1. SOUL. Are we really willing to face the enterprise which Christ sets before us? Much depends on what I may call soul for this object. By that I mean the possession of an overmastering sense of obligation to fulfill Christ’s commission, confidence in the Lord’s promised presence in the discharge of it, an invincible assurance that the preaching of the Cross is the one instrumentality for the conversion of men, reliance on His providence to open doors of entrance into kingdoms, and, more than all, a burning love to Christ Himself, an unfaltering enthusiasm for the salvation of men, an inflexible determination to persevere, conquer, or die.

2. PRAYER. The greatest, the most responsible, the busiest, and most successful servants that Christ ever had divided their functions into two departments. ‘We will give ourselves continually to prayer and to the ministry of the Word.’ What would be thought of dividing the twelve hours of our day by giving six hours to prayer for the Gospel, and six to the ministry of the Word? Had all Christ’s servants acted thus, could any one estimate how mighty the results on the world would be today? What should be the tenor of our prayers? If the promises of God may be regarded as molds, our prayers should be like liquid metal poured into them, in dimension corresponding with the capacity of the mold, and taking on all the lines, grooves, and figuring of the interior. If, then, we find such promises as these, “The earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea,” a promise twice given in Scripture, and which has many corresponding with it, our prayers should be commensurate with the promise. We are not to pass by molds, even of extremely limited capacity, by all means let us match the great promises of God with great prayers. Doubtless this is pleasing to God. In what manner God may see fit to fulfill His promises is quite another consideration. But would it not be well could we train ourselves to take up all the countries of the world in detail, and make mention of them systematically before God? There are persons who have attempted to do this every day of their lives, while others divide the world into portions, and take these up on successive days. I mean a pocket atlas, which should be spread like Hezekiah’s letter before the Lord, and be gone over carefully from day to day, and from year to year, so that every kingdom, capital, island, and ocean shall be individually remembered. If this were done on an extensive scale among Christians, blessed issues would ensue.
If we find that individuals are employed to change the face of continents by exploration or personal effort, why may not individuals equally prevail when they, by prayer, lay hold of the arm of the Almighty? The answer to your prayers may come by God sending you as evangelists or settlers to the very lands for which you have prayed; or by enabling you to write a volume which may stir the missionary activity of hundreds, or to prepare hymns that may be sung in every land and tongue. God may enable you, by your addresses as ministers, professors, and laymen, to rouse congregations and entire synods to their duty to the heathen, as well as to call forth the Christian enthusiasm of young men in our colleges and universities; and mothers in Israel, like Hannah, Lois, and Eunice, may, through prayer, be the means of sending forth a Carey, a Henry Martyn, a Duff, or a William Burns. I believe that the Day will declare that solitary individuals have, simply by their prayers, prevailed to introduce the Gospel into vast and populous dominions.
The ancient Jewish Church was not directly evangelistic; yet, like David, who prepared the materials for the temple which another was to build, the Jewish Church provided an immense store of intercessions which became available a thousand years afterwards. If you search the Book of Psalms you will find that upwards of forty of them contain prayers for, or references to, the spreading of the gospel among the nations. These prayers were answered when the hour for the reconciling of the world arrived. The Gentiles can never discharge their obligation to the Jewish Church for its prayers in their behalf in these sacred songs.

3. ACTION. But prayer must be associated with ACTION. In view of the seemingly insoluble problem, how the multitudinous populations of the world are to be reached with the Gospel, and our readiness to faint at the thought of the impracticability of the effort, I would venture to ask—Was the condition of mankind, let us say, such as it is at this moment, actually present to the eye of Christ when He gave the imperative commission— ‘Go and make disciples of all nations?’ Or, on the other hand, are we to suppose that the commission was only temporary, and that now, with millions today still waiting to be evangelized, He would say to us— The business is too weighty, the commission is accordingly suspended, and no longer in force? For my part, I cannot bring myself to believe that any change has taken place on the commission or in the obligation to fulfill it. In that case I must put myself in the position of those originally addressed by the Lord Jesus, and recognize that the command is binding on me in common with others to lay out my life in the execution of it. This consideration must sustain me in the face of all incredulity, and of the ridicule that may be launched against me. It may not be ours to convert the world, but our Commander’s orders are explicit, to carry the glad tidings to every soul.
May it not be that, instead of the commission waning in its terms, it is only now, when the world teems with billions of sinners, that the four “Alls” of Christ’s majestic utterance are starting into their full significance and brilliancy, like the four angular stars in the constellation of the Southern Cross?


