Mark 16:15

‘INTO ALL THE WORLD’

‘And He said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature.’

Mark 16:15

If ever there was a nation to whom these words were plainly and directly addressed, that nation is England.

I. Reparation to native races.—As a nation we owe some reparation to our heathen brethren (for they are our brothers), for the wars we have waged against them, for the curse of drink we have inflicted upon them, for the bad example which professing Christians have too often taught them. Certainly we do something in the way of sending to the heathen a better Gospel. A million and a half of money is annually spent on foreign missions; but this is not enough from the richest nation in the world, and looks small indeed when compared with the one hundred and thirty millions which are each year wasted on drink.

II. What we have received.—Consider now what it is that has made England great. Is it not the honesty, truthfulness, purity, and righteousness generally that, with all their faults, have been the ruling principles of the conduct of Englishmen? and where did these come from except from Jesus Christ? He it was Who made them ‘current coin’; so that what Lord Macaulay once said in Parliament is literally true. ‘The man,’ he said, ‘who writes or speaks against Christianity is a traitor to the civilisation of the world.’

III. The Lord’s command.—Nothing can be more direct and plain than the words of the text, and there is no better test of the vitality of a Christian community than readiness to obey the command.

IV. The claims of our own kith and kin.—We are bound not merely for the sake of the heathen, but for the sake of our own kith and kin, to follow with the teaching and ordinances of the Christian religion the stream of commerce and emigration that carries Englishmen to the ends of the world. ‘Charity to the soul is the soul of charity’ is a saying especially true in reference to the prevention of that spiritual destitution into which our emigrants would fall if they were not helped, when they make their first settlements in distant countries, by the great missionary societies.

—Rev. E. J. Hardy.