Daily Service of Christ

“Then shall the righteous. answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungered, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink? When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee? Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee?” ’

Out of this divine picture of the groups around the last Tribunal, let us take a single point, detaching it from the rest. The modesty, humility, and self-forgetfolness of the righteous, shall introduce what we have to say on a matter of great importance. The good deeds of their life they scarcely recognise as having been such. They seem to forget that which God remembers, even their works of mercy. Certainly these blessed of the Father, brethren of the Son, and heirs of the Kingdom, do not belong to the class who trumpet

* New York, June 13, 1858. their alms and rear monuments to their own goodness. Having done good by stealth, they blush to find it fame. Christ’s applauses surprise them, and at an hour when the faces of millions on the left are gathering blackness, their cheeks are suffused with ingenuous blushing. They stand amazed that the Son of Man, now come in his glory with all the holy angels, should so overwhelm their trifling services with a glorious reward. Nay, they can hardly recollect any service at all. The ministries were so trifling, and were bestowed on objects so inconsiderable, often with such mixture of bad motives, and such deficiency of good, that it amazes them to find every transient item legible in the book of the Judge, now seated upon the throne of his glory. Such is the representation given by our Lord himself, of the feeUngs with -which a righteous man will receive the gracious award.

Now, in parabohc sayings of this kind, no one will expect exactness of recital, as to the very words uttered before the throne. It is enough that we catch the great lessons breathed by the spirit of the passage. Every true servant saved by grace, will discover “at that day,” how momentous have been the consequences of acts too small to be remembered. He will see, that a righteous man may have been continually putting forth unconscious influence; may have been ministering to his Master, when his mind was busied chiefly about his brethren; and that, while he sought the gratification of a benevolent heart, he may have rendered a service honourable and grateful to his Lord. Among the numerous teachings, therefore, of this magnificent vision, one may suffice for the present occasion. It is this:

No ONE CAN ESTIMATE THE AMOUNT OF SERVICE REN-DERED TO Christ in apparently little things.

To trace this current of good deeds to its source, is not difficult. Wherever there is regeneration, there is love to Christ. Wherever love to Christ exists, it presently shows its fruits, in love to the brethren. The connexion is pubhcly owned by Him, who, pointing to the right, says, “These, my brethren.” Benevolence, thus dnected, leads to beneficence. True Christians do “not love in word, neither in tongue, but in deed and in truth.” “Love unfeigned” is perpetually passing into act, with regard to every member of Christ who can be reached. The Lord Jesus vouchsafes to receive every such benefit rendered to any one of his people as conferred upon himself. And lest there should be a misgiving on this point, as if our Lord took account only of favours bestowed on distinguished disciples, he expressly instances the most inconsiderable. “And the King (the introduction of which title just here, merits our particular notice) shall answer and say unto them. Verily, I say unto you, inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these iny brethren, ye have done it unto me.” No act of kindness, even the smallest, is unobserved or disregarded by our Ejng. He says in his heart of every such act: “It is done to me.” Yet the passage before ‘us shows, that he who puts forth this act of bounty or mercy may entirely lose sight of its terminating on any object greater than the sufferer whom he relieves; indeed, even at the moment of rehef, he may not explicitly own the reference of the act to Christ. One may therefore really minister to his Redeemer, when his soul is chiefly taken up with some Lazarus at the gate, or some wounded wretch left by robbers on the road to Jericho. The Master, nevertheless, accounts the deed as done to himself.

