THE WORLD'S GREAT SERMONS

COMPILED BY

GRENVILLE KLEISER

Formerly of Yale Divinity School Faculty; Author of "How to Speak inPublic, " Etc. 

With Assistance from Many of the Foremost Living Preachers and OtherTheologians

INTRODUCTION BY LEWIS O. BRASTOW, D. D. 

Professor Emeritus of Practical Theology in Yale University

IN TEN VOLUMES

VOLUME X DRUMMOND TO JOWETT

General Index

1908

CONTENTS

VOLUME X. 

DRUMMOND (1851--1897). The Greatest Thing in the World

WAGNER (Born in 1851). I Am a Voice

GORDON (Born in 1853). Man in the Image of God

DAWSON (Born in 1854). Christ Among the Common Things of Life

SMITH (Born in 1856). Assurance in God

GUNSAULUS (Born in 1856). The Bible vs. Infidelity

HILLIS (Born in 1858). God the Unwearied Guide

JEFFERSON (Born in 1860). The Reconciliation

MORGAN (Born in 1863). The Perfect Ideal of Life

CADMAN (Born in 1864). A New Day for Missions

JOWETT (Born in 1864). Apostolic Optimism

Index to Preachers and Sermons

Index to Texts

DRUMMOND

THE GREATEST THING IN THE WORLD

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

Henry Drummond, author and evangelist, was born at Stirling, Scotland, in 1851. His book, "Natural Law in the Spiritual World, " caused muchdiscussion and is still widely read. His "Ascent of Man" is regardedby many as his greatest work. The address reprinted here has appearedin hundreds of editions, and has been an inspiration to thousandsof peoples all over the world. There is an interesting biographyof Drummond by Professor George Adam Smith, his close friend andcolaborer. He died in 1897. 

DRUMMOND

1851--1897

THE GREATEST THING IN THE WORLD[1]

[Footnote 1: Reprinted by permission of James Pott & Co. ]

_Tho I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not love, &c. _--I Cor. Xiii. 

Everyone has asked himself the great question of antiquity as of themodern world: What is the _summum bonum_--the supreme good? You havelife before you. Once only you can live it. What is the noblest objectof desire, the supreme gift to covet?

We have been accustomed to be told that the greatest thing in thereligious world is faith. That great word has been the key-note forcenturies of the popular religion; and we have easily learned to lookupon it as the greatest thing in the world. Well, we are wrong. If wehave been told that, we may miss the mark. I have taken you, in thechapter which I have just read, to Christianity at its source; andthere we have seen, "The greatest of these is love. " It is not anoversight. Paul was speaking of faith just a moment before. He says, "If I have all faith, so that I can remove mountains, and have notlove, I am nothing. " So far from forgetting, he deliberately contraststhem, "Now abideth faith, hope, love, " and without a moment'shesitation the decision falls, "The greatest of these is love. "

And it is not prejudice. A man is apt to recommend to others his ownstrong point. Love was not Paul's strong point. The observing studentcan detect a beautiful tenderness growing and ripening all through hischaracter as Paul gets old; but the hand that wrote, "The greatest ofthese is love, " when we meet it first, is stained with blood. 

Nor is this letter to the Corinthians peculiar in singling out love asthe _summum bonum_. The masterpieces of Christianity are agreed aboutit. Peter says, "Above all things have fervent love among yourselves. "Above all things. And John goes further, "God is love. " And youremember the profound remark which Paul makes elsewhere, "Love is thefulfilling of the law. " Did you ever think what he meant by that? Inthose days men were working their passage to heaven by keeping the tencommandments, and the hundred and ten other commandments which theyhad manufactured out of them. Christ said, I will show you a moresimple way. If you do one thing, you will do these hundred and tenthings, without ever thinking about them. If you love, you willunconsciously fulfil the whole law. And you can readily see foryourselves how that must be so. Take any of the commandments. "Thoushalt have no other gods before me. " If a man love God, you will notrequire to tell him that. Love is the fulfilling of that law. "Takenot his name in vain. " Would he ever dream of taking His name in vainif he loved Him? "Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. " Would henot be too glad to have one day in seven to dedicate more exclusivelyto the object of his affection? Love would fulfil all these lawsregarding God. And so, if he loved man, you would never think oftelling him to honor his father and mother. He could not do anythingelse. It would be preposterous to tell him not to kill. You could onlyinsult him if you suggested that he should not steal--how could hesteal from those he loved? It would be superfluous to beg him not tobear false witness against his neighbor. If he loved him it would bethe last thing he would do. And you would never dream of urging himnot to covet what his neighbors had. He would rather that they possestit than himself. In this way "Love is the fulfilling of the law. " Itis the rule for fulfilling all rules, the new commandment for keepingall the old commandments, Christ's one secret of the Christian life. 

Now, Paul had learned that; and in this noble eulogy he has given usthe most wonderful and original account extant of the _summum bonum_. We may divide it into three parts. In the beginning of the shortchapter, we have love contrasted; in the heart of it, we have loveanalyzed; toward the end, we have love defended as the supreme gift. 

Paul begins contrasting love with other things that men in thosedays thought much of. I shall not attempt to go over those things indetail. Their inferiority is already obvious. 

He contrasts it with eloquence. And what a noble gift it is, the powerof playing upon the souls and wills of men, and rousing them to loftypurposes and holy deeds. Paul says, "If I speak with the tongues ofmen and of angels, and have not love, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. " And we all know why. We have all felt thebrazenness of words without emotion, the hollowness, the unaccountableunpersuasiveness, of eloquence behind which lies no love. 

He contrasts it with prophecy. He contrasts it with mysteries. Hecontrasts it with faith. He contrasts it with charity. Why is lovegreater than faith? Because the end is greater than the means. Andwhy is it greater than charity? Because the whole is greater than thepart. Love is greater than faith, because the end is greater than themeans. What is the use of having faith? It is to connect the soul withGod. And what is the object of connecting man with God? That he maybecome like God. But God is love. Hence faith, the means, is in orderto love, the end. Love, therefore, obviously is greater than faith. Itis greater than charity, again, because the whole is greater than apart. Charity is only a little bit of love, one of the innumerableavenues of love, and there may even be, and there is, a great deal ofcharity without love. It is a very easy thing to toss a copper to abeggar on the street; it is generally an easier thing than not to doit. Yet love is just as often in the withholding. We purchase relieffrom the sympathetic feelings roused by the spectacle of misery, atthe copper's cost. It is too cheap--too cheap for us, and often toodear for the beggar. If we really loved him we would either do morefor him, or less. 

Then Paul contrasts it with sacrifice and martyrdom. And I beg thelittle band of would-be missionaries--and I have the honor to callsome of you by this name for the first time--to remember that thoyou give your bodies to be burned, and have not love, it profitsnothing--nothing! You can take nothing greater to the heathen worldthan the impress and reflection of the love of God upon your owncharacter. That is the universal language. It will take you years tospeak in Chinese; or in the dialects of India. From the day you land, that language of love, understood by all, will be pouring forth itsunconscious eloquence. It is the man who is the missionary, it is nothis words. His character is his message. In the heart of Africa, amongthe great lakes, I have come across black men and women who rememberedthe only white man they ever saw before--David Livingstone; and as youcross his footsteps in that dark continent, men's faces light up asthey speak of the kind doctor who passed there years ago. They couldnot understand him; but they felt the love that beat in his heart. Take into your new sphere of labor, where you also mean to lay downyour life, that simple charm, and your life-work must succeed. Youcan take nothing greater, you need take nothing less. It is notworth while going if you take anything less. You may take everyaccomplishment; you may be braced for every sacrifice; but if you giveyour body to be burned, and have not love, it will profit you and thecause of Christ nothing. 

After contrasting love with these things, Paul, in three verses, veryshort, gives us an amazing analysis of what this supreme thing is. Iask you to look at it. It is a compound thing, he tells us. It is likelight. As you have seen a man of science take a beam of light and passit through a crystal prism, as you have seen it come out on the otherside of the prism broken up into its component colors--red, andblue, and yellow, and violet, and orange, and all the colors of therainbow--so Paul passes this thing, love, through the magnificentprism of his inspired intellect, and it comes out on the other sidebroken up into its elements. And in these few words we have whatone might call the spectrum of love, the analysis of love. Will youobserve what its elements are? Will you notice that they have commonnames; that they are virtues which we hear about every day, that theyare things which can be practised by every man in every place in life;and how, by a multitude of small things and ordinary virtues, thesupreme thing, the _summum bonum_, is made up?

The spectrum of love has nine ingredients:

 Patience--"Love suffereth long. " Kindness--"And is kind. " Generosity--"Love envieth not. " Humility--"Love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up. " Courtesy--"Doth not behave itself unseemly. " Unselfishness--"Seeketh not her own. " Good temper--"Is not easily provoked. " Guilelessness--"Thinketh no evil. " Sincerity--"Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth. "

Patience, kindness, generosity, humility, courtesy, unselfishness, good temper, guilelessness, sincerity--these make up the supreme gift, the stature of the perfect man. You will observe that all are inrelation to men, in relation to life, in relation to the known to-dayand the near to-morrow, and not to the unknown eternity. We hear muchof love to God; Christ spoke much of love to man. We make a great dealof peace with heaven; Christ made much of peace on earth. Religion isnot a strange or added thing, but the inspiration of the secular life, the breathing of an eternal spirit through this temporal world. Thesupreme thing, in short, is not a thing at all, but the giving of afurther finish to the multitudinous words and acts which make up thesum of every common day. 

There is no time to do more than to make a passing note upon each ofthese ingredients. Love is patience. This is the normal attitude oflove; love passive, love waiting to begin; not in a hurry; calm;ready to do its work when the summons comes, but meantime wearing theornament of a meek and quiet spirit. Love suffers long; beareth allthings; believeth all things; hopeth all things. For love understands, and therefore waits. 

Kindness. Love active. Have you ever noticed how much of Christ's lifewas spent in doing kind things--in merely doing kind things? Runover it with that in view, and you will find that He spent a greatproportion of His time simply in making people happy, in doing goodturns to people. There is only one thing greater than happiness in theworld, and that is holiness; and it is not in our keeping; but whatGod has put in our power is the happiness of those about us, and thatis largely to be secured by our being kind to them. 

"The greatest thing, " says some one, "a man can do for his HeavenlyFather is to be kind to some of his other children. " I wonder why itis that we are not all kinder than we are? How much the world needsit. How easily it is done. How instantaneously it acts. How infalliblyit is remembered. How superabundantly it pays itself back--for thereis no debtor in the world so honorable, so superbly honorable, aslove. "Love never faileth. " Love is success, love is happiness, loveis life. "Love, " I say, with Browning, "is energy of life. "

 For life, with all it yields of joy or wo And hope and fear, Is just our chance o' the prize of learning love-- How love might be, hath been indeed, and is. 

Where love is, God is. He that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God. Godis love. Therefore love. Without distinction, without calculation, without procrastination, love. Lavish it upon the poor, where it isvery easy; especially upon the rich, who often need it most; most ofall upon our equals, where it is very difficult, and for whom perhapswe each do least of all. There is a difference between trying toplease and giving pleasure. Give pleasure. Lose no chance of givingpleasure. For that is the ceaseless and anonymous triumph of a trulyloving spirit. "I shall pass through this world but once. Any goodthing therefore that I can do, or any kindness that I can show to anyhuman being, let me do it now. Let me not defer it or neglect it, forI shall not pass this way again. "

Generosity. "Love envieth not. " This is love in competition withothers. Whenever you attempt a good work you will find other men doingthe same kind of work, and probably doing it better. Envy them not. Envy is a feeling of ill-will to those who are in the same lineas ourselves, a spirit of covetousness and detraction. How littleChristian work even is a protection against unchristian feeling! Thatmost despicable of all the unworthy moods which cloud a Christian'ssoul assuredly waits for us on the threshold of every work, unless weare fortified with this grace of magnanimity. Only one thing trulyneeds the Christian envy, the large, rich, generous soul which"envieth not. "

And then, after having learned all that, you have to learn thisfurther thing, humility--to put a seal upon your lips and forget whatyou have done. After you have been kind, after love has stolen forthinto the world and done its beautiful work, go back into the shadeagain and say nothing about it. Love hides even from itself. Lovewaives even self-satisfaction. "Love vaunteth not itself, is notpuffed up. "

The fifth ingredient is a somewhat strange one to find in this _summumbonum_: Courtesy. This is love in society, love in relation toetiquette. "Love doth not behave itself unseemly. " Politeness has beendefined as love in trifles. Courtesy is said to be love in littlethings. And the one secret of politeness is to love. Love can notbehave itself unseemly. You can put the most untutored persons intothe highest society, and if they have a reservoir of love in theirhearts, they will not behave themselves unseemly. They simply can notdo it. Carlyle said of Robert Burns that there was no truergentleman in Europe than the plowman-poet. It was because he lovedeverything--the mouse, the daisy, and all the things, great and small, that God had made. So with this simple passport he could mingle withany society, and enter courts and palaces from his little cottage onthe banks of the Ayr. You know the meaning of the word "gentleman. " Itmeans a gentle man--a man who does things gently with love. And thatis the whole art and mystery of it. The gentle man can not in thenature of things do an ungentle and ungentlemanly thing. The ungentlesoul, the inconsiderate, unsympathetic nature can not do anythingelse. "Love doth not behave itself unseemly. "

Unselfishness. "Love seeketh not her own. " Observe: Seeketh not eventhat which is her own. In Britain the Englishman is devoted, andrightly, to his rights. But there come times when a man may exerciseeven the higher right of giving up his rights. Yet Paul does notsummon us to give up our rights. Love strikes much deeper. It wouldhave us not seek them at all, ignore them, eliminate the personalelement altogether from our calculations. It is not hard to give upour rights. They are often external. The difficult thing is to give upourselves. The more difficult thing still is not to seek things forourselves at all. After we have sought them, bought them, won them, deserved them, we have taken the cream off them for ourselves already. Little cross then perhaps to give them up. But not to seek them, tolook every man not on his own things, but on the things of others--_idopus est_. "Seekest thou great things for thyself?" said the prophet;"seek them not. " Why? Because there is no greatness in things. Things can not be great. The only greatness is unselfish love. Evenself-denial in itself is nothing, is almost a mistake. Only agreat purpose or a mightier love can justify the waste. It is moredifficult, I have said, not to seek our own at all, than, havingsought it, to give it up. I must take that back. It is only true of apartly selfish heart. Nothing is a hardship to love, and nothing ishard. I believe that Christ's yoke is easy. Christ's "yoke" is justHis way of taking life. And I believe it is an easier way than anyother. I believe it is a happier way than any other. The most obviouslesson in Christ's teaching is that there is no happiness in havingand getting anything, but only in giving. I repeat, there is nohappiness in having or in getting, but only in giving. And half theworld is on the wrong scent in the pursuit of happiness. They thinkit consists in having and getting, and in being served by others. Itconsists in giving and serving others. He that would be great amongyou, said Christ, let him serve. He that would be happy, let himremember that there is but one way--it is more blest, it is morehappy, to give than to receive. 

The next ingredient is a very remarkable one: good temper. "Love isnot easily provoked. " Nothing could be more striking than to findthis here. We are inclined to look upon bad temper as a very harmlessweakness. We speak of it as a mere infirmity of nature, a familyfailing, a matter of temperament, not a thing to take into veryserious account in estimating a man's character. And yet here, rightin the heart of this analysis of love, it finds a place; and the Bibleagain and again returns to condemn it as one of the most destructiveelements in human nature. 

The peculiarity of ill temper is that it is the vice of the virtuous. It is often the one blot on an otherwise noble character. You know menwho are all but perfect, and women who would be entirely perfect, butfor an easily ruffled, quick-tempered, or "touchy" disposition. Thiscompatibility of ill temper with high moral character is one of thestrangest and saddest problems of ethics. The truth is, there are twogreat classes of sins--sins of the body, and sins of the disposition. The Prodigal Son may be taken as a type of the first, the ElderBrother of the second. Now society has no doubt whatever as to whichof these is the worse. Its brands fall without a challenge, upon theProdigal. But are we right? We have no balance to weigh one another'ssins, and coarser and finer are but human words; but faults in thehigher nature may be less venial than those in the lower, and to theeye of Him who is love, a sin against love may seem a hundred timesmore base. No form of vice, not worldliness, not greed of gold, notdrunkenness itself, does more to unchristianize society than eviltemper. For embittering life, for breaking up communities, fordestroying the most sacred relationships, for devastating homes, forwithering up men and women, for taking the bloom off childhood, inshort, for sheer gratuitous misery-producing power, this influencestands alone. Look at the Elder Brother, moral, hard-working, patient, dutiful--let him get all credit for his virtues--look at this man, this baby, sulking outside his own father's door. "He was angry, " weread, "and would not go in. " Look at the effect upon the father, uponthe servants, upon the happiness of the guests. Judge of the effectupon the Prodigal--and how many prodigals are kept out of the kingdomof God by the unlovely character of those who profess to be inside?Analyze, as a study in temper, the thunder-cloud itself as it gathersupon the Elder Brother's brow. What is it made of? Jealousy, anger, pride, uncharity, cruelty, self-righteousness, touchiness, doggedness, sullenness--these are the ingredients of this dark and loveless soul. In varying proportions, also, these are the ingredients of all illtemper. Judge if such sins of the disposition are not worse to livein, and for others to live with, than sins of the body. Did Christindeed not answer the question Himself when He said, "I say unto you, that the publicans and the harlots go into the kingdom of heavenbefore you. " There is really no place in heaven for a disposition likethis. A man with such a mood could only make heaven miserable for allthe people in it. Except, therefore, such a man be born again, hecan not, he simply can not, enter the kingdom of heaven. For it isperfectly certain--and you will not misunderstand me--that to enterheaven a man must take it with him. 

You will see then why temper is significant It is not in what it isalone, but in what it reveals. This is why I take the liberty now ofspeaking of it with such unusual plainness. It is a test for love, a symptom, a revelation of an unloving nature at bottom. It is theintermittent fever which bespeaks unintermittent disease within;the occasional bubble escaping to the surface which betrays somerottenness underneath; a sample of the most hidden products ofthe soul dropt involuntarily when off one's guard; in a word, thelightning form of a hundred hideous and unchristian sins. For a wantof patience, a want of kindness, a want of generosity, a want ofcourtesy, a want of unselfishness, are all instantaneously symbolizedin one flash of temper. 

Hence it is not enough to deal with the temper. We must go to thesource, and change the inmost nature, and the angry humors will dieaway of themselves. Souls are made sweet not by taking the acid fluidsout, but by putting something in--a great love, a new spirit, thespirit of Christ. Christ, the spirit of Christ, interpenetrating ours, sweetens, purifies, transforms all. This only can eradicate whatis wrong, work a chemical change, renovate and regenerate, andrehabilitate the inner man. Will-power does not change men. Time doesnot change men. Christ does. Therefore, "Let that mind be in you whichwas also in Christ Jesus. " Some of us have not much time to lose. Remember, once more, that this is a matter of life or death. I cannot help speaking urgently, for myself, for yourselves. "Whoso shalloffend one of these little ones, which believe in me, it were betterfor him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he weredrowned in the depth of the sea. " That is to say, it is the deliberateverdict of the Lord Jesus that it is better not to live than not tolove. _It is better not to live than not to love. _

Guilelessness and sincerity may be dismissed almost without a word. Guilelessness is the grace for suspicious people. And the possessionof it is the great secret of personal influence. You will find, if youthink for a moment, that the people who influence you are people whobelieve in you. In an atmosphere of suspicion men shrivel up; butin that other atmosphere they expand, and find encouragement andeducative fellowship. It is a wonderful thing that here and there inthis hard, uncharitable world there should still be left a few raresouls who think no evil. This is the great unworldliness. Love"thinketh no evil, " imputes no bad motive, sees the bright side, putsthe best construction on every action. What a delightful state of mindto live in! What stimulus and benediction even to meet with it fora day! To be trusted is to be saved. And if we try to influence orelevate others, we shall soon see that success is in proportion totheir belief of our belief in them. For the respect of another is thefirst restoration of the self-respect a man has lost; our ideal ofwhat he is becomes to him the hope and pattern of what he may become. 

"Love rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth. " I havecalled this sincerity from the words rendered in the AuthorizedVersion by "rejoiceth in the truth. " And, certainly, were this thereal translation, nothing could be more just. For he who loves willlove truth not less than men. He will rejoice in the truth--rejoicenot in what he has been taught to believe; not in this Church'sdoctrine or in that; not in this ism or in that ism; but "in thetruth. " He will accept only what is real; he will strive to get atfacts; he will search for truth with an humble and unbiased mind, and cherish whatever he finds at any sacrifice. But the more literaltranslation of the Revised Version calls for just such a sacrifice fortruth's sake here. For what Paul really meant is, as we there read, "Rejoiceth not in unrighteousness, but rejoiceth with the truth, "a quality which probably no one English word--and certainly notsincerity--adequately defines. It includes, perhaps more strictly, theself-restraint which refuses to make capital out of others' faults;the charity which delights not in exposing the weakness of others, but"covereth all things"; the sincerity of purpose which endeavors to seethings as they are, and rejoices to find them better than suspicionfeared or calumny denounced. 

So much for the analysis of love. Now the business of our lives is tohave these things in our characters. That is the supreme work to whichwe need to address ourselves in this world to learn love. Is life notfull of opportunities for learning love? Every man and woman everyday has a thousand of them. The world is not a playground; it is aschoolroom. Life is not a holiday, but an education. And the oneeternal lesson for us all is how better we can love. What makes a mana good cricketer? Practise. What makes a man a good artist, a goodsculptor, a good musician? Practise. What makes a man a good linguist, a good stenographer? Practise. What makes a man a good man. Practise. Nothing else. There is nothing capricious about religion. We do notget the soul in different ways, under different laws, from those inwhich we get the body and the mind. If a man does not exercise his armhe develops no biceps muscle; and if he does not exercise his soul, heacquires no muscle in his soul, no strength of character, no vigor ofmoral fiber nor beauty of spiritual growth. Love is not a thing ofenthusiastic emotion. It is a rich, strong, manly, vigorous expressionof the whole round Christian character--the Christlike nature in itsfullest development. And the constituents of this great character areonly to be built up by ceaseless practise. 

What was Christ doing in the carpenter's shop? Practising. Thoperfect, we read that He learned obedience, and grew in wisdom and infavor with God. Do not quarrel, therefore, with your lot in life. Donot complain of its never-ceasing cares, its petty environment, thevexations you have to stand, the small and sordid souls you have tolive and work with. Above all, do not resent temptation; do not beperplexed because it seems to thicken round you more and more, andceases neither for effort nor for agony nor prayer. That is yourpractise. That is the practise which God appoints you; and it ishaving its work in making you patient, and humble, and generous, andunselfish, and kind, and courteous. Do not grudge the hand that ismolding the still too shapeless image within you. It is growing morebeautiful, tho you see it not, and every touch of temptation may addto its perfection. Therefore keep in the midst of life. Do not isolateyourself. Be among men, and among things, and among troubles, anddifficulties, and obstacles. You remember Goethe's words: _Es bildetein Talent sich in der Stille, Doch ein Character in dem Strom derWelt_. "Talent develops itself in solitude; character in the stream oflife. " Talent develops itself in solitude--the talent of prayer, offaith, of meditation, of seeing the unseen; character grows in thestream of the world's life. That chiefly is where men are to learnlove. 

How? Now how? To make it easier, I have named a few of the elements oflove. But these are only elements. Love itself can never be defined. Light is a something more than the sum of its ingredients--a glowing, dazzling, tremulous ether. And love is something more than all itselements--a palpitating, quivering, sensitive, living thing. Bysynthesis of all the colors, men can make whiteness, they can not makelight. By synthesis of all the virtues, men can make virtue, they cannot make love. How then are we to have this transcendent living wholeconveyed into our souls? We brace our wills to secure it. We try tocopy those who have it. We lay down rules about it. We watch. We pray. But these things alone will not bring love into our nature. Love isan effect. And only as we fulfil the right condition can we have theeffect produced. Shall I tell you what the cause is?

If you turn to the Revised Version of the First Epistle of John youwill find these words: "We love because he first loved us. " "We love, "not "We love him. " That is the way the old version has it, and it isquite wrong. "We love--because he first loved us. " Look at that word"because. " It is the cause of which I have spoken. "Because he firstloved us, " the effect follows that we love, we love Him, we loveall men. We can not help it. Because He loved us, we love, we loveeverybody. Our heart is slowly changed. Contemplate the love ofChrist, and you will love. Stand before that mirror, reflect Christ'scharacter, and you will be changed into the same image from tendernessto tenderness. There is no other way. You can not love to order. Youcan only look at the lovely object, and fall in love with it, andgrow into likeness to it. And so look at this perfect character, thisperfect life. Look at the great sacrifice as He laid down Himself, allthrough life, and upon the cross of Calvary; and you must love Him. And loving Him, you must become like Him. Love begets love. It isa process of induction. Put a piece of iron in the presence ofan electrified body, and that piece of iron for a time becomeselectrified. It is changed into a temporary magnet in the merepresence of a permanent magnet, and as long as you leave the two sideby side they are both magnets alike. Remain side by side with Him wholoved us, and gave Himself for us, and you too will become a permanentmagnet, a permanently attractive force; and like Him you will draw allmen unto you; like Him you will be drawn unto all men. That is theinevitable effect of love. Any man who fulfils that cause must havethat effect produced in him. Try to give up the idea that religioncomes to us by chance, or by mystery, or by caprice. It comes to us bynatural law, or by spiritual law, for all law is divine. Edward Irvingwent to see a dying boy once, and when he entered the room he just puthis hand on the sufferer's head, and said, "My boy, God loves you, "and went away. And the boy started from his bed, and called out to thepeople in the house, "God loves me! God loves me!" It changed thatboy. The sense that God loved him overpowered him, melted him down, and began the creating of a new heart in him. And that is how the loveof God melts down the unlovely heart in man, and begets in him thenew creature, who is patient and humble and gentle and unselfish. Andthere is no other way to get it. There is no mystery about it. We loveothers, we love everybody, we love our enemies, because He first lovedus. 

Now I have a closing sentence or two to add about Paul's reason forsingling out love as the supreme possession. It is a very remarkablereason. In a single word it is this: it lasts. "Love, " urges Paul, "never faileth. " Then he begins one of his marvelous lists of thegreat things of the day, and exposes them one by one. He runs over thethings that men thought were going to last, and shows that they areall fleeting, temporary, passing away. 

"Whether there be prophecies, they shall fail. " It was the mother'sambition for her boy in those days that he should become a prophet. For hundreds of years God had never spoken by means of any prophet, and at that time the prophet was greater than the king. Men waitedwistfully for another messenger to come, and hung upon his lips whenhe appeared as upon the very voice of God. Paul says, "Whether therebe prophecies, they shall fail. " This book is full of prophecies. Oneby one they have "failed"; that is, having been fulfilled their workis finished; they have nothing more to do now in the world except tofeed a devout man's faith. 

Then Paul talks about tongues. That was another thing that was greatlycoveted. "Whether there be tongues, they shall cease. " As we all know, many, many centuries have passed since tongues have been known in thisworld. They have ceased. Take it in any sense you like. Take it, forillustration merely, as languages in general--a sense which was notin Paul's mind at all, and which tho it can not give us the specificlesson will point the general truth. Consider the words in which thesechapters were written--Greek. It has gone. Take the Latin--the othergreat tongue of those days. It ceased long ago. Look at the Indianlanguage. It is ceasing. The language of Wales, of Ireland, of theScottish Highlands is dying before our eyes. The most popular book inthe English tongue at the present time, except the Bible, is one ofDickens' works, his "Pickwick Papers. " It is largely written in thelanguage of London street-life, and experts assure us that in fiftyyears it will be unintelligible to the average English reader. 

Then Paul goes further, and with even greater boldness adds, "Whetherthere be knowledge, it shall vanish away. " The wisdom of the ancients, where is it? It is wholly gone. A schoolboy today knows more thanSir Isaac Newton knew. His knowledge has vanished away. You putyesterday's newspaper in the fire. Its knowledge has vanished away. You buy the old editions of the great encyclopedias for a few cents. Their knowledge has vanished away. Look how the coach has beensuperseded by the use of steam. Look how electricity has supersededthat, and swept a hundred almost new inventions into oblivion. One ofthe greatest living authorities, Sir William Thompson, said the otherday, "The steam-engine is passing away. " "Whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away. " At every workshop you will see, in the backyard, a heap of old iron, a few wheels, a few levers, a few cranks, broken and eaten with rust. Twenty years ago that was the pride of thecity. Men flocked in from the country to see the great invention; nowit is superseded, its day is done. And all the boasted science andphilosophy of this day will soon be old. But yesterday, in theUniversity of Edinburgh, the greatest figure in the faculty wasSir James Simpson, the discoverer of chloroform. The other day hissuccessor and nephew, Professor Simpson, was asked by the librarianof the university to go to the library and pick out the books on hissubject that were no longer needed. And his reply to the librarian wasthis: "Take every textbook that is more than ten years old, and put itdown in the cellar. " Sir James Simpson was a great authority only afew years ago; men came from all parts of the earth to consult him;and almost the whole teaching of that time is consigned by the scienceof today to oblivion. And in every branch of science it is the same. "Now we know in part. We see through a glass darkly. "

Can you tell me anything that is going to last? Many things Paul didnot condescend to name. He did not mention money, fortune, fame; buthe picked out the great things of his time, the things the best menthought had something in them, and brushed them peremptorily aside. Paul had no charge against these things in themselves. All he saidabout them was that they would not last. They were great things, but not supreme things. There were things beyond them. What we arestretches past what we do, beyond what we possess. Many things thatmen denounce as sins are not sins; but they are temporary. And that isa favorite argument of the New Testament. John says of the world, notthat it is wrong, but simply that it "passeth away. " There is a greatdeal in the world that is delightful and beautiful; there is a greatdeal in it that is great and engrossing; but it will not last. Allthat is in the world, the lust of the eye, the lust of the flesh, andthe pride of life, are but for a little while. Love not the worldtherefore. Nothing that it contains is worth the life and consecrationof an immortal soul. The immortal soul must give itself to somethingthat is immortal. And the immortal things are: "Now abideth faith, hope, love, but the greatest of these is love. "

Some think the time may come when two of these three things will alsopass away--faith into sight, hope into fruition. Paul does not say so. We know but little now about the conditions of the life that is tocome. But what is certain is that love must last. God, the eternalGod, is love. Covet therefore that everlasting gift, that one thingwhich it is certain is going to stand, that one coinage which will becurrent in the universe when all the other coinages of all the nationsof the world shall be useless and unhonored. You will give yourselvesto many things, give yourselves first to love. Hold things in theirproportion. _Hold things in their proportion. _ Let at least the firstgreat object of our lives be to achieve the character defended inthese words, the character--and it is the character of Christ--whichis built round love. 

