{"collection":"scripture-revelation","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_2498/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_2498","id":"gutenberg_2498","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2498","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Essays, Letters & Speeches","Category: Religion/Spirituality","Sermons","Speeches, addresses, etc.","Theology"],"text":"Ver.04.29.93*END*\n\n\n\n\n\nAt the time this was typed in 02/04/2000, there were images showing\nMillet's \"The Angelus\" available on the internet at the following\nsites: http://www.tam.itesm.mx/~jdorante/art/realismo/1205.jpg\n\n\nhttp://www.udayton.edu/mary/gallery/artists/angelus.html\nhttp://www.tigtail.org/TVM/X2/a.NeoClassic/millet_angelus.1859.jpg\nhttp://www.i-a-s.de/IAS/Bilder/MILLET/Angelus.htm While this list\nis not exhaustive (and should include the Louvre--where the painting\nis hung--but I couldn't find it there) there should be at least\none of these active at the time of the reading.\n\nAddresses by Henry Drummond\n\n\n\n\n\nIntroductory.\n\n\n\n\nI was staying with a party of friends in a country house during my\nvisit to England in 1884.  On Sunday evening as we sat around the\nfire, they asked me to read and expound some portion of Scripture.\nBeing tired after the services of the day, I told them to ask Henry\nDrummond, who was one of the party.  After some urging he drew a\nsmall Testament from his hip pocket, opened it at the 13th chapter\nof I Corinthians, and began to speak on the subject of Love.\n\nIt seemed to me that I had never heard anything so beautiful, and\nI determined not to rest until I brought Henry Drummond to Northfield\nto deliver that address.  Since then I have requested the principals\nof schools to have it read before the students every year.  The one\ngreat need in our Christian life is love, more love to God and to\neach other.  Would that we could all move into that Love chapter,\nand live there.\n\nThis volume contains, in addition to the address on Love, some\nother addresses which I trust will bring help and blessing to many.\n\n[signed]D. L. Moody.\n\n\n\n\n\nContents\n\n\n\n\nLove, the Greatest Thing in the World . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7\nLessons from the Angelus  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  35\nPax Vobiscum  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  44\nFirst!  An Address to Boys  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  70\nThe Changed Life, the Greatest Need of the World  . . . . . . .  82\nDealing with Doubt  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113\n\n\n\n\n\nLove:  The Greatest Thing in the World\n\n\n\n\nEvery one has asked himself the great question of antiquity as of\nthe modern world:  What is the 'summum bonum'--the supreme good?\nYou have life before you.  Once only you can live it.  What is the\nnoblest object of desire, the supreme gift to covet?\n\nWe have been accustomed to be told that the greatest thing in the\nreligious world is Faith.  That great word has been the key-note\nfor centuries of the popular religion; and we have easily learned\nto look upon it as the greatest thing in the world.  Well, we are\nwrong.  If we have been told that, we may miss the mark.  In the\n13th chapter of I Corinthians, Paul takes us to\n\n\nChristianity at its source;\n\n\nand there we see, \"the greatest of these is love.\"\n\nIt is not an oversight.  Paul was speaking of faith just a moment\nbefore.  He says, \"If I have all faith, so that I can remove\nmountains, and have not love, I am nothing.\"  So far from forgetting,\nhe deliberately contrasts them, \"Now abideth Faith, Hope, Love,\"\nand without a moment's hesitation the decision falls, \"The greatest\nof these is Love.\"\n\nAnd it is not prejudice.  A man is apt to recommend to others his\nown strong point.  Love was not Paul's strong point.  The observing\nstudent can detect a beautiful tenderness growing and ripening all\nthrough his character as Paul gets old; but the hand that wrote\n\"The greatest of these is love,\" when we meet it first, is stained\nwith blood.\n\nNor is this letter to the Corinthians peculiar in singling out\nlove as the \"summum bonum.\"  The masterpieces of Christianity are\nagreed about it.  Peter says, \"Above all things have fervent love\namong yourselves.\"  ABOVE ALL THINGS.  And John goes farther, \"God\nis love.\"\n\nYou remember the profound remark which Paul makes elsewhere, \"Love\nis the fulfilling of the law.\"  Did you ever think what he meant\nby that?  In those days men were working the passage to Heaven\nby keeping the Ten Commandments, and the hundred and ten other\ncommandments which they had manufactured out of them.  Christ came\nand said, \"I will show you a more simple way.  If you do one thing,\nyou will do these hundred and ten things, without ever thinking\nabout them.  If you LOVE, you will unconsciously fulfill the whole\nlaw.\"\n\nYou can readily see for yourselves how that must be so.  Take any\nof the commandments.  \"Thou shalt have no other gods before Me.\"\nIf a man love God, you will not require to tell him that.  Love is\nthe fulfilling of that law.  \"Take not His name in vain.\"  Would he\never dream of taking His name in vain if he loved him?  \"Remember\nthe Sabbath day to keep it holy.\"   Would he not be too glad to\nhave one day in seven to dedicate more exclusively to the object\nof his affection?  Love would fulfill all these laws regarding God.\n\nAnd so, if he loved man, you would never think of telling him\nto honor his father and mother.  He could not do anything else.\nIt would be preposterous to tell him not to kill.  You could only\ninsult him if you suggested that he should not steal--how could\nhe steal from those he loved?  It would be superfluous to beg him\nnot to bear false witness against his neighbor.  If he loved him\nit would be the last thing he would do.  And you would never dream\nof urging him not to covet what his neighbors had.  He would rather\nthey possess it than himself.  In this way \"Love is the fulfilling\nof the law.\"  It is the rule for fulfilling all rules, the new\ncommandment for keeping all the old commandments, Christ's one.\n\n\nSecret of the Christian life.\n\n\nNow Paul has learned that; and in this noble eulogy he has given\nus the most wonderful and original account extant of the \"summum\nbonum.\"  We may divide it into three parts.  In the beginning of\nthe short chapter we have Love CONTRASTED; in the heart of it, we\nhave Love ANALYZED; toward the end, we have Love DEFENDED as the\nsupreme gift.\n\n\nI. The Contrast.\n\n\nPaul begins by contrasting Love with other things that men in those\ndays thought much of.  I shall not attempt to go over these things\nin detail.  Their inferiority is already obvious.\n\nHe contrasts it with ELOQUENCE.  And what a noble gift it is,\nthe power of playing upon the souls and wills of men, and rousing\nthem to lofty purpose and holy deeds!  Paul says, If I speak with\nthe tongues of men and of angels, and have not love, I am become\nsounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.\"  We all know why.  We have\nall felt the brazenness of words without emotion, the hollowness,\nthe unaccountable unpersuasiveness, of eloquence behind which lies\nno Love.\n\nHe contrasts it with PROPHECY.  He contrasts it with MYSTERIES.\nHe contrasts it with FAITH.  He contrasts it with CHARITY.  Why\nis Love greater than faith?  Because the end is greater than the\nmeans.  And why is it greater than charity?  Because the whole is\ngreater than the part.\n\nLove is greater than FAITH, because the end is greater than the\nmeans.  What is the use of having faith?  It is to connect the\nsoul with God.  And what is the object of connecting man with God?\nThat he may become like God.  But God is Love.  Hence Faith, the\nmeans, is in order to Love, the end.  Love, therefore, obviously\nis greater than faith.  \"If I have all faith, so as to remove\nmountains, but have not love, I am nothing.\"\n\nIt is greater than CHARITY, again, because the whole is greater\nthan a part.  Charity is only a little bit of Love, one of the\ninnumerable avenues of Love, and there may even be, and there is,\na great deal of charity without Love.  It is a very easy thing\nto toss a copper to a beggar on the street; it is generally an\neasier thing than not to do it.  Yet Love is just as often in the\nwithholding.  We purchase relief from the sympathetic feelings\nroused by the spectacle of misery, at the copper's cost.  It is too\ncheap--too cheap for us, and often too dear for the beggar.  If we\nreally loved him we would either do more for him, or less.  Hence,\n\"If I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, but have not love it\nprofiteth me nothing.\"\n\nThen Paul contrasts it with SACRIFICE and martyrdom:  \"If I give\nmy body to be burned, but have not love, it profiteth me nothing.\"\nMissionaries can take nothing greater to the heathen world than the\nimpress and reflection of the Love of God upon their own character.\nThat is the universal language.  It will take them years to speak\nin Chinese, or in the dialects of India.  From the day they land,\nthat language of Love, understood by all, will be pouring forth\nits unconscious eloquence.\n\nIt is the man who is the missionary, it is not his words.  His\ncharacter is his message.  In the heart of Africa, among the great\nLakes, I have come across black men and women who remembered the\nonly white man they ever saw before--David Livingstone; and as you\ncross his footsteps in that dark continent,\n\n\nMen's faces light up\n\n\nAs they speak of the kind doctor who passed there years ago.  They\ncould not understand him; but they felt the love that beat in his\nheart.  They knew that it was love, although he spoke no word.\n\nTake into your sphere of labor, where you also mean to lay down\nyour life, that simple charm, and your lifework must succeed.  You\ncan take nothing greater, you need take nothing less.  You may\ntake every accomplishment; you may be braced for every sacrifice;\nbut if you give your body to be burned, and have not Love, it will\nprofit you and the cause of Christ NOTHING.\n\n\nII.  The Analysis\n\n\nAfter contrasting Love with these things, Paul, in three verses,\nvery short, gives us an amazing analysis of what this supreme thing\nis.\n\nI ask you to look at it.  It is a compound thing, he tells us.  It\nis like light.  As you have seen a man of science take a beam of\nlight and pass it through a crystal prism, as you have seen it come\nout on the other side of the prism broken up into its component\ncolors--red, and blue, and yellow, and violet, and orange, and all\nthe colors of the rainbow--so Paul passes this thing, Love, through\nthe magnificent prism of his inspired intellect, and it comes out\non the other side broken up into its elements.\n\nIn these few words we have what one might call\n\n\nThe spectrum of Love,\n\n\nthe analysis of love.  Will you observe what its elements are?\nWill you notice that they have common names; that they are virtues\nwhich we hear about every day; that they are things which can\nbe practised by every man in every place in life; and how, by a\nmultitude of small things and ordinary virtues, the supreme thing,\nthe \"summum bonum,\" is made up?\n\nThe Spectrum of Love has nine ingredients:\n\n\nPatience . . . . . \"Love suffereth long.\"\nKindness . . . . . \"And is kind.\"\nGenerosity . . . . \"Love envieth not.\"\nHumility . . . . . \"Love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up.\"\nCourtesy . . . . . \"Doth not behave itself unseemly.\"\nUnselfishness  . . \"Seeketh not its own.\"\nGood temper  . . . \"Is not provoked.\"\nGuilelessness  . . \"Taketh not account of evil.\"\nSincerity  . . . . \"Rejoiceth not in unrighteousness, but rejoiceth\n                    with the truth.\"\n\n\nPatience; kindness; generosity; humility; courtesy; unselfishness;\ngood temper; guilelessness; sincerity--these make up the supreme\ngift, the stature of the perfect man.\n\nYou will observe that all are in relation to men, in relation to\nlife, in relation to the known to-day and the near to-morrow, and\nnot to the unknown eternity.  We hear much of love to God; Christ\nspoke much of love to man.  We make a great deal of peace with heaven;\nChrist made much of peace on earth.  Religion is not a strange or\nadded thing, but the inspiration of the secular life, the breathing\nof an eternal spirit through this temporal world.  The supreme\nthing, in short, is not a thing at all, but the giving of a further\nfinish to the multitudinous words and acts which make up the sum\nof every common day.\n\nPATIENCE.  This is the normal attitude of love; Love passive, love\nwaiting to begin; not in a hurry; calm; ready to do its work when\nthe summons comes, but meantime wearing the ornament of a meek and\nquiet spirit.  Love suffers long; beareth all things; believeth\nall things; hopeth all things.  For Love understands, and therefore\nwaits.\n\nKINDNESS.  Love active.  Have you ever noticed how much of Christ's\nlife was spent in doing kind things--in MERELY doing kind things?\nRun over it with that in view, and you will find that He spent a\ngreat proportion of His time simply in making people happy, in\n\n\nDoing good turns\n\n\nto people.  There is only one thing greater than happiness in the\nworld, and that is holiness; and it is not in our keeping; but\nwhat God HAS put in our power is the happiness of those about us,\nand that is largely to be secured by our being kind to them.\n\n\"The greatest thing,\" says some one, \"a man can do for his Heavenly\nFather is to be kind to some of His other children.\"  I wonder why\nit is that we are not all kinder than we are?  How much the world\nneeds it!  How easily it is done!  How instantaneously it acts!  How\ninfallibly it is remembered!  How superabundantly it pays itself\nback--for there is no debtor in the world so honorable, so superbly\nhonorable, as Love.  \"Love never faileth.\"  Love is success, Love\nis happiness, Love is life.  \"Love,\" I say with Browning, \"is energy\nof life.\"\n\n\n\"For life, with all it yields of joy or woe\n And hope and fear,\n Is just our chance o' the prize of learning love,--\n How love might be, hath been indeed, and is.\"\n\n\nWhere Love is, God is.  He that dwelleth in Love dwelleth in\nGod.  God is Love.  Therefore LOVE.  Without distinction, without\ncalculation, without procrastination, love.  Lavish it upon the\npoor, where it is very easy; especially upon the rich, who often need\nit most; most of all upon our equals, where it is very difficult,\nand for whom perhaps we each do least of all.  There is a difference\nbetween TRYING TO PLEASE and GIVING PLEASURE.  Give pleasure.\nLose no chance of giving pleasure; for that is the ceaseless and\nanonymous triumph of a truly loving spirit.  \"I shall pass through\nthis world but once.  Any good thing, therefore, that I can do, or\nany kindness that I can show to any human being, let me do it now.\nLet me not defer it or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way\nagain.\"\n\nGENEROSITY.  \"Love envieth not.\"  This is love in competition with\nothers.  Whenever you attempt a good work you will find other men\ndoing the same kind of work, and probably doing it better.  Envy\nthem not.  Envy is a feeling of ill-will to those who are in the\nsame line as ourselves, a spirit of covetousness and detraction.\nHow little Christian work even is a protection against un-Christian\nfeeling!  That most despicable of all the unworthy moods which\ncloud a Christian's soul assuredly waits for us on the threshold of\nevery work, unless we are fortified with this grace of magnanimity.\nOnly one thing truly need the Christian envy--the large, rich,\ngenerous soul which \"envieth not.\"\n\nAnd then, after having learned all that, you  have to learn this\nfurther thing, HUMILITY--to put a seal upon your lips and forget\nwhat you have done.  After you have been kind, after Love has stolen\nforth into the world and done its beautiful work, go back into the\nshade again and say nothing about it.  Love hides even from itself.\nLove waives even self-satisfaction.  \"Love vaunteth not itself, is\nnot puffed up.\"  Humility--love hiding.\n\nThe fifth ingredient is a somewhat strange one to find in this \"summum\nbonum:\"  COURTESY.  This is Love in society, Love in relation to\netiquette.  \"Love doe not behave itself unseemly.\"\n\nPoliteness has been defined as love in trifles.  Courtesy is said\nto be love in little things.  And the one secret of politeness is\nto love.\n\nLove CANNOT behave itself unseemly.  You can put the most untutored\npersons into the highest society, and if they have a reservoir\nof Love in their hearty they will not behave themselves unseemly.\nThey simply cannot do it.  Carlisle said of Robert Burns that there\nwas no truer gentleman in Europe than the ploughman-poet.  It was\nbecause he loved everything--the mouse, and the daisy, and all the\nthings, great and small, that God had made.  So with this simple\npassport he could mingle with any society, and enter courts and\npalaces from his little cottage on the banks of the Ayr.\n\nYou know the meaning of the word \"gentleman.\"  It means a gentle\nman--a man who does things gently, with love.  That is the whole art\nand mystery of it.  The gentle man cannot in the nature of things\ndo an ungentle, an ungentlemanly thing.  The ungentle soul, the\ninconsiderate, unsympathetic nature, cannot do anything else.  \"Love\ndoth not behave itself unseemly.\"\n\nUNSELFISHNESS.  \"Love seeketh not her own.\"  Observe:  Seeketh not\neven that which is her own.  In Britain the Englishman is devoted,\nand rightly, to his rights.  But there come times when a man may\nexercise even\n\n\nThe higher right\n\n\nof giving up his rights.\n\nYet Paul does not summon us to give up our rights.  Love strikes\nmuch deeper.  It would have us not seek them at all, ignore them,\neliminate the personal element altogether from our calculations.\n\nIt is not hard to give up our rights.  They are often eternal.  The\ndifficult thing is to give up OURSELVES.  The more difficult thing\nstill is not to seek things for ourselves at all.  After we have\nsought them, bought them, won them, deserved them, we have taken\nthe cream off them for ourselves already.  Little cross then to\ngive them up.  But not to seek them, to look every man not on his\nown things, but on the things of others--that is the difficulty.