SENSITIVE TO THE WORLD'S NEEDS.
By J. H. Jowett
BUT we need to be sensitive, not only to the world's sorrow and to the world's sin, but also to the world's awakenings and yearnings. You will notice my descriptive word "awakening." "Awake, thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead." I would know when men are awakening long, long before they may arise. I would have so fine a discernment as to know when the sleep of indifference and of death is just breaking up in a man, and he is turning his half-opened eyes upon the light of life. I would know when the first faint spiritual impulse is knocking at the door of his life, and he is half inclined to lift the latch. "When thou wast under the fig-tree, I saw thee." That is when I would see the man, before he comes out into open discipleship, when he is brooding by himself, and, may-hap, with torn and wounded fingers blindly groping his way to the light. Nay, I would know him earlier still, before the groping had begun, when perhaps the first cold, chilly wind of dissatisfaction has blown across his sinful revels, and he is beginning to be disquieted within him. "When he was yet a long way off, his father saw him." That is the sight I covet for myself and for the church, this telescopic sight, which sees a man in a far-off country, when he is away in the fields of debasement and want, when first he turns his longing, tired eyes in the direction of the homeland, even before he has taken a single step on the homeward way! But if the church is to discern the prodigal when he is still a long way off, how sensitive she must be! She must have the very gentleness and compassion and delicacy of the Lord, or she will never thrill to the far away. If she be insensitive, she will know her prodigals only when they knock loudly at her door, and to her will be denied the golden privilege of helping and cheering them on the way. If we would win the world, we must surprise it by our knowledge of sorrow, by our pained recognition of its sin, and by our excellent discernment of its trembling yearnings after light.—J. H. Jowett.