{"collection":"scripture-revelation","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_11760/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_11760","id":"gutenberg_11760","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/11760","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Essays, Letters & Speeches","Category: Religion/Spirituality","Christianity","Sermons"],"text":"THE WORLD'S GREAT SERMONS\n\nCOMPILED BY\n\nGRENVILLE KLEISER\n\nFormerly of Yale Divinity School Faculty; Author of \"How to Speak in\nPublic,\" Etc.\n\nWith Assistance from Many of the Foremost Living Preachers and Other\nTheologians\n\nINTRODUCTION BY LEWIS O. BRASTOW, D.D.\n\nProfessor Emeritus of Practical Theology in Yale University\n\nIN TEN VOLUMES\n\nVOLUME X DRUMMOND TO JOWETT\n\nGeneral Index\n\n1908\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCONTENTS\n\n\nVOLUME X.\n\n\nDRUMMOND (1851--1897).\nThe Greatest Thing in the World\n\nWAGNER (Born in 1851).\nI Am a Voice\n\nGORDON (Born in 1853).\nMan in the Image of God\n\nDAWSON (Born in 1854).\nChrist Among the Common Things of Life\n\nSMITH (Born in 1856).\nAssurance in God\n\nGUNSAULUS (Born in 1856).\nThe Bible vs. Infidelity\n\nHILLIS (Born in 1858).\nGod the Unwearied Guide\n\nJEFFERSON (Born in 1860).\nThe Reconciliation\n\nMORGAN (Born in 1863).\nThe Perfect Ideal of Life\n\nCADMAN (Born in 1864).\nA New Day for Missions\n\nJOWETT (Born in 1864).\nApostolic Optimism\n\n\nIndex to Preachers and Sermons\n\nIndex to Texts\n\n\n\n\nDRUMMOND\n\nTHE GREATEST THING IN THE WORLD\n\nBIOGRAPHICAL NOTE\n\n\nHenry Drummond, author and evangelist, was born at Stirling, Scotland,\nin 1851. His book, \"Natural Law in the Spiritual World,\" caused much\ndiscussion and is still widely read. His \"Ascent of Man\" is regarded\nby many as his greatest work. The address reprinted here has appeared\nin hundreds of editions, and has been an inspiration to thousands\nof peoples all over the world. There is an interesting biography\nof Drummond by Professor George Adam Smith, his close friend and\ncolaborer. He died in 1897.\n\n\n\n\nDRUMMOND\n\n1851--1897\n\nTHE GREATEST THING IN THE WORLD[1]\n\n[Footnote 1: Reprinted by permission of James Pott & Co.]\n\n_Tho I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not love,\n&c._--I Cor. xiii.\n\n\nEveryone has asked himself the great question of antiquity as of the\nmodern world: What is the _summum bonum_--the supreme good? You have\nlife before you. Once only you can live it. What is the noblest object\nof desire, the supreme gift to covet?\n\nWe have been accustomed to be told that the greatest thing in the\nreligious world is faith. That great word has been the key-note for\ncenturies of the popular religion; and we have easily learned to look\nupon it as the greatest thing in the world. Well, we are wrong. If we\nhave been told that, we may miss the mark. I have taken you, in the\nchapter which I have just read, to Christianity at its source; and\nthere we have seen, \"The greatest of these is love.\" It is not an\noversight. Paul was speaking of faith just a moment before. He says,\n\"If I have all faith, so that I can remove mountains, and have not\nlove, I am nothing.\" So far from forgetting, he deliberately contrasts\nthem, \"Now abideth faith, hope, love,\" and without a moment's\nhesitation the decision falls, \"The greatest of these is love.\"\n\nAnd it is not prejudice. A man is apt to recommend to others his own\nstrong point. Love was not Paul's strong point. The observing student\ncan detect a beautiful tenderness growing and ripening all through his\ncharacter as Paul gets old; but the hand that wrote, \"The greatest of\nthese is love,\" when we meet it first, is stained with blood.\n\nNor is this letter to the Corinthians peculiar in singling out love as\nthe _summum bonum_. The masterpieces of Christianity are agreed about\nit. Peter says, \"Above all things have fervent love among yourselves.\"\nAbove all things. And John goes further, \"God is love.\" And you\nremember the profound remark which Paul makes elsewhere, \"Love is the\nfulfilling of the law.\" Did you ever think what he meant by that? In\nthose days men were working their passage to heaven by keeping the ten\ncommandments, and the hundred and ten other commandments which they\nhad manufactured out of them. Christ said, I will show you a more\nsimple way. If you do one thing, you will do these hundred and ten\nthings, without ever thinking about them. If you love, you will\nunconsciously fulfil the whole law. And you can readily see for\nyourselves how that must be so. Take any of the commandments. \"Thou\nshalt have no other gods before me.\" If a man love God, you will not\nrequire to tell him that. Love is the fulfilling of that law. \"Take\nnot his name in vain.\" Would he ever dream of taking His name in vain\nif he loved Him? \"Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.\" Would he\nnot be too glad to have one day in seven to dedicate more exclusively\nto the object of his affection? Love would fulfil all these laws\nregarding God. And so, if he loved man, you would never think of\ntelling him to honor his father and mother. He could not do anything\nelse. It would be preposterous to tell him not to kill. You could only\ninsult him if you suggested that he should not steal--how could he\nsteal from those he loved? It would be superfluous to beg him not to\nbear false witness against his neighbor. If he loved him it would be\nthe last thing he would do. And you would never dream of urging him\nnot to covet what his neighbors had. He would rather that they possest\nit than himself. In this way \"Love is the fulfilling of the law.\" It\nis the rule for fulfilling all rules, the new commandment for keeping\nall the old commandments, Christ's one secret of the Christian life.\n\nNow, Paul had learned that; and in this noble eulogy he has given us\nthe most wonderful and original account extant of the _summum bonum_.\nWe may divide it into three parts. In the beginning of the short\nchapter, we have love contrasted; in the heart of it, we have love\nanalyzed; toward the end, we have love defended as the supreme gift.\n\nPaul begins contrasting love with other things that men in those\ndays thought much of. I shall not attempt to go over those things in\ndetail. Their inferiority is already obvious.\n\nHe contrasts it with eloquence. And what a noble gift it is, the power\nof playing upon the souls and wills of men, and rousing them to lofty\npurposes and holy deeds. Paul says, \"If I speak with the tongues of\nmen and of angels, and have not love, I am become as sounding brass,\nor a tinkling cymbal.\" And we all know why. We have all felt the\nbrazenness of words without emotion, the hollowness, the unaccountable\nunpersuasiveness, of eloquence behind which lies no love.\n\nHe contrasts it with prophecy. He contrasts it with mysteries. He\ncontrasts it with faith. He contrasts it with charity. Why is love\ngreater than faith? Because the end is greater than the means. And\nwhy is it greater than charity? Because the whole is greater than the\npart. Love is greater than faith, because the end is greater than the\nmeans. What is the use of having faith? It is to connect the soul with\nGod. And what is the object of connecting man with God? That he may\nbecome like God. But God is love. Hence faith, the means, is in order\nto love, the end. Love, therefore, obviously is greater than faith. It\nis greater than charity, again, because the whole is greater than a\npart. Charity is only a little bit of love, one of the innumerable\navenues of love, and there may even be, and there is, a great deal of\ncharity without love. It is a very easy thing to toss a copper to a\nbeggar on the street; it is generally an easier thing than not to do\nit. Yet love is just as often in the withholding. We purchase relief\nfrom the sympathetic feelings roused by the spectacle of misery, at\nthe copper's cost. It is too cheap--too cheap for us, and often too\ndear for the beggar. If we really loved him we would either do more\nfor him, or less.\n\nThen Paul contrasts it with sacrifice and martyrdom. And I beg the\nlittle band of would-be missionaries--and I have the honor to call\nsome of you by this name for the first time--to remember that tho\nyou give your bodies to be burned, and have not love, it profits\nnothing--nothing! You can take nothing greater to the heathen world\nthan the impress and reflection of the love of God upon your own\ncharacter. That is the universal language. It will take you years to\nspeak in Chinese; or in the dialects of India. From the day you land,\nthat language of love, understood by all, will be pouring forth its\nunconscious eloquence. It is the man who is the missionary, it is not\nhis words. His character is his message. In the heart of Africa, among\nthe great lakes, I have come across black men and women who remembered\nthe only white man they ever saw before--David Livingstone; and as you\ncross his footsteps in that dark continent, men's faces light up as\nthey speak of the kind doctor who passed there years ago. They could\nnot understand him; but they felt the love that beat in his heart.\nTake into your new sphere of labor, where you also mean to lay down\nyour life, that simple charm, and your life-work must succeed. You\ncan take nothing greater, you need take nothing less. It is not\nworth while going if you take anything less. You may take every\naccomplishment; you may be braced for every sacrifice; but if you give\nyour body to be burned, and have not love, it will profit you and the\ncause of Christ nothing.\n\nAfter contrasting love with these things, Paul, in three verses, very\nshort, gives us an amazing analysis of what this supreme thing is. I\nask you to look at it. It is a compound thing, he tells us. It is like\nlight. As you have seen a man of science take a beam of light and pass\nit through a crystal prism, as you have seen it come out on the other\nside of the prism broken up into its component colors--red, and\nblue, and yellow, and violet, and orange, and all the colors of the\nrainbow--so Paul passes this thing, love, through the magnificent\nprism of his inspired intellect, and it comes out on the other side\nbroken up into its elements. And in these few words we have what\none might call the spectrum of love, the analysis of love. Will you\nobserve what its elements are? Will you notice that they have common\nnames; that they are virtues which we hear about every day, that they\nare things which can be practised by every man in every place in life;\nand how, by a multitude of small things and ordinary virtues, the\nsupreme thing, the _summum bonum_, is made up?\n\nThe spectrum of love has nine ingredients:\n\n  Patience--\"Love suffereth long.\"\n  Kindness--\"And is kind.\"\n  Generosity--\"Love envieth not.\"\n  Humility--\"Love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up.\"\n  Courtesy--\"Doth not behave itself unseemly.\"\n  Unselfishness--\"Seeketh not her own.\"\n  Good temper--\"Is not easily provoked.\"\n  Guilelessness--\"Thinketh no evil.\"\n  Sincerity--\"Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth.\"\n\nPatience, kindness, generosity, humility, courtesy, unselfishness,\ngood temper, guilelessness, sincerity--these make up the supreme gift,\nthe stature of the perfect man. You will observe that all are in\nrelation to men, in relation to life, in relation to the known to-day\nand the near to-morrow, and not to the unknown eternity. We hear much\nof love to God; Christ spoke much of love to man. We make a great deal\nof peace with heaven; Christ made much of peace on earth. Religion is\nnot a strange or added thing, but the inspiration of the secular life,\nthe breathing of an eternal spirit through this temporal world. The\nsupreme thing, in short, is not a thing at all, but the giving of a\nfurther finish to the multitudinous words and acts which make up the\nsum of every common day.\n\nThere is no time to do more than to make a passing note upon each of\nthese ingredients. Love is patience. This is the normal attitude of\nlove; love passive, love waiting to begin; not in a hurry; calm;\nready to do its work when the summons comes, but meantime wearing the\nornament of a meek and quiet spirit. Love suffers long; beareth all\nthings; believeth all things; hopeth all things. For love understands,\nand therefore waits.\n\nKindness. Love active. Have you ever noticed how much of Christ's life\nwas spent in doing kind things--in merely doing kind things? Run\nover it with that in view, and you will find that He spent a great\nproportion of His time simply in making people happy, in doing good\nturns to people. There is only one thing greater than happiness in the\nworld, and that is holiness; and it is not in our keeping; but what\nGod has put in our power is the happiness of those about us, and that\nis largely to be secured by our being kind to them.\n\n\"The greatest thing,\" says some one, \"a man can do for his Heavenly\nFather is to be kind to some of his other children.\" I wonder why it\nis that we are not all kinder than we are? How much the world needs\nit. How easily it is done. How instantaneously it acts. How infallibly\nit is remembered. How superabundantly it pays itself back--for there\nis no debtor in the world so honorable, so superbly honorable, as\nlove. \"Love never faileth.\" Love is success, love is happiness, love\nis life. \"Love,\" I say, with Browning, \"is energy of life.\"\n\n  For life, with all it yields of joy or wo\n  And hope and fear,\n  Is just our chance o' the prize of learning love--\n  How love might be, hath been indeed, and is.\n\nWhere love is, God is. He that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God. God\nis love. Therefore love. Without distinction, without calculation,\nwithout procrastination, love. Lavish it upon the poor, where it is\nvery easy; especially upon the rich, who often need it most; most of\nall upon our equals, where it is very difficult, and for whom perhaps\nwe each do least of all. There is a difference between trying to\nplease and giving pleasure. Give pleasure. Lose no chance of giving\npleasure. For that is the ceaseless and anonymous triumph of a truly\nloving spirit. \"I shall pass through this world but once. Any good\nthing therefore that I can do, or any kindness that I can show to any\nhuman being, let me do it now. Let me not defer it or neglect it, for\nI shall not pass this way again.\"\n\nGenerosity. \"Love envieth not.\" This is love in competition with\nothers. Whenever you attempt a good work you will find other men doing\nthe same kind of work, and probably doing it better. Envy them not.\nEnvy is a feeling of ill-will to those who are in the same line\nas ourselves, a spirit of covetousness and detraction. How little\nChristian work even is a protection against unchristian feeling! That\nmost despicable of all the unworthy moods which cloud a Christian's\nsoul assuredly waits for us on the threshold of every work, unless we\nare fortified with this grace of magnanimity. Only one thing truly\nneeds the Christian envy, the large, rich, generous soul which\n\"envieth not.\"\n\nAnd then, after having learned all that, you have to learn this\nfurther thing, humility--to put a seal upon your lips and forget what\nyou have done. After you have been kind, after love has stolen forth\ninto the world and done its beautiful work, go back into the shade\nagain and say nothing about it. Love hides even from itself. Love\nwaives even self-satisfaction. \"Love vaunteth not itself, is not\npuffed up.\"\n\nThe fifth ingredient is a somewhat strange one to find in this _summum\nbonum_: Courtesy. This is love in society, love in relation to\netiquette. \"Love doth not behave itself unseemly.\" Politeness has been\ndefined as love in trifles. Courtesy is said to be love in little\nthings. And the one secret of politeness is to love. Love can not\nbehave itself unseemly. You can put the most untutored persons into\nthe highest society, and if they have a reservoir of love in their\nhearts, they will not behave themselves unseemly. They simply can not\ndo it. Carlyle said of Robert Burns that there was no truer\ngentleman in Europe than the plowman-poet. It was because he loved\neverything--the mouse, the daisy, and all the things, great and small,\nthat God had made. So with this simple passport he could mingle with\nany society, and enter courts and palaces from his little cottage on\nthe banks of the Ayr. You know the meaning of the word \"gentleman.\" It\nmeans a gentle man--a man who does things gently with love. And that\nis the whole art and mystery of it. The gentle man can not in the\nnature of things do an ungentle and ungentlemanly thing. The ungentle\nsoul, the inconsiderate, unsympathetic nature can not do anything\nelse. \"Love doth not behave itself unseemly.\"\n\nUnselfishness. \"Love seeketh not her own.\" Observe: Seeketh not even\nthat which is her own. In Britain the Englishman is devoted, and\nrightly, to his rights. But there come times when a man may exercise\neven the higher right of giving up his rights. Yet Paul does not\nsummon us to give up our rights. Love strikes much deeper. It would\nhave us not seek them at all, ignore them, eliminate the personal\nelement altogether from our calculations. It is not hard to give up\nour rights. They are often external. The difficult thing is to give up\nourselves. The more difficult thing still is not to seek things for\nourselves at all. After we have sought them, bought them, won them,\ndeserved them, we have taken the cream off them for ourselves already.\nLittle cross then perhaps to give them up. But not to seek them, to\nlook every man not on his own things, but on the things of others--_id\nopus est_. \"Seekest thou great things for thyself?\" said the prophet;\n\"seek them not.\" Why? Because there is no greatness in things.\nThings can not be great. The only greatness is unselfish love. Even\nself-denial in itself is nothing, is almost a mistake. Only a\ngreat purpose or a mightier love can justify the waste. It is more\ndifficult, I have said, not to seek our own at all, than, having\nsought it, to give it up. I must take that back. It is only true of a\npartly selfish heart. Nothing is a hardship to love, and nothing is\nhard. I believe that Christ's yoke is easy. Christ's \"yoke\" is just\nHis way of taking life. And I believe it is an easier way than any\nother. I believe it is a happier way than any other. The most obvious\nlesson in Christ's teaching is that there is no happiness in having\nand getting anything, but only in giving. I repeat, there is no\nhappiness in having or in getting, but only in giving. And half the\nworld is on the wrong scent in the pursuit of happiness. They think\nit consists in having and getting, and in being served by others. It\nconsists in giving and serving others. He that would be great among\nyou, said Christ, let him serve. He that would be happy, let him\nremember that there is but one way--it is more blest, it is more\nhappy, to give than to receive.\n\nThe next ingredient is a very remarkable one: good temper. \"Love is\nnot easily provoked.\" Nothing could be more striking than to find\nthis here. We are inclined to look upon bad temper as a very harmless\nweakness. We speak of it as a mere infirmity of nature, a family\nfailing, a matter of temperament, not a thing to take into very\nserious account in estimating a man's character. And yet here, right\nin the heart of this analysis of love, it finds a place; and the Bible\nagain and again returns to condemn it as one of the most destructive\nelements in human nature.\n\nThe peculiarity of ill temper is that it is the vice of the virtuous.\nIt is often the one blot on an otherwise noble character. You know men\nwho are all but perfect, and women who would be entirely perfect, but\nfor an easily ruffled, quick-tempered, or \"touchy\" disposition. This\ncompatibility of ill temper with high moral character is one of the\nstrangest and saddest problems of ethics. The truth is, there are two\ngreat classes of sins--sins of the body, and sins of the disposition.\nThe Prodigal Son may be taken as a type of the first, the Elder\nBrother of the second. Now society has no doubt whatever as to which\nof these is the worse. Its brands fall without a challenge, upon the\nProdigal. But are we right? We have no balance to weigh one another's\nsins, and coarser and finer are but human words; but faults in the\nhigher nature may be less venial than those in the lower, and to the\neye of Him who is love, a sin against love may seem a hundred times\nmore base. No form of vice, not worldliness, not greed of gold, not\ndrunkenness itself, does more to unchristianize society than evil\ntemper. For embittering life, for breaking up communities, for\ndestroying the most sacred relationships, for devastating homes, for\nwithering up men and women, for taking the bloom off childhood, in\nshort, for sheer gratuitous misery-producing power, this influence\nstands alone. Look at the Elder Brother, moral, hard-working, patient,\ndutiful--let him get all credit for his virtues--look at this man,\nthis baby, sulking outside his own father's door. \"He was angry,\" we\nread, \"and would not go in.\" Look at the effect upon the father, upon\nthe servants, upon the happiness of the guests. Judge of the effect\nupon the Prodigal--and how many prodigals are kept out of the kingdom\nof God by the unlovely character of those who profess to be inside?\nAnalyze, as a study in temper, the thunder-cloud itself as it gathers\nupon the Elder Brother's brow. What is it made of? Jealousy, anger,\npride, uncharity, cruelty, self-righteousness, touchiness, doggedness,\nsullenness--these are the ingredients of this dark and loveless soul.\nIn varying proportions, also, these are the ingredients of all ill\ntemper. Judge if such sins of the disposition are not worse to live\nin, and for others to live with, than sins of the body. Did Christ\nindeed not answer the question Himself when He said, \"I say unto you,\nthat the publicans and the harlots go into the kingdom of heaven\nbefore you.\" There is really no place in heaven for a disposition like\nthis. A man with such a mood could only make heaven miserable for all\nthe people in it. Except, therefore, such a man be born again, he\ncan not, he simply can not, enter the kingdom of heaven. For it is\nperfectly certain--and you will not misunderstand me--that to enter\nheaven a man must take it with him.\n\nYou will see then why temper is significant It is not in what it is\nalone, but in what it reveals. This is why I take the liberty now of\nspeaking of it with such unusual plainness. It is a test for love,\na symptom, a revelation of an unloving nature at bottom. It is the\nintermittent fever which bespeaks unintermittent disease within;\nthe occasional bubble escaping to the surface which betrays some\nrottenness underneath; a sample of the most hidden products of\nthe soul dropt involuntarily when off one's guard; in a word, the\nlightning form of a hundred hideous and unchristian sins. For a want\nof patience, a want of kindness, a want of generosity, a want of\ncourtesy, a want of unselfishness, are all instantaneously symbolized\nin one flash of temper.\n\nHence it is not enough to deal with the temper. We must go to the\nsource, and change the inmost nature, and the angry humors will die\naway of themselves. Souls are made sweet not by taking the acid fluids\nout, but by putting something in--a great love, a new spirit, the\nspirit of Christ. Christ, the spirit of Christ, interpenetrating ours,\nsweetens, purifies, transforms all. This only can eradicate what\nis wrong, work a chemical change, renovate and regenerate, and\nrehabilitate the inner man. Will-power does not change men. Time does\nnot change men. Christ does. Therefore, \"Let that mind be in you which\nwas also in Christ Jesus.\" Some of us have not much time to lose.\nRemember, once more, that this is a matter of life or death. I can\nnot help speaking urgently, for myself, for yourselves. \"Whoso shall\noffend one of these little ones, which believe in me, it were better\nfor him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were\ndrowned in the depth of the sea.\" That is to say, it is the deliberate\nverdict of the Lord Jesus that it is better not to live than not to\nlove. _It is better not to live than not to love._\n\nGuilelessness and sincerity may be dismissed almost without a word.\nGuilelessness is the grace for suspicious people. And the possession\nof it is the great secret of personal influence. You will find, if you\nthink for a moment, that the people who influence you are people who\nbelieve in you. In an atmosphere of suspicion men shrivel up; but\nin that other atmosphere they expand, and find encouragement and\neducative fellowship. It is a wonderful thing that here and there in\nthis hard, uncharitable world there should still be left a few rare\nsouls who think no evil. This is the great unworldliness. Love\n\"thinketh no evil,\" imputes no bad motive, sees the bright side, puts\nthe best construction on every action. What a delightful state of mind\nto live in! What stimulus and benediction even to meet with it for\na day! To be trusted is to be saved. And if we try to influence or\nelevate others, we shall soon see that success is in proportion to\ntheir belief of our belief in them. For the respect of another is the\nfirst restoration of the self-respect a man has lost; our ideal of\nwhat he is becomes to him the hope and pattern of what he may become.\n\n\"Love rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth.\" I have\ncalled this sincerity from the words rendered in the Authorized\nVersion by \"rejoiceth in the truth.\" And, certainly, were this the\nreal translation, nothing could be more just. For he who loves will\nlove truth not less than men. He will rejoice in the truth--rejoice\nnot in what he has been taught to believe; not in this Church's\ndoctrine or in that; not in this ism or in that ism; but \"in the\ntruth.\" He will accept only what is real; he will strive to get at\nfacts; he will search for truth with an humble and unbiased mind,\nand cherish whatever he finds at any sacrifice. But the more literal\ntranslation of the Revised Version calls for just such a sacrifice for\ntruth's sake here. For what Paul really meant is, as we there read,\n\"Rejoiceth not in unrighteousness, but rejoiceth with the truth,\"\na quality which probably no one English word--and certainly not\nsincerity--adequately defines. It includes, perhaps more strictly, the\nself-restraint which refuses to make capital out of others' faults;\nthe charity which delights not in exposing the weakness of others, but\n\"covereth all things\"; the sincerity of purpose which endeavors to see\nthings as they are, and rejoices to find them better than suspicion\nfeared or calumny denounced.\n\nSo much for the analysis of love. Now the business of our lives is to\nhave these things in our characters. That is the supreme work to which\nwe need to address ourselves in this world to learn love. Is life not\nfull of opportunities for learning love? Every man and woman every\nday has a thousand of them. The world is not a playground; it is a\nschoolroom. Life is not a holiday, but an education. And the one\neternal lesson for us all is how better we can love. What makes a man\na good cricketer? Practise. What makes a man a good artist, a good\nsculptor, a good musician? Practise. What makes a man a good linguist,\na good stenographer? Practise. What makes a man a good man. Practise.\nNothing else. There is nothing capricious about religion. We do not\nget the soul in different ways, under different laws, from those in\nwhich we get the body and the mind. If a man does not exercise his arm\nhe develops no biceps muscle; and if he does not exercise his soul, he\nacquires no muscle in his soul, no strength of character, no vigor of\nmoral fiber nor beauty of spiritual growth. Love is not a thing of\nenthusiastic emotion. It is a rich, strong, manly, vigorous expression\nof the whole round Christian character--the Christlike nature in its\nfullest development. And the constituents of this great character are\nonly to be built up by ceaseless practise.\n\nWhat was Christ doing in the carpenter's shop? Practising. Tho\nperfect, we read that He learned obedience, and grew in wisdom and in\nfavor with God. Do not quarrel, therefore, with your lot in life. Do\nnot complain of its never-ceasing cares, its petty environment, the\nvexations you have to stand, the small and sordid souls you have to\nlive and work with. Above all, do not resent temptation; do not be\nperplexed because it seems to thicken round you more and more, and\nceases neither for effort nor for agony nor prayer. That is your\npractise. That is the practise which God appoints you; and it is\nhaving its work in making you patient, and humble, and generous, and\nunselfish, and kind, and courteous. Do not grudge the hand that is\nmolding the still too shapeless image within you. It is growing more\nbeautiful, tho you see it not, and every touch of temptation may add\nto its perfection. Therefore keep in the midst of life. Do not isolate\nyourself. Be among men, and among things, and among troubles, and\ndifficulties, and obstacles. You remember Goethe's words: _Es bildet\nein Talent sich in der Stille, Doch ein Character in dem Strom der\nWelt_. \"Talent develops itself in solitude; character in the stream of\nlife.\" Talent develops itself in solitude--the talent of prayer, of\nfaith, of meditation, of seeing the unseen; character grows in the\nstream of the world's life. That chiefly is where men are to learn\nlove.\n\nHow? Now how? To make it easier, I have named a few of the elements of\nlove. But these are only elements. Love itself can never be defined.\nLight is a something more than the sum of its ingredients--a glowing,\ndazzling, tremulous ether. And love is something more than all its\nelements--a palpitating, quivering, sensitive, living thing. By\nsynthesis of all the colors, men can make whiteness, they can not make\nlight. By synthesis of all the virtues, men can make virtue, they can\nnot make love. How then are we to have this transcendent living whole\nconveyed into our souls? We brace our wills to secure it. We try to\ncopy those who have it. We lay down rules about it. We watch. We pray.\nBut these things alone will not bring love into our nature. Love is\nan effect. And only as we fulfil the right condition can we have the\neffect produced. Shall I tell you what the cause is?\n\nIf you turn to the Revised Version of the First Epistle of John you\nwill find these words: \"We love because he first loved us.\" \"We love,\"\nnot \"We love him.\" That is the way the old version has it, and it is\nquite wrong. \"We love--because he first loved us.\" Look at that word\n\"because.\" It is the cause of which I have spoken. \"Because he first\nloved us,\" the effect follows that we love, we love Him, we love\nall men. We can not help it. Because He loved us, we love, we love\neverybody. Our heart is slowly changed. Contemplate the love of\nChrist, and you will love. Stand before that mirror, reflect Christ's\ncharacter, and you will be changed into the same image from tenderness\nto tenderness. There is no other way. You can not love to order. You\ncan only look at the lovely object, and fall in love with it, and\ngrow into likeness to it. And so look at this perfect character, this\nperfect life. Look at the great sacrifice as He laid down Himself, all\nthrough life, and upon the cross of Calvary; and you must love Him.\nAnd loving Him, you must become like Him. Love begets love. It is\na process of induction. Put a piece of iron in the presence of\nan electrified body, and that piece of iron for a time becomes\nelectrified. It is changed into a temporary magnet in the mere\npresence of a permanent magnet, and as long as you leave the two side\nby side they are both magnets alike. Remain side by side with Him who\nloved us, and gave Himself for us, and you too will become a permanent\nmagnet, a permanently attractive force; and like Him you will draw all\nmen unto you; like Him you will be drawn unto all men. That is the\ninevitable effect of love. Any man who fulfils that cause must have\nthat effect produced in him. Try to give up the idea that religion\ncomes to us by chance, or by mystery, or by caprice. It comes to us by\nnatural law, or by spiritual law, for all law is divine. Edward Irving\nwent to see a dying boy once, and when he entered the room he just put\nhis hand on the sufferer's head, and said, \"My boy, God loves you,\"\nand went away. And the boy started from his bed, and called out to the\npeople in the house, \"God loves me! God loves me!\" It changed that\nboy. The sense that God loved him overpowered him, melted him down,\nand began the creating of a new heart in him. And that is how the love\nof God melts down the unlovely heart in man, and begets in him the\nnew creature, who is patient and humble and gentle and unselfish. And\nthere is no other way to get it. There is no mystery about it. We love\nothers, we love everybody, we love our enemies, because He first loved\nus.\n\nNow I have a closing sentence or two to add about Paul's reason for\nsingling out love as the supreme possession. It is a very remarkable\nreason. In a single word it is this: it lasts. \"Love,\" urges Paul,\n\"never faileth.\" Then he begins one of his marvelous lists of the\ngreat things of the day, and exposes them one by one. He runs over the\nthings that men thought were going to last, and shows that they are\nall fleeting, temporary, passing away.\n\n\"Whether there be prophecies, they shall fail.\" It was the mother's\nambition for her boy in those days that he should become a prophet.\nFor hundreds of years God had never spoken by means of any prophet,\nand at that time the prophet was greater than the king. Men waited\nwistfully for another messenger to come, and hung upon his lips when\nhe appeared as upon the very voice of God. Paul says, \"Whether there\nbe prophecies, they shall fail.\" This book is full of prophecies. One\nby one they have \"failed\"; that is, having been fulfilled their work\nis finished; they have nothing more to do now in the world except to\nfeed a devout man's faith.\n\nThen Paul talks about tongues. That was another thing that was greatly\ncoveted. \"Whether there be tongues, they shall cease.\" As we all know,\nmany, many centuries have passed since tongues have been known in this\nworld. They have ceased. Take it in any sense you like. Take it, for\nillustration merely, as languages in general--a sense which was not\nin Paul's mind at all, and which tho it can not give us the specific\nlesson will point the general truth. Consider the words in which these\nchapters were written--Greek. It has gone. Take the Latin--the other\ngreat tongue of those days. It ceased long ago. Look at the Indian\nlanguage. It is ceasing. The language of Wales, of Ireland, of the\nScottish Highlands is dying before our eyes. The most popular book in\nthe English tongue at the present time, except the Bible, is one of\nDickens' works, his \"Pickwick Papers.\" It is largely written in the\nlanguage of London street-life, and experts assure us that in fifty\nyears it will be unintelligible to the average English reader.\n\nThen Paul goes further, and with even greater boldness adds, \"Whether\nthere be knowledge, it shall vanish away.\" The wisdom of the ancients,\nwhere is it? It is wholly gone. A schoolboy today knows more than\nSir Isaac Newton knew. His knowledge has vanished away. You put\nyesterday's newspaper in the fire. Its knowledge has vanished away.\nYou buy the old editions of the great encyclopedias for a few cents.\nTheir knowledge has vanished away. Look how the coach has been\nsuperseded by the use of steam. Look how electricity has superseded\nthat, and swept a hundred almost new inventions into oblivion. One of\nthe greatest living authorities, Sir William Thompson, said the other\nday, \"The steam-engine is passing away.\" \"Whether there be knowledge,\nit shall vanish away.\" At every workshop you will see, in the back\nyard, a heap of old iron, a few wheels, a few levers, a few cranks,\nbroken and eaten with rust. Twenty years ago that was the pride of the\ncity. Men flocked in from the country to see the great invention; now\nit is superseded, its day is done. And all the boasted science and\nphilosophy of this day will soon be old. But yesterday, in the\nUniversity of Edinburgh, the greatest figure in the faculty was\nSir James Simpson, the discoverer of chloroform. The other day his\nsuccessor and nephew, Professor Simpson, was asked by the librarian\nof the university to go to the library and pick out the books on his\nsubject that were no longer needed. And his reply to the librarian was\nthis: \"Take every textbook that is more than ten years old, and put it\ndown in the cellar.\" Sir James Simpson was a great authority only a\nfew years ago; men came from all parts of the earth to consult him;\nand almost the whole teaching of that time is consigned by the science\nof today to oblivion. And in every branch of science it is the same.\n\"Now we know in part. We see through a glass darkly.\"\n\nCan you tell me anything that is going to last? Many things Paul did\nnot condescend to name. He did not mention money, fortune, fame; but\nhe picked out the great things of his time, the things the best men\nthought had something in them, and brushed them peremptorily aside.\nPaul had no charge against these things in themselves. All he said\nabout them was that they would not last. They were great things,\nbut not supreme things. There were things beyond them. What we are\nstretches past what we do, beyond what we possess. Many things that\nmen denounce as sins are not sins; but they are temporary. And that is\na favorite argument of the New Testament. John says of the world, not\nthat it is wrong, but simply that it \"passeth away.