Paul was neither extravagant nor irreverent; yes, something remains, after Christ's finished atoning passion and justifying work,-after even the Spirit's descent,-to "fill up that which is behind." A preacher, a witness, who is cleansed by the blood, justified by the life of Christ, renewed by the Spirit, is needful, is necessary, if all this stupendous display of grace is to reach the unsaved soul. The believer is the missing link-add this, and God the Father, Son, Holy Ghost, brought into close contact with the lost, can apply the blood, the Word, the regenerating power. But, while this last link is lacking, what is to secure the needful contact and connection?

There is something awful and overpowering about this truth. Yet it is not too high to be apprehended. I have been wont as a pastor, like many of my brethren, to seek, in every case of conversion, to trace the human link by which the new soul was united to God. I have never yet found one case where some human agency had not been used by God. Some godly father or mother, sister or brother, Sunday-school teacher, pastor, evangelist; perhaps a stray word dropped by the way, a simple invitation to a church service or a prayer-meeting, a tract or book slipped into the hand-in some cases, nothing more than a tear that told of deep fountains of feeling, or an earnest look in which the soul found a voice; but always a human soul somehow coming between God and

another soul and filling up that which would otherwise be lacking.

We are not prepared to say that this rule is so universal as to be without an exception. Missionaries tell strange tales of souls prepared, like Cornelius, for the visit of the preacher, before he came; or led by some stray copy of a fragment of the New Testament, to call on the unknown God. But, even here, who can tell what human agency, that can no longer be traced, has left its footsteps on heathen soil-may this not be the springing up of seed, sown in darkness, by some hand now again turned to dust in the grave? And is not the very Bible itself the work of man, though it be the Word of God? However many exceptions there may be, even exceptions prove the rule, and the rule is that, without the agency of believers, unbelievers are not made believers. A saved soul always comes in to be the means by which sinners. are turned to saints.

It is the old story of rescue repeated on a more august scale of application. God's ladder will not reach the lost in this House of Doom unless you add your own length to the ladder! And so, as we are co-workers with the Father, we are co-sufferers with the Son. His cross is dumb, His tomb is dumb, until we give to them a voice. We are to tell men how He died, and rose. Even the Word of God needs a human witness. If we ask the Ethiopian eunuch who is intently reading the

:

Messianic poem of Isaiah, "Understandest thou what thou readest?" he answers: 'How can I,

except some man should guide me? Of whom speaketh the prophet this, of himself or of some other man?" And thus, even to those who have the Word of God, there is needed one who has learned, by experience, to interpret that Word to others.

Paul uses a phrase which is itself an interpretation of his meaning: "For His body's sake, which is the Church." In a body, all is mutual dependence and interdependence. "The eye cannot say unto the hand, I have no need of thee; nor again the head to the feet, I have no need of you;" "nay, much more, those members of the body which seem to be more feeble are necessary.' Here is the Divine parable of the Body of Christ. That body is one with many members, and all, however feeble, uncomely, less honorable, are necessary, if not to vitality, at least to vigor. The hand depends on the feet, and both, on the eyes and ears. Nay, even the head depends on the activity of the members over which it presides. If the head wills to go-how can it unless the legs and feet bear it elsewhere-or, if it would have some work done which the brain devises, how, unless the hands produce what we call handiwork? We have an exalted "Head"—He might have been divinely independent of us; but, when

* I. Cor. xii. 22.

He chose to be Head and take the Church for His body, He chose also to depend on the co-operation of the humblest member. Henceforth, even the Head cannot say to the feet—the highest to the lowest "I have no need of you!"

Now, whenever believers neglect souls, and, for the sake of their own indolence and indulgence, leave the lost to die unsaved and unwarned, there is schism in the body—oxiopa,—rent, division. The head yearns to reach out and save, but the great nerves no longer act. It is as though a sharp blade had cut through the spinal cord, and motion, if not sensation, is gone; the muscles and sinews no longer respond to the will, and, in sight of the lost, the body stands inactive.

This universal evangelism is thus necessary alike to accomplish the will of God, overtake the wants of the world, and energize and exercise the life of the Church. It is the one thing needful from any and every point of view. If missions languish, in so far God and man part company, the human race sinks lower in vice, crime, and sin, and the Church runs the risk, not of apathy only, but of apostasy.

Everything else depends on the health, strength, growth of the Body of Christ. As soon as missions fall into neglect, that body becomes enfeebled; and when any part of the body is inactive the whole body is more or less crippled, if not paralyzed. No truth is more enforced in the Word than the

unity of the Body of Christ.* We are taught that both development and activity depend on the whole body's working together. Both edification and evangelization demand that "the whole body, fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth, according to the effectual working in the measure of every part, maketh increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in love." †

As Mr. Hudson Taylor well says, one may stand near a burning house or sinking ship and yearn to save those who are in danger of death; but by no possibility can the outstretched arms reach one that is a yard and a half away, unless the legs and feet carry the whole body forward to the scene of action. It is comparatively in vain that a few members of the Church, which is Christ's Body, seek to be heroic in self-sacrifice for the lost, and to uplift and redeem heathen and pagan peoples, while the Church as a whole is idle and indifferent. The best effort is both restrained and restricted, and there can be no large outreach, no strong uplift; the most consecrated missionary band finds, in an apathetic Church at home, a hindrance more fatal to success than the most violent opposition where Satan's strongholds stand.

Never yet certainly not since the apostolic age has the whole body moved together in the * Rom. xii. ; I. Cor. xii.; Eph. iv.

Ephesians iv. 16.