I have said this thing is eternal. Did you ever notice how continuallyJohn associates love and faith with eternal life? I was not toldwhen I was a boy that "God so loved the world that he gave his onlybegotten son, that whosoever believeth in him should have everlastinglife. " What I was told, I remember, was, that God so loved the worldthat, if I trusted in Him, I was to have a thing called peace, or Iwas to have rest, or I was to have joy, or I was to have safety. ButI had to find out for myself that whosoever trusteth in Him--thatis, whosoever loveth Him, for trust is only the avenue to love--hatheverlasting life. The gospel offers a man life. Never offer men athimbleful of gospel. Do not offer them merely joy, or merely peace, or merely rest, or merely safety; tell them how Christ came to givemen a more abundant life than they have, a life abundant in love, and therefore abundant in salvation for themselves, and large inenterprise for the alleviation and redemption of the world. Thenonly can the gospel take hold of the whole of a man, body, soul, andspirit, and give to each part of his nature its exercise and reward. Many of the current gospels are addrest only to a part of man'snature. They offer peace, not life; faith, not love; justification, not regeneration. And men slip back again from such religion becauseit has never really held them. Their nature was not all in it. Itoffered no deeper and gladder life-current than the life that waslived before. Surely it stands to reason that only a fuller love cancompete with the love of the world. 

To love abundantly is to live abundantly, and to love forever is tolive forever. Hence, eternal life is inextricably bound up with love. We want to live forever for the same reason that we want to livetomorrow. Why do we want to live tomorrow? It is because there is someone who loves you, and whom you want to see tomorrow, and be with, andlove back. There is no other reason why we should live on than that welove and are beloved. It is when a man has no one to love him that hecommits suicide. So long as he has friends, those who love him andwhom he loves, he will live; because to live is to love. Be it but thelove of a dog, it will keep him in life; but let that go and he has nocontact with life, no reason to live. He dies by his own hand. Eternallife is to know God, and God is love. This is Christ's own definition. Ponder it. "This is life eternal, that they might know thee the onlytrue God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent. " Love must be eternal. It is what God is. On the last analysis, then, love is life. Lovenever faileth, and life never faileth, so long as there is love. Thatis the philosophy of what Paul is showing us; the reason why in thenature of things love should be the supreme thing--because it is goingto last; because in the nature of things it is an eternal life. It isa thing that we are living now, not that we get when we die; that weshall have a poor chance of getting when we die unless we are livingnow. No worse fate can befall a man in this world than to live andgrow old all alone, unloving and unloved. To be lost is to live in anunregenerate condition, loveless and unloved; and to be saved is tolove; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth already in God; for God islove. 

Now I have all but finished. How many of you will join me in readingthis chapter once a week for the next three months? A man did thatonce and it changed his whole life. You might begin by reading itevery day, especially the verses which describe the perfect character. "Love suffereth long, and is kind; love envieth not; love vaunteth notitself. " Get these ingredients into your life. Then everything thatyou do is eternal. It is worth doing. It is worth giving time to. No man can become a saint in his sleep; and to fulfil the conditionrequired demands a certain amount of prayer and meditation and time, just as improvement in any direction, bodily or mental, requirespreparation and care. Address yourselves to that one thing; at anycost have this transcendent character exchanged for yours. You willfind as you look back upon your life that the moments that stand out, the moments when you have really lived, are the moments when you havedone things in a spirit of love. As memory scans the past, above andbeyond all the transitory pleasures of life, there leap forward thosesupreme hours when you have been enabled to do unnoticed kindnesses tothose around about you, things too trifling to speak about, but whichyou feel have entered into your eternal life. I have seen almostall the beautiful things God has made; I have enjoyed almost everypleasure that He has planned for man; and yet as I look back I seestanding out above all the life that has gone four or five shortexperiences when the love of God reflected itself in some poorimitation, some small act of love of mine, and these seem to be thethings which alone of all one's life abide. Everything else in all ourlives is transitory. Every other good is visionary. But the acts oflove which no man knows about, or can ever know about, they neverfail. 

In the Book of Matthew, where the judgment day is depicted for us inthe imagery of One seated upon a throne and dividing the sheep fromthe goats, the test of a man then is not, "How have I believed?" but"How have I loved?" The test of religion, the final test of religion, is not religiousness, but love. I say the final test of religion atthat great day is not religiousness, but love; not what I have done, not what I have believed; not what I have achieved, but how I havedischarged the common charities of life. Sins of commission in thatawful indictment are not even referred to. By what we have not done, by sins of omission, we are judged. It could not be otherwise. For thewithholding of love is the negation of the spirit of Christ, the proofthat we never knew Him, that for us He lived in vain. It means that Hesuggested nothing in all our thoughts, that He inspired nothing in allour lives, that we were not once near enough to Him to be seized withthe spell of His compassion for the world. It means that

 I lived for myself, I thought for myself, For myself, and none beside-- Just as if Jesus had never lived, As if He had never died. 

It is the Son of Man before whom the nations of the world shall begathered. It is in the presence of humanity that we shall be charged. And the spectacle itself, the mere sight of it, will silently judgeeach one. Those will be there whom we have met and helped; or there, the unpitied multitude whom we neglected or despised. No otherwitness need be summoned. No other charge than lovelessness shall bepreferred. Be not deceived. The words which all of us shall one dayhear sound not of theology but of life, not of churches and saints butof the hungry and the poor, not of creeds and doctrines but of shelterand clothing, not of Bibles and prayer-books but of cups of cold waterin the name of Christ. Thank God the Christianity of today is comingnearer the world's need. Live to help that on. Thank God men knowbetter, by a hairbreadth, what religion is, what God is, who Christis, where Christ is. Who is Christ? He who fed the hungry, clothedthe naked, visited the sick. And where is Christ? Where?--Whoso shallreceive a little child in My name receiveth Me. And who are Christ's?Every one that loveth is born of God. 

WAGNER

I AM A VOICE

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

Charles Wagner, French Protestant pastor and moral essayist, was bornin 1851 in Alsace. He is at present rector of the Reformed Churchin Fontenay-Lous-Bois, in the Department of Seine. He received acomprehensive education at the universities of Paris, Strasburg andGoettingen, and after undertaking many cures in the provinces he wentto Paris in 1882, where he occupied himself in a crusade against thedegrading tendency of life, art and literature in certain of theirParisian phases. He has been a founder of several popular universitiesunder the auspices of the Society for the Promotion of Morality. Hehas published many books, and "La Vie Simple" ("The Simple Life")was crowned by the French Academy and has been translated into manyEuropean languages, as well as into Japanese. Wagner has been styledthe French Tolstoy, but he is less visionary and much more popular andpractical in his views than the Russian mystic. The author of "TheSimple Life" was greeted with many expressions of warm appreciation onhis visit to the United States a few years ago. He was a guest at thePresidential mansion by invitation of President Roosevelt, who hashighly commended "The Simple Life. "

WAGNER

Born in 1851

I AM A VOICE[1]

[Footnote 1: From "The Gospel of Life, " by Charles Wagner, bypermission of the McClure Company, publishers. Copyright, 1905, byMcClure, Phillips & Co. ]

_I am the voice[2] of one crying in the wilderness, Make straight theway of the Lord_. --John i. , 23. 

[Footnote 2: In the French version of the Scriptures it is "_a_voice, " and it is necessary to retain this reading in order to renderprecisely Pastor Wagner's thought. --_Translator_. ]

Nothing is rarer than a personality. So many causes, both interiorand exterior, hinder the normal development of human beings, so manyhostile forces crush them, so many illusions lead them astray, thatthere is required a concurrence of extraordinary circumstances torender possible the existence of an independent character. Butwhen, God alone knows at the cost of what efforts and of what happyaccidents, a vigorous and original personality has been able tounfold, nothing is rarer than not to see it degenerate into a merepersonage. History teaches us that men exceptional in will and energyalmost always become obstructive and mischievous. They commence byserving a cause and end by taking possession of it so completely that, from being its servants, they become its masters. Instead of being menof a cause, they make the cause that of a man, and they degrade themost sacred realities to the paltry level of their ambitious egoism. 

Thus, when we meet with strong natures, endowed with the secret ofleadership and command, yet able to resist the subtle temptation towhich so many of the finer spirits have succumbed, it behooves us tobow and to salute in them a greatness before which all that it iscustomary to call by that name fades into nothingness. 

If ever soul encompassed this greatness, it was that of John theBaptist. John is little known. Of him there remain only a few traitsof physiognomy and a few snatches of discourse. But these snatches arefull of character, these traits possess a sculptural relief; just aswith broken trunks of columns, with fragments of stones, all that isleft of temples that were once the marvels of ancient art, they enableus to conceive of the grandeur of the whole edifice to which theyonce belonged. John was at once strong and humble, energetic andself-detached. Never has an individuality so well-tempered been lesspersonal. Identifying himself completely with his rôle as precursor, he found perfect happiness in effacing himself in the glory of Christ, just as the dawn disappears in the splendors of the morning. 

History is full of precursors who impede and withstand those whom theyhad first announced. When the time comes to retire and to give wayto those for whom they have prepared the way, they do not have thecourage to sacrifice themselves. They go on forever, and often becomethe worst enemies of the cause they have defended. John knew nothingof these failings which are the perpetual scandal in the developmentof the kingdom of God. Not only did he say, speaking of Jesus: "Hemust increase, but I must decrease, " but he made all his acts conformto these words. 

"This my joy is therefore fulfilled, " he said, as he dwelt upon thefirst advances of the gospel, and he exprest thus a sweetness ofsacrifice forever unknown to personal souls that remain vulgar inspite of their genius. 

Finally, John described himself metaphorically in that inimitableprophetic speech which explains in full the idea that he formed forhimself of his ministry. Under the sway of a morbid curiosity, thecrowd, more perplexed by the appearance of the worker than attentiveto the work, prest him with questions. Who then art thou, mysteriouspreacher? Art thou one of the old prophets of Israel, escaped from hisrocky tomb? Or art thou perchance He whom we await? No, answered John, I am neither one of the prophets nor the Messiah himself, I am no one:I am a voice!

I am a voice! This is not a formula that sums up the vocation of theprophets solely, or of all those who, in the pulpit or in the tribune, by the pen or by the public discourse, exert an influence upon theircontemporaries. These words are addrest to every one. They define forevery man, the humble yet great duty of truth that he is called tofulfil in his sphere and according to the measure of his ability. Atthe epoch in which we live, such a device is so applicable to the timebeing, so pressing, so needful for us to hear, that it is wise toengrave it in the very foreground of our consciousness. 

To become a voice we must begin by keeping still. We must listen. The whole world is a tongue of which the spirit is the meaning. Godengraved its fiery capitals in the immensity of the heavens, andtraced its delicate smaller letters on the flower, on the grass, onthe human soul, as rich, as incommensurable as the abysses of space. Whosoever you are, brother, before letting yourself utter one word, lend your ear to that voice that seeks you, I might almost add, thatimplores you. Listen!--Listen to the confused murmur that arises fromthe human depths, and that, comprising in it all tears, all torments, as well as all joys, becomes the sigh of creation. 

Listen in your heart to remorse, the sad and poignant echo that sin, traversing life, leaves everywhere upon its passage. Shut your earto no sound, however unobtrusive, however sad, it may be. There arevoices that issue from the tombs, others that call to you from out theabyss of past ages; repel them not, listen! One and all, they havesomething to say to you. 

But do not be content with listening to man. Pierce nature, and, in visible creation as in the invisible sanctuary of souls, watchattentively for the revelation of Him whose eternal thought everyliving thing, humble or sublime, translates after its own fashion. Hespeaks to you in the dark nights and in the bright light of dawn, inthe infinite radiance of the worlds beyond all reckoning, and in thehumble stalk that awaits, in the valley bottom, its ray of light andits drop of dew. Listen!--If there is anguish in the voice of poorhumanity, there are in great nature profound words of soothing, ofhope. Look at the flower in the fields, listen to the birds in theskies! After the distrest voices that perturb you, you shall know thevoices that relieve and console. There shall befall you that whichbefell the nun whose memory is preserved for us in the old legends. Listening to the forest voices she had gone, following them always, asfar as the thick solitudes where nothing any longer comes to troublethe collected soul. There, in the shade of a tree where she had seatedherself, she heard a song till then unknown to her ears. It was thesong of the mystic bird. This song said, in marvelous modulations, allthat man thinks and feels, all that he suffers, all that he seeks, allthat falls short of fulfilment for him. It summed up in harmonies thedestinies of living beings and the immense pity that is at the rootof things. Softly, on light, strong wings, it lifted the soul to theheights where it looks upon reality. And the nun, her hands clasped, listened, listened without end, forgetting earth, sky, time, forgetting herself. She listened for centuries without ever growingtired, finding in the song that charmed her a sweetness forever new. Dear and truthful image of what the soul experiences when, mute, as respectful as a child and as ready of belief, it listens in theuniversal silence to the voices that translate for it the things thatare eternal!

All those who have become voices have traveled this way. At Patmos orin the desert, on Horeb or on Sinai, they have trembled with fright orstarted with joy. But everything has its time. There comes a day whenall voices, soft or terrible, that man has heard, grow still, to lethenceforth only one be heard, which cries to him: "Go! go now and bea witness of the things you have heard! Go! I send you forth as lambsamong wolves! Go! I send you toward men whose brow is harsh, whoseheart is wicked, but fear nothing, I shall embolden your face, I shallgive you a heart of brass and a forehead of diamond. "

When that moment has come, one must, in order to remain faithful tohis mission, remember that after all he is only a voice. Truthdoes not belong to us, it is we who belong to truth! Wo to him whopossesses it and treats it as something that belongs to himself. Happyis he who is possest by it! No preference, no kinship, no sympathycounts here. Alas! it is not thus that men understand it. It is forthis reason that they degrade truth and that it becomes without powerin their hands. Instead of winging its way heavenward in vigorousflight, it crawls along the earth, like an eagle whose wings have beenbroken. Nothing is sadder than to see how those who ought to lendtheir voice to truth, turn it to their own uses and play with it. Thevoice, human speech, that sacred organ, whose whole worth lies insincerity, has in all ages been the victim of odious profanations. Butin this age it is more than ever attainted. The evil from which itsuffers is defilement. 

At certain epochs a word was as good as a man. It was an act total, supreme, guaranteed by the whole of life. There was no need to sign, to stamp, to legalize. Speech was held between friends and enemiesalike, more sacred than any sanctuary, and man maintained it, with theobscure but just sentiment that it is at the base of society, and thatif words lose their value, there is no longer any society possible. Later the written word was considered sacred. And coming nearer toour own day, we have been able to see the masses, guided ever bythat quite legitimate sentiment of the holiness of speech, regardeverything printed as gospel truth. Those times are no more. We havelied too much, by the living word, the pen, and the press. We havesaid and printed too much that is light, false, wittingly disfigured. Armed with an instrumentality that multiplies thought and spreads itbroadcast to the four corners of the earth with a rapidity unknownto our fathers, we have made use of it, for the most part, to extendslander more widely and to cause a greater amount of doubtfulintelligence to swarm upon the earth. So well have we spun speech outin all our mouths, so thoroughly have we deprived it of its propernature and caused it to become sophisticated, that it is no longer ofthe least value. The confidence of the masses in authority, which isone of the slowest and most difficult conquests of humanity, we havelost like a thing of no worth. They no longer say to any one who nowlifts up his voice: Who are you? But: What end have you in view? Whatparty do you serve? By what interest are you led? By whom have youbeen bought? That there may be a sacred truth, loved, respected, adored; a truth that is worth more than life, to which one may givehimself wholly and with happiness--this idea diverts the cynicsand makes those whom the cruel experiences of life have rendereddistrustful, shake their heads. If ever an epoch has needed torehabilitate human speech, it is our own. What good are we if it isgood for nothing, since it is at the root of all our institutions?

Who will give it back its potency?--They who will know how to resignthemselves to being but a voice!

Permit me to bring home to you, by means of a very modest example, what man may gain in force by being but a voice. Look at that clock. When the hour has come, it marks it. Whether it be the hour of birthor of death, the hour of joy or of sorrow, the hour of longed-formeetings, or of heart-breaking farewells, the clock strikes that hour. It is only a mechanism, but it is scrupulously exact, it measures thattime which descends to us drop by drop from the bosom of eternity, andwhen the hammer falls on the brazen bell, the entire universe confirmswhat it announces. The suns and the worlds mark at this very moment, in the immortal light, the same point of time that is indicated belowon earth, some starless night, by the humblest village clock. We mustimitate the clock. In full consciousness, through absolute submission, man should make himself the humble instrument of truth, and go throughsupreme servitude to supreme power. When he does not do this, he isonly an imperfect timepiece. But when, bound by his word, chained tothe truth that he serves, he has become its slave, and when, withouthate, without preference, without human fear, without other desirethan that of being faithful, he proclaims what is just, true, right, good, the rocks are less firm on their base than this man: for he is avoice!

A voice is, if you like, a slight thing. Stilled as soon as itawakened, it is heard only by a few and for a little while. It is saidthat singers are greatly to be pitied, since posterity can not hearthem. Nothing of them remains. And yet how many marvelous forcesunderlie this apparent fragility! The thunder has its roar, the breezehas its tenderness, but their power is transitory; they are sounds andnot voices. A voice is a living sound, it is the vibrant echo of asoul. It is doubtless that most fragile thing, a breath, but joined tothat which is most durable, spirit. And it is for this reason that, ifthe instant when it is born sees it die, centuries of centuries cannot destroy its effect. The truth which is in it confers immortalityupon it, and when this voice escapes from a human breast, he whospeaks, sings or weeps, feels indeed that eternity has concluded analliance with him. Peeling his fragile testimony confirmed by all thatendures and can not die, he says with Christ: "Heaven and earth shallpass away, but my words shall not pass away!"

The holy labors entrusted to the voice can never be counted. Becauseof the very fact that it lives and that it contains a soul, it isthe great awakener, the incomparable evoker. When, obscure still andunknown, a thought distracts us and slumbers at the bottom of ourbeing, a voice is all that is needed to make it emerge into the light. With maternal tenderness, the voice borrows all the energies ofincubation, to infuse with warmth, to fortify, the nascent germs ofspiritual life. In it lives and breaks forth what, in the evolvingsoul, tends feebly and furtively toward the flowering. In short, thevoice, speech, the tongue, condenses in a single focus incalculablequantities of rays. 

Only think of the efforts that human thought must have made to reachthat clearness that enables it to become speech. Every word that youutter without giving it a thought is a monument toward which centuriesand multitudes of minds have wrought. A world is contained in it. Poorwords! one man decks himself out in them, another wraps himself up inthem, but how few know of the warmth of life and love that has putthem into the world that they may be forever the witnesses of the pastfor posterity! No matter, for when they have been made sufficiently toresound like an inanimate cymbal, there comes an hour when they reviveunder the breath of a true and living being, and they depart to spreadlife. Then they fulfil their rôle as educators. To educate is toexplain a being to itself. And this is the benign service thatthe voice performs. It tells us what we think better than we canourselves. It unbinds the chains of the captive soul and permits it totake its flight. Happy the child, happy the young man who meets witha voice to decipher him to himself! This is what Christ did in thoseblest hours when He reunited the children of His people, as a birdreunites its brood under its wings!

What the voice does in detail, it continues to accomplish on thelarger scale. At certain moments societies seem a prey to a sort ofchaos. A number of contrary forces clash and perturb them, as theyperturb and rend individual souls. Men seek, feeling their way, a roadthat seems to elude them. A crowd of spirits, by the very fact oftheir contemporaneity, feel themselves distracted and agitated allin the same way. Confusedly and provoked by the same sufferings theyelaborate the same ideal and formulate the same desires. But they allwander along twilit paths on the side of the night where the lightseems to be breaking through, without, however, being able topierce the darkness. These are the preliminary agonies of the greathistorical epochs. Then let a being more powerful, more vital, anelect soul that has passed through this phase and conquered theseshadows, become incarnate in a voice! That is enough. The personalword which expresses the soul of that epoch and responds to itsneeds, is found. It sounds through the world like a new _fiat lux_!Everywhere, in those who listen to it and feel secret affinities withit in themselves, it constitutes a magnificent revelation of light andlife. All these hearts vibrate in unison with one; and, gathering upall these scattered notes into a single harmony, he who expresses thesentiments of all, renders an account of the wonderful power of whichhe is the instrument. No, it is no longer a man that speaks: whatsounds upon his lips, is the whole soul of a people, is a whole epoch, is a new world. 

A voice is also that inimitable sigh, that pure sob which tellsof grief because it issues from a suffering heart. It is pity andcompassion, it is the angel of God arriving among us on the caressingbreath, a messenger of mercy, and pouring into the tortured depths ofour poor heart its healing dew. It is Jesus saying to Mary, and, inher, to all those whom grief afflicts: "Why weepest thou?" It is Davidsinging: "Why art thou cast down, O my soul?" It is Isaiah crying:"Comfort ye, comfort ye, my people; speak ye comfortably toJerusalem!"

A voice is, on the solitary path where our will strays, the faithfulshepherd calling his sheep; it is every sign, even tho it be madeby the hand of a child, which in the days of forgetfulness andunrestraint, suddenly wakes us and warns us that our feet skirt theabysses. 

Then, after the work of education, of creation, of pity, comes thework of severity, of punishment, of destruction. The voice has beencompared to a sword. Like it, it flames and punishes. A voice isNathan rising up before the criminal king and calling down upon hishead the avenging lightning of this word: "Thou art the man!" Thesword attacks, destroys, but it defends, also, and this is its fairestwork. Never is the voice more touching than when it is lifted in favorof the weak, and, when, suddenly, in the midst of the iniquitiesof brute force that it denounces, marks with its stigma, it causesjustice to shine forth and the truth to be felt, in the holysoul-traversing thrill, that God Himself is there and that His hourhas come!

A voice has its echo. When this echo is sympathetic, it is endowedwith the sweetest recompense and obliterates the memory of manysorrows. But this echo is often hostile. It arises from wrath and isincreased by hatred. Then it is resistance, riot, that rumbles. It isthe passions and the scourged vices that twist and bellow like deerunder the lash of the trainer. How many times, O, faithful voices, souls of peace and truth, has the spirit that animates you driven youto these fearful encounters--you who have heard in the silence of yourhearts the holy verities and who know their worth, you are obliged togo bearing them in the face of menace, of mockery, of trembling ragewhere they seem to us like Daniel in the lion's den! A terribleordeal! but one before which the testifying voices have neverrecoiled. Luther, who knew the emotions of the great battles of thespirit where one man is alone in the face of a thousand, where tinderthe growing clamors and the cries of death . .. A voice struggles likea torch in a tempest, has given to the servants of truth a counselthat is the alpha and omega of their austere mission. When they havesaid all, done all, essayed all, put all their being and all theirlove into the proclamation of what they have to announce, then, hesays, "let them be ready to be hooted at and spat upon!" And not onlyshould they be ready but they should accept this lot with happiness. Christ says to them: "Happy are they that are outraged and persecutedfor the sake of justice!"

Alas, the rudest proof for him who speaks the truth is not to arouseindignation. That, at least, is a result, and however sad it may be, it bears witness to him who has spoken. Certain protests, despitetheir fury, are a sort of involuntary homage. The supreme trial fora voice is indifference. When John called himself a voice in thewilderness, he alluded to that external solitude where his voice wasraised. But this solitude, on certain days was full of life and thegospel cites for our benefit certain facts which prove that the wordswith which it resounded were not lost in the empty spaces. They movedand struck home from the humblest regions of society to the exaltedspheres, to the royal throne itself. John garnered love and hate, blessing and curse, the desirable fruits of all energetic action. Since that time and before, more than one voice has been able, applying them to itself, to give to those prophetic words, "voices inthe wilderness, " another very melancholy significance. The supremeimage of despair is a voice that is lost in the silence, as is lost, in the bosom of dead solitudes, the call that no one hears, for succorthat will never come. 

After having spoken of the different voices, of their power, of theireffects, let us bestow a compassionate remembrance upon the lostvoices, on those who were or who are still, in the most lamentablesense of that word, voices in the wilderness. --To be a man, a soul, tohave felt the lighting of a holy flame within oneself; to love truthand justice; to feel the pain of contact with a life ruled over byfalsehood and violence; at the heart of this poignant contrast betweena divine ideal and a heart-rending reality, to receive from hisconscience, from God himself, the command to speak; to put his lifeinto this work, to renounce everything to be only a voice . .. Andafter all this to see himself forsaken, neglected, despised! To wearoneself out slowly in a strife obscure and without issue; to perishwithout having aroused either sympathy or opposition, to disappearinto oblivion before disappearing in the tomb . .. Ah! all the furies, all the bloody reprisals, the dungeons, the gibbets, the massacres, all the martyrdoms by which human wickedness strove to stifle thevoice of the just, are less horrible than this extermination byapathy. 

And yet, not to press things to this cruel extremity, but rememberingthe parable of the sower, where so many seeds are lost for the fewthat take root and flourish, ought we not be willing to be, in thegreatest number of cases, voices in the wilderness, only too happy ifour thankless labors are recompensed elsewhere by an encouraging echo?Have we not here, on the contrary, the image of human life? we arealways aspiring toward an ideal more elevated than that which werealize. We are always precursors, and it becomes us to accept humblywhat that destiny holds both of pain and of beauty. 

Besides, do we know whether voices that seem to be lost, are so inreality? Are the stones that are hidden in the foundations of abeautiful edifice, and thanks to which the whole fabric is supported, lost because no one sees them? In the same way it must be that manyvoices are forgotten apparently, until such time as, added togetherand finding in each other mutual support, they end by emerging intothe full light of day. 

To wait and to work; to do his duty, and leave the rest to God; tojourney through life, gathering truth into his heart, and then intothe family, the Church, the city; to be its faithful voice; this isthe best use a man can make of his mortal days. And should it be yourlot to be voices in the wilderness; among your children deaf to yourcries; among your compatriots insensible to your warnings, consoleyourselves. Greater than you have suffered the same fate. Uniteyourself in spirit to their company and be happy to suffer with them. At least as you come to understand more and more from day to day thattruth can not perish, and that it is potent even on feeble lips; youwill establish in your hearts faith in the world that endures, and youwill be less astonished and less disconcerted when you see the face ofthis world pass away. You will live by the sacred fire cherished inyour souls. Let your furrow close, your hope will not perish! LikeMoses on Nebo, you will enter into the silence, having filled yourdying eyes with the spectacle of the promised land!

GORDON

MAN IN THE IMAGE OF GOD

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

George Angier Gordon, Congregational divine, was born in Scotland, 1853. He was educated at Harvard, and has been minister of Old SouthChurch, Boston, Massachusetts, since 1884. His pulpit style isconspicuous for its directness and forcefulness, and he is consideredin a high sense the successor of Philip Brooks. He was lecturer in theLowell Institute Course, 1900; Lyman Beecher Lecturer, Yale, 1901;university preacher to Harvard, 1886-1890; to Yale, 1888-1901; Harvardoverseer. He is the author of "The Witness to Immortality" (1897), and many other works. 

GORDON

Born in 1853

MAN IN THE IMAGE OF GOD[1]

[Footnote 1: Printed here by kind permission of Dr. Gordon. ]

_And God created man in his own image, in the image of God created hehim_. --Genesis i. , 27. 

It must never be forgotten that all truth lies in the order of lifeitself. There is a natural environment, and in it have been, real andmighty from the beginning, the laws and forces which science has butrecently discovered. Copernicus discovered the true order of the solarsystem; but the order itself has been there from the morning of time. Newton discovered the force of gravity, but that force has been in thenatural situation since creation. Chemists have been able to make outsixty-five or sixty-six irreducible elements; but while chemistry isyoung, the elements are everlasting. Electricity is the discovery ofyesterday, and yet it has been at play in man's environment from thefoundation of the world. The continuity of life, from the lowest formsof it up to man, has been a fact from the first; but not untilthis century has the fact meant anything. Few things impress theimagination more powerfully than the sense of the forces that havesurrounded man from his first appearance on the earth, and thathave been noted and utilized only in recent times. There stands theimmemorial force, and men have had no eyes for it till yesterday. Thoughtful men begin to look upon the environment in a new spirit. They begin to walk within it in amazement and hope. All the forces ofthe material universe are here, and only a few things about themhave been discovered. The natural environment is rich beyond allcalculation or dream; it is exhaustless. Here in the field of man'slife is the alluring object of science. Here in the natural situationare the everlasting and benign energies that wait to be discovered andprest into human service. There is a human environment, and all thefundamental truth about man has been present in it from the start. Moses gave his nomadic brethren the ten words; but they were writtenin the human heart ages before they were inscribed upon stone. Thegreat Hebrew prophets gave to the world the vision of one God, Hisrighteous government of the world, and His election of a single racefor the service of all the races; but God and His government and Hismethod in the education of man were real and mighty before Amos, andHosea, and Isaiah, and Jeremiah beheld them. Christ revealed theFather through His own divine Sonhood; but the Fatherhood of God is aneternal truth. Nowhere is the divineness of Christ more obvious thanin the ease and adequacy with which He, and He alone, is able to readthe meaning of the human situation. Christ as Prophet, as Seer andDiscoverer, is most amazing to the most gifted. His eye for factis divine. He notes the falling sparrow, and at once reaches theuniversal fatherly foresight and control of God. His consuming visiongoes everywhere, turning the hidden truth of life into light and joyin His parables. His teaching is revelation, the unveiling of theaboriginal divine order. He makes nothing; He reveals what God made. And when He increases life it is by showing the path to that increaseordained of God, insight and obedience. The will of God is the finallaw for heaven and earth; the vision of it and surrender to it are thepath of life. Here we touch the depth of the old faith. God the Fathercreates, and the Son reveals. The order of the Spirit is eternal; therevelation of it is in time and for sense-bound men. Here we see ina mirror and dimly; there they behold face to face. And Christ drewforth into light the divine significance of man's life, as Godoriginally made it; and that divine meaning of existence thus drawnout is the gospel of Christ. 

