The London Missionary Society 7
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4. Another thing of vital importance to the preservation and increased usefulness of our Society, is a careful, diligent, and practical regard to the well-being of our denomination.
In political affairs, a nation engaged in a war of invasion and subjugation, must look well to its own internal condition, and to the union of its people, the prosperity of its finances, and the wisdom of its government. A nation weak at home can never be strong abroad. All the troops, munitions of war, and supplies for the army are drawn from home. My brethren, we have proclaimed war with all the idols of the world, and are invading the territories of Paganism over the face of the whole earth; and we must be strong at home, if we would be victorious abroad.
The time will come, no doubt, when our missions will be self-supporting and self-propagating; and it should be our study, aim, and policy, to bring them to that state as soon as possible—but they are far enough off from it at present. Our churches at home must for ages to come be the grand storehouse to the world for money, men, and all the material of our spiritual warfare. Then what, I ask, ought to be the state of our body to carry on with vigor and success such a conflict? I do not mean to dispute my own words already uttered in this discourse. I do not intend to excite the jealousy of the directors. I do not wish to divert your attention from, or weaken your affection for, the Missionary Society; but I do mean, intend, and wish, in the most public, explicit, and emphatic manner—to impress upon you the sentiment that your first and most anxious consideration should be directed to the state of your own denomination, as regards the orthodoxy of its theology; the efficiency of its ministry; the zeal and piety of its members; the peaceable working of its principles; and the harmony of its churches. In short, to the compactness, strength, and growth of the whole body.
I say this for your own sake, and no less for the sake of the Missionary Society. If you are weak, that is weak; if you are strong, it will be strong in you. No one, I believe, will suspect me of a lack of love—as far as I know myself, sectarian bigotry is not my besetting sin. I believe that the church must be more united before the world is converted. Truth and love are the two most powerful things in the universe; and it is by the silken cord of love, united with the golden thread of truth, that the church must draw the world to Christ. But then I am no advocate of the spurious philosophy which proposes to build up universal benevolence on the destruction of truth.
I say, then, to the pastors of our churches, and to their churches with them, Look well to yourselves. Let no multiplication of foreign objects divert your attention for a moment from your own condition. Be united, and be strong—strong, I mean, internally and spiritually, rather than externally and politically. I am far more concerned about the former than the latter. Control the centrifugal tendency of your principles, by a strong centripetal force of vital godliness. Look well to the state of your ministry, and support it well. Sustain with liberality your colleges. Encourage your literature; and thus be ready and every way prepared to bear a conspicuous and honorable part in the evangelization of your country and the world. Descendants of the Puritans! children of the Nonconformists! to your great ancestors Britain stands indebted in no small measure for her liberties; New England for its population, its Protestantism, and its freedom; and the world for much of its purest and richest theology, and its Christian missions to all nations. Disgrace not your lineage; be worthy of the men from whom you have descended; assert your principles with the courage of heroes and the constancy of martyrs, though at the same time with the holiness of saints, and the meekness and gentleness of Christ. Our denominational prosperity is, under God, to the Missionary Society, the source of its strength, the secret of its power; and if your churches, which are the springs and tributary streams of its vast reservoir, become fewer, smaller, and poorer—the supplies of this great cause will be suspended.
5. We now go on to the last particular; and thus advance to the close of a sermon, I am afraid, far too long for the patience of the hearers; and that is for a few moments to show that the perpetuation of the missionary enterprise depends in no small measure upon the support given to it by the ministers of the Gospel.
The church, we admit, has a stewardship to perform, and one not lacking in grandeur, solemnity, or responsibility. But still more solemn are the functions and accountability of the pastoral ministry; for if to the church is entrusted the salvation of the world, to the ministry is entrusted the conservation of the church. In repudiating the notion of a priesthood, in disclaiming and rejecting the absurdities connected with the communication of sacramental grace, and resolving our ministry into an office of instruction, persuasion, and example, we have immeasurably increased its difficulty, its responsibility, and its solemnity. How easy are the genuflexions, the invocations, and the manipulations of the Popish or Tractarian priest, compared with the mental concern and the spiritual labor of the Christian minister to keep up by the labor of studying, preaching, and exemplifying truth, right views and feelings in the minds and hearts of the people!
