USA > Virginia > City of Staunton > City of Staunton > The First Presbyterian Church, Staunton, Virginia > Part 18
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In such conceptions as these the spirit of missions becomes a mighty and resistless impulse among men. There is no question as to consequences :
He always wins who sides with God To Him no chance is lost.
With this thought in mind Pearson says : "To God's Chariots two celestial chargers are yoked : Omniscience and Omnipotence, the rim of whose chariot wheels is so high that it is dreadful and full of eyes before and behind." Hence does he add (and what an inspiration to the Calvinistic Missionary) "To work for and with God is to be borne along irresistibly toward the goal of consummate victory and final glory."
JESUS CHRIST WAS NOT ONLY THE GREAT MISSIONARY, BUT PLACED HIS OWN SOVEREIGN PURPOSE BENEATH THE SCHEME OF MIS- SIONS. In John XV: 16, this is made clear. "Ye have not chosen me but I have chosen you and ordained you, that ye should go and bring forth fruit." He did not leave it to others to interpret that "go"; He did it Himself. "Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature." Thus the eternal purpose is illuminated by His command. God's plans are the marching orders of the Church.
When we undertake mission work we become co-laborers, co-suf- ferers and co-witnesses with Christ, the typical missionary. He laid aside crown, sceptre and heavenly purple; left the Courts of Heaven in sovereign unmerited grace to lift a lost world, dead in trespasses and sins, up into the sunlight of His Father's eternal love and favor: Well cried a missionary, "Oh what a perfect missionary was He! What sermons of love did he preach !" The path of missions-who first trod it?
Nay, no men mortal first that passage trod, The prince of missions was the Son of God.
THE SOVEREIGN HOLY SPIRIT WAS CHRIST'S FIRST GREAT MISSION- ARY TO MEN. Said the departing Christ: "I send you another com- forter"; "He shall convince the world of sin, of righteousness and judgment to come." He is a sovereign. "The wind bloweth where it listeth." The Acts of Apostles is truly the acts of the Holy Ghost. It is the first chapter in the Holy Spirit's Mission work for the world. He
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appears on the scene and creates Pentecost. He says, "Separate me Barnabas and Saul to the work whereto I have called them"-the work of missions. He guided Paul in all his wondrous career, now suffering him not to enter one province, now leading him from one city to an- other, and now leading him from one continent to another. His whole work by the hands of these Apostles, especially by the hands of Paul, was carried on according to Calvinistic norms of thought.
All mission work is under the guidance of the Holy Spirit; pro- vided it is true Foreign mission work. The Holy Ghost sketches the widening lines of this world-wide campaign. In the year 328, A. D., Constantine, on the site of Byzantium, was in person marking out the boundary of the city of Constantinople; his attention being called to the vast area he had staked off and the improbability that so large a city should ever be built, calmly replied: "I am following Him who is leading me." In the same words may every missionary and mis- sionary church reply as it maps out the world for mission effort: "I am following Him-the Holy Ghost-that leadeth me."
PAUL, THE INSPIRED FOUNDER OF THE CALVINISTIC SYSTEM, WAS THE GREAT MISSIONARY OF THE AGES. Read the Romans, with its deep and exhaustive conception of sin and its malignity, its doctrine of salvation by pure grace, its explicit statement of the electing love of a Sovereign God; now behold Paul's thrilling career as a missionary to the Gentiles, tracing his travels among them in lines of light, you have beheld cause and effect. The man whose heart and soul is on fire with the truth contained in the Romans will not count his life dear if only he can carry that great salvation to the nations.
The author of the Romans, sees the Macedonian vision. Paul is upon one of his urgent missionary journeys ; he reaches Mysia and essays to go into Bithynia, but the Spirit suffered him not; he reaches Troas and there God gives him a vision and a call. He would fain stay in Asia-dear old Asia-where the Lord was born, where the ground was hallowed with being pressed by his heavenly feet; Asia "bright with the memories of Pentecost." The call is to Foreign mission work. A man of Macedonia, a man of another continent, appears to him saying, "Come over into Macedonia and help us." In that vision Philippi stretched her hands for the bread of life; Berea besought the word of God, to them worth more than gold, yea, than much fine gold; classic, agnostic Athens begged that the true light might dispel her darkness; Rome sued for peace with God; savage Britain turned its blinded eyes to the coming dawn; America from the isles on the east to the golden gates of the sunset in the west strained her ear to hear the wing of the angel that bears the trumpet of the everlasting gospel. The Macedonian cry was a Calvinistic vision.
