mm-mm iii -^r- MISSIONS IN STATE AND CHURCH BY THE SAME AUTHOR POSITIVE PREACHING AND THE MODERN MIND. 7s. 6d. net. RELIGION IN RECENT ART. los. net. THE HOLY FATHER AND THE LIVING CHRIST. IS. 6d. CHRISTIAN PERFECTION, is. 6d. ROME, REFORM, AND REACTION. 5s. SOCIALISM, THE CHURCH AND THE POOR. IS. net. London : HODDER AND STOUGHTON MISSIONS IN STATE AND CHURCH SERMONS AND ADDRESSES BY P. T. FORSYTH, M.A., D.D. PRINCIPAL OF HACKNEY COLLEGE HAMPSTEAD HODDER AND STOUGHTON LONDON MCMVIII \ JAW 25 1953 \ t^^5/Ty OF T05Sf I SHOULD LIKE TO INSCKIBE THIS BOOK IN AFFECTION AND HONOUR TO A TRUE MISSIONARY STATESMAN EEV. EALPH WAEDLAW THOMPSON, D.D. NOW FOR TWENTY-EIGHT YEARS FOREIGN SECRETARY OF THE LONDON MISSIONARY SOCIETY, AND THIS YEAR CHAIRMAN OF THE CONGREGATIONAL UNION OF ENGLAND AND WALES Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2010 with funding from University of Toronto http://www.archive.org/details/missionsinstateOOfors CONTENTS I PAGE THE FATHERHOOD OF DEATH . .1 II FINAL JUDGMENT FULL SALVATION . .49 III SOME CAUSES OF MISSIONARY APATHY . 105 IV SOME GROUNDS OF MISSIONARY ZEAL . 131 THE NATIONAL ASPECT OF MISSIONS . • 165 vii viii CONTENTS VI PAGE THE EXCLUSIVBNESS OP CHEIST . 195 VII THE missionary's STAYING POWER . 219 VIII THE GREATEST CREDITORS THE GREATEST DEBTORS 247 IX A MISSIONARY MODEL .... 275 X HOLY CHRISTIAN EMPIRE . 289 THE FATHERHOOD OF DEATH Missions "Now is the judgment of this world ; now shall the prince of this world be cast out. " And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men imto Me."—John xii. 31, 32. THE FATHERHOOD OF DEATH* /CERTAIN Greeks wished to see Jesus, and ^-^ they applied for help to the Greek-named apostles. There does not seem to have been an interview in their mind. They were proselytes to Judaism on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Jesus had just made His royal entry, and He was the talk of the town. They would not miss one of the great sights of their journey. Visit Jerusalem as proselytes, and not see the last sensation, the possible Messiah ! As soon would an English pervert go to Rome, and not see the Pope. When Jesus was told, it produced a singular effect upon Him. It was a small matter ap- parently ; but things affect us as they find us ; and this fell on a soul in great tension and * Preached at the City Temple on behalf of the London Missionary Society. 4 THE FATHERHOOD OF DEATH vision. Heathen, then, were curious about the Messiah of the Jews ! Was He gratified by the attention of a new world, as a British preacher might be with an American public ? No, it seemed to Him like a straw on the wind of the Spirit. It was like the weeds Columbus met at sea. It was the beginning of a new world. These men were the harbingers of a new time. Here were the swallows, spring was at the door, and summer on the way. But the worst storm of the winter was still to come. It meant death. It meant His cross. Jesus had always felt that His earthly mission was to the Jews. His ointment was held for the time in that small alabaster-box. But you remember how the universal scope of His work was borne in upon Him in contact with the Syrophenician woman. And at the same time He was forced by the attitude of the Jews to face an early death. The two convictions, universality and death, were one. There was but one way for His work to become universal. To fill the world with the healing odour, the box must be broken. The emancipa- tion of His gospel must come by His death. Already He had seen death to be inevitable from without, from the temper of His foes. He could not escape it. Now it is carried home to ! THE FATHERHOOD OF DEATH 5 Him, how necessary it was from within, fromi His Father. He must not escape it. His work required it. It was in God's will. The will of the Pharisees becomes to Him, by a sure mys- tery and miracle, the will of God. Both willed His death. But how different the intention What He realised from the Syrophenician now comes home anew, but with tragedy and glory. So when the disciples thought to gratify Him by the news of His popularity, His reply was mixed, and it was disconcerting. He was elated, indeed, for a moment. "The hour is come for the Son of Man to be glorified." Ah, at last ! they thought. But the only way to such glory filled Him