Then the father said very quietly, "Phil, your teacher was h_Quiet Talks with World Winners

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Quiet Talks with World Winners

S. D. Gordon

Author of "Quiet Talks on Power," "Quiet Talks About Jesus," "Quiet Talks

on Personal Problems," Etc.

Contents

I. World-winning

1. The Master Passion

2. The Master's Plan

3. The Need

4. The Present Opportunity

5. The Pressing Emergency

6. The Past Failure

7. The Coming Victory

II. Winning Forces

1. The Church

2. Each One of Us

3. Jesus

4. The Holy Spirit

5. Prayer

6. Money

7. Sacrifice

The Master Passion

The Earliest Calvary Picture.

The Love Passion.

Mother-love.

The Genesis Picture.

God Giving Himself.

God's Fellow.

The Genesis Water-mark.

A Human Picture of God.

On a Wooing Errand.

Jesus' World-passion.

The Master Passion

The Earliest Calvary Picture.

There's a great passion burning in the heart of God. It is tenderly warm

and tenaciously strong. Its fires never burn low, nor lose their fine

glow. That passion is to win man back home again. The whole world of man

is included in its warm, eager reach.

The old home hearth-fire of God is lonely since man went away. The family

circle is broken. God will not rest until that old home circle is complete

again, and every voice joining in the home songs.

It is an overmastering passion, the overmastering passion of God's

heart. It has guided and controlled all His thoughts and plans for man

from the first. The purpose of winning man, and the whole race, back again

is the dominant gripping passion of God's heart to-day. Everything is made

to bend to this one end.

When Eden's tragedy came so early, to darken the pages of this old Book,

and, far worse, to darken the pages of human life, there is a great

glimpse of this passion of God's heart in the guarding of those Eden

gates. The presence of the angels with their sword of flame told plainly

of a day when man would be coming back again to the old Eden home of God.

The place must be carefully guarded for him.

This is a love passion, a passion of love. And love itself is the master

passion both of the human heart and of God's heart. Nothing can grip and

fill and sway the heart either of man or God like that.

We would all easily agree that the greatest picture of God's marvellous,

overmastering passion of love is seen in the cross. All men as they have

come to know that story have stood with heads bowed and bared before the

love revealed there. They have not understood it. They have quarrelled

about its meaning. But they have acknowledged its love and power as beyond

that of any other story or picture.

However men may differ as to why Jesus died, and how His dying affects us,

they all agree that the scene of the cross is the greatest revelation of

love ever known or ever shown. All theories of the atonement seem to be

lost sight of in one thought of grateful acknowledgment of a stupendous

love, as men are drawn together by the magnetism of the hill-top of

Calvary.

But there is a wondrously clear foreshadowing of that tremendous cross

scene in the earliest page of this old Book. Nowhere is love, God's

passion of love, made to stand out more distinctly and vividly than in the

first chapter of Genesis. The after-scene of the cross uses intenser

coloring; the blacks are inkier in their blackness; the reds deeper and

redder; the contrasts sharper to the startling-point; yet there is nothing

in the cross chapters of the Gospels not included fully in this first leaf

of revelation. But it has taken the light of the cross to open our eyes to

see how much is plainly there. Let us look at it a bit.

The Love Passion.

What is this greatest of passions called love? There is no word harder to

get a satisfactory definition of. Because, whatever you say about it,

there comes quickly to your mind some one who loves you, or you think of

the passion that burns in your own heart for some one. And, as you think

of that, no words that anybody may use seem at all strong enough, or

tender enough, to tell what love is, as you know it in your own inner

heart.

Yet I think this much can be said--love is the tender, strong outgoing of

your whole being to another. It is a passion burning like a fire within

you, a soft-burning but intense fire within you, for some other one. Every

mention of that name stirs the flame into new burning. Every passing or

lingering thought of him or her is like fresh air making the flames leap

up more eagerly. And each personal contact is a clearing out of all the

ashes, and a turning on of all the draughts, to feed new oxygen for

stronger, fresher burning.

There are many other things that seem like love. Kindliness and

friendliness, and even intenser emotions, use love's name for themselves.

But though these have likenesses to love, they are not love. They have

caught something of its warm glow. A bit of the high coloring of its

flames plays on them. But they are not the real thing, only distant

kinsfolk. The severe tests of life quickly reveal their lack.

Love itself is really an aristocrat. It allows very, very few into its

inner circle, often only one. The real thing of love is never selfish. Now

we know very well that in the thick of life the fine gold of love gets

mixed up with the baser metals. It is very often overlaid, and shot

through with much that is mean and low. Rank selfishness, both the coarse

kind and the refined, cultured sort, seeks a hiding-place under its cloak.

But the stuff mixed in it is not love, but a defiling of it. That is a bit

of the slander it suffers for a time, from the presence in life of sin.

Weeds with their poison, and snakes and spiders with their deadly venom,

draw life from the sun. That is a bit of the bad transmuting the good,

pure sun into its own sort. The sun itself never produces poison or any

hurtful thing.

