The Spiritual Life of the Workers
The general emphasis on active service, which has been the dominant note in the evangelical thought of the home church for the past fifteen years or more, is fortunately so far undergoing modification as to allow of an equal emphasis on the spiritual life of devotion and fellowship as the condition of right and fruitful service. This due balance of emphasis is greatly needed. The demands of the work are so overwhelming. “Do! Do! Do!” is the imperative call from every side. The equally important call, “Be! Be! Be!” is more faintly heard. There is ever the danger that, in the desire to do the work, the conditions of the devotional life, with its habits of Bible study and prayer, may be less and less met. Again and again Alexander McLaren’s words suggest themselves: “Without much solitary communion with Jesus, effort for him tends to become mechanical, and to lose the elevation of nature and the suppression of self which gives it all its power. It is not lost time which the busiest worker, confronted with the most imperative calls for service, gives to still fellowship in secret with God. There can never be too much activity in Christian work, but there is often disproportionate activity, which is too much for the amount of time given to meditation and communion. That is one reason why there is so much sowing and so little reaping in Christian work to-day.” A deep spiritual life, fed from ever-fresh fountains of living water, understanding the place of fellowship, prayer, and Bible study is necessary, not only for the worker’s joy and effectiveness, but also for the sake of those for whom he labors. The missionary is their standard of life and faith. . . . Realizing this, and out of a century’s experience, one of the greatest of all missionary societies says to its new missionaries in its “instructions:” “Beware of the temptation to omit or abridge devotional exercises. A high spiritual tone, however unostentatious, would make a missionary useful, even if it stood unaccompanied by any other qualifications than those which necessarily result from it. Let one or two hours be therefore daily given to private communion with God in prayer, and in reading the Scriptures. Let it be actual communion—converse with God in solitude, real pouring out of the heart before him, real reception from his fullness.”—Regions Beyond.