The Shepherd's Sling
A Plea for Foreign Missions.
“Then said David to the Philistine, Thou comest to me with a Bword, and with a spear, and with a shield: but I come to thee in the name of the Lord of hosts.” — 1 Sam. xvii. 45.
nr^HAT was a remarkable encounter which -■- once took place in the little valley of Elah. With its thrilling story you are all as familiar as you are with the grapple of American yeomanry on Bunker Hill, or with the dear-bought victory of freedom on the heights of Gettysburg. From our early childhood we have all loved to read the brief epic of David and Goliath. With our childish eyes we distinctly saw the boastful champion of the Philistines plant himself in full view of Israel, and of Israel’s heathen foes.
The champion measures six cubits and a span; and every inch of his giant staturfe is encased in flashing brass. The staff of his spear is like to a weaver’s beam; the head of his spear weighs six hundred shekels of iron. A shield-bearer goes before him. His impious proclamation is: “I defy the armies of Israel this day: give me a man, that we may fight together.”
For forty days the heathen’s challenge remains unaccepted, and for forty days the heart of Israel is growing weaker than water. At length a shepherd’s boy fresh from his flocks, with the ruddy tint of toil on his fair young face, steps modestly forth into the lists. In one hand he carries a staff; in the other he carries a common sling. He has dropped five smooth stones into the shepherd’s pouch by his side. These are his only weapons; the protection of God is his only armor. Even so was ruddy-cheeked free labor, fresh from its fields, pitted against the giant of oppression in our late national conflict,
I need not recount to you the bulletin of that battle at Elah, — so short, so sharp, and so decisive. I need not repeat to you modest David’s reply to the disdainful champion:
“Thou comest to me with a sword, and with a spear, and with a shield: hut I come to thee in the name of the Lord of hosts, whom thou hast defied.” I need not tell you how the stripling put his hand in his hag, and took thence a stone, and slung it, and smote the Philistine in his forehead, and he fell upon his face to the earth. I need not depict to you the triumphant youth standing on the giant’s prostrate carcass, and hewing off his swaggering head; nor the subsequent rout of the heathen before Israel’s reassured and victorious armies.
I have brought to you this narrative as a starting-point and an illustration. It furnishes a happy parable of the “irrepressible conflict” between God’s right and the devil’s wrong. Goliath typifies the giant of Error that for forty centuries has defied the living God. Ruddy Daliid is the Missionary Church. The five smooth stones are Gospel truths. The staff’ they bear is the unbroken promise of God. Before the “countless cloud of witnesses” in heaven and on earth the conflict is
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joined; and all that “assembly shall know that the Lord saveth not with sword and spear; for the battle is the Lord’s,” audi he will yet give the enemy into our hands.
If the stripling of Bethlehem seemed a most unequal match for the brazen-mailed giant of Gath, how much more disproportionate is the Church’s missionary band to the stupendous enemy which they confront! Worldly wisdom smiles at what it styles their “-weak-minded enthusiasm;” and, while it coldly commends their object, it predicts an inevitable failure. But the little band stand to their post. Rationalism derides them. Infidelity scoffs at them. The false prophet and the false priests of Baal threaten them. Bat yet the little band toils on. When one of their number sinks at his post, there is another ready to step forward and to take up the abandoned implements of labor. The ranks swell every year; and often a gentle woman steps forth, and with meek heroism takes up the burden of a toil that has sunk so many a strong man to his grave. Occasionally a youthful missionary falls when he has just learned how to wield his sling. Occasionally a Lyman or a Lowrie is struck down by mur dei-ous violence. A Winslow, a Judson, and a Poor sink under the burden of the long day, and are laid to rest. A Father Goodell comes home to die. A nobler life no man can live, a sublimer death no man can die, than to live or die a missionary of the Cross!
“How beautiful it is for man to die Upon the walls of Zion! To be called. Like a watch-worn and weary sentinel, To put his armor off, and rest in heaven. What is the warrior’s clarion — though its blast Ring with the conquest of a world — to this?
What are all The trumpetings of proud humanity To the short history of one who dies for souls. And makes his sepulchre beside the King of kings P”
(a.) Wherein lies the real power of the Missionary Church? (I use this term because my Bible gives me no other idea of a true church than a missionary, aggressive, reformatory, soul-saving body of working believers.) Wherein lies her power? Manifestly not in her numbers; for she embraces less than one-fourth of the human race. Manifestly not in her earthly resources; for Mammon has more wealth than the Church, and Antichrist possesses cunninger state-craft and mightier armies. Her power lies in her living union with (lie living God. And in proportion to her closeness of union with Christ Jesus will she be sagacious in plan, steadfast of purpose, fertile in resources, zealous in labor, prevalent in prayer, and victorious in achievement. Christ is in the Missionary Church. He is not in heathenism, or in Moslemism, or in Rome. When he gave the Church her commission, “Go, teach all nations,” he sealed up with it the priceless promise, “Lo! I am with you to the end of the world.”
