The Apostolic Spirit and the Perennial Revival
It is doubtful whether there is a better way of discovering the secret of success in the primitive church than by studying the spirit of one of its most efficient apostles. Confessedly Paul was the peerless soul-winner of the first century, or at most, Peter alone shared with him that distinction. There is a sentence in one of Paul’s epistles which reveals the secret of his success, so far, at least, as that success depended upon the apostle himself. It reads after this manner: “I am become all things to all men, that I may by all means save some.” These words uncover the springs of the great soul-winner’s life of labor, and privilege us to look into his very heart of hearts to behold the controlling passion of an apostle’s life. What wonder that he never failed to effect a revival! A notable and most worthy writer recently declared concerning his visit to Athens: “Paul failed here. Some mocked him, but others said, * We will hear thee again in this matter,’ and thereby dismissed him with civility, but without conviction, and so Paul departed from among them.” But let it be remembered that the text does not conclude with Acts 17: 33. Another verse is added to make the history of Paul’s work at Athens complete; it reads after this manner: “Certain men clave unto him, and believed: among the which also was Dionysius the Areopagite, and a woman named Damaris, and others with them.” The great apostle had no part or lot with the man who excuses the barren condition of his church on the ground of “laboring under difficult circumstances,” of being “located in a hard field,” etc., etc. The apostle found God’s promise, “My word shall not return unto me void,” made good under all circumstances. And while his success at some points was greater than at others he found none, not even the dreary island of Malta, or the prison at Rome, where he could not by preaching and personal work win men to God. Is it not so now with a man or church animated by the spirit of this sentence: “I am become all things to all men, that I may by all means save some “?
A Splendid Enthusiasm
This speech indicates enthusiasm.
It is the language of one whose whole life was ablaze with the business of soul-winning. Some conservative saints seek to brand their aggressive fellows with a sort of insanity by saying, “Oh, they are enthusiasts!” It is, in fact, a compliment akin to that paid to the early believers when, at Antioch, they were first called “Christians.” The derivation of the word *’ enthusiast “is “God-inspired,” and he is honored indeed who can wear that name well. It took an enthusiast to be an apostle of the first Christian conquests — they charged that great apostle himself with madness. Enthusiasm saved Florence from the spiritual death and political oppression of the Medici sovereignty. But men believed Savonarola half insane. Martin Luther was an enthusiast, or he never could have wrought a reformation against a prostitute and priest-ridden church. But for Wendell Phillips — the agitator, the enthusiast — the black blot of American slavery might still be staining our Southland. Christ was the greatest enthusiast of the centuries, and slow folks thought him beside himself. The pity of the present is that so few Christians, and even fewer churches, are ever chargeable with this spirit. Doctor Strong, in “The New Era,” declared that in 189 1 it took on an average fourteen Christians in a large and influential denomination a whole year to win one soul to Christ; in another, it took seventeen; and in a third, twenty-two were required for this conquest. Surely these denominations are so well balanced, so sanely sane, that they have felt little need of the spirit which indwelt the great apostle Paul! They have mocked that which he made the motto of his life, and all men know the result.
The Essential Work
Again, this sentence emphasises soul-saving as his essential work.
Other things are important; this thing is absolutely necessary. It is important that men be fed; it is important that women and children be clothed; it is important that the sanitary condition of homes be studied and improved; it is important that sociological reforms be effected; it is important that free education be provided, and its value properly impressed. But the indispensable thing is that the soul be saved. Lazarus died hungry, but the life of Lazarus was an eminent success. Tom Lee was educated in an English University, but, with a soul enslaved, he was foredoomed. Robert G. Ingersoll was brought up in good society and accorded the best advantages of the nineteenth century, but these could not save him from profanity, tippling, and infidelity.
When life is over and we come into the presence of God, one may be a Gladstone for intellect, another a Spurgeon for eloquence, a third a Rockefeller for wealth, a fourth a Stanley for explorations, a fifth a Newton for mathematics, a sixth a Bacon for philosophy, a seventh a Milton for poetry, an eighth a Beethoven for harmony, a ninth a Michelangelo for art, a tenth a Wesley for organization; but if he has neglected the Master’s commission, he will stand a pitiable pauper in spirit, while the humblest soul-winner will be honored with a crown, set with stars destined to shine forever and ever, because he did the essential thing and illustrated the spirit of the apostle in being willing to become all things to all men, that by all means he might save some.
