Missionary service is a _personal_ thing; it cannot be deputed to another any more than it can have something else as a substitute for it. Contributing money in order that others may be maintained in their missionary undertakings, does not exempt the donor from personal service himself. Every Christian is bound to strive to deepen and widen, by the force of his personality in Christ, the Kingdom of God. Of course there is a narrower and a wider missionary spirit. The latter is reached by faithfulness to the former, here as well as elsewhere effective breadth beginning in depth. All missionary power begins (as well as ends) in that unconscious witness[36] which the Christian character bears to Christ. So infectious a thing is God's truth, that to receive it is to spread it.
_As one lamp lights another nor grows less, So nobleness enkindleth nobleness_.
"Ye _are_ the light of the world;" "Ye _are_ the salt of the earth." And it is that part of the character which easily, simply and naturally lays hold on Christ, that first sheds God's light abroad and becomes the preservative element of society.
It is further noticeable that the sphere of Christian influence as alluded to by our Lord in the Sermon on the Mount, corresponds with the sphere of witness-bearing marked out by Him in His parting words before the Ascension--"Ye are the light of _the world_;" "Ye are the salt of _the earth_;" "Ye shall be witnesses unto the uttermost part of the earth." To recognize the fact that the Christian life is the most invincible and the most permeating influence that the world can ever know, is an enormous incentive to consistency and zealous devotion. Christian character is the only force which a man can both leave behind him, and take with him when he comes to die. Nothing can withstand it, and nothing can check its career. It is bound to impress all that it touches, and it touches everything--"the world," "the earth." It is not too much to hold that unconscious influence always exceeds conscious influence, the latter reaching the zenith of its effectiveness only when it has been transformed, by constant use, into the former. It is in the home that the Christian begins that witness-bearing, which is destined to reach so far.