SUNDAY READING.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 16468, 21 June 1919, Page 10

SUNDAY READING.

IS CHRISTIANITY HEROIC?

A sermon preached in the Whiteley Memorial Church by the Rev. J. Napier Milne. '

Acts 15-26.—“ Men that have hazarded their lives for the name of our Lord Jos us Christ. ’ ’

Our hearts have all been thrilled by thei accounts, constantly coming to light, of the exceedingly adventurous things dono by our brave brothers during the war. it is surprising and yet not surprising that volunteers should so readily be found for tasks so extremely perilous. Heroism has been poured out abundantly on human nature, and, to very many, to live dangerously is life Unit is life indeed. It has sometimes been brought as an argument against the Christian Church that its ministers and its members love ease, are afraid of risks, boggle at difficulties and sacrifices and keep their eye generally on tho “cushy” jobs. Well, it cannot be denied that there are timid and selfish people amongst those who profess and call themselves Christians, though, in all fairness, it must be added that tho Church has no monopoly of such people. But that granted, the talc of Christian couragt granted, the tale of Christian courage Glorious as is the record of the deeds that won and have kept the Empire, it is not raoye stirring than the gallantry and spirit and pluck, elevated and consecrated, manifested on many a field of toil by the servants of Jesus Christ. The weapons of the Church’s warfare have not been ste«l and stone and iron, and therefore the risk to Ehysical life has not been so great; ut whore sacrifice and surrender have been called for, where men have been required to step into some breach which meant danger, disease and even death, many eager hands have been held rup and many eager voices have cried, “Here 1 am, send me.” The text speaks of men who have hazarded their lives for the name of the Lord Jesus. The word “hazard” has gaming associations. It means to take risks, to expose to peril or danger, to embark upon ventures, chancing the loss and ruin in which they may end. So had Paul and Barnabas done, not with the treasure that moth and rust doth corrupt but with the wealth of life. With full knowledge of what they were doing they had placed their lives in jeopardy, had literally gambled' with them for the, sake of the name which had meant to them salvation. On their journey from ,Perga to Antioch they had to pass through the wild ranges of the Taurus mountains, and may well have met with some of those perils 1 of rivers and of robbers of which Paul speaks in 2 Corinthians. Despite the dangers and difficulties of the way, their enthusiasm never flagged. When driven out of one city they moved forward to the next. Prepared to sacrifice anything so that men might be saved they cheerfully hazarded their continuance in the flesh.

The whole history of missionary enterprise is a history of holy heroism and divine daring. Where shall we begin to speak of the men who have sacrificed personal comfort and have faced death unafraid for the sake of their brother men who wore wandering friendless and forlorn in the darkness of heathen night ?' Here is Francis Xavier, the Apostle of Asia in the 16th century, mistaken and misguided in many things no doubt, but aflame with a zeal for the glory of God which puts to shanie the weakness and cowardice and selfishness of our own lives. Xavier waa'-heir to a castle and estate. He was a brilliant scholar in the University of Paris, hut left the path of scholarship and indulgence for a life -amid the cruelty and superstition of Oriental heathenism. In the pursuit of his work he was often beaten and kicked about by mobs, and his life stood in jeopardy every hour. Yet in ten years he had planted the Cross in no less than 52 different kingdoms; and when ho came to die worn out by toil and fever, lie whispered: “In Thee 0 God have I trusted, I shall never be confounded.” And here is the less known but not the less noble Danish missionary, Hans Egedi, who, in 1721, heard and responded to tho call of Christ to take the 'message .of salvation to the dull and stupid Greenlanders. When the ship was ready to sail he was warned by the sailors that he would be done to death if he landed on those inhospitable shores. Nevertheless, he took ms seat in the boat and went.