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That Pauline vision was typical and universal. It has been the perpetual call to missions; its living symbol. All churches seek here its unfailing inspiration for mission effort. This call to duty fails not with the ages. Some one has said that the man of Macedonia was a composite photograph of every race under heaven. Itis a man of Japan calling us to take his land, the key to the Orient, for Christ; a man of Korea begging that the coming of the Sun of Righteousness may make his land indeed the land of the rising sun; a man from the isles of the sea asking that they may become by a touch of the gospel, gems for Christ's mediatorial crown; a man of India crying in behalf of vast and needy millions for the bread of life; a man of Africa, on bended knee, petitioning that his submerged millions may yet become "saints carved in ebony"; a man of Mexico wishing from the depths of impoverished and sin-blurred soul, that the Gospel may make their souls richer than their mines and purer and more beautiful than his unflecked skies and Eden-like valleys.
The Pauline or Calvinistic system alone gives an adequate theory of missions. First: As regards motive. Paul makes the glory of God the chief end of man. God's glory is best subserved in the salvation of souls. Calvinism, then, plies men with the chief motive of life as an impulse to missions. Love, too, is stronger in the Calvinistic system- "forgiven much, loveth also much"-is its motto. To the Calvinist sin is the direct evil, hell the deepest pit in the universe, grace the sweetest word in the language of God and the holy heaven, to which electing love lifts him, the sum total of all felicity. Feeling him- self saved with so great a salvation, gratitude causes the flinty heart ever to gush in streams of love-the saved one will leave home, friends, property and all to take Jesus and his salvation to his lost brethren who have never known its glory. It requires a Calvinistic view of man's chief end-a Calvinistic fountain of love-to overcome all difficulties, dangerous climates, antagonism of the heathen, the Prince of Darkness and all his innumerable hosts. Despite all diffi- culties, to the Calvinist so full is his heart of love and confidence, that the future, "to his exalting expectation, is to be as radiant with glory as the sky over Calvary was heavy with gloom-as resplendent with lovely celestial lights as to his imagination, if you hold that faculty chiefly concerned, was the mount of the Lord's supreme ascension. He expects long toil and many disasters, incarnadined seas, dreary wildernesses, battles with giants, and spasms of fear in the heart of the Church. But he looks, as surely as he looks for the sunrise, after nights of tempest and lingering dawn, for the ultimate illumination of the world of faith." Second: As regards neccessity for the work. The heathen are in supreme need of the gospel. They
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are lost, they are dead in trespasses and sins, they are "without God and without hope in the world." There is no possibility of salvation out of Christ. They must be taught about Christ. "Neither is there salvation in any other ; for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved." Calvinism em- phasizes this necessity ; other systems weaken its force until men conclude that there is no deep need. Calvinism gives a need as deep as sin, as terrible as the pit and thus rouses the Church to her duty to those who sit in darkness.
Third: As to the results. No other system gives definite assur- ance. Calvinism says all God's people, however vast a multitude that may be, will be saved; we have but to preach a pure gospel. God cheered Paul in corrupt Corinth with the assurance "I have much people in this city." He was wading in the waters of doubt when lo! those words put the eternal rock beneath his feet. How often the missionary in the field and the church at home need just such a star to guide them.
Under the Apostle who saw the Macedonian vision and con- structed an adequate theory of missions, the missionary impulse continued to impel the Church for centuries until at last the night of the dark ages quenched the light which Paul had kindled. The night rested like a pall over the world; one or two stars relieved its darkness. They were Calvinistic beacons assuring God's watchers that dawn would come again when the clock of the ages struck God's hour.
THE DARK AGES SHOWED TWO PERSISTENT AND HEROIC EFFORTS AT MISSIONS. The first star shone among the snowy pinnacles of the Alps. Moving out from amid its dark gorges and valleys true Calvin- ists, whom persecution could not intimidate nor sword deter, carried the pure gospel to the neighboring people. "The Israel of the Alps" burned in Rome's vindictive fires but could not be consumed. She gave herself ceaselessly to spreading the Gospel; even making it a rule that every minister must spend at least two years in missionary labors. They went two and two all over Italy, into France and far into Germany. Whittier has celebrated the work of her colporteurs carrying the free Word of God to cottage and palace. Thus the humble missionary presses the Word of God on a noble lady:
O lady fair, I have yet a gem Which purer lustre flings Than the diamond flash of the jewelled crown On the lofty brow of kings; A wonderful pearl of exceeding price.