Progressive Methods
Paul also provides for progressive methods, “All things to all men, that I may by all means save some.” That spirit keeps the disciples of Christ forever up to date. It warrants a conscientious accommodation. Paul was not a politician, a wire-puller; but he was a statesman, a wise general. He left unused no lawful means to bring the gospel to men, and men to God. To a Jew he was as a Jew; to the Gentile, as a Gentile; to the weak he became as weak, that he might gain the weak; he rejoiced with those who did rejoice and wept with them that wept. The man who cannot fit himself into the century of which he is a part is a poor representative of the Christ of all centuries. Accommodation to the times does not involve a compromise with the devil. When Jesus Christ was in the world he was separate from sinners in his conduct, but he went everywhere under his commission. He mingled with the common people; he dined with the rich; he visited with the poor; he was often a guest in the house with noble Lazarus and spiritual Mary; and they truthfully said of him on one occasion: “He has gone to be a guest of a man that is a sinner.” When Nicodemus came to him he turned teacher; when the hungry crowds were about to depart from him he provided bread and fish; when he found the synagogues only partially filled he took his way to the street and there secured a crowd — all things to all men, that he might by all means save some.
You cannot go to every soul after the same manner; you cannot bring all men into one place that they may there be converted; neither can you reach all men with the same sermon, nor see them surrender after the same fashion. Paul must have a light beyond the brightness of the sun; Peter needs only to hear about the man of Nazareth to be brought to him; while Lydia’s heart opens to the word as the morning receives the light. Since these things are so, why should we not accommodate ourselves to circumstances and compel them to aid us in soul-winning?
It is related of Uncle John Vassar that he went to visit a certain man who, seeing him coming, retired to the barn and crept into a hogshead. Uncle John proceeded to follow; got into the hogshead with him, and stayed by until the man had surrendered. That would not be the best method in all instances. God’s Spirit must have indicated it or Uncle John would not have used it there. When Truman Osborne wanted to reach De Witt Talmage he visited his father’s house, and as he sat by the fireside at night, the family all about, he told in the tenderest way the parable of the Lost Sheep, and the depths of De Witt’s soul were broken up, and with full purpose of heart he turned to God. All things to all men, that we may by all means save some.
The apostle here records his disinclination to be trammeled by
Time-Honored Customs
He was never chargeable with cheap sensationalism, nor did he think it essential to the proprieties to convert himself into a mere copyist. The question with him was not, “How have others wrought?” but “How can I best work?” The past should instruct us without restraining us. We should draw upon the customs of our fathers for what they are worth; we should refuse to let those same customs run us into ruts. Thomas Dixon once said: “Tradition was the most constant, the most persistent, the most dogged, the most utterly devilish opposition the Master encountered. It openly attacked -him on every hand, and silently repulsed his teaching. Even the Samaritan woman he finds armed with the ancestral bludgeon: ‘Art thou greater than our father Jacob? Our fathers worshiped in this mountain.’”
It was his departure from customs, in search of souls, that caused Christ to be crucified, and the same fact caused the great apostle Paul to be imprisoned. But without it there could have been no Christian church, no soulwinning endeavor worthy the name. To a certain extent the same is true to-day. The great soul- winners of the past have shaken off the shackles of overconservatism in methods. Witness Luther, Melancthon, Wesley, Edwards, Finney. This assertion may also be made of recent soul-winners — living and dead. There is a sense in which every successful man is an iconoclast. The church itself grows by iconoclasm; its first work was to set aside false gods; its permanent work is to set aside false ideals and dispense with obsolete customs. Many of us remember how we came to our modern music of organ and soul-stirring hymns. We saw the more progressive fathers fight this battle to a finish and finally bring a majority to vote with them; but it was a conflict beside which Gettysburg was only a skirmish.
The men who advocated the institutional church after the order of the Judson Memorial, New York; Jersey City Tabernacle, New Jersey; Ruggles Street, Boston; the Fourth Congregational, Hartford; and others equally worthy to be named, found it difficult enough to effect a change in the customs which had obtained for decades; while that better institutional church represented by the Clarendon Street, Boston; the Chicago Avenue, Chicago; Simpson’s Tabernacle, New York; and such as have emphasized the importance of Bible teaching, instruction in missions, preparation for personal work, and the better filling of the professions of evangelist and pastor, have accomplished the same while listening to the execrations of those who felt called upon to champion the timehonored custom of four meetings a week — two for preaching, one for Sunday-school, and one for prayer-meeting; and who, as Ernest Gordon put it, “accept nothing unless hammered on their own anvil.”
