Cabourne... ..... 10 12 10 Covenham: St. Bartholomew's........... 1 4 2 Grantham 10 0 0 ....... 40 00 Middlesex: Belgrave Chapel. Ealing... Hampstead....... Harefield.. Islington St. John's, Holloway. Kensington, South: St. Paul's.. St. Matthew's, Oakley Square.... Norfolk: Catfield.. Northamptonshire: Northampton 23 4 1 ....350 0 0 Burgoyne, John Chas., Esq., Harley Street.... D. K.... Dewe, Miss, Aldworth Rise... Friend in Leeds. Gould, Rev. Joseph, Repton....... Markby, Alfred, Esq., New Square.. Phillimore, Rear-Admiral H. B., Lans- Rose, Sir W., K.C.B., Bruton Street....... S. G... S. W. .........100 00 Kingsbrompton....... 2 10 0 6 15 4 0 0 6 16 3 10 9 9 1 13 9 Shropshire: Chetton.................... Dorrington..... Somersetshire: Bath, &c......... Dulverton..... Luxborough ...........200 46 5 6 0 0 Burton-on-Trent Juvenile. Cannock.. Colwich. Darlaston: All Saints'.................................................. Great Haywood Leek Ladies 10 1 6 Stretton.... Dorking: St. Paul's....... Egham. ...... 6 0 0 19 0 0 by Jno. Waring, Esq..... 1 3 8 16 5 11 27 0 0 64 19 6 LEGACIES. 18 2 0 Auriol, Rev. E 2700 0 0 6 13 10 Brealey, Miss Sarah Ann, of Leek. 19 19 0 50 0 0 Buxton, late Rev. F. Arthur. .100 0 0 55 8 5 Goodwin, Miss E. A. 129 1 8 80 0 0 Holloway, Mr. C. H......... 50 0 0 MacAllan, Mrs............. 13 17 9 Parkin, Mr. Wm. .100 6 8 Surbiton: Christ Church. Upper Tooting and Balham Weybridge...... Sussex: Brighton, &c... Broadwater and Worthing... Eastbourne....... Lindfield.. Smith, Mrs. Hannah, Birmingham......... 19 19 0 FOREIGN CONTRIBUTIONS. Canada: Montreal.. 7 13 0 China Shanghai.. 13 10 10 314 9 Uckfield. Warwickshire: Alcester.. 4 1 3 EXTENSION FUND. Birmingham. Coleshill.. .600 0 0 Bevan, Charles J., Esq., Bryanston 5 0 3 Square...... Rugby.. Westmoreland: Ambleside. Kirkby-Thore.. Worcestershire: Wolverley... Worcester Ladies.. Yorkshire: Arthington....... 23 10 0 100 40 19 6 S. L., Kettering... Wostenholm, Mrs., Sheffield.. .....500 0 0 10 0 0 20 0 0 HENRY WRIGHT MEMORIAL FUND. Barclay, C. A., Esq., Nutfield.... 50 0 0 13 15 7 Bridlington Quay... 40 8 5 Cust, R. N., Esq., St. George's Square. 500 10 0 0 Edstone.. 2 6 0 Grindleton......... York.. Kennaway, Sir J. H., Hyde Park Square 250 GAZA MEDICAL MISSION FUND. Thankoffering from the Honorary Secre tary.. 500 550 Venn, Rev. John, Hereford 100 0 0 .500 0 0 BENEFACTIONS. VICTORIA NYANZA FUND. Angas, Miss G., Tunbridge Wells... Anonymous.......... 10 0 0 ..500 0 0 Boyd, Miss, Ballynahinch.. 10 0 0 Burgess, Miss S., Clifton.... 10 0 3 .......... Contributions to the Church Missionary Society are received at the Society's House, Salisbury Square, THE CHURCH MISSIONARY INTELLIGENCER AND RECORD. OCTOBER, 1881. THE GOSPEL NET. BY THE REV. CANON TRISTRAM, LL.D., F.R.S. Luke v. 6, and John xxi. 11:-" And when they had this done, they inclosed a great multitude of fishes: and their net brake.” "Simon Peter went up, and drew the net to land full of great fishes, an hundred and fifty and three: and for all there were so many, yet was not the net broken." HESE two Evangelists have here given us in very minute detail the crises of two incidents-both of them, but for surrounding circumstances, of the most ordinary and commonplace character, and yet they have found their place, not without reason, we may be very certain, in the record of Inspiration. It is remarkable how in a Book which was to teach all mankind for all time, so large a portion should be occupied with events and occurrences apparently trivial and insignificant, whilst the convulsions of empires, the upheavals of states, the great catastrophes of history, are all passed by without an allusion, save where something touches some obscure family or person whose history is entwined with the Bible narrative. It can only be because the Bible has given each of those incidents to teach us something beyond and outside the record. And what is the lesson, the spiritual lesson, here? Let us notice the difference between the two occurrences. On the first occasion the net broke; on the second occasion, "though the fishes were so many, yet was not the net broken." Yet on both occasions the disciples cast in the net at the Lord's bidding. The command indeed was more specific on the last occasion, "Cast on the right side of the ship and ye shall find;' " but the result was the same on both-in so far as that a great multitude of fishes was inclosed. But there was a difference in the time of the two events-a very material difference when we look at the history of our Lord's sojourn upon earth. On the first occasion the New Dispensation had not been fully promulgated. The transition period had just begun between the Law and the Gospel. Under both