\n\"Seekest thou great things for thyself?\" said the prophet; \"SEEK\nTHEM NOT.\"  Why?  Because there is no greatness in THINGS.  Things\ncannot be great.  The only greatness is unselfish love.  Even\nself-denial in itself is nothing, is almost a mistake.  Only a\ngreat purpose or a mightier love can justify the waste.\n\nIt is more difficult, I have said, not to seek our own at all\nthan, having sought it, to give it up.  I must take that back.  It\nis only true of a partly selfish heart.  Nothing is a hardship to\nLove, and nothing is hard.  I believe that Christ's \"yoke\" is easy.\nChrist's yoke is just His way of taking life.  And I believe it is\nan easier way than any other.  I believe it is a happier way than\nany other.  The most obvious lesson in Christ's teaching is that\nthere is no happiness in having and getting anything, but only in\ngiving.  I repeat, THERE IS NO HAPPINESS IN HAVING OR IN GETTING,\nBUT ONLY IN GIVING.  Half the world is on the wrong scent in the\npursuit of happiness.  They think it consists in having and getting,\nand in being served by others.  It consists in giving, and in\nserving others.  \"He that would be great among you,\" said Christ,\n\"let him serve.\"  He that would be happy, let him remember that\nthere is but one way--\"it is more blessed, it is more happy, to\ngive than to receive.\"\n\nThe next ingredient is a very remarkable one:  GOOD TEMPER.  \"Love\nis not provoked.\"\n\nNothing could be more striking than to find this here.  We\nare inclined to look upon bad temper as a very harmless weakness.\nWe speak of it as a mere infirmity of nature, a family failing, a\nmatter of temperament, not a thing to take into very serious account\nin estimating a man's character.  And yet here, right in the heart\nof this analysis of love, it finds a place; and the Bible again and\nagain returns to condemn it as one of the most destructive elements\nin human nature.\n\nThe peculiarity of ill temper is that it is the vice of the virtuous.\nIt is often the one blot on an otherwise noble character.  You\nknow men who are all but perfect, and women who would be entirely\nperfect, but for an easily ruffled, quick-tempered, or \"touchy\"\ndisposition.  This compatibility of ill temper with high moral\ncharacter is one of the strangest and saddest problems of ethics.\nThe truth is, there are two great classes of sins--sins of the BODY\nand sins of the DISPOSITION.  The Prodigal Son may be taken as a\ntype of the first, the Elder Brother of the second.  Now, society\nhas no doubt whatever as to which of these is the worse.  Its brand\nfalls, without a challenge, upon the Prodigal.  But are we right?\nWe have no balance to weigh one another's sins, and coarser and\nfiner are but human words; but faults in the higher nature may be\nless venal than those in the lower, and to the eye of Him who is\nLove, a sin against Love may seem a hundred times more base.  No\nform of vice, not worldliness, not greed of gold, not drunkenness\nitself, does more to un-Christianize society than evil temper.  For\nembittering life, for breaking up communities, for destroying the\nmost sacred relationships, for devastating homes, for withering up\nmen and women, for taking the bloom of childhood, in short,\n\n\nFor sheer gratuitous misery-producing power\n\n\nthis influence stands alone.\n\nLook at the Elder Brother--moral, hard-working, patient, dutiful--let\nhim get all credit for his virtues--look at this man, this baby,\nsulking outside his own father's door.  \"He was angry,\" we read,\n\"and would not go in.\"  Look at the effect upon the father, upon the\nservants, upon the happiness of the guests.  Judge of the effect\nupon the Prodigal--and how many prodigals are kept out of the\nKingdom of God by the unlovely character of those who profess to\nbe inside.  Analyze, as a study in Temper, the thunder-cloud itself\nas it gathers upon the Elder Brother's brow.  What is it made of?\nJealousy, anger, pride, uncharity, cruelty, self-righteousness,\ntouchiness, doggedness, sullenness--these are the ingredients of\nthis dark and loveless soul.  In varying proportions, also, these\nare the ingredients of all ill temper.  Judge if such sins are of\nthe disposition are not worse to live in, and for others to live\nwith, than the sins of the body.  Did Christ indeed not answer the\nquestion Himself when He said, \"I say unto you that the publicans\nand the harlots go into the Kingdom of Heaven before you\"?  There\nis really no place in heaven for a disposition like this.  A man\nwith such a mood could only make heaven miserable for all the people\nin it.  Except, therefore, such a man be\n\n\nBorn again,\n\n\nhe cannot, simply CANNOT, enter the kingdom of heaven.\n\nYou will see then why Temper is significant.  It is not in what\nit is alone, but in what it reveals.  This is why I speak of it\nwith such unusual plainness.  It is a test for love, a symptom, a\nrevelation of an unloving nature at bottom.  It is the intermittent\nfever which bespeaks unintermittent disease within; the occasional\nbubble escaping to the surface which betrays some rottenness\nunderneath; a sample of the most hidden products of the soul dropped\ninvoluntarily when off one's guard; in a word, the lightning form\nof a hundred hideous and un-Christian sins.  A want of patience, a\nwant of kindness, a want of generosity, a want of courtesy, a want\nof unselfishness, are all instantaneously symbolized in one flash\nof Temper.\n\nHence it is not enough to deal with the Temper.  We must go to the\nsource, and change the inmost nature, and the angry humors will die\naway of themselves.  souls are made sweet not by taking the acid\nfluids out, but by putting something in--a great Love, a new Spirit,\nthe Spirit of Christ.  Christ, the Spirit of Christ, interpenetrating\nours, sweetens, purifies, transforms all.  This only can eradicate\nwhat is wrong, work a chemical change, renovate and regenerate,\nand rehabilitate the inner man.  Will-power does not change men.\nTime does not change men.\n\n\nChrist does.\n\n\nTherefore, \"Let that mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus.\"\n\nSome of us have not much time to lose.  Remember, once more, that\nthis is a matter of life or death.  I cannot help speaking urgently,\nfor myself, for yourselves.  \"Whoso shall offend one of these little\nones, which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone\nwere hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth\nof the sea.\"  That is to say, it is the deliberate verdict of the\nLord Jesus that it is better not to live than not to love.  IT IS\nBETTER NOT TO LIVE THAN NOT TO LOVE.\n\nGUILELESSNESS and SINCERITY may be dismissed almost without a word.\nGuilelessness is the grace for suspicious people.  The possession\nof it is\n\n\nThe great secret of personal influence.\n\n\nYou will find, if you think for a moment, that the people who\ninfluence you are people who believe in you.  In an atmosphere of\nsuspicion men shrivel up; but in that atmosphere they expand, and\nfind encouragement and educative fellowship.\n\nIt is a wonderful thing that here and there in this hard, uncharitable\nworld there should still be left a few rare souls who think no\nevil.  this is the great unworldliness.  Love \"thinketh no evil,\"\nimputes no motive, sees the bright side, puts the best construction\non every action.  What a delightful state of mind to live in!  What\na stimulus and benediction even to meet with it for a day!  To\nbe trusted is to be saved.  And if we try to influence or elevate\nothers, we shall soon see that success is in proportion to their\nbelief of our belief in them.  The respect of another is the first\nrestoration of the self-respect a man has lost; our ideal of what\nhe is becomes to him the hope and pattern of what he may become.\n\n\"Love rejoiceth not in unrighteousness, but rejoiceth with the\ntruth.\"  I have called this SINCERITY from the words rendered in\nthe Authorized Version by \"rejoiceth in the truth.\"  And, certainly,\nwere this the real translation, nothing could be more just; for he\nwho loves will love Truth not less than men.  He will rejoice in\nthe Truth--rejoice not in what he has been taught to believe; not\nin this church's doctrine or in that; not in this ism or in that\nism; but \"in THE TRUTH.\"  He will accept only what is real; he\nwill strive to get at facts; he will search for TRUTH with a humble\nand unbiased mind, and cherish whatever he finds at any sacrifice.\nBut the more literal translation of the Revised Version calls for\njust such a sacrifice for truth's sake here.  For what Paul really\nmeant is, as we there read, \"Rejoiceth not in unrighteousness, but\nrejoiceth with the truth,\" a quality which probably no one English\nword--and certainly not SINCERITY--adequately defines.  It includes,\nperhaps more strictly, the self-restraint which refuses to make\ncapital out of others' faults; the charity which delights not in\nexposing the weakness of others, but \"covereth all things\"; the\nsincerity of purpose which endeavors to see things as they are,\nand rejoices to find them better than suspicion feared or calumny\ndenounced.\n\nSo much for the analysis of Love.  Now the business of our lives\nis to have these things fitted into our characters.  That is the\nsupreme work to which we need to address ourselves in this world,\nto learn Love.  Is life not full of opportunities for learning\nLove?  Every man and woman every day has a thousand of them.  The\nworld is not a playground; it is a schoolroom.  Life is not a\nholiday, but an education.  And\n\n\nThe one eternal lesson\n\n\nfor us all is HOW BETTER WE CAN LOVE.\n\nWhat makes a man a good cricketer?  Practice.  What makes a man\na good artist, a good sculptor, a good musician?  Practice.  What\nmakes a man a good linguist, a good stenographer?  Practice.  What\nmakes a man a good man?  Practice.  Nothing else.  There is nothing\ncapricious about religion.  We do not get the soul in different\nways, under different laws, from those in which we get the body\nand the mind.  If a man does not exercise his arm he develops no\nbiceps muscle; and if a man does not exercise his soul, he acquires\nno muscle in his soul, no strength of character, no vigor of\nmoral fibre, no beauty of spiritual growth.  Love is not a thing\nof enthusiastic emotion.  It is a rich, strong, manly, vigorous\nexpression of the whole round Christian character--the Christlike\nnature in its fullest development.  And the constituents of this\ngreat character are only to be built up by\n\n\nCeaseless practice.\n\n\nWhat was Christ doing in the carpenter's shop?  Practising.  Though\nperfect, we read that he LEARNED obedience, and grew in wisdom\nand in favor with God.  Do not quarrel, therefore, with your lot\nin life.  Do not complain of its never-ceasing cares, its petty\nenvironment, the vexations you have to stand, the small and sordid\nsouls you have to live and work with.  Above all, do not resent\ntemptation; do not be perplexed because it seems to thicken round\nyou more and more, and ceases neither for effort nor for agony nor\nprayer.  That is your practice.  That is the practice which god\nappoints you; and it is having its work in making you patient, and\nhumble, and generous, and unselfish, and kind, and courteous.  Do\nnot grudge the hand that is moulding the still too shapeless image\nwithin you.  It is growing more beautiful, though you see it not;\nand every touch of temptation may add to its perfection.  Therefore\nkeep in the midst of life.  Do not isolate yourself.  Be among\nmen and among things, and among troubles, and difficulties, and\nobstacles.  You remember Goethe's words:  \"Talent develops itself\nin solitude; character in the stream of life.\"  Talent develops\nitself in solitude--the talent of prayer, of faith, of meditation,\nof seeing the unseen; character grows in the stream of the world's\nlife.  That chiefly is where men are to learn love.\n\nHow?  Now, how?  To make it easier, I have named a few of the\nelements of love.  But these are only elements.  Love itself can\nnever be defined.  Light is a something more than the sum of its\ningredients--a glowing, dazzling, tremulous ether.  And love is\nsomething more than all its elements--a palpitating, quivering,\nsensitive, living thing.  By synthesis of all the colors, men can\nmake whiteness, they cannot make light.  By synthesis of all the\nvirtues, men can make virtue, they cannot make love.  How then are\nwe to have this transcendent living whole conveyed into our souls?\nWe brace our wills to secure it.  We try to copy those who have\nit.  We lay down rules about it.  We watch.  We pray.  But these\nthings alone will not bring love into our nature.  Love is an EFFECT.\nAnd only as we fulfill the right condition can we have the effect\nproduced.  Shall I tell you what the CAUSE is?\n\nIf you turn to the Revised Version of the First Epistle of John\nyou find these words:  \"We love because He first loved us.\"  \"We\nlove,\" not \"We love HIM.\"  That is the way the old version has\nit, and it is quite wrong.  \"WE LOVE--because He first loved us.\"\nLook at that word \"because.\"  It is the CAUSE of which I have\nspoken.  \"BECAUSE He first loved us,\" the effect follows that we\nlove, we love Him, we love all men.  We cannot help it.  Because He\nloved us, we love, we love everybody.  Our heart is slowly changed.\ncontemplate the love of Christ, and you will love.  Stand before\nthat mirror, reflect Christ's character, and you will be changed\ninto the same image from tenderness to tenderness.  There is no\nother way.  You cannot love to order.  You can only look at the\nlovely object, and fall in love with it, and grow into likeness to\nit.  And so look at this Perfect Character, this Perfect Life.  Look\nat\n\n\nThe great sacrifice\n\n\nas He laid down Himself, all through life, and upon the Cross of\nCalvary; and you must love Him.  And loving Him, you must become\nlike Him.  Love begets love.  It is a process of induction.  Put\na piece of Iron in the presence of an electrified body, and that\npiece of iron for a time becomes electrified.  It is changed into\na temporary magnet in the mere presence of a permanent magnet, and\nas long as you leave the two side by side, they are both magnets\nalike.  Remain side by side with Him who loved us, and\n\n\nGave himself for us,\n\n\nand you, too, will become a permanent magnet, a permanently attractive\nforce; and like Him you will draw all men unto you, like Him you\nwill be drawn unto all men.  that is the inevitable effect of Love.\nAny man who fulfills that cause must have that effect produced in\nhim.\n\nTry to give up the idea that religion comes to us by chance, or\nby mystery, or by caprice.  It comes to us by natural law, or by\nsupernatural law, for all law is Divine.\n\nEdward Irving went to see a dying boy once, and when he entered\nthe room he just put his hand on the sufferer's head, and said,\n\"My boy, God loves you,\" and went away.  The boy started from his\nbed, and called out to the people in the house,\n\n\"God loves me!  God loves me!\"\n\nOne word!  It changed that boy.  The sense that God loved\nhim overpowered him, melted him down, and began the creating of a\nnew heart in him.  And that is how the love of God melts down the\nunlovely heart in man, and begets in him the new creature, who is\npatient and humble and gentle and unselfish.  And there is no other\nway to get it.  There is no mystery about it.  We love others, we\nlove everybody, we love our enemies, BECAUSE HE FIRST LOVED US.\n\n\nIII.  The Defence.\n\n\nNow I have a closing sentence or two to add about Paul's reason\nfor singling out love as the supreme possession.\n\nIt is a very remarkable reason.  In a single word it is this:  IT\nLASTS.  \"Love,\" urges Paul, \"never faileth.\"  Then he begins again\none of his marvelous lists of the great things of the day, and\nexposes them one by one.  He runs over the things that men thought\nwere going to last, and shows that they are all fleeting, temporary,\npassing away.\n\n\"Whether there be PROPHECIES, they shall be done away.\"  It was the\nmother's ambition for her boy in those days that he should become\na prophet.  For hundreds of years God had never spoken by means\nof any prophet, and at that time the prophet was greater than the\nking.  Men waited wistfully for another messenger to come, and hung\nupon his lips when he appeared, as upon the very voice of God.  Paul\nsays, \"Whether there be prophecies, they shall fail.\"  The Bible\nis full of prophecies.  One by one they have \"failed\"; that is,\nhaving been fulfilled, their work is finished; they have nothing\nmore to do now in the world except to feed a devout man's faith.\n\nThen Paul talks about TONGUES.  That was another thing that was\ngreatly coveted.  \"Whether there be tongues, they shall cease.\"\nAs we all know, many, many centuries have passed since tongues\nhave been known in this world.  They have ceased.  Take it in any\nsense you like.  Take it, for illustration merely, as languages in\ngeneral--a sense which was not in Paul's mind at all, and which\nthough it cannot give us the specific lesson, will point the\ngeneral truth.  Consider the words in which these chapters were\nwritten--Greek.  It has gone.  Take the Latin--the other great tongue\nof those days.  It ceased long ago.  Look at the Indian language.\nIt is ceasing.  The language of Wales, of Ireland, of the Scottish\nHighlands is dying before our eyes.  The most popular book in the\nEnglish tongue at the present time, except the bible, is one of\nDickens' works, his \"Pickwick Papers.\"  It is largely written in\nthe language of London street-life; and experts assure us that in\nfifty years it will be unintelligible to the average English reader.\n\nThen Paul goes farther, and with even greater boldness adds,\n\"Whether there by KNOWLEDGE, it shall be done away.\"  The wisdom of\nthe ancients, where is it?  It is wholly gone.  A schoolboy to-day\nknows more than Sir Isaac Newton knew; his knowledge has vanished\naway.  You put yesterday's newspaper in the fire:  its knowledge has\nvanished away.  You buy the old editions of the great encyclopaedias\nfor a few cents:  their knowledge has vanished away.  Look how the\ncoach has been superseded by the use of steam.  Look how electricity\nhas superseded that, and swept a hundred almost new inventions\ninto oblivion.  