In Labors Abundant

Address before the Evangelical Alliance, 1890— Church unity— Personal experience of faith healing—Work in Chicago, 1890 and 1893—The World's Fair campaign— Rabinowitz

IN the winter of 1890 the Evangelical Alliance met in Bos-

ton. It fell to Dr. Gordon to give the address of welcome

to the delegates. A portion of the address, illustrating his

opinions on certain of the important questions with which the conference had to deal, we transcribe here.

After a few introductory sentences on the significance of these cooperative religious movements, he said

"I have therefore few tears to shed with those who are weeping over ' the scandal of a divided Christendom,' as the phrase is. True, a church divided into manifold sects is not the ideal church; it is not the church which our Lord inaugurated in the beginning, and it is not the church for which he prayed in the end. But as the strength of Christ is made perfect in our weakness, so, I doubt not, the unity of Christ will finally be made perfect through our divisions. If a divided church meant a divided Christ, we might well lament and weep over the sects of Christendom; but if these sects hold the Head, this cannot be the case. As a handful of quicksilver flung to the earth breaks into a hundred separate globules reflecting a full-orbed sun, so, though by disruptions and

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revolutions and reformations the church has been broken into a hundred sects, each sect may hold in the bosom of its faith a full-orbed Christ.

" Therefore I beg you to reflect that for the last hundred years our ascended Lord has been showing what he can do through a divided church; thus bringing higher glory to himself out of what many regard as a most lamentable evil. ' Divide and conquer ' is a maxim of skilful generalship. What if our great commander has said to his church, ' Be divided and conquer '? I cannot otherwise translate the providence of the nineteenth century.

" The door of every nation under heaven was to be opened during this hundred years; but the experience of all history proves that had the church been outwardly one, a conservative organic unity, holding all its parts together and moving them according to a uniform law of action, she would have been unequal to the task of entering these doors and conquering these nations.

" But look again. These sects have put into the field one hundred and forty-six foreign missionary societies, which are now operating along various lines and by divers methods for giving the gospel to the world. By the division of labor providentially arranged the Scriptures have been translated into two hundred and eighty dialects, the work of translation having progressed so rapidly that, as we close the ninth decade of this century, we find the Bible accessible to nine tenths of the entire human family.

" Observe, too, how the Christian forces have been deployed, as though an invisible commander had been arranging for his final campaign. There are forty missionary societies operating in India, thirty-three in China, thirty-four in Africa. Is there any likelihood that there would be a tenth of this number in the three fields, or a hundredth of the men whom they employ, if there were only one great and all-inclusive church to which the evangelization of the world was intrusted? Take the Dark Continent, for example. Thirty-three regiments of the Protestant army have completely invested it, as though all ready to move inward for its final conquest. ' The nineteenth century has made the African free,' says Victor Hugo; ' the twentieth is to make him a man.' But he cannot be a man except he is made acquainted with the divine Man, who alone can strike the fetters from his soul as he struck the chains from his body. 'Is Christ divided?' asked the apostle centuries ago. And from hundreds of missionary fields the answer comes to-day, ' Yes, divided only that he may be the more completely distributed to a starving world.' And over all we seem to see our risen Lord, holding in his pierced hands the fragments of his mystical body, the church, and saying to the hungry nations, ' This is my body broken for you.'

" But one may say, ' Yes; but think of the wreck of doctrine and the discord of faith which have been brought about by this disruption of the church. True; but what of the gains which have come out of this great loss? In the disintegration of the church a vast amount of free thinking and cheerless speculat'on has been set free, even as the cold is liberated by the breaking up of a solid block of ice. But the question is, Has the ultimate temperature of Christianity been lowered or raised by the process? It is a magnificent answer which Professor Dollinger makes to those who point to the successive waves of deadly rationalism which have swept over Germany in the last three hundred years, as a convincing proof of the criminal evil of that church disruption brought about by Luther and his fellow-reformers. Admitting the evil of the rationalism, Dr. Dollinger replies that, nevertheless, nine tenths of all the best exegesis and the best theology of Germany has been contributed by this Protestant church which Luther led out from Rome. Here is a confirmation of the same idea of disunity working out the highest unity. The

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full beauty of a ray of light never appears till it has been broken in the prism. So the harmony and glory of divine truth is destined to be made fully manifest only through the refraction which it has suffered in its sectarian divisions."

The address closed with the following appeal in behalf of the poor and of the oppressed

" Upon the great questions that are now agitating society we find a characteristic temptation belonging to the olden age, one that was recorded concerning our Lord Jesus Christ—' Command that these stones be made bread.' The great art of the adversary is to turn us Christians from soul-winners into bread-winners, to take the lower stratum of society and grind it up between the upper and nether millstone of power and capital, so that God may have to say again, ' Have all the workers of iniquity no knowledge? who eat up my people as they eat bread, and call not upon the Lord? ' ' Connnajid that these stones be made bread.' Our Lord Jesus Christ speaks just the opposite word: ' God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham.' Stones they are, rough and uncouth, but they can be turned into living stones, builded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit. Stones they are: but under the discipline of God's hand they can be made into corner-stones, polished after the similitude of a palace. Stones they are: but in the hands of the great Lapidary they may be made to adorn his breastplate and shine with nameless beauty— topaz and beryl and jacinth, each giving a different color to set forth the glory of the Lord."