Love itself is never mean, nor bad, nor selfish. The man who truly loves

the woman whom he would have for his own lifelong, closest companion is

not selfish. He does not want her chiefly for his own sake, but for her

sake, that so he may guard and care for her, and her life be fully grown

in the sunlight of the love it must have. And, if you think that is

idealizing it out of all practical reach, please remember that true love

will steadily refuse the union that would not be best for the loved one.

What is the finest and highest love that we know? There are many different

sorts and degrees of love revealed in man's relation with his fellow:

conjugal, the love between husband and wife; paternal, the love of a

father for his child; maternal, the mother's love for her child; filial,

the love of children for father and mother; fraternal, or brotherly,

meaning really the love of children of the same parents for each other,

both brothers and sisters--the same word is used for love between friends

where there is no tie of blood; and patriotic, or love for one's country.

And under that last word may be loosely grouped the love that one may have

for any special object, to which he may devote his life, outside of

personal relationships, such as music or any profession or occupation.

This is putting them in their logical order. Though in our experience we

know the father-and mother-love for ourselves first; and then in turn the

others, so far as they come to us, until we complete the circle and reach

the climax of father-and mother-love in ourselves going out to another.

Mother-love.

Now of these sorts and degrees which is the highest and finest? Well, your

answer to that question will depend entirely on your own experience; as

every answer and every thought we have of everything does. All children

have mothers, or have had, but thousands of children don't know a mother's

love.

I was speaking one time in New York City about the conception, of which

the Bible is so full, that God is a mother. And the English evangelist

Gypsy Smith, who lost his mother when very young, but who had an unusually

devoted father, said with charming simplicity that he could not just see

how God could be called a mother, but he knew He was a father. And then he

went on to speak very winsomely of God as a father.

Many times love is not born in the heart at all, until there comes into

the life some one clear outside of one's own kin. Many a woman never knows

love until it is awakened in her heart by him who henceforth is to be a

part of herself.

But the common answer, that most people everywhere give to that question,

is that a mother's love is the greatest human love we know. And if you

press them to tell why they think so, this stands out oftenest and

strongest--that it is because she gives so much of herself. She gives her

very life. If need be, she sacrifices everything in life, and then

sacrifices life itself, going out into the darkness of death that her

child may come into fulness and sweetness of life. This is the mother

spirit, giving one's very self to bring life to another.

The mother gives her very life-blood that the new life may come. And, if

need be, will gladly give her life out to the death that the new life

may come into life. And yet more, she gives her life out daily and yearly,

throughout its length, that so the full strength and fragrance of life may

come in her child's life.

Yet, when all this has been said, I am strongly inclined to think that the

mother's love, though the greatest that can be found in any one heart, is

not the perfect, fully grown love. The human unit is not a man nor a

woman, but a man and a woman. Perfect love requires more than one or two

for its matured growth into full life. It cannot exist in its full

strength and fragrant sweets except where three are joined together to

draw out its full depth and meaning.

There must be two whose hearts are fully joined in love, each finding

answering and ever-satisfying love in the other; and so each love growing

to full ripeness in the warm sunshine of the other love. And then there

needs to be a third one, who comes as a result of that mutual love, and

who constantly draws out the love of the other two.

For love in itself is creative. It yearns to bring into being another upon

whom it may freely lavish itself. That other one must be of its own sort,

upon its own level. Nothing less ever satisfies. And so the love poured

out draws out to itself an answering love fully as full as its own. And

then, having yearned, it does more. It creates. It must create. It must

bring forth life; and life like its own in all its powers and privileges.

This is the very life of love in its full expression.

Yet to say all this is simply to spell out fully, in all its letters and

syllables, the great, the greatest of passions, mother-love, which we

agreed a moment ago was the highest. For mother-love is not restricted to

woman, though among us humans it often finds its brightest expressions in

her. It knows no restriction of sex. It is simply love at its fullest and

highest and freest and tenderest; free to do as it will, and to do it as

fully as it will. Love left to itself, free to do as its heart dictates,

will give its very self, its life, that life may come to another. This is

the great passion called love, the greatest of all passions.

The Genesis Picture.

Now, maybe you think we have swung pretty far away from that first chapter

of the Genesis revelation. No; you are mistaken there. We have been

walking, with rapid stride, by the shortest road, straight into its inner

heart. Let us look a bit at the picture of God sketched for us in this

earliest page of revelation.

There are two creations here, first of the earth, man's home; and then of

man himself who was to live in the home. Here at once in the beginning is

mother-love. Before the new life comes the mother is absorbed in getting

the home ready; the best and softest and homiest home that her mother-love

can think of, and her fingers fix. The same mother instinct in the birds

spends itself in getting the nest ready, and then patiently broods until

the new occupants come to take possession.

The Bible never calls God a mother, though the mother language, as here,

is used of Him many times. It takes more of the human to tell the divine.

