What the Church Means to Me | Page 6

Spain. As for me, I am
satisfied in my own work, and I think my Master was, with the faith
that makes a man anxious and willing to come and help me, ever
believing that he that is not against us is on our side.
Joshua, a servant of God if ever there was one, is often quoted as
saying, "Decide," "Choose." We must remember that what he said was,
"Choose whom you will serve," not what your final belief is going to
be. Christ never sought for admirers, but for followers. The most
voluble protestants of their faith in Jesus as God's Son were devils.
They knew it, but benefited little by it. Thank God, Jesus never made
the opposite of confessing our belief in him before men to be the
non-apprehension of his divinity, but always the denying and being
ashamed of his service and becoming a stumbling block. Though I
know what a wonderful thing it is, as a source of power, to be able to
confess our faith in Jesus as the Son of God, and what infinite peace it
affords to have that confirmed by experience.
The shrewd judgment of Wall Street would not lend a man ten cents
because he had been accepted as a member of a church on confession
of faith. Often enough members of the same church wouldn't either,
although they probably both would to a doer, like Livingstone. So let us

abandon the creed-judging of others. Jesus accepted the following of
the adulterers, publicans, and the harlots, and the man who has honest
doubts may be a Christ follower or a Christian, who ever says the
contrary.
BANDED TOGETHER FOR MANLY SERVICE
I have always loved to think of Jesus Christ and to commend him as
Master because he accepted all who came--whether for comfort, for
help, or for service. When a man sets to work on the road that leads to
heaven here, he will be tasting the sweetness of the believing that
involves everlasting life. In our Labrador work we form no church. Our
fellow-workers pray and worship in every denomination as the bias of
their mind and temperament leads them to find peace and comfort and
strength best. Yet we are a definite body associated together for certain
purposes. These we believe are translations into action of our
interpretation of our debt to God and to our neighbor. In that sense are
we not a true ecclesia?
Will it horrify my readers if I confess I have accepted doctors for our
hospitals, nurses for our districts, and workers of every type, and yet
have never known which way they prefer to worship? Nor have I ever
played the censor on their right to help us by defining what they ought
to believe before I allowed them to set to work. Before a member joins
the permanent staff we must know he is in absolute sympathy with our
aim to glorify God and serve our brother, and that he or she is willing
to give their best for that object. But that is all. I am fearless to confess
that I would enroll for a colleague in the clinics, which hold in their
hands the lives of my friends, a man who is facile princeps in the art of
surgery rather than a second-rate surgeon who can subscribe to the very
same intellectual tenets as I do myself.
Our claim to be capable servants of our Master and reincarnations of
his life is judged in our little world by the good work we do; if as
surgeons or nurses, by our skill; if as storekeepers and labor employers,
by the clean deals we give. If we are second-rate in our work all our
talking won't persuade men of our fitness for our position. Securus
judicat orbis terrarum--and to my mind God seeks first men diligent in

business, fervent in spirit, serving the Lord.
All the sects have only the same work for the same Master to
accomplish; it is through being fellow-workers and not identical
thinkers that love for all who love Christ must come. This is unity. The
camaraderie of a fighting force is not disturbed by the feeling that one
is of the cavalry, another of the infantry, a third of the artillery; or even,
as has often been shown in warfare, whether they are of different races,
climes, or temperaments. There is nothing like common work to beget
intelligent love for your fellow.
How did Christ admit his members? By their profession of faith? I
think not. By their readiness to work? Yes. Those were workers he
chose, every one of them. Did he wait until they could say they
believed, even that he was God's Son, before he sent them out to work?
Not at all.