If such a masterpiece of organization were controlled by the Spirit that controls in these early chapters of Acts, what tremendous and thorough and rapid work would be done in world-winning! And that is the goal toward which we should be driving. The evangelization of the whole world is an easy task for the whole Church. It would be a stupendous, if not an impossible task for the few. It has been a gigantic task for the leaders, who by dint of great planning and persuasion and earnest pleading have done as much as has been done. But if the whole Church or half of it were to go at it as earnestly as men go at other things, it would be an easy task.
I remember one October morning walking across an old smoke-begrimed bridge that spans the Ohio at Cincinnati. My eye was caught by a dingy sign in large plain letters nailed up in a prominent place. It simply, said, "Processions in crossing this bridge must break step." That was all. But it was imperative. It was a law. The processions must break step. The same men might cross the bridge, in as large numbers, at the same time, but they must not keep step.
The authorities knew perfectly well that for a body of men to march in step, every left foot set down at once, the impact of every right foot striking at the same moment, would so--I do not say, add to the force exerted--would so multiply the force exerted upon the bridge as to endanger its safety. The power of concerted action is immense beyond any power of conception. Every bit of power at command can so be brought to bear at one point with a force beyond any words to express.
Our Master reverses for us the old bridge sign. Out from Pentecost rings this word: "Let my followers all form in line, close ranks, and move out to a world conquest, and--keep step." That command of His will make a winning force so great as to shorten up the world"s present calendars, and shorten up the world"s pain, and lengthen out the new life that will come to untold numbers through Jesus.
"Find My World and Win it Back."
Nearly forty years ago David Livingstone, one of the Church"s great world-winning pioneers, was lost in the depths of equatorial Africa. That is to say, he had advanced so far ahead of everybody else that the rest of us lost track of him, and so we called him lost. Perhaps we got the use of the word twisted, and we were the lost ones because we hadn"t kept up. He had gone where the Church was told to go, but the rest of us had lingered behind, and so the main column became detached from its leader. Everybody was talking about the lost leader.
James Gordon Bennett, the owner of the New York Herald, sent a telegram to one of its correspondents, Henry M. Stanley. Bennett was in Paris, and Stanley at Gibraltar. The telegram summoned Stanley to come to Paris at once. Stanley went, reached Paris at midnight, knocked at the great newspaper-man"s door, and asked what was wanted. "Find Livingstone," was the short, blunt reply. "How much money do you place at my disposal?"
asked Stanley. "Fifty thousand dollars, or a larger sum. Never mind about the money; find Livingstone."
Stanley went. It took two years" time to get ready. It required a specially planned campaign and thorough preparation. The planning was done, and the world was thrilled when the bold missionary leader was found.
Our Master has sent a message to His Church. It is written down in a Book, and is being repeated by wireless messages constantly. He says, "Find my world, and bring it back; never mind about the expense of money and lives.
Find my world and win it back." And the Church has the winning power to do it.
Each One of Us
Our Drawing Power.
Sowing Ourselves in Life"s Soil.
Our Need of a World to Win.
Living Broad Lives in Narrow Alleys.
Giving G.o.d Free Use of Ourselves.
Growing Bigger for Service"s Sake.
My Mission-field.
Our Spirit-touch.
Each One of Us
Our Drawing Power.
The greatest human winning force is a man swayed in every bit of his being by the Spirit of Jesus. Man himself is the most attractive thing on G.o.d"s earth. He has the greatest drawing power.
He is attractive to G.o.d. He drew out of the creative power of G.o.d this world of beauty and splendor. He drew Jesus down from the throne of G.o.d to the earth, to poverty and hard labor, to the limitations of human life, to misunderstandings and suffering and pain and death. These were gladly yielded to because it was all for man. How the crowds used to draw Jesus!
He would give His strength out to them without stint, until those closest to Him, not understanding, sought to interfere for the sake of his strength.
One man was a sufficient magnet to draw him away from His rest, and to draw out of Him the best of love and strength He had. Nicodemus" earnest presence wooed out of His busy life a whole evening, and drew out the matchless words that the world has been feeding upon ever since. The woman of little half-breed Sychar, though an outcast, drew from Him the touch of power that transformed her life and her village.
Man is attractive to his fellows. There is no power so attractive to a man as another man. The phenomenal growth of modern cities is one of the evidences of this. Everywhere men acknowledge the attractiveness that their fellows have for them. Every friendship, every leadership, every family circle, and gathering of men for whatever purpose tells of the winning power that man has for his fellows. It is modified by all sorts of surrounding conditions, and exists in many different degrees. The great leader and the great orator have it in unusual measure. Every man has some of it. Each man is a magnetic north pole. Every man of his spirit-current is drawn toward him with a steady pull.
Man can win man. That fact at once brings out strikingly his winning power. For the hardest thing in all this world to win is a man. Of all luggage man is the hardest to move. He won"t move unless he will move.
