^ The clergyman is not simply an of&cer or servant of God or workman of God, but His ambassador and herald to tell men about God Himself. He must bring distinctly before men the reality of the heaven of which the earth and all that it contains is but the symbol and vesture. And, since all human teaching is but the purging of the ear to hear God's teaching, and since the whole man, and not certain faculties only, must enter into the Divine presence, the sacraments must be the centre and crown (I don't mean central subject) of his teaching, for there the real heights and depths of heaven are most fully revealed, and at the same time the commonest acts and things of earth are most closely and clearly connected with the highest heaven. This is, briefly, my view of a clergyman's work; and by this, I think, must the nature of the Spirit's inward motion be determined.*
2. The Christian ambassador must spare no pains to be a true
copy of the Master whom he represents. David Brainerd was a
young American missionary to the Ked Indians. Weak and ill in
body he died at twenty-nine, but what a noble history he left.
He travelled, in spite of suffering, four thousand miles a year,
through woods, over mountains and rivers. At night he lay out
in the open woods, or in log and turf huts. He ate the Indians'
coarse food, learned their strange language, and preached to them
fin their wigwams, full of smoke and filth, the Indians often
laughing and drinking around. And he tells us why he so lived
and suffered : first " to be conformed to Jesus in toil and
suffering"; and second, "I cared not where or how I lived, or
what hardships I went through, so that I could but win souls to
Christ."
1 Dr. MacGregor of St. CutKberts, 97.
' F. J. A. Hort, in Life and Letters, i. 279.
2 COR. V. 20 213
^ To one who asked MacGregor in the zenith of his power what were the things which stood behind his preaching, the answer was characteristically descriptive of what was felt by every listening hearer of his ministry : " All through, from the beginning, I have tried to be true to my colours — preaching Christ and Him crucified. The rock of my faith is the eternal Sonship of the Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ. All flows from that. Eeligion without that is a pithless, marrowless concern. On that I rest my own eternal hopes ; on the work done for me ; on Christ as the Eedeemer of men ; the love of God in sending His Son, in giving Him as a sacrifice for the sins of the world ; the love of Christ in executing His Father's loving purpose ; and the love and power of the Holy Ghost in applying the benefits which Christ secured for us." These doctrines he never preached with bated breath. "The clarion voice gave no uncertain call" A herald charged with a direct commission, he might fitly have begun and closed every one of his sermons with the words, " Thus saith the Lord."^
III.
An Ambassador is a Diplomatist.
1. The ambassador has to recommend his message. Every- thing, or almost everything, depends on address in the am- bassador. What corresponds to this in the Christian minister? Why, the first element is character, and the second is char- acter, and the third is character — the character and life of the minister of Christ, of the preacher of the gospel — a life of earnestness, of self-forgetfulness, of truthfulness, of singleness of purpose, of simplicity.
Diplomacy ! What ideas do we not commonly connect with the word ? Ambiguity, manoeuvre, chicane, over-reaching, fraud. Not such must be our diplomacy. Only let people feel that we have a single heart and a single eye ; only let them see that in all our words and all our acts we seek not theirs but them ; not ourselves, but our work ; not ourselves, but Christ Jesus our Lord ; and the battle is already half won. Duplicity, untruthful- ness, insincerity, self-assertion, self-seeking in any form — this it is which mars a man's influence.
* J)r. MacGregor of St. Cuthberts, 163.
214 AMBASSADORS FOR CHRIST
^ Remember how often Christ haa said, " The Father has sent me. I am sent. I do the will of him who has sent me."
These words have always been obscure to me.
Only now has the simple, clear, and joyous meaning of these words been revealed to me. I arrived at the comprehension of them through doubt and suffering.
Their meaning is this, that Christ has taught all men the life which He considered the true one for Himself. But He con- siders His life an embassy, a fulfilment of the will of Him who sent Him.
But the will of Him who sent is the rational (good) life of the whole world. Consequently, it is the business of life to carry the truth into the world.
If I am God's messenger, my chief business does not only consist in fulfilling the commandments — they are only conditions under which I must fulfil the ambassadorship — -but in living in such a way as to carry into the world with all means given me that truth which I know, that truth which is entrusted to me.