Stanley P. Smith’s Exeter Hall Farewell Address

Stanley P. Smith was a missionary to China with the China Inland Mission. He was one of a group of seven wealthy, well known, Cambridge graduates who came to be known as the Cambridge Seven who together left this world's riches to follow Christ’s call to China. Among the group was the famous cricketer turned missionary to China, C.T. Studd. The following is Stanley P. Smith’s address at the group's final farewell at Exeter Hall in London on February 4, 1885 as recorded in the book The Evangelisation of the World, A Missionary Band: A Record of Consecration, and an Appeal by B. Broomhall. The address shows their motivation and the same Christ in us is stirring us into action to reach our present generation:

"There is a Proverb which occurs in the eleventh chapter of the Book, which reads thus: 'There is that scattereth, and yet increaseth; and there is that withholdeth more than is meet, but it tendeth to poverty.' I suppose that we all allow that we are under obligation to spread the knowledge of a good thing. It is this simple fact, coupled with our having heard the clear note of the Master’s call, which is sending us out from England's shores. We do not go to that far-distant field to speak of doctrine or theory, but of a living, bright, present, reigning SAVIOUR. This was the exact Gospel which made that Thessalonian church of old such an evangelistic church. We read, in the space of one year after receiving it, they had made the glad tidings sound throughout the whole regions of Macedonia and Achaia, so that the Apostle hardly needed to speak anything. We find the secret of this spread of the Gospel was this: Paul had passed through Amphipolis and Apollonia, and came to Thessalonica, and the burden of his message was such that there is another KING, one JESUS. And these Thessalonians, who were not going to believe in any half-way religion had gladly received the mighty Monarch as King and LORD of their whole being, and had given themselves right up to the Master. They were not going to propagate what was the milk-and-water of religion, but the cream of the Gospel, and to tell what a blessed thing it was to have the love of the LORD JESUS CHRIST reigning in their hearts. This, dear friends, is the Gospel we want to recommend. We want to go out to the Chinaman, buried in theories and prejudices, and bound by the chains of lust, and say, 'My brother, I bring to you an Almighty Saviour!’ We want to point them to Him whose blood has atoned for sin, and made peace for the whole world, if only the whole world knew it. And it is our earnest hope and desire that the outcome of this meeting will be that scores and scores of those whom we now see before us will before long go out, not only to China, but to every part of the world, to spread the glorious Gospel.

“For years in this England we have been debtors. We have had every conceivable privilege, and every conceivable means of getting hold of the truth, and bathing ourselves in Gospel light. If we are groping in heathen darkness it is our own fault. But the gospel is rejected by multitudes of people in this country, and it seems to me the cry might go from many throats, 'Seeing ye put it from you and judge yourselves unworthy of everlasting life, lo, we turn to the Gentiles.' Let us try and take a bird's-eye view of this world. And oh, that GOD may expand our hearts that we may think of the sympathy of that GOD who unbosomed Himself that He might bring the world back to Himself, and has committed to us the glorious privilege of making known the only way by which men come to the Father! If we take such a view of the world we shall not keep our hearts long upon England. We shall remember 'there is that scattereth, and yet increaseth; and there is that withholdeth more than is meet, but it tendeth to poverty.' It is my earnest prayer that there may be such an outlet of men and women from this country as shall lead to an inlet of blessing from heaven, so that there will not be room enough to receive it.

"The blessed Master has Himself given, and has taught us to give; pledging His royal word that it shall be 'given to us, good measure, shaken together, pressed down, and running over.' Yet only within the last century have we begun to think at all of the great need of the heathen world. The Pope of Rome, as soon as he lost England and other countries at the Reformation, was ready enough to send his missionaries far abroad, but this nation, with the Bible open, in the written and spoken dialect of the people, read unheeding for three centuries the words, 'Go ye into all the world, and preach the Gospel to every creature;' and it is only within the last century that we have attempted to obey it. The first man who did seek to obey was not a learned man; he could not claim any university education; he was only a cobbler. Yes, a cobbler, from one of the obscure towns of England was the first to send the Gospel to the heathen. This man, in conjunction with about eleven others, had been meeting together. The needs of the world had been laid upon his heart, and for eight years he had been praying to the living GOD that He would provide the men and send out the Gospel, but for eight years his prayer had not been answered, and he and his friends met to renew their appeal. As he was coming out from this meeting he put his hand on the shoulder of Andrew Fuller, and said, 'Are we going to separate again, and is nothing to be done?' These friends conferred together, and decided to make a practical beginning; and William Carey went to India.