with melancholy. " Except a corn of wheat die." What ! harping on death at such a time ! They did not understand it. But He was often careless whether they understood or not. We are much too lucid for His great- ness. He was not now teaching, but soliloquising. The agony struck home to Him. Gethsemane had begun. The temptation was resumed. He saw the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them. It was not their pagan splendour, but the glory they might yield to God, if Messiah put out His latent powers and became their literal King. He flushed to anticipate the scene. He saw His own Puritan race keen for a lead. 6 THE FATHERHOOD OF DEATH He saw empire wide open to such powers as His, where He might serve God on a royal scale, and make Him an offering of a conquered world. Yet He saw just as surely that for Him that way was barred. Swift and universal empire, even if beneficent, could be neither Divine nor final. It fitted neither the true God nor the real world, neither grace nor need. And it was too vulgar for His soul. His vast powers were to be called in at a moral bidding. They were to be fixed on a task not only obscure, but bewilder- ing, unpopular, and apparently futile. His star rose, only to be smothered by the black cloud of death. His joy suddenly sweeps round to sorrow. A world was before Him, His foot was on the frontier—and He must turn away to die. How like was the Moses of the new Israel to the Moses of the old ! It was bitter. If a man make his fortune just to find he has heart disease and cannot last a twelvemonth it is bitter enough. And life is full of such fates. But these are minor bitternesses compared to the misery that the prospect of death brought to Him who was the fulness of life and power for good. And even that, again, was small and personal compared to another grief. It was the grief of knowing that His duty would bring not only trouble but perdition to the Israel He loved. THE FATHERHOOD OF DEATH 7 His death must be the damnation of the race He could have imperialised. It was not the darkness of death, but the damnation in it that struck through Him, and turned his sadness to His passion. It is agony for a man to do for conscience what he knows may ruin his family. How much more when he has to do what will condemn them, what will bring out all the evil in them and be death unto death to them ; what will drive them to blaspheme the Holy Ghost, call His sacrifice a mere craze and His mission lunacy—yea, to protect them- selves by putting Him away? That, you will remember, was what Christ's own family thought when He took up His work. They went out to bring Him back as mad, and put Him under restraint. And it was what His whole nation were coming to think also. And so, when an occasion, however trivial, bore this swiftly and sharply in on Him, it was almost more than He could bear. That was the case now : " How is My soul troubled ! Father, spare Me this hour." And the Father would not. Jesus well-nigh lost heart at the revived sense of His tragic doom, of involving in calamity all He loved. So He did once before, when He saw the awful result of His work in family estrangement and the breaking up 8 THE FATHERHOOD OF DEATH of homes. " It is dreadful," He said. " I have a baptism to be baptized with ; and how am ! I crushed until it be over " (Luke xii. 50.) But the attack only called out the resources of His solemn will. He stood still and silent. The passion had begun. He was conquering His distress by prayer. He always did. Beware of soliloquy (you poor Hamlets of an unhinged age !) if it do not turn to prayer. He recovered His spiritual self-command, which was His habi- tual obedience to the purpose of God. And He not only regained calm ; He rose to exaltation again. Calm will not meet depression. Depres- sion is in the nature of a passion with such souls as His, and it must be expelled by a counter- passion of faith and action. He rose to the eternal, glorious issue before Him. " I die alone. But unless I die I am more alone. If I die I bear much fruit." The prize was the world, the enemy the prince of this world ; the work was judgment ; the conflict the decisive battle of the immortal sinful soul ; the pressure was the Father's will. So from the anguish of " Now is My soul troubled.