One stumbling block in your way is, you say, that you are revolted
and kept at arm’s-length by the separatist and exclusive habits and
maxims of those who profess to have the faith you want. Many of them
are kind, exemplary men, but just because they are Christians, and in
so far forth as they are Christians, they are calling to you to come
out from amongst the people of the world—to separate yourselves from an
adulterous generation.
Against this call something which you know to be true and noble in you
rises up. You have felt that what your age is crying out for, is union.
You acknowledge the power of that cry in your own hearts. You want to
feel with all men, and for all men. If you need a faith at all, it is
one which shall meet that cry, which shall teach you how all men are
bound together; not how some may be separated from the rest. You will
not be false to your age. You will have no faith at all, or a faith for
all mankind.
Keep to that; take nothing less than that; only look again and see
whether that is not just what Christ offers you. Again I urge you not
to look at his followers, real or professing—look at him, look at his
life.
Was He exclusive? Did ever man or woman come near him and he turn
away? Did he not go amongst all ranks, into every society? Did he not
go to the houses of great men and rulers; of Pharisees, of poor men,
of publicans? Did he not frequent the temple, the marketplace, the
synagogue, the sea-shore, the hillside, the haunts of outcasts and
harlots? Was he not to be found at feasts and at funerals? Wherever men
and women were to be found, there was his place and his work; and there
is ours. He who believes in him must go into every society where he
has any call whatever. Who are we that we should pick and choose? The
greatest ruffian, the most abandoned woman, that ever walked the face
of this earth, were good enough for our Lord to die for. If he sends
us amongst them, he will take care of us, and has something for us to
do or speak, for or to them. The greatest king, the holiest saint on
earth, is not too high company for one for whom Christ died, as he did
for you and me. So, if he sends us amongst great or holy people, let us
go, and learn what he means us to learn there.
I know how deeply many of you feel and mourn over the miseries and
disorder of England and the world—how you long to do something towards
lightening ever so small a part of those miseries, rescuing ever
so small a corner of the earth from that disorder. I know well how
earnestly many of you are working in one way or another for your
country and your brethren. I know what high hopes many of you have
for the future of the world and the destiny of man. I say, mourn on,
work on; abate not one jot of any hope you have ever had for the world
or for man. Your hopes, be they what they may, have never been high
enough—your work never earnest enough. But I ask you whether your
hopes and your work have not been marred again and again, whether
you have not been thrown back again and again into listlessness and
hopelessness, by failures of one kind or another, whether you have not
felt that those failures have been caused more or less by your own
uncertainty, by your having had to work and fight without a leader,
with comrades to whom you were bound only by chance, to journey without
any clear knowledge of the road you were going, or where it led to?
At such times have you not longed for light and guidance? What would
you have not given for a well of light and hope and strength, springing
up within you and renewing your powers and energies? What would you not
have given for the inward certainty that the road you were travelling
was the right one, however you might stumble on it; that the line
of battle in which you stood was the line for all true men, and was
marching break at the point which had been given you to hold, whatever
might become of you? Well, be sure that light and guidance, that
renewal of strength and hope, that certainty as to your side and your
road, you are meant to have; they have been prepared, and are ready,
for every man of you, whenever you will take them. The longings for
them are whispered in your hearts by the Leader, whose cross, never
turned back, ever triumphing more and more over all principalities and
powers of evil, blazes far ahead in the van of our battles. He has
been called the Captain of our Salvation, the Lion of the tribe of
Judah, the Lamb who was slain for the world; He has told us his name,
the Son of God and the Son of Man; He has claimed to be the redeemer,
deliverer, leader of mankind.