"FEEDING EIGHTY OF THE FIVE THOUSAND.

"Now, my friends, the living LORD is here amongst us, and oh! how He yearns that multitudes out of this great number should go forth to the perishing world! He has given us the Gospel that we may proclaim it to others, and not that we may keep it ourselves. You remember once when the five thousand were before Him, and the disciples wished Him to send them away that they might buy themselves food, He gave His disciples bread and fish, and said, 'They need not depart, give ye them to eat.' He was there to multiply the food and to make it sufficient. And what did the disciples do? Let us make a parable out of this story for ourselves. Imagine the apostles are here distributing the food, and that this great assembly is the hungry multitude that is waiting to be fed. They go to the first row of benches distributing the food, and to the second and the third and the fourth, and so on to the eighth row. But at the end of the eighth row they stop and turn back to the first, and feed these eight rows again, pouring bread and fish into their laps and piling it about them, leaving the starving multitudes behind uncared for. What do you suppose our LORD would say if He were here? He would say, 'What are you doing? Here, Andrew, Peter, John, what are you doing? Don't you see the starving multitudes behind?' Let us take the parable to ourselves, for this is what we have been doing. We have been feeding those nearest to us over and over again with the bread which our LORD has given to us, and have neglected the multitudes beyond. What should we answer? Should we say that charity begins at home? And, alas! charity stops at home, and has been stopping at home for centuries. GOD grant that we may have the charity that increaseth, for 'there is that scattereth, and yet increaseth.'

"I would like to call your attention to this fact--and it is a fact, and a fact that we ought to take deeply to ourselves--that the knowledge of this precious JESUS, who, I hope to most of us, is everything in the world, is absolutely wanting to thousands and millions of our brethren and sisters in the present day. What are we going to do? What is the use of calling big meetings like this if the outcome is not to be something worthy of the name of JESUS? He wants us to take up our cross and follow Him. To leave fathers and mothers and brethren and sisters and friends and property and everything we love, and carry the Gospel to the perishing ones. We are not to labour, said He, for the meat that perisheth, but for that which endureth to everlasting life. You remember when that poor Syro-Phoenician mother was pleading before Him she said that even the dogs were permitted to eat of the crumbs which fell from the master's table. Call the heathen dogs if you will, but we have been keeping back the crumbs from them.

"LIVING EPISTLES.

"Our LORD wants us to go and take the Gospel to the perishing world, and by our lives amongst the people to commend the Gospel. Unfortunately, many Englishmen who go out to these lands do not commend the Gospel. The Chinaman, observing their conduct, turns away from the message, believing his own religion to be better, and saying, 'I have got my little stone idol. My father worshipped it, my grandfather and my great-grandfather worshipped it; and at any rate there is the honour of antiquity about it. But if you ask me to take these Christians' GOD, I think I would rather have my little stone idol. It does not teach me to be drunken and to be impure as I see these foreigners are.' And to think that we send out from this land of light hundreds and thousands who might in a short time, if they had only first sought the kingdom of GOD, have evangelised the world.

"SEEK YE FIRST THE KINGDOM OF GOD.

"We want to cry to GOD that those who go from England will seek first the kingdom of GOD, that the cobblers will resemble William Carey, that the wheelwrights and carpenters will make that the main object of their life, and that the governors and the consuls will make it the main object of their life, to spread the Gospel. This is what we need, and this is that for which we pray. We look at Africa, and see there, but a few years ago, one brave young Scotchman, Frederick Stanley Arnott. He starts from the south of the continent, and from thence walks right up into the heart of Africa. And through what does he pass? Now he is sleeping, under a cart, with four degrees of frost on the ground, and then he is in a burning fever on the desert plain, with the fierce hot sun on his uncovered head. Now he is living in the swamps, finding every day that his garments are completely wetted with the mists and dews. And there, all alone, he toils.

