1 
 
 i' 
 
 A SERMON 
 
 PREACHED BY 
 
 REV. A. J. F. BEHRENDS, D. D. 
 
 BEFORE THE 
 
 ^ntirifan ^oard 0|[ ^ommissianfts for li^oreijn '^^bsiotis, 
 
 AT THE 
 
 SEVENTY-SECOND ANNUAL MEETING, 
 
 HELD IN ST. LOUIS, MO., 
 
 OCTOBER 18, 1881. 
 
COUNTING THE COST. 
 
 A SERMON 
 
 BEFORE THE 
 
 AT THE 
 
 SEVENTY-SECOND ANNUAL MEETING. 
 
 HELD IN PILGRIM CHURCH, 
 
 ST. LOUIS, OCT. i8, i88i. 
 
 By Rev. A. J. F, Behrends, D. D., 
 
 PROVIDENCE, R. I. 
 
 BOSTON : 
 
 BEACON PRESS: THOMAS TODD, PRINTER, 
 No. I Somerset Street. 
 
 I 8 8 I . 
 
^ 2.i)(j 
 I 
 
 ■ 
 
 :i{ LIBrIry )|) 
 
 
SERMON. 
 
 “For which of you, intending to build a tower, sitteth 
 
 NOT DOWN FIRST AND COUNTETH THE COST, WHETHER HE HAVE SUF- 
 FICIENT TO FINISH IT? Lest haply, after he hath laid the 
 FOUNDATION, AND IS NOT ABLE TO FINISH IT, ALL THAT BEHOLD IT 
 BEGIN TO MOCK HIM, SAYING, ThIS MAN BEGAN TO BUILD, AND WAS 
 NOT ABLE TO FINISH.” — Luke xiv : 28-JO. 
 
 It is often said that where there is a will there is a way. 
 Nor can it be doubted that the failure, or partial success, of 
 many a life is largely due to feebleness or intermission of 
 resolute determination. But the will is none the less under 
 law, and where that law is not consulted and honored the will 
 is not permitted to have its way. Wisdom is the appointed 
 highway along which the will must press to its goal. A man’s 
 aims may be high and noble, and his devotion may be pure 
 and entire, yet may he bitterly fail from simple neglect of hav- 
 ing measured all the obstacles ; falling before assaults whose 
 vigor and number he had not anticipated, and for which he 
 had neglected to make the necessary preparation. 
 
 Every wise man, therefore, counts the cost. But from this 
 it does not follow that he only is a wise man who counts the 
 cost before he chooses, who compels obligation to wait on 
 prudence, who makes his decision of what he shall do de- 
 pendent on a survey of the difficulties to be encountered and 
 the sacrifices to be borne. Counting the cost is with some 
 men the confession of cowardice ; with others it is the dis- 
 closure of undaunted heroism. The noblest men are they 
 who so count the cost as to hold themselves ready to devote 
 time, fortune, and even life, to the cause they freely and 
 heartily espouse. Moses counted the cost in this heroic 
 spirit when he turned from the courts of the Pharaohs to 
 share the fortunes of an enslaved but chosen people. Paul 
 
4 
 
 Counting the Cost. 
 
 counted the cost when he became a Christian disciple and 
 a preacher of the gospel to the Gentiles. Jesus Christ count- 
 ed the cost when He bowed His shoulders beneath that burden 
 whose awful weight was crushing a race. The martyrs, in 
 ancient and modern times, counted the cost when they sealed 
 their testimony in their blood. Such a counting of the cost 
 is the only one to which Christ summons us, as plainly ap- 
 pears from the preceding and following statements, in which 
 the duty enjoined is that of immediate, intelligent, deliberate, 
 unqualified, irrevocable surrender. The twenty-seventh and the 
 thirty-third verses of our chapter supply us with the key to 
 the true meaning of the included illustrations. They were 
 preceded by the declaration that no man could be Christ’s 
 disciple who was not ready to bear the cross ; and their appli- 
 cation is given in these significant words : “ So likewise, who- 
 soever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he 
 cannot be my disciple.” Here is the inspired commentary of 
 our text. This is the spirit in which we are to count the cost 
 and build, measure the resources of our enemy and vanquish 
 him. The dearest associations must be cheerfully sundered, 
 the heaviest burdens must be freely and gladly borne, if nec- 
 essary. We must give all, ourselves included. Only such a 
 service does Christ want ; only such a one can He bless. He 
 must have all, or He can make use of nothing; and that, not 
 because of His imperious wilfulness, but because our lives 
 cannot reach their utmost vigor and their highest usefulness 
 unless and until His will has everywhere and always its way. 
 
 It has fallen to our lot, dear brethren, to be summoned to a 
 service in which no reservations are permitted or possible. 
 Neither Alexander, nor Caesar, nor Napoleon, dreamed of such 
 an empire as that to whose establishment Jesus Christ calls 
 us — an empire of truth and righteousness, resting on the 
 free acceptance and hearty love of its subjects, including all 
 nations, enduring forever. If Napoleon’s dreams of empire 
 impoverished France, we may rest assured that the Church of 
 God has neither treasure nor talent to spare. And, therefore, 
 should we diligently count the cost, not with the reserved de- 
 
Counting the Cost. 
 
 5 
 
 termination to abandon a task apparently too great for our 
 execution, but in order that our will may work along the lines 
 of a wisdom that is never baffled, because it is never sur- 
 prised, and that we may bring within easy reach, and use with 
 the utmost energy, each and all the means at our command. 
 
 Let .us glance, then, first of all, at the difflculties that must 
 be encountered and overcome-by the Church of Christ in the 
 world’s evangelization. I can do no more than very rapidly to 
 mention them, condensing in a few sentences what might 
 properly claim volumes in the minute description. 
 