One of the greatest living authorities, Sir William\nThompson, said in Scotland, at a meeting at which I was present,\n\"The steam-engine is passing away.\"  \"Whether there be knowledge,\nit shall vanish away.\"  At every workshop you will see, in the\nback yard, a heap of old iron, a few wheels, a few levers, a few\ncranks, broken and eaten with rust.  Twenty years ago that was\nthe pride of the city.  Men flocked in from the country to see the\ngreat invention; not it is superseded, its day is done.  And all\nthe boasted science and philosophy of this day will soon be old.\n\nIn my time, in the university of Edinburgh, the greatest figure\nin the faculty was Sir James Simpson, the discoverer of choloform.\nRecently his successor and nephew, Professor Simpson, was asked by\nthe librarian of the University to go to the library and pick out\nthe books on his subject (midwifery) that were no longer needed.\nHis reply to the librarian was this:\n\n\"Take every text-book that is more than ten years old and put it\ndown in the cellar.\"\n\nSir James Simpson was a great authority only a few years ago:  men\ncame from all parts of the earth to consult him; and almost the\nwhole teaching of that time is consigned by the science of to-day\nto oblivion.  And in every branch of science it is the same.  \"Now\nwe know in part.  We see through a glass darkly.\"  Knowledge does\nnot last.\n\nCan you tell me anything that is going to last?  Many things Paul\ndid not condescend to name.  He did not mention money, fortune,\nfame; but he picked out the great things of his time, the things\nthe best men thought had something in them, and brushed them\nperemptorily aside.  Paul had no charge against these things in\nthemselves.  All he said about them was that they would not last.\nThey were great things, but not supreme things.  There were things\nbeyond them.  What we are stretches past what we do, beyond what\nwe possess.  Many things that men denounce as sins are not sins;\nbut they are temporary.  And that is a favorite argument of the\nNew Testament.  John says of the world, not that it is wrong, but\nsimply that it \"passeth away.\"  There is a great deal in the world\nthat is delightful and beautiful; there is a great deal in it that\nis great and engrossing; but\n\n\nIt will not last.\n\n\nAll that is in the world, the lust of the eye, the lust of the\nflesh, and the pride of life, are but for a little while.  Love not\nthe world therefore.  Nothing that it contains is worth the life\nand consecration of an immortal soul.  The immortal soul must give\nitself to something that is immortal.  And the only immortal things\nare these:  \"Now abideth faith, hope, love, but the greatest of\nthese is love.\"\n\nSome think the time may come when two of these three things will\nalso pass away--faith into sight, hope into fruition.  Paul does\nnot say so.  We know but little now about the conditions of the\nlife that is to come.  But what is certain is that Love must last.\nGod, the Eternal God, is Love.  Covet, therefore, that everlasting\ngift, that one thing which it is certain is going to stand, that\none coinage which will be current in the Universe when all the\nother coinages of all the nations of the world shall be useless and\nunhonored.  You will give yourself to many things, give yourself\nfirst to Love.  Hold things in their proportion.  HOLD THINGS\nIN THEIR PROPORTION.  Let at least the first great object of our\nlives be to achieve the character defended in these words, the\ncharacter--and it is he character of Christ--which is built round\nLove.\n\nI have said this thing is eternal.  Did you ever notice how continually\nJohn associates love and faith with eternal life?  I was not told\nwhen I was a boy that \"God so loved the world that He gave His\nonly-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should have\neverlasting life.\"  What I was told, I remember, was, that God so\nloved the world that, if I trusted in Him, I was to have a thing\ncalled peace, or I was to have rest, or I was to have joy, or I was\nto have safety.  But I had to find out for myself that whosoever\ntrusteth in Him--that is, whosoever loveth Him, for trust is only\nthe avenue to Love--hath\n\n\nEverlasting life.\n\n\nThe Gospel offers a man a life.  Never offer a man a thimbleful of\nGospel.  Do not offer them merely joy, or merely peace, or merely\nrest, or merely safety; tell them how Christ came to give men a more\nabundant life than they have, a life abundant in love, and therefore\nabundant in salvation for themselves, and large in enterprise for\nthe alleviation and redemption of the world.  Then only can the\nGospel take hold of the whole of a man, body, soul and spirit, and\ngive to each part of his nature its exercise and reward.  Many of\nthe current Gospels are addressed only to a part of man's nature.\nThey offer peace, not life; faith, not Love; justification, not\nregeneration.  And men slip back again from such religion because\nit has never really held them.  Their nature was not all in it.  It\noffered no deeper and gladder life-current than the life that was\nlived before.  Surely it stands to reason that only a fuller love\ncan compete with the love of the world.\n\nTo love abundantly is to live abundantly, and to love forever is\nto live forever.  Hence, eternal life is inextricably bound up with\nlove.  We want to live forever for the same reason that we want to\nlive to-morrow.  Why do we want to live to-morrow?  Is it because\nthere is some one who loves you, and whom you want to see to-morrow,\nand be with, and love back?  There is no other reason why we should\nlive on than that we love and are beloved.  It is when a man has\nno one to love him that he commits suicide.  So long as he has\nfriends, those who love him and whom he loves, he will live, because\nto live is to love.  Be it but the love of a dog, it will keep him\nin life; but let that go, he has no contact with life, no reason\nto live.  He dies by his own hand.\n\nEternal life also is to know God, and God is love.  This is Christ's\nown definition.  Ponder it.  \"This is life eternal, that they might\nknow Thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent.\"\nLove must be eternal.  It is what God is.  On the last analysis,\nthen, love is life.  Love never faileth, and life never faileth,\nso long as there is love.  That is the philosophy of what Paul\nis showing us; the reason why in the nature of things love should\nbe the supreme thing--because it is going to last; because in the\nnature of things it is an Eternal Life.  It is a thing that we are\nliving now, not that we get when we die; that we shall have a poor\nchance of getting when we die unless we are living now.\n\n\nNo worse fate\n\n\ncan befall a man in this world than to live and grow old alone,\nunloving and unloved.  To be lost is to live in an unregenerate\ncondition, loveless and unloved; and to be saved is to love; and\nhe that dwelleth in love dwelleth already in God.  For God is Love.\n\nNow I have all but finished.  How many of you will join me in\nreading this chapter once a week for the next three months?  A man\ndid that once and it changed his whole life.  Will you do it?  It\nis for the greatest thing in the world.  You might begin by reading\nit every day, especially the verses which describe the perfect\ncharacter.  \"Love suffereth long, and is kind; love envieth not;\nlove vaunteth not itself.\"  Get these ingredients into your life.\nThen everything that you do is eternal.  It is worth doing.  It\nis worth giving time to.  No man can become a saint in his sleep;\nand to fulfill the condition required demands a certain amount of\nprayer and meditation and time, just as improvement in any direction,\nbodily or mental, requires preparation and care.  Address yourselves\nto that one thing; at any cost have this transcendent character\nexchanged for yours.\n\nYou will find as you look back upon your life that the moments that\nstand out, the moments when you have really lived, are the moments\nwhen you have done things in a spirit of love.  As memory scans\nthe past, above and beyond all the transitory pleasures of life,\nthere leap forward those supreme hours when you have been enabled\nto do unnoticed kindnesses to those round about you, things too\ntrifling to speak about, but which you feel have entered into your\neternal life.  I have seen almost all he beautiful things God has\nmade; I have enjoyed almost every pleasure that He has planned for\nman; and yet as I look back I see standing out above all the life\nthat has gone four or five short experiences, when the love of God\nreflected itself in some poor imitation, some small act of love\nof mine, and these seem to be the things which alone of all one's\nlife abide.  Everything else in all our lives is transitory.  Every\nother good is visionary.  But the acts of love which no man knows\nabout, or can ever know about--they never fail.\n\nIn the book of Matthew, where the Judgement Day is depicted for us\nin the imagery of One seated upon a throne and dividing the sheep\nfrom the goats, the test of a man then is not, \"How have I believed?\"\nbut \"How have I loved?\"  The test of religion, the final test of\nreligion, is not religiousness, but Love.  I say the final test\nof religion at that great Day is not religiousness, but Love; not\nwhat I have done, not what I have believed, not what I have achieved,\nbut how I have discharged the common charities of life.  Sins of\ncommission in that awful indictment are not even referred to.  By\nwhat we have not done, BY SINS OF OMISSION, we are judged.  It could\nnot be otherwise.  For the withholding of love is the negation of\nthe spirit of Christ, the proof that we never knew Him, that for\nus He lived in vain.  It means that He suggested nothing in all our\nthoughts, that He inspired nothing in all our lives, that we were\nnot once near enough to Him to be seized with the spell of His\ncompassion for the world.  It means that---\n\n\n\"I lived for myself, I thought for myself,\n For myself, and none beside--\n Just as if Jesus had never lived,\n As if He had never died.\"\n\n\nThank God the Christianity of today is coming nearer the world's\nneed.  Live to help that on.  Thank God men know better, by a hair's\nbreadth, what religion is, what God is, who Christ is, where Christ\nis.  Who is Christ?  He who fed the hungry, clothed the naked,\nvisited the sick.  And where is Christ?  Where?--\"Whoso shall receive\na little child in My name receiveth Me.'  And who are Christ's?\n\"Every one that loveth is born of God.\"\n\n\n\n\n\nLessons from the Angelus.\n\n\n\n\nGod often speaks to men's souls through music; He also speaks to\nus through art.  Millet's famous painting entitled \"The Angelus\"\nis an illuminated text, upon which I am going to say a few words\nto you to-night.\n\nThere are three things in this picture--a potato field, a country\nlad and a country girl standing in the middle of it, and on the\nfar horizon the spire of a village church.  That is all there is to\nit--no great scenery and no picturesque people.  In Roman Catholic\ncountries at the evening hour the church bell rings out to remind\nthe people to pray.  Some go into the church, while those that are\nin the fields bow their heads for a few moments in silent prayer.\n\nThat picture contains the three great elements which go to make up\na perfectly rounded Christian life.  It is not enough to have the\n\"root of the matter\" in us, but that we must be whole and entire,\nlacking nothing.  The Angelus may bring to us suggestions as to\nwhat constitutes a complete life.\n\nI.\n\nThe first element in a symmetrical life is WORK.\n\nThree-fourths of our time is probably spent in work.  Of course\nthe meaning of it is that our work should be just as religious as\nour worship, and unless we can work for the glory of God three-fourths\nof life remains unsanctified.\n\nThe proof that work is religious is that most of Christ's life was\nspent in work.  During a large part of the first thirty years of\nHis life He worked with the hammer and the plane, making ploughs and\nyokes and household furniture.  Christ's public ministry occupied\nonly about two and a half years of His earthly life; the great\nbulk of His time was simply spent in doing common everyday tasks,\nand ever since then work has had a new meaning.\n\nWhen Christ came into the world He was revealed to three deputations\nwho went to meet and worship Him.  First came the shepherds, or\nworking class; second, the wise men, or student class; and third,\nthe two old people in the temple, Simeon and Anna; that is to say,\nChrist is revealed to men at their work, He is revealed to men at\ntheir books, and He is revealed to men at their worship.  It was\nthe old people who found Christ at their worship, and as we grow\nolder we will spend more time exclusively in worship than we are\nable to do now.  In the mean time we must combine our worship with\nour work, and we may expect to find Christ at our books and in our\ncommon task.\n\nWhy should God have provided that so many hours of every day should\nbe occupied with work?  It is because\n\nWork makes men.\n\nA university is not merely a place for making scholars, it is\na place for making Christians.  A farm is not a place for growing\ncorn, it is a place for growing character, and a man has no\ncharacter except that which is developed by his life and thought.\nGod's Spirit does the building through the acts which a man performs\nfrom day to day.  A student who cons out every word in his Latin\nand Greek instead of consulting a translation finds that honesty\nis translated into his character.  If he works out his mathematical\nproblems thoroughly, he not only becomes a mathematician, but becomes\na thorough man.  It is by constant and conscientious attention to\ndaily duties that thoroughness and conscientiousness and honorableness\nare imbedded in our beings.  Character is\n\nThe music of the soul,\n\nand is developed by exercise.  Active use of the power entrusted\nto us is one of the chief means which God employs for producing the\nChristian graces.  Hence the religion of a student demands that he\nbe true to his work, and that he let his Christianity be shown to\nhis fellow students and to his professors by the integrity and the\nconscientiousness of his academic life.  A man who is not faithful\nin that which is least will not be faithful in that which is great.\nI have known men who struggled unsuccessfully for years to pass\ntheir examinations who, when they became Christians, found a new\nmotive for work and thus were able to succeed where previously they\nhad failed.  A man's Christianity comes out as much in his work as\nin his worship.\n\nOur work is not only to be done thoroughly, but it is to be\ndone honestly.  A man is not only to be honorable in his academic\nrelations, but he must be honest with himself and in his attitude\ntoward the truth.  Students are not entitled to dodge difficulties,\nthey must go down to the foundation principles.  Perhaps the truths\nwhich are dear to us go down deeper even than we think, and we will\nget more out of them if we dig down for the nuggets than we will\nif we only pick up those that are on the surface.  Other theories\nmay perhaps be found to have false bases; if so, we ought to know\nit.  It is well to take our surroundings in every direction to see\nif there is deep water; if there are shoals we ought to find out\nwhere they are.  Therefore, when we come to difficulties, let us\nnot jump lightly over them, but let us be honest as seekers after\ntruth.\n\nIt may not be necessary for people in general to sift the doctrines\nof Christianity for themselves, but a student is a man whose business\nit is to think, to exercise the intellect which God has given him\nin finding out the truth.  Faith is never opposed to reason, thought\nit is sometimes supposed by Bible teachers that it is; but you\nwill find it is not.  Faith is opposed to sight, but not to reason,\nthought it is not limited to reason.  In employing his intellect\nin the search for truth a student is drawing nearer to the Christ\nwho said, \"I am the way, the truth and the life.\"  We talk a great\ndeal about Christ as the way and Christ as the life, but there is\na side of Christ especially for the student:  \"I am the truth,\"\nand every student ought to be a truth-lover and a truth-seeker for\nChrist's sake.\n\nII.\n\nAnother element in life, which of course is first in importance,\nis GOD.\n\nThe Angelus is perhaps the most religious picture painted this\ncentury.  You cannot look at it and see that young man standing\nin the field with his hat off and the girl opposite him with her\nhands clasped and her head bowed on her breast, without feeling a\nsense of God.\n\nDo we carry about with us the thought of God wherever we go?  If not,\nwe have missed the greatest part of life.  Do we have a conviction\nof god's abiding presence wherever we are?  There is nothing more\nneeded in this generation than a larger and more Scriptural idea\nof God.  A great American writer has told us that when he was a\nboy the conception of God which he got from books and sermons was\nthat of a wise and very strict lawyer.  I remember well the awful\nconception of God which I had when a boy.  I was given an illustrated\nedition of Watts' hymns, in which God was represented as a great\npiercing eye in the midst of a great black thunder cloud.  The\nidea which that picture gave to my young imagination was that of\nGod as a great detective, playing the spy upon my actions, as the\nhymn says:\n\n\"Writing now the story of what little children do.\"\n\nThat was a very mistaken and harmful idea which it has taken me\nyears to obliterate.  We think of God as \"up there,\" or as one who\nmade the world six thousand years ago and then retired.  We must\nlearn that He is not confined either to time or space.  God is\nnot to be thought of as merely back there in time, or up there in\nspace.  If not, where is He?  \"The word is nigh thee, even in thy\nmouth.\"  The Kingdom of God is within you, and God Himself is among\nmen.  When are we to exchange the terrible, far-away, absentee God\nof our childhood for the everywhere present God of the Bible?  Too\nmany of the old Christian writers seem to have conceived of God\nas not much more than the greatest man--a kind of divine emperor.\nHe is infinitely more; He is a spirit, as Jesus said to the woman\nat the well, and in Him we live and move and have our being.  