"A little further north, we see, a few years ago, that great man Livingstone kneeling in his tent. He is breathing his last prayers for Africa, and dies praying for Africa. Soon his body is brought to England, and crowds follow it to Westminster Abbey, and speak well of the dead man's deeds. If Livingstone could leap to life, what would he say? 'Do not follow my body home to this cathedral, but follow where my heart lies, out yonder in Africa. Obey your LORD's command--"Go ye into all the world, and preach the Gospel to every creature."'

“Oh, to think that Gordon has but to speak a word from Khartoum, and millions of money go from England. Forth go our gallant soldiers, and in Egypt our noblest and bravest spill their blood. And it is right, I suppose, that Gordon should be rescued. But a greater than Gordon cries from Khartoum. Whose is that voice? It is the voice of CHRIST from the cross of Calvary, and He cries in tones of love, 'I thirst.' And ah, that Divine thirst has not yet been quenched. It has hardly begun to be quenched. He thirsts for the Chinese, for the Africans, for the Asiatics, and for the South Americans. Are there none here who would quench His thirst? Would you pass by that CHRIST? See His agony! You would not do so had you seen Him in the flesh. But, my brethren and sisters, He thirsts with a deeper than bodily thirst. With His great soul He thirsts for the millions of this earth. David once thirsted for the waters of Bethlehem, and said, 'Oh, would GOD that one would give me to drink of the water.' And three of his followers, at the risk of their lives, broke through the ranks of the enemy, and got him the water: but when he received it he could not drink it, but poured it upon the ground. Yes, David's thirst was bodily thirst. But shall not this Mightier than David have His thirst quenched to-night? Shall not the Divine LORD have His thirst quenched? Shall not the Man of Sorrows have His heart rejoiced by men and women, young and old, offering themselves to the cause of spreading the glorious Gospel? CHRIST yearns over this earth. What are we going to do? Many here cannot leave their native land; but others who are free to go may ask, 'What is sending you out?' I cannot tell you of any vision or dream, but I can point the hand and show you the needs abroad that prevent us stopping in England. You cannot want to remain in England when once you know of the thousands that are preaching the Gospel here, and of the twos and threes that are preaching it abroad.

"God will have this work done. I don't know that He will raise up Englishmen or Scotchmen to do it, but the work shall be done, and the Gospel shall be spread; even if the stones of our streets have to be raised up to cry out, GOD will see that His Son shall have His right. Oh, may we therefore be wise, and while there is yet opportunity be amongst the workers. Do you ask why London is growing up in the state it is? Do you ask why our land is full of infidelity? why our cities are festering in wickedness? You have the answer. We are in distress, and there is sin in the camp. Yes, 'there is that scattereth, and yet increaseth; and there is that witholdeth more than is meet, but it tendeth to poverty.' It is the poverty of withholding that is upon us. The mighty, loving LORD constrains us by His love to scatter. And GOD will indeed scatter us. Our prayer should be, 'If it be persecution, scatter; or if it be war, yet scatter; or if it be pestilence, yet scatter; or if it be intolerance that arises up and drives us from the land, yet scatter.' Oh may we in England know the blessedness of this simple privilege--'There is that scatterth, and yet increaseth.' This is my desire and prayer.

"IF YE LOVE ME, KEEP MY COMMANDMENTS.

“And now the last word. How can one leave such an audience as this? It seems to me as if CHRIST has come right into your midst, and has looked into the face of you men and women, young, old, and middle-aged. He would take hold with loving hands of each one, and looking into your eyes, point to the wounds in His pierced side, and ask, ‘Lovest thou Me?’ And you would say, 'Yea, LORD, Thou knowest that I love Thee.’ And what is the test of love? 'If you love Me, keep My commandments.' What is the test of friendship? ‘Slake My thirst.’ ‘Ye are My friends if ye do whatsoever I command you.’ And what, Master, do you command? ‘Go ye into all the world, and preach the Gospel to every creature.’”