{"collection":"scripture-revelation","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_24373/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_24373","id":"gutenberg_24373","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/24373","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Essays, Letters & Speeches","Category: Religion/Spirituality","Category: Teaching & Education","Universities and colleges -- Sermons"],"text":"Produced by Al Haines\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nMornings in the College Chapel\n\n\n\n  SHORT ADDRESSES TO YOUNG MEN ON\n  PERSONAL RELIGION BY FRANCIS GREENWOOD\n  PEABODY, PLUMMER PROFESSOR OF\n  CHRISTIAN MORALS IN HARVARD\n  UNIVERSITY\n\n\n\nBOSTON AND NEW YORK\n\nHOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY\n\nThe Riverside Press, Cambridge\n\n\n\n\nCopyright, 1896,\n\nBy FRANCIS G. PEABODY.\n\n_All rights reserved._\n\n\n\n\nTO\n\nMY BELOVED AND REVERED COLLEAGUES\n\nTHE PREACHERS TO THE UNIVERSITY\n\nAND TO THE SACRED MEMORY OF\n\nPHILLIPS BROOKS\n\nOF THE FIRST STAFF OF PREACHERS\n\nWHO BEING DEAD YET SPEAKETH AMONG US\n\nIN GRATEFUL RECOLLECTION OF\n\nHAPPY ASSOCIATION IN THE SERVICE OF\n\nCHRIST AND THE CHURCH\n\n\n\n\n{v}\n\n_In the conduct of morning prayers at Harvard University, the Preachers\nto the University usually say a few plain words to interpret or enforce\nthe Bible lesson which has been read.  The entire service is but\nfifteen minutes long, so that this little address must occupy not more\nthan two or three minutes, and can at the best indicate only a single\nwholesome thought with which a young man may begin his day.  It has\nbeen suggested to me that some of these informal and brief addresses,\nif printed, may continue to be of interest to those who heard them, or\nmay perhaps be of use to other young people in like conditions of life;\nand I have therefore tried to recall some of these mornings in the\nCollege Chapel._\n\n_It is now ten years since it was determined that religion in our\nUniversity should be regarded no longer as a part of College\ndiscipline, but as a natural and rational opportunity offering itself\nto the life of youth.  It was a momentous transition, undertaken with\nthe profoundest sense of its seriousness and significance.  It was an\nact of faith,--of faith in religion and of faith in young men.  The\nUniversity announced the belief that religion, rationally presented,\nwill always have for healthy-minded young men a commanding interest.\nThis faith has been abundantly justified.  There has become familiar\namong us, through the devotion of successive staffs of Preachers, a\nclearer sense of the simplicity and reality of religion, which, for\nmany young men, has enriched the meaning of University life.  No one\nwho has had the slightest part in administering such a work can sum up\nits present issues without feeling on the one hand a deep sense of\npersonal insufficiency, and on the other hand a large and solemn hope._\n\n_I have indicated such sources of suggestion for these addresses as I\nnoted at the time of their delivery, but it may well be that some such\nindebtedness remains, against my will, unacknowledged._\n\nCAMBRIDGE, October, 1896.\n\n\n\n\n{vii}\n\nCONTENTS\n\n                                                           PAGE\n\n        I.  THE CLOUD OF WITNESSES . . . . . . . . . . . .    1\n       II.  NOT TO BE MINISTERED UNTO, BUT TO MINISTER . .    4\n      III.  THE TRANSMISSION OF POWER  . . . . . . . . . .    7\n       IV.  LET YOUR LIGHT SHINE . . . . . . . . . . . . .    9\n        V.  THE CENTURION  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   12\n       VI.  SPIRITUAL ATHLETICS  . . . . . . . . . . . . .   15\n      VII.  THE RHYTHM OF LIFE . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   18\n     VIII.  THAT OTHER DISCIPLE  . . . . . . . . . . . . .   21\n       IX.  MORAL TIMIDITY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   25\n        X.  THE HEAVENLY VISION  . . . . . . . . . . . . .   27\n       XI.  THE BREAD AND WATER OF LIFE  . . . . . . . . .   30\n      XII.  THE RECOIL OF JUDGMENTS  . . . . . . . . . . .   32\n     XIII.  THE INCIDENTAL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   35\n      XIV.  LEARNING AND LIFE  . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   38\n       XV.  FILLING LIFE FULL  . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   41\n      XVI.  TAKING ONE'S SHARE OF HARDSHIPS  . . . . . . .   44\n     XVII.  CHRISTIAN UNITY  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   47\n    XVIII.  THE PATIENCE OF FAITH  . . . . . . . . . . . .   49\n      XIX.  THE BOND-SERVANT AND THE SON . . . . . . . . .   52\n       XX.  DYING TO LIVE  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   54\n      XXI.  CARRYING YOUR OWN CROSS  . . . . . . . . . . .   56\n     XXII.  THE POOR IN SPIRIT . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   58\n    XXIII.  THE MOURNERS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   60\n     XXIV.  THE MEEK . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   62\n      XXV.  THE HUNGER FOR RIGHTEOUSNESS . . . . . . . . .   64\n     XXVI.  THE MERCIFUL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   67\n    XXVII.  THE PURE IN HEART  . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   69\n   XXVIII.  THE TWO BAPTISMS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   71\n\n{viii}\n\n     XXIX.  THE WISE MEN AND THE SHEPHERDS . . . . . . . .   74\n      XXX.  THE SONG OF THE ANGELS . . . . . . . . . . . .   76\n     XXXI.  THE SECRET OF HEARTS REVEALED  . . . . . . . .   78\n    XXXII.  THE GRACE OF JESUS CHRIST  . . . . . . . . . .   80\n   XXXIII.  THE EVERLASTING ARMS . . . . . . . . . . . . .   83\n    XXXIV.  THE COMFORT OF THE TRUTH . . . . . . . . . . .   85\n     XXXV.  THE SWORD OF THE SPIRIT  . . . . . . . . . . .   87\n    XXXVI.  LIFE IS AN ARROW . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   89\n   XXXVII.  THE DECLINE OF ENTHUSIASM  . . . . . . . . . .   90\n  XXXVIII.  THE CROWN OF LIFE  . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   93\n    XXXIX.  THE HIDDEN MANNA AND THE WHITE STONE . . . . .   96\n       XL.  THE MORNING STAR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   99\n      XLI.  LIVING AS DEAD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  102\n     XLII.  THE OPEN DOOR  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  105\n    XLIII.  BEHOLD, I STAND AT THE DOOR AND KNOCK  . . . .  107\n     XLIV.  HE THAT OVERCOMETH . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  110\n      XLV.  THE PRODIGALITY OF PROVIDENCE  . . . . . . . .  113\n     XLVI.  THE HARD LIFE  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  116\n    XLVII.  THE THIN LIFE  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  118\n   XLVIII.  THE CROWDED LIFE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  120\n     XLIX.  THE PATIENCE OF NATURE . . . . . . . . . . . .  122\n        L.  THE DISTRIBUTION OF TALENTS  . . . . . . . . .  124\n       LI.  THE LAW OF INCREASING RETURNS  . . . . . . . .  127\n      LII.  THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF WEALTH . . . . . . .  129\n     LIII.  THE AVERAGE MAN  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  131\n      LIV.  THE OVERCOMING OF INSIGNIFICANCE . . . . . . .  133\n       LV.  CAPACITY EXTIRPATED BY DISUSE  . . . . . . . .  136\n      LVI.  THE PARABLE OF THE VACUUM  . . . . . . . . . .  138\n     LVII.  CHRISTIANITY AND BUSINESS  . . . . . . . . . .  140\n    LVIII.  MAKING FRIENDS OF MAMMON . . . . . . . . . . .  143\n      LIX.  COMING TO ONE'S SELF . . . . . . . . . . . . .  146\n       LX.  POPULARITY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  148\n      LXI.  TWO QUESTIONS ABOUT CHRISTIANITY . . . . . . .  151\n     LXII.  AN UNRECORDED DAY  . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  154\n    LXIII.  THE ANSWER TO PRAYER . . . . . . . . . . . . .  156\n     LXIV.  AN IMPOSSIBLE NEUTRALITY . . . . . . . . . . .  159\n\n{ix}\n\n      LXV.  THE FINISHED LIFE  . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  163\n     LXVI.  ATTAINING TO THE RESURRECTION  . . . . . . . .  166\n    LXVII.  SIMON OF CYRENE  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  168\n   LXVIII.  POWER AND TEMPTATION . . . . . . . . . . . . .  171\n     LXIX.  LOVING WITH THE MIND . . . . . . . . . . . . .  174\n      LXX.  AM I MY BROTHER'S KEEPER?  . . . . . . . . . .  176\n     LXXI.  PROFESSIONALISM AND PERSONALITY  . . . . . . .  178\n    LXXII.  THE CENTRAL SOLITUDE . . . . . . . . . . . . .  180\n   LXXIII.  IF THOU KNEWEST THE GIFT OF GOD  . . . . . . .  182\n    LXXIV.  THE WEDDING GARMENT  . . . . . . . . . . . . .  185\n     LXXV.  THE ESCAPE FROM DESPONDENCY  . . . . . . . . .  187\n    LXXVI.  THE DIFFICULTIES OF UNBELIEF . . . . . . . . .  189\n   LXXVII.  KNOWING GOD, AND BEING KNOWN OF HIM  . . . . .  192\n  LXXVIII.  FREEDOM IN THE TRUTH . . . . . . . . . . . . .  195\n    LXXIX.  THE SOIL AND THE SEED  . . . . . . . . . . . .  198\n     LXXX.  THE LORD'S PRAYER: I.  . . . . . . . . . . . .  201\n    LXXXI.  THE LORD'S PRAYER: II. OUR FATHER  . . . . . .  203\n   LXXXII.  THE LORD'S PRAYER: III. FATHER AND SON . . . .  205\n  LXXXIII.  THE LORD'S PRAYER: IV. HALLOWED BE THY NAME  .  207\n   LXXXIV.  THE LORD'S PRAYER: V. THY KINGDOM COME . . . .  209\n    LXXXV.  THE LORD'S PRAYER: VI. THY WILL BE DONE  . . .  211\n   LXXXVI.  THE LORD'S PRAYER: VII. DAILY BREAD  . . . . .  213\n  LXXXVII.  THE LORD'S PRAYER: VIII. FORGIVENESS . . . . .  215\n LXXXVIII.  THE LORD'S PRAYER: IX. TEMPTATIONS . . . . . .  217\n   LXXXIX.  SIMPLICITY TOWARD CHRIST . . . . . . . . . . .  219\n       XC.  OPEN OUR EYES  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  222\n      XCI.  THE WORD MADE FLESH  . . . . . . . . . . . . .  224\n\nLIST OF BIBLE PASSAGES  . . . . . . . . . . .  . . . . . .  227\n\n\n\n\n{1}\n\nMornings in a College Chapel\n\n\nI\n\nTHE CLOUD OF WITNESSES\n\n_Hebrews_ xii. 1.\n\n(FIRST DAY OF COLLEGE TERM)\n\nNo one can look for the first time into the faces of a congregation\nlike this without thinking, first of all, of the great multitude of\nother lives whose love and sacrifice are represented here.  Almost\nevery single life which enters our chapel is the focus of interest for\na whole domestic circle, whose prayers and anxieties, whose hopes and\nambitions, are turning toward this place from every region of this\nland.  Out from behind our congregation stands in the background a\ncloud of witnesses in whose presence we meet.  There are the fathers,\nearning and saving, that the sons may have a {2} better chance than\nthey; there are the mothers with their prayers and sacrifices; there\nare the rich parents, trembling lest wealth may be a snare to their\nsons; and the humble homes with their daily deeds of self-denial for\nthe sake of the boys who come to us here.  When we meet in this chapel\nwe are never alone.  We are the centre of a great company of observant\nhearts.  And then, behind us all, there is the still larger fellowship\nof the past, the historic traditions of the university, the men who\nhave adorned it, the inheritances into which we freely enter, the\nwitnesses of a long and honorable associated life.\n\nNow this great company of witnesses does two things for us.  On the one\nhand, it brings responsibility.  The apostle says in this passage,\n\"that apart from us they should not be made perfect.\"  Every work of\nthe past is incomplete unless the present sustains it.  We are\nresponsible for this rich tradition.  We inherit the gift to use or to\nmar.  But, on the other hand, the cloud of witnesses is what\ncontributes courage.  It sustains you to know that you represent so\nmuch confidence and trust.  It is strengthening to enter into this rich\ninheritance.  You do not have to begin things {3} here.  You only have\nto keep them moving.  It is a great blessing to be taken up thus out of\nsolitude into the companionship of generous souls.  Let us begin the\nyear soberly but bravely.  Surrounded by this cloud of witnesses, let\nus lay aside every weight, and the sin which most easily besets us, and\nlet us run with patience the race that is immediately set before us in\nthe swiftly passing days of this college year.\n\n\n\n\n{4}\n\nII\n\n\"NOT TO BE MINISTERED UNTO, BUT TO MINISTER\"\n\n_Mark_ x. 35-45.\n\nThe disciples in this passage were looking at their faith to see what\nthey could get out of it.  They wanted to be assured of a prize before\nthey took a risk.  They came to Jesus saying: \"We would that Thou\nshouldest do for us whatever we ask.\"  But Jesus bids them to consider\nrather what they can do for their faith.  \"Whosoever,\" He says, \"would\nbe first, is to be the servant for all, for even the Son of man comes\nnot to be ministered unto, but to minister.\"  I suppose that when a man\nfaces a new year of college life, his first thought is of what it can\ndo for him.  He has studied the college programme, asking himself:\n\"What can I get out of this?\" and now he looks into the year, with all\nits unknown chances, and asks of it: \"O unknown year, what happiness\nand friendship and instruction may I get from you?  Will you not bring\nto {5} pass what I desire?  I would that thou shouldest do for me\nwhatever I ask.\"  Then the spirit of Jesus Christ meets him here and\nturns his question round: \"What are you going to do for the college\nduring this coming year?  Are you going to help us in our morals, in\nour intellectual life, in our religion?  Are you going to contribute to\nthe higher life of the university?  For what do you come here,--to be\nministered unto, or to minister?\"\n\nOf course a man may answer that this is an impossible test; that there\nis nothing that he can give to a great place like this, and everything\nhe can receive.  But he little knows how the college from year to year\ngets marked for good or evil by a class, or a group within a class, or\nsometimes a few persons, as they pass in and out of our gates.\nSometimes a group of young men live for a few years among us and leave\nbehind them a positively malarial influence; and some times a few quiet\nlives, simply and modestly lived among us, actually sweeten and purify\nour climate for years together.  And so in the quiet of our prayers we\ngive ourselves, not to be ministered unto, but to minister.  {6}\nNowhere in the world is it more true that we are members one of\nanother, and that the whole vast institutional life is affected by each\nslightest individual.  Nowhere in this world is there a better chance\nto purify the spirit and tone, either of work or of sport, and nowhere\ncan a man discover more immediately the happiness of being of use.  The\nrecreation and the religion, the study and the play, of our associated\nlife, are waiting for the dedication of unassuming Christian men to a\nlife which offers itself, not to be ministered unto, but to minister.\n\n\n\n\n{7}\n\nIII\n\nTHE TRANSMISSION OF POWER\n\n_John_ xvii. 22.\n\nThis was the glory which Jesus Christ claimed for himself--to take the\nglory of God and glorify with it the life of man.  \"The glory that thou\nhast given me I have given them.\"  It was not a glory of possession,\nbut a glory of transmission.  It was not his capacity to receive which\nglorified him, it was his capacity to give.  In most of the great\npictures of the glorified Christ there is a halo of light encircling\nand illuminating his face.  That is the fictitious glory, the glory of\npossession.  In a few such paintings the light streams from the\nMaster's face to illuminate the other figures of the scene.  That is\nthe real glory, the glory of transmission.\n\nAnd such is the only glory in life.  A man looks at learning or power\nor refinement or wealth and says: \"This is glory; this is success; this\nis the pride of life.\"  But there is really nothing glorious about\npossession.  It may be most inglorious and mean,--as {8} mean when the\npossession is brains or power as when it is bonds or wheat.  Indeed,\nthere is rarely much that is glorious or great about so slight or\nevanescent a thing as a human life.  The glory of it lies in its being\nable to say, \"The glory that thou hast given me I give to them.\"  The\nworth of life is in its transmissive capacity.  In the wonderful system\nof the telephone with its miracle of intercommunication there is, as\nyou know, at each instrument that little film of metal which we call\nthe transmitter, into which the message is delivered, and whose\nvibrations are repeated scores of miles away.  Each human life is a\ntransmitter.  Take it away from its transmissive purpose, and what a\npoor insignificant film a human life may be.  But set it where it\nbelongs, in the great system where it has its part, and that\ninsignificant film is dignified with a new significance.  It is as if\nit said to its God: \"The message which Thou givest me I give to them,\"\nand every word of God that is spoken into it is delivered through it to\nthe lives that are wearily waiting for the message as though it were\nfar away.\n\n\n\n\n{9}\n\nIV\n\nLET YOUR LIGHT SHINE\n\n_Matthew_ v. 16.\n\nAt the first reading there certainly seems to be something of\nself-assertion and self-display about this passage, as if it said: \"Let\nyour light so shine that people may see how much good you do.\"  But, of\ncourse, nothing could be farther than this from the spirit of Jesus.\nIndeed, his meaning is the precise opposite of this.  For he is\nspeaking not of a light which is to illuminate you, but of a light\nwhich is to shine from you upon your works; so that they, and not you,\nare seen, and the glory is given, not to you, but to God.  Such a light\nwill hide you rather than exhibit you, as when one holds a lantern\nbefore him on some dark road, so that while the bearer of the lantern\nis in the darkness, the path before him is thrown into the light.  The\npassage, then, which seems to suggest a doctrine of self-display, is\nreally a teaching of self-effacement.  Here is a railway-train\nthundering along some evening {10} toward a broken bridge, and the\ntrack-walker rushes toward it with his swinging lantern, as though he\nhad heard the great command, \"Let your light shine before men;\" and the\ntrain comes to a stop and the passengers stream out and see the peril\nthat they have just escaped, and give thanks to their Father which is\nin heaven.  And this is the reward of the plain, unnoticed man as he\ntrudges home in the dark,--that he has done his duty well that night.\nHe has not been seen or praised; he has been in the shadow; but he has\nbeen permitted to let his little light shine and save; and he too gives\nthanks to his Father in heaven.\n\nHere, again, is a lighthouse-keeper on the coast.  The sailor in the\ndarkness cannot see the keeper, unless indeed the shadow of the keeper\nobscures for a moment the light.  What the sailor sees is the light;\nand he thanks, not the keeper, but the power that put the light on that\ndangerous rock.  So the light-keeper tends his light in the dark, and a\nvery lonely and obscure life it is.  No one mounts the rock to praise\nhim.  The vessels pass in the night with never a word of cheer.  But\nthe life of the keeper gets its dignity, not {11} because he shines,\nbut because his light guides other lives; and many a weary captain\ngreets that twinkling light across the sea, and seeing its good work\ngives thanks to his Father which is in heaven.\n\n\n\n\n{12}\n\nV\n\nTHE CENTURION\n\n_Matthew_ viii. 5-11.\n\nOne of the most interesting things to observe in the New Testament is\nthe series of persons who just come into sight for a moment through\ntheir relation to the life of Jesus Christ, and are, as it were,\nilluminated by that relationship, and then, as they pass out of the\nlight again, disappear into obscurity.  They are like some\nwestern-fronting window on which the slanting sun shines for a moment,\nso that we see the reflection miles away.  Then, with the same\nsuddenness, the angle of reflection changes, and the window grows dark\nand insignificant once more.  This centurion was such a person.  Jesus\nperhaps never met him before, and we never hear of him again, and yet,\nin the single phrase, \"I have not found so great faith, no, not in\nIsrael,\" Jesus stamps him with a special character and welcomes him\nwith a peculiar confidence.  How is it that there is given to him this\nabrupt {13} commendation?  Why does Jesus say that he shows more faith\nthan Israel itself?  It was, of course, because of the man's attitude\nof mind.  He comes to Jesus just as a soldier comes to his superior\nofficer.  He has been disciplined to obedience, and that habit of\nobedience to his own superiors is what gives him in his turn authority.\nHe obeys, and he expects to be obeyed.  He is under authority, and so\nhe has authority over his own troops, and says to one soldier Go, and\nto another Come, and they obey.  Now Jesus sees in an instant that this\nis just what he wants of his disciples.  What discipline is to a\nsoldier, faith is to a Christian.  A religious man is a man who is\nunder authority.  He goes to his commander and gets orders for the day.\nHe does not pretend to know everything about his commander's plans.  It\nis not for him to arrange the great campaign.  It is for him only to\nobey in his own place, and to take his own part in the great design.\nPerhaps in the little skirmish in which he is involved there may be\ndefeat, but perhaps that defeat is to count in the victory for the\nlarger plan.  Thus the religious man does not serve on his own account.\nHe is in the hands of a general, who overlooks {14} the whole field.\nAnd that sense of being under authority is what gives the religious man\nauthority in his turn.  He is not the slave of his circumstances; he is\nthe master of them.  He takes command of his own detachment of life,\nbecause he has received command from the Master of all life.  He says\nto his passions, Go; and to his virtues, Come; and to his duty, Do\nthis; and the whole little company of his own ambitions and desires\nfall into line behind him, because he is himself a man under authority.\nThat is a soldier's discipline, and that is a Christian's faith.\n\n\n\n\n{15}\n\nVI\n\nSPIRITUAL ATHLETICS\n\n1 _Timothy_ iv. 8.\n\nThere is this great man writing to his young friend, whom he calls \"his\nown son in the faith,\" and describing religion as a branch of\nathletics.  Bodily exercise, he says, profiteth somewhat.  It is as if\nan old man were writing to a young man today, and should begin by\nsaying: \"Do not neglect your bodily health; take exercise daily; go to\nthe gymnasium.\"  But spiritual exercise, this writer goes on, has this\nsuperior quality, that it is good for both worlds, both for that which\nnow is, and that which is to come.  Therefore, \"exercise unto\ngodliness.\"  \"Take up those forms of spiritual athletics which develop\nand discipline the soul.  Keep your soul in training.  Be sure that you\nare in good spiritual condition, ready for the strain and effort which\nlife is sure to demand.\"  We are often told in our day that the\nathletic ideal is developed to excess, but the teaching of this passage\nis just the opposite of {16} the modern warning.  Paul tells this young\nman that he has not begun to realize the full scope of the athletic\nideal.  Is not this the real difficulty now?  We have, it is true, come\nto appreciate exercise so far as concerns the body, and any\nhealthy-minded young man to-day is almost ashamed of himself if he has\nnot a well developed body, the ready servant of an active will.  We\nhave even begun to appreciate the analogy of body and mind, and to\nperceive that the exercise and discipline of the mind, like that of the\nbody, reproduces its power.  Much of the study which one does in his\neducation is done with precisely the same motive with which one pulls\nhis weights and swings his clubs; not primarily for the love of the\nthings studied, but for the discipline and intellectual athletics they\npromote.  And yet it remains true that a great many people fancy that\nthe soul can be left without exercise; that indeed it is a sort of\ninvalid, which needs to be sheltered from exposure and kept indoors in\na sort of limp, shut-in condition.  There are young men in the college\nworld who seem to feel that the life of faith is too delicate to be\nexposed to the sharp climate of the world of scholarship and {17} have\nnot begun to think of it as strengthened by exposure and fortified by\nresistance.\n\nNow the apostolic doctrine is this: \"You do not grow strong in body or\nin mind without discipline and exercise.  The same athletic demand is\nmade on your soul.\"  All through the writings of this vigorous,\nmasculine, robust adviser of young men, you find him taking the\nathletic position.  Now he is a boxer: \"So fight I not as one that\nbeateth the air.\"  Now he is a runner, looking not to the things that\nare behind, but to the things before, and running, not in one sharp\ndash, but, with patience, the race set before him.  It is just as\nathletic a performance, he thinks, to wrestle with the princes of the\ndarkness of this world, as to wrestle with a champion.  It needs just\nas rigorous a training to pull against circumstances as to pull against\ntime.  It appears to him at least not unreasonable that the supreme\ninterest of an immortal soul should have from a man as much attention\nand development as a man gives to his legs, or his muscle, or his wind.\n\n\n\n\n{18}\n\nVII\n\nTHE RHYTHM OF LIFE\n\n_Matthew_ xiv. 23.\n\nOne of the most striking passages in modern literature is the paragraph\nin Mr. Spencer's First Principles, in which he describes the rhythm of\nmotion.  Motion, he says, though it seems to be continuous and steady,\nis in fact pulsating, undulatory, rhythmic.  There is everywhere\nintermittent action and rest.  The flag blown by the breeze floats out\nin undulations; then the branches oscillate; then the trees begin to\nsway; everywhere there is action and pause, the rhythm of motion.\n\nThe same law holds good of the conduct of life.  Its natural method is\nrhythmic, intermittent, work alternating with rest, activity and\nreceptivity succeeding one another, the rhythm of life.  The steady\nstrain, the continuous uniformity of life, is what kills.  Work\nunrelieved by play, and play unrefreshed by work, grow equally stale\nand dull.  Activity without reflection loses its grasp; meditation {19}\nwithout action sinks into a dream.  Jesus in this passage had been\nabsorbed in the most active and outward-going ministry; and then, as\nthe evening comes, he turns away and goes up into the mountain and is\nthere alone in prayer.\n\nWe need to take account of this law of the rhythm of life.  Most of the\ntime we are very much absorbed in busy, outward-looking activity,\noverwhelmed with engagements and hurry and worry; and then in the midst\nof this active life there stands the chapel with its summons to us to\npause and give the reflective life its chance.  That is one of the\nchief offices of religion in this preposterously busy age.  Religion\ngives one at least a chance to stop and let God speak to him.  It sends\nthe multitudes away and takes one up into the solitude of the soul's\ncommunication with God.  One of our Cambridge naturalists told me once\nof an experiment he had made with a pigeon.  The bird had been born in\na cage and had never been free; and one day his owner took him out on\nthe porch of the house and flung the bird into the air.  To the\nnaturalist's surprise the bird's capacity for flight was perfect.