Let us\nthink of God as Immanuel--God with us--an ever-present, omnipresent,\neternal One.  Long, long ago, God made matter, then He made the\nflowers and trees and animals, then He made man.  Did He stop?  Is\nGod dead?  If He lives and acts what is He doing?  He is\n\nMaking men better.\n\nHe it is that \"worketh in you.\"  The buds of our nature are not\nall out yet; the sap to make them comes from the God who made us,\nfrom the indwelling Christ.  Our bodies are the temples of the Holy\nGhost, and we must bear this in mind, because the sense of God is\nkept up, not by logic, but by experience.\n\nUntil she was seven years of age the life of Helen Keller, the\nBoston girl who was deaf and dumb and blind, was an absolute blank;\nnothing could go into that mind because the ears and eyes were\nclosed to the outer world.  Then by that great process which has\nbeen discovered, by which the blind see, and the deaf hear, and the\nmute speak, that girl's soul became opened, and they began to put\nin little bits of knowledge, and bit by bit they began to educate\nher.  They reserved her religious instruction for Phillips Brooks.\nAfter some years, when she was twelve years old, they took her to\nhim and he began to talk to her through the young lady who could\ncommunicate with her by the exceedingly delicate process of touch.\nHe began to tell her about God and what He had done, and how He loved\nmen, and what He is to us.  The child listened very intelligently,\nand finally said:\n\n\"Mr. Brooks, I knew all that before, but I didn't know His name.\"\n\nHow often we have felt something within us impelling us to do\nsomething which we would not have conceived of by ourselves, or\nenabling us to do something which we could not have done alone.\n\"It is God which worketh in you.\"  This great simple fact\n\nExplains many of the mysteries of life,\n\nand takes away the fear which we would otherwise have in meeting\nthe difficulties which lie before us.\n\nTwo Americans who were crossing the Atlantic met on Sunday night\nto sing hymns in the cabin.  As they sang the hymn, \"Jesus, Lover\nof my Soul,\" one of the Americans heard an exceedingly rich and\nbeautiful voice behind him.  He looked around, and although he did\nnot know the face he thought that he recognized the voice.  So when\nthe music ceased he turned and asked the man if he had not been\nin the Civil war.  The man replied that he had been a Confederate\nsoldier.  \"Were you at such a place on such a night?\"  asked the\nfirst.  \"Yes,\" he said, \"and a curious thing happened that night;\nthis hymn recalled it to my mind.  I was on sentry duty on the\nedge of the wood.  It was a dark night and very cold, and I was a\nlittle frightened because the enemy was supposed to be very near\nat hand.  I felt very homesick and miserable, and about midnight,\nwhen everything was very still, I was beginning to feel very weary\nand thought that I would comfort myself by praying and singing a\nhymn.  I remember singing this hymn,\n\n\n'All my trust on Thee is stayed,\n  All my help from Thee I bring,\n Cover my defenceless head\n  With the shadow of Thy wing.'\n\n\nAfter I had sung those words a strange peace came down upon me,\nand through the long night I remember having felt no more fear.\"\n\n\"Now,\" said the other man, \"listen to my story.  I was a Union\nsoldier, and was in the wood that night with a party of scouts.  I\nsaw you standing up, although I didn't see your face, and my men\nhad their rifles focused upon you waiting the word to fire, but\nwhen you sang out,\n\n\n'Cover my defenceless head\n  With the shadow of Thy wing.'\n\n\nI said, 'Boys, put down your rifles, we will go home.'  I couldn't\nkill you after that.\"\n\nGod was working in each of them, in His own way carrying out His\nwill.  God keeps his people and guides them and without Him life\nis but a living death.\n\nIII.\n\nThe third element in life about which I wish to speak is LOVE.\n\nIn this picture we notice the delicate sense of companionship,\nbrought out by the young man and the young woman.  It matters not\nwhether they are brother and sister, or lover and loved; there\nyou have the idea of friendship, the final ingredient in our life,\nafter the two I have named.  If the man or the woman had been\nstanding in that field alone it would have been incomplete.\n\nLove is the divine element in life, because \"God is love.\"  \"He\nthat loveth is born of God,\" therefore, as some one has said, let\nus \"keep our friendships in repair.\"  Let us cultivate the spirit\nof friendship, and let the love of Christ develop it into a great\nlove, not only for our friends, but for all humanity.  Wherever\nyou go and whatever you do, your work will be a failure unless you\nhave this element in your life.\n\nThese three things go far toward forming a well-rounded life.  Some\nof us may not have these ingredients in their right proportion,\nbut if you are lacking in one or the other of them, then pray for\nit and work for it that your life may be rounded and complete as\nGod intended it should be.\n\n\n\n\n\nPax Vobiscum.\n\n\n\n\nI once heard a sermon by a distinguished preacher upon \"Rest.\"\nIt was full of beautiful thoughts; but when I came to ask myself,\n\"How does he say I can get Rest?\" there was no answer.  The sermon\nwas sincerely meant to be practical, yet it contained no experience\nthat seemed to me to be tangible, nor any advice that I could\ngrasp--any advice, that is to say, which could help me to find the\nthing itself as I went about the world.\n\nYet this omission of what is, after all, the only important problem,\nwas not the fault of the preacher.  The whole popular religion is\nin the twilight here.  And when pressed for really working specifics\nfor the experiences with which it deals, it falters, and seems to\nlose itself in mist.\n\nThe want of connection between the great words of religion and\nevery-day life has bewildered and discouraged all of us.  Christianity\npossesses the noblest words in the language; its literature overflows\nwith terms expressive of the greatest and happiest moods which can\nfill the soul of man.  Rest, Joy, Peace, Faith, Love, Light--these\nwords occur with such persistency in hymns and prayers that an\nobserver might think they formed the staple of Christian experience.\nBut on coming to close quarters with the actual life of most of us,\nhow surely would he be disenchanted.  I do not think we ourselves\nare aware of how much our religious life is\n\nMade up of phrases;\n\nhow much of what we call Christian Experience is only a dialect\nof the Churches, a mere religious phraseology with almost nothing\nbehind it in what we really feel and know.\n\nTo some of us, indeed, the Christian experiences seem further away\nthan when we took the first steps in the Christian life.  That life\nhas not opened out as we had hoped.  We do not regret our religion,\nbut we are disappointed with it.  There are times, perhaps, when\nwandering notes form a diviner music stray into our spirits; but\nthese experiences come at few and fitful moments.  We have no sense\nof possession in them.  When they visit us, it is as surprise.\nWhen they leave us, it is without explanation.  When we wish their\nreturn, we do not know how to secure it.\n\nAll of which means a religion without solid base, and a poor and\nflickering life.  It means a great bankruptcy in those experiences\nwhich give Christianity its personal solace and make it attractive\nto the world, and a great uncertainty as to any remedy.  It is as\nif we knew everything about health--except the way to get it.\n\nI am quite sure that the difficulty does not lie in the fact that\nmen are not in earnest.  This is simply not the fact.  All around\nus Christians are wearing themselves out in trying to be better.\nThe amount of spiritual longing in the world--in the hearts\nof unnumbered thousands of men and women in whom we should never\nsuspect it; among the wise and thoughtful, among the young and\ngay, who seldom assuage and never betray their thirst--this is one\nof the most wonderful and touching facts of life.  It is not more\nheart that is needed, but more light; not more force, but a wiser\ndirection to be given to very real energies already there.\n\nThe usual advice when one asks for counsel on these questions is,\n\"Pray.\"  But this advice is far from adequate.  I shall qualify the\nstatement presently; but let me urge it here, with what you will\nperhaps call daring emphasis, that to pray for these things is not\nthe way to get them.  No one will get them without praying; but\nthat men do not get them by praying is a simple fact.  We have all\nprayed, and sincerely prayed, for such experiences as I have named;\nprayed, believing that that was the way to get them.  And yet have\nwe got them?  The test is experience.  I dare not limit prayer;\nstill less the grace of God.  If you have got them in this way,\nit is well.  I am speaking to those, be they few or many, who have\nnot got them; to ordinary men in ordinary circumstances.  But if we\nhave not got them, it by no means follows that prayer is useless.\nThe correct conclusion is only that it is useless, or inadequate\nrather, for this particular purpose.  To make prayer the sole\nresort, the universal panacea for every spiritual ill, is as radical\na mistake as to prescribe only one medicine for every bodily trouble.\nThe physician who does the last is a quack; the spiritual advisor\nwho dies the first is\n\nGrossly ignorant of his profession.\n\nTo do nothing but pray is a wrong done to prayer itself, and can\nonly end in disaster.  It is as if one tried to live only with the\nlungs, as if one assimilated only air and neglected solid food.\nThe lungs are a first essential; the air is a first essential; but\nthe body has many members, given for different purposes, secreting\ndifferent things, and each has a method of nutrition as special to\nitself as its own activity.  While prayer, then, is the characteristic\nsublimity of the Christian life, it is by no means the only one.\nAnd those who make it the sole alternative, and apply it to purposes\nfor which it was never meant, are really doing the greatest harm\nto prayer itself.  To couple the word \"inadequate\" with this might\nword is not to dethrone prayer, but to exalt it.\n\nWhat dethrones prayer\n\nis unanswered prayer.  When men pray for things which do not come\nthat way--pray with sincere belief that prayer, unaided and alone,\nwill compass what they ask--then, not getting what they ask, they\noften give up prayer.\n\nThis is the natural history of much atheism, not only an atheism of\natheists, but a more terrible atheism of Christians, an unconscious\natheism, whose roots have struck far into many souls whose\nlast breath would be spent in denying it.  So, I repeat, it is a\nmistaken Christianity which allow men to cherish a blind belief in\nthe omnipotence of prayer.  Prayer, certainly, when the appropriate\nconditions are fulfilled, is omnipotent, but not blind prayer.\nBlind prayer is superstition.  Prayer, in its true sense, contains\nthe sane recognition that while man prays in faith, GOD ACTS BY LAW.\nWhat that means in the immediate connection we shall see presently.\n\nWhat, then, is the remedy?  It is impossible to doubt that there\nis a remedy, and it is equally impossible to believe that it is\na secret.  The idea that some few men, by happy chance or happier\ntemperament, have been given the secret--as if there were some sort\nof knack or trick of it--is wholly incredible and wrong.  Religion\nmust be for all, and the way into its loftiest heights must be by\na gateway through which the peoples of the world may pass.\n\nI shall have to lead up to this gateway by a very familiar path.\nBut as this path is strangely unfrequented where it passes into\nthe religious sphere, I must ask your forbearance for dwelling for\na moment upon the commonest of commonplaces.\n\nI. Effects Require Causes\n\nNothing that happens in the world happens by chance.  God is a God\nof order.  Everything is arranged upon definite principles, and\nnever at random.  the world, even the religious world, is governed\nby law.  Character is governed by law.  Happiness is governed by\nlaw.  The Christian experiences are governed by law.  Men, forgetting\nthis, expect Rest, Joy, Peace, Faith to drop into their souls from\nthe air like snow or rain.  But in point of fact they do not do so;\nand if they did, they would no less have their origin in previous\nactivities and be controlled by natural laws.  Rain and snow do\ndrop from the air, but not without a long previous history.  They\nare the mature effects of former causes.  Equally so are Rest and\nPeace and Joy.  They, too, have each a previous history.  Storms and\nwinds and calms are not accidents, but brought about by antecedent\ncircumstances.  Rest and Peace are but calms in man's inward nature,\nand arise through causes as definite and as inevitable.\n\nRealize it thoroughly; it is a methodical, not an accidental world.\nIf a housewife turns out a good cake, it is the result of a sound\nreceipt, carefully applied.  She cannot mix the assigned ingredients\nand fire them for the appropriate time without producing the\nresult.  It is not she who has made the cake; it is nature.  She\nbrings related things together; sets causes at work; these causes\nbring about the result.  she is not a creator, but an intermediary.\nShe does not expect random causes to produce specific effects--random\ningredients would only produce random cakes.  So it is in the making\nof Christian experiences.  Certain lines are followed; certain\neffects are the result.  These effects cannot but be the result.\nBut the result can never take place without the previous cause.\nTo expect results without antecedents is to expect cakes without\ningredients.  That impossibility is precisely\n\nThe almost universal expectation.\n\nNow what I mainly wish to do is to help you firmly to grasp this\nsimple principle of Cause and Effect in the spiritual world.  And\ninstead of applying the principle generally to each of the Christian\nexperiences in turn, I shall examine its application to one in\nsome little detail.  The one I shall select is Rest.  And I think\nany one who follows the application in this single instance will\nbe able to apply it for himself to the others.\n\nTake such a sentence as this:  African explorers are subject to\nfevers which cause restlessness and delirium.\n\nNote the expression, \"cause restlessness.\"  RESTLESSNESS HAS A CAUSE.\nClearly, then, any one who wished to get rid of restlessness would\nproceed at once to deal with the cause.  If that were not removed,\na doctor might prescribe a hundred things, and all might be taken\nin turn, without producing the least effect.  Things are so arranged\nin the original planning of the world that certain effects must\nfollow certain causes, and certain causes must be abolished before\ncertain effects can be removed.  Certain parts of Africa are\ninseparably linked with the physical experience called fever; this\nfever is in turn infallibly linked with a mental experience called\nrestlessness and delirium.  To abolish the mental experience the\nradical method would be to abolish the physical experience, and\nthe way of abolishing the physical experience would be to abolish\nAfrica, or to cease to go there.\n\nNow this hold good for all other forms of Restlessness.  Every other\nform and kind of Restlessness in the world had a definite cause,\nand the particular kind of Restlessness can only be removed by\nremoving the allotted cause.\n\nAll this is also true of Rest.  Restlessness has a cause:  must\nnot REST have a cause?  Necessarily.  If it were a chance world we\nwould not expect this; but, being a methodical world, it cannot be\notherwise.  Rest, physical rest, moral rest, spiritual rest, every\nkind of rest has a cause, as certainly as restlessness.  Now causes\nare discriminating.  There is one kind of cause for every particular\neffect and no other, and if one particular effect is desired, the\ncorresponding cause must be set in motion.  It is no use proposing\nfinely devised schemes, or going through general pious exercises\nin the hope that somehow Rest will come.  The Christian life is\nnot casual, but causal.  All nature is a standing protest against\nthe absurdity of expecting to secure spiritual effects, or any\neffects, without the employment of appropriate causes.  The Great\nTeacher dealt what ought to have been the final blow to this infinite\nirrelevancy by a single question, \"Do men gather grapes of thorns\nor figs of thistles?\"\n\nWhy, then, did the Great Teacher not educate His followers fully?\nWhy did He not tell us, for example, how such a thing as Rest might\nbe obtained?  The answer is that HE DID.  But plainly, explicitly,\nin so many words?  Yes, plainly, explicitly, in so many words.\nHe assigned Rest to its cause, in words with which each of us has\nbeen familiar from his earliest childhood.\n\nHe begins, you remember--for you at once know the passage I refer\nto--almost as if Rest could be had without any cause; \"Come unto\nme,\" He says, \"and I will GIVE you Rest.\"\n\nRest, apparently, was a favor to be bestowed; men had but to\ncome to Him; He would give it to every applicant.  But the next\nsentence takes that all back.  The qualification, indeed, is added\ninstantaneously.  For what the first sentence seemed to give was\nnext thing to an impossibility.  For how, in a literal sense, can\nRest be GIVEN?  One could no more give away Rest than he could\ngive away Laughter.  We speak of \"causing\" laughter, which we can\ndo; but we can not give it away.  When we speak of \"giving\" pain,\nwe know perfectly well we can not give pain away.  And when we aim\nat \"giving\" pleasure, all that we can do is to arrange a set of\ncircumstances in such a way as that these shall cause pleasure.\nOf course there is a sense, and a very wonderful sense, in which a\nGreat Personality breathes upon all who come within its influence\nan abiding peace and trust.  Men can be to other men as the shadow\nof a great rock in a weary land; much more Christ; much more Christ\nas Perfect Man; much more still as Savior of the world.  But it\nis not this of which I speak.  When Christ said He would give men\nRest, He meant simply that he would put them in the way of it.  By\nno act of conveyance would or could He make over His own Rest to\nthem.  He could give them\n\nHis receipt\n\nfor it.  That was all.  But He would not make it for them.  