That we are to do all things “to the glory of God,” and “in the name of the Lord Jesus,” is fixed in the minds of all believers, by two remarkable maxims. But conscientious inquirers sometimes doubt whether any acts can be justly said to have this quality and intention, unless there be a distinct view of the Lord, as the object to whom the service is rendered. Doubtless, a view thus distinct is good, and much to be desired, since we cannot too much place our blessed Master before the mind, as the end of all our actions. At the same time, the passage which we are considering shows that, provided we be in a state of grace, we may be feeding, refreshing, lodging and visiting the Son of God, when, to our own apprehension, we are only comforting the hungry, thirsty, homeless,, or imprisoned brother-man. And this is sustaining, in no common degree, to those who consider the limitations of human thought, and the small scope of many sincere minds, which cannot look far beyond what is nearest to them, especially when they add the cheering truth, that of such acts, which Jesus will thus own, there are thousands in the calendar of any one Christian year. Indeed, in this way, a true follower of Christ fills up his life. The new nature is continually working its way outwards, according to the various objects which invite its flow; and benevolence, inspired of God, seeks new ways of communicating happiness, even in the smallest particulars. Nor are these effluences of the sanctified nature, in the way of kindly acts, the less Christian, even if at the moment of performance the happy spirit does not distinctly think of its being done to Christ himself. The inward spring is perpetually running, marking its track by the green margin which it irrigates. A kind, merciful, unselfish heart is always looking around for some one to be the object of its care; and love is the same in its kind, when it gives a kingdom, and when it gives a flower. The clean raiment, gently laid beside the pauper’s bed by the modest hand of a child, is as honourable in God’s sight as the thousands builded into marble. This internal principle of good-will, in a soul created anew after the image of the Divine beneficence, acts itself out to all the human species of whatsoever religion, language, condition, creed, or colour; and even makes itself known towards the lower animals, and all sentient beings. “A righteous man regardeth the life of his beast; but the tender mercies of the wicked are cruel.”

We must nevertheless return to the brotherhood, the members of Christ, as the chosen objects of charity, affectionate care, and seasonable help. As we have opportunity, we do good to all men, but specially to those who are of the household of faith. The image of our Lord is in our poor neighbour, and we love it, even when we are not thinking of the reward which He will bestow. The very name of Christ, even where the image is obscured or dim, or not in any way apparent, goes fox something in our esteem. Thus we honour the supposed signature of a friend, until we discover it to be forged. In foreign, and especially in unbeheving lands, the heart thrills towards one who is even nominaQy a Christian. Suppose we are mistaken; suppose we do a kindness to one who is undeserving; what then? Christ is deserving, and we did it in his name. It is marvellous what conscience some people make of never giving an alms amiss; as if it were the greatest of blunders to confer an irregular kindness on some poor suffering creature, not so good as they; as if charity were the only mode of erroneous outlay; as if every superfluity of their wardrobe, every extravagant bauble of their ornament, every costly rarity on their board, did not go to run up an accomit of perverted stewardship, greater in the aggregate than all they ever bestowed with their own hands upon the poor, right or wrong. If you behold Christ in your supposed brother, you honour Christ by the ministry, even if peradventure you mistake the character of the beneficiary. God only reads the heart. Those whom we doubt, and whose profession we discredit, may have been held down by troubles and temptation, and may, in the sight of the All seeing, be as worthy as yourselves. If you are “the children of your Father lyhich is m heaven,” you will remember that he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.

My hearers, I would not reject from some semblance of this brotherhood the vilest and worst of the sons of Adam. Each is a man and a brother. The nature which the Son of God assumed, in his incarnation, is their nature also. They share in the very humanity whih He took. There is a sense in which He “tasted death for every man.” There is an appHcability of this death and its piacular fruits to every man. There is a commandment that the glad news of this love shall be preached to “all nations” and to “every creature.” There is therefore a unity of the whole species, not only as the science of the world has demonstrated, in one parental pair, but in the assumption of their very nature by our Redeemer. And hence a true and scriptural philanthropy seeks the happiness of man, as man, and as claiming a human kindred with Him whom we love and adore. While then we are unquestionably bound to look with peculiar regard on those who are Christ’s inwardly and spiritually, by a vital union, we are nowhere urged to any solicitous inquisition, how good a sufferer must be before we shall help him for Christ’s sake. And if we should be happy enough to wrest a poor wretch from shipwreck, jail, or starvation, we do not suppose our Lord will any the less remember the tribute, if in the end it should turn out that the person, far from being a decent church member, was no better than she who broke the box of aromatics, or she to whom the Master said, “Go, and sin no more.” If we imitate the divine goodness, let us never forget that when God’s saving mercy comes to us, it always finds us unworthy. Whenever in the Scriptures we are exhorted to acts of beneficence, we are sent to the miserable as miserable; that is enough. Certification of desert, especially of godliness, is not presupposed. “Blessed is he that considereth the poor; the Lord will deliver4iim in time of trouble.” Ps. xli. 1. And still more parallel: “He that hath pity upon the poor lendeth unto the Lord: and that which he hath given will he pay him again.” Prov. xix. 17. Jesus records the loan, and makes remuneration, even to him who cries astonished, “When saw we thee poor and had pity on thee?”