\" There is a great\ndeal in the world that is delightful and beautiful; there is a great\ndeal in it that is great and engrossing; but it will not last. All\nthat is in the world, the lust of the eye, the lust of the flesh, and\nthe pride of life, are but for a little while. Love not the world\ntherefore. Nothing that it contains is worth the life and consecration\nof an immortal soul. The immortal soul must give itself to something\nthat is immortal. And the immortal things are: \"Now abideth faith,\nhope, love, but the greatest of these is love.\"\n\nSome think the time may come when two of these three things will also\npass away--faith into sight, hope into fruition. Paul does not say so.\nWe know but little now about the conditions of the life that is to\ncome. But what is certain is that love must last. God, the eternal\nGod, is love. Covet therefore that everlasting gift, that one thing\nwhich it is certain is going to stand, that one coinage which will be\ncurrent in the universe when all the other coinages of all the nations\nof the world shall be useless and unhonored. You will give yourselves\nto many things, give yourselves first to love. Hold things in their\nproportion. _Hold things in their proportion._ Let at least the first\ngreat object of our lives be to achieve the character defended in\nthese words, the character--and it is the character of Christ--which\nis built round love.\n\nI have said this thing is eternal. Did you ever notice how continually\nJohn associates love and faith with eternal life? I was not told\nwhen I was a boy that \"God so loved the world that he gave his only\nbegotten son, that whosoever believeth in him should have everlasting\nlife.\" What I was told, I remember, was, that God so loved the world\nthat, if I trusted in Him, I was to have a thing called peace, or I\nwas to have rest, or I was to have joy, or I was to have safety. But\nI had to find out for myself that whosoever trusteth in Him--that\nis, whosoever loveth Him, for trust is only the avenue to love--hath\neverlasting life. The gospel offers a man life. Never offer men a\nthimbleful of gospel. Do not offer them merely joy, or merely peace,\nor merely rest, or merely safety; tell them how Christ came to give\nmen a more abundant life than they have, a life abundant in love,\nand therefore abundant in salvation for themselves, and large in\nenterprise for the alleviation and redemption of the world. Then\nonly can the gospel take hold of the whole of a man, body, soul, and\nspirit, and give to each part of his nature its exercise and reward.\nMany of the current gospels are addrest only to a part of man's\nnature. They offer peace, not life; faith, not love; justification,\nnot regeneration. And men slip back again from such religion because\nit has never really held them. Their nature was not all in it. It\noffered no deeper and gladder life-current than the life that was\nlived before. Surely it stands to reason that only a fuller love can\ncompete with the love of the world.\n\nTo love abundantly is to live abundantly, and to love forever is to\nlive forever. Hence, eternal life is inextricably bound up with love.\nWe want to live forever for the same reason that we want to live\ntomorrow. Why do we want to live tomorrow? It is because there is some\none who loves you, and whom you want to see tomorrow, and be with, and\nlove back. There is no other reason why we should live on than that we\nlove and are beloved. It is when a man has no one to love him that he\ncommits suicide. So long as he has friends, those who love him and\nwhom he loves, he will live; because to live is to love. Be it but the\nlove of a dog, it will keep him in life; but let that go and he has no\ncontact with life, no reason to live. He dies by his own hand. Eternal\nlife is to know God, and God is love. This is Christ's own definition.\nPonder it. \"This is life eternal, that they might know thee the only\ntrue God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent.\" Love must be eternal.\nIt is what God is. On the last analysis, then, love is life. Love\nnever faileth, and life never faileth, so long as there is love. That\nis the philosophy of what Paul is showing us; the reason why in the\nnature of things love should be the supreme thing--because it is going\nto last; because in the nature of things it is an eternal life. It is\na thing that we are living now, not that we get when we die; that we\nshall have a poor chance of getting when we die unless we are living\nnow. No worse fate can befall a man in this world than to live and\ngrow old all alone, unloving and unloved. To be lost is to live in an\nunregenerate condition, loveless and unloved; and to be saved is to\nlove; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth already in God; for God is\nlove.\n\nNow I have all but finished. How many of you will join me in reading\nthis chapter once a week for the next three months? A man did that\nonce and it changed his whole life. You might begin by reading it\nevery day, especially the verses which describe the perfect character.\n\"Love suffereth long, and is kind; love envieth not; love vaunteth not\nitself.\" Get these ingredients into your life. Then everything that\nyou do is eternal. It is worth doing. It is worth giving time to.\nNo man can become a saint in his sleep; and to fulfil the condition\nrequired demands a certain amount of prayer and meditation and time,\njust as improvement in any direction, bodily or mental, requires\npreparation and care. Address yourselves to that one thing; at any\ncost have this transcendent character exchanged for yours. You will\nfind as you look back upon your life that the moments that stand out,\nthe moments when you have really lived, are the moments when you have\ndone things in a spirit of love. As memory scans the past, above and\nbeyond all the transitory pleasures of life, there leap forward those\nsupreme hours when you have been enabled to do unnoticed kindnesses to\nthose around about you, things too trifling to speak about, but which\nyou feel have entered into your eternal life. I have seen almost\nall the beautiful things God has made; I have enjoyed almost every\npleasure that He has planned for man; and yet as I look back I see\nstanding out above all the life that has gone four or five short\nexperiences when the love of God reflected itself in some poor\nimitation, some small act of love of mine, and these seem to be the\nthings which alone of all one's life abide. Everything else in all our\nlives is transitory. Every other good is visionary. But the acts of\nlove which no man knows about, or can ever know about, they never\nfail.\n\nIn the Book of Matthew, where the judgment day is depicted for us in\nthe imagery of One seated upon a throne and dividing the sheep from\nthe goats, the test of a man then is not, \"How have I believed?\" but\n\"How have I loved?\" The test of religion, the final test of religion,\nis not religiousness, but love. I say the final test of religion at\nthat great day is not religiousness, but love; not what I have done,\nnot what I have believed; not what I have achieved, but how I have\ndischarged the common charities of life. Sins of commission in that\nawful indictment are not even referred to. By what we have not done,\nby sins of omission, we are judged. It could not be otherwise. For the\nwithholding of love is the negation of the spirit of Christ, the proof\nthat we never knew Him, that for us He lived in vain. It means that He\nsuggested nothing in all our thoughts, that He inspired nothing in all\nour lives, that we were not once near enough to Him to be seized with\nthe spell of His compassion for the world. It means that\n\n  I lived for myself, I thought for myself,\n    For myself, and none beside--\n  Just as if Jesus had never lived,\n    As if He had never died.\n\nIt is the Son of Man before whom the nations of the world shall be\ngathered. It is in the presence of humanity that we shall be charged.\nAnd the spectacle itself, the mere sight of it, will silently judge\neach one. Those will be there whom we have met and helped; or there,\nthe unpitied multitude whom we neglected or despised. No other\nwitness need be summoned. No other charge than lovelessness shall be\npreferred. Be not deceived. The words which all of us shall one day\nhear sound not of theology but of life, not of churches and saints but\nof the hungry and the poor, not of creeds and doctrines but of shelter\nand clothing, not of Bibles and prayer-books but of cups of cold water\nin the name of Christ. Thank God the Christianity of today is coming\nnearer the world's need. Live to help that on. Thank God men know\nbetter, by a hairbreadth, what religion is, what God is, who Christ\nis, where Christ is. Who is Christ? He who fed the hungry, clothed\nthe naked, visited the sick. And where is Christ? Where?--Whoso shall\nreceive a little child in My name receiveth Me. And who are Christ's?\nEvery one that loveth is born of God.\n\n\n\n\nWAGNER\n\nI AM A VOICE\n\nBIOGRAPHICAL NOTE\n\n\nCharles Wagner, French Protestant pastor and moral essayist, was born\nin 1851 in Alsace. He is at present rector of the Reformed Church\nin Fontenay-Lous-Bois, in the Department of Seine. He received a\ncomprehensive education at the universities of Paris, Strasburg and\nGoettingen, and after undertaking many cures in the provinces he went\nto Paris in 1882, where he occupied himself in a crusade against the\ndegrading tendency of life, art and literature in certain of their\nParisian phases. He has been a founder of several popular universities\nunder the auspices of the Society for the Promotion of Morality. He\nhas published many books, and \"La Vie Simple\" (\"The Simple Life\")\nwas crowned by the French Academy and has been translated into many\nEuropean languages, as well as into Japanese. Wagner has been styled\nthe French Tolstoy, but he is less visionary and much more popular and\npractical in his views than the Russian mystic. The author of \"The\nSimple Life\" was greeted with many expressions of warm appreciation on\nhis visit to the United States a few years ago. He was a guest at the\nPresidential mansion by invitation of President Roosevelt, who has\nhighly commended \"The Simple Life.\"\n\n\n\n\nWAGNER\n\nBorn in 1851\n\nI AM A VOICE[1]\n\n[Footnote 1: From \"The Gospel of Life,\" by Charles Wagner, by\npermission of the McClure Company, publishers. Copyright, 1905, by\nMcClure, Phillips & Co.]\n\n_I am the voice[2] of one crying in the wilderness, Make straight the\nway of the Lord_.--John i., 23.\n\n[Footnote 2: In the French version of the Scriptures it is \"_a_\nvoice,\" and it is necessary to retain this reading in order to render\nprecisely Pastor Wagner's thought.--_Translator_.]\n\n\nNothing is rarer than a personality. So many causes, both interior\nand exterior, hinder the normal development of human beings, so many\nhostile forces crush them, so many illusions lead them astray, that\nthere is required a concurrence of extraordinary circumstances to\nrender possible the existence of an independent character. But\nwhen, God alone knows at the cost of what efforts and of what happy\naccidents, a vigorous and original personality has been able to\nunfold, nothing is rarer than not to see it degenerate into a mere\npersonage. History teaches us that men exceptional in will and energy\nalmost always become obstructive and mischievous. They commence by\nserving a cause and end by taking possession of it so completely that,\nfrom being its servants, they become its masters. Instead of being men\nof a cause, they make the cause that of a man, and they degrade the\nmost sacred realities to the paltry level of their ambitious egoism.\n\nThus, when we meet with strong natures, endowed with the secret of\nleadership and command, yet able to resist the subtle temptation to\nwhich so many of the finer spirits have succumbed, it behooves us to\nbow and to salute in them a greatness before which all that it is\ncustomary to call by that name fades into nothingness.\n\nIf ever soul encompassed this greatness, it was that of John the\nBaptist. John is little known. Of him there remain only a few traits\nof physiognomy and a few snatches of discourse. But these snatches are\nfull of character, these traits possess a sculptural relief; just as\nwith broken trunks of columns, with fragments of stones, all that is\nleft of temples that were once the marvels of ancient art, they enable\nus to conceive of the grandeur of the whole edifice to which they\nonce belonged. John was at once strong and humble, energetic and\nself-detached. Never has an individuality so well-tempered been less\npersonal. Identifying himself completely with his r\u00f4le as precursor,\nhe found perfect happiness in effacing himself in the glory of Christ,\njust as the dawn disappears in the splendors of the morning.\n\nHistory is full of precursors who impede and withstand those whom they\nhad first announced. When the time comes to retire and to give way\nto those for whom they have prepared the way, they do not have the\ncourage to sacrifice themselves. They go on forever, and often become\nthe worst enemies of the cause they have defended. John knew nothing\nof these failings which are the perpetual scandal in the development\nof the kingdom of God. Not only did he say, speaking of Jesus: \"He\nmust increase, but I must decrease,\" but he made all his acts conform\nto these words.\n\n\"This my joy is therefore fulfilled,\" he said, as he dwelt upon the\nfirst advances of the gospel, and he exprest thus a sweetness of\nsacrifice forever unknown to personal souls that remain vulgar in\nspite of their genius.\n\nFinally, John described himself metaphorically in that inimitable\nprophetic speech which explains in full the idea that he formed for\nhimself of his ministry. Under the sway of a morbid curiosity, the\ncrowd, more perplexed by the appearance of the worker than attentive\nto the work, prest him with questions. Who then art thou, mysterious\npreacher? Art thou one of the old prophets of Israel, escaped from his\nrocky tomb? Or art thou perchance He whom we await? No, answered John,\nI am neither one of the prophets nor the Messiah himself, I am no one:\nI am a voice!\n\nI am a voice! This is not a formula that sums up the vocation of the\nprophets solely, or of all those who, in the pulpit or in the tribune,\nby the pen or by the public discourse, exert an influence upon their\ncontemporaries. These words are addrest to every one. They define for\nevery man, the humble yet great duty of truth that he is called to\nfulfil in his sphere and according to the measure of his ability. At\nthe epoch in which we live, such a device is so applicable to the time\nbeing, so pressing, so needful for us to hear, that it is wise to\nengrave it in the very foreground of our consciousness.\n\nTo become a voice we must begin by keeping still. We must listen.\nThe whole world is a tongue of which the spirit is the meaning. God\nengraved its fiery capitals in the immensity of the heavens, and\ntraced its delicate smaller letters on the flower, on the grass, on\nthe human soul, as rich, as incommensurable as the abysses of space.\nWhosoever you are, brother, before letting yourself utter one word,\nlend your ear to that voice that seeks you, I might almost add, that\nimplores you. Listen!--Listen to the confused murmur that arises from\nthe human depths, and that, comprising in it all tears, all torments,\nas well as all joys, becomes the sigh of creation.\n\nListen in your heart to remorse, the sad and poignant echo that sin,\ntraversing life, leaves everywhere upon its passage. Shut your ear\nto no sound, however unobtrusive, however sad, it may be. There are\nvoices that issue from the tombs, others that call to you from out the\nabyss of past ages; repel them not, listen! One and all, they have\nsomething to say to you.\n\nBut do not be content with listening to man. Pierce nature, and,\nin visible creation as in the invisible sanctuary of souls, watch\nattentively for the revelation of Him whose eternal thought every\nliving thing, humble or sublime, translates after its own fashion. He\nspeaks to you in the dark nights and in the bright light of dawn, in\nthe infinite radiance of the worlds beyond all reckoning, and in the\nhumble stalk that awaits, in the valley bottom, its ray of light and\nits drop of dew. Listen!--If there is anguish in the voice of poor\nhumanity, there are in great nature profound words of soothing, of\nhope. Look at the flower in the fields, listen to the birds in the\nskies! After the distrest voices that perturb you, you shall know the\nvoices that relieve and console. There shall befall you that which\nbefell the nun whose memory is preserved for us in the old legends.\nListening to the forest voices she had gone, following them always, as\nfar as the thick solitudes where nothing any longer comes to trouble\nthe collected soul. There, in the shade of a tree where she had seated\nherself, she heard a song till then unknown to her ears. It was the\nsong of the mystic bird. This song said, in marvelous modulations, all\nthat man thinks and feels, all that he suffers, all that he seeks, all\nthat falls short of fulfilment for him. It summed up in harmonies the\ndestinies of living beings and the immense pity that is at the root\nof things. Softly, on light, strong wings, it lifted the soul to the\nheights where it looks upon reality. And the nun, her hands clasped,\nlistened, listened without end, forgetting earth, sky, time,\nforgetting herself. She listened for centuries without ever growing\ntired, finding in the song that charmed her a sweetness forever new.\nDear and truthful image of what the soul experiences when, mute,\nas respectful as a child and as ready of belief, it listens in the\nuniversal silence to the voices that translate for it the things that\nare eternal!\n\nAll those who have become voices have traveled this way. At Patmos or\nin the desert, on Horeb or on Sinai, they have trembled with fright or\nstarted with joy. But everything has its time. There comes a day when\nall voices, soft or terrible, that man has heard, grow still, to let\nhenceforth only one be heard, which cries to him: \"Go! go now and be\na witness of the things you have heard! Go! I send you forth as lambs\namong wolves! Go! I send you toward men whose brow is harsh, whose\nheart is wicked, but fear nothing, I shall embolden your face, I shall\ngive you a heart of brass and a forehead of diamond.\"\n\nWhen that moment has come, one must, in order to remain faithful to\nhis mission, remember that after all he is only a voice. Truth\ndoes not belong to us, it is we who belong to truth! Wo to him who\npossesses it and treats it as something that belongs to himself. Happy\nis he who is possest by it! No preference, no kinship, no sympathy\ncounts here. Alas! it is not thus that men understand it. It is for\nthis reason that they degrade truth and that it becomes without power\nin their hands. Instead of winging its way heavenward in vigorous\nflight, it crawls along the earth, like an eagle whose wings have been\nbroken. Nothing is sadder than to see how those who ought to lend\ntheir voice to truth, turn it to their own uses and play with it. The\nvoice, human speech, that sacred organ, whose whole worth lies in\nsincerity, has in all ages been the victim of odious profanations. But\nin this age it is more than ever attainted. The evil from which it\nsuffers is defilement.\n\nAt certain epochs a word was as good as a man. It was an act total,\nsupreme, guaranteed by the whole of life. There was no need to sign,\nto stamp, to legalize. Speech was held between friends and enemies\nalike, more sacred than any sanctuary, and man maintained it, with the\nobscure but just sentiment that it is at the base of society, and that\nif words lose their value, there is no longer any society possible.\nLater the written word was considered sacred. And coming nearer to\nour own day, we have been able to see the masses, guided ever by\nthat quite legitimate sentiment of the holiness of speech, regard\neverything printed as gospel truth. Those times are no more. We have\nlied too much, by the living word, the pen, and the press. We have\nsaid and printed too much that is light, false, wittingly disfigured.\nArmed with an instrumentality that multiplies thought and spreads it\nbroadcast to the four corners of the earth with a rapidity unknown\nto our fathers, we have made use of it, for the most part, to extend\nslander more widely and to cause a greater amount of doubtful\nintelligence to swarm upon the earth. So well have we spun speech out\nin all our mouths, so thoroughly have we deprived it of its proper\nnature and caused it to become sophisticated, that it is no longer of\nthe least value. The confidence of the masses in authority, which is\none of the slowest and most difficult conquests of humanity, we have\nlost like a thing of no worth. They no longer say to any one who now\nlifts up his voice: Who are you? But: What end have you in view? What\nparty do you serve? By what interest are you led? By whom have you\nbeen bought? That there may be a sacred truth, loved, respected,\nadored; a truth that is worth more than life, to which one may give\nhimself wholly and with happiness--this idea diverts the cynics\nand makes those whom the cruel experiences of life have rendered\ndistrustful, shake their heads. If ever an epoch has needed to\nrehabilitate human speech, it is our own. What good are we if it is\ngood for nothing, since it is at the root of all our institutions?\n\nWho will give it back its potency?--They who will know how to resign\nthemselves to being but a voice!\n\nPermit me to bring home to you, by means of a very modest example,\nwhat man may gain in force by being but a voice. Look at that clock.\nWhen the hour has come, it marks it. Whether it be the hour of birth\nor of death, the hour of joy or of sorrow, the hour of longed-for\nmeetings, or of heart-breaking farewells, the clock strikes that hour.\nIt is only a mechanism, but it is scrupulously exact, it measures that\ntime which descends to us drop by drop from the bosom of eternity, and\nwhen the hammer falls on the brazen bell, the entire universe confirms\nwhat it announces. The suns and the worlds mark at this very moment,\nin the immortal light, the same point of time that is indicated below\non earth, some starless night, by the humblest village clock. We must\nimitate the clock. In full consciousness, through absolute submission,\nman should make himself the humble instrument of truth, and go through\nsupreme servitude to supreme power. When he does not do this, he is\nonly an imperfect timepiece. But when, bound by his word, chained to\nthe truth that he serves, he has become its slave, and when, without\nhate, without preference, without human fear, without other desire\nthan that of being faithful, he proclaims what is just, true, right,\ngood, the rocks are less firm on their base than this man: for he is a\nvoice!\n\nA voice is, if you like, a slight thing. Stilled as soon as it\nawakened, it is heard only by a few and for a little while. It is said\nthat singers are greatly to be pitied, since posterity can not hear\nthem. Nothing of them remains. And yet how many marvelous forces\nunderlie this apparent fragility! The thunder has its roar, the breeze\nhas its tenderness, but their power is transitory; they are sounds and\nnot voices. A voice is a living sound, it is the vibrant echo of a\nsoul. It is doubtless that most fragile thing, a breath, but joined to\nthat which is most durable, spirit. And it is for this reason that, if\nthe instant when it is born sees it die, centuries of centuries can\nnot destroy its effect. The truth which is in it confers immortality\nupon it, and when this voice escapes from a human breast, he who\nspeaks, sings or weeps, feels indeed that eternity has concluded an\nalliance with him. Peeling his fragile testimony confirmed by all that\nendures and can not die, he says with Christ: \"Heaven and earth shall\npass away, but my words shall not pass away!\"\n\nThe holy labors entrusted to the voice can never be counted. Because\nof the very fact that it lives and that it contains a soul, it is\nthe great awakener, the incomparable evoker. When, obscure still and\nunknown, a thought distracts us and slumbers at the bottom of our\nbeing, a voice is all that is needed to make it emerge into the light.\nWith maternal tenderness, the voice borrows all the energies of\nincubation, to infuse with warmth, to fortify, the nascent germs of\nspiritual life. In it lives and breaks forth what, in the evolving\nsoul, tends feebly and furtively toward the flowering. In short, the\nvoice, speech, the tongue, condenses in a single focus incalculable\nquantities of rays.\n\nOnly think of the efforts that human thought must have made to reach\nthat clearness that enables it to become speech. Every word that you\nutter without giving it a thought is a monument toward which centuries\nand multitudes of minds have wrought. A world is contained in it. Poor\nwords! one man decks himself out in them, another wraps himself up in\nthem, but how few know of the warmth of life and love that has put\nthem into the world that they may be forever the witnesses of the past\nfor posterity! No matter, for when they have been made sufficiently to\nresound like an inanimate cymbal, there comes an hour when they revive\nunder the breath of a true and living being, and they depart to spread\nlife. Then they fulfil their r\u00f4le as educators. To educate is to\nexplain a being to itself. And this is the benign service that\nthe voice performs. It tells us what we think better than we can\nourselves. It unbinds the chains of the captive soul and permits it to\ntake its flight. Happy the child, happy the young man who meets with\na voice to decipher him to himself! This is what Christ did in those\nblest hours when He reunited the children of His people, as a bird\nreunites its brood under its wings!\n\nWhat the voice does in detail, it continues to accomplish on the\nlarger scale. At certain moments societies seem a prey to a sort of\nchaos. A number of contrary forces clash and perturb them, as they\nperturb and rend individual souls. Men seek, feeling their way, a road\nthat seems to elude them. A crowd of spirits, by the very fact of\ntheir contemporaneity, feel themselves distracted and agitated all\nin the same way. Confusedly and provoked by the same sufferings they\nelaborate the same ideal and formulate the same desires. But they all\nwander along twilit paths on the side of the night where the light\nseems to be breaking through, without, however, being able to\npierce the darkness. These are the preliminary agonies of the great\nhistorical epochs. Then let a being more powerful, more vital, an\nelect soul that has passed through this phase and conquered these\nshadows, become incarnate in a voice! That is enough. The personal\nword which expresses the soul of that epoch and responds to its\nneeds, is found. It sounds through the world like a new _fiat lux_!\nEverywhere, in those who listen to it and feel secret affinities with\nit in themselves, it constitutes a magnificent revelation of light and\nlife. All these hearts vibrate in unison with one; and, gathering up\nall these scattered notes into a single harmony, he who expresses the\nsentiments of all, renders an account of the wonderful power of which\nhe is the instrument. No, it is no longer a man that speaks: what\nsounds upon his lips, is the whole soul of a people, is a whole epoch,\nis a new world.\n\nA voice is also that inimitable sigh, that pure sob which tells\nof grief because it issues from a suffering heart. It is pity and\ncompassion, it is the angel of God arriving among us on the caressing\nbreath, a messenger of mercy, and pouring into the tortured depths of\nour poor heart its healing dew. It is Jesus saying to Mary, and, in\nher, to all those whom grief afflicts: \"Why weepest thou?\" It is David\nsinging: \"Why art thou cast down, O my soul?\" It is Isaiah crying:\n\"Comfort ye, comfort ye, my people; speak ye comfortably to\nJerusalem!\"\n\nA voice is, on the solitary path where our will strays, the faithful\nshepherd calling his sheep; it is every sign, even tho it be made\nby the hand of a child, which in the days of forgetfulness and\nunrestraint, suddenly wakes us and warns us that our feet skirt the\nabysses.\n\nThen, after the work of education, of creation, of pity, comes the\nwork of severity, of punishment, of destruction. The voice has been\ncompared to a sword. Like it, it flames and punishes. A voice is\nNathan rising up before the criminal king and calling down upon his\nhead the avenging lightning of this word: \"Thou art the man!\" The\nsword attacks, destroys, but it defends, also, and this is its fairest\nwork. Never is the voice more touching than when it is lifted in favor\nof the weak, and, when, suddenly, in the midst of the iniquities\nof brute force that it denounces, marks with its stigma, it causes\njustice to shine forth and the truth to be felt, in the holy\nsoul-traversing thrill, that God Himself is there and that His hour\nhas come!\n\nA voice has its echo. When this echo is sympathetic, it is endowed\nwith the sweetest recompense and obliterates the memory of many\nsorrows. But this echo is often hostile. It arises from wrath and is\nincreased by hatred. Then it is resistance, riot, that rumbles. It is\nthe passions and the scourged vices that twist and bellow like deer\nunder the lash of the trainer. How many times, O, faithful voices,\nsouls of peace and truth, has the spirit that animates you driven you\nto these fearful encounters--you who have heard in the silence of your\nhearts the holy verities and who know their worth, you are obliged to\ngo bearing them in the face of menace, of mockery, of trembling rage\nwhere they seem to us like Daniel in the lion's den! A terrible\nordeal! but one before which the testifying voices have never\nrecoiled. Luther, who knew the emotions of the great battles of the\nspirit where one man is alone in the face of a thousand, where tinder\nthe growing clamors and the cries of death ... a voice struggles like\na torch in a tempest, has given to the servants of truth a counsel\nthat is the alpha and omega of their austere mission. When they have\nsaid all, done all, essayed all, put all their being and all their\nlove into the proclamation of what they have to announce, then, he\nsays, \"let them be ready to be hooted at and spat upon!\" And not only\nshould they be ready but they should accept this lot with happiness.\nChrist says to them: \"Happy are they that are outraged and persecuted\nfor the sake of justice!\"\n\nAlas, the rudest proof for him who speaks the truth is not to arouse\nindignation. That, at least, is a result, and however sad it may be,\nit bears witness to him who has spoken. Certain protests, despite\ntheir fury, are a sort of involuntary homage. The supreme trial for\na voice is indifference. When John called himself a voice in the\nwilderness, he alluded to that external solitude where his voice was\nraised. But this solitude, on certain days was full of life and the\ngospel cites for our benefit certain facts which prove that the words\nwith which it resounded were not lost in the empty spaces. They moved\nand struck home from the humblest regions of society to the exalted\nspheres, to the royal throne itself. John garnered love and hate,\nblessing and curse, the desirable fruits of all energetic action.\nSince that time and before, more than one voice has been able,\napplying them to itself, to give to those prophetic words, \"voices in\nthe wilderness,\" another very melancholy significance. The supreme\nimage of despair is a voice that is lost in the silence, as is lost,\nin the bosom of dead solitudes, the call that no one hears, for succor\nthat will never come.\n\nAfter having spoken of the different voices, of their power, of their\neffects, let us bestow a compassionate remembrance upon the lost\nvoices, on those who were or who are still, in the most lamentable\nsense of that word, voices in the wilderness.--To be a man, a soul, to\nhave felt the lighting of a holy flame within oneself; to love truth\nand justice; to feel the pain of contact with a life ruled over by\nfalsehood and violence; at the heart of this poignant contrast between\na divine ideal and a heart-rending reality, to receive from his\nconscience, from God himself, the command to speak; to put his life\ninto this work, to renounce everything to be only a voice ... and\nafter all this to see himself forsaken, neglected, despised! To wear\noneself out slowly in a strife obscure and without issue; to perish\nwithout having aroused either sympathy or opposition, to disappear\ninto oblivion before disappearing in the tomb ... ah! all the furies,\nall the bloody reprisals, the dungeons, the gibbets, the massacres,\nall the martyrdoms by which human wickedness strove to stifle the\nvoice of the just, are less horrible than this extermination by\napathy.\n\nAnd yet, not to press things to this cruel extremity, but remembering\nthe parable of the sower, where so many seeds are lost for the few\nthat take root and flourish, ought we not be willing to be, in the\ngreatest number of cases, voices in the wilderness, only too happy if\nour thankless labors are recompensed elsewhere by an encouraging echo?\nHave we not here, on the contrary, the image of human life? we are\nalways aspiring toward an ideal more elevated than that which we\nrealize. We are always precursors, and it becomes us to accept humbly\nwhat that destiny holds both of pain and of beauty.\n\nBesides, do we know whether voices that seem to be lost, are so in\nreality? Are the stones that are hidden in the foundations of a\nbeautiful edifice, and thanks to which the whole fabric is supported,\nlost because no one sees them? In the same way it must be that many\nvoices are forgotten apparently, until such time as, added together\nand finding in each other mutual support, they end by emerging into\nthe full light of day.\n\nTo wait and to work; to do his duty, and leave the rest to God; to\njourney through life, gathering truth into his heart, and then into\nthe family, the Church, the city; to be its faithful voice; this is\nthe best use a man can make of his mortal days. And should it be your\nlot to be voices in the wilderness; among your children deaf to your\ncries; among your compatriots insensible to your warnings, console\nyourselves. Greater than you have suffered the same fate. Unite\nyourself in spirit to their company and be happy to suffer with them.\nAt least as you come to understand more and more from day to day that\ntruth can not perish, and that it is potent even on feeble lips; you\nwill establish in your hearts faith in the world that endures, and you\nwill be less astonished and less disconcerted when you see the face of\nthis world pass away. You will live by the sacred fire cherished in\nyour souls. Let your furrow close, your hope will not perish! Like\nMoses on Nebo, you will enter into the silence, having filled your\ndying eyes with the spectacle of the promised land!\n\n\n\n\nGORDON\n\nMAN IN THE IMAGE OF GOD\n\nBIOGRAPHICAL NOTE\n\n\nGeorge Angier Gordon, Congregational divine, was born in Scotland,\n1853. He was educated at Harvard, and has been minister of Old South\nChurch, Boston, Massachusetts, since 1884. His pulpit style is\nconspicuous for its directness and forcefulness, and he is considered\nin a high sense the successor of Philip Brooks. He was lecturer in the\nLowell Institute Course, 1900; Lyman Beecher Lecturer, Yale, 1901;\nuniversity preacher to Harvard, 1886-1890; to Yale, 1888-1901; Harvard\noverseer. He is the author of \"The Witness to Immortality\" (1897),\nand many other works.\n\n\n\n\nGORDON\n\nBorn in 1853\n\nMAN IN THE IMAGE OF GOD[1]\n\n[Footnote 1: Printed here by kind permission of Dr. Gordon.]\n\n_And God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he\nhim_.--Genesis i., 27.\n\n\nIt must never be forgotten that all truth lies in the order of life\nitself. There is a natural environment, and in it have been, real and\nmighty from the beginning, the laws and forces which science has but\nrecently discovered. Copernicus discovered the true order of the solar\nsystem; but the order itself has been there from the morning of time.\nNewton discovered the force of gravity, but that force has been in the\nnatural situation since creation. Chemists have been able to make out\nsixty-five or sixty-six irreducible elements; but while chemistry is\nyoung, the elements are everlasting. Electricity is the discovery of\nyesterday, and yet it has been at play in man's environment from the\nfoundation of the world. The continuity of life, from the lowest forms\nof it up to man, has been a fact from the first; but not until\nthis century has the fact meant anything. Few things impress the\nimagination more powerfully than the sense of the forces that have\nsurrounded man from his first appearance on the earth, and that\nhave been noted and utilized only in recent times. There stands the\nimmemorial force, and men have had no eyes for it till yesterday.\nThoughtful men begin to look upon the environment in a new spirit.\nThey begin to walk within it in amazement and hope. All the forces of\nthe material universe are here, and only a few things about them\nhave been discovered. The natural environment is rich beyond all\ncalculation or dream; it is exhaustless. Here in the field of man's\nlife is the alluring object of science. Here in the natural situation\nare the everlasting and benign energies that wait to be discovered and\nprest into human service. There is a human environment, and all the\nfundamental truth about man has been present in it from the start.