To My Younger Brethren | Page 9

ready
mechanism with which to work out the social and sanitary amelioration
of the lives of the multitude, and so to take him to be the best qualified
Clergyman who is, perhaps, the most "muscular" of Christians, or the
cleverest at the invention or superintendence of recreations on a large
scale, or the quickest student and exponent of the principles or theories
of political economy, or possibly of socialistic enterprize? But all this
may leave entirely out the very life-blood of what the New Testament
means by the Gospel of the grace of God; and in many, many cases it
does entirely leave it out.
*"NATURALISM" IN CHRISTIAN WORK.
A conception of "Church work" is widely entertained, and thought to
be adequate, out of which is practically dropped all the mystery, and all
the mercy; above all, the work and message of the atoning Cross and
the dying Lamb; and the need of the sovereign grace of the Holy Ghost
to begin and carry out the Regeneration of the soul; and the depth of
our Fall; and the offered greatness and splendour of our New Creation;
and "that blessed hope, the glorious appearing of the great God and our
Saviour Jesus Christ." [Tit. ii. 13.] It is just one wave of the great
anti-supernatural tide of our time. Christian work is viewed as much as
possible as man's work for man in this present world, under the
example, doubtless, of the beneficent life of our Lord, but not under the
shadow of Calvary, nor in the light of Pentecost, nor in the definite
prospect of an immortality of holy glory.

HOW TO COUNTERACT IT.
To counteract this tendency, and to do so in the right way, is one of the
very noblest tasks set before the younger Clergy of the English Church
in our time. It is for them, under God, in a pre-eminent degree, to find
out the secret, and then to live it out, how to be at once the perfectly
genuine man, devoted to the service of men, carrying what he is and
what he believes into the actual surroundings of modern life, not
allowing illusions and poetic day-dreams to come between him and
facts; and also the convinced, unwavering, spiritual Christian,
conversant with his own soul, and with his living Lord and Saviour,
and with that sacred, unalterable written Word which that Saviour put
into His people's hands, never to be taken out of them. Nothing is more
wanted at present in the sphere of "Church life and work," unless I am
greatly mistaken, than a generation of young Clergymen (soon to be
seniors) who shall conspicuously combine the best forms of practicality
with an unmistakable chastened personal spirituality which is seen to
be "the pulse of" their busy "machine." And if the spirituality is to be
indeed genuine (away with it if it is anything but genuine to the centre),
if it is to be quite different on the one hand from a thing of artificial
phrases, and on the other from merely formulated and regulated
devoutness, I am deeply sure that its only secret and preservative is a
fully-maintained secret walk with God.
"GOD, I THANK THEE."
"I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing." [SN:
Rev. iii. 17.] Such was the thought and word of the Laodicean long ago.
Is it not in effect the thought, if not the word, of not a few hard workers
and energetic enterprizers now? "What do I want with the dialect of
'Christian experience'? What have I, with all these irons in the fire, and
a strong hammer and a strong hand with which to strike them, what
have I to do with 'old-world faiths' about sin and salvation, about grace
and conversion, about pardon and justification? What have I so
pressingly to do with much prayer, save in the form of much work?
God, I thank Thee that I am a worker; let it be for others to dive into
spiritual secrets, if it is good for them to do so."

"THOU KNOWEST NOT."
I would not overdraw the picture. And the words I have put into a
possible mouth are words which, if I heard, I hope I should hear with
every wish to judge them fairly and to see where any truth lay in them.
But none the less I am sure that those words not unjustly represent a
type of thought widely prevalent among even ministerial workers, and
that it is a type of thought pregnant with disaster for Christian work.
"Thou knowest not that thou art poor"; "I counsel thee, to buy of Me";
"I stand at the door and knock: if any man hear My voice and open the
door I will come in to him and sup with