"He shows his Roman readers his method; telling them that from Jerusalem
unto Illyricum (just across the Adriatic Sea from Italy) he had 'fully
preached the Gospel of Christ.' Now he was ready to look farther, his
task to those regions being accomplished. What did he mean? Was he
leaving behind him converted areas, whose every inhabitant magnified God
in Christ Jesus? Far from it. 'Fully preached' though he had,
communities were still heathen, but for the lights that he had kindled
from place to place in his persecuted journeyings. Remembering that he
is in his life the model for Gospel preaching, as he is in his writings
the messenger of Christian doctrine, must we not see that the Gospel is
for _broadcast sowing_, not for close gardening, save by the careful
hands that God will raise up in the wake of the evangelist. Or, to use
another figure, it is the _notification, to lost heirs_, of a fortune
bequeathed them; and the responsibility of the ones entrusted with the
carrying out of the will is not so much to persuade heirs to receive
their inheritance as to notify them of it. So the Apostle preached 'not
where Christ was named,' having a zeal to discharge his debtorship of
making known to all nations God's gift of grace. Now over into
Spain--far, far afield, as distances then were gauged--the eager eyes of
the Apostle looked and longed for a crown of rejoicing from that land
also in the day of Christ. In him we see the faithful exposition of the
missionary idea."
By this time Hubert was looking at the speaker very intently, with
widened, almost startled, eyes that were opening to a new idea. Winifred
also sat with riveted gaze, her cheeks slightly paling beneath the
deepening conviction of a tremendous truth. True worshiper that she was,
to know the truth must be to shape her life in consonance with it, and a
voice at her heart gave warning that to be conformed to this newly
revealed will of God would be pain. But where was the theory that had
seemed so clear and sensible to both Hubert and herself when they came to
the meeting? Hubert always had clear ideas. What would he say to this?
Now Mr. Carew was saying:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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