But above all, at this time the necessity, I think, is for a clear testimony concerning the purpose of God for His people, and His kingdom that shall surely come. We have made our precepts so tame; our efforts for peace and fellowship have been so much less exhilarating than other men's efforts for war; we have been very mild; and that is not the spirit of Christ, or of His Kingdom. The spirit of Christ is the spirit of all heroism in all ages.
In 1848, a little republic was founded in Rome to stand for justice and purity of government amid the corrupt States all round. It was attacked by those States, and at last it yielded; on the day when the capitulation was signed masses of people were gathered together in the great Piazza outside St. Peter's, and there rode among them the man whose faith and heroism had sustained that siege for more weeks than the wiseacres thought it could last days. When the cheering had subsided, he made no acknowledgment, but simply said:
"I am going out from Rome. I offer neither quarters, nor provisions, nor wages. I offer hunger, thirst, forced marches, battles, death. Let him who loves his country with his heart not with his lips only follow me."
And they streamed out after him into the hills. His name was Garibaldi; and because of his heroism and theirs the kingdom of Italy is in the world to-day.
But the invitation of Christ is in exactly that spirit—"I offer neither quarters, nor provisions, nor wages. I offer hunger, thirst, forced marches, battles, death." "If any man would come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me."
The cross, when our Lord spoke those words, was quite a real thing. To take up the cross did not mean bearing life's little inconveniences with equanimity. It meant literally to put the rope round one's neck, and be ready simply for anything that might come. That is the spirit in which we are summoned to work for Christ. Can we rise to it? The Prince of Peace was not a "mild man." This is the vision that His disciple had of Him:
"His head and His hair were white, as white wool, white as snow; and His eyes were as a flame of fire; and His feet like unto burnished brass, as if it had been refined in a furnace; and His voice as the voice of many waters. And He had in His right hand seven stars: and out of His mouth proceeded a sharp two-edged sword; and His countenance was as the sun shineth in its strength. And when I saw Him, I fell at His feet as one dead."
Can we present the figure of Christ as endowed with anything like that compelling power? If so, we are worthy ministers. It not, we are making dull the one great adventure of the world.
There is only one way in which we can succeed. It is that we cling to faith in God, the Author of the drama, in which we play our part; God, Himself the Guide along the path we are to follow; God, not only the Guide, but the very Way in which we are to walk; God, not only the Guide and Way, but the Strengthener within our souls, enabling us to follow; and God the Guide, the Way, the Strengthener, Himself also the Goal to which we would come. "For in Him we move and live and have our being."
Yea thro' life, death, thro' sorrow and thro' sinning
He shall suffice me, for He hath sufficed;
Christ is the end, for Christ was the beginning,
Christ the beginning, for the end is Christ.