And here is Robert Alorrison, the last-maker of Alorpeth, setting ‘out alone for the country of the 1 Celestials, and experiencing in fullest measure their hostility to everything BritishIn the midst of stupendous difficulties and discouragements he translated tho word of God into the vernacular and was able to report only one convert after seven years of hard, self-sacrific-ing toil. And here is David Livingstone, tho African explorer, willing, as has been said, to go anywhere provided it were only forward, willing to do anything provided it were preparing the whole field for the harvest, willing to suffer any hardship so only it might fall out to the furtherance of the Kingdom of the Saviour. At heart he was simply a humble missionary, and his words on the memorial slab in Westminster Abbey show that he had all the missionary’s passjon for God and for the souls of men. “All I can add in my loneliness is—Alay Heaven’s rich blessing come down on everyone, American, English, Turk—and who will help to heal the open sore of the world?” And her a is John Hunt, the farmer lad of Lincolnshire, leaving his quiet, uneventful country life that he might preach Jesus to the savages of Fiji. Hti soon found that not one half of the revolting cruelties practised by tho natives had been told him. On one occasion the Islanders threatened to burn down his house because his wife had closed and blinded the windows to shut out tho sickening sight and smell of burning bodies. And they were never sure that they were not going to be the next victims. And here is John G. Baton, the hero of the New- Hebrides, leaving his much-loved work in Glasgow to teach Christianity to the cannibal peoples of the South' Seas. His wife and her infant child die, and w-ith his own hands he has to dig for them a grave. Scarcely a day passes in which lie is not in-, danger of being clubbed to death by the brute men of Aniwa. Time and again ho is prostrated Infer® and ague, hut lie recovers oal£_

to go back with renewed zeal to his old work. And here is Dr. Jackson, the young medical missionary, whose heroic death a few years ago called forth such widespread regret throughout Christendom. A horrible plague was stalking through the land, and Dr. Jackson took up his position at the Mukden railway station, examined every passenger arriving from the north, aiul tending with his own hands scores of the sick and the dying. He took every precaution, but in ten days he was in the grip of the disease, and on the twelfth day he died. He was only 26 years of age, and ho had been but ten "weeks on the Mission f ield. By his devotion to duty lie had saved many hundreds of lives. The time would simply fail me to tell of all the heroes and heroines of the Christian faith, who poured out their souls in life and in death for the Gospel’s sake, and whose names are written in God’s great book of golden deeds. Whatever may be the future or Christianity-—and some of us believe that the golden age is before 1 it—its past at least is secure. The men of whom I have spoken were not adventurers, sportsmen, discoverers, warriors, whose’ object was amusement, money, fame, or material conquest. They were men who went forth sacrificing earthly prospects and encountering sufferings, privation and sometimes martyr deaths that they might preach among the nations the unsearchable riches of Christ. Nothing less than attachment to a Divine Person could have so lifted them above themselves firing them with finest heroism and forcing them into ways that could i ever have been of their own natural choosing. We hoar a good deal nowadays about “enthusiasm for humanity.’ That is little better than a fine phrase. The dictum of history and of human experience is thaij there can be no deep and no abiding enthusiasm for humanity where there is no wholehearted'devotion and enthusiasm for Jesus Christ. In one of his books Dr. James Stalker tolls us that when the bitter cry of outcast London grew so piercing as to attract universal attention, the heart of the West End was stirred, and the sons and daughters of fashion left their frivolity to go slumming. But destitute of a great and adequate motive power they soon found that their fingers were all thumbs at the business and they speedily left the humble followers of Jesus Christ to relieve the wretched as before. Even within the circle of our own acquaintances, however narrow, there are some for whom we find it difficult to entertain a deep feeling of affection and regard. We would never dream of dying for them, unless it were to get rid of them. And if this bo true of men within our own set t is it strange that we should feel inclined to give the drunkard and the prodigal a wide berth and should find the negro and the Esquimaux detestable? Human nature is not uniformly lovely or loveable; and when enthusiasm for humanity stands alone it is in constant danof being cooled and chilled in the presence of the stupidity, the ingratitude and ,the meanness of men. But let a man conceive an ardent love for Jesus Christ, let his whole being burn as with a flame of devotion to the Saviour of the world, and then the weakest and most degraded of his kind become to him souls for whom Christ died, and he will be prepared to count no sacrifice too great so only they may be won for the -Kingdom. “The wonderful thing,” said a thoughtful Congregational layman recently, “about the work of John G. Baton, is not that ho was able to do it, but that anything should make him want to do it.” That is it. All the ethical cults and isms in the world don’t make men anxious to live amongst savages. Nothing short of k deathless enthusiasm for Jesus Christ could have sustained that heroic missionary through nearly 30 toilsome and trying years. The men and women who are wearing their lives out in the evil-smelling slums of European cities or who are doing the hard, drudging repulsive work amongst the heathen in other lands, have something more to impel them than more enthusiasm for humanity. To use the phrase of an eminent preacher, “they are the victims of a sweet.compulsion,” and they arc living witnesses to tho truth that the only abiding source of enthusiasm for humanity is enthusiasm for Jesus Christ.