For\none thing it was not in His plan to make it for them; for another\nthing, men were not so planned that it could be made for them; and\nfor yet another thing, it was a thousand times better that they\nshould make it for themselves.\n\nThat this is the meaning becomes obvious from the wording of the\nsecond sentence:  \"Learn of me, and ye shall FIND Rest.\"  Rest,\n(that is to say), is not a thing that can be GIVEN, but a thing to\nbe ACQUIRED.  It comes not by an act, but by a process.  It is not\nto be found in a happy hour, as one finds a treasure; but slowly, as\none finds knowledge.  It could indeed be no more found in a moment\nthan could knowledge.  A soil has to be prepared for it.  Like\na fine fruit, it will grow in one climate, and not in another; at\none altitude, and not at another.  Like all growth it will have an\norderly development and mature by slow degrees.\n\nThe nature of this slow process Christ clearly defines when He says\nwe are to achieve Rest by LEARNING.  \"Learn of me,\" He says, \"and\nye shall find rest to your souls.\"\n\nNow consider the extraordinary\n\nOriginality of this utterance.\n\nhow novel the connection between these two words \"Learn\" and \"Rest.\"\nHow few of us have ever associated them--ever thought that Rest was\na thing to be learned; ever laid ourselves out for it as we would\nto learn a language; ever practised it as we would practice the\nviolin?  Does it not show how entirely new Christ's teaching still\nis to the world, that so old and threadbare an aphorism should still\nbe so little known?  The last thing most of us would have thought\nof would have been to associate REST with WORK.\n\nWhat must one work at?  What is that which if duly learned will\nfind the soul of man in Rest?  Christ answers without the least\nhesitation.  He specifies two things--Meekness and Lowliness.\n\"Learn of me,\" He says, \"for I am MEEK and LOWLY in heart.\"\n\nNow these two things are not chosen at random.  To these\naccomplishments, in a special way, Rest is attached.  Learn these,\nin short, and you have already found Rest.  These as they stand\ndirect causes of Rest; will produce it at once; cannot but produce\nit at once.  And if you think for a single moment, you will see\nhow this is necessarily so, for causes are never arbitrary, and\nthe connection between antecedent and consequent her and everywhere\nlies deep in the nature of things.\n\nWhat is the connection, then?  I answer by a further question.\n\nWhat are the chief causes of unrest?\n\nIf you know yourself, you will answer--Pride, Selfishness, Ambition.\nAs you look back upon the past years of your life, is it not\ntrue that its unhappiness has chiefly come from the succession of\npersonal mortifications and almost trivial disappointments which\nthe intercourse of life has brought you?  Great trials come at\nlengthened intervals, and we rise to breast them; but it is the\npetty friction of our every-day life with one another, the jar\nof business or of work, the discord of the domestic circle, the\ncollapse of our ambition, the crossing of our will or the taking\ndown of our conceit, which make inward peace impossible.  Wounded\nvanity, then, disappointed hopes, unsatisfied selfishness--these\nare the old, vulgar, universal\n\nSources of man's unrest.\n\nNow it is obvious why Christ pointed out as the two chief objects\nfor attainment the exact opposites of these.  To meekness and\nlowliness these things simply do not exist.  They cure unrest by\nmaking it impossible.  These remedies do not trifle with surface\nsymptoms; they strike at once at removing causes.  The ceaseless\nchagrin of a self-centered life can be removed at once by learning\nmeekness and lowliness of heart.  He who learns them is forever proof\nagainst it.  He lives henceforth a charmed life.  Christianity is\na fine inoculation, a transfusion of healthy blood into an anaemic\nor poisoned soul.  No fever can attack a perfectly sound body; no\nfever of unrest can disturb a soul which has breathed the air or\nlearned the ways of Christ.\n\nMen sigh for the wings of a dove that they may fly away and be at\nRest.  But flying away will not help us.  \"The Kingdom of God is\nWITHIN YOU.\"  We aspire to the top to look for Rest; it lies at the\nbottom.  Water rests only when it gets to the lowest place.  So do\nmen.  Hence, BE LOWLY.  The man who has no opinion of himself at\nall can never be hurt if others do not acknowledge him.  Hence, BE\nMEEK.  He who is without expectation cannot fret if nothing comes\nto him.  It is self-evident that these things are so.  The lowly\nman and the meek man are really above all other men, above all other\nthings.  They dominate the world because they do not care for it.\nThe miser does not possess gold, gold possesses him.  But the meek\npossess it.  \"The meek,\" said Christ, \"inherit the earth.\"  They\ndo not buy it; they do not conquer it; but they inherit it.\n\nThere are people who go about the world looking out for slights,\nand they are necessarily miserable, for they find them at every\nturn--especially the imaginary ones.  One has the same pity for\nsuch men as for the very poor.  They are the morally illiterate.\nThey have had no real education, for they have never learned\n\nHow to live.\n\nFew men know how to live.  We grow up at random carrying into mature\nlife the merely animal methods and motives which we had as little\nchildren.  And it does not occur to us that all this must be changed\nthat much of it must be reversed; that life is the finest of the\nFine Arts; that it has to be learned with life-long patience, and\nthat the years of our pilgrimage are all too short to master it\ntriumphantly.\n\nYet this is what Christianity is for--to teach men\n\nThe art of life.\n\nAnd its whole curriculum lies in one word--\"Learn of me.\"  Unlike\nmost education, this is almost purely personal; it is not to be had\nfrom books, or lectures or creeds or doctrines.  It is a study from\nthe life.  Christ never said much in mere words about the Christian\ngraces.  He lived them, He was them.  Yet we do not merely copy\nHim.  We learn His art by living with Him, like the old apprentices\nwith their masters.\n\nNow we understand it all?  Christ's invitation to the weary\nand heavy-laden is a call to begin life over again upon a new\nprinciple--upon His own principle.  \"Watch my way of doing things,\"\nHe says; \"Follow me.  Take life as I take it.  Be meek and lowly,\nand you will find Rest.\"\n\nI do not say, remember, that the Christian life to every man, or\nto any man, can be a bed of roses.  No educational process can be\nthis.  And perhaps if some men knew how much was involved in the\nsimple \"learn\" of Christ, they would not enter His school with so\nirresponsible a heart.  For there is not only much to learn, but\n\nMuch to unlearn.\n\nMany men never go to this school at all till their disposition is\nalready half ruined and character has taken on its fatal set.  To\nlearn arithmetic is difficult at fifty--much more to learn\nChristianity.  To learn simply what it is to be meek and lowly, in\nthe case of one who has had no lessons in that in childhood, may\ncost him half of what he values most on earth.  Do we realize,\nfor instance, that the way of teaching humility is generally by\nHUMILIATION?  There is probably no other school for it.  When a man\nenters himself as a pupil in such a school it means a very great\nthing.  There is much Rest there, but there is also much Work.\n\nI should be wrong, even though my theme is the brighter side, to\nignore the cross and minimize the cost.  Only it gives to the cross\na more definite meaning, and a rarer value, to connect it thus\ndirectly and casually with the growth of the inner life.  Our\nplatitudes on the \"benefits of affliction\" are usually about as\nvague as our theories of Christian Experience.  \"Somehow\" we believe\naffliction does us good.  But it is not a question of \"Somehow.\"\nThe result is definite, calculable, necessary.  It is under the\nstrictest law of cause and effect.  The first effect of losing\none's fortune, for instance, is humiliation; and the effect of\nhumiliation, as we have just seen, is to make one humble; and the\neffect of being humble is to produce Rest.  It is a roundabout\nway, apparently, of producing Rest; but Nature generally works by\ncircular processes; and it is not certain that there is any other\nway of becoming humble, or of finding Rest.  IF a man could make\nhimself humble to order, it might simplify matters; but we do not\nfind that this happens.  Hence we must all go through the mill.\nHence death, death to the lower self, is the nearest gate and the\nquickest road to life.\n\nYet this is only half the truth.  Christ's life outwardly was one\nof the most troubled lives that was ever lived:  tempest and tumult,\ntumult and tempest, the waves breaking over it all he time till the\nworn body was laid in the grave.  But the inner life was a sea of\nglass.  The great calm was always there.  At any moment you might\nhave gone to Him and found Rest.  Even when the blood-hounds were\ndogging Him in the streets of Jerusalem, He turned to His disciples\nand offered them, as a last legacy, \"My peace.\"  Nothing ever for\na moment broke the serenity of Christ's life on earth.  Misfortune\ncould not reach Him; He had no fortune.  Food, raiment,\nmoney--fountain-heads of half the world's weariness--He simply did\nnot care for; they played no part in His life; He \"took no thought\"\nfor them.  It was impossible to affect Him by lowering His reputation.\nHe had already made Himself of no reputation.  He was dumb before\ninsult.  When he was reviled, He reviled not again.  In fact, there\nwas\n\nNothing that the world could do to him\n\nthat could ruffle the surface of His spirit.\n\nSuch living, as mere living, is altogether unique.  It is only\nwhen we see what it was in Him that we can know what the word Rest\nmeans.  It lies not in emotions, or in the absence of emotions.\nIt is not a hallowed feeling that comes over us in church.  It is\nnot something that the preacher has in his voice.  It is not in\nnature, or in poetry, or in music--though in all these there is\nsoothing.  It is the mind at leisure from itself.  It is the perfect\npoise of the soul; the absolute adjustment of the inward man to\nthe stress of all outward things; the preparedness against every\nemergency; the stability of assured convictions; the eternal calm\nof an invulnerable faith; the repose of a heart set deep in God.\nIt is the mood of the man who says, with Browning, \"God's in His\nHeaven, all's well with the world.\"\n\nTwo painters each painted a picture to illustrate his conception\nof rest.  The first chose for his scene a still lone lake among\nthe far-off mountains.  The second threw on his canvas a thundering\nwaterfall, with a fragile birch-tree bending over the foam; at the\nfork of a branch, almost wet with the cataract's spray, a robin\nsat on its nest.  The first was only STAGNATION; the last was REST.\nFor in Rest there are always two elements--tranquility and energy;\nsilence and turbulence; creation and destruction; fearlessness and\nfearfulness.  This it was in Christ.\n\nIt is quite plain from all this that whatever else He claimed to\nbe or to do, He at least\n\nKnew how to live.\n\nAll this is the perfection of living, of living in the mere sense\nof passing through the world in the best way.  Hence His anxiety to\ncommunicate His idea of life to others.  He came, He said, to give\nmen life, true life, a more abundant life than they were living; \"the\nlife,\" as the fine phrase in the Revised Version has it, \"that is\nlife indeed.\"  This is what He Himself possessed, and it was this\nwhich He offers to mankind.  And hence His direct appeal for all\nto come to Him who had not made much of life, who were weary and\nheavy-laden.  These He would teach His secret.  They, also, should\nknow \"the life that is life indeed.\"\n\nII.  What yokes are for.\n\nThere is still one doubt to clear up.  After the statement, \"Learn\nof Me,\" Christ throws in the disconcerting qualification:\n\n\"TAKE MY YOKE upon you, and learn of Me.\"\n\nWhy, if all this be true, does He call it a YOKE?  Why, while\nprofessing to give Rest, does He with the next breath whisper\n\"BURDEN\"?  Is the Christian life, after all, what its enemies take\nit for--an additional weight to the already great woe of life,\nsome extra punctiliousness about duty, some painful devotion to\nobservances, some heavy restriction and trammeling of all that is\njoyous and free in the world?  Is life not hard and sorrowful enough\nwithout being fettered with yet another yoke?\n\nIt is astounding how so glaring a misunderstanding of this plain\nsentence should ever have passed into currency.  Did you ever stop\nto ask what a yoke is really?  Is it to be a burden to the animal\nwhich wears it?  It is just the opposite.  It is to make its burden\nlight.  Attached to the oxen in any other way than by a yoke, the\nplough would be intolerable.  Worked by means of a yoke, it is\nlight.  A yoke is not an instrument of torture; it is\n\nAn instrument of mercy.\n\nIt is not a malicious contrivance for making work hard; it is a\ngentle device to make hard labor light.  It is not meant to give\npain, but to save pain.  And yet men speak of the yoke of Christ\nas if it were slavery, and look upon those who wear it as objects\nof compassion.  For generations we have had homilies on \"The Yoke\nof Christ\"--some delighting in portraying its narrow exactions;\nsome seeking in those exactions the marks of its divinity; others\napologizing for it, and toning it down; still others assuring us\nthat, although it be very bad, it is not to be compared with the\npositive blessings of Christianity.  How many, especially among\nthe young, has this one mistaken phrase driven forever away from\nthe kingdom of God?  Instead of making Christ attractive, it makes\nHim out a taskmaster, narrowing life by petty restrictions, calling\nfor self-denial where none is necessary, making misery a virtue\nunder the plea that it is the yoke of Christ, and happiness criminal\nbecause it now and then evades it.  According to this conception,\nChristians are at best the victims of a depressing fate; their\nlife is a penance; and their hope for the next world purchased by\na slow martyrdom in this.\n\nThe mistake has arisen from taking the word \"yoke\" here in the same\nsense as in the expression \"under the yoke,\" or \"wear he yoke in\nhis youth.\"  But in Christ's illustration it is not the \"jugum\" of\nthe Roman soldier, but the simple \"harness\" or \"ox-collar\" of the\nEastern peasant.  It is the literal wooden yoke which He, with His\nown hands in the carpenter shop, had probably often made.  He knew\nthe difference between a smooth yoke and a rough one, a bad fit\nand a good fit; the difference also it made to the patient animal\nwhich had to wear it.  The rough yoke galled, and the burden was\nheavy; the smooth yoke caused no pain, and the load was lightly\ndrawn.  The badly fitted harness was a misery; the well-fitted\ncollar was \"easy.\"\n\nAnd what was the \"burden\"?  It was not some special burden laid upon\nthe Christian, some unique infliction that they alone must bear.\nIt was what all men bear.  It was simply life, human life itself,\nthe general burden of life which all must carry with them from the\ncradle to the grave.  Christ saw that men took life painfully.  To\nsome it was a weariness, to others a failure, to many a tragedy,\nto all a struggle and a pain.  How to carry this burden of life\nhad been the whole world's problem.  It is still the whole world's\nproblem.  And here is Christ's solution:  \"Carry it as I do.  Take\nlife as I take it.  Look at it from My point of view.  Interpret\nit upon My principles.  Take My yoke and learn of me, and you will\nfind it easy.  For my yoke is easy, works easily, sits right upon\nthe shoulders, and THEREFORE My burden is light.\"\n\nThere is no suggestion here that religion will absolve any man from\nbearing burdens.  That would be to absolve him from living, since\nit is life itself that is the burden.  What Christianity does\npropose is to make it tolerable.\n\nChrist's yoke\n\nis simply His secret for the alleviation of human life, His prescription\nfor the best and happiest method of living.  Men harness themselves\nto the work and stress of the world in clumsy and unnatural ways.\nThe harness they put on is antiquated.  A rough, ill-fitted collar\nat best, they make its strain and friction past enduring, by\nplacing it where the neck is most sensitive; and by mere continuous\nirritation this sensitiveness increases until the whole nature is\nquick and sore.\n\nThis is the origin, among other things, of a disease called\n\"touchiness\"--a disease which, in spite of its innocent name, is one\nof the gravest sources of restlessness in the world.  Touchiness,\nwhen it becomes chronic, is a morbid condition of the inward\ndisposition.  It is self-love inflamed to the acute point; conceit,\nWITH A HAIR-TRIGGER.  The cure is to shift the yoke to some other\nplace; to let men and things touch us through some new and perhaps\nas yet unused part of our nature; to become meek and lowly in heart\nwhile the old sensitiveness is becoming numb from want of use.\n\nIt is the beautiful work of Christianity everywhere to adjust the\nburden of life to those who bear it, and them to it.  It has a\nperfectly miraculous gift of healing.  Without doing any violence\nto human nature it sets it right with life, harmonizing it with\nall surrounding things, and restoring those who are jaded with the\nfatigue and dust of the world to a new grace of living.  In the\nmere matter of altering the perspective of life and changing the\nproportions of things, its function in lightening the care of man\nis altogether its own.\n\nThe weight of a load depends upon the attraction of the earth.\nSuppose the attraction of the earth were removed?  A ton on some\nother planet, where the attraction of gravity is less, does not\nweigh half a ton.  Now Christianity removes the attraction of the\nearth; and this is one way in which it diminishes man's burden.\nIt makes them citizens of another world.  What was a ton yesterday\nis not half a ton today.  So without changing one's circumstances,\nmerely by offering a wider horizon and a different standard, it\nalters the whole aspect of the world.\n\nChristianity as Christ taught is the truest philosophy of life ever\nspoken.  