You must take many words, and several of our human relationships, and put

them together, in the finest meaning of each, to get near the full meaning

of what God is. Up on the higher level, with God, the word "father" really

includes all that both father and mother mean to us.

The word "father" is even used once of God in what we think of as the

strict mother sense. In speaking of God's early care of the Hebrews Paul

says, "as a nursing-father bore he them in the wilderness."[1] That word

"nursing-father" is peculiar in coupling the distinctive function of the

mother in caring for the babe with the word father.

The word "father" applied to God includes not only our meaning of father

in all its strength as we know it at its best; but all of the meaning of

the word "mother," in all its sweet fragrance, as we have had it breathed

into our own very life.

We have come commonly to think of the word mother as a tenderer word than

father. Though I have met many, both men and women, who unconsciously

revealed that their experience has made father the tenderer, and the

tenderest word to them. Father stands commonly for the stronger, more

rugged qualities; and mother for the finer, gentler, sweeter, maybe

softer qualities, in the strong meaning of that word soft.

God Giving Himself.

Here in this Genesis story the creation of the whole sun-system to give

life to the earth, and of the earth itself, was the outward beginning of

this greatest passion of love in the heart of God. And if you would know

more of that love in this early stage of it, just look a bit at the home

itself. It has been pretty badly mussed, soiled and hurt by sin's foul

touch. Yet even so it is a wonder of a world in its beauty and

fruitfulness. What must it have been before the slime and tangle of sin

got in! But that's a whole story by itself. We must not stop there just

now.

When the home was ready God set Himself to bringing the new life He was

planning. And He did it, even as father and mother of our human kind and

of every other kind do:--He gave some of Himself. He breathed into man His

own life-breath. He came Himself, and with the warmth and vitality of His

life brought a new life. The new life was a bit of Himself.

That phrase, "breathed into his nostrils," brings to us the conception of

the closest personal, physical contact; two together in most intimate

contact, and life passing from one to the other. The picture of Elijah

stretching his warm body upon that of the widow's son until the

life-breath came again comes instinctively to mind. And its companion

scene comes with it, of Elisha lying prone upon the child, mouth to

mouth, eye to eye, hand to hand, until the breath again softly reentered

that little, precious body.

And if all this seems too plain and homely a way to talk about the great

God, let us remember it is the way of this blessed old Book. It is the

only way we shall come to know the marvellous intimacy and tenderness of

God's love, and of God's touch upon ourselves.

How shall we talk best about God so as to get clear, sensible ideas about

Him? Why not follow the rule of the old Bible? Can we do better? It

constantly speaks of Him in the language that we use of men. The scholars,

with their fondness for big words, say the Bible is anthropomorphic. That

simply means that it uses man's words, and man's ideas of things in

telling about God. It makes use of the common words and ideas, that man

understands fully, to tell about the God, whom he doesn't know. Could

there be a more sensible way? Indeed, how else could man understand?

Some dear, godly people have sometimes been afraid of the use of simple,

homely language in talking about God. To speak of Him in the common

language of every-day life, the common talk of home and kitchen, and shop

and street and trade, seems to them lacking in due reverence. Do they

forget that this is the language of the common people? And of our good old

Anglo-Saxon Bible? Has anybody ever yet used as blunt homely, talk as this

old Book uses? And has any other book stuck into people's memories and

hearts with such burr-like hold as it has?

That breathing by God into man's nostrils of the breath of life suggests

the intensest concentration of strength and thought and heart. The whole

heart of God went out to man in that breath that brought life.

God's Fellow.

The whole thought of God's heart was to have a man like Himself. Over

and over again, with all the peculiar emphasis of repetition, it is said

that the man was to be in the very image, or likeness, of God. God gave

Himself that the man might be a bit of Himself. Here is the love-passion,

the mother-passion, the father-mother-passion, in its highest mood, and at

its own finest work.

The man was to be the very best, that so he might have fellowship of the

most intimate sort with God. Of course, only those who are alike can have

fellowship. Only in that particular thing which any two have in common can

they have fellowship together. Let me use a common word in its old, fine,

first meaning: man was made to be God's fellow, His most intimate

associate and companion.

As you read this early story in Genesis of God's passion of love, you

know, if you stop to think into it, that if ever the need for it came, He

will climb any Calvary hill, however steep, and receive the jagging nails

of any cross, however cutting, for the sake of His darling child--man.

This love-passion never faileth. There is no emergency that can arise

that is too great for love's resources. Any danger, however great, every

need, no matter how distressing, is already provided for by love. The

emergency may sorely test and tax love to its last limit, but it can never

outdo it, nor outstrip it in the race. No matter how great the danger,

love is a bit greater. No matter how strong the enemy threatening, love is

always yet stronger. However deep down into the very vitals of life the

poison-sting may sink its fangs, love goes yet deeper, neutralizing the

deadly influence with its own fresh life-blood.

Have you ever looked into a single drop of water and seen the sun? the

whole of that brilliant ball of fire there in one tiny drop of water?