\nRound and round he flew {20} as if born in the air; but soon his flight\ngrew excited, panting, and his circles grew smaller, until at last he\ndashed full against his master's breast and fell on the ground.  What\ndid it mean?  It meant that, though the bird had inherited the instinct\nfor flight, he had not inherited the capacity to stop, and if he had\nnot risked the shock of a sudden halt, he would have panted his little\nlife out in the air.  Is not that a parable of many a modern\nlife,--completely endowed with the instinct of action, but without the\ncapacity to stop?  Round and round life goes, in its weary circle,\nuntil it is almost dying at full speed.  Any shock, even some severe\nexperience, is a mercy if it checks this whirl.  Sometimes God stops\nsuch a soul abruptly by some sharp blow of trouble, and the soul falls\nin despair at his feet, and then He bends over it and says: \"Be still\nmy child; be still, and know that I am God!\" until by degrees the\ndespair of trouble is changed into submission and obedience, and the\npoor, weary, fluttering life is made strong to fly again.\n\n\n\n\n{21}\n\nVIII\n\n\"THAT OTHER DISCIPLE\"\n\n_John_ xx. 8.\n\nAbout fifty years ago, one of the most distinguished of New England\npreachers, Horace Bushnell, preached a very famous sermon on the\nsubject of \"Unconscious Influence,\" taking for his text this verse:\n\"Then went in also that other disciple.\"  The two disciples had come\ntogether, as the passage says, to the sepulchre, but that other\ndisciple, though he came first, hesitated to go in, until the impetuous\nPeter led the way, and \"then went in also that other disciple.\"\n\nThere are always these two ways of exerting an influence on another's\nlife, the ways of conscious and unconscious influence.  A few persons\nin a community have the strength of positive leadership.  They devise\nand guide public opinion, and may be fairly described as personal\ninfluences.  But such real leaders are few.  Most of us cannot expect\nto stand in our community like the centurion of the {22} Gospel and say\nto one man: Come, and he cometh; and to another: Go, and he goeth; and\nto a third: Do this, and he doeth it.  Most of us must take to\nourselves what one of our professors said to a body of students: \"Be\nsure to lend your influence to any good object; but do not lend your\ninfluence until you have it.\"  On the other hand, however, there is for\nall of us an unavoidable kind of influence; the unconscious effect on\nanother's life, made not by him who preaches, or poses, or undertakes\nto be a missionary, but simply by the man who goes his own way, and so\ndemonstrates that it is the best way for others to follow.  That is\nwhat Laurence Oliphant once called, \"living the life;\" the kind of\nconduct which does not drive, but draws.\n\nPeter might have stood before the sepulchre, and tried all in vain to\ninfluence and urge his friend to come in with him, but instead of this\nhe simply enters, and then, without any conscious persuasion on his\npart, that other disciple enters too.  So it is that a man to-day just\ntakes his stand among us in some issue of duty, not dragging in allies\nto help him, but quietly standing on his own isolated conviction, and\nsome day \"that other {23} disciple\" just comes and stands by him for\nthe right.  Or a man is passing some morning the door of this Chapel,\nand just slips in and says his prayer, and falls into the habit of\nworship from which he had of late been falling out, and some day as he\nsits here, as he supposes, quite out of the circle of his friends, he\nturns and finds \"that other disciple\" sitting by his side.  Or a man\nenters just a little way into the power of the religious life, just\nenough to feel how incomplete is his faith, and how little he can do\nfor any one else, and one day as he gropes his way toward the light he\nfeels a hand reaching out to his, and \"that other disciple\" gives\nhimself to be guided by the strength which had seemed to its possessor\nuntil that moment weakness.  Here is the encouragement and the\ninterpretation of many an insignificant and apparently ineffective\nlife.  Positive and predetermined influence few of us can boast of\npossessing, but this unconscious influence not one of us can escape.\nAnd indeed, that is the profounder leadership even of the greatest\nsouls.  One of the most extraordinary traits in the ministry of Jesus\nChrist is his undesigned persuasiveness.  He does not seem to expect\n{24} a generally accepted influence.  He recognizes that there are\nwhole groups of souls whom he cannot reach.  Only they who have ears to\nhear, he says, can hear him.  He just goes his own great way,\nmisinterpreted, persecuted; and at last the world perceives that it is\nthe way to go, and falls into line behind him.  When he puts forth his\nsheep, he goes before them, and they follow him.  It is simply the\ncontagion of personality, the magnetism of soul, the spiritual law of\nattraction, which draws a little soul toward a great soul, as a planet\nis drawn in its orbit round the sun.\n\n\n\n\n{25}\n\nIX\n\nMORAL TIMIDITY\n\n_John_ xxi. 22.\n\nThe trouble with Peter in this passage is the sense of his own\nincapacity.  Jesus comes to him with the great command: \"Feed my lambs;\nfeed my sheep;\" as though Peter were appointed to take the lead among\nhis followers.  And then Peter shrinks back, not because of\ndisinclination, but because of sheer self-distrust.  Who is he that he\nshould assume the leadership?  He has failed once, perhaps he may fail\nagain.  \"Lord,\" he says, \"there is John; is not he the man to lead?  He\nnever made a mistake as I did.  What is he to do?\"  And then Jesus\nsays: \"What is that to thee?  The question is not whether you are the\nbest man to do this thing.  You are simply called to do it as best you\ncan.  If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee?\nFollow thou me.\"\n\nThere is a great deal of this moral timidity in college life.  Any man\nof reasonable {26} modesty sees about him plenty of men better able to\nbe leaders in good service than he is.  It seems audacious for him to\npose as fit to lead.  \"There is John,\" he says, \"a far better man than\nI; what is he to do?\"  Then the spirit of Jesus again answers: \"What is\nthat to thee?\"  Here is the thing to be done, the stand to be taken,\nand here are you.  Of course, there is much that you cannot do.  Of\ncourse there are many that might do it better.  But the call happens to\nbe to you: \"Follow thou me.\"  It is not a call to any exciting or\ndramatic service.  It is simply the demand that one takes his life just\nas it is, and gives it as he can to the service of Christ.  \"Feed my\nsheep, feed my lambs;\" give yourself to humble and modest service; live\nyour own life without much anticipation of influence or effectiveness;\nwith all your insufficiency and frequent stumbling, follow thou me; and\nin that simple following you are showing better than by all eloquence\nor argument how others ought to go, and you are helping and\nstrengthening us all.\n\n\n\n\n{27}\n\nX\n\nTHE HEAVENLY VISION\n\n_Acts_ xxvi. 19.\n\nThe great transformation in St. Paul from a persecutor to an apostle of\nChristianity was a sudden revelation.  He saw a heavenly vision and was\nnot disobedient unto it.  But this is not the common way of life.  It\ndoes not often happen that character is transformed and the great\ndecision irrevocably made in an instant.  It is not as a rule true\nthat:--\n\n  \"Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide,\n  In the strife of truth with falsehood, for the good or evil side.\"\n\nMost lives proceed more evenly, without any such catastrophic change.\nAnd yet, it is none the less true that in a very large proportion of\nlives there come, now and then, in the midst of routine and uniformity,\ncertain flashes of clearer vision, disclosing the aims and ideals of\nlife, as though one should be traveling in a fog along a hillside, and\nnow and then the breeze should sweep the mist away, and the road and\nits end be clear.  {28} Now, loyalty to such a vision is the chief\nsource of strength and satisfaction in a man's life.  Sometimes a young\nman comes to an old one for counsel about his calling in life, and the\nyoung man sums up his gifts and capacities and defects.  He will be a\nlawyer because he has a turn for disputation, or an engineer because he\nis good at figures, or a minister because he likes the higher\nliterature.  All such considerations have, of course, their place.  But\nby no such intellectual analysis is the fundamental question met.  Many\nmen fail in their lives in spite of great gifts, and many men succeed\nin spite of great defects.  The fundamental question is: \"Has this\nyoung man had a vision of what he wants to do?  Has a great desire\ndisclosed itself to his heart?  Has the breeze of God blown away the\nmists of his confusion and shown him his ideal, very far away perhaps,\nyet unmistakable and clear?\"  Then, with all reasonable allowance for\ngifts and faults, the straighter he heads toward that ideal the happier\nand the more effective he is likely to be.  When he thus follows his\nheart, he is working along the line of least resistance; and when his\nlittle work is done, however meagre {29} and unimportant it may be, he\ncan at least give it back to God, who gave it to him to do, and say: \"I\nwas not disobedient unto the heavenly vision.\"\n\n\n\n\n{30}\n\nXI\n\nTHE BREAD AND WATER OF LIFE\n\n_John_ vi. 35.  _Revelation_ xxii. 17\n\nHere, in the Gospel, the message of Christ is described as the bread of\nlife, and, here, again, in the Book of Revelation, as the water of\nlife.  Bread and water--the very plainest, most essential, every-day\nneeds, the forms of nourishment of which we rarely think with\ngratitude, but which on no day we go without.\n\nA great many people seem to think that religion is a kind of luxury in\nlife, a Sunday delicacy, an educated taste, an unessential food, which\none can, at his discretion, take or go without.  But to Jesus Christ\nreligion is no such super-imposed accessory; it is simply bread and\nwater, the daily necessity, the fundamental food, the universally\nessential and normal satisfaction of the natural hunger and the human\nthirst.  Let us, of all things, hold fast to the naturalness,\nsimplicity, and wholesomeness of the religious life.  Religion is not a\nluxury added to the normal life; it is the {31} rational attitude of\nthe soul in its relation to the universe of God.  It is not an accident\nthat the central sacrament of the Christian life is the sacrament of\ndaily food and drink.  This do, says the Master, so oft as ye eat and\ndrink it, in remembrance of me.\n\nAnd how elementary are the sources of religious confidence!  They lie,\nnot in remote or difficult regions of authority, or conformity, or\nhistory, but in the witness of daily service, and of commonplace\nendeavor.  \"The word is very nigh thee,\" says the Old Testament.  The\nsatisfying revelation of God reaches you, not in the exceptional,\noccasional, and dramatic incidents of life, but in the bread and water\nof life which you eat and drink every day.  As one of our most precious\nAmerican poets, too early silent, has sung of the routine of life:--\n\n  \"Forenoon, and afternoon, and night!--Forenoon,\n  And afternoon, and night!--Forenoon, and--what?\n  The empty song repeats itself.  No more?\n  Yea, that is Life: make this forenoon sublime,\n  This afternoon a psalm, this night a prayer,\n  And Time is conquered, and thy crown is won.\" [1]\n\n\n\n[1] E. R. Sill.  Poems, p. 27 \"Life.\"  Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1888.\n\n\n\n\n{32}\n\nXII\n\nTHE RECOIL OF JUDGMENTS\n\n_Matthew_ vii. 1.\n\nWhen Jesus says \"Judge not that ye be not judged,\" he cannot be\nforbidding all severity of judgment, for no one could be on occasion\nmore severe, or unsparing, or denunciatory than he.  \"Woe unto you,\nhypocrites,\" he says to some of the respectable church-leaders of his\ntime.  \"Beware of false prophets,\" he says in this passage, \"for they\nare inwardly ravening wolves.\"  No, Jesus certainly was not a\nsoft-spoken person or one likely to plead for gentle judgments so as to\nget kindness in return.  What he is in fact laying down in this passage\nis a much profounder principle,--the principle of the recoil of\njudgments.  Your judgments of others are in reality the most complete\nbetrayal of yourself.  What you think of them is the key to your own\nsoul.  Your careless utterances are like the boomerang of some clumsy\nsavage, often missing the mark toward {33} which it is thrown, and\nreturning to smite the man that threw it.\n\nThis is a strange reversal of the common notion in which we think of\nour relation to other lives.  We fancy that another life is perfectly\ninterpretable in its motives and aims, but that our own lives are much\ndisguised; whereas the fact is that nothing is more mysterious and\nbaffling than the interior purposes of another soul, and nothing is\nmore self-disclosed and transparent than the nature of a judging life.\nOne man goes through the world and finds it suspicious, inclined to\nwrong-doing, full of capacity for evil, and he judges it with his ready\ngossip of depreciation.  He may be in all this reporting what is true,\nor he may be stating what is untrue; but one truth he is reporting with\nentire precision,--the fact that he is himself a suspicious and\nungenerous man; and this disclosure of his own heart, which, if another\nhinted at it, he would resent, he is without any disguise making of his\nown accord.  The cynic looks over the world and finds it hopelessly\nbad, but the one obvious fact is not that the world is all bad, but\nthat the man is a cynic.  The snob looks over the world and finds it\nhopelessly {34} vulgar, but the fact is not that the world is all\nvulgar, but that the man is a snob.  The gentleman walks his way\nthrough the world, anticipating just dealing, believing in his\nneighbor, expecting responsiveness to honor, considerateness,\nhigh-mindedness, and he is often deceived and finds his confidence\nmisplaced, and sometimes discovers ruffians where he thought there were\ngentlemen; but this at least he has proved,--that he himself is a\ngentleman.  Through his judgment of others he is himself judged, and as\nhe has measured to others, so, in the final judgment of him, made\neither by God or men, it shall be measured to him again.\n\n\n\n\n{35}\n\nXIII\n\nTHE INCIDENTAL\n\n_Luke_ xvii. 5-15.\n\n\"As they went, they were healed.\"  The cure of these sick men was not\nonly remarkable in itself, but still more remarkable because of the way\nin which it happened.  They came to Jesus crying: \"Master, have mercy\non us,\" and He sends them to the priest that they might show themselves\nto him and get his official guarantee that they were no longer lepers.\nSo they must have expected that the cure, if it was to come at all,\nwould happen either under the hands of Jesus before they started, or\nunder the hands of the high priest after they arrived.  But it did not\ncome in either of these ways.  As they went, they were cleansed.  Not\nin the moment of Christ's benediction, nor yet in the moment of\necclesiastical recognition, but just between the two they were healed.\n\nThere is something like this very often in any man's deliverance from\nhis temptations {36} or cares or fears.  A man, for instance, sets\nhimself to his intellectual task, but as he studies it is all dark\nabout him, and his mind seems dull and heavy, and no light shines upon\nhis work, and he goes away from it discouraged.  But then, by some\nmiracle of the mind's working, such as each one of us in his own way\nhas experienced, his task gets solved for him, not as he works at it,\nbut as he turns to other things.  Suddenly and mysteriously, sometimes\nbetween the night's task and the morning's waking, his problem clears\nup before him, and as he goes, his mind is cleansed.  So a man goes out\ninto his life of duty-doing.  He tries to do right, and he makes\nmistakes; he does his best, and he fails.  But then his life goes on\nand other duties meet it, and out of his old mistakes comes new\nsuccess, and out of the discipline of his conscience brought about by\nhis failures comes the power of his conscience, and by degrees--he\nhardly knows how--his will grows strong.  So perhaps it happens that a\nman some morning kneels down and says his prayer, and then rises and\ngoes out into the world, the same man with the same cares and fears on\nhis shoulder, as though {37} there had been no blessing from his\nprayer.  He passes out into the day's life all unchanged.  But then, as\nit sometimes happens through God's grace, as he goes, life seems\nsoberer and plainer, and, by the very prayer he thought unanswered, he\nis healed.  Not in the great hour of his petition, but as he trudges\nalong the dusty road of life the cleansing comes to him, and the burden\nwhich he prayed might be taken from him, and which seemed to be left to\nbear, drops unnoticed by the way.\n\n\n\n\n{38}\n\nXIV\n\nLEARNING AND LIFE\n\n_Romans_ xii. 1.\n\nThe letters of Paul, varied as they are in their purpose, have one\ncurious likeness.  Each goes its way through a tangled argument of\ndoctrinal discussion, and then in almost every case each issues, as it\nwere, into more open ground, with a series of practical maxims for the\nconduct of life.  If you are looking for profound Biblical philosophy,\nyou turn to the first part of Paul's epistles.  If you are looking for\nrules of moral conduct, you turn to the last part.  And between these\ntwo sections there is, as a rule, one connecting word.  It is the word\n\"therefore.\"  The maxims, that is to say, are the consequences of the\nphilosophy.  The theology of Paul is to him an immediate cause of the\nbetter conduct of life.  \"I, therefore, the prisoner of the Lord,\"--he\nsays to the Ephesians.  \"If, therefore, there is any comfort in\nChrist,\" he says to the Philippians, {39} \"I beseech you, therefore, by\nthe mercy of God,\" he says to the Romans.\n\nWe hear much in these days of the practical perils of the intellectual\nlife; the spiritual risks of education, the infidelity of scholars, as\nthough one who dealt much in the speculations of philosophy would lose\nthe impulse to the devout and generous life; and certainly there are\nscholars enough whose learning has shrivelled up their souls.  But the\nattitude of Paul toward the general question of the relation of\nlearning to life is this,--that the better philosopher a man is, so\nmuch the better Christian he is likely to be; that hard thinking opens\nnaturally into strong doing; that while not all religion is for\nscholars, there is a scholar's religion, and while not all sin comes\nfrom ignorance, much foolish conduct comes of superficial philosophy.\nLet us take courage to-day in this natural association of philosophy\nand life.  The world needs piety, but it needs in our time a new\naccession of rational piety, or what the apostle calls \"reasonable\nservice.\"  The world needs enthusiasm, but it still more urgently needs\nintelligently directed enthusiasm.  Remember that the same man who laid\n{40} the foundation for the whole history of Christian theology and\nphilosophy was at the same time the most practical of counsellors\nconcerning Christian duty and love.  He explores with a free mind the\nspeculative mysteries of religious philosophy, and then, perceiving the\nbearing of these researches on the conduct of life he proceeds as from\na cause to an effect, and writes: \"Therefore, my brethren, I beseech\nyou, present yourselves a living sacrifice.\"\n\n\n\n\n{41}\n\nXV\n\nFILLING LIFE FULL\n\n_Matthew_ v. 17.\n\nThe Jews thought that Jesus had come to destroy their teaching and to\nabandon all their splendid history, though Jesus repeatedly told them\nthat his purpose was not destructive; that he wanted to take all that\ngreat past and fill it full of the meaning it was meant to bear; to\nfulfill, as this famous verse says, their law and prophets.  A great\nmany people still think that Jesus comes to destroy.  The religious\nlife appears to them a life of giving up things.  Renunciation seems\nthe Christian motto.  The religious person forsakes his passions,\ndenies his tastes, mortifies his body, and then is holy.  But Jesus\nalways answers that he comes not to destroy, but to fill full; not to\npreach the renunciation of capacity, but the consecration of capacity.\n\nHere is your body, with all its vigorous life.  It is a part of your\nreligion to fill out your body.  It is the temple of God, to be kept\n{42} clean for his indwelling.  Not the ascetic man, but the athletic\nman is the physical representative of the Christian life.  Here is your\nmind, with all the intellectual pursuits which engross you here.  Many\npeople suppose that the scholar's life is in antagonism to the\ninterests of religion, as though a university were somehow a bad place\nfor a man's soul.  But religion comes not to destroy the intellectual\nlife.  It wants not an empty mind but a full one.  The perils of this\nage come not from scholars, but from smatterers; not from those who\nknow much, but from those who think they \"know it all.\"  When our\nforefathers desired to do something for the service of their God, one\nof the first things they regarded as their religious duty was, as you\nmay read yonder on our gate, to found this college.  And here, once\nmore, are your passions, tempting you to sin.  Are you to destroy them,\nfleeing from them like the hermits from the world?  Oh, no!  You are\nnot to destroy them, but to direct them to a passionate interest in\nbetter things.  The soul is not saved by having the force taken out of\nit.  It is, as Chalmers said, the expulsive force of a new affection\nwhich redeems one from his {43} old sin.  How small a thing we make of\nthe religious life; hiding it in a corner of human nature, serving it\nin a fragment of the week; and here stands Jesus Christ at the centre\nof all our activities of body and mind and will, and calls for the\nconsecration of the whole of life, for the all-round man, for the\nfulfilment of capacity.  In him, says the scripture, is not emptiness,\nbut fullness of life.\n\n\n\n\n{44}\n\nXVI\n\nTAKING ONE'S SHARE OF HARDSHIPS\n\n2 _Timothy_ ii. 3.\n\nHere is one of the passages where the Revised Version brings out more\nclearly the meaning.[1]  The Old Version says: \"Endure hardness;\" as\nthough it were an appeal to an individual.  The Revised Version in the\nmargin says: \"Take thy part in suffering hardship;\" take, that is to\nsay, your share of the hardship which belongs to the common cause.\n\"Come in with the rest of us,\" it means, \"in bearing the hard times.\"\nThere were plenty of hard times in those days.  Paul was a prisoner in\nRome; Nero's persecution was abroad.  When the aged Paul, however,\nwrites to the young man whom he affectionately calls his beloved child,\nhe does not say to him: \"I hope, my beloved child, that you will find\nlife easier than I have, or that the times will clear up before you\nhave to take the lead.\"  He says, on the contrary: {45} \"The times are\nvery hard.  Come in with us then and take your share of the hardship.\"\n\nA great many people in the modern world are trying to look at life in\nquite an opposite way.  They want to make it soft and easy for\nthemselves and for their sons.  The problem of life is to get rid of\nhardness.  Education is to be smoothed and simplified.  Trouble and\ncare are to be kept away from their beloved children.  Young people are\nto have a good time while they can.  The apostle strikes a wholly\ndifferent note.  Writing to a young man of the modern time he would\nsay: \"There is a deal of hardship, of poverty, of industrial distress\nin the world, and I charge you to take your share in it!  Are you not\nold enough to enlist in Christ's army?  At your age, college men\ntwenty-five years ago were brigadier-generals, dying at the head of\ntheir troops.  Take your place, then, in the modern battle.  Be a good\nsoldier, not a shirk or a runaway.\"\n\nWhen that extraordinary man,--perhaps the most inspiring leader of men\nin our generation,--General Armstrong, was first undertaking his work\nfor the negroes in Virginia, he wrote a letter to a friend in the\nNorth, {46} saying: \"Dear Miss Ludlow: If you care to sail into a good\nhearty battle, where there is no scratching and pin-sticking, but great\nguns and heavy shot only used, come here.  If you like to lend a hand\nwhen a good cause is short-handed, come here.\"  Could any brave man or\nwoman resist a call like that?  It was a call to arms, a summons to a\ngood soldier of Jesus Christ.  The problem of a soldier is, not to find\na soft and easy place in life, with plenty to get and little to do, but\n\"to take his share of hardship,\" and as the passage goes on, \"to please\nhim who hath chosen him to be a soldier.\"\n\n\n\n[1] This change of reading is finely commented on by F. Paget, _The\nHallowing of Work_, p. 57.  Longmans, 1891.\n\n\n\n\n{47}\n\nXVII\n\nCHRISTIAN UNITY\n\n_Ephesians_ iv. 13.\n\nWe hear much in these days of Christian unity, and many programmes and\nplatforms and propositions are presented to us, as though religious\nunity were a thing to be constructed and put together like a building,\nwhich should be big enough to hold us all.  But in this splendid\nchapter religious unity is regarded by the apostle, not as a thing\nwhich is to be made, but as a thing which is to grow.  \"There is,\" he\nsays \"one body and one spirit; there is a unity of the faith.  But we\ndo not make this unity; we grow up into it as we attain unto a\nfull-grown man; we attain unto it as a boy becomes a man, not by\ndiscussing his growth, or by worrying because he is not a man, or by\nbragging that he is bigger than other boys, but simply by growing up.\nThus, as people grow up into Christ, they grow up into unity.  The\nunity comes not of the assent of man to certain propositions, but of\nthe ascent of man to {48} the stature of Christ.  And so what hinders\nunity is that we have not got our spiritual growth.  It takes a\nfull-grown mind to reach it.  It takes a full-grown heart to feel it.\nThe unity is always waiting at the top.  Religious progress is like the\nascent of a hill from various sides.  Below there is division,\nobstructive underbrush, perplexity; but as the top is neared there is\never a closer approach of man to man; and at the summit there is the\nsame view for all, and that view is a view all round.  The climbers\nattain to the measure of the stature of Christ, and they attain at the\nsame time to the unity of the faith.\n\n\n\n\n{49}\n\nXVIII\n\nTHE PATIENCE OF FAITH\n\n_Mark_ iv. 28.\n\nJesus here falls back, as he so often does, on the gradualness of\nnature.  Life, he says, is not abrupt and revolutionary in its method;\nit is gradual and evolutionary: the seed is sown and slowly comes to\nfruitage; the leaven silently penetrates the lump; the grain grows,\nfirst the blade, then the ear, finally the full corn.  The best things\nin the world do not come with a rush.  Some things have to be waited\nfor.  Faith is patient.  And this he says, not only against the nervous\nhurry of life, which is, as we all know, cursing the American world\nto-day, but also against the spiritual impatience which is to be\nobserved in every age.  The most marked illustration of it to-day is in\nour dealings with the social movements of the time.  It is the\nimpatience of the reformer.  He wants to redeem the world all at once.\nAs Theodore Parker said of the anti-slavery cause: \"The trouble seems\nto be that God {50} is not in a hurry, and I am.\"  Thus we are beset by\npanaceas which are to regenerate society in some wholesale, external,\nmechanical way.  