(1) We hear much of intellectual difficulties. How many of us attempt to qualify ourselves even to understand them far less to answer them? Again and again grievous harm is done to those for whom, as for us, Christ died, by the way in which those who have never themselves experienced difficulties of belief put such things aside as the work of the devil, or as a wilful carping at revealed truth. To fail to throw ourselves into the different mental and moral states of our people will be to fail to deliver our message aright. I, too, have passed through that self-same place I neither vanquished nor slew him quite, Alas! so deadly the mortal fray, And I, who remember the combat sore, (2) We hear much of scientific progress. The true Christian worker will meet the latest acquisitions of science, not with opposition, not with coldness, not with misgiving, but with a hearty welcome-the more hearty in proportion as his faith is the stronger-confident that in the end Divine truth can only gain by enlarging the bounds of human knowledge. ¶ Of all that elder race, he [Dean Church] was the one who most intimately followed on with the new movements and the fresh temper. He was absolutely in touch with the younger men. No brick walls blocked them out, or brought them into abrupt arrest. He did not encounter them with a challenge of suspicion, or hold them off at arm's length. He felt what was going forward; he believed in its worth; he took it seriously. Right to his very last years, he caught the spirit that was abroad, and was sensitive to its necessary differences from earlier types. Thus the younger men could come to him with their vague and crude aspirations, unafraid and unchilled. They were sure of sympathetic consideration-of a judgment that viewed their case from inside. They felt that he saw with their eyes; and, with that assurance, they 1 could freely yield to his authority, which it was a delight to recognize.1 (3) Do we live at a time when æsthetic culture is making rapid strides? We will not let it drift into a position of antagonism to Christian worship, but will rather enlist it in the service of God, careful only not to make a mistress of a handmaid, and watchful always lest artistic feeling should step into the place of devotion, or music usurp the throne of prayer. If we are to become all things to all men that we may by all means save some, we are to become cultured to the cultured, refined to the refined. But we often work on a principle diametrically opposite to that of the Apostle. As a rule, much more pains is taken to adapt the Gospel to the uneducated than to the educated, and a severe unchristian shibboleth is set up as a test which serves only as a barrier. It is difficult to see why it should be right to respect the tastes of one class and wrong to respect the tastes of another.2 (4) There is urgent need for adaptation in the methods of our work among children. How many people who give Sundayschool addresses ever try to become children while they are speaking? How many make the least effort to drop all their philosophy and look at things with the simple directness of a child? How many remember that children become bored by a long and dull speech? How many think of saying a word about the peculiar difficulties of school life, the moral problems that arise even in the earliest years out of every day's work and play? The angel of the Lord-i.e. God in self-manifestation-said to Abraham," Now I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son, from me" (Gen. xxii. 12). This is one of the many instances in which God is represented as speaking in a human fashion, as if He were not omniscient. When the cry of Sodom came up to heaven, the Lord said, “I will go down and see . . . and I will know." To Abraham He said, "If I find in Sodom fifty righteous men, I will spare it." The Infinite voluntarily approximates the ways and thoughts of finite beings. He is above all limitations, and to Him nothing is ever unknown. "I am God," He said, "and there is none like me, declaring the end from the beginning." But if He were to speak to men in terms of His foreknowledge absolute, they 1 Life and Letters of Dean Church, 227. 2 H. W. Horwill. would "find no end, in wandering mazes lost." The All-wise in His intercourse with men is represented as like a human father conversing with his children. He speaks very simply, that He may be understood. Every teacher knows that he must sympathize with his pupils' ignorance, else they will never understand his knowledge. He must condescend to their condition, place himself alongside of them, study their limitations, take into account their inexperience. He has to bridge over the gulf that separates his mind from theirs. Unless he can express his ideas, not in his own language, but in theirs, their ears might as well be closed, and all his wisdom will be lost upon them. That is the principle on which the Divine Teacher of the human race acted in His revelation. He made His meaning intelligible by translating His great thoughts into simple forms of speech. He spake to men in the language of earth, that they might learn the laws of Heaven.1 (5) This principle must guide us in our attempts to reach those among the working classes who at present are never seen inside a place of worship. If elaborate sermons repel them, elaborate sermons must go. If pew-rents keep them away, pew-rents must go. We must learn their habits of thought, their opinions, even their prejudices, and use this knowledge for the extension of Christ's Kingdom. A certain shoemaker, radical and infidel, was among the number of those under Irving's special care; a home-workman of course, always present, silent, with his back turned upon the visitors, and refusing any communication except a sullen humph of implied