 These obstacles are found in the native depravity of the 
 human heart — an enmity original, subtle, persistent, cumu- 
 lative — whose removal can only be secured by a change so 
 mighty and superhuman as to be called the “new birth;” in 
 the bad conditions of life that are the heritage of centuries of 
 sin ; in the great and compact mass of customs, institutions 
 and philosophies, enlisting the pride of nationality and scorn- 
 ing intrusion ; in the gigantic social vices that corrupt society 
 at home, disgrace the Christian name abroad, and paralyze 
 the arm of Christian endeavor ; in the tenacity of national 
 habits and the power of national traditions; in the scorn of 
 false learning and the pride of great names ; in the stealthy, 
 but sleepless, vigilance of Roman Catholicism, with its fixed 
 policy of invading every Protestant mission field, and in the 
 painful violations of Christian comity by representatives of 
 Protestant communions, creating distrust and disaffection ; in 
 the stagnation of the Greek communion, as stolid as it is sta- 
 tionary ; in the hard formality and corruption of the degene- 
 rate remnants of ancient churches in Asia and Africa ; in the 
 bigotry of the Moslem, ruling many of the fairest portions of 
 the globe, dominant in all the lands of Bible story and of 
 primitive Christianity, trained to the utmost scorn of the 
 gospel by the traditions of a thousand years ; in the seared 
 moral nature of the Mongolian, steeped in centuries of prac- 
 tical atheism ; in the extreme animalism of millions of our 
 race ; in the horrors of the slave-trade, maintained in the face 
 of the united protest of Christendom, and causing the native 
 
6 
 
 Counting the Cost. 
 
 African races to regard every stranger as an enemy, a traffic 
 whose prompt and stern suppression must accompany, if not 
 precede, the Christianization of the Dark Continent ; in the 
 jealousy of nations and the selfishness of trade, with shot and 
 shell plowing a highway for its products through the heart of a 
 protesting and suffering people ; and last, though by na means 
 least, in the unseen powers of darkness, under the leadership 
 of Satan, father of lies, and destroyer of souls from the be- 
 ginning. 
 
 For, interpret the third chapter of Genesis as you please, 
 reading it as sober history or as pictorial and poetic repre- 
 sentation, the Biblical solution of an extra-mundane and ante- 
 human origin of sin is the most reasonable. Sin exhibits a 
 violence and reveals itself in methods of assault that argue 
 its intrusion into the field of human history from a sphere be- 
 yond the reach of our observation. For one, I cannot read 
 my Bible, and deny or doubt the personal existence and living 
 hostility of Satan. Our Lord’s, personal conflict was not only 
 with the moral obstinacy of the man, but with the subtler and 
 fiercer enmity of the Prince of Darkness. He was tempted 
 of the Devil. He rejoiced over Satan’s fall. So speaks the 
 record. Peter was the object of a Satanic sifting. An invis- 
 ible agency is represented by Paul as at work intent on the 
 destruction of man. We are exposed to the wiles of the 
 Devil. To reduce all this to rhetorical impression, or to per- 
 sonification, or to an innocent accommodation to traditional 
 doctrine, is to riddle the Bible of its honest significance and 
 worth for ordinary readers. And for one I cannot resist the 
 impression that the whole history of man confirms the script- 
 ural representation, and bears testimony to the awful reality 
 of a Satanic agency and leadership. We need not go to the 
 length of some of the ancient fathers, so deeply mastered by 
 this conviction, as to maintain that the heathen deities are the 
 representatives and embodiments of demons ; that all heathen 
 worship is Satanic in its inspiration and results ; that all hea- 
 then virtue is thinly disguised vice. The heathen do grope 
 after God. But their history and bondage are marked by 
 
Counting the Cost. 
 
 7 
 
 such strange and contradictory features, such aberrations and 
 excesses in worship and in conduct, as to point to causes both 
 known and unknown, natural and supernatural, visible and 
 invisible. The delusions that have swept over them and poi- 
 soned their blood seem to have come from regions beyond 
 them ; they are the footprints of an army that the eye has 
 never seen, whose footfall has been unheard, and whom the 
 sword cannot reach. As in Kaulbach’s famous mural paint- 
 ing of the battle of the Huns, the bitter contest of the day is 
 renewed by the spirits of the sleeping warriors in the dead of 
 night and in mid air, the ghostly Attila borne on his shield, 
 with scourge in hand, hasting to smite Theodoric, so is our 
 earthly campaign only section and symbol of a warfare that 
 stirs all the heights and depths, and where the clash of arms, 
 though unheard, is fierce and unceasing. An army must 
 move in concert, and the work of no division is complete 
 until victory has swept the whole broad field. The face of 
 the earth can be renewed only as the entire universe shares in 
 the regeneration. Subtler forces than any we can measure, or 
 even attack, complicate the problem of a world’s conversion 
 and retard its achievement. No holiday task is ours when we 
 talk of reducing the world to the obedience of Jesus Christ. 
 That sums up the problern of all the ages. No greater prayer 
 ever fell from human or angelic lips than that familiar to us 
 from childhood, a prayer of only three short words : “ Thy 
 kingdom come ! ” 
 
 I have summarized and made prominent the difficulties of 
 our task, not by way of discouragement, but to emphasize the 
 amplitude and sufficiency of our means of conquest. They 
 who are with and for us are more than they who are against us. 
 