the Law and the Gospel there was but one object-to enclose souls. There was one great object-the aim of all spiritual fishing, both before and since the New Testament Dispensation-to enclose the souls of men within the net of a great salvation. But at the first time, recorded by St. Luke, when the disciples had only just been called, they were under the dispensation of the Law. Their only idea was to teach men by bringing them under that Law. And in so striving the net broke. The Law could not save men; it might enclose them but it could not keep them. "But what the Law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh that the righteousness of the Law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit." Then, when this full revelation was made, the net could hold. That net could never break. Christ had offered the one sacrifice. Christ had now by His resurrection conquered death, and now that salvation was given through Him the net could stand the strain. However many the fishes, yet the net was not broken, because its strength was in the perfect righteousness of the Saviour, with His power to save all that come unto Him! It was a strength that adapted it to the needs of all men for all time. When the Master called His disciples the first time He found them mending their nets. Then they were old nets. Then they were old nets. Their spiritual net was but the enclosure of the Law, and they only knew how to mend it by interweaving with it the old traditions of the elders, the glosses of the scribes, the tales that were afterwards incorporated in the Talmud, the ingenious sophistries of the Pharisees,-and this illpatched net could never hold. But when a short three years afterwards these same men had again gone a-fishing, many things had happened in the interval. They had heard much; they had seen much; they had learned much. In the morning dawn they saw One stand by the shore after a night of failure. And now the command not only brought to them a great multitude of fishes, but it provided for them a new net-the Gospel net, which though the fishes were ever so many yet was the net not broken. Nor ever shall be. This is a salvation capable of embracing all men, and of those who are once within its folds none shall be lost, for they are all given Him by the Father. The fishes, however many they be, are but a faint and feeble emblem of the number of the saved. All of these fishes could be numbered, and their number is recorded. The saved are spoken of as an innumerable multitude whom no man can number. But what is impossible with man is possible with God. God can number them; aye, and does number them. The least of them is known to Him who can tell each sparrow as it falls, and knows the exact number of fishes in the cast. "Are not," He asks, "two sparrows sold for a farthing," and yet so little money value have they that when four are bought a fifth is thrown in as not worth a thought, and the five fetch but two farthings, and "yet not one of them is forgotten before God." And so we are told the exact number of the fishes here-one hundred and fifty and three. The number has excited the ingenuity of old writers and commentators, and page after page has been written by father and learned doctor as to the meaning and analysis of the number 153. Without entering into these speculations, the simple fact of this number being given was probably not without reason. It seems to say that all those who are within the Gospel net are counted. These fishes were counted as God counts souls. Each individual is noted by Him. They are all counted up. One hundred and fifty and three! It is not by the gross-it is not by the score-it is not even seven score-it is not by the dozen, nor even by the couple, -it is an uneven number, not a multiple of any other number, but betokening as it were an individual reckoning. Aye, as those fishes were told one by one, so the souls of men are counted by God. They are not summed up in countries and churches; they are not calculated as combined in congregations; they are not told off as in guilds; they are not counted in companies; they are not reckoned in families; they are not numbered in societies; nay, not even husband and wife, not even two living hand in hand, but individually, separately, singly before God stands each soul. "Two women shall be grinding at the mill; one shall be taken and the other left." "Ye shall be gathered one by one, O ye children of Israel," says the Prophet. But what is the net that gathers these souls? It cannot be the framework of the visible Church, for many a soul escapes through its meshes and is not landed to life eternal. It is not schemes and organizations of man's device for drawing