Well, there's one word on this first leaf of the Book which contains the

clear reflection, sharply outlined, of the whole creation story; ah! yes,

more than that, of the whole Gospel story.

Come here and look; you can see in its clear surface the form of a man

climbing a little, steep hill, and being hung, thorn-crowned, upon a cross

of pain and shame. It is in chapter one, verse two, the word "brooding."

The old version and the Revision, both English and American, have the word

"moved." The Revisions add "brooding" in the margin. And that is the root

meaning of the word underneath our English--"brooding," or, rendered more

fully, "was brooding tremulous with love."

The Genesis Water-mark.

That English word "brooding," as well as the old word underneath, is a

mother word. The brooding hen sits so faithfully, day after day, upon the

eggs, bringing the new lives by the vital warmth of her own body. The

mother-bird nestles softly down upon the nest in the crotch of the tree,

patiently, expectantly brooding, by the strength of her own life giving

life to the coming young. She who, in the holiest, greatest function

entrusted to her, comes nearest to God in creative power and love--the

mother of our human kind, broods for long months over her coming child,

giving her very life, until the crisis of birth comes; and then broods

still, for months and years longer, that the new life may come into

fulness of life. That is the great word used here.

Now, will you please notice very keenly the connection in which it occurs.

It was because the earth was "waste and void, and darkness upon the face

of the deep," that the Spirit of God was brooding. It is only fair to say

that our scholarly friends who think in Hebrew are divided as to the

meaning here. Some think that these words, "waste and void," simply

indicate a stage, or step, in the processes of creation.

But others of them are just as positive in saying that the words point

plainly to a disaster of some sort that took place. In their view the

whole story of creation is in the ten opening words of the chapter. Then

follows a bad break of some sort; then the brooding of God in verse two;

and the rest of the chapter is taken up in what is practically a reshaping

up again of the whole affair. Some of this second group of Hebrew scholars

have made this translation,--"the earth became a waste," or "a wreck," or

"a ruin," or "without inhabitant."

If we may so read it now, it gives a world of additional meaning to this

word "brooding." Here was love not merely giving life, but giving itself

to overcome a disaster. The brooding was to mend a break. Love creates. It

also redeems. It stoops down with great patience, and washes the dirt and

filth thoroughly off, in the best cleansing liquid to be found, and brings

the cleansed, redeemed man back again.

Love does indeed create. It gave man the power to choose freely, without

any restriction, whatever he would choose to choose. Redeeming love does

more. It woos him to choose the right, and only the right. It gets down by

his side after his eyesight has become twisted, and his will badly kinked

by wrong choosing, and patiently, persistently works to draw him up to the

level of choosing right. Love makes us like God in the power of choice.

But there's a greater task ahead. It makes us yet more like Him in the

desire to choose only the right, and in the power to choose it, too. All

this is in that marvellous world of a word--"brooding."

The whole story of the sacrifice of Calvary is included in this wondrous

first leaf of revelation. If we had lost the Gospels, and didn't know

their story, nor the history of man, we yet could know from this Genesis

page that, if ever the need arose, God would lavishly give out His very

life, at any cost of suffering and pain, that His man might be saved.

John, three, sixteen is in the first chapter of Genesis. Calvary is in the

creation. God gave His breath to man in creation, and His blood for man on

Calvary. He gave His blood because He had given His breath. Each was His

very life.

You know the way publishers have of putting an imprint in a book by means

of what is called a water-mark. By the skilful use of water in

manufacturing the paper, a name or trade imprint is made a part of the

very paper of which the book is made.

Have you ever noticed God's water-mark on the paper of this first leaf of

His Book? Hold your Bible up as we talk; separate this first leaf and hold

it up to the light and try to see through it. The best light to use is

that which came from Calvary. Can you see the water-mark plainly imprinted

there? Look closely and carefully, for it is there. In clear-cut outline,

every bit of it showing sharply out, is a cross. And if you look still

more closely you will find this water-mark different from those in common

use, in this--there is a distinct blood-red tinge to it.

A Human Picture of God.

Illustrations of God from our common life are never full, and must not be

taken too critically, but they are sometimes wonderfully vivid and very

helpful. Anything that makes God seem real and near helps.

A few years ago I heard a simple story of real life from the lips of a New

England clergyman. It was told of a brother clergyman of the same

denomination, and stationed in the same city with the man who told me.

This clergyman had a son, about fourteen years of age, who, of course, was

going to school. One day the boy's teacher called at the house and asked

for the father. When they met he said:

"Is your son sick?"

"No; why?"

"He was not at school to-day."

"You don't mean it!"

"Nor yesterday."

"Indeed!"

"Nor the day before."

"Well!"

"And I supposed he was sick."

"No, he's not sick."

"Well, I thought I should tell you."

And the father thanked him, and the teacher left. The father sat thinking

about his son, and those three days. By and by he heard a click at the

gate, and he knew the boy was coming in. So he went to the door to meet

him at once. And the boy knew as he looked up that the father knew about

those three days.

And the father said, "Come into the library, Phil."