4. SCOTLAND. No country for its size has a greater amount of qualification—doctrinal, spiritual, and otherwise—for influencing the world than our own. Were we to concentrate our energies, to call in and exercise the forces of Christian love, mutual confidence, and forbearance, and put ourselves into the hands of the Lord, to be used unitedly for the evangelization of mankind, who can tell what the results might be? Our poor land has always had great conflicts within its borders to maintain, which have absorbed her resources and lessened her influence abroad. Is it not the part of high Christian expediency, instead of expending our life’s energies on disputations at home, to take a lesson from the evil effects of disunion illustrated in the divisions of the twelve tribes in the days of old, and in the mutual waste and ruin inflicted on each other by the states of Ancient Greece, rather to close up our ranks, and, with the compactness of the Macedonian phalanx on the one hand, and the impetuous onset of the Roman legion on the other, to precipitate ourselves on the wide and necessitous field of the world, and to make common cause against ignorance, irreligion, and idolatry, African fetishism, Buddhism, and Mohammedanism, slavery, barbarism, strong drink, and all the other devilries that still torture the race?
Let me say, God will not look for more from us than He knows we possess. It is by the things that are weak He confounds the things that are mighty. The missionary from Livingstonia tells us that Scotland is so diminutive that, were its surface divided into portions like the segments of a dissected map, it could be all packed within the limits of Lake Nyassa. That lake is so small, though 350 miles long, as almost to require to be searched for, as we scan the map of Africa. Yet see what God has already done by Scotland…Scotland, small as she is, has already told on the destinies of the world. Why should she not gird herself for a new enterprise on behalf of the noblest object that can engage the enthusiasm of man—the salvation of millions?
Would that, like the veil destined to fall from Israel when they shall turn to the Lord, a similar veil might fall from our Scottish eyes, so as to disclose to us the unhappy condition of mankind, our responsibility with regard to them, and the privilege and opportunity granted to us today, which if neglected shall return never, never, never! The nations of the world seem standing with outstretched arms, and with wistful looks calling to us, ‘Come over and help us.’ Could we only see them and hear their plaintive cries our hearts would be profoundly moved. For my own part, these soft voices of the nations, though in one sense unspeakably sad, have an intonation sweet and powerful as of a choir of angels, for in them I hear the voice of Jesus Himself. Let Scotland then open her ear, her sympathy, and her purse, and be ready to take the front, as in other circumstances she has done in days of old.

5. BRITISH CHURCHES. But invaluable as the service is which Scotland may render, the time is surely come when the entire Christianity of the British Isles should be aroused to meet the ever-accumulating necessities of a dying world. Apart from the rampant materialism and supercilious agnosticism abroad in society, there is undoubtedly in the Churches a widespread indifference, a lurking skepticism, an ignoring of the saving doctrines of the gospel, the substitution of ritual observances in place of the new birth and spiritual life. Indeed, there is a strange blight resting even on those that are evangelical. And there is a pretty general complaint of an absence of power in the ministrations of the Church generally, that her services are uninteresting and even wearisome, while few conversions are said to be taking place under the ordinary ministry.
Could we conceive of any means more likely to lead to an extensive revival of vital religion in the Church at large than that she should be started into action—ministers and people alike—by the trumpet call to arise, go forth, and subdue the kingdoms for Christ. Were the Churches to realize that the function of their existence is to spread Christ’s name in the earth, would not the result bear resemblance to what is promised to the Gentiles when Israel is restored—life from the dead? What! Shall the Churches in their supineness leave it to others—all honor to them for their Christian pluck and courage—to assume the function as well as the name of the Salvation Army? Who should be the Salvation Army for the world if not the universal Church of Christ!

THE PAROUSIA. There seems an impression that, because the condition of the world is so deplorable after nineteen centuries of Christianity, the only hope for mankind lies in the second coming of Christ Himself. We hail the thought of the Lord’s coming. And should He come while we are engaged fulfilling His orders, ‘Blessed shall that servant be whom his Lord when He cometh shall find so doing.’ If Christ comes soon, then the present is our one priceless opportunity before He appears to labor on behalf of His kingdom. Be it ours to take care lest our misapprehension of the blessed hope of His second coming should neutralize the influence of His first.

NOTHING SHALL BE IMPOSSIBLE. Let us then as one man arise, and without presuming to say in what manner God’s purposes or the world are to be accomplished, or pronouncing in any way as to the time and season of our Lord’s return, but ever lovingly waiting for His appearing, let us not be ashamed to say that the business immediately laid to our hand is to face the heathenism of millions of our fellow-creatures who have never yet heard the gospel. What! Shall experts tell us there are 160 million who at this hour bear the name of ‘Reformed’, and shall the enterprise be considered extravagant? Rather let us sound the trumpet throughout Christendom, and summon these millions to the rescue. Did not Jesus love us, seek us in our misery, and die for us? Has His eye ceased to rest on us one day since He went to Heaven? And shall His last request fall on unbelieving and reluctant ears? The Lord forbid. Let our compassionate eye then rest on the nations whom as His inheritance He has entrusted to us, lying in ignorance, weltering in sin, and crushed under the bondage of man’s great adversary, and hasten to have our place among those of whom it is said—”How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings, that publisheth salvation; that saith unto Zion, Thy God reigneth!”
“Verily, I say unto you, if ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place, and it shall remove, AND NOTHING SHALL BE IMPOSSIBLE UNTO YOU.”