It is the will of God, and in the order of nature, that there should be influence and power perpetually going forth from a minister to his people. We, dear brethren, cannot be neutral; we must do good—or harm. Our situation is solemn—our responsibility is tremendous. Our negative as well as our positive qualities must have an influence. It is enough to crush and overwhelm us, merely to think that hundreds, and in some cases thousands of immortal souls are brought every Sabbath-day to us to be instructed and moved; to be converted and sanctified; to be taught what to think, how to feel, how to act, not as rational creatures merely—but as moral agents, not as mortals only—but as immortals, not only in reference to themselves—but to others. Yes, we mold the saint as well as convert the sinner. The pulpit is the center of the moral universe, and is the object of deepest interest to three worlds—heaven, earth, and hell. To a considerable extent, it sustains and directs the destinies of both the church and the world. Hence, by an obvious deduction, it may be inferred, if the Missionary Society ever dies, it will expire in the heart of the ministry, and be entombed in the pulpit; and should this ever be the case, its frowning Spirit will haunt the studies of men whose neglect has caused the death of this evangelist of the world.
Every church ought to be in spirit a missionary church; and so it would be if its pastor was a missionary man. If, instead of considering the missionary cause as the business of our people, we adopted it as our own, and, where God has blessed us with property, we were ahead of them in liberality, and did not consider our sermons as our only contributions to the cause; if, instead of trusting to the eloquent appeals of a deputation, or even to our own annual sermon, we interweaved the subject as we ought to do with the whole web of our pulpit ministrations; if, instead of confining it to the sanctuary, we took it to the houses of our friends, and breathed into them a missionary spirit in the social circle; if in everything we added all the power of example to all the force of persuasion, what might we not, by God's blessing, do in exciting and sustaining a right feeling in our people in reference to this cause!
In a late battle in India, the following order was given—"Officers, take your position in front; lead on your troops." Such is the command of the Great Captain of our salvation to us ministers. We must be in the front, not in the rear. We must lead in person, not merely direct. We must be seen in advance, giving the signal, and crying to those behind, "Onwards! follow!" Let us only do our part, and the people will not be lacking in theirs. By God's blessing, we may conduct them to any measure of zeal and liberality within reasonable bounds. Directors of the society! hold us bound to you as responsible for its support. Devolve the responsibility upon us. It belongs to us. God has laid it upon us. Our office commits us to it; and we dare not shrink from it, without being false to our ordination vows.
To you, my beloved young brethren, who are now the hope of our churches, and must soon be the successors of their declining pastors, I turn for a few moments, with an anxiety and an affection which no words could enable me to express. The preacher, with a few others who remain, are the connecting link between the men of the past who founded the society, and the men of the future who are to support it in the coming time. That precious trust which they bequeathed to us, we in our turn must soon bequeath, we would sincerely hope uninjured, to you. We have loved the cause, and endeavored, however imperfectly, to serve it; and in doing this, we have but discharged a debt of gratitude. If we have gained any share of public esteem, if we have attained to any measure of usefulness, we owe it in some measure to this society.
It was this which helped to lift us into notice, which fanned the spark of zeal in our youthful bosoms, and inspired us with what little earnestness we have manifested in the Christian ministry. The shadows of evening are gathering around us, our sun is touching the western horizon, and we are in a situation better able, than amidst the heat and burden of the day, to estimate the relative value of all the objects of ministerial ambition; and now, while we are willing to bear our testimony to the subordinate importance of high scholarship and sound philosophy, (and some of us from a felt and lamented deficiency in these attainments,) we feel that these things, and everything else that could be added to them, are but as the small dust of the balance when weighed against the worth of souls, and the achievement of their salvation. And if, in the review of life, we had to look back upon any serious neglect of this, no matter what we had done in the acquisition or advancement of learning or science, we would repeat with a deeper sigh, and a more intense agony than his, the lament of Grotius, "I have consumed much of my time in laboriously doing nothing."
Forgive me, my young brethren, if this appeal breathes any suspicion of your attachment to this glorious cause—love for it, and for you, makes me anxious, and impels me to ask, "Will you ever forsake it?" Where can you find anything in grandeur so sublime, in beauty so fascinating? Shall the amenities of literature, the speculations of philosophy, the productions of genius—have any power to seduce you from the stupendous objects presented by the cause of Christian missions? What! Shall neither the loud deep groans of an unconverted world, nor the anticipated and triumphant shout of a redeemed one, have power to draw you from the retreat of the study into the field where heaven and hell are conflicting for the possession of our earth?
Consider, I beseech you, your advantages. You have not either to create a public sentiment in favor of missions, or to form and embody it into an organization. This is all done to your hand. The machinery is constructed, the mighty engine is at work; and all you have to do is to keep it going with such improvements as you can invent. Consider the circumstances of the times in which you have come upon the stage. By signs better understood than apocalyptic seals, vials, and trumpets—we learn that the hour of travail has come upon the world, and that some great moral birth is soon to be announced as having taken place.