criticism, while his trembling wife made her deprecating curtsy in the foreground. The way in which this intractable individual was finally won over is attributed by some tellers of the story to a sudden happy inspiration on Irving's part; but, by others, to plot and intention. Approaching the bench one day, the visitor took up a piece of patent leather, then a recent invention, and remarked upon it in somewhat skilled terms. The shoemaker went on with redoubled industry at his work; but at last, roused and exasperated by the speech and pretence of knowledge, demanded, in great contempt, but without raising his eyes, 'What do ye ken about leather?" This was just the opportunity his assailant wanted; for Irving, though a minister and a scholar, was a tanner's son, and could discourse learnedly upon that material. Gradually interested and mollified, the cobbler 1 J. Strachan, Hebrew Ideals, i. 171. slackened work, and listened while his visitor described some process of making shoes by machinery, which he had carefully got up for the purpose. At last the shoemaker so far forgot his caution as to suspend his work altogether, and lift his eyes to the great figure stooping over his bench. The conversation went on with increased vigour after this, till finally the recusant threw down his arms:-"Od, you're a decent kind o' fellow-do you preach ?" said the vanquished, curious to know more of his victor. The advantage was discreetly, but not too hotly pursued; and on the following Sunday the rebel made a defiant, shy appearance at church. Next day Irving encountered him in the savoury Gallowgate, and hailed him as a friend. Walking beside him in natural talk, the tall probationer laid his hand upon the shirtsleeve of the shrunken sedentary workman, and marched by his side along the well-frequented street. By the time they had reached the end of their mutual way not a spark of resistance was left in the shoemaker. His children henceforward went to school; his deprecating wife went to the kirk in peace. He himself acquired that suit of Sunday "blacks" so dear to the heart of the poor Scotchman, and became a churchgoer and respectable member of society; while his acknowledgment of his conqueror was conveyed with characteristic reticence, and concealment of all deeper feeling, in the self-excusing pretenceHe's a sensible man, yon; he kens about leather!"1 3. This principle of adaptation is the basis of all effective missionary work. It is not so long ago that the idea which people attached to missionary work was that Christian people went out to speak to heathen people; and they grouped under the phrase "heathen" all sorts of races, nationalities and religions. In point of fact we coloured the world, or the map of the world, in various colours, and the great bulk of it was coloured black. But the black covered various races, various nationalities, various creeds and differences, and it is one of the mistakes of those indefatigable and earnest men, that they did not learn to discriminate between the religious differences and the racial differences, between one nationality, race and creed, and another. (1) It is at this point that we shall find the clue to the slow progress which the Christian religion has too often made among alien races in spite of the sturdiest missionary effort. The 1 Mrs. Oliphant, The Life of Edward Irving, i. 110. advocates of Christianity have not always possessed the tolerance of their great Master. They have said, "This is the only way. Walk in this way or go to destruction." They have declared, "Here is the supreme and absolute truth. Believe it or perish in the darkness and misery of unbelief." The pagan peoples to whom they have gone with their patent panacea for the ills of life have made reply, "Our own sages have shown us another way, and we have found that a safer way to walk in. They have given us a different doctrine. They were good men and true, and we have not found their teachings repugnant to reason." Do not think you will ever get harm by striving to enter into the faith of others, and to sympathize, in imagination, with the guiding principles of their lives. So only can you justly love them, or pity them, or praise.1 On the Day of Pentecost part of the charm was that every man heard the Gospel in his own language, and that is why our missionaries have to learn foreign languages, that they may preach the Gospel to men in the tongue to which they were born. But if they are to be of much use they must learn far more than the language of the people; they must learn their manners and customs, their history, their beliefs, their ideals, even their prejudices. Let no young missionary going forth doubt that there are elements of Divine truth in the faith and the practice of the heathen. And these are not to be despised or neglected, but are to be used as stepping-stones by which to lead them to something higher and better. I have always been profoundly moved by what an Indian woman said when she first heard the Gospel of Grace proclaimed-"That is what I have been expecting to hear all my life." 2 ¶ I once heard a distinguished missionary, who had spent his whole life among Indians upon the frontier, tell the story of a chieftain, who, just as he was about to go upon the war-path against the whites, lost a little child to whom he was devotedly attached. He sat down in his tepee a day and a night beside the body of the babe, gloomy and terrible. Then the white man came with a little coffin and placed it on the ground before him. The Indian sat an hour or more in silence. Then he rose and, after placing the babe in the coffin, washed away the paint and laid aside the feathers, which were the symbols of war, and dismissed his followers in peace.3 1 Ruskin, The Ethics of the Dust (Works, xviii. 356). |