In the fall of this year Dr. Gordon underwent certain personal experiences which were to him ever after as a divine imprimatur upon the doctrine of healing by faith which he advocated. These experiences were not indeed the first of their sort. Frequently in his letters references are made to relief from serious sicknesses obtained in this way.

" I had a sudden attack of the grippe," he writes during an epidemic of that disease— "high fever, chills, sore throat, pain in bones, headache, all coming on at three in the morning, when I had retired perfectly well. But I determined that Satan should not get the advantage, committed the case to the great Physician, and determined, in spite of much advice, to preach on Sunday. So I did, and found no trouble. All the difficulty is gone, praise the Lord!

And at another time " Many are sick among us of influenza. I was taken violently, but I called upon the Lord, and though there was a little time of waiting, when the cure came it swept the trouble away, so that not a trace remained behind. This is contrary to common experience with this disease. But my Physician made short work of the case."

In the case to which we now refer the sickness was of so radical a character and the cure so complete and effectual that the fact of divine intervention can hardly be doubted. For several years he had been subject to a severe and agonizing neuralgia of the solar plexus. The attacks, occasional at first, became, cis time passed, more and more frequent and more and more distressing. Each one was followed by days of complete exhaustion. Medical applications, rest, in fact, everything suggested, were tried without any permanent relief. In the winter of 1890 Mr. Moody had arranged for an exchange of work with him, it being provided that he should lecture in the Chicago Training-school for one month. The neuralgic spasm, which was due now every second month, had been endured, and no further trouble was for the present expected. A few days, however, before the time appointed for starting another terrible and wholly unlooked-for attack completely prostrated the sufferer. A conference was held, and it was decided that the Chicago project must be abandoned. The physician present declared his conviction that the disease was now chronic, that the intervals between the seizures were

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likely to narrow, and that the continuance of Hfe was but a question of time and of the natural resources of physique. At the earnest request of the patient appeal was now carried up to God himself. The sick man was anointed according to the commandment. His own prayers were accompanied by those of the few Christian friends about the bedside. Shortly after he rose up dressed, and went to his study in the room below. The pain had somewhat subsided, yet it still ran strong in undercurrent. As he stood in front of the mantel, leaning and resting on it, he was suddenly seized by an awful paroxysm— the most intense that he had ever experienced. It was as if the demon of sickness were tearing him grievously for the last time— for it was the last time. Never again did it enter the precincts of that body. The following week Gordon left for Chicago. For a whole month he lectured daily to the students, preparing the lectures as he proceeded, preaching twice or thrice each Sunday, conducting evening meetings during the week, and writing in the snatches of leisure his little book, " Faith— the First Thing in the World." Four more years passed before his death, years of extraordinary burden-bearing. Not the slightest intimation of the old chronic difficulty ever intruded. Never in all his life had he such a wealth of physical resource wherewith to perform the tasks laid on him, and accompanying physical healing there entered into him a new tide of spiritual life and blessing.

The summer of '93 found Dr. Gordon again in Chicago, lecturing to the students of the Bible Institute and preaching in the great meetings which Mr. Moody had organized in that city. These meetings were designed to reach the millions visiting the Exposition. Four theaters, five tents, and many churches were jammed every evening and several times on Sunday with strangers from all parts of the earth. Thirtyeight preachers, evangelists, and singers instructed the multitudes, while several hundred students in residence cooperated in an endless variety of house-to-house and highway-and-hedge effort. The Fair was finally closed on Sunday, after an exhibition on the part of the managers, upon the shamelessness of which there is no need to dilate here. The people refused to go in sufficient numbers to warrant Sunday opening. But the evangelistic services secured a Sabbath attendance of more than thirty-five thousand and an entire weekly attendance of not less than one hundred thousand. Even the great showman Forepaugh was obliged to capitulate to Mr. Moody. The circus tents, which had been opened for Sunday amusement, were handed over without charge and forthwith filled by ten thousand people.

For a whole month Gordon preached to hungry thousands, teaching all the while at the school on Institute Place. The influence of this work of Mr. Moody and his assistants was very far-reaching, and important in the life of thousands. The attention of the press and of the public was of course turned upon the " Parliament of Religions," with its cardinal's teagown, its shaven-pated bonzes, and its facile sub-truthful Calcutta babus. This to the novelty-seekers was the most important "'nligious " feature of that summer in Chicago. But of this heterogeneous assembly most men who know the East the obscenities of Benares, the linga-worship of Muttra, the degraded beggary of Mandalay, to say nothing of present-day Islamism in Armenia— cherish convictions not flattering either to its promoters or co its participants. Gordon himself regarded the proceedings as thoroughly misleading in their appraisement of non-Christian systems, and as gratuitously disheartening to the representatives of our Lord among the heathen. The strangers whom he welcomed and with whom he consorted were of a very different type. None interested him more than a visitor from Bessarabia, Joseph Rabinowitz, whom Delitzsch considered the most remarkable Jewish convert since Saul of

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Tarsus. In a few notes Gordon describes his conversations with this Israelite of the new covenant.

