A Life-Resolve to Do Individual Work

In view of the fact that a personal appeal to me, from an individual, to seek the Saviour, had had an influence over my thoughts and action beyond all the sermons and addresses to any collection of persons of which I had been a part, the importance of individual effort with individuals for Christ naturally assumed a new importance in my mind. And the &ct that the friend whose first appeal to me had won me to Christ had, even while often prompted to it as a duty, postponed that appeal for years, to his. lack and mine, because of his “timidity and fear,” had emphasized the truth that the individual Christian has a duty to urge individuals about him to come to Christ, whether he likes to do it or not.

InDMdual TnotH

And thus, in my being won to Christ as I had been, I had not only received a rich blessing to my own soul, but I had, at the same time, been taught, with fresh and irresistible force, a truth of truths as to my personal duty in work for Christ and for those whom Christ loves. I, as an individual, had been won to Christ by an individual follower and representative of Christ And I had been taught that every individual follower of Christ has a duty to make known to other individuals the duty of serving and representing Christ And thus my life mission was given me as a duty when my life trust in Christ was shown me as a privilege. Does it seem strange, then, that my half-century of Christian service since that time has been largely influenced by this beginning of my Christian life, under its peculiar circumstances?

It was some time after this that I learned how prominent this method of extending the truth had been among the most devoted lovers of Christ in former centuries; 20

% %JitCm1tiC0OtV€

but to me it came as a fresh truth, and as almost a self-evident one. I later found that this had been the method of evangelizing, not only among the apostles, but in almost every revival of apostolic zeal. Reinerius, the papal inquisitor, reported against the Vaudois, or Waldenses, in the thirteenth century, that” he who has been a disciple for seven days looks out some one whom he may teach in his turn, so that there is a continual increase’’ That, surely, is a good way of having the cause of Christ progress where the followers of Christ are, in our neighborhood — or anywhere else.

So soon as I had come to the point of Christian decision for myself, I looked about me for another man. I did not have far to go. An associate with me in the office of the chief engineer was a fellow-boarder with me in the house which was my temporary home. We were accustomed to walk together to and from the boarding-house and the office. We were near each other all day in the office, and we

21
liiMvitmal IRAotk

sat near each other at the boarding-house table. As we walked together from the house to the office, I told my friend of my new decision for Christ, and I urged him to make a like decision. He turned toward me as we walked, and said earnestly:

“Trumbull, your words cut me to the heart You little think how they rdlpuke me. IVe long been a professed follower of Christ; and you have never suspected this, although we’ve been in close asso* ciation in house and office for years. IVe never said a word to you for the Saviour whom I trust IVe never urged you to trust him. IVe never said a word for him. And now a follower of his, and a friend of yours, from a distance, has been the means of leading you to him. And here are you, inviting me to come to that Saviour of whom I have been a silent follower for years. May God forgive me for my lack of faithfulness!”

It will be believed that this new incident pressed on me more forcibly the common

22 unwillingness of Christians to speak for Christ to their individual friends or associates, and the duty of such speaking as a hopeful means of honoring their Master and of helping their fellows.

Then it was that I made a purpose and resolve for life. The purpose I formed was, as an imperative duty, not to fail in my Christian life in the particular way that these two friends of mine confessed that they had consciously &iled. I determined that as I loved Christ, and as Christ loved souls, I would press Christ on the individual soul, so that none who were in the proper sphere of my individual responsibility or influence should lack the opportunity of meeting the question whether or not they would individually trust and follow Christ. The resolve I made was, that whenever I was in such intimacy with a soul as to be justified in choosing my subject of conversation, the theme of themes should have prominence between us, so that I might learn his need, and, if possible, meet it 23

InMriMial TRRocft

That decision has largely shaped my Christian life-work in the half-century that has followed its making. I have not always been &ithful in this sphere of Christian service, as, indeed, I have fiuled or lacked in every other sphere; but my resolve at this point has been adhered to as faithfully as any other resolve I ever made, and I have steadily grown in the conviction that it was a wise resolve. The more extensive and varied has been my experience, and the more I have known of the Christian labors of others, the more positive is my conviction that the winning of one soul to Christ, or of ten thousand souls to Christ, is best done by the effort of an individual with an individual, not by the proclamationof an individual to a multitude, larger or smaller, without the accompanying or following face-to-&ce pleading with the single soul.

