IN TRUST FOR THE GOSPEL
‘The gospel … which was committed to my trust.’
The gospel of the glory of the Blessed God, says St. Paul, was committed to my trust. Nothing moved the Apostle more deeply than this. Whenever he alludes to it, it seems to bring him to the very dust. It is in connection with this he speaks of himself as the least of the Apostles; and a few years later, with deepening humility, as less than the least of all saints; and later still, not long before he finished his course, as the chief of sinners.
I. You admit this in the great Apostle of the Gentiles.—But you say he was a chosen vessel, unlike every other. You admire, and justly, his manifold education for the work he was called to fulfil. You point to the fact that he was an Hebrew of the Hebrews and yet a Roman citizen of Tarsus, to the culture of his learning, to the religiousness of his Pharisaic youth, to the fiery zeal of his manhood, and when it pleased God to reveal His Son in Him to the overmastering love of Christ, which made him count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus his Lord if only he might finish his course with joy. Then you urge that St. Paul was clothed, like Israel’s warriors of old, with the Spirit of the living God. And, lastly, you remind us that the legions of Rome had prepared a highway for the gospel into almost every land, and that the weary world was unconsciously craving for that wonderful ambassador of the Cross.
II. But is it too much to say that England, and pre-eminently England’s Church, have been trained by God for a like embassy, an embassy of the same promise and of the same hopefulness, in these last days? How marvellous has been God’s education of the Church of our fathers—the early planting of the Gospel among us from Apostolic days; then lessons learned under the iron bondage of Rome, which perhaps nothing else could have so deeply graven on our hearts, hunger for freedom, thirst for light, a craving for the pure Word of God; then after the long winter the fresh springtide of the Reformation; then amid sultry calm and wildering storms the consecration of noble intellectual powers to the defence and furtherance of the gospel; and then coming nearer to our own times the revival of Evangelical life, followed by the renaissance of Church order; and now year by year the closer intermingling of these two great streams of thought, so that Evangelical life has largely indoctrinated the lovers of Church order, and the love of Church order has directed into the best channels the zeal of Evangelical life. We ponder these things and ask ourselves, Has not God, Who trained the Apostle of the Gentiles in the first century, been training the Church of this Anglo-Saxon race for His missionary work among the heathen in these last days?
III. From among and from beyond our colonial dependencies the cry of heathen and Mohammedan lands, sometimes an inarticulate cry of anguish and unrest, sometimes a cry of distincter entreaty, ‘Come over and help us,’ is borne to our ears by every wind that blows.
—Bishop E. H. Bickersteth.
Illustration
‘St. Paul gloried only in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, and our missionaries have known nothing among men but Jesus Christ and Him crucified. St. Paul was a vigilant pastor, as when at Ephesus for three years he ceased not to warn every one night and day with tears; and there are pastorates in our missionary fields, many of them now under native clergymen, which would vie with the most favoured parishes of England. St. Paul, though free from all men, yet made himself servant unto all that he might gain the more; and a Society like the C.M.S., which has adapted itself to the haughty Moslem, and the cultured Brahmin, and the simple aborigines of India, and the born-warrior Afghan, and the refined Persian, and the patient Chinese, and the broad-minded peoples of Japan, and the hot-hearted children of Africa, and the generous New Zealanders, and the thoughtful, pensive tribes of North-West America—a Society which has done this and won souls for Christ in every field of labour, may take up the Apostle’s words and say, “I am made all things to all men that I might by all means save some.” But St. Paul counted not his life dear unto him so that he might finish his course with joy: this, too, has not been wanting; for long years the coast of Africa was known as the white man’s grave, but the soldiers of the Cross never failed, others pressed forward,
Each standing where his comrade stood,
The moment that he fell.
When Bishop Hannington was martyred, some twenty-seven volunteers in England offered themselves for the same post of danger.’