When such a reformer not long ago presented some quick\nsolution of the social question, and it was criticised, he answered:\n\"Well, if you do not accept my solution, what is yours?\" as though\nevery one must have some immediate cure for the evils of civilization.\nBut the fact is, that the world is not likely to be saved in any\nwholesale way.  A much wiser observer of the social situation has\nlately said: \"When any one brings forward a complete solution of the\nSocial Question, I move to adjourn.\"  Jesus, let us remember, saved men\none at a time.  The patience of nature taught him the patience of\nfaith; first the blade, then the ear, then the full corn.\n\nOr, again, we are afflicted in our day by the impatience of the\ntheologian.  He wants to know all about God.  It seems somehow a\ndepreciation of theology to admit that there is anything which is not\nrevealed.  But the fact is that the wisest feel most the sense of\nmystery.  The only theology which is likely to last is one which admits\na large degree of {51} Christian agnosticism.  As one of our University\npreachers once said: \"We do not know anything about God unless we first\nknow that we cannot know Him perfectly.\" [1]  How superb, as against\nall this impatience of spirit, are the reserve and patience of Christ.\nAccept doubts, he says.  Bear with incompleteness.  Give faith its\nchance to grow.  First the blade, then the ear, and then the harvest.\nThere are some things which youth can prove, and some which only the\nexperience of maturity can teach, and then there are some mysteries\nwhich are perhaps to be made plain to us only in the clearer light of\nanother world.\n\n\n\n[1] Henry van Dyke, D. D., _Straight Sermons_, p. 216, Scribners, 1893.\n\n\n\n\n{52}\n\nXIX\n\nTHE BOND-SERVANT AND THE SON\n\n_Luke_ xvii. 7-10.\n\n\"We are unprofitable servants, we have done that which it was our duty\nto do.\"  It seems almost as if we must have misread this passage.  Can\none who has done his duty be called an unprofitable servant?  Shall one\nhave no credit because he has done what is right?  This seems strange\nindeed.  But Jesus in reality is contrasting two ideas of duty,--the\nduty of a bond-servant and the duty of a son.  The duty of a slave is\nto do what is demanded of him.  He accomplishes his stint of work, his\nround of necessities, his grudging service, and for doing that duty he\ngets his hire and his day's work is done.  Sometimes we see workmen for\nthe city in the roadway, doing their duty on these terms, and we wonder\nthat men can move so slowly and accomplish so little.  They have done\ntheir duty, but they are unprofitable servants.  Now against this,\nJesus sets the Christian thought of duty, which {53} grows out of the\nChristian thought of sonship.  A son who loves his father does not\nmeasure his duty by what is demanded of him.  No credit is his for\nobeying orders.  He passes from obligation to affection, from demand to\nprivilege.  And only as he passes thus into uncalled-for and\nspontaneous service does any credit come.  There is no credit in a\nman's paying his debts, earning his hire, meeting his demands.  The\nbusiness man does not thank his clerk for doing what he is paid for.\nWhat the employer likes to see is that service beyond obligation which\nmeans fidelity and loyalty.  Do you do your work for wages, for marks,\nfrom compulsion?  Then, when you lie down at night, you should say: \"I\nhave done that which it was my duty to do, and I am ashamed.\"  Do you\ndo your work for love's sake, for the life of service to which it\nleads, for generous ambition and hope?  Then with all your sense of\nineffectiveness and incapacity you may still have that inward peace and\njoy which permits you to say: \"I have done but little of what I dreamed\nof doing, but I have tried, at any rate, to do it unselfishly and\ngladly,--not as a bond-servant, but as a son.\"\n\n\n\n\n{54}\n\nXX\n\nDYING TO LIVE\n\n2 _Corinthians_ iv. 13.\n\nPaul repeatedly described his spiritual experiences under physical\nfigures of speech; and most of all he writes of himself as living over\nin his spiritual life the incidents of the physical life and death of\nJesus.  He is crucified with Christ; he is risen with Christ; he bears\nabout in his body the dying of Christ.  \"Death worketh in us, but life\nin you.\"  This sounds like exaggerated and rhetorical language.  It\nseems a strange use of words to say that the death of self is the life\nof the world.  But consider how it was with this man Paul.  He had been\nambitious, sanguine, impetuous, and it had all come to nothing, and\nworse than nothing.  He had been led to persecute the very faith which\nhe had soon found to be God's truth.  And then he gives up everything.\nHe throws away every prospect of honor and public respect and social\nambition.  He simply dies to himself, and gives himself {55} to the\nservice of Christ; and, behold, that death of self is the beginning of\nlife and courage to generation after generation of Christian followers.\n\nThe same story might be told of many a man.  Just in proportion as\nself-seeking dies, life begins.  A man goes his way in self-assertion,\nself-display, the desire to make an impression, and he seems to achieve\nmuch.  He gets distinction, glory, the prizes of life.  But one thing\nhe fails to do; he fails to quicken spiritual life in others.  His work\nis stained by self-consciousness, and becomes incapable of inspiration.\nIt is life to him, but death to the things that are trusted to him.\nThen some day he absolutely forgets himself in his work.  He buries\nhimself, as we say, in it.  His conceit and ambition die, and then out\nof the death of self comes the life of the world he serves.  That is\nthe paradox of life.  Life is reproduced by sacrifice.  The life that\nis lost is the only life that is saved.  The dead self is the only\nlife-bearer.  Only the man who thus sinks himself in his cause is\nremembered as its apostle.\n\n\n\n\n{56}\n\nXXI\n\nCARRYING YOUR OWN CROSS\n\n_Mark_ viii. 34.\n\n\"If any man will come after me,\" says Jesus, \"let him take up his cross\nand follow.\"  Notice that it is his own cross.  This is a different\npicture of Christian discipleship from that which is commonly\npresented.  We are used to thinking of people as abandoning their own\nlives, their passions and desires, their own weakness and their own\nstrength, and turning to the one support and safety of the cross of\nJesus Christ.  We remember that familiar picture of the woman who has\nbeen almost overwhelmed in the sea of trouble, and is finally cast up\nby the waves of life upon the rock where she clings to the cross which\nis set there as a refuge for her shipwrecked soul.  Now, no doubt, that\nrefuge in the cross of Christ has been to many a real experience.\n\"Other refuge have I none, hangs my helpless soul on thee,\" has been,\nno doubt, often a sincere confession.  But that is not the {57} state\nof mind which Jesus is describing in this passage.  He is thinking, not\nof some limp and helpless soul clinging to something outside itself,\nbut rather of a masculine, vigorous, rational life, which shoulders its\nown responsibility and trudges along under it.  Jesus says that if a\nman wants to follow him, he must first of all take up his own burden\nlike a man.  He sees, for instance, a young man to-day beset by his own\nproblems and difficulties,--his poverty, his temper, his sin, his\ntimidity, his enemies; and Jesus says to him: \"That is your cross, your\nown cross.  Now, do not shirk it, or dodge it, or lie down on it, or\nturn from it to my cross.  First of all, take up your own; let it lie\non your shoulder; and then stand up under it like a man and come to me;\nand as you thus come, not limply and feebly, but with the step--even\nlet it be the staggering step--of a man who is honestly bearing his own\nload, you will find that your way opens into strength and peace.  The\nyoke you have to carry will grow easier for you to carry, and the\nburden which you do not desire to shirk will be made light.\"\n\n\n\n\n{58}\n\nXXII\n\nTHE POOR IN SPIRIT\n\n_Matthew_ v. 3.\n\nWhom does Jesus call the blessed people?  First of all, he says, they\nare the \"poor in spirit.\"  And who are the poor in spirit?  It\nsometimes seems as if Christians thought that to be poor in spirit one\nmust be poor-spirited--a limp and spiritless creature, without dash, or\nvigor, or force.  But the poor in spirit are not the poor-spirited.\nThey are simply the teachable, the receptive, the people who want help\nand are conscious of need.  They do not think they \"know it all;\" they\nappreciate their own insufficiency.  They are open-minded and\nimpressionable.  Now Jesus says that the first approach to his\nblessedness is in this teachable spirit.  The hardest people for him to\nreach were always the self-sufficient people.  The Pharisees thought\nthey did not need anything, and so they could not get anything.  As any\none thinks, then, of his own greatest blessings, the first of them must\nbe {59} this,--that somehow he has been made open-minded to the good.\nIt may be that the conceit has been, as we say, knocked out of him, and\nthat he has been \"taken down.\"  Well! it is better to be taken down\nthan to be still up or \"uppish.\"  It is better to have the\nself-complacency knocked out of you than to have it left in.  Humility,\nas Henry Drummond once said, even when it happens through humiliation,\nis a blessing.  Not to the Pharisee with his \"I am not as other men\nare,\" but to the publican crying \"God be merciful to me, a sinner,\"\ncomes the promise of the beatitude.  The first condition of receiving\nthe gift of God is to be free from the curse of conceit.  The\nspiritually poor are the first to receive Christ's blessing.  They have\nat least made themselves accessible to the further blessings which\nJesus has to bestow.\n\n\n\n\n{60}\n\nXXIII\n\nTHE MOURNERS\n\n_Matthew_ v. 4.\n\nWhom does Jesus call the blessed people?  How strange it sounds when he\nanswers: \"Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.\"\nBlessed, that is to say, are not only the people who, as we say, are in\nsorrow; but blessed are all the burdened people, the people who are\nhaving a hard time, the people who are bearing their crosses, for they\nare the ones who will learn the deeper comfort of the Gospel.  It is\nthe same promise which is repeated later in another place: \"Come unto\nme all ye that are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.\"  This does\nnot mean that mourning is blessed for its own sake, or that the only\nway to be a Christian is to be sad.  It simply calls attention to this\nfact, that every life is sure to have some hardness, or burden, or\ncross in it.  If you have none, it simply shows that you have not\nreally begun to live.  And Jesus says that the farther you go into {61}\nthese deep places of experience, the more you will get out of his\nreligion.  There are some phases of life where it makes little\ndifference whether you have any religion or not.  But let the water of\ntrouble go over your soul, and then there is just one support which\nkeeps you from going down.  Religion, that is to say, is not a thing\nfor holidays and easy times.  Its comfort is not discovered until you\ncome to a hard place.  The more it is needed, the stronger it is.  How\nstrange it is that the people who seem most conscious of their\nblessings and sustained by a sense of gratitude are, as a rule, people\nwho have been called to mourn.  It is not resignation only which they\nhave found; it is light.  They have been comforted through their\nsorrows.  Their burden has been made easy and their yoke light.\n\n\n\n\n{62}\n\nXXIV\n\nTHE MEEK.\n\n_Matthew_ v. 5.\n\nWhom does Jesus call the blessed people?  Again he answers: \"Blessed\nare the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.\"  And who are the meek?\nWe think of a meek man as a limp and mild creature who has no capacity\nto hurt or courage to help.  But that is not what the Bible word means.\nMeekness is not weakness.  The Book of Numbers says that Moses was the\nmeekest man that ever lived; but one of the first illustrations of his\ncharacter was in slaying an Egyptian who insulted his people.  The meek\nman of the Bible is simply what we call the gentle-man--the man without\nswagger or arrogance, not self-assertive or forthputting, but honorable\nand considerate.  This is the sense in which it has been said of Jesus\nthat he was the first of gentlemen.  Now these people, the gracious and\ngenerous,--not the self-important and ostentatious,--are, according to\nJesus, in the end to rule.  {63} They are not to get what we call the\nprizes of life, the social notoriety and position, but they are to have\nthe leadership of their time and its remembrance when they are gone.\nLong after showy ambition has its little day and ceases to be, the\nworld will remember the magnanimous and self-effacing leader.  He does\nnot have to grasp the prizes of earth; he, as Jesus says, \"inherits the\nearth.\"  It is his by right.  The meek, says the thirty-seventh Psalm,\nshall inherit the earth and shall delight themselves in abundance of\npeace.  The meek escape the quarrelsomeness of ambition.  They live in\na world of peace and good-will.  And when we sing of peace on earth and\ngood-will to men, we are only repeating the beatitude of Jesus:\n\"Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.\"\n\n\n\n\n{64}\n\nXXV\n\nTHE HUNGER FOR RIGHTEOUSNESS\n\n_Matthew_ v. 6.\n\nWhom does Jesus call the blessed people?  \"Blessed,\" he goes on, \"are\nthey that hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be\nfilled.\"  The New Testament repeatedly states this doctrine, which\nsounds so strangely in our ears.  It is the doctrine that a man gets\nwhat he asks for--that his real hunger will be filled.  We should say\nthat just the opposite of this was true--that life was a continued\nstriving to get things which one fails to get--a hunger which is doomed\nto stay unsatisfied.  But Jesus turns to his followers and says: \"Ask,\nand you shall receive; seek, and you shall find,\" and in the same\nspirit turns even to the hypocrites and says again: \"They also receive\ntheir reward.\"  Conduct, that is to say, fulfils its destiny.  What you\nsow, you reap.  The blessing which is sufficiently desired is attained.\nWhat you really ask for, you get.  The only reason why this does not\n{65} seem to be true is that we do not realize what the things are\nwhich we are asking for and what must be the inevitable answer to our\ndemand.  We ask, for instance, for money; and we expect an answer of\nhappiness.  But we do not get happiness, we only get money, which is a\nwholly different thing.  We ask for popularity and reputation, and we\nexpect these gifts, when received, to last; but we have asked for\nsomething whose very nature is that it does not last.  It is like\nasking for a soap-bubble and expecting to get a billiard-ball.  We\ncannot work for the temporary and get the permanent.  If, then, it is\ntrue that we are to get what we want, then the secret of happiness is\nto want the best things and to want them very much.  If we hunger and\nthirst for base things we shall get them.  Oh yes, we shall get them;\nand get the unhappiness which comes of this awful discovery, that as we\nhave hungered so we are filled.  And if we are really hungry for\nrighteousness, if we want to be good, as a thirsty man wants water, if,\nas Jesus says of himself, our meat is to do the will of Him who sends\nus, then that demand also will be supplied.  \"He satisfieth the longing\nsoul,\" {66} says the Psalmist, \"and filleth the hungry soul\"--not with\nsuccess, or money, or fame, but with that which the soul was hungry\nfor--\"with goodness.\"  The longing soul has sought the best blessing,\nand it has received the best blessedness.\n\n\n\n\n{67}\n\nXXVI\n\nTHE MERCIFUL\n\n_Matthew_ v. 7.\n\nWhom does Jesus call the blessed people?  \"Blessed are the merciful:\nfor they shall obtain mercy.\"  This repeats in effect the later words\nof Jesus: \"With what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged.\"  The\nmerciless judgment passed on others recoils upon one's own nature and\nmakes it hard and mean and brutalized.  The habit of charitable\njudgment of others is a source of personal blessedness.  It blooms out\ninto composure and hopefulness, into peace and faith.  How wonderful\nthese great calm affirmations of Jesus are!  They are directly in the\nface of the most common views of life, and yet they are delivered as\nsimple axioms of experience, as matters of fact, self-evident\npropositions of the reason.  It is not a matter of barter of which\nJesus is speaking.  He does not say: \"If you treat another kindly he\nwill be kind to you.  The merciful man will get mercy when he needs\nit.\"  That {68} would not be the truth.  The best of men are often\njudged most mercilessly.  Jesus himself gives his life to acts of\nmercy, and is pitilessly slain.  This beatitude gives, not a promise to\npay, but a law of life.  To forgive an injury is, according to this\nlaw, a blessing to the forgiver himself.  The quality of mercy blesses\nhim that gives as well as him that takes.  The harsh judge of others\ngrows hard himself, while pity softens the pitier.  Thus among the\nhappiest of people are those whose grudges and enmities have been\novercome by their own broader view of life.  It is as though in the\nmidst of winter the warmer sun were already softening the frost.  They\nare happy, not because others are kinder to them, but because that\nsofter soil permits their own better life to germinate and grow.  The\nmerciful has obtained mercy; the blesser has received the blessing.\n\n\n\n\n{69}\n\nXXVII\n\nTHE PURE IN HEART\n\n_Matthew_ v. 8.\n\n\"Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.\"  That, I\nsuppose, is the highest and deepest proposition which ever fell from\nhuman lips.  Without the least argument or reasoning about it, as a\nthing which is perfectly self-evident, Jesus announces that purity of\nheart leads to the knowledge of God.  Your character clarifies your\ncreed.  A theologian who wants to be profound must be pure.\nConsecration brings with it insight.  The perfect knowledge of God is\nto be attained only by the perfectly consecrated life.  The human soul\nis a mirror on which the light of God shines, and only the pure mirror\nreflects the perfect image.  What a word is this to drop into the midst\nof the conflicting theologies and philosophies of the time, of the\ndisputes between the people who think they know all about God, and the\npeople who think they cannot know Him at all!  Do you want to be {70}\nsure that God is directing and supporting you in all your perplexing\nexperiences of life?  You cannot see God in these things except through\na perfectly purified heart.  Clarify the medium of vision, and truth\nundiscerned before breaks on the observer's sight.  A mile or two from\nhere skilful artisans make those great object-glasses with which the\nmysteries of the stars are disclosed.  The slightest speck or flaw\nblurs the image, but with the perfect glass stars unseen by any eye\nthroughout the history of the world are to be in our days discovered.\nIt is a parable of the soul.  Each film on the object-glass of\ncharacter obscures the heavenly vision, but to the prepared and\ntranslucent life truth undiscernible by others breaks upon the reverent\ngaze, and the beatific vision is revealed to the pure in heart.\n\n\n\n\n{71}\n\nXXVIII\n\nTHE TWO BAPTISMS\n\n_Luke_ iii. 16.\n\nTHE WEEK BEFORE CHRISTMAS.\n\nAmong the persons who group themselves about Jesus, the most dramatic\nand picturesque figure is certainly that of John the Baptist.  There is\nin him a most extraordinary combination of audacity and humility.  He\nis bold, denunciatory, confident; but at the same time he is\nself-effacing and preparatory in his work.  He never thinks of his\nservice as final; after him is to come a man who is preferred before\nhim.  There is always the larger work than his to follow.  There are in\nhim the most beautiful humility and the most absolute bravery, and this\nmakes perhaps the rarest combination of traits which a character can\nshow.  It is all summed up in his doctrine of the two baptisms: the\nbaptism by water, which John is to bring, and the baptism by the Holy\nGhost and by fire, which is to be brought by Jesus.  Water is, of\ncourse, the symbol of cleansing, the washing away of {72} one's old\nsins, an expulsive, negative work.  Fire is the symbol of passion,\nenthusiasm, flame.  It is illuminating, kindling, the work of the Holy\nGhost.  One of these baptisms prepares for the other.  First a man must\nbe clean and then he may be passionate.  First, the fire of his base\naffections must be washed away and then the fire of a new enthusiasm\nmay be lighted.  And only that second step makes one a Christian.  It\nis a great thing to have life cleansed, and its conceits and follies\nwashed away.  But that is not safety.  The cleansing is for the moment\nonly.  It is like that house which was swept and garnished, but because\nit was empty was invaded by tenants worse than the first.  The only\nsalvation of the soul lies in the kindling of a new passion, the\nlighting of the fire of a new intention, the expulsive power, as it has\nbeen called, of a new affection.\n\nSo it is in our associated life.  We need, God knows, the baptism of\nJohn, the purifying of conduct, the washing away of follies and sins;\nbut what we need much more is the fire of a moral enthusiasm to burn up\nthe refuse that lies in the malarious corners of our college life, and\nlight up the whole of it {73} with moral earnestness and passionate\ndesire for good.  That is to pass from the discipleship of John to the\ndiscipleship of Jesus, from the baptism by water to the baptism by\nfire, from the spirit of the Advent season to the spirit of the\nChristmas time.\n\n\n\n\n{74}\n\nXXIX\n\nTHE WISE MEN AND THE SHEPHERDS\n\n_Matthew_ ii. 1-11; _Luke_ ii. 8-10.\n\nOne Gospel tells of one kind of people who saw a star in the East and\nfollowed it; and another Gospel tells the same story of quite an\nopposite kind of people.  Matthew says that the wise men of the time\nwere the first to appreciate the coming of Christ.  Luke says that it\nwas the plainest sort of people, the shepherds, who first greeted that\ncoming.  There is the same variety of impression still.  Many people\nnow write as if religion were for the magi only.  They make of it a\nmystery, a philosophy, an opinion, a doctrine, which only the scholars\nof the time can appreciate, and which plain people can obey, but cannot\nunderstand.  Many people, on the other hand, think that religion is for\nplain people only; good for shepherds, but outgrown by magi; a star\nthat invites the superstitious and ignorant to worship, but which\nsuggests to scholars only a new phenomenon for science to explore.\n\n{75}\n\nBut the Christmas legend calls both, the wise and the humble, to\ndiscipleship.  Religion has both these aspects, and offers both these\ninvitations.  Religion is not theology.  There are many things which\nare hidden from the magi, and are revealed to simple shepherds.  But\nreligion, on the other hand, is not all for the simple.  The man who\nwrote that there were many things hidden from the wise and prudent, was\nhimself a scholar.  It was like that dramatic day, when Wendell\nPhillips arraigned the graduates of this college for indifference to\nmoral issues, while he who made the indictment was a graduate himself.\nThe central subject of the highest wisdom to-day is, as it always has\nbeen, the relation of the mind of man to the universe of God.\n\nThus both these types of followers are called.  Never before was the\nfundamental simplicity of religion so clear as it is now; and never\nbefore was scholarship in religion so needed.  Some of the secrets of\nfaith are open to any receptive heart, and some must be explored by the\ntrained and disciplined mind.  The scholar and the peasant are both\ncalled to this comprehensive service.  The magi and the shepherd meet\nat the cradle of the Christ.\n\n\n\n\n{76}\n\nXXX\n\nTHE SONG OF THE ANGELS\n\n_Luke_ ii. 8-14.\n\nWe are beginning to feel already the sweep of life that hurries us all\nalong to the keeping of the Christmas season; our music already takes\non a Christmas tone, and we begin to hear the song of the angels, which\nseemed to the Evangelists to give the human birth of Jesus a fit\naccompaniment in the harmonies of heaven.\n\nThis song of the angels, as we have been used to reading it, was a\nthreefold message; of glory to God, peace on earth, and good-will among\nmen; but the better scholarship of the Revised Version now reads in the\nverse a twofold message.  First, there is glory to God, and then there\nis peace on earth to the men of good-will.  Those, that is to say, who\nhave the good-will in themselves are the ones who will find peace on\nearth.  Their unselfishness brings them their personal happiness.  They\ngive themselves in good-will, and so they obtain peace.  That is the\ntrue spirit {77} of the Christmas season.  It is the good-will which\nbrings the peace.  Over and over again in these months of feverish\nscrambling for personal gain, men have sought for peace and have not\nfound it; and now, when they turn to this generous good-will, the peace\nthey sought comes of itself.  Many a man in the past year has had his\nmisunderstandings or grudges or quarrels rob him of his own peace; but\nnow, as he puts away these differences as unfit for the season of\ngood-will, the peace arrives.  That is the paradox of Christianity.  He\nwho seeks peace does not find it.  He who gives peace finds it\nreturning to him again.  He who hoards his life loses it, and he who\nspeeds it finds it:--\n\n  \"Not what we give, but what we share,\n  For the gift without the giver is bare;\n  Who gives himself with his alms feeds three,--\n  Himself, his hungering neighbor, and me.\"\n\nThat is the sweet and lingering echo of the angels' song.\n\n\n\n\n{78}\n\nXXXI\n\nTHE SECRET OF HEARTS REVEALED\n\n_Luke_ ii. 30-35.\n\nThe prophecy of the aged Simeon for the infant Christ was this,--that\nthrough him the secrets of many hearts should be revealed.  Jesus, that\nis to say, was not only to read the secrets of others' hearts, but he\nwas to enable people to read their own hearts.  They were to come into\nself-recognition as they came to him.  They were to be disclosed to\nthemselves.  You know how that happens in some degree when you fall in\nwith other exceptional lives.  You meet a person of purity or\nself-control or force, and there waken in you kindred impulses, and you\nbecome aware of your own capacity to be better than you are.  The touch\nof the heroic discovers to you something of heroism in yourself.  The\ncontagion of nobleness finds a susceptibility for that contagion in\nyourself.\n\nSo it was that this disclosure of their hearts to themselves came to\nthe people who met with {79} Jesus Christ.  One after another they come\nup, as it were, before him, and he looks on them and reads them like an\nopen book; and they pass on, thinking not so much of what Jesus was, as\nof the revelation of their own hearts to themselves.  Nathanael comes,\nand Jesus reads him, and he answers: \"Whence knowest thou me?\"  Peter\ncomes, and Jesus beholds him and says: \"Thou shalt be called Cephas, a\nstone.\"  Nicodemus, Pilate, the woman of Samaria, and the woman who was\na sinner, pass before him, and the secrets of their different hearts\nare revealed to themselves.  It is so now.  If you want to know\nyourself, get nearer to this personality, in whose presence that which\nhid you from yourself falls away, and you know yourself as you are.