but let us be quite sure when we speak of Christianity\nthat we mean Christ's Christianity.  Other versions are either\ncaricatures, or exaggerations, or misunderstandings, or shortsighted and\nsurface readings.  For the most part their attainment is hopeless\nand the results wretched.  But I care not who the person is,\nor through what vale of tears he has passed, or is about to pass,\nthere is a new life for him along this path.\n\nIII.  How fruits grow.\n\nWere Rest my subject, there are other things I should wish to say\nabout it, and other kinds of Rest of which I should like to speak.\nBut that is not my subject.  My theme is that the Christian\nexperiences are not the work of magic, but come under the law of\nCause and Effect.  I have chosen Rest only as a single illustration\nof the working of that principle.  If there were time I might next\nrun over all the Christian experiences in turn, and show the same\nwide law applies to each; but I think it may serve the better\npurpose if I leave this further exercise to yourselves.  I know no\nBible study that you will find more full of fruit, of which will\ntake you nearer to the ways of God, or make the Christian life\nitself more solid or more sure.  I shall add only a single other\nillustration of what I mean, before I close.\n\nWhere does Joy come from?  I knew a Sunday scholar whose conception\nof Joy was that it was a thing made in lumps and kept somewhere\nin Heaven, and that when people prayed for it, pieces were somehow\nlet down and fitted into their souls.  I am not sure that views\nas gross and material are not often held by people who ought to be\nwiser.  In reality, Joy is as much a matter of Cause and Effect as\npain.  No one can get Joy by merely asking for it.  It is one of\nthe ripest fruits of the Christian life, and, like all fruits, must\nbe grown.  There is a very clever trick in India called the mango\ntrick.  A seed is put in the ground and covered up, and after diverse\nincantations a full-blown mango-bush appears within five minutes.\nI never met any one who knew how the thing was done, but I never\nmet any one who believed it to be anything else than a conjuring\ntrick.  The world is pretty unanimous now in its belief in the\norderliness of Nature.  Men may not know how fruits grow, but they\ndo know that they cannot grow in an hour.  Some lives have not even\na stalk on which fruits could hang, even if they did grow in an\nhour.  Some have never planted one seed of Joy in all their lives;\nand others who may have planted a germ or two have lived so little\nin sunshine that they never could come to maturity.\n\nWhence, then, is joy?  Christ put His teaching upon this subject\ninto one of the most exquisite of His parables.  I should in any\ninstance have appealed to His teaching here, as in the case of Rest,\nfor I do not wish you to think I am speaking words of my own.  But\nit so happens that He has dealt with it in words of unusual fullness.\n\nI need not recall the whole illustration.  It is the parable of\nthe Vine.  Did you ever think why Christ spoke that parable?  He\ndid not merely throw it into space as a find illustration of general\ntruths.  It was not simply a statement of the mystical union, and\nthe doctrine of an indwelling Christ.  It was that; but it was\nmore.  After He had said it, He did what was not an unusual thing\nwhen He was teaching His greatest lessons--He turned to the disciples\nand said He would tell them why He had spoken it.  It was to tell\nthem\n\nHow to get joy.\n\n\"These things I have spoken unto you,\" He said, \"that My Joy might\nremain in you, and that your Joy might be full.\"  It was a purposed\nand deliberate communication of His\n\nSecret of Happiness.\n\nGo back over these verses, then, and you will find the Causes of\nthis Effect, the spring, and the only spring, out of which true\nHappiness comes.  I am not going to analyze them in detail.  I ask\nyou to enter into the words for yourselves.\n\nRemember, in the first place, that the Vine was the Eastern symbol\nof Joy.  It was its fruit that made glad the heart of man.  Yet,\nhowever innocent that gladness--for the expressed juice of the\ngrape was the common drink at every peasant's board--the gladness\nwas only a gross and passing thing.  This was not true happiness,\nand the vine of the Palestine vineyards was not the true vine.\n\"CHRIST was the TRUE Vine.\"  Here, then, is the ultimate source\nof Joy.  Through whatever media it reaches us, all true Joy and\nGladness find their source in Christ.\n\nBy this, of course, is not meant that the actual Joy experienced\nis transferred from Christ's nature, or is something passed on from\nHim to us.  What is passed on is His method of getting it.  There\nis, indeed, a sense in which we can share another's joy or another's\nsorrow.  But that is another matter.  Christ is the source of Joy\nto men in the sense in which He is the source of Rest.  His people\nshare His life, and therefore share its consequences, and one of\nthese is Joy.  His method of living is one that in the nature of\nthings produces Joy.  When He spoke of His Joy remaining with us\nHe meant in part that the causes which produced it should continue\nto act.  His followers, (that is to say), by REPEATING His life\nwould experience its accompaniments.  His Joy, His kind of Joy,\nwould remain with them.\n\nThe medium through which this Joy comes is next explained:  \"He that\nabideth in Me, the same bringeth forth much fruit.\"  Fruit first,\nJoy next; the one the cause or medium of the other.  Fruit-bearing\nis the necessary antecedent; Joy both the necessary consequent and\nthe necessary accompaniment.  It lay partly in the bearing fruit,\npartly in the fellowship which made that possible.  Partly, that\nis to say, Joy lay in mere constant living in Christ's presence,\nwith all that that implied of peace, of shelter, and of love;\npartly in the influence of that Life upon mind and character and\nwill; and partly in the inspiration to live and work for others,\nwith all that that brought of self-riddance and joy in others'\ngain.  All these, in different ways and at different times, are\n\nSources of pure happiness.\n\nEven the simplest of them--to do good to other people--is an instant\nand infallible specific.  There is no mystery about Happiness\nwhatever.  Put in the right ingredients and it must come out.  He\nthat abideth in Him will bring forth much fruit; and bringing forth\nmuch fruit is Happiness.  The infallible receipt for Happiness,\nthen, is to do good; and the infallible receipt for doing good\nis to abide in Christ.  The surest proof that all this is a plain\nmatter of Cause and Effect is that men may try every other conceivable\nway of finding happiness, and they will fail.  Only the right cause\nin each case can produce the right effect.\n\nThen the Christian experiences are our own making?  In the same\nsense in which grapes are our own making and no more.  All fruits\nGROW--whether they grow in the soil or in the soul; whether they\nare the fruits of the wild grape or of the True Vine.  No man can\nMAKE things grow.  He can GET THEM TO GROW by arranging all the\ncircumstances and fulfilling all the conditions.  But the growing\nis done by God.  Causes and effects are eternal arrangements, set\nin the constitution of the world; fixed beyond man's ordering.\nWhat man can do is to place himself in the midst of a chain of\nsequences.  Thus he can get things to grow.  But the power is the\nSpirit of God.\n\nWhat more need I add but this--test the method by experiment.  Do\nnot imagine that you have got these things because you know how to\nget them.  As well try to feed upon a cookery book.  But I think\nI can promise that if you try in this simple and natural way, you\nwill not fail.  Spend the time you have spent in sighing for fruits\nin fulfilling the conditions of their growth.  The fruits will come,\nmust come.  We have hitherto paid immense attention to EFFECTS, to\nthe mere experiences themselves; we have described them, extolled\nthem, advised them, prayed for them--done everything but find out\nwhat CAUSED them.  Henceforth\n\nLet us deal with causes.\n\n\"To be,\" says Lotze, \"is to be in relations.\"  About every other\nmethod of living the Christian life there is an uncertainty.  About\nevery other method of acquiring the Christian experiences there is\na \"perhaps.\"  But in so far as this method is the way of nature,\nit cannot fail.  Its guarantee is the laws of the universe--and\nthese are \"the Hands of the Living God.\"\n\nThe true vine.\n\n\"I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman.  Every branch\nin me that beareth not fruit he taketh away; and every branch that\nbeareth fruit, he purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit.\nNow ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you.  Abide\nin me, and I in you.  As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself,\nexcept it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in\nme.  I am the vine, ye are the branches:  He that abideth in me,\nand I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit:  for without me\nye can do nothing.  If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as\na branch, and is withered; and men gather them, and cast them into\nthe fire, and they are burned.  If ye abide in me, and my word abide\nin you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you.\nHerein is my Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit; so ye shall\nbe my disciples.  As the Father hath loved me, so have I loved\nyou:  continue ye in my love.  If ye keep my commandments, ye shall\nabide in my love; even as I have kept my Father's commandments,\nand abide in his love.  These things have I spoken unto you, that\nmy joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\"FIRST!\" An Address to boys.\n\n\n\n\nI have three heads to give you.  The first is \"Geography,\" the\nsecond is \"Arithmetic,\" and the third is \"Grammar.\"\n\nI.\n\nFirst.  Geography tells us where to find places.\n\nWhere is the Kingdom of God?  It is said that when a Prussian\nofficer was killed in the Franco-Prussian war, a map of France was\nvery often found in his pocket.  When we wish to occupy a country,\nwe ought to know its geography.  Now, WHERE is the Kingdom of God?\nA boy over there says, \"It is in heaven.\"  No; it is not in heaven.\nAnother boy says, \"It is in the Bible.\"  No; it is not in the\nBible.  Another boy says, \"It must be in the Church,\" No; it is not\nin the Church.  Heaven is only the capital of the Kingdom of God;\nthe Bible is the guide-book to it; the Church is the weekly parade\nof those who belong to it.  If you turn to the seventeenth chapter\nof Luke you will find out where the Kingdom of God really is:  \"The\nKingdom of God is within you\"--within YOU.  The Kingdom of God is\nINSIDE PEOPLE.\n\nI remember once taking a walk by the river near where the Falls of\nNiagara are, and I noticed a remarkable figure walking along the\nriver bank.  I had been some time in America.  I had seen black\nmen, and red men, and yellow men, and white men; black men, the\nNegroes; red men, the Indians; yellow men, the Chinese; white men,\nthe Americans.  But this man looked quite different in his dress\nfrom anything I had ever seen.  When he came a little closer, I\nsaw he was wearing a kilt; when he came a little nearer still, I\nsaw that he was dressed exactly like a Highland soldier.  When he\ncame quiet near, I said to him:\n\n\"What are you doing here?\"\n\n\"Why should I not be here?\" he replied; \"don't you know this is\nBritish soil?  When you cross the river you come into Canada.\"\n\nThis soldier was thousands of miles from England, and yet he was\nin the Kingdom of England.  Wherever there is an English heart\nbeating loyal to the Queen of Britain, there is England.  Wherever\nthere is a boy whose heart is loyal to the Kingdom of God, the\nKingdom of God is within him.\n\nWhat is the Kingdom of God?  Every Kingdom has its exports, it\nproducts.  Go down the river here and you will find ships coming\nin with cotton; you know they come from America.  You will find\nships with tea; you know they are from China.  Ships with wool;\nyou know they come from Australia.  Ships with sugar; you know they\ncome from Java.\n\nWhat comes from the Kingdom of God?  Again, we must refer to our\nGuide-book.  Turn to Romans, and we shall find what the Kingdom\nof God is.  I will read it:  \"The Kingdom of God is righteousness,\npeace, joy\"--three things.  \"The Kingdom of God is righteousness,\npeace, joy.\"  Righteousness, of course is just doing what is right.\nAny boy who does what is RIGHT has the Kingdom of God within him.\nAny boy who, instead of being quarrelsome, lives at peace with\nthe other boys, has the Kingdom of God within him.  Any boy whose\nheart is filled with joy because he does what is right, has the\nKingdom of God within him.  The Kingdom of God is not going to\nreligious meetings, and hearing strange religious experiences; the\nKingdom of God is doing what is right--living at peace with all\nmen, being filled with joy in the Holy Ghost.\n\nBoys, if you are going to be Christians, be Christians as boys, and\nnot as your grandmothers.  A grandmother has to be a Christian as\na grandmother, and that is the right and the beautiful thing for her;\nbut if you cannot read your Bible by the hours as your grandmother\ncan, or delight in meetings as she can, don't think you are\nnecessarily a bad boy.  When you are your grandmother's age you will\nhave your grandmother's kind of religion.  Meantime, be a Christian\nas a boy.  Live a boy's life.  Do the straight thing; seek the\nkingdom of righteousness and honor and truth.  Keep the peace with\nthe boys about you, and be filled with the joy of being a loyal,\nand simple, and natural, and boy-like servant of Christ.\n\nYou can very easily tell a house, or a workshop, or an office where\nthe Kingdom of God is NOT.  The first thing you see in that pace\nis that the \"straight thing\" is not always done.  Customers do not\nget fair play.  You are in danger of learning to cheat and to lie.\nBetter a thousand times to starve than to stay in a place where\nyou cannot do what is right.\n\nOr, when you go into your workshop, you find everybody sulky, touchy,\nand ill-tempered, everybody at daggers-drawn with everybody else,\nsome of the men not on speaking terms with some of the others, and\nthe whole FEEL of the place miserable and unhappy.  The Kingdom of\nGod is not thee, for IT is peace.  It is the Kingdom of the Devil\nthat is anger, and wrath and malice.\n\nIf you want to get the Kingdom of God into your workshop, or\ninto your home, let the quarreling be stopped.  Live in peace and\nharmony and brotherliness with everyone.  For the Kingdom of God\nis a kingdom of brothers.  It is a great Society, founded by Jesus\nChrist, of all the people who try to live like Him, and to make the\nworld better and sweeter and happier.  Wherever  boy is trying to\ndo that, in the house or on the street, in the workshop or on the\nbaseball field, there is the Kingdom of God.  And every boy, however\nsmall or obscure or poor, who is seeking that, is a member of it.\nYou see now, I hope, what the Kingdom is.\n\nII.\n\nI pass, therefore, to the second head; What was it?  Arithmetic.\nAre there any arithmetic words in this text?  \"Added.\"  What other\narithmetic words?  \"First.\"\n\nNow, don't you think you could not have anything better to seek\n\"first\" than the things I have named to do what is right, to live\nat peace, and be always making those about you happy?  You see at\nonce why Christ tells us to seek these things first--because they\nare\n\nThe best worth seeking.\n\nDo you know anything better than these three things, anything\nhappier, purer, nobler?  If you do, seek them first.  But if you\ndo not, seek first the Kingdom of God.  I do not tell you to be\nreligious.  You know that.  I do not tell you to seek the Kingdom\nof God.  I tell you to seek the Kingdom of God FIRST.  FIRST.\nNot many people do that.  They put a little religion into their\nlife--once a week, perhaps.  They might just as well let it alone.\nIt is not worth seeking the Kingdom of God unless we seek it FIRST.\n\nSuppose you take the helm out of a ship and hang it over the bow,\nand send that ship to sea, will it ever reach the other side?\nCertainly not.  It will drift about anyhow.  Keep religion in its\nplace, and it will take you straight through life and straight to\nyour Father in heaven when life is over.  But if you do not put\nit in its place, you may just as well have nothing to do with it.\nReligion out of its place in a human life is the most miserable\nthing in the world.  There is nothing that requires so much to be\nkept in its place as religion, and its place is what? second? third?\n\"First.\"  Boys, FIRST the Kingdom of God; make it so that it will\nbe natural to you to think about that the very first thing.\n\nThere was a boy in Glasgow apprenticed to a gentleman who made\ntelegraphs.  (The gentleman told me this himself.)  One day this\nboy was up on the top of a four-story house with a number of men\nfixing up a telegraph wire.  The work was all but done.  It was\ngetting late, and the men said they were going away home, and the\nboy was to nip off the ends of the wire himself.  Before going\ndown they told him to be sure to go back to the workshop, when he\nwas finished, with his master's tools.\n\n\"Do not leave any of them lying about, whatever you do,\" said the\nforeman.\n\nThe boy climbed up the pole and began to nip off the ends of the\nwire.  It was a very cold winter night, and the dusk was gathering.\nHe lost his hold and fell upon the slates, slid down, and then\nover and over to the ground below.  A clothes-rope stretched across\nthe \"green\" on which he was just about to fall, caught him on the\nchest and broke his fall; but the shock was terrible, and he lay\nunconscious among some clothes upon the green.\n\nAn old woman came out; seeing her rope broken and the clothes all\nsoiled, thought the boy was drunk, shook him, scolded him, and\nwent for the policeman.  The boy with the shaking came back to\nconsciousness, rubbed his eyes, and got back on his feet.  What do\nyou think he did?  He staggered, half-blind, up the stairs.  He\nclimbed the ladder.  He got on to the roof of the house.  He gathered\nup his tools, put them into his basket, took them down, and when\nhe got to the ground again fainted dead away.