^ There were some rough diamonds among the converts ; but if they were rough they were diamonds still. One man, a brick- layer's labourer, could not read a chapter of the Bible without a mistake in every line. Yet for fifteen years he attended the Sunday morning prayer-meeting at seven o'clock, often conducting it, and praying with such fervour and power that my father felt the influence of his prayers upon his ministry to be exceptional, if not unique. A woman, who in the early days of his work among the pig-feeders of Notting Dale held up in his face a quart pot of beer and laughed at him with words of scornful obscenity, was attracted to the Tabernacle, was soundly converted to Jesus Christ, and was thenceforward a living monument of the most winsome Christian goodness. It was with special reference to her that my father wrote : " I believe we had as real and noble a company of praying women as ever they had in the apostolic days." Another woman was a member of a little colony of gypsies who often encamped upon some waste ground not far away from the Tabernacle. Herself led to the feet of Jesus by my father's ministry, she brought several others to hear him preach, and among those of them who were converted were three brothers — the father and two uncles of the now famous evangelist, Gypsy Smith. My father baptized them — I can myself remember the scene — with peculiar and exultant joy.*
*ff In his Confessions St. Augustine has left record in literature of a profligate and shameful past, of a deep repentance and flight to God for succour, and of a grand recovery alike to moral obedi-
' Michael Fairless, The Roadmender, 79. ' Henry Varley's Life-Story, 69.
2 COR. V. 17 ^ot
ence and to splendid service. The profligate of Carthage, steeped in degrading animalism, becomes in Eome the first of the four great Latin Fathers of the Church, exercising an influence on Christian thought and life second only to that of the Apostle Paul. In this case, as in many others which might be recorded, the springs of action were not lamed by the memory of a mournful past, but rather quickened into finer intensity and more strenuous endeavour. Shakespeare had dared to say :
Best men are moulded out of faults.
There is blue sky in front of us if in the memory of any guilty act we feel that we would rather die than repeat it. To have erred in the past does not condemn us to degradation in the future. The soul, though deeply stained, may be cleansed and regain its purity, if not its innocence. Again and yet again He who " knoweth our frame, and remembereth that we are dust " takes us by the hand and says " Start afresh." With God, and hope, and to-morrow, we may mock the counsels of despair. It is inevitable that some error should creep into our lives, for we are but human. Let the bitterness of past failure sting us into nobler action in the present, and the weakness revealed urge us to supplication for diviner strength. We have at least gained through defeat a fuller knowledge of ourselves. Our self-confidence has been rebuked, and we have learned the special perils, the be- setting sins, against which we need to guard. Says Browning :
When the fight begins within himself, A man's worth something.
He is tried that he may triumph. He wrestles that he may be crowned.^
» E. P. Downs, Beaten Gold, 148.
Ambassadors for Christ.
LITERATURE.
Aitken (W. H. M. H.), Mission Sermons, 272.
Cameron (J.), Sermons and Memoir, 13.
Cooper (T. J.), Love's Unveiling, 49.
Fowler (G, H.), Thi^igs Old and New, 153.
Garbett (E.), The SouFs Life, 34.
Henson (H. H.), Preaching to the Times, 174.
Horton (R. F.), Row the Gross Saves, 101.
Jackson (G.), Memoranda Paulina, 260.
Lightfoot (J. B.), Ordination Addresses, 44.
Maclaren (A.), Expositions : 1 and 2 Corinthians, 380.
Meyer (F. B.), In the' Beginning Ood, 163,
Price (A. C), Fifty Sermons, iv. 33 ; viii. 361.
Randolph (B, W.), The Threshold of the Sanctuary, 30.
Robertson (A. T.), The Glory of the Ministry, 203.
„ (J.), Sermons and Expositions, 3. Robinson (C. S.), Studies in the New Testament, 48. Snell (B. J.), in TTie Sermon Year Book, ii. 1. Spurgeon (C. H.), Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, xix. (1873), No. 1124 ;
Iv. (1909), No. 3148. Vaughan (J.), Sermons (Brighton Pulpit), vi. (1869), No. 627. Watson (F.), The Christian Life Here and Hereafter, 161.
„ (J.), Preparing for Home, 238. Church of England Magazine, x. 296 (E. Parker); xv. 166 (W. Stone) ;
XX. 200 (W. H. Brett). Eomiletic Review, liii. 306 (B. Smith).
Ambassadors for Christ.
We are ambassadors therefore on behalf of Christ, as thoug^h God were intreating by us : we beseech you on behalf of Christ, be ye reconciled to God. — 2 Cor. V. 20.
1. The ministry is one of the original elements of historic Christianity. From the beginning there have been duly ap- pointed ministers in the Church. The ministry was implied in the constitution of the Christian Society. No thoughtful student of the Gospels can doubt that the ultimate origin of the ministry must be traced to Christ Himself. From the start the Church has taken the form of an ordered society. The earliest Christian writings we possess indicate the existence of an authorized and accepted ministry. The ministry takes rank with the two Sacraments, the Lord's Day, the Scripture, as an original and therefore essential element of historic Christianity. The earliest Christian document we possess is the First Epistle to the Thessalonians, and there we encounter the ministry as a settled thing. "We beseech you, brethren, to know them that labour among you, and are over you in the Lord, and admonish you ; and to esteem them exceeding highly in love for their work's sake."