060. FAITHFULNESS REQUIRES UNION

FAITHFULNESS REQUIRES UNION The second thing which faithfulness to Christ requires is Union. We are to hold the truth in love. The love of God is to be shed abroad in us. And, as truth leads to education, so love leads to union. We are to cooperate with our brethren in every good word and work. The constant exhortations to unity in the New Testament proceed upon the supposition that Christ dwells in all believers. Baptist polity is the best possible polity for good people. Christ has made no provision for an unregenerate church-membership and for the Satanic possession of Christians. It is best that a church in which Christ does not dwell should by dissension reveal its weakness and fall to pieces; and any outward organization that conceals inward disintegration and compels a merely formal union, after the love of Christ has departed, is a hindrance instead of a help to true religion. How vast the change when that love takes possession of hearts that were once cold! The church becomes a Christian family once more, and all the world begins to say: "See how these Christians love one another." The host of God that had been scattered and ineffective, like soldiers bivouacked for the night, comes together and stands once more in battle array, mighty either for defense or attack. I can but think that the new impulse to come together in State Conventions, to form Social Unions, to organize our young people for Christian work, and to mass the strength and contributions of our women, is indicative of an increase of Christian love. When God’s people begin to take pleasure in the scattered stones of his spiritual temple, and to favor even the dust thereof, it is an evidence that God is about to arise and have mercy upon Zion, and that the time for him to favor her, yea the set time, is come. And the last thing which faithfulness requires—the thing indeed to which all my address thus far has been aiming to lead you—is Evangelization. It is peculiarly an activity of the will, in bringing the world into conformity with holiness of God. We are set to save men from their sins, and to lead them to submit to Christ. It is our vocation on earth to promote God’s cause. To it we are to give our money, our time, our personal effort. What motives urge us forward! A century of progress at home and abroad such as the world has never seen before, missionary enterprises crowned with blessing surpassing that of Pentecost, our churches growing in wealth and influence at a rate that would have seemed incredible to the fathers,—ah, these are things not to make us proud, but to make us humble! The little one has become a thousand, indeed; but unless we do for God a thousand times more than the fathers did, our blessing will be our curse.