And Phil went and the door was shut.

Then the father said very quietly, "Phil, your teacher was here a little

while ago. He tells me you were not at school to-day, nor yesterday, nor

the day before. And we thought you were. You let us think you were. And

you don't know how bad I feel about this. I have always said I could trust

my boy Phil. I always have trusted you. And here you have been a living

lie for three whole days. I can't tell you how bad I feel about it."

Well, it was hard on the boy to be talked to in that gentle way. If his

father had spoken to him roughly, or had taken him out to the wood-shed,

in the rear of the dwelling, it wouldn't have been nearly so hard.

Then the father said, "We'll get down and pray." And the thing was getting

harder for Phil all the time. He didn't want to pray just then. Most

people don't about that time.

And they got down on their knees, side by side. And the father poured out

his heart in prayer. And the boy listened. Somehow he saw himself in the

looking-glass of his knee-joints as he hadn't before. It is queer about

that mirror of the knee-joints, the things you see in it. Most people

don't like to use it much. And they got up from their knees. The father's

eyes were wet. And Phil's eyes were not dry.

Then the father said, "My boy, there's a law of life, that where there is

sin there is suffering. You can't get those two things apart. Wherever

there is suffering there has been sin, somewhere, by somebody. And

wherever there is sin there will be suffering, for some one, somewhere;

and likely most for those closest to you."

"Now," he said, "my boy, you have done wrong. So we'll do this. You go

up-stairs to the attic. I'll make a little bed for you there in the

corner. We'll bring your meals up to you at the usual times. And you stay

up in the attic three days and three nights, as long as you've been a

living lie." And the boy didn't say a word. They climbed the attic steps.

The father kissed his boy, and left him alone.

Supper-time came, and the father and mother sat down to eat. But they

couldn't eat for thinking of their son. The longer they chewed on the food

the bigger and drier it got in their mouths. And swallowing was clear out

of the question. And the mother said, "Why don't you eat?" And he said

softly, "Why don't you eat?" And, with a catch in her throat, she said,

"I can't, for thinking of Phil." And he said, "That's what's bothering

me."

And they rose from the supper-table, and went into the sitting-room. He

took up the evening paper, and she began sewing. His eyesight was not very

good. He wore glasses, and to-night they seemed to blur up. He couldn't

see the print distinctly. It must have been the glasses, of course. So he

took them off, and wiped them with great care, and then found the paper

was upside-down. And she tried to sew. But the thread broke, and she

couldn't seem to get the thread into the needle again. How we all reveal

ourselves in just such details!

By and by the clock struck ten, their usual hour of retiring. But they

made no move to go. And the mother said quietly, "Aren't you going to

bed?" And he said, "I'm not sleepy, I think I'll sit up a while longer;

you go." "No, I guess I'll wait a while too." And the clock struck eleven;

then the hands clicked around close to twelve. And they arose, and went to

bed; but not to sleep. Each one pretended to be asleep. And each knew the

other was not asleep.

After a bit she said--woman is always the keener--"Why don't you sleep?"

And he said softly, "How did you know I wasn't sleeping? Why don't you

sleep?" And she said, with that same queer catch in her voice, "I can't,

for thinking of Phil." He said, "That's the bother with me." And the clock

struck one; and then two; still no sleep. At last the father said,

"Mother, I can't stand this. I'm going up-stairs with Phil."

And he took his pillow, and went softly out of the room; climbed the attic

steps softly, and pressed the latch softly so as not to wake the boy if he

were asleep, and tiptoed across to the corner by the window. There the boy

lay, wide-awake, with something glistening in his eyes, and what looked

like stains on his cheeks. And the father got down between the sheets, and

they got their arms around each other's necks, for they had always been

the best of friends, and their tears got mixed up on each other's

cheeks--you couldn't have told which were the father's and which the

son's. Then they slept together until the morning light broke.

When sleep-time came the second night the father said, "Good-night,

mother. I'm going up with Phil again." And the second night he shared his

boy's punishment in the attic. And the third night when sleep-time came

again, again he said, "Mother, good-night. I'm going up with the boy." And

the third night he shared his son's punishment with him.

That boy, now a man grown, in the thews of his strength, my acquaintance

told me, is telling the story of Jesus with tongue of flame and life of

flame out in the heart of China.

Do you know, I think that is the best picture of God I have ever run

across in any gallery of life? It is not a perfect picture. No human

picture of God is perfect, except of course the Jesus human picture. The

boy's punishment was arbitrarily chosen by the father, unlike God's

dealings with our sin. But it is the tenderest and most real of any that

has come to me.

God couldn't take away sin. It's here. Very plainly it is here. And He

couldn't take away suffering, out of kindness to us. For suffering is

sin's index-finger pointing out danger. It is sin's voice calling loudly,

"Look out! there's something wrong." So He came down in the person of His

Son, Jesus, and lay down alongside of man for three days and nights, in

the place where sin drove man.

That's God! And that suggests graphically the great passion of His heart.

