Quiet Talks on Service Part 6

A Pa.s.sion for Winning Men: The Motive-power of Service.

(Mark vi:30-34.)

A Day off.

One morning toward the end, in the midst of His busiest campaigning, Jesus was very tired. It is one of the touches of His humanness. So He said to His disciples, "Let us take a day _off_." And they could see the sense of it. They were tired too. So they got a boat, and boarded her, and set sail, and headed out across the lake. And meanwhile a crowd of people had come down to the beach to be talked to, and healed, and helped in various ways.

And you can just see the look of disappointment in their faces as they say, "Why, He's going away." And for a few moments they stand there utterly dejected. Then somebody--for a long while I have thought it was a woman--somebody with eyes keenly watching the direction of the boat, said, "I believe He's going so and so"--naming a place across the lake--"let's run around the head of the lake, and meet Him when He gets out."

And the crowd was taken with that. And they ran--literally _ran_--around the head of the lake. And as they went they spread the word, "The Master's going so and so. Come along with us." And the people came eagerly out of the villages and cross-roads. And the crowd thickened and the longer way around in distance proved the shorter way there in time. For by and by when Peter ran the nose of the boat into the sand on the other side, and the Master got out for _a day off_, there were five thousand men, maybe ten thousand people waiting to receive Him.

Do you think that Peter scrooged down his eyebrows, and in a jerky voice said, "They might have given Him _one_ day to Himself. Can't they see He's tired?" Do you think that likely John chimed in, with that fire in his voice which the after years mellowed and sweetened but never lost,--"Yes, how inconsiderate a crowd is!" _Do_ you think so? _I_ do. Because they were so much like us. But _He_--the most tired of them all--"_was moved with compa.s.sion_," and spent the whole day in teaching, and talking personally, and healing. And then when they had gone He went off to the mountain for the quiet time at night He could not get in the daytime.

Moved with Compa.s.sion.

There is a great word used of Jesus, and by Him, nine times[9] in these brief records, the word _compa.s.sion_. The sight of a leprous man, or of a demon-distressed man, _moved_ Him. The great mult.i.tudes huddling together after Him, so pathetically, like leaderless sheep, eager, hungry, tired, always stirred Him to the depths. The lone woman, bleeding her heart out through her eyes, as she followed the body of her boy out--He couldn't stand that at all.

And when He was so moved, He always did something. He clean forgot His own bodily needs so absorbed did He become in the folks around Him. The healing touch was quickly given, the demonized man released from his sore bonds, the disciples organized for a wider movement to help, the bread multiplied so the crowds could find something comforting between their hunger-cleaned teeth.

The sight of suffering always stirred Him. The presence of a crowd seemed always to touch and arouse Him peculiarly. He never learned that sort of city culture that can look unmoved upon suffering or upon a leaderless, helpless crowd. That word compa.s.sion, used of Him, is both deep and tender in its meaning. The word, actually used under our English means to have the bowels or heart, the seat of emotion, greatly stirred.

The kindred word, sympathy, means to have the heart yearning, literally to be suffering the same distress, to be so moved by somebody's pain or suffering that you are suffering within yourself the same pain too. Our plain English word, fellow-feeling, is the same in its force. Seeing the suffering of some one else so moves you that the same suffering is going on inside you as you see in them. This is the great word used so often of Jesus, and by Him.

There never lived a man who had such a pa.s.sion for men as Jesus. He lived to win them out of their distressed, sinful, needy lives up to a new level. He _died_ to win them. His last act was dying to win men. His last word was, "Go ye and win men." And His first act when He got back home, all scarred and marred by His contact with earth, was to send down the same Spirit as swayed Him those human years to live in us that we might have the same pa.s.sion for winning men as He. Aye, and the same exquisite tact in doing it as He had.

I said the last act was dying to win men. And you remember that even in the act of dying, He forgot the keen pain of body, and the far keener pain of spirit, to turn His head as far as He could turn it, and speak the word to the fellow by His side that meant the difference of _a world_ to him. Surely it was the ruling pa.s.sion with Him to win men, strong in death, aye, strongest in death, and finding its strongest expression in His death.

Counting on Us.

Somebody has supposed the scene that he thinks may have taken place after Jesus went back. The last the earth sees of Him is the cloud--not a rain cloud, a _glory_ cloud--that sweeps down and conceals Him from view. And the earth has not seen Him since. Though the old Book does say that some day He's coming back in just the same way as He went away, and some of us are strongly inclined to think it will be as the Book says in that regard.

But--have you ever tried to think of what took place on the other side of that cloud? He has been gone down there on the earth thirty-odd years.

It's a long time. And they're fairly hungry in their eyes for a look again at that blessed old face. And I have imagined them crowding down to where they may get the first glimpse of His face again. And, do you know, lately I have been wondering, with the softening of awe creeping into the thought, whether--the Father--did not come the very first of them all and--touch His lips up to where--the _scars_ were in Jesus' brow and cheeks--yes, His hands--and His feet, too. Tell me, you fathers here listening, would you not have done something like that with _your_ boy, under such circ.u.mstances?

You mothers, wouldn't you have been doing something like that with your boy? And all the fatherhood of earth is named after the fatherhood of heaven, we're told. And with G.o.d fatherhood means motherhood too, you know. I do not _know_ if it were so. But I think it's likely. It would be just like G.o.d.

