Harmony with God's Purpose
To WORK with God and on God’s plan is the only real bliss, and the only sure success. All else is disappointment and failure. President Lincoln was once taunted by an adversary with the temporary defeat of political measures which he had adopted in the interests of the eternal principles of right. His sublime reply was: ‘Defeat! If it were not one, but one hundred defeats, I should still pursue the same unchanging course.” And, on another occasion, when, during the war for the Union, a timid man ventured to say: ‘’ I hope God will be on our side,” his response was: “My only anxiety is to be on God’s side.” Audit was this man of an incarnate conscience whose heroic words were: Let us believe that right makes might, and in that faith let us to the end dare to do our duty as we understand it.” It is the same sentiment that Faber crystallized into verse:
“He always wins who sides with God;
With him no chance is lost.”
It is, therefore, of immense importance to us to know wJiat God’s plan is and then to take our place ift it. As to the purpose of God in this dispensation, Anthony Grant has, in his Bampton Lectures, given clear and brief statement: “That the gospel shall be preached in some places at all times, and in all places at some time.” And beyond this we know very little. How large or rapid are to be the visible results in anyone field is a matter never yet unveiled; it is one of the secret things that belong unto the Lord our God. But what is revealed is His will that we should go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature.
Then if, as George Bowen told Dr. Norman McLeod of himself, thirty years are spent in India without one known convert, we can still do our duty — for in God’s eyes that is success; all else, failure. In this doing of God’s will on God’s plan, the holiest aspiration finds’ satisfaction. A divine ambition engrosses the soul. This is the avenue to the purest, widest influence. One may, at God’s bidding, go into comparative retirement and obscurity — as Bishop Butler, author of the famous ‘* Analogy,” into the little country parish of Stanhope, so that Archbishop Blackburne told Queen Caroline that he was” not dead, but buried” — but if it be at God’s bidding it is no burial alive, except as a seed secreted for a crop. Butler, during that apparent burial, was writing that great work which revolutionized the thinking of that deistic age!
In great crises of Church history some word of God has become the rallying cry of His true followers. The motto of the Apostolic age was: ‘^ Christ died for our sins, and rose again, according to the Scriptures.” During the Lutheran Reformation, the watchword was: ‘’The just shall live by faith.” And, for this age of missions, what is a more fitting battle-cry than that which has been spontaneously chosen by the Student Volunteers in their ‘’ New Crusade:”
THE EVANGELIZATION OF THE WORLD IN THIS
GENERATION!
This, now famous motto, has been traced to the writer of these pages, as its author, because he first gave it expression at the inauguration of this movement at Mount Hermon, Mass., eight years ago. But the fact is, he got this motto from the thirteenth chapter of the Acts, verses 22 and 36, where the Holy Spirit says of David, that, God in him found a man after His own heart, which should fulfil all His will, and that he served his own generation by the will of God. Let us write that divine motto on all our banners!
How much is included here! Sovereignty — a divine Master; Se7’viee — a world’s evangelization; Sphere — our own generation; a Secret and Signal — the will of God.
A most expressive word is here rendered, ‘* served” — it means to be an under-rower, and refers to the ancient galleys with their banks of oars, where every man who held an oar served under the control of the pilot. All God asks of us is to take the place which He assigns, and there do our work, watching His signal. When there is obedience to His will, there is sure to be co-operation with all other obedient souls, since they heed the same signal. The conception is magnificent. What a symphony of action! what a harmony of movement! — the oars rising and falling, dipping and dripping together, though the oarsmen see not each other, and plan no such co-operation; because one will sways all alike, and controls the synchronisms and coincidences of history by a unity of universal plan.
And what identity with God! His will is His personality. To serve under that will as the all-controlling signal, is to be one with Him — to be about our Father’s business. What authority! for all is done in the name of the one Master. What holy audacity! as when David approached Goliath: *’ I come to thee in the name of Jehovah, God of the armies of Israel, whom thou hast defied! “What security to him who does the will of God! ‘*A11 things work together for good,” in the orbit of obedience, which is a part of a universal system where God is Sun and Centre! And what success! Into the channel of our weak and wayward will is turned the very river of God — the mighty torrent of His omnipotence, to turn the wheels of our life and action, and insure uninterrupted power and ultimate accomplishment. And what is the natural sphere of every disciple’s work and witness, if it be not his own generation? He cannot affect the past generations, and the best way to serve the future is by fidelity to the present. He may in a sense belong to the whole race of man, but he is especially related to the human family as living on earth at the same period with himself. Their claims on him are paramount, pressing, immediate, imperative.
If the Church would come into harmony with God’s purpose, here is the secret: — He must be acknowledged as absolute Master, and His command must be the sole, sufficient authority. Service must be conceived as part of a full discipleship and even a complete salvation; and that service must be accepted as proclaiming the gospel to every human creature. The will of God must be the one all-commanding signal which we watch, study, and obey. And our own generation must be, to our constant thought and prayer, the great and present sphere for our energetic and consecrated activity.
God has given a banner to them that fear Him, that it may be displayed because of the truth. And let the Church lift that banner high and bear it in the very front of the ranks and the thick of the fight — with this motto emblazoned on it:
SERVING OUR OWN GENERATION BY THE WILL OF GOD.