CHAPTER IV

ONE CHOSEN FROM A HUNDRED

Luke xv, 4: "What man of you, having an hundred sheep, if he lose one of them, doth not leave the ninety and nine in the wilderness, and go after that which is lost, until he find it?"

WE are apt to read this parable as showing the contrast between righteous people and sinners, and that Christ would care for sinners-which is true. But the parable also shows the contrast between the ninety and nine and the one, and that Christ would care for the one and choose the one. But it is in Christ that we learn most clearly what it is possible to know concerning God; therefore Christ's way of choosing men gives us our surest knowledge of God's methods of election.

Some, when they are choosing, care only for quantity; Christ cared for quality. Some preachers would not trouble themselves to do good work except for great congregations. This preacher did some of his best work for eleven men sitting at a table, or three men on a mountain, or one man who had come to Him at night, or one woman at a well, or two sisters in their Bethany home; and of

those two sisters, Martha was careful and troubled about ninety and nine things; Mary could care for one thing, and Jesus commended Mary.

The text sets before us the individualism of the Gospel. Of course there may be a false individualism which is essentially selfish, and therefore most unchristian; it is the individualism of the man who tries to put himself up on the throne and to make all things in heaven and on earth serve him. Christianity teaches a man rather to deny himself, and make himself the servant of all. The ideals of our modern social reformers, who would have each citizen forget himself and work for the elevation of all his kind, come very near to Christ's teaching. There is a reason for it that so many of the extremest socialists, however they may denounce the organized Christian Church, yet claim that Christ himself was one of their sort, a socialist. They are not altogether mistaken; many of the things that the socialists insist on most earnestly, He also insisted on. For some parts of His teaching there is no better interpreter than a thoughtful socialist. He did renounce His own individual exaltation that He might make himself the servant of all. He, though rich, did become poor, that we all through His poverty might be rich. He, though Son of God, was in all things made like unto us, His brethren. What more could any socialist ask of

Jesus? Are they not right in claiming Him as carrying out their programme to the utmost, himself a thoroughly consistent socialist?

True; but there is another side of Christ's teaching which we forget at our peril. If Jesus Christ was more generously social than any other socialist, He was also more intensely individualistic than any other individualist. While others were content with the ninety and nine, He was always looking out for the one. Others wanted the biggest flock; He cared as much to have the most perfect sheep. No matter how great the crowd, Christ's interest was always fastening itself to individuals in the crowd; and the effect of His teaching was to round out each individual to the utmost that was in him. Christ himself was interested in individuals, and He knew how to make each individual interesting.

The great revivals of Christianity have always picked individual men and women out of the mass, and made them individually interesting. It was so at the beginning. The oldest civilizations of the world had treated a common man as if he existed only for the sake of the state; that was their theory, I mean. Not that the people always lived up to it, for no doubt there was plenty of disloyal selfishness even then; but the theory treated a common man as existing only for the sake of the state. But

Christianity from the first taught each poor slave and outcast that he for himself was infinitely interesting to God. The Good Shepherd was content to leave everything and go far into the mountains, if He might find this one sheep that had gone astray. And this most intense individualism was a large part of the message of Christianity to the Greek, and to the Roman, and also to the Jew, of the first century.

So, again, at the Reformation, private Christians had been almost lost sight of in the imposing organization of the Church. Except through the Church, it seemed that God himself could hardly hear the cry of any one poor sinner. The Reformers' message to the Europe of the sixteenth century was that the cry of that one poor sinner was exactly what God was listening for. Ninety and nine bishops, priests, and deacons safe up in the fold of the Church were not so sure of interesting the Master as this one poor wandering elect soul outside. The great problem of salvation must concern that one by himself alone, that one and God. That was the substance of the doctrine of the Protestant Reformation.

So, again, the English Puritan of the seventeenth century, and his brother in New England. I need not remind you of their intense individualism. They taught each man to deal for himself with God.

So Wesley and his followers in the eighteenth century, each of them finding the Holy Spirit in his own soul; always pressing on their hearers the fateful question, "What shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?"

People often complain of the Methodists and Evangelicals of those days because of a certain appearance of selfishness in their doctrine. It may be so, but I have been naming all the great Christian revivals down through the ages. Whenever this religion of Christ has begun to stir the world with extraordinary power, it has taught men once more to go with the Good Shepherd who could almost forget the flock because He cared so much for the sheep; who could leave the ninety and nine while He went for the one. This is a characteristic of Christianity from the beginning; therefore, when men tell me that Jesus was a good socialist, I agree in a way, but I try not to forget that, nevertheless, for nineteen hundred years He has been teaching the world its lessons of most tremendous individualism. And any socialism that leaves out that side of His character and teaching may become in the last degree unchristian, antichristian. We talk of the antichrist; but John says, "Even now there are many antichrists; "1 and surely in our day

1 I John ii, 18.