01.04. CHAPTER IV - HOLY BOLDNESS

CHAPTER IV - HOLY BOLDNESS The trouble with most Christian workers ministers and laymen is that they are afraid, and now as of old fear bringeth a snare. We are afraid of what people will say, for the moment a man does anything different from the ordinary, that moment he is the target for criticism. Some will call him too zealous, too personal and too insistent. It is only perfect love and perfect confidence and perfect abandon to the will of God that casteth out fear and that brings the personal victory. The New Testament has a great deal to say about boldness. We often quote the passage ’ (They took knowledge of them that they had been with Jesus.” But why did they? The record says, “When they saw the boldness of Peter and John.” So it seems that boldness was associated in the thought of the people with the life of Jesus. Again the apostle says that he declared the truth “with all boldness,” and the effect of that truth was a thrilling one on himself as well as on those who heard. Conviction breeds conviction. Hear the apostle say that “In nothing we shall be ashamed, but that with all boldness as always so now Christ shall be magnified in my body whether by life or by death.” You cannot hold a man like that no pent-up Utica contracts his powers. So everywhere through the teachings of the apostles, we are challenged to a boldness that is not arrogance, or simply self-assertion, or dogmatism, but an authority in boldness that has its birth in a sense of the mighty consequences that are at issue a sense of the importance and imminence of a decision that outreaches time and thought. No doubt there were friends who stood by and said to John the Baptist, “Be careful what you say to Herod.” But John thundered the truth into the very teeth of the royal sinner though it cost him his own head. “Mind what you say to Felix,” Paul’s anxious companions might have said, but Paul reasoned of righteousness and of judgment to come until the knees of the proud ruler knocked together. “We boldly proclaim the word,” says the apostle again and again. It was the same spirit in which he said concerning himself and all of us that we were to come boldly to the throne of Christ and find help in every time of need.

Thousands of ministers are cribbed, cabined and confined because they do not dare to make the great adventure. Their faith fails them they will not put it to the test. If they could only remember, “if thou hast faith like a grain of mustard seed thou shalt say to this mountain, remove hence to yonder place and it shall remove.” So many men who will not leave the safe harbor and put with God to sea! They are conventional and smug and comfortable. They do not know the joy of a great emprize. In this matter I am speaking out of my own experience. I know the temptations which face every minister through the weakness of the flesh. Some of us are naturally timid and shrink from the great contests where there must be a decision a victory or a defeat. We would rather avoid it if we can, but if we do, we shall only know the shallows of life. For the comfort of some of my brethren, I do not mind saying that again and again in my early ministry, I was put to the test which almost overwhelmed me. More than once I have walked around a city block before I could get up courage to go to the door and talk to a man about his soul’s interest. I shall never forget the struggle of my own soul when I was asked to stand on the steps of the City Hall in New York and to address an audience of many thousands of men in the open. As chairman of the Committee on Outdoor Service for the Evangelistic Committee of the city, it was suggested that it would greatly help our cause and secure for our work helpful publicity if we could arrange for a service on the steps of the City Hall. When I asked permission, I was passed on by the city officials from one department to another, but at last permission was granted, and we were told that we should have all the police protection that was necessary. I was quite aware that in my audience were many who were more inclined to scoff than to pray. I knew there were anarchists and socialists by the hundred in front of me, who cared for none of these things. It was not an easy matter to screw my courage to the sticking point and to say with shut teeth, as Garrison said long before, “I will not equivocate and I will be heard,” and say without fear in the face of all classes and conditions of men “There is none other name given under heaven among men whereby ye must be saved but the name of Jesus,” or to say with Peter on the day of Pentecost, “This same Jesus ye have taken and by wicked hands have crucified. “ It was not an easy thing for me, with a temperament that shrinks from notoriety, to stand on the seat of an automobile in “Wall Street, under the windows of J. P. Morgan’s office, and preach the unsearchable riches of Jesus Christ to a surging crowd; to stand on the steps of the Custom House, the historic spot where the great political leaders, presidents and senators of the United States had stood, and to speak to thousands of men, who looked up into my face, concerning the one thing to which I had been called in the Christian ministry. But out of every one of these experiences, which were so trying to me that I could hardly gather courage to speak, there came such grace into my own heart that in a few minutes I forgot all ahout the crowd and only remembered my message and my Master. Scores came to me as I spoke at these places and told me how they had decided to go back to their old manner of life and to accept Jesus Christ as their Saviour. Some of them were hack-sliders, some had been superintendents and local preachers and class leaders, but they had come into the city and had hidden themselves away. They had said, “I have worked hard for many years, now I will rest.” In resting it soon happened that they lost their zeal, and soon their love for the Master had become cold and indifferent. I had the pleasure of knowing that in many cases they came back to their old love and united themselves for vital service with the Church of the Living God. And many who heard the Gospel for the first time aliens by wilful choice and wicked life from the kingdom of God came back to their Father’s house and to His yearning love.