 And, first, let us clearly, constantly and gratefully recognize 
 that the purpose of the world’s redemption has its seat and 
 throne in the eternal love of God. The prayer we lisp is 
 sublime because the living thought of Jehovah is in it. If 
 the missionary spirit were the fruit only of the ripest thought 
 of man, or of his most generous sympathies, it might be 
 doubtful whether it carried sufficient momentum to overcome 
 
8 
 
 Counting the Cost. 
 
 all the resistance enlisted, and on its overthrow to establish 
 the fair rule of righteousness. But against all such doubt we 
 are fortified — yea, lifted high above it — when Paul declares, 
 in the Epistle to the Colossians, that it is the pleasure of the 
 Father, having made peace through the blood of Jesus Christ, 
 by Him to reconcile all things to Himself; or when it is 
 affirmed, in the Epistle to the Ephesians, that the mystery, or 
 secret, of God’s eternal will is this : “That in the dispensation 
 of the fullness of time. He might gather together in one all 
 things in Christ, both which are in heaven, and which are on 
 earth.” Here, brethren, is the secret that rules the stars, 
 and before which the ages must bow. This living thought of 
 God is the philosophy of history ; and we have hope for the 
 race because grace is on the throne. The fulfillment may 
 seem to be very distant, and the night may seem to gather 
 darkness; but, as in the bitter days when the frost-king rules, 
 and his icy hand palsies all the rivers and strips all the trees, 
 beneath the surface and in hidden chambers flowers, foliage 
 and fruits are safely sheltered, and even tenderly nursed, des- 
 tined after a few brief days to transfigure the earth anew into 
 a paradise, so surely is God at work, pushing His new cre- 
 ation, giving embodiment to the eternal purpose of His grace 
 in Jesus Christ. 
 
 Let us grasp the high meaning of the declaration that grace 
 reigns. Physical science has made us familiar with the idea 
 that the reign of law is universal, and that a solitary exception 
 to its rule would be an unspeakable calamity. Older, deeper, 
 and more majestic than this conviction of physical order, is 
 the conviction of an absolute and universal justice, the reign 
 of an impartial and stern righteousness, incapable of evasion 
 or bribery. This profound conviction dominates all literature, 
 ancient and modern, and gives to human life both its tragedy 
 and glory. For, as Bishop Butler has so well said, if con- 
 science had only might, as she has right, she would rule the 
 world, and as it is, when her right is ignored and defied, the 
 consequent misery and remorse are a terrible vindication of 
 her indefeasible authority. 
 
Counting the Cost. 
 
 9 
 
 But neither physical order nor moral law exhausts the secret 
 of God’s purpose. Grace reigns ; the purpose of redemption, 
 not by violation of natural law, nor by compromising and de- 
 preciating righteousness, but by making both agencies in 
 securing a higher and more glorious result. The transfigur- 
 ing energy of grace is the secret both of natural and of moral 
 law. Therefore is it said that even the material creation waits 
 in earnest expectation for the manifestation of the sons of 
 God, and that God has no pleasure in the death of the wicked. 
 There is something more in God than a passion for order, or 
 the quality of retributive justice; and there is something 
 more than these in the work of His hands. Love is the most 
 glorious name He bears — a love creative of order, and always 
 promoting righteousness — but filling all law, not merely with 
 punitive, but also with redemptive energy. Grace, equally 
 with order and righteousness, is crowned and sceptered. The 
 cross of redemption, as the theologians say, is older than the 
 Decalogue, or the misty void of which was born the beauty 
 of the Cosmos. At the heart of nature, as the secret of all 
 her manifold and complicated movements, and at the heart of 
 human history, is the living purpose of the Divine benevo- 
 lence. It is no less unscriptural and mischievous to repre- 
 sent grace as optional, intermittent, or even limited, while 
 righteousness is regarded as necessary, eternal and universal, 
 than it is so to conceive of grace as to rob righteousness of 
 its eternal honors. The righteousness of God is always and 
 everywhere more than the rigid exactness of retributive jus- 
 tice ; and the grace of God is not a sentimental goodness 
 that excuses sin ; nor is it so mechanical in its administration 
 that the moral freedom of man is resolved into a name. God 
 neither surrenders His justice to His grace nor His grace to 
 His justice. In Christ all things are to be profoundly and 
 eternally reconciled, but only through the mediation of a right- 
 eousness graciously communicated, voluntarily and vitally 
 appropriated. Universalism, therefore, errs when it inter- 
 prets this restoration as outward, mechanical, and compul- 
 sory, rather than ideal and ethical. For the lost, in Scripture, 
 
10 
 
 Counting the Cost. 
 
 are represented as being “ without,” severed from the living, 
 fruitful organism. The tree remains, unimpaired in its essen- 
 tial and complete vitality, though the withered branches be 
 committed to the flames ; nay, its vigor, fruitfulness and beauty 
 are greatly increased by the pruning. The dead branches are 
 not a part of the vine, but an ugly and injurious incumbrance 
 upon it. In this sense is there to be a salvation of the world ; 
 not of all who once belonged to its numerical constituency, 
 nor merely of very many of its individual members, but of 
 humanity as an ideally unbroken and indissoluble unity, and 
 in its historical completeness ; just as a nation may not only 
 retain the integrity of its political existence, but possess it in 
 richer and growing fullness, though thousands fall in a war of 
 resistance and thousands more remain permanently under 
 civil disabilities. Grace reigns through righteousness, and 
 will have its glorious way in a transfigured creation and a 
 redeemed humanity. The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness 
 thereof, and the Devil’s claim thereto is false, fraudulent, and 
 hollow. I have not discounted the difficulties of our task, 
 but multiply them a thousandfold, involve the whole creation 
 from its very dawn, and in all its spheres, in the antagonism ; 
 yet if grace reigned in the creative thought and word, that 
 reign cannot be thwarted nor broken. Jesus Christ shall see 
 of the travail of His soul and be satisfied, because that travail 
 of grace is the oldest and the mightiest of all the forces in the 
 universe of God. 
 