My experience came to be varied, but in every fresh phase of that experience the pre-eminent value of work for one soul at a H

B lAtemHiceolve

time, over work for a multitude of souls on the same occasion, stands out as the truth beyond challenge or question. This was my conviction in the first days of my Christian consecration. This is my conviction to-day more positively than ever before. However others may feel about it, I cannot have a doubt on the subject Winning one soul at a time usually results in the winning of a multitude of souls in the process of time. But addressing a multitude of souls, and urging them all to trust and serve Christ, may not be the means of winning even one soul to Christ, now or at any time.

Within a few weeks of my first entering Christ’s service, I most unexpectedly found myself summoned to superintend a newly organized mission Sunday-school in Hartford. In this way I was providentially started in the line of religious work that has been my chief method of Christian effort from that time to the present. In this, my first field of Christian work, I found that I 2S

InOiviDual IPOlotli

could do most and best for my charge by appealing to the individual when he and I were alone together, rather than by my most eflfective appeals from the desk, or by my most attractive endeavors to impress the school as a whole. Occasionally, when a boy whose conduct and influence seemed hopelessly bad was not to be reached through anything said by teacher or superintendent in the presence of others, I found that a personal talk with him near his haunts of an evening, when no one else could see us, would give me a hold on him, so that I could lead him to a better view, and a higher estimate, of his possibilities and duties. A good superintendent or a good teacher will often do more for Christ and for the most incorrigible pupil by a half-hour’s talk with that pupil all by himself out of the school than is done for such a person in a year’s time by superintendent and teacher in the school or class as a whole. And this kind of effort I came to value more and more. 26

National politics was just then assuming more importance as a great moral issue, in view of the struggle over the extension of slavery into free territory. It was about the time of the formation of the Republican party. I was on the stump for the first candidates of that party; and I was active in the work camvassing for the election of those candidates. In this field, as in the mission Sunday-school field, I found that the effective political work was to be done, not in the public meetings, addressed by eloquent speakers, but in the quiet, systematic searching out of the individual voter, and winning him to the right side. Indeed, I had the privilege of introducing iind advocating measures for an extension of this canvassing for individual voters wUch were novel then, but which gained in recognition and prominence as their superior effectiveness was evidenced. No political campaign is won by speakers on the stump. Stump ^eeches are well yAough in their way. Thgr arouse enthu- «7

InMviDual tOlotli

siasm and make voters ready to work; but the campaign is won by the man-to-man canvass of the individual voter. One man is more than a hundred in the held of missions or of politics. Until that thought prevails, the world will never be won to Christ, or to any good cause.

During the Civil War I unexpectedly received an invitation to enter army service as a chaplain. My state of health having forbidden my accepting any other position in the army, I accepted this as one where I might hope to be of some service. I was accordingly ordained and went out, and for three years I was privileged to be in active army service. There, again, the Christian work that told was not that of address to a collection of persons, but the man-to-man appeal of the chaplain to the single officer or soldier, when no one else was within sight or hearing. And this advantage was not because the chaplain was a chaplain, and therefore he had to work in a peculiar way, but it was because tho 28 chaplain was a man and his charge was made up of individual men, and his best way to deal with his men was the best way to deal with all men.

After my return from the army I was again in the Sunday-school missionary field, which I had left to go out as a chaplain. For ten years I addressed gatherings of persons in numbers from ten or fifteen to five or six thousand each. In this work I went from Maine to California, and from Minnesota to Florida. This gave me an opportunity to test the relative value of speeches to gathered assemblies. Later, I have been for more than twenty-five years an editor of a religious periodical that has had a circulation of more than a hundred thousand a week during much of the time. Meanwhile I have published more than thirty different volumes. Yet looking back upon my work, in all these years, I can see more direct results of good through my individual efforts with individuals, than I can know of through all my spoken words 29 ltlMvflUlt Wotk

to thousands upon thousands of persons in religious assemblies, or all my written words on the pages of periodicals or of books. And in this I do not think that my experience has been wholly unlike that of many others who have had large experience in both spheres of influence.

Reaching one person at a time is the best way of reaching all the world in time. Reaching one person at a time is the best way of reaching a single individual. Therefore seeking a single individual is the best way of winning one pei’son or a multitude to Christ The world is made up of individuals. Christ longs for individuals to be in his service. Therefore he who considers Christ’s love, or the world’s needs, will think most of individuals, and will do most for individuals.