In the text we are carried by a true seer back of all traditions, behind all conventions, beyond all beliefs about life to life itselfas it lies in its own freshness and fulness. We are led to look uponhuman life newly made, still warm with the touch of the creative hand, and yet containing in it that very hour all that the Lord eventuallydrew out of it. If the first man had understood himself he would havebeen essentially a Christian. And therefore I propose to evolve fromthe original human situation, as described in the text, the outline ofwhat I take to be a great faith. 

I. If the first man had understood himself, he would have seen inhimself the interpreter of nature. From the first command, "Let therebe light, " to the final, "Let us make man in our image, " there are twothings to be noted. There is continuity in the creative process, andthere is an ascension from the lower to the higher. The first duty ofour self-comprehending Adam will be to look backward. He will lookacross the wide field whose farther limit lies in cloud and whosehither border touches his feet. He will survey the creative processthat has led up to and that has come to its climax in him. And as hethinks of himself as the product of nature, must he not conclude thatas reason is the result, reason must have preceded the process andgoverned it? Humanity is the issue; therefore humanity must haveplanned the issue and secured it. Back of this march of life, behindthis developing and ascending order, out in the darkness, before thelight was created, there was the Mind that accounts for man. Thus thelast becomes the first, the man that ends the creative process seesthat a human God must have preceded the process. 

This truth is one of the greater insights of the time. The continuityof life, from the lowest forms to the highest, has received during thelast fifty years an unparalleled recognition. So, too, with the factof the steady ascent of life. Not indeed in a literal and yet in atrue way, the modern scientific conception is a wonderful parallel tothe sublime hymn with which the Bible opens. In the beginning was thefire-mist. In that fire-mist began the process of development. Itbecame worlds, systems innumerable, a stellar universe, and withinthis whole a solar order, an earth beating forward in preparation forthe advent of life. Life when it came flowed into countless forms. From the shapeless mass it pushed on upward into successively higherand finer structures, ever aspiring toward man. Ages preceded theadvent of man. There were upon the part of life ages of preparation, ages of climbing. Before life rose the mountain of the Lord; itmust be scaled and its summit reached before man could put inan appearance. But the hour for which the whole cosmos had beentravailing in pain could not be indefinitely delayed. In the fulnessof time, as the tree bursts into bloom, as the tide rolls to theflood, as the light breaks in through the gates of morning, naturecame to her supreme expression in man. Man is not here on his ownstrength. He is not in the bosom of things unaccounted for. He is thechild of nature; her last act, her highest product, the best that isin her power to bring forth, the son in whose wondrous being her ownmotherhood is to undergo total transformation. 

That is the modern scientific conception; look for a moment at itsgreatness. Man as final issue of nature must turn round and lookbackward. He must look down the long line of life to the far-off firstbeginning. He must pass beyond the earliest forms in which the vitalmovement began to the mysterious, formless, eternal power behind all. And it is here that nature is lifted into a new character by her humanproduct. In that eternal power there must be a reason to accountfor man's reason, conscience to account for his conscience, love toaccount for his love, spirit to explain his spirit. Nature as mothermust become spirit to account for the soul of her son. The flowershows what was in the seed, the oak is the revelation of what was inthe heart of the acorn; and man as the last and best outcome of natureis the authoritative expression of the power that is behind nature. Thus the mind that is the final product of nature discovers the mindthat is the source of nature. Man seeking the origin of his beingfinds it on the farther side of nature in One like unto a son of man. He learns later to distinguish between the reality and the image, between God and godlike man. And then a wireless telegraphy isestablished between them across the vast untraveled distances ofnature. The life near to God can not send the tokens of His inmostcharacter upward to man; the brute life near to man can not carrydownward to God man's thoughts and hopes. The animal life thatstretches in an expanse so wide between the Creator and His best workcan not connect the human and the divine. But when the spirit to whichnature comes in man has once seen the Spirit in which nature mustbegin, then the wireless telegraphy comes into play. The heart, thatis the last product of life, sends out its mysterious currents, itsaspirations, its gladness, its grief, and its hope; and these repeatthemselves in the great heart of God. And forth from the Spirit behindnature issue the messages of recognition, of sympathy, of intimatedideals and endless incentive, that register themselves in the soul ofman. Nature is a solid, sympathetic, and now and then glorified, andyet dumb, highway between God and man. Her beauty belongs to theSpirit that she does not know, and it speaks to the Spirit that isolder than her child. She is a mute, unconscious sacrament between theinfinite reason and the finite, a path for the lightning that playsbackward and forward between the soul of man and the soul of God. The great primal fact in the human environment is that man is theinterpreter of nature. In this character of interpreter of nature hereceives his first message from God, and makes his first response. 

II. The second fact in the human situation is that religion is theinterpreter of man. As man looks backward he beholds beyond naturea face like his own, only diviner; and ever afterward the noblestaspiration of his soul is to win the smile of that face and to escapeits frown. Our self-comprehending Adam would confess that he knewhimself only when he noted within him the lover of the infinite. Andhere history leads the way. You look into "The Book of the Dead, " andyou see what high and serious things religion meant for the earlyEgyptian. The pyramids are monuments to religion. The art of theancient races was chiefly homage to the divine. The Athenian Parthenonwould never have been but for faith in the goddess that shielded thecity. Greek art, the greatest art in the world, is primarily a tributeto faith. Those marvelous statues were likenesses of the gods; thoseincomparable temples were dwelling-places for the gods. Religion isin the warp and woof of the world's love and sorrow, its art andliterature, its patriotism and history. The life of man is thecathedral window, and religion is the colored figure that stands init. The two are inseparable. You can not abolish the figure withoutbreaking the window; you can not banish religion without destroyinghumanity. Try to explain Homer's world without Olympus; account forMohammedanism and make no reference to faith; write the history ofthe Middle Ages and take no note of the "Divine Comedy"; sum upthe meaning of Persian and Indian civilization and pay no heed toreligion; show what Hebraism is and leave unnoticed its consciousnessof God, and you will create a parallel to the philosopher who shouldendeavor to trace the significance of human life apart from man'spassion for the infinite. 

Here then is the key to manhood. He is a being over whom the unseenwields an endless fascination. There is in him a thirst that nothingcan quench save the living God. His chief attribute is an attributeof wo, an incapacity for content within the limits of the visibleand temporal. His differentiation from the brute is at this pointabsolute. Between man and the lower orders of life there is a line oflikeness; there is also from the beginning a line of unlikeness. Inphysical structure man is both similar and dissimilar to the animal. As bread-winner and economist he is kindred and he is in contrast tothe creatures below him. In the home, in society, and in the statein which both home and society are set and protected, the line oflikeness grows less and less distinct, while the line of unlikenessbecomes bolder and plainer. It is impossible to deny observation tothe dog and impossible to grant to it science. The instinct for beautybelongs to the bird, but art in the full sense of the word, as theself-conscious expression of beautiful ideas, is no part of its life. One can not decline to note method in the existence of the brute, and one is compelled to withold from it philosophy. In these higheractivities the line of likeness between man and the animal is of thefaintest description; while the line of contrast becomes more and morepronounced and significant. When we come to the summit of man thelikeness vanishes utterly. Among the lower life of the world there isno _Magnificat_, there is no _Nunc Dimittis_; the beginning and theend do not link themselves to the Eternal. The brute has no religion, no temple, no priest, no Bible, no sacrament of love between itselfand the invisible. The tower of this church tells at once, and fromafar, that it is a church. Near at hand, much besides the tower tellsthe same story. There is the cruciform foundation; there is thestructure of its walls. There is the outside with distinct note; thereis the inside with its joyous beauty. Look at the church closely andyou need no tower to proclaim what it is. And yet the tower is itsmost conspicuous witness: at a distance it is the sole witness. Religion is similarly the eminent token that man belongs to a divineorder. The basis of his being in sacrifice should repeat the sametale. Civilization as a struggle after social righteousness shouldannounce the same fact. Man's thoughts and feelings, and theirmanifold and marvelous expression in art, in institutions, and insystems of opinion, utter the same testimony. And yet the tower of hisbeing, high soaring and far seen, is his feeling for the invisible. You do not know man until you behold him worshiping. 

III. The third fact in our human situation is that Christianity is theinterpretation of religion. You see the devout old Jew, Simeon, whomet Jesus as His mother brought Him for the first time into thetemple; and there you behold the old faith interpreted by the new. Allthat was best in the Hebrew religion is conserved and carried higherin the Christian religion. Everywhere the devoutest Jews wereconscious of wants which the national faith did not meet. They waitedfor the consolation of Israel, and when Christ came he suppliedsatisfactions which Hebraism could not supply. Christianity commendeditself to the disciples of Christ because it seemed to be their ownfaith at its best. They were carried over into it by the logicof their previous belief and their deep human need. Paul soughtrighteousness as a Jew; when he became a Christian, righteousnesswas still his great quest. And Christianity commended itself to himbecause the national ideal of righteousness was set before him ina sublimer form, and because a new inspiration came to him in hispursuit of it. The old immemorial goal of human endeavor was exalted, and the everlasting incentives were filled with the freshness of adivine life. Thus the religious Jew, when Christ came, was like aconvalescent patient. The process of recovery was going on, but ina way that was discouragingly slow. The longing was for the higheraltitudes of the spirit, for the pure and bracing atmosphere of someexalted leader, for an environment richer in healing ministry and inrestoring power. That longing Christ met. He carried His believingcountrymen on to the heights. He surrounded them with the freshness ofHis own spirit. He put over them a new sky. He took them into a newenvironment, rich with His truth and grace, tender with infinitesympathy, stored with the forces that work for spiritual vigor, filledwith the love of His Father. Ask Peter or James or John or Paul, askany believing Jew and he will tell you that Christianity is simply theconsummation of his faith as a Jew. 

The gospel moves along the same line of self-verification withreference to all the great religions. The Persian believes in eternallight, and he hates the contending darkness. Christianity says thatGod is light, and that in Him is no darkness at all; that Jesus is theLight of the world, and that whosoever followeth Him shall not walkin darkness, but shall have the light of life. The Greek was full ofhumanity, and he could not help making his gods and goddesses simplylarger and more beautiful men and women. What is the soul of thatamazingly beautiful and seemingly fantastic mythology of the Greeks?Why do they worship Apollo and Aphrodite, Hermes and Athene? Becausethey can think of nothing higher than ideal humanity. And Christcomes, the ideal man. The beauty of the Lord is upon Him. His thoughtsand feelings and purpose and character are the most perfect things inthe world. He identifies Himself with man, and He identifies Himselfwith God. He is the Son of man, and as such He is the Son of God. Andthus a human. God, a human universe, a human religion is offered tothe Greek, and in place of the wonderful mythology the clear, warm, divine fact. The Mohammedan believes in will; and the gospel putsbefore him that ultimate irresistible Will as a Will to all good, eternally burdened with love, and nothing but love, for man. The Hinduis smitten with an endless craving after rest, and he thinks the pathto peace lies in the diminution and final extinction of being. Christgoes to the Hindu and says: "Come unto me all ye that are weary andheavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learnof me; for I am meek and lowly of heart, and ye shall find rest untoyour souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. "

He sets before the Hindu an infinite social peace; he calls into playthe moral will that for ages has been allowed to slumber. The goalis high social harmony; the path to it is the intelligent will infaithful, inspired, victorious obedience. The need of the Hindu isnot less but more and better existence. The way out of his despair isthrough fulness of life. His misery is but the dumb prayer for eternallife, that is, for existence supreme in its character and in itsvolume. 

Thus Christianity is everywhere the interpreter of religion. Everywhere it carries the world's faith to its best. It is theconsummation both of the human need and the divine answer. And to-day, in our own world, it goes on the same high errand. The intuitions ofrighteousness, the sympathies with goodness, the wish for the moreabundant life, the ideals and the struggles, the hope and the fear, without which man would not be man, find their interpreter inChristianity. It is the soul carried to the utmost depth of its needand the loftiest height of its desire, and then made conscious thatbelow its profoundest weakness and above its highest dream is theinfinite Love that is educating its life. It is the best wisdom ofhistory speaking to the highest interests of man. As mothers broughttheir children to Jesus that He might reveal the inmost meaning ofchildhood, open its treasure to the hearts that loved it, and by Hisconsecrating touch assure it of perpetual increase; so are the nationsbringing their religions to Him, and the noble among men theiruncomprehended longing and hope. He walks among us still as theRevealer, the Conserver, and the Consummator of life. 

IV. Lastly, Christianity finds it own interpretation in God. We haveseen man looking backward and finding the origin of his soul in theSoul that is behind nature. We have seen his religion telling himthat he can not live by bread alone, that he can rest only underthe shelter of the unseen, that he is infinitely more akin to theinvisible than to the visible, that he has a spirit and must thereforehunger for the fellowship of the eternal Spirit. We see Christianitylifting this religious capacity to its highest, and bringing in thedivine appeal in its sublimest form. We behold the earth transfiguredin this Christian dream, the ladder set that reaches from the dreamerto heaven, and upon it, going up and coming down, the great prayers ofthe soul and the tender responses of the Most High. To what shall werefer this sublime, transfiguring dream? Is it the delusion of thesleeper, or the whisper of God? Is the ladder set up from the earth, or is it let down from above? Did man shape it out of his abysmaldesire, or did God make and establish it out of His love. What canwe say of that which is the highest wisdom, the widest sympathy, thedivinest love, and the mightiest power in human history? What canwe do with that which is the true life of man? Can the trees of thefield, as they clap their hands and sing in the freshening breeze, doother than refer it to heaven? And man, as he sees the light of Christupon the Spirit behind nature, beholds in the gospel that whichinterprets his highest dreams, feels in Christianity the power tounderstand and to become his own best self--can he do other than saythat his Christian faith is the gift of God? The star in the brookrefers you for the explanation of its being to the star in the sky;and the glory of the gospel living in the depths of man's soul has noother origin than the love of God. 

The hope of science lies in exploring the natural environment. Allmaterial reality is here, and here science has found all her truth, and every season reminds her that inexpressible wonders still wait hersearch. In the heavens above, and in the earth beneath, and in thewaters under the earth are hidden the treasure for which she is totoil. Earth and sea and sky; the waveless depths and the windlessheights, and the wide expanse between, now sunlit and againstormswept, are the field of her enterprise and hope. And in the sameway the human environment is the region that the spirit must explore. The meaning of humanity must be found in and through humanity. "Saynot in thy heart, Who shall ascend into heaven? that is, to bringChrist down; or who shall descend into the abyss? that is, to bringChrist up from the dead. The word is nigh thee, in thy mouth and inthy heart. " The divine reality offers itself to faith in and throughthe scope and sweep of life. The order of God is in the life ofsociety. The ideal for man, the method by which it is realized, andthe power, are set in the spiritual tissues of the race. If you see noGod, no soul, no genuine religion, believe rather that you are blindthan that your human environment does not contain them. You are theproduct of nature. It follows that nature must be great enough toaccount for you and your race and the Christ who is your race at itsbest. Back of the nature that gave birth to you, that bore your kind, and brought forth Christ, there must be the sufficient Spirit. Youare sure that you can not live by bread alone. You have thoughts thatwander through eternity. You can not rest until you rest in God. Youare a being made for religion, and again here is the gospel that meetsyour intelligence with its wisdom, your heart with its love, your willwith its moral authority. Nothing puts your being in tune, and nothingrings out the best music that is in you, as the gospel does. It isomnipresent in our civilization, working everywhere to crush thebeast and to free the man. It is in a mother's love, the soul of itstenderness; it is in a father's heart as ideal and incentive. Thehistory and the experience and the hope of our homes are transfiguredin its light, as if the earth should repose in an everlasting eveningglow. Patriotism is alive with its fire, and the new and growingpassion for humanity is the great token of its quickening spirit. It is the box of ointment, very precious, which has been broken insociety and all Christendom is filled with its perfume. Birth anddeath, love and sorrow, achievement and failure, human life and itsimmemorial content, the old room and the dear and dreary things in it, take on new dignity and grace. To detect the new spirit in the olddwelling is the best and most rewarding of all intuitions. To live inthe human homestead consecrated by the diffusion of Christ's gospel isto undergo an unconscious conformation to exalted ideals. Because ofour Christian civilization, behind every morning is the Father, whomakes His sun to shine upon the evil and the good, and who sends Hisrain upon the just and the unjust. Nature has been lifted into aservant of the divine beneficence. And man's wild but imperishablepassion for the unseen has been brought to see its last and best selfin the love of Christ. Wherever we look, this gospel is the masterlight of all our seeing; and once more, is it not light from heaven?We know where to look for the belt of Orion, and clear and grand asthe stars that constitute it are the great saving truths which are setin the human sky. There is nothing arbitrary in this sublime faith, nothing that does not rise out of the human order, nothing that is amere import from the world of fancy or wild belief. The faith is thetranslation of fact into thought and speech. The eyes of Christ passover and through the order of the universe, and His vision is ourfaith. Man is the interpreter of nature; religion is the interpreterof man; Christianity is the interpreter of religion; and God theFather is the interpreter of Christianity. 

DAWSON

CHRIST AMONG THE COMMON THINGS OF LIFE

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

William James Dawson, Congregational preacher and evangelist, was bornin Towcester, Northamptonshire, in 1854. He was educated at KingswoodSchool, Bath, and Didsbury College, Manchester. He has long beenknown as an author of originality and pure literary style. In 1906 hereceived the pastorate of Highbury Quadrant Congregational Church, London, and accepted an invitation to do general evangelistic workunder the auspices of the National Council of the Congregationalchurches of the United States. He now resides in this country. 

DAWSON

Born in 1854:

CHRIST AMONG THE COMMON THINGS OF LIFE[1]

[Footnote 1: Reprinted by kind permission of Messrs. Fleming H. Revell& Co. , New York. ]

_As soon then as they were come to land they saw a fire of coalsthere, and fish laid thereon, and bread. Jesus saith unto them, Comeand dine_. --John xxi. , 9, 12. 

I can not read these words without indulging for a moment in areminiscence. Not long ago, in the early morning, while all the worldslept, I stood beside the Sea of Tiberias, just as the morning mistlifted, and watched a single brown-sailed fishing-boat making for theshore, and the tired fishermen dragging their net to land. In thatmoment it seemed to me as if more than the morning mist lifted--twentycenturies seemed to melt like mist, and the last chapter of St. John'sgospel seemed to enact itself before my eyes. For so vivid was thesense of something familiar in the scene, so mystic was the hour, thatI should scarce have been surprized had I seen a fire of coals burningon the shore, and heard the voice of Jesus inviting these tiredfishermen to come and dine. 

Now if I felt that, if I was sensible of the haunting presence ofChrist by that Galilean shore, how much more these disciples, inwhose minds every aspect of the Galilean lake was connected with someintimate and thrilling memory of the ministry of Jesus. 

Christ once more stands among the common things of life; the fire, the fish, the bread--all common things; a group of tired, hungryfishers--all common men; and He is there to affirm that in Hisresurrection He had not broken His bond with men, but strengthenedit--wherever common life goes on there is Jesus still. 

I. Notice the words with which the story opens, and you will see atonce that this is the real clue to its interpretation. "When morninghad now come, Jesus stood on the shore, but the disciples knew notthat it was Jesus. " A strange thing that! Why did they not know Him?Because they were not looking for Him in such a scene. It had seemed anatural thing, if Jesus should appear at all, that He should appear inthe garden, a vision of life at the very altar of death. It seemed yetmore probable and appropriate that He should appear in the upper room, that room made sacred by holiest love and memory. If any words ofChrist yet lingered in the mind and had power to thrill them, theywere surely these words, "Ye shall see the Son of man coming in theclouds of heaven, " glorified, triumphant, lifted far above the earthand its humble life. And so, if they were looking for Christ at allthat morning, I think they watched the morning clouds, expecting Himto come down the resplendent staircase of the sunbeams to call thenations together and vindicate Himself in acts of universal judgment. And behold! Jesus comes as a fisherman standing on the lakeside, busyover a little fire, where the morning meal is cooking; and behold!Jesus speaks, and it is not of the eternal mysteries of God, not ofthe solemn secrets of the grave, but of nets and fishing and how tocast the nets--the simple concerns of simple men engaged in humbletasks. 

No wonder they did not recognize Him. Once more the Son of Man comeseating and drinking, and even the eyes that knew Him best can not seein this human figure by the lakeside the only begotten Son of theFather, full of grace and truth. They looked and saw but a fellowfisherman, cooking his meal upon the shore, and they knew not that itwas Jesus. 

II. Think for a moment of the earthly life of Christ, and you willsee that it was designedly linked with all the common and even thecommonest things of life. 

If you or I could have conceived the great thought of some humancreature that should be the very incarnation of God, what would havebeen the shape of our imaginings? Surely we should have chosen forthis earthly temple of the Highest some human form perfected in graceand beauty by the long refinements of exalted ancestry; the child ofkings or scholars; the delicate flower of life, in whom the elementswere so subtly mixed that we should recognize them as special andmiraculous--so we might think of God manifest in man. But God choosesfor the habitation of His Spirit a peasant woman of Nazareth, humble, poor, unconsidered. 

If we could have forecast the training of such a life, how shouldwe have pictured it? Surely as sheltered from the coarseness of theworld, delicately nourished, sedulously cultured; but God ordersthat this life should manifest itself in the house of the villagecarpenter, out of reach of schools, in a little wicked town, under thecommonest conditions of poverty, obscurity, and toil. 

If you and I could have imagined the introduction of this life oflives to the world, how should we picture that? Surely we should havepictured it coming with pomp and display that would at once haveattracted all eyes; but God orders that it shall come withoutobservation, unfolding its quiet beauty like the wayside flower, whichthere are few to see and very few to love. Commonness: that is thegreat note of the incarnation and the purposed feature of Christ'searthly life. 

He reaffirms His fraternity in common life. The disciples could notimagine that as possible; nor can we. And why not? For two reasons, one of which is that we have forgotten the dignity of common life. 

1. Dignity is for us almost synonymous with some kind of separationfrom common life; it dwells in palaces, not in cottages; it inheres inculture, but is inconceivable in narrow knowledge; and to the greatmass of men it is, alas! the attribute of wealth, of fine raiment, of social isolation. But we have not learned even the alphabetof Christ's gospel unless we have come to see that the only true_in_dignity in human life is sin, meanness, malevolence, andsmall-heartedness; and that all life is dignified where there arelove, purity, and piety in it, whatever be its social category. 

I read the other day that it is probable that the very mire of theLondon streets contains that mysterious substance known as radium, themost tremendous agent of light and heat ever yet discovered by man; soin man himself, however low his state, there is the spark of God, anember lit at the altar fires of the Eternal, and it is because weforget this that we forget the dignity of common life. For we doforget it. We may make our boast that a single human soul is of morevalue than all the splendors and immensities of matter; but in ouractions we treat the boast as a mere rhetorical expression. There isnothing so cheap as men and women--let the lords of commerce answerif it be not so. But Christ acted as tho the boast were true. Hedeliberately inwove His life into all that is commonest in life. Hehas made it impossible for us, if indeed we have His spirit, to thinkof any salient aspect of human life without thinking of Him. Where childhood is, there is Bethlehem; where sorrow is, there isGethsemane; where death is, there is Calvary; where the toiler is, there is the poor man of Nazareth; and where the beggar is, there isHe who had no place where to lay His head. There is not a drop ofblood of Christ, nor a throb of thought in our brains that is notthrilling with the impact of this divine life of lives. And so thetrue dignity of life is this, that Christ is in all men, faintlyoutlined it may be, defaced, half-obliterated, but there, and theChurch that forgets this has neither impulse nor mandate for Christ'swork among men. 

2. And then, again, there is a second reason: we have not learned tolook for Christ among the common things of life. 

"Let us build three tabernacles, " said the wondering disciples onthe Mount of Transfiguration, and the speech betrayed a tendency ofthought which was in time to prove fatal to the Church. 

The Christ without a tabernacle, the free, familiar Christ of the lakeor the wayside was everybody's Christ; but the moment Christ is shutup in a church or a tabernacle He becomes the priest's Christ, thethinker's Christ, the devotee's Christ, but He ceases to be thepeople's Christ. 

I remember five years ago standing in the great church of Assisi, which has been erected over and encloses the little humble chapelwhere Francis first received his call. You will scarcely be surprizedif I confess that I turned with a sense of heart-sick indignationfrom the pomp of that splendid service in the gorgeous church tothe thought of Francis, in his worn robe, going up and down theseneighboring roads, touching the lepers, calling them "God's patients, "pouring out his life for the poor; and I knew Christ nearer to meon the roads that Francis trod than in that church, which is hismausoleum rather than his monument. And as I felt that day in far-offUmbria, so I have felt to-day in England; my heart goes out toCatherine Booth; to Father Dolling, to these Christs of the wayside, and it turns more and more from the kind of Christ who lives inchurches and nowhere else. My brethren, you will let me say that we dobut make the church Christ's prison when we forget that all the realmof life is His. Oh, you good people, you do love your church, butoften think and act as tho the presence of Christ can be found nowhereelse. Lift up your eyes and see this risen Christ, a fisherman uponthe shore, busy in no loftier task than to have a meal prepared forhungry fishermen. Unlock your church doors, let Christ go out amongcommon people; nay, go yourselves, for it is here that He would haveyou be. Remember that wherever there is toil, there is the Christwho toiled; and there you should be, with the kind glance, the warmhand-grasp, and the loving warmth of brotherhood. 

Christ stands amid the common things of life; where the fire is lit, there is He; where the bread is broken, there is He; where the net ofbusiness gain is drawn, there is He; and only as we learn to see Himeverywhere shall we understand the dignity and the divinity of humanlife. 

III. "And Jesus said unto them, Cast the net on the right side of theship, and ye shall find. They cast, and now they were not able to drawit for the multitude of fishes. "

Here is another strange thing. Christ knows more about the managementof their own business than they do. They had toiled all night andcaught nothing; is not that a significant description of many humanlives? "Children, have ye any meat?" asks that quiet Voice fromthe shore, and they answer "No. " Is not that yet more patheticallysignificant? All the heartbreak and disappointment of the world cryaloud in that confession. Oh, I could fill an hour with the mererecital of the names of great and famous people who have toiledthrough a long life, and as the last gray hour came over their dim seaof life, "brackish with the salt of human tears, " have acknowledgedwith infinite bitterness that they have caught nothing. Listen to thevoice of Goethe, "In all my seventy-five years I have not had fourweeks of genuine well-being;" to the confession of our own famouspoet, My life is in the yellow leaf, The flowers, the fruits of love are gone; The worm, the canker, and the grief Are mine alone. 

to the ambitious and successful statesman who says, "Youth is folly, manhood is struggle, old age regret"; to one of our most brilliantwomen of genius in our own generation, wife of a still more brillianthusband, who cries, "I married for ambition, and I am miserable. "Surely there is some tragic mismanagement of the great business ofliving here. Oh, brother, is it true of you, that after all thepainful years happiness is not yours? You have no meat, no food onwhich the heart feeds, no green pasture in the soul, no table in thewilderness, and the last gray day draws near and will find you stillhungering for what life Has never given you. 

Learn, then, that Christ knows more about the proper management ofyour life than you do. "Cast your net on the right side of the ship, "speaks that quiet Voice from the shore. And you know what happened. And it is so still. Just because Christ stands among the common thingsof life, He knows most about life, and, above all, He knows wherethe golden fruit of happiness is found and where the secret wells ofpeace. 

And to some of us whom God has called to be fishers of men the issueis yet more solemn. We have the boat and the nets, all this elaborateorganization of the Church, but have we caught anything this year?Where is the draft of fishes? Where are the men and women saved byour triumphant effort? I will make my humble confession this morning, that for five-and-twenty years I have cast the net, but only latelyhave I found the right side of the ship; only lately have I discoveredhow easy it is to get the great draft of fishes by simply going towork in Christ's way. I do not believe in the indifference of themasses in religion; the indifference is not in the masses, but in thechurches. You will never catch many fish if you stand upon the shoreof cold respectability and wait for them to come; launch out into thedeep and you will find them. Go for them--that is Christ's method. Compel them to come in, for remember Christ's ideal was, as BishopLightfoot so nobly put it, "the universal compulsion of the souls ofmen. " And if your experience is like mine, you will find that there isstrangely little compulsion needed to bring men and women to Christ. I stood but lately in a house where fifty fallen women lived; I wentthere to rescue three of its unhappy inmates. When the moment came totake these three women from their life of sin, their comrades linedthe passage to shake my hand; there were tears and prayers, andmessages like these, "Be good. You'll be a good woman, " "We wish wehad your chance"; and these poor souls in their inferno wished me"a happy New-year. " Compulsion! There was small need for compulsionthere! I believe I could have rescued all of these fifty women at onestroke had I known where to take them. But to the shame of the FreeChurches in London I confess that, with the exception of the Wesleyansand the Salvation Army, I do not know a single Free Church Rescue Homein London. And I put it to you this morning whether you can any longertolerate that omission? I ask you whether you really want a greatdraft of fishes, for you can have them if you want them. Christ knowsthe business better than you do; and if you will come out of thecloister of the church and seek the people in His spirit, I promiseyou that very soon you will not be able to drag the net for themultitude of fishes. 

IV. "And Jesus said unto them, Come and dine. "

Dine on what? Not the fish which they had caught. They had caught onehundred and fifty-three great fishes; but notice Christ's fire waskindled before they came. Christ's fish was already laid thereon, andall they had to do was to come and dine. It is all you have to do, allthe churches have to do. Did not Christ so put it in the parable ofthe Great Supper?--"Come, for all things are ready. " Is not the lastword of Scripture the great invitation?--"The Spirit and the Bridesay, Come, and whosoever will, let him come, and take of the water oflife freely. " Many a church can not say to a hungry world, "Come anddine, " because it will not let Christ prepare the meal. It will notlive in His spirit, it has no real faith in His gospel, it does notunderstand that its true strength is not in elaborate organizationor worship, but in simple reliance on His grace. And so there is thetable covered with elaborate confections, which are not bread, andwhen it says, "Come and dine, " men will not come, for they know thatthere is nothing there for them. Let Christ prepare the meal and allis different then. When He says, "Come and dine, " there is "enoughfor each, enough for all, enough for evermore. " And as Jesus spoke, Ithink there flashed upon the memory of these men the scene when Jesusfed the five thousand, and by that memory they knew their Jesus. Noone else ever spoke like that, with such certainty and such authority. And the same Voice speaks even now to your hunger-bitten soul, to yourfamished heart, "Come and dine. "

V. "Then Jesus taketh bread and giveth them, and fish likewise. "

There is no mistaking the act; it was a sacramental act. Here, uponthe lake shore, without a church, without an altar, the true feast ofthe Lord was observed. For what does the Holy Supper, which is thebond and seal of the Church's fellowship, stand for, if it is notfor this, the sanctification of the common life? Bread and wine, thecommonest of all foods to an Oriental, are elements indeed, becausethey are necessary to the most elementary form of physical life, things used daily in the humblest home. By linking Himselfimperishably with these commonest elements of life, Christ makes itimpossible to forget Him. Once more the thought shines clear, Jesusamong the common things of life. 