When Doctor Gordon opened the Bible Training School in Clarendon Street Church the denominational editor opened upon him a fusillade. Now that this honored pastor and the self-appointed press-pope both sleep in the dust, the former is remembered for having been eminently successful in soul-winning and saint-culture; while the criticisms of the latter are written in the Books of Mistakes, of the making of which there is no end. When the Salvation Army first appeared in the streets of our cities the policemen ran them in and the public applauded — and that public had its quota of custom-made church-members. When the Salvation Army appears upon the streets now the policeman keeps order for it, and the public attends to its words and tosses it pennies, nickels, and in some instances dimes and dollars, because we have discovered that their method is in accord with the apostolic motive, “all things to all men, that we may by all means save some.”
There is a page in one of Louis Albert Banks’ books which all pastors troubled with empty pews ought to study. It reads after this manner: “Last April I went to a charge that has been under most excellent pastors for many years, and still, notwithstanding all that, the church was comparatively empty of people, and on Sunday night less than a hundred people attended service, though the church seats about nine hundred. I was appointed in the middle of the week. Easter Sunday was the next Sunday, and there was a Sunday-school concert on the Sunday night; and Sunday morning was the start-off, so that I had eight or ten days to look around. I had some large cards printed, announcing that I would preach a series of sermons to young men on Samson. There was nothing sensational about that. I took the cards with me. The church stands in the midst of a boardinghouse population, right back of the old State House on .Beacon Hill, and all the mansions in that neighborhood have been given up to a boarding-house population; and yet in the midst of all this the church was comparatively empty. I set to work myself. It was undignified for a city pastor, of course, but on Monday I deliberately took a package of those big cards under my arm and went to door after door of those boarding-houses, and when the girl came to the door, I said I would like to see the landlady. She would look at the cards under my arm, and then at my stovepipe hat, and in that perplexity she usually called the landlady. She came down, and I was invited into the parlor with her, and I sat down and talked. I told her about the conditions of the boarding-houses on that hill; said I did not know what her convictions were, but I was satisfied she believed it would be better for these young men and women to go to church. With one or two exceptions the women were in sympathy with it in a minute, and would talk with me with the utmost sympathy about it; and the result was, that after four days’ hard work, six or eight hours a day, there were a hundred and fifty boarding-houses and restaurants on that hill that had my cards hanging in their dining-rooms or halls, where the people going up to get their meals could see them. I said I was going to preach six sermons on Samson, and the result was that the next Sunday evening not less than eight hundred people were in that church.” Our churches sorely need more nonconformist pastors.
We maintain that, after all is said on forfeiting ministerial dignity that “the uppish “may utter, it remains more undignified to deliver polished discourses to empty pews than to search boarding-houses for an audience, or carry a dry-goods box to a street corner where one can call a crowd.” All things to all men, that we may by all means save some.”
Finally, let us see in this sentence the apostle’s great
Love of Souls
When Jesus stood at the grave of Lazarus and wept, it was said, “Behold, how he loved him!” When one reads Romans 9: 1-3, he is warranted in saying of Paul, “Behold, how he loved the Israelites!” When he reads Romans i: 14, 15, he knows that, like his Master, this apostle is no respecter of persons, but loves Greek and barbarian, Jew and Gentile. He never looked upon the crowds, but, with his Master, he was moved with compassion, seeing that they were as sheep without a shepherd. The sight of their need and the knowledge of their sorrows compelled him to cry, “Woe is me, if I preach not the gospel.”
A man who is out for election to office may feign affection for every man he meets, but his smiles, his handshakings, and fawning patronage all indicate selfishness. A teacher asked her children, “Who loves everybody? ‘* One bright boy replied, “My pa does, ‘cause he is runnin’ for office.” But such love never survives many months. That may be the reason for making the political campaign season short. The man who loves his fellows as Christ loves them, as this great Christian apostle loved them, vill seek them not only in all ways but at all times. You may send the elite of London to answer the pitiful cry of the East End, but after a few weeks the unregenerate among them will have tired and returned home. But the saved, constrained by the love of Christ, will remain.
It is a psychological and Christological study to see the efforts at reclaiming Chicago from sin. Every now and then a great organization has undertaken to clean up its plague-spot — the Black Hole — as it is called. When they grew discouraged and dispersed, Harry Monroe and the class of men he represented were pushing the old plan of redemption with new ardor and studying new methods for the sake of larger success. The Pauline method, “all things to all men,” with the Pauline purpose, “if by all means we may save some,” expresses the Pauline grace, concerning which the apostle wrote: “If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am become sounding brass, or a clanging cymbal. And if I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. And if I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and if I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profiteth me nothing. Love suffereth long, and is kind; love envieth not; love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not its own, is not provoked, taketh not account of evil; rejoiceth not in unrighteousness, but rejoiceth with the truth; beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. Love never faileth... Follow after love.”
When the individual is possessed of this grace his personal endeavor at soul-winning will succeed; and when a church of Jesus Christ is characterized by it a perennial revival is its experience.