Soul-winning

The fruit of the righteous is a tree of life, and whoever captures souls is wise.” Proverbs 11: 30.

In an article in The Student Movement for February 1901, on “A Spiritual Awakening,” by H. W. Old-ham, I have found the following sentences: “In the constitutions of most Student’s Christian Unions it is stated that the chief aim of S.C. Union is to lead students to become disciples of Jesus Christ. But if the question is pressed home, ‘Are students actually being won from indifference and unbelief to faith in Jesus Christ?’ the reply must be that, although in a few instances such is the case, in the majority of Unions it is very doubtful. Some Unions, discouraged by the previous failure, have become skeptical as to the possibility of winning men for Christ in circumstances as difficult as their own. They may carry on to some extent traditional methods of aggressive work, but have ceased to expect to do more than strengthen such as already have faith.

The Executive of the General College Department has definitely set the spiritual awakening of students in the forefront of their policy. If the local Unions will rally around the Executive we may fully expect to see God working in the lives of those round about us.

‘The love that won us can win many. It is right to recognize the seriousness of adopting this aim. Involves close companionship with Jesus Christ in holy living, in self-sacrifice, in loving service; it requires submission to the correction and control of God’s Spirit….We must lift the aim of winning students for Christ out of the background in our work and place it first. Our Unions have more than sufficient mechanical workers. They need men and women with definite aims, who will think and pray, and pray and work until their Union is a fit instrument in God’s hand for transforming the lives of students.”

In an Editorial in the same number, we read with regard to the Day of Prayer, “There are many confessions, and many requests which we shall have to make on the day of prayer; but for ourselves, we feel that the most urgent must be a prayer for a spiritual awakening. We have been gradually recognizing the fact that most of our Unions are not winning men for Christ, and some have begun to realize with dismay that the fact has caused them very little sorrow. ‘It is a misfortune certainly that students have not been won, but — what can we do? Truly a spiritual awakening is needed; needed in our own hearts. When it comes we shall soon find out what to do. Where is the passionate longing to help men? Where is the urgent prayer for our brother that will not be denied?

At the very heart of the whole matter is our lack of interest. It is only what interests us that will influence men.

It is only when deep down among the eternal interests of our soul there flames the passionate desire to lead men to Christ, that we shall meet those who need our help, and who will welcome it. It is only words and deeds which burst from the burning passion of desire to help men, which find opportunities of influencing lives. For it is only where there is a desire like this, that the without Him we are powerless, either to find those who are needy or, having found them, to give them help. Shall we not unitedly ask that a passion for souls may be borne in each of us on the day of prayer?”

To this let me add an extract from an article on “Indian Needs,” in the January number of the same paper. The writer (Rev. W. E. S. Holland, formerly Trav. Sec. B.C.C.U.) had spoken of the central purpose in the creation of Mission Colleges being “the personal influence which the teachers in four of the largest Indian Mission Colleges that their time is so fully taken up with lecturing that they have neither time nor spirit for personal oneness with their students. Five or six hours a day, with several more in preparation, in an Indian climate, leave a man exhausted, with neither time nor nervous energy for that intensest of all work, individual dealing with a man about his soul.”

He concludes his paper with these words: “40,000 men are wanted, not less if all India is to hear. Yet one almost shrinks from an appeal for men. Why? Lest men should come to be cumberers of the ground. For missionary work is, after all, only soul-winning. And there is nothing to make a man a soul-winner in India who has not been one at home.

A sense of duty, or of the great need, may bring a man to India. Nothing can enable him to live year by year a missionary life out here, save such a burning love for Christ as constrains to sacrifice and a life of soul-winning at home.”

What thoughts these extracts suggest in regard to the work of soul- winning! That it is the first great requisite in the missionary. That going to a mission field will not necessarily make a man a soul- winner. That it is at home, ere one enters the mission field that the spirit of self-sacrifice and soul-winning must be got and be exercised. To train its members in the art of soul-winning is one of the chief aims of the Student Movement, as the practice of it will be the measure of its strength and success. That the danger ever threatens of our lapsing out of this into traditional and mechanical methods. That continual, fervent, united, and private prayer ought to be made for more love to souls, and continual, earnest, united, and private efforts is put forth in every Students’ Union that our companions may be won for Christ.

The great characteristic of the Divine life, whether in God, in Christ, or in us, is- love seeking to save the lost. Let this be the Christian life we cultivate; a love that finds its blessedness in saving men. This life can be cultivated in no other man by close personal attachment to Jesus, and daily fellowship with Him as a Friend we love.

It is in the inner chamber that this fellowship with the Father and the son is to be maintained. It is in this that the father who sees us in secret will reward us openly.