And then there comes one last touch in the beautiful story. Whilethese things happened, the day was breaking. Is there one of uslong tossed on sunless seas of doubt, long conscious of failure anddisappointment in life? Are there those of us whose sorrow lies deeperthan that which is personal--sorrow over our failure in Christ's work, pain over a life's ministry for Christ that has known no victoriousevangel? Turn your eyes from that barren sea to Him who stands uponthe shore; He shall yet make you a fisher of men. Turn your eyes fromthat bleak, dark sea of wasted effort where you have fared so ill; itis always dark till Jesus comes, it is always light when He has come. There is a new day breaking for the churches--a day of widespreadevangelistic triumphs that shall eclipse all the greatest triumphs ofthe past, if we will but go back to Christ's school and learn of Himhow to save the people. And to each of us He says to-day: "I am theliving bread; I am the bread of life come down from heaven. If any maneat of this bread, he shall live forever. " "Come and dine. " Will youcome?

SMITH

ASSURANCE IN GOD

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

GEORGE ADAM SMITH, divine, educator and author, was born at Calcuttain 1856, and educated at New College, Edinburgh, Scotland. He is atpresent professor of Old Testament Language, Literature and Theologyin the United Free Church College, Glasgow. He is author of "TheHistorical Geography of the Holy Land, " "Jerusalem, the Topography, Economics and History from the Earliest Time to A. D. 70" (1908). He isgenerally regarded as one of the most gifted preachers of Scotland. 

SMITH

Born in 1856

ASSURANCE IN GOD

_Preserve me, O God. _--Psalm xvi. , 16. 

The psalmist lived in a period when belief in the reality of many godswas still strong, and when a man who would follow the one true Godhad to prefer to do so against the attractions of other deities andagainst the convictions of a great number of his fellow countrymenthat these deities were living and powerful. That stage of religion isso distant from ourselves that we may imagine the psalmist's exampleto be of no practical value for our faith, yet in such an imaginationwe should be very much mistaken indeed, for, to begin with, considerhow much you and I to-day owe to those believers who so many centuriesago rejected all the gods that offered themselves to the hearts of menexcept the true God, and who chose to cleave to Him alone with allthat passionate loyalty which breathes through these verses. But forthem you and I could not be standing where we are in religion to-day. As the eleventh of Hebrews reminds us, we are the spiritual heir ofsuch believers. It is to their struggles and their faith and theirvictories that we greatly owe it that we have been born into anatmosphere in which no religious belief is possible to us save in oneGod who is Spirit and Righteousness and all Truth. 

That, then, was the great choice that the psalmist's faith was turningto--a choice that was no mere assent to a creed that had been foughtfor and established by previous generations of believers. It was theman's own proving of things unseen and his own preference of thoseagainst the crowd and a system of things seen, palpable, and verypowerful in their attraction for the senses of humanity. But we arenot to suppose that the rival deities, from which this man turned tothe unseen God, were to his mind or to the mind of his day the heapof dead and ugly idols which we know them to be. They were not deadthings that he could kick away with his feet that these believers hadto reject when they sought the living God, but things which he and hiscontemporaries felt to be alive and powerful; powerful alike in theirseduction and in their vengeance. They were believed to be identical, as you know, with the forces of nature; they were supposed to beindispensable to the welfare of the individual and of society, andthey were fanatically supported at the time by the mass of this man'sown countrymen; so that to break from them in those days meant toabandon ancient opinions and habits, to resist many pleasant andnatural temptations and to incur the hostility, as was believed, ofthe powers of nature, to break with customs and with rites that hadfortified and consoled the individual heart for generations and beenthe support and sanction of society and of the state as well. Yet thisman did it. From all that living crowd and system, from all thosevisible temptations and terrors he turned to the unseen, fullyconscious of his danger, for he opens his Psalm with a great cry, "Preserve me, preserve me, O God!" but yet deliberately, and with allhis heart: "I have said unto the Lord, Thou art my Lord. " I have nogoodness, no happiness, that is outside Thee or outside the saintsthat are in the land, "the excellent in whom is all my delight. " Herewe touch another great characteristic of all true faith which is fullof example to ourselves. It is remarkable how, when a man really turnsto God, he turns to God's people as well, and how he includes them inthe loyalty and in the devotion which he feels toward his Redeemer. His confidence and the sensitiveness of his faith in and toward Godbecome almost an equal confidence and an equal sensitiveness towardhis fellow believers. So it is throughout Scripture; you remember thatother psalmist who tells us how he had been tempted to doubt God'sprovidence and God's power to help the good man--"does God know and isthere knowledge in the Most High? Verily I have cleansed my heart invain and washed my hands in innocency. " The psalmist immediately adds:"If I had spoken thus, behold I had dealt treacherously with thegeneration of God's children. " If I had spoken thus, denying God, I had dealt treacherously with the generation of God's children. Unbelief toward God meant to him treason toward God's people; and theauthor of the Epistle to the Hebrews affirms the same double characterof true faith when he emphasizes just these two points in the faithof Moses: "choosing to suffer affliction with the people of God, " and"enduring as seeing Him who is invisible, " and God Himself throughJesus Christ has accepted this partnership of His people in ourloyalty--"Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of thesemy brethren ye have done it unto me. " I do not believe in the fullfaith of any man who does not extend the loyalty he professes toGod to God's people as well, who does not feel as sensitive to hisbrethren on earth as he does to his Father in heaven, who does notpractise piety toward the Church as he does toward her Head, or findin her fellowship and her service a joy and a gladness which is onewith his deep joy in God, his Redeemer. Nay, is it not just in lovingpeople who are still imperfect, often disappointing, and far fromtheir ideal it may be, that in our relations to them we are to findthe greater proof and test of our religious faith? In these days sucha duty is unfortunately more complicated than with the psalmist. Thelines between God's Church and the world is not so clear as it was tohim, and the Church is divided into many and often hostile factions. All the more it becomes the test of our religion if our hearts feeland rejoice in the fellowship of God's simpler and more needy and moredevoted believers, however unattractive they may otherwise be. 

Consider the way in which the psalmist reached this pure faith in Godand in His people. A factor in the process was distaste for the uglyrites of idolatry--"Their drink-offerings of blood will I not offer. "Idolatry always develops a loathsome ritual. Sometimes it is crueland sometimes it is horribly unclean, but it always debases theworshiper's mind, confuses his conscience, and hampers his freedom andenergy by the burdensome ceremonies it imposes upon them. Standingafar off from them as we do, and knowing that there is no heathenreligion but has something good in it, we are apt to think that itdoes not in the least matter how crude or how material a nation'sfaith be if only it be faith in something more powerful thanthemselves, if it satisfy their consciences and have some influence indisciplining society and helping the individual to control himself. But you have only to see idolatry at work, and at work with thehabits of ages upon it, to recognize how terrible it can be in itsidentification of sheer filth and cruelty with the interests ofreligion, and how it at once demoralizes and paralyzes its adherents. To see it thus is to understand the passionate horror of these words:"Their drink-offering of blood will I not offer. "

It is, however, no mere recoil from the immoral which started thespring of this psalmists's faith in God. That faith was formed onpersonal experience of God Himself. In simple but pregnant phrases thepsalmist tells us how sure he has become, first, of God's providencein his life; secondly, of God's intimate communion with his soul. God, he says, had been everything in his life. One does not know whetherthe psalmist was a prosperous man or a poor one; the inference that hewas prosperous and rich has sometimes been drawn, but wrongly drawn, from one of the verses of the Psalm. His indifference to that isclear, but what he did have he knew he had from God. God, he says, isall his happiness and all his strength--"The Lord is the portion ofmine inheritance and of my cup; thou maintainest my lot. " Whether pooror prosperous he could say: "The lines are fallen unto me in pleasantplaces; yea, I have a goodly heritage. " Now that assurance of divineleading is not analyzable, but we know that it does grow up solid andsure in the experience of simple men who have put their trust in God, who have felt life to be a commission from Him and who have done theirduty obeying His call. With such men "all things work together forgood. " Tho life about them shake and darken, they feel their ownsolidity and have light enough to read the future. Tho striptand stark, they feel the Lord Himself to be the portion of theirinheritance and of their cup. The portion of my inheritance the Lordis, i. E. , the little bit of land that fell to each Israelite as hisshare in the promised inheritance of the nation. "The Lord is theportion of mine inheritance, " as we might say in our Scotch language, "The Lord is my croft and my cup, " so they find in Him all theground and the freedom they need to do their work, fulfil theirrelationships, and develop their manhood. 

It is, however, with the psalmist's second reason for his faith wehave most to do. "I will bless the Lord, who hath given me counsel:my reins also instruct me in the night seasons. " This man held closecommunion with God. Is it not great to find the testimony of a brotherman coming down all through those ages, from that dim and distantpast, clear and sure as to this, that he had God's counsel and thatGod kept communion with him? God had spoken to this man and shownhim His will. Yes, he had received what we call inspiration andrevelation, and had proved the truth of these in his life. They hadled and they had lifted him. Nor had they come to him as many menfalsely suppose revelation and inspiration exclusively have come tomankind, by means, namely, that were extraordinary and miraculous. Thepsalmist tells us of no vision of angels, of no voice from heaven. TheLord had not appeared to him in dreams nor by any marvelous signs; onthe other hand, he tells us simply that the divine counsel of whichhe was so sure, and which he passes on to us, came to him through theworkings of his inner spiritual life. That is what he means by theemphatic statement "yea, my reins instruct me in the night seasons, "which he adds parallel with the thought, "I will bless the Lord, whohath given me counsel. " According to the primitive physiology ofthis man's nation and times, the reins of a man fulfil the sameintellectual function which we, with our larger knowledge, know aredischarged by the brain. This was how God's revelation came to thisbrother of ours, through the working of his mind and conscience, butit was in the night seasons that they worked, not in the day and inthe sunshine, but in the night when a man is left to himself withonly this advantage to his thought: that like the blind he is yetundistracted by the influences which are seen. When he lies down hethinks soberly and quietly about himself and about life and about God, and about the great hidden future that is waiting for him. Hewas communing with God, who had made his brain and used it as aninstrument of revelation. In these thoughts God was communing with manthrough his reason and through his conscience. You and I are alwayscontrasting God's providence and His grace. We are always attemptingto oppose reason and revelation; to this man they were one. God'sgreat grace had come to him through God's own providence, and God'srevelation was ministered to him through the reason with which he hadendowed the creature He had made in His own image. This psalmist'schief and practical help to us men and women today is that he becamesure of God not because of any miracle or supernatural sign, on hisreport of which we might be content indolently to rest our faith, butin God's own providence in his life and in God's quiet communion withhim through the organs God Himself has created in every one of us. Forall time, whether before or after Christ, these are the chiefgrounds and foundations of faith in God. So it was in the OldTestament--"stand in awe and sin not, " "commune with your own heartupon your bed and be still, " "be still and know that I am God. " Sowith Christ, "for the kingdom of heaven cometh not with observation, but the kingdom of heaven is within you, " and so with Paul, "theSpirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are thechildren of God, and if children then heirs, heirs of God and jointheirs with Christ. " "For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father ofour Lord Jesus Christ, . .. That he would grant you according to theriches of his glory to be strengthened with might by his spirit in theinner man; that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith, to the endthat ye being rooted and grounded in love may come to apprehend withall saints what is the breadth and length and depth and height and toknow the love of Christ. "

God's guidance of his life, first of all, produces in a man a greatsense of stability. "I have set the Lord always before me: because heis at my right hand I shall not be moved. " He who has found God socareful of him, he whom God hath regarded as worth speaking to andcounseling and disciplining, will be certain that he shall endure, provided he is sure of his own loyalty. The life so loved of God, soprovided for, and in such close communion with the Eternal is not, cannot be the creature of the day, and this assurance stands firm in faceof even death and the horrible corruption of the body. The psalmistrefuses to believe that he is to dwell in the horrible under-worldforever--either himself or any of God's believers. "Thou must not, thou wilt not leave my soul in sheol, thou must not, thou wilt notsuffer thy loved ones to see the pit. " To this man it is incredible, and our hearts bear witness to the truth if we have had any experienceof God's blessing and guidance. To this man it is incredible that thelife God has cared for and guided and spoken to and brought into suchintimate communion with himself can find its end in death. Those whomGod has loyally loved and who have loyally loved God--for thisword badly translated "holy" in the psalms really has that actualsignificance--those whom God has loyally loved and who have loyallyloved God shall never die. As He lives so shall they; they shall neverbe absent from His presence. Be the future unknown and unknowable, be we ourselves incapable of conceiving the processes by which thismortal shall put on immortality, or where heaven is, or what eternitycan possibly be to those who have never lived outside time, yet thatfuture is secure and its immortal character is indubitable--where Godis there shall His servants be, and because He is there their lifeshall be peace and joy, and because He is eternal it shall lastforevermore. That thought is the whole of the hope and argument. Weare assured of the future life because we have known God, and as wehave found Him to be true to us and proved ourselves true to Him. 

GUNSAULUS

THE BIBLE VS. INFIDELITY

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

Frank Wakely Gunsaulus was born at Chesterville, Ohio, in 1856. Hegraduated from Ohio Wesleyan University in 1875. For some years he waspastor of Plymouth Church, Chicago, and since 1899 pastor of CentralChurch, Chicago. He is also president of the Armour Institute ofTechnology. He is a fascinating speaker, having a clear, resonantvoice, and a dignified presence. His mind is a storehouse of the bestliterature, and his English style is noteworthy for its purity andrichness. He is the author of several books and is in popular demandas a lecturer. 

GUNSAULUS

Born in 1856

THE BIBLE VS. INFIDELITY[1]

[Footnote 1: Preached as an impromptu reply to R. G. Ingersoll. Printedfrom an unrevised stenographic report. ]

_There are, it may be, so many kinds of voices in the world, and noneof them is without signification_. --I Cor. Xiv. , 10. 

Ours is a voiceful era. Perhaps, as the ages come and go and man'slife grows richer, its questions more restless for answer, itsmoral supports called upon to bear heavier interests of faith, itsenterprises more often and searchingly compelled to defend themselves, the voices of time will be increasingly potent and worthy of hisattention. A singularly suggestive collection of messages fills theair today, and all of these voices speak of one theme--the Bible. 

Anarchy, which is always atheistic, holds its converse in the placesof evil which this book's message would close forever; the foes ofthat civilization builded on its laws and stimulated by its hopes asksus to condemn it as worthy only of caricature, vituperation, and hate. Let us find a path of duty today, not refusing to listen to any ofthese voices, but asking that other voices also may help us to thetruth. 

The preacher's message is a book called the Bible. That is only theliterary form of his message--telling its history. Even that form, which is much less divine as paper and ink are less lofty in thescale than humanity, has worked wonders. To-day, the Bible offers thenineteenth-century infidel as testimony of the influence it has. Ithas force enough to make infidelity preach tearfully and well aboutman, woman, and child. Skepticism did not do so well until the Biblecame. The Bible has furnished the eloquence of infidelity with sucha man as Shakespeare to talk about; no student of literature couldimagine Shakespeare without the Bible and the Bible's influence uponhim as he created his dreams. It furnished an Abraham Lincoln for anorator to compare favorably with incomplete ideas of Almighty God; butit seems to have been unable to show the critic that Christian ideasof Almighty God made Lincoln so love the Lord's Prayer that he wanteda church builded with this as its creed. It would seem that anygeneral denunciation or humorous caricature of a book which hasworked such an amazing effect in literature as has the Bible wouldbe tempered by some recognition of the fact that these otherminds--poets, orators, sages, and scientists--have found illuminationand help in its pages. Liberal Christianity will be intellectuallybroad. Certainly the greatest of modern pagans, Goethe, will not beaccused of favoritism toward the Bible, yet he said: "I esteem thegospels to be thoroughly genuine, for there shines forth from them thereflected splendor of a sublimity, proceeding from the person ofJesus Christ, of so divine a kind as only the divine could ever havemanifested upon earth. " The Earl of Rochester saw that the onlyliberalism which objects to the Bible, in its true uses, is theliberalism of licentiousness; and he left this saying: "A bad heartis the great argument against this holy book. " And Faraday, weeping, said: "Why will people go astray when they have this blest book toguide them?"

If we turn to literature we encounter many such liberal thinkers asTheodore Parker, who calmly informs us: "This collection of books hastaken such a hold upon the world as has no other. The literature ofGreece, which goes up like incense from that land of temples andheroic deeds, has not half the influence of this book. It goes equallyto the cottage of the plain man and the palace of the king. It iswoven into the literature of the scholar and colors the talk of thestreet. " That is the voice of the liberalism which includes ratherthan excludes. 

These were men not of the band of evangelical Christian preachers, whoare roughly classed as a set of persons unable to tell the truth aboutthe Bible, for fear they may lose their means of subsistence; theseare men who know the true mission of the Bible. It is not to furnisha picture of life in the time of Moses such as life ought to be, aportrait of a David for the imitation of men, a statue of a warriorin a time of barbarism who shall command my obedience to his commandsnow, an idea of God wrought out in ignorance and darkness, which hasno self-development within it. The mission of the Bible is to furnisha humanly written account of a people, just as human as we, in whom, by divine inspiration, the soul of truth so lived and worked as todevelop, in gradual course, by laws, by hopes, by loves, by life, aliving, and, at last, perfectly authoritative ideal of righteousness, but more than all a gradual growth of such moral power as would becommanding in the redeeming self-sacrifice and love of Jesus Christ. Every page of the Old Testament was only preparatory, as the thornybush is preparatory for the rose. Christ is the end of the long, wearyhuman history that leads to Him. If the laws of Sinai had been enough, there never would have been a Calvary. No one for a moment dreams thatthe God of nature could have brought forth such a fruit as the lifeand ideas of Jesus without a tree of such a history, a tree rooted inthe ground, storm-twisted, gnarled, and valuable only for its fruit. We are not asked to eat the roots and bark and branches; only thefruit has an appeal to us. Its appeal is to our hunger, its authoritylies in the fact that it satisfies our hunger. 

It has satisfied the hunger of men whose liberalism came from theirbeing made liberally. Large and capacious souls of mighty yearningsare they. They stand in contrast with the puny critics who assertthat the Bible fails to feed them, because they have never tasted itsnourishment. 

Liberal Christianity, separating itself from the dogmatism which wouldmake Christianity a book religion, worshiping a literary idol ratherthan loving a human revelation of the divine, knows it is not anignorant lot of men and women who have received most from the Bibleand spoken most gratefully of its message. When we think of sendingthe Bible to barbarism, with the hope of creating in its steadcivilization, we can look into the face of John Selden, one of themost illustrious of English lawyers, when he says: "I have surveyedmost of the learning that is among the sons of men, yet at this momentI can recall nothing in them on which to rest my soul, save one fromthe sacred Scriptures, which rises much on my mind. It is this: 'Thegrace of God, which bringeth salvation, hath appeared unto all men, teaching us that denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should livesoberly, righteously, and godly in this present world, looking forthat blest hope and the glorious appearing of the great God and ourSavior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us that he might redeemus unto himself, a peculiar people zealous of good works. '" Liberalreligion must include Selden. We will not be deterred from giving theBible to heathenism of any kind when we remember that Sir WilliamJones has left these words: "The Scriptures contain more truesublimity, more exquisite beauty, and finer strains of poetry andeloquence than could be collected from all other books that were evercomposed in any age or in any idiom. " Liberal religion must be asbroad as Sir William Jones. 

This is a very needy world, and many are the institutions of evil thatneed to be changed for institutions of goodness. If we are to believethe eloquence of hopeless unbelief, we ourselves will only be theslaves of a fatalism which says that man is but a result of forces;that what we call crime is but a part of the necessary course ofthings, and that there is no such thing as moral responsibility. Thismakes all reform or efforts at staying the tide of evil useless. Oftentimes the heart of the man who has ceased to read his Bible getsthe victory over this dreadful philosophy, and it is not remarkablethat the skeptic becomes the exponent of freedom, charging like a hostof war upon all institutions of slavery. Liberal theology puts its onehand on the dogmatist who tells him to accept literal infallibility, and its other on the sincere lover of men who has lost his Bibleentirely. And liberalism says: It is in just such moments that wetrust our Bible the most, and we remember that William Wilberforce, who lifted the chains from the bondmen, has said: "I never knewhappiness until I found Christ as a Savior. Read the Bible! Bead theBible! Through all my perplexities and distresses I never read anyother book, I never knew the want of any other. " We are certainly notdespising the science which is worthy of a name, nor are we forgettingany proposition which has found a place in the world's thought, if welook into the face of Sir John Herschel, who tells us that "all humandiscoveries seem to be made only for the purpose of confirming moreand more strongly the truths contained in the holy Scriptures. " It istruly no part of wisdom for us to conclude that for scientific reasonswe ought to forsake our Bible when Professor Dana avers: "The grandold book of God still stands; and this old earth, the more its leavesare turned and pondered, the more will it sustain and illustrate thesacred Word. "

Surely it is not the hour dogmatically to withdraw this book, whichhas proved the basis of civilization. Professor Lyell, the greatEnglish geologist, tells us: "In the year 1806 the French Instituteenumerated no less than eighty geological theories which were hostileto the Scriptures, but not one of these theories is held today. "Bacon's remark is still true: "There never was found in any age of theworld either religion or law that did so highly exalt the public goodas the Bible. " And John Marshall and Prince Bismarck agree with DanielWebster when he says: "If we abide by the principles taught in theBible our country will go on prospering and to prosper; but if we andour posterity neglect its instructions and authority no man can tellhow sudden a catastrophe may overwhelm us and bury all our glory inprofound obscurity. " There is not an anarchist in America who does notclap his hands when he hears a Bible with the Ten Commandments and theSermon on the Mount denounced. Indeed, the civilization in which westand, as compared with the barbarism out of which we have been ledby the Bible, would make William Henry Seward's assertion only a mildstatement of the truth when he says: "The whole hope of human progressis suspended on the ever-growing influence of the Bible. " I preferlawyers like these to lead American public opinion. Part of theservice of these men has been that they have shown theology that theBible is not a set of texts on a dead level of authority and equalvalue, but the revealing, slow and sure, of an inspiration obeyed by acertain people in the realm of morals like that inspiration obeyed byanother people in the realm of art, and its test is: Does the Bible'sultimate message, its crowning commandment of Christ's life and love, produce goodness in morals? just as the test of the long revelationof beauty in his ancestors and the Greek is, does its ultimatecommandment produce goodness in art. 

Christianity does not ask: "What think ye of the Bible?" It asks:"What think ye of Christ?" There the throne is set, and so majestic isHis glory that the moment we come into His presence we are judged. TheJudge of the earth has taken His place in thought, history and hope. He is not on trial, and He asks no question as to what man thinks ofthe book which has enthroned Him in literature. The test is placed inmy conduct and yours; each may say with Michael Bruce, who left thesewords on the fly-leaf of his Bible:

 'Tis very vain of me to boast How small a price this Bible cost; The day of judgment will make clear 'Twas very cheap or very dear. 

Shall we go forward with our Bible or backward without it? Infidelityhas always forgotten that, so far as it has an eye for liberty andhumanity, the Christianity not of sects but of the Bible has furnishedit and trained it. The liberalism which puts its Bible aside willacknowledge that a Christless humanity culminated in Rome. Skepticismis often eloquent when it tries to show how much "fragments of Romanart" had to do with the making of modern civilization. Now, as Romemarks the height to which humanity without a Bible ascended, it wouldseem that this would be just the point where free and untrammeledthought and the fullest intellectual liberty would be found. Rightthere, where a Christless race was supreme, ought to be the placewhere the liberty abounded which the religion of Christ is said todestroy. 

Whose program for the production of intellectual and spiritual libertycan liberals accept? Hoarse is the cry: The Bible is to be cast out. We look and behold men who have these opinions sitting on the throneof the Caesars. Now, one would suppose the intellect of that wholerealm would have fair play. There was no Bible there to fetter or toannoy. This ought to be the halcyon age for "the liberty of man, womanand child. " These rulers have the same dignified abhorrence for allkinds of religion. The skeptic Lucretius says: "The fear of the lowerworld must be sent headlong forth. It poisons life to its lowestdepths; it spreads over all things the blackness of death; it leavesno pleasure unalloyed. " I match the Roman with the phrase of a recentorator of this school who spoke of the soldiers dead, as now "sleepingbeneath the shadows of the clouds, careless alike of sunshine or ofstorm, each in the windowless palace of rest. " There was no window inthe grave when more illustrious and original skeptics talked about it. Modern infidelity has many expressions on the future after death whichsound like the old Roman distich, "I was not, and became; I was, andam no more. "

Its orator, bending over the body of his dear brother, said nothingmore touching than did Tacitus over the grave of Agricola, as hewrote: "If there is a place for the spirits of the pious; if, as thewise suppose, great souls do not become extinct with their bodies;if"--oh, that age of "if" ought to have been an age when every brainwas free and no thought or sentiment were a chain. The Bible ofChristianity was not powerful enough to throttle anybody. Its pageswere not all written; its authors were hunted and outcast. Morals, too, ought to have been all right, for we are told that they areindependent of God and Christ. 

But what is the fact? Strangely enough, in that age, when nearly everymonarch, or poet, or philosopher was a humorous skeptic and they hadno Christian religion to "bind their hands, " in an age when nothingbut this sort of infidelity was supreme, Seneca, to whom connoisseursin ethics blandly turn when they grow weary of the strenuous Paul orthe pensive John, Seneca, while he wrote a book on poverty, has afortune of $15, 000, 000, with a house full of citrus tables made ofveined wood brought from Mount Atlas. While he framed moral preceptswhich we are besought to substitute for the Sermon on the Mount, hewas openly accused of constant and shameless iniquity, and was leadinghis distinguished and tender pupil, Nero, into those practises andpreparing him for those atrocities which Seneca himself had upon hisown soul while he wrote his book on clemency. At that hour the BibleChristianity offered to the world's heart and aspiration, not a book, not a theorist of morals, but a man for the leadership of humanity, and, of that Man the literary and calm French skeptic says: "Jesuswill never be surpassed. " In the age of Rome, when people were notburdened by churches or Bibles, Lucian says: "If any one loves wealthand is dazed by gold; if any one measures happiness by purple andpower; if any one brought up among flatterers and slaves has never hada conception of liberty, frankness and truth; if any one has whollysurrendered himself to pleasure, full tables, carousals, lewdness, sorcery, and deceit, let him go to Rome. " There was no Bible eitherto preach against it or to interfere with it. These things were theproduct then, as they are now, of infidelity. Whenever the worldwishes a civilization so barbarous as that, the reviler of the Biblemust create it, for they have the applause of evil and the good-willof crime. In the age of Rome, when this skepticism was the creed ofthe State, Nero got tired of the goddess Astarte, and murdered his ownbrother, his wife, and his mother, and the senate was so affected withthe same opinion that they heard his justification and proceeded toheap new honors upon him. He threw the preacher Paul into jail, butthere Paul wrought out the impulse of Europe. In the age when thegreat Livy said that "neglect of gods" had come, Caligula let loosehis imperial frenzy, and every stream of blood that could be senttoward the sea carried its red tide. In that age when, like latereloquent critics, Ennius said that he did not believe that the godsthought of human beings, "for if the gods concerned themselves aboutthe human race the good would prosper and the bad suffer, " thecourtesan was kept for pleasure and the wife for domestic slavery. Inthat happy age of unbelief, when Menander sung "the gods do not carefor men, " "the homes were, " according to Juvenal, "broken up beforethe nuptial garland faded"; and according to Tertullian, "they marriedonly to be divorced. " Friends exchanged wives; infanticide and otherhellish crimes were common. This is what that spirit, in its purity, did for the home, when there was no Bible to read at its hearthstoneand no New Testament to put into the hands of young lovers departingto make a new rooftree. 

Labor will some day be too liberal to give up its Bible. In that age, when "God was dead"; in that age, when "the gods had abdicated";they said, "the mechanic's occupation is degrading. A workshop isincompatible with anything noble. " The curse of slavery had blottedthe name of labor, and they agreed that "a purchased laborer is betterthan a hired one, " and thousands of prison-like dwellings rose toconceal the myriads of slaves. In that age Nero, who had the sameopinion about God which the vaunting spirit which calls itself liberalhas today, had a "golden house" as large as a city, with colonnades amile long, and within it a statue of Nero 120 feet high. That is whatthe theory of infidelity did for labor and the working man when itwas on the throne. Do you wonder that from that day to this the"carpenter's son" of the Bible has been scoffed at by this infidelity?

In that age, when the theories of infidelity ruled, the gladiatorsmade wet with their blood the great enclosure of the arena. The womenand timid girls of Rome gave lightly the sign of death. The crowdshook the building with applause as the palpitating body was draggedby a hook into the death-chamber, and slaves turned up the bloody soiland covered the blood-dabbled earth with sand that the awful amusementmight go on. All this was allowed by infidelity in its purity, beforeit had been influenced by the Christian's Bible into believing thatsuch things are atrocious. 

Oh, when I hear infidelity prate of the horrors of slavery and defenda Godless theory of the State, I remember that those who had it in itspurity did not regard the slave as a man. When I read the story ofslavery and hear an exponent of free thought say, "The doctrine thatwoman is a slave or serf of man--whether it comes from hell or heaven, from God or demon, from the golden streets of the New Jerusalem, orthe very Sodom of perdition--is savagery pure and simple, " I say, "That is so, but just that was the ruling idea when infidelity was onthe throne of Rome. " And only where the Bible has gone and triumphedhas woman the privileges which are thus praised. 