Whose virtues shall not decay;
Whose light shall be as a spell to Thee, And a blessing on Thy way.
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Despite tens of thousands of martyrs these Calvinists of the Alpine vale and crag, kept alive mission fires for hundreds of years, while on other altars lay but blackened and dead ashes. They were adamant to the persecutor's coercion but their hearts melted in love and hunger for those who knew not the way of life.
The other star of that dreary night shone above the western coast of Scotland. We turn to Iona's Isle, a rugged gem set in a boisterous sea.
Where Christian piety's soul-cheering spark (Kindled from heaven between the light and dark Of time) Shone like the morning star.
Here was established what might be a missionary seminary whence preachers were sent out through Britain, France, Germany and Switzerland declaring a pure gospel. These precious agencies relieved greatly the night which hung over the sixth, seventh and eighth centuries. D'Aubigne says: "Iona, governed by a simple elder had become a missionary college." Rome at last crushed this protest against her claims and drove the missionaries off the earth, but the smouldering fires never died out in many a glen of Scotland, so that when the Reformation began to kindle, the hearts of the people were already glowing with the truth. Scotland, as a consequence, became, next to Geneva, the heart of Protestantism.
MODERN MISSIONS SPRUNG UP IN CALVINISTIC SOIL. Coligny dreamed of a happy Huguenot France across the seas. He fitted out an expedition to establish a strictly missionary colony in Brazil. His next step was to apply to Calvin himself for ministers to send out with this colony. Calvin responded by appointing Richier, Chartier and twelve others to undertake this great work. But sad it is for the western world that this promising effort to spread the truth was basely betrayed, but it had the glory of heading the list of modern mission- ary martyrs. Coligny made a second effort to carry his purpose into effect which was this time crushed by the bloody hand of the Portu- guese, and the colony in Florida was blotted out of existence.
Coligny's name appears on the escutheon of the Huguenot Church. Never do I see that name of a character purer than the lilies of France that I do not wish it could be written in gems. Calvinism with the hammer and chisel of the Infinite Artist, shaped his character into white marble to endure forever-a precious and enduring monument to the Huguenot name of which he was the consummate flower. Let us never forget that while pure as snow, his heart was warm and tender as that of the Savior and yearned for the salvation of heathen in the western world. Coligny's effort was the morning star which heralded the glorious day of modern missions.
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NEXT WE BEHOLD FLAMES KINDLING IN SCOTLAND, THE MOST CAL- VINISTIC OF ALL LANDS. John Knox wrote into the first Confession (1560) of the Church of Scotland a text which was a very seed- thought of missions: "And this glaid tyding is of the Kyngdome sall be prechert through the haill world for a witness unto all natiouns and then sall the end cum." In 1647 the General Assembly recorded the gospel desire for "a more firm consociation for propagating it to those who are without, especially the Jews." 1699 heard the Assem- bly enjoining upon the ministers sent forth with the Darien expedition to labor among the heathen; a year later the Assembly added: "The Lord, we hope, will yet honor you and this Church from which you were sent to carry His name among the heathen." This all, logically, led in 1709 to the organization of "The Society in Scotland for Propa- gating Christian knowledge," which worked in the Highlands, in America, and at a later date, in Africa and India.
John Eliot, whose Calvinistic energy and efforts caused one to re- mark that the anagram of his name was toile, went forth to heroic labors among the Indians. Resting on God's plans for missions and His purpose thereby to save His people out of all nations, Eliot uttered one sentence which has become as immortal as his own name: "Prayer and pains, through faith in Jesus Christ, will do anything." What an incentive those words are to the missionary!
Brainerd, who was himself a Calvinist, has a name forever linked in idylic romance with the greatest New England Calvinistic philos- opher. Jonathan Edwards was his biographer and bosom friend. Edwards' daughter with loving ministry soothed his last days while that beautiful life was sinking in glory as when
The weary sun hath made a golden set.