\n\nJust then the policeman came, saw there was something seriously\nwrong, and carried him away to the hospital, where he lay for some\ntime.  I am glad to say he got better.\n\nWhat was his first thought at that terrible moment?  His duty.\nHe was not thinking of himself; he was thinking about his master.\nFirst, the Kingdom of God.\n\nBut there is another arithmetic word.  What is it?  \"Added.\"\n\nYou know the difference between ADDITION and SUBTRACTION.  Now,\nthat is\n\nA very important difference\n\nin religion, because--and it is a very strange thing--very few\npeople know the difference when they begin to talk about religion.\nThey often tell boys that if they seek the Kingdom of God, everything\nelse is going to be SUBTRACTED from them.  They tell them that they\nare going to become gloomy, miserable, and will lose everything\nthat makes a boy's life worth living--that they will have to stop\nbaseball and story-books, and become little old men, and spend all\ntheir time in going to meetings and in singing hymns.\n\nNow, that is not true.  Christ never said anything like that.\nChrist said we are to \"Seek first the Kingdom of God,\" and\n\nEverything else worth having\n\nis to be ADDED unto us.  If there is anything I would like you to\nremember, it is these two arithmetic words--\"first\" and \"added.\"\n\nI do not mean by \"added\" that if you become religious you are all\ngoing to become RICH.  Here is a boy, who, in sweeping out the\nshop tomorrow, finds a quarter lying among the orange boxes.  Well,\nnobody has missed it.  He puts it in his pocket, and it begins to\nburn a hole there.  by breakfast time he wishes that money were\nin his master's pocket.  And by-and-by he goes to his master.  He\nsays (to HIMSELF, and not to his master), \"I was at the Boys' Brigade\nyesterday and I was told to seek FIRST that which was right.\"  Then\nhe says to his master:\n\n\"Please, sir, here is a quarter that I found upon the floor.\"\n\nThe master puts it in the till.  What has the boy got in his pocket?\nNothing; BUT HE HAS GOT THE KINGDOM OF GOD IN HIS HEART.  He has\nlaid up treasure in heaven, which is of infinitely more worth than\nthe quarter.\n\nNow, that boy does not find a dollar on his way home.  I have known\nthat to happen, but that is not what is meant by \"adding.\"  It does\nnot mean that God is going to pay him in his own coin, for He pays\nin better coin.\n\nYet I remember once hearing of a boy who was paid in both ways.\nHe was very, very poor.  He lived in a foreign country, and his\nmother said to him one day that he must go into the great city and\nstart in business, and she took his coat and cut it open and sewed\nbetween the lining and the coat forty golden dinars, which she had\nsaved up for many years to start him in life.  She told him to take\ncare of robbers as he went across the desert; and as he was going\nout of the door she said:\n\n\"My boy, I have only two words for you--'Fear God, and never tell\na lie.'\"\n\nThe boy started off, and towards evening he saw glittering in the\ndistance the minarets of the great city.  But between the city and\nhimself he saw a cloud of dust.  It came nearer.  Presently he saw\nthat it was a band of robbers.\n\nOne of the robbers left the rest and rode toward him, and said:\n\n\"Boy, what have you got?\"\n\nThe boy looked him in the face and said:\n\n\"I have forty golden dinars sewed up in my coat.\"\n\nThe robber laughed and wheeled around his horse and went away back.\nHe would not believe the boy.\n\nPresently another robber came and he said:\n\n\"Boy, what have you got?\"\n\n\"Forty golden dinars sewed up in my coat.\"\n\nThe robber said:  \"The boy is a fool,\" and wheeled his horse and\nrode away back.\n\nBy and by the robber captain came and he said:\n\n\"Boy, what have you got?\"\n\n\"I have forty golden dinars sewed up in my coat.\"\n\nThe robber dismounted, and put his hand over the boy's breast,\nfelt something round, counted one, two, three, four, five, till he\ncounted out the forty golden coins.  He looked the boy in the face\nand said:\n\n\"Why did you tell me that?\"\n\nThe boy said:  \"Because of God and my mother.\"\n\nThe robber leaned on his spear and thought and said:\n\n\"Wait a moment.\"\n\nHe mounted his horse, rode back to the rest of the robbers, and\ncame back in about five minutes with his dress changed.  This time\nhe looked not like a robber, but like a merchant.  He took the boy\nup on his horse and said:\n\n\"My boy, I have long wanted to do something for my God and for my\nmother, and I have this moment renounced my robber's life.  I am\nalso a merchant.  I have a large business house in the city.  I\nwant you to come and live with me, to teach me about your God; and\nyou will be rich, and your mother some day will come and live with\nus.\"\n\nAnd it all happened.  By seeing first the Kingdom of God, all these\nthings were added unto him.\n\nBoys, banish forever from your minds the idea that religion is\nSUBTRACTION.  It does not tell us to give things up, but rather\ngives us something so much better that they give themselves up.\nWhen you see a boy on the street whipping a top, you know, perhaps,\nthat you could not make that boy happier than by giving him a top,\na whip, and half an hour to whip it.  But next birthday, when he\nlooks back he says,\n\n\"What a goose I was last year to be delighted with a top.  What I\nwant now is a baseball bat.\"\n\nThen when he becomes an old man, he does not care in the least for\na baseball bat; he wants rest, and a snug fireside and a newspaper\nevery day.  He wonders how he could ever have taken up his thoughts\nwith baseball bats and whipping-tops.\n\nNow, when a boy becomes a Christian, he grows out of the evil\nthings one by one--that is to say, if they are really evil--which\nhe used to set his heart upon; (of course I do not mean baseball\nbats, for they are not evils); and so instead of telling people to\ngive up things, we are safer to tell them to \"seek first the Kingdom\nof God,\" and then they will get new things and better things, and\n\nThe old things will drop off\n\nof themselves.  This is what is meant by the \"new heart.\"  It means\nthat God puts into us new thoughts and new wishes, and we become\nquite different.\n\nIII.\n\nLastly, and very shortly.  What was the third head?  \"Grammar.\"\nRight.\n\nNow, I require a clever boy to answer the next question.  What\nis the verb?  \"Seek.\"  Very good:  \"seek.\"  What mood is it in?\n\"Imperative mood.\"  What does that mean?  \"A command.\"  What is\nthe soldier's first lesson?  \"Obedience.\"  Have you obeyed this\ncommand?  Remember the imperative mood of these words, \"SEEK first\nthe Kingdom of God.\"\n\nThis is the command of your King.  It MUST be done.  I have been\ntrying to show you what a splendid thing it is; what a reasonable\nthing it is; what a happy thing it is; but beyond all these reasons,\nit is a thing that MUST be done, because we are COMMANDED to do\nit by our Captain.  Now, there is His command to seek FIRST the\nKingdom of God.  Have you done it?\n\n\"Well,\" I know some boys will say, \"we are going to have a good\ntime, enjoy life, and then we are going to seek--LAST--the Kingdom\nof God.\"\n\nNow, that is mean; it is nothing else than mean for a boy to take\nall the good gifts that God has given him, and then give him nothing\nback in return but\n\nHis wasted life.\n\nGod wants boys' LIVES, not only their souls.  It is for active,\nservice that soldiers are drilled, and trained, and fed, and armed.\nThat is why you and I are in the world at all--not to prepare to\ngo out of it some day, but to serve God actively in it NOW.  It\nis monstrous, and shameful, and cowardly to talk of seeking the\nKingdom LAST.  It is shirking duty, abandoning one's rightful post,\nplaying into the enemy's hand by doing nothing to turn his flank.\nEvery hour a Kingdom is coming in your heart, in your home, in the\nworld near you, be it a Kingdom of Darkness or a Kingdom of Light.\nYou are placed where you are, in a particular business, in a\nparticular street, to help on there the Kingdom of God.  You cannot\ndo that when you are old and ready to die.  By that time your\ncompanions will have fought their fight, and lost or won.  If they\nlose, will you not be sorry that you did not help them?  Will you\nnot regret that only at the last you helped the Kingdom of God?\nPerhaps you will not be able to do it then.  And then your life\nhas been lost indeed.\n\nVery few people have the opportunity to seek the Kingdom of God\nat the end.  Christ, knowing all that, knowing that religion was\na thing for our life, not merely for our death-bed, has laid this\ncommand upon us now:  \"Seek FIRST the Kingdom of God.\"\n\nI am going to leave you with this text itself.  Every boy in the\nworld should obey it.\n\nBoys, before you go to work to-morrow, before you go to sleep\nto-night, resolve that, God helping you, you are going to seek\nFIRST the Kingdom of God.  Perhaps some boys here are deserters;\nthey began once before to serve Christ, and they deserted.  Come\nback again, come back again today!  Others have never enlisted at\nall.  Will you not do it now?  You are old enough to decide.  The\ngrandest moment of a boy's life is that moment when he decides to\n\"SEEK FIRST THE KINGDOM OF GOD.\"\n\n\n\n\n\nThe Changed Life:  The Greatest Need of the World.\n\n\n\n\nGod is all for quality; man is for quantity.  The immediate need\nof the world at this moment is not more of us, but, if I may use\nthe expression, a better brand of us.  To secure ten men of an\nimproved type would be better than if we had ten thousand more of\nthe average Christians distributed all over the world.  There is\nsuch a thing in the evangelistic sense as winning the whole world\nand losing our own soul.  And the first consideration of our\nown life--our own spiritual relations to God--our own likeness to\nChrist.  And I am anxious, briefly, to look at the right and the\nwrong way of becoming like Christ--of becoming better men:  the\nright and the wrong way of sanctification.\n\nLet me begin by naming, and in part discarding some processes in\nvogue already for producing better lives.  These processes are far\nfrom wrong; in their place they may even be essential.  One ventures\nto disparage them only because they do not turn out the most perfect\npossible work.\n\n1.  The first imperfect method is to rely on\n\nResolution.\n\nIn will power, in mere spasms of earnestness, there is no salvation.\nStruggle, effort, even agony, have their place in Christianity, as\nwe shall see; but this is not where they come in.\n\nIn mid-Atlantic the Etruria, in which I was sailing, suddenly\nstopped.  Something had gone wrong with the engines.  There were\nfive hundred able-bodied men on board the ship.  Do you think that\nif we had gathered together and pushed against the mast we could\nhave pushed it on?\n\nWhen one attempts to sanctify himself by effort, he is trying to\nmake his boat go by pushing against the mast.  He is like a drowning\nman trying to lift himself out of the water by pulling at the hair\nof his own head.\n\nChrist held up this method almost to ridicule when He said, \"Which\nof you by taking thought can add a cubit to his stature?\"  Put down\nthat method forever as being futile.\n\nThe one redeeming feature of the self-sufficient method is this--that\nthose who try it find out almost at once that it will not gain the\ngoal.\n\n2.  Another experimenter says:  \"But that is not my method.  I have\nseen the folly of a mere wild struggle in the dark.  I work on a\nprinciple.  My plan is not to waste power on random effort, but to\nconcentrate on a single sin.  By taking\n\nOne at a time\n\nand crucifying it steadily, I hope in the end to extirpate all.\"\n\nTo this, unfortunately, there are four objections:  For one thing,\nlife is too short; the name of sin is legion.  For another thing,\nto deal with individual sins is to leave the rest of the nature\nfor the time untouched.  In the third place, a single combat with\na special sin does not affect the root and spring of the disease.\nIf you dam up a stream at one place, it will simply overflow higher\nup.  If only one of the channels of sin be obstructed, experience\npoints to an almost certain overflow through some other part of the\nnature.  Partial conversion is almost always accompanied by such\nmoral leakage, for the pent-up energies accumulate to the bursting\npoint, and the last state of that soul may be worse than the\nfirst.  In the last place, religion does not consist in negatives,\nin stopping this sin and stopping that.  The perfect character can\nnever be produced with a pruning knife.\n\n3.  But a third protests:  \"So be it.  I make no attempt to stop\nsins one by one.  My method is just the opposite.\n\nI copy the virtues\n\none by one.\"\n\nThe difficulty about the copying method is that it is apt to be\nmechanical.  One can always tell an engraving from a picture, an\nartificial flower from a real flower.  To copy virtues one by one\nhas somewhat the same effect as eradicating the vices one by one;\nthe temporary result is an overbalanced and incongruous character.\nSome one defines a PRIG as \"a creature that is over-fed for its\nsize.\"  One sometimes finds Christians of this species--over-fed\non one side of their nature, but dismally thin and starved looking\non the other.  The result, for instance, of copying Humility, and\nadding it on to an otherwise worldly life, is simply grotesque.  A\nrabid temperance advocate, for the same reason, is often the poorest\nof creatures, flourishing on a single virtue, and quite oblivious\nthat his Temperance is making a worse man of him and not a better.\nThese are examples of fine virtues spoiled by association with\nmean companions.  Character is a unity, and all the virtues must\nadvance together to make the perfect man.\n\nThis method of sanctification, nevertheless, is in the true direction.\nIt is only in the details of execution that it fails.\n\n4.  A fourth method I need scarcely mention, for it is a variation\non those already named.  It is\n\nThe very young man's method;\n\nand the pure earnestness of it makes it almost desecration to touch\nit.  It is to keep a private note-book with columns for the days\nof the week, and a list of virtues, with spaces against each for\nmarks.  this, with many stern rules for preface, is stored away in\na secret place, and from time to time, at nightfall, the soul is\narraigned before it as before a private judgment bar.\n\nThis living by code was Franklin's method; and I suppose thousands\nmore could tell how they had hung up in their bedrooms, or hid in\nlocked-fast drawers, the rules which one solemn day they drew up\nto shape their lives.\n\nThis method is not erroneous, only somehow its success is poor.\nYou bear me witness that it fails.  And it fails generally for very\nmatter-of-fact reasons--most likely because one day we forget the\nrules.\n\nAll these methods that have been named--the self-sufficient method,\nthe self-crucifixion method, the mimetic method, and the diary\nmethod--are perfectly human, perfectly natural, perfectly ignorant, and\nas they stand perfectly inadequate.  It is not argued, I repeat,\nthat they must be abandoned.  Their harm is rather that they distract\nattention from the true working method, and secure a fair result\nat the expense of the perfect one.  What that perfect method is we\nshall now go on to ask.\n\nI.  The formula of sanctification.\n\nA formula, a receipt for Sanctification--can one seriously speak\nof this mighty change as if the process were as definite as for\nthe production of so many volts of electricity?\n\nIt is impossible to doubt it.  Shall a mechanical experiment\nsucceed infallibly, and the one vital experiment of humanity remain\na chance?  Is corn to grow by method, and character by caprice?\nIf we cannot calculate to a certainty that the forces of religion\nwill do their work, then is religion vain.  And if we cannot express\nthe law of these forces in simple words, then is Christianity not\nthe world's religion, but the world's conundrum.\n\nWhere, then, shall one look for such a formula?  Where one would\nlook for any formula--among the text-books.  And if we turn to the\ntext-books of Christianity we shall find a formula for this problem\nas clear and precise as any in the mechanical sciences.  If this\nsimple rule, moreover, be but followed fearlessly, it will yield\nthe result of a perfect character as surely as any result that is\nguaranteed by the laws of nature.\n\nThe finest expression of this rule in Scripture, or indeed in any\nliterature, is probably one drawn up and condensed into a single\nverse by Paul.  You will find it in a letter--the second to the\nCorinthians--written by him to some Christian people who, in a city\nwhich was a byword for depravity and licentiousness, were seeking\nthe higher life.  To see the point of the words we must take them\nfrom the immensely improved rendering of the Revised translation,\nfor the older Version in this case greatly obscures the sense.\nThey are these:\n\n\"We all, with unveiled face reflecting as a mirror the glory of\nthe Lord, are transformed into the same image from glory to glory,\neven as from the Lord, the Spirit.\"\n\nNow observe at the outset the entire contraction of all our previous\nefforts, in the simple passive:  \"WE ARE TRANSFORMED.\"\n\nWe ARE CHANGED, as the Old Version has it--we do not change\nourselves.  No man can change himself.  Throughout the New Testament\nyou will find that wherever these moral and spiritual transformations\nare described the verbs are in the passive.  Presently it will be\npointed out that there is a RATIONALE in this; but meantime do not\ntoss these words aside as if this passivity denied all human effort\nor ignored intelligible law.  What is implied for the soul here\nis no more than is everywhere claimed for the body.  In physiology\nthe verbs describing the processes of growth are in the passive.\nGrowth is not voluntary; it takes place, it happens, it is wrought\nupon matter.  So here.  \"Ye must be born again\"--we cannot be born\nourselves.  \"Be not conformed to this world, but BE YE TRANSFORMED\"--we\nare subjects to transforming influence, we do not transform ourselves.\nNot more certain is it that it is something outside the thermometer\nthat produces a change in the thermometer, that it is\n\nSomething outside the soul of man\n\nthat produces a moral change upon him.  