Aye, that is just it. And so, brethren, the Lord Jesus isn’t able, according to His plans for this world, to come personally yet among us, but He has sent those colored people, Chinese, Indians and heathen to make appeal in His behalf to us, and who among us will set a chair for Him? There are many friends with whom I hardly agree who are very anxiously waiting for the appearance of the personal Christ among us, and they are wondering what they shall do to welcome Him. Would that the eyes of these brethren and our own too were opened to the perception of the Christ that is already here, in the persons of those needing to be helped and educated and elevated, and that their ears could hear His words, “Inasmuch as ye do it unto one of the least of these His brethren ye do it unto Christ.”
That is the Christian philosophy of giving, and if a man does not feel the force of these considerations I should be disposed to say he has not yet begun to be a Christian.
ADDRESS OF REV. DR. DENNEN.
The topic of this closing service is not only of prime importance, but comes in its logical place. When your machinery is all educational, industrial and church-wise, the final and vital question is one of power to move it. The supreme motive power in your work is spiritual life.
Life is force, something capable of originating or resisting power or motion. Physical life is that mysterious something no analysis can detect, no alembic reveal, no power resist; which swells the bud, opens the flower, sprouts the seed, ripens the harvest.
Spiritual life, through another plane, is also a force, capable of originating or resisting power or motion. Its realm is the human soul, and draws nutriment from the soil, which that cunning chemist we call life builds up into strength and beauty.
Spiritual vitality performs a similar structural function. Once made alive in Christ Jesus, the disciple seeks for spiritual aliment.
1. Now, spiritual life, like natural life, possesses structural power. It is a master builder. One main function of the vital principle in nature is to lay hold of inert matter and convert it into living organisms. The growing tree absorbs tons of carbon from the air. The local church, if a live one, takes up into her membership more or less of the outlying population, and from aliens converts them into fellow citizens of the saints and members of the household of faith.
The ability, then, of this noble Association, second to none in the land, to advance the kingdom of Christ in the several fields where it operates, will assuredly be conditioned upon the spirit and vigor of the churches and individuals behind it, will be determined, not so much by the amount of money it receives or the number of workers it puts into the field, as by the prayers and spiritual enthusiasm of its constituency.