The Golden age. [volume], February 18, 1909, Page 2, Image 2

About The Golden age. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1906-1920

Image provided by: Digital Library of Georgia, a project of GALILEO located at the University of Georgia Libraries

                
2
Text: —“He that winneth souls is wise.” Prov.
11: 31.
S
institutions. He had the great orphanage, with its
five hundred or more orphan children, to look after
and care for and instruct; he had his great college
for the education of preachers and Christian work
ers to which he had to give regularly three or four
lectures a week and for which he had to prepare, be
sides looking after the financial and business end of
this enterprise. He had also at that time a number
of sub-stations, which were largely homes for the
sick, dispensaries for the poor and the like, and yet
in spite of all this great and multiplied machinery
fie said that he regarded the chief work of the
church to be the winning of souls. These agencies
of his were agencies through which he and his church
endeavored to express the Christ spirit to the world
> of need, and it was ever done with an eye single to
the impression that he and his people might be able
to make upon the vast unsaved world with the end
in view of winning them to Christ. These agencies
were used by him and his people as simply a means
to a larger end. The supreme mission, year, the
whole mission of the church of Christ is the win
ning of souls. Os course, there is the work of con
struction; the work of development, the work of civ
ilizing and elevating our general life, but the whole
aim of the church is the winning of souls. If we
minister to the sick it is that we may by that means
express to the needy world the Christ spirit, the
Christ nature, the Christ character; that we may by
this means so impress Jesus as that the world will
see its need of Him.
THE OBJECT OF CHARITY.
If we give to the poor it is not simply that we
may put bread in their mouths or clothes upon their
backs or to shelter them from the storm, it is with
the idea that by this means we may so impress the
sympathy, the love and the fellowship of Jesus with
the suffering that we may cause the needy world
to follow Him and seek Him as Lord and Saviour.
If we educate a man it is that we .may through this
means enable him with a trained mind and a sharp
ened intellect, sanctified by the grace of God, be of
greater use in the expression of the Christ character,
to the end that he may do a larger work for the
winning of men to Jesus. Never mind what we do,
if we properly understand our position as a church
of Christ, we do it with an eye single to the glory
of God in the salvation of lost people.
And so, my brethren, I want us to see this: to see
it if we possibly can see it through the eye of Jesus.
The winning of souls is the greatest work of the
church. Jesus considered it so. It was so great that
Jesus gave up his position in heaven, where He was
surrounded by every possible environment of loveli
ness, and came to this world and took upon Himself
the sins of man; He came to live and die here that
He might by that means come in closer touch with
the weaknesses and infirmities of the race and
through that means be (nabled to better lift the
race up and save it. It cost Him something to save
this world. It cost Him more to bring salvation to
one heart than to create a world. It cost Him more
to bring salvation to one heart, even the most insig
nificant, than it cost Him to make all the worlds
that move in space. Jesus could speak a world into
existence; but Jesus, to save the world, had to die
for it. And just as it is true with reference to the
world, it is true with reference tcv man. It cost
Jesus just as much to save the thief on the cross
as it did to save an empire, or a nation, or a world.
OME one asked Mr. Spurgeon what he
regarded to be the supreme work of the
church, and he answered without hesita
tion, “The winning of lost souls.” He
made this statement in spite of the fact
that he at that time with his great Tab
ernacle was giving a great deal of at
tention and strenuous effort to the pro
motion of philanthropic and educational
SOUL WINNING
Tabernacle Sermon by Reb. Len G. Broughton < D. ‘D.
Steuogriphlcilly reported for The Golden Age. —Copyright applied for
Wrapped up in the salvation of that thief on the
cross was the essence of the salvation of the entire
world of lost mankind. So this is our greatest work
because it was His greatest work.
And then, too, the greatness of salvation is seen
in that it guarantees to the saved that which noth
ing else under heaven can guarantee to them. I
want that you shall see with me briefly some of the
things that salvation guarantees to the soul. First,
it guarantees to him a satisfaction that he gets in
nothing else. The- satisfaction that steals over a
man when he knows he is saved is the kind of satis
faction that is to be found in nothing else. Some
time ago I was talking with a railroad engineer, and
he said, “You can not imagine how complete is the
satisfaction when I take my engine and start out
on a dark night, not knowing what I shall come in
contact with; not knowing at what moment I shall
be hurled into eternity. You can not imagine what a
satisfaction it is just to know that I am saved.”
I said, “I think I can, because I have had just
that same kind of thing settle over me hundreds and
thousands of times.”
Some years ago I was crossing the Allantic ocean.
We were just about half way across. Suddenly one
day, it was a Sunday, we ran into a dense fog. The
fog horn began blowing. Those who have ever been
aboard a vessel in time of fog know that they
blow every half minute, but it seemed to me every
second. Then the old ship began to quiver and then
in less time than I am taking to tell it, we heard
another fog horn, and could not tell where it was
or what direction it came from, nor could the cap
tain. That is one of the peculiarities of those ocean
fogs. Then eame three hard blows from our horn,
then three from the other vesel. It looked for a
moment as if it were about to be up with us. We