\nThe most immediate effect of Christian discipleship is this,--not that\nthe mysteries of heaven are revealed, but that you yourself are\nrevealed to yourself.  Your follies and weaknesses, and all the\ninsignificant efforts of your better self as well, come into\nrecognition, and you stand at once humbled and strengthened in the\npresence of a soul which understands you, and believes in you, and\nstirs you to do and to be what you have hitherto only dreamed.\n\n\n\n\n{80}\n\nXXXII\n\nTHE GRACE OF JESUS CHRIST\n\nThese are the last words of most of the Epistles of the New Testament.\nThey are the last words of the New Testament itself.  They are commonly\nheard as the last words of Christian worship; the most familiar form of\nChristian benediction.  But what is the grace of Jesus Christ?  Grace\nis that which acts not for duty's sake, but for sheer love and\nkindness.  What is the grace of God?  It is just this overflowing\nbenevolence.  Who is the gracious man?  It is he who gives beyond his\nobligations, and seeks opportunities of thoughtful kindliness.  What is\nthe grace of Christ?  It is just this superadded and unexpected\ngenerosity.\n\nSo the life of duty and the life of grace stand contrasted with each\nother.  The duty-doer thinks of justice, honesty, the reputable way of\nlife.  But grace goes beyond duty.  Duty asks, What ought I to do?\nGrace asks, What can I do?  Where duty halts, grace begins.  It touches\nduty with beauty, and makes it fair instead of stern.  Grace is not\nlooking {81} for great things to do, but for gracious ways to do little\nthings.  In many spheres of life it is much if it can be said of you\nthat you do your duty.  But think of a home of which all that you could\nsay was that its members did their duty.  That would be as much as to\nsay that it was a just home, but a severe one; decorous, but unloving;\na home where there was fair dealing, but where there was little of the\ngrace of Jesus Christ.\n\nThus it is that the grace of Jesus Christ sums up the finest beauty of\nthe Christian spirit, and offers the best benediction with which\nChristians should desire to part.  As we separate for a time from our\nworship, I do not then ask that we may be led in the coming year to do\nour duty, I ask for more.  I pray for the grace of Jesus Christ; that\nin our homes there may be more of considerateness, that in our college\nthere may be a natural and spontaneous self-forgetfulness, a free and\ngenerous offering of uncalled-for kindness.  Some of us are able to do\nmuch for others, to give, to teach, to govern, to employ.  There is a\nway of doing this which doubles its effect.  It is the way of grace.\nSome of us must be for the most part receivers of instruction or {82}\nkindness.  There is a way of receiving kindness which is among the most\nbeautiful traits of life.  It is the way of grace.  No one of us, if he\nbe permitted to live on in this coming year, can escape this choice\nbetween obligation and opportunity, between the way of life which is\ndiscreet and prudent and the way of life which is simply beautiful.\nWhen these inevitable issues come, then the prayer, which may lead us\nto the higher choice, must be the prayer with which the Bible ends; the\nbenediction of the Christian spirit; even this,--that the grace of\nJesus Christ may be with us all.\n\n\n\n\n{83}\n\nXXXIII\n\nTHE EVERLASTING ARMS\n\n_Deuteronomy_ xxxiii. 27.\n\n\"Underneath are the everlasting arms,\"--that was the repeated burden of\nthe great men of Israel.  They lived in the midst of national\ncalamities and distresses.  They were defeated, puzzled, baffled.  The\nway looked dark.  Then they fall back on the one great re-establishing\nthought: after all, it is God's world.  It is not going to ruin.\nChanges which seemed tremendous are not fatal or final.  Israel dwells\nin safety, for God holds us in his arms.\n\nWe need some such broad, deep confidence as we enter a new year.  We\nget involved in small issues and engrossed in personal problems, and\npeople sometimes seem so malicious, and things seem to be going so\nwrong that it is as if we heard the noise of some approaching Niagara.\nThen we fall back on the truth that after all it is not our world.  We\ncan blight it or help it, but we do not {84} decide its issues.  In the\nmidst of such a time of social distress, Mr. Lowell in one of his\nlectures wrote: \"I take great comfort in God.  I think He is\nconsiderably amused sometimes, but on the whole loves us and would not\nlet us get at the matchbox if He did not know that the frame of the\nuniverse was fireproof.\"  That is the modern statement of the\nunderlying faith and self-control and patience which come of confessing\nthat in this world it is not we alone who do it all.  \"Why so hot,\nlittle man?\" says Mr. Emerson.  \"I take great comfort in God,\" says Mr.\nLowell; and the Old Testament, with a much tenderer note repeats:\n\"Underneath are the everlasting arms.\"\n\n\n\n\n{85}\n\nXXXIV\n\nTHE COMFORT OF THE TRUTH\n\n_John_ xiv. 14, 16.\n\nJesus says that he will send a Comforter, and that it will be the\nspirit of the truth.  Many people say just the opposite of this.  If\nyou want comfort, they think that you must not have truth.  Is not the\ntruth often an uncomforting and uncomfortable thing?  Too much truth\nseems dangerous.  The spirit of the truth is a hard, cold spirit.\nShould not a comforter shade and soften the truth?  But Jesus answers\nthere is nothing so permanently comforting as the truth.  Why, for\ninstance, is it that we judge people so severely?  It is not as a rule\nthat we know the whole truth about them, but that we know only a\nfragment of the truth.  The more we know, the gentler grow our\njudgments.  Would it not be so if people who judge you should know all\nyour secret hopes and conflicts and dreams?  Why is it again that\npeople are so despondent about their own times, their community, the\ntendency of things?  It is because {86} they have not entered deeply\nenough into the truth of the times.  The more they know, the more they\nhope.  And why is it that God is all-merciful?  It is because He is\nalso all-wise.  He knows all about us, our desires and our repentances,\nand so in the midst of our wrong-doing He continues merciful.  His Holy\nSpirit bears in one hand comfort and in the other truth.  How does a\nstudent get peace of mind?  He finds it when he gets hold of some\nstable truth.  It may not be a large truth, but it is a real truth, and\ntherefore it is a comfort.  How does a man in his moral struggles get\ncomfort?  He gets it not by swerving, or dodging, or compromising, but\nby being true.  The only permanent comfort is in the sense of fidelity.\nYou are like a sailor in the storm; it is dark about you, the wind\nhowls, the stars vanish.  What gives you comfort?  It is the knowledge\nthat one thing is true.  Thank God, you have your compass, and the\ntremulous little needle can be trusted.  You bend over it with your\nlantern in the dark and know where you are going, and that renews your\ncourage.  You have the spirit of the truth, and it is your comforter.\n\n\n\n\n{87}\n\nXXXV\n\nTHE SWORD OF THE SPIRIT\n\n_Ephesians_ vi. 14-17.\n\nIn this passage the apostle is thinking of the Christian life as full\nof conflict and warfare.  It needs what he calls the good soldier of\nJesus Christ, and for the moment St. Paul is considering how such a\nsoldier should be armed for such a war.  He is like some knight of the\nMiddle Ages, standing in his castle-yard and serving out to his vassals\nthe weapons they need for the battle which is near at hand.  \"Take all\nyour armor,\" he says.  \"This is no holiday affair, no dress parade.\nYou are to fight against principalities and powers.  So take the whole\narmor of God.\"  And then he puts it into their hands.  There is,\nhowever, one curious thing about this armor.  It has but one offensive\nweapon.  The soldier of Jesus Christ is given, to defend himself from\nhis enemies, the shield of faith, the tunic of truth, the helmet of\nsalvation; but to fight, to overcome, to disarm, he has but one\nweapon,--the {88} sword of the spirit.  Is it possible, then, that the\nSpirit of God entering into a man can be to him a sword; that a man's\ncharacter has this aggressive quality; that a man fights just by what\nhe is?  Yes, that seems to be the apostle's argument.  Looking at all\nthe conflicts and collisions of life, its differences of opinion, its\ncauses to be won, he thinks that the best fighting weapon is the spirit\nof a man's life.  Behind all argument and persuasion the only absolute\nargument, the final persuasion, is the simple witness of the spirit.\nWhen a man wants to make a cause he believes in win, his aggressive\nforce lies not in what he says about that cause, but in what that cause\nhas made of him.  He wins his victory without striking a blow when he\nwields the sword of the Spirit.  He comes like the soft, fresh morning\namong us, and we simply open our windows and yield to it, greeting it\nwith joy.  It is the air we want to breathe, and we accept it as our\nown.\n\n\n\n\n{89}\n\nXXXVI\n\nLIFE IS AN ARROW\n\n_John_ xiv. 6.\n\nWhen Jesus says: \"I am the way, and the truth, and the life,\" he names\nthe three things which a man must have in order to lead a straight\nlife.  Such a man must have first a way to go, and then a truth to\nreach, and then life enough to get there.  He needs first a direction,\nand then an end, and then a force.  Some lives have no path to go by,\nand some no end to go to, and some no force to make them go.  Now Jesus\nsays that the Christian life has all three.  It has intention, the\ndecision which way to go; it has determination, the finding of a truth\nto reach; it has power, the inner dynamic of the life of Christ.  Life,\nas has been lately said by one of our own preachers, is like an arrow.\nIt must have its course, it must have its mark, and it must have the\npower to go.\n\n  \"Life is an arrow, therefore you must know\n  What mark to aim at, how to bend the bow,\n  Then draw it to its head, and let it go.\" [1]\n\n\n\n[1] Henry van Dyke, D. D., in the _Outlook_ for Feb. 23, 1895.\n\n\n\n\n{90}\n\nXXXVII\n\nTHE DECLINE OF ENTHUSIASM\n\n_Revelation_ ii. 1-7.\n\nI do not propose to consider the character or intention of this\nmystical Book of Revelation.  However it may be regarded, it is first\nof all a series of messages written in the name of the risen Christ to\nthe churches of Asia, singling out each in turn, pointing out its\nspecial defects, and exhorting it to its special mission; and there is\nsomething so modern, or rather so universal about these messages to the\nchurches that in spite of their strange language and figures of speech\nthey often seem like messages to the churches of America to-day.  First\nthe word comes to the chief church of the region, at Ephesus.  It was a\ngreat capital city, with much prosperity and splendor, and the church\nthere abounded in good works.  The writer appreciates all this: \"I know\nthy works, and thy toil and patience, and that thou canst not bear evil\nmen.\"  It was a substantial, busy city church.  What was lacking in the\nchurch {91} of Ephesus?  It had fallen away, says the message, from its\nfirst enthusiasm.  It had \"lost its first love.\"  The eagerness of its\nfirst conversion had gone out of it.  It had settled down into the ways\nof an established church, with plenty of good works and good people,\nbut with the loss of that first spontaneous, passionate loyalty; and\nunless it recovered this enthusiasm \"its candlestick would be removed\nout of its place,\" and its light would go out.\n\nHow modern that sounds!  How precisely it is like some large church in\nsome large city to-day, a respectable and respected and useful church,\na Sunday club, a self-satisfied circle; and how it explains that\nmysterious way in which, in many such a large church, a sort of dry-rot\nseems to set in, and even where the church seems to prosper it is\ndeclining, and some day it dies!  It has lost its first love, and its\ncandle first flickers and then goes out.\n\nIndeed, how true the same story is of many an individual inside or\noutside the church, perfectly respectable and entirely respected, but\noutgrowing his enthusiasms.  He becomes, by degrees, first\nself-repressed and unemotional, then a cynical dilettante.  How you\nwish he {92} would do something impulsive, impetuous, even foolish!\nHow you would like to detect him in an enthusiasm!  His life has moved\non like the river Rhine, which has its boisterous Alpine youth, and\nthen runs more and more slowly, until in Holland we can hardly detect\nwhether it has any current.\n\n  \"It drags its slow length through the hot, dry land,\n  And dies away in the monotonous strand.\"\n\nThat is the church of Ephesus, and that is the man from Ephesus, and\nunless they repent and regain their power of enthusiasm their light\ngoes out.  Ephesus lies there, a cluster of huts beside a heap of\nruins, and the future of the world is with the nations and churches and\npeople who view the world with fresh, unspoiled, appreciative hope.\n\n\n\n\n{93}\n\nXXXVIII\n\nTHE CROWN OF LIFE\n\n_Revelation_ ii. 8-10.\n\nThe Church of Ephesus needed a rebuke; the Church at Smyrna needed an\nencouragement.  The first was a prosperous, busy church, without\nspiritual vitality, and the prophecy was that its light should go out.\nThe second was a persecuted church, with much tribulation and poverty,\nand the promise was that for its faithfulness it should have a crown of\nlife.  And if the traveller, as he stands among the ruins of Ephesus,\ncannot help thinking how its candle-stick has been removed, so he must\nthink of the reward of fidelity, as he stands among the busy docks and\nbustling life of Smyrna.\n\nA crown of life!  There is no discovery of experience more important in\na man's life than the discovery of its legitimate rewards.  A man\nundertakes to do the best he can with his powers and capacities, and\ninquires some day for the natural reward of his fidelity.  Shall he\nhave gratitude, or recognition, or praise?  Any one of these things may\ncome {94} to him, but any one of them, or all of them, may elude him;\nand all sooner or later show themselves to be accidents of his\nexperience, and not its natural and essential issue.  Then he discovers\nthat there is but one legitimate reward of life, and that is increase\nof life, more of power and capacity and vitality and effectiveness.\nWhat is the reward of learning one's lessons?  Marks, or praise, or\ndistinction, may come of this, or they may not.  The legitimate reward\nis simply the power to learn other lessons.  The expenditure of force\nhas increased the supply of force; the use of capacity has developed\ncapacity.  What is the reward of taking physical exercise?  It is not\nathletic prizes, or athletic glory; it is strength.  You have sought\nstrength, and you get strength.  The crown of athletic life is increase\nof athletic vitality.  What is the reward of keeping your temper?  It\nis the increased power of self-control.  What is the reward of doing\nyour duty as well as you can?  It is the ability to do your duty\nbetter.  Out of the duty faithfully done opens the way to meet the\nlarger duty.  You have been faithful over a few things, and you become\nthe ruler over many things.\n\n{95}\n\nAnd what is the crown of the whole of life lived faithfully here?  It\nis not a crown of gold or gems in another life; it is simply more life;\na broader use of power, a healthier capacity, a larger usefulness.  You\nare faithful unto death, through the misapprehensions and imperfections\nand absence of appreciation or gratitude in this preparatory world, and\nthen there is offered to you inevitably and legitimately the crown of a\nlarger, more serviceable, more effective life.\n\n\n\n\n{96}\n\nXXXIX\n\nTHE HIDDEN MANNA AND THE WHITE STONE\n\n_Revelation_ ii. 12-17.\n\nBoth of these are Jewish symbols.  One refers to that food which, as\nMoses commanded, was kept in the sanctuary and eaten by the priest\nalone; the other apparently refers to a sacred stone worn by the\npriest, with an inscription on it known only to him.  Both symbols mean\nto teach that the Christian believer has an immediate and personal\nintimacy with God.  There is no sacerdotal intermediation for him.  He\ncan go straight to the altar and take of the sacred bread.  He wears on\nhis own breast the mark of God's communication.  It is the doctrine of\nthe universal priesthood of believers; the highest promise to a\nfaithful church.  But on this white stone, the message says, there is a\nname written which no man knoweth save he that receiveth it.  How\nquickly that goes home to many a faithful life.  Hidden from all that\ncan be read by {97} others is the writing which one bears upon his own\nbreast, legible only to himself and to his God.  Think how hardly and\ncarelessly people try to judge one's life, to read its characteristics\nof strength or weakness.  Think how we all thus deal in hasty judgment,\nstamping our neighbors as jovial or moody, generous or selfish, as kind\nor stern, as sinner or saint; while all the time, deeper than any\ninterpretation of ours can reach, there is the central sanctuary of the\nman's own soul, where is worn against his breast the real title which\nto his own consciousness he bears, and which may quite contradict all\nexternal judgments.  What is written on that interior life?  What is\nthat name you bear which no man knoweth save you;--that life of\nyourself which is hidden with Christ in God?  That is the most solemn\nquestion which any man can ask himself as he bends to say his silent\nprayer.\n\nIs it just your own name, the badge of selfishness; or is it some vow\nof irresponsibility,--Am I my brother's keeper?--or is it just a sheer\nblank white stone, marking a life without intention or character at\nall?  Or is there perhaps written there the pure {98} demand to be of\nuse?--\"For their sakes I sanctify myself;\"--or is there written on your\nheart the name of God, or of his Christ, so that this interior maxim\nreads: \"I live, yet not I, but Christ that liveth in me\"?\n\n\n\n\n{99}\n\nXL\n\nTHE MORNING STAR\n\n_Revelation_ ii. 18-28.\n\nThe morning star is the symbol of promise, the sign that the dawn is\nnot far away.  Thyatira was a little place, with a weak church, with\nsmall hopes and great discouragements, much troubled by the work of a\nfalse prophetess, tempted by \"the deep things of Satan,\" as the message\nsays, and yet to it the promise is committed, that it shall have\nauthority over the nations, and receive \"the morning star.\"  It was the\nsame great promise that had been already given to the early Christians:\n\"Fear not, little flock, for it is my Father's good pleasure to give\nyou the kingdom.\"  It was the same amazing optimism which made Jesus\nlook about him, as he stood with a dozen humble followers, and say:\n\"Lift up your eyes and look at the fields, they are white already to my\nharvest.\"\n\nThere is certainly passing over the world in our day a great wave of\nintellectual and {100} spiritual discouragement and despondency.  What\nwith philosophical pessimism and social agitations and literary\ndecadence and political corruption and moral looseness, a great many\npersons are beginning to feel that the end of the century is an end of\nfaith, and are not able to discern in the darkness of the time any\nmorning star.  As one distinguished author has said: \"This is not a\ntime of the eclipse of faith, but a time of the collapse of faith.\"  It\nwas much the same in the times of Thyatira.  There was the same luxury\nand self-indulgence in the Roman world, the same social restlessness,\nthe same intellectual despondency.  Now, who is it that can view these\nperturbations of the world with a tranquil and rational hope?  I\nanswer, that it is only he who views his own time in the light of the\neternal purposes of God.  The religious man is bound to be an optimist,\nnot with the foolish optimism which blinks the facts of life; but with\nthe sober optimism which believes that--\n\n  \"Step by step, since time began,\n  We see the steady gain of man.\"\n\nIt may be dark as pitch in the world of speculative thought, but\nreligion discerns the {101} morning star.  It believes in its own time.\nIt believes that somehow \"good will be the final goal of ill.\"  Even in\nthe perplexities and disasters of its own experience it is not\noverwhelmed.  It is cast down, but not destroyed.  It is saved by hope.\nIt lifts its eyes and beholds through the clouds the gleam of the\nmorning star.\n\n\n\n\n{102}\n\nXLI\n\nLIVING AS DEAD\n\n_Revelation_ iii. 1.\n\nWas there ever a message of sterner irony than this to the Church of\nSardis: \"Thou hast a name that thou livest, and thou art dead\"!  We may\nsuppose that it was a church of apparent prosperity, with all the\nmachinery of church life, its ritual, and officers, and committees, all\nin working order; and yet, when one got at the heart of it, there was\nno vitality.  It was a dead church.  It could show--as the passage\nsays--no works fulfilled before God.  It was like a tree which seems\nall vigorous, but which, when one thrusts into the heart of it, proves\nto be pervaded by dry-rot.  There are plenty of such churches\nstill,--churches which have a name that they are living, but are dead.\nThey are counted in the denominational year-book; they go through the\nmotions of life; but where is their quickening, communicating,\nvitalizing power?  What are they but mechanical, formal, institutional\nthings, and how sudden sometimes, like {103} the falling of a dead\ntree, is the collapse of a dead church!\n\nThere is the same story to tell of some people.  They have a name that\nthey are living, but they are practically dead.  For what is it,\naccording to the New Testament, which makes one live, and when is it\nthat one comes to die?  \"To be carnally minded,\" answers St. Paul, \"is\ndeath, and to be spiritually minded is life.\"  \"He that heareth my\nsayings,\" answers Jesus, \"hath passed from death into life.\"  What a\nwonderful word is that!  It is not a promise that the true Christian\nshall some day, when his body dies, pass into an eternal life.  It is\nan announcement that when one enters into the spirit of Christ he\npasses, now, in this present world, from all that can be fairly called\ndeath, into all that can be rationally called life.  Under this New\nTestament definition, then, a man may suppose himself to be alive and\nhealthy, when he is really sick, dying, dead.  A man may perhaps, as he\nsays, see life, while he may be really seeing nothing but death.  Or a\nman may be, as we say, dying, and be, in the New Testament sense, full\nof an abundant and transfiguring life.\n\n{104}\n\nAnd so it becomes an entirely practical question, which one may ask\nhimself any morning, \"Am I alive to-day, or am I dead?  Is it only that\nI have the name of living, a sort of directory-existence, a page in the\ncollege records, a place in the list of my class, while in fact there\nis dry-rot in my soul?  Or is there any movement of the life of God in\nme, of quickening and refreshing life, of generous activity and\ntransmissive vitality?  Then death is swallowed up in victory, and I am\npartaking even in this present world of the life that does not die.\"\n\n\n\n\n{105}\n\nXLII\n\nTHE OPEN DOOR\n\n_Revelation_ iii. 8.\n\nA few years ago, at the first service of the college year, one of our\npreachers took for his text this message to the church at Philadelphia:\n\"Behold, I have set before thee an open door;\" and it has always seemed\nto me to represent with precision the spirit of our worship here.  We\nhave abandoned the principle of compulsion.  We do not force young men\nof twenty to come here and say their prayers.  We simply set before\nthem an open door.  The privilege of worship is permitted to them from\nday to day, and religion stands among us, not as a part of college\ndiscipline, but as the supreme privilege of a manly human soul.\nWhosoever will, let him take the water of life freely.  Indeed, this\nsame text represents the spirit of our whole university life.  What we\ncall the elective system is a method of invitation and persuasion.  It\nmultiplies opportunities.  It does not compel the allegiance of the\nindifferent.  He that is lazy, let him be lazy still.  {106} The\nuniversity sets before the mind of youth its open door.\n\nAnd this, indeed, is what one asks of life.  What should a free state\nin this modern world guarantee to all its citizens?  Not that equality\nof condition for which many in our days plead, the dead level of\ninsured and effortless comfort, but equality of opportunity, a free and\nfair chance for every man to be and to do his best.  That land is best\ngoverned where the door of opportunity stands wide open to the humblest\nof its citizens, so that no man can shut it.\n\nAnd what is the relation of religion to the life of man, if it be not\nof this same enlarging and emancipating kind?  Here we are, all shut in\nby our routine of business and study and preoccupation, and religion\nsimply opens the door outward from this narrowness of life into a\nlarger and a purer world.  It is as if you were bending some evening\nover your books in the exhausted air of your little room, and as if you\nshould rise from your task, and pass out into the night, and the open\ndoor should deliver you from your weariness and your self-absorption,\nas you stood in the serene companionship of the infinite heavens and\nthe myriad of stars.\n\n\n\n\n{107}\n\nXLIII\n\nBEHOLD, I STAND AT THE DOOR AND KNOCK\n\n_Revelation_ iii. 20.\n\nTo the church at Philadelphia it was promised that the door should be\nopened; but here was a church at Laodicea which had deliberately shut\nits door on the higher life.  It was a church that was neither cold nor\nhot, a lukewarm, indifferent, spiritless people, and to such a people,\nwillfully barring out the revelations of God, comes the Christ in this\nwonderful figure, standing at the door like a weary traveller, asking\nto be let in.  Such a picture just reverses the common view which one\nis apt to take of the religious life.  We commonly think of truth as\nhiding itself within its closed door and of ourselves as trying to get\nin to it.  We speak of finding Christ, or proving God, or getting\nreligion, as if all these things were mysteries to be explored, hidden\nbehind doors which must be unlocked; as if, in the relation between man\nand God, man did all the searching, and God was a hidden God.\n\n{108}\n\nBut the fundamental fact of the religious life is this,--that the power\nand love of God are seeking man; that before we love Him, He loves us;\nthat before we know Him, He knows us; that antecedent to our\nrecognition of Him must be our receptivity of Him.  Coleridge said that\nhe believed in the Bible because it found him.  It is for the same\nreason that man believes in God.  God finds him.  It is not the sheep\nwhich go looking for the shepherd, it is the shepherd who finds the\nsheep, and when they hear his voice, they follow him.\n\nThis is not contrary to nature.  The same principle is to be noticed in\nregard to all truth.  Take, for instance, any scientific discovery of a\nphysical force, like that which we call the force of electricity.\nThere is nothing new about this wonderful power.  It has always been\nabout us, playing through the sky, and inviting the mind of man.  Then,\nsome day, a few men open their minds to the significance of this force,\nand appreciate how it may be applied to the common uses of life.  