Only as the string is tied inside to his will can he be persuaded to move.
The heart may help open the door into the will. Most often that is the way to get in. Sometimes intelligence, the reasoning powers, open the way in, but rarely; often these two, the heart and the reason, combined. But even then they go tandem, with the heart in the lead; only man can get that door open, and tie the tether to the other man"s will, and draw him out, whither he will. He can do it. And only he can. Man yields to the drawing power of his fellow.
With the deepest reverence be it said that when G.o.d would redeem a world He sent a Man. Aye, He came as a man. And, while Jesus was so much more than man, we must always insistently remind ourselves that He was truly and fully a man. He was as really human in every bit of His make-up and life as though only human. Because of man"s power to win his fellow, Jesus came to the man-level, as a Man, that so He might win men.
Sowing Ourselves in Life"s Soil.
Man is winsome, wherever found, just as he is. He may be shackled and slimed over with sin, as he plainly is. He may have lost much of his winsomeness, as probably he has, through deeply rooted prejudice and superst.i.tions, and endless limitations of surroundings and education, but he still remains a powerful magnet to his fellow.
But he is most winning in his winningness as he returns to the original as G.o.d planned him. His native winning power comes out fully only as sin is taken out of him, washed out, and burned out; the desire for it removed, and the hurt of sin upon his bodily and mental powers overcome. Jesus is the sort of human that G.o.d planned. And only as He is allowed to come into a man"s life, and treat the sin trouble at the core, and rule from within, can man come to his own in his rare winsomeness.
Only won men can win men, of course. Only the man who has felt the power of Jesus can tell some one else of that marvellous power. n.o.body else wants to. n.o.body else can. For n.o.body else knows that power. But that man must. There is something inside that compels him to. The man who realizes most keenly that he has been saved will be the most intent on getting others saved, too. The pa.s.sion for Jesus becomes a pa.s.sion for telling others about Jesus.
Jerry McCauley must spend out his life in Water Street because he had been gripped by the Man who spent out His life for him. The pa.s.sion is irresistible. Splendid young Hugh Beaver must win the Pennsylvania students to Jesus because Jesus had become the magnet of his own life.
Livingstone must plunge into the depths of the African wilds, and Duff into India"s heat, and Hudson Taylor into China"s inner provinces because of the Jesus-pa.s.sion that gripped them.
Now the thing to mark very keenly is this: that G.o.d"s chief reliance in His pa.s.sionate outreach for His world is men. He is counting on you and me. The power that actually wins men is the power of G.o.d. Only He can so play upon human wills and hearts as to induce them gladly to open to Him.
That is true. But it is as true that only through the winsome power of men can He use His winning power fully.
I am not going to take up just now why this is so, though that is full of helpful suggestion. But simply to have you mark that straight through this old Book, and through church history, and in actual experience this has been His way of reaching men. G.o.d"s pathway to one human heart is through another human heart.
When men have failed Him G.o.d"s plan has failed. His sovereignty doesn"t mean that His plan doesn"t fail. It means here that with endless patience He clings to the failed plan until He can get the man through whom it can be carried out. But meanwhile there has been serious delay and sad suffering for man.
There is a most striking sentence spoken by Jesus in explaining the parable of the tares, in Matthew, Chapter thirteen. He said, "The good seed are the sons of the kingdom." We think of the truth, the Gospel message, as the good seed that we are to sow, and so it is. But there"s a far better seed. It is men, saved men. We are to sow our saved selves, our lives, in the soil of men"s lives. Our presence among men was meant to be G.o.d"s greatest sowing of the seed of life. Upon that seed He sends the dew and rain and sunlight of His Spirit. And through that sort of sowing He wins His greatest harvests.
Our Need of a World to Win.
Now I want to turn aside here a bit, and say this: we men need a world to win. The world needs winning. There"s no doubt of that. And just as really we men need a world to win. We need the impetus and stimulus, the grip and the swing of having a world to win. The Master"s command fits with great exactness into the need of our lives.
Every man needs a great purpose to grip his life. So he is anch.o.r.ed and held steady against the world"s tidal movements. If he isn"t tied to some great gripping purpose the wash of the sea will send him adrift, or the fierce undertow will suck him under. And many are adrift. And many are in the deadly suction of the undertow.
Jesus" command provides the great purpose that every man needs to hold him steady and to bring out, and bring out best, all the splendid powers with which we are endowed. When we are not gripped by the great purpose planned for us we swing off into smaller, meaner purposes.
I mean, of course, those of us who are awake. Many people are habitual somnambulists. All their walking and moving about is done in a state of sleep. Some men never wake up. They go through the motions of life so far as they must. The mechanism of habit keeps certain motions going, but the real man within is asleep or dozing, with occasional spells of being sleepily awake.