THE CALL FOR SERVICE
‘I laboured more abundantly than they all: yet not I, but the grace of God.’
The Gospel of Christ appeals to you in your strength as well as in your weakness. It is pitiable to think how many miss this truth in the fulness of their manhood, in the glory of their youth. Somehow they suppose that Christianity will wait out of sight for the day when it ever will find them fallen among thieves, wounded and broken by the roadside. Then, at last, it will come to pour in its oil and to bind up wounds. But till then it has no living message for them.
I. Christianity came to set the world on fire.—It came to work a revolution. It came to create a new heaven and a new earth. And for this high work it needs all the energy of health, of hope, of youth, of aspiration that you can bring it. It will put all splendid gifts to service. It looks out on the brave audacities of souls dauntless and untamed, and loves them, as our Lord loved Simon Peter. It will rebaptise them with the new name, but they will be the same men who once gloried in girding themselves and going whither they would, and now, committed to Christ’s humility, are content to be girded by another and to be carried whither they would not.
II. Christ calls for men of this generous impulsiveness, of this strenuous passion.—He invites the men of high desires—men who will ever ask and seek and knock; men who press ever forward and set no limit to their aspirations. To them, and to them only, who ask is it given. So the Faith cries aloud, invoking holy ambitions. Only those who seek, find; only to those who knock can gates be opened. That is the one law of grace! Such men will go on asking more and more, not for selfish greed, but out of sheer trust in the immeasurable goodness of a God Who exists to give; Who always longs to give more than they ever dare to ask for, crying to us, ‘Open thy mouth wide, and I will fill it!’ It is not self that prompts them to seek out ever new treasures, but reliance upon a God Who has prepared for those that love Him things far beyond what eye hath ever seen or heart conceived.
It is out of faith in God that they ask or seek or knock. It is in God that their aspirations are set free to act. And therefore it is that our youth and our health, no less than our sickness and our sin, find their sole interpretation in Jesus Christ.
III. Come, then, and bring Him all that He so dearly loves and so sorely needs.—Come with your youth, hot with desire! Come with your heart aflame. Come with your body sound and fair and free, now while the blood runs warm, and the strength of your pure manhood is in you, undimmed and untainted. Come with your muscular force and your keen vitalities. Come with your laughter and your gladness, you that are joyous-hearted. Come with your music and your song, your emotion and imagination, you that are artists and poets! Come with your high courage and your noble dreams, and your revolutionary ardour, you men of hope. Come while still you have something to bring Him which may be of service for the royalty of His name. For Christianity is the greatest adventure ever set on foot. It has set itself to create the world anew. Christianity is a romance. It appeals to all who can give themselves away. Christianity is a mighty effort to build the city of God on earth, and it wants those who will labour on with their tools in one hand and their weapons in another, in defiant and holy glee. Christianity is a war, and the foe is strong, and the ‘blood-red banner streams afar,’ and who will follow in that train but those who are strong enough to dare all for the good cause?
IV. Take the measure of the task that Christ has undertaken, and then consider whether He will not need all the power and all the splendour that men and women can ever bring Him, if He is to work out this victory—as He has sworn to do—through human flesh and blood. He needs the very best and finest instruments for such a task; and if you have any power of hand or brain, of body or mind; if you have high motives astir and kindling hopes; if you have youth and health, and force and joy; then here, in Christ, is their noblest use; in Him they will find their freedom. Not in self, not in egotism, will they find themselves alive. You will never know your full capacity until you can cry, ‘Lo! I find myself labouring more abundantly than I could have dreamed possible. Yet not I! not I! not I! but the grace of God that is with me.’
—Rev. Canon H. Scott Holland.
Illustration
‘The more splendid the achievement, the more intolerable would be the claim made by self, the more impossible would egotism become. “What!” the Apostle would cry, “when I think of all the incredible wonders wrought through me; when I recall how I, the least of all, who was not worthy to be called an Apostle, yet laboured more abundantly than they all; do you suppose I can calmly attribute all that to my own credit? Can I see myself in it? Can I recognise my own hand in it? Do you suppose I dare review it and pronounce ‘that is all mine: I did it’? It is just because I ‘laboured more abundantly than they all’ that I cannot possibly have done it of myself. The glory of my achievement is the very thing that convinces me of my own nothingness. As I look at the stupendous task I am lost, I disappear. I have forgotten myself. Oh, no! it is not I who so abundantly laboured. Not I, not I! How could it be? Not I, but the grace of God that was with me. It was all God. Nothing but God. God in me. God through me. God and God alone.” ’