^ R. F. Horton, Row the Cross Saves, 102. 2 COR. & GAL. — 14
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But it so happened that General Wakasa picked it up out of the sea, and he was curious to know what this book was. He got an interpreter to tell him what it was. He became interested in it. He procured a Chinese New Testament and read it through — it brought him to Christ. Twelve years later General Wakasa came down to Verbeck, the missionary, and asked to be baptized because he had found the Saviour. Your British sailor let his New Testament fall into the sea, but that New Testament converted the General of the Japanese army, and his family, and the whole circle of his friends, and planted the blessed truth of reconciliation in the islands of Japan. That is the logic of missions. The first duty is to let the world know, and let every race of men know, to have it in every language, to put it within reach of every human being, that God is " in Christ reconciling the world unto himself." ^
4. To turn a deaf ear to this message is to incur great guilt. It is an awful and solemn power that every poor little speck of humanity has, to lift itself up in God's face, and say, in answer to all His pleadings, " I will not ! " as if the dwellers in some little island, a mere pin-point of black, barren rock, jutting up at sea, were to declare war against a kingdom that stretched through twenty degrees of longitude on the mainland. So we, on our little bit of island, our pin-point of rock in the great waste ocean, can separate ourselves from the great Continent ; or, rather, God has, in a fashion, made us separate in order that we may either unite ourselves with Him, by our willing yielding, or wrench our- selves away from Him by our antagonism and rebellion,
God cannot prise open a man's heart with a crowbar, as it were, and force Himself inside. The door opens from within. "Behold! I stand at the door and knock." There is an "if." " If any man open I will come in." Hence the beseeching, hence the wail of wisdom that cries aloud and no man regards it ; of love that stands at the entering in of the city, and pleads in vain, and says, " I have called, and ye have refused. . . . How often would I have gathered . . . and ye would not"
We heard his footfall on the vacant stair
The whole night long. We lay awake in bed
And heard him climb ; — but those who slept instead
Smiled and assured us that he was not there.
^ R. F. Horton, How the Cross Saves, 109.
2 COR. V. 20 211
We had our own ioiportant things to care
About — place, profit and the daily bread ;
And then the street so thundered in one's head
And often life's a commonplace affair ! Yet then we heard him ! — we not they were right :
We heard him — Yes ! tho' now we sleep by night
Almost as soundly as we sleep by day, We waked, we heard him, heard — and nothing more.^
II.
An Ambassador is a Kepresentative.
1. An ambassador has no independent position, no independent authority. What he is, he is because he represents the king or nation which has commissioned him to bear their message. In- structions are given him, and he must not exceed them. The terms he proposes, the plans he communicates, have been settled beforehand, and they are not his own. He is the mouthpiece of others. He mediates between kings or nations, because he represents one king or one nation to another. To put the ambassador in the place of his king or nation would be a gross perversion of the truth. To put the minister in the place of Christ would be equally gross. And yet the minister does represent Christ, does mediate between his people and Christ, for he speaks in his Master's name.
We are ambassadors not only " for Christ," but " on Christ's behalf." And the same preposition is repeated in the subsequent clause. " We pray you," not merely " in Christ's stead," though that is much, but " on His account," which is more — as if it lay very near His heart that we should put away our enmity ; and as if in some transcendent and wonderful manner the all-perfect, self-sufi&ciug God was made glad, and the Master, who is His image for us, " saw of the travail of his soul, and," in regard to one man, " was satisfied," when the man lets the warmth of God's love in Christ thaw away the coldness out of his heart, and kindle there an answering flame. An old divine says, " We cannot do God a greater pleasure, or more oblige His very heart, than to trust in Him as a God of love."
^ G. C. Lodge, Poems and Dramas, ii. 152,
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^ There is one absolute essential to successful preaching and to beneficial hearing — firm faith that it is God's own appointed plan for the conversion of souls, and that He never will withhold the blessing when it is earnestly sought. The moment you allow the mind to fix itself solely and exclusively on the human element in preaching — the man, the talent, the oratory — you miss the good of preaching. The way to regard it is this : to look upon the man as but the machine in God's hand, doing God's work. Then you reap the benefit; because you listen reverently, patiently, receptively. This is far too little enforced and far too little understood.^