In David's raid, as in every campaign, some of the available strength
has to be taken to guard the camp, the place where the supplies are,
the base of operations, and pickets and detachments have to be left
behind all the way, to keep open the communication. The sword is not
more needful than the long train of baggage carts, and the forwarding
of supplies to the front is as indispensable to the conduct of the war
as the headlong charge.
In every great work there is the same distinction of parts and
functions, all co-operating to produce the effect which seems to be
entirely due to that cause which happens to come last in the series.
Organisation of labour associates many hands in the different stages of
the one result. There are very few things in this world which are the
product of one simple cause alone. You cannot grow a grain of corn
without the seed with its vital germ, the soil with its mysterious
influences, the sunshine and the rain, the sower's hand and basket, the
plougher's plough, and all these, except the blessed sunshine, are the
results of a series of other causes which lie forgotten, but are really
represented in the issue. If one of them were struck out, all the rest
would be ineffectual. In a great machine all its parts are equally
necessary, and a defect in a cog on a wheel would be as fatal as a flaw
in the cylinder or a crack in the mighty shaft. What would become of a
ship if the pintle that the rudder works on were away? The effect of a
whole orchestra may depend on the coming in of the flute at the right
place.
So in the work which God has given to the Church to do, there are the
two forms of service, the direct and the indirect. There are the
fighters and the guards of the baggage. And these two are equally
necessary. That without which a great work could not have been done is
great. When Luther came out from the Diet of Worms, and a knight
clapped him on the shoulder, and said, 'Well done! little monk,' he had
a share in the memorable deed of that day. The man who gave Luther a
flagon of beer when his lips were dry with speaking there before
emperor and cardinals, was included in the promise to the giver 'of a
cup of cold water in the name of a disciple.'
We have brethren in Christ who have gone to the front, hazarding their
lives on the high places of the field. Their hands will droop if they
do not feel that a chain of sympathy stretches between them and us, for
they in their solitude need all the strength which the confidence of a
multitude at home feeling with them can give. They are powerfully
influenced by the tone of feeling among us. When devotion languishes
and faith droops here, these will generally pass through the same
phases among them. When we are strong and bold, their hearts will be
quickened by the pulsations of ours, and their courage heightened by
thoughts of those from whom they come. Our disorders, our heresies, our
struggles are all reproduced on the mission field. An epidemic here
travels thither before long, and the spiritual condition of the Church
at home is one of the most powerful means of determining that of the
churches abroad. A blight among our vines soon shows itself in the
little gardens just reclaimed from the waste.
The fighters need material helps and appliances for their work. The
days in which the law for apostles and missionaries was, 'Go forth
without purse or scrip,' ended before Jesus said, 'Go ye into all the
world.' That condition was solemnly revoked by our Lord Himself, when
He said, 'When I sent you forth without purse and scrip and shoes,
lacked ye anything? But now he that hath a purse, let him take it, and
likewise his scrip.' The fighters' material wants are now to be met by
Christ's administration of natural means, even as before they had been
met by Christ's administration of supernatural ones. His messengers
cannot live, do their work, or extend the kingdom, but by the help of
material appliances. Those who 'abide by the stuff' are to organise the
commissariat department, and to see that those who are far ahead, among
the ranks of the foe, do not want for either food or weapons, and are
not left isolated, hemmed in by the enemy, and languishing because they
feel that they are forgotten by those who 'live at home at ease.'
There has always been that division of labour. Our Lord Himself 'had
need of' many humble instruments as helpers. There were the woman who
ministered to His wants, the faithful few whose presence and sympathy
were joyful to Him even on the Mount of Transfiguration, and longed for
even in the awful solitude of the agony in Gethsemane, the sisters of
Bethany whose humble home was His last shelter before the Cross, the
owner of the Upper Room, the sad women who prepared sweet spices, the
ruler who consecrated his new sepulchre in a garden by His body. Even
He, treading the wine-press alone, needed helpers in the background,
and, while conquering for us in the awful duel with our enemy, had
humble friends who 'tarried by the stuff.' Similarly Paul had his
helpers, on whose names he lovingly lingers and has made immortal, a
'Gaius, mine host, and of the whole church,' an 'Epaphroditus, my
fellow soldier, who ministered to my wants,' and therefore was a
soldier, though he did not fight, an 'Onesiphorus, who oft refreshed
me, and was not ashamed of my chain.'
But let us remember that these two forms of service which are equally
necessary are equally binding on us all, in the measure of our
opportunity and capacity. Our performing the indirect is no excuse for
our neglecting the direct. The conversion of the world is _our_
business and not to be handed over to any society or missionary. No
Christian can be only and always a non-combatant, without sin and loss.
He is bound to take some share in the actual conflict in one or other
of its many parts.