That\nis what we call a discovery; it is the opening of the door of the mind;\nand one of the most impressive things about science to-day is to {109}\nconsider how many other secrets of the universe are at this moment\nknocking at our doors, and waiting to be let in; and to perceive how\nsenseless and unreceptive we must seem to an omniscient mind, when so\nmuch truth, standing near us, is beaten back from our closed minds and\nwills.  It is the same with religious truth.  Here are our lives, shut\nin, limited, self-absorbed; and here are the messages of God, knocking\nat our door; and between the two only one barrier, the barrier of our\nown wills.  Religious education is simply the opening of the door of\nthe heart.  A Christian discipleship is simply that alertness and\nreceptivity which hears the knocking and welcomes the Spirit which\nsays: \"If any man will but open the door, I will come in to him, and\nsup with him, and he with me.\"\n\n\n\n\n{110}\n\nXLIV\n\nHE THAT OVERCOMETH\n\n_Revelation_ xxi. 7.\n\nIn each one of these letters to the churches there is repeated like a\nrefrain, a sort of _motif_ which announces the character of all,--this\nfinal phrase: \"He that overcometh.\"  He is to receive the promise, he\nis to inherit these things, he is to be the stone in the temple of God.\nThe reward and blessing are to be not for the shirks or runaways or\neasy-going of the world, but for those who, taking life just as it is\nwith all its hardness, overcome it.  It is the manly summons from the\nsoft theory of life to the principle which one may call that of\nprogress through overcoming resistance.\n\nA great many lives are spoiled by the soft theory of life.  They expect\nto get out of life a comfort which is not in it to give.  They go about\nlooking, so to speak, for a \"soft course\" in the curriculum of life,\nhoping to enroll in it and be free from trouble.  They ask of their\nreligion that it shall make life easy and safe and clear.  But the\ntrouble is {111} that the elective pamphlet of life does not announce a\nsingle soft course.  The people who try thus to live are simply\ncourting disaster and despair.  Some day, perhaps in some tragic\nmoment, every man has to learn that life is not an easy thing, but that\nit is at times fearfully and solemnly hard.  Nothing is more plainly\nwritten on the facts of life than this,--that life was meant to be\nhard.  Trouble and disaster, and the inevitable blows of experience,\nare absolutely certain to teach this truth sooner or later, and the\nsooner one learns it the better for his soul.  And if life was not\nmeant to be easy, what was it meant for?  It was meant to be overcome.\nIt stands before one like the friction of the world of nature, which is\nalways seeming to retard one's motion, but which makes really the only\ncondition under which we move at all.  If there is to be any motion\nthrough life, then it must be by overcoming its friction.  If life was\nmeant just to stand still, then it might stagnate in a soft place; but\nlife was meant to move, and the only way of motion is by overcoming\nfriction, and the hardness of the world becomes the very condition of\nspiritual progress.  What we call the rub of life is {112} then what\nmakes living possible.  What we call the burdens of life are the\ndiscipline of its power.  Not to him who meets no resistance, nor to\nhim whose shoulder is chafed by no cross, but to him who overcometh is\nthe promise given that God will be his God, and that he shall be God's\nson.\n\n\n\n\n{113}\n\nXLV\n\nTHE PRODIGALITY OF PROVIDENCE\n\n_Matthew_ xiii. 1-9.\n\nI wish to dwell for several mornings on this parable of the sower, and\nfor to-day I call attention to the air of prodigality which pervades\nthis story.  There seems to be an immense amount of seed wasted.  Some\nof it falls on the roadway; some of it is snatched away by the birds;\nsome of it is caught among the bushes.  Yet the sower proceeds in no\nniggardly fashion.  He strides away across the field scattering the\nseed broadcast, far beyond the border where he expects a crop, for he\nknows that, though much shall be wasted, whatever seed may fall on good\nground will have miraculous increase.  There may be prodigality of\nwaste, but there shall be prodigality of reproduction.  If but one seed\nin thirty takes root in good soil it may produce thirty or sixty or a\nhundred fold.\n\nSuch is the prodigality of Providence.  And it comes close to many\nexperiences, and {114} interprets many perplexities of life.  A man\ngoes his way through life scattering his efforts, distributing his\nenergy, doing his work as broadly and generously as he can, and some\nday he notices what a very large proportion of all that he does comes\nto nothing.  Much of the soil where he sows seems hard and barren, and\nhe might as well be trying to raise wheat on a stone pavement.  It\nseems to be simply effort thrown away.  But then some other day this\nman makes this other discovery,--that some very slight effort or\nendeavor or sacrifice or word has been infinitely more fruitful than he\ncould have dreamed.  It was an insignificant thing which he did, but it\nhappened to fall at the right time in the right place, and he is almost\nstartled at its productiveness.\n\nAnd so he takes his lesson from the prodigality of Providence.  Of\ncourse it will happen that the great proportion of his efforts will\ncome to nothing.  Of course he is to be misjudged and ineffective and\nbarren of results; but if only one word in a hundred falls in the right\nsoil, if only one effort in a hundred touches the right soul, the\nhundred-fold fruitage brings with it ample {115} compensation.  Thus he\nstrides cheerfully over the fields of life with the broad swing of an\nunthrifty mind, expecting that much of his seed will fall among the\nthorns and rocks, but with faith that the harvest--even if he is not\nhimself permitted to reap it--is yet made safe through his fidelity to\nthat prodigal Providence which miraculously multiplies the little he\ncan do, and makes it bear fruit, sometimes a hundredfold.\n\n\n\n\n{116}\n\nXLVI\n\nTHE HARD LIFE\n\n_Matthew_ xiii. 1-9.\n\nLet us look still further at this parable of the sower.  There are\ndescribed in it various kinds of lives on which God's influences fall,\nand fall in vain.  The first of these is the hard life,--hard, like a\nroad, so that the seed lies there as if fallen on a pavement, and gets\nno root, and the pigeons come and pick it up.  We usually think of the\nhard life as if it were a life of sin.  We speak of a hardened sinner,\nof a hard man, as of persons whom good influences cannot penetrate.\nBut the hard soil of the parable is not that of sin.  It is that of a\nroadway, hardened simply by the passing to and fro.  It is the\nhardening effect of habit.  Sometimes, the passage says, your life gets\nso worn by the coming and going of your daily routine, that you become\nimpenetrable to the subtle suggestions of God, as if your life were\npaved.  Some people are thus hardened even to good.  They lose capacity\nfor impressions.  {117} Some people are even gospel-hardened.  They\nhave heard so much talk about religion that it runs off the pavement of\ntheir lives into the gutter.  Thus the first demand of the sower is for\nreceptivity, for openness of mind, for responsiveness.  Give God a\nchance, says the parable.  His seed gets no fair opportunity in a life\nwhich is like a trafficking high-road.  Keep the soil of life soft, its\nsympathy tender, its imagination free, or else you lose the elementary\nquality of receptiveness, and all the influences of God may be\nscattered over you in vain.\n\n\n\n\n{118}\n\nXLVII\n\nTHE THIN LIFE\n\n_Matthew_ xiii. 1-9.\n\nThe first thing which hinders God's seed from taking root is, as we\nhave seen, hardness,--the life which is trodden down like a road; an\nimpenetrability of nature, which is not a trait of sinners only, but of\nmany privileged souls.  The second sort of unfruitful soil is just the\nopposite of this.  It is not the unreceptive, but the impulsively\nreceptive life.  It is not too hard, or too soft, but it is too thin.\nIt is a superficial soil which has no depth of earth, and so with joy\nit receives the word; but the seed has no depth of earth and quickly\nwithers away.  This sort of soil receives quickly and as quickly lets\ngo.  It is like that unstable man of whom St. James writes and who is\nlike the wave of the sea, driven with the wind and tossed.  We see the\nwave come flashing up out of the general level, catching the sunshine\nas it leaps and crowned with its spray, and then we look again for it,\nand where is {119} it?  It has sunk again into the undistinguishable\nlevel of the sea.\n\nThus the parable turns to this instability and says: \"It is bad to be\nhard, but it is bad also to be thin.\"  When tribulation or persecution\narises, something more than impulsiveness is needed to give a root to\nlife.  How strongly and serenely Newman writes of this:--\n\n  \"Prune thou thy words, the thoughts control\n  That o'er thee swell and throng;\n  They will condense within thy soul\n  And turn to purpose strong.\n  But he who lets his feelings run\n  In soft luxurious flow,\n  Faints when hard service must be done,\n  And shrinks at every blow.\"\n\n\n\n\n{120}\n\nXLVIII\n\nTHE CROWDED LIFE\n\n_Matthew_ xiii. 1-9.\n\nIn the parable of the sower the third kind of soil is one which is very\ncommon in modern life.  The first soil was too hard, and the second too\nthin, and now the third is too full.  It is overgrown and preoccupied.\nOther things choke the seed.  There is not room for the harvest.  The\ninfluences of God are simply crowded out.  And of what is life thus so\nfull?  Of two things, answers the parable.  For some it is full of the\ncares of this world, and for some it is full of the deceitfulness of\nriches.  Care is the weed that chokes plain people, and money is the\nweed that chokes rich people.  Sometimes a poor man wonders how a rich\nman feels.  Well, he feels about his money just as a poor man does\nabout his cares.  His wealth preoccupies him.  It is a great\nresponsibility.  It takes a great deal of time.  It crowds out many\nthings he would like to do.  The poor man says that {121} money would\nfree him from care, but the rich man finds that money itself increases\ncare.  Thus they are both choked by lack of leisure, one by the demands\nof routine, and one by the burdens of responsibility.  And this parable\nsays to both these types of life: \"Keep room for God.\"  It comes to the\nscholar and says: \"In this busy place reserve time to think and feel;\ndo not let your cares choke your soul.\"  And then it goes out to the\ngreat scrambling, money-getting world, and sees many a man hard at work\nin what he calls his field, watching for things grow in his life, and\nfinding some day that he has been deceived in his crop.  He thought it\nwas to come up grain and it turns out to be weeds.  He sowed money and\nexpected a harvest of peace; and behold! he only reaps more money.\nThat is the deceitfulness of riches.\n\n\n\n\n{122}\n\nXLIX\n\nTHE PATIENCE OF NATURE\n\n_Matthew_ xiii.; _Mark_ iv. 27.\n\nThe parable of the sower, which begins with its solemn warnings against\nthe hard life, the thin life, and the crowded life, ends with a note of\nwholesome hope.  Who are they who bring forth fruit in abundance?  They\nare, the parable says, not great and exceptional people.  The\nconditions are such as any life can fulfil.  It is an honest and good\nheart which hears the word and keeps it and is fruitful.  Nothing but\nsincerity and receptivity is demanded.  A plain soil is productive\nenough.  God only needs a fair chance.  He only asks that life shall\nnot be too hard, or too thin, or too crowded.\n\nThis is a saying of great comfort to plain people.  And yet, even for\nthese, one last demand is added,--the demand for patience.  If fruit is\nto be brought forth it must be \"with patience.\"  The autumn comes, but\nnot all at once.  Jesus is always recalling to us the gradualness of\nnature; first the blade, {123} then the ear, then the full corn.\nNothing in nature is in a hurry.  It is not a movement of catastrophes,\nit is a movement of evolution.  And so the last word of the parable is\nto the impetuous.  What a hurry we are in for our results.  We look\nabout us among the social agitations of the day and demand a panacea;\nbut God is not in a hurry.  Delay, uncertainty, doubt, are a part of\nChristian experience.  It brings forth its fruit with patience.  It is\nlike these lingering days of spring, when one can discern no intimation\nof the quickening life; and yet one knows that through the brown\nbranches the sap is running, and slowly with hesitating advance the\nworld is moving to the miracle of the spring.\n\n\n\n\n{124}\n\nL\n\nTHE DISTRIBUTION OF TALENTS\n\n_Matthew_ xxv. 14-30.\n\nThe parable of the talents takes up the side of life which is not\nemphasized in the parable of the sower.  In the story of the sower God\nis doing the work and man is receptive of his influence.  In the story\nof the talents God is a master who leaves his servants to do his work,\nand the parable is one of activity.  These men are responsible agents.\nLife is a trust.  That is the natural teaching of the parable.  All\nthese men are accountable; there has been given to them that which is\nnot their own, a trust from God, to be used in his service.  But then\nenters the extraordinary teaching of this parable as to the fact of\ndiversity.  We talk of men as created free and equal.  The cry of the\ntime is for equality of condition, for leveling down the rich, and\nleveling up the poor; for paying the genius and the hod-carrier alike;\ntime for time, and man for man.  But this parable stands for no such\ndefinition of {125} equality.  It recognizes diversity.  Some have many\ntalents and some have few.  To each is given \"according to his several\nability.\"  Diversity of condition is accepted as a natural feature of\nhuman life, just as the hills and valleys make up the landscape.  The\nparable does not make of life a prairie.\n\nWhere then, in this diversified life, is justice, the social justice\nwhich men in our time so eagerly and so reasonably claim?  There is no\njustice, answers the parable, if the end of life is to be found in\ngetting the prizes of this world; for some are sure to get more than\nothers.  The justice of this diversity is found only in its relation to\nGod.  It is in the proportional responsibility of these holders of\ndifferent gifts.  Of those to whom much has been entrusted much will be\nrequired; of those who are slightly gifted the judgment will be\naccording to the gift.  There is no absolute standard.  The judgment is\nproportional.  One man may accomplish less than another, and yet be\nmore highly rewarded, for he may do the less conspicuous duty laid on\nhim better than the man with the larger trust does his.  The parable\nhumbles the privileged and encourages the disheartened.  {126} There is\nno distinction of reward between the five-talent man and the two-talent\nman.  Each has done his own duty with his own gifts, and to each\nprecisely the same language of commendation is addressed.  They have\nhad proportional responsibility, and they have identical reward.  Both\nhave been faithful, and both enter into the same joy of their Lord.\n\n\n\n\n{127}\n\nLI\n\nTHE LAW OF INCREASING RETURNS\n\n_Matthew_ xxv. 14-30.\n\nThe parable of the talents adds to its doctrine of responsibility a\nsecond teaching.  It is its doctrine of interest; the return to be\nlooked for from investment in the spiritual life.  The economists have\na law which they call the law of diminishing returns; but Jesus calls\nattention to the converse of that principle,--the law of increasing and\naccelerated returns.  We see this principle on a great scale in the\nworld of money.  Money has a self-propagating quality.  It breeds\nmoney.  If you should ask a very rich man how he accumulated his\nfortune he would tell you that the first savings involved great thrift\nand wisdom or great good luck, but that after a while his wealth flowed\nin upon him almost in spite of himself.  He began to get money, and the\nmore he got the more easily he got more.  Now this law, says Jesus,\nwhich is so obvious in the business world, is true in a much deeper way\nof the {128} spiritual life.  Knowledge, power, faith, all grow by\ninvestment.  Use of the little makes it much; hoarding what you have\nleaves it unfruitful.  Do you want to know more?  Well, put what you\nnow know to use.  Invest it, and as you seem to spend it, it increases,\nand you have found the way to the riches of wisdom.  Do you want faith?\nWell, use what faith you have.  Try the working hypothesis of living by\nfaith.  Our ancestors in New England trading used to send out on their\nships what they called a \"venture.\"  They took the risks of business.\nThere is a similar venture of faith, which says: \"Lord, I believe, help\nthou mine unbelief.\"  He who sends the venture of his faith over the\nocean of his life may look for a rich cargo in return.  To the faithful\nin the few things the many things are revealed.  That is the law of\nincreasing returns.\n\n\n\n\n{129}\n\nLII\n\nTHE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF WEALTH\n\n_Matthew_ xxv. 14-30.\n\nIn the parable of the talents the use of money is of course only an\nillustration of spiritual truth.  Yet the story has its obvious lessons\nabout the uses of money itself.  The five-talent man is the rich man;\nand his way of service makes the Christian doctrine of wealth.  And,\nfirst of all, the parable evidently permits wealth to exist.  It does\nnot prohibit accumulation.  Jesus is not a social leveler.  His words\nare full of tenderness to the poor, but when a certain rich young man\ncame to him, Jesus loved him also; and when one man asked him, saying:\n\"Master, speak to my brother that he divide the inheritance with me,\"\nJesus disclaimed the office of a social agitator, saying: \"Man, who\nmade me a judge or a divider over you.\"  Thus Jesus cannot be claimed\nfor any pet scheme which one may have of the distribution of wealth.\nBut let not the Christian {130} think that on this account the\nChristian theory of wealth is less sweeping or radical than some modern\nprogramme.  The fact is that it asks more of a man, be he rich or poor,\nthan any modern agitator dares to propose.  For it demands not a part\nof one's possessions as the property of others, but the whole of them.\nThe Christian holds all his talents as a trust.  There is in the\nChristian belief no absolute ownership of property.  A man has no\njustification in saying: \"May I not do what I will with mine own?\"  He\ndoes not own his wealth; he owes it.  The Christian principle does not\ndivide the rich from the poor; it divides the faithful use of whatever\none has from its unfaithful use.  Wealth is a fund of five talents of\nwhich one is the trusted agent; and to some five-talent men who have\nbeen faithful in their grave responsibilities, the word of Jesus would\nbe given to-day as gladly as to any poor man: \"Well done, faithful\nservant, enter into the joy of thy Lord.\"\n\n\n\n\n{131}\n\nLIII\n\nTHE AVERAGE MAN[1]\n\n_Matthew_ xxv. 22.\n\nIn the parable of the talents the man that gets least general attention\nis the man that stands in the middle.  The five-talent man gets\ndistinction, and the one-talent man gets rebuke, but the two-talent\nman, the man with ordinary gifts and ordinary returns from them, seems\nto be an unexciting character.  And yet this is the man of the\nmajority, the average man, the man most like ourselves,--not very bad,\nand not very remarkable.  As has been said: \"God must have a special\nfondness for average people, for He has made so many of them.\"  Now,\nthe average man stands in special need of encouragement.  One of the\nmost serious moments of life is when a man discovers that he is this\nsort of man.  It comes over most of us some day that we are not going\n{132} to do anything extraordinary; that we are never likely to shine;\nthat we are simply people of the crowd.  Nothing seems to take the\nambition and enthusiasm out of one more than this recognition of\noneself as an average man.  Then comes Jesus with his word of courage.\n\"Your work,\" he says, \"is just as significant, and rewarded with\nprecisely the same commendation as the work of the five-talent man.\"\nThe same \"Well done\" is spoken to both, and it may be that the more\nheroic qualities are in the man with fewer gifts.  To make great gifts\neffective may be easy, but to take common gifts and make them yield\ntheir best returns--that is what helps us all.  There is not a more\ninspiring sight in life than to see a man start with ordinary capacity\nand to see his power grow out of his consecration.  Looking back on\nlife from middle age, that would be the story one would tell of many a\nsuccess.  One sees five-talent men fail and two-talent men take their\nplace; average gifts persistently used yielding rich returns, and the\npromise of usefulness lying, not in abundant endowments of nature, but\nin the using to the utmost what moderate capacities one has soberly\naccepted as trusts from God.\n\n\n\n[1] Read also, on this and the following subject, the kindling sermons\nof Phillips Brooks: \"The Man with Two Talents,\" vol. iv. p. 192; \"The\nMan with One Talent,\" vol. i. p. 138.\n\n\n\n\n{133}\n\nLIV\n\nTHE OVERCOMING OF INSIGNIFICANCE\n\n_Matthew_ xxv. 24.\n\nThe parable of the talents was specially given to teach Christians not\nto be discouraged because Christ's kingdom was delayed.  The one-talent\nman is its real object, and the lessons of larger endowment are only by\nthe way.  The one-talent man is not the bad man, for to him also God\ngives a trust, but this man is given so little to do that he thinks it\nnot worth while to do anything.  He is not the many-gifted five-talent\nman, or even the average two-talent man, but he is simply the man of no\naccount.  The risk of the five-talent man is his conceit; the risk of\nthe two-talent man is his envy; the risk of the one-talent man is his\nhopelessness.  Why should this insignificant bubble on the great stream\nof life inflate itself with self-importance?  Why should it not just\ndrift along with the current and be lost in the first rapids of the\nstream?  Now Christ's first appeal to this sense of insignificance is\n{134} this,--that in the sight of God there is no such thing as an\ninsignificant life.  Taken by itself, looked at in its own independent\npersonality, many a life is insignificant enough.  But when we look at\nlife religiously and recognize that it is a trusted agent of God, then\nthe doctrine of the trust redeems it from insignificance.  You have not\nmuch, but what you have is essential to the whole.  The\nlighthouse-keeper on his rock sits in his solitude and watches his\nlittle flame.  Why does he not let it die away as other lights in the\ndistance die when the night comes on?  Because it is not his light.  He\nis its keeper, not its owner.  The great Power that watches that stormy\ncoast has set him there, and he must be true.  The insignificant\nservice becomes full of dignity and importance when it is accepted as a\npost of honor and trust.  So the unimportant life gets its significance\nnot by its own dimensions, but by its place in God's great order, and\nthe most wretched moment of one's life must be when he discovers that\nhe has been trusted by God to do even a little part and has thrown his\nchance away.  The one-talent man thought his trust not worth investing,\nand behold, the account of it was called for with the rest.  He {135}\nhad in his hands a trust from God and had wasted it, and there was\nnothing left for him but the weeping of regret and the gnashing of\nteeth of indignant self-reproach.\n\n\n\n\n{136}\n\nLV\n\nCAPACITY EXTIRPATED BY DISUSE\n\n_Matthew_ xxv. 29.\n\nThe parable of the talents begins with its splendid encouragement to\nthose who have done their best, but it ends with a solemn warning and\nwith the stern announcement of a universal law.  It is this,--that from\nhim who does not use his powers there is taken away even the power that\nhe has.  The gift is lost by the lack of exercise, or as Horace\nBushnell stated the principle, the \"capacity is extirpated by disuse.\"\n\nThis principle has manifold illustrations.  The hand or muscle disused\nwithers in power.  The fishes of the Mammoth Cave, having no use for\ntheir eyes, lose them.  Mr. Darwin in an impressive passage of his\nbiography testifies that he began life with a taste for poetry and\nmusic, but that by disuse this aesthetic taste grew atrophied so that\nat last he did not care to read a poem or to hear a musical note.  So\nit is, says Jesus, with spiritual insight and power.  Sometimes we see\na man of intellectual {137} gifts lose his grasp on spiritual\nrealities, and we ask: \"How is it that so learned a man can find little\nin these things?  Does not he testify that these things are illusions?\"\nNot at all.  It is simply that he has not kept his life trained on that\nside.  His capacity has been extirpated by disuse.  He may know much of\nscience or language, but he has lost his ideals.  We hear a young man\nsometimes say that he has grown soft by lack of exercise.  Well, if you\nlive a few years you will see people who have grown soft in soul, and\nyou will see some great blow of fate smite them and crush them because\ntheir spiritual muscle is flabby and weak.  Ignatius Loyola laid down\nfor his followers certain methods of prayer which he called \"Spiritual\nExercises.\"  So in one sense they were.  They kept souls in training.\nThe exercise of the religious nature is the gymnastics of the soul, and\nthe disuse of the religious nature extirpates its capacity.  That is\nthe solemn ending of the parable of the talents.  From him who does not\nuse his power there is taken away even the power that he hath.\n\n\n\n\n{138}\n\nLVI\n\nTHE PARABLE OF THE VACUUM\n\n_Matthew_ xii. 38-45.\n\nIt is easy to see where the emphasis of this parable lies.  It is on\nthe impossible emptiness of this man's house.  A man casts out the\ndevil of his life and turns the key on his empty soul and feels safe.\nBut he cannot thus find safety.  That is not the way to deal with evil\nspirits.  Back they come, crowding into his life through the windows if\nnot through the doors, and the last state of that man is worse than the\nfirst.  If the parable had been told in modern times it might have been\ncalled the parable of the vacuum.  A man's life is a space which\nrefuses to be empty.  If it is not tenanted by good the evil knocks and\nenters it.  There is no such thing as an unoccupied life.  Nature\nabhors a vacuum.\n\nHere is one of the most common mistakes of human experience.  A man\noften thinks that the less occupied his life is the safer it is.  He\ncasts out his passions, he denies his {139} desires, he abandons his\nambitions, and so seeks safety.  But his life is attacked by new\nperils.  The lusts and conceits of life cannot be barred out of life;\nthey must be crowded out.  The old passion must be supplanted by a new\nand better one.  The very same qualities which go to make a great\nsinner are needed to make a true saint.  A man's soul is not safe when\nthe vigor and force are taken out of it.  It is safe only when the same\npassion which once threatened ruin is converted to generous service;\nand the same physical life that seemed an enemy of the soul has become\nthe instrument of the soul.  The saved life is not the empty life, but\nthe full life.  Jesus comes not to destroy men's natures, but to fill\ntheir capacities full of better aims.  The only way to overcome evil is\nto have the life preoccupied by good.\n\n\n\n\n{140}\n\nLVII\n\nCHRISTIANITY AND BUSINESS\n\n_Luke_ xvi. 1-12.\n\nThis is a difficult parable.  