The Birmingham age-herald., 1922-02-19
WITNESS BEARING

Judas Iscariot was one of the twelve apostles, and I do not doubt that often he had preached and called men to come to God through Christ. The prosecutors of the middle ages were leading Christian men. They preached, and sought to drive men to Christ with law and rack and flame. Great councils of the church have met in ses- sions which extended over years, and sought to enclose the faith of Jesus in the form of human language. These all were witnesses, and I wonder how many men they led to God.
 And through the years when they were at work, other men were working too. While the Apostle Judas was planning betrayal, his humble listeners in mart and shipyard were consscrating their lives to God. The prosecutors brought many men to Cod unwittingiy; those whom they had driven as heretics from the doors of churches; those who as heretics found God and were found of God amid the swirling flames of preju- dice. While great churchmen were speaking in councils, humble Christians who could not say the creed were leading quiet lives of Christ-like devotion. And the witnesses to God through all the ages whose voices have been heard and believed, have been the men through whose humble, quiet and faithful lives, like beacon God was shining.
 These simple truths go to the very heart of the Christian religion, and to the heart of all other religion that is worth while. God calls to the world in many ways, and has called, but the only call that men have heard, or seemingly have been able to hear, l. III 4I..4. AL,1I oF who has made God his own, and whom God has made His own. It was for this very reason, so we Christians believe, that God came and dwelt with men as man. So long as He abode in heaven, and spoke to us from far-off places, and sent His word down from the smoking mountain graven on two tablets of stone; so long as the prophets came and told about God, promis- ing glories or threatening punishments as we heard, or needed not, just so long was God a stranger to us and we aliens to Him. It was as if travellers had returned from distant lands telling us of glories they had seen. Their tales were interesting, but the glories were remote, and we had not seen them, nor made them ours. Since God wished US to partake of His glory, he was compelled to do one of two things: He must take us to it, or bring it to us. The first was impossible; the last He did. And we no longer heard about God. We saw God. We saw His love shining through human eyes; we heard Him speak in tender human ac cents; we felt the touch of His gentle, min istering hand. In Christ, we saw and knew at last what God in human life could mean. The words which Christ spake were only a small part of Christ's teaching, and that minor part. Every spoken word which the New Testament records could be wiped from the mind of man, and there would still be left the figure of Him in whom God lived and wrought and loved.
 This would be enough. And it will be enough if you and forget the things which divide us, and seek the more earnestly to live Gods life. Our sermons and our laws and our invectives and prosecutions profit nothing; our creeds not much. If God calls to the world through our lives, these are all unnecessary. If He does not, they are all in vain.
 MIDDLETON S. FAREWELL.