The pity and the purpose of Christ and his Church: a missionary sermon.
With what different eyes do we look out on to the world, and how varied a spectacle it presents, according to our views, our spirits, our aims! To the geographer and discoverer it appears in one aspect, to the statesman and the historian in another. The artist sees it in one light, the man of science in a different one. The sportsman and pleasure-hunter has his view of it, the trader has his, etc. But from the standpoint of the sanctuary, and so far as our minds are filled with God's truth and our hearts with the love of Christ, we shall look at the vast, outlying human world with very different eyes. We shall see before us—
I. A POOR AND NEEDY WORLD ATHIRST FOR THE TRUTH AND LOVE OF GOD.
1. We think of those multitudes of our race, beneath every sky, of every hue, of every clime and tongue, who are utterly dissatisfied with their life, their creed, or their character; the many millions who are the victims of human oppression, of intolerable tyranny, or of heartless cruelty (social or domestic), or abject slavery; those who are the heirs of grinding poverty, seeking for the bare sufficiency or the comfort or the success which they never gain, which perpetually eludes them; those who are vain seekers after happiness, the voice of whose life is this, "Who will show us any good?" whose experience is one long sad heart-ache; those who are unsuccessful inquirers after God, after truth and righteousness, who say, not in sarcasm, but in sadness, "What is truth?" "Oh that we knew where we might find him!" "What shall we do that we may inherit eternal life?" and to whom no answer comes from the deep void, who have to go groping on in the darkness. These are the poor and needy, seeking water and there is none, "whose tongue faileth for thirst."
2. We include in our view that other multitude who lack the water of life, but who are not conscious of their need. Did it enfeeble the argument for emancipation that so many of the slaves, before their liberty was given them, were content to wear their bonds and to be deprived of the rights of manhood, the claims of womanhood? Or did it not, on the other hand, immeasurably strengthen the case of the emancipators and the cause of the slave? And does it relieve the situation that millions of Chinese are content to live the sordid, selfish, godless lives they are living, and to die the hopeless deaths they are dying? Does it make less pitiful and pathetic the fact that millions of our fellow-subjects in India are content to bow down before images their own hands have carved, and to worship gods and goddesses to honour whom is to be dishonoured and degraded in and by the very act of devotion? Surely this fact only multiplies the reasons for regret and for sympathy. The very muteness of the appeal is the most eloquent plea on their behalf.
II. THE PITY AND THE PURPOSE OF CHRIST ON ITS BEHALF. "When the poor and needy seek water, and there is none,… I the Lord will hear them I will not forsake them.! will open rivers … I will plant trees," etc. If this be primarily applicable to the Israelites in captivity (or on their way home), it must be true of all God's children. He who pitied the thousands of bodily sufferers will much more pity the millions of his sons and daughters who are in the last extremity of spiritual destitution. When Christ "saw the multitude," hungry and weary, he was "moved with compassion" for them. With what profounder pity and intenser feeling does he look down on these far greater multitudes, who are pining and perishing in the famine of the soul! And then does the Church of Christ enter into his spirit and rise toward his stature when it also is stirred to strong, deep sympathy with these poor and needy ones, hungering and athirst for the truth and love of God. And as Christ's purpose answered to his pity, and he came, by the sacrifice of himself, to put away our sin and to take away our sorrow, so must ours also. Pity must end in.provision, in causing the rivers to flow and the fountains to spring and the trees to bear their fruit. Such sources and springs of health and life are our mission Churches. Heathenism is a desert place, a wild waste, where there is no provision for human need. But our Christian Churches, planted in the midst of the ignorant and idolatrous, are rivers in the high places, fountains in the valleys, trees in the desert; there is bread for the hungering, water for those who are perishing with thirst, life for dying souls.—C.