That he must be susceptible\nto that change, that he must be a party to it, goes without saying;\nbut that neither his aptitude nor his will can produce it, is\nequally certain.\n\nObvious as it ought to seem, this may be to some an almost startling\nrevelation.  The change we have been striving after is not to\nbe produced by any more striving.  It is to be wrought upon us by\nthe moulding of hands beyond our own.  As the branch ascends, and\nthe bud bursts, and the fruit reddens under the co-operation of\ninfluences from the outside air, so man rises to the higher stature\nunder invisible pressures from without.  the radical defect of all\nour former methods of sanctification was the attempt to generate\nfrom within that which can only be wrought upon us from without.\nThe radical defect of all our former methods of sanctification was\nthe attempt to generate from within that which can only be wrought\nupon us from without.  According to the first Law of Motion,\nevery body continues in its state of rest, or of uniform motion\nin a straight line, except in so far as it may be compelled BY\nIMPRESSED FORCES to change that state.  This is also a first law of\nChristianity.  Every man's character remains as it is, or continues\nin the direction in which it is going, until it is compelled BY\nIMPRESSED FORCES to change that state.  Our failure has been the\nfailure to put ourselves in the way of the impressed forces.  There\nis a clay, and there is a Potter; we have tried to get the clay to\nmould the clay.\n\nWhence, then, these pressures, and where this Potter?  The answer\nof the formula is--\"By reflecting as a mirror the glory of the Lord\nwe are changed.\"  But this is not very clear.  What is the \"glory\"\nof the Lord, and how can mortal man reflect it, and how can that\nact as an \"impressed force\" in moulding him to a nobler form?  The\nword \"glory\"--the word which has to bear the weight of holding\nthese \"impressed forces\"--is a stranger in current speech, and our\nfirst duty is to seek out its equivalent in working English.  It\nsuggests at first a radiance of some kind, something dazzling or\nglittering, some halo such as the old masters loved to paint round\nthe head of their Ecce Homos.  But that is paint, mere matter, the\nvisible symbol of some unseen thing.  What is that unseen thing?  It\nis that of all unseen things the most radiant, the most beautiful,\nthe most Divine, and that is CHARACTER.  On earth, in Heaven,\nthere is nothing so great, so glorious as this.  The word has many\nmeanings; in ethics it can have but one.  Glory is character, and\nnothing less, and it can be nothing more.  The earth is \"full of\nthe glory of the Lord,\" because it is full of His character.  The\n\"Beauty of the Lord\" is character.  \"The Glory of the Only\nBegotten\" is character, the character which is \"fullness of grace\nand truth.\"  And when God told His people HIS NAME, He simply gave\nthem His character, His character which was Himself:  \"And the Lord\nproclaimed the name for the Lord...the Lord, the Lord God, merciful\nand gracious, long-suffering and abundant in goodness and truth.\"\nGlory then is not something intangible, or ghostly, or transcendental.\nIf it were this, how could Paul ask men to reflect it?  Stripped\nof its physical enswathement it is Beauty, moral and spiritual\nBeauty, Beauty infinitely real, infinitely exalted, yet infinitely\nnear and infinitely communicable.\n\nWith this explanation read over the sentence once more in\nparaphrase:  We all reflecting as a mirror the character of Christ\nare transformed into the same Image from character to character--from\na poor character to a better one, from a better one to a little\nbetter still, from that to one still more complete, until by slow\ndegrees the Perfect Image is attained.  Here\n\nThe solution of the problem of sanctification\n\nis compressed into a sentence:  Reflect the character of Christ.\nYou will be changed, in spite of yourself and unknown to yourself,\ninto the same image from character to character.\n\n(I.)  All men are reflectors--that is\n\nThe first law\n\non which this formula is based.  One of the aptest descriptions of\na human being is that he is a mirror.  As we sat at table to-night\nthe world in which each of us lived and moved through this day was\nfocused in the room.  What we saw when we looked at one another was\nnot one another, but one another's world.  We were an arrangement\nof mirrors.  The scenes we saw were all reproduced; the people we\nmet walked to and fro; they spoke, they bowed, they passed us by,\ndid everything over again as if it had been real.  When we talked,\nwe were but looking at our own mirror and describing what flitted\nacross it; our listening was not hearing, but seeing--we but looked\non our neighbor's mirror.\n\nAll human intercourse is a seeing of reflections.  I meet a stranger\nin a railway carriage.  The cadence of his first words tell me he\nis English and comes from Yorkshire.  Without knowing it he has\nreflected his birthplace, his parents, and the long history of their\nrace.  Even physiologically he is a mirror.  His second sentence\nrecords that he is a politician, and a faint reflection in the way\nhe pronounces THE TIMES reveals his party.  In his next remarks I\nsee reflected a whole world of experiences.  The books he has read,\nthe people he has met, the companions he keeps, the influences\nthat have played upon him and made him the man he is--these are\nall registered there by a pen which lets nothing pass, and whose\nwriting can\n\nNever be blotted out.\n\nWhat I am reading in him meantime he is also reading in me; and\nbefore the journey is over we could half write each other's lives.\nWhether we like it or not, we live in glass houses.  The mind, the\nmemory, the soul, is simply a vast chamber paneled with looking-glass.\nAnd upon this miraculous arrangement and endowment depends the\ncapacity of mortal souls to \"reflect the character of the Lord.\"\n\n(2).  But this is not all.  If all these varied reflections\nfrom our so-called secret life are patent to the world, how close\nthe writing, complete the record within the soul itself!  For the\ninfluences we meet are not simply held for a moment on the polished\nsurface and thrown off again into space.  Each is retained where\nfirst it fell, and stored up in the soul forever.\n\nThis law of assimilation\n\nis the second, and by far the most impressive truth which underlies\nthe formula of sanctification--the truth that men are not only\nmirrors, but that these mirrors, so far from being mere reflectors\nof the fleeting things they see, transfer into their own inmost\nsubstance, and hold in permanent preservation the things that they\nreflect.\n\nNo one knows how the soul can hold these things.  No one knows\nhow the miracle is done.  No phenomenon in nature, no process in\nchemistry, no chapter in necromancy can ever help us to begin to\nunderstand this amazing operation.  For, think of it, the past is\nnot only FOCUSED there, in a man's soul, it IS there.  How could\nit be reflected from there if it were not there?  All things that\nhe has ever seen, known, felt, believed of the surrounding world\nare now within him, have become part of him, in part are him--he\nhas been changed into their image.  He may deny it, he may resent\nit, but they are there.  They do not adhere to him, they are\ntransfused through him.  He cannot alter or rub them out.  They\nare not in his memory, they are in HIM.  His soul is as they have\nfilled it, made it, left it.  These things, these books, these\nevents, these influences are his makers.  In their hands are life\nand death, beauty and deformity.  When once the image or likeness\nof any of these is fairy presented to the soul, no power on earth\ncan hinder two things happening--it must be absorbed into the soul\nand forever reflected back again from character.\n\nUpon these astounding yet perfectly obvious psychological facts,\nPaul bases his doctrine of sanctification.  He sees that character\nis a thing built up by slow degrees, that it is hourly changing\nfor better or for worse according to the images which flit across\nit.  One step further and the whole length and breadth of the\napplication of these ideas to the central problem of religion will\nstand before us.\n\nII.  The alchemy of influence.\n\nIf events change men, much more persons.  No man can meet another on\nthe street without making some mark upon him.  We say we exchange\nwords when we meet; what we exchange is souls.  And when intercourse\nis very close and very frequent, so complete is this exchange that\nrecognizable bits of the one soul begin to show in the other's\nnature, and the second is conscious of a similar and growing debt\nto the first.\n\nNow, we become like those whom we habitually reflect.  I could\nprove from science that applies even to the physical framework of\nanimals--that they are influenced and organically changed by the\nenvironment in which they life.\n\nThis mysterious approximating of two souls, who has not witnessed?\nWho has not watched some old couple come down life's pilgrimage\nhand in hand, with such gentle trust and joy in one another that\ntheir very faces wore the self-same look?  These were not two\nsouls; it was a composite soul.  It did not matter to which of the\ntwo you spoke, you would have said the same words to either.  It\nwas quite indifferent which replied, each would have said the same.\nHalf a century's REFLECTING had told upon them; they were changed\ninto the same image.  It is the Law of Influence that WE BECOME\nLIKE THOSE WHOM WE HABITUALLY REFLECT: these had become like because\nthey habitually reflected.  Through all the range of literature,\nof history, and biography this law presides.  Men are all mosaics\nof other men.  There was a savor of David about Jonathan, and a\nsavor of Jonathan about David.  Metempsychosis is a fact.  George\nEliot's message to the world was that men and women make men and\nwomen.  The Family, the cradle of mankind, has no meaning apart\nfrom this.  Society itself is nothing but a rallying point for these\nomnipotent forces to do their work.  On the doctrine of Influence,\nin short, the whole vast pyramid of humanity is built.\n\nBut it was reserved for Paul to make the supreme application of\nthe Law of Influence.  It was a tremendous inference to make, but\nhe never hesitated.  He himself was a changed man; he knew exactly\nwhat had done it;\n\nIt was Christ.\n\nOn the Damascus road they met, and from that hour his life was\nabsorbed in His.  The effect could not but follow--on words, on\ndeeds, on career, on creed.  The \"impressed forces\" did their vital\nwork.  He became like Him Whom he habitually loved.  \"So we all,\"\nhe writes, \"reflecting as a mirror the glory of Christ, are changed\ninto the same image.\"\n\nNothing could be more simple, more intelligible, more natural, more\nsupernatural.  It is an analogy from an every-day fact.  Since we\nare what we are by the impacts of those who surround us, those who\nsurround themselves with the highest will be those who change into\nthe highest.  There are some men and some women in whose company\nwe are\n\nAlways at our best.\n\nWhile with them we cannot think mean thoughts or speak ungenerous\nwords.  Their mere presence is elevation, purification, sanctity.\nAll the best stops in our nature are drawn out by their intercourse,\nand we find a music in our souls that was never there before.\nSuppose even THAT influence prolonged through a month, a year, a\nlifetime, and what could not life become?  There, even on the common\nplane of life, talking our language, walking our streets, working\nside by side, are sanctifiers of souls; here, breathing through\ncommon clay, is Heaven; here, energies charged even through a\ntemporal medium with the virtue of regeneration.  If to live with\nmen, diluted to the millionth degree with the virtue of the Highest,\ncan exalt and purify the nature, what bounds can be set to the\ninfluence of Christ?  To live with Socrates--with unveiled face--must\nhave made one wise; with Aristides, just.  Francis Assisi must\nhave made one gentle; Savonarola, strong.  But to have lived with\nChrist must have made one like Christ:  that is to say, A CHRISTIAN.\n\nAs a matter of fact, to live with Christ did produce this effect.\nIt produced it in the case of Paul.  And during Christ's lifetime\nthe experiment was tried in an even more startling form.  A few\nraw, unspiritual, uninspiring men, were admitted to the inner circle\nof His friendship.  The change began at once.  Day by day we can\nalmost see the first disciple grow.  First there steals over them\nthe faintest possible adumbration of His character, and occasionally,\nvery occasionally, they do a thing or say a thing that they could\nnot have done or said had they not been living there.  Slowly the\nspell of His Life deepens.  Reach after reach of their nature is\novertaken, thawed, subjugated, sanctified.  Their manner softens,\ntheir words become more gentle, their conduct more unselfish.  As\nswallows who have found a summer, as frozen buds the spring, their\nstarved humanity bursts into a fuller life.  They do not know how\nit is, but they are different men.\n\nOne day they find themselves like their Master, going about and\ndoing good.  To themselves it is unaccountable, but they cannot\ndo otherwise.  they were not told to do it, it came to them to do\nit.  But the people who watch them know well how to account for\nit--\"They have been,\" they whisper, \"with Jesus.\"  Already even,\nthe mark and seal of His character is upon them--\"They have been\nwith Jesus.\"  Unparalleled phenomenon, that these poor fishermen\nshould remind other men of Christ!  Stupendous victory and mystery\nof\n\nRegeneration\n\nthat mortal men should suggest GOD to the world!\n\nThere is something almost melting in the way his contemporaries,\nand John especially, speak of the influence of Christ.  John lived\nhimself in daily wonder at Him; he was overpowered, over-awed,\nentranced, transfigured.  To his mind it was impossible for any one\nto come under this influence and ever be the same again.  \"Whosoever\nabideth in Him sinneth not,\" he said.  It was inconceivable that he\nshould sin, as inconceivable as that ice should live in a burning\nsun, or darkness coexist with noon.  If any one did sin, it\nwas to John the simple proof that he could never have met Christ.\n\"Whosoever sinneth,\" he exclaims, \"hath not seen HIM, neither known\nHIM.\"  Sin was abashed in this Presence.  Its root withered.  Its\nsway and victory were forever at an end.\n\nBut these were His contemporaries.  It was easy for THEM to be\ninfluenced by Him, for they were every day and all the day together.\nBut how can we mirror that which we have never seen?  How can all\nthis stupendous result be produced by a Memory, by the scantiest\nof all Biographies, by One who lived and left this earth eighteen\nhundred years ago?  How can modern men to-day make Christ, the\nabsent Christ, their most constant companion still?\n\nThe answer is that\n\nFriendship is a spiritual thing.\n\nIt is independent of Matter, or Space, or Time.  That which I\nlove in my friend is not that which I see.  What influences me in\nmy friend is not his body but his spirit.  He influences me about\nas much in his absence as in his presence.  It would have been an\nineffable experience truly to have lived at that time--\n\n\n\"I think when I read the sweet story of old,\n    How when Jesus was here among men,\nHe took little children like lambs to his fold,\n    I should like to have been with Him then.\n\n\"I wish that His hand had been laid on my head,\n    That His arms had been thrown around me,\nAnd that I had seen His kind look when he said,\n    'Let the little ones come unto me.'\"\n\n\nAnd yet, if Christ were to come into the world again, few of us\nprobably would ever have a chance of seeing Him.  Millions of her\nsubjects in the little country of England have never seen their\nown Queen.  And there would be millions of the subjects of Christ\nwho could never get within speaking distance of Him if He were\nhere.  We remember He said:  \"It is expedient for you (not FOR ME)\nthat I go away\"; because by going away He could really be nearer\nto us than He would have been if He had stayed here.  It would\nbe geographically and physically impossible for most of us to be\ninfluenced by His person had He remained.  And so our communion\nwith Him is a spiritual companionship; but not different from most\ncompanionships, which, when you press them down to the roots, you\nwill find to be essentially spiritual.\n\nAll friendship, all love, human and Divine, is purely spiritual.\nIt was after He was risen that He influenced even the disciples\nmost.  Hence, in reflecting the character of Christ, it is no real\nobstacle that we may never have been in visible contact with Himself.\n\nThere lived once a young girl whose perfect grace of character\nwas the wonder of those who knew her.  She wore on her neck a gold\nlocket which no one was ever allowed to open.  One day, in a moment\nof unusual confidence, one of her companions was allowed to touch\nits spring and learn its secret.  She saw written these words--\n\n\"Whom having not seen I love.\"\n\nThat was the secret of her beautiful life.  She had been changed\ninto the Same Image.\n\nNow this is not imitation, but a much deeper thing.  Mark\nthis distinction, for the difference in the process as well as in\nthe result, may be as great as that between a photograph secured\nby the infallible pencil of the sun, and the rude outline from a\nschool-boy's chalk.  Imitation is mechanical, reflection organic.\nThe one is occasional, the other habitual.  In the one case,\nman comes to God and imitates him; in the other, God comes to man\nand imprints Himself upon him.  It is quite true that there is an\nimitation of Christ which amounts to reflection.  But Paul's term\nincludes all that the other holds, and is open to no mistake.\n\nWhat, then, is the practical lesson?  It is obvious.  \"Make Christ\nyour most constant companion\"--this is what it practically means for\nus.  Be more under His influences than under any other influence.\nTen minutes spent in His society every day, ay, two minutes if\nit be face to face, and heart to heart, will make the whole day\ndifferent.  Every character has an inward spring,--let Christ be\nit.  Every action has a key-note,--let Christ set it.\n\nYesterday you got a certain letter.  You sat down and wrