Jesus Christ’s ideal of His Church was an active propaganda, an army in which there were no non-combatants, even although some of the combatants might be detailed to remain in the camp and look after the stuff, and others of them might be in the forefront of the battle.  But is that ideal ever fulfilled in any of our churches?  How many amongst us there are who do absolutely nothing in the shape of Christian work!  Some of us seem to think that the voluntary principle on which our Nonconformist churches are largely organised means, ’I do not need to do anything unless I like.  Inclination is the guide of duty, and if I do not care to take any active part in the work of our church, nobody has anything to say.’  No man can force me, but if Jesus Christ says to me, ‘Go!’ and I say, ‘I had rather not,’ Jesus Christ and I have to settle accounts between us.  The less men control, the more stringent ought to be the control of Christ.  And if the principle of Christian obedience is a willing heart, then the duty of a Christian is to see that the heart is willing.

A stringent obligation, not to be shuffled off by any of the excuses that we make, is laid upon us all.  It makes very short work of a number of excuses.  There is a great deal in the tone of this generation which tends to chill the missionary spirit.  We know more about the heathen world, and familiarity diminishes horror.  We have taken up, many of us, milder and more merciful ideas about the condition of those who die without knowing the name of Jesus Christ.  We have taken to the study of comparative religion as a science, forgetting sometimes that the thing that we are studying as a science is spreading a dark cloud of ignorance and apathy over millions of men.  And all these reasons somewhat sap the strength and cool the fervour of a good many Christian people nowadays.  Jesus Christ’s commandment remains just as it was.

Then some of us say, ‘I prefer working at home!’ Well, if you are doing all that you can there, and really are enthusiastically devoted to one phase of Christian service, the great principle of division of labour comes in to warrant your not entering upon other fields which others cultivate.  But unless you are thus casting all your energies into the work which you say that you prefer, there is no reason in it why you should do nothing in the other direction.  Jesus Christ still says, ‘Go ye into all the world.’

Then some of you say, ’Well, I do not much believe in your missionary societies.  There is a great deal of waste of money about them.  A number of things there are that one does not approve of.  I have heard stories about missionaries being very idle, very luxurious, and taking too much pay, and doing too little work.’  Well, be it so!  Very probably it is partly true; though I do not know that the people whose testimony is so willingly accepted, to the detriment of our brethren in foreign lands, are precisely the kind of people that should talk