The very striking portion of the language used by the redeemed which now occupies us, tends directly to this point: that a servant of Christ may be performing acts which the Lord accepts as benignantly as if terminating on himself in person, when all the while the humble happy servant, though habitually loving Christ, was unconscious of more than the glow of love and pity towards a fellow-creature. We do not say that reference to Jesus, the Chief-beloved, will not dart in, from time to time, amidst the charities of life, like stray sunbeams through the network of branches in shady places of the grove; such is always the heavenward reference of regenerate souls; but the rapid and almost instinctive impulses of Christian kindness often leave no time to look fully at anything but the famished, weeping, or bleeding sufferer. It will be apparent, upon the least reflection, that difference in degree or amount, the more or less of the benefits conferred, makes no difference in the principle. Do any good, be it great or small, to a brother of Christ, and you do it to Christ. What new rays of encouragement are here shed over the walks of Qlu: common life, which is made up of seeimng trifles! It is as if the Lord Jesus had come with his hallowing presence, into the scenes of our daily occupation; to sit beside our well, to tread the planks of our fishing-boat, to smile on us with remonstrance when cumbered with much serving. Nothing is small, which the Master accepts as tribute. Little things become great, when done in a great cause, and out of loyalty to a great King. It is not the price, but the homage. Only a sordid, mercenary, venal mind would prefer the value of dollars and cents, accumulate the ciphers as you please, to the value of a ring, a lock of hair, a word of hearty postscript, an old tear-stained Bible, marked all through its tattered pages, a smile of love, a dying kiss. These are life’s imponderables, which are also invaluables. The cup of cold water, in the name of a disciple, refreshes the soul of the Master and has his sure reward. The two mites of the widow (less than the cost of three sparrows) go for more than the thousands of the opulent. The heart is all. The giver stamps the gift, and the intention defines the giver. So likewise in. regard to the person benefited; little things, we may say again, become great, when done in behalf of Christ’s “little ones.” And these ar6 continually about us. The poor we have always with us; and God hath chosen the poor rich in faith. Ostentatious charities, of great figures, performed by proxy, should never take the place of personal kindnesses, though known only to God and the recipient.

Life is so ordered in providence, that what we call great deeds occur only now and then. Even princes and conquerors cannot be always magnificent. Especially we, who are not distinguished, must find our occasions of obedience in the shop, the farm, the school, the kitchen, the office, the ship, the family. If we are not doing good here; if a barren sentimentality beguiles us into dreaming of some future, romantic, conspicuous service; if we pass by the sister, the servant, the alms-person that rings timidly at our gate, or the errand-boy who brings supplies, while we plan beautiful schemes of distant and collective good; we are not the persons whom Jesus means. Common life, in its humblest domestic fiow, is full of opportunities for honouring our Lord. You can scarcely make a single turn within the circle of home and daily work, without finding occasion to act out some inward principle of divine benevolence. “One of the least of these” Christ’s “brethren,” may sit beside your hearth, in the person of some parent, grandparent, or widowed relative. Christ may expostulate with you, for your neglect of some kinsman who is “waxen poor,” and whom with coldness and pride you abandon to the tender mercies of strangers. “If any provide not for his own, and especially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel.” Acts of mercy towards those who are daily meeting us in the unromantic paths of ordinary intercourse, fall properly under the head of ministries to the Lord. A true Christian will endeavour to enhven every particular of service to fellow-creatures with this consecrating intention. This spirit of love will give verdure and fragrance to performances otherwise withered and repulsive. Thus, for example, the home duties of Woman, restrained as she is from publicity and the guidance of affairs, may be woven into a blessed tissue of service, often unconscious, to Christ Jesus the Lord. Charity will not house itself, we admit, nor selfishly shut out thoughts of sufferers abroad. But we always discover that those who are permanently and consistently most useful abroad, are those who have first proved themselves most faithful in charities at home. And, whether at home or abroad, the great majority of mankind must expect their usefulness, in other words their work for Christ, to consist in a series of familiar and oft-recurring acts, each apparently inconsiderable by itself.

