God's ambassador is a lover of humanity. All men appeal to him. While he takes naturally to some people more than to others, yet the servant of Christ does not love any one the less because certain others are of a more kindred spirit. It may be inferred from certain expressions in the Gospels that John was more congenial to Jesus than the other disciples; but He loved them all to the end, even the traitor. It was not that He made an effort to be impartial—His infinite love made Him so. Likewise must the preacher love all men, because they are men like himself and because Christ loves them.
A preacher must not be whimsical in his affections. He is not to love those who come from his native state, home town, or school, above others, nor because they have the same color of skin as his. They may be poor or rich, cultured or crude, good looking or ugly featured, well-kept or slovenly, wise or foolish, drunken or temperate. The minister of the grace of Christ must love them all, every one of them, no matter what their race or color, or whether they are slave or free. And his love is the love of Christ, whose minister he is to all men.
Some time ago I saw on a train a woman tightly bound to a cot on which she was being carried to a hospital for the insane. She was a most pitiably repulsive-looking object. But to her mother she looked altogether different. "My dear girl," "my poor girl," she would moan, caressing her cheeks and forehead and smoothing her hair. The mother's love could not wane, but rather its fountain was enlarged as the light of her daughter's reason went out. The very nature of mother love made this so. It was not dependent on her daughter's balance of mind. Because of His nature God so loved men who had lost, not only their balance of mind, but also of heart, that "He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life." He loves all, every one of them, and in consequence His Son has become the "Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world" —kings and bushmen, every man. And through the preacher this same Christ love is now to flow out to all men.
Now the minister cannot make-believe in this matter. He cannot profess a friendliness that is not spontaneous and genuine. His cordiality is to be "like a spring of water, whose waters fail not." To pretend to like persons for whom he does not much care, is to sham the most distinguishing virtue of God's minister.
It is quite safe to say that we may find congenial characteristics of mind and heart in every soul whom we meet. They may be few or many, but they will serve as lanes of friendship. Even with the most uncultured and unlikable we have some common interests. While these common interests may be few, perhaps little more than those relating to food, clothing, and shelter, yet they may serve as roads over which love may travel forth and back to each other's heart.
Christ's preacher enters into the joys and sorrows, not only of those whose lives he touches, but of all men. He does so naturally, for it is the work of his new heart. He does not regard men and their problems speculatively or materially. He views and visits them under the inspiration of Christ's love. He preaches the love of Christ to them, not only to convince their minds of this love, but also to move their hearts to its obedience. But unless the preacher's own being is radiant with love for Christ, he will not have this love for man.
"The love of Christ constraineth us." It is only this love of Christ that could have sent Carey to pagan India, with its debasing and stultifying religions, and Morrison to China. Only by a whole-hearted love for Christ can one in a heathen land be kept from growing callous to the dull stupor and tragedy of the lives of those who know not God and His Son. The passion for souls is dependent upon a passionate love for Christ. He who would keep close to men must keep close to God. It is only thus that God's servant can highly value the worth of a human soul. Otherwise humanity will at times seem cheap, while as a matter of fact it is so valuable that Christ paid His own life for it.
A new-found love for another gives to the lover a kind and tender feeling for all about him. In speaking of her experience after her conversion, Mrs. E. G. White says: "Everything that my eyes rested upon seemed to have undergone a change. The trees were more beautiful, and the birds sang more sweetly than ever before; they seemed to be praising the Creator in their songs." Love changes the heart. When under its spell we see the good, not the evil, the congenial, not the unlikable, in all men, not only in those with whom we associate, but in all men, even to the ends of the earth. Our newly created hearts are enlarged to embrace the whole world. It is impossible to love Christ and not love the heathen. Love is not simply an emotion; it serves. As it brought Christ from heaven to earth, so it takes men from the joy of comfortable homes in native lands, off into the darkest corners of paganism, where many home comforts are wanting. If he will let it, Christ's love will so move a preacher, who for just reasons cannot personally work in mission lands, that his preaching will stir others to go and still others to give in full measure for the support of those who do go. That preacher's love for Christ is infectious, and believers and even unbelievers are stimulated to a greater love for lost men by the new Christ love which he brings them. Such preachers are also God's real foreign missionaries. Their hearts embrace all, Jew or Gentile barbarian, Scythian, bond or free.
A full measure of the love of Christ gives to the minister a particular love for his fellow ministers' and for all who are of the household of faith. It is here that the real strength of his' loVe is tested and its warmth shown. As a man's Christianity is most revealed within the confines of his own home, so is the preacher's love for Christ most revealed by the depths of his affection for those with whom he serves at Christ's altar. To the ministry are committed in a peculiar sense the oracles of Christ. "God . . . hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation." "Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you [and all men1 by us: we pray you in Christ's stead, be ye reconciled to God." No work is more holy or responsible than that of him who reveals God to man. How closely united, then, should every minister be to every fellow minister the world around. As men and women with strong, pure hearts are found in homes in which the light of love burns at maximum brightness, so likewise in a ministry which is bound together by strong cords of love there are found God's mighty preachers of righteousness. There is always a rich harvest of souls when the reapers work in perfect unison.
Christ very forcibly taught this lesson to His disciples and through them to all who should believe on Him through their witness. "Yet a little while," said He, "I am with you," and "whither I go, ye cannot come. . . . A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another." Greater love than Christ had revealed, could not be shown. And with just this degree of love were His disciples to love one another. This wonderful relation could be experienced only when each disciple was fully united with Christ. John expressed this when he said, "If we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship one with another."
The advance of Christ's gospel is very dependent upon this union of the workers. In Christ's prayer for His disciples just before He was taken by the Roman soldiers, He besought His Father that they might be one. He so longed for this that He asked for it five different times in this prayer. Twice He gave as a reason for thus urging it "that the world may believe that Thou hast sent Me." This perfect oneness is thus set forth by the Master as the chief evidence that the Father had sent Him to save the world. And what more satisfying evidence could be offered? It was God's infinite love that caused Him to let His Son come to save men. It was the same infinite love that led our Saviour to give Himself. How better could this love motive be continually revealed than through His followers? Without this revelation the world could not know that God had sent His Son as its Saviour.
In the advance of God's last message a great organization has been created. From its center to the farthest ends of the earth, it shows the strength of union. This unity of organization is of God, that His truth may make a steady and rapid advance into all the world. And it is doing this even in the face of financial and other difficulties. But our perfect organization cannot account, in full, for the onward movement of our message. The real explanation is not to be found in institutions nor business managements, though these play an important part. The strength of this great second advent movement depends primarily upon a perfect unity of spirit and purpose among its leaders and workers. And it is the ministry that leads in this way of unity. In its perfectness it is a revelation of the love for which Christ so earnestly prayed.
The coming of the fullness of the loud cry of our message is conditioned in no small degree upon the loving unity of its ministry. The preachers of God's doctrine of love must themselves love one another fervently. This kind of love makes the wheels within the wheels of our organization run smoothly. The spirit of love is yielding and co-operative. It respects authority, and knows well the difference between principle and policy, a policy perhaps the preacher's own and not much shared by others.
Loving men—all men—can only be the experience of the preacher who is crucified with Christ, and in whom Christ is living. Such an experience makes the preacher a true ambassador of Christ. Men's hearts burn within them as they walk with the preacher by the way. It is by such men, and only such, that God's gospel of love is to reach every nation and kindred and tongue and people. May God make each of us, as His minister, just such an ambassador.
Baguio, P. 1.
