We do not say that all these means are equally good or equally efficacious. St. Paul, in his argument with Agrippa, did not mean to say that “almost and altogether,” that “much and little,” were the same; he did not mean that it was equally good that Christ should be preached in strife or in good-will; he did not mean that a good end justified bad means, or that we may do evil that good may come; he did not mean to justify the falsehoods which are profanely called pious frauds, nor the persecutions which have been set on foot by those who thought to do God service, or the attempt to stimulate artificial excitement by undermining the moral strength and manly independence of the human spirit. God forbid! But what he meant, and what we mean with him, is this: In true Christian missions, in the conversion of human souls from dead works, from sin, from folly, from barbarism, from hardness, from selfishness, to goodness and purity, justice and truth, the field is so vast, the diversity of character in men and nations is so infinite, the enterprise so arduous, the aspects of Divine truth so various, that it is on the one hand a duty for each one to follow out that particular means of conversion which seems to him most efficacious, and on the other hand to acquiesce in the converging use of many means which cannot, by the nature of the case, appear equally efficacious to every one. Such a toleration, such an adoption of the different modes of carrying on what John Bunyan called “the Holy War,” “the Siege of Man’s Soul,” must indeed be always controlled by the determination to keep the high, paramount, universal end always in view; by the vigilant endeavor to repress the exaggeration, to denounce the follies and the falsehoods which infect even the best attempts of narrow and fallible, though good and faithful, servants of their Lord. But, if once we have this principle fixed in our minds, it surely becomes a solace to remember that the soul of man is won by a thousand different approaches—that thus the instruments which often seem most unworthy may yet serve to produce a result far above themselves—that when “we have toiled all night and taken nothing” by keeping close to the shore, or by throwing out our nets always on one side, yet if we have courage “to launch out into the deep, and cast out our nets on the other side of the ship,” we shall “enclose a great multitude of fishes, so that the net shall break.”
He is a traitor to the cause who exalts the means above the end, or who seeks an end altogether different from that to which his allegiance binds him; but he is not a traitor, but a faithful soldier, who makes the best use of all the means that are placed in his hands. Long after the imperfect instruments have perished the results will endure, and in forms wholly unlike the insufficiency or the meagreness of the first propelling cause. The preaching of Henry Martyn may have been tinged by a zeal often not according to knowledge; but the savor of his holy and self-denying life has passed like a sweet-smelling incense through the whole framework of Indian society. “Even,” so he said himself, “if I should never see a native converted, God may design by my patience and continuance in the work to encourage future missionaries.”
The more profoundly we are impressed with the degradation of the heathen nations, with the corruption of the Christian churches, the more thankful should we be for any attempts, however slight and however various, to quicken the sluggish mass, and enlighten the blackness of the night, provided only that the mass is permanently quickened, and the darkness is in any measure dispelled. “I have lived too long,” said Lord Macaulay on his return from India to England, “I have lived too long in a country where people worship cows, to think much of the differences which part Christians from Christians.” And, in fact, as the official report to which I have referred testifies in strong terms, the presence of the great evils which Indian missionaries have to confront, has often produced in them a noble and truly Christian indifference to the trivial divergences between themselves. “Even a one-eyed man,” says the proverb, “is a king amongst the blind.” Even the shepherd’s sling may perchance smite down the Goliath of Gath. The rough sledge-hammer of a rustic preacher may strike home, where the most polished scholar would plead in vain. The calm judgment of the wise and good, or the silent example, or the understanding sympathy, or the wide survey of the whole field of the religions of mankind, may awaken convictions which all the declamations of all the churches would fail to arouse.
The misery of the war on the coast of Africa, the terrible prospect of the Indian famine, may furnish the very opening which we most desire. They may be the very touchstones by which these suffering heathens will test the practical efficiency of a Christian government and a Christian nation, of Christian missionaries and Christian people, and, having so tested it, will judge.
When the first Napoleon suddenly found himself among the quicksands of the Red Sea he ordered his generals to ride out in so many opposite directions, and the first who arrived on firm ground to call on the rest to follow. This is what we may ask of all the various schemes and agencies—all the various inquiries after truth now at work in all the different branches and classes of Christendom—“Ride out amongst those quicksands! Ride out in the most opposite directions, and let him that first finds solid ground call out to us! It may perchance be the very ground in the midst of this quaking morass where we shall be able to stand firm and move the world.”