When I hear it said: "Slavery includes all other crimes. It is thejoint product of the kidnaper, pirate, thief, murderer, and hypocrite. It degrades labor and corrupts leisure. To lacerate the naked back, tosell wives, to steal babes, to debauch your soul--this is slavery, " Ianswer: "That is so, " and I add that all these and a thousand otherdamnable features of slavery were seen in Rome when the whole Romanpeople felt and spoke about the message of the Bible just as your typeof liberalism does today. 

To all this wretched state of man what offers came from Seneca, whomskepticism quotes as a moralist? Why, he said: "Admire only thyself";and when he saw that a man must get out of himself, he said: "Givethyself to philosophy. " Not philosophy, but the power of the Bible'sChrist has lifted man upward to his highest life. 

If ever anti-Christianity had a chance to show its beauty, it was whenit was at its supreme strength, and when Christianity was a babe inthe manger; and these are only suggestions of the hell it dug for manat Rome. You say that it was not what skepticism is at the presentday, and I acknowledge that it is so. Why? Because nineteen centurieshave rolled like waves of light between, and Christ has improved itin spite of itself. Never had the world so good a chance to see whatalmost absolute skepticism and unbelief could and would do for theliberty of the human soul as then. But when the thrones of Rome wereoccupied with men who held the same opinion of the Bible as he doestoday, what was the freedom of the race?

The scene all comes back. Here is a little, obscure set of poor peoplewho follow the words and life of the son of a carpenter. They arepowerful in nothing that Rome calls power. But Rome says that theyshall not think that way. Celsus, from whom our less scholarlyskepticism is ready to borrow arguments, was not enough for the newthought in the arena of debate, and they cried for another arena. Letus remember that unbelief, in its purity at that date, was so offendedat nothing as at the fact that the Church said: "Christian justicemakes all equal who bear the name of man, " and that Paul said: "Thereis neither bond nor free, but ye are all one in Christ Jesus. " Nothingso offended the representative of free thought in that period asthe fact that a rich Roman, in the time of Trajan, having become aChristian, presented freedom to his 1, 250 slaves on an Easter day. And, in all that time, when poor Christians with the funds of theChurch were privately buying the freedom of slaves, I do not findthat a base liberalism believed in liberty. Neither did it believe infreedom of thought. It is the blossom of egotism; it has nothing towhich it bows; it beholds no majesty to which it can look up. It issublime self-conceit, and it has no hesitancy in telling the wholehuman race that at its grandest moments it has been wrong. Thisegotism dared to become active in Rome, and it asked the Christians, in the person of the Emperor, to worship him, and to strew incenseabout him. "I will honor the Emperor, " said Theophilus, "not byworshiping him, but by praying for him. " Such men as that infidelitykindly put to death. Around their quivering limbs the infidelity ofthat day made the fagots to flame, and it taught the red tongues ofcruel death to creep about their smoking bodies. 

Men who believed that the Bible's influence was what infidelity saysit is, made the funeral pyre for Polycarp, the populace bringing fuelfor the fire, and while the flames made a glory of their lambentglare, he cried out: "Six and eighty years have I served him and hehas done me nothing but good, and how could I curse him, my Lordand Savior. If you would know what I am, I tell you frankly, I am aChristian. " He did his own thinking, and was brave enough to avow hisopinion, for which hate of Christianity duly burned him. This was theway infidelity treated free speech. In that way it unchained the soulof Polycarp. Infidelity's idea of Christianity sent the martyrs ofNumidia and Paulus out of the world while they were praying for theirmurderers. Who believed in freedom then? Infidelity's idea of themessage of the Bible followed the Christian like a wild beast, andin the catacomb of Calixtus drew from the pursued soul the patheticexclamation: "Oh, sorrowful times, when we can not even in cavesescape our foes!" And all this was true, because they said, "Recompense to no man evil for evil"; "Pray for them that despitefullyuse you and persecute you. "

This spirit of hate has had at least one holiday at the expense ofChristian faith. On the night of the 18th of July, 64, Rome was sweptwith fire. Six days and nights it raged. Ruined was the world'smetropolis and excited were the wo-stricken people. Nero, whoseopinions of Christianity, by the way, were wonderfully like theorator's, was king, and the people suspected that this royal monsterdid it. Men told of how he exulted over the sea of flame as he watchedit from the tower of Maecenas; and whatever the truth of this may be, it is certain that for the rage of the people Nero must have a victim, and Tacitus tells us that he charged the Christians with the crime. Then opened in Rome the awful carnival of bloodshed that the oratornever mentions, in which horrible modes of torture and excruciatingmethods of producing pain vied with each other in satisfying thedemands of death. Women bound to raging bulls and dragged to deathwere not without the companionship of others who, in the evening, inNero's garden, were coated with pitch, covered with tar, bound tostakes of pine, lighted with fire, and sent to run aflame with thehatred of Christianity. Through the crowd of sufferers a gentleman, who was ultra-liberal as the orator, drove about, fantasticallyattired as a charioteer, and the people were wild with delight. Domitian had the same ideas, and severe were his persecutions of thenew heresy. This was the day on which infidelity was so full of thelove of freedom that it cried: "The Christians to the lions!"

And so I might recount to you how for hundreds of years the Churchfound out how early and unchristianized infidelity loved freedom ofthought. To a type of liberals, it has for years seemed a joy to goto the places in the old world and note how intolerant the Church hasbeen. Now I suggest to any one that he go and visit some of the placeswhere men who thought of Christianity as negativism thinks showedtheir faith and its fruits. Let him go to the Colosseum and ask thewinds that moan over its ruins what they know of the historyof infidelity. The winds will hush in that wreck of stupendousmagnificence, and with an eloquence gathered from seventeen centuriesthey will tell him a story that will cause a flow of tears, for muchof infidelity is of noble heart. They will tell him how the marbleseats were crowded with thousands; again will sweep upward the shoutof the excited throng; before him there will lie a half-dead Christianmartyr, and near that pool of blood will stand a lion who has satiatedhis horrid thirst. 

They will tell him how infidelity made that splendid place a templeof the furies, how it laughed and yelled and applauded, as it amuseditself with that spectacle of horror. They will tell him how theunderground passages served to keep and cage wild beasts, and howthose who then hated Christianity starved the fierce lion until hiseyes rolled in hot hunger and his teeth were sharpened with its agony. They will tell him how the infidelity of that day put balls of fireon the backs of the lions, and how the madness of their passion wasincreased by scattering hated colors about, tearing the beasts withiron hooks and beating them with cruel whips. They will tell how theChristian was made to fight these infuriated beasts without weapons, while infidelity was frantic with applause. It said "no" to the tornbody yonder, that was mangled and supplicating in blood for life. Iwould have him stand there until, in after years, in a nobler strainthan that of Byron, he could say:

 And thou didst shine, thou rolling moon, upon All this, and cast a wide and tender light, Which softened down the hoar austerity Of rugged desolation. 

 * * * * *

 Till the place Became religion, and the heart ran o'er With silent worship of the great of old! The dead but sceptered sovereigns who still rule Our spirits from their urns. 

So long as I know what this book has been and done, so long as man'shistory will not allow me to risk the interests of society with theinfidelity which has so often demoralized it, so long will I yearn toget the Bible and its message to all men. It has been our world's bestbook. With this book as inspiration and resource, William Tyndaleand Miles Coverdale were so to continue and complete the task of TheVenerable Bede and John Wyclif as to make an epoch in the history ofthat language to be used by Shakespeare and Burke--an era as distinctas that which Luther's Bible so soon should mark in the history of alanguage to be such a potent instrument in the hands of Goethe andHegel. For this very act of heresy, Tyndale was to be called "afull-grown Wyclif, " and Luther "the redeemer of his mother-tongue. "With the Bible, Calvin was to conceive republics at Geneva, andHolbein to paint, in spite of the iconoclasm of the Reformation, thefaces of Holy Mother and Saint, and in spite of the cruelty of theChurch, scripturally conceived satires illustrating the sale ofindulgences. With that book Gustavus Vasa was to protect and nurturethe freedom of the land of flowing splendors, while Angelo wastranscribing sacred scenes upon the Sistine vault or fixing them instone. Reading this book, More was to die with a smile; Latimer, Cranmer, and Ridley to perish while illuminating with living torches, and the Anabaptist to arouse the sympathies of Christendom by hisagonies. With this book in hand, Shakespeare was to write his plays;Raleigh was to die, knight, discoverer, thinker, statesman, martyr;Bacon to lay the foundation of modern scientific research--three starsin the majestic constellation about Henry's daughter. With this Bibleopen before them the English nation would behold the Spanish Armadadashed to pieces upon the rocks, while Edmund Spenser mingled hisdelicious notes with the tumult of that awful wreck. 

This book was to produce the edict of Nantes, while John of Barneveldwould give new life to the command of William the Silent--"Levelthe dikes; give Holland back to the ocean, if need be, " thus makingpreparation for the visit of the Mayflower pilgrims to Leyden orDelfthaven. Their eyes resting upon its pages, Selden and Pym were togo to prison, while Grotius dreamed of the rights of man in peace andwar, and Guido and Rubens were painting the joys of the manger or thesorrows of Calvary. His hand resting upon this book, Oliver Cromwellwould consolidate the hopes and convictions of Puritanism into a swordwhich should conquer at Nasby, Marston Moor and Dunbar, leave to thethrone of Charles I, a headless corpse, and create, if only for anhour's prophecy, a commonwealth of unbending righteousness. With thatvolume in their homes, the Swede and the Huguenot, the Scotch-Irishmanand the Quaker, the Dutchman and the freedom-loving cavalier, were toplan pilgrimages to the West, and establish new homes in America. Withthat book in the cabin of the _Mayflower_, venerated and obeyed bysea-tossed exiles, was to be born a compact from which should springa constitution and a government for the life of which all thesenationalities should willingly bleed and struggle, under a conquerorwho should rise from the soil of the cavaliers, and unsheath his swordin the colony of the Puritans. 

Out of that Bible were to come the "Petition of Right, " the nationalanthem of 1628, the "Grand Remonstrance, " and "Paradise Lost. " Withit, Blake and Pascal should voyage heroically in diverse seas. In itsinfluence Jeremy Taylor should write his "Liberty of Prophesying, "Sir Matthew Hale his fearless replies, while Rembrandt was placing oncanvas little Dutch children, with wooden shoes, crowding to the feetof a Jewish Messiah. 

Its lines, breathing life, order, and freedom, would inspireJohn Bunyan's dream, Algernon Sidney's fatal republicanism, andPuffendorf's judicature. With them, William Penn would meet theIndian of the forest, and Fénelon, the philosopher, in his meditativesolitude. Locke and Newton and Leibnitz would carry it with them inpathless fields of speculation, while Peter the Great was smitingan arrogant priest in Russia, and William was ascending the Englishthrone. From its poetry Cowper, Wordsworth, Tennyson, and Browningwould catch the divine afflatus; from its statesmanship Burke, Romilly, and Bright would learn how to create and redeem institutions;from its melodies Handel, Bach, Mendelssohn, and Beethoven would writeoratorios, masses, and symphonies; from its declaration of divinesympathy Wilberforce, Howard, and Florence Nightingale were toemancipate slaves, reform prisons, and mitigate the cruelties of war;from its prophecies Dante's hope of a united Italy was to be realizedby Cavour, Garibaldi, and Victor Emmanuel. Looking upon the familyBible as he was dying, Andrew Jackson said: "That book, sir, is therock on which the Republic rests"; and with her hand upon that book, Victoria, England's queen, was to sum up her history as a poweramid the nations of the earth, when, replying to the question of anambassador: "What is the secret of England's superiority among thenations?" she would say: "Go tell your prince that this is the secretof England's political greatness, "

Beloved friends, when spurious liberalism, with all her literature, produces such a roll-call as this; when out of her pages I may seecoming a nobler set of forces for the making of manhood, then, andonly then, will I give up my Bible; then, and only then, will I ceaseto pray and labor that it may be given to all the world. 

HILLIS

GOD THE UNWEARIED GUIDE

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

Newell Dwight Hillis was born at Magnolia, Iowa, in 1858. He firstbecame known as a preacher of the first rank during his pastorate overthe large Presbyterian church in Evanston, Illinois. This reputationled to his being called to the Central Church, Chicago, in which hesucceeded Dr. David Swing, and where from the first he attractedaudiences completely filling one of the largest auditoriums inChicago. In 1899 he was called to Plymouth Church, Brooklyn, tosucceed Dr. Lyman Abbott in the pulpit made famous by the ministryof Henry Ward Beecher. By his strong personality and mental gifts hedraws to his church a large and eager following. His best known booksare "A Man's Value to Society, " and "The Investment of Influence. "

HILLIS

Born in 1858

GOD THE UNWEARIED GUIDE[1]

[Footnote 1: By permission of the _Brooklyn Daily Eagle_. Copyright, 1905. ]

_Comfort ye, comfort ye, my people, saith your God, &c. _--Isaiah xl. , 1-31. _He shall not fail, nor be discouraged_. --xliv. , 4. 

This is an epic of the unwearied God, and the fainting strength ofman. For splendor of imagery, for majesty and elevation, it is oneof the supreme things in literature. Perhaps no other Scripture hasexerted so profound an influence upon the world's leaders. Luther readit in the fortress of Salzburg, John Brown read it in the prisonat Harper's Ferry. Webster made it the model of his eloquence, Wordsworth, Carlyle and a score of others refer to its influence upontheir literary style, their thought and life. Like all the supremethings in eloquence, this chapter is a spark struck out of the firesof war and persecution. Its author was not simply an exile--he was aslave who had known the dungeon and the fetter. Bondage is hard, evenfor savages, naked, ignorant, and newly drawn from the jungle, butslavery is doubly hard for scholars and prophets, for Hebrew merchantsand rulers. 

This outburst of eloquence took its rise in a war of invasion. Whenthe northern host swept southward, and overwhelmed Jerusalem, theonrushing wave was fretted with fire; later, when the wave of warretreated, it carried back the detritus of a ruined civilization. Thestory of the siege of Jerusalem, the assault upon its gates, the fallof the walls, all the horrors of famine and of pestilence, are givenin the earlier chapters of this wonderful book. The homeward marchof the Persian army was a kind of triumphal procession in which theHebrew princes and leaders walked as captives. The king marched in theguise of a slave, with his eyes put out, followed by sullen princes, with bound hands, and unsubdued hearts. As slaves the Hebrews crossedthe Euphrates at the very point where Xenophon crossed with hisimmortal ten thousand. In the land of bondage the exiles were planted, not in military prisons, but in gangs, working now in the fields, nowin the streets of the city, and always under the scourge of soldiers. When thirty years had passed the forty thousand captives werescattered among the people, one brother in the palace, and another aslave in the fields. Soon their religion became only a memory, theirlanguage was all but forgotten, their old customs and manner of lifewere utterly gone. But God raised up two gifted souls for just such anemergency as this. One youth, through sheer force of genius, climbedto the position of prime minister, while a young girl through herloveliness came to the king's palace. One day an emancipationproclamation went forth, from a king who had come to believe in theunseen God who loved justice, and would overwhelm oppression andwrong. The good news went forth on wings of the wind. Making readyfor their return to their homeland, all the captives gathered on theoutskirts of the desert. It was a piteous spectacle. The people werebroken in health, their beauty marred, their weapon a staff, theirgarments the leather coat, their provisions pieces of moldy bread, andtheir path fifteen hundred miles of sands, across the desert. To suchan end had come a disobedient and sinful generation!

In that hour, beholding these exiles and captives, a flood of emotionsrushed over the poet; he saw those bound who should conquer; he sawthat men were slaves who should be kings. Then, with a rush, animmeasurable longing shivers through him like a trumpet call. Oh, tosave them! To perish for their saving! To die for their life, to beoffered for them all! In an abandon of grief and sympathy, he beganto speak to them in words of comfort and hope. At first these exiles, dumb with pain and grief, listened, but listened with no lightquivering in the eye, and no hope flitting like sunshine across theface. Their yesterdays held bondage, blows and degradation; theirtomorrow held only the desert and the return to a ruined land. Thenthe word of the Lord came upon the poet. What if the night winds didgo mourning through the deserted streets of their capital! What iftheir language had decayed and their institutions had perished? Whatif the farmer's field was only a waste of thorns and thickets, and thetowns become heaps and ruins! What if the king of Babylon and hisarmy has trampled them under foot, as slaves trample the shellfish, crushing out the purple dye that lends rich color to a royal robe?"Comfort ye, comfort ye, my people. " Is the way long and through adesert? "Every valley shall be exalted, every mountain and hill shallbe made low. " Has slavery worn man's strength to nothingness until heis as weak as the broken reed and the withered grass? The spirit ofthe Lord will revive the grass, trampled down by the hoofs of warhorses. Soon the bruised root shall redden into the rose and thefluted stem climb into the tree. And think you if God's winds cantransform a spray and twig into a trunk fit for foundation of house ormast of ship, that eternal arms can not equip with strength the handof patriot?

Is the Shepherd and Leader of His little flock unequal to theirguidance across the desert? "Behold the Lord will come with a strongarm; he shall feed his flock like a shepherd and he shall gather thelambs in his arms and carry them in his bosom. " What! Man's handunequal to the task of rebuilding Jerusalem? Hath not God pledged Hisstrength to the worker, that God whose arm strikes out worlds as thesmith strikes out sparks upon the anvil? Is not man's helper that Godwho dippeth up the seas in the hollow of His hand? Who weighs themountains with scales and the hills in the balance? What! Thineenemies too strong for thee? Why, God looketh upon all the nations andenemies of the earth as but a drop in the bucket. He sendeth forth Hisbreath, and the tribes disappear as dust is blown from the balance. Then the trumpet call shivered through these exiles. "Hast thou notknown? Have the sons of the fathers never heard of the everlastingGod, the Lord, Creator of the ends of the earth? Fainteth not, neitheris weary!" Heavy is the task, but the Eternal giveth power andstrength. Even tho young patriots and heroes faint and fall, they thatwait upon the Lord shall renew their strength. While fulfilling theirtask of rebuilding they shall mount up with wings as eagles, theyshall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint. Oh, what aword is this! What page in literature is comparable to it for comfort!Wonderful the strength of the warrior! Mighty the influence of thestatesman! All powerful seems the inventor, but greater still the poetwho dwells above the clang and dust of time, with the world's secrettrembling on his lips. 

 He needs no converse nor companionship, In cold starlight, whence thou can not come, The undelivered tidings in his breast, Will not let him rest. He who looks down upon the immemorable throng, And binds the ages with a song. And through the accents of our time, There throbs the message of eternity. 

And so the unwearied God comforted the fainting strength of man. 

Primarily, this glorious outburst was addrest to the exiles as headsof families. The father's strength was broken and his children hadbeen crusht and ground to earth. The ancient patrimony was gone; hehad gathered his little ones in from the huts where slaves dwelt. Hewas leading his little band of pilgrims into a desert. But the prophetspoke to the exiles as to men who believed that the family was thegreat national institution. With us, the family is important, but withthese Hebrew exiles the family was everything. For them the home wasthe spring from whence the mighty river rolled forth. The family wasthe headwaters of national, industrial, social and religious life. Every father was revered as the architect of the family fortune. Thefirst ambition of every young Hebrew was to found a family. Just asabroad, a patrician gentleman builds a baronial mansion, fills it withart treasures, hangs the shields and portraits of his ancestors uponthe walls, hoping to hand the mansion forward to generations yetunborn, so every worthy Hebrew longed to found a noble family. Howkeen the anguish, therefore, of this exile in the desert! What a sceneis that of the exiles upon the edge of the desert. Darkness is uponthe land and the fire burns low into coals. Worn and exhausted, children are sleeping beside the mother. Here is an old man, lyingapart, broken and bitter in spirit--one son stands forth a dimfigure--looking down upon his aged parents, upon the wife of hisbosom and upon his little children. Standing under the stars, hemeditates his plans. How shall he care for these, when he returns tohis ruined estate? In the event of death, what arm shall lift a shieldabove these little ones? What if sickness or death pounce upon a homeas an eagle upon a dove, as wolves upon lambs, or as brigands descendfrom the mountains upon sleeping herdsmen!

Every founder of a family knows the agony of such an hour! We are in aworld where men are never more than a few weeks from, possible povertyand want; little wonder then that all men seek to provide for thefuture of the home and the children. But to the exile standing in thedarkness, with love that broods above his babes, there comes thisword of comfort: God's solicitude for you and yours will not let Himslumber or sleep! God will lift up a highway for the feet of thelittle band of pilgrims. The eternal God shall be thy guide in themarch through the desert. His pillar of cloud by day and of fire bynight shall stand in the sky; He shall lead the flock like a shepherd;He shall gather the little ones in His arms, and carry the childrenin His bosom. And if the father fall on the march, the wings of theEternal shall brood the babes that are left. His right arm shall be asword and His left arm a shield. The eternal God fainteth not, neitheris weary. Having time to care for the stars, and to lead them forth byname, He hath time and thought also for His children. What a word isthis for the home! What comfort for all whose hearts turn toward theirchildren! What a pledge to fathers for generations yet unborn! Thistruth arms every parent for any emergency. For God is round aboutevery home as the mountains are round about Jerusalem, for bounty andprotection. 

But the sage was also thinking of men whose hopes were broken, andwhose lives were baffled and beaten. These exiles, crossing thedesert, might have claimed for themselves the poet's phrase, "Lo, henceforth I am a prisoner of hope. " Like Dante, they might havecried, "For years my pillow by night has been wet with tears, and allday long have I held heartbreak at bay. " For these whose gloriousyouth had been exhausted by bondage, life had run to its very dregs. Gone the days of glorious strength! Gone all the opportunities thatbelong to the era when the heart is young, the limitations of life hadbecome severe! Environment often is a cage against whose iron bars thesoul beats bloody wings in vain!

How many men are held back by one weak nerve, or organ! How many areshut in, and limited, and just fall short of supreme success becauseof an hereditary weakness, handed on by the fathers! How many made onemistake in youth in choosing the occupation and discovered the errorwhen it was too late! How many erred in judgment in their youth, through one critical blunder, that has been irretrievable, and whoseburden is henceforth lasht to the back! In such an hour of depression, Isaiah assembles the exiles, and exclaims, "Comfort ye, comfort ye, mypeople. Tho your young men faint and be weary, tho the strong utterlyfail, yet God is the unwearied one; with his help thou shalt take thyburden, and mount up with wings as eagles; with his unwearied strengththou shalt run with thy load and not be weary, and walk and notfaint. " For this is the experience of persecution and the rewardof sorrow, bravely borne that the fainting strength of man issupplemented by the sure help of the unwearied God. 

Therefore, in retrospect, exiles, prisoners, martyrs, who havebelieved in God seem fortunate. The endungeoned heroes often seem thechildren of careful good fortune and happiness. The saints, walkingthrough the fire, stand forth as those who are dear unto God. How thepoint of view changes events. Kitto was deaf, and in his youth hisdeafness broke his heart, but because his ears were closed to thedin of life, he became the great scholar of his time, and swept thetreasures of the world into a single volume, an armory of intellectualweapons. Fawcett was blind, but through that blindness became a greatanalytic student, a master of organization, and served all England inher commerce. John Bright was broken-hearted, standing above the bier, but Richard Cobden called him from his sorrow to become a voice forthe poor, to plead the cause of the opprest, and bring about the CornLaws for the hungry workers in the factories and shops. Comfort ye, comfort ye, my people. 

Let the exile say unto himself: "Your warfare is accomplished; youriniquity is pardoned; the Lord's hand will give unto thee double forall thy sins that are forgiven. " The great faiths and convictions ofthe prophets and law-givers, your language and your laws and yourliberties, have not been destroyed by captivity; rather slaveryhas saved them. At last you know their value; in contrast with theidolatry of the Euphrates, the jargon of tongues, the inequality ofrights, the organization of justice and oppression, how wonderful theequity of the laws of Moses! How beautiful the faith of the fathers!How surely founded the laws of God. Henceforth idolatry, injustice andsin became as monstrous in their ugliness as they were wicked in theiressence. Everything else might go, but not the faith of the fathers. Persecution was like fire on the vase; it burned the colors in. Littlewonder that the tradition tells us that for the next hundred years, at stated periods, all the people in the land came together, while areader repeated this chapter on the unwearied God and the faintingstrength of man that had recovered unto hope, men whose hopes had beenbaffled and beaten. 

The thought of an unwearied God is also the true antidote todespondency. The ground of optimism is in God. When that great thinkerdescribed certain people as without God and without hope, there wassure logic in his phrase, for the Godless man is always the hopelessman. Between no God anywhere and the one God who is everywhere, thereis no middle ground. Either we are children, buffeted about by fateand circumstances, with events tossing souls about in an eternal gameof battledore and shuttlecock, or else the world is our Father'shouse, and God standeth within the shadow, keeping watch above Hisown. For the man who believes in God, who allies himself to nature, who makes the universe his partner, there is no defeat, and no death, and no interruption of his prosperity. Concede that there is a God, and it follows as a logical necessity that He will not permit anyenemy to ruin your life and His plans. For a man who holds this faithit follows that there can be no defeat, or failure. Indeed, theessential difference between men is the difference in their relationtoward God. Here are the biographies of two great men. Both are menof genius, both are marvelously equipped, but their end was, oh, howdifferent. One is Martin Luther, who stood forth alone, affirming hisreligious freedom, in the face of enemies and devils thick as thetiles on the roofs of the houses. The few friends Luther had shut himup in a fortress to save his life, but Luther mightily believed inGod. With the full consent of his marvelous gifts, he surrendered hislife to the will of God. Knowing that his days were as brief asthe withering grass, he allied himself with the Eternal. In hisdiscouragement he read these words, "The Everlasting God fainteth not, neither is weary. " In that hour Martin Luther shouted for joy. Thebeetling walls of the fortress were as tho they were not. Victorioushe went forth, in thought, ranging throughout all Germany. And goingout, he went up and down the land telling the people that God wouldprotect him, and soon Germany was free. 

Goethe tells us that Luther was the architect of modern Germanlanguage and literature, and stamped himself into the whole nationallife. The Germany of the Kaiser is simply Martin Luther written largein fifty millions of men. But what made Luther? There was some hiddenenergy and spirit within him! What was this spirit in him? The spiritof beauty turned a lump of mud into that Grecian face about whichKeats wrote his poem. The spirit of truth changes a little ink intoa beautiful song. The spirit of strength and beauty in an architectchanges a pile of bricks into a house or cathedral or gallery. And thethought of our unwearied God changed the collier's son into thegreat German emancipator. But over against this man, who never knewdespondency, after his vision hour, stands another German. He, too, was a philosopher, clothed with ample power, and blest withopportunity. But he did evil in his life, and then the heart lostits faith, and hope utterly perished. The more he loved pleasure andpursued self, the more cynical and bitter he became. Pessimism set acold, hard stamp upon his face, and marred his beauty. Cynicism lieslike a black mark across his pages. At last, in his bitterness, thephilosopher tells us the whole universe is a mirage, and that yondersummer-making sun is a bubble that repeats its iridescent tints in thecolors of the rainbow. Despair ate out his heart. He became the mostmiserable of men, and knew no freedom from sorrow and pain. And lo, now the man's philosophy has perished like a bubble, his influencehas utterly disappeared, for his books are unread, while only anoccasional scholar chances upon his name, tho the great summer-makingsun still shines on and Luther's eternal God fainteth not, neither isweary. 

Are you weak, oh, patriot? Remember God is strong. Do your days ofservice seem short, until your life is scarcely longer than the flowerthat blooms to-day and is gone tomorrow? God is eternal, and He willtake care of your work. Are you sick with hope long deferred? Hopethou in God; He shall yet send succor. Have troubles driven happinessfrom thee, as the hawk drives the young lark or nightingale from itsnest? Return unto thy rest, troubled heart, for the Lord will dealbountifully with thee. Are you anxious for your children? God willbring the child back from the far country. For the child hath wanderedfar, the golden thread spun in a mother's heart is an unbroken threadthat will draw him home! For things that distress you to-day, youshall thank God to-morrow. Nothing shall break the golden chain thatbinds you to God's throne. Are you hopeless and despondent because ofyour fainting strength? Remember that the antidote for despondency isthe thought of the unwearied God who is doing the best He can for you, and whose ceaseless care neither slumbers nor sleeps. 

Little wonder therefore that God became all and in all to this feebleband of captives, journeying across the desert back to their ruinedlife and land. God had taken away earthly things from them, that Hemight be their all and in all. When the earth is made poor for us, sometimes the heavens become rich. God closed the eyes of Milton tothe beauty in land and sea and sky, that he might see the companies ofangels marching and countermarching on the hills of God. He closed theears of Beethoven, that he might hear the music of St. Cecilia fallingover heaven's battlements. He gave Isaiah a slave's hut, that he mightponder the house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. How isit that this prophet and poet has become companion of the great onesof the earth? At the time Isaiah rebelled against his bondage, butwhen it was all over, and the fitful fever had passed, and the fleshlyfetters had fallen, he smiled at the things that once alarmed him, ashe recalled his fainting strength and the unwearied God. 

Gone--that ancient capital. Babylon is a heap. Jerusalem a ruin! Butthis epic of the unwearied Guide still lives! Isaiah, can never die!Can a chapter die that has cheered the exile in his loneliness, thathas comforted the soldier upon his bivouac, that has braced the martyrfor his execution, that has given songs at midnight to the prisonersin the dungeon? Out of suffering and captivity came this song of restand hope. At last the poet praised the eternal God for his bonds andhis imprisonment. Oh, it is darkness that makes the morning light sowelcome to the weary watcher. It is hunger that makes bread sweet. It is pain and sickness that gives value to the physician and hismedicine. It is business trouble that makes you honor your lawyer andcounselor, and it is the sense of need that makes God near. 

Are there any merchants here who are despondent? Remember the eternalGod and make your appeal to the future. Are there any parents whosechildren have wandered far? When they are old, the children willreturn to the path of faith and obedience. Are there any in whom theimmortal hope burns low? The smoking flax He will not quench, but willfan the flame into victory. Look up to-day; be comforted once more. Work henceforth in hope. Live like a prince. Scatter sunshine. Letyour atmosphere be happiness. If troubles come, let them be the darkbackground that shall throw your hope and faith into bolder relief. God hath set His heart upon you to deliver you. Tho your hand faint, and the tool fall, the eternal God fainteth not, neither is weary. Hewill bring thy judgment unto victory, immortalize thy good deeds, andcrown thy career with everlasting renown. 

