A MOBILIZED CHURCH

Appointing the Seventy. His friends. Under commission. Disencumbered. Fully equipped. -Comrades. Enheartened with great promises. "Before his face."-End of the campaign.

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Appointing the Seventy.-It was in October of the last year of our Lord's ministry. He had carried on his work in the north country for a period of eighteen months or thereabouts; and there was apparently little or nothing to show for it. He had been rejected on every side; as it is written, "He came unto his own, and his own received him not." In Capernaum the people turned a deaf ear to his message of grace. In Gadara they "besought him that he would depart from their borders." At Nazareth, his townsmen plotted against him. So turning his face southward he began his memorable journey to Jerusalem and his passion.

This has been called "the retreat from Galilee." Was it, then, like the retreat of Napoleon from Moscow; when the great captain rode alone, gloomy and morose, followed by the pathetic remnant of his shattered army? Not so. This was an advance all along the line. The light of progress was in the Leader's eyes. Calm and hopeful

he gave the signal for a great campaign which was to eventuate in the setting up on earth of the Kingdom of God.

He had been accompanied thus far in his ministry by a bodyguard of twelve men; but their mission, however important in the formative period of the Christian Church, ended then and there. The so-called Apostolic Succession is as diaphanous as the stuff that dreams are made of. Now the field of operation enlarged, and the Master appointed the Seventy 1 to act as the advance guard of a great multitude who would march down the centuries declaring the unsearchable riches of Christ. In the instructions given to them our Lord struck the keynote for the propaganda of the future. These men stand for the mobilized Church; and their marching orders are the marching orders of all who follow Christ through the ages.

The order is, Forward the vanguard! Yet the martial figure is not wholly in place, since these men were sent upon an errand of peace. They bore no sword, but a benediction: "Peace be unto you!" They went not to war, but to husbandry. So have I seen men thronging the roads of the Dakotas, browned, tanned, stalwart men on their way to gather in the harvests that were to feed the hunger of the world. The Seventy go forth with

'It is worthy of note, that, as the twelve apostles correspond to the twelve princes of the tribes of Israel, so the Seventy correspond to the Seventy Elders who were appointed by Moses to co-operate with him.

sickles in hand, in pursuance of their Master's word: "Say not ye, There are yet four months and then cometh the harvest? .. Lift up your eyes, and look on the fields, that they are white already unto harvest." Go, reap for God!

His friends.-Observe this. All of these Seventy were friends and followers of Christ. They had heard him say, "Come!" and had left all to follow him. Everybody knew them to be his disciples. This is the first qualification for service: to hear the invitation of Christ and to heed it and to come out into the open, enlisting under Christ's banner and putting on the uniform of a confessed soldier of Jesus.

Under commission. They had not only heard Christ say, "Come!" but they had heard him say, "Go!" They were missionaries, that is, sent-ones; as he said, "Behold, I send you."

The service of Christ is business. It means more than the saying of prayers and the singing of psalms. The Lord said, "After this manner therefore pray ye, Our Father who art in heaven

.. Thy kingdom come." And here he adds, "As you go, preach, saying, The kingdom of heaven is at hand!" The praying and the saying go together; the profession must be followed by the preaching of the Kingdom of God.

Disencumbered.-He said, "Carry no purse, no wallet, no shoes." No doubt they would have

deemed it wise to take a little ready cash, some provisions in their wallet and a pair of extra sandals for so long a journey: but they were to be an army without a commissariat. They were to march under a banner bearing this device: a bunch of lilies, and over it the legend, "Have faith in God."

Are we to follow these instructions to the letter in these days? "The letter killeth, but the Spirit giveth life." But did ever a man go forth to service, trusting God in vain? Is not history full of stories of those who going out, like Paul, Francis Xavier, John Eliot, Henry Martin and Adoniram Judson, without purse, wallet or extra sandals, have returned in due time with rejoicing, bringing their sheaves with them?

In one of Paul's letters to Timothy he says: "No soldier on service entangleth himself with the affairs of this life." Yet how many of the servants of Christ are overburdened with secular cares; all tangled up in their purses, and their wallets, and their extra sandals. We cannot afford to overlook the fact that it is the disencumbered man who fights well, runs well, reaps well. The Mission of the Seventy was like a forced march, and there must be nothing to hinder it. The business in hand was so important that they were enjoined to "salute no man by the way." A salutation in the Orient to-day is a matter of much punctilio. If two Arabs meet in the desert, one hand is extended, then both hands are lifted, then there is a kissing

of beards; and on occasion all this repeated ten times over with voluble expressions of more or less. sincere delight. There was no time for the Seventy to indulge in such distractions along the way. They went forth as the King's legates, and "the King's business requireth haste."

Fully equipped.-The Lord bestowed on them those singular gifts of the Spirit which were known as charismata; by which they were enabled to work miracles of healing; and he said, “Behold, I have given you authority to tread upon serpents and scorpions and over all the power of the enemy; and nothing shall in any wise hurt you.'

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Do the followers of Christ have such power in these days? It would appear that these extraordinary gifts were conferred in the infancy of the Church for special reasons. If they still continue, as is claimed in some quarters, it is a singular thing that the whole world is not constrained to acknowledge it. The healings wrought by Christ and his early disciples were so obvious that nobody disputed them; while nowadays, when such miracles are claimed, everybody standing by simply lifts his eyebrows and smiles.

Nevertheless the work of healing in Christ's name still goes on. The skill of the medical profession of our time is due to the advance of civilization and humanity which received its momentum in the life and gospel of Christ. The Church has no such pressing need of practising medicine