3. One great channel through which spiritual life is imparted to a dying Church is suggested by the picture of our Lord as having "the seven stars." The "stars" are the "angels of the churches," by whom we are probably to understand their bishops and pastors. If so, then we have a striking thought symbolized by the juxtaposition. Christ, as it were, holds in the one hand the empty vessels, and in the other the brimming cup, from which He will pour out the supply for their emptiness. The lesson taught us is, that in a dead Church the teachers mostly partake of the deadness, and are responsible for it. But, further, we learn that Christ's way of reviving a decaying and all but effete Church
^ G. K. Chesterton, The Ball and the Cross.
128 A DEAD AND ALIVE CHURCH
is oftenest by filling single men full of His Spirit, and then sending them out to kindle a soul under the ribs of death. The Lord of the Churches is able to bring together the gifts of life and the ministry for which those gifts are needed. If those who minister are without the gifts, it is because they have not asked for them. The union of the two attributes is, therefore, one both of encouragement and of warning. If each star shines with its peculiar radiance, it is because it is under the power and influence of the sevenfold Spirit ; if it has no life or light, and ceases to shine, there is the danger of its falling away from its place in that glorious band, and becoming as one of the " wandering stars, to whom is reserved the blackness of darkness for ever."
^ That minister who receives a body of people more or less cast down, and wearied in the great battle of the soul, and sends them forth full of good cheer and enthusiasm, has done his work and deserved well of his people. He has shown himself a true shepherd, and he had not done this service without knowing both the Will of God and the life of man, without draining a wide watershed of experience — from high hills where the soul has been alone with God, and from deep valleys where the soul has tasted the agonies of life — into the stream that shall be the motive power of many lives on the plains beneath.^
^ It will be seen that this beloved minister, who mingled daily with all classes of the community, " radiating happiness " wherever he went ; who toiled unceasingly in the dark places where " the poor of the earth hide themselves together " ; whose visits were like rays of sunshine to the weary sufferers in city hospitals and elsewhere ; who was rejoicing and sorrowing with his people all day long ; and whose pulpit ministrations from week to week were an undiminished source of spiritual inspiration, moral uplift and good cheer, was himself not infrequently carrying a secret load of care. Yet we do not remember that he ever once used the expression " it is hard," although his deeply affectionate nature was charged with that quick and ready sympathy for the sufferings of others which must always mean pain to its possessor. The sight of any one enduring physical or mental pain which he could not alleviate unmanned him ; but his habitual and unfailing eagerness to point to the bright side of even the darkest experiences was in itself a true consolation. It was as if he stood, a radiant figure, in the midst of us all, calling always, " Be of good cheer, I see land ! " *
^ J. Watson, The Cure of Souls.
* Hector Mackinnon: A Memoir, by his Wife (1914), 97.
REVELATION iii. i 129
4. What is the life of a Church ? The life of a Church is loving loyalty to Jesus Christ, present more or less in the actual human heart of all the members ; an inner, hidden thing, that we cannot weigh in a balance, that we cannot set down in figures in an annual report, that we cannot exhibit to a non-believer or a world- ling, but the greatest, the most powerful force in all our world. The life of a Church is the living, real presence of Jesus Christ as a daily influence on the conduct, the thoughts, the words, the deeds of all the members of that Church. The life of a Church is the living presence of Jesus Christ in every committee of manage- ment, in every meeting of Sunday-school teachers, in every social gathering of the congregation ; a living loyalty and devotion to the Lord Jesus Christ, born out of a grateful certainty that He died to save us, born out of a grand sympathy with Him, and under the belief that He is willing to save all the men and women and all the little children who are round about us. That is the living life of a Church, and nothing else is. We may have a perfect orthodoxy and death; we may have great activity, and yet we may have death. Nothing is the life of a Church but actual, living loyalty and love to the real, living Lord of the Church, Jesus Christ. A living Church will show its life in such things as hearty singing, earnest prayers, faithful service, generous liber- ality to every good cause. A living Church will show its life by bravery and courage in taking up new responsibilities that may offer themselves, and working them most heartily. A living Church is living, not because it does one or all of these things, but because it loves loyalty to the Lord Jesus who died for it, and feels that goodness and holiness are the grandest things in the world.