JEFFERSON

THE RECONCILIATION

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

Charles Edward Jefferson was born at Cambridge, Ohio, in 1860. He cameto public attention by the effectiveness of his preaching during amost successful pastorate in Chelsea, Mass. , from which he was calledto the Broadway Tabernacle, New York, in 1897. During his New Yorkpastorate the Tabernacle at 34th Street has been sold and a uniquestructure, including an apartment tower ten stories high, has beenbuilt farther up-town. Dr. Jefferson has published several successfulbooks. He has a mellow, sympathetic voice, of considerable range andflexibility, and he speaks in an easy, conversational style. 

JEFFERSON

Born in 1860

THE RECONCILIATION[1]

[Footnote 1: Reprinted by permission from "Doctrine and Deed, "Copyright, 1901, by Thomas Y. Crowell & Co. ]

_Christ died for our sins_. --1 Cor. Xv. , 3. 

I want to think with you this morning about the doctrine of theAtonement. Having used that word atonement once, I now wish to dropit. It is not a New Testament word, and is apt to lead one intoconfusion. You will not find it in your New Testament at all, providing you use the Revised Version. It is found in the King JamesVersion only once, and that is in the fifth chapter of Paul's letterto the Romans; but a few years ago, when the revisers went to work, they rubbed out the word and would allow it no place whatever inthe entire New Testament. They substituted for it a betterword--reconciliation--and that is the word that will probably be usedin the future theology of the Church. It is my purpose, then, thismorning, to think with you about the doctrine of the reconciliation, or, to put it in a way that will be intelligible to all the boys andgirls, I want to think with you about the "making up" between God andman. 

Christianity is distinctly a religion of redemption. Its fundamentalpurpose is to recover men from the guilt and power of sin. All ofits history and its teachings must be studied in the light of thatdominating purpose. We are told sometimes that Jesus was a greatteacher, and so He was, but the apostles never gloried in that fact. We are constantly reminded that He was a great reformer, and so Hewas, but Peter and John and Paul seemed to be altogether unconsciousof that fact. It is asserted that He was a great philanthropist, a manintensely interested in the bodies and the homes of men, and so ofcourse He was, but the New Testament does not seem to care for that. It has often been declared that He was a great martyr, a man who laiddown His life in devotion to the truth, and so He was and so He did, but the Bible never looks at Him from that standpoint or regardsHim in that light. It refuses to enroll Him among the teachers orreformers or philanthropists or the martyrs of our race. Accordingto the apostolic writers, Jesus is the world's Redeemer, He wasmanifested to take away sin. He is the Lamb of God that taketh awaythe sin of the world. The vast and awful fact that broke the apostles'hearts and sent them out into the world to baptize the nations intoHis name, was the fact which Paul was all the time asserting, "He diedfor our sins. "

No one can read the New Testament without seeing that its central andmost conspicuous fact is the death of Jesus. Take, for instance, thegospels, and you will find that over one-quarter of their pages aredevoted to the story of His death. Very strange is this indeed, ifJesus was nothing but an illustrious teacher. A thousand interestingevents of His career are passed over, a thousand discourses are nevermentioned, in order that there may be abundant room for the telling ofHis death. Or take the letters which make up the last half of the NewTestament; in these letters there is scarcely a quotation from thelips of Jesus. Strange indeed is this if Jesus is only the world'sgreatest teacher. The letters seem to ignore that He was a teacher orreformer, but every letter is soaked in the pathos of His death. Theremust be a deep and providential reason for all this. The character ofthe gospels and the letters must have been due to something that Jesussaid or that the Holy Spirit inbreathed. A study of the New Testamentwill convince us that Jesus had trained His disciples to see in Hissufferings and death the climax of God's crowning revelation to theworld. The key-note of the whole gospel story is struck by John theBaptist in his bold declaration, "Behold the Lamb of God which takethaway the sin of the world. " In that declaration there was a referenceto His death, for the "lamb" in Palestine lived only to be slain. Assoon as Jesus began His public career He began to refer in enigmaticphrases to His death. He did not declare His death openly, but thethought of it was wrapt up inside of all He said. Nicodemus comes toHim at night to have a talk with Him about His work, and among otherthings, Jesus says, "As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wildernessso shall the Son of man be lifted up. " Nicodemus did not know what Hemeant--we know. He goes into the temple and drives out the men whohave made it a den of thieves, and when an angry mob surrounds Him Hecalmly says, "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise itup. " They did not know what He meant--we know. He goes into the cityof Capernaum, and is surrounded by a great crowd who seem to be eagerto know the way of life. He begins to talk to them about the breadthat comes down from heaven, and among other things He says, "Thebread which I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the lifeof the world. " They did not understand what He said--we understand itnow. One day in the city of Jerusalem He utters a great discourseupon the good shepherd. "I am the good shepherd, " He says; "the goodshepherd giveth his life for the sheep. " They did not understandHim--we do. In the last week of His earthly life it was reported thata company of Greeks had come to see Him. He falls at once into athoughtful mood, and when at last He speaks it is to say that "I, if Ibe lifted up, will draw all men unto me. " The men standing by did notunderstand what He said--we understand. All along His journey, fromthe Jordan to the cross, He dropt such expressions as this: "I havea baptism to be baptized with; and how am I straitened till it beaccomplished. " Men did not know what He was saying--it is all clearnow. 

But while He did not talk openly to the world about His death, He didnot hesitate to speak about it to His nearest friends. As soon as Hefound a man willing to confess that He was indeed the world's Messiah, the Son of the living God, He began to initiate His disciples into thedeeper mysteries of His mission. "From that time, " Matthew says, "hebegan to show, to unfold, to set forth the fact that he must suffermany things and be killed. " Peter tried to check Him in thisdisclosure, but Jesus could not be checked. It is surprising how manytimes it is stated in the gospels that Jesus told His disciplesHe must be killed. Matthew says that while they were traveling inGalilee, on a certain day when the disciples were much elated over themarvelous things which He was doing, He took them aside and said"Let these words sink into your ears: I am going to Jerusalem to bekilled. " Later on, when they were going through Perea, Jesus took themaside and said, "The Son of man must suffer many things, and at lastbe put to death. " On nearing Jerusalem His disciples became impatientfor a disclosure of His power and glory. He began to tell them aboutthe grace of humility. "The Son of man, " He said, "is come, not to beministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransomfor many. " On the last Tuesday of His earthly life He sat with Hisdisciples on the slope of the Mount of Olives, and in the midst of Hishigh and solemn teaching He said, "It is only two days now until Ishall be crucified. " And on the last Thursday of His life, on theevening of His betrayal, He took His disciples into an upper room, andtaking the bread and blessing it, He gave it to these men, saying, "This is my body which is given for you. " Likewise after supper Hetook the cup, and when He had blest it gave it to them, saying, "Thisis my blood of the covenant which is shed for you and for many for theremission of sins. Do this in remembrance of me. " It would seemfrom this that the one thing which Jesus was desirous that all Hisfollowers should remember was the fact that He had laid down His lifefor them. One can not read the gospels without feeling that he isbeing borne steadily and irresistibly toward the cross. 

When we get out of the gospels into the epistles we find ourselvesface to face with the same tragic and glorious fact. Peter's firstletter is not a theological treatise. He is not writing a dissertationon the person of Christ, or attempting to give any interpretation ofthe death of Jesus; he is dealing with very practical matters. Heexhorts the Christians who are discouraged and downhearted to hold uptheir heads and to be brave. It is interesting to see how againand again he puts the cross behind them in order to keep them fromslipping back. "Endure, " he says, "because Christ suffered for us. Who his own self bore our sins in his own body on the tree. " TheChristians of that day had been overtaken by furious persecution. They were suffering all sorts of hardships and disappointments. But"suffer, " he says, "because Christ has once suffered for sins, thejust for the unjust, that he might bring us to God. " Certainly thegospel, according to St. Peter, was: Christ died for our sins. 

Read the first letter of St. John, and everywhere it breathes thesame spirit which we have found in the gospels and in St. Peter. Johnpunctuates almost every paragraph with some reference to the cross. In the first chapter he is talking about sin. "The blood of JesusChrist, " he says, "cleanses us from all sins. " In the second chapterhe is talking about forgiveness, and this leads him to think at onceof Jesus Christ, the righteous, "who is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but for the sins of the whole world. " In thethird chapter he is talking about brotherly love. He is urging themembers of the Church to lay down their lives, one for another, "Hereby perceive we the love of God, because he laid down his life forus. " In the fourth chapter he tells of the great mystery of Christ'slove: "Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. " To the beloveddisciple evidently the great fact of the Christian revelation is thatChrist died for our sins. 

But it is in the letters of Paul that we find the fullest and mostemphatic assertion of this transcendent fact. It will not be possiblefor me to quote to you even a half of what he said on the subject. Ifyou should cut out of his letters all the references to the cross, youwould leave his letters in tatters. Listen to him as he talks to hisconverts in Corinth: "First of all I delivered unto you that whichI also received, how that Christ died for our sins. " That was theforemost fact, to be stated in every letter and to be unfolded inevery sermon. To Saul of Tarsus, Jesus is not an illustrious Rabbiwhose sentences are to be treasured up and repeated to listeningcongregations; He is everywhere and always the world's Redeemer. And throughout all of Paul's epistles one hears the same jubilant, triumphant declaration, "I live by the faith of the Son of God, wholoved me and gave himself for me. "

Let us now turn to the last book of the New Testament, the Book ofthe Revelation. What does this prophet on the Isle of Patmos see andhear, as he looks out into future ages and coming worlds? The bookbegins with a doxology: "Unto him that loved us, and washed us fromour sins in his own blood, to him be glory and dominion forever andever. " John looks, and beholds a great company of the redeemed. Heasks who these are, and the reply comes back, "These are they who havewashed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. " Helistens, and the song that goes up from the throats of the redeemedis, "Worthy art thou to take the book, and to open the seals thereof;for thou wast slain and didst purchase us for God with thy blood. "At the center of the great vision which bursts upon the soul of theexiled apostle, there is a Lamb that was slain. Whatever we may thinkof Jesus of Nazareth, there is no question concerning what the men whowrote the New Testament thought. To the men who wrote the book, Jesuswas not a Socrates or a Seneca, a Martin Luther or an Abraham Lincoln. His life was not an incident in the process of evolution, His deathwas not an episode in the dark and dreadful tragedy of human history. His life is God's. Greatest gift to men, His death is the climax andthe crowning revelation of the heart of the eternal. You can not openthe New Testament anywhere without the idea flying into your face, "Christ died for our sins. "

How different all this is from the atmosphere of the modern Church. When you go into the average church to-day, what great idea meets you?Do you find yourselves face to face with the fact that Christ diedfor our sins? I do not think you will often hear that great truthpreached. In all probability you will hear a sermon dealing with thedomestic graces, or with business obligations, or with politicalduties and complications. You may hear a sermon on city missions, oron foreign missions; you may hear a man dealing with some great evil, or pointing out some alarming danger, or discussing some interestingsocial problem, or urging upon men's consciences the performance ofsome duty. It is not often in these modern days that you will heara sermon dealing with the thought that set the apostles blazing andturned the world upside down. And right there, I think, lies one ofthe causes of the weaknesses of the modern Church. We have been sobusy attending to the things that ought to be done, we have had notime to feed the springs that keep alive these mighty hopes which makeus Christian men. What is the secret of the strength of the RomanCatholic Church? How is it that she pursues her conquering way, inspite of stupidities and blunders that would have killed any otherinstitution? I know the explanations that are usually offered, but itseems to me they are far from adequate. Somebody says, But the RomanCatholic Church does not hold any but the ignorant. That is not true. It may be true of certain localities in America, but it is not true ofthe nations across the sea. In Europe she holds entire nations in thehollow of her hand; not only the ignorant, but the learned; not onlythe low, but the high; not only the rude, but the cultured, the noble, and the mighty. It will not do to say that the Roman Catholic Churchholds nobody but the ignorant. But even if it were true, it wouldstill be interesting to ascertain how she exercises such an influenceover the minds and hearts of ignorant people--for ignorant people arethe hardest of all to hold. When you say that the Church can holdignorant men, you are giving her the very highest compliment, foryou are acknowledging that she is in the possession of a power whichdemands an explanation. The very fact that she is able to bring outsuch hosts of wage-earning men and women in the early hours of Sundaymorning, men and women who have worked hard through the week, and manyof them far into the night, but who are willing on the Lord's Day towend their way to the house of God and engage in religious worship, is a phenomenon which is worth thinking about. How does the RomanCatholic Church do it? Somebody says she does it all by appealing tomen's fears, she scares men into penitence and devotion. Do you thinkthat that is a fair explanation? I do not think so. I can conceive howshe might frighten people for one generation, or for two, but I cannot conceive how she could frighten a dozen generations. One wouldsuppose that the spell would wear off by and by. There is a deeperexplanation than that The explanation is to be found in the spiritualnature of man. The Roman Catholic leaders, notwithstanding theirblunders and their awful sins, have always seen that the central factof the Christian revelation is the death of Jesus, and around thatfact they have organized all their worship. Roman Catholics go tomass; what is the mass? It is the celebration of the Lord's Supper. What is the Lord's Supper? It is the ceremony that proclaims ourLord's death until He comes. The hosts of worshipers that fill ourstreets in the early Sunday morning hours are not going to church tohear some man discuss an interesting problem, nor are they going tolisten to a few singers sing; they are going to celebrate oncemore the death of the Savior of the world. In all her cathedralsCatholicism places the stations of the cross, that they may tell tothe eye the story of the stages of His dying. On all her altars shekeeps the crucifix. Before the eyes of every faithful Catholic thatcrucifix is held until his eyes close in death. A Catholic goes out ofthe world thinking of Jesus crucified. So long as a Church holds on tothat great fact, she will have a grip on human minds and hearts thatcan not be broken. The cross, as St. Paul said, a stumbling-blockto the Jews and foolishness to the Greeks, is the power of God untosalvation to every one that believes. The Catholic Church has pickedup the fact of Jesus' death and held it aloft like a burning torch. Around the torch she has thrown all sorts of dark philosophies, butthrough the philosophies the light has streamed into the hearts andhomes of millions of God's children. 

Protestantism has prospered just in proportion as she has kept thecross at the forefront of all her preaching. The missionaries bringback the same report from every field, that it is the story of Jesus'death that opens the hearts of the pagan world. Every now and then adenomination has started, determined to get rid of the cross of Jesus, or at least to pay scant attention to it, and in every case thesedenominations have been at the end of the third or fourth generationeither decaying or dead. There is no interpretation of the Christianreligion that has in it redeeming power which ignores or belittles thedeath of Christ. 

If Protestantism to-day is not doing what it ought to do, and ismanifesting symptoms which are alarming to Christian leaders, it isbecause she has in these recent years been engaged so largely inpractical duties as to forget to drink inspiration from the greatdoctrines which must forever furnish life and strength and hope. If you will allow me to prophesy this morning, I predict that thepreaching of the next fifty years will be far more doctrinal than thepreaching of the last fifty years has been. I imagine some of you willshudder at that. You say you do not like doctrinal preaching, you wantpreaching that is practical. Well, pray, what is practical preaching?Practical preaching is preaching that accomplishes the object forwhich preaching is done, and the primary object of all Christianpreaching is to reconcile men to God. The experience of 1900 yearsproves that it is only doctrinal preaching that reconciles the heartto God. If, then, you really want practical preaching, the onlypreaching that is deserving the name is preaching that deals with thegreat Christian doctrines. But somebody says, I do not like doctrinalpreaching. A great many people have said that within recent years. Ido not believe they mean what they say. They are not expressing withaccuracy what is in their mind. They do like doctrinal preaching ifthey are intelligent, faithful Christians, for doctrinal preaching isbread to hearts that have been born again. When people say they donot like doctrinal preaching, they often mean that they do not likepreaching which belongs to the eighteenth or seventeenth or sixteenthcenturies. They are not to be blamed for this. There is nothing thatgets stale so soon as preaching. We can not live upon the preachingof a bygone age. If preachers bring out the interpretations andphraseology which were current a hundred years ago, people must ofnecessity say, "Oh, please do not give us that, we do not like suchdoctrinal preaching. " But doctrinal preaching need not be antiquatedor belated, it may be fresh, it may be couched in the language inwhich men were born, it may use for its illustrations the images andfigures and analogies which are uppermost in men's imagination. Andwhenever it does this there is no preaching which is so thrillingand uplifting and mighty as the preaching which deals with the greatfundamental doctrines. 

In one sense, the Christian religion never changes, in another senseit is changing all the time. The facts of Christianity never change, the interpretations of those facts alter from age to age. It is withreligion as it is with, the stars, the stars never change. They movein their orbits in our night sky as they moved in the night sky ofAbraham when he left his old Chaldean home. The constellations werethe same at the opening of our century as they were when David watchedhis flocks on the old Judean hills. But the interpretations of thestars have always changed, must always change. Pick up the old chartswhich the astrologers made and compare them with the charts ofastronomers of our day. How vast the difference! Listen to ourastronomers talk about the magnitudes and disunites and composition ofthe stars, and compare with their story that which was written inthe astronomy of a few centuries ago. The stellar universe has notchanged, but men's conceptions have changed amazingly. The facts ofthe human body do not change. Our heart beats as the heart of Homerbeat, our blood flows as the blood of Julius Caesar flowed, ourmuscles and nerves live and die as the nerves and muscles have livedand died in the bodies of men in all the generations--and yet, how thetheories of medicine have been altered from time to time. A doctordoes not want to hear a medical lecturer speak who persists in usingthe phraseology and conceptions which were accepted by the medicalscience of fifty years ago. Conceptions become too narrow to fit thegrowing mind of the world, and when once outgrown they must be thrownaside. As it is in science, so it is in religion. The facts ofChristianity never change, they are fixt stars in the firmament ofmoral truth. Forever and forever it will be true that Christ died forour sins, but the interpretations of this fact must be determined bythe intelligence of the age. Men will never be content with simplefacts, they must go behind them to find out an explanation of them. Man is a rational being, he must think, he will not sit down calmly infront of a fact and be content with looking it in the face, he willgo behind it and ask how came it to be and what are its relations toother facts. That is what man has always been doing with the facts ofthe Christian revelation, he has been going behind them and bringingout interpretations which will account for them. The interpretationsare good for a little while, and then they are outgrown and castaside. 

A good illustration of the progressive nature of theology is found inthe doctrine of the atonement. All of the apostles taught distinctlythat Christ died for our sins. The early Christians did not attempt togo behind that fact, but by and by men began to attempt explanations. In the second century a man by the name of Irenaeus seized upon theword "ransom" in the sentence, "The Son of man is come to give hislife a ransom for many, " and found in that word "ransom" the key-wordof the whole problem. The explanation of Irenaeus was taken up in thethird century by a distinguished preacher, Origen. And in the fourthcentury the teaching of Origen was elaborated by Gregory of Nyssa. 

According to the interpretation of these men, Jesus was the price paidfor the redemption of men. Paul frequently used the word redemption, and the word had definite meanings to people who lived in the firstfour centuries of the Christian era. If Christ was indeed a ransom, the question naturally arose, who paid the price? The answer was, God. A ransom must be paid to somebody--to whom was this ransom paid? Theanswer was, the devil. According to Origen and to Gregory, God paidthe devil the life of Jesus in order that the devil might let humanitygo free. The devil, by deceit, had tricked man, and man had become hisslave--God now plays a trick upon the devil, and by offering him thelife of Jesus, secures the release of man. That was the interpretationheld by many theologians for almost a thousand years, but in theeleventh century there arose a man who was not satisfied with theold interpretation. The world had outgrown it. To many it seemedridiculous, to some it seemed blasphemous. There was an Italian by thename of Anselm who was an earnest student of the Scriptures, and heseized upon the word "debt" as the key-word of the problem. He wrotea book, one of the epoch-making books of Christendom, which he called"_Cur Deus Homo_. " In this book Anselm elaborated his interpretationof the reconciliation. "Sin, " he said, "is debt, and sin against aninfinite being is an infinite debt. A finite being can not pay aninfinite debt, hence an infinite being must become man in order thatthe debt may be paid. The Son of God, therefore, assumes the form ofman, and by his sufferings on the cross pays the debt which allowshumanity to go free. " The interpretation was an advance upon that ofOrigen and Gregory, but it was not final. It was repudiated by men ofthe twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and finally, in the day of theReformation, it was either modified or cast away altogether. 

Martin Luther, Calvin, and the other reformers seized upon theword "propitiation, " and made that the starting-point of theirinterpretation. According to these men, God is a great governor andman has broken the divine law--transgressors must be punished--if theman who breaks the law is not punished, somebody else must be punishedin his stead. The Son of God, therefore, comes to earth to suffer inHis person the punishment that rightly belongs to sinners. He is notguilty, but the sins of humanity are imputed to Him, and God wreaksupon Him the penalty which rightfully should have fallen on the headsof sinners. That is known as "the penal substitution theory. "

It was not altogether satisfactory, many men revolted from it, and inthe seventeenth century a Dutchman, Hugo Grotius, a lawyer, broughtforth another interpretation, which is known in theology as "thegovernmental theory. " He would not admit that Christ was punished. His sufferings were not penal, but illustrative. "God is the moralgovernor, " said Grotius, "his government must be maintained, law cannot be broken with impunity. Unless sin is punished the dignity ofGod's government would be destroyed. Therefore, that man may see howhot is God's displeasure against sin, Christ comes into the world andsuffers the consequences of the transgressions of the race. The crossis an exhibition of what God thinks of sin. " That governmental theorywas carried into England and became the established doctrine of theEnglish Church for almost three hundred years. It was carried acrossthe ocean and became the dominant theory in the New Haven school oftheologians, as represented by Jonathan Edwards, Dwight, and Taylor. The Princeton school of theology still clung to the penal substitutiontheory, and it was the clashing of the New Haven school and thePrinceton school which caused such a commotion in the PresbyterianChurch of sixty years ago. They are antiquated. They are too little. They seem mechanical, artificial, trivial. We can say of thegovernmental theory what Dr. Hodge said, "It degrades the work ofChrist to the level of a governmental contrivance. " If I shouldattempt to preach to you the governmental theory as it was preached bytheologians fifty years ago, you would not be interested in it Thereis nothing in you that would respond to it. You would simply say, "Ido not like doctrinal preaching. " Or if I should go back and take upthe penal substitution theory in all its nakedness and hideousness, and attempt to give it to you as the correct interpretation of thegospel, you would rise up in open rebellion and say, "We will notlisten to such preaching. " If I should go back and take up theAnselmic theory and attempt to show how an infinite debt must be paidby infinite suffering, you would say: "Stop, you are converting Godinto a Shylock, who is demanding His pound of flesh. We prefer tothink of Him as our heavenly Father. " If I should go further back andtake up the old ransom theory of Origen and Gregory, I suspectthat some of you would want to laugh. You could not accept aninterpretation which represents God as playing a trick upon Satan inorder to get humanity out of his grasp. No, those theories have allbeen outgrown. We have come out into larger and grander times. We havehigher conceptions of the Almighty than the ancients ever had. We seefar deeper into the Christian revelation than Martin Luther or JohnCalvin ever saw. These old interpretations are simply husks, and menand women will not listen to the preaching of them. If, now and then, a belated preacher attempts to preach them, the people say, "If thatis doctrinal preaching, please give us something practical. "

And so the Church is to-day slowly working out a new interpretation ofthe great fact that Christ died for our sins. The interpretation hasnot yet been completed, and will not be for many years. I should likethis morning simply to outline in a general way some of the moreprominent features of the new interpretation. The Holy Ghost is atwork. He is taking the things of Christ and showing them unto us. Theinterpretation of the reconciliation of the future will be superior inevery point to any of the interpretations of the past. 

The new interpretation is going to be simple, straightforward, andnatural. The death of Christ is not going to be made somethingartificial, mechanical, or theatrical. It is going to be the naturalconception of the outflowing life of God. 

The new interpretation is going to start from the Fatherhood ofGod. The old theories were all born in the counting-room, or thecourt-house. Jesus went into the house to find His illustrationsfor the conduct of the heavenly Father. He never went into thecourt-house, nor can we go there for analogies with which to imageforth His dealings with our race. It was His custom to say, "If you, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how muchmore shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to themthat ask him. "

The new interpretation is going to be comprehensive. It is going to bebuilt, not on a single metaphor, but on everything that Jesus andthe apostles said. Right there is where the old interpretations wentastray. They seized upon one figure of speech and made that thedetermining factor in the entire interpretation. Jesus said manythings, and so did His apostles, and all of them must contribute tothe final interpretation. 

Two things are to be hereafter made very clear: The first is that Godreveals Himself in Jesus Christ. The old views were always losingsight of that great fact. There was always a dualism between God andChrist. I remember what my conception was when I was a boy. I thoughtthat God was a strict and solemn and awful king, who was very angrybecause men had broken His law. He was just, and His justice hadno mercy in it. Christ, His Son, was much better-natured and morecompassionate, and He came forth into our world to suffer upon thecross that God's justice might relax a little, and His heart be openedto forgive our race. I supposed that that was the teaching of theNew Testament, it certainly was the teaching of the hymns in thehymn-book, if not of the preachers. And when I became a young man, I supposed that that was the teaching of the Christian religion. Myheart rebelled against it. I would not accept it. I became an infidel. A man can not accept an interpretation of God that does not appeal tothe best that is in him. No man can accept a doctrine that darkens hismoral sense, or that confuses the distinction between right and wrong. I would not accept the old interpretation because my soul rose inrevolt against it. I shall never forget how, one evening in his study, a minister, who had outgrown the old traditions, explained to methe meaning of the reconciliation. He assured me that God is love, invisible, eternal. Christ, His Son, is also love. In becoming atone with the Son we become at one with the Father. This is theat-one-ment. And when that truth broke upon me my heart began to sing:

 Just as I am--Thy love unknown Hath broken every barrier down; Now, to be Thine, yea, Thine alone, O Lamb of God, I come!

I wonder in telling this if I have not spoken the experience of manyof you this morning. It is impossible to love God if we feel that Heis stern and despotic, and must be appeased by the sufferings of aninnocent man. The New Testament nowhere lends any support to thatidea. Everywhere the New Testament assures us that God is the loverof men, that He initiates the movement for man's redemption. "God soloved the world that he gave his only begotten Son. .. . " "Herein islove: not that we loved God, but that he loved us. " "God commendethhis love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ diedfor us. " "The Father spared not his own Son, but delivered him up forus all. " "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father. " "I and my Fatherare one. " These are only a few of the passages in which we are toldthat God is our Savior. When an old Scotchman once heard the textannounced, "God so loved the world that he gave his only begottenSon, " he exclaimed, "Oh, that was love indeed! I could have givenmyself, but I never could have given my boy. " This, then, is the veryhighest love of which it is possible for the human mind to think: thelove of a father that surrenders his son to sufferings and death. 

And this brings us to the second great truth which is outgrowingincreasingly clear in the consciousness of the Church. The death ofJesus is the revelation of an experience in the heart of God. God isthe sin-bearer of the world. He bears our sins on His mind and heart. There are three conceptions of God: the savage, the pagan, and theChristian. God, according to the savage conception, is vengeful, andcapricious, and vindictive. He is a great savage hidden in the sky. Wehave all outgrown that. According to the pagan idea, He is indifferentto the wants and woes of men. He does not care for men. He is notinterested in them. He does not sympathize with them. He does notsuffer over their griefs. He does not feel pain or sorrow. I am afraidthat many of us have never gotten beyond the pagan conception of theAlmighty. But according to the Christian conception, God suffers. He feels, and because He feels, He sympathizes, and because Hesympathizes, He suffers. He feels both pain and grief. He carries awound in His heart. We men and women sometimes feel burdened becauseof the sin we see around us; shall not the heavenly Father be assensitive and responsive as we men? But somebody says that God cannot be happy then. Of course he can not be happy. Happiness is not anadjective to apply to God. Happy is a word that belongs to children. Children are happy, grown people never are. One can be happy when thebirds are singing and the dew is on the grass, and there is no cloudin all the sky, and the crape has not yet hung at the door. But afterwe have passed over the days of childhood, there is happiness nolonger. Some of us have lived too long and borne too much ever to behappy any more. But it is possible for us to be blest. We may passinto the very blessedness of God. The highest form of blessedness issuffering for those we love, and shall not the Father of all men havein His own eternal heart that experience which we confess to be thehighest form of blessedness? This is the truth which is dawning like anew revelation on the Church: the humanity of God. It is revealed inthe New Testament, but as yet we have only begun to take it in. Godis like us men. We are like Him. We are made in His image. We are Hischildren, and He is our Father. If we are His children, then we areHis heirs, and joint heirs with Christ. Not only our joys, but oursorrows also, are intimations and suggestions of experiences in theinfinite heart of the Eternal. 

MORGAN

THE PERFECT IDEAL OF LIFE

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

George Campbell Morgan, Congregational divine and preacher, was bornin Tetbury, Gloucestershire, England, in 1863, and was educated at theDouglas School, Cheltenham. He worked as a lay-mission preacher forthe two years ending 1888, and was ordained to the ministry in thefollowing year, when he took charge of the Congregational Churchat Stones, Staffordshire. After occupying the pulpit in severalpastorates, in 1904 he became pastor of the Westminster CongregationalChapel, Buckingham Gate, London, a position which he still occupies. Besides being highly successful as a pulpit orator, Dr. Morgan haspublished many works of a religious character, among which may beenumerated: "Discipleship"; "The Hidden Years of Nazareth"; "Life'sProblems"; "The Ten Commandments. " His last work, "The Christ ofTo-day, " has passed through several editions. 

MORGAN

Born in 1863

THE PERFECT IDEAL OF LIFE

_Jesus therefore said, When ye have lifted up the son of man, thenshall ye know that I am he, and that I do nothing of myself, but asthe Father taught me, I speak these things. And he that sent me iswith me; he hath not left me alone; for I do always the things thatare pleasing to him. As he spake these things, many believed onhim_. --John viii. , 28-30. 