It was when I stood on the steps of the City Hall, bringing home to the members of the church, with all the force of which I was capable, the fact that they were chosen of God for the world’s redemption and that they needed to throw themselves with uncalculating devotion into the work, that I repeated several times the two words which stand at the head of this chapter, and urged that those who were followers of Jesus, who counted not His own life dear unto Himself, should themselves be able to proclaim with boldness His truths and to stop short of no sacrifice for Him.

I delivered my soul with great earnestness of the message which it seemed to me God had laid upon my heart. It was some weeks after that when one of the most successful preachers in America laid his hand on my shoulder and said, “I owe you a debt I shall never be able to pay, and all on account of two words which you used, but which I believe were sent by the Holy Spirit. When I went home after hearing your message, those two words kept ringing in my ears, ’Holy boldness, holy boldness,’ and I said to myself, ’You are a coward. You do not dare to venture. You will not do what you know you ought to do. You are afraid of that fine congregation that gathers at your morning service. You want to observe all the proprieties and have the most dignified and proper service. You would not dare to preach a message straight to their hearts and to urge them to give themselves to Jesus Christ on the spot.

You would not dare to send your deacons among that congregation and ask them to urge men and women to be reconciled to God.’ I thought about it and I prayed about it, and the more I thought and the more I prayed, the more the conviction laid hold upon me that I must make the great adventure. In order to preserve my own soul alive, I must cast myself into the breach. I remembered how He said, ’If any man will save his life, he shall lose it, and if he will lose his life for my sake and the Gospel’s, he shall find it.’ On the next Sabbath morning I called my officials into the study and told them that I was greatly moved. I felt that something ought to be done and done at once; I feared that perhaps they would not like it and that the congregation might feel like resenting it, but I had in my heart the same feeling which Luther had when he said, ’Here I stand, God help me, I can do no other.’ I told them all that was on my heart, and we had a time of great heart searching and agony before God. I asked them to spend the week in thought and in prayer, and on the next Sabbath morning as we gathered the atmosphere seemed to be surcharged with spiritual conviction. ’I want you,’ I said, ’to help me take the message this morning and bring it to the thought and conscience of the people for immediate action.’ “

So, my friend said, when he had given his message as hot with yearning as he knew how to give it, he called the officials to the front, and, in the presence of the congregation, charged them to carry the message of the Master to their friends among the people. “It was such an hour as we had never witnessed in the church. Strong men bowed their heads upon the pews before them and many of my leaders were in tears. When I gave the invitation for men and women to stand for Christ and proclaim their choice of Him as their life leader, one and another and another responded until more than forty men and women came to the front, and clasping my hand, made a solemn promise to be true to God. I count that,” said the preacher, “the greatest hour in my ministry hitherto, and, if I am ever tempted to be unfaithful, I hope I shall hear those words ’holy boldness’ ringing in my ears, and that I may never prove recreant to the call of my Lord.”