\nMoses gave his nomadic brethren the ten words; but they were written\nin the human heart ages before they were inscribed upon stone. The\ngreat Hebrew prophets gave to the world the vision of one God, His\nrighteous government of the world, and His election of a single race\nfor the service of all the races; but God and His government and His\nmethod in the education of man were real and mighty before Amos, and\nHosea, and Isaiah, and Jeremiah beheld them. Christ revealed the\nFather through His own divine Sonhood; but the Fatherhood of God is an\neternal truth. Nowhere is the divineness of Christ more obvious than\nin the ease and adequacy with which He, and He alone, is able to read\nthe meaning of the human situation. Christ as Prophet, as Seer and\nDiscoverer, is most amazing to the most gifted. His eye for fact\nis divine. He notes the falling sparrow, and at once reaches the\nuniversal fatherly foresight and control of God. His consuming vision\ngoes everywhere, turning the hidden truth of life into light and joy\nin His parables. His teaching is revelation, the unveiling of the\naboriginal divine order. He makes nothing; He reveals what God made.\nAnd when He increases life it is by showing the path to that increase\nordained of God, insight and obedience. The will of God is the final\nlaw for heaven and earth; the vision of it and surrender to it are the\npath of life. Here we touch the depth of the old faith. God the Father\ncreates, and the Son reveals. The order of the Spirit is eternal; the\nrevelation of it is in time and for sense-bound men. Here we see in\na mirror and dimly; there they behold face to face. And Christ drew\nforth into light the divine significance of man's life, as God\noriginally made it; and that divine meaning of existence thus drawn\nout is the gospel of Christ.\n\nIn the text we are carried by a true seer back of all traditions,\nbehind all conventions, beyond all beliefs about life to life itself\nas it lies in its own freshness and fulness. We are led to look upon\nhuman life newly made, still warm with the touch of the creative hand,\nand yet containing in it that very hour all that the Lord eventually\ndrew out of it. If the first man had understood himself he would have\nbeen essentially a Christian. And therefore I propose to evolve from\nthe original human situation, as described in the text, the outline of\nwhat I take to be a great faith.\n\nI. If the first man had understood himself, he would have seen in\nhimself the interpreter of nature. From the first command, \"Let there\nbe light,\" to the final, \"Let us make man in our image,\" there are two\nthings to be noted. There is continuity in the creative process, and\nthere is an ascension from the lower to the higher. The first duty of\nour self-comprehending Adam will be to look backward. He will look\nacross the wide field whose farther limit lies in cloud and whose\nhither border touches his feet. He will survey the creative process\nthat has led up to and that has come to its climax in him. And as he\nthinks of himself as the product of nature, must he not conclude that\nas reason is the result, reason must have preceded the process and\ngoverned it? Humanity is the issue; therefore humanity must have\nplanned the issue and secured it. Back of this march of life, behind\nthis developing and ascending order, out in the darkness, before the\nlight was created, there was the Mind that accounts for man. Thus the\nlast becomes the first, the man that ends the creative process sees\nthat a human God must have preceded the process.\n\nThis truth is one of the greater insights of the time. The continuity\nof life, from the lowest forms to the highest, has received during the\nlast fifty years an unparalleled recognition. So, too, with the fact\nof the steady ascent of life. Not indeed in a literal and yet in a\ntrue way, the modern scientific conception is a wonderful parallel to\nthe sublime hymn with which the Bible opens. In the beginning was the\nfire-mist. In that fire-mist began the process of development. It\nbecame worlds, systems innumerable, a stellar universe, and within\nthis whole a solar order, an earth beating forward in preparation for\nthe advent of life. Life when it came flowed into countless forms.\nFrom the shapeless mass it pushed on upward into successively higher\nand finer structures, ever aspiring toward man. Ages preceded the\nadvent of man. There were upon the part of life ages of preparation,\nages of climbing. Before life rose the mountain of the Lord; it\nmust be scaled and its summit reached before man could put in\nan appearance. But the hour for which the whole cosmos had been\ntravailing in pain could not be indefinitely delayed. In the fulness\nof time, as the tree bursts into bloom, as the tide rolls to the\nflood, as the light breaks in through the gates of morning, nature\ncame to her supreme expression in man. Man is not here on his own\nstrength. He is not in the bosom of things unaccounted for. He is the\nchild of nature; her last act, her highest product, the best that is\nin her power to bring forth, the son in whose wondrous being her own\nmotherhood is to undergo total transformation.\n\nThat is the modern scientific conception; look for a moment at its\ngreatness. Man as final issue of nature must turn round and look\nbackward. He must look down the long line of life to the far-off first\nbeginning. He must pass beyond the earliest forms in which the vital\nmovement began to the mysterious, formless, eternal power behind all.\nAnd it is here that nature is lifted into a new character by her human\nproduct. In that eternal power there must be a reason to account\nfor man's reason, conscience to account for his conscience, love to\naccount for his love, spirit to explain his spirit. Nature as mother\nmust become spirit to account for the soul of her son. The flower\nshows what was in the seed, the oak is the revelation of what was in\nthe heart of the acorn; and man as the last and best outcome of nature\nis the authoritative expression of the power that is behind nature.\nThus the mind that is the final product of nature discovers the mind\nthat is the source of nature. Man seeking the origin of his being\nfinds it on the farther side of nature in One like unto a son of man.\nHe learns later to distinguish between the reality and the image,\nbetween God and godlike man. And then a wireless telegraphy is\nestablished between them across the vast untraveled distances of\nnature. The life near to God can not send the tokens of His inmost\ncharacter upward to man; the brute life near to man can not carry\ndownward to God man's thoughts and hopes. The animal life that\nstretches in an expanse so wide between the Creator and His best work\ncan not connect the human and the divine. But when the spirit to which\nnature comes in man has once seen the Spirit in which nature must\nbegin, then the wireless telegraphy comes into play. The heart, that\nis the last product of life, sends out its mysterious currents, its\naspirations, its gladness, its grief, and its hope; and these repeat\nthemselves in the great heart of God. And forth from the Spirit behind\nnature issue the messages of recognition, of sympathy, of intimated\nideals and endless incentive, that register themselves in the soul of\nman. Nature is a solid, sympathetic, and now and then glorified, and\nyet dumb, highway between God and man. Her beauty belongs to the\nSpirit that she does not know, and it speaks to the Spirit that is\nolder than her child. She is a mute, unconscious sacrament between the\ninfinite reason and the finite, a path for the lightning that plays\nbackward and forward between the soul of man and the soul of God.\nThe great primal fact in the human environment is that man is the\ninterpreter of nature. In this character of interpreter of nature he\nreceives his first message from God, and makes his first response.\n\nII. The second fact in the human situation is that religion is the\ninterpreter of man. As man looks backward he beholds beyond nature\na face like his own, only diviner; and ever afterward the noblest\naspiration of his soul is to win the smile of that face and to escape\nits frown. Our self-comprehending Adam would confess that he knew\nhimself only when he noted within him the lover of the infinite. And\nhere history leads the way. You look into \"The Book of the Dead,\" and\nyou see what high and serious things religion meant for the early\nEgyptian. The pyramids are monuments to religion. The art of the\nancient races was chiefly homage to the divine. The Athenian Parthenon\nwould never have been but for faith in the goddess that shielded the\ncity. Greek art, the greatest art in the world, is primarily a tribute\nto faith. Those marvelous statues were likenesses of the gods; those\nincomparable temples were dwelling-places for the gods. Religion is\nin the warp and woof of the world's love and sorrow, its art and\nliterature, its patriotism and history. The life of man is the\ncathedral window, and religion is the colored figure that stands in\nit. The two are inseparable. You can not abolish the figure without\nbreaking the window; you can not banish religion without destroying\nhumanity. Try to explain Homer's world without Olympus; account for\nMohammedanism and make no reference to faith; write the history of\nthe Middle Ages and take no note of the \"Divine Comedy\"; sum up\nthe meaning of Persian and Indian civilization and pay no heed to\nreligion; show what Hebraism is and leave unnoticed its consciousness\nof God, and you will create a parallel to the philosopher who should\nendeavor to trace the significance of human life apart from man's\npassion for the infinite.\n\nHere then is the key to manhood. He is a being over whom the unseen\nwields an endless fascination. There is in him a thirst that nothing\ncan quench save the living God. His chief attribute is an attribute\nof wo, an incapacity for content within the limits of the visible\nand temporal. His differentiation from the brute is at this point\nabsolute. Between man and the lower orders of life there is a line of\nlikeness; there is also from the beginning a line of unlikeness. In\nphysical structure man is both similar and dissimilar to the animal.\nAs bread-winner and economist he is kindred and he is in contrast to\nthe creatures below him. In the home, in society, and in the state\nin which both home and society are set and protected, the line of\nlikeness grows less and less distinct, while the line of unlikeness\nbecomes bolder and plainer. It is impossible to deny observation to\nthe dog and impossible to grant to it science. The instinct for beauty\nbelongs to the bird, but art in the full sense of the word, as the\nself-conscious expression of beautiful ideas, is no part of its life.\nOne can not decline to note method in the existence of the brute,\nand one is compelled to withold from it philosophy. In these higher\nactivities the line of likeness between man and the animal is of the\nfaintest description; while the line of contrast becomes more and more\npronounced and significant. When we come to the summit of man the\nlikeness vanishes utterly. Among the lower life of the world there is\nno _Magnificat_, there is no _Nunc Dimittis_; the beginning and the\nend do not link themselves to the Eternal. The brute has no religion,\nno temple, no priest, no Bible, no sacrament of love between itself\nand the invisible. The tower of this church tells at once, and from\nafar, that it is a church. Near at hand, much besides the tower tells\nthe same story. There is the cruciform foundation; there is the\nstructure of its walls. There is the outside with distinct note; there\nis the inside with its joyous beauty. Look at the church closely and\nyou need no tower to proclaim what it is. And yet the tower is its\nmost conspicuous witness: at a distance it is the sole witness.\nReligion is similarly the eminent token that man belongs to a divine\norder. The basis of his being in sacrifice should repeat the same\ntale. Civilization as a struggle after social righteousness should\nannounce the same fact. Man's thoughts and feelings, and their\nmanifold and marvelous expression in art, in institutions, and in\nsystems of opinion, utter the same testimony. And yet the tower of his\nbeing, high soaring and far seen, is his feeling for the invisible.\nYou do not know man until you behold him worshiping.\n\nIII. The third fact in our human situation is that Christianity is the\ninterpretation of religion. You see the devout old Jew, Simeon, who\nmet Jesus as His mother brought Him for the first time into the\ntemple; and there you behold the old faith interpreted by the new. All\nthat was best in the Hebrew religion is conserved and carried higher\nin the Christian religion. Everywhere the devoutest Jews were\nconscious of wants which the national faith did not meet. They waited\nfor the consolation of Israel, and when Christ came he supplied\nsatisfactions which Hebraism could not supply. Christianity commended\nitself to the disciples of Christ because it seemed to be their own\nfaith at its best. They were carried over into it by the logic\nof their previous belief and their deep human need. Paul sought\nrighteousness as a Jew; when he became a Christian, righteousness\nwas still his great quest. And Christianity commended itself to him\nbecause the national ideal of righteousness was set before him in\na sublimer form, and because a new inspiration came to him in his\npursuit of it. The old immemorial goal of human endeavor was exalted,\nand the everlasting incentives were filled with the freshness of a\ndivine life. Thus the religious Jew, when Christ came, was like a\nconvalescent patient. The process of recovery was going on, but in\na way that was discouragingly slow. The longing was for the higher\naltitudes of the spirit, for the pure and bracing atmosphere of some\nexalted leader, for an environment richer in healing ministry and in\nrestoring power. That longing Christ met. He carried His believing\ncountrymen on to the heights. He surrounded them with the freshness of\nHis own spirit. He put over them a new sky. He took them into a new\nenvironment, rich with His truth and grace, tender with infinite\nsympathy, stored with the forces that work for spiritual vigor, filled\nwith the love of His Father. Ask Peter or James or John or Paul, ask\nany believing Jew and he will tell you that Christianity is simply the\nconsummation of his faith as a Jew.\n\nThe gospel moves along the same line of self-verification with\nreference to all the great religions. The Persian believes in eternal\nlight, and he hates the contending darkness. Christianity says that\nGod is light, and that in Him is no darkness at all; that Jesus is the\nLight of the world, and that whosoever followeth Him shall not walk\nin darkness, but shall have the light of life. The Greek was full of\nhumanity, and he could not help making his gods and goddesses simply\nlarger and more beautiful men and women. What is the soul of that\namazingly beautiful and seemingly fantastic mythology of the Greeks?\nWhy do they worship Apollo and Aphrodite, Hermes and Athene? Because\nthey can think of nothing higher than ideal humanity. And Christ\ncomes, the ideal man. The beauty of the Lord is upon Him. His thoughts\nand feelings and purpose and character are the most perfect things in\nthe world. He identifies Himself with man, and He identifies Himself\nwith God. He is the Son of man, and as such He is the Son of God. And\nthus a human. God, a human universe, a human religion is offered to\nthe Greek, and in place of the wonderful mythology the clear, warm,\ndivine fact. The Mohammedan believes in will; and the gospel puts\nbefore him that ultimate irresistible Will as a Will to all good,\neternally burdened with love, and nothing but love, for man. The Hindu\nis smitten with an endless craving after rest, and he thinks the path\nto peace lies in the diminution and final extinction of being. Christ\ngoes to the Hindu and says: \"Come unto me all ye that are weary and\nheavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn\nof me; for I am meek and lowly of heart, and ye shall find rest unto\nyour souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.\"\n\nHe sets before the Hindu an infinite social peace; he calls into play\nthe moral will that for ages has been allowed to slumber. The goal\nis high social harmony; the path to it is the intelligent will in\nfaithful, inspired, victorious obedience. The need of the Hindu is\nnot less but more and better existence. The way out of his despair is\nthrough fulness of life. His misery is but the dumb prayer for eternal\nlife, that is, for existence supreme in its character and in its\nvolume.\n\nThus Christianity is everywhere the interpreter of religion.\nEverywhere it carries the world's faith to its best. It is the\nconsummation both of the human need and the divine answer. And to-day,\nin our own world, it goes on the same high errand. The intuitions of\nrighteousness, the sympathies with goodness, the wish for the more\nabundant life, the ideals and the struggles, the hope and the fear,\nwithout which man would not be man, find their interpreter in\nChristianity. It is the soul carried to the utmost depth of its need\nand the loftiest height of its desire, and then made conscious that\nbelow its profoundest weakness and above its highest dream is the\ninfinite Love that is educating its life. It is the best wisdom of\nhistory speaking to the highest interests of man. As mothers brought\ntheir children to Jesus that He might reveal the inmost meaning of\nchildhood, open its treasure to the hearts that loved it, and by His\nconsecrating touch assure it of perpetual increase; so are the nations\nbringing their religions to Him, and the noble among men their\nuncomprehended longing and hope. He walks among us still as the\nRevealer, the Conserver, and the Consummator of life.\n\nIV. Lastly, Christianity finds it own interpretation in God. We have\nseen man looking backward and finding the origin of his soul in the\nSoul that is behind nature. We have seen his religion telling him\nthat he can not live by bread alone, that he can rest only under\nthe shelter of the unseen, that he is infinitely more akin to the\ninvisible than to the visible, that he has a spirit and must therefore\nhunger for the fellowship of the eternal Spirit. We see Christianity\nlifting this religious capacity to its highest, and bringing in the\ndivine appeal in its sublimest form. We behold the earth transfigured\nin this Christian dream, the ladder set that reaches from the dreamer\nto heaven, and upon it, going up and coming down, the great prayers of\nthe soul and the tender responses of the Most High. To what shall we\nrefer this sublime, transfiguring dream? Is it the delusion of the\nsleeper, or the whisper of God? Is the ladder set up from the earth,\nor is it let down from above? Did man shape it out of his abysmal\ndesire, or did God make and establish it out of His love. What can\nwe say of that which is the highest wisdom, the widest sympathy, the\ndivinest love, and the mightiest power in human history? What can\nwe do with that which is the true life of man? Can the trees of the\nfield, as they clap their hands and sing in the freshening breeze, do\nother than refer it to heaven? And man, as he sees the light of Christ\nupon the Spirit behind nature, beholds in the gospel that which\ninterprets his highest dreams, feels in Christianity the power to\nunderstand and to become his own best self--can he do other than say\nthat his Christian faith is the gift of God? The star in the brook\nrefers you for the explanation of its being to the star in the sky;\nand the glory of the gospel living in the depths of man's soul has no\nother origin than the love of God.\n\nThe hope of science lies in exploring the natural environment. All\nmaterial reality is here, and here science has found all her truth,\nand every season reminds her that inexpressible wonders still wait her\nsearch. In the heavens above, and in the earth beneath, and in the\nwaters under the earth are hidden the treasure for which she is to\ntoil. Earth and sea and sky; the waveless depths and the windless\nheights, and the wide expanse between, now sunlit and again\nstormswept, are the field of her enterprise and hope. And in the same\nway the human environment is the region that the spirit must explore.\nThe meaning of humanity must be found in and through humanity. \"Say\nnot in thy heart, Who shall ascend into heaven? that is, to bring\nChrist down; or who shall descend into the abyss? that is, to bring\nChrist up from the dead. The word is nigh thee, in thy mouth and in\nthy heart.\" The divine reality offers itself to faith in and through\nthe scope and sweep of life. The order of God is in the life of\nsociety. The ideal for man, the method by which it is realized, and\nthe power, are set in the spiritual tissues of the race. If you see no\nGod, no soul, no genuine religion, believe rather that you are blind\nthan that your human environment does not contain them. You are the\nproduct of nature. It follows that nature must be great enough to\naccount for you and your race and the Christ who is your race at its\nbest. Back of the nature that gave birth to you, that bore your kind,\nand brought forth Christ, there must be the sufficient Spirit. You\nare sure that you can not live by bread alone. You have thoughts that\nwander through eternity. You can not rest until you rest in God. You\nare a being made for religion, and again here is the gospel that meets\nyour intelligence with its wisdom, your heart with its love, your will\nwith its moral authority. Nothing puts your being in tune, and nothing\nrings out the best music that is in you, as the gospel does. It is\nomnipresent in our civilization, working everywhere to crush the\nbeast and to free the man. It is in a mother's love, the soul of its\ntenderness; it is in a father's heart as ideal and incentive. The\nhistory and the experience and the hope of our homes are transfigured\nin its light, as if the earth should repose in an everlasting evening\nglow. Patriotism is alive with its fire, and the new and growing\npassion for humanity is the great token of its quickening spirit.\nIt is the box of ointment, very precious, which has been broken in\nsociety and all Christendom is filled with its perfume. Birth and\ndeath, love and sorrow, achievement and failure, human life and its\nimmemorial content, the old room and the dear and dreary things in it,\ntake on new dignity and grace. To detect the new spirit in the old\ndwelling is the best and most rewarding of all intuitions. To live in\nthe human homestead consecrated by the diffusion of Christ's gospel is\nto undergo an unconscious conformation to exalted ideals. Because of\nour Christian civilization, behind every morning is the Father, who\nmakes His sun to shine upon the evil and the good, and who sends His\nrain upon the just and the unjust. Nature has been lifted into a\nservant of the divine beneficence. And man's wild but imperishable\npassion for the unseen has been brought to see its last and best self\nin the love of Christ. Wherever we look, this gospel is the master\nlight of all our seeing; and once more, is it not light from heaven?\nWe know where to look for the belt of Orion, and clear and grand as\nthe stars that constitute it are the great saving truths which are set\nin the human sky. There is nothing arbitrary in this sublime faith,\nnothing that does not rise out of the human order, nothing that is a\nmere import from the world of fancy or wild belief. The faith is the\ntranslation of fact into thought and speech. The eyes of Christ pass\nover and through the order of the universe, and His vision is our\nfaith. Man is the interpreter of nature; religion is the interpreter\nof man; Christianity is the interpreter of religion; and God the\nFather is the interpreter of Christianity.\n\n\n\n\nDAWSON\n\nCHRIST AMONG THE COMMON THINGS OF LIFE\n\nBIOGRAPHICAL NOTE\n\n\nWilliam James Dawson, Congregational preacher and evangelist, was born\nin Towcester, Northamptonshire, in 1854. He was educated at Kingswood\nSchool, Bath, and Didsbury College, Manchester. He has long been\nknown as an author of originality and pure literary style. In 1906 he\nreceived the pastorate of Highbury Quadrant Congregational Church,\nLondon, and accepted an invitation to do general evangelistic work\nunder the auspices of the National Council of the Congregational\nchurches of the United States. He now resides in this country.\n\n\n\n\nDAWSON\n\nBorn in 1854:\n\nCHRIST AMONG THE COMMON THINGS OF LIFE[1]\n\n[Footnote 1: Reprinted by kind permission of Messrs. Fleming H. Revell\n& Co., New York.]\n\n_As soon then as they were come to land they saw a fire of coals\nthere, and fish laid thereon, and bread. Jesus saith unto them, Come\nand dine_.--John xxi., 9, 12.\n\n\nI can not read these words without indulging for a moment in a\nreminiscence. Not long ago, in the early morning, while all the world\nslept, I stood beside the Sea of Tiberias, just as the morning mist\nlifted, and watched a single brown-sailed fishing-boat making for the\nshore, and the tired fishermen dragging their net to land. In that\nmoment it seemed to me as if more than the morning mist lifted--twenty\ncenturies seemed to melt like mist, and the last chapter of St. John's\ngospel seemed to enact itself before my eyes. For so vivid was the\nsense of something familiar in the scene, so mystic was the hour, that\nI should scarce have been surprized had I seen a fire of coals burning\non the shore, and heard the voice of Jesus inviting these tired\nfishermen to come and dine.\n\nNow if I felt that, if I was sensible of the haunting presence of\nChrist by that Galilean shore, how much more these disciples, in\nwhose minds every aspect of the Galilean lake was connected with some\nintimate and thrilling memory of the ministry of Jesus.\n\nChrist once more stands among the common things of life; the fire,\nthe fish, the bread--all common things; a group of tired, hungry\nfishers--all common men; and He is there to affirm that in His\nresurrection He had not broken His bond with men, but strengthened\nit--wherever common life goes on there is Jesus still.\n\nI. Notice the words with which the story opens, and you will see at\nonce that this is the real clue to its interpretation. \"When morning\nhad now come, Jesus stood on the shore, but the disciples knew not\nthat it was Jesus.\" A strange thing that! Why did they not know Him?\nBecause they were not looking for Him in such a scene. It had seemed a\nnatural thing, if Jesus should appear at all, that He should appear in\nthe garden, a vision of life at the very altar of death. It seemed yet\nmore probable and appropriate that He should appear in the upper room,\nthat room made sacred by holiest love and memory. If any words of\nChrist yet lingered in the mind and had power to thrill them, they\nwere surely these words, \"Ye shall see the Son of man coming in the\nclouds of heaven,\" glorified, triumphant, lifted far above the earth\nand its humble life. And so, if they were looking for Christ at all\nthat morning, I think they watched the morning clouds, expecting Him\nto come down the resplendent staircase of the sunbeams to call the\nnations together and vindicate Himself in acts of universal judgment.\nAnd behold! Jesus comes as a fisherman standing on the lakeside, busy\nover a little fire, where the morning meal is cooking; and behold!\nJesus speaks, and it is not of the eternal mysteries of God, not of\nthe solemn secrets of the grave, but of nets and fishing and how to\ncast the nets--the simple concerns of simple men engaged in humble\ntasks.\n\nNo wonder they did not recognize Him. Once more the Son of Man comes\neating and drinking, and even the eyes that knew Him best can not see\nin this human figure by the lakeside the only begotten Son of the\nFather, full of grace and truth. They looked and saw but a fellow\nfisherman, cooking his meal upon the shore, and they knew not that it\nwas Jesus.\n\nII. Think for a moment of the earthly life of Christ, and you will\nsee that it was designedly linked with all the common and even the\ncommonest things of life.\n\nIf you or I could have conceived the great thought of some human\ncreature that should be the very incarnation of God, what would have\nbeen the shape of our imaginings? Surely we should have chosen for\nthis earthly temple of the Highest some human form perfected in grace\nand beauty by the long refinements of exalted ancestry; the child of\nkings or scholars; the delicate flower of life, in whom the elements\nwere so subtly mixed that we should recognize them as special and\nmiraculous--so we might think of God manifest in man. But God chooses\nfor the habitation of His Spirit a peasant woman of Nazareth, humble,\npoor, unconsidered.\n\nIf we could have forecast the training of such a life, how should\nwe have pictured it? Surely as sheltered from the coarseness of the\nworld, delicately nourished, sedulously cultured; but God orders\nthat this life should manifest itself in the house of the village\ncarpenter, out of reach of schools, in a little wicked town, under the\ncommonest conditions of poverty, obscurity, and toil.\n\nIf you and I could have imagined the introduction of this life of\nlives to the world, how should we picture that? Surely we should have\npictured it coming with pomp and display that would at once have\nattracted all eyes; but God orders that it shall come without\nobservation, unfolding its quiet beauty like the wayside flower, which\nthere are few to see and very few to love. Commonness: that is the\ngreat note of the incarnation and the purposed feature of Christ's\nearthly life.\n\nHe reaffirms His fraternity in common life. The disciples could not\nimagine that as possible; nor can we. And why not? For two reasons,\none of which is that we have forgotten the dignity of common life.\n\n1. Dignity is for us almost synonymous with some kind of separation\nfrom common life; it dwells in palaces, not in cottages; it inheres in\nculture, but is inconceivable in narrow knowledge; and to the great\nmass of men it is, alas! the attribute of wealth, of fine raiment,\nof social isolation. But we have not learned even the alphabet\nof Christ's gospel unless we have come to see that the only true\n_in_dignity in human life is sin, meanness, malevolence, and\nsmall-heartedness; and that all life is dignified where there are\nlove, purity, and piety in it, whatever be its social category.\n\nI read the other day that it is probable that the very mire of the\nLondon streets contains that mysterious substance known as radium, the\nmost tremendous agent of light and heat ever yet discovered by man; so\nin man himself, however low his state, there is the spark of God, an\nember lit at the altar fires of the Eternal, and it is because we\nforget this that we forget the dignity of common life. For we do\nforget it. We may make our boast that a single human soul is of more\nvalue than all the splendors and immensities of matter; but in our\nactions we treat the boast as a mere rhetorical expression. There is\nnothing so cheap as men and women--let the lords of commerce answer\nif it be not so. But Christ acted as tho the boast were true. He\ndeliberately inwove His life into all that is commonest in life. He\nhas made it impossible for us, if indeed we have His spirit, to think\nof any salient aspect of human life without thinking of Him.\nWhere childhood is, there is Bethlehem; where sorrow is, there is\nGethsemane; where death is, there is Calvary; where the toiler is,\nthere is the poor man of Nazareth; and where the beggar is, there is\nHe who had no place where to lay His head. There is not a drop of\nblood of Christ, nor a throb of thought in our brains that is not\nthrilling with the impact of this divine life of lives. And so the\ntrue dignity of life is this, that Christ is in all men, faintly\noutlined it may be, defaced, half-obliterated, but there, and the\nChurch that forgets this has neither impulse nor mandate for Christ's\nwork among men.\n\n2. And then, again, there is a second reason: we have not learned to\nlook for Christ among the common things of life.\n\n\"Let us build three tabernacles,\" said the wondering disciples on\nthe Mount of Transfiguration, and the speech betrayed a tendency of\nthought which was in time to prove fatal to the Church.\n\nThe Christ without a tabernacle, the free, familiar Christ of the lake\nor the wayside was everybody's Christ; but the moment Christ is shut\nup in a church or a tabernacle He becomes the priest's Christ, the\nthinker's Christ, the devotee's Christ, but He ceases to be the\npeople's Christ.\n\nI remember five years ago standing in the great church of Assisi,\nwhich has been erected over and encloses the little humble chapel\nwhere Francis first received his call. You will scarcely be surprized\nif I confess that I turned with a sense of heart-sick indignation\nfrom the pomp of that splendid service in the gorgeous church to\nthe thought of Francis, in his worn robe, going up and down these\nneighboring roads, touching the lepers, calling them \"God's patients,\"\npouring out his life for the poor; and I knew Christ nearer to me\non the roads that Francis trod than in that church, which is his\nmausoleum rather than his monument. And as I felt that day in far-off\nUmbria, so I have felt to-day in England; my heart goes out to\nCatherine Booth; to Father Dolling, to these Christs of the wayside,\nand it turns more and more from the kind of Christ who lives in\nchurches and nowhere else. My brethren, you will let me say that we do\nbut make the church Christ's prison when we forget that all the realm\nof life is His. Oh, you good people, you do love your church, but\noften think and act as tho the presence of Christ can be found nowhere\nelse. Lift up your eyes and see this risen Christ, a fisherman upon\nthe shore, busy in no loftier task than to have a meal prepared for\nhungry fishermen. Unlock your church doors, let Christ go out among\ncommon people; nay, go yourselves, for it is here that He would have\nyou be. Remember that wherever there is toil, there is the Christ\nwho toiled; and there you should be, with the kind glance, the warm\nhand-grasp, and the loving warmth of brotherhood.\n\nChrist stands amid the common things of life; where the fire is lit,\nthere is He; where the bread is broken, there is He; where the net of\nbusiness gain is drawn, there is He; and only as we learn to see Him\neverywhere shall we understand the dignity and the divinity of human\nlife.\n\nIII. \"And Jesus said unto them, Cast the net on the right side of the\nship, and ye shall find. They cast, and now they were not able to draw\nit for the multitude of fishes.\"\n\nHere is another strange thing. Christ knows more about the management\nof their own business than they do. They had toiled all night and\ncaught nothing; is not that a significant description of many human\nlives? \"Children, have ye any meat?\" asks that quiet Voice from\nthe shore, and they answer \"No.\" Is not that yet more pathetically\nsignificant? All the heartbreak and disappointment of the world cry\naloud in that confession. Oh, I could fill an hour with the mere\nrecital of the names of great and famous people who have toiled\nthrough a long life, and as the last gray hour came over their dim sea\nof life, \"brackish with the salt of human tears,\" have acknowledged\nwith infinite bitterness that they have caught nothing. Listen to the\nvoice of Goethe, \"In all my seventy-five years I have not had four\nweeks of genuine well-being;\" to the confession of our own famous\npoet,\n\n  My life is in the yellow leaf,\n    The flowers, the fruits of love are gone;\n  The worm, the canker, and the grief\n    Are mine alone.\n\nto the ambitious and successful statesman who says, \"Youth is folly,\nmanhood is struggle, old age regret\"; to one of our most brilliant\nwomen of genius in our own generation, wife of a still more brilliant\nhusband, who cries, \"I married for ambition, and I am miserable.\"\nSurely there is some tragic mismanagement of the great business of\nliving here. Oh, brother, is it true of you, that after all the\npainful years happiness is not yours? You have no meat, no food on\nwhich the heart feeds, no green pasture in the soul, no table in the\nwilderness, and the last gray day draws near and will find you still\nhungering for what life Has never given you.\n\nLearn, then, that Christ knows more about the proper management of\nyour life than you do. \"Cast your net on the right side of the ship,\"\nspeaks that quiet Voice from the shore. And you know what happened.\nAnd it is so still. Just because Christ stands among the common things\nof life, He knows most about life, and, above all, He knows where\nthe golden fruit of happiness is found and where the secret wells of\npeace.\n\nAnd to some of us whom God has called to be fishers of men the issue\nis yet more solemn. We have the boat and the nets, all this elaborate\norganization of the Church, but have we caught anything this year?\nWhere is the draft of fishes? Where are the men and women saved by\nour triumphant effort? I will make my humble confession this morning,\nthat for five-and-twenty years I have cast the net, but only lately\nhave I found the right side of the ship; only lately have I discovered\nhow easy it is to get the great draft of fishes by simply going to\nwork in Christ's way. I do not believe in the indifference of the\nmasses in religion; the indifference is not in the masses, but in the\nchurches. You will never catch many fish if you stand upon the shore\nof cold respectability and wait for them to come; launch out into the\ndeep and you will find them. Go for them--that is Christ's method.