The Master, you will see, in this verse lays before us three things. First of all, He gives us the perfect ideal of human life in a shortphrase, and that comes at the end, "the things that please him. " Thoseare the things that create perfect human life, living in the realm ofwhich man realizes perfectly all the possibilities of his wondrousbeing--"the things that please him. " So I say, in this phrase, theMaster reveals to us the perfect ideal of our lives. Then, in thesecond place, the Master lays claim--one of the most stupendous claimsthat He ever made--that He utterly, absolutely, realizes that ideal. He says, "I do always the things that please him. " And then, thirdly, we have the revelation of the secret by which He has been able torealize the ideal, to make the abstract concrete, to bring down thefair vision of divine purpose to the level of actual human life andexperience, and the secret is declared in the opening words: "He thatsent me is with me; my Father hath not left me alone. "

The perfect ideal for my life, then, is that I live always in therealm of the things that please God; and the secret by which I may doso is here unfolded--by living in perpetual, unbroken communion withGod: communion with which I do not permit anything to interfere. Thenit shall be possible for me to pass into this high realm of actualrealization. 

It is important that we should remind ourselves in a few sentencesthat the Lord has indeed stated the highest possible ideal for humanlife in these words: "The things that please him. " Oh, the godlessnessof men! The godlessness that is to be found on every hand! Thegodlessness of the men and women that are called by the name of God!How tragic, how sad, how awful it is! because godlessness is alwaysnot merely an act of rebellion against God, but a falling-short in ourown lives of their highest and most glorious possibilities. 

Here is my life. Now, the highest realm for me is the realm where allmy thoughts, and all my deeds, and all my methods, and everything inmy life please God. That is the highest realm, because God only knowswhat I am; only perfectly understands the possibilities of my nature, and all the great reaches of my being. You remember those lines thatTennyson sang--very beautifully, I always think:

 Flower in the crannied wall, I pluck you out of the crannies;-- Hold you here, root and all, in my hand, Little Flower--but if I could understand What you art, root and all, and all in all, I should know what God and man is. 

Beautiful confession! Absolutely true. I hold that flower in my hand, and I look at it, flower and leaves and stem and root. I can botanizeit, and then I tear it to pieces--that is what the botanist mostlydoes--and you put some part of it there, and some part of it there, and some part of it there. There is the root, there the stem, andthere are the leaves, and there is everything; but where is theflower? Gone. How did it go? When did it go? Why, when you ruthlesslytore it to bits. But how did you destroy it? You interfered with theprinciple that made it what it was--you interfered with the principleof life. What is life? No man can tell you. "If I could but know whatyou are, little flower, root and all, and all in all, " I would knowwhat life is, what God is, what man is. I can not. 

Now, if you lift that little parable of the flower into the highestrealm of animal life, and speak of yourself--we don't know ourselves;down in my nature there are reaches that I have not fathomed yet. Theyare coming up every day. What a blest thing it is to have the Masterat hand, to hand them over to Him as they come up, and say, "Lord, here is another piece of Thy territory; govern it; I don't knowanything about it. " But there is the business. I don't know myself, but God knows me, understands all the complex relationships of mylife, knows how matter affects mind, and physical and mental andspiritual are blended in one in the high ideal of humanity. Oh, remember, man is the crowning and most glorious work of God of whichwe know anything as yet. And God only knows man. 

But here is a Man that stands amid His enemies, and He looks out uponHis enemies, and He says, "I do the things that please him"--not "Iteach them, " not "I dream them, " not "I have seen them in a fairvision, " but "I do them. " There never was a bigger claim from the lipsof the Master than that: "I do always the things that please him. "

You would not thank me to insult your Christian experience, uponwhatever level you live it, by attempting to define that statementof Christ. History has vindicated it. We believe it with all ourhearts--that He always did the things that pleased God. But I have goton to a level that I can touch now. The great ideal has come from theair to the earth. The fair vision has become concrete in a Man. Now, I want to see that Man; and if I see that Man I shall see in Hima revelation of what God's purpose is for men, and I shall see, therefore, a revelation of what the highest possibility of life is. Now this is a tempting theme. It is a temptation to begin to contrastHim with popular ideals of life. I want to see Him; I want, if I can, to catch the notes of the music that make up the perfect harmony whichwas the dropping of a song out of God's heaven upon man's earth, thatman might catch the key-note of it and make music in his own life. What are the things in this Man's life? He says: "I have realized theideal--I do. " There are four things that I want to say about Him, fournotes in the music of His life. 

First, spirituality. That is one of the words that needs redeemingfrom abuse. He was the embodiment of the spiritual ideal in life. Hewas spiritual in the high, true, full, broad, blest sense of thatword. 

It may be well for a moment to note what spirituality did not mean inthe life of Jesus Christ. It did not mean asceticism. During all theyears of His ministry, during all the years of His teaching, you neverfind a single instance in which Jesus Christ made a whip of cordsto scourge Himself. And all that business of scourging oneself--anattempt to elevate the spirit by the ruin of the actual flesh--isabsolutely opposed to His view of life. Jesus Christ did not denyHimself. The fact of His life was this--that He touched everythingfamiliarly. He went into all the relationship of life. He went to thewidow. He took up the children and held them in His arms, and lookedinto their eyes till heaven was poured in as He looked. He didn't goand get behind walls somewhere. He didn't get away and say: "Now, if Iam going to get pure I shall do it by shutting men out. " You rememberwhat the Pharisees said of Him once. They said: "This man receivethsinners. " You know how they said it. They meant to say: "We did hopethat we should make something out of this new man, but we are quitedisappointed. He receives sinners. "

And what did they mean? They meant what you have so often said: "Youcan't touch pitch without being defiled. " But this Man sat down withthe publican and He didn't take on any defilement from the publican. On the other hand, He gave the publican His purity in the life ofJesus Christ. Things worked the other way. He was the great negativeof God to the very law of evil that you have--evil contaminates good. If you will put on a plate one apple that is getting bad among twelveothers that are pure, the bad one will influence the others. Christcame to drive back every force of disease and every force of evil bythis strong purity of His own person, and He said: "I will go amongthe bad and make them good. " That is what He was doing the whole waythrough. So His spirituality was not asceticism. And if you are goingto be so spiritual that you see no beauty in the flowers and hear nomusic in the song of the birds; if the life which you pass into whenyou consent to the crucifixion of self does not open to you the verygates of God, and make the singing of the birds and the blossoming ofthe flowers infinitely more beautiful, you have never seen Jesus yet. 

What was His spirituality? The spirituality of Jesus Christ was aconcrete realization of a great truth which He laid down in His ownbeatitudes. What was that? "Blest are the pure in heart, for theyshall see God. " Now, the trouble is we have been lifting all the goodthings of God and putting them in heaven. And I don't wonder that yousing:

 My willing soul would stay In such a frame as this, And sit and sing itself away To everlasting bliss. 

No wonder you want to sing yourself away to everlasting bliss, becauseeverything that is worth having you have put up there. But Jesus said:"Blest are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. " If you are pureyou will see Him everywhere--in the flower that blooms, in the marchof history, in the sorrows of men, above the darkness of the darkestcloud; and you will know that God is in the field when He is mostinvisible. 

Second, subjection. The next note in the music of His life is Hisabsolute subjection to God. You can very often tell the greatphilosophies which are governing human lives by the little catchwordsthat slip off men's tongues: "Well, I thank God I am my own master. "That is your trouble, man. It is because you are your own master thatyou are in danger of hell. A man says: "Can't I do as I like with myown?" You have got no "own" to do what you like with. It is becausemen have forgotten the covenant of God, the kingship of God, that wehave all the wreckage and ruin that blights this poor earth of ours. Here is the Man who never forgot it. 

Did you notice those wonderful words: "I do nothing of myself, but asmy Father taught me, I speak. " He neither did nor spoke anything ofHimself. It was a wonderful life. He stood forevermore between thenext moment and heaven. And the Father's voice said, "Do this, " and Hesaid "Amen, I came to do thy will, " and did it. And the Father's voicesaid, "Speak these words to men, " and He, "Amen, " and He spoke. 

You say: "That is just what I do not want to do. " I know that. We wantto be independent; have our own way. "The things that please God--thisMan was subject to the divine will. " You know the two words--if youcan learn to say them, not like a parrot, not glibly, but out of yourheart--the two words that will help you "Halleluiah" and "Amen. " Youcan say them in Welsh or any language you like; they are always thesame. When the next dispensation of God's dealings faces you look atit and say: "Halleluiah! Praise God! Amen!" That means, "I agree. "

Third, sympathy. Now, you have this Man turned toward other men. Wehave seen something of Him as He faced God: Spirituality, a sense ofGod; subjection, a perpetual amen to the divine volition. Now, Hefaces the crowd. Sympathy! Why? Because He is right with God, He isright with men; because He feels God near, and knows Him, and respondsto the divine will; therefore, when He faces men He is right towardmen. The settlement of every social problem you have in this countryand in my own land, the settlement of the whole business, will befound in the return of man to God. When man gets back to God he getsback to men. What is behind it? Sympathy is the power of putting myspirit outside my personality, into the circumstances of another man, and feeling as that man feels. 

I take one picture as an illustration of this. I see the Masterapproaching the city of Nain, and around Him His disciples. He iscoming up. And I see outside the city of Nain, coming toward the gatea man carried by others, dead, and walking by that bier a mother. Now, all I want you to look at is that woman's face, and, looking into herface, see all the anguish of those circumstances. She is a widow, andthat is her boy, her only boy, and he is dead. Man can not talk aboutthis. You have got to be in the house to know what that means. Butlook at her face--there it is. All the sorrow is on her face. You cansee it. 

Now, turn from her quickly and look into the face of Christ. Why, I look into His face--there is her face. He is feeling all she isfeeling; He is down in her sorrow with her; He has got underneath theburden, and He is feeling all the agony that that woman feels becauseher boy is dead. He is moved with compassion whenever human sorrowcrosses His vision and human need approaches Him. And now I see Himmoving toward the bier. I see Him as He touches it. And He takes theboy back and gives him to his mother. Do you see in yon mountain acloud, so somber and sad, and suddenly the sun comes from behind thecloud, and all the mountain-side laughs with gladness? That is thatwoman's face. The agony is gone. The tear that remains there is gildedwith a smile, and joy is on her face. Look at Him. There it is. Heis in her joy now. He is having as good a time as the woman. He hascarried her grief and her sorrow. He has given her joy. And it is Hisjoy that He has given to her. He is with her in her joy. 

Wonderful sympathy! He went about gathering human sorrow into Hisown heart, scattering His joy, and having fellowship in agony and indeliverance, in tears and in their wiping away. Great, sympatheticsoul! Why? Because He always lived with God, and, living with God, thedivine love moved Him with compassion. Ah, believe me, our sorrows aremore felt in heaven than on earth. And we had that glimpse of thateternal love in this Man, who did the things that pleased God, andmanifested such wondrous sympathy. 

Fourth, strength. The last note is that of strength. You talk aboutthe weakness of Jesus, the frailty of Jesus. I tell you, there neverwas any one so strong as He. And if you will take the pains of readingHis life with that in mind you will find it was one tremendous marchof triumph against all opposing forces. About His dying--how did Hedie? "At last, at last, " says the man in his study that does not knowanything about Jesus; "At last His enemies became too much for Him, and they killed Him. " Nothing of the sort. That is a very superficialreading. What is the truth? Hear it from His own lips: "No man takethmy life from me. I lay it down of myself. And if I lay it down I haveauthority to take it again. " What do you think of that? How does thattouch you as a revelation of magnificence in strength? And then, lookat Him, when He comes back from the tomb, having fulfilled that whichwas either an empty boast or a great fact--thank God, we believe itwas a great fact! Now He stands upon the mountain, with this handfulof men around Him, His disciples, and He is going away from them. "Allauthority, " He says, "is given unto me. I am king not merely by anoffice conferred, but by a triumph won. I am king, for I have facedthe enemies of the race--sin and sorrow and ignorance and death--andmy foot is upon the neck of every one. All authority is given to me. "

Oh, the strength of this Man! Where did He get it? "My Father hath notleft me alone. I have lived with God. I have walked with God. I alwaysknew him near. I always responded to his will. And my heart went outin sympathy to others, and I mastered the enemies of those with whom Isympathized. And I come to the end and I say, All authority is givento me. " Oh, my brother, that is the pattern for you and for me! Ah, that is life! That is the ideal! Oh, how can I fulfil it? I am notgoing to talk about that. Let me only give you this sentence to finishwith, "Christ in you, the hope of glory. " If Christ be in me by thepower of the Spirit, He will keep me conscious of God's nearness tome. If Christ be in me by the consciousness of the spirit reigning andgoverning, He will take my will from day to day, blend it with His, and take away all that makes it hard to say, "God's will be done. "

CADMAN

A NEW DAY FOR MISSIONS

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

S. Parkes Cadman is one of the many immigrant clergymen who haveattained to fame in American pulpits. He was born in Shropshire, England, December 18, 1864, and graduated from Richmond College, London University, in 1889. Coming to this country about 1895 he wasappointed pastor of the Methodist Episcopal Metropolitan Tabernacle, New York. From this post he was called to Central CongregationalChurch, Brooklyn, with but one exception the largest CongregationalChurch in the United States. He has received the degree of D. D. FromWesleyan University and the University of Syracuse. The sermon heregiven, somewhat abridged, was delivered before the National Council ofCongregational Churches, in Cleveland, Ohio, and is from Dr. Cadman'smanuscript. 

CADMAN

Born in 1864

A NEW DAY FOR MISSIONS

_God forbid that I should glory save in the cross of our Lord JesusChrist: by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto theworld_. --Gal. Vi. , 14. 

The pivotal conception of missionary enterprise is the conception ofChrist as the eternal priest of humanity. If any need of the world'sheart is before us now, it is the need of the Cross. There is adeep and anxious desire in men for the saving forces of sacrificialChristianity. The ideals of the New Testament concerning Gethsemaneand Calvary are being thrust upon our attention by the upwardstrugglings of the people. They, at any rate, have not forgotten theforsaken Man in the night of awful silence in the garden, nor Hisexceeding bitter agony, nor the perfect ending that made His death Hisvictory. The wastes of eccentricity, whether orthodox or heterodox, and the over curious speculations of theologies remote from thehabitations of men, have had little influence upon the multitudeswe seek to serve. And if I had to choose a sphere where one couldrediscover the central forces of Christian life and of Christianpractise, I would lean toward the enlightened democracies which to-dayare vibrant with the plea that the shepherdless multitudes shall havesocial ameliorations and new incentives and selfless leaders. 

We are all very jealous for the honor and success of the propagandismwe sustain at home and abroad, and I hold that its honor and successalike depend upon the priesthood and redemptive efficacies of Jesus. These sovereign forces are correlated with His victories for thetwenty past centuries, and they constitute the distinctive genius ofthe faith. 

We shall gain nothing for the rule or for the ethics of Jesus byderogating that peculiar office of the divine Victim which is, tome, at any rate, the most sublime reason for the Incarnation and theineffable height and depth and mystery of all love and all strengthblessedly operative in every ruined condition by means of sacrifice. The missionary fields confessedly can not be conquered by the unaidedteacher; he must have more than a system of truth, more than aprogram, more than a reasoned discourse. Their vast inert mass demandsvitalization; and the life which is given for the life of men, thedivinest gift of all, is alone sufficient for this regeneration. 

Moreover, can we rest the absolutism and finality of Jesus uponanything less than the last complete outpouring of His soul untovoluntary death for men's salvation? I do not think we can, and it isa requisite that we place larger emphasis upon this holy mystery ofour life through Christ's death, the substantial soul and secret ofall missionary progress in all ages of the Church. 

Before we can see the miracle of nations entering the kingdom of God, before we can dismiss the black death of apathy which rests on so manyprofessedly Christian communities, before we can dominate the socialstructure in righteousness and justice, the Church must be raisednearer to the standards of New Testament efficiency. And New Testamentefficiency rested upon the perfect divinity and all-persuasivemediatorship of "Christ and him crucified. " The personality of Christinvolves for many of us the entire relation of God to His universe; Heis "the central figure in all history, " and Pie is "the centralfigure of our personal experience, " creative in us, by His inauguralexperience, of all we are in Him and for our fellows. Thus we makegreat claims for the Lord of the harvest, and we make them soberly, and we know them true for our spiritual consciousness, and we areprepared to defend them. 

Yet I, for one, do not hesitate to admit that the theologicalnecessities of missionary work are many, and that they must berecognized and met before it can fully accomplish its infinitedesign. Indeed, the rule of Jesus in all these aspects of His missionclarifies and simplifies the gospel. It is plain that such a gospel, wherein the living personality of the Christ deals with the livingman to whom we minister, is not to be beset by complications andabstractions. Its spiritual topography embraces the height ofgood, the depth of love, the breadth of sympathy, and the width ofcatholicity. It was meant for the race and for the far-reachingreciprocities and inexpressible necessities of the race. It is attunedto the cry of the common heart. Its interpretations have the sanctionsof an authoritative human experience which has never failed in itswitness. Sometimes I have challenged these honored servants of theevangel who have come back to us from quarters where they were busyon the errands of the cross. Almost pathetically, with the painfulinterest of one inquiring for a long absent friend of whom no news hasbeen received, I have solicited the missionaries. They came from thesouth of our own dear land, where they administered to the negro; fromthe arctic zone, from the farther East. Their wider vision, their moreimperial instinct, were plain to me, and my usual question was, "Whatdo you teach the impulsive colored man and the stolid Eskimo and thepensive Hindu and the inscrutable Asiatic?" And they replied, "Weteach them, that God is a personal spirit and Father, whose characteris holiness and whose heart is love; that Jesus Christ is the designedand supreme Son of God, who lived in sinlessness and died in perfectwilling sacrifice for the eternal life of all men, that by the will ofGod and in the power of His spirit men may have everlasting life and, better still, everlasting goodness, if they will accept and trust inJesus Christ for all. "

And this gospel obtains the day of overcoming for which we plead andpray. For tho an angel from heaven had any other, men do not respond;the charisma rests on no other message. Possest of it, and possessingit, under the covenant of heaven and led by the Shepherd and Bishop ofsouls, we shall go forth determined to give it place in us and in ourpresentations as never before. May nothing mar the solemn splendorof such a message from God unto men. Let us subordinate our undueintellectualism and place our boasted freedom under restraints, sothat the evangel may be preached without reserve and with abandon. "For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, himselfman, Christ Jesus, who gave himself a ransom for all. "

Such in one grand passage is the creed that breathes the very life andspirit of the most significant and overwhelming missionary period inthe history of the Christian Church. 

There is a new day due in missions because of the immense superiorityin missionary methods. The _personnel_ of our administrations has beensuperb, and of nearly all the honored servants of God who have laboredin domestic and foreign departments it could be said, "Thou hastloved righteousness and hated iniquity. " But I presume these seasonedveterans would be the first to show us how the whole conception ofpropagandism has been readapted, and its vehicles of communicationmultiplied in various directions. The onfall and sally of the earlerevangelistic campaigns are now aided by the investment and siege ofeducational and medical work. 

The trackways of a policy embedded in the wider interpretation of thegospel are laid and the new era takes shape before our comprehension. Travel, exploration, and commerce have demanded and obtained the_Lusitania_ on the sea; the railroad from the Cape to Cairo on theland, and they have left no spot of earth untrodden, no map obscure, no mart unvisited. Keeping step with this stately and unprecedenteddevelopment, and often anticipating it, the widening frontiers of ourmissionary kingdom have demonstrated again and again how the Churchcan make a bridal of the earth and sky, linking the lowliest needsto the loftiest truths. And best of all in respect of methods is thedispersal of our native egotism. We have come to see that the types ofChristianity in Europe and America are perhaps aboriginal for us, but can not be transplanted to other shores. "Manifest destiny" is aphrase that sits down when Japan and China wake up. Not thus can Jesusbe robbed of the fruits of His passion in any branch of the humanfamily. We are to plant and water, labor in faith, and die in hope, scattering the seed of the gospel in the hearts of these brothers ofregions outside. But God will ordain their harvests as it pleasethHim. What will be the joy of that harvest? Throw your imaginationacross this new century, and as it dies and gives place to itssuccessor, review the race whose devotion has then fastened on thedivine ruler and the federal Man, Christ Jesus. For nearly a hundredyears the barriers that segregated us will have been a memory. TheChurch will have discovered not only fields of labor, but forces forher replenishing. Then will our posterity rejoice in the largerChrist who is to be. The virtuous elements of all other faiths willbe placed under the purification and control of the priesthood andauthority of Jesus. And tho in these ancient religions that await theBridegroom, the mortal stains the immortal and the human mars thebeauty of the divine, in the light of His appearing they will assumenew attitudes and receive His quickening and thrill with His pulse. When I conceive of this reward for our Daysman I protest that allother triumphs seem as tinsel and sham. The Desire of all nationsshall then see of the travail of His soul and shall be satisfied. Thesubtle patience of China, the fierce resistance of Japan, the broodingsoul that haunts the Ganges valley, the tumult of emotion of theEthiopian breast, all are for His appearing; they must be saved untonoble ends by His sanctification. For that time there will be a Churchwhose canonization of the infinite is beyond our dreams, enriched onevery side, with common allegiance and diversity of gifts, and everygift the boon of all, and Christ's dower in His bride increased beyondcompare. 

This is the ideal of the new day; may it become our personal ideal. Then shall we fight with new courage for the right, and abhor theimperfect, the unjust, and the mean. Our leaders will care nothing forflattery and praise or odium and abuse. Enthusiasm can not be soured, nor courage diminished. The Almighty has placed our hand on thegreatest of His plows, in whose furrow the nations I have named aregerminating religiously. And to drive forward the blade if but alittle, and to plant any seed of justice and of joy, any sense ofmanliness or moral worth, to aid in any way the gospel which is thefriend of liberty, the companion of the conscience and the parentof the intellectual enlightenment--is not that enough? Is it not acomplete justification of our plea?

We shall do well to remember that no evangel can prosper without theevangelical temper. The parsing of grammarians is of little availhere, and to have all critical knowledge of the prophets and apostlesof the faith without their fervor and consecration is profitablemerely for study, and useless mainly for the larger life. Our culturemust be the passion-flower of Christ Jesus. To be more anxious aboutintellectual pre-eminence or ecclesiastical origins than about "thetrial of the immigrant" and the condition of the colored races is nothelpful. "There is a sort of orthodoxy that revels in the visions ofapocalypses and refuses to fight the beast, " says Dr. Nurgan. Such barren indulgence is excluded from any glory to follow. Technicalities, niceties, knowledge remote and knowledge general mustbe appropriated and made dynamic in this life-and-death conflict;any that can not be thus used can be sent to the rear for a furtherdebate. 

Diplomacies in church government and adjustments in church creeds canwait on this consecration, this baptism of unction. I never heard thatthe statesman who formulated the peace at Paris in 1815 got in theway of the Household Brigades and the Highlanders at Waterloo andHougomont. They played their commendable game, but they could nothave swept that awful slope of flame in which Ney and the Old Guardstaggered on at Mont St. Jean. 

Let us redeem our creeds at the front, and prove the welding of ourweapons and their tempered blades upon every evil way and darkness andsuperstition that afflict humankind. 

And have you not seen with moistened eyes and beating hearts thepathetic surgings of harassed and broken sons and daughters ofGod toward His son Jesus Christ? I have watched them until I feltconstrained to cry aloud and spare not; and while viewing them hereand yonder, and refusing to be localized in our love toward them, havenot our spirits been rebuked, have they not known fear for ourselves, have they not pensively echoed the charge of some that we have no realroots in democracy, but are as plants in pots, and not as oaks in thesoil of earth? If independency is a barrier to the essence of which itis supposedly a form, if superiority shuts us off from assimilationwith popular movements and delivers us over to cliques, then thesechurches of ours[1] will end in a record of shame and confusion. While we are busy in trivial things, our energy and our might will bedeflected, and the living God will hand over the crusade to those whohave proven worthier and who knew the day when it did come, even theday of their visitation. 

[Footnote 1: The special reference is to the Congregational churches. ]

We must arise with courage undismayed, and join in the cry of theages:

 When wilt thou save the people, O God of mercy, when? The people! Lord, the people! Not crowns, nor thrones, but men. 

 Flower of thy heart, O Lord, are they, Their heritage a sunless day. Let them like weeds not fade away; Lord, save the people. 

If our hearts are thus enlarged, we shall run in the way of Hiscommandments; fatherhood and brotherhood and sonship will not besymbols, shibboleths of pious intercourse, but ways of God's reachingout through us for the total brotherhood. We shall silence the cavileragainst missions; we shall raise the negro in the face of those whosay he can not be raised; we shall see the latter-day miracles, andthe lame man healed and rejoicing at the Temple gate. Thus may thebreath of God sweep across our pastorates and dismiss timidity, provincialism, ease, and narrowness of outlook. And thus may the powerbe demonstrated as of heaven because it is the power unto salvation. Let us fear not men who shall die, nor be content to fill our peacefullot and occupy a respectable grave. The new world needs the renewedbaptism, and the "modernism" of which medievalists complain is therobe of honor for the Christ of this epoch. So that there shall comeunto the Church the flame of sacred love, and, kindling on every heartand altar, there shall it burn for the glory of Christ, the HighPriest, with inextinguishable blaze. We can rest content, for, behold!the day cometh and in its light. Let us go hence. 

JOWETT

APOSTOLIC OPTIMISM

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

John Henry Jowett, Congregational divine, was born at Barnard Castle, Durham, in 1864, and educated at Edinburgh and Oxford universities. In 1889 he was ordained to St. James's Congregational Church, Newcastle-on-Tyne, and in 1895 was called to his present pastorate ofCarr's Lane Congregational Church, Birmingham, where he has taken rankamong the leading preachers of Great Britain. He is the author ofseveral important books. 

JOWETT

Born in 1864

APOSTOLIC OPTIMISM[1]

[Footnote 1: Reprinted by permission of A. C. Armstrong & Son. ]

_Rejoicing in hope_. --Romans xii. , 12. 

That is a characteristic expression of the fine, genial optimism ofthe Apostle Paul. His eyes are always illumined. The cheery tone isnever absent from his speech. The buoyant and springy movement of hislife is never changed. The light never dies out of his sky. Even thegray firmament reveals more hopeful tints, and becomes significant ofevolving glory. The apostle is an optimist, "rejoicing in hope, " achild of light wearing the "armor of light, " "walking in the light"even as Christ is in the light. 

This apostolic optimism was not a thin and fleeting sentiment begottenof a cloudless summer day. It was not the creation of a season; it wasthe permanent pose of the spirit. Even when beset with circumstanceswhich to the world would spell defeat, the apostle moved with the mienof a conqueror. He never lost the kingly posture. He was disturbed byno timidity about ultimate issues. He fought and labored in the spiritof certain triumph. "We are always confident. " "We are more thanconquerors through Him that loved us. " "Thanks be unto God who givethus the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. "

This apostolic optimism was not born of sluggish thinking, or of idleand shallow observation. I am very grateful that the counsel of mytext lifts its chaste and cheery flame in the twelfth chapter of anepistle of which the first chapter contains as dark and searching anindictment of our nature as the mind of man has ever drawn. Let merehearse the appalling catalog that the radiance of the apostle'soptimism may appear the more abounding: "Senseless hearts, " "fools, ""uncleanness, " "vile passions, " "reprobate minds, " "unrighteousness, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malignity, whisperers, backbiters, hateful to God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil things, without understanding, covenant breakers, without natural affection, unmerciful. " Withfearless severity the apostle leads us through the black realms ofmidnight and eclipse. And yet in the subsequent reaches of the greatargument, of which these dark regions form the preface, there emergesthe clear, calm, steady light of my optimistic text. I say it is notthe buoyancy of ignorance. It is not the flippant, light-heartedexpectancy of a man who knows nothing about the secret places of thenight. The counselor is a man who has steadily gazed at light atits worst, who has digged through the outer walls of convention andrespectability, who has pushed his way into the secret chambers andclosets of life, who has dragged out the slimy sins which were lurkingin their holes, and named them after their kind--it is this man whowhen he has surveyed the dimensions of evil and misery and contempt, merges his dark indictment in a cheery and expansive dawn, in anoptimistic evangel, in which he counsels his fellow-disciples tomaintain the confident attitude of a rejoicing hope. 

Now, what are the secrets of this courageous and energetic optimism?Perhaps, if we explore the life of this great apostle, and seek todiscover its springs, we may find the clue to his abounding hope. Roaming then through the entire records of his life and teachings, do we discover any significant emphasis? Preeminent above all othersuggestions, I am imprest with his vivid sense of the reality of theredemptive work of Christ. Turn where I will, the redemptive work ofthe Christ evidences itself as the base and groundwork of his life. It is not only that here and there are solid statements of doctrine, wherein some massive argument is constructed for the partial unveilingof redemptive glory. Even in those parts of his epistles where formalargument has ceased, and where solid doctrine is absent, the doctrineflows as a fluid element into the practical convictions of life, anddetermines the shape and quality of the judgments. Nay, one mightlegitimately use the figure of a finer medium still, and say that inall the spacious reaches of the apostle's life the redemptive work ofhis Master is present as an atmosphere in which all his thoughts andpurposes and labors find their sustaining and enriching breath. Takethis epistle to the Romans in which my text is found. The earlierstages of the great epistle are devoted to a massive and statelypresentation of the doctrines of redemption. But when I turn over thepages where the majestic argument is concluded, I find the doctrinepersisting in a diffused and rarefied form, and appearing as thedetermining factor in the solution of practical problems. If he isdealing with the question of the "eating of meats, " the great doctrinereappears and interposes its solemn and yet elevating principle:"destroy not him with thy meat for whom Christ died. " If he is calledupon to administer rebuke to the passionate and unclean, the shadow ofthe cross rests upon his judgment. "Ye are not your own; ye are boughtwith a price. " If he is portraying the ideal relationship of husbandand wife, he sets it in the light of redemptive glory: "Husbands, loveyour wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself upfor it. " If he is seeking to cultivate the grace of liberality, hebrings the heavenly air around about the spirit. "Ye know the graceof our Lord Jesus Christ, that tho he was rich, yet for your sakeshe became poor. " It interweaves itself with all his salutations. Itexhales in all his benedictions like a hallowing fragrance. You cannot get away from it. In the light of the glory of redemption allrelationships are assorted and arranged. Redemption was not degradedinto a fine abstract argument, to which the apostle had appended hisown approval, and then, with sober satisfaction, had laid it aside, asa practical irrelevancy, in the stout chests of orthodoxy. It becamethe very spirit of his life. It was, if I may be allowed the violentfigure, the warm blood in all his judgment. It filled the veins of allhis thinking. It beat like a pulse in all his purposes. It determinedand vitalized his decisions in the crisis, as well as in the lessertrifles of the common day. His conception of redemption was regulativeof all his thought. 

But it is not only the immediacy of redemption in the apostle'sthought by which I am imprest. I stand in awed amazement before itsvast, far-stretching reaches into the eternities. Said an old villagerto me concerning the air of his elevated hamlet, "Ay, sir, it's a fineair is this westerly breeze; I like to think of it as having traveledfrom the distant fields of the Atlantic!" And here is the ApostlePaul, with the quickening wind of redemption blowing about him inloosening, vitalizing, strengthening influence, and to him, in all histhinking, it had its birth in the distant fields of eternity! Tothe apostle redemption was not a small device, an afterthought, apatched-up expedient to meet an unforseen emergency. The redemptivepurpose lay back in the abyss of the eternities, and in a spirit ofreverent questioning the apostle sent his trembling thoughts intothose lone and silent fields. He emerged with, whispered secrets suchas these: "fore-knew, " "fore-ordained, " "chosen in him before thefoundation of the world, " "eternal life promised before timeseternal, " "the eternal purpose which he purposed in Christ Jesus ourLord. "

Brethren, does our common thought of redemptive glory reach backinto this august and awful presence? Does the thought of the moderndisciple journey in this distant pilgrimage? Or do we now regard it asunpractical and irrelevant? There is no more insidious peril in modernreligious life than the debasement of our conception of the practical. If we divorce the practical from the sublime, the practical willbecome the superficial, and will degenerate into a very lean andforceless thing. When Paul went on this lonely pilgrimage his spiritacquired the posture of a finely sensitive reverence. People wholive and move beneath great domes acquire a certain calm and statelydignity. It is in companionship with the sublimities that awkwardnessand coarseness are destroyed. We lose our reverence when we desert theaugust. But has reverence no relationship to the practical? Shall wediscard it as an irrelevant factor in the purposes of common life?Why, reverence is the very clue to fruitful, practical living. Reverence is creative of hope; nay, a more definite emphasis can begiven to the assertion; reverence is a constituent of hope. Annihilate reverence, and life loses its fine sensitiveness, and whensensitiveness goes out of a life the hope that remains is only aflippant rashness, a thoughtless impetuosity, the careless onrush ofthe kine, and not a firm, assured perception of a triumph that is onlydelayed. A reverent homage before the sublimities of yesterday is thecondition of a fine perception of the hidden triumphs of the morrow. And, therefore, I do not regard it as an accidental conjunction thatthe psalmist puts them together and proclaims the evangel that "theLord taketh pleasure in them that fear him, in them that hope in hismercy. " To feel the days before me I must revere the purpose whichthrobs behind me. I must bow in reverence if I would anticipate inhope. 

Here, then, is the Apostle Paul, with the redemptive purposeinterweaving itself with all the entanglements of his common life, apurpose reaching back into the awful depths of the eternities, andissuing from those depths in amazing fulness of grace and glory. Noone can be five minutes in the companionship of the Apostle Paulwithout discovering how wealthy is his sense of the wealthy, redeemingministry of God. What a wonderful consciousness he has of the sweepand fulness of the divine grace! You know the variations of theglorious air: "the unsearchable riches of Christ"; "riches in gloryin Christ Jesus"; "all spiritual blessings in the heavenly placesin Christ"; "the riches of his goodness and forbearance andlong-suffering. " The redemptive purpose of God bears upon the life ofthe apostle and upon the race whose privileges he shares, not in anuncertain and reluctant shower, but in a great and marvelous flood. And what to him is the resultant enfranchisement? What are thespacious issues of the glorious work? Do you recall those wonderfulsentences, scattered here and there about the apostle's writings, andbeginning with the words "but now"? Each sentence proclaims the endof the dominion of night, and unveils some glimpse of the new createdday. "But now!" It is a phrase that heralds a great deliverance!"But now, apart from the law the righteousness of God hath beenmanifested, " "But now, being made free from sin and become servants toGod. " "But now in Christ Jesus ye that once were far off are made nighin the blood of Christ. " "But now are ye light in the Lord. " "Now, nocondemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus. " These represent nothin abstractions. To Paul the realities of which they speak were morereal than the firm and solid earth. And is it any wonder that a manwith such a magnificent sense of the reality of the redemptiveworks of Christ, who felt the eternal purpose throbbing in the darkbackground and abyss of time, who conceived it operating upon our racein floods of grace and glory, and who realized in his own immediateconsciousness the varied wealth of the resultant emancipation--is itany wonder that for this man a new day had dawned, and the birds hadbegun to sing and the flowers to bloom, and a sunny optimism had takenpossession of his heart, which found expression in an assured andrejoicing hope?

I look abroad again over the record of this man's life and teachings, if perchance I may discover the secrets of his abiding optimism, and Iam profoundly imprest by his living sense of the reality and greatnessof his present resources. "By Christ redeemed!" That is not a grandfinale; it is only a glorious inauguration. "By Christ redeemed; inChrist restored"; it is with these dynamics of restoration that hisepistles are so wondrously abounding. In almost every other sentencehe suggests a dynamic which he can count upon as his friend. Paul'smental and spiritual outlook comprehended a great army of positiveforces laboring in the interests of the kingdom of God. His conceptionof life was amazingly rich in friendly dynamics! I do not wonder thatsuch a wealthy consciousness was creative of a triumphant optimism. Just glance at some of the apostle's auxiliaries: "Christ liveth inme!" "Christ liveth in me! He breathes through all my aspirations. Hethinks through all my thinking. He wills through all my willing. Heloves through all my loving. He travails in all my labors. He workswithin me 'to will and to do of his good pleasure. '" That is theprimary faith of the hopeful life. But see what follows in swift andimmediate succession. "If Christ is in you, the spirit is life. " "Thespirit is life!" And therefore you find that in the apostle's thoughtdispositions are powers. They are not passive entities. They arepositive forces vitalizing and energizing the common life of men. My brethren, I am persuaded there is a perilous leakage in thisdepartment of our thought. We are not bold enough in our thinkingconcerning spiritual realities. We do not associate with every modeof the consecrated spirit the mighty energy of God. We too oftenoust from our practical calculations some of the strongest and mostaggressive allies of the saintly life. Meekness is more than theabsence of self-assertion; it is the manifestation of the mighty powerof God. To the Apostle Paul love exprest more than a relationship. Itwas an energy productive of abundant labors. Faith was more than anattitude. It was an energy creative of mighty endeavor, Hope wasmore than a posture. It was an energy generative of a most enduringpatience. All these are dynamics, to be counted as active allies, cooperating in the ministry of the kingdom. And so the epistles aboundin the recital of mystic ministries at work. The Holy Spirit worketh!Grace worketh! Faith worketh! Love worketh! Hope worketh! Prayerworketh! And there are other allies robed in less attractive garb. "Tribulation worketh!" "This light affliction worketh. " "Godly sorrowworketh!" On every side of him the apostle conceives cooperative andfriendly powers. "The mountain is full of horses and chariots offire round about him. " He exults in the consciousness of aboundingresources. He discovers the friends of God in things which find noplace among the scheduled powers of the world. He finds God's rawmaterial in the world's discarded waste. "Weak things, " "base things, ""things that are despised, " "things that are not, " mere nothings;among these he discovers the operating agents of the mighty God. Is itany wonder that in this man, possessed of such a wealthy consciousnessof multiplied resources, the spirit of a cheery optimism should beenthroned? With what stout confidence he goes into the fight! Henever mentions the enemy timidly. He never seeks to underestimate hisstrength. Nay, again and again he catalogs all possible antagonisms ina spirit of buoyant and exuberant triumph. However numerous the enemy, however subtle and aggressive his devices, however towering andwell-established the iniquity, however black the gathering clouds, sosensitive is the apostle to the wealthy resources of God that amid itall he remains a sunny optimist, "rejoicing in hope, " laboring in thespirit of a conqueror even when the world was exulting in his supposeddiscomfiture and defeat. 

And, finally, in searching for the springs of this man's optimism, Iplace alongside his sense of the reality of redemption and his wealthyconsciousness of present resources his impressive sense of the realityof future glory. Paul gave himself time to think of heaven, of thehome of God, of his own home when time should be no more. He loved tocontemplate "the glory that shall be revealed. " He mused in wistfulexpectancy of the day "when Christ who is our life shall bemanifested, " and when we also "shall be manifested with him in glory. "He pondered the thought of death as "gain, " as transferring him toconditions in which he would be "at home with the Lord, " "with Christ, which is far better. " He looked for "the blest hope and appearingof the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, " and hecontemplated "that great day" as the "henceforth, " which would revealto him the crown of righteousness and glory. Is any one prepared todissociate this contemplation from the apostle's cheery optimism? Isnot rather the thought of coming glory one of its abiding springs? Canwe safely exile it from our moral and spiritual culture? I know thatthis particular contemplation is largely absent from modern religiouslife, and I know the nature of the recoil in which our presentimpoverishment began. "Let us hear less about the mansions of theblest and more about the housing of the poor!" Men revolted against aneffeminate contemplation, which had run to seed, in favor of an activephilanthropy which sought the enrichment of the common life. But, mybrethren, pulling a plant up is not the only way of saving it fromrunning to seed. You can accomplish by a wise restriction whatis wastefully done by severe destruction. I think we have lostimmeasurably by the uprooting, in so many lives, of this plant ofheavenly contemplation. We have built on the erroneous assumption thatthe contemplation of future glory inevitably unfits us for the serviceof man. It is an egregious and destructive mistake. I do not thinkthat Richard Baxter's labors were thinned or impoverished by hiscontemplation of "The Saint's Everlasting Rest. " When I consider hismental output, his abundant labors as father-confessor to a countlesshost, his pains and persecutions and imprisonments, I can not butthink he received some of the powers of his optimistic endurance fromcontemplations such as he counsels in his incomparable book. "Runfamiliarly through the streets of the heavenly Jerusalem; visit thepatriarchs and prophets, salute the apostles, and admire the armies ofmartyrs; lead on the heart from street to street, bring it intothe palace of the great king; lead it, as it were, from chamber tochamber. Say to it, 'Here must I lodge, here must I die, here must Ipraise, here must I love and be loved. My tears will then be wipedaway, my groans be turned to another tune, my cottage of clay bechanged to this palace, my prison rags to these splendid robes'; 'forthe former things are passed away. '" I can not think that SamuelRutherford impoverished his spirit or deadened his affections, ordiminished his labors by mental pilgrimages such as he counsels toLady Cardoness: "Go up beforehand and see your lodging. Look throughall your Father's rooms in heaven. Men take a sight of the lands erethey buy them. I know that Christ hath made the bargain already; butbe kind to the house ye are going to, and see it often. " I can notthink that this would imperil the fruitful optimisms of the Christianlife. I often examine, with peculiar interest, the hymn-book we use atCarr's Lane. It was compiled by Dr. Dale. Nowhere else can I find thebroad perspective of his theology and his primary helpmeets inthe devotional life as I find them there. And is it altogetherunsuggestive that under the heading of "Heaven" is to be found one ofthe largest sections of the book. A greater space is given to "Heaven"than is given to "Christian duty. " Is it not significant of what agreat man of affairs found needful for the enkindling and sustenanceof a courageous hope? And among the hymns are many which have helpedto nourish the sunny endeavors of a countless host. 

 There is a land of pure delight Where saints immortal reign; Infinite day excludes the night, And pleasures banish pain. 

 What are these, arrayed in white, Brighter than the noonday sun? Foremost of the suns of light, Nearest the eternal throne. 

 Hark! hark, my soul! Angelic songs are swelling O'er earth's green fields and ocean's wave-beat shore. Angelic songs to sinful men are telling Of that new life when sin shall be no more. 

My brethren, depend upon it, we are not impoverished by contemplationssuch as these. They take no strength out of the hand, and theyput much strength and buoyancy into the heart. I proclaim thecontemplation of coming glory as one of the secrets of the apostle'soptimism which enabled him to labor and endure in the confident spiritof rejoicing hope. These, then, are some of the springs of Christianoptimism; some of the sources in which we may nourish our hope in thenewer labors of a larger day: a sense of the glory of the past ina perfected redemption, a sense of the glory of the present in ourmultiplied resources, a sense of the glory of tomorrow in the fruitfulrest of our eternal home. 

 O blest hope! with this elate Let not our hearts be desolate; But, strong in faith and patience, wait Until He come!

GENERAL INDEX

INDEX TO PREACHERS AND SERMONS

Abbott, Lyman, The Divinity in HumanityAbraham's Imitators; or The Activity of Faith. By Thomas HookerAffection, The Expulsive Power of a New. By Thomas ChalmersArgument, The, from Experience. By Robert William DaleArnold, Thomas, Alive in GodAscension, The, of Christ. By Girolamo SavonarolaAssurance in God. By George Adam SmithAtonement, Eternal. By Roswell Dwight HitchcockAtonement, The Prominence of the. By Edwards Amasa ParkAugustine, St. , The Recovery of Sight by the Blind

Bacon, Leonard Woolsey, God IndwellingBasil "The Great, " The Creation of the WorldBaxter, Richard, Making Light of Christ and SalvationBeecher, H. W. , ImmortalityBeecher, Lyman, The Government of God DesirableBible, The, vs. Infidelity. By Frank Wakely GunsaulusBlair, Hugh, The Hour and the Event of All TimeBlind, The Recovery of Sight by the. By St. AugustineBones, The Valley of Dry. By Frederick Denison MauriceBossuet, Jacques Benigne, The Death of the Grande CondéBounty, The Royal. By Alexander McKenzieBourdaloue, Louis, The Passion of ChristBroadus, John A. , Let us Have Peace with GodBrooks, Memorial Discourse on Phillips. By Henry Codman PotterBrooks, Phillips, The Pride of LifeBunyan, John, The Heavenly FootmanBurrell, David James, How to Become a ChristianBushnell, Horace, Unconscious Influence

Cadman, S. Parkes, A New Day for MissionsCaird, John, Religion in Common LifeCalvin, John, Enduring Persecution for ChristCampbell, Alexander, The Missionary CauseCarlyle, Thomas, --In Memoriam. By Arthur Penrhyn StanleyCarpenter, William Boyd, The Age of ProgressChalmers, Thomas, The Expulsive Power of a New AffectionCharming, William Ellery, The Character of ChristChapin, Edwin Hubbell Nicodemus: The Seeker after ReligionCharacter, The, of Christ. By William Ellery CharmingChrist and Salvation, Making Light of. By Richard BaxterChrist Among the Common Things of Life. By William James DawsonChrist Before Pilate--Pilate Before Christ. By William Mackergo TaylorChrist, Enduring Persecution for. By John CalvinChrist, The Ascension of. By Girolamo SavonarolaChrist, The Character of. By William Ellery ChanningChrist, The First Temptation of. By John KnoxChrist, The Loneliness of. By Frederick William RobertsonChrist, The Passion of. By Louis BourdaloueChrist--_The_ Question of the Centuries. By Robert Stuart MacArthurChrist, The Spirit of. By Charles H. FowlerChrist, What Think ye of. By Dwight Lyman MoodyChrist, Zeal in the Cause of. By William Morley PunshonChrist's Advent to Judgment. By Jeremy TaylorChrist's Real Body not in the Eucharist. By John WyclifChrist's Resurrection an Image of our New Life. By Frederich Ernst SchleiermacherChristian, How to Become a. By David James BurrellChristian Victory. By Christopher Newman HallChristianity, The Mysteries of. By Alexander VinetChristianity, The Transient and Permanent in. By Theodore ParkerChrysostom, Excessive Grief at the Death of FriendsChurch, The Mother. By Ernest Roland WilberforceChurch, The Triumph of the. By Henry Edward ManningClifford, John, The Forgiveness of SinsColonization, The, of the Desert. By Edward Everett HaleCommon Life, Religion in. By John CairdCommon Things of Life, Christ Among the. By William James DawsonCondé, The Funeral Sermon on the Death of the Grande. By Jacques Benigne BossuetCreation, The, of the World. By BasilCreation, Work in the Groaning. By Frederick William FarrarCrosby, Howard, The Prepared WormCuyler, Theodore Ledyard, The Value of Life

Dale, Robert William, The Argument from ExperienceDay, A, in the Life of Jesus of Nazareth, By Francis WaylandDawson, William James, Christ Among the Common Things of LifeDeath, Glorification Through. By Francis Landey PattonDesert, The Colonization of the. By Edward Everett HaleDivinity, The, in Humanity. By Lyman AbbottDrummond, Henry, The Greatest Thing in the WorldDwight, Timothy, The Sovereignty of God

Earth, The Shaking of the Heavens and the. By Charles KingsleyEducation and the Future of Religion. By John Lancaster SpaldingEdwards, Jonathan, Spiritual lightElect, The Small Number of the. By Jean Baptiste MassillonEternal Atonement. By Roswell Dwight HitchcockEucharist, Christ's Real Body not in the. By John WyclifEvans, Christmas, The Fall and Recovery of ManEvent, The Hour and the, of all Time. By Hugh BlairExperience. By Alexander WhyteExperience, The Argument from. By Robert William DaleExpulsive Power, The, of a New Affection. By Thomas Chalmers

Faith, Constructive. By Charles Henry ParkhurstFaith, The Activity of; or, Abraham's Imitators. By Thomas HookerFaith, The Story of a Disciple's. By Henry Scott HollandFall, The, and Recovery of Man. By Christmas EvansFarrar, Frederick William, Work in the Groaning CreationFénelon, Francois de Salignac de la Mothe, The Saints Converse with GodFootman, The Heavenly. By John BunyanForgiveness, The, of Sins. By John Clifford. Fowler, Charles H. , The Spirit of ChristFuneral Sermon, The, on the Death of the Grande Condé, by Jacques Benigne Bossuet

Gethsemane, The Rose Garden of God. By William Robertson NicollGladden, Washington, The Prince of LifeGlorification Through Death. By Francis Landey PattonGod, Alive in. By Thomas ArnoldGod Calling to Man. By Charles John VaughanGod Indwelling. By Leonard Woolsey Bacon. God, Marks of Love to. By Robert HallGod, Preparation for Consulting the Oracles of. By Edward IrvingGod, The Government of, Desirable. By Lyman BeecherGod, The Image of, in Man. By Robert SouthGod, The Saints Converse with. By Francois FénelonGod, The Sovereignty of. By Timothy DwightGod the Unwearied Guide. By Newell Dwight HillisGod's Love to Fallen Man. By John WesleyGod's Will the End of Life. By John Henry NewmanGordon, George Angier, Man in the Image of GodGovernment, The, of God Desirable. By Lyman BeecherGrace, The Method of. By George WhitefieldGreatest Thing, The, in the World. By Henry DrummondGrief, Excessive, at the Death of Friends. By ChrysostomGuide, God the Unwearied. By Newell Dwight HillisGunsaulus, Frank Wakely, The Bible vs. InfidelityGuthrie, Thomas, The New Heart

Hale, Edward Everett, The Colonization of the DesertHall, Christopher Newman, Christian VictoryHall, John, Liberty only in TruthHall, Robert, Marks of Love to GodHeart, The New. By Thomas GuthrieHeavens, The Shaking of the, and the Earth. By Charles KingsleyHillis, Newell Dwight, God the Unwearied GuideHitchcock, Roswell Dwight, The Eternal AtonementHolland, Henry Scott, The Story of a Disciple's FaithHoly Spirit, Influence of the. By Henry Parry LiddonHooker, Thomas, The Activity of Faith; or Abraham's ImitatorsHour, The, and the Event of all Time. By Hugh BlairHowe, John, The Redeemer's Tears over Lost SoulsHumanity, The Divinity in. By Lyman Abbott

Ideal of Life, The Perfect. By George Campbell MorganImmortality. By H. W. BeecherInfidelity, The Bible vs. By Frank Wakely GunsaulusInfluence, Unconscious. By Horace BushnellInfluences of the Holy Spirit. By Henry Parry LiddonInheritance, The Heavenly. By John SummerfieldIrving, Edward, Preparation for Consulting the Oracles of God

Jefferson, Charles Edward, The ReconciliationJesus of Nazareth, A Day in the Life of. By Francis WaylandJowett, John Henry, Apostolic OptimismJudgment, Christ's Advent to. By Jeremy TaylorJudgment, The Reversal of Human. By James B. MozleyJustification, The Method and Fruits of. By Martin Luther

Kingsley, Charles, The Shaking of the Heavens and the EarthKnox, John, The First Temptation of ChristKnox-Little, William John, Thirst SatisfiedLatimer, Hugh, Christian LoveLife, Christ's Resurrection an Image of our New By Frederich Ernst SchleiermacherLife, God's Will the End of. By John Henry NewmanLife, The Perfect Ideal of. By George Campbell MorganLife, The Pride of. By Phillips BrooksLife, The Prince of. By Washington GladdenLife, The Value of. By Theodore Ledyard CuylerLiberty only in Truth. By John HallLiddon, Henry Parry, Influences of the Holy SpiritLight, Spiritual. By Jonathan EdwardsLoneliness, The, of Christ. By Frederick William RobertsonLord, The Resurrection of Our. By Matthew SimpsonLorimer, George C. The Fall of SatanLove, Christian. By Hugh LatimerLove, Marks of, to God. By Robert HallLuther, Martin, The Method and Fruits of JustificationMacArthur, Robert Stuart, Christ--The Question of the CenturiesMcKenzie, Alexander, The Royal BountyMaclaren, Alexander, The Pattern of ServiceMacleod, Norman, The True Christian MinistryMagee, William Connor, The Miraculous Stilling of the StormMan, God Calling to. By Charles John VaughanMan, God's Love to Fallen. By John WesleyMan in the Image of God. By George Angier GordonMan, The Fall and Recovery of. By Christmas EvansMan, The Image of God in. By Robert SouthManhood, The Meaning of. By Henry Van DykeManning, Henry Edward, The Triumph of the ChurchMartineau, James, Parting WordsMason, John Mitchell, Messiah's ThroneMassillon, Jean Baptiste, The Small Number of the ElectMaurice, Frederick Denison, The Valley of Dry BonesMelanchthon, Philip, The Safety of the VirtuousMemorial Discourse on Phillips Brooks. By Henry Codman PotterMessiah's Throne. By John Mitchell MasonMinistry, The True Christian. By Norman MacleodMissions, A New Day for. By. S. Parkes CadmanMissionary Cause, The. By Alexander CampbellMissionary Work, The Permanent Motive in. By Richard S. StorrsMonster, A Bloody. By Thomas DeWitt TalmageMoody, Dwight Lyman, What Think ye of Christ?Morgan, George Campbell, The Perfect Ideal of LifeMotive, The Permanent, in Missionary Work. By Richard S. StorrsMozley, James B. , The Reversal of Human JudgmentMysteries. The, of Christianity. By Alexander Vinet

Newman, John Henry, God's Will the End of LifeNicodemus: The Seeker after Religion. By Edwin Hubbell ChapinNicoll, William Robertson, Gethsemane, The Rose Garden of God

Optimism, Apostolic. By John Henry JowettOptimism. By John WatsonOracles, Preparation for Consulting the, of God. By Edward Irving

Park, Edwards Amasa, The Prominence of the AtonementParker, Joseph, A Word to the WearyParker, Theodore, The Transient and Permanent in ChristianityParkhurst, Charles Henry, Constructive FaithPassion, The, of Christ. By Louis BourdalouePatton, Francis Landey, Glorification Through DeathPaul Before Felix and Drusilla. By Jacques SaurinPeace with God, Let us Have. By John A. BroadusPermanent, The Transient and the, in Christianity. By Theodore ParkerPersecution for Christ, Enduring, John CalvinPilate Before Christ--Christ Before Pilate. By William Mackergo TaylorPotter, Henry Codman, Memorial Discourse on Phillips BrooksPride, The, of Life. By Phillips BrooksPrince, The, of Life. By Washington GladdenProgress, The Age of. By William Boyd CarpenterPunshon, William Morley, Zeal in the Cause of Christ

Reconciliation, The. By Charles E. JeffersonRecovery, The Fall and, of Man. By Christmas EvansRedeemer's Tears, The, over Lost Souls. By John HoweReligion, Education and the Future of. By John Lancaster SpaldinReligion in Common Life. By John CairdReligion, Nicodemus: The Seeker after. By Edwin Hubbell ChapinResurrection, Christ's, an Image of our New-Life. By Frederick Ernst SchleiermacherResurrection, The, of Our Lord. By Matthew SimpsonResurrection, The Reasonableness of a. By John TillotsonReversal, The, of Human Judgment. By James B. MozleyRobertson, Frederick William, The Loneliness of ChristRoyal Bounty, the. By Alexander McKenzie

Sackcloth, The Transfigured. By William L. WatkinsonSaints Converse with God, The. By Francis FénelonSalvation, Making Light of Christ and. By Richard BaxterSatan, The Fall of. By George C. LorimerSaurin, Jacques, Paul Before Felix and DrusillaSavonarola, Girolamo, The Ascension of ChristSchleiermacher, Frederick Ernst, Christ's Resurrection an Image of our New LifeSeiss, Joseph A. , The Wonderful TestimoniesService, The Pattern of. By Alexander MaclarenShaking, The, of the Heavens and the Earth. By Charles KingsleySight, The Recovery of, by the Blind By St AugustineSimpson, Matthew, The Resurrection of Our Lord. Sins, The Forgiveness of By John CliffordSmith, George Adam Assurance in GodSongs in the Night By Charles Haddon SpurgeonSouls, The Redeemer's Tears Over Lost By John HoweSouth, Robert, The Image of God in ManSovereignty, The of God By Timothy DwightSpalding, John Lancaster, Education and the Future of ReligionSpiritual Light By Jonathan EdwardsSpurgeon, Charles Haddon Songs in the NightStalker, James TemptationStanley, Arthur Penrhyn, In Memoriam--Thomas CarlyleStilling of the Storm, The Miraculous By William Connor MageeStorm, The Miraculous Stilling of the By William Connor MageeStorrs, Richard S. The Permanent Motive in Missionary WorkSummerfield, John The Heavenly Inheritance

Talmage, Thomas DeWitt A Bloody MonsterTaylor, Jeremy Christ's Advent to JudgmentTaylor, William Mackergo Christ Before Pilate--Pilate Before ChristTemptation By James StalkerTemptation, The First, of Christ By John KnoxTestimonies The Wonderful By Joseph A SeissThirst Satisfied By William John Knox LittleTime, The Hour and the Event of all By Hugh BlairTillotson, John, The Reasonableness of a ResurrectionTransfigured Sackcloth, The By William L. WatkinsonTransient, The, and Permanent in Christianity. By Theodore ParkerTriumph, The, of the Church. By Henry Edward ManningTruth, Liberty Only in. By John HallValley, The, of Dry Bones By Frederick Derrison MauriceVan Dyke, Henry, The Meaning of ManhoodVaughan, Charles John, God Calling to ManVictory, Christian By Christopher Newman HallVinet, Alexander, The Mysteries of ChristianityVirtuous, The Safety of the. By Philip MelanchthonVoice, I am a. By Charles Wagner

Wagner, Charles, I am a VoiceWatkinson, William L, The Transfigured SackclothWatson, John, OptimismWayland, Francis, A Day in the Life of Jesus of NazarethWeary, A Word to the. By Joseph ParkerWesley, John, God's Love to Fallen Man. Whitefield, George, The Method of GraceWhyte, Alexander, ExperienceWilberforce, Ernest Roland, The Mother ChurchWords, Parting By James MartineauWork in the Groaning Creation. By Frederick William FarrarWorld, The Greatest Thing in the. By Henry DrummondWorm, The Prepared. By Howard Crosby

INDEX TO TEXTS

 VOLUME

Genesis i. , 2 I i. , 27 II i. , 31 VII i. , 31 VII iii. , 9 VI xxxvii. , 33 VIII

I Kings x. , 13 VII x. , 36 IX

II Kings vi. , 1, 2 IX

Esther iv. , 2 VIII

Job xxxiii. , 4 IX xxxv. , 10 VIII

Psalms xvi. , 16 X xlii. , 2 VIII cxix. , 45 VII cxix. , 129 VII

Proverbs xi. , 30 IV

Isaiah xl. , 1-31 X l, 4 VII lvii. , 15 VII

Jeremiah vi. , 14 III x. , 23 III

Ezekiel xxxvi. , 26 V xxxvii. , 1-3 V

Jonah iv. , 7 VII

Matthew iv. , 1 I vi. , 10 IV viii. , 25, 26 VII xii. , 12 IX xiii. , 24 VI xvi. , 17 III xvii. , 5 IV xix. , 30 V xx. , 30 I xxii. , 5 II xxii. , 32 IV xxii. , 42 VIII xxii. , 42 IX xxvi. , 26 I xxvii. , 22 VII xxviii. , 19 IX

Mark vii. , 33 VII xvi. , 15 VI

Luke iv. 27 III ix. , 10-17 IV x. , 18 VIII xix. , 41, 42 II xxi. , 33 V xxiii. , 27, 28 II xxiv. , 51 I

John i. , 23 X iii. 1, 2 VI iii. , 8 VII v. , 39 IV v. , 42 III vi. , 38 IV vi. , 63 VIII vi. , 64 IX viii. , 28-30 X x. , 28 I x. , 34-36 VIII xii. , 24 IX xiv. 27 V xv. , 12 I xvi. , 31, 32 VI xvii. , 1 III xvii. , 20, 21 V xx. , 8 IV xx. , 8 IX xxi. , 9, 12 X

Acts iii. , 15 VIII xix. , 23 IX xxiv. , 24, 25 III xxvi. , 8 II xxvi. , 8 IX

Romans iv. , 12 II v. , 1 IX v. , 4 VIII v. , 15 III v. , 15 III vi. , 4 III viii. , 9 VIII viii. , 22 VII xii. , 11 VI xii. , 12 X

I Corinthians ii. , 2 V ii. , 9 IV ix. , 24 II xiii. , X xiv. , 10 X xv. , 3 X xv. , 19 VI xv. , 20 V xx. , 13 IX

II Corinthians ii. , 14-16 V v. , 10 II v. , 13-15 VI

Galatians iv. , 1-7 I vi. , 14 X

I Thessalonians iv. , 13 I v. , 17 II

Hebrews i. , 18 III xii. , 26-29 VI xiii. , 13 I

II Peter i. , 11 IV

I John, ii. , 16 VIII v. , 15 IV

Revelations ii. , 17 VI xiii. , 8 VI xxii. , 3 VII

Apostles' Creed VIII