“‘Tis a little thing
To give a cup of water; yet its draught

Of cool refreshment drained by fevered lips

May give a stock of pleasure to the frame,

More exquisite than when nectarean juice

Renews the life of joy in happiest hours.

It is a little thing to speak a phrase

Of common comfort which, by daily use,

Has almost lost its sense; yet on the ear

Of him who thought to die unmourned, ‘twill fall

Like choicest music.” *

How blessed a service! how munificent a Master! By this ubiquity in his suffering brethren, he is always present wherever a generous office can be performed. And let us not forget the very acts of mercy, the particular charities wrought by the righteous, and remembered by the King, charities confined to no age or nation, but practicable in whatsoever spot we encounter famine, parching thirst, exile, nakedness, disease, or bondage. Let us go in quest of Jesus, among the half-starved occupants of the tall, overcrowded tenanthouse, where the restoring beverage, so familiar to our tables, never courts the taste of the scorched and hectic pauper; or sick-beds, where the foreigner and emigrant pants for breath in summer and shivers in winter; or, most neglected of all, in the prison-house, abode at once of shame, vice, ignorance and woe. All these, and such as these, all forms of misery, begotten of sin, and swarming most opprobriously in cities, under the very eaves of Christian wealth and lofty fashion, cry to us in

Lord Talfourd.

the name not merely of humanity, but of our Lord. Every system of means which offers access to these representatives of our Master, and affords ways of serving him, should be honoured and upheld. But we should not allow individual effort to be swallowed up by great organizations. The machinery which intervenes between us and the Saviour, to whom we would minister in his poor members, is an evil, even if a necessary evil. Association, subscription, collection, stated agency, beneficent proxies, these are indispensable; but observe for what reason. They carry the alms of him who is too weak, too busy, or too old, to go always in person; they divide and methodize the work, so that no part may be overlooked, and no part over-served; and they cause a few, trained and practised, to do the work of many. But, after all, those organizations are best, which, while they secure these objects, assign most of their task of visitation and aid to free-will agents, and so increase rather than lessen the amount of individual charity. The Sunday School is one, and only one, of a class which somewhat realizes these ideas. When converts in large numbers are brought into the church, and with the impulse of new love look around for a way to do good, every one knows that the instrument which first and naturally presents itseff is the Sunday School. The day is coming, when we shall have many others, equally aiming at the rescue of fallen humanity. At present, this form of charitable organization carriesan its train much more than scriptural instruction on the Lord’s day; for Sunday School teachers are more and more Bible readers and Tract distributors in alleys and attics; Good Samaritans by the way, to pour oil and wine into hearts wounded by intemperance and unbelief; visitors of infirmaries, ships, and prisons; exhorters and reprovers of sin at wharfs and ferries; seekers for the sick poor, up and down the vast dimensions of our metropolitan misery. If you would find the thousands who do this work, while you sit on your luxurious sofas, and criticise the indiscreet outlay of pubHc charities, you must look to the teachers in Sunday Schools. In my judgment the ehte of beneficent and therefore happy Christians in America is in the Sunday School ranks. And though after all these weary days and anxious nights, some of them may exclaim, “When, O Master, saw we thee in distress and ministered unto thee,” they will not fail of their reward. As a means of bringing out the latent and diversified talent of a congregation, the Sunday School is at present above all others. But the time is not distant when, under the influence of fruitful awakenings and the pressure of increasing love for Christ, the principle now very much confined to Sunday Schools will, by a happy extension, be reahzed in sister organizations, so diversified as to detect and employ in appropriate ministry every lurking talent of the brotherhood. While, however, we are awaiting a period when the inward energies of the Church shall be called out with more equable and universal effect, let each of us, in his own post, be living for Christ. We have nothing that we have not received; let there be nothing held back from the Lord. We serve a forbearing and munificent King, who, though he needs none of us, vouchsafes to treat our poor doings as if he were the party obliged. What a contemptible tribute is the fullest obedience of our best day, considered in itself! If we had “done all those things” which are enjoined, we ought stni to say, “We are unprofitable servants; we have done that which was our duty to do.” It was “duty,” dues to be rendered, what we ought; we owed it; matter of debt. But mark how he receives it, how he gathers up the bruised, withered, scattered flowers which seemed

