Five Sermons | Page 6

of every name, shall we not pray
for the healing of the wounds of the body of Christ, that the world may
believe in him?
We are perplexed by the unbelief and sin of our time. The Christian
faith is assailed not only with scoffs of old as Celsus and Julian, but
also with the keenest intellectual criticism of Divine revelation, the
opposition of alleged scientific facts, and a Corinthian worldliness
whose motto is "Eat and drink, for to-morrow we die." In many places
Christian homes are dying out. Crime and impurity are coming in as a
flood, and anarchy raises its hated form in a land where all men are
equal before the law. The lines between the Church and the world are
dim. Never did greater problems confront a council of the Church. An
Apostolic Church has a graver work than discussion about its name or
the amending of its canons and rubrics. I fear that some of this unbelief
is a revolt from a caricature of God. These mechanical ideas about the
universe are the outcome of a mechanical theology which has lost sight
of the Fatherhood of God. There is much honest unbelief. In these
yearnings of humanity, in its clubs, brotherhoods, and orders, in their
readiness to share all things with their brothers, I see unconscious
prophecies of the brotherhood of all men as the children of one God
and Father. Denunciation will not silence unbelief. The name infidel
has lost its terrors. There in only one remedy. It is in the spirit, the
power, and the love of Jesus Christ. Philosophy cannot touch the want.
It offers no hand to grasp, no Saviour to trust, no God to save. When
men see in us the hand, the heart, and the love of Christ, they will
believe in the brotherhood of men and the Fatherhood of God.
There was nothing which impressed your bishops in the late visit to

England more than the service in the cathedral at Durham. The church,
with its thousand years of history was thronged. The chants were sung
by two thousand choristers in surplices. The sermon was preached by
the Bishop of Western New York. This grand service was to set apart
some Bible readers and lay-preachers to go into the collieries to tell
these toilers of the love of Jesus Christ. The same awful problems stare
us in the face,--the centralization of swarms of souls in the cities; the
wealth of the nation in fewer hands; competition making a
life-and-death struggle for bread; the poorest sinking into hopeless
despair; and the richest often forgetting that Lazarus at his gate is a
child of the same God and Father. We, too, must send our best men and
women wherever there is sin, sorrow, and death, to work and suffer,
and, if need be, die for Christ.
We are living in the eventide of the world, when all things point toward
the second coming of our King. God has placed the English-speaking
people in the fore-part of the nations. They number one-tenth of the
human family, and I believe God calls them to do the work of the last
time. The wealth of the world is largely in Christian hands. There never
have been such opportunities for Christian work. Never such a harvest
awaited the husbandman.
You may tell me of difficulties and dangers. We have only one answer.
Sin, sorrow, and death are not the inventions of a Christian priest.
"There is only one Name under heaven whereby any man can be
saved." We have nothing to do with results. It is ours to work and pray,
and pray and work and die. So falls the seed into the earth, and so God
gives the harvest. When the Church sends out embassies commensurate
with the dignity of our King, it will be time to talk of failure. Is the
kingdom of Christ the only kingdom which has not the right to lay
tribute on its citizens? The only failure is the failure to do God's work.
Was it failure when Dr. Hill of blessed memory laid the foundation for
that Christian school which the wisest statesmen say is the chief factor
in the regeneration of Greece? Was it failure when James Lloyd Breck,
our apostle of the wilderness, carried the Gospel to the Indians? Did
Williams, Selwyn, and Patteson fail in Polynesia? Was it failure when
Hoffman and Auer died for Christ in Africa? Have your great-hearted
sons failed who have followed in the footsteps of the saintly Kemper,
and laid with tears and prayers foundations for Christian schools which

are the glory of the West? Has the Gospel failed in Japan, where a
nation is awakening into the life of Christian civilization? Never has
God given His Church more blessed rewards.