Verse 1
The Work of the Few and the Many.
The history of mankind, whether secular or religious, resolves itself into the history of a few individuals. It is not that all the rest do not live their own lives, or can shirk their own eternal responsibilities; but it is that the march and movement of the many is as surely influenced by the genius of the few as is the swing of the tide by the law of gravitation. It is a law of our being that we should belong the vast majority of us to the unknown, to the unrecorded masses, who, long before the very things we own have perished, shall have passed away out of all remembrance as utterly as though we had never been.
I. There, then, is one great fact of life; another, and a far sadder one, is that, by a sort of fatal gravitation, the human race seems of itself to tend downwards. It is impulse, passion, temptation, more than reason, that often sways the heart of each man, and therefore of all men. It is the few only who are saints; the few only who are heroes.
II. How does God carry out His work of continuous redemption? It is by the energy of His chosen few. Into their hearts He pours the power of His Spirit; upon their heads He lays the hands of His consecration. The history of mankind is like the history of Israel in the days of the Judges. The deliverance of mankind has never been wrought by the multitude; always by the individual.
III. We learn from this subject: (1) the secret, the sole secret, of moral power. Who that reads the signs of the times can fail to perceive how much this age needs to learn the secret. By faith, each in his age and order, these saints of God delivered his generation, inspired his successors, wrought righteousness in a faithless world. (2) We may notice also that the work of these saints of God, being always and necessarily human, is never permanent in its special results. There is an infinite pathos in the predestined failure of men and institutions which leave no adequate heirs to propagate their impulse, to carry on their purposes. Abraham dies, and in a century his descendants are slaves. When the influence of God's saints has spent its force, if the work pauses for a moment, everything falls into ruin and corruption. Only as an inspiring, passionate, continuous energy can Christianity regenerate the world. (3) These apparent failures were never absolute. No good man, no saint of God, has ever lived or died in vain. The very best of us leaves his tale half untold, his message imperfect; but if we have but been faithful, then, because of us, some one who follows us with a happier heart and in happier times, shall utter our message better and tell our tale more perfectly. Some one shall run and not be faint; some one shall fly with wings where we have walked with weary feet.
F. W. Farrar, Sermons and Addresses in America, p. 202.
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