Many years was he in dying and during those days with quenchless enthusiasm he preached the gospel to the heathen savages. The She- kinah glory burned behind his thin veil of flesh so that even savage eyes beheld its glory and knelt to worship. If you never read any other uninspired book, read his memoirs with its thrilling romance of mission work. Whole sections of it should be printed in gold.
William Carey became a great modern apostle of missions. Out of his efforts grew the Baptist Society and also The London Missionary Society. Presbyterian influences had much to do in the immediate organization of the latter society which has done such a world-wide work. Of this whole movement Smith, in his "Short History of Mis- sions," says : "Nor should we omit to observe that it was Calvinism- the doctrines of grace of Paul and Augustine, of Columba and Wicliffe -acting against the false or anti-Calvinism which had emasculated
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the churches, that led the van in the great missionary crusade to which Christendom was summoned by a higher reading of the cry which Peter the Hermit adopted as his watch word : "God wills it." Go, inspire your hearts by reading of Capt. James Wilson, "Who had retired in affluence and ease from the East India service," in the later years of life sacrificing all and becoming the first volunteer missionary of the London Society. Kindle anew the missionary fires in your soul by studying the life of Robert Morrison, who started for China when it was a sealed kingdom, and who, after twenty-seven years of work for them was buried at Macao, and beside him Leang-Afa, the first Chinese preacher, and Ako, the first convert. Forget not John Wil- liams, who gave himself to the south seas and who in his enthusiasm wrote : "For my own part I cannot content myself within the narrow limits of a single reef." Think of Robert Moffat in darkest Africa, and of Livingstone dying on his knees calling down blessings upon every one "who will help to heal this open sore of the world." Moffat's memorial obelisk stands in Ormiston, while Livingstone's statue graces Edinburg-fitting tributes to two great Calvinistic missionaries.
THE CHURCH IS THE TRUE MISSIONARY SOCIETY. She can delegate this function to no individual or society of individuals. It is her own heaven-appointed work. The Church of Scotland was the first church, as such, since the reformation to send out missionaries, and that under the influence of the great Chalmers. Presbyterianism supplies now, as in the time of the Acts of the Apostles, just the agency and machinery wanted for Foreign missions. The gradation of courts from the Session to the Assembly enables the whole Church to act directly on the mission fields of the world. This is her glory.
Our beloved Southern Church realized this important truth. In 1861, when she was organized, despite the fact that hundreds of thousands of soldiers shut in her landward borders threatening inva- sion and mighty fleets were already blockading her coast, she appointed a committee of Foreign missions and amid her poverty began work among the heathen. God has richly blessed her faith in sending many mighty men of God into her foreign harvest fields. Lane, in apostolic zeal, laid down his life for the gospel in Brazil. Lapsley, burning with a Savior's love, forever consecrated Africa by mingling his sacred dust with her soil. Mrs. Snider, loving souls more than her own life, went to glory from the Congo's dark region. What a burst of light for her sainted soul as she entered the gates of pearl to look on a Savior's face! There, too, is Shepherd yet working with the mighty powers of God for his own race. Happy race to have produced such a character! So noble in genuine
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Christian humility. Forget not, too, that his main equipment for his life-work was a thorough study of the Westminster Confession and Catechisms-under their mighty influences his character was formed and his heart filled with the impulse which has taken him to the heart of Africa.
LET US NEVER LOSE THE IMPULSE TO FOREIGN MISSIONS WHICH IS INHERENT IN CALVINISM. If we do, the glory of the Calvinistic Churches will have departed and the shadows of a second Dark Ages will already have begun to settle over the Church. In Retzsch's illustrations of "Faust" there is a picture which vividly brings the dire result before us. To lay aside our mission zeal will be to turn our blessings into curses. . In the picture referred to, the soul of Faust is contending with the demons who are trying to drag him down into the bottomless abyss. Angels from the battlements of heaven watch the struggle. Desiring to assist Faust, the angels pluck the roses from the bowers of Paradise and fling them down-a mighty shower of falling roses-upon the heads of the fiends. When the celestial roses reach the air of the pit they are transformed into burning coals which burn and blister the demons. Mighty change! So all blessings, though they be the best blooms of heaven, become to the church which disobeys the inherent laws of its own nature withering curses. Let us not belie our own Calvinism in relaxing our efforts for the salva- tion of the heathen. We would sound this warning note in the ears of our dear Church like a thunder-peal, the Church that does not take up the work of sending the gospel to the lost multitudes of the nations practically denies her Calvinistic creed and enters upon a period of stagnation and death.