With one slender rod, Moses cleft the Red Sea asunder; but God was in the rod. With a herdsman’s sling, David brought down the Philistine; but God strengthened the young shepherd’s arm, and guided the fatal stone. Out from the doorway of a prayer-meeting in Jerusalem, a handful of plain people issued forth, to turn the heathen world “upside down,” and to carry the cross from the Euphrates to the Tiber. But Christ went with them and in them from that “upper chamber.” Christ flamed on Peter’s tongue; Christ reasoned from Paul’s cultured brain; Christ spake from Apollos’ lips; Christ throbbed in the pulsations of John’s warm heart; Christ shone from Stephen’s face, when it was like unto the face of an angel. Lo! I am with you always, blazed on the banners of every apostolic corps; Lo! I am with you always, rang as her bugle call to every march to victory. The power of that missionary apostolic Church lay in her piety; for her piety was the measure of her union with Jesus Christ. And in our day the Church’s piety is the Church’s power. Do not forget, my brethren, this truth of truths for a moment. The power of the missionary Church is her living, toiling, self-denying piety. For this there can be no substitute. The Church may increase her agencies as she will; she may multiply her machinery a hundred-fold; but it will be all for naught, unless Christ Jesus be the “living Spirit within the wheels.” What the missionary Church now most needs is another Pentecost. And all ye who would see new vigor in the work of missions, who would see a new zeal, a new liberality, a new inspiration in the Church at home, must besiege God’s mercy-seat for powerful, soul-quickening revivals.
(&.) Look now with me, a moment, at another element of strength in the Missionary Church. Not only is the power of God promised to her fidelity, but the wisdom of God is visible iii the choice of her materials. In our modern times, God has put His gospel faith into the best races on the globe. David has better blood in his veins than Goliath. The races to which God has intrusted His staff and five smooth stones of gospel truth are the same races that drew up Magna Charta and the Declaration of Independence, — the races that have made iron types to talk and iron ships to swim, — that have strung the telegraphic nerves through humanity’s limbs, and have woven out of revealed law the highest forms yet reached of Christian civilization.
For the spread of His gospel, God has made Great Britain strong, and Holland industrious, and Germany learned, and has saved our American Republic as by fire. The welfare of Christianity has God bound up with the welfare of certain races and nations. If this be so, how vitally important it is that those nations who essay to Christianize other nations should themselves be Christianized to the very core!
When the diplomacy of Christian nations has been employed to outwit simple savages, and the commerce of Christian nations has been employed to cheat them; when the same ship that carried out the Bible was also freighted with opium and firearms, and with handcuffs to bind on savage limbs, we need not wonder that the very name of Christianity became an opprobrium and a terror. Only a short time ago a vessel was cleared from an American port to the coast of Africa, which carried seven missionaries in her cabin, and several hundred barrels of New England rum in her cargo! I very much fear that the contents of her cargo will prove an overmatcli for the contents of her cabin.
Of other nations I am not to speak. But, for my own beloved land, I rejoice to say that her Divine Deliverer seems to be preparing her for her predestined work abroad by no common discipline. What our liberated land now needs is another baptism, the baptism of Pentecost. Wherefore, all ye who long to see America’s influence go forth like the morning light over every land, I pray you that ye besiege the mercy-seat for powerful, purifying Pentecostal revivals.
(c.) Before I close, let me remind you of another pertinent parallel between the shepherd-boy of Israel and Christ’s Missionary Church. The young David of Bethlehem brought from his sheep-cote to the battle-field of Elah a hearty frame, a rustic simplicity, and an intrepid heart. Like the strong-limbed rail-hewer of our day, he was a plain-born son of toil, with the smell of mother earth on his garments. His cheek was ruddy with temperance; his sinews were knit with athletic exercise. That rustic son of Jesse, fresh from the hills, is a beautiful type of Christ’s Church in its best days,: — its days of self-denial, — its apostolic days, when fishermen and tent-makers conquered principalities and powers, — its Reformation days, when the miner’s son from Saxony, and the lean student of Geneva, smote the Papal Goliath, — its Puritan days, when Cromwell’s “Ironsides” sent curl-pated cavaliers “whirling” over Marston Moor; when a band of Yorkshire farmers and herdsmen steered the “Mayflower” through wintry tempests to bleak Plymouth Rock! And in our days the missionaries of the cross have mostly come from such households as the household of Jesse. Herein lies a lesson and a warning.