 But grace works with fitting instruments. The gospel we 
 are commanded to preach matches the grace which it pro- 
 claims, and which is our inspiration. We have a message 
 that, in spirit and contents, addresses itself to the unbiased 
 reason and the healthy conscience. The Westminster Con- 
 fession of Faith contains nothing more admirable than its 
 summary of the evidences establishing the Divine authority 
 of the Holy Scriptures, in which the secondary place is given 
 to the heavenliness of the matter, the efficacy of the doctrine, 
 the majesty of the style, the consent of all the parts, the 
 scope of the whole, while it is declared that ” our full persua- 
 
Counting the Cost. 
 
 11 
 
 sion and assurance of the infallible truth, and divine authority 
 thereof, is from the inward work of the Holy Ghost, bearing 
 witness by and with the word in our hearts.” The gospel 
 compels recognition and acceptance in advance of personal 
 experience, as really and inevitably as does the light of heaven 
 before we have walked under its guidance. We do not believe 
 in that light because we have tried it ; rather do we try it 
 because we believe in it. Robertson reports how once, on a 
 journey up the Rhine, he made the acquaintance of an intelli- 
 gent and brilliant but skeptical young Frenchman, and as 
 the conversation drifted into religious subjects, the preacher 
 avoided the apologetic tone and emphasized the contents of 
 revelation, when suddenly his hearer exclairhed : “ It is a 
 beautiful faith ! ” What the world needs is the gospel, not 
 the evidences of the gospel. The congruity between man and 
 the Bible is perfect ; and there is no better evidence of its 
 divinity than its pure and perfect humanity. It is a faithful 
 mirror of human life in its bondage, its painful contradictions, 
 its universal restlessness. Its moral precepts compel recog- 
 nition, and the good news it proclaims is adequate and grate- 
 ful. Carry the Bible where you will, it makes its own way 
 and “ finds ” men. The fall has not modified nor broken 
 either the moral government of God or the essential nature 
 of man. The deepest apostasies, the foulest abominations of 
 heathenism, cannot destroy the moral nature, extract the 
 sting from an accusing conscience, and secure peace to the 
 wicked. Even Felix trembles when Paul preaches. Here is 
 the pou sto, the living fulcrum, securing the natural leverage 
 for the world’s conversion. This makes it possible and rea- 
 sonable. Christianity needs only to expound the moral law, 
 and proclaim the gospel of forgiveness to compel a hearing 
 and draw the hungry to her feast. No criticism can discredit 
 the Sermon on the Mount, and the third chapter of John’s 
 Gospel. 
 
 Experience has taught us that the high morality and intense 
 spirituality of the New Testament constitute no obstacle to 
 the evangelization of the rudest races. It has been main- 
 
12 
 
 Counting the Cost. 
 
 tained by some that the progress of civilization is largely 
 dependent on colonization, to be achieved by the dominance 
 of one great race pushing the weaker tribes to the wall and 
 gradually supplanting them. To the Anglo-Saxon, we are 
 told, belongs the dominion of the world. The Indian must 
 disappear, and it is an unscientific sentimentality that pro- 
 longs his stay. The Chinese must retreat and vanish. The 
 races of Central Africa must give way. Asiatic and African 
 nationalities are effete, their demoralization so deep-seated and 
 incurable that the only hope of these great continents is in 
 the gospel of emigration. I confess that I tremble before 
 this appeal to pride of blood. This theory is only a new form 
 of the old dream of a world-empire in the hands of a single 
 fortunate and favored race ; and on that dream of ambition 
 God has written, in history. His judgment of fire. Nimrod 
 dreamed of it, and the dispersion followed. Nebuchadnezzar 
 dreamed of it, and he reaped a harvest of insanity. Alexan- 
 der dreamed of it, and he died in a debauch. Caesar dreamed 
 of it, and fell by the hand of an assassin. Charlemagne 
 dreamed of it, but his empire fell apart when his strong hand 
 was withdrawn. Napoleon Bonaparte dreamed of it ; Water- 
 loo and St. Helena were the answer. Babylonian, Grecian, 
 Roman, German, Frenchman, successively heard the call to 
 universal dominion, and deemed it- the call of God; but the 
 vision melted away and left the eager pursuers disgraced and 
 humbled. And the Anglo-Saxon has no such call. He will 
 be honored of God only as he seeks his power in unselfish 
 and universal service, provoking and helping others to achieve 
 for themselves what he has secured for himself. It is an 
 infinitely nobler thing, more honorable to God and man alike, 
 to Christianize the world than it would be to Europeanize or 
 Americanize it. 
 
 And the history of missions shows that no race is beyond 
 redemption. Prof. Rawlinson, in a recent article on the 
 “ Prospective Civilization of Africa,” quotes approvingly from 
 a living French writer to the effect that “ the preaching of the 
 gospel is capable of becoming the most active principle in 
 
Counting the Cost. 
 
 13 
 
 the regeneration of the African nations. History shows that 
 Christianity possesses a power peculiar to itself for drawing 
 uncultivated races out of savagery and enabling them to 
 mount rapidly the first stages of civilization.” This testi- 
 mony rises to palpable demonstration when you read of what 
 the gospel has done for the “ most debased branches of the 
 human race,” fetichists and cannibals, in Australia, New 
 Zealand, New Guinea, the South Sea Islands, that standing 
 miracle of Christian evangelization, the Sandwich Islands, 
 and “ the crown of the London Society,” Madagascar. Chris- 
 tian missions have won their most signal triumphs among the 
 tribes and races that a worldly wisdom had come to regard as 
 hopelessly debased and doomed to extinction ; and it is fair to 
 measure the power of any system by what it can do for the 
 least hopeful of its subjects. 
 
