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THE WORLD’S SEARCH FOR A MAN
Tenth Annual Sermon Before Tabernacle
Baraoas.
TEXT—“And I sought for a man among
them ,that should make up the hedge, and stand
in the gap before me for the land, that I
should not destroy it: but I found none.” —
Ezekiel 22: 30.
T
HE other day, realizing that I was
to preach this sermon, and desiring
that it should be as practical as
possible, I approached one of our
leading business men, a man whose
name, if I were to mention it here,
would be recognized by almost
everybody in this house, a man
well known in business and relig-
ions circles, and I asked him this question:
“What do you regard to be the supreme need
of the present day?’’ He hesitated a moment,
then looked me in the face and said, “I am
able to answer you in one word.” I said, “Let’s
have it.” He said, “Men.” I said, “I think
you are right, and you have given me a key
for a sermon that I am going to preach next
Sunday night. The world has everything else
that it needs but men.”
You take business. This same man talking
to me on this line said: “At the present time I
am worked almost to death at the head of five
or six different enterpris.es, trying to keep them
going—all because I can not find men to take
charge of them.” I said, “Do you mean to tell
me that you can not find men among all the
men in Atlanta?” “Oh,” he said, “I can find
plenty of things, plenty of people in the mas
culine gender, but I can not find men. ’ ’ They
are so scarce that they have already been
found, and hence I have to do this work my
self.”
And so, my friends, when you begin to look
around you for men to man the various de
partments of business in the -world today, you
have got a hard task ahead of you, if you find
them. I walked into a dry goods store the other
day and the senior member of the firm, walking
around with me, said, as he pointed to a wo
man, “I give that woman a salary of $125 a
month.” I said, “Why is it, then, that you
pay that woman so much more than anybody
else. ’’ ‘‘Well, I will tell you, ’’ he replied, ‘‘that
woman gives to me every ounce of her time.
That woman thinks for me every moment of the
day. She hasn’t so much more sense than any
other woman that I have in my employ, but
she uses what she has to help me make my busi
ness a success.”
I was on a railway train going out west last
summer and noticed a man sitting in front of
me in the car who seemed a bit lonely, and
as I was also a bit lonely, we entered into con
versation. I found out that he was an agent
for a great railway corporation in the west,
charged with the duty of finding men, and for
doing it he was paid a salary of $20,000 a year.
$20,000 a year, to do nothing but ride about
over the country, stopping at big hotels, and
looking in upon various congregations and as
semblies and institutions where men were gath
ered, in the hope of finding men that could
actually take hold of the business interests of
that corporation and make it go!
Take the political world. What means the
present searchlight thrown out by the two
great political parties over our country at this
present time? You can not go anywhere that
you do not find yourself in the path of it.
What does this mean? It means that the lead
ers of these two parties are searching for a man
who shall fill the presidency of the United
States, and this searchlight sent out by these
parties is a light sent out for a man. The day
will be when it will be a search for votes, but
at the present time it is a search for men that
can command them.
Take religion. There never was a time in
the history of the Christian Church when it
The Golden Age for March 7, 1912.
Tabemacle Sermon by Rev. Len G. Broughton, D.D.
Stenographically reported for The Golden Age-—Copyright applied for.
realized the need of men as it does today. O!
she has got men; men of wealth, men of cul
ture, men of education, good men, eloquent
men, men of learning, and all that, but there
are very few men that can actually take hold
of the Kingdom of Christ and make it go. And
this is what the Church wants. Men that can
make the Church move, and when the Church
finds a man like that, every effort that can be
possibly put forth is put forth to get him ? for
he is rare. He is hard to find; and they liter
ally compass sea and land to make one prose
lyte of that character
And, my friends, as this is true with refer
ence to the affairs of the world, so it is true
with reference to God and His work particu
larly.
Our text here presents us with a picture of
God searching for a man. Jerusalem, the city
of God, has transgressed. She has fallen into
the dust. Her people are characterized as liars,
and murderers and oppressors of the poor,
hypocrites and the like. And God looks down
upon it all and His heart is pained, and He be
gins to try to save the city from ruin. What
is His method? His method is to find a man—
one man. One man to stand in the gap and
patch up the breech, one man, that through
him He may save the city. What a picture!
God trying to save a great city through a man
and can not find one!
And my friend, just as this is true of Jeru
salem, it has been true ever in the history of
God’s movements among men. With every
great crisis through which man has passed,
God has been found searching for a man.
Go back to Eden. When God made man He
crowned him with a free will. In the exercise
of that free will man plunged the world into
sin, then God stepped in upon the scene and
cried, “Adam, where art thou?’ Searching for
a man at the very beginning of the history
of the world.