Brethren! I have a prodigious fear for our metropolitan churches. I fear that fastgrowing wealth is impoverishing the Church’s piety; I fear that an unparalleled prosperity is making our churches luxurious, fashionable, worldly-minded, self-indulgent. The religion that walks on life’s sunny side
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in Paris laces, and sips its choice wines in freestone mansions, is not the religion that breeds missionaries, or fights Goliaths.
Don’t you remember reading in your childhood’s favorite fiction about Sinbad’s voyage into the Indian Ocean? Do you remember that magnetic rock that rose from the surface of the placid sea? Silently the vessel v?as attracted toward it; silently the bolts were drawn out of the ship’s sides, one by one, through the subtle attraction of that magnetic rock. And when the fated vessel drew so near that every bolt and clamp were unloosed, the whole structure of bulwark, mast, and spars, tumbled into ruin on the sea, and the sleeping sailors awoke to their drowning agonies!
So stands the magnetic rock of worldliness athwart the Church’s path. If the Church draw too near, then bolt after bolt of godly purpose will be drawn out, clamp after clamp of Christian obligation will be unloosed, until the sacred argosy, that is freighted with immortal hopes, shall tumble into a shattered and disgraceful wreck. Depend upon it, brethren, that God will never suffer this to be. He will not let us rob Him. Depend upon it, that if we lie down to luxurious slumber on couches of rosewood, while the world is perishing, He will snatch the couch from beneath us in financial judgments. If we persist in paving the way to our places of amusement and our parties of pleasure with His silver and gold. He will wrest it from us with the terrible rebuke, “Ye may no longer be my stewards!” Oh for the descent of a Pentecostal fire to consume this “wood, hay, and stubble” of pomp and luxury! O ye who long to see the self-pampering churches brought back to a hardier self-denial and a holier self-consecration! I pray you that ye besiege the mercy-seat, and labor, too, for soul-humbling, church-purifying revivals.
But I must not weary you with the discussion of a widening theme. As we close, we seem to be looking out upon the stupendous conflict between light and darkness, between the hosts of truth and the hosts of error. The field of this conflict is not a narrow vale of Elah: it is the wide, wide world. Like the swarming squadrons of Philistia on the mountain-sides, stand the combined innumerable hosts of heathenism, of the false prophet, and the man of sin. Like the brazen-mailed giant of Gath, stands Antichrist, — proud, stubborn, impious, and defiant. As the shepherd’s boy of Bethlehem came forth to confront Israel’s foe, so come forth the missionary band of Christ. They are inferior indeed to the foe in numbers; but a single man, with God on his side, is in the majority. In the missionary band of Christendom are represented eighty-five different organizations. Of these, twenty-two hail from Great Britain; twenty from our beloved Union; thirteen from Germany; nine from little Holland; seven from the lands of the “Norsemen;” one from France, and the remainder from British colonies. Of these organizations, the two largest are the “Wesleyan Society” of England, and the “American Board of Foreign Missions.” As the roll of the American Board is called, three hundred and twenty missionaries answer to their names. The Presbyterian Board have two hundred and forty in the field. These are the men of whom the most eminent Scotch painter once said to me, “America has produced many great artists and authors and orators; but the most superior body of men she has yet furnished are her missionaries.” Each one of them is equipped with the staff and the sling. Each one has in his scrip the five smooth stones from
“Siloa’s brook, That flows fast by the oracles of God.”
To our weak faith, these missionary bands seem small and few for the moral conquest of the globe. But who can tell how many Martyns and Winslows and Duffs the eye of God may discern yet waiting in the household of Jesse? Who can say that there is not now upon his mother’s knee another Luther, who shall lead the last great onset against the man of sin; or another Calvin, to vindicate the cross before European scepticism; or another
Wesley, to awake with Gide’on’s trumpet a formal church to fresh revivals and a loftier zeal 1 Who can tell how soon the eye of God may see an American missionary preaching Christ in the Mosque of Omar, or proclaiming the downfall of the Papacy under the frescoed dome of St. Peter’s 1
That time is coming! It is eighteen centuries nearer than when the first missionary concert of prayer was held in the “upper room” at Jerusalem. It is sixty years nearer than when the first American missionary sailed from Boston wharf to the shores of India. It is as sure to come as to-morrow’s sunrise. Do you ask, When will that time arrive ] I answer: It will come when the Church of Christ shall pray as the first missionary concert prayed at Jerusalem: it will come when all the followers of Jesus shall write Holiness to the Lord on every dollar in their coffers; when the Church shall consecrate all her children to self-denial and to holv toils, and shall train every David from his cradle to wield the sling! Then, all the world shall know that God saveth not with sword and spear; for the battle is the Lord’s, and on the brow of the Enthroned Lamb shall rest the diadem of victory.