all thought that we stood waiting for a watery grave.
The first thought that came into my heart was,
“Thank God, I am saved! Even if Igo down, lam
saved! ’ ’
There is nothing that can bring that kind of satis
faction to a man. My reputation, my friends, my
family, in fact all these combined with all the wealth
of the world would have been worth nothing to me
at that time. All around me were men and women
crying or nervously walking the deck. Os course, I
was a little nervous also, for nobody wants to be
drowned; we don’t have a hankering after getting
to heaven by going down. But oh, the cries all
about us, the shrieking, and the praying by the hys
terical men and women. The gambling on board
stopped; the drinking all stopped. Then just as if
by a miracle, the fog lifted from just in front of
our boat and the sun light shot in, while all around
were great banks of fog, and there just in front of
us was a huge cattle steamer with its prow just
ready to jab into the side of our boat; we afterwards
learned that it was in eight seconds of crashing
into our great steamer with thirty-three hundred
passengers on board. We were so close that the
prow of our boat scraped the other one from stem
to stern as we passed around.
JESUS’ FRIENDSHIP FOR MAN.
And then this salvation of which we speak is
wonderful because it bring us into a relationship, a
conscious relationship of the friendship of Jesus.
There is no friendship with Christ out side of salva
tion. A man who has not salvation has no claim
upon the friendship of Jesus. It is there for him
if he will have it, but he cannot have the friendship
of Jesus with his back turned on Him. We do not
get friends that way. Friends are formed by con
tact. For a man to be impressed with your friend
ship you have got to come face to face with Him.
There must be no reserve about it. To have the
friendship of Jesus, the world’s best friend, there
must be first of all His salvation consciously felt in
the heart. What a blessed thought it is to be the
friend of Jesus and to have Jesus as our friend. I
think the sweetest words that Jesus ever spoke to
His disciples were these: “Hence J call you no
The Golden Age for February 11, 1909.
longer servants, but friends.” Jesus made a good
deal of love talk to His disciples during the days
of His ministry on earth. Some of the sweetest love
talk that the world has ever heard fell from the lips
of Jesus as He talked to His disciples in the days
of their trouble, but Jesus never spoke a sweeter
thing in all His life on earth than that word friend.
“Ye are my friends.”
Some of us have away of looking upon Jesus as
if He sat upon a throne away up yonder somewhere,
an arbitrary, hard, cold monarch, with a rod of iron
in His hand ruling this world. I wish I could de
stroy that impression, for it is not a correct one;
Jesus, our Lord Jesus, is our friend, who has tasted
to the last bitter dregs every hardship that is com
mon to the people whom He would befriend. At
one time I heard a Christian worker in London say
a thing that attracted my attention and afterwards
grew upon me. He stood by the side of 'a young
man who was not a Christian. He extended his
hand and looked him straight in the eye and said,
“My friend, I want to introduce to you my best
friend, Jesus Christ.” Then he went on to tell how
Jesus had been his best friend; how He had never
forsaken him; how His peace had ever abided in his
heart since the day he came to know Him. “My
best friend, Jesus." Do vou feel that way about
Him?
The other day I went to see a member of our
church, one of our very best members, a woman
whose life, ever since it has been given to the church
has been, so far as I have been able to observe,
entirely constant, regular, loyal and true. Her little
girl was thought to be dying; the doctors had said
that she could not possibly live. She had a case of
exceeding rare in this part of the world, a disease
from which the patient rarely ever recovers. When
I went in and sat by the bediside and looked at the
child, as I thought, in the throes of death, I felt
somehow, that I was in the house where Jesus was
the best friend. I felt that that woman had givei}
Jesus a place there ever since she had a home, and
she had been true to Him; she had been true to
His church; she loved Him, and I just felt that He
could not afford to go back on her in her trouble.
I thought, “If He does not hear this prayer for the
healing of the child, it is surely because there is
something better for her even than this child.”
When we were in prayer there came over me such
a satisfaction as I rarely ever had in my life that
God was surely going to do what was best for that
mother. 1 will let you judge as to whether He has
or not. He took the little one unto Himself, but by
reason of that the father, a fine man, but who was
not a Christian, has given his heart to His Master
and united with the church. Don’t you think that
is better? The little one is in heaven now, but she
is waiting there for father and mother both, and
when they are reunited nothing will ever separate
them»again.
I tell you, my brethren and sisters, we do not
magnify the friendship of Jesus enough in the day
when there is not trouble. It is easy, for a man to
get pious in the day of trouble. What Jesus wants
is that we shall be His friend in the day when there
is no trouble, and if we are true to Him then, we
will find that He will be ours in the day when there
is.
IN THE DAY OF TROUBLE.
I love to think of Mary and Martha <as an example
of die friendship of Jesus. They were His friends.
They had entertained Him in their home. One day
Lazarus, their only brother, lay sick. Os course,
Mary and Martha were in great distress. They knew
that Jesus was out yonder by the Jordan teaching’,
and so they sent a minister post haste to Jesus with
this message, “Lord, he whom thou lovest is sick.”
Perhaps before Jesus reached Bethany many of
us would have decided that He had turned His back
upon H s friends. But when the time was ripe He
was at the grave of His friend. He eame for the
purpose of answering that prayer made by those