 Nor ought we to forget as an encouragement to our confi- 
 dence and devotion, that Christian faith has become estab- 
 lished in the great literatures and the beneficent institutions 
 of a Christian civilization. The gospel is not only an agency 
 of personal renewal ; it has become a living, historical force, 
 claiming recognition in the industrial, mental and moral supe- 
 riority, and in the political dominance, of the nations that 
 have received it. The material benefits of Christian civiliza- 
 tion are rapidly commanding universal attention ; while the 
 spirit of emulation is waking the most drowsy of races. But 
 you cannot have the fruit apart from the tree ; and nations 
 will learn that stern lesson of history. Civilizations are not 
 made to order ; they are born and grow ; they are the index 
 of a nation’s mental and moral life, and only as that life is 
 cleansed and enriched can a higher civilization supplant a 
 lower. Japan and China may want our factories, and schools, 
 and railways, and telegraphs, and homes, but they cannot 
 have these and keep them unless they appropriate and assim- 
 ilate the living thought on which these are fibred. Christian 
 ideas must be regnant if Christian products are to be en- 
 joyed. Every steam-engine exported becomes the prophet of 
 a new dispensation. Every bar of railroad iron fastened 
 
14 
 
 Counting the Cost. 
 
 down imperils social and national alienation. Every yard of 
 our fabrics is a lesson in Christian civilization. Now it may 
 not be very complimentary for a man to be converted through 
 his pocket-book ; it is none the less true that in many cases 
 Christianity has received support on no higher ground than 
 that it is conducive to order, thrift and prosperity. The 
 churches help the bankers, and therefore many a banker sup- 
 ports the church. Your shrewd and sensible politician is 
 never an atheist by profession, whatever he may be in prac- 
 tice, for he well knows that religion is the main support of the 
 State. It may be that nations, as the greatest of all corpora- 
 tions, have no souls and are supremely selfish; but the carnal 
 ambition for material enrichment and advance will prove the 
 entering wedge for a nobler national life. When men travel 
 in the same car and share in the advantages of trade they can- 
 not avoid comparing their opinions, and in a free comparison 
 the best are sure to win. The world is becoming more and 
 more compact. Railway and telegraph are annihilating space 
 and time. Seclusion is becoming more and more difficult, and 
 will soon become impossible. The world is rapidly becoming 
 a huge crucible, with the fires at white heat. All things must 
 submit to the fierce testing that has already begun. There 
 is coming, there has already begun, a struggle for existence 
 between opposing civilizations, and the fittest is destined to 
 survive. Once did Christianity measure swords with the civil- 
 izations of Greece and Rome, and the cross conquered ; once 
 more that conflict must be renewed on a broader field, and the 
 second victory will be the last. 
 
 But here two questions confront us: What is the fittest.^ 
 And what assurance is there of its survival ? Can I deter- 
 mine what is best and highest only by the issue ? Can I decide 
 what is fitted to survive, only by the fact that I see it sur- 
 vive.^ Then I can never know the best in advance, and 
 adjust my life to it, because all history has its ebb and flow, 
 and I must wait for the end of the world to show me what is 
 best. In the meantime moral life must be suspended; I can 
 only abandon myself to the drift and tendency of my time. 
 
Counting the Cost. 
 
 15 
 
 But if the best and highest be a living and authoritative reve- 
 lation, commanding the sanctions of the universal conscience, 
 what living provision is there in human history for its con- 
 quest ? The best ought to prevail ; but how do I know that it 
 will prevail unless I have some evidence that it has prevailed 
 and does prevail ? In other words, the final cause of history 
 must also be its first and formative cause. The outcome of 
 all history must be history’s living heart, the creative and con- 
 trolling spirit of all the ages. 
 
 What evidence is there that this central place belongs to 
 Christianity.? You will point me to the ancient prophets who, 
 as Isaac Taylor says, are the masters of modern thought, from 
 whom we have caught the spirit of high hopefulness and of 
 undaunted aggressiveness. But do we simply occupy the 
 prophetic ground, or have we passed beyond the ancient seers, 
 beholding what they did not discern, so that prophecy has 
 become a pledge .? Even ancient prophecy had its visible his- 
 torical ground and warrant in God’s dealing with Israel, of 
 which it was only an interpretation ; and now that the the- 
 ocracy has vanished, what living assurance have we that all 
 the hopes it created and fostered have not also vanished .? 
 We make a peculiar claim for Christianity, a claim whose 
 familiarity blinds us to its audacity. We decline for it an 
 honorable, even the highest, place in the pantheon of the 
 world’s religions ; we will not hear of its throne and scepter 
 being shared with Confucius, or Sakya Mouni, or Mahomet. 
 We insist on its original, exclusive, universal, eternal right to 
 sovereignty. Is there any historical warrant for so sweeping 
 a claim, or must we be content to base it on the peculiar ex- 
 cellence of the Gospel, or on the prophecies of the Bible, or 
 on the command of Jesus Christ ? What is the Christian 
 answer.? What is the answer of the New Testament.? 
 
 The resurrection of Jesus Christ has changed prophecy into 
 history. That is the living argument and pledge of the 
 world’s ultimate and universal regeneration. Initially and 
 constructively, that resurrection is the world’s redemption. 
 Explain it as you will, the person of Christ is the center of 
 
16 
 
 Counting the Cost. 
 