We lose nothing, but gain everything by our Calvinism. Here is a mill moved by a waterwheel. The power is furnished from a small stream which at times runs low-very low-almost dry. In such dry seasons the wheel runs slowly -if at all. Such is human effort ener- gized by less than Calvinistic theories of redemption. Near by the mill flows a mighty river, drawn from exhaustless fountains and melting snows in the mountains. The miller turns this mighty, steady current into his little rill. He has gained the might of the river. The Calvinistic view of redemption gains for the Church God's omnipotence with which to move the wheels of mission activity. Hence in all the ages its zeal for missions has had a firmness, force and fervor to which all other systems are strangers.
This burden of missions which our Calvinism imposes upon us, if ardently borne, will become a blessing. There is a legend that God first made the birds without wings. They could run on the earth but could not soar in sighless songs through the skies. Then he made wings
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and commanded the birds to take up these apparent burdens and bear them. They took them upon their shoulders and folded them over their hearts. When lo! a wonder was wrought. The burdens grew fast to their bearers as pinions which bore them heavenward. All burdens imposed by Calvinism in its impulse to missions become wings to bear Christ's Church upward and onward to the glory of His presence.
The missionary responsibilities which our Calvinistic Creed lays upon us are, to use the words of Rutherford, "The sweetest burden that ever I bore; it is such a burden as are wings to a bird or sails to a ship, to carry me forward to my desired haven."
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CHAPTER XV
A SERMON PREACHED BY THE PASTOR, THE REV. A. M. FRASER, D. D., SUNDAY, OCTOBER 16, 1904, PREPAR- ATORY TO THE CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION
"All the paths of the Lord are mercy and truth to such as keep his covenant and his testimonies." PSALM XXV: 10.
T HIS day is this Scripture fulfilled in your ears." We are on the eve of the celebration of the one hundredth anniversary of the organization of this Church. That means one hundred years of human worship and service and a hundred years of divine blessing; one hundred years of human prayer and a hundred years of divine response; a hundred years of human doubts and divine guidance of human struggles and divine victories; a hundred years in which God has been saving souls from sin and death and crowning them with glory and immortality.
Could we gather back here this morning all the sounds of worship in this church for the past century, there are four formulas of religion which, from the frequent repeti- tion of them, would be distinct above all the confusion. "Child of the covenant I baptize thee in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen!" "As often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do shew the Lord's death till He come"; "I pronounce you to be husband and wife. Whom therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder"; "Earth to earth, dust to dust, ashes to ashes. Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth, yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labors; and their works do follow them." These four formulas are the signal stations in the lives of all those whose journey heavenward has lain
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through this place, and each of these formulas is an embod- iment of the text, "All the paths of the Lord are goodness and truth to such as keep His covenant and His testimonies."
The text tells us of a blessed relationship to God, and of the condition upon which it may be entered. It is not said that all the paths of the Lord are mercy and truth to all men, but only to such as "keep his covenant and his testimonies." All men are divided into two classes, those who do and those who do not keep His covenant and His testimonies, and it is those who do keep, who find that all the paths of the Lord are dropping fatness. Let me ask your attention then, first to this condition on which we may have this blessed relation to God, and second to that rela- tionship itself.
I. What is it then to keep the covenant and the testi- monies of the Lord?
First: What is the Covenant? Presbyterians ought to know. The word belongs to the Bible and it belongs to Presbyterian history. We call our children, the "Children of the Covenant." We are the heirs, we dwell in the tents of the men, some of you are the lineal decendants of the men who are known in history as the "Covenanters." Men whose blood flows in your veins, men whose blood flowed in the veins of your fathers, who through their representatives, Thomas Lewis and Samuel McDowell, conveyed to George III their "sentiments of loyalty and allegiance," and at the same time their conviction that his right to reign rested upon his protection of human liberty, and pledged their lives and fortunes to maintain their own rights at whatever sacrifice; men whose blood flowed in the veins of these your fathers, before ever they had left the original home of the race in Scotland, were goaded to revolt by the effort of Charles I to wrench from them their Presbyterian faith and their Presbyterian modes of worship and form of church government. There was a memorable gathering of them in the Greyfriars'
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