There is one special variety of means which I would venture to name in conclusion. Ever since the close of the Apostolic age there have been two separate agencies in the Christian Church by which the work of conversion has been carried on. The chief, the recognized, the ordinary agency has been that of the clergy. Every presbyter, every bishop in the Church of the first ages, and again in the beginning of Christian Europe, was, in the strict sense of the word, a missionary; and although their functions have in these latter days been for the most part best fulfilled by following their stationary, fixed, pastoral charges, yet it is still from their ranks in all the different churches that the noble army of missionaries and martyrs in foreign lands has been, and is and must be recruited. Most unwise and unworthy would be any word which should underrate the importance of this mighty element in the work of renewing the face of the earth. But there has always been recognized, more or less distinctly, the agency of Christian laymen in this same work of evangelization. Not only in that more general sense in which I have already indicated the effect of the laws, and literature, and influence of Christian Europe—not only in that unquestionable sense in which the best of all missionaries is a high-minded governor, or an upright magistrate, or a devout and pure-minded soldier, who is always “trusting in God and doing his duty;” not only in these senses do we look for the coöperation of laymen, but also in the more direct forms of instruction, of intelligent and far-seeing interest in labors, which, though carried on mainly by the clergy, must, if they are to be good for anything, concern all mankind alike. In the early centuries of Christianity the aid of laymen was freely invoked and freely given in this great cause. Such was Origen, the most learned and the most gifted of the Fathers, who preached as a layman in the presence of presbyters and bishops. Such was one of the first evangelizers of India, Pantænus; such was the hermit Telemachus, whose earnest protest, aided by his heroic death, extinguished at Rome the horrors of the gladiatorial games; such was Antony, the mighty preacher in the wilds of the Thebaid and the streets of Alexandria; such, in later days, was Francis of Assisi, when first he began his career as the most famous preacher of the Middle Ages; such, just before the Reformation, was our own Sir Thomas More.[29] In these instances, as in many others, the influence, the learning, the zeal of laymen, was directly imported into the work of Christianizing the nations of Europe. It is for this reason that we in our age also, so far as the law and order of our churches permit, have frequently received the assistance of laymen; who, by the weight of their character or their knowledge, can render a fresh testimony, or throw a fresh light on subjects where we, the clergy, should perhaps be heard less willingly. As their voices have been raised on this sacred subject of missions in many a humble parish church; as also on other sacred topics, such as Christian art and history, their words have often been heard within the consecrated walls of this and other great abbeys and cathedrals;—so, in the hope that a more systematic form may thus be given to our knowledge, and a more concentrated direction to our zeal, we shall have the privilege of listening this evening in the nave of this church to a scholar renowned throughout the world, whose knowledge of all heathen religions, ancient and modern, in their relation to the experience of Christian missions, probably exceeds that of any other single person in Europe.
I conclude by once more applying the Apostle’s words to the Means and the End of Christian missions. We would to God that whether by little or by much, whether by sudden stroke or by elaborate reasoning, whether in a brief moment or by long process of years, whether by the fervor of active clergy, or by the learning of impartial laymen, whether by illiterate simplicity or by wide philosophy—not only those who hear me, but all on whom the services of this day, far and near, have any influence, may become, at least in some degree, such as was Paul the Apostle, such as have been the wisest and best of Christian missionaries, except only those bonds which belong to time and place, not to the Eternal Spirit and the Everlasting Gospel of Jesus Christ. We cannot wish a better wish, or pray a better prayer to God on this day than that amongst the missionaries who teach, amongst the heathens who hear, there should be raised up men who should exhibit that type of Christian truth and of Christian life which was seen by Festus and Agrippa in Paul of Tarsus. May the Giver of all good gifts give to us some portion of his cheerful and manly faith, of his fearless energy, of his horror of narrowness and superstition, of his love for God and for mankind, of his absolute faith in the triumph of his Redeemer’s cause. May God our Father waken in us the sense that we are all his children; may the whole earth become more and more one fold under one Good Shepherd, Jesus Christ his Son; may the Holy Spirit of Heaven
“Our souls inspire,
And lighten with celestial fire.”