 the world’s life. It marks the death of the old, and the birth 
 of the new. Call the resurrection a fiction, if you will, the 
 dream of Mary Magdalene, that resurrection has proved the 
 world’s inspiration. The early preachers proclaimed Christ as 
 the Risen One, and on that living conviction they founded 
 the Church. Primitive Christianity planted her standards by 
 the open and empty grave of the Crucified, and thence 
 marched to the conquest of the Roman Empire. The most 
 remarkable movement of the Middle Ages, enlisting kings 
 and beggars, setting the world on fire, breaking up the stupor 
 of centuries, preparing the way for commerce, the revival of 
 letters and the great Reformation, from which modern history 
 dates, was due to an intense and widespread enthusiasm to 
 recover the empty grave where our Lord was buried. Once 
 more, in our day, that sepulcher has become the altar of the 
 Church. We are not ambitious to supplant the Crescent by 
 the Cross, as the sym.bol of an external and empty triumph. 
 For we need to remember that the sanctity of that unknown 
 tomb is bound up with that of the whole earth, with the re- 
 demption of all the nations for whom that tomb was hewn and 
 rent. Redeem the world and the great crusade is accom- 
 plished. And on the morning when that grave was rent, if 
 Christ be indeed Christianity, not only the founder, but the 
 living energy of our holy religion, Christianity became the 
 all-conquering force of history. When our Lord had abol- 
 ished death in His own person, redemption was no longer a 
 problem or a prophecy, but a fact. The first Easter of human 
 history was the dawn of the millennium. The mustard seed 
 has been planted, and is growing. The leaven lies at the 
 heart of the meal. The year of jubilee has come. Christ 
 is risen ! That is the great rallying cry of the Church of 
 God. Let us proclaim it to the ends of the earth ; for He 
 who conquered death has a divine right to a world smitten by 
 its curse. 
 
 It seems only yesterday, though three weeks have passed, 
 that we yielded to the earth its claim to the mortal frame of 
 our late lamented President. Sorely did we feel ourselves to 
 
Counting the Cost. 
 
 17 
 
 be smitten, and the burden lias not yet lifted from our sorrow- 
 ing hearts. No sick-bed in the history of the world has been 
 so sacred a temple, toward which the people turned their faces 
 as they prayed, as that in the cottage by the sea ; and no 
 death of mortal man has been such a rebuke to sectionalism 
 and partisanship, and so eloquent a charge to a nobler and 
 purer patriotism, as the death of him whom the sea sang to 
 sleep. Let us hope that this baptism of suffering and tears, 
 by whose holy chrism every brow has been touched, has 
 joined in living and undying fellowship those whom the sword 
 had severed. Be that grave by the stormy inland sea the 
 Mecca of a new devotion, to which all the great land shall 
 turn to swear fresh allegiance to our common country. But 
 Jesus Christ, my brethren, died for the world, and that death 
 is honored only as by its memory and might the world is 
 brought to Him. And we have yet a more wondrous talisman 
 of power. The grave where His body was laid has been 
 empty ever since the third day of its burial ! The earth 
 closed over him, as it did over our late chief. But soon its 
 mighty heart, on which the millions have been laid to sleep, 
 felt a strange, joyful stirring. It was the pulse of life beating 
 against the stony ribs of death. The chains flew apart, the 
 prison walls trembled, the heavy doors were burst through, as 
 the Lord of life and glory came forth. My brethren, what a 
 ruin was that ! What a toppling of the principalities and 
 powers of darkness ! And the ruin has never been repaired, 
 nor will it ever be. No gloom has the grave henceforth for 
 the believer, since the glory of that resurrection has trans- 
 figured it. It is the open gate to heaven. And the earth 
 that bears upon her heart the seal of such a triumph can be 
 destined for nothing less than a conspicuous share in her 
 Lord’s eternal glory. The risen Christ is the living prophecy 
 and pledge of a world’s redemption. By that sign we conquer ! 
 
 Shall we stop here Not if our inventory is to be com- 
 plete. In the Book of Acts, which has been called “ the 
 gospel of the Holy Ghost,” the day of Pentecost is closely 
 associated with the day of Resurrection. The isolated fact 
 
18 
 
 Counting the Cost. 
 
 hereby proved its universal energy. The new dispensation is 
 preeminently that of the Spirit, not as if He had not wrought 
 before, but that by the resurrection and ascension of Christ 
 the way was fully prepared for His varied and peculiar minis- 
 try. The new dispensation may be said to have its base in a 
 conquering Christ, and its historical inauguration and living 
 inspiration in the baptism of the Holy Ghost. The Pente- 
 costal miracle, it has been well said, “ was not merely tran- 
 sient, but is continuously renewed. It is not a rushing sound 
 and gleaming light, seen perhaps only for a moment, but it is 
 a living energy and unceasing inspiration. It is not a visible 
 symbol to a gathered handful of human souls, but a vivifying 
 wind, which shall henceforth breathe in all ages of the world’s 
 history ; a tide of light which is rolling, and shall roll, from 
 shore to shore, until the earth is full of the knowledge of the 
 Lord as the waters cover the sea.” 
 
 The Church, then, has an indwelling, invisible, invincible, 
 infallible leadership. A mightier spirit than man’s moves in 
 the prayers of saints and the devotion of good men. The 
 deepest heart within us does not always pray as do the lips, 
 and our wants are often the reverse of our wishes ; but Christ 
 passes beyond the word, and makes articulate in His interces- 
 sion the real need, whose supply is never wanting. And as 
 He breathes His infallible interpretation through our faulty 
 and halting speech, so He makes His wisdom to brood over 
 all our thought and care, as we take counsel about His king- 
 dom. He guides the church by His Spirit as well as by His 
 Providence, pushing back the bolts and opening the doors, 
 providing opportunities and preparing us meanwhile, anoint- 
 ing the prophets and sealing their labors. Our thought 
 grows painfully intense, our prayers gather holy violence, our 
 hands are strained to the utmost; and it always will be so, for 
 it is our only salvation to be thus occupied and burdened ; yet 
 into our thought enters a wisdom, into our hands steals a 
 power, that is not of earth. It is the wisdom, the travail of 
 soul, the might of our great and living Head. 
 
 All build wiser than they know. Not Paul, nor Luther, nor 
 
Counting the Cost. 
 
