fy the world and to capture the
world. There is something attractive about them; they have his
secret, something of his charm; they are magnetic with his power. A
new impulse to win men marks them, a new power to do it, a new faith
which grows in significance as you study it--the faith of William
Carey, a hundred years ago, was the same thing--a perfectly
incredible faith, that they actually will win men for God and
Christ. And they did--and along his lines and by his methods of
love--even for Gentiles. "Woe is me, if I preach not the Gospel,"
says St. Paul (1 Cor. 9:16), who to preach the Gospel shipwrecked
his life and suffered the loss of all things (Phil. 3:8). But these
men are sure that it is worthwhile. They have a new passion for men
and women--an interest not merely in the saving of their souls but
in every real human need. The early Church made a point of teaching
men trades when they had none. They learnt all this from him. The
greatest miracle in history seems to me the transformation that
Jesus effected in those men. Everything else in Christian or secular
history, compared to it, seems easy and explicable; and it was
achieved by the love of Jesus.

The Church spread over the world without social machinery. The
Gospel was preached instinctively, naturally. The earliest
Christians were persecuted in Jerusalem, and were driven out. I
picture one of them in flight; on his journey he falls in with a
stranger. Before he knows what he is doing, he is telling his fellow
traveller about Jesus. It follows from his explanation of why he is
on the road; he warms up as he speaks. He never really thought about
the danger of doing so. And the stranger wants to know more; he is
captured by the message, and he too becomes a Christian. And then
this involuntary preacher of the Gospel is embarrassed to learn that
the man is a Gentile; he had not thought of that. I think that is
how it began--so naturally and spontaneously. These people are so
full of love of Jesus that they are bound to speak (Acts 8:4). "One
loving heart sets another on fire."

CHAPTER V

THE TEACHING OF JESUS UPON GOD

It is worth taking some trouble to realize how profoundly Jesus has
changed the thinking of mankind about God. "Since Jesus lived," Dr.
Fairbairn wrote, "God has been another and nearer Being to man."
"Jesus," writes Dr. Fosdick, "had the most joyous idea of God that
ever was thought of." That joyous sense of God he has given to hi