\nCompel them to come in, for remember Christ's ideal was, as Bishop\nLightfoot so nobly put it, \"the universal compulsion of the souls of\nmen.\" And if your experience is like mine, you will find that there is\nstrangely little compulsion needed to bring men and women to Christ.\nI stood but lately in a house where fifty fallen women lived; I went\nthere to rescue three of its unhappy inmates. When the moment came to\ntake these three women from their life of sin, their comrades lined\nthe passage to shake my hand; there were tears and prayers, and\nmessages like these, \"Be good. You'll be a good woman,\" \"We wish we\nhad your chance\"; and these poor souls in their inferno wished me\n\"a happy New-year.\" Compulsion! There was small need for compulsion\nthere! I believe I could have rescued all of these fifty women at one\nstroke had I known where to take them. But to the shame of the Free\nChurches in London I confess that, with the exception of the Wesleyans\nand the Salvation Army, I do not know a single Free Church Rescue Home\nin London. And I put it to you this morning whether you can any longer\ntolerate that omission? I ask you whether you really want a great\ndraft of fishes, for you can have them if you want them. Christ knows\nthe business better than you do; and if you will come out of the\ncloister of the church and seek the people in His spirit, I promise\nyou that very soon you will not be able to drag the net for the\nmultitude of fishes.\n\nIV. \"And Jesus said unto them, Come and dine.\"\n\nDine on what? Not the fish which they had caught. They had caught one\nhundred and fifty-three great fishes; but notice Christ's fire was\nkindled before they came. Christ's fish was already laid thereon, and\nall they had to do was to come and dine. It is all you have to do, all\nthe churches have to do. Did not Christ so put it in the parable of\nthe Great Supper?--\"Come, for all things are ready.\" Is not the last\nword of Scripture the great invitation?--\"The Spirit and the Bride\nsay, Come, and whosoever will, let him come, and take of the water of\nlife freely.\" Many a church can not say to a hungry world, \"Come and\ndine,\" because it will not let Christ prepare the meal. It will not\nlive in His spirit, it has no real faith in His gospel, it does not\nunderstand that its true strength is not in elaborate organization\nor worship, but in simple reliance on His grace. And so there is the\ntable covered with elaborate confections, which are not bread, and\nwhen it says, \"Come and dine,\" men will not come, for they know that\nthere is nothing there for them. Let Christ prepare the meal and all\nis different then. When He says, \"Come and dine,\" there is \"enough\nfor each, enough for all, enough for evermore.\" And as Jesus spoke, I\nthink there flashed upon the memory of these men the scene when Jesus\nfed the five thousand, and by that memory they knew their Jesus. No\none else ever spoke like that, with such certainty and such authority.\nAnd the same Voice speaks even now to your hunger-bitten soul, to your\nfamished heart, \"Come and dine.\"\n\nV. \"Then Jesus taketh bread and giveth them, and fish likewise.\"\n\nThere is no mistaking the act; it was a sacramental act. Here, upon\nthe lake shore, without a church, without an altar, the true feast of\nthe Lord was observed. For what does the Holy Supper, which is the\nbond and seal of the Church's fellowship, stand for, if it is not\nfor this, the sanctification of the common life? Bread and wine, the\ncommonest of all foods to an Oriental, are elements indeed, because\nthey are necessary to the most elementary form of physical life,\nthings used daily in the humblest home. By linking Himself\nimperishably with these commonest elements of life, Christ makes it\nimpossible to forget Him. Once more the thought shines clear, Jesus\namong the common things of life.\n\nAnd then there comes one last touch in the beautiful story. While\nthese things happened, the day was breaking. Is there one of us\nlong tossed on sunless seas of doubt, long conscious of failure and\ndisappointment in life? Are there those of us whose sorrow lies deeper\nthan that which is personal--sorrow over our failure in Christ's work,\npain over a life's ministry for Christ that has known no victorious\nevangel? Turn your eyes from that barren sea to Him who stands upon\nthe shore; He shall yet make you a fisher of men. Turn your eyes from\nthat bleak, dark sea of wasted effort where you have fared so ill; it\nis always dark till Jesus comes, it is always light when He has come.\nThere is a new day breaking for the churches--a day of widespread\nevangelistic triumphs that shall eclipse all the greatest triumphs of\nthe past, if we will but go back to Christ's school and learn of Him\nhow to save the people. And to each of us He says to-day: \"I am the\nliving bread; I am the bread of life come down from heaven. If any man\neat of this bread, he shall live forever.\" \"Come and dine.\" Will you\ncome?\n\n\n\n\nSMITH\n\nASSURANCE IN GOD\n\nBIOGRAPHICAL NOTE\n\n\nGEORGE ADAM SMITH, divine, educator and author, was born at Calcutta\nin 1856, and educated at New College, Edinburgh, Scotland. He is at\npresent professor of Old Testament Language, Literature and Theology\nin the United Free Church College, Glasgow. He is author of \"The\nHistorical Geography of the Holy Land,\" \"Jerusalem, the Topography,\nEconomics and History from the Earliest Time to A.D. 70\" (1908). He is\ngenerally regarded as one of the most gifted preachers of Scotland.\n\n\n\nSMITH\n\nBorn in 1856\n\nASSURANCE IN GOD\n\n_Preserve me, O God._--Psalm xvi., 16.\n\n\nThe psalmist lived in a period when belief in the reality of many gods\nwas still strong, and when a man who would follow the one true God\nhad to prefer to do so against the attractions of other deities and\nagainst the convictions of a great number of his fellow countrymen\nthat these deities were living and powerful. That stage of religion is\nso distant from ourselves that we may imagine the psalmist's example\nto be of no practical value for our faith, yet in such an imagination\nwe should be very much mistaken indeed, for, to begin with, consider\nhow much you and I to-day owe to those believers who so many centuries\nago rejected all the gods that offered themselves to the hearts of men\nexcept the true God, and who chose to cleave to Him alone with all\nthat passionate loyalty which breathes through these verses. But for\nthem you and I could not be standing where we are in religion to-day.\nAs the eleventh of Hebrews reminds us, we are the spiritual heir of\nsuch believers. It is to their struggles and their faith and their\nvictories that we greatly owe it that we have been born into an\natmosphere in which no religious belief is possible to us save in one\nGod who is Spirit and Righteousness and all Truth.\n\nThat, then, was the great choice that the psalmist's faith was turning\nto--a choice that was no mere assent to a creed that had been fought\nfor and established by previous generations of believers. It was the\nman's own proving of things unseen and his own preference of those\nagainst the crowd and a system of things seen, palpable, and very\npowerful in their attraction for the senses of humanity. But we are\nnot to suppose that the rival deities, from which this man turned to\nthe unseen God, were to his mind or to the mind of his day the heap\nof dead and ugly idols which we know them to be. They were not dead\nthings that he could kick away with his feet that these believers had\nto reject when they sought the living God, but things which he and his\ncontemporaries felt to be alive and powerful; powerful alike in their\nseduction and in their vengeance. They were believed to be identical,\nas you know, with the forces of nature; they were supposed to be\nindispensable to the welfare of the individual and of society, and\nthey were fanatically supported at the time by the mass of this man's\nown countrymen; so that to break from them in those days meant to\nabandon ancient opinions and habits, to resist many pleasant and\nnatural temptations and to incur the hostility, as was believed, of\nthe powers of nature, to break with customs and with rites that had\nfortified and consoled the individual heart for generations and been\nthe support and sanction of society and of the state as well. Yet this\nman did it. From all that living crowd and system, from all those\nvisible temptations and terrors he turned to the unseen, fully\nconscious of his danger, for he opens his Psalm with a great cry,\n\"Preserve me, preserve me, O God!\" but yet deliberately, and with all\nhis heart: \"I have said unto the Lord, Thou art my Lord.\" I have no\ngoodness, no happiness, that is outside Thee or outside the saints\nthat are in the land, \"the excellent in whom is all my delight.\" Here\nwe touch another great characteristic of all true faith which is full\nof example to ourselves. It is remarkable how, when a man really turns\nto God, he turns to God's people as well, and how he includes them in\nthe loyalty and in the devotion which he feels toward his Redeemer.\nHis confidence and the sensitiveness of his faith in and toward God\nbecome almost an equal confidence and an equal sensitiveness toward\nhis fellow believers. So it is throughout Scripture; you remember that\nother psalmist who tells us how he had been tempted to doubt God's\nprovidence and God's power to help the good man--\"does God know and is\nthere knowledge in the Most High? Verily I have cleansed my heart in\nvain and washed my hands in innocency.\" The psalmist immediately adds:\n\"If I had spoken thus, behold I had dealt treacherously with the\ngeneration of God's children.\" If I had spoken thus, denying God,\nI had dealt treacherously with the generation of God's children.\nUnbelief toward God meant to him treason toward God's people; and the\nauthor of the Epistle to the Hebrews affirms the same double character\nof true faith when he emphasizes just these two points in the faith\nof Moses: \"choosing to suffer affliction with the people of God,\" and\n\"enduring as seeing Him who is invisible,\" and God Himself through\nJesus Christ has accepted this partnership of His people in our\nloyalty--\"Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these\nmy brethren ye have done it unto me.\" I do not believe in the full\nfaith of any man who does not extend the loyalty he professes to\nGod to God's people as well, who does not feel as sensitive to his\nbrethren on earth as he does to his Father in heaven, who does not\npractise piety toward the Church as he does toward her Head, or find\nin her fellowship and her service a joy and a gladness which is one\nwith his deep joy in God, his Redeemer. Nay, is it not just in loving\npeople who are still imperfect, often disappointing, and far from\ntheir ideal it may be, that in our relations to them we are to find\nthe greater proof and test of our religious faith? In these days such\na duty is unfortunately more complicated than with the psalmist. The\nlines between God's Church and the world is not so clear as it was to\nhim, and the Church is divided into many and often hostile factions.\nAll the more it becomes the test of our religion if our hearts feel\nand rejoice in the fellowship of God's simpler and more needy and more\ndevoted believers, however unattractive they may otherwise be.\n\nConsider the way in which the psalmist reached this pure faith in God\nand in His people. A factor in the process was distaste for the ugly\nrites of idolatry--\"Their drink-offerings of blood will I not offer.\"\nIdolatry always develops a loathsome ritual. Sometimes it is cruel\nand sometimes it is horribly unclean, but it always debases the\nworshiper's mind, confuses his conscience, and hampers his freedom and\nenergy by the burdensome ceremonies it imposes upon them. Standing\nafar off from them as we do, and knowing that there is no heathen\nreligion but has something good in it, we are apt to think that it\ndoes not in the least matter how crude or how material a nation's\nfaith be if only it be faith in something more powerful than\nthemselves, if it satisfy their consciences and have some influence in\ndisciplining society and helping the individual to control himself.\nBut you have only to see idolatry at work, and at work with the\nhabits of ages upon it, to recognize how terrible it can be in its\nidentification of sheer filth and cruelty with the interests of\nreligion, and how it at once demoralizes and paralyzes its adherents.\nTo see it thus is to understand the passionate horror of these words:\n\"Their drink-offering of blood will I not offer.\"\n\nIt is, however, no mere recoil from the immoral which started the\nspring of this psalmists's faith in God. That faith was formed on\npersonal experience of God Himself. In simple but pregnant phrases the\npsalmist tells us how sure he has become, first, of God's providence\nin his life; secondly, of God's intimate communion with his soul. God,\nhe says, had been everything in his life. One does not know whether\nthe psalmist was a prosperous man or a poor one; the inference that he\nwas prosperous and rich has sometimes been drawn, but wrongly drawn,\nfrom one of the verses of the Psalm. His indifference to that is\nclear, but what he did have he knew he had from God. God, he says, is\nall his happiness and all his strength--\"The Lord is the portion of\nmine inheritance and of my cup; thou maintainest my lot.\" Whether poor\nor prosperous he could say: \"The lines are fallen unto me in pleasant\nplaces; yea, I have a goodly heritage.\" Now that assurance of divine\nleading is not analyzable, but we know that it does grow up solid and\nsure in the experience of simple men who have put their trust in God,\nwho have felt life to be a commission from Him and who have done their\nduty obeying His call. With such men \"all things work together for\ngood.\" Tho life about them shake and darken, they feel their own\nsolidity and have light enough to read the future. Tho stript\nand stark, they feel the Lord Himself to be the portion of their\ninheritance and of their cup. The portion of my inheritance the Lord\nis, i.e., the little bit of land that fell to each Israelite as his\nshare in the promised inheritance of the nation. \"The Lord is the\nportion of mine inheritance,\" as we might say in our Scotch language,\n\"The Lord is my croft and my cup,\" so they find in Him all the\nground and the freedom they need to do their work, fulfil their\nrelationships, and develop their manhood.\n\nIt is, however, with the psalmist's second reason for his faith we\nhave most to do. \"I will bless the Lord, who hath given me counsel:\nmy reins also instruct me in the night seasons.\" This man held close\ncommunion with God. Is it not great to find the testimony of a brother\nman coming down all through those ages, from that dim and distant\npast, clear and sure as to this, that he had God's counsel and that\nGod kept communion with him? God had spoken to this man and shown\nhim His will. Yes, he had received what we call inspiration and\nrevelation, and had proved the truth of these in his life. They had\nled and they had lifted him. Nor had they come to him as many men\nfalsely suppose revelation and inspiration exclusively have come to\nmankind, by means, namely, that were extraordinary and miraculous. The\npsalmist tells us of no vision of angels, of no voice from heaven. The\nLord had not appeared to him in dreams nor by any marvelous signs; on\nthe other hand, he tells us simply that the divine counsel of which\nhe was so sure, and which he passes on to us, came to him through the\nworkings of his inner spiritual life. That is what he means by the\nemphatic statement \"yea, my reins instruct me in the night seasons,\"\nwhich he adds parallel with the thought, \"I will bless the Lord, who\nhath given me counsel.\" According to the primitive physiology of\nthis man's nation and times, the reins of a man fulfil the same\nintellectual function which we, with our larger knowledge, know are\ndischarged by the brain. This was how God's revelation came to this\nbrother of ours, through the working of his mind and conscience, but\nit was in the night seasons that they worked, not in the day and in\nthe sunshine, but in the night when a man is left to himself with\nonly this advantage to his thought: that like the blind he is yet\nundistracted by the influences which are seen. When he lies down he\nthinks soberly and quietly about himself and about life and about God,\nand about the great hidden future that is waiting for him. He\nwas communing with God, who had made his brain and used it as an\ninstrument of revelation. In these thoughts God was communing with man\nthrough his reason and through his conscience. You and I are always\ncontrasting God's providence and His grace. We are always attempting\nto oppose reason and revelation; to this man they were one. God's\ngreat grace had come to him through God's own providence, and God's\nrevelation was ministered to him through the reason with which he had\nendowed the creature He had made in His own image. This psalmist's\nchief and practical help to us men and women today is that he became\nsure of God not because of any miracle or supernatural sign, on his\nreport of which we might be content indolently to rest our faith, but\nin God's own providence in his life and in God's quiet communion with\nhim through the organs God Himself has created in every one of us. For\nall time, whether before or after Christ, these are the chief\ngrounds and foundations of faith in God. So it was in the Old\nTestament--\"stand in awe and sin not,\" \"commune with your own heart\nupon your bed and be still,\" \"be still and know that I am God.\" So\nwith Christ, \"for the kingdom of heaven cometh not with observation,\nbut the kingdom of heaven is within you,\" and so with Paul, \"the\nSpirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the\nchildren of God, and if children then heirs, heirs of God and joint\nheirs with Christ.\" \"For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of\nour Lord Jesus Christ, ... that he would grant you according to the\nriches of his glory to be strengthened with might by his spirit in the\ninner man; that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith, to the end\nthat ye being rooted and grounded in love may come to apprehend with\nall saints what is the breadth and length and depth and height and to\nknow the love of Christ.\"\n\nGod's guidance of his life, first of all, produces in a man a great\nsense of stability. \"I have set the Lord always before me: because he\nis at my right hand I shall not be moved.\" He who has found God so\ncareful of him, he whom God hath regarded as worth speaking to and\ncounseling and disciplining, will be certain that he shall endure,\nprovided he is sure of his own loyalty. The life so loved of God, so\nprovided for, and in such close communion with the Eternal is not, can\nnot be the creature of the day, and this assurance stands firm in face\nof even death and the horrible corruption of the body. The psalmist\nrefuses to believe that he is to dwell in the horrible under-world\nforever--either himself or any of God's believers. \"Thou must not,\nthou wilt not leave my soul in sheol, thou must not, thou wilt not\nsuffer thy loved ones to see the pit.\" To this man it is incredible,\nand our hearts bear witness to the truth if we have had any experience\nof God's blessing and guidance. To this man it is incredible that the\nlife God has cared for and guided and spoken to and brought into such\nintimate communion with himself can find its end in death. Those whom\nGod has loyally loved and who have loyally loved God--for this\nword badly translated \"holy\" in the psalms really has that actual\nsignificance--those whom God has loyally loved and who have loyally\nloved God shall never die. As He lives so shall they; they shall never\nbe absent from His presence. Be the future unknown and unknowable,\nbe we ourselves incapable of conceiving the processes by which this\nmortal shall put on immortality, or where heaven is, or what eternity\ncan possibly be to those who have never lived outside time, yet that\nfuture is secure and its immortal character is indubitable--where God\nis there shall His servants be, and because He is there their life\nshall be peace and joy, and because He is eternal it shall last\nforevermore. That thought is the whole of the hope and argument. We\nare assured of the future life because we have known God, and as we\nhave found Him to be true to us and proved ourselves true to Him.\n\n\n\n\nGUNSAULUS\n\nTHE BIBLE VS. INFIDELITY\n\nBIOGRAPHICAL NOTE\n\n\nFrank Wakely Gunsaulus was born at Chesterville, Ohio, in 1856. He\ngraduated from Ohio Wesleyan University in 1875. For some years he was\npastor of Plymouth Church, Chicago, and since 1899 pastor of Central\nChurch, Chicago. He is also president of the Armour Institute of\nTechnology. He is a fascinating speaker, having a clear, resonant\nvoice, and a dignified presence. His mind is a storehouse of the best\nliterature, and his English style is noteworthy for its purity and\nrichness. He is the author of several books and is in popular demand\nas a lecturer.\n\n\n\n\nGUNSAULUS\n\nBorn in 1856\n\nTHE BIBLE VS. INFIDELITY[1]\n\n[Footnote 1: Preached as an impromptu reply to R.G. Ingersoll. Printed\nfrom an unrevised stenographic report.]\n\n_There are, it may be, so many kinds of voices in the world, and none\nof them is without signification_.--I Cor. xiv., 10.\n\n\nOurs is a voiceful era. Perhaps, as the ages come and go and man's\nlife grows richer, its questions more restless for answer, its\nmoral supports called upon to bear heavier interests of faith, its\nenterprises more often and searchingly compelled to defend themselves,\nthe voices of time will be increasingly potent and worthy of his\nattention. A singularly suggestive collection of messages fills the\nair today, and all of these voices speak of one theme--the Bible.\n\nAnarchy, which is always atheistic, holds its converse in the places\nof evil which this book's message would close forever; the foes of\nthat civilization builded on its laws and stimulated by its hopes asks\nus to condemn it as worthy only of caricature, vituperation, and hate.\nLet us find a path of duty today, not refusing to listen to any of\nthese voices, but asking that other voices also may help us to the\ntruth.\n\nThe preacher's message is a book called the Bible. That is only the\nliterary form of his message--telling its history. Even that form,\nwhich is much less divine as paper and ink are less lofty in the\nscale than humanity, has worked wonders. To-day, the Bible offers the\nnineteenth-century infidel as testimony of the influence it has. It\nhas force enough to make infidelity preach tearfully and well about\nman, woman, and child. Skepticism did not do so well until the Bible\ncame. The Bible has furnished the eloquence of infidelity with such\na man as Shakespeare to talk about; no student of literature could\nimagine Shakespeare without the Bible and the Bible's influence upon\nhim as he created his dreams. It furnished an Abraham Lincoln for an\norator to compare favorably with incomplete ideas of Almighty God; but\nit seems to have been unable to show the critic that Christian ideas\nof Almighty God made Lincoln so love the Lord's Prayer that he wanted\na church builded with this as its creed. It would seem that any\ngeneral denunciation or humorous caricature of a book which has\nworked such an amazing effect in literature as has the Bible would\nbe tempered by some recognition of the fact that these other\nminds--poets, orators, sages, and scientists--have found illumination\nand help in its pages. Liberal Christianity will be intellectually\nbroad. Certainly the greatest of modern pagans, Goethe, will not be\naccused of favoritism toward the Bible, yet he said: \"I esteem the\ngospels to be thoroughly genuine, for there shines forth from them the\nreflected splendor of a sublimity, proceeding from the person of\nJesus Christ, of so divine a kind as only the divine could ever have\nmanifested upon earth.\" The Earl of Rochester saw that the only\nliberalism which objects to the Bible, in its true uses, is the\nliberalism of licentiousness; and he left this saying: \"A bad heart\nis the great argument against this holy book.\" And Faraday, weeping,\nsaid: \"Why will people go astray when they have this blest book to\nguide them?\"\n\nIf we turn to literature we encounter many such liberal thinkers as\nTheodore Parker, who calmly informs us: \"This collection of books has\ntaken such a hold upon the world as has no other. The literature of\nGreece, which goes up like incense from that land of temples and\nheroic deeds, has not half the influence of this book. It goes equally\nto the cottage of the plain man and the palace of the king. It is\nwoven into the literature of the scholar and colors the talk of the\nstreet.\" That is the voice of the liberalism which includes rather\nthan excludes.\n\nThese were men not of the band of evangelical Christian preachers, who\nare roughly classed as a set of persons unable to tell the truth about\nthe Bible, for fear they may lose their means of subsistence; these\nare men who know the true mission of the Bible. It is not to furnish\na picture of life in the time of Moses such as life ought to be, a\nportrait of a David for the imitation of men, a statue of a warrior\nin a time of barbarism who shall command my obedience to his commands\nnow, an idea of God wrought out in ignorance and darkness, which has\nno self-development within it. The mission of the Bible is to furnish\na humanly written account of a people, just as human as we, in whom,\nby divine inspiration, the soul of truth so lived and worked as to\ndevelop, in gradual course, by laws, by hopes, by loves, by life, a\nliving, and, at last, perfectly authoritative ideal of righteousness,\nbut more than all a gradual growth of such moral power as would be\ncommanding in the redeeming self-sacrifice and love of Jesus Christ.\nEvery page of the Old Testament was only preparatory, as the thorny\nbush is preparatory for the rose. Christ is the end of the long, weary\nhuman history that leads to Him. If the laws of Sinai had been enough,\nthere never would have been a Calvary. No one for a moment dreams that\nthe God of nature could have brought forth such a fruit as the life\nand ideas of Jesus without a tree of such a history, a tree rooted in\nthe ground, storm-twisted, gnarled, and valuable only for its fruit.\nWe are not asked to eat the roots and bark and branches; only the\nfruit has an appeal to us. Its appeal is to our hunger, its authority\nlies in the fact that it satisfies our hunger.\n\nIt has satisfied the hunger of men whose liberalism came from their\nbeing made liberally. Large and capacious souls of mighty yearnings\nare they. They stand in contrast with the puny critics who assert\nthat the Bible fails to feed them, because they have never tasted its\nnourishment.\n\nLiberal Christianity, separating itself from the dogmatism which would\nmake Christianity a book religion, worshiping a literary idol rather\nthan loving a human revelation of the divine, knows it is not an\nignorant lot of men and women who have received most from the Bible\nand spoken most gratefully of its message. When we think of sending\nthe Bible to barbarism, with the hope of creating in its stead\ncivilization, we can look into the face of John Selden, one of the\nmost illustrious of English lawyers, when he says: \"I have surveyed\nmost of the learning that is among the sons of men, yet at this moment\nI can recall nothing in them on which to rest my soul, save one from\nthe sacred Scriptures, which rises much on my mind. It is this: 'The\ngrace of God, which bringeth salvation, hath appeared unto all men,\nteaching us that denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live\nsoberly, righteously, and godly in this present world, looking for\nthat blest hope and the glorious appearing of the great God and our\nSavior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us that he might redeem\nus unto himself, a peculiar people zealous of good works.'\" Liberal\nreligion must include Selden. We will not be deterred from giving the\nBible to heathenism of any kind when we remember that Sir William\nJones has left these words: \"The Scriptures contain more true\nsublimity, more exquisite beauty, and finer strains of poetry and\neloquence than could be collected from all other books that were ever\ncomposed in any age or in any idiom.\" Liberal religion must be as\nbroad as Sir William Jones.\n\nThis is a very needy world, and many are the institutions of evil that\nneed to be changed for institutions of goodness. If we are to believe\nthe eloquence of hopeless unbelief, we ourselves will only be the\nslaves of a fatalism which says that man is but a result of forces;\nthat what we call crime is but a part of the necessary course of\nthings, and that there is no such thing as moral responsibility. This\nmakes all reform or efforts at staying the tide of evil useless.\nOftentimes the heart of the man who has ceased to read his Bible gets\nthe victory over this dreadful philosophy, and it is not remarkable\nthat the skeptic becomes the exponent of freedom, charging like a host\nof war upon all institutions of slavery. Liberal theology puts its one\nhand on the dogmatist who tells him to accept literal infallibility,\nand its other on the sincere lover of men who has lost his Bible\nentirely. And liberalism says: It is in just such moments that we\ntrust our Bible the most, and we remember that William Wilberforce,\nwho lifted the chains from the bondmen, has said: \"I never knew\nhappiness until I found Christ as a Savior. Read the Bible! Bead the\nBible! Through all my perplexities and distresses I never read any\nother book, I never knew the want of any other.\" We are certainly not\ndespising the science which is worthy of a name, nor are we forgetting\nany proposition which has found a place in the world's thought, if we\nlook into the face of Sir John Herschel, who tells us that \"all human\ndiscoveries seem to be made only for the purpose of confirming more\nand more strongly the truths contained in the holy Scriptures.\" It is\ntruly no part of wisdom for us to conclude that for scientific reasons\nwe ought to forsake our Bible when Professor Dana avers: \"The grand\nold book of God still stands; and this old earth, the more its leaves\nare turned and pondered, the more will it sustain and illustrate the\nsacred Word.\"\n\nSurely it is not the hour dogmatically to withdraw this book, which\nhas proved the basis of civilization. Professor Lyell, the great\nEnglish geologist, tells us: \"In the year 1806 the French Institute\nenumerated no less than eighty geological theories which were hostile\nto the Scriptures, but not one of these theories is held today.\"\nBacon's remark is still true: \"There never was found in any age of the\nworld either religion or law that did so highly exalt the public good\nas the Bible.\" And John Marshall and Prince Bismarck agree with Daniel\nWebster when he says: \"If we abide by the principles taught in the\nBible our country will go on prospering and to prosper; but if we and\nour posterity neglect its instructions and authority no man can tell\nhow sudden a catastrophe may overwhelm us and bury all our glory in\nprofound obscurity.\" There is not an anarchist in America who does not\nclap his hands when he hears a Bible with the Ten Commandments and the\nSermon on the Mount denounced. Indeed, the civilization in which we\nstand, as compared with the barbarism out of which we have been led\nby the Bible, would make William Henry Seward's assertion only a mild\nstatement of the truth when he says: \"The whole hope of human progress\nis suspended on the ever-growing influence of the Bible.\" I prefer\nlawyers like these to lead American public opinion. Part of the\nservice of these men has been that they have shown theology that the\nBible is not a set of texts on a dead level of authority and equal\nvalue, but the revealing, slow and sure, of an inspiration obeyed by a\ncertain people in the realm of morals like that inspiration obeyed by\nanother people in the realm of art, and its test is: Does the Bible's\nultimate message, its crowning commandment of Christ's life and love,\nproduce goodness in morals? just as the test of the long revelation\nof beauty in his ancestors and the Greek is, does its ultimate\ncommandment produce goodness in art.\n\nChristianity does not ask: \"What think ye of the Bible?\" It asks:\n\"What think ye of Christ?\" There the throne is set, and so majestic is\nHis glory that the moment we come into His presence we are judged. The\nJudge of the earth has taken His place in thought, history and hope.\nHe is not on trial, and He asks no question as to what man thinks of\nthe book which has enthroned Him in literature. The test is placed in\nmy conduct and yours; each may say with Michael Bruce, who left these\nwords on the fly-leaf of his Bible:\n\n  'Tis very vain of me to boast\n  How small a price this Bible cost;\n  The day of judgment will make clear\n  'Twas very cheap or very dear.\n\nShall we go forward with our Bible or backward without it? Infidelity\nhas always forgotten that, so far as it has an eye for liberty and\nhumanity, the Christianity not of sects but of the Bible has furnished\nit and trained it. The liberalism which puts its Bible aside will\nacknowledge that a Christless humanity culminated in Rome. Skepticism\nis often eloquent when it tries to show how much \"fragments of Roman\nart\" had to do with the making of modern civilization. Now, as Rome\nmarks the height to which humanity without a Bible ascended, it would\nseem that this would be just the point where free and untrammeled\nthought and the fullest intellectual liberty would be found. Right\nthere, where a Christless race was supreme, ought to be the place\nwhere the liberty abounded which the religion of Christ is said to\ndestroy.\n\nWhose program for the production of intellectual and spiritual liberty\ncan liberals accept? Hoarse is the cry: The Bible is to be cast out.\nWe look and behold men who have these opinions sitting on the throne\nof the Caesars. Now, one would suppose the intellect of that whole\nrealm would have fair play. There was no Bible there to fetter or to\nannoy. This ought to be the halcyon age for \"the liberty of man, woman\nand child.\" These rulers have the same dignified abhorrence for all\nkinds of religion. The skeptic Lucretius says: \"The fear of the lower\nworld must be sent headlong forth. It poisons life to its lowest\ndepths; it spreads over all things the blackness of death; it leaves\nno pleasure unalloyed.\" I match the Roman with the phrase of a recent\norator of this school who spoke of the soldiers dead, as now \"sleeping\nbeneath the shadows of the clouds, careless alike of sunshine or of\nstorm, each in the windowless palace of rest.\" There was no window in\nthe grave when more illustrious and original skeptics talked about it.\nModern infidelity has many expressions on the future after death which\nsound like the old Roman distich, \"I was not, and became; I was, and\nam no more.\"\n\nIts orator, bending over the body of his dear brother, said nothing\nmore touching than did Tacitus over the grave of Agricola, as he\nwrote: \"If there is a place for the spirits of the pious; if, as the\nwise suppose, great souls do not become extinct with their bodies;\nif\"--oh, that age of \"if\" ought to have been an age when every brain\nwas free and no thought or sentiment were a chain. The Bible of\nChristianity was not powerful enough to throttle anybody. Its pages\nwere not all written; its authors were hunted and outcast. Morals,\ntoo, ought to have been all right, for we are told that they are\nindependent of God and Christ.\n\nBut what is the fact? Strangely enough, in that age, when nearly every\nmonarch, or poet, or philosopher was a humorous skeptic and they had\nno Christian religion to \"bind their hands,\" in an age when nothing\nbut this sort of infidelity was supreme, Seneca, to whom connoisseurs\nin ethics blandly turn when they grow weary of the strenuous Paul or\nthe pensive John, Seneca, while he wrote a book on poverty, has a\nfortune of $15,000,000, with a house full of citrus tables made of\nveined wood brought from Mount Atlas. While he framed moral precepts\nwhich we are besought to substitute for the Sermon on the Mount, he\nwas openly accused of constant and shameless iniquity, and was leading\nhis distinguished and tender pupil, Nero, into those practises and\npreparing him for those atrocities which Seneca himself had upon his\nown soul while he wrote his book on clemency. At that hour the Bible\nChristianity offered to the world's heart and aspiration, not a book,\nnot a theorist of morals, but a man for the leadership of humanity,\nand, of that Man the literary and calm French skeptic says: \"Jesus\nwill never be surpassed.\" In the age of Rome, when people were not\nburdened by churches or Bibles, Lucian says: \"If any one loves wealth\nand is dazed by gold; if any one measures happiness by purple and\npower; if any one brought up among flatterers and slaves has never had\na conception of liberty, frankness and truth; if any one has wholly\nsurrendered himself to pleasure, full tables, carousals, lewdness,\nsorcery, and deceit, let him go to Rome.