By F.J. Huegel
One thing for the missionary is inevitable. If he is to go forward in the face of the seemingly insuperable obstacles which beset him, ushering in a new day for enslaved souls, if, I repeat, he is to do the thing which God expects of him, and the Church expects of him, and what the heart-rending need of these to whom He has come as an ambassador of light requires of him, then he must himself appropriate in an ever-deeper and fuller way the power of Christ. He must himself be bound to that unconquerable Christ who all down the centuries has through His disciples achieved the impossible. He must get beyond a mere intellectual knowledge of the historical Christ, and so entwine the tendrils of his spiritual nature in the Eternal Christ that he imbibes a divine life.
The job he is attempting to do requires of him superhuman force. The merely human, however noble and strong and cultivated, proves as insufficient and as inadequate as a handful of glowing coals would be for the dissipation of an arctic blizzard. He must transcend the purely natural, and immerse himself in the super-natural. He must experience the power of the indwelling Christ, and, dispossessed of his own life, become in an ever-fuller measure possessed of a Divine life.
Only "rivers of living water" flowing from his innermost being -- the promise which the Saviour has made to His own -- can make possible the renewal of life in those to whom he is sent.
It may be that temperamentally he is not predisposed to forge his way into these lonely uplands of the faith. He may even have a deep aversion to the mystical elements of Christianity. Still the force of circumstances like a mighty tide will most certainly sweep him from the moorings of a merely intellectual grasp of the Christian verities, out into the deeps of a vital experience of redeeming grace. For, unless Christ becomes more real to him than any other reality, even of the physical universe, and unless he learns to draw upon Christ and to sink his being into Him and thus emerge from the deep well of the Uncreated Good charged with that power which had fallen upon the apostles, he is from the very nature of the circumstances in which he is involved, doomed to defeat. The force of evil which he would overcome will be as destructive of his purpose, and as disdainfully subversive of his message as some mighty Gibraltar which stands out in invincible might against the waves of the sea.
The following chapters are simply an outline of the position to which, as a missionary of the Cross, I was led. I wish to share with Christians of all lands and all sects, those blessed experiences of the indwelling Christ, those immeasurable treasures which, in the deeper participation in Christ, have become mine. I wish to make the common property of the Church, those ineffable experiences which are the fruitage of a oneness with Christ -- that Christ without whom the missionary, because of the peculiar situation in which he finds himself, more than any one else, realizes that he can do nothing.
I cannot send forth these messages however, without acknowledging the great debt of gratitude which I owe the late Mrs. Penn-Lewis, whose writings on the deeper aspects of the Cross, and whose insistence on the believer's identification with Christ in death and in resurrection, have meant so much to the Church in these recent years. God greatly used the writings of Mrs. Penn-Lewis to bring me to the victorious position in Christ which the following messages seek to clarify.
With the hope and prayer that my kind readers may be given grace to realize in their own experience this deeper oneness with Christ, so that their joy may be that joy which is "unspeakable and full of glory," and their peace that "peace which passeth all understanding," and their life that "abundant life" which is eternal and which flows from the throne of God, I place these messages upon the altar of my Lord that He might use them for the edification of "the saints" and for the glory of His name.
F. J. HUEGEL
Mexico City, Mexico
