“Ye are the salt of the earth … Ye are the light of the world … Let your light

so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father

which is in heaven.”

(Matthew 5:13, 14, 16)

 

We know that a lot of folks are going to catch colds during the first few weeks of autumn’s cool, rainy weather. Usually a cold spreads something like this: someone turns up at the office one morning sneezing. In a couple of days two or three people in the office will have caught that same bad cold. One man takes the cold home to his wife and baby, and their little girl spreads the cold to her schoolroom — and so it goes. The common cold is highly contagious.

Now religion can be a very contagious thing. I wonder, is your religion and mine the catching kind? When folks come in contact with us do they catch anything? Are our associates in danger of becoming infected with our religious faith? Are our friends and the members of our family succumbing one by one to the contagion of our spirit? Or do we have that brand of religion which is non-communicable? Do others find us infected only with the germ of selfishness? Religions, like diseases, are not all the catching kind. What kind is yours and mine?

A man on a bus was reading to his companion in the seat beside him an account of the death of a prominent citizen, evidently well known to both of them. The reader came to the words: “The funeral will be held in the First Presbyterian Church.” Here he paused and exclaimed: “Well, well, John was a Presbyterian! Who would have ever guessed it? What do you know about that?” Any chance listener would have known a lot about that! He would have known that, though the deceased was a church member and presumably had some sort of religious faith, that he very definitely was not affected with the contagious variety. His friends and associates caught no fever of faith from him.

That brand of Christianity which conquered the whole Roman world in the space of five centuries was of the contagious variety. Beginning with a mere dozen men in the obscure province of Galilee it spread to every nook and cranny of the Empire, becoming the dominant religious faith in the course of 500 years.

In explaining the process by which this miracle of missions and evangelization took place, Kenneth Scott Latourette, the church historian, wrote these words: “The chief agents in the expansion of Christianity appear not to have been those who made it a profession or a major part of their occupation, but men and women who earned their livelihood in some purely secular manner and spoke of their faith to those whom they met in this natural fashion. Thus, when Celsus (the great critic of the early church) denounces a religion which spreads through workers in wool and leather and fullers, and uneducated persons who get hold of children privately, and of ignorant women who teach them, Origen does not deny that this occurs.”

And John Chrysostom, the golden-mouthed orator of the early church, was under no spell of self-deception as to the relative power of his preaching in propagating the faith, for Chrysostom held that the most effective means of evangelization was the example of Christian living, saying: “There would be no more heathens if we would be true Christians.”

It was a contagious Christianity, spread through the medium of personal conduct, that conquered the ancient pagan world. And it will be by means of a similar contagious faith that the modern world is won to Christianity, if won it is in our desperate day. For every program of evangelism and missionary endeavor depends in the final analysis for its success upon individual personalities imbued with a contagious religion.

But what is a contagious religion, and how does it differ from the non-communicative variety? How can we tell whether or not we have a contagious religion? Here is how we can diagnose our own case!

First of all, in order to be contagious a religion must be attractive. I think that goes without saying. If our religion has not converted our disposition and made us pleasant and good tempered, if it has not filled us with a hope as bright as the sunrise, and a joy as deep as eternity, then the devil doesn’t need fear us as spreaders of Christianity. No one will catch that kind of faith that moves always in a gloomy cloud if he can possibly find an effective antiseptic. Walter Russell Bowie said that: “most of the Pharisees were not bad men. They were good men whose goodness had turned sour.” That’s the reason the Pharisees’ religion never stood a ghost of a chance with the common people after Jesus appeared with his attractive, bright, and glad-hearted faith.

The elder brother in the parable of the Prodigal had always been an obedient son. He had never transgressed one of his Father’s commandments. He never ran away from the Father’s house as the Prodigal had. He had a religion of sorts. But he was a sour-faced gloomy-gus. He went into tantrums of pouting, bad temper and self-pity when everything did not go to suit him. He got all eaten up with jealousy and self-righteousness when his father wanted to show mercy on his wayward brother. Rudyard Kipling suggested that it was the ill-tempered, self-righteousness of the elder brother that ran the Prodigal away from the Father’s house in the first instance, for he pictures the Prodigal as saying:

My brother glooms and despises me,

And my mother catechizes me,

Till I want to go out and swear.

Someone was posed the provocative question: “What do you suppose would have happened had the Prodigal come back on an afternoon when no one else was at home — no one, but the elder brother?” No doubt he would have gone back to his pigs and slop in the far country, as has many a poor wanderer from the Father’s house because of the sour, self-righteous, unattractive religion of some of the Father’s children.