\" There was no Bible either\nto preach against it or to interfere with it. These things were the\nproduct then, as they are now, of infidelity. Whenever the world\nwishes a civilization so barbarous as that, the reviler of the Bible\nmust create it, for they have the applause of evil and the good-will\nof crime. In the age of Rome, when this skepticism was the creed of\nthe State, Nero got tired of the goddess Astarte, and murdered his own\nbrother, his wife, and his mother, and the senate was so affected with\nthe same opinion that they heard his justification and proceeded to\nheap new honors upon him. He threw the preacher Paul into jail, but\nthere Paul wrought out the impulse of Europe. In the age when the\ngreat Livy said that \"neglect of gods\" had come, Caligula let loose\nhis imperial frenzy, and every stream of blood that could be sent\ntoward the sea carried its red tide. In that age when, like later\neloquent critics, Ennius said that he did not believe that the gods\nthought of human beings, \"for if the gods concerned themselves about\nthe human race the good would prosper and the bad suffer,\" the\ncourtesan was kept for pleasure and the wife for domestic slavery. In\nthat happy age of unbelief, when Menander sung \"the gods do not care\nfor men,\" \"the homes were,\" according to Juvenal, \"broken up before\nthe nuptial garland faded\"; and according to Tertullian, \"they married\nonly to be divorced.\" Friends exchanged wives; infanticide and other\nhellish crimes were common. This is what that spirit, in its purity,\ndid for the home, when there was no Bible to read at its hearthstone\nand no New Testament to put into the hands of young lovers departing\nto make a new rooftree.\n\nLabor will some day be too liberal to give up its Bible. In that age,\nwhen \"God was dead\"; in that age, when \"the gods had abdicated\";\nthey said, \"the mechanic's occupation is degrading. A workshop is\nincompatible with anything noble.\" The curse of slavery had blotted\nthe name of labor, and they agreed that \"a purchased laborer is better\nthan a hired one,\" and thousands of prison-like dwellings rose to\nconceal the myriads of slaves. In that age Nero, who had the same\nopinion about God which the vaunting spirit which calls itself liberal\nhas today, had a \"golden house\" as large as a city, with colonnades a\nmile long, and within it a statue of Nero 120 feet high. That is what\nthe theory of infidelity did for labor and the working man when it\nwas on the throne. Do you wonder that from that day to this the\n\"carpenter's son\" of the Bible has been scoffed at by this infidelity?\n\nIn that age, when the theories of infidelity ruled, the gladiators\nmade wet with their blood the great enclosure of the arena. The women\nand timid girls of Rome gave lightly the sign of death. The crowd\nshook the building with applause as the palpitating body was dragged\nby a hook into the death-chamber, and slaves turned up the bloody soil\nand covered the blood-dabbled earth with sand that the awful amusement\nmight go on. All this was allowed by infidelity in its purity, before\nit had been influenced by the Christian's Bible into believing that\nsuch things are atrocious.\n\nOh, when I hear infidelity prate of the horrors of slavery and defend\na Godless theory of the State, I remember that those who had it in its\npurity did not regard the slave as a man. When I read the story of\nslavery and hear an exponent of free thought say, \"The doctrine that\nwoman is a slave or serf of man--whether it comes from hell or heaven,\nfrom God or demon, from the golden streets of the New Jerusalem, or\nthe very Sodom of perdition--is savagery pure and simple,\" I say,\n\"That is so, but just that was the ruling idea when infidelity was on\nthe throne of Rome.\" And only where the Bible has gone and triumphed\nhas woman the privileges which are thus praised.\n\nWhen I hear it said: \"Slavery includes all other crimes. It is the\njoint product of the kidnaper, pirate, thief, murderer, and hypocrite.\nIt degrades labor and corrupts leisure. To lacerate the naked back, to\nsell wives, to steal babes, to debauch your soul--this is slavery,\" I\nanswer: \"That is so,\" and I add that all these and a thousand other\ndamnable features of slavery were seen in Rome when the whole Roman\npeople felt and spoke about the message of the Bible just as your type\nof liberalism does today.\n\nTo all this wretched state of man what offers came from Seneca, whom\nskepticism quotes as a moralist? Why, he said: \"Admire only thyself\";\nand when he saw that a man must get out of himself, he said: \"Give\nthyself to philosophy.\" Not philosophy, but the power of the Bible's\nChrist has lifted man upward to his highest life.\n\nIf ever anti-Christianity had a chance to show its beauty, it was when\nit was at its supreme strength, and when Christianity was a babe in\nthe manger; and these are only suggestions of the hell it dug for man\nat Rome. You say that it was not what skepticism is at the present\nday, and I acknowledge that it is so. Why? Because nineteen centuries\nhave rolled like waves of light between, and Christ has improved it\nin spite of itself. Never had the world so good a chance to see what\nalmost absolute skepticism and unbelief could and would do for the\nliberty of the human soul as then. But when the thrones of Rome were\noccupied with men who held the same opinion of the Bible as he does\ntoday, what was the freedom of the race?\n\nThe scene all comes back. Here is a little, obscure set of poor people\nwho follow the words and life of the son of a carpenter. They are\npowerful in nothing that Rome calls power. But Rome says that they\nshall not think that way. Celsus, from whom our less scholarly\nskepticism is ready to borrow arguments, was not enough for the new\nthought in the arena of debate, and they cried for another arena. Let\nus remember that unbelief, in its purity at that date, was so offended\nat nothing as at the fact that the Church said: \"Christian justice\nmakes all equal who bear the name of man,\" and that Paul said: \"There\nis neither bond nor free, but ye are all one in Christ Jesus.\" Nothing\nso offended the representative of free thought in that period as\nthe fact that a rich Roman, in the time of Trajan, having become a\nChristian, presented freedom to his 1,250 slaves on an Easter day.\nAnd, in all that time, when poor Christians with the funds of the\nChurch were privately buying the freedom of slaves, I do not find\nthat a base liberalism believed in liberty. Neither did it believe in\nfreedom of thought. It is the blossom of egotism; it has nothing to\nwhich it bows; it beholds no majesty to which it can look up. It is\nsublime self-conceit, and it has no hesitancy in telling the whole\nhuman race that at its grandest moments it has been wrong. This\negotism dared to become active in Rome, and it asked the Christians,\nin the person of the Emperor, to worship him, and to strew incense\nabout him. \"I will honor the Emperor,\" said Theophilus, \"not by\nworshiping him, but by praying for him.\" Such men as that infidelity\nkindly put to death. Around their quivering limbs the infidelity of\nthat day made the fagots to flame, and it taught the red tongues of\ncruel death to creep about their smoking bodies.\n\nMen who believed that the Bible's influence was what infidelity says\nit is, made the funeral pyre for Polycarp, the populace bringing fuel\nfor the fire, and while the flames made a glory of their lambent\nglare, he cried out: \"Six and eighty years have I served him and he\nhas done me nothing but good, and how could I curse him, my Lord\nand Savior. If you would know what I am, I tell you frankly, I am a\nChristian.\" He did his own thinking, and was brave enough to avow his\nopinion, for which hate of Christianity duly burned him. This was the\nway infidelity treated free speech. In that way it unchained the soul\nof Polycarp. Infidelity's idea of Christianity sent the martyrs of\nNumidia and Paulus out of the world while they were praying for their\nmurderers. Who believed in freedom then? Infidelity's idea of the\nmessage of the Bible followed the Christian like a wild beast, and\nin the catacomb of Calixtus drew from the pursued soul the pathetic\nexclamation: \"Oh, sorrowful times, when we can not even in caves\nescape our foes!\" And all this was true, because they said,\n\"Recompense to no man evil for evil\"; \"Pray for them that despitefully\nuse you and persecute you.\"\n\nThis spirit of hate has had at least one holiday at the expense of\nChristian faith. On the night of the 18th of July, 64, Rome was swept\nwith fire. Six days and nights it raged. Ruined was the world's\nmetropolis and excited were the wo-stricken people. Nero, whose\nopinions of Christianity, by the way, were wonderfully like the\norator's, was king, and the people suspected that this royal monster\ndid it. Men told of how he exulted over the sea of flame as he watched\nit from the tower of Maecenas; and whatever the truth of this may be,\nit is certain that for the rage of the people Nero must have a victim,\nand Tacitus tells us that he charged the Christians with the crime.\nThen opened in Rome the awful carnival of bloodshed that the orator\nnever mentions, in which horrible modes of torture and excruciating\nmethods of producing pain vied with each other in satisfying the\ndemands of death. Women bound to raging bulls and dragged to death\nwere not without the companionship of others who, in the evening, in\nNero's garden, were coated with pitch, covered with tar, bound to\nstakes of pine, lighted with fire, and sent to run aflame with the\nhatred of Christianity. Through the crowd of sufferers a gentleman,\nwho was ultra-liberal as the orator, drove about, fantastically\nattired as a charioteer, and the people were wild with delight.\nDomitian had the same ideas, and severe were his persecutions of the\nnew heresy. This was the day on which infidelity was so full of the\nlove of freedom that it cried: \"The Christians to the lions!\"\n\nAnd so I might recount to you how for hundreds of years the Church\nfound out how early and unchristianized infidelity loved freedom of\nthought. To a type of liberals, it has for years seemed a joy to go\nto the places in the old world and note how intolerant the Church has\nbeen. Now I suggest to any one that he go and visit some of the places\nwhere men who thought of Christianity as negativism thinks showed\ntheir faith and its fruits. Let him go to the Colosseum and ask the\nwinds that moan over its ruins what they know of the history\nof infidelity. The winds will hush in that wreck of stupendous\nmagnificence, and with an eloquence gathered from seventeen centuries\nthey will tell him a story that will cause a flow of tears, for much\nof infidelity is of noble heart. They will tell him how the marble\nseats were crowded with thousands; again will sweep upward the shout\nof the excited throng; before him there will lie a half-dead Christian\nmartyr, and near that pool of blood will stand a lion who has satiated\nhis horrid thirst.\n\nThey will tell him how infidelity made that splendid place a temple\nof the furies, how it laughed and yelled and applauded, as it amused\nitself with that spectacle of horror. They will tell him how the\nunderground passages served to keep and cage wild beasts, and how\nthose who then hated Christianity starved the fierce lion until his\neyes rolled in hot hunger and his teeth were sharpened with its agony.\nThey will tell him how the infidelity of that day put balls of fire\non the backs of the lions, and how the madness of their passion was\nincreased by scattering hated colors about, tearing the beasts with\niron hooks and beating them with cruel whips. They will tell how the\nChristian was made to fight these infuriated beasts without weapons,\nwhile infidelity was frantic with applause. It said \"no\" to the torn\nbody yonder, that was mangled and supplicating in blood for life. I\nwould have him stand there until, in after years, in a nobler strain\nthan that of Byron, he could say:\n\n  And thou didst shine, thou rolling moon, upon\n  All this, and cast a wide and tender light,\n  Which softened down the hoar austerity\n  Of rugged desolation.\n\n          *       *       *       *       *\n\n  Till the place\n  Became religion, and the heart ran o'er\n  With silent worship of the great of old!\n  The dead but sceptered sovereigns who still rule\n  Our spirits from their urns.\n\nSo long as I know what this book has been and done, so long as man's\nhistory will not allow me to risk the interests of society with the\ninfidelity which has so often demoralized it, so long will I yearn to\nget the Bible and its message to all men. It has been our world's best\nbook. With this book as inspiration and resource, William Tyndale\nand Miles Coverdale were so to continue and complete the task of The\nVenerable Bede and John Wyclif as to make an epoch in the history of\nthat language to be used by Shakespeare and Burke--an era as distinct\nas that which Luther's Bible so soon should mark in the history of a\nlanguage to be such a potent instrument in the hands of Goethe and\nHegel. For this very act of heresy, Tyndale was to be called \"a\nfull-grown Wyclif,\" and Luther \"the redeemer of his mother-tongue.\"\nWith the Bible, Calvin was to conceive republics at Geneva, and\nHolbein to paint, in spite of the iconoclasm of the Reformation, the\nfaces of Holy Mother and Saint, and in spite of the cruelty of the\nChurch, scripturally conceived satires illustrating the sale of\nindulgences. With that book Gustavus Vasa was to protect and nurture\nthe freedom of the land of flowing splendors, while Angelo was\ntranscribing sacred scenes upon the Sistine vault or fixing them in\nstone. Reading this book, More was to die with a smile; Latimer,\nCranmer, and Ridley to perish while illuminating with living torches,\nand the Anabaptist to arouse the sympathies of Christendom by his\nagonies. With this book in hand, Shakespeare was to write his plays;\nRaleigh was to die, knight, discoverer, thinker, statesman, martyr;\nBacon to lay the foundation of modern scientific research--three stars\nin the majestic constellation about Henry's daughter. With this Bible\nopen before them the English nation would behold the Spanish Armada\ndashed to pieces upon the rocks, while Edmund Spenser mingled his\ndelicious notes with the tumult of that awful wreck.\n\nThis book was to produce the edict of Nantes, while John of Barneveld\nwould give new life to the command of William the Silent--\"Level\nthe dikes; give Holland back to the ocean, if need be,\" thus making\npreparation for the visit of the Mayflower pilgrims to Leyden or\nDelfthaven. Their eyes resting upon its pages, Selden and Pym were to\ngo to prison, while Grotius dreamed of the rights of man in peace and\nwar, and Guido and Rubens were painting the joys of the manger or the\nsorrows of Calvary. His hand resting upon this book, Oliver Cromwell\nwould consolidate the hopes and convictions of Puritanism into a sword\nwhich should conquer at Nasby, Marston Moor and Dunbar, leave to the\nthrone of Charles I, a headless corpse, and create, if only for an\nhour's prophecy, a commonwealth of unbending righteousness. With that\nvolume in their homes, the Swede and the Huguenot, the Scotch-Irishman\nand the Quaker, the Dutchman and the freedom-loving cavalier, were to\nplan pilgrimages to the West, and establish new homes in America. With\nthat book in the cabin of the _Mayflower_, venerated and obeyed by\nsea-tossed exiles, was to be born a compact from which should spring\na constitution and a government for the life of which all these\nnationalities should willingly bleed and struggle, under a conqueror\nwho should rise from the soil of the cavaliers, and unsheath his sword\nin the colony of the Puritans.\n\nOut of that Bible were to come the \"Petition of Right,\" the national\nanthem of 1628, the \"Grand Remonstrance,\" and \"Paradise Lost.\" With\nit, Blake and Pascal should voyage heroically in diverse seas. In its\ninfluence Jeremy Taylor should write his \"Liberty of Prophesying,\"\nSir Matthew Hale his fearless replies, while Rembrandt was placing on\ncanvas little Dutch children, with wooden shoes, crowding to the feet\nof a Jewish Messiah.\n\nIts lines, breathing life, order, and freedom, would inspire\nJohn Bunyan's dream, Algernon Sidney's fatal republicanism, and\nPuffendorf's judicature. With them, William Penn would meet the\nIndian of the forest, and F\u00e9nelon, the philosopher, in his meditative\nsolitude. Locke and Newton and Leibnitz would carry it with them in\npathless fields of speculation, while Peter the Great was smiting\nan arrogant priest in Russia, and William was ascending the English\nthrone. From its poetry Cowper, Wordsworth, Tennyson, and Browning\nwould catch the divine afflatus; from its statesmanship Burke,\nRomilly, and Bright would learn how to create and redeem institutions;\nfrom its melodies Handel, Bach, Mendelssohn, and Beethoven would write\noratorios, masses, and symphonies; from its declaration of divine\nsympathy Wilberforce, Howard, and Florence Nightingale were to\nemancipate slaves, reform prisons, and mitigate the cruelties of war;\nfrom its prophecies Dante's hope of a united Italy was to be realized\nby Cavour, Garibaldi, and Victor Emmanuel. Looking upon the family\nBible as he was dying, Andrew Jackson said: \"That book, sir, is the\nrock on which the Republic rests\"; and with her hand upon that book,\nVictoria, England's queen, was to sum up her history as a power\namid the nations of the earth, when, replying to the question of an\nambassador: \"What is the secret of England's superiority among the\nnations?\" she would say: \"Go tell your prince that this is the secret\nof England's political greatness,\"\n\nBeloved friends, when spurious liberalism, with all her literature,\nproduces such a roll-call as this; when out of her pages I may see\ncoming a nobler set of forces for the making of manhood, then, and\nonly then, will I give up my Bible; then, and only then, will I cease\nto pray and labor that it may be given to all the world.\n\n\n\n\nHILLIS\n\nGOD THE UNWEARIED GUIDE\n\nBIOGRAPHICAL NOTE\n\n\nNewell Dwight Hillis was born at Magnolia, Iowa, in 1858. He first\nbecame known as a preacher of the first rank during his pastorate over\nthe large Presbyterian church in Evanston, Illinois. This reputation\nled to his being called to the Central Church, Chicago, in which he\nsucceeded Dr. David Swing, and where from the first he attracted\naudiences completely filling one of the largest auditoriums in\nChicago. In 1899 he was called to Plymouth Church, Brooklyn, to\nsucceed Dr. Lyman Abbott in the pulpit made famous by the ministry\nof Henry Ward Beecher. By his strong personality and mental gifts he\ndraws to his church a large and eager following. His best known books\nare \"A Man's Value to Society,\" and \"The Investment of Influence.\"\n\n\n\n\nHILLIS\n\nBorn in 1858\n\nGOD THE UNWEARIED GUIDE[1]\n\n[Footnote 1: By permission of the _Brooklyn Daily Eagle_. Copyright,\n1905.]\n\n_Comfort ye, comfort ye, my people, saith your God, &c._--Isaiah xl.,\n1-31. _He shall not fail, nor be discouraged_.--xliv., 4.\n\n\nThis is an epic of the unwearied God, and the fainting strength of\nman. For splendor of imagery, for majesty and elevation, it is one\nof the supreme things in literature. Perhaps no other Scripture has\nexerted so profound an influence upon the world's leaders. Luther read\nit in the fortress of Salzburg, John Brown read it in the prison\nat Harper's Ferry. Webster made it the model of his eloquence,\nWordsworth, Carlyle and a score of others refer to its influence upon\ntheir literary style, their thought and life. Like all the supreme\nthings in eloquence, this chapter is a spark struck out of the fires\nof war and persecution. Its author was not simply an exile--he was a\nslave who had known the dungeon and the fetter. Bondage is hard, even\nfor savages, naked, ignorant, and newly drawn from the jungle, but\nslavery is doubly hard for scholars and prophets, for Hebrew merchants\nand rulers.\n\nThis outburst of eloquence took its rise in a war of invasion. When\nthe northern host swept southward, and overwhelmed Jerusalem, the\nonrushing wave was fretted with fire; later, when the wave of war\nretreated, it carried back the detritus of a ruined civilization. The\nstory of the siege of Jerusalem, the assault upon its gates, the fall\nof the walls, all the horrors of famine and of pestilence, are given\nin the earlier chapters of this wonderful book. The homeward march\nof the Persian army was a kind of triumphal procession in which the\nHebrew princes and leaders walked as captives. The king marched in the\nguise of a slave, with his eyes put out, followed by sullen princes,\nwith bound hands, and unsubdued hearts. As slaves the Hebrews crossed\nthe Euphrates at the very point where Xenophon crossed with his\nimmortal ten thousand. In the land of bondage the exiles were planted,\nnot in military prisons, but in gangs, working now in the fields, now\nin the streets of the city, and always under the scourge of soldiers.\nWhen thirty years had passed the forty thousand captives were\nscattered among the people, one brother in the palace, and another a\nslave in the fields. Soon their religion became only a memory, their\nlanguage was all but forgotten, their old customs and manner of life\nwere utterly gone. But God raised up two gifted souls for just such an\nemergency as this. One youth, through sheer force of genius, climbed\nto the position of prime minister, while a young girl through her\nloveliness came to the king's palace. One day an emancipation\nproclamation went forth, from a king who had come to believe in the\nunseen God who loved justice, and would overwhelm oppression and\nwrong. The good news went forth on wings of the wind. Making ready\nfor their return to their homeland, all the captives gathered on the\noutskirts of the desert. It was a piteous spectacle. The people were\nbroken in health, their beauty marred, their weapon a staff, their\ngarments the leather coat, their provisions pieces of moldy bread, and\ntheir path fifteen hundred miles of sands, across the desert. To such\nan end had come a disobedient and sinful generation!\n\nIn that hour, beholding these exiles and captives, a flood of emotions\nrushed over the poet; he saw those bound who should conquer; he saw\nthat men were slaves who should be kings. Then, with a rush, an\nimmeasurable longing shivers through him like a trumpet call. Oh, to\nsave them! To perish for their saving! To die for their life, to be\noffered for them all! In an abandon of grief and sympathy, he began\nto speak to them in words of comfort and hope. At first these exiles,\ndumb with pain and grief, listened, but listened with no light\nquivering in the eye, and no hope flitting like sunshine across the\nface. Their yesterdays held bondage, blows and degradation; their\ntomorrow held only the desert and the return to a ruined land. Then\nthe word of the Lord came upon the poet. What if the night winds did\ngo mourning through the deserted streets of their capital! What if\ntheir language had decayed and their institutions had perished? What\nif the farmer's field was only a waste of thorns and thickets, and the\ntowns become heaps and ruins! What if the king of Babylon and his\narmy has trampled them under foot, as slaves trample the shellfish,\ncrushing out the purple dye that lends rich color to a royal robe?\n\"Comfort ye, comfort ye, my people.\" Is the way long and through a\ndesert? \"Every valley shall be exalted, every mountain and hill shall\nbe made low.\" Has slavery worn man's strength to nothingness until he\nis as weak as the broken reed and the withered grass? The spirit of\nthe Lord will revive the grass, trampled down by the hoofs of war\nhorses. Soon the bruised root shall redden into the rose and the\nfluted stem climb into the tree. And think you if God's winds can\ntransform a spray and twig into a trunk fit for foundation of house or\nmast of ship, that eternal arms can not equip with strength the hand\nof patriot?\n\nIs the Shepherd and Leader of His little flock unequal to their\nguidance across the desert? \"Behold the Lord will come with a strong\narm; he shall feed his flock like a shepherd and he shall gather the\nlambs in his arms and carry them in his bosom.\" What! Man's hand\nunequal to the task of rebuilding Jerusalem? Hath not God pledged His\nstrength to the worker, that God whose arm strikes out worlds as the\nsmith strikes out sparks upon the anvil? Is not man's helper that God\nwho dippeth up the seas in the hollow of His hand? Who weighs the\nmountains with scales and the hills in the balance? What! Thine\nenemies too strong for thee? Why, God looketh upon all the nations and\nenemies of the earth as but a drop in the bucket. He sendeth forth His\nbreath, and the tribes disappear as dust is blown from the balance.\nThen the trumpet call shivered through these exiles. \"Hast thou not\nknown? Have the sons of the fathers never heard of the everlasting\nGod, the Lord, Creator of the ends of the earth? Fainteth not, neither\nis weary!\" Heavy is the task, but the Eternal giveth power and\nstrength. Even tho young patriots and heroes faint and fall, they that\nwait upon the Lord shall renew their strength. While fulfilling their\ntask of rebuilding they shall mount up with wings as eagles, they\nshall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint. Oh, what a\nword is this! What page in literature is comparable to it for comfort!\nWonderful the strength of the warrior! Mighty the influence of the\nstatesman! All powerful seems the inventor, but greater still the poet\nwho dwells above the clang and dust of time, with the world's secret\ntrembling on his lips.\n\n  He needs no converse nor companionship,\n  In cold starlight, whence thou can not come,\n  The undelivered tidings in his breast,\n  Will not let him rest.\n  He who looks down upon the immemorable throng,\n  And binds the ages with a song.\n  And through the accents of our time,\n  There throbs the message of eternity.\n\nAnd so the unwearied God comforted the fainting strength of man.\n\nPrimarily, this glorious outburst was addrest to the exiles as heads\nof families. The father's strength was broken and his children had\nbeen crusht and ground to earth. The ancient patrimony was gone; he\nhad gathered his little ones in from the huts where slaves dwelt. He\nwas leading his little band of pilgrims into a desert. But the prophet\nspoke to the exiles as to men who believed that the family was the\ngreat national institution. With us, the family is important, but with\nthese Hebrew exiles the family was everything. For them the home was\nthe spring from whence the mighty river rolled forth. The family was\nthe headwaters of national, industrial, social and religious life.\nEvery father was revered as the architect of the family fortune. The\nfirst ambition of every young Hebrew was to found a family. Just as\nabroad, a patrician gentleman builds a baronial mansion, fills it with\nart treasures, hangs the shields and portraits of his ancestors upon\nthe walls, hoping to hand the mansion forward to generations yet\nunborn, so every worthy Hebrew longed to found a noble family. How\nkeen the anguish, therefore, of this exile in the desert! What a scene\nis that of the exiles upon the edge of the desert. Darkness is upon\nthe land and the fire burns low into coals. Worn and exhausted,\nchildren are sleeping beside the mother. Here is an old man, lying\napart, broken and bitter in spirit--one son stands forth a dim\nfigure--looking down upon his aged parents, upon the wife of his\nbosom and upon his little children. Standing under the stars, he\nmeditates his plans. How shall he care for these, when he returns to\nhis ruined estate? In the event of death, what arm shall lift a shield\nabove these little ones? What if sickness or death pounce upon a home\nas an eagle upon a dove, as wolves upon lambs, or as brigands descend\nfrom the mountains upon sleeping herdsmen!\n\nEvery founder of a family knows the agony of such an hour! We are in a\nworld where men are never more than a few weeks from, possible poverty\nand want; little wonder then that all men seek to provide for the\nfuture of the home and the children. But to the exile standing in the\ndarkness, with love that broods above his babes, there comes this\nword of comfort: God's solicitude for you and yours will not let Him\nslumber or sleep! God will lift up a highway for the feet of the\nlittle band of pilgrims. The eternal God shall be thy guide in the\nmarch through the desert. His pillar of cloud by day and of fire by\nnight shall stand in the sky; He shall lead the flock like a shepherd;\nHe shall gather the little ones in His arms, and carry the children\nin His bosom. And if the father fall on the march, the wings of the\nEternal shall brood the babes that are left. His right arm shall be a\nsword and His left arm a shield. The eternal God fainteth not, neither\nis weary. Having time to care for the stars, and to lead them forth by\nname, He hath time and thought also for His children. What a word is\nthis for the home! What comfort for all whose hearts turn toward their\nchildren! What a pledge to fathers for generations yet unborn! This\ntruth arms every parent for any emergency. For God is round about\nevery home as the mountains are round about Jerusalem, for bounty and\nprotection.\n\nBut the sage was also thinking of men whose hopes were broken, and\nwhose lives were baffled and beaten. These exiles, crossing the\ndesert, might have claimed for themselves the poet's phrase, \"Lo,\nhenceforth I am a prisoner of hope.\" Like Dante, they might have\ncried, \"For years my pillow by night has been wet with tears, and all\nday long have I held heartbreak at bay.\" For these whose glorious\nyouth had been exhausted by bondage, life had run to its very dregs.\nGone the days of glorious strength! Gone all the opportunities that\nbelong to the era when the heart is young, the limitations of life had\nbecome severe! Environment often is a cage against whose iron bars the\nsoul beats bloody wings in vain!\n\nHow many men are held back by one weak nerve, or organ! How many are\nshut in, and limited, and just fall short of supreme success because\nof an hereditary weakness, handed on by the fathers! How many made one\nmistake in youth in choosing the occupation and discovered the error\nwhen it was too late! How many erred in judgment in their youth,\nthrough one critical blunder, that has been irretrievable, and whose\nburden is henceforth lasht to the back! In such an hour of depression,\nIsaiah assembles the exiles, and exclaims, \"Comfort ye, comfort ye, my\npeople. Tho your young men faint and be weary, tho the strong utterly\nfail, yet God is the unwearied one; with his help thou shalt take thy\nburden, and mount up with wings as eagles; with his unwearied strength\nthou shalt run with thy load and not be weary, and walk and not\nfaint.\" For this is the experience of persecution and the reward\nof sorrow, bravely borne that the fainting strength of man is\nsupplemented by the sure help of the unwearied God.\n\nTherefore, in retrospect, exiles, prisoners, martyrs, who have\nbelieved in God seem fortunate. The endungeoned heroes often seem the\nchildren of careful good fortune and happiness. The saints, walking\nthrough the fire, stand forth as those who are dear unto God. How the\npoint of view changes events. Kitto was deaf, and in his youth his\ndeafness broke his heart, but because his ears were closed to the\ndin of life, he became the great scholar of his time, and swept the\ntreasures of the world into a single volume, an armory of intellectual\nweapons. Fawcett was blind, but through that blindness became a great\nanalytic student, a master of organization, and served all England in\nher commerce. John Bright was broken-hearted, standing above the bier,\nbut Richard Cobden called him from his sorrow to become a voice for\nthe poor, to plead the cause of the opprest, and bring about the Corn\nLaws for the hungry workers in the factories and shops. Comfort ye,\ncomfort ye, my people.\n\nLet the exile say unto himself: \"Your warfare is accomplished; your\niniquity is pardoned; the Lord's hand will give unto thee double for\nall thy sins that are forgiven.\" The great faiths and convictions of\nthe prophets and law-givers, your language and your laws and your\nliberties, have not been destroyed by captivity; rather slavery\nhas saved them. At last you know their value; in contrast with the\nidolatry of the Euphrates, the jargon of tongues, the inequality of\nrights, the organization of justice and oppression, how wonderful the\nequity of the laws of Moses! How beautiful the faith of the fathers!\nHow surely founded the laws of God. Henceforth idolatry, injustice and\nsin became as monstrous in their ugliness as they were wicked in their\nessence. Everything else might go, but not the faith of the fathers.\nPersecution was like fire on the vase; it burned the colors in. Little\nwonder that the tradition tells us that for the next hundred years,\nat stated periods, all the people in the land came together, while a\nreader repeated this chapter on the unwearied God and the fainting\nstrength of man that had recovered unto hope, men whose hopes had been\nbaffled and beaten.\n\nThe thought of an unwearied God is also the true antidote to\ndespondency. The ground of optimism is in God. When that great thinker\ndescribed certain people as without God and without hope, there was\nsure logic in his phrase, for the Godless man is always the hopeless\nman. Between no God anywhere and the one God who is everywhere, there\nis no middle ground. Either we are children, buffeted about by fate\nand circumstances, with events tossing souls about in an eternal game\nof battledore and shuttlecock, or else the world is our Father's\nhouse, and God standeth within the shadow, keeping watch above His\nown. For the man who believes in God, who allies himself to nature,\nwho makes the universe his partner, there is no defeat, and no death,\nand no interruption of his prosperity. Concede that there is a God,\nand it follows as a logical necessity that He will not permit any\nenemy to ruin your life and His plans. For a man who holds this faith\nit follows that there can be no defeat, or failure. Indeed, the\nessential difference between men is the difference in their relation\ntoward God. Here are the biographies of two great men. Both are men\nof genius, both are marvelously equipped, but their end was, oh, how\ndifferent. One is Martin Luther, who stood forth alone, affirming his\nreligious freedom, in the face of enemies and devils thick as the\ntiles on the roofs of the houses. The few friends Luther had shut him\nup in a fortress to save his life, but Luther mightily believed in\nGod. With the full consent of his marvelous gifts, he surrendered his\nlife to the will of God. Knowing that his days were as brief as\nthe withering grass, he allied himself with the Eternal. In his\ndiscouragement he read these words, \"The Everlasting God fainteth not,\nneither is weary.\" In that hour Martin Luther shouted for joy. The\nbeetling walls of the fortress were as tho they were not. Victorious\nhe went forth, in thought, ranging throughout all Germany. And going\nout, he went up and down the land telling the people that God would\nprotect him, and soon Germany was free.\n\nGoethe tells us that Luther was the architect of modern German\nlanguage and literature, and stamped himself into the whole national\nlife. The Germany of the Kaiser is simply Martin Luther written large\nin fifty millions of men. But what made Luther? There was some hidden\nenergy and spirit within him! What was this spirit in him? The spirit\nof beauty turned a lump of mud into that Grecian face about which\nKeats wrote his poem. The spirit of truth changes a little ink into\na beautiful song. The spirit of strength and beauty in an architect\nchanges a pile of bricks into a house or cathedral or gallery. And the\nthought of our unwearied God changed the collier's son into the\ngreat German emancipator. But over against this man, who never knew\ndespondency, after his vision hour, stands another German. He,\ntoo, was a philosopher, clothed with ample power, and blest with\nopportunity. But he did evil in his life, and then the heart lost\nits faith, and hope utterly perished. The more he loved pleasure and\npursued self, the more cynical and bitter he became. Pessimism set a\ncold, hard stamp upon his face, and marred his beauty. Cynicism lies\nlike a black mark across his pages. At last, in his bitterness, the\nphilosopher tells us the whole universe is a mirage, and that yonder\nsummer-making sun is a bubble that repeats its iridescent tints in the\ncolors of the rainbow. Despair ate out his heart. He became the most\nmiserable of men, and knew no freedom from sorrow and pain. And lo,\nnow the man's philosophy has perished like a bubble, his influence\nhas utterly disappeared, for his books are unread, while only an\noccasional scholar chances upon his name, tho the great summer-making\nsun still shines on and Luther's eternal God fainteth not, neither is\nweary.\n\nAre you weak, oh, patriot? Remember God is strong. Do your days of\nservice seem short, until your life is scarcely longer than the flower\nthat blooms to-day and is gone tomorrow? God is eternal, and He will\ntake care of your work. Are you sick with hope long deferred? Hope\nthou in God; He shall yet send succor. Have troubles driven happiness\nfrom thee, as the hawk drives the young lark or nightingale from its\nnest? Return unto thy rest, troubled heart, for the Lord will deal\nbountifully with thee. Are you anxious for your children? God will\nbring the child back from the far country. For the child hath wandered\nfar, the golden thread spun in a mother's heart is an unbroken thread\nthat will draw him home! For things that distress you to-day, you\nshall thank God to-morrow. Nothing shall break the golden chain that\nbinds you to God's throne. Are you hopeless and despondent because of\nyour fainting strength? Remember that the antidote for despondency is\nthe thought of the unwearied God who is doing the best He can for you,\nand whose ceaseless care neither slumbers nor sleeps.