dying in our hands, and makes of them a garland; biads them on his brow as a diadem; points to them before his angels as an honour. The self-condemning disciple sees no beauty or worthiness but in his prince. Conscious of short-coming, he hears the plaudit, and looks around among the right-hand myriads in quest of him whom it may befit. Not me, assuredly. “When saw / thee, in sorrow, and ministered to thee! “Yes, thee, blushing saiat — thee; the Master’s eye seeketh thee. The moment has arrived for discoveries, and while the wicked is horror-struck with the fiery record of his secret sins, the” Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin,” read by the universe in those asbestos leaves, the child of God is amazed to find that every kindness to a little one is tabled, owned and rewarded; “good measure, pressed down and shaken together.” The secret chanty has become public; according to that word, *’ there is nothing covered that shall not be revealed, neither hid that shall not be known; “which ought to teach us that every thing in the nature of service to Christ, has a certain greatness. I deplore from the bottom of my soul the disposition of some Protestants to imdervalue and carp at acts of mercy to the poor, the sick, or the dying, because Romanists have made much of them. God forbid that neglect of Christ’s poor should ever be a characteristic of Reform! God be thanked, that true Protestantism has always walked in the steps of that Catholic charity which is older than popes and monkery. If a Good Samaritan do a deed of mercy, let no meanness or inward sense of delinquency lead you to scowl at it. “Go thou and do likewise;” go and do better. To take a single instance; the great difficulties which private families, however wealthy, sometimes experience, in getting nurses for sudden emergencies of illness, ought to make us all exclaim, “How must it be with the poor!” and to concert measures for training Christian attendants for the sick; a service which has no more necessary connexion with Popery, than has the binding up of a bleeding wayfarer’s wounds. For one, I will take the liberty of loving and applauding the act of mercy to a sufferer, by whomsoever performed; and this without groping into those hidden motives which can be read by God only. “The day shall declare it.” It shall declare thy feeblest, most faltering deed. O, Christian woman! O, little child I Here is the principle to preserve us from deeming anything little. The kind word, gesture, look, to a mother or a brother — some withhold these who are very public with good deeds to strangers — shall be owned as unto Christ. O, what a Master! Who wiQ not love him and serve him! Let me close with the words of Bishop Andrewes: “There is glory which shall be revealed; for when the Judge Cometh, some shall see thy face cheerful, and shall be placed on the right, and shall hear those most welcome words, ‘Come ye blessed, They shall be caught up in clouds to meet the Lord; they shall enter into gladness, they shall enjoy the sight of Him, they shall be even with Him. These alone, only these, are blessed among the sons of men. O, to me the meanest grant, the meanest place, there under their feet; under the feet of thine elect, the meanest among them!”