 19 
 
 Knox, nor Edwards, leads the Church ; but the Holy Ghost 
 elects and ordains, appoints and establishes. Did Stephen 
 dream how his words and martyrdom would burn their way 
 into the soul of one young man, who should fall only after 
 thirty years of service, and when Christianity had been com- 
 pletely emancipated from bondage to Jewish legalism } Do 
 you suppose Paul imagined what he was doing when he 
 preached from Jerusalem to Rome, and wrote his burning 
 epistles } Did Luther suspect what reverberations his ham- 
 mer would cause, how memorablg^ would be that walk of less 
 than a mile from his home to the grim castle-church ? Did 
 Wesley know what a fire he was kindling when he prayed at 
 Lincoln College, Oxford.^ Did Robert Raikes dream what 
 forces he was setting in motion when he began his humble 
 work in Gloucester.^ Did Samuel Mills, Gordon Hall and 
 James Richards anticipate that their retired prayer-meeting 
 would grow to the dimensions of the American Board, and 
 prove the crowning glory of Williams College ? And who 
 will dare to prophesy what our children’s children shall see ? 
 Who guides the church ? The risen Christ, by the Holy Ghost ^ 
 There is power in heaven and there is power on earth. 
 Above, Christ is represented as interceding and ruling ; on 
 earth, responsive to that intercession and kingship, the Spirit 
 moves all creation with unconscious travail, and the hearts of 
 saints with unutterable prayers. With such a presence filling 
 the spaces and shaping the centuries, what need have we to 
 fear 1 Can there be any other issue than the glorious and 
 eternal triumph of Christ’s kingdom over the hatred of men 
 and the wrath of devils } Wh^t foe can resist an army 
 recruited at the call of God’s grace, equipped with a message 
 that is a double-edged sword, fitted both for wounding and 
 healing, guarding the trophies won from a hundred hard- 
 fought battle-fields, under the command of a captain by whose 
 personal assault the enemy’s center has been broken, his cita- 
 del captured and his forces shattered, led by a secret wisdom 
 incapable alike of surprise and fear.? Let Mount Zion re- 
 joice, let the daughters of Judah be glad, because of Jehovah's 
 
20 
 
 Counting the Cost. 
 
 judgments. Walk about Zion, and go round about her: tell 
 the towers thereof. Mark ye well her bulwarks, consider her 
 palaces, for in them God is known for a refuge. Lo! the kings 
 were assembled; they passed by together; they saw, and so they 
 marveled; they were troubled, and hasted away. 
 
 Bear with me while I endeavor, briefly, to indicate the 
 practical conclusions of our study. 
 
 It summons us to great boldness. We need to lay aside 
 the apologetic tone. A king once crowned does not stop to 
 submit the parchments of his legitimacy to every challenge. 
 Possession counts for something. Remember what Chris- 
 tianity has done, the disadvantages under which she began 
 her mission, the abuses she has conquered, and the dominance 
 she has attained by the simple force of the truth committed 
 to her custody, and let our advocacy have a triumphant ring. 
 Let us sing as we march. 
 
 We need great wisdom. A large work must be done, in 
 which personal discipleship is completed in social, literary and 
 political regeneration, so that Christianity shall not remain a 
 foreign importation, but shall become native to every race by 
 whom it is received, creating new institutions and traditions. 
 We need a different policy of evangelization "from that pur- 
 sued by Augustine in England, or Boniface in Germany, or 
 St. Francis Xavier in India. Pertnanence of impression is 
 much more important than rapidity of increase ; and of equal 
 importance is the earnest endeavor to secure, at the earliest 
 possible day, a competent native leadership; and we must be 
 on our guard, as Prof. Christlieb says, not to Europeanize the 
 native helpers and disciples, lest we isolate them from the 
 great masses of their countrymen. We need, therefore, to 
 build broadly, with an eye to the distant future, without being 
 too intent upon immediate results. For Christianity is not 
 only a religion of personal salvation, and of salvation in the 
 narrow sense of getting men into heaven : it makes a heaven 
 below, as well as conducting to one above and beyond ; it 
 means to transfigure into celestial beauty every form of earthly 
 life — its homes, its traffic, its industries, its restless, adven- 
 
Counting the Cost. 
 
 21 
 
 turous thought, its art, its science, its social movements, its 
 political councils, until the great globe shall be radiant with a 
 divine glory. 
 
 Let us remember, too, that in a task of such exceptional 
 magnitude, there is room and need for all existing exigencies. 
 We are all brethren. David Livingstone cherished the true 
 spirit when he said : “ We are all engaged in very much the 
 same work ; geographers, astronomers, and mechanicians, la- 
 boring to make men better acquainted with each other, pro- 
 moters of Niger expeditions, soldiers fighting for right against 
 oppression, and sailors rescuing captives in deadly chains, as 
 well as missionaries, are all aiding in hastening on a glorious 
 consummation of all God’s dealings with our race.” Amen 
 and amen ! The very stars in their wide courses fight for the 
 Israel of God. The sun in the heavens hears and heeds the 
 summons of the second and greater Joshua. He gives to 
 every man his place, combining the most' diverse and widely 
 scattered labors into the living unity of His plan The wid- 
 ow’s mite is not despised. The precious ointment is not 
 wasted when love for Him breaks the brittle vase. The labor 
 of Dorcas is not forgotten nor unregistered. Every true 
 man, every generous deed, all honest work, all patient endur- 
 ance, even the cup of water given in a disciple’s name, every 
 Sunday-school scholar’s penny, every invalid’s prayer has its 
 honored place in that ministry of grace, whose fruit shall be 
 the redeemed earth. The millions are summoned to make 
 President Garfield’s grave monumental, each dollar subscrip- 
 tion entitling the donor to formal and permanent record of his 
 name on the long roll of honor. That parchment will grovv 
 old and sere, its names passing into oblivion. But he who 
 contributes his treasure and his toil to the erection of God’s 
 monumental temple, under whose ample dome the millions 
 are to worship, will find his name carved in undying lines on 
 its eternal pillars. 
 