\n\nLittle wonder therefore that God became all and in all to this feeble\nband of captives, journeying across the desert back to their ruined\nlife and land. God had taken away earthly things from them, that He\nmight be their all and in all. When the earth is made poor for us,\nsometimes the heavens become rich. God closed the eyes of Milton to\nthe beauty in land and sea and sky, that he might see the companies of\nangels marching and countermarching on the hills of God. He closed the\nears of Beethoven, that he might hear the music of St. Cecilia falling\nover heaven's battlements. He gave Isaiah a slave's hut, that he might\nponder the house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. How is\nit that this prophet and poet has become companion of the great ones\nof the earth? At the time Isaiah rebelled against his bondage, but\nwhen it was all over, and the fitful fever had passed, and the fleshly\nfetters had fallen, he smiled at the things that once alarmed him, as\nhe recalled his fainting strength and the unwearied God.\n\nGone--that ancient capital. Babylon is a heap. Jerusalem a ruin! But\nthis epic of the unwearied Guide still lives! Isaiah, can never die!\nCan a chapter die that has cheered the exile in his loneliness, that\nhas comforted the soldier upon his bivouac, that has braced the martyr\nfor his execution, that has given songs at midnight to the prisoners\nin the dungeon? Out of suffering and captivity came this song of rest\nand hope. At last the poet praised the eternal God for his bonds and\nhis imprisonment. Oh, it is darkness that makes the morning light so\nwelcome to the weary watcher. It is hunger that makes bread sweet.\nIt is pain and sickness that gives value to the physician and his\nmedicine. It is business trouble that makes you honor your lawyer and\ncounselor, and it is the sense of need that makes God near.\n\nAre there any merchants here who are despondent? Remember the eternal\nGod and make your appeal to the future. Are there any parents whose\nchildren have wandered far? When they are old, the children will\nreturn to the path of faith and obedience. Are there any in whom the\nimmortal hope burns low? The smoking flax He will not quench, but will\nfan the flame into victory. Look up to-day; be comforted once more.\nWork henceforth in hope. Live like a prince. Scatter sunshine. Let\nyour atmosphere be happiness. If troubles come, let them be the dark\nbackground that shall throw your hope and faith into bolder relief.\nGod hath set His heart upon you to deliver you. Tho your hand faint,\nand the tool fall, the eternal God fainteth not, neither is weary. He\nwill bring thy judgment unto victory, immortalize thy good deeds, and\ncrown thy career with everlasting renown.\n\n\n\n\nJEFFERSON\n\nTHE RECONCILIATION\n\nBIOGRAPHICAL NOTE\n\n\nCharles Edward Jefferson was born at Cambridge, Ohio, in 1860. He came\nto public attention by the effectiveness of his preaching during a\nmost successful pastorate in Chelsea, Mass., from which he was called\nto the Broadway Tabernacle, New York, in 1897. During his New York\npastorate the Tabernacle at 34th Street has been sold and a unique\nstructure, including an apartment tower ten stories high, has been\nbuilt farther up-town. Dr. Jefferson has published several successful\nbooks. He has a mellow, sympathetic voice, of considerable range and\nflexibility, and he speaks in an easy, conversational style.\n\n\n\n\nJEFFERSON\n\nBorn in 1860\n\nTHE RECONCILIATION[1]\n\n[Footnote 1: Reprinted by permission from \"Doctrine and Deed,\"\nCopyright, 1901, by Thomas Y. Crowell & Co.]\n\n_Christ died for our sins_.--1 Cor. xv., 3.\n\n\nI want to think with you this morning about the doctrine of the\nAtonement. Having used that word atonement once, I now wish to drop\nit. It is not a New Testament word, and is apt to lead one into\nconfusion. You will not find it in your New Testament at all,\nproviding you use the Revised Version. It is found in the King James\nVersion only once, and that is in the fifth chapter of Paul's letter\nto the Romans; but a few years ago, when the revisers went to work,\nthey rubbed out the word and would allow it no place whatever in\nthe entire New Testament. They substituted for it a better\nword--reconciliation--and that is the word that will probably be used\nin the future theology of the Church. It is my purpose, then, this\nmorning, to think with you about the doctrine of the reconciliation,\nor, to put it in a way that will be intelligible to all the boys and\ngirls, I want to think with you about the \"making up\" between God and\nman.\n\nChristianity is distinctly a religion of redemption. Its fundamental\npurpose is to recover men from the guilt and power of sin. All of\nits history and its teachings must be studied in the light of that\ndominating purpose. We are told sometimes that Jesus was a great\nteacher, and so He was, but the apostles never gloried in that fact.\nWe are constantly reminded that He was a great reformer, and so He\nwas, but Peter and John and Paul seemed to be altogether unconscious\nof that fact. It is asserted that He was a great philanthropist, a man\nintensely interested in the bodies and the homes of men, and so of\ncourse He was, but the New Testament does not seem to care for that.\nIt has often been declared that He was a great martyr, a man who laid\ndown His life in devotion to the truth, and so He was and so He did,\nbut the Bible never looks at Him from that standpoint or regards\nHim in that light. It refuses to enroll Him among the teachers or\nreformers or philanthropists or the martyrs of our race. According\nto the apostolic writers, Jesus is the world's Redeemer, He was\nmanifested to take away sin. He is the Lamb of God that taketh away\nthe sin of the world. The vast and awful fact that broke the apostles'\nhearts and sent them out into the world to baptize the nations into\nHis name, was the fact which Paul was all the time asserting, \"He died\nfor our sins.\"\n\nNo one can read the New Testament without seeing that its central and\nmost conspicuous fact is the death of Jesus. Take, for instance, the\ngospels, and you will find that over one-quarter of their pages are\ndevoted to the story of His death. Very strange is this indeed, if\nJesus was nothing but an illustrious teacher. A thousand interesting\nevents of His career are passed over, a thousand discourses are never\nmentioned, in order that there may be abundant room for the telling of\nHis death. Or take the letters which make up the last half of the New\nTestament; in these letters there is scarcely a quotation from the\nlips of Jesus. Strange indeed is this if Jesus is only the world's\ngreatest teacher. The letters seem to ignore that He was a teacher or\nreformer, but every letter is soaked in the pathos of His death. There\nmust be a deep and providential reason for all this. The character of\nthe gospels and the letters must have been due to something that Jesus\nsaid or that the Holy Spirit inbreathed. A study of the New Testament\nwill convince us that Jesus had trained His disciples to see in His\nsufferings and death the climax of God's crowning revelation to the\nworld. The key-note of the whole gospel story is struck by John the\nBaptist in his bold declaration, \"Behold the Lamb of God which taketh\naway the sin of the world.\" In that declaration there was a reference\nto His death, for the \"lamb\" in Palestine lived only to be slain. As\nsoon as Jesus began His public career He began to refer in enigmatic\nphrases to His death. He did not declare His death openly, but the\nthought of it was wrapt up inside of all He said. Nicodemus comes to\nHim at night to have a talk with Him about His work, and among other\nthings, Jesus says, \"As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness\nso shall the Son of man be lifted up.\" Nicodemus did not know what He\nmeant--we know. He goes into the temple and drives out the men who\nhave made it a den of thieves, and when an angry mob surrounds Him He\ncalmly says, \"Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it\nup.\" They did not know what He meant--we know. He goes into the city\nof Capernaum, and is surrounded by a great crowd who seem to be eager\nto know the way of life. He begins to talk to them about the bread\nthat comes down from heaven, and among other things He says, \"The\nbread which I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life\nof the world.\" They did not understand what He said--we understand it\nnow. One day in the city of Jerusalem He utters a great discourse\nupon the good shepherd. \"I am the good shepherd,\" He says; \"the good\nshepherd giveth his life for the sheep.\" They did not understand\nHim--we do. In the last week of His earthly life it was reported that\na company of Greeks had come to see Him. He falls at once into a\nthoughtful mood, and when at last He speaks it is to say that \"I, if I\nbe lifted up, will draw all men unto me.\" The men standing by did not\nunderstand what He said--we understand. All along His journey, from\nthe Jordan to the cross, He dropt such expressions as this: \"I have\na baptism to be baptized with; and how am I straitened till it be\naccomplished.\" Men did not know what He was saying--it is all clear\nnow.\n\nBut while He did not talk openly to the world about His death, He did\nnot hesitate to speak about it to His nearest friends. As soon as He\nfound a man willing to confess that He was indeed the world's Messiah,\nthe Son of the living God, He began to initiate His disciples into the\ndeeper mysteries of His mission. \"From that time,\" Matthew says, \"he\nbegan to show, to unfold, to set forth the fact that he must suffer\nmany things and be killed.\" Peter tried to check Him in this\ndisclosure, but Jesus could not be checked. It is surprising how many\ntimes it is stated in the gospels that Jesus told His disciples\nHe must be killed. Matthew says that while they were traveling in\nGalilee, on a certain day when the disciples were much elated over the\nmarvelous things which He was doing, He took them aside and said\n\"Let these words sink into your ears: I am going to Jerusalem to be\nkilled.\" Later on, when they were going through Perea, Jesus took them\naside and said, \"The Son of man must suffer many things, and at last\nbe put to death.\" On nearing Jerusalem His disciples became impatient\nfor a disclosure of His power and glory. He began to tell them about\nthe grace of humility. \"The Son of man,\" He said, \"is come, not to be\nministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom\nfor many.\" On the last Tuesday of His earthly life He sat with His\ndisciples on the slope of the Mount of Olives, and in the midst of His\nhigh and solemn teaching He said, \"It is only two days now until I\nshall be crucified.\" And on the last Thursday of His life, on the\nevening of His betrayal, He took His disciples into an upper room, and\ntaking the bread and blessing it, He gave it to these men, saying,\n\"This is my body which is given for you.\" Likewise after supper He\ntook the cup, and when He had blest it gave it to them, saying, \"This\nis my blood of the covenant which is shed for you and for many for the\nremission of sins. Do this in remembrance of me.\" It would seem\nfrom this that the one thing which Jesus was desirous that all His\nfollowers should remember was the fact that He had laid down His life\nfor them. One can not read the gospels without feeling that he is\nbeing borne steadily and irresistibly toward the cross.\n\nWhen we get out of the gospels into the epistles we find ourselves\nface to face with the same tragic and glorious fact. Peter's first\nletter is not a theological treatise. He is not writing a dissertation\non the person of Christ, or attempting to give any interpretation of\nthe death of Jesus; he is dealing with very practical matters. He\nexhorts the Christians who are discouraged and downhearted to hold up\ntheir heads and to be brave. It is interesting to see how again\nand again he puts the cross behind them in order to keep them from\nslipping back. \"Endure,\" he says, \"because Christ suffered for us.\nWho his own self bore our sins in his own body on the tree.\" The\nChristians of that day had been overtaken by furious persecution.\nThey were suffering all sorts of hardships and disappointments. But\n\"suffer,\" he says, \"because Christ has once suffered for sins, the\njust for the unjust, that he might bring us to God.\" Certainly the\ngospel, according to St. Peter, was: Christ died for our sins.\n\nRead the first letter of St. John, and everywhere it breathes the\nsame spirit which we have found in the gospels and in St. Peter. John\npunctuates almost every paragraph with some reference to the cross.\nIn the first chapter he is talking about sin. \"The blood of Jesus\nChrist,\" he says, \"cleanses us from all sins.\" In the second chapter\nhe is talking about forgiveness, and this leads him to think at once\nof Jesus Christ, the righteous, \"who is the propitiation for our sins,\nand not for ours only but for the sins of the whole world.\" In the\nthird chapter he is talking about brotherly love. He is urging the\nmembers of the Church to lay down their lives, one for another,\n\"Hereby perceive we the love of God, because he laid down his life for\nus.\" In the fourth chapter he tells of the great mystery of Christ's\nlove: \"Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us,\nand sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.\" To the beloved\ndisciple evidently the great fact of the Christian revelation is that\nChrist died for our sins.\n\nBut it is in the letters of Paul that we find the fullest and most\nemphatic assertion of this transcendent fact. It will not be possible\nfor me to quote to you even a half of what he said on the subject. If\nyou should cut out of his letters all the references to the cross, you\nwould leave his letters in tatters. Listen to him as he talks to his\nconverts in Corinth: \"First of all I delivered unto you that which\nI also received, how that Christ died for our sins.\" That was the\nforemost fact, to be stated in every letter and to be unfolded in\nevery sermon. To Saul of Tarsus, Jesus is not an illustrious Rabbi\nwhose sentences are to be treasured up and repeated to listening\ncongregations; He is everywhere and always the world's Redeemer.\nAnd throughout all of Paul's epistles one hears the same jubilant,\ntriumphant declaration, \"I live by the faith of the Son of God, who\nloved me and gave himself for me.\"\n\nLet us now turn to the last book of the New Testament, the Book of\nthe Revelation. What does this prophet on the Isle of Patmos see and\nhear, as he looks out into future ages and coming worlds? The book\nbegins with a doxology: \"Unto him that loved us, and washed us from\nour sins in his own blood, to him be glory and dominion forever and\never.\" John looks, and beholds a great company of the redeemed. He\nasks who these are, and the reply comes back, \"These are they who have\nwashed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.\" He\nlistens, and the song that goes up from the throats of the redeemed\nis, \"Worthy art thou to take the book, and to open the seals thereof;\nfor thou wast slain and didst purchase us for God with thy blood.\"\nAt the center of the great vision which bursts upon the soul of the\nexiled apostle, there is a Lamb that was slain. Whatever we may think\nof Jesus of Nazareth, there is no question concerning what the men who\nwrote the New Testament thought. To the men who wrote the book, Jesus\nwas not a Socrates or a Seneca, a Martin Luther or an Abraham Lincoln.\nHis life was not an incident in the process of evolution, His death\nwas not an episode in the dark and dreadful tragedy of human history.\nHis life is God's. greatest gift to men, His death is the climax and\nthe crowning revelation of the heart of the eternal. You can not open\nthe New Testament anywhere without the idea flying into your face,\n\"Christ died for our sins.\"\n\nHow different all this is from the atmosphere of the modern Church.\nWhen you go into the average church to-day, what great idea meets you?\nDo you find yourselves face to face with the fact that Christ died\nfor our sins? I do not think you will often hear that great truth\npreached. In all probability you will hear a sermon dealing with the\ndomestic graces, or with business obligations, or with political\nduties and complications. You may hear a sermon on city missions, or\non foreign missions; you may hear a man dealing with some great evil,\nor pointing out some alarming danger, or discussing some interesting\nsocial problem, or urging upon men's consciences the performance of\nsome duty. It is not often in these modern days that you will hear\na sermon dealing with the thought that set the apostles blazing and\nturned the world upside down. And right there, I think, lies one of\nthe causes of the weaknesses of the modern Church. We have been so\nbusy attending to the things that ought to be done, we have had no\ntime to feed the springs that keep alive these mighty hopes which make\nus Christian men. What is the secret of the strength of the Roman\nCatholic Church? How is it that she pursues her conquering way, in\nspite of stupidities and blunders that would have killed any other\ninstitution? I know the explanations that are usually offered, but it\nseems to me they are far from adequate. Somebody says, But the Roman\nCatholic Church does not hold any but the ignorant. That is not true.\nIt may be true of certain localities in America, but it is not true of\nthe nations across the sea. In Europe she holds entire nations in the\nhollow of her hand; not only the ignorant, but the learned; not only\nthe low, but the high; not only the rude, but the cultured, the noble,\nand the mighty. It will not do to say that the Roman Catholic Church\nholds nobody but the ignorant. But even if it were true, it would\nstill be interesting to ascertain how she exercises such an influence\nover the minds and hearts of ignorant people--for ignorant people are\nthe hardest of all to hold. When you say that the Church can hold\nignorant men, you are giving her the very highest compliment, for\nyou are acknowledging that she is in the possession of a power which\ndemands an explanation. The very fact that she is able to bring out\nsuch hosts of wage-earning men and women in the early hours of Sunday\nmorning, men and women who have worked hard through the week, and many\nof them far into the night, but who are willing on the Lord's Day to\nwend their way to the house of God and engage in religious worship,\nis a phenomenon which is worth thinking about. How does the Roman\nCatholic Church do it? Somebody says she does it all by appealing to\nmen's fears, she scares men into penitence and devotion. Do you think\nthat that is a fair explanation? I do not think so. I can conceive how\nshe might frighten people for one generation, or for two, but I can\nnot conceive how she could frighten a dozen generations. One would\nsuppose that the spell would wear off by and by. There is a deeper\nexplanation than that The explanation is to be found in the spiritual\nnature of man. The Roman Catholic leaders, notwithstanding their\nblunders and their awful sins, have always seen that the central fact\nof the Christian revelation is the death of Jesus, and around that\nfact they have organized all their worship. Roman Catholics go to\nmass; what is the mass? It is the celebration of the Lord's Supper.\nWhat is the Lord's Supper? It is the ceremony that proclaims our\nLord's death until He comes. The hosts of worshipers that fill our\nstreets in the early Sunday morning hours are not going to church to\nhear some man discuss an interesting problem, nor are they going to\nlisten to a few singers sing; they are going to celebrate once\nmore the death of the Savior of the world. In all her cathedrals\nCatholicism places the stations of the cross, that they may tell to\nthe eye the story of the stages of His dying. On all her altars she\nkeeps the crucifix. Before the eyes of every faithful Catholic that\ncrucifix is held until his eyes close in death. A Catholic goes out of\nthe world thinking of Jesus crucified. So long as a Church holds on to\nthat great fact, she will have a grip on human minds and hearts that\ncan not be broken. The cross, as St. Paul said, a stumbling-block\nto the Jews and foolishness to the Greeks, is the power of God unto\nsalvation to every one that believes. The Catholic Church has picked\nup the fact of Jesus' death and held it aloft like a burning torch.\nAround the torch she has thrown all sorts of dark philosophies, but\nthrough the philosophies the light has streamed into the hearts and\nhomes of millions of God's children.\n\nProtestantism has prospered just in proportion as she has kept the\ncross at the forefront of all her preaching. The missionaries bring\nback the same report from every field, that it is the story of Jesus'\ndeath that opens the hearts of the pagan world. Every now and then a\ndenomination has started, determined to get rid of the cross of Jesus,\nor at least to pay scant attention to it, and in every case these\ndenominations have been at the end of the third or fourth generation\neither decaying or dead. There is no interpretation of the Christian\nreligion that has in it redeeming power which ignores or belittles the\ndeath of Christ.\n\nIf Protestantism to-day is not doing what it ought to do, and is\nmanifesting symptoms which are alarming to Christian leaders, it is\nbecause she has in these recent years been engaged so largely in\npractical duties as to forget to drink inspiration from the great\ndoctrines which must forever furnish life and strength and hope.\nIf you will allow me to prophesy this morning, I predict that the\npreaching of the next fifty years will be far more doctrinal than the\npreaching of the last fifty years has been. I imagine some of you will\nshudder at that. You say you do not like doctrinal preaching, you want\npreaching that is practical. Well, pray, what is practical preaching?\nPractical preaching is preaching that accomplishes the object for\nwhich preaching is done, and the primary object of all Christian\npreaching is to reconcile men to God. The experience of 1900 years\nproves that it is only doctrinal preaching that reconciles the heart\nto God. If, then, you really want practical preaching, the only\npreaching that is deserving the name is preaching that deals with the\ngreat Christian doctrines. But somebody says, I do not like doctrinal\npreaching. A great many people have said that within recent years. I\ndo not believe they mean what they say. They are not expressing with\naccuracy what is in their mind. They do like doctrinal preaching if\nthey are intelligent, faithful Christians, for doctrinal preaching is\nbread to hearts that have been born again. When people say they do\nnot like doctrinal preaching, they often mean that they do not like\npreaching which belongs to the eighteenth or seventeenth or sixteenth\ncenturies. They are not to be blamed for this. There is nothing that\ngets stale so soon as preaching. We can not live upon the preaching\nof a bygone age. If preachers bring out the interpretations and\nphraseology which were current a hundred years ago, people must of\nnecessity say, \"Oh, please do not give us that, we do not like such\ndoctrinal preaching.\" But doctrinal preaching need not be antiquated\nor belated, it may be fresh, it may be couched in the language in\nwhich men were born, it may use for its illustrations the images and\nfigures and analogies which are uppermost in men's imagination. And\nwhenever it does this there is no preaching which is so thrilling\nand uplifting and mighty as the preaching which deals with the great\nfundamental doctrines.\n\nIn one sense, the Christian religion never changes, in another sense\nit is changing all the time. The facts of Christianity never change,\nthe interpretations of those facts alter from age to age. It is with\nreligion as it is with, the stars, the stars never change. They move\nin their orbits in our night sky as they moved in the night sky of\nAbraham when he left his old Chaldean home. The constellations were\nthe same at the opening of our century as they were when David watched\nhis flocks on the old Judean hills. But the interpretations of the\nstars have always changed, must always change. Pick up the old charts\nwhich the astrologers made and compare them with the charts of\nastronomers of our day. How vast the difference! Listen to our\nastronomers talk about the magnitudes and disunites and composition of\nthe stars, and compare with their story that which was written in\nthe astronomy of a few centuries ago. The stellar universe has not\nchanged, but men's conceptions have changed amazingly. The facts of\nthe human body do not change. Our heart beats as the heart of Homer\nbeat, our blood flows as the blood of Julius Caesar flowed, our\nmuscles and nerves live and die as the nerves and muscles have lived\nand died in the bodies of men in all the generations--and yet, how the\ntheories of medicine have been altered from time to time. A doctor\ndoes not want to hear a medical lecturer speak who persists in using\nthe phraseology and conceptions which were accepted by the medical\nscience of fifty years ago. Conceptions become too narrow to fit the\ngrowing mind of the world, and when once outgrown they must be thrown\naside. As it is in science, so it is in religion. The facts of\nChristianity never change, they are fixt stars in the firmament of\nmoral truth. Forever and forever it will be true that Christ died for\nour sins, but the interpretations of this fact must be determined by\nthe intelligence of the age. Men will never be content with simple\nfacts, they must go behind them to find out an explanation of them.\nMan is a rational being, he must think, he will not sit down calmly in\nfront of a fact and be content with looking it in the face, he will\ngo behind it and ask how came it to be and what are its relations to\nother facts. That is what man has always been doing with the facts of\nthe Christian revelation, he has been going behind them and bringing\nout interpretations which will account for them. The interpretations\nare good for a little while, and then they are outgrown and cast\naside.\n\nA good illustration of the progressive nature of theology is found in\nthe doctrine of the atonement. All of the apostles taught distinctly\nthat Christ died for our sins. The early Christians did not attempt to\ngo behind that fact, but by and by men began to attempt explanations.\nIn the second century a man by the name of Irenaeus seized upon the\nword \"ransom\" in the sentence, \"The Son of man is come to give his\nlife a ransom for many,\" and found in that word \"ransom\" the key-word\nof the whole problem. The explanation of Irenaeus was taken up in the\nthird century by a distinguished preacher, Origen. And in the fourth\ncentury the teaching of Origen was elaborated by Gregory of Nyssa.\n\nAccording to the interpretation of these men, Jesus was the price paid\nfor the redemption of men. Paul frequently used the word redemption,\nand the word had definite meanings to people who lived in the first\nfour centuries of the Christian era. If Christ was indeed a ransom,\nthe question naturally arose, who paid the price? The answer was, God.\nA ransom must be paid to somebody--to whom was this ransom paid? The\nanswer was, the devil. According to Origen and to Gregory, God paid\nthe devil the life of Jesus in order that the devil might let humanity\ngo free. The devil, by deceit, had tricked man, and man had become his\nslave--God now plays a trick upon the devil, and by offering him the\nlife of Jesus, secures the release of man. That was the interpretation\nheld by many theologians for almost a thousand years, but in the\neleventh century there arose a man who was not satisfied with the\nold interpretation. The world had outgrown it. To many it seemed\nridiculous, to some it seemed blasphemous. There was an Italian by the\nname of Anselm who was an earnest student of the Scriptures, and he\nseized upon the word \"debt\" as the key-word of the problem. He wrote\na book, one of the epoch-making books of Christendom, which he called\n\"_Cur Deus Homo_.\" In this book Anselm elaborated his interpretation\nof the reconciliation. \"Sin,\" he said, \"is debt, and sin against an\ninfinite being is an infinite debt. A finite being can not pay an\ninfinite debt, hence an infinite being must become man in order that\nthe debt may be paid. The Son of God, therefore, assumes the form of\nman, and by his sufferings on the cross pays the debt which allows\nhumanity to go free.\" The interpretation was an advance upon that of\nOrigen and Gregory, but it was not final. It was repudiated by men of\nthe twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and finally, in the day of the\nReformation, it was either modified or cast away altogether.\n\nMartin Luther, Calvin, and the other reformers seized upon the\nword \"propitiation,\" and made that the starting-point of their\ninterpretation. According to these men, God is a great governor and\nman has broken the divine law--transgressors must be punished--if the\nman who breaks the law is not punished, somebody else must be punished\nin his stead. The Son of God, therefore, comes to earth to suffer in\nHis person the punishment that rightly belongs to sinners. He is not\nguilty, but the sins of humanity are imputed to Him, and God wreaks\nupon Him the penalty which rightfully should have fallen on the heads\nof sinners. That is known as \"the penal substitution theory.\"\n\nIt was not altogether satisfactory, many men revolted from it, and in\nthe seventeenth century a Dutchman, Hugo Grotius, a lawyer, brought\nforth another interpretation, which is known in theology as \"the\ngovernmental theory.\" He would not admit that Christ was punished.\nHis sufferings were not penal, but illustrative. \"God is the moral\ngovernor,\" said Grotius, \"his government must be maintained, law can\nnot be broken with impunity. Unless sin is punished the dignity of\nGod's government would be destroyed. Therefore, that man may see how\nhot is God's displeasure against sin, Christ comes into the world and\nsuffers the consequences of the transgressions of the race. The cross\nis an exhibition of what God thinks of sin.\" That governmental theory\nwas carried into England and became the established doctrine of the\nEnglish Church for almost three hundred years. It was carried across\nthe ocean and became the dominant theory in the New Haven school of\ntheologians, as represented by Jonathan Edwards, Dwight, and Taylor.\nThe Princeton school of theology still clung to the penal substitution\ntheory, and it was the clashing of the New Haven school and the\nPrinceton school which caused such a commotion in the Presbyterian\nChurch of sixty years ago. They are antiquated. They are too little.\nThey seem mechanical, artificial, trivial. We can say of the\ngovernmental theory what Dr. Hodge said, \"It degrades the work of\nChrist to the level of a governmental contrivance.\" If I should\nattempt to preach to you the governmental theory as it was preached by\ntheologians fifty years ago, you would not be interested in it There\nis nothing in you that would respond to it. You would simply say, \"I\ndo not like doctrinal preaching.\" Or if I should go back and take up\nthe penal substitution theory in all its nakedness and hideousness,\nand attempt to give it to you as the correct interpretation of the\ngospel, you would rise up in open rebellion and say, \"We will not\nlisten to such preaching.\" If I should go back and take up the\nAnselmic theory and attempt to show how an infinite debt must be paid\nby infinite suffering, you would say: \"Stop, you are converting God\ninto a Shylock, who is demanding His pound of flesh. We prefer to\nthink of Him as our heavenly Father.\" If I should go further back and\ntake up the old ransom theory of Origen and Gregory, I suspect\nthat some of you would want to laugh. You could not accept an\ninterpretation which represents God as playing a trick upon Satan in\norder to get humanity out of his grasp. No, those theories have all\nbeen outgrown. We have come out into larger and grander times. We have\nhigher conceptions of the Almighty than the ancients ever had. We see\nfar deeper into the Christian revelation than Martin Luther or John\nCalvin ever saw. These old interpretations are simply husks, and men\nand women will not listen to the preaching of them. If, now and then,\na belated preacher attempts to preach them, the people say, \"If that\nis doctrinal preaching, please give us something practical.\"\n\nAnd so the Church is to-day slowly working out a new interpretation of\nthe great fact that Christ died for our sins. The interpretation has\nnot yet been completed, and will not be for many years. I should like\nthis morning simply to outline in a general way some of the more\nprominent features of the new interpretation. The Holy Ghost is at\nwork. He is taking the things of Christ and showing them unto us. The\ninterpretation of the reconciliation of the future will be superior in\nevery point to any of the interpretations of the past.\n\nThe new interpretation is going to be simple, straightforward, and\nnatural. The death of Christ is not going to be made something\nartificial, mechanical, or theatrical. It is going to be the natural\nconception of the outflowing life of God.\n\nThe new interpretation is going to start from the Fatherhood of\nGod. The old theories were all born in the counting-room, or the\ncourt-house. Jesus went into the house to find His illustrations\nfor the conduct of the heavenly Father. He never went into the\ncourt-house, nor can we go there for analogies with which to image\nforth His dealings with our race. It was His custom to say, \"If you,\nbeing evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much\nmore shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them\nthat ask him.\"\n\nThe new interpretation is going to be comprehensive. It is going to be\nbuilt, not on a single metaphor, but on everything that Jesus and\nthe apostles said. Right there is where the old interpretations went\nastray. They seized upon one figure of speech and made that the\ndetermining factor in the entire interpretation. Jesus said many\nthings, and so did His apostles, and all of them must contribute to\nthe final interpretation.\n\nTwo things are to be hereafter made very clear: The first is that God\nreveals Himself in Jesus Christ. The old views were always losing\nsight of that great fact. There was always a dualism between God and\nChrist. I remember what my conception was when I was a boy. I thought\nthat God was a strict and solemn and awful king, who was very angry\nbecause men had broken His law. He was just, and His justice had\nno mercy in it. Christ, His Son, was much better-natured and more\ncompassionate, and He came forth into our world to suffer upon the\ncross that God's justice might relax a little, and His heart be opened\nto forgive our race. I supposed that that was the teaching of the\nNew Testament, it certainly was the teaching of the hymns in the\nhymn-book, if not of the preachers. And when I became a young man,\nI supposed that that was the teaching of the Christian religion. My\nheart rebelled against it. I would not accept it. I became an infidel.\nA man can not accept an interpretation of God that does not appeal to\nthe best that is in him. No man can accept a doctrine that darkens his\nmoral sense, or that confuses the distinction between right and wrong.\nI would not accept the old interpretation because my soul rose in\nrevolt against it. I shall never forget how, one evening in his study,\na minister, who had outgrown the old traditions, explained to me\nthe meaning of the reconciliation. He assured me that God is love,\ninvisible, eternal. Christ, His Son, is also love. In becoming at\none with the Son we become at one with the Father. This is the\nat-one-ment. And when that truth broke upon me my heart began to sing:\n\n  Just as I am--Thy love unknown\n  Hath broken every barrier down;\n  Now, to be Thine, yea, Thine alone,\n    O Lamb of God, I come!\n\n\nI wonder in telling this if I have not spoken the experience of many\nof you this morning. It is impossible to love God if we feel that He\nis stern and despotic, and must be appeased by the sufferings of an\ninnocent man. The New Testament nowhere lends any support to that\nidea. Everywhere the New Testament assures us that God is the lover\nof men, that He initiates the movement for man's redemption. \"God so\nloved the world that he gave his only begotten Son....\" \"Herein is\nlove: not that we loved God, but that he loved us.\" \"God commendeth\nhis love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died\nfor us.\" \"The Father spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for\nus all.\" \"He that hath seen me hath seen the Father.\" \"I and my Father\nare one.\" These are only a few of the passages in which we are told\nthat God is our Savior. When an old Scotchman once heard the text\nannounced, \"God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten\nSon,\" he exclaimed, \"Oh, that was love indeed! I could have given\nmyself, but I never could have given my boy.\" This, then, is the very\nhighest love of which it is possible for the human mind to think: the\nlove of a father that surrenders his son to sufferings and death.\n\nAnd this brings us to the second great truth which is outgrowing\nincreasingly clear in the consciousness of the Church. The death of\nJesus is the revelation of an experience in the heart of God. God is\nthe sin-bearer of the world. He bears our sins on His mind and heart.