Come down into Noah’s time. The earth is
so plunged into sin and wickedness that God
is sorry that He ever made man, and He plans
to destroy it, but before doing so, He searches
among the men for one man, that through
this one man He may replenish the earth.
Come down to the time of Moses. When the
children of Israel were in bondage in Egypt,
God planned their liberation, but it depended
upon one man, and Moses was the one man
found of God to do that work.
Come on down to the time of Christ. The
law has failed and the time is come when God
inaugurates grace, the dynamic of which is
love. He seeks a man, but no man is to be
found to properly represent that love, and to
establish that grace. And so God incarnated
Himself, clothed Himself as man, that through
Him He might touch and save men.
Why did God become man in Christ? We
might stop here and theorize about it for over
an hour and still we could get no nearer to
that great question upon which men have writ
ten volume upon top of volume, than this —
God took upon Him the form of man that He
might touch and save man; and in all God’s
dealing with men, He has moved through men
to accomplish His work among men.
But somebody asks, “Why does God need
men? Can not He do His work independent
of men? Why does He need men?”
I want to submit three answers: First, it is
that He may bring together need and sup
ply. One has only to look around him to real
ize the superabundance of both —need and sup
ply.
Take need. O, the need that we see all about
us today! Material need, heart need, physical
need, spiritual need. O, the need! Many of
you will remember a little boy that we have
had for two years at our Infirmary. When he
came to us he was unable to walk. Some of
you have seen him these last few days. He has
passed through operation after operation until
he is now able to walk about on his, feet. Last
Sunday night a most pathetic thing occurred.
Little Horace slipped away Without permission
, from the Hospital, after the nurses had gone,
and was found by one of the ushers at the
Church door, who asked him if he did not want
to. take his place with the nurses. With a tear
in his eye Horace replied, “No, I am off duty
tonight.”. He had been there so long he
thought he had to be on dress parade like*the
rest. When he got back that night and the
Superintendent found it out, she talked to him
about it, and he thought she was going to scold
him and his lips began to quiver, and the tears
welled up into his eyes. She said, “Why did
you do that, Horace?” He said, tremblingly,
‘ ‘ I wanted to so bad. ’ ’
That remark illustrates the cry of every hu
man heart in this presence at some time or
other.
It does seem that God has ordained that
there is nothing in this world that can really
satisfy all our longings. Need everywhere!
Need! Need!
Oh, my friends, I thank God that there is no
need for which there is not provided a supply.
I do not believe there is a single throb of the
heart that God does not provide some balm
to heal it. Let me encourage you with the
statement, that there is somewhere in this great
vast universe of God a remedy; but that remedy
can only be communicated to you thrdugh some
individual, man or woman. The bridge that
spans the chasm between need and supply, is
the bridge of human shoulders.; Over the
shoulders of men travel the train of supply.
Men have got .to supply men. Gdd in no in
stance leaves man out in His effort to meet
the needs of, men. ■■■■>■
Here, now before me, I see a splendid array
of young men. God wants you, young fellow,
that through you He may reach some other
young fellow. You do not know how soon it
will be true of you that some other fellow will
be used to meet your need 1 .
Then, in the second place, God needs men in
order that He may make understandable His
law of requirement. Do you know that lan
guage means nothing in this world unless it is
interpreted. Words are great things'. But
they are worthless unless they are translated.
We may have all the dictionaries in the world
at our command, and still we will be unable
to understand the words unless their defini
tions are interpreted by life. I walked into
a college one day not long ago, and entering
the room of a boy, I saw over his mantlepiece
the words, “Honesty is the best policy.” I
said to myself, “What does a student' know
about honesty, unless back of it there is some
life that has impressed him. Perhaps it is the
life of an old, tottering, horny-handed, self-sac
rificing father that is to him the embodiment
of honesty.” ~ tr 5,
I talked some ime ago with a missionary from
China, and during our conversation, said to
him, “How is it that you are able to make
plain to the Chinese many of the great pivot
words of our religion, words, some of them, so
hard for us here to understand?” “We can
only do it,” he replied, “as we put our life
into them.” And then he went further and
said, “It is the life of a missionary that speaks
louder than his language.”
Oh. my friends, this is true of us. It is the
life of a Christian that speaks louder than his
testimony. We may stand and preach as elo
quently as we may about the love of God, and
the brotherhood of man, but until we get down
from our preaching, and actually demonstrate
our preaching in our conduct before our fel
lows all our preaching is as sounding brass
and tinkling cimbal. It is. the life that inter
prets the language., .
And God wants men to set up His standards.
You remember Phillip, after being instructed
(Continued on page 14.)