^ Lord, I read at the transfiguration that Peter, James, and John were admitted to behold Christ ; but Andrew was excluded. So again at the reviving of the daughter of the ruler of the synagogue, these three were let in, and Andrew shut out. Lastly, in the agony, the aforesaid three were called to be » C. G. Trumbull, Taking Men Alive, 53.
ST. JOHN I. 40-42 it3
witnesses thereof, and still Andrew left behind. Yet he was Peter's brother, and a good man, and an apostle; why did not Christ take the two pair of brothers ? was it not a pity to part them ? But methinks I seem more offended thereat than Andrew himself was, whom I find to express no discontent, being pleased to be accounted a loyal subject for the general, though he was no favourite in these particulars. Give me to be pleased in myself, and thankful to thee, for what I am, though I be not equal to others in personal perfections. For such peculiar privileges are courtesies from thee when given, and no injuries to us when denied.^
2. Consider the manner of the service,
(1) It was service rendered as the result of experience. — No sermon did Andrew preach that day. He simply uttered one sentence, "We have found the Messiah, which is, being inter- preted, the Christ." Who could not have uttered such a sentence, if he had possessed the experience ? The man who had experienced the effect of his eyes being opened, the woman who had experienced the opening out of her life before her eyes — both spoke with such power that men believed the words they uttered. So Andrew had found the Messiah, and the words of such a man, though few, had a weight such as those of a Demosthenes could not carry. Eloquence can never make up for the lack of experi- ence. Experience with one sentence can move men as eloquence without it can never do, and Andrew with his one sentence brought Peter to Christ. When the Holy Ghost fell upon the Apostles they went out stating that God had " shed forth this " ; so, to-day, the man who has spent the night with the Christ can go forth and, with the light of joy in his life, and the ring of conviction in his tone, can say, " We have found the Christ," and men will listen to his message.
^ Some of us are influenced by argument and some of us are not. You may pound a man's mistaken creed to atoms with sledge-hammers of reasoning, and he is not much nearer being a Christian than he was before ; just as you may pound ice to pieces and it is pounded ice after all. The mightiest argument that we can use, and the argument that we can all use, if we have got any religion in us at all, is that of Andrew, "We have found the Messiah." 2
' Tliomas Fuller. ' A. Maclaren,
ST. JOHN — 8
114 PERSONAL SERVICE
^ When John Wesley went as a missionary to Georgia, he went, as he writes, " to save his own soul " ; but two years later he returned to England a disappointed man, having saved neither his own soul nor those of the colonists and Indians. "I who went to America to convert others," he says, " was never myself converted." Then, with a new accession of self-forgetfulness, he turned from his own salvation to the service of others. The words spoken of his Master came home to him : " He saved others ; himself he cannot save." He was no longer Wesley the ritualist, but Wesley the missionary. " He first tindeth his own brother Simon," and soon his own life acquired confidence and peace. "His soul was saved," says his biographer, "because he had found his work." ^
(2) It was service rendered hy the utterance of one sentence. — Andrew was a young convert and had no learning. He could not argue about it, and he could not preach about it — all of which was a great mercy. Because he could do nothing else he had to stick to the point — " We have found the Messiah." The simple sentence uttered by one man to another is often the way by which men are brought into touch with Christ. We cannot all be preachers to the crowd, nor are we all called to such a work; but we are all qualified and we are all called to pass the message on to any one into whose company we may he thrown.
^ The real powers of the Early Church were not men who could harangue crowds or arouse congregations by their fervid appeals, but men who could talk to a brother, a friend, a com- panion, a neighbour, about the wonderful love and beauty of Jesus Christ, and out of the fulness of their own joys testify to those nearest them of the new life which they had found. It was in that way chiefly, and not by the orators of the Church, that Christianity was spread in the early days. A man who had realized the blessedness of it passed it on to the one next to him. It went like a forest fire, each tree kindled set fire to another. Each convert was as good as two, for each one made a second. The Christian plant, like every other, propagated itself; the flower of its joy dropped seed as it ripened into fruit. Prisoners whispered the glad secret to their gaolers, soldiers to their comrades, servants to their masters, women to every one who would hsten. Each saved soul was eager to save another, eager to pluck a brand from the burning and win a jewel for Christ. So the work went on, so the army of the Lord grew, so the great