Providence is disclosing some of its grandest secrets, and performing some of its noblest works. You will witness greater things than we have seen, and will be called to join in more stupendous operations. To be destitute, in such an age, of public spirit, would be sullenly to refuse your sympathy with God in the greatest of his doings, to shrink into littleness when everything combines to magnify your importance, and to remain torpid at the center of universal excitement. It would be to recline in the chair of ease, or on the couch of voluptuous repose, when the Christian army is marching to battle and to victory beneath your windows, to the song of the seraphim, and amidst the shouts of applauding multitudes.
Young ministers! the eyes of all turn to you. The directors of the Missionary Society turn to you, the declining pastors of the churches turn to you, the missionaries and mission churches which they have planted turn to you, the idolatrous nations of the earth turn to you, the fathers and the founders of the society from their elevated seats of glory turn to you. The triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, calls on you. Will you disappoint such hopes, refuse such appeals?
Beneath the pulpit which I now occupy lie the ashes, and behind it is placed the monumental record of one of the most ardent of the fathers of our cause.* Over those ashes, around that marble bust, in view of those sculptured emblems of your ministry, and with the inscription recording his excellence before you, swear by him that lives forever and ever that you will never abandon this great enterprise.
* Rowland Hill is here referred to, at whose interment it may be mentioned the Author delivered the address. This office devolved upon him in right, not only of the long friendship which subsisted between them—but of the still stronger attachment which existed between Mr and Mrs Hill and the Author's second wife, when Mrs Benjamin Neale.
We take your pledge; we confide in you; we dismiss our solicitude; we will spend what remains of the evening of life in greater serenity; our declining sun shall go down more free from clouds, now that we see a pledged, devoted band of young men rising up to take our places when we shall have joined our spiritual fathers.
"High heaven that heard the solemn vow,
That vow renewed shall daily hear,
Until in life's latest hour you bow,
And bless in death a bond so dear."
And now what remains but that, leaving the fields where the fathers labored, and the tombs where the prophets slumber, and even passing over the millennial beauties of a renovated world, we anticipate that illustrious morning when, every other foe having been vanquished, the last enemy shall be destroyed, and emancipated millions, bursting from the fetters of the tomb, shall raise the last and loudest shout of the Redeemer's triumph, "Death is swallowed up in victory!" Then, high on the great white throne, the Lord Jesus, with infinite satisfaction, shall see of the travail of his soul, and gather into his presence all whom he has employed in carrying out the plan of his redeeming work. What a convocation will then assemble!
There will be the goodly fellowship of the prophets, the glorious company of the apostles, and the noble army of martyrs. There will be the reformers, the missionaries, the ministers of every age, and every country, and every church. There, like co-workers in some stupendous enterprise assembled to celebrate together its successful completion, or like a company of warriors and heroes collected in the palace of their sovereign to enjoy a banquet in commemoration of a victory, will all the servants of Jesus assemble from every department of hallowed labor.
No voice need then ask, "Your fathers, where are they?" There they are arrayed in glory, honor, and immortality! What blissful recognitions, what enraptured congratulations and sublime communications will take place at that interview! The very anticipation, is it not almost overwhelming? Then shall it be seen who are the men whom the King of Kings delights to honor; and when monarchs and statesmen, warriors and heroes, philosophers and scholars, poets and historians, who knew not God, and served not his cause, shall be passed by without a glance, or be swept away with the refuse of the nations; the fathers, the founders, the directors and supporters of this blessed cause shall be seen, with amazement and envy by these mighty ones of the earth, united to their Lord, covered with his glory, and seated on his throne!
Illustrious day! yours it is to close the dispensations of earth, of time, and grace—and to open those of heaven, and glory, and eternity; yours to justify the ways of Providence to men—and clear up every mystery which now confounds our reason and sometimes staggers our faith; yours to fulfill the expectations, to terminate the sufferings, and exhibit the perfection of God's redeemed church; yours to reveal the glory, to consummate the mission, and adorn with its brightest honors the crown of Immanuel! Hasten, glad day, your coming! For your arrival, and the manifestation of the glorious liberty of the sons of God, the earnest expectation of the creature waits. The very anticipation of your approach, however distant, gives vigor to our exertions, patience to our sufferings, and stimulus to our hopes; and yet, patient as she is under your delay, the whole redeemed church raises her longing eye, and, with her ten thousand times ten thousand voices, cries "Come, Lord Jesus, come quickly!"
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