There is a quality of daring about it\nwhich at first sight perplexes many people.  It is the story of a\nsteward who cheats his master, and of debtors who are in collusion with\nthe fraud, and of a master praising his servant even while he punishes\nhim, as though he said: \"Well, at least you are a shrewd and clever\nfellow.\"  It uses, that is to say, the bad people to teach a lesson to\nthe good, and one might fancy that it praises the bad people at the\nexpense of the good.  But this is not its intention.  It simply goes\nits way into the midst of a group of people who are cheating and\ndefrauding each other and says: \"Even such people as these have\nsomething to teach to the children of light.\"\n\nI once heard of a father whose son was sentenced to the Concord\nReformatory for burglary.  The father stood by the bars of the cell and\nheard the boy's story, and then {141} with tears in his eyes he turned\nto the jailer and said: \"It is a terrible sorrow to have one's boy thus\ndisgraced, but\"--and his face brightened a little--\"after all he was\nmonstrous plucky.\"  So Jesus, out of the heart of this petty group of\npersons snatches a lesson for Christians.  It is this: \"Why should not\nthe children of light be as sagacious as these rascals were?  Why\nshould pious people be so stupid?\"  Jesus looks on to the needs that\nmust occur in his religion for sagacity, prudence, discretion, and the\nperils that will come to it from sentimentalism, mysticism, silliness,\nand he asks: \"Why is it that the children of this world are so much\nshrewder than the children of light?\"\n\nHow closely his question comes to the needs of our own time!  Why is it\nthat in our moral agitations and reforms the bad people seem so much\ncleverer than the good ones; that political self-seeking gets the\nbetter of unselfish statesmanship; that the liquor dealers defeat the\ntemperance people; that competition in business is so often cleverer\nthan cooeperation in business?  What does Christianity need to-day so\nmuch as wisdom?  It has soft-heartedness, but it lacks {142}\nhard-headedness.  It has sweetness, but it lacks light.  It has\nsentiment, but it needs sense.  How often a man of affairs is tempted\nto feel a certain contempt for the Church of Christ, when he turns from\nthe intensely real issues of his week-day world to the abstractness and\nunreality of religious questions!  How fictitious, how unbusiness-like,\nhow preposterous in the sight of God is this internecine sectarianism\nand impotent sentimentalism where there might be the triumphant march\nof one army under one flag!  Let us learn the lesson which even the\ngrasping, unscrupulous world has to teach,--the lesson of an absorbed\nand disciplined mind giving its entire sagacity to the chief business\nof life.\n\n\n\n\n{143}\n\nLVIII\n\nMAKING FRIENDS OF MAMMON\n\n_Luke_ xvi. 1-10.\n\nMammon means money, and the purpose of this parable is to teach\nChristians their relations to that world of which Mammon is the\ncentre,--the world of business interests and cares.  Jesus says that\nthis world is neither very good nor very bad.  It is simply\nunrighteous.  It has no specific moral quality about it.  He says\nfurther that you cannot serve this world of Mammon and serve God also.\nYou must choose.  What then can you do in your relation to Mammon?  You\ncan do one of three things.  You may, first, make an enemy of Mammon;\nor secondly, make a master of Mammon, or thirdly, make a friend of\nMammon.  Many people in Christian history have made an enemy of Mammon.\nThey have regarded the world of business as a godless world which\nshould be shunned.  They have run away from it to the ascetic,\nunworldly life.  That is the spirit of the whole monastic retreat from\nthe battle of {144} practical life,--a reaction full of the beauty of\nself-denial, but still a retreat.  The battle of life has to go on, and\nthe best troops have run away.  On the other hand, a great many persons\nhave made a master of Mammon.  They are simply the slaves of money.\nThat is the vulgar materialism of the modern world.  But Jesus says\nthat neither of these attitudes towards Mammon is the Christian\nrelation.  The Christian is to make a friend of Mammon; to welcome it,\nand to use it, to discover the good in it and learn its lessons; to\nmould it into the higher uses of life.  Here is a potter working in his\nclay.  It is a coarse material which he uses and his hands grow soiled\nas he works; but it is not for him to reject it because it is not\nclean, but for him to work out through it the shapes of beauty which\nare possible within the limits of the clay.  Just such a material is\nthe modern world.  It is not very clean and not very beautiful; but the\nproblem of life is to mould out of its uncleanness the shapes of beauty\nwhich it contains.  To run away from life--that is easy enough; to\nyield to its evil--that is still easier; but to be in the world and to\nmould it--that is the {145} real problem of the Christian life.  And\nhere is the real test of Christian character.  The saints of the past\nhave been for the most part men who fled from the world, but the saint\nof to-day is the man who can use the world.  He is the man of business\nwho amid looseness of standards keeps himself clean.  He is the youth\nin college who without the least retreat from its influences moulds\nthem to good.  He is not the runaway from the world of Mammon, nor yet\nits slave; he makes a friend of Mammon for the service of God.\n\n\n\n\n{146}\n\nLIX\n\nCOMING TO ONE'S SELF\n\n_Luke_ xv. 17.\n\nWhen he came to himself he said: \"I will arise and go to my father.\"\nThis is one of those gospel sentences which contains within itself a\nwhole system of theology, a doctrine of man and of God and of the\nrelation of the one to the other.  He came to himself.  It was not then\nhimself that had gone away into a far country.  It was an unreal,\nfictitious self.  He had been insane, beside himself, and now, as his\nbetter life starts up in him, he comes to himself.  As his father said\nof him, he had been dead and was alive again.  The renewal of the good\nself in him was the resurrection of his true personality.\n\nHow deep that goes into one's doctrine of human nature!  Never believe\nthat the sinning self is the true self.  Your real personality is the\npotential good in you.  The moment that good springs into life you have\na right to say: \"Now I know what I was {147} made for.  I have come to\nlife.  I have discovered myself.\"  And then there is the religious\naspect of this same self-discovery.  No sooner does this boy come to\nhimself than he says, \"I will arise and go to my father.\"  The\nreligious need follows at once from the self-awakening.  Nay, was not\nthe religious need the source of the self-awakening?  What was it that\nbrought him to himself but just the homesickness of the child for his\nfather's house?  His self-discovery was but the answer of his soul to\nthe continuous love of God.  Before he ever came to himself the father\nwas waiting for him.  Antecedent to the ethical return was the\nreligious quickening.  That is the relation of religion to conduct.\nYou make your resolutions, but it is God that prompts them.  Your\nself-discovery is the drawing of the Father.  Your true self is his\nson.  How natural it all is,--an infinite law of love at the heart of\nthe universe--that is the centre of theology; a world that permits\nmoral alienation through the free will of man,--that is the problem of\nphilosophy; he came to himself,--that is the heart of ethics; I will go\nto my Father,--that is the soul of religion.\n\n\n\n\n{148}\n\nLX\n\nPOPULARITY\n\n_Luke_ xix. 37-43; _Matthew_ xxi. 17-23.\n\n(PASSION WEEK--MONDAY)\n\nThe ministry of Jesus is as a whole not easy to arrange in any fixed\nchronology.  The order of events seems often to vary in the different\ngospels, and sometimes these unstudied narratives seem in positive\nconflict.  But as the story draws to its close the paths of narrative\nbegin to converge, and as we approach the last days and enter on the\nlast week the incidents of each day become perfectly distinct, and one\ncan trace the life of Jesus as it moves on from his triumph of Palm\nSunday to his tragedy of the cross.  As we enter then to-day on the\nanniversary of the last week of the life of Jesus, the week before\nEaster Sunday, let us glance at some of the hurrying events.  And for\ntoday consider the contrast which presents itself between the entrance\nof Jesus at Jerusalem on Sunday morning, and his return to the city by\nthe same road on this Monday {149} morning of his last week.  Yesterday\nhe came over the brow of the Mount of Olives, surrounded by an\nenthusiastic throng, the centre of their popularity.  To-day he comes\nalong the same road, unattended and alone, the crowd slinking away from\nhim, his popularity gone.  And how does he bear himself through these\nshillings of opinion?  He simply does not manifest any consciousness of\nchange.  He is as undisturbed by neglect as he was yesterday by\nsuccess.  On Sunday, while the people were spreading their branches\nbeneath his feet, he looked across the valley to the city and wept as\nhe looked; and to-day, coming with no popular applause, he enters\nstraight into the city and asserts to its leaders his supreme\nauthority.  In the midst of popularity he seems saddened, and in the\nmidst of neglect he seems stirred to a defiant boldness.  In short, he\nis unscathed alike by what seems to be success and what seems to be\nfailure.  He goes his way through it all with his eye on that great end\nwhich gives him peace amid the throng, and courage amid the solitude.\n\nThat is the only way in which one can maintain himself among the\nshifting currents {150} of popularity.  It comes and goes like a tide.\nThe man who tries to lean on it is simply swept by the rising tide into\nself-conceit, and then stranded by the ebb of that same tide on the\nflats of despair.  Popularity is as fickle as the April winds, and one\ncan trust it as little as he dare trust the New England climate.  It is\nonly he who can be wholly self-controlled amid the triumphs of his Palm\nSunday who can move on with equal self-control to the bearing of the\ncross with which that same week may close.\n\n\n\n\n{151}\n\nLXI\n\nTWO QUESTIONS ABOUT CHRISTIANITY\n\n_Luke_ xx. 19-38.\n\n(PASSION WEEK--TUESDAY)\n\nThe Sunday of the last week of Jesus was all triumph, the Monday was\nall neglect, the Tuesday was all controversy.  He returns once more\nfrom Bethany to the city, and he finds the opposition at its height.\nAt once he is set upon by two kinds of people and asked two kinds of\nquestions as to his mission and aim.  One question was political, or as\nwe now are saying sociological.  What did he think about taxation?\nWhat was his attitude toward the government?  Was he encouraging social\nrevolt?  Was he an anarchist or a socialist?  The other question was\ntheological.  What did he think about the future life?  How would\nmarriage be arranged in heaven?  Was his theology orthodox?  All this\nmust have seemed to Jesus malicious enough, but I think that the\ndeepest impression he had of such questions {152} must have been of\ntheir stupidity.  How was it possible that after months of public\nteaching any one could suppose that such problems were in the line of\nhis intention.  Here he was, trying to bring spiritual life among his\npeople,--the life of God to the souls of men,--and here were people\nstill trying to find in him a political schemer or a metaphysical\ntheologian.\n\nYet there are questions of much this nature still being asked of Jesus.\nSome honest persons are still insisting that Christ's religion is a\nsystem of theology, and some are trying to make of it a course in\nsocial science, and neither of them seem to notice that the last day of\ngeneral teaching which was permitted to him on earth was largely\ndevoted to demonstrating that he was neither a social agitator nor a\ntheological professor.  Christianity is not a scheme or arrangement,\nsocial or theological, like a railway which men might build either to\naccelerate the business of life or to take one straight to heaven.\nChristianity provides that which all such mechanism needs.  It is a\npower, like that electric force which makes the equipment of a railway\nmove.  A church is a power-house for the {153} development and the\ntransmission of the power that makes things go.  Cut off the power, and\nthe theological creeds and social programmes of the day stand there\nparalyzed or dead.  Communicate to them the dynamic of the Christian\nlife, and the power goes singing over all the wires of life and sets\nits mechanism in motion, as though it sang upon its way: \"I am come\nthat these may have my life, and may have it abundantly.\"\n\n\n\n\n{154}\n\nLXII\n\nAN UNRECORDED DAY\n\n(PASSION WEEK--WEDNESDAY)\n\nWe have traced from day to day the life of Jesus through the earlier\ndays of its last week, its triumph of Sunday, its solitude of Monday,\nits controversies of Tuesday.  On each of these days Jesus has come\nover the hill from Bethany into the city, and has returned to the\nvillage at night.  And now we come to the last day before the Passover\nand the betrayal; the last chance to meet his enemies and to enforce\nhis cause.  What then does Jesus do on this last Wednesday of his life?\nSo far as we know, he does nothing at all.  It is a day without record.\nThere is no New Testament passage from which I can read about it.  He\nappears to have stayed at Bethany, perhaps with his friends, perhaps\nfor a part of the day alone.  His work was done, and he used this last\nday for quiet withdrawal.\n\nWhat self-control and reserve are here!  How would one of us have been\ninclined to conduct himself, if he found himself with just {155} one\nmore day for active service?  \"One more day,\" he would have said; \"then\nfill it with the best works and the best words; let me stamp my message\non my time; let me fulfil the work which was given me to do.\"  But\nJesus has no such lust of finishing.  He simply commits his spirit to\nhis Father, and awaits the trial and the cross.  And perhaps on that\nunrecorded day his real agony was met, and his real cross borne.\nPerhaps as he went up on that hillside, which still overlooks the\nlittle village of Bethany, and looked at his past and at his future,\nthe real spiritual conquest was attained; for he comes back again to\nJerusalem on Thursday morning, not with the demeanor of a martyr but\nwith the air of a conqueror; and when Pilate asks him if he is a king\nhe answers him: \"Thou hast said it.\"\n\nSo it is with many a life.  It has its great days,--its Palm Sundays of\ntriumphs, its Good Fridays of cross-bearing, and these seem the epochs\nof its experience; but when one searches for the sources of its\nstrength, they lie--do they not?--in some unrecorded day, as the\nsources of an abundant river lie hidden in some nook among the hills.\n\n\n\n\n{156}\n\nLXIII\n\nTHE ANSWER TO PRAYER\n\n_Luke_ xxii. 39-48.\n\n(PASSION WEEK--THURSDAY)\n\nOn Thursday morning of his last week Jesus sends two of his friends\nbefore him into Jerusalem to prepare the Passover meal, while he does\nnot himself enter the city until the afternoon.  There he meets his\nfriends, and after the supper he takes the bread and wine and with\nentire naturalness asks them, as they eat and drink, to remember him.\nThen he talks with them and prays with them, and they go out again on\nthe road toward Bethany; and coming to a little garden at the foot of\nthe hill called the Mount of Olives he bids his companions wait while\nhe goes, as his custom was, to pray.\n\nWe hear much discussion about prayer and its possibilities,--what we\ncan pray for and what God can do in return, and what is the true answer\nto prayer.  But what a silence comes over all such questionings when\none notices that this prayer of Jesus uttered thus {157} in this most\nsolemn hour was not, in the sense of these discussions, answered by his\nGod.  It was the moment of the supreme agony of Christ.  The falseness\nof friends, the blindness of his people, the malice of their\nleaders,--all these things seem more than he can bear.  \"Let this cup\npass from me,\" he prays, and, behold, his prayer is not accepted, and\nwhat he asks is denied, and the cup is to be drunk.  And yet in a far\ndeeper sense his, prayer is answered.  \"Thy will be done,\" he\nprays,--not in spite of me, or over me, but through me.  Make me, my\nFather, the instrument of thy will; and so praying he rises with\nabsolute composure and kingly authority, and goes out with his prayer\nanswered to do that will.\n\nWhat should we pray for?  Why, we should pray for what we most deeply\nwant.  There is no sincerity in praying for things which are fictitious\nor abstract or mere theological blessings.  Open to God the realities\nof your heart and seek the blessings which you sincerely desire.  But\nin all prayers desire most to know the will of God toward you, and to\ndo it.  Prayer is not offered to deflect God's will to yours, but to\nadjust your will to His.  When a ship's captain is setting out on a\n{158} voyage he first of all adjusts his compasses, corrects their\ndivergence, and counteracts the influences which draw the needle from\nthe pole.  Well, that is prayer.  It is the adjustment of the compass\nof the soul, it is its restoration from deflection, it is the pointing\nof it to the will of God.  And the soul which thus sails forth into the\nsea of life finds itself--not indeed freed from all storms of the\nspirit, but at least sure of its direction through them all.\n\n\n\n\n{159}\n\nLXIV\n\nAN IMPOSSIBLE NEUTRALITY\n\n_John_ xviii. 28-38.\n\n(PASSION DAY--FRIDAY)\n\nThe story of Friday in this last week of Jesus begins with this meeting\nwith the Roman governor, and certainly few persons in history would be\nmore surprised than Pilate at the judgment of the world concerning him.\nIf Pilate felt sure of anything it was that he did not commit himself\nin the case of Jesus.  He undertook to be absolutely neutral.  See how\nnicely he poises his judgment.  On the one hand he says: \"I find no\nfault in him,\" and then on the other hand he says: \"Take him away and\ncrucify him;\" First he washes his hands to show that he is innocent of\nthe blood of this just person, and then he delivers Jesus to the Jews\nto take him away.  It was a fine balancing of a judicial mind, and I\nsuppose he withdrew from the judgment hall saying to himself: \"Whatever\nmay happen in this case, at least I am not responsible.\"  But what does\nhistory think {160} of this judicial Pilate?  It holds him to be a\nresponsible agent in the death of Jesus.  He was attempting a\nneutrality which was impossible.  The great wind was blowing across the\nthreshing floor of the nation, and the people were separated into two\ndistinct heaps, and must be counted forever as chaff or as wheat.  He\nthat was not with Christ was against him, and Pilate's place, even in\nspite of himself, was determined as among those who brought Jesus to\nhis cross that afternoon.\n\nI was once talking with a cultivated gentleman who volunteered to tell\nme his attitude toward religion.  He wished me to understand that he\nwas in sympathy with the purposes and the administration of worship.\nHe desired that it should prevail.  He welcomed its usefulness in the\nuniversity.  But as for himself it appeared better that he should hold\na position of neutrality.  His responsibility seemed to him better met\nby standing neither for religion nor against it, but in a perfectly\njudicial frame of mind.  He did not take account, however, of the fact\nthat this neutrality was impossible; that it was just what Pilate\nattempted, and just wherein he failed.  If he {161} was not to be\ncounted among those who would by their presence encourage worship, then\nhe must be counted among those who by their absence hinder its effect.\nOn one side or other in these great issues of life every man's weight\nis to be thrown, and the Pilates of to-day--as of that earlier time--in\ntheir impossible neutrality are often the most insidious, although most\nunconscious opponents of a generous cause.\n\nAnd so to-day on this most solemn anniversary of religious history,\nwhile it is, as the passage says of this interview with Pilate, \"yet\nearly,\" let us set before ourselves, the issue just as it is now and\njust as it was then.  This morning demands of any honest-minded man an\nanswer to the question: \"On which side do I propose to stand?\"  It is\nnot a demand for absoluteness of conviction or unwavering loyalty, but\nit is a summons to recognize that Jesus Christ died on this day largely\nat the hands of intellectual dilettanteism and indifferentism,--the\npeculiar and besetting sin of the cultivated and academic life.  On\nwhich side, then, do I propose to stand; with the cultivated neutral\nand his skillful {162} questioning: What is truth? or with the prisoner\nwho in this early morning says: \"Every one who is of the truth heareth\nmy voice;\" with Pilate in his neutrality or with Jesus on his cross?\n\n\n\n\n{163}\n\nLXV\n\nTHE FINISHED LIFE\n\n_John_ xix. 30.\n\n(PASSION WEEK--SATURDAY)\n\nThe last word of Jesus as he gives up his spirit is: \"It is finished.\"\nBut was it what could be called a finished life?  Was it not, on the\ncontrary, a terribly unfinished life, prematurely cut short, without\nany visible effect of his work, and with everything left to live for?\nSurely, if some sympathetic friend of Jesus had been telling of his\ndeath, one of the first things he would be tempted to say would be\nthis: \"What a fearful pity it was that he died so soon!  What a loss it\nwas to us all that he left his life unfinished.  Think what might have\nhappened if he could only have lived to sixty and had had thirty years\nfor his ministry instead of three!\"  And yet, as Jesus said, it was a\nfinished life; for completeness in life is not a thing of quantity, but\nof quality.  What seems to be a fragment may be in reality the most\nperfect thing on earth.  You stand in {164} some museum before a Greek\nstatue, imperfect, mutilated, a fragment of what it was meant to be.\nAnd yet, as you look at it, you say: \"Here is perfect art.  It is\nabsolutely right; the ideal which modern art may imitate, but which it\nnever hopes to attain.\"  Or, what again shall we say of those young men\nof our civil war, dying at twenty-five at the head of their troops,\npouring out all the promise of their life in one splendid instant?  Did\nthey then die prematurely?  Was not their life a finished life?  What\nmore could they ever have done with it?  Why do we write their names on\nour monuments so that our young men may read of these heroes, except\nthat they may say to us that life may be completed, if one will, even\nat twenty?  All of life that is worth living is sometimes offered to a\nman not in a lifetime, but in a day.\n\nAnd that is what any man must set before him as the test and the plan\nof his own life.  You cannot say to yourself: \"I will live until I am\nseventy, I will accomplish certain things, and will attain a certain\nposition;\" for the greatest and oldest of men when they look back on\ntheir lives see in them only a fragment of what they once dreamed that\nthey {165} might do or be.  But you can design your life, not according\nto quantitative completeness, but according to qualitative\ncompleteness.  It may be long or short, but in either case it may be of\nthe right stuff.  It may be carved out of pure marble with an artist's\nhand, and then, whether the whole of it remains to be a thing of beauty\nor whether it is broken off, like a fragment of its full design, it is\na finished life.  You give back your life to God who gave it, perhaps\nin ripe old age, perhaps, as your Master did, at thirty-three, and you\nsay: \"I have accomplished, not what I should like to have done, but\nwhat Thou hast given me to do.  I have done my best.  It is finished.\nFather, into thy hands I commend my spirit.\"\n\n\n\n\n{166}\n\nLXVI\n\nATTAINING TO THE RESURRECTION\n\n_Philippians_ iii. 11.\n\n(MONDAY AFTER EASTER)\n\nThis is certainly a very extraordinary saying of St. Paul--that he\nhopes to attain unto the resurrection from the dead.  We are so apt to\nthink of the resurrection as a remote truth, to be realized in some\ndistant future, when some day we shall die and live again, that the\nvery idea of attaining to such a resurrection now is not easy to grasp.\nBut here we have a resurrection which can be attained any day.  \"I have\nnot already attained,\" says St. Paul, \"but I press on.\"  It is\npossible, that is to say, for a man to-day, who seems perfectly\nhealthy, to be dying or dead, and for a man to rise from the dead\nto-day and attain to the resurrection.\n\nAnd thus the fundamental question of the Easter season is not: \"Do I\nbelieve that people when they die shall rise again from the dead?\" but\nit is \"Have I risen from the dead {167} myself?\"  \"Am I alive to-day,\nwith any touch of the eternal life?\"  Mr. Ruskin describes a grim\nScythian custom where, when the king died, he was set on his throne at\nthe head of his table, and his vassals, instead of mourning for him,\nbowed before his corpse and feasted in his presence.  That same ghastly\nscene is sometimes repeated now, and young men think they are sitting\nat a feast, when they are really sitting at a funeral, and believe\nthemselves to be, as they say, \"seeing life,\" when they are in reality\nlooking upon the death of all that is true and fair.  And on the other\nhand the most beautiful thing which is permitted for any one to see is\nthe resurrection of a human soul from the dead, its deliverance from\nshame and sin, its passing from death into life.  As the father of the\nprodigal said of his boy, he was dead and is alive again, and in that\ncoming to his true self he attains, as surely as he ever can in any\nfuture world, unto the resurrection from the dead.\n\n\n\n\n{168}\n\nLXVII\n\nSIMON OF CYRENE\n\n_Luke_ xxiii. 20-26.\n\nThis Simon, the Cyrenian, was just a plain man, coming into town on his\nown business, and meeting at the gate this turbulent group surging out\ntoward the place of crucifixion, with the malefactor in their midst.\nSuddenly Simon finds himself turned about in his own journey, swept\nback by the crowd with the cross of another man on his shoulder, and\nthe humiliation forced upon him which there seemed no reason for him to\nbear.\n\nHow often that happens in many a life!  You are going your own way,\ncarrying your own load, and suddenly you are called on to take up some\none else's burden,--a strange cross, a home responsibility, a business\nduty; and you find yourself turned square round in the road you meant\nto go.  Your plan of life is interrupted by no fault of your own, and\nyou are summoned to bear an undeserved and unexpected cross.\n\n{169}\n\nAnd yet, how certain it is that this man of Cyrene came to look back on\nthis interruption of his journey as the one thing he would not have\nmissed?  When others were remembering the wonderful career of Jesus,\nhow often he must have said: \"Yes, but I once had the unapproached\nprivilege of bearing his cross for him.  On one golden morning of my\nlife I was permitted to share his suffering.  I was called from all my\nown hopes and plans to take up this burden of another, and I did not\nlet it drop.  It seemed a grievous burden, but it has become my\ncrowning joy.  I did not know then, but I know now, that my day of\nhumiliation was my day of highest blessedness.\n\n  \"I think of the Cyrenian\n  Who crossed the city-gate,\n  When forth the stream was pouring\n  That bore thy cruel fate.