" Going to Chicago in July last for a month's service in connection with Mr. Moody's World's Fair evangelization campaign, we found ourselves at our lodgings placed in the next room to a Russian guest, whose name was not yet told us. Hearing in the evening the strains of subdued and fervent Hebrew chanting, we inquired who our neighbor might be, and learned that it was one Joseph Rabinowitz, of Russia. Thus, to our surprise, we found ourselves next neighbor to one whom we would have crossed the ocean to see, with only a sliding door now between us. Introduction followed, and then three weeks of study and communion together concerning the things of the kingdom, the memory of which will not soon depart.

" It seemed to us, as we talked day after day with this Israelite without guile and heard him pour out his soul in prayer, that we had never before witnessed such ardor of aflFection for Jesus and such absorbing devotion to his person and glory. We shall not soon forget the radiance that would come into his face as he expounded the Messianic psalms at our morning or evening worship, and how, as here and there he caught a glimpse of the suffering or glorified Christ, he would suddenly lift his hands and his eyes to heaven in a burst of admiration, exclaiming, with Thomas after he had seen the nail-prints, ' My Lord and my God." So saturated was he with the letter as well as with the spirit of the Hebrew Scriptiu"es that to hear him talk one might imagine it was Isaiah or some other prophet of the old dispensation. ' What is your view of inspiration? ' we once asked him, in order to draw him out concerning certain much-mooted questions of our time. ' My view is,' he said, holding up his Hebrew Bible, ' that this is the Word of God; the Spirit of God dwells in it. When I read it I know that God is speaking to me, and when I preach it I say to the people, " Be silent, and hear what Jehovah will say to you." As for comparing the inspiration of Scripture with that of Homer or of Shakespeare, it is not a question of degree, but of kind. Electricity will pass through an iron bar, but it will not go through a rod of glass, however beautiful and transparent, because it has no affinity for it. So the Spirit of God dwells in the Word of God, the Holy Scriptures, because these are his proper medium, but not in Homer or Shakespeare, because he has no affinity with these writings.'

" ' Do you know what questioning and controversies the Jews have kept up over Zechariah xii. 10? ' he asked one day. ' '' They shall look upon me (n n) whom they have pierced." They will not admit that it is Jehovah whom they pierced. Hence the dispute about the whom; but do you notice that this word is simply the first and last letters of the Hebrew alphabet, Aleph, Tav? Do you wonder, then, that I was filled with awe and astonishment when I opened to Revelation i. 7, 8, and read these words of Zechariah, now quoted by John, "Behold, he cometh with clouds; and every eye shall see him, and they also which pierced him;" and then heard the glorified Lord saying, "I am Alpha and Omega"? Jesus seemed to say to me, '' Do you doubt who it is whom you pierced? I am the Aleph Tav, the Alpha Omega, Jehovah, the Almighty."

" Nothing could be more thrilling and pathetic than to hear this latter-day prophet of Israel dilate on the blessedness and glory of his nation when it shall at last be brought back into favor and fellowship with God. ' The Gentile nations cannot come to their highest blessing till then, nor can our rejected and crucified Messiah see of the travail of his soul and be satisfied till his kinsmen according to the flesh shall own and accept him.' Then, with a dramatic fervor and pathos impossible to describe, he made the following beautiful com-

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ment: ' Jesus, tWfe glorified head of the church, is making up his body now. Think you that my nation will have no place in that body? Yes; the last and most sacred place. When from India's and China's millions, and from the innumerable multitudes of Africa, and the islands of the sea the last Gentile shall have been brought in and Christ's body made complete, there will still be left a place for little Israel; she will fill up the hole in his side— that wound which can never be closed till the nation which made it is saved.'

The deep affection which grew up between the two may be measured by the following brief note:

" Kishenev, March II, 1895. " Dear Mrs. Gordon: The most sad news in the paper, ' The Christian Herald,' about the death of your' dear husband, my unforgotten friend. Dr. A. J. Gordon, reached me this morning. I was so overwhelmed with grief that for half an hour I could not keep back the tears. My wife and daughter, seeing me so broken-hearted, could not help shedding tears also, saying to each other, ' See how he loved him.'

" I assure you, dear Mrs. Gordon, that, far away over the ocean at Kishenev in South Russia, there is a heart deeply sympathizing with you in your bereavement, and lamenting with all those who personally knew dear Dr. Gordon and experienced his gentle Christian love. I shall never forget those happy moments we spent together in Chicago. I remember well with what joy he looked forward to the restoration of

Israel, to Jesus' appearing in glory.... He is now in the

bosom of Abraham enjoying the nearness of his Lord Jesus, whom he served so faithfully.

"Joseph Rabinowitz."