But this friend I speak of has supposed that, after the first flush of feeling has spent itself--the way _we_ speak of such things done here, the Master is walking down the golden street one day, arm in arm with Gabriel, talking intently, earnestly. Gabriel is saying,

"Master, you died for the whole world down there, did you not?"

"Yes."

"You must have suffered much," with an earnest look into that great face with its unremovable marks.

"Yes," again comes the answer in a wondrous voice, very quiet, but strangely full of deepest feeling.

"And do they all know about it?"

"Oh, no! Only a few in Palestine know about it so far."

"Well, Master, what's your plan? What have you done about telling the world that you died for, that you _have_ died for them? What's your plan?"

"Well," the Master is supposed to answer, "I asked Peter, and James and John, and little Scotch Andrew, and some more of them down there just to make it the business of their lives to tell others, and the others are to tell others, and the others others, and yet others, and still others, until the last man in the farthest circle has heard the story and has felt the thrilling and the thralling power of it."

And Gabriel knows us folk down here pretty well. He has had more than one contact with the earth. He knows the kind of stuff in us. And he is supposed to answer, with a sort of hesitating reluctance, as though he could see difficulties in the working of the plan, "Yes--but--suppose Peter fails. Suppose after a while John simply _does not_ tell others.

Suppose their descendants, their successors away off in the first edge of the twentieth century, get _so busy about things_--some of them proper enough, some may be not quite so proper--that _they do not_ tell others--_what then?_"

And his eyes are big with the intenseness of his thought, for he is thinking of--the _suffering,_ and he is thinking too of the difference to the man who hasn't been told--"what then?"

And back comes that quiet wondrous voice of Jesus, "Gabriel, _I haven't made any other plans--I'm counting on them_."

The Secret of Winsomeness.

That's a bit of this friend's imagination, it's true. But--it's the whole Gospel story, through and through. Jesus has made that plan. He has not made any other plan. He's counting on us, each of us, each in his own circle, in his own way, as comes best, most natural to him tactfully, quietly, earnestly--simply that, but all of that. And--if--we fail--Him--let me be saying it very softly so the seriousness of it may get into the inner c.o.c.kles of our hearts--if we _fail Him_, just that far we make _Jesus' dying a failure_ so far as concerns those whom we touch.

Yes, I know that sounds very serious. I'd rather not be saying it. I'm _sure_, by the Book, it is so. And so, do you see the genius--may I use that word very reverently of Him who was a man and far more than man--the genius of His plan? He sent down the same Spirit that swayed Him those human years to live in us, and control us, that we might have the same fine pa.s.sion for men as He, and the same exquisite tact in winning them as He had.

It must be a _pa.s.sion_; a fire burning with the steady flame of anthracite fed by a constant stream of oil. If it be less we will be swept off our feet by the tides all around, or sucked under by their swift current. And many a splendid man to-day is being swept off his feet and sucked under by the tides and currents of life because no such pa.s.sion as this is mooring and steadying and driving his whole life.

It must be a pa.s.sion for _winning_ men; not driving nor dragging, _drawing_. Not argument nor coercion but warm, winsome wooing. Today the sun up yonder is drawing up toward itself thousands of tons' weight of water. n.o.body sees it going, except perhaps in very small part. There's no noise or dust. But the water rises up irresistibly toward the sun because of the winning power in the sun for the water. It must be something like that in this higher sphere. A winsomeness in us that will win men to us and through us to the Master.

"Oh! well," some one says, "if you put the thing that way you'll have to count me out. I'm not winsome that way." Well, maybe you need not have bothered to say it. We could easily know that without your saying it. We are not winsome this way, any of us, of ourselves. But when we allow this Jesus Spirit to take possession of us He imparts His winsomeness. For the real secret of a transfigured life is a _transmitted_ life. Somebody else living in us, with a capital S for that Somebody, looking out of our eyes, giving His beauty to our faces, and His winningness to our personality.

"As the Stars."

The language used in the Scriptures for this sort of thing is full of intense interest. Some time ago I was reading in the old prophecy of Daniel. I was not thinking of this matter of winning men but simply trying to get a fresh grasp of that wonderfully fascinating old bit of prophecy.

And all at once I came across that gem in the last chapter. I knew it was there. You know it is there. Yet it came to me with all the freshness of a new delightful surprise. "They that are wise shall s.h.i.+ne with the brightness of the firmament; and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars forever and ever."[10]

Four times in those last two chapters of Daniel it refers to those that are "wise"; literally, those that are _teachers_. Those who have themselves learned the truth and are patiently, faithfully, winsomely telling and teaching others. The word used for influencing the others is full of practical picturesque meaning. "They that _turn_ many." As if a man were going the wrong way on a dangerous road. And _I know_ it's the wrong way. There's a sharp precipice ahead. But he is going steadily on, head down, all absorbed, not noticing where the road leads.

I might go up to him, and strike him sharply on the shoulder to get his attention, and say, "See here, you're going the wrong way; can't you see the danger ahead there? Come this way," with a vigorous pull. I have sometimes seen that done, in just that way. And if the man is an American, or an Englishman, or a German,--we're all very much alike,--he will say coldly, "Excuse me. I think I can take care of myself. Thank you. I'll look out for this individual."