\n\n      *    *    *    *\n\n  \"I ponder what within him\n  The thoughts that woke that day\n  As his unchosen burden\n  He bore that unsought way.\n\n      *    *    *    *\n\n  \"Yet, tempted he as we are!\n  O Lord, was thy cross mine?\n  Am I, like Simon, bearing\n  A burden that is thine?\n\n{170}\n\n  \"Thou must have looked on Simon;\n  Turn, Lord, and look on me\n  Till I shall see and follow\n  And bear thy cross for Thee.\" [1]\n\n\n\n[1] Harriet Ware Hall, _A Book for Friends_, p. 90.  (Privately\nprinted.) 1888.\n\n\n\n\n{171}\n\nLXVIII\n\nPOWER AND TEMPTATION\n\n_Matthew_ iv. 1-11.\n\nAll these temptations of Jesus came to him through the very sense of\npower of which he could not but be aware.  Here was this great\nconsciousness of capacity in him to do wonders, to display himself, to\nget glory.  How should he use his gifts?  Should it be for himself, for\nhonor, for praise, or should it be for service, for sacrifice, for God?\nThe devil's temptation was that Jesus should take the gifts of which he\nwas conscious and make them serve his own ends of ambition or success.\nThe first great decision in the work of Jesus Christ was the decision\nof the end to which his powers should be dedicated; the use to which\nhis powers should be put.\n\nThe same fundamental decision comes to every young man in his own\ndegree.  Here are your gifts and capacities, great or small.  What are\nyou to do with them?  Are they for glory or for use?  Are they for\nambition {172} or for service?  The sooner that decision is made the\nbetter.  Some people have never quite done with that temptation of the\ndevil.  They go on trying to direct their gifts to the end of\nreputation, or wealth, or dominion; and they attain that end only to\nfind that it is no end, and that their lives, which should have grown\nbroader and richer, have grown shrunken, and meagre, and unsatisfied.\nSuch a life is like a fish swimming into the labyrinth of a weir.  It\nfollows along the line of its vocation until the liberty to return\ngrows less and less; and, at last, in the very element where it seems\nmost free, it is in fact a helpless captive.  The man's occupation has\nbecome his prison.  He is the slave of his own powers.  The devil has\nwithered that life with his touch.\n\nAnd then, on the other hand, you turn to lives which have given\nthemselves to the life of service, and what do you see?  You see their\ncapacity enlarged through use, you see small gifts multiplied into\ngreat powers.  Few things are more remarkable in one's experience of\nlife than to see men who by nature are not extraordinarily endowed\nachieve the highest success by sheer dedication of their {173} moderate\ngifts.  Their capacities expand through their self-surrender, as leaves\nunfold under the touch of the sun.  They lose themselves and then they\nfind themselves.  The devil tempts these men, not with a sense of their\ngreatness, but with their self-distrust; yet he tempts them in vain.\nTheir weakness issues into strength; their temptation develops their\npower.  The angels of God have come and ministered unto them.\n\n\n\n\n{174}\n\nLXIX\n\nLOVING WITH THE MIND\n\n_Mark_ xii. 30.\n\nIn the great law of love to God and love to man which Jesus repeats as\nthe law of his own teaching, there is one phrase that seems not wholly\nclear.  You can love God with your heart and your soul; you can even\nincrease your strength by love; but how can you love with the mind?  Is\nit not the very quality of a trained mind to be unmoved by love or\nhate, dispassionate and unemotional?  Is not this the scientific\nspirit, this attitude of criticism, with no prejudice or affection to\ncolor its results?\n\nOf course one must answer that there is much truth which can be\ndiscovered by a loveless mind.  Yet there is, on the other hand, much\ntruth which cannot be discerned without love.  There are many secrets\nof literature, of art, of music, and of the higher traits of character\nas well, into which you cannot enter unless you give your mind to these\nthings with sympathy and affection and responsiveness; loving them, as\nJesus says, with the mind.  One {175} of our preachers has lately\ncalled attention to the new word in literature which illustrates this\nattitude of the mind.[1]  When people wrote in earlier days of other\npeople and their works they wrote biographies or criticisms or studies,\nbut now we have what are called \"appreciations;\" the attempt, that is\nto say, to enter into a character and appreciate its traits or its art,\nand to love it with the mind.  Perhaps that is what this ancient law\nasks of you in your relation to God, to come not as a critic, but as a\nlover, to the rational appreciation of the ways of God.  Here is the\nnoblest capacity with which human life is endowed.  It is a great thing\nto love God with the heart and soul, to let the emotions of gratitude\nto Him or of joy in his world run free; but to rise into sympathetic\ninterpretation of his laws, to think God's thoughts after Him, and to\nbe moved by the high emotions which are stirred by exalted ideas,--to\nlove God, that is to say, with the mind,--that, I suppose, is the\nhighest function of human life, and the quality which most endows a man\nwith insight and power.\n\n\n\n[1] Rev. Leighton Parks, D. D., in a sermon at the Diocesan Convention\nof the Protestant Episcopal Church, Boston, May, 1895.\n\n\n\n\n{176}\n\nLXX\n\nAM I MY BROTHER'S KEEPER?\n\n_Genesis_ iv. 9.\n\nCain was the first philosophical individualist; the first\n\"laissez-faire\" economist.  When God asked: \"Where is Abel?\" Cain\nanswered: \"What responsibility have I for him?  My business is to take\ncare of myself.  Am I my brother's keeper?\"  But the interesting fact\nis that Cain had been his brother's keeper though he declined\nresponsibility for him.  He refused to be responsible for his brother's\nlife, but he certainly was responsible for his brother's death.  He\nrefused to be his brother's keeper, but he was willing to be his\nbrother's slayer.  There are plenty of people to-day who are trying to\nmaintain this same impossible theory of social irresponsibility.  They\naffirm that they have no social duty except to mind their own business;\nbut that very denial of responsibility is what makes them among the\nmost responsible agents of social disaster.  They deal with their\naffairs on the principle that they are nobody's {177} keeper, and so\nthey are stirring every day the fires of industrial revolt.  We are\npassing through dark days in the business world, and there are many\ncauses for the trouble, but the deepest cause is Cain's theory of life.\n\"Where is thy brother?\" says God to the business man to-day,--\"thy\nbrother, the wage-earner, the victim of the cut-down and the lockout?\"\n\"Where is thy brother?\" says God again to the unscrupulous agitator,\nbringing distress into many a workman's home for the satisfactions of\nambition and power.  And to any man who answers: \"I know not.  Am I my\nbrother's keeper?\" the rebuke of God is spoken again: \"Cursed art thou!\nThe voice of thy brother crieth against thee from the ground.\"\n\n\n\n\n{178}\n\nLXXI\n\nPROFESSIONALISM AND PERSONALITY\n\n1 _Corinthians_ xii. 31.\n\nThe wonderful chapter which follows this verse becomes still more\ninteresting when one considers its connection with the preceding\npassage.  Paul has been looking over the life of his Christian\nbrethren, and he sees in it a great variety of callings.  Some of his\nfriends are preachers,--apostles and prophets, as he calls them.  Some\nare teachers, some are doctors, with gifts of healing; some are\npoliticians, with gifts of government.  The apostle speaks to them as\nthough he were advising young men as to the choice of their profession,\nand he says: \"Among all these professional opportunities covet the\nbest; take that which most fills out and satisfies your life.\"  But\nthen he turns from these professional capacities and adds: \"Be sure\nthat these gifts do not crowd out of your life the higher capacity for\nsympathy.  For you may understand all knowledge and speak with all\ntongues, and if you have lost thereby {179} the personal, human,\nsympathetic relation with people which we call love you are not really\nto be counted as a man.  You are nothing more than an instrument of\nsound, a wind instrument like a trumpet, or a clanging instrument like\na cymbal.\"  That is the apostolic warning to the successful\nprofessional man,--the warning against the narrowing, self-contented\nresult which sometimes taints even great attainments and professional\ndistinction.  Covet the best.  Be satisfied with nothing less than the\nhighest professional work of doctor, politician, or teacher.  But\nbeware of the imprisoning effect which sometimes comes of this very\nsuccess in professional life, the atrophy of sensibility, the\nincreasing incapacity for sympathy, for public spirit, for charity,--an\nincapacity which makes some men of the highest endowments among the\nleast serviceable, least loving, and least loved of a community.  \"If,\"\nsays the apostle, \"in the gain of professional success you lose the\nhigher gift of love, you are no longer a great man; you are not even to\nbe described as a small man.  You are 'nothing.'\"\n\n\n\n\n{180}\n\nLXXII\n\nTHE CENTRAL SOLITUDE\n\n_John_ xvi. 32.\n\nIn one of Frederick Robertson's sermons he speaks of the conduct of\nlife as like the conduct of atoms, which have a certain attraction for\neach other, but at a certain point of approach are repelled and do not\ntouch.  There is in every large life a certain central solitude of this\nkind into which no other soul can enter.  Some persons fear this\nsolitude, some rejoice in it, but the use of it is the test of a man's\nlife.  A very near friend of Dr. Brooks's once heard of a man who said\nthat he knew Dr. Brooks intimately; and this friend said: \"No man ought\nto say that.  Not one of us knew Dr. Brooks intimately.  There was a\ncentral Holy of Holies in his life, into which none of us ever\nentered.\"  So it was.  And this preservation of an inner privacy for\nthe deeper experiences of life is what proves a soul to be peaceful and\nstrong.  Guard your soul's individual life.  In the midst of the social\nworld keep a place for the {181} nurture of the isolated life, for the\nreading and for the thoughts which deal with the interior relations of\nthe single soul to the immanent God.\n\n  \"Thyself amid the silence clear,\n  The world far off and dim,\n  His presence close, the bright ones near,\n  Thyself alone with Him.\"\n\nThat is what makes a man strong under the tests of life.  He is not a\nparasitic plant deriving its life from some other life; he is rooted\ndeep in the soil of the Eternal.  As was said of John Henry Newman,\nsuch a man is never less alone than when alone.  \"He is not alone,\nbecause the Father is with him.\"\n\n\n\n\n{182}\n\nLXXIII\n\nIF THOU KNEWEST THE GIFT OF GOD\n\n_John_ iv. 10.\n\nWe usually notice in this story the great words of Jesus--perhaps the\ndeepest and richest series of utterances that have ever fallen from\nhuman lips.  Yet it is almost as striking to notice the attitude of\nmind in which the woman remained throughout these wonderful scenes.\nShe seems to have been entirely oblivious of the situation, and unaware\nthat anything great was going on.\n\nJesus speaks to her of the living water, and she thinks it must be some\ndevice which shall save her coming with her pitcher to the well.  Then\nJesus looks on her with infinite pathos and says: \"If you only knew the\ngift of God, and who it is that is now speaking to you!\"  But she does\nnot know, and shoulders her pitcher and trudges home again, reporting\nonly that she has seen some one who appeared a wonderful\nfortune-teller, and never dreaming that the greatest words of human\nhistory had been spoken to her, and her alone.\n\n{183}\n\nIf thou knewest the gift of God!--to have had one's opportunity in\none's hands and to have let it slip; to have had the Messiah sitting by\nyou and not to have recognized Him; to have thought it just a\ncommonplace day when the most sacred revelations of God were\noccurring,--that is about the saddest confession that any one can make.\nAnd yet, that is what might happen to any one any day.  No one can be\nsure when the great exigencies of life are likely to occur.  He looks\nforward to great things to be done in some more favoring future, and,\nbehold, the insignificant incidents of to-day are the greater things\nwhich he does not discern.  He looks forward to the discovery of God in\nsome difficult intellectual achievement, and meantime the daily task is\nfull of revelation, and as he wakes to the morning the new day stands\nby him and says: \"If you only knew the gift of God, and who it is that\nspeaks to you today.\"  And at last perhaps he begins to realize that\nthe ordinary ways of daily life are the channels of God's revelation,\nand then there\n\n  \"Comes to soul and sense\n  The feeling which is evidence\n\n{184}\n\n  That very near about us lies\n  The realm of spiritual mysteries.\n  With smile of trust and folded hands,\n  The passive soul in waiting stands,\n  To feel, as flowers the sun and dew.\n  The one true life its own renew.\"\n\n\n\n\n{185}\n\nLXXIV\n\nTHE WEDDING GARMENT\n\n_Matthew_ xxii. 11-14.\n\nHere is a man who has the feast offered to him, but is not clothed to\nmeet it.  He is unprepared and is therefore cast out.  He does not wear\nthe wedding garment and therefore is not fit for the wedding feast.\nThis seems at first sight harsh treatment; but one soon remembers that\nit was the custom of an Oriental feast to offer the guest at his\nentrance a robe fit for the occasion.  \"Bring forth the best robe,\"\nsays the father of the prodigal, \"and put it on him.\"  This man had had\noffered to him the opportunity of personal preparation and had refused\nit.  He wanted to share the feast, but he wanted to share it on his own\nterms.  He pressed into the happiness without the personal preparedness\nwhich made that happiness possible.\n\nEvery man in this way makes his own world.  The habit of his life\nclothes him like a garment, and only he who wears the wedding garment\n{186} is at home at the wedding feast.  The same circumstances are to\none man beautiful and to another, at his side, demoralizing.  You may\nhave prosperity and it may be a source of happiness, or the same\nprosperity and it may be a source of peril.  You may be at a college\nand it may be either regenerating to you, or pernicious in its\ninfluence, according as you are clothed or unclothed with the right\nhabit of mind.  God first asks for your heart and then offers you his\nworld.  The wedding feast is for him alone who has accepted the wedding\ngarment.\n\n\n\n\n{187}\n\nLXXV\n\nTHE ESCAPE FROM DESPONDENCY\n\n1 _Kings_ xix. 1-13.\n\nThis is God's word to man's despondency; and when we strip this man's\nstory of its Orientalism, it is really the story of many a discouraged,\ndespondent man of to-day.  Elijah has been doing his best, but has come\nto a point where he is ready to give up.  His enemies are too many for\nhim.  \"Lord,\" he says, \"it is enough.  I have had as much as I can\nbear.  I am alone and Baal's prophets are four hundred and fifty men.\"\nSo he goes away into solitude, and looks about him for some clear sign\nthat God has not deserted him.  But nothing happens.  The great signs\nof nature pass before him, the storm, the lightning, and the\nearthquake, but they only reflect his own stormy mood.  The Lord is not\nin them.  Then, within his heart, there speaks that voice which is at\nonce speech and silence, and it says to him: \"What doest thou here,\nElijah,\" and behold, the man is convicted.  For when he {188} reflects\non it he is doing nothing at all.  He is sitting under a tree,\nrequesting that he may die.  He has fled from his duty and is hiding in\na cave.  Then the voice says to him: \"Get up and go and do your duty.\nYou might sit here forever and get no light on your lot.  The problem\nof life is solved through the work of life.  The way out of your\ndespondency is in going straight on with the work now ready to your\nhand.  Answers to great problems are not so likely to come to people in\ncaves, as along the dusty road of duty-doing.  Not to the dreamer, but\nto the doer come the interpretations of life.  Elijah, Elijah, what\ndoest thou here?\"\n\n\n\n\n{189}\n\nLXXVI\n\nTHE DIFFICULTIES OF UNBELIEF\n\n_Matthew_ xxiii. 24.\n\nWe are often very much impressed by the difficulties of religious\nbelief.  It seems hard to attain any absolute, convinced faith.  There\nare doubts and obscurities which every one feels, and these\nquestionings are often stirred into activity by the mistaken efforts of\nthe defenders of the faith.  There is even a special department in\ntheological teaching known as Apologetics, or the defense of faith; as\nthough religion had to be always on the defensive, and as if the\neasiest attitude of mind, even of the least philosophical, were the\nattitude of denial.  But did you ever consider the alternative position\nand the difficulties which present themselves when one undertakes\nabsolutely and continuously to deny himself the relations of the\nreligious life?  Did you ever fairly face the conception of a logically\ncompleted unbelief, a world stripped of its ideals, with no region of\nspiritual hopes or of worship, a {190} world absolutely without God, a\npermanently faithless world?  What is the difficulty here?  The\ndifficulty is that these aspects of life, though they are often hard to\nmaintain, are harder still to abandon.  Faith has its perplexities, but\nno sooner do you eliminate the spiritual world than you are confronted\nwith a series of experiences, emotions, and intimations which are\nsimply inexplicable.  That was perhaps partly what Jesus had in mind\nwhen he met the Pharisees.  \"You find it hard to believe in me,\" he\nsaid.  \"Ah, yes, but is it not still harder altogether to refuse me?\nYou are quite alive to the smaller difficulties of my position, but you\nseem to be quite unaware of the difficulties of your own position.  You\nbusy yourself with straining out the gnat which floats on the surface\nof your glass, but you do not seem to observe the residuary camel.\"\n\nSo with his splendid satire Jesus turns the critical temper back upon\nitself.  Difficulties enough, God knows, there are in every\nintellectual position, and intellectual certainty usually means the\nabnegation of the thinking faculty.\n\nBut many persons strain out the little difficulties and swallow the\ngreat ones.  What is, {191} on the whole, the best working theory of\nlife?--that is the only practical question.  Under which view of life\ndo the facts, on the whole, best fall?  Especially, what conception of\nlife holds the highest facts, the great irresistible spring-tides,\nwhich sometimes rise within the soul, of hope and love and desire?  So\nBrowning's Bishop, turning on his critic, says:--\n\n  \"And now what are we? unbelievers both,\n  Calm and complete, determinately fixed\n  To-day, to-morrow, and forever, pray?\n  You'll guarantee me that?  Not so, I think.\n  In nowise!  All we've gained is, that belief,\n  As unbelief before, shakes us by fits,\n  Confounds us like its predecessor.  Where's\n  The gain?  How can we guard our unbelief,\n  Make it bear fruit to us?  The problem's here.\n  Just when we are safest, there's a sunset-touch,\n  A fancy from a flower-bell, some one's death,\n  A chorus-ending from Euripides,--\n  And that's enough for fifty hopes and fears\n  As old and new at once as nature's self,\n  To rap and knock and enter in our soul,\n  Take hands and dance there, a fantastic ring,\n  Round the ancient idol, on his base again,--\n      *    *    *    *    *    *    *\n  What have we gained then by our unbelief\n  But a life of doubt diversified by faith,\n  For one of faith diversified by doubt.\n  We called the chessboard white,--we call it black.\"\n\n\n\n\n{192}\n\nLXXVII\n\nKNOWING GOD, AND BEING KNOWN OF HIM\n\n_Galatians_ iv. 9.\n\nIt is very interesting to come so close to a great man as we do in this\npassage, for the Apostle seems to be discovered here, correcting\nhimself.  It is as if he had written one teaching to the Galatians, and\nthen crossed it out and written another.  \"You know God,\" he says, \"or\nrather you are known of Him.\"  He is asking himself why the Galatians\nshould in a given case do their duty, and he answers: \"Because they\nknow God; they are aware of His purposes and laws, and having this\nrational understanding of Him they know how to act as His servants.\"\n\"But no,\" he goes on to say, \"that is not the real impulse of their\nduty.  What holds them to their best is rather the thought that God\nknows them, that He gives them their duty, and that they obey.\"  It is\nlike the position of a soldier under his commander.  The soldier does\nnot expect to know {193} all about the plan of the campaign, but what\nkeeps him to his best is the knowledge that some one knows about it;\nthat the commander overlooks the field; that each little skirmish has\nits place in the great design.  That is what makes the soldier go down\nagain into the smoke and dust of his duty with his timidity converted\ninto faith.\n\nKnowing God,--that is theology; being known of Him,--that is religion.\nBoth theology and religion have their influence on conduct.  It is a\ngreat thing to know that one knows God.  There is power in a rational\ncreed.  But, after all, the profoundest impulse for conduct is to know\nthat beneath all your ignorance of God is His knowledge of you; that\nbefore you loved Him, He loved you, that antecedent to your response to\nHim was His invitation to you.  Thus it is that a man looks out into\neach new day and asks: \"What is to hold me to-day to my duty?\"  Well,\nfirst of all, everything I may learn ought to help me.  It is all God's\ntruth, and, as I get a grasp on truth and stand on its firm ground, my\nconduct is steadier and assured.  But, after all, the deeper safety\nlies in this other confession, that I am known of God; that I {194} am\nnot merely an explorer, searching for truth, but guided and controlled\nas ever under the great taskmaster's eye; known of Him, with my\nignorance of Him held within His knowledge of me, until the time comes\nwhen at last I shall know even as also I am known.\n\n\n\n\n{195}\n\nLXXVIII\n\nFREEDOM IN THE TRUTH\n\n_John_ viii. 32.\n\n\"The truth shall make you free;\"--that is one of the greatest\nannouncements of a universal principle which even Jesus Christ ever\nmade.\n\nBut the Jews began to ask of him: \"How can one be a disciple of your\ntruth and yet be free?  Is not that discipleship only another name for\nbondage?  We are free already.  We are in bondage to no man.  Why then\nshould we enter into the servitude of obedience to your truth?\"  And to\nthis Jesus seems to answer: \"That depends upon what it is to be free.\nIt is a question of your definition of liberty.  You seem to believe\nthat to be free one must have no authority or leadership or master.\nBut I say unto you that there is no such liberty.  You must be the\nservant of something.  You must be under the authority of your law, or\nyour superstition, or your God, or yourself.  Freedom on any other\nterms is not freedom, it is lawlessness.  {196} Indeed it may be more\nlike slavery than freedom.\"\n\nWhat is a free country?  Not a country without law,--a country of the\nanarchist,--but a country where the law encourages each citizen to be\nand to do his best.  A free country gives every man a chance.  It opens\nlife at the top.  It invites one's allegiance from the things which\nenslave to the things which enlarge.  And that is the only liberty,--a\ntransfer of allegiance, a higher attachment, which sets free from the\nlower enslavements of life.  Suppose a man is the slave of a sin, how\ndoes he get free?  He frees himself from his sin by attaching himself\nto some better interest.  Sin is not driven out of one's life; it is\ncrowded out.  Suppose a man is the slave of himself, sunk in the\nself-absorbed and ungenerous life, how does he get free?  He gets free\nby finding an end in life which is larger than himself.  He becomes the\nservant of the truth, and the truth makes him free.  Suppose a man asks\nhimself, \"What can religion do for me?  It does not solve all my\nproblems, or satisfy all my needs.  What then does religion do?\"  Well,\nfirst of all, it gives one liberty.  It detaches one's life from {197}\nthe things which shut it in, and attaches it to those ideal ends which\ngive enlargement, emancipation, range to life.  God speaks to you of\nduty, of self-control, of power in your prayers, and then you go out\ninto the world again, not as if all were plain before you, but at least\nwith a free heart, and a mind not in bondage to the world of\ncircumstance or of trivial cares.  The truth of God, so far as it has\nbeen revealed to you, has made you free.  You have found the perfect\nlaw, the law of liberty.\n\n\n\n\n{198}\n\nLXXIX\n\nTHE SOIL AND THE SEED\n\n_Matthew_ xiii. 1-9.\n\nIt takes two things to make a seed grow.  One is a good seed, and the\nother is a good soil.  One is what the sower provides, and the other is\nwhat the ploughman prepares.  God's best seed falls in vain on a rock.\nMan's best soil is unfruitful till the sower visits it.  Now the\ntilling of the soil of life is what in all its different forms we call\nculture, and the expansion of God's germinating influence is what we\ncall religion.  Some people think that either of these alone is enough\nto insure a good crop.  Some think that culture makes a man fruitful,\nand some think religion is a spontaneous growth; and some even talk of\na conflict between the two.  But culture does for a man just what it\ndoes for a field.  It deepens the soil and makes it ready, and that is\nall.  The merely cultivated man is nothing more than a ploughed field\nwhich has not been sown, and when it comes to the proper time of\nharvest has a most {199} empty and untimely look.  And religion alone\ndoes not often penetrate into the unprepared life.  Sometimes, indeed,\nit seems to force its way as by a miracle, and take root, as we see a\ntree or shrub growing as it seems without any soil in which to cling.\nBut in the normal way of life the seed of God falls in vain upon a soil\nwhich is not deepened and softened to receive it.  It waits for\npreparedness of nature, for the obedient will, the awakened mind, the\nreceptive heart;--and all these forms of self-discipline are\ncomprehended in any genuine self-culture.\n\nCulture and religion--here they meet in university life.  Most of your\ntime is given to culture.  What are you doing?  You are enriching and\nspading up the soil of life.  That is the test of culture.  Is it\nquickening, deepening, stimulating the mind?  Is it opening the\nimagination and training the will?  Then it is true culture and not\nthat spurious cultivation which spreads over life gravel instead of\nfertilizers.  Culture prepares the soil; and then in sacred moments,\nperhaps in your worship here, perhaps in the solitude of your own\nexperience, or perhaps in the busiest moments of your day, God, the\nsower, comes, scattering {200} His seeds of suggestion and His minute\ninfluences for good over the heart, and what He needs is a receptive\nmind and an awakened heart; the life of man ready for the life of God,\nand the descending influences of God finding depth of earth within the\nlife of man.\n\n\n\n\n{201}\n\nLXXX\n\nTHE LORD'S PRAYER, I [1]\n\n_Matthew_ vi. 1-15.\n\nFrom day to day we gather here and repeat together the Lord's Prayer.\nOne is tempted sometimes to wonder whether in this daily repetition the\nprayer keeps its freshness and reality.  