II.

THE TRUMPET AT HOME AND ABROAD.

S. LUKE iv. 27.

Many lepers were in Israel in the time of Eliseus the prophet; and none of them was cleansed, saving Naaman the Syrian.

MANY and great are the difficulties which beset the Mission cause; many and great too are the difficulties which surround the whole question : so many and so great, that there are not wanting times when we are tempted to feel that the whole work is a mistake, the energy spent upon it wasted, the prospect hopeless, the labour unprofitable, the appeal for its support one that ought never to be made. We look abroad over the face of the earth, and though we see our Church planted wherever the sun shines, we hear accounts on the other hand of the failure of religious efforts to produce any wide result. Our Missionaries penetrate the most desolate continents, they navigate the most unfrequented streams, they open communications with the most savage races, they make themselves understood to men of other tongues. Yet we are challenged

to say where, over the whole wide world, can you find a spot in which heathenism under our modern Missionary enterprises has really retired before Christianity, and government and people have united in a national conversion? The Church, they say, is planted; but where is the proof of its taking root, and growing, and gathering the nations under the shadow of its branches? These are serious questions, but they are fair ones; yet it is not for me to deal with them. I am not standing here to-day to narrate details, or to give results.

Another class of difficulties and objections, however, arises. The appeal for foreign Missions is often met with the reply, "There is too much to be done at home; wait till we are Christian people in England before we attempt to evangelize the others;" in fact, in other words, the very proverb which our Blessed Lord puts into the mouth of those who quarrelled with His teaching is repeated now to His followers; and those who would tread in His footsteps, and "preach the kingdom of God to other cities also," are met with the reproachful answer, 'Physician, heal thyself.”

Those, I say, who are treading in His very footsteps. For in spite of all difficulties, it is the truth that foreign Missions are the work of the Church, and that we are untrue to Christ our great Example, untrue to our own commission and position as a city set on a hill which cannot be hid, if we flinch from the conviction, and the duty consequent on that conviction, that Christ's life and death were not for one nation only, but for the

benefit of the whole world; that the Gentiles may be fellow-heirs, and of the same body, and partakers of the promises of Christ by the Gospel . . . and that it is our duty and our privilege to help to make all men see what is the fellowship of the mystery which from the beginning of the world hath been hid in God.

He

Now what is the example of Christ in this matter? He went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed with the devil. He was sent, He tells us, first to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. Still that did not prevent His entering upon the coasts of Tyre and Sidon, from healing the Syrophenician's daughter, or from counting it the special hour of His glorification on earth when the representatives of Gentile Greece desired to see Him in the temple. And what He did in act, He defended in words. did not stay among His own people; He came unto them, and they received Him not. Then He went to other cities and villages, and at last returned to His own city, Nazareth. In the synagogue, on the Sabbath Day, He taught the people : from the roll of the prophet Esaias, He explains the object of the Gospel teaching, and tells His countrymen that now no longer are these glorious things at a distance; the real Advent has dawned, and the Voice that is then ringing in their ears is teaching with authority, and offering in all sincerity the things which Esaias had seen only through the vista of ages. And as He spoke the hearts of men were softened, and perhaps they wished that He would always stay with them, and that they might

pass the rest of their lives lulled into the slumber of content by the music of a Voice that told them such heavenly promises. But Christ's preaching was to arouse, not to soothe to slumber; to stir up to holy faith and noble self-denial, not to leave in mere wonder or passive admiration. And therefore He startles them, He shows them His knowledge of their hearts; He shows them that all their jealousy of others, all this hatred of Himself, is plain to His all-searching glance. He knew that they were envious because they had heard what He had done at Capernaum, and desired that He should spend, and be spent, entirely for them. But this was not His object on earth, nor was it the purpose of God's dealing. He takes them back in thought to the ages long ago : He calls up to them the memory of the two greatest prophets that had ever lived and worked in that holy land. Those who had opened and shut heaven by their prayers, who had warred with idolatry, had hurled the enemies of God to destruction, and had called the dead to life-what message had God spoken to them? "Many widows were in Israel in the days of Elias, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, when great famine was throughout all the land; but unto none of them was Elias sent, save unto Sarepta, a city of Sidon, unto a woman that was a widow. And many lepers were in Israel in the time of Eliseus; but none of them was cleansed, saving Naaman the Syrian." In the days of famine and want, when the people of God were starving, when the rain came not down from heaven, and the bread

was short by reason of scarceness, when the prophet of God received from his Master the power to maintain one family throughout those days of gloom, it was not to Bethlehem's royal city, nor to Jerusalem the Mount of God, nor to Jacob's ancient house at Sychem, nor to the sacred precincts of Gilgal, nor the once holy shrine of Shiloh, but to the frontier of idolatrous Sidon, to the little town of Sarepta, to a widow woman there: though many a tale of sore distress was still crying aloud for relief from many a desolate home of Israel. And not merely the desolate home and the empty store are made to teach their lessons, but the awful mystery of sin in the parable of leprosy is introduced in Elisha's days. In his time there was many a leper, dying by the living death of his foul disease; many a one of God's own chosen people, cut off from his brethren unclean and hopeless, raising the sad and melancholy cry as he hurried away from home, and brethren, and friends, to hide his misery in the presence of those who like himself were banished from their fellow-men. But not to these was Elisha sent. But one comes to him, the representative of an idolatrous power, high in position among the enemies of Israel, and to him the prophet administered the cure which could come from none but God. And, brethren, apply the lesson as our Lord applied it at Nazareth. Learn that His goodness, and His teaching, and His grace are not the property of one town, nay, nor of one nation, nor of one age and stay not to extend those blessings to others, because round your own hearthstone or within