pointed out
the streaks of dawn that were lighting the sky. He made men hear the
bird's song within the voiceless egg and to catch the perfume of
flowers under the snow. He was a son of consolation. "Be pitiful,"
says Dr. Watson, "for every man is having a hard time." There are some
folks who depress us. There are some wet blanket personalities who
stifle us. And there are others like Barnabas who refresh us, and when
they come and knock at our doors we pass out of the stuffy atmosphere
of a mental prison into a flower garden where the air is fresh and
sweet with perfume and musical with the morning song of birds.

Third, this man was thoroughly missionary. He had taken a course in
God's doctrine of evangelism. He believed that the Gospel was for all
mankind. Some Christians of that day were trying to keep it a Jewish
sect. When they heard that folks were actually being converted down in
Antioch there seems to have been not the least bit of joy in the fact.
But under the leadership of the Spirit they sent Barnabas to
investigate. He came and saw the same light in their faces down in
Antioch that was in the faces of those who were Spirit-baptized up in
Jerusalem. And the story says that when he saw the work of the Lord he
was glad. And not only was he glad, but he threw himself at once into
the work of evangelizing that foreign city.

Then he did another big thing. Seeing the great opportunity that was
there, he went and sought Paul out over at Tarsus and brought him over
as his helper. And it was there as they labored together and
ministered to the Lord and fasted that the Holy Ghost said, "Separate
me Barnabas and Saul, for the work whereunto I have called them." And
they went forth as the world's first foreign missionaries. An army has
gone forth since that day,--the choicest spirits that this world has
ever seen. And those who have gone have consecrated the soil of every
continent by their prayers, their tears and their sacrifices. Their
ashes rest to-day upon every shore and the songs of the redeemed are
sung to-day under every sky because they have labored. Who was the
vanguard of that great army whose going forth was as the going forth of
the morning? The vanguard was made up of two men. One of them was
Paul, the other Barnabas, a man not marvelously clever, not greatly
gifted. His supreme merit was just this, that in a real and genuine
sense he was a good man, full of faith.

And last of