souls. It is the kingdom of heaven which is the net cast into the sea. It is cast by human hands, but it is God's net; and we must keep in mind how very different is the net from the hands that cast it. Often we are tempted to look on the human instruments as if they were the net, and when one and another-perchance a promising young hero in the missionary army, in the midst of a career just beginning-another in the midst of untold usefulness-when just at the time they appear to be gathering the fruit of their labours, their hands are paralyzed and struck down by death, we might think the net was breaking. It is not so. When the hands of one who had cast this net with divinelyinspired cunning for some years, who had begun to be looked upon as a veritable Elisha on whom the mantle of Elijah had fallen-when in the cold waters of that Westmoreland lake the hands of Henry Wright yielded up their hold of the net, we might have fancied that the Church Missionary net was breaking. When that gallant pioneer, one who among the missionary band so well understood and knew the Afghan character, went and seized the opportunity of the first opening into that wild, untamed land,-when Gordon went there and found that even a Moslem Mollah was the first to welcome and listen to him, and when in his duty of tending the sick and closing the eyes of the dying a bullet struck down that missionary hero, it might seem that the net was rent. It is not so. These human hands might have drawn a great multitude,-they seemed to be drawing it,they are suddenly called to let go their incompleted task,—but the net has not given way. Others shall be found to take up those dropped folds. The net may be fearfully strained, but it is not permitted to break, and help shall come in answer to prayer. For what is prayer but the finger beckoning heavenward to summon some partner in some other boat to take the place of those who have fallen in the struggle? God will yet raise up those who shall draw in an unbroken net. And what is the great Church Missionary Society, the organized representative and embodiment of the growing, the accruing, and aggrandizing element of the Protestantism of the Church of England, but a great net cast into the sea? In its organized form, made up of the contributions of brethren ever striving each to do his part, it is a net cast wide into the sea of corrupt humanity, and during now almost three generations, many a cast has been made,-sometimes in storms, and enclosing but few fishes, for Full many a dreary, anxious hour We watch our nets alone In drenching spray, and driving shower, At morn we look, and nought is there; Who then from pining and despair To cheer our solitary song, And guide us to the strand, In His own time; but yet awhile, And this net the Church Missionary Society is casting into many an untried sea, where "wildest storms our ocean sweep; " yet we are not forsaken. It was after toiling all night that the morning brought a great multitude of fishes. Yet these same waters had been swept by the net time after time, at night, the most likely time for catching fish, again and again, in vain. And shall we despair? Time was when fishermen might scan the unknown seas, and vainly ask for signs of a draught, time was when the founders of this great society looked on unknown seas, and vainly sought for a place where they might cast their net,―time was when China was sealed, when Japan was sealed, when Africa was a closed mystery, when our own India was forbidden ground, when the savage aborigines of the Isles of the South were inaccessible; but now the whole world has been opened. "There remains no corner unexplored, and God's work on earth will remain undone if we of this great Anglo-Saxon race do it not," says a great historical writer. We can see shoals waiting on every side. One of the signs of the deepest practical interest is the present accessibility of the whole heathen world to missionary effort, and more than this, the eager desire for secular knowledge, for material civilization after the type of Christian nations, and the wonderful transformation of nations long stagnant and apathetic. These movements open the door for the Gospel. Knowledge thus obtained overthrows much of heathen superstition. The confessed superiority of the Englishman, in arts and sciences, suggests the probability that his religion is superior also. By imparting the lower secular instruction the Christian teacher gains an audience for truth of less obvious utility, but of infinitely higher worth. Yes; the door has been open more widely. We see where we can throw the net and where the fish are in multitudes. But the adversaries are not fewer or less active than formerly. |