2 Corinthians 2:16

2 Corinthians 2:16

The Missionary.

I. Among the qualifications of the true missionary, I do not scruple to put first a love of souls; or, if the expression be thought to have too technical a meaning, let us say rather an earnest longing that other men and women should become true Christians at heart. Here we have the true foundation on which all missionary success must be reared. There is no substitute for it. Heart to heart, soul to soul, man must come with his brother-man, if he is to implant in him any seeds of a spiritual life.

II. A successful missionary must be in the main a hopeful, sanguine man. One of the sorest temptations to missionaries is the temptation to despond. This is a temptation hardly known to any but noble natures. Those who have no high aims, no grand enterprises with which they have intertwined their hearts, cannot tell the miseries of misgiving. But the records of missionaries are essentially records of high aims and gallant enterprises; and so you find a large space filled by their hours of darkness. These are the weak moments of strong natures. They are enough to show one of the characteristic trials of the missionary, and of the need there is that he should be a man naturally cheerful and hopeful.

III. Again, a missionary should be a man of delicate sympathy. The most holy natures are sometimes deficient in at least the finer shades of sympathy. Such persons, if they adopt the missionary calling, will probably find again and again that their success is marred.

IV. A successful missionary must have a very sure and definite hold of the main promises and doctrines of the gospel. His own faith must be strong and simple; if not, he will not be able to speak or act with decision. His tongue will be tied, his arm will be palsied by the fatal consciousness that he has not thoroughly grasped and appropriated the truths which he is professing to impress upon others.

H. M. Butler, Harrow Sermons,2nd series, p. 80.

I. The difficulties which faced St. Paul were open and tangible. He knew that on one side there was Jewish bigotry, and on the other side Greek speculation; here the charge of apostasy from ancestral sanctities there of insubordination to existing authorities; here some definite risk of scourging or stoning, of dungeon or sword there some insidious corruption of gospel simplicity by Judaizing admixture or Alexandrian refinement. From these things he had no rest; his life was a daily sacrifice, wanting but its completion in the drink-offering of his blood. But St. Paul was spared some experiences, belonging to an age not his. That reckless, restless impatience of the old, even when the old is God's truth; that insolent disdain of Christ's ordinance of preaching; that choosing and rejecting amongst the plain sayings of Scripture, these habits of thought and mind have taken the place, in our time, of that scoffing of the scorner which at least warned off the believing: they have passed inside the unguarded door of the Church, and they utter themselves in the very temple of God, as if they were part and parcel of the recognised sentiment of the faithful.

II. There is yet another peculiarity of our time which troubles a thoughtful man as much as any it is the timidity of the believing, in the face of free thought and scientific discovery. I count it a great evil when true believers betray an uneasiness in the presence of true seekers. Truth and the Truth can never really be at variance. Let not faith think that by hiding its head in the sand it can elude pursuit, or that by a clamorous outcry, "The gospel is in danger," it can breathe either confidence into its troops or panic into its foes. Let us be brave with a courage at once of man and of God. Let us count no affront to the cause of Christ equal to that of His so-called followers who would turn His Church into a clique and His hope into a fear.

C. J. Vaughan, Temple Sermons,p. 1.

References: 2 Corinthians 2:16. Homilist,2nd series, vol. iv., p. 385; J. Clifford, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xxxvi., p. 305.