\nThere are three conceptions of God: the savage, the pagan, and the\nChristian. God, according to the savage conception, is vengeful, and\ncapricious, and vindictive. He is a great savage hidden in the sky. We\nhave all outgrown that. According to the pagan idea, He is indifferent\nto the wants and woes of men. He does not care for men. He is not\ninterested in them. He does not sympathize with them. He does not\nsuffer over their griefs. He does not feel pain or sorrow. I am afraid\nthat many of us have never gotten beyond the pagan conception of the\nAlmighty. But according to the Christian conception, God suffers.\nHe feels, and because He feels, He sympathizes, and because He\nsympathizes, He suffers. He feels both pain and grief. He carries a\nwound in His heart. We men and women sometimes feel burdened because\nof the sin we see around us; shall not the heavenly Father be as\nsensitive and responsive as we men? But somebody says that God can\nnot be happy then. Of course he can not be happy. Happiness is not an\nadjective to apply to God. Happy is a word that belongs to children.\nChildren are happy, grown people never are. One can be happy when the\nbirds are singing and the dew is on the grass, and there is no cloud\nin all the sky, and the crape has not yet hung at the door. But after\nwe have passed over the days of childhood, there is happiness no\nlonger. Some of us have lived too long and borne too much ever to be\nhappy any more. But it is possible for us to be blest. We may pass\ninto the very blessedness of God. The highest form of blessedness is\nsuffering for those we love, and shall not the Father of all men have\nin His own eternal heart that experience which we confess to be the\nhighest form of blessedness? This is the truth which is dawning like a\nnew revelation on the Church: the humanity of God. It is revealed in\nthe New Testament, but as yet we have only begun to take it in. God\nis like us men. We are like Him. We are made in His image. We are His\nchildren, and He is our Father. If we are His children, then we are\nHis heirs, and joint heirs with Christ. Not only our joys, but our\nsorrows also, are intimations and suggestions of experiences in the\ninfinite heart of the Eternal.\n\n\n\n\nMORGAN\n\nTHE PERFECT IDEAL OF LIFE\n\nBIOGRAPHICAL NOTE\n\n\nGeorge Campbell Morgan, Congregational divine and preacher, was born\nin Tetbury, Gloucestershire, England, in 1863, and was educated at the\nDouglas School, Cheltenham. He worked as a lay-mission preacher for\nthe two years ending 1888, and was ordained to the ministry in the\nfollowing year, when he took charge of the Congregational Church\nat Stones, Staffordshire. After occupying the pulpit in several\npastorates, in 1904 he became pastor of the Westminster Congregational\nChapel, Buckingham Gate, London, a position which he still occupies.\nBesides being highly successful as a pulpit orator, Dr. Morgan has\npublished many works of a religious character, among which may be\nenumerated: \"Discipleship\"; \"The Hidden Years of Nazareth\"; \"Life's\nProblems\"; \"The Ten Commandments.\" His last work, \"The Christ of\nTo-day,\" has passed through several editions.\n\n\n\n\nMORGAN\n\nBorn in 1863\n\nTHE PERFECT IDEAL OF LIFE\n\n_Jesus therefore said, When ye have lifted up the son of man, then\nshall ye know that I am he, and that I do nothing of myself, but as\nthe Father taught me, I speak these things. And he that sent me is\nwith me; he hath not left me alone; for I do always the things that\nare pleasing to him. As he spake these things, many believed on\nhim_.--John viii., 28-30.\n\n\nThe Master, you will see, in this verse lays before us three things.\nFirst of all, He gives us the perfect ideal of human life in a short\nphrase, and that comes at the end, \"the things that please him.\" Those\nare the things that create perfect human life, living in the realm of\nwhich man realizes perfectly all the possibilities of his wondrous\nbeing--\"the things that please him.\" So I say, in this phrase, the\nMaster reveals to us the perfect ideal of our lives. Then, in the\nsecond place, the Master lays claim--one of the most stupendous claims\nthat He ever made--that He utterly, absolutely, realizes that ideal.\nHe says, \"I do always the things that please him.\" And then, thirdly,\nwe have the revelation of the secret by which He has been able to\nrealize the ideal, to make the abstract concrete, to bring down the\nfair vision of divine purpose to the level of actual human life and\nexperience, and the secret is declared in the opening words: \"He that\nsent me is with me; my Father hath not left me alone.\"\n\nThe perfect ideal for my life, then, is that I live always in the\nrealm of the things that please God; and the secret by which I may do\nso is here unfolded--by living in perpetual, unbroken communion with\nGod: communion with which I do not permit anything to interfere. Then\nit shall be possible for me to pass into this high realm of actual\nrealization.\n\nIt is important that we should remind ourselves in a few sentences\nthat the Lord has indeed stated the highest possible ideal for human\nlife in these words: \"The things that please him.\" Oh, the godlessness\nof men! The godlessness that is to be found on every hand! The\ngodlessness of the men and women that are called by the name of God!\nHow tragic, how sad, how awful it is! because godlessness is always\nnot merely an act of rebellion against God, but a falling-short in our\nown lives of their highest and most glorious possibilities.\n\nHere is my life. Now, the highest realm for me is the realm where all\nmy thoughts, and all my deeds, and all my methods, and everything in\nmy life please God. That is the highest realm, because God only knows\nwhat I am; only perfectly understands the possibilities of my nature,\nand all the great reaches of my being. You remember those lines that\nTennyson sang--very beautifully, I always think:\n\n  Flower in the crannied wall,\n    I pluck you out of the crannies;--\n    Hold you here, root and all, in my hand,\n    Little Flower--but if I could understand\n  What you art, root and all, and all in all,\n    I should know what God and man is.\n\n\nBeautiful confession! Absolutely true. I hold that flower in my hand,\nand I look at it, flower and leaves and stem and root. I can botanize\nit, and then I tear it to pieces--that is what the botanist mostly\ndoes--and you put some part of it there, and some part of it there,\nand some part of it there. There is the root, there the stem, and\nthere are the leaves, and there is everything; but where is the\nflower? Gone. How did it go? When did it go? Why, when you ruthlessly\ntore it to bits. But how did you destroy it? You interfered with the\nprinciple that made it what it was--you interfered with the principle\nof life. What is life? No man can tell you. \"If I could but know what\nyou are, little flower, root and all, and all in all,\" I would know\nwhat life is, what God is, what man is. I can not.\n\nNow, if you lift that little parable of the flower into the highest\nrealm of animal life, and speak of yourself--we don't know ourselves;\ndown in my nature there are reaches that I have not fathomed yet. They\nare coming up every day. What a blest thing it is to have the Master\nat hand, to hand them over to Him as they come up, and say, \"Lord,\nhere is another piece of Thy territory; govern it; I don't know\nanything about it.\" But there is the business. I don't know myself,\nbut God knows me, understands all the complex relationships of my\nlife, knows how matter affects mind, and physical and mental and\nspiritual are blended in one in the high ideal of humanity. Oh,\nremember, man is the crowning and most glorious work of God of which\nwe know anything as yet. And God only knows man.\n\nBut here is a Man that stands amid His enemies, and He looks out upon\nHis enemies, and He says, \"I do the things that please him\"--not \"I\nteach them,\" not \"I dream them,\" not \"I have seen them in a fair\nvision,\" but \"I do them.\" There never was a bigger claim from the lips\nof the Master than that: \"I do always the things that please him.\"\n\nYou would not thank me to insult your Christian experience, upon\nwhatever level you live it, by attempting to define that statement\nof Christ. History has vindicated it. We believe it with all our\nhearts--that He always did the things that pleased God. But I have got\non to a level that I can touch now. The great ideal has come from the\nair to the earth. The fair vision has become concrete in a Man. Now,\nI want to see that Man; and if I see that Man I shall see in Him\na revelation of what God's purpose is for men, and I shall see,\ntherefore, a revelation of what the highest possibility of life is.\nNow this is a tempting theme. It is a temptation to begin to contrast\nHim with popular ideals of life. I want to see Him; I want, if I can,\nto catch the notes of the music that make up the perfect harmony which\nwas the dropping of a song out of God's heaven upon man's earth, that\nman might catch the key-note of it and make music in his own life.\nWhat are the things in this Man's life? He says: \"I have realized the\nideal--I do.\" There are four things that I want to say about Him, four\nnotes in the music of His life.\n\nFirst, spirituality. That is one of the words that needs redeeming\nfrom abuse. He was the embodiment of the spiritual ideal in life. He\nwas spiritual in the high, true, full, broad, blest sense of that\nword.\n\nIt may be well for a moment to note what spirituality did not mean in\nthe life of Jesus Christ. It did not mean asceticism. During all the\nyears of His ministry, during all the years of His teaching, you never\nfind a single instance in which Jesus Christ made a whip of cords\nto scourge Himself. And all that business of scourging oneself--an\nattempt to elevate the spirit by the ruin of the actual flesh--is\nabsolutely opposed to His view of life. Jesus Christ did not deny\nHimself. The fact of His life was this--that He touched everything\nfamiliarly. He went into all the relationship of life. He went to the\nwidow. He took up the children and held them in His arms, and looked\ninto their eyes till heaven was poured in as He looked. He didn't go\nand get behind walls somewhere. He didn't get away and say: \"Now, if I\nam going to get pure I shall do it by shutting men out.\" You remember\nwhat the Pharisees said of Him once. They said: \"This man receiveth\nsinners.\" You know how they said it. They meant to say: \"We did hope\nthat we should make something out of this new man, but we are quite\ndisappointed. He receives sinners.\"\n\nAnd what did they mean? They meant what you have so often said: \"You\ncan't touch pitch without being defiled.\" But this Man sat down with\nthe publican and He didn't take on any defilement from the publican.\nOn the other hand, He gave the publican His purity in the life of\nJesus Christ. Things worked the other way. He was the great negative\nof God to the very law of evil that you have--evil contaminates good.\nIf you will put on a plate one apple that is getting bad among twelve\nothers that are pure, the bad one will influence the others. Christ\ncame to drive back every force of disease and every force of evil by\nthis strong purity of His own person, and He said: \"I will go among\nthe bad and make them good.\" That is what He was doing the whole way\nthrough. So His spirituality was not asceticism. And if you are going\nto be so spiritual that you see no beauty in the flowers and hear no\nmusic in the song of the birds; if the life which you pass into when\nyou consent to the crucifixion of self does not open to you the very\ngates of God, and make the singing of the birds and the blossoming of\nthe flowers infinitely more beautiful, you have never seen Jesus yet.\n\nWhat was His spirituality? The spirituality of Jesus Christ was a\nconcrete realization of a great truth which He laid down in His own\nbeatitudes. What was that? \"Blest are the pure in heart, for they\nshall see God.\" Now, the trouble is we have been lifting all the good\nthings of God and putting them in heaven. And I don't wonder that you\nsing:\n\n  My willing soul would stay\n    In such a frame as this,\n  And sit and sing itself away\n    To everlasting bliss.\n\nNo wonder you want to sing yourself away to everlasting bliss, because\neverything that is worth having you have put up there. But Jesus said:\n\"Blest are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.\" If you are pure\nyou will see Him everywhere--in the flower that blooms, in the march\nof history, in the sorrows of men, above the darkness of the darkest\ncloud; and you will know that God is in the field when He is most\ninvisible.\n\nSecond, subjection. The next note in the music of His life is His\nabsolute subjection to God. You can very often tell the great\nphilosophies which are governing human lives by the little catchwords\nthat slip off men's tongues: \"Well, I thank God I am my own master.\"\nThat is your trouble, man. It is because you are your own master that\nyou are in danger of hell. A man says: \"Can't I do as I like with my\nown?\" You have got no \"own\" to do what you like with. It is because\nmen have forgotten the covenant of God, the kingship of God, that we\nhave all the wreckage and ruin that blights this poor earth of ours.\nHere is the Man who never forgot it.\n\nDid you notice those wonderful words: \"I do nothing of myself, but as\nmy Father taught me, I speak.\" He neither did nor spoke anything of\nHimself. It was a wonderful life. He stood forevermore between the\nnext moment and heaven. And the Father's voice said, \"Do this,\" and He\nsaid \"Amen, I came to do thy will,\" and did it. And the Father's voice\nsaid, \"Speak these words to men,\" and He, \"Amen,\" and He spoke.\n\nYou say: \"That is just what I do not want to do.\" I know that. We want\nto be independent; have our own way. \"The things that please God--this\nMan was subject to the divine will.\" You know the two words--if you\ncan learn to say them, not like a parrot, not glibly, but out of your\nheart--the two words that will help you \"Halleluiah\" and \"Amen.\" You\ncan say them in Welsh or any language you like; they are always the\nsame. When the next dispensation of God's dealings faces you look at\nit and say: \"Halleluiah! Praise God! Amen!\" That means, \"I agree.\"\n\nThird, sympathy. Now, you have this Man turned toward other men. We\nhave seen something of Him as He faced God: Spirituality, a sense of\nGod; subjection, a perpetual amen to the divine volition. Now, He\nfaces the crowd. Sympathy! Why? Because He is right with God, He is\nright with men; because He feels God near, and knows Him, and responds\nto the divine will; therefore, when He faces men He is right toward\nmen. The settlement of every social problem you have in this country\nand in my own land, the settlement of the whole business, will be\nfound in the return of man to God. When man gets back to God he gets\nback to men. What is behind it? Sympathy is the power of putting my\nspirit outside my personality, into the circumstances of another man,\nand feeling as that man feels.\n\nI take one picture as an illustration of this. I see the Master\napproaching the city of Nain, and around Him His disciples. He is\ncoming up. And I see outside the city of Nain, coming toward the gate\na man carried by others, dead, and walking by that bier a mother. Now,\nall I want you to look at is that woman's face, and, looking into her\nface, see all the anguish of those circumstances. She is a widow, and\nthat is her boy, her only boy, and he is dead. Man can not talk about\nthis. You have got to be in the house to know what that means. But\nlook at her face--there it is. All the sorrow is on her face. You can\nsee it.\n\nNow, turn from her quickly and look into the face of Christ. Why,\nI look into His face--there is her face. He is feeling all she is\nfeeling; He is down in her sorrow with her; He has got underneath the\nburden, and He is feeling all the agony that that woman feels because\nher boy is dead. He is moved with compassion whenever human sorrow\ncrosses His vision and human need approaches Him. And now I see Him\nmoving toward the bier. I see Him as He touches it. And He takes the\nboy back and gives him to his mother. Do you see in yon mountain a\ncloud, so somber and sad, and suddenly the sun comes from behind the\ncloud, and all the mountain-side laughs with gladness? That is that\nwoman's face. The agony is gone. The tear that remains there is gilded\nwith a smile, and joy is on her face. Look at Him. There it is. He\nis in her joy now. He is having as good a time as the woman. He has\ncarried her grief and her sorrow. He has given her joy. And it is His\njoy that He has given to her. He is with her in her joy.\n\nWonderful sympathy! He went about gathering human sorrow into His\nown heart, scattering His joy, and having fellowship in agony and in\ndeliverance, in tears and in their wiping away. Great, sympathetic\nsoul! Why? Because He always lived with God, and, living with God, the\ndivine love moved Him with compassion. Ah, believe me, our sorrows are\nmore felt in heaven than on earth. And we had that glimpse of that\neternal love in this Man, who did the things that pleased God, and\nmanifested such wondrous sympathy.\n\nFourth, strength. The last note is that of strength. You talk about\nthe weakness of Jesus, the frailty of Jesus. I tell you, there never\nwas any one so strong as He. And if you will take the pains of reading\nHis life with that in mind you will find it was one tremendous march\nof triumph against all opposing forces. About His dying--how did He\ndie? \"At last, at last,\" says the man in his study that does not know\nanything about Jesus; \"At last His enemies became too much for Him,\nand they killed Him.\" Nothing of the sort. That is a very superficial\nreading. What is the truth? Hear it from His own lips: \"No man taketh\nmy life from me. I lay it down of myself. And if I lay it down I have\nauthority to take it again.\" What do you think of that? How does that\ntouch you as a revelation of magnificence in strength? And then, look\nat Him, when He comes back from the tomb, having fulfilled that which\nwas either an empty boast or a great fact--thank God, we believe it\nwas a great fact! Now He stands upon the mountain, with this handful\nof men around Him, His disciples, and He is going away from them. \"All\nauthority,\" He says, \"is given unto me. I am king not merely by an\noffice conferred, but by a triumph won. I am king, for I have faced\nthe enemies of the race--sin and sorrow and ignorance and death--and\nmy foot is upon the neck of every one. All authority is given to me.\"\n\nOh, the strength of this Man! Where did He get it? \"My Father hath not\nleft me alone. I have lived with God. I have walked with God. I always\nknew him near. I always responded to his will. And my heart went out\nin sympathy to others, and I mastered the enemies of those with whom I\nsympathized. And I come to the end and I say, All authority is given\nto me.\" Oh, my brother, that is the pattern for you and for me! Ah,\nthat is life! That is the ideal! Oh, how can I fulfil it? I am not\ngoing to talk about that. Let me only give you this sentence to finish\nwith, \"Christ in you, the hope of glory.\" If Christ be in me by the\npower of the Spirit, He will keep me conscious of God's nearness to\nme. If Christ be in me by the consciousness of the spirit reigning and\ngoverning, He will take my will from day to day, blend it with His,\nand take away all that makes it hard to say, \"God's will be done.\"\n\n\n\n\nCADMAN\n\nA NEW DAY FOR MISSIONS\n\nBIOGRAPHICAL NOTE\n\n\nS. Parkes Cadman is one of the many immigrant clergymen who have\nattained to fame in American pulpits. He was born in Shropshire,\nEngland, December 18, 1864, and graduated from Richmond College,\nLondon University, in 1889. Coming to this country about 1895 he was\nappointed pastor of the Methodist Episcopal Metropolitan Tabernacle,\nNew York. From this post he was called to Central Congregational\nChurch, Brooklyn, with but one exception the largest Congregational\nChurch in the United States. He has received the degree of D.D. from\nWesleyan University and the University of Syracuse. The sermon here\ngiven, somewhat abridged, was delivered before the National Council of\nCongregational Churches, in Cleveland, Ohio, and is from Dr. Cadman's\nmanuscript.\n\n\n\n\nCADMAN\n\nBorn in 1864\n\nA NEW DAY FOR MISSIONS\n\n_God forbid that I should glory save in the cross of our Lord Jesus\nChrist: by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the\nworld_.--Gal. vi., 14.\n\n\nThe pivotal conception of missionary enterprise is the conception of\nChrist as the eternal priest of humanity. If any need of the world's\nheart is before us now, it is the need of the Cross. There is a\ndeep and anxious desire in men for the saving forces of sacrificial\nChristianity. The ideals of the New Testament concerning Gethsemane\nand Calvary are being thrust upon our attention by the upward\nstrugglings of the people. They, at any rate, have not forgotten the\nforsaken Man in the night of awful silence in the garden, nor His\nexceeding bitter agony, nor the perfect ending that made His death His\nvictory. The wastes of eccentricity, whether orthodox or heterodox,\nand the over curious speculations of theologies remote from the\nhabitations of men, have had little influence upon the multitudes\nwe seek to serve. And if I had to choose a sphere where one could\nrediscover the central forces of Christian life and of Christian\npractise, I would lean toward the enlightened democracies which to-day\nare vibrant with the plea that the shepherdless multitudes shall have\nsocial ameliorations and new incentives and selfless leaders.\n\nWe are all very jealous for the honor and success of the propagandism\nwe sustain at home and abroad, and I hold that its honor and success\nalike depend upon the priesthood and redemptive efficacies of Jesus.\nThese sovereign forces are correlated with His victories for the\ntwenty past centuries, and they constitute the distinctive genius of\nthe faith.\n\nWe shall gain nothing for the rule or for the ethics of Jesus by\nderogating that peculiar office of the divine Victim which is, to\nme, at any rate, the most sublime reason for the Incarnation and the\nineffable height and depth and mystery of all love and all strength\nblessedly operative in every ruined condition by means of sacrifice.\nThe missionary fields confessedly can not be conquered by the unaided\nteacher; he must have more than a system of truth, more than a\nprogram, more than a reasoned discourse. Their vast inert mass demands\nvitalization; and the life which is given for the life of men, the\ndivinest gift of all, is alone sufficient for this regeneration.\n\nMoreover, can we rest the absolutism and finality of Jesus upon\nanything less than the last complete outpouring of His soul unto\nvoluntary death for men's salvation? I do not think we can, and it is\na requisite that we place larger emphasis upon this holy mystery of\nour life through Christ's death, the substantial soul and secret of\nall missionary progress in all ages of the Church.\n\nBefore we can see the miracle of nations entering the kingdom of God,\nbefore we can dismiss the black death of apathy which rests on so many\nprofessedly Christian communities, before we can dominate the social\nstructure in righteousness and justice, the Church must be raised\nnearer to the standards of New Testament efficiency. And New Testament\nefficiency rested upon the perfect divinity and all-persuasive\nmediatorship of \"Christ and him crucified.\" The personality of Christ\ninvolves for many of us the entire relation of God to His universe; He\nis \"the central figure in all history,\" and Pie is \"the central\nfigure of our personal experience,\" creative in us, by His inaugural\nexperience, of all we are in Him and for our fellows. Thus we make\ngreat claims for the Lord of the harvest, and we make them soberly,\nand we know them true for our spiritual consciousness, and we are\nprepared to defend them.\n\nYet I, for one, do not hesitate to admit that the theological\nnecessities of missionary work are many, and that they must be\nrecognized and met before it can fully accomplish its infinite\ndesign. Indeed, the rule of Jesus in all these aspects of His mission\nclarifies and simplifies the gospel. It is plain that such a gospel,\nwherein the living personality of the Christ deals with the living\nman to whom we minister, is not to be beset by complications and\nabstractions. Its spiritual topography embraces the height of\ngood, the depth of love, the breadth of sympathy, and the width of\ncatholicity. It was meant for the race and for the far-reaching\nreciprocities and inexpressible necessities of the race. It is attuned\nto the cry of the common heart. Its interpretations have the sanctions\nof an authoritative human experience which has never failed in its\nwitness. Sometimes I have challenged these honored servants of the\nevangel who have come back to us from quarters where they were busy\non the errands of the cross. Almost pathetically, with the painful\ninterest of one inquiring for a long absent friend of whom no news has\nbeen received, I have solicited the missionaries. They came from the\nsouth of our own dear land, where they administered to the negro; from\nthe arctic zone, from the farther East. Their wider vision, their more\nimperial instinct, were plain to me, and my usual question was, \"What\ndo you teach the impulsive colored man and the stolid Eskimo and the\npensive Hindu and the inscrutable Asiatic?\" And they replied, \"We\nteach them, that God is a personal spirit and Father, whose character\nis holiness and whose heart is love; that Jesus Christ is the designed\nand supreme Son of God, who lived in sinlessness and died in perfect\nwilling sacrifice for the eternal life of all men, that by the will of\nGod and in the power of His spirit men may have everlasting life and,\nbetter still, everlasting goodness, if they will accept and trust in\nJesus Christ for all.\"\n\nAnd this gospel obtains the day of overcoming for which we plead and\npray. For tho an angel from heaven had any other, men do not respond;\nthe charisma rests on no other message. Possest of it, and possessing\nit, under the covenant of heaven and led by the Shepherd and Bishop of\nsouls, we shall go forth determined to give it place in us and in our\npresentations as never before. May nothing mar the solemn splendor\nof such a message from God unto men. Let us subordinate our undue\nintellectualism and place our boasted freedom under restraints, so\nthat the evangel may be preached without reserve and with abandon.\n\"For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, himself\nman, Christ Jesus, who gave himself a ransom for all.\"\n\nSuch in one grand passage is the creed that breathes the very life and\nspirit of the most significant and overwhelming missionary period in\nthe history of the Christian Church.\n\nThere is a new day due in missions because of the immense superiority\nin missionary methods. The _personnel_ of our administrations has been\nsuperb, and of nearly all the honored servants of God who have labored\nin domestic and foreign departments it could be said, \"Thou hast\nloved righteousness and hated iniquity.\" But I presume these seasoned\nveterans would be the first to show us how the whole conception of\npropagandism has been readapted, and its vehicles of communication\nmultiplied in various directions. The onfall and sally of the earler\nevangelistic campaigns are now aided by the investment and siege of\neducational and medical work.\n\nThe trackways of a policy embedded in the wider interpretation of the\ngospel are laid and the new era takes shape before our comprehension.\nTravel, exploration, and commerce have demanded and obtained the\n_Lusitania_ on the sea; the railroad from the Cape to Cairo on the\nland, and they have left no spot of earth untrodden, no map obscure,\nno mart unvisited. Keeping step with this stately and unprecedented\ndevelopment, and often anticipating it, the widening frontiers of our\nmissionary kingdom have demonstrated again and again how the Church\ncan make a bridal of the earth and sky, linking the lowliest needs\nto the loftiest truths. And best of all in respect of methods is the\ndispersal of our native egotism. We have come to see that the types of\nChristianity in Europe and America are perhaps aboriginal for us,\nbut can not be transplanted to other shores. \"Manifest destiny\" is a\nphrase that sits down when Japan and China wake up. Not thus can Jesus\nbe robbed of the fruits of His passion in any branch of the human\nfamily. We are to plant and water, labor in faith, and die in hope,\nscattering the seed of the gospel in the hearts of these brothers of\nregions outside. But God will ordain their harvests as it pleaseth\nHim. What will be the joy of that harvest? Throw your imagination\nacross this new century, and as it dies and gives place to its\nsuccessor, review the race whose devotion has then fastened on the\ndivine ruler and the federal Man, Christ Jesus. For nearly a hundred\nyears the barriers that segregated us will have been a memory. The\nChurch will have discovered not only fields of labor, but forces for\nher replenishing. Then will our posterity rejoice in the larger\nChrist who is to be. The virtuous elements of all other faiths will\nbe placed under the purification and control of the priesthood and\nauthority of Jesus. And tho in these ancient religions that await the\nBridegroom, the mortal stains the immortal and the human mars the\nbeauty of the divine, in the light of His appearing they will assume\nnew attitudes and receive His quickening and thrill with His pulse.\nWhen I conceive of this reward for our Daysman I protest that all\nother triumphs seem as tinsel and sham. The Desire of all nations\nshall then see of the travail of His soul and shall be satisfied. The\nsubtle patience of China, the fierce resistance of Japan, the brooding\nsoul that haunts the Ganges valley, the tumult of emotion of the\nEthiopian breast, all are for His appearing; they must be saved unto\nnoble ends by His sanctification. For that time there will be a Church\nwhose canonization of the infinite is beyond our dreams, enriched on\nevery side, with common allegiance and diversity of gifts, and every\ngift the boon of all, and Christ's dower in His bride increased beyond\ncompare.\n\nThis is the ideal of the new day; may it become our personal ideal.\nThen shall we fight with new courage for the right, and abhor the\nimperfect, the unjust, and the mean. Our leaders will care nothing for\nflattery and praise or odium and abuse. Enthusiasm can not be soured,\nnor courage diminished. The Almighty has placed our hand on the\ngreatest of His plows, in whose furrow the nations I have named are\ngerminating religiously. And to drive forward the blade if but a\nlittle, and to plant any seed of justice and of joy, any sense of\nmanliness or moral worth, to aid in any way the gospel which is the\nfriend of liberty, the companion of the conscience and the parent\nof the intellectual enlightenment--is not that enough? Is it not a\ncomplete justification of our plea?\n\nWe shall do well to remember that no evangel can prosper without the\nevangelical temper. The parsing of grammarians is of little avail\nhere, and to have all critical knowledge of the prophets and apostles\nof the faith without their fervor and consecration is profitable\nmerely for study, and useless mainly for the larger life. Our culture\nmust be the passion-flower of Christ Jesus. To be more anxious about\nintellectual pre-eminence or ecclesiastical origins than about \"the\ntrial of the immigrant\" and the condition of the colored races is not\nhelpful. \"There is a sort of orthodoxy that revels in the visions of\napocalypses and refuses to fight the beast,\" says Dr. Nurgan.\nSuch barren indulgence is excluded from any glory to follow.\nTechnicalities, niceties, knowledge remote and knowledge general must\nbe appropriated and made dynamic in this life-and-death conflict;\nany that can not be thus used can be sent to the rear for a further\ndebate.\n\nDiplomacies in church government and adjustments in church creeds can\nwait on this consecration, this baptism of unction. I never heard that\nthe statesman who formulated the peace at Paris in 1815 got in the\nway of the Household Brigades and the Highlanders at Waterloo and\nHougomont. They played their commendable game, but they could not\nhave swept that awful slope of flame in which Ney and the Old Guard\nstaggered on at Mont St. Jean.\n\nLet us redeem our creeds at the front, and prove the welding of our\nweapons and their tempered blades upon every evil way and darkness and\nsuperstition that afflict humankind.\n\nAnd have you not seen with moistened eyes and beating hearts the\npathetic surgings of harassed and broken sons and daughters of\nGod toward His son Jesus Christ? I have watched them until I felt\nconstrained to cry aloud and spare not; and while viewing them here\nand yonder, and refusing to be localized in our love toward them, have\nnot our spirits been rebuked, have they not known fear for ourselves,\nhave they not pensively echoed the charge of some that we have no real\nroots in democracy, but are as plants in pots, and not as oaks in the\nsoil of earth? If independency is a barrier to the essence of which it\nis supposedly a form, if superiority shuts us off from assimilation\nwith popular movements and delivers us over to cliques, then these\nchurches of ours[1] will end in a record of shame and confusion.\nWhile we are busy in trivial things, our energy and our might will be\ndeflected, and the living God will hand over the crusade to those who\nhave proven worthier and who knew the day when it did come, even the\nday of their visitation.\n\n[Footnote 1: The special reference is to the Congregational churches.]\n\nWe must arise with courage undismayed, and join in the cry of the\nages:\n\n  When wilt thou save the people,\n    O God of mercy, when?\n  The people! Lord, the people!\n    Not crowns, nor thrones, but men.\n\n  Flower of thy heart, O Lord, are they,\n  Their heritage a sunless day.\n  Let them like weeds not fade away;\n    Lord, save the people.\n\nIf our hearts are thus enlarged, we shall run in the way of His\ncommandments; fatherhood and brotherhood and sonship will not be\nsymbols, shibboleths of pious intercourse, but ways of God's reaching\nout through us for the total brotherhood. We shall silence the caviler\nagainst missions; we shall raise the negro in the face of those who\nsay he can not be raised; we shall see the latter-day miracles, and\nthe lame man healed and rejoicing at the Temple gate. Thus may the\nbreath of God sweep across our pastorates and dismiss timidity,\nprovincialism, ease, and narrowness of outlook. And thus may the power\nbe demonstrated as of heaven because it is the power unto salvation.\nLet us fear not men who shall die, nor be content to fill our peaceful\nlot and occupy a respectable grave. The new world needs the renewed\nbaptism, and the \"modernism\" of which medievalists complain is the\nrobe of honor for the Christ of this epoch. So that there shall come\nunto the Church the flame of sacred love, and, kindling on every heart\nand altar, there shall it burn for the glory of Christ, the High\nPriest, with inextinguishable blaze. We can rest content, for, behold!\nthe day cometh and in its light. Let us go hence.\n\n\n\n\nJOWETT\n\nAPOSTOLIC OPTIMISM\n\nBIOGRAPHICAL NOTE\n\n\nJohn Henry Jowett, Congregational divine, was born at Barnard Castle,\nDurham, in 1864, and educated at Edinburgh and Oxford universities.\nIn 1889 he was ordained to St. James's Congregational Church,\nNewcastle-on-Tyne, and in 1895 was called to his present pastorate of\nCarr's Lane Congregational Church, Birmingham, where he has taken rank\namong the leading preachers of Great Britain. He is the author of\nseveral important books.\n\n\n\n\nJOWETT\n\nBorn in 1864\n\nAPOSTOLIC OPTIMISM[1]\n\n[Footnote 1: Reprinted by permission of A.C. Armstrong & Son.]\n\n_Rejoicing in hope_.--Romans xii., 12.\n\n\nThat is a characteristic expression of the fine, genial optimism of\nthe Apostle Paul. His eyes are always illumined. The cheery tone is\nnever absent from his speech. The buoyant and springy movement of his\nlife is never changed. The light never dies out of his sky. Even the\ngray firmament reveals more hopeful tints, and becomes significant of\nevolving glory. The apostle is an optimist, \"rejoicing in hope,\" a\nchild of light wearing the \"armor of light,\" \"walking in the light\"\neven as Christ is in the light.\n\nThis apostolic optimism was not a thin and fleeting sentiment begotten\nof a cloudless summer day. It was not the creation of a season; it was\nthe permanent pose of the spirit. Even when beset with circumstances\nwhich to the world would spell defeat, the apostle moved with the mien\nof a conqueror. He never lost the kingly posture. He was disturbed by\nno timidity about ultimate issues. He fought and labored in the spirit\nof certain triumph. \"We are always confident.\" \"We are more than\nconquerors through Him that loved us.\" \"Thanks be unto God who giveth\nus the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.\"\n\nThis apostolic optimism was not born of sluggish thinking, or of idle\nand shallow observation. I am very grateful that the counsel of my\ntext lifts its chaste and cheery flame in the twelfth chapter of an\nepistle of which the first chapter contains as dark and searching an\nindictment of our nature as the mind of man has ever drawn. Let me\nrehearse the appalling catalog that the radiance of the apostle's\noptimism may appear the more abounding: \"Senseless hearts,\" \"fools,\"\n\"uncleanness,\" \"vile passions,\" \"reprobate minds,\" \"unrighteousness,\nwickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, strife,\ndeceit, malignity, whisperers, backbiters, hateful to God, insolent,\nhaughty, boastful, inventors of evil things, without understanding,\ncovenant breakers, without natural affection, unmerciful.