Sin was not ignored. Its lines stood sharply out. The boy in the garret

had two things burned into his memory, never to be erased: the wrong of

his own sin, and the strength of his father's love.

Jesus is God coming down into our midst and giving His own very life, and

then, more, giving it out in death, that He might make us hate sin, and

might woo and win the whole world, away from sin, back to the intimacies

of the old family circle again.

On a Wooing Errand.

Jesus was a mirror held up to the Father's face for man to look in. So we

may know what the Father is like. When you look at Jesus and listen to Him

you are looking into the Father's heart and listening to its warm

throbbing. And no one can look there without being caught by the great

passion burning there, and feeling its intense soft-burning glow, and

carrying some of it for ever after in his own heart.

Jesus was on a wooing errand to the earth. The whole spirit of His

dealings with men was that of a great lover, wooing them to the Father. He

was insistently eager to let men know what His Father was like. He seemed

jealous of His Father's reputation among men. It had been slandered badly.

Men misunderstood the Father. He would leave no stone unturned to let men

know how good and loving and winsome God is. For then they would eagerly

run back home again to Him. This was His method of approach to the world

He came to win.

Jesus is the greatest wooer the old world has ever known, and will be the

greatest winner of what He is after, too. Run thoughtfully through these

Gospels, and stand by Jesus' side in each one of these simple, tremendous

incidents of His contact with the common people. Then listen anew to His

teaching talks, so homely and so gripping. And the impression becomes

irresistible that the one thought that gripped at every turn, never

forgotten, was to woo man back to the Father's allegiance.

Jesus' World-passion.

Have you not marked the world-wide swing of Jesus' thought and plan? It

is stupendous in its freshness and bold daring. The bigness of His idea of

the thing to be done is immense. To use a favorite phrase of to-day, He

had a world-consciousness. It is hard for us to realize what a startling

thing His world-consciousness was. We are so familiar with the Gospels

that we lose much of their force through mere rote of familiarity.

It takes a determined effort, and the fresh touch of the Holy Spirit, too,

to have them come with all the freshness of a new book. And then we have

gotten sort of used in our day, and in our part of the world especially,

to talking about world-wide enterprises.

We don't realize what a stupendous thing a world-consciousness was in

Jesus' day. He certainly did not get it from His own generation; not from

the Jews. It stands out in keen contrast to their ideas. They lived within

very narrow alleyways. They supposed they were the favorites of God; and

everybody else--dogs, and damned dogs, too; not in the profane usage,

but actually.

But Jesus thought of a world, and yearned for a world. The words "world"

and "earth" are constantly on His lips. He said He came "into the world;"

not to Palestine; that was only the door He used for entrance. It was from

Him that John learned, what he wrote down, that He was to "lighten every

man that cometh into the world."

To the Jewish senator of the inner national circle He said plainly in that

great sentence that contains the gist of the whole Bible--John, three,

sixteen--that it was a world he was after. A saved world was the one

purpose of His errand to the earth. He had come to "save the world,"[2]

and would stop at nothing short of giving His very self "for the life of

the world."

He tells His own inner circle that "the field" is a world. And that it

is to be won by the means He Himself was using; namely, men, human beings,

"sons of the kingdom"[3] were to be sown as seed all over its vast extent.

You remember, that last week, the request of the Greeks for an

interview?[4] The outside non-Jewish world came to Him in the visit and

earnest request of those Greeks. And His whole being became greatly

agitated. It was as when one, at last, after years of labor without any

seeming success, gets a first faint glimpse of the results he longs so

earnestly for. Here was a touch, a glimpse of the very thing on which His

heart was so set. The great outside world was coming to Him.

The realization of its tremendous meaning, the sure promise it held of the

day when all the world would be coming seems to set Him all a-tremble

with intensest emotion. The delight of the possible realizing of His

life-dream, His earth errand, and yet the terrific conviction that only by

travelling the red road of the cross could that world be won, made a

fierce conflict within. It was the world-vision that agitated Him.

And it was that same world-vision that held Him steady. He would not

scatter. By concentrating all in one act He would generate and set off a

dynamic power on Calvary that would shake and then shape a world. The

knowledge that all men would be irresistibly drawn by the loadstone of the

cross steadied His steps.

A few days later, as He sat resting a bit, on the side of the Hill of

Olivet, the disciples earnestly ask for some idea of His plan. And He

explains that the Gospel was to be "preached to the whole inhabited

earth."[5] That conception was never out of His mind. How could it be!

But the great purpose and passion of His life stands out most sharply in

the words of that last imperial command. He shows the whole of His heart

in that stirring "Go ye into all the world and make disciples of all

the nations"; "preach the gospel to the whole creation." The passion of

Jesus' heart was to win the world. And that passion has grown intenser in

waiting. To-day more than ever the one passion of yonder enthroned Man is

to win His world. Everything else bends to that with Him. Nothing less

will satisfy His heart.

Now, the God-touched man is always swayed by the same purpose and passion

as sway God. The passion of every God-touched man, fresh from direct

contact with Him, is to win the whole world up to God. Everything will be

held under the strong thumb of this, and made to fit and bend and blend

into it.

The Master's Plan

Will the World Be Won?

Some Bad Drifts.

Great Incidental Blessings.

The World Really Lost.

God's Method of Saving.

The Programme of World-winnng.

Early Moorings.

Service Unites.

The World-winning Climb.

The Plan

Will the World Be Won?

The great passion of God's heart is a love-passion. Love never fails. It

waits and, if need be, waits long; but it never fails to get what it is

waiting for. Love sacrifices; though it never uses that word. It doesn't

know it is sacrificing, it is so absorbed in its gripping purpose. There

may be keen-cutting pain, but it is clean forgotten in the passion that

burns within. God means to win His world of men back home to Himself.

But some earnest friend is thinking of an objection to all this talk about

a world being won. You are taken all anew with the great picture of God's

passion of love in the opening page of this old Book. But all the time we

have been talking together you have been having a cross-cutting train of

thought underneath. It has been saying, "Isn't this going a bit too far?

will the whole world be won?"

Let us talk over that a bit. We have been used all our lives to hearing

about soul-winning. We have been urged, more or less, to do it. A

favorite motto in some Christian workers' convention has been, "Win one."

But this idea of winning the world has not been preached. At first it

doesn't seem exactly orthodox.

The old-time preaching, of which not so much is heard now, except in

restricted quarters, is that the whole world is lost; and that we are to

save people out of it. We used to be told that the world is bad, and only

bad; bad beyond redemption, and doomed. In his earlier years Mr. Moody

used to say often with his great earnestness that this was a doomed world,

and that the great business of life was to save men out of it.

But of late years there has been a distinct swing away from this sort of

preaching and talking. Everything we humans do seems to go by the clock

movement, the pendulum swing: first one side, then the other. Now we hear

a very different sort of preaching. This is really a good world. There is

some wickedness in it, to be sure. Indeed, there is quite a great deal of

it. But in the main it is not a bad world, we're told.

The old-time preaching was chiefly concerned with getting ready for

heaven. Now it is concerned, for most part, with living pure, true lives

right here on the earth. And that change is surely a good one. But it is

also the common thing to be told that the world is not nearly so bad as we

have been led to believe.

Some Bad Drifts.

It is striking that with that has come a change of talk about sin, the

thing that was supposed to be responsible for making the world so bad. Sin

is not such a damnable thing now, apparently. It is largely

constitutional weakness, or prenatal predilection, or the idiosyncrasy of

individuality. (Big words are in favor here. They always make such talk

seem wise and plausible.) Heaven has slipped largely out of view;

and--hell, too, even more. Churchmen in the flush of phenomenal material

prosperity, with full stomachs and luxurious homes and pews, are well

content with things as they are in this present world, and don't propose

to move.

And with that it is easy to believe what we are freely told, that there is

really no need of giving our Christian religion to the heathen world.

Those peoples have religions of their own that are remarkably good. At

least they are satisfactory to them. Why disturb them? They are doing very

well. This talk about their being lost, and needing a Savior, is reckoned

out of date. The old common statements about so many thousands dying

daily, and going out into a lost eternity, are not liked. They are called

lurid. And, indeed, they are not used nearly so much now as once.

This swing away has had a great influence upon the mass of church-members,

and upon their whole thought of the foreign-mission enterprise. There is a

vaguely expressed, but distinctly felt idea both in the Church and outside

of it, for the two seem to overlap as never before--that the sending of

missionaries is really not to save peoples from being lost. That sort of

talk is almost vulgar now.

Mission work is really a sort of good-natured neighborliness. It is

benevolent humanitarianism in which we may all help, more or less (usually

less), regardless of our beliefs or lack of beliefs, our church-membership

or attendance. We should show these heathen our improved methods of

living. We have worked out better plans of housekeeping and schooling, of

teaching and doctoring, and farming and all the rest of it. And now we

want to help these poor deficient peoples across the seas.

We think we are a superior people in ourselves, as well as in our type of

civilization, decidedly so. And having taken good care of ourselves, and

laid up a good snug sum, we can easily afford to help these backward

far-away neighbors a bit. It is really the thing to do.

Such seems to be the general drift of much of the present-day talk about

foreign missions. The Church, and its members individually, have grown so

rich that we have forgotten that we were ever poor. The table is so loaded

with dainties that we are quite willing to be generous with the crumbs,

even cake crumbs.

Great Incidental Blessings.

Now, without doubt the sending of the missionaries has vastly improved

conditions of human life in the foreign-mission lands. The missionaries

have been the forerunners of great improvements. They have been the

pioneers blazing out the paths along which both trade and diplomacy have

gone with the newer and better civilization of the West. Civilization has

developed marvellously in the western half of the world. And the

missionaries have been its advance agents into the stagnant East, and the

savage wilds of the southern hemisphere.

Full, accurate knowledge of nature's resources and laws, and adaptation of

that knowledge to practical uses, have been among the most marked

conditions of the western world during the past century. And, as a result,

education, medical and hygienic and sanitary science, development of the

earth's soil, and resources above and below the soil, have gone forward by

immense strides. So far as is known, our progress in such matters exceeds

all previous achievements in the history of the race.

And some of all this has been seeping into the heathen world. It hasn't

gotten in far yet; only into the top soil, and about the edges, so far.

The progress in this regard has seemed both rapid and slow. When the great

mass of these peoples have not yet gotten even a whiff of the purer,

better civilization air of the western nations the progress seems slow.

But when we remember the incalculably tremendous inertia, and the

strangely stagnant spirit of heathen lands, it seems rapid.

The effort to get the heathen world simply to clean up; to open the

windows and let in some fresh air, and use plain soap and water to scrub

off the actual dirt makes one think of the typical small boy's dislike of

being washed up. It has been a hard job. Yet a great beginning has been

made. The boy seems to be beginning to find out that his face is dirty,

and feels dirty. And that is an enormous gain.

The World Really Lost.

Yet while this is good, and only good, it isn't the thing we are driving

at in missions. While it would fully warrant all the expenditures of

money, and vastly more than has yet been given, it should be said in

clearest, most ringing tones that all this is merely incidental. It is

blessed. It is sure to come. It is remarkable that it always has come

where the Gospel of Jesus is preached.

Yet this is not the thing aimed at in missions. The one driving purpose is

to carry to men a Saviour from sin. And to take Him so earnestly and

winsomely that men yonder shall be wooed and won to the real God, whom

they have lost knowledge of.

It cannot be said too plainly that the world is lost. It has strayed so

far away from the Father's house that it has lost all its bearings, and

can't find its way back without help. The old preaching that this is a

lost world, is true.

But we need to remember the different uses of that word "world." In the

old-time conception it was used in a loose way as meaning the spirit that

actuates men in the world. The scheme of selfishness and wickedness and

sinfulness which has overcast all life is commonly spoken of in the Bible

as the world spirit. In that sense the world is bad, and only bad. Men

are to be saved out of it, as Moody said.

But, in the other commoner use of it, that word "world" simply means the

whole race of men. And we must remind ourselves vigorously of the plain

truth that this is a lost world. That is to say, men have gotten away from

God. They completely misunderstand Him. Then they do more, and worse, they

misrepresent and slander Him. The result is complete lack of trust in Him.

They have lost their moorings, and have drifted out to deep sea with no

compass on board. Thick fogs have risen and shut out sun and stars and

every guiding thing. They are hopelessly and helplessly lost, and need

some one to bring the compass so as to get back to shore, back home to

God.

But this world of men is to be won. Jesus said He came to save a world.

And He will not fail nor rest content until He has done it, and this has

become a saved world. He said that He gave His life for the life of the

world. And the world will yet know the fulness of that life of His

throbbing in its own heart.

This does not mean that all men will be saved. There seems to be clear

evidence in the Book that some will insist on preferring their own way to

God's. And I am sure I do not know anything except what the Book teaches.

It is the only reliable source of information I have been able to find so

far. It must be the standard, because it is the standard.

There will be a group of stubborn irreconcilables holding out against all

of God's tender pleading. John's Patmos vision of glory, with its

marvellous beauty and sweep, has yet a lake of fire and a group of men

insisting upon going their own way. If a man choose that way, he may. He

is still in the likeness of God in choosing to leave out God. He remains a

sovereign in his own will even in the hell of his own choosing.

God's Method of Saving.

The method of saving is by winning. The Father would not be content

with anything else. Such a thing as might be represented by throwing a

blanket over the head of a horse in a burning stable, and so getting it

out by coaxing, and forcing, and hiding the danger, is not to be thought

of here. Sin is never smoothed over by God, nor its results, their badness

and their certainty.

He would have us see the sin as ugly and damning as it actually is, and

see Him as pure and holy and winsome as He is; and then to reject the sin

and choose Himself. The method of much modern charity, the long-range

charity that helps by organization, without the personal relation and warm

touch, is unknown to God. He touches every man directly with His own warm

heart, and appeals to Him at closest quarters.

Man's highest power is his power of choosing. It is in that He is most

like God. God's plan is to clear away the clouds, sweep down the cobwebs

that bother our eyes so, and let us get such a look at Himself that we

will be caught with the sight of His great face, and choose to come, and

to come a-running back to Himself. The world will be saved by its own

choosing to be. It will be saved by being won. Men will choose to leave

sin and accept God's Saviour Jesus Christ.

It is a great method. It is the only method God could use. The creative

love-passion of His heart was that we should choose Himself in preference

to all else, and choose life with Him up on His level as the only life.

And the method of winning is by getting each man's consent. The old cry of

soul-winning is the true cry. It tells the method of work for us to

follow. Each man is to be won by his own free glad consent. There is to be

no wholesaling except by retailing. In business the wholesale comes after

the retail. It is the child and servant of the retail.