 The memories and inspirations of our gathering, fathers 
 and brethren, forbid the recognition of all hard lines of dis- 
 tinction between domestic and foreign missionary operations. 
 
22 
 
 Counting the Cost. 
 
 You who toil among the busy growing millions in this great 
 Valley of the Mississippi, and who behold an empire rapidly 
 growing up beyond the slopes of the Rocky Mountains, for 
 whom the savagery of the Indian, the heathenism of China, 
 and the rotten social life of Utah, are the most terrible of 
 practical problems, are appalled at the magnitude and keenly 
 sensitive to the immediate requirements of the home work. 
 “ We must secure and hold these valleys and coasts,” you tell 
 us, “ for Christ and for His gospel, if we would conquer the 
 continent beyond the Pacific. There is danger that a vigilant 
 enemy may outflank us, and cut off our supplies while we are 
 invading the hostile territory.” Your words of warning do 
 not fall on dull and heavy ears. We of the East share your 
 conviction and solicitude ; we, too, declare, through one of 
 our most honored representatives, that twenty years here, 
 west of the Father of Waters, may be worth five hundred 
 years in China and Japan. Asia can be evangelized only as 
 North America is redeemed, and converted into a base of 
 operations against the powers of heathenism. But a great 
 and ably officered army always moves in concert, however 
 numerous and scattered the departments. Its ultimate object 
 and ruling spirit are always one and the same. And hence, 
 whether we plant churches and schools at home, or push the 
 work abroad, we are doing either aright only when it is done 
 from supreme love for Christ, and with a view to the conquest 
 of the world. The separation of the ventricles of the heart, 
 or the severance of the arteries from the veins, would be 
 vastly more innocent than any conscious breach between the 
 domestic and the foreign missionary work in the living sympa- 
 thies of the Church of God. Not Asia for Christ, or America 
 for the Gospel, but the whole round earth, with all her tribes 
 and races, for the Lord, is the open secret of our commission ; 
 and for its execution home and foreign missionary societies 
 are only the two arms of a single service, neither of which 
 will we suffer to be amputated, paralyzed, or unemployed. 
 And I am sure that whatever ancient and chronic rivalries 
 may be supposed to exist between Chicago and St. Louis, 
 
Counting the Cost, 
 
 23 
 
 there is only the heartiest cooperation between those who, 
 last week, consulted on the home work in the great city of the 
 lakes, and ourselves who, from every part of the land, have 
 come to the metropolis of the Mississippi Valley to pray and 
 to plan for the salvation of the whole earth. Here must we 
 create and stock the arsenals and commissary departments, in 
 the form of living vigorous churches, and Christian schools, 
 whose task it shall be to supply the needed recruits and pro- 
 vide the army of universal conquest with bread and arms. 
 
 Nor must we suffer ourselves to become impatient. The 
 Lord has the ages for His own. Let us not forget that 
 eighteen centuries have been required to make us what we 
 are ; that we have entered into the inheritance of sixty Chris- 
 tian generations ; and that, by comparison, the achievements 
 of missionary endeavor for the last one hundred years consti- 
 tute a chapter of peculiar and unparalleled success. The 
 record of the nineteenth century is more marvelous than that 
 of the first. With seventy societies distributed through the 
 field ; with a force of twenty-four hundred ordained European 
 and American missionaries, and nearly twenty-five thousand 
 native preachers, helpers and catechists ; with a native mem- 
 bership of over a million in the mission churches, represent- 
 ing a population five times as large ; with an expenditure of 
 nearly seven million dollars annually ; with twelve thousand 
 schools and four hundred and fifty thousand pupils ; with the 
 Scriptures translated into nearly three hundred languages and 
 dialects, sixty of which had never before been reduced to 
 writing, and reaching a circulation of a hundred and fifty 
 million copies ; with native and popular movements in Japan, 
 Burmah and India, portentous from their intensity and magni- 
 tude, attended with extravagances peculiarly Oriental, but in- 
 dicative of the approach of national awakenings ; and all the 
 result of little more than three quarters of a century of work, 
 have we any right to complain } Nay, my brethren ; we have 
 reason to be gratefully astonished that so large a blessing has 
 rested on labors so recently undertaken, so scattered and in- 
 adequate. 
 
24 
 
 Counting the Cost. 
 
 Above all, let us have faith ; not simply in the sense of 
 confidence that our cause is worthy and approved of God, but 
 in the sense of assurance that our plans and methods are of 
 Divine suggestion and appointment, and of firm reliance on 
 Jesus Christ, as leading us to victory. Faith has grasp as 
 well as rest. It shouts even when it suffers. It is jubilant 
 while it is anxious. It knows, and therefore dares. It is not 
 enough indolently to believe that God will make good His 
 word, for it has pleased Him to make that word good only as it 
 becomes the life of His servants ; and if God’s word can be 
 made good only in and through us, we must have a clear ap- 
 prehension of His chosen agencies, and adjust ourselves to 
 them. And the supreme agency that he has ordained is the 
 personal ministry of the Holy Ghost, by whom alone the 
 prophets can be anointed and the message of the gospel be 
 made effective. Let us honor Him ! May His baptism fall 
 on us ! 
 
 We have counted the cost, and have found no cause for 
 despondency or fear. When the pious Spener, to whom Ger- 
 man Protestantism owes its first impulse to missionary activ- 
 ity, lay on his death-bed, in 1705, he ordered that his body 
 should be shrouded in garments of white, placed in a white 
 coffin, and wrapped in a white pall, because he would not 
 take so much as a thread of black with him into the grave, 
 having mourned too long, as he confessed, “not only out- 
 wardly, but inwardly in his heart.” As Spener was carried to 
 his burial, so let us go forth to battle, robed and crowned for 
 victory ! 
 
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