\" With\nfearless severity the apostle leads us through the black realms of\nmidnight and eclipse. And yet in the subsequent reaches of the great\nargument, of which these dark regions form the preface, there emerges\nthe clear, calm, steady light of my optimistic text. I say it is not\nthe buoyancy of ignorance. It is not the flippant, light-hearted\nexpectancy of a man who knows nothing about the secret places of the\nnight. The counselor is a man who has steadily gazed at light at\nits worst, who has digged through the outer walls of convention and\nrespectability, who has pushed his way into the secret chambers and\nclosets of life, who has dragged out the slimy sins which were lurking\nin their holes, and named them after their kind--it is this man who\nwhen he has surveyed the dimensions of evil and misery and contempt,\nmerges his dark indictment in a cheery and expansive dawn, in an\noptimistic evangel, in which he counsels his fellow-disciples to\nmaintain the confident attitude of a rejoicing hope.\n\nNow, what are the secrets of this courageous and energetic optimism?\nPerhaps, if we explore the life of this great apostle, and seek to\ndiscover its springs, we may find the clue to his abounding hope.\nRoaming then through the entire records of his life and teachings,\ndo we discover any significant emphasis? Preeminent above all other\nsuggestions, I am imprest with his vivid sense of the reality of the\nredemptive work of Christ. Turn where I will, the redemptive work of\nthe Christ evidences itself as the base and groundwork of his life.\nIt is not only that here and there are solid statements of doctrine,\nwherein some massive argument is constructed for the partial unveiling\nof redemptive glory. Even in those parts of his epistles where formal\nargument has ceased, and where solid doctrine is absent, the doctrine\nflows as a fluid element into the practical convictions of life, and\ndetermines the shape and quality of the judgments. Nay, one might\nlegitimately use the figure of a finer medium still, and say that in\nall the spacious reaches of the apostle's life the redemptive work of\nhis Master is present as an atmosphere in which all his thoughts and\npurposes and labors find their sustaining and enriching breath. Take\nthis epistle to the Romans in which my text is found. The earlier\nstages of the great epistle are devoted to a massive and stately\npresentation of the doctrines of redemption. But when I turn over the\npages where the majestic argument is concluded, I find the doctrine\npersisting in a diffused and rarefied form, and appearing as the\ndetermining factor in the solution of practical problems. If he is\ndealing with the question of the \"eating of meats,\" the great doctrine\nreappears and interposes its solemn and yet elevating principle:\n\"destroy not him with thy meat for whom Christ died.\" If he is called\nupon to administer rebuke to the passionate and unclean, the shadow of\nthe cross rests upon his judgment. \"Ye are not your own; ye are bought\nwith a price.\" If he is portraying the ideal relationship of husband\nand wife, he sets it in the light of redemptive glory: \"Husbands, love\nyour wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself up\nfor it.\" If he is seeking to cultivate the grace of liberality, he\nbrings the heavenly air around about the spirit. \"Ye know the grace\nof our Lord Jesus Christ, that tho he was rich, yet for your sakes\nhe became poor.\" It interweaves itself with all his salutations. It\nexhales in all his benedictions like a hallowing fragrance. You can\nnot get away from it. In the light of the glory of redemption all\nrelationships are assorted and arranged. Redemption was not degraded\ninto a fine abstract argument, to which the apostle had appended his\nown approval, and then, with sober satisfaction, had laid it aside, as\na practical irrelevancy, in the stout chests of orthodoxy. It became\nthe very spirit of his life. It was, if I may be allowed the violent\nfigure, the warm blood in all his judgment. It filled the veins of all\nhis thinking. It beat like a pulse in all his purposes. It determined\nand vitalized his decisions in the crisis, as well as in the lesser\ntrifles of the common day. His conception of redemption was regulative\nof all his thought.\n\nBut it is not only the immediacy of redemption in the apostle's\nthought by which I am imprest. I stand in awed amazement before its\nvast, far-stretching reaches into the eternities. Said an old villager\nto me concerning the air of his elevated hamlet, \"Ay, sir, it's a fine\nair is this westerly breeze; I like to think of it as having traveled\nfrom the distant fields of the Atlantic!\" And here is the Apostle\nPaul, with the quickening wind of redemption blowing about him in\nloosening, vitalizing, strengthening influence, and to him, in all his\nthinking, it had its birth in the distant fields of eternity! To\nthe apostle redemption was not a small device, an afterthought, a\npatched-up expedient to meet an unforseen emergency. The redemptive\npurpose lay back in the abyss of the eternities, and in a spirit of\nreverent questioning the apostle sent his trembling thoughts into\nthose lone and silent fields. He emerged with, whispered secrets such\nas these: \"fore-knew,\" \"fore-ordained,\" \"chosen in him before the\nfoundation of the world,\" \"eternal life promised before times\neternal,\" \"the eternal purpose which he purposed in Christ Jesus our\nLord.\"\n\nBrethren, does our common thought of redemptive glory reach back\ninto this august and awful presence? Does the thought of the modern\ndisciple journey in this distant pilgrimage? Or do we now regard it as\nunpractical and irrelevant? There is no more insidious peril in modern\nreligious life than the debasement of our conception of the practical.\nIf we divorce the practical from the sublime, the practical will\nbecome the superficial, and will degenerate into a very lean and\nforceless thing. When Paul went on this lonely pilgrimage his spirit\nacquired the posture of a finely sensitive reverence. People who\nlive and move beneath great domes acquire a certain calm and stately\ndignity. It is in companionship with the sublimities that awkwardness\nand coarseness are destroyed. We lose our reverence when we desert the\naugust. But has reverence no relationship to the practical? Shall we\ndiscard it as an irrelevant factor in the purposes of common life?\nWhy, reverence is the very clue to fruitful, practical living.\nReverence is creative of hope; nay, a more definite emphasis can be\ngiven to the assertion; reverence is a constituent of hope.\nAnnihilate reverence, and life loses its fine sensitiveness, and when\nsensitiveness goes out of a life the hope that remains is only a\nflippant rashness, a thoughtless impetuosity, the careless onrush of\nthe kine, and not a firm, assured perception of a triumph that is only\ndelayed. A reverent homage before the sublimities of yesterday is the\ncondition of a fine perception of the hidden triumphs of the morrow.\nAnd, therefore, I do not regard it as an accidental conjunction that\nthe psalmist puts them together and proclaims the evangel that \"the\nLord taketh pleasure in them that fear him, in them that hope in his\nmercy.\" To feel the days before me I must revere the purpose which\nthrobs behind me. I must bow in reverence if I would anticipate in\nhope.\n\nHere, then, is the Apostle Paul, with the redemptive purpose\ninterweaving itself with all the entanglements of his common life, a\npurpose reaching back into the awful depths of the eternities, and\nissuing from those depths in amazing fulness of grace and glory. No\none can be five minutes in the companionship of the Apostle Paul\nwithout discovering how wealthy is his sense of the wealthy, redeeming\nministry of God. What a wonderful consciousness he has of the sweep\nand fulness of the divine grace! You know the variations of the\nglorious air: \"the unsearchable riches of Christ\"; \"riches in glory\nin Christ Jesus\"; \"all spiritual blessings in the heavenly places\nin Christ\"; \"the riches of his goodness and forbearance and\nlong-suffering.\" The redemptive purpose of God bears upon the life of\nthe apostle and upon the race whose privileges he shares, not in an\nuncertain and reluctant shower, but in a great and marvelous flood.\nAnd what to him is the resultant enfranchisement? What are the\nspacious issues of the glorious work? Do you recall those wonderful\nsentences, scattered here and there about the apostle's writings, and\nbeginning with the words \"but now\"? Each sentence proclaims the end\nof the dominion of night, and unveils some glimpse of the new created\nday. \"But now!\" It is a phrase that heralds a great deliverance!\n\"But now, apart from the law the righteousness of God hath been\nmanifested,\" \"But now, being made free from sin and become servants to\nGod.\" \"But now in Christ Jesus ye that once were far off are made nigh\nin the blood of Christ.\" \"But now are ye light in the Lord.\" \"Now, no\ncondemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus.\" These represent no\nthin abstractions. To Paul the realities of which they speak were more\nreal than the firm and solid earth. And is it any wonder that a man\nwith such a magnificent sense of the reality of the redemptive\nworks of Christ, who felt the eternal purpose throbbing in the dark\nbackground and abyss of time, who conceived it operating upon our race\nin floods of grace and glory, and who realized in his own immediate\nconsciousness the varied wealth of the resultant emancipation--is it\nany wonder that for this man a new day had dawned, and the birds had\nbegun to sing and the flowers to bloom, and a sunny optimism had taken\npossession of his heart, which found expression in an assured and\nrejoicing hope?\n\nI look abroad again over the record of this man's life and teachings,\nif perchance I may discover the secrets of his abiding optimism, and I\nam profoundly imprest by his living sense of the reality and greatness\nof his present resources. \"By Christ redeemed!\" That is not a grand\nfinale; it is only a glorious inauguration. \"By Christ redeemed; in\nChrist restored\"; it is with these dynamics of restoration that his\nepistles are so wondrously abounding. In almost every other sentence\nhe suggests a dynamic which he can count upon as his friend. Paul's\nmental and spiritual outlook comprehended a great army of positive\nforces laboring in the interests of the kingdom of God. His conception\nof life was amazingly rich in friendly dynamics! I do not wonder that\nsuch a wealthy consciousness was creative of a triumphant optimism.\nJust glance at some of the apostle's auxiliaries: \"Christ liveth in\nme!\" \"Christ liveth in me! He breathes through all my aspirations. He\nthinks through all my thinking. He wills through all my willing. He\nloves through all my loving. He travails in all my labors. He works\nwithin me 'to will and to do of his good pleasure.'\" That is the\nprimary faith of the hopeful life. But see what follows in swift and\nimmediate succession. \"If Christ is in you, the spirit is life.\" \"The\nspirit is life!\" And therefore you find that in the apostle's thought\ndispositions are powers. They are not passive entities. They are\npositive forces vitalizing and energizing the common life of men.\nMy brethren, I am persuaded there is a perilous leakage in this\ndepartment of our thought. We are not bold enough in our thinking\nconcerning spiritual realities. We do not associate with every mode\nof the consecrated spirit the mighty energy of God. We too often\noust from our practical calculations some of the strongest and most\naggressive allies of the saintly life. Meekness is more than the\nabsence of self-assertion; it is the manifestation of the mighty power\nof God. To the Apostle Paul love exprest more than a relationship. It\nwas an energy productive of abundant labors. Faith was more than an\nattitude. It was an energy creative of mighty endeavor, Hope was\nmore than a posture. It was an energy generative of a most enduring\npatience. All these are dynamics, to be counted as active allies,\ncooperating in the ministry of the kingdom. And so the epistles abound\nin the recital of mystic ministries at work. The Holy Spirit worketh!\nGrace worketh! Faith worketh! Love worketh! Hope worketh! Prayer\nworketh! And there are other allies robed in less attractive garb.\n\"Tribulation worketh!\" \"This light affliction worketh.\" \"Godly sorrow\nworketh!\" On every side of him the apostle conceives cooperative and\nfriendly powers. \"The mountain is full of horses and chariots of\nfire round about him.\" He exults in the consciousness of abounding\nresources. He discovers the friends of God in things which find no\nplace among the scheduled powers of the world. He finds God's raw\nmaterial in the world's discarded waste. \"Weak things,\" \"base things,\"\n\"things that are despised,\" \"things that are not,\" mere nothings;\namong these he discovers the operating agents of the mighty God. Is it\nany wonder that in this man, possessed of such a wealthy consciousness\nof multiplied resources, the spirit of a cheery optimism should be\nenthroned? With what stout confidence he goes into the fight! He\nnever mentions the enemy timidly. He never seeks to underestimate his\nstrength. Nay, again and again he catalogs all possible antagonisms in\na spirit of buoyant and exuberant triumph. However numerous the enemy,\nhowever subtle and aggressive his devices, however towering and\nwell-established the iniquity, however black the gathering clouds, so\nsensitive is the apostle to the wealthy resources of God that amid it\nall he remains a sunny optimist, \"rejoicing in hope,\" laboring in the\nspirit of a conqueror even when the world was exulting in his supposed\ndiscomfiture and defeat.\n\nAnd, finally, in searching for the springs of this man's optimism, I\nplace alongside his sense of the reality of redemption and his wealthy\nconsciousness of present resources his impressive sense of the reality\nof future glory. Paul gave himself time to think of heaven, of the\nhome of God, of his own home when time should be no more. He loved to\ncontemplate \"the glory that shall be revealed.\" He mused in wistful\nexpectancy of the day \"when Christ who is our life shall be\nmanifested,\" and when we also \"shall be manifested with him in glory.\"\nHe pondered the thought of death as \"gain,\" as transferring him to\nconditions in which he would be \"at home with the Lord,\" \"with Christ,\nwhich is far better.\" He looked for \"the blest hope and appearing\nof the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ,\" and he\ncontemplated \"that great day\" as the \"henceforth,\" which would reveal\nto him the crown of righteousness and glory. Is any one prepared to\ndissociate this contemplation from the apostle's cheery optimism? Is\nnot rather the thought of coming glory one of its abiding springs? Can\nwe safely exile it from our moral and spiritual culture? I know that\nthis particular contemplation is largely absent from modern religious\nlife, and I know the nature of the recoil in which our present\nimpoverishment began. \"Let us hear less about the mansions of the\nblest and more about the housing of the poor!\" Men revolted against an\neffeminate contemplation, which had run to seed, in favor of an active\nphilanthropy which sought the enrichment of the common life. But, my\nbrethren, pulling a plant up is not the only way of saving it from\nrunning to seed. You can accomplish by a wise restriction what\nis wastefully done by severe destruction. I think we have lost\nimmeasurably by the uprooting, in so many lives, of this plant of\nheavenly contemplation. We have built on the erroneous assumption that\nthe contemplation of future glory inevitably unfits us for the service\nof man. It is an egregious and destructive mistake. I do not think\nthat Richard Baxter's labors were thinned or impoverished by his\ncontemplation of \"The Saint's Everlasting Rest.\" When I consider his\nmental output, his abundant labors as father-confessor to a countless\nhost, his pains and persecutions and imprisonments, I can not but\nthink he received some of the powers of his optimistic endurance from\ncontemplations such as he counsels in his incomparable book. \"Run\nfamiliarly through the streets of the heavenly Jerusalem; visit the\npatriarchs and prophets, salute the apostles, and admire the armies of\nmartyrs; lead on the heart from street to street, bring it into\nthe palace of the great king; lead it, as it were, from chamber to\nchamber. Say to it, 'Here must I lodge, here must I die, here must I\npraise, here must I love and be loved. My tears will then be wiped\naway, my groans be turned to another tune, my cottage of clay be\nchanged to this palace, my prison rags to these splendid robes'; 'for\nthe former things are passed away.'\" I can not think that Samuel\nRutherford impoverished his spirit or deadened his affections, or\ndiminished his labors by mental pilgrimages such as he counsels to\nLady Cardoness: \"Go up beforehand and see your lodging. Look through\nall your Father's rooms in heaven. Men take a sight of the lands ere\nthey buy them. I know that Christ hath made the bargain already; but\nbe kind to the house ye are going to, and see it often.\" I can not\nthink that this would imperil the fruitful optimisms of the Christian\nlife. I often examine, with peculiar interest, the hymn-book we use at\nCarr's Lane. It was compiled by Dr. Dale. Nowhere else can I find the\nbroad perspective of his theology and his primary helpmeets in\nthe devotional life as I find them there. And is it altogether\nunsuggestive that under the heading of \"Heaven\" is to be found one of\nthe largest sections of the book. A greater space is given to \"Heaven\"\nthan is given to \"Christian duty.\" Is it not significant of what a\ngreat man of affairs found needful for the enkindling and sustenance\nof a courageous hope? And among the hymns are many which have helped\nto nourish the sunny endeavors of a countless host.\n\n      There is a land of pure delight\n        Where saints immortal reign;\n      Infinite day excludes the night,\n        And pleasures banish pain.\n\n      What are these, arrayed in white,\n        Brighter than the noonday sun?\n      Foremost of the suns of light,\n        Nearest the eternal throne.\n\n  Hark! hark, my soul! Angelic songs are swelling\n    O'er earth's green fields and ocean's wave-beat shore.\n  Angelic songs to sinful men are telling\n    Of that new life when sin shall be no more.\n\nMy brethren, depend upon it, we are not impoverished by contemplations\nsuch as these. They take no strength out of the hand, and they\nput much strength and buoyancy into the heart. I proclaim the\ncontemplation of coming glory as one of the secrets of the apostle's\noptimism which enabled him to labor and endure in the confident spirit\nof rejoicing hope. These, then, are some of the springs of Christian\noptimism; some of the sources in which we may nourish our hope in the\nnewer labors of a larger day: a sense of the glory of the past in\na perfected redemption, a sense of the glory of the present in our\nmultiplied resources, a sense of the glory of tomorrow in the fruitful\nrest of our eternal home.\n\n  O blest hope! with this elate\n  Let not our hearts be desolate;\n  But, strong in faith and patience, wait\n    Until He come!\n\n\n\n\nGENERAL INDEX\n\n\n\n\nINDEX TO PREACHERS AND SERMONS\n\nAbbott, Lyman, The Divinity in Humanity\nAbraham's Imitators; or The Activity of Faith. By Thomas Hooker\nAffection, The Expulsive Power of a New. By   Thomas Chalmers\nArgument, The, from Experience. By Robert William Dale\nArnold, Thomas, Alive in God\nAscension, The, of Christ. By Girolamo Savonarola\nAssurance in God. By George Adam Smith\nAtonement, Eternal. By Roswell Dwight Hitchcock\nAtonement, The Prominence of the. By Edwards Amasa Park\nAugustine, St., The Recovery of Sight by the Blind\n\nBacon, Leonard Woolsey, God Indwelling\nBasil \"The Great,\" The Creation of the World\nBaxter, Richard, Making Light of Christ and Salvation\nBeecher, H.W., Immortality\nBeecher, Lyman, The Government of God Desirable\nBible, The, vs. Infidelity. By Frank Wakely Gunsaulus\nBlair, Hugh, The Hour and the Event of All Time\nBlind, The Recovery of Sight by the. By St. Augustine\nBones, The Valley of Dry. By Frederick Denison Maurice\nBossuet, Jacques Benigne, The Death of the Grande Cond\u00e9\nBounty, The Royal. By Alexander McKenzie\nBourdaloue, Louis, The Passion of Christ\nBroadus, John A., Let us Have Peace with God\nBrooks, Memorial Discourse on Phillips. By Henry Codman Potter\nBrooks, Phillips, The Pride of Life\nBunyan, John, The Heavenly Footman\nBurrell, David James, How to Become a Christian\nBushnell, Horace, Unconscious Influence\n\nCadman, S. Parkes, A New Day for Missions\nCaird, John, Religion in Common Life\nCalvin, John, Enduring Persecution for Christ\nCampbell, Alexander, The Missionary Cause\nCarlyle, Thomas,--In Memoriam. By Arthur Penrhyn Stanley\nCarpenter, William Boyd, The Age of Progress\nChalmers, Thomas, The Expulsive Power of a New Affection\nCharming, William Ellery, The Character of Christ\nChapin, Edwin Hubbell Nicodemus: The Seeker after Religion\nCharacter, The, of Christ. By William Ellery Charming\nChrist and Salvation, Making Light of. By Richard Baxter\nChrist Among the Common Things of Life. By William James Dawson\nChrist Before Pilate--Pilate Before Christ. By William Mackergo Taylor\nChrist, Enduring Persecution for. By John Calvin\nChrist, The Ascension of. By Girolamo Savonarola\nChrist, The Character of. By William Ellery Channing\nChrist, The First Temptation of. By John Knox\nChrist, The Loneliness of. By Frederick William Robertson\nChrist, The Passion of. By Louis Bourdaloue\nChrist--_The_ Question of the Centuries. By Robert Stuart\n  MacArthur\nChrist, The Spirit of. By Charles H. Fowler\nChrist, What Think ye of. By Dwight Lyman Moody\nChrist, Zeal in the Cause of. By William Morley Punshon\nChrist's Advent to Judgment. By Jeremy Taylor\nChrist's Real Body not in the Eucharist. By John Wyclif\nChrist's Resurrection an Image of our New Life. By Frederich Ernst\n  Schleiermacher\nChristian, How to Become a. By David James Burrell\nChristian Victory. By Christopher Newman Hall\nChristianity, The Mysteries of. By Alexander Vinet\nChristianity, The Transient and Permanent in. By Theodore Parker\nChrysostom, Excessive Grief at the Death of Friends\nChurch, The Mother. By Ernest Roland Wilberforce\nChurch, The Triumph of the. By Henry Edward Manning\nClifford, John, The Forgiveness of Sins\nColonization, The, of the Desert. By Edward Everett Hale\nCommon Life, Religion in. By John Caird\nCommon Things of Life, Christ Among the. By William James Dawson\nCond\u00e9, The Funeral Sermon on the Death of the Grande. By Jacques\n  Benigne Bossuet\nCreation, The, of the World. By Basil\nCreation, Work in the Groaning. By Frederick William Farrar\nCrosby, Howard, The Prepared Worm\nCuyler, Theodore Ledyard, The Value of Life\n\nDale, Robert William, The Argument from Experience\nDay, A, in the Life of Jesus of Nazareth, By Francis Wayland\nDawson, William James, Christ Among the Common Things of Life\nDeath, Glorification Through. By Francis Landey Patton\nDesert, The Colonization of the. By Edward Everett Hale\nDivinity, The, in Humanity. By Lyman Abbott\nDrummond, Henry, The Greatest Thing in the World\nDwight, Timothy, The Sovereignty of God\n\nEarth, The Shaking of the Heavens and the. By Charles Kingsley\nEducation and the Future of Religion. By John Lancaster Spalding\nEdwards, Jonathan, Spiritual light\nElect, The Small Number of the. By Jean Baptiste Massillon\nEternal Atonement. By Roswell Dwight Hitchcock\nEucharist, Christ's Real Body not in the. By John Wyclif\nEvans, Christmas, The Fall and Recovery of Man\nEvent, The Hour and the, of all Time. By Hugh Blair\nExperience. By Alexander Whyte\nExperience, The Argument from. By Robert William Dale\nExpulsive Power, The, of a New Affection. By Thomas Chalmers\n\nFaith, Constructive. By Charles Henry Parkhurst\nFaith, The Activity of; or, Abraham's Imitators. By Thomas Hooker\nFaith, The Story of a Disciple's. By Henry Scott Holland\nFall, The, and Recovery of Man. By Christmas Evans\nFarrar, Frederick William, Work in the Groaning Creation\nF\u00e9nelon, Francois de Salignac de la Mothe, The Saints Converse with God\nFootman, The Heavenly. By John Bunyan\nForgiveness, The, of Sins. By John Clifford.\nFowler, Charles H., The Spirit of Christ\nFuneral Sermon, The, on the Death of the Grande Cond\u00e9, by Jacques\n  Benigne Bossuet\n\nGethsemane, The Rose Garden of God. By William Robertson Nicoll\nGladden, Washington, The Prince of Life\nGlorification Through Death. By Francis Landey Patton\nGod, Alive in. By Thomas Arnold\nGod Calling to Man. By Charles John Vaughan\nGod Indwelling. By Leonard Woolsey Bacon.\nGod, Marks of Love to. By Robert Hall\nGod, Preparation for Consulting the Oracles of. By Edward Irving\nGod, The Government of, Desirable. By Lyman Beecher\nGod, The Image of, in Man. By Robert South\nGod, The Saints Converse with. By Francois F\u00e9nelon\nGod, The Sovereignty of. By Timothy Dwight\nGod the Unwearied Guide. By Newell Dwight Hillis\nGod's Love to Fallen Man. By John Wesley\nGod's Will the End of Life. By John Henry Newman\nGordon, George Angier, Man in the Image of God\nGovernment, The, of God Desirable. By Lyman Beecher\nGrace, The Method of. By George Whitefield\nGreatest Thing, The, in the World. By Henry Drummond\nGrief, Excessive, at the Death of Friends. By Chrysostom\nGuide, God the Unwearied. By Newell Dwight Hillis\nGunsaulus, Frank Wakely, The Bible vs. Infidelity\nGuthrie, Thomas, The New Heart\n\nHale, Edward Everett, The Colonization of the Desert\nHall, Christopher Newman, Christian Victory\nHall, John, Liberty only in Truth\nHall, Robert, Marks of Love to God\nHeart, The New. By Thomas Guthrie\nHeavens, The Shaking of the, and the Earth. By Charles Kingsley\nHillis, Newell Dwight, God the Unwearied Guide\nHitchcock, Roswell Dwight, The Eternal Atonement\nHolland, Henry Scott, The Story of a Disciple's Faith\nHoly Spirit, Influence of the. By Henry Parry Liddon\nHooker, Thomas, The Activity of Faith; or Abraham's Imitators\nHour, The, and the Event of all Time. By Hugh Blair\nHowe, John, The Redeemer's Tears over Lost Souls\nHumanity, The Divinity in. By Lyman Abbott\n\nIdeal of Life, The Perfect. By George Campbell Morgan\nImmortality. By H.W. Beecher\nInfidelity, The Bible vs. By Frank Wakely Gunsaulus\nInfluence, Unconscious. By Horace Bushnell\nInfluences of the Holy Spirit. By Henry Parry Liddon\nInheritance, The Heavenly. By John Summerfield\nIrving, Edward, Preparation for Consulting the Oracles of God\n\nJefferson, Charles Edward, The Reconciliation\nJesus of Nazareth, A Day in the Life of. By Francis Wayland\nJowett, John Henry, Apostolic Optimism\nJudgment, Christ's Advent to. By Jeremy Taylor\nJudgment, The Reversal of Human. By James B. Mozley\nJustification, The Method and Fruits of. By Martin Luther\n\nKingsley, Charles, The Shaking of the Heavens and the Earth\nKnox, John, The First Temptation of Christ\nKnox-Little, William John, Thirst Satisfied\nLatimer, Hugh, Christian Love\nLife, Christ's Resurrection an Image of our New By Frederich Ernst\n  Schleiermacher\nLife, God's Will the End of. By John Henry Newman\nLife, The Perfect Ideal of. By George Campbell Morgan\nLife, The Pride of. By Phillips Brooks\nLife, The Prince of. By Washington Gladden\nLife, The Value of. By Theodore Ledyard Cuyler\nLiberty only in Truth. By John Hall\nLiddon, Henry Parry, Influences of the Holy Spirit\nLight, Spiritual. By Jonathan Edwards\nLoneliness, The, of Christ. By Frederick William Robertson\nLord, The Resurrection of Our. By Matthew Simpson\nLorimer, George C. The Fall of Satan\nLove, Christian. By Hugh Latimer\nLove, Marks of, to God. By Robert Hall\nLuther, Martin, The Method and Fruits of Justification\nMacArthur, Robert Stuart, Christ--The Question of the Centuries\nMcKenzie, Alexander, The Royal Bounty\nMaclaren, Alexander, The Pattern of Service\nMacleod, Norman, The True Christian Ministry\nMagee, William Connor, The Miraculous Stilling of the Storm\nMan, God Calling to. By Charles John Vaughan\nMan, God's Love to Fallen. By John Wesley\nMan in the Image of God. By George Angier Gordon\nMan, The Fall and Recovery of. By Christmas Evans\nMan, The Image of God in. By Robert South\nManhood, The Meaning of. By Henry Van Dyke\nManning, Henry Edward, The Triumph of the Church\nMartineau, James, Parting Words\nMason, John Mitchell, Messiah's Throne\nMassillon, Jean Baptiste, The Small Number of the Elect\nMaurice, Frederick Denison, The Valley of Dry Bones\nMelanchthon, Philip, The Safety of the Virtuous\nMemorial Discourse on Phillips Brooks. By Henry Codman Potter\nMessiah's Throne. By John Mitchell Mason\nMinistry, The True Christian. By Norman Macleod\nMissions, A New Day for. By. S. Parkes Cadman\nMissionary Cause, The. By Alexander Campbell\nMissionary Work, The Permanent Motive in. By Richard S. Storrs\nMonster, A Bloody. By Thomas DeWitt Talmage\nMoody, Dwight Lyman, What Think ye of Christ?\nMorgan, George Campbell, The Perfect Ideal of Life\nMotive, The Permanent, in Missionary Work. By Richard S. Storrs\nMozley, James B., The Reversal of Human Judgment\nMysteries. The, of Christianity. By Alexander Vinet\n\nNewman, John Henry, God's Will the End of Life\nNicodemus: The Seeker after Religion. By Edwin Hubbell Chapin\nNicoll, William Robertson, Gethsemane, The Rose Garden of God\n\nOptimism, Apostolic. By John Henry Jowett\nOptimism. By John Watson\nOracles, Preparation for Consulting the, of God. By Edward Irving\n\nPark, Edwards Amasa, The Prominence of the Atonement\nParker, Joseph, A Word to the Weary\nParker, Theodore, The Transient and Permanent in Christianity\nParkhurst, Charles Henry, Constructive Faith\nPassion, The, of Christ. By Louis Bourdaloue\nPatton, Francis Landey, Glorification Through Death\nPaul Before Felix and Drusilla. By Jacques Saurin\nPeace with God, Let us Have. By John A. Broadus\nPermanent, The Transient and the, in Christianity. By Theodore Parker\nPersecution for Christ, Enduring, John Calvin\nPilate Before Christ--Christ Before Pilate. By William Mackergo\n  Taylor\nPotter, Henry Codman, Memorial Discourse on Phillips Brooks\nPride, The, of Life. By Phillips Brooks\nPrince, The, of Life. By Washington Gladden\nProgress, The Age of. By William Boyd Carpenter\nPunshon, William Morley, Zeal in the Cause of Christ\n\nReconciliation, The. By Charles E. Jefferson\nRecovery, The Fall and, of Man. By Christmas Evans\nRedeemer's Tears, The, over Lost Souls. By John Howe\nReligion, Education and the Future of. By John Lancaster Spaldin\nReligion in Common Life. By John Caird\nReligion, Nicodemus: The Seeker after. By Edwin Hubbell Chapin\nResurrection, Christ's, an Image of our New-Life. By Frederick Ernst\n  Schleiermacher\nResurrection, The, of Our Lord. By Matthew Simpson\nResurrection, The Reasonableness of a. By John Tillotson\nReversal, The, of Human Judgment. By James B. Mozley\nRobertson, Frederick William, The Loneliness of Christ\nRoyal Bounty, the. By Alexander McKenzie\n\nSackcloth, The Transfigured. By William L. Watkinson\nSaints Converse with God, The. By Francis F\u00e9nelon\nSalvation, Making Light of Christ and. By Richard Baxter\nSatan, The Fall of. By George C. Lorimer\nSaurin, Jacques, Paul Before Felix and Drusilla\nSavonarola, Girolamo, The Ascension of Christ\nSchleiermacher, Frederick Ernst, Christ's Resurrection an Image of our\n  New Life\nSeiss, Joseph A., The Wonderful Testimonies\nService, The Pattern of. By Alexander Maclaren\nShaking, The, of the Heavens and the Earth. By Charles Kingsley\nSight, The Recovery of, by the Blind By St Augustine\nSimpson, Matthew, The Resurrection of Our Lord.\nSins, The Forgiveness of By John Clifford\nSmith, George Adam Assurance in God\nSongs in the Night By Charles Haddon Spurgeon\nSouls, The Redeemer's Tears Over Lost By John Howe\nSouth, Robert, The Image of God in Man\nSovereignty, The of God By Timothy Dwight\nSpalding, John Lancaster, Education and the Future of Religion\nSpiritual Light By Jonathan Edwards\nSpurgeon, Charles Haddon Songs in the Night\nStalker, James Temptation\nStanley, Arthur Penrhyn, In Memoriam--Thomas Carlyle\nStilling of the Storm, The Miraculous By William Connor Magee\nStorm, The Miraculous Stilling of the By William Connor Magee\nStorrs, Richard S. The Permanent Motive in Missionary Work\nSummerfield, John The Heavenly Inheritance\n\nTalmage, Thomas DeWitt A Bloody Monster\nTaylor, Jeremy Christ's Advent to Judgment\nTaylor, William Mackergo Christ Before Pilate--Pilate Before Christ\nTemptation By James Stalker\nTemptation, The First, of Christ By John Knox\nTestimonies The Wonderful By Joseph A Seiss\nThirst Satisfied By William John Knox Little\nTime, The Hour and the Event of all By Hugh Blair\nTillotson, John, The Reasonableness of a Resurrection\nTransfigured Sackcloth, The By William L. Watkinson\nTransient, The, and Permanent in Christianity. By Theodore Parker\nTriumph, The, of the Church. By Henry Edward Manning\nTruth, Liberty Only in. By John Hall\nValley, The, of Dry Bones By Frederick Derrison Maurice\nVan Dyke, Henry, The Meaning of Manhood\nVaughan, Charles John, God Calling to Man\nVictory, Christian By Christopher Newman Hall\nVinet, Alexander, The Mysteries of Christianity\nVirtuous, The Safety of the. By Philip Melanchthon\nVoice, I am a. By Charles Wagner\n\nWagner, Charles, I am a Voice\nWatkinson, William L, The Transfigured Sackcloth\nWatson, John, Optimism\nWayland, Francis, A Day in the Life of Jesus of Nazareth\nWeary, A Word to the. By Joseph Parker\nWesley, John, God's Love to Fallen Man.\nWhitefield, George, The Method of Grace\nWhyte, Alexander, Experience\nWilberforce, Ernest Roland, The Mother Church\nWords, Parting By James Martineau\nWork in the Groaning Creation. By Frederick William Farrar\nWorld, The Greatest Thing in the. By Henry Drummond\nWorm, The Prepared. By Howard Crosby\n\n\n\n\nINDEX TO TEXTS\n\n\n                      VOLUME\n\nGenesis i., 2              I\n  i., 27                  II\n  i., 31                 VII\n  i., 31                 VII\n  iii., 9                 VI\n  xxxvii., 33           VIII\n\nI Kings x., 13           VII\n  x., 36                  IX\n\nII Kings vi., 1,2         IX\n\nEsther iv., 2           VIII\n\nJob xxxiii., 4            IX\n  xxxv., 10             VIII\n\nPsalms xvi., 16            X\n  xlii., 2              VIII\n  cxix., 45              VII\n  cxix., 129             VII\n\nProverbs xi., 30          IV\n\nIsaiah xl., 1-31           X\n  l, 4                   VII\n  lvii., 15              VII\n\nJeremiah vi., 14         III\n  x., 23                 III\n\nEzekiel xxxvi., 26         V\n  xxxvii., 1-3             V\n\nJonah iv., 7             VII\n\nMatthew iv., 1             I\n  vi., 10                 IV\n  viii., 25, 26          VII\n  xii., 12                IX\n  xiii., 24               VI\n  xvi., 17               III\n  xvii., 5                IV\n  xix., 30                 V\n  xx., 30                  I\n  xxii., 5                II\n  xxii., 32               IV\n  xxii., 42             VIII\n  xxii., 42               IX\n  xxvi., 26                I\n  xxvii., 22             VII\n  xxviii., 19             IX\n\nMark vii., 33            VII\n  xvi., 15                VI\n\nLuke iv. 27              III\n  ix., 10-17              IV\n  x., 18                VIII\n  xix., 41, 42            II\n  xxi., 33                 V\n  xxiii., 27, 28          II\n  xxiv., 51                I\n\nJohn i., 23                X\n  iii. 1, 2               VI\n  iii., 8                VII\n  v., 39                  IV\n  v., 42                 III\n  vi., 38                 IV\n  vi., 63               VIII\n  vi., 64                 IX\n  viii., 28-30             X\n  x., 28                   I\n  x., 34-36             VIII\n  xii., 24                IX\n  xiv. 27                  V\n  xv., 12                  I\n  xvi., 31, 32            VI\n  xvii., 1               III\n  xvii., 20, 21            V\n  xx., 8                  IV\n  xx., 8                  IX\n  xxi., 9, 12              X\n\nActs iii., 15           VIII\n  xix., 23                IX\n  xxiv., 24, 25          III\n  xxvi., 8                II\n  xxvi., 8                IX\n\nRomans iv., 12            II\n        v., 1             IX\n        v., 4           VIII\n        v., 15           III\n        v., 15           III\n       vi., 4            III\n     viii., 9           VIII\n     viii., 22           VII\n      xii., 11            VI\n      xii., 12             X\n\nI Corinthians ii., 2       V\n              ii., 9      IV\n              ix., 24     II\n              xiii.,       X\n             xiv., 10      X\n              xv., 3       X\n              xv., 19     VI\n              xv., 20      V\n              xx., 13     IX\n\nII Corinthians ii., 14-16  V\n                v., 10    II\n                v., 13-15 VI\n\nGalatians iv., 1-7         I\n          vi., 14          X\n\nI Thessalonians iv., 13    I\n                 v., 17   II\n\nHebrews i., 18           III\n      xii., 26-29         VI\n     xiii., 13             I\n\nII Peter i., 11           IV\n\nI John, ii., 16         VIII\n         v., 15           IV\n\nRevelations ii., 17       VI\n          xiii., 8        VI\n          xxii., 3       VII\n\nApostles' Creed         VIII","title":"The World's Great Sermons, Volume 10: Drummond to Jowett, and General Index","tradition":"scripture-revelation","translated_text":null,"word_count":53456}