Evangeline Booth, the daughter of the Salvation Army’s founder, said that very early in life she saw her parents working for their people in the slums of London, cheerfully, gladly bearing their burdens day and night. She said: “They did not have to say a word to me about Christianity. I saw it in action.”

Youth has always cried out in the words of that ever popular song; “Poppa don’t preach, Poppa don’t preach, Poppa don’t preach to me.” What youth needs is to see parents worshipping as the Psalmist said: “in the beauty of holiness. An attractive religion, rejoicing always in the Lord, is always a contagious religion.”

A second symptom of a contagious religion is positiveness. To too many people religion has been a mere catalogue of don’ts — a series of prohibitions. How often a person’s religious code consists simply of the number of things that person will not do. O shame upon us, the ministers of the gospel, that in the public eye, clergymen are the fellows who won’t do this or won’t do that which run-of-the-mill folks will do. Would who dare to do what the faithless and unbelieving will not dare to do.

Such is a pitiful caricature of that religion Jesus came to bring and which He describes in His words: “I am come that ye may have life and have it more abundantly.” The Pharisees were masters at being religious in terms of the things they would not do. And yet Jesus said: “Except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.” The Pharisees had the ordinances of religion, but the contents had leaked out. Religion still tends to conduct itself as though good form were the matter of supreme importance, and as though the capacity of being shocked at evil were equivalent to righteousness. It is only brokenly that religion is perceived to be the unreckoning adventure of the valiant spirit.” (Walter Russell Bowie)

There is no catching challenge to a muster roll of “Thou Shalt Nots.” A religion without a positive program to lift and lead forward the whole human race will never enjoy an epidemic success. “When religion stands for things as they are, then men will let them stand as they are — empty.” (K. S. Jones) A contagious religion must be positive.

But above all, a contagious religion must bear the clear mark of sincerity — of genuineness. You never caught a cold from a fellow who was just making out like he had one. Neither did anyone ever catch the contagion of Christianity from one who was just playing at following Christ.

There is a naturalness about a sincere Christian which cannot be missed. His spirit is fresh and contagious. “Love God,” said St. Augustine, “and then do as you please.” This was the old saint’s way of saying, “Be natural, be yourself.” We are not all cast in the same pattern. We must not think we have to conform to a certain mold. There is enough room in the Christian way to follow Christ and be thoroughly ourselves. Yes, we cannot be thoroughly and fully ourselves until we do come to Him. He opens the locked doors of our undeveloped personal resources and sets us free to be what God has intended us to be. Have the courage to be a character: not seeking eccentricity for its own sake, but to be true to Christ as He reveals Himself to each one.

I remember hearing Dr. Ben R. Lacy, years ago, tell at a young people’s conference about the origin of our word “sincere”. It comes from two Latin words: “sine,” meaning “without,” and “cere,” the word for “wax.” And the word was born of the custom among the ancient sellers of statues who displayed their wares out in the bright sunlight and placed on the perfectly cut marble images the sign — “sinecere” — “without wax.” And what did that mean? Well, a clumsy craftsman who had spoiled his work with a false cut might also be rascal enough to fill the imperfection with wax to hide it and cheat a buyer. But under the blazing heat of the sun the wax would melt and run away and the searching sunlight would reveal the deception. So statues marked “sine cere” were sincere — without sham and imperfections.

The blazing, searching light of life proves also the sincerity or insincerity of each person’s religion. Sooner or later it reveals the cut of their character, be it finely chiseled or basely marred.

The Bible teacher at a young people’s conference had taught with telling power, lessons from St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans. All week he had dwelt upon the triumphant adequacy of the Christian faith to carry one through all the experiences of life. The young people had listened attentively, but words are so easy, and words by themselves do not last. Then there came to this teacher on the last day of the conference a message of his father’s sudden death. But he stayed to meet his class on that last day. And in the light of his own sorrow and loss, he reaffirmed the triumphant adequacy of the Christian faith. And the young people, who had heard the teacher all week with interest, listened that morning with conviction. Here was a religion proved sincere, in the merciless light of adversity, in the heat of heartbreak. Those young people wanted a religion like that. They couldn’t help catching some of his courageous spirit. A sincere, a genuine religious faith is contagious.

My Christian friends, you and I have committed to us the gospel which is the power of God unto salvation for every soul that believeth. It has pleased God to spread this precious and powerful life saving faith by the contagion of life touching life. It is more or less contagious in you and me, dependant upon how attractive, positive, and sincere an expression it finds through your life and mine.