I will not say that even if it\nbecomes a mere form it is useless in our worship.  It is something even\nto have a form so rich in the associations of home and of church, of\nthe prayers of childhood, and the centuries of Christian worship.  And\nyet this prayer is first of all a protest against formalism.  \"Use not\nvain repetitions,\" says Jesus, and then he goes on to give this type of\nrestrained, unswerving, concentrated prayer.\n\nWhile the prayer, however, is a protest against formalism it is itself\nextraordinarily beautiful in form.  When a clear mind {202} expresses a\ndeep purpose its expression is always orderly, and the petitions of the\nLord's Prayer do not unfold their quality until we consider the form in\nwhich they are expressed.  Look for a moment at the order of these\npetitions.  There are two series of prayers.  The first series relate\nto God, His kingdom, and His will; the second series deal with men,\ntheir bread, their trespasses, and their temptations.  The Lord's\nPrayer, that is to say, reverses the common order of petition.  Most\npeople turn to God first of all with their own needs.  The Lord's\nPrayer postpones these needs of bread and of forgiveness, and asks\nfirst of all for God's kingdom and His will.  Thus it is, first of all,\nan unselfish prayer.  When a man comes here and prays the Lord's\nPrayer, he, first of all, subordinates himself; he postpones his own\nneeds.  He subdues his thoughts to the great purposes of God.  He prays\nfirst for God's kingdom, however it may come, whether through joy and\npeace or through much trouble and pain; and then, in the light of that\nsupreme and self-subordinating desire for the larger glory, the man\ngoes on to ask for his own bread and the forgiveness of his own sin.\n\n\n\n[1] See also, F. D. Maurice, _The Lord's Prayer_, London, 1861; Robert\nEyton, _The Lord's Prayer_, London, 1892; H. W. Foote, _Thy Kingdom\nCome_, Boston, 1891.\n\n\n\n\n{203}\n\nLXXXI\n\nTHE LORD'S PRAYER, II\n\nOUR FATHER\n\n_Matthew_ v. 21-25.\n\nI have said that the Lord's Prayer is by its very form an unselfish\nprayer.  This same mark of it is to be seen in another way by the word\nwith which it begins.  It does not pray: \"My Father, my bread, my\ntrespasses.\"  It prays throughout for blessings which are \"ours.\"  Not\nmy isolated life, but the common life I share is that for which I ask\nthe help of God.  Even when a man enters into his inner chamber and\nshuts the door, and is alone, he still says: \"Our Father.\"  He takes up\ninto his solitary prayer the lives which for the moment are bound up in\nhis.  He thinks of those he loves and says: \"Our Father.\"  He sets\nhimself right with those he does not love, reconciles himself with his\nbrother, and says: \"Our Father.\"  He joins himself with the whole great\ncompany of those who have said this prayer in all the ages, and have\nfound peace {204} in it, and with that great sense of companionship the\nsolitude of his own experience is banished, and he is compassed about\nwith a cloud of witnesses, living and dead, as he bends alone, and in\nhis half-whispered prayer begins to say: \"Our Father.\"\n\n\n\n\n{205}\n\nLXXXII\n\nTHE LORD'S PRAYER, III\n\nFATHER AND SON\n\n_Galatians_ iii. 26; iv. 6.\n\nThe fatherhood of God has become so familiar a phrase that we hardly\nrealize what a revolution of thought it represents.  In the whole Old\nTestament, so the scholars say, God is spoken of but seven times as\nFather; five times as Father of the Hebrew people, once to David as the\nfather of his son Solomon, and once as a prediction that sometime men\nwould thus pray.  And so when Jesus at the beginning of his prayer\nsays: \"After this manner pray, Our Father,\" he is opening the door into\na new conception of God's relation to man.\n\nAnd what is this conception?  It is the recognition of kinship.  It is\nthe conviction that the spiritual life in man is of the same nature as\nthe spiritual life in God.  The child's kinship to the parent involves\nthe natural inheritance of capacity and destiny.  \"If children,\" says\nSt. Paul, \"then heirs, heirs of God, and {206} joint heirs with\nChrist.\"  \"Because we are sons we cry, Abba, Father.\"  We are not Greek\nphilosophers interpreting the causes of nature or the world of ideas;\nwe are not Hebrew prophets representing a sacred nation; we are\nchildren, with the rights and gifts of children, and the assurance of a\nfather's confidence and love.  All this great promise the humblest\nChristian claims when he begins to pray the Lord's Prayer.  He says, \"I\nam not a brute, I am not a clod, I am a partaker of the Divine nature;\nI claim the promise of a child.  And that sense of kinship summons me\nto my best.  I pray as my Father's son, and as his son I bear a name\nwhich must not be stained.  _Noblesse oblige_.  There are some things\nwhich I cannot degrade myself to do because my position forbids them.\nThere are some things to which I could not attain of myself, but which\nare made possible to me as my Father's son.  I accept the unearned\nprivilege of my descent; I claim the great inheritance of the kinship\nof God, and out of my self-distrust and weakness I turn to self-respect\nand strength, when I pray: 'Our Father.'\"\n\n\n\n\n{207}\n\nLXXXIII\n\nTHE LORD'S PRAYER, IV\n\nHALLOWED BE THY NAME\n\n_Exodus_ xx. 1-7.\n\nI suppose that to many a reader the prayer: \"Holy be Thy name,\" means\nlittle more than: \"Let me not be profane; help me to keep myself from\nblasphemy.\"  But it is not likely that Jesus began his prayer with any\nsuch elementary desire as this; or that our first prayer need be only a\nprayer to be kept from irreverence.  The name of God to the Hebrews was\nmuch more than a title.  His name represented all His ways of\nrevelation.  The Hebrews did not speak the name of God.  It was a word\ntoo sacred for utterance.  Thus the man who begins the Lord's Prayer in\nthat Hebrew spirit first summons to his thought the things which are\nthe most sacred in the world to him, the thoughts and purposes which\nstand to him for God; the associations, memories, and ideals which make\nlife holy, and asks that these may lead him into his own prayer.  {208}\nWhat he says is this: \"My Father, and the Father of all other souls,\nrenew within me my most sacred thoughts and all the holy associations\nwhich are to me the symbol of Thyself.  Give to me a sense of the\nsanctity of the world.  Set me in the right mood of prayer.  And as I\nthus reverently look out on Thy varied ways of revelation and of\nrighteousness, help me to bring my own spirit into this unity with\nThyself, to make a part of Thy holy world, and humbly to begin my\nprayer by hallowing Thy name.\"\n\n\n\n\n{209}\n\nLXXXIV\n\nTHE LORD'S PRAYER, V\n\nTHY KINGDOM COME\n\n_Luke_ xvii. 21.\n\nThe prayer that the kingdom of God might come had long been familiar to\nthe Hebrews.  They had been for centuries dreaming of a time when their\ntyrants should be overcome and their nation delivered and their God\nrule.  But all this desire was for an outward change.  Some day the\nRomans and their tax-gatherers should be expelled from the land and\nthen the kingdom would come.  Jesus repeats the same prayer, but with a\nnew significance in the familiar words.  He is not thinking of a Hebrew\ntheocracy, or a Roman defeat; he is thinking of a human, universal,\nspiritual emancipation.  There dawns before his inspired imagination\nthe unparalleled conception of a purified and regenerated people.\nNever did a modern socialist in his dream of a better outward order\nsurpass this vision of Jesus of a coming kingdom of God.\n\n{210}\n\nBut to Jesus the means to that outward transformation were always\npersonal and individual.  The golden age, as Mr. Spencer has said,\ncould not be made out of leaden people.  The first condition of the\noutward kingdom must be the kingdom within.  The new order must be the\nproduct of the new life.  That is the doctrine of the social order in\nthe Lord's Prayer.\n\nWe too are looking for outward reform in legislation and economics.  It\nis all a part of the movement to the kingdom of God.  Yet any outward\ntransformation which is to last proceeds from regenerated lives.  The\nkingdom of God is within before it is without.  Do you want a better\nworld?  Well, plan for it, and work for it.  But, first of all, enter\ninto the inner chamber of your prayer, and say: \"Lord, make me a fit\ninstrument of thy kingdom.  Purify my heart, that I may purify thy\nworld.  I would live for others' sakes, but first of all that great\nself-sacrifice must be obeyed: 'For their sakes I sanctify myself,\nReign thus in me that I may rationally pray: Thy kingdom come!'\"\n\n\n\n\n{211}\n\nLXXXV\n\nTHE LORD'S PRAYER, VI\n\nTHY WILL BE DONE\n\n_Luke_ xxii. 39-46.\n\nThe Lord's Prayer begins as a prayer for the great things.  It prays\nfor a sanctified world: \"Holy be Thy name.\"  It gives form to that\ngreat hope: \"Thy kingdom come.\"  It deals with the means of that great\ncoming: \"Thy will be done.\"  The coming of the kingdom and the\nhallowing of the name are to happen through the doing of the will.\n\nI suppose that most prayers which ask that God's will may be done are\nprayers of passive acquiescence and resignation.  We are apt to pray\n\"Thy will be done,\" as though we were saying: \"Let it be done in spite\nof us and even against our wills, and we will try to bear it.\"  But\nthat is not the teaching of the Lord's Prayer.  \"Thy will be done;\"--by\nwhom?  By the man that thus prays!  He prays to have his part in the\naccomplishment of God's will, even as Jesus prays in the Garden: \"Thy\nwill be done,\" and then rises and {212} proceeds to do that will.  The\nprayer recognizes the solemn and fundamental truth that the will, even\nof God Himself, works, in its human relations, through the service of\nman.  Here, for instance, is a social abuse.  What is God's will toward\nit?  His will is that man should remove it.  Here is a threat of\ncholera, and people pray that God's will be done.  But what is God's\nwill?  His will is that the town shall be cleansed.  And who are to do\nHis will?  Why, the citizens.  Typhoid fever and bad drainage are not\nthe will of God.  The will of God is that they should be abolished.\nSocial wrongs are not to be endured with resignation.  They simply\nindicate to man what is God's will.  And who is to do God's will in\nthese things?  We are.  The man who enters into his closet and says:\n\"Thy will be done,\" is asking no mere help to bear the unavoidable; he\nis asking help to be a participator in the purposes of God, a laborer\ntogether with Him, first a discerner and then a doer of his will.  \"Our\nFather,\" he says, \"accomplish Thine ends not over me, or in spite of\nme, but through me,--Thou the power and I the instrument,--Thine to\nwill and mine to do.\"\n\n\n\n\n{213}\n\nLXXXVI\n\nTHE LORD'S PRAYER, VII\n\nDAILY BREAD\n\nThe Lord's Prayer begins with the desire for the great things, the\nuniversal needs; a holy world, a kingdom of righteousness, the will of\nGod fulfilled.  Then, in the light of these great things it goes on to\none's personal needs, and prays, first of all, for the present, then\nfor the past, then for the future.  The prayer for the present is this:\n\"Give us our daily bread,\"--our bread, that is to say, sufficient for\nto-day, enough to live on and to work by, just for today.  The prayer\nis limitative.  It puts restraint on my desire and limit on my\nambition.  It does not demand the future.  It looks only to this\npresent unexplored and unknown day.  \"Give us in this day what is\nnecessary for us, fit to sustain us,--strength to do thy will, patience\nto bring in thy kingdom, grace to hallow thy name.\"\n\nInto the midst of the restless anticipations of modern life, its living\nof to-morrow's life in {214} to-day's anxiety, its social disease which\nhas been described as \"Americanitis,\" and which, if it is not arrested,\nwill have to be operated on some day at the risk of the nation's life,\nthere enters every morning in your daily prayer the desire for quiet\nacceptance of the day's blessings, the dismissal of the care for the\nmorrow, the sense of sufficiency in the bread of to-day:--\n\n  \"Lord, for to-morrow and its needs I do not pray,\n  Keep me from stain of sin, just for to-day.\n  Let me both diligently work, and duly pray,\n  Let me be kind in word and deed, just for to-day.\n  Let me no wrong or idle word unthinking say,\n  Set thou a seal upon my lips, just for to-day.\n  Let me be slow to do my will, prompt to obey,\n  Help me to sacrifice myself, just for to-day.\n  So for to-morrow and its needs, I do not pray,\n  But help me, keep me, hold me, Lord, just for to-day.\"\n\n\n\n\n{215}\n\nLXXXVII\n\nTHE LORD'S PRAYER, VIII\n\nFORGIVENESS\n\n_Luke_ xii. 1-3.\n\nWe come to the petition in the Lord's Prayer which is the easiest to\nunderstand and the hardest to pray,--the prayer that we may be forgiven\nas we forgive.  This prayer does not, of course, ask God to measure His\ngoodness by our virtues.  We should not dare to ask that God would deal\nwith us just as we have dealt with others.  It is the spirit of\nforgiveness for which we pray.  \"Give us forgiveness,\" we ask, \"because\nwe come in the spirit of forgiveness.\"  The spirit of forgiveness, that\nis to say, is the condition and prerequisite of the prayer for\nforgiveness.  If you do not love your brother whom you have seen, how\ncan you truly pray to God whom you have not seen?  If a man comes to\nhis prayer with hate in his heart, he makes it impossible for God to\nforgive him.  He is shutting the door which opens into the spirit {216}\nof prayer.  Right-mindedness to man is the first condition of right\nprayer to God.\n\nThe traveler in Egypt sometimes looks out in the early morning and sees\nan Arab preparing to say his prayers.  The man goes down to the\nriver-bank and spreads his little carpet so that he shall look toward\nMecca; but before he kneels he crouches on the bank, and cleanses his\nlips, his tongue, his hands, even his feet, so that he shall bring to\nhis prayer no unclean word or deed.  It is as if he first said with the\nPsalmist: \"Wash me thoroughly of my iniquity; purge me of my sin; make\nme a clean heart; renew in me a right spirit;\" and then with a right\nspirit in him, he bends and rises and bows again in his prayer.  The\npetition for a forgiving spirit prepares one in the same way to say his\nmorning prayer.  It cleanses the tongue; it washes the motives; it\npurifies the thoughts of their uncharitableness; and then, in this\nspirit of forgiveness even toward those who have wronged him, the\nChristian is clean enough to ask for the forgiveness of his own sin.\n\n\n\n\n{217}\n\nLXXXVIII\n\nTHE LORD'S PRAYER, IX\n\nTEMPTATIONS\n\n_James_ i. 12-17.\n\nThis passage from the Epistle of James is a commentary on the last\npetition of the Lord's Prayer.  When we pray: \"Lead us not into\ntemptation,\" it is, as James says, not God who tempts, for God tempteth\nno man.  The temptation comes through our misuse of the circumstances\nwhich God offers us as our opportunity.  We turn these circumstances\ninto temptations.\n\nEvery condition of life has these two aspects.  It is on the one hand\nan opportunity, and it is on the other hand a temptation.  God gives it\nas an opportunity and we misuse the opportunity and it becomes our\ntemptation.  The rich have their special and great opportunity of\ngenerous service for the common good, and yet through that very\nopportunity comes their special temptation.  The poor are saved by\ntheir lot from many temptations of self-centred and frivolous luxury,\nbut are much tempted {218} by their poverty itself.  The healthy have a\ngreat gift of God, but they are tempted by that very gift to\nrecklessness, inconsiderateness and self-injury.  The sick receive\npeculiar blessings of patience and resignation, but are much tempted to\nselfishness and discontent.  The business man is tempted by his very\nknowledge of the world to the hardness of materialism; the minister is\ntempted by his very indifference to the world to unsophisticated\nimprudence.  Wherever on earth a man may be he must scrutinize his\nfuture, and calculate his powers, and face his problems, and pray: \"My\nGod, prevent my vocation from becoming my temptation.  Let me not put\nmyself where I shall be tried over much.  Save me from the peculiar\ntemptation of my special lot.  Deliver me from its evils and lead me\nnot round its temptations, but through them into its opportunity and\njoy.\"\n\n\n\n\n{219}\n\nLXXXIX\n\nSIMPLICITY TOWARD CHRIST\n\n2 _Corinthians_ xi. 3.\n\nIn listening, as we have done, from day to day to Bishop Vincent, there\nhas repeatedly come to my mind this phrase: The simplicity that is in\nChrist; or, as the Revised Version more accurately translates it, the\nsimplicity that is toward Christ,--the power which is often so much\ngreater than eloquence, of an obviously genuine, sincere, simple\nChristian life.\n\nBut when one inquires into the nature of this Christian simplicity,\nwhich is one of the fairest blooms of character, it turns out to be, so\nto speak, not so simple a trait as it at first appeared.  Of course,\nthere is a kind of simplicity which is a survival of childhood, a\nguileless, childish ignorance; but when a man is simple in a childish\nway, he is only what we call a simpleton.  Christian simplicity is not\na survival but an achievement, wrought out of the struggles and\nproblems of maturer life.  It is not an infantile but a masculine trait.\n\n{220}\n\nWhat then is simplicity?  The Latin word means singleness, unmixedness,\nstraightforwardness.  It is sometimes used of wood which is\nstraight-grained.  What simplifies life is to have a single, specific\ndirection in which to grow, a straight-grained, definite intention, the\npossibility of a straightforward life.  The scattered, divergent,\nwavering life,--what is this but what we call the dissipating career?\nIt abandons self-concentration and steadiness; it dissipates its\nenergy.  It does not mean to begin wrong, but because it has no fixity\nof direction it becomes, as we say, dissipated.  And what is it, once\nmore, which gives direction, unity, simplicity, to life?  That is made\nplain in this same passage.  It is the simplicity, says the New\nVersion, which is toward Christ.  What gives straightforwardness is not\nthe condition in which we are, but the ideal toward which we are\nheading.  What simplifies life is to say something like this: \"I do not\npretend to know all about religion, or duty, or Christ, but I do\npropose to live along the line of life which I will call toward Christ.\nI propose to think less of what I may live by, and more of what I may\nlive toward.\"  When a man makes this decision he has not indeed {221}\nsolved all the problems of life, but he has amazingly simplified them.\nMany things which had been perplexing, disturbing, confusing, now fall\ninto line behind that one comprehensive loyalty.  He has, as it were,\ncome out of the woods, and found a high road.  It is not all level, or\neasy; there is many a sharp ascent in it, and many a shadowy valley.\nBut at least the way is clear, and he knows whither it leads, and he\nhas found his bearings, and he trudges along with a quiet mind, even\nthough with a weary step, for he has emerged from the bewildering\nunderbrush of life into the simplicity which is toward Christ.\n\n\n\n\n{222}\n\nXC\n\nOPEN OUR EYES\n\n2 _Kings_ vi. 17.\n\n(END OF COLLEGE TERM)\n\nThis young man did not see things as they really were, because, as we\nsay in smaller matters, he did not have his eyes open.  He saw the\nhorses and chariots of Syria round about him, and the enemy seemed too\nstrong for him, and then Elisha prayed: \"Lord, open his eyes,\" and the\nyoung man saw that over against his enemies there was a host of\nspiritual allies, so that \"They that be with us are more than they that\nbe with them.\"\n\nAs we look back over this closing college year with all its problems\nand duties, its conflicts and fears, it is with something of this same\nsense that we have not half known the powers which were on our side.\nSometimes we have thought the enemy too strong for us, and it looked as\nif cares and fears, troubles and misunderstandings were likely to\ndefeat us, and the battle of life might be lost.  The {223} problems of\nthe world about us have seemed very grievous, and the perplexities of\nthe life within very perilous.  And now God comes to us at last and\nopens our eyes, and we look back and say: \"What a good year, after all,\nit has been.\"  There never has been so good a year for the college as\nthis.  There never has been so good a year for the world.  With all the\nsocial problems and agitations that seem so threatening about us, this\nis, after all, the best year that God has ever made.  And in our\npersonal conflicts, how plain it is that the forces of heaven have been\nbehind us.  No man has thought a true thought, or done an unselfish\ndeed this year without a backing which now discloses itself as very\nreal.  Behind our doubts and fears have been the horses and chariots of\nfire.  Lord, open our eyes, that we may see these spiritual allies and\nenlist ourselves in the ranks of their omnipotence.\n\n\n\n\n{224}\n\nXCI\n\nTHE WORD MADE FLESH\n\n_John_ i. 1-14.\n\n(END OF COLLEGE TERM)\n\nI do not enter into the deeper philosophical significance of this great\nchapter, but any one can see on the very surface of it the general\ntruth on which Christianity rests its claim.  God's government of the\nworld is here described as operating through His word.  God simply\nspeaks, and things are done.  God says: \"Let there be light,\" and there\nis light.  The universe is God's language.  History is God's voice.  By\nHis word was everything made that is made.  Then, when the fullness of\ntime has come this language of God is made life.  What God has been\ntrying to make men hear through his word, He now lets them see through\nhis life.  His word becomes flesh.  The life becomes the light of men.\nThat is the most elementary statement of the doctrine of the\nincarnation.  It is the transformation of language into life.\n\n{225}\n\nLet us take this great truth into our own little lives as we part on\nthis last day of common worship.  God has been speaking to us His word\nin many ways through our worship here; in our silence and in our song,\nin Bible and in prayer, in the voice of different preachers, and in the\nvoice of our own consciences and hearts.  And now what is our last\nprayer but this, that this word may be made flesh, that this worship\nmay be transformed into life, that these messages of courage, of hope,\nof composure, of self-control, may be incarnated in this life of youth;\nthat out of the many words here spoken in the name of God, here and\nthere one may become flesh and walk out of this chapel and out of these\ncollege grounds in the interior life of a consecrated young man.  The\nlife is the light of men.  May it be so with us here.  May the spirit\nof him in whose life is our light, enlighten the lives which have\ngathered here, and lead them through all the obscurities of life, and\nbrighten more and more before them into a perfect day.\n\n\n\n\n{227}\n\n  LIST OF BIBLE PASSAGES\n\n                         Address.      Page.\n\n  Genesis iv, 9          LXX             176\n  Exodus xx, 1-7         LXXXIII         207\n  Deut. xxxiii, 27       XXXIII           83\n  I Ks. xix, 1-13        LXXV            187\n  II Kings vi, 17        XC              212\n  Mat. ii, 1-11          XXIX             74\n       iv, 1-11          XLVIII          171\n       v, 3              XXII             58\n       v, 4              XXIII            60\n       v, 5              XXIV             62\n       v, 6              XXV              64\n       v, 7              XXVI             67\n       v, 8              XXVII            69\n       v, 16             IV                9\n       v, 17             XV               41\n       v, 21-25          LXXXI           203\n       vi, 1-15          LXXX            201\n       vii, 1            XII              32\n       viii, 5-11        V                12\n       xii, 38-45        LVI             138\n       xiii, 1-9         XLV             113\n       xiii, 1-9         XLVI            116\n       xiii, 1-9         XLVII           118\n       xiii, 1-9         XLVIII          120\n       xiii, 1-9         XLIX            122\n       xiv, 23           VII              18\n       xxi, 17-23        LX              148\n       xxii, 11-14       LXXIV           185\n       xxiii, 24         LXXVI           189\n       xxv, 14-30        L               124\n       xxv, 14-30        LI              127\n       xxv, 14-30        LII             129\n       xxv, 22           LIII            131\n       xxv, 24           LIV             133\n       xxv, 29           LV              136\n  Mark iv, 27            XVIII            49\n       iv, 27            XLIX            122\n       viii, 34          XXI              56\n       x, 35-45          II                4\n  Mark xii, 30           LXIX            174\n       xiii, 1-9         LXXIX           198\n  Luke ii, 8-10          XXIX             74\n       ii, 8-14          XXX              76\n       ii, 30-35         XXXI             78\n       iii, 16           XXVIII           71\n       xii, 1-5          LXXXVII         215\n       xv, 17            LIX             146\n       xvi, 1-10         LVIII           143\n       xvi, 1-12         LVII            140\n       xvii, 5-15        LXXXIV          209\n       xvii, 7-10        XIII             35\n       xvii, 21          XIX              52\n       xix, 37-43        LX              148\n       xx, 19-38         LXI             151\n       xxii, 39-46       LXXXV           211\n       xxii, 39-48       LXIII           156\n       xxiii, 20-26      LXVII           168\n  John i, 1-14           XCI             224\n       iv, 10            LXXIII          182\n       vi, 35            XI               29\n       viii, 32          LXXVIII         195\n       xiv, 6            XXXVI            89\n       xiv, 14, 16       XXXIV            85\n       xvi, 32           LXXII           180\n       xvii, 22          III               7\n       xviii, 28-38      LXIV            159\n       xix, 30           LXV             163\n       xx, 8             VIII             21\n       xxi, 22           IX               25\n  Acts xxvi, 19          X                27\n  Romans xii, 1          XIV              38\n  I Cor. xii, 31         LXXI            178\n  II Cor. iv, 10         XX               54\n          xi, 3          LXXXIX          219\n  Galatians iii, 26      LXXXII          205\n            iv, 6        LXXXII          205\n            iv, 9        LXXVII          192\n  Ephes. iv, 13          XVII             48\n\n{228}\n\n                         Address.      Page.\n\n  Ephes. iv, 14-17       XXXV             87\n  Phil. iii, 11          LXVI            166\n  II Tim. ii, 3          XVI              44\n          iv, 8          VI               15\n  Hebrews xii, 1         I                 1\n  James i, 12-17         LXXXVIII        217\n  Rev. ii, 1-7           XXXVII           96\n       ii, 8-10          XXXVIII          93\n  Rev. ii, 12-17         XXXIX            90\n       ii, 18-28         XL               99\n       iii, 1            XLI             102\n       iii, 8            XLII            105\n       iii, 20           XLIII           107\n       xxi, 7            XLIV            110\n       xxii, 17          XI               29","title":"Mornings in the College Chapel: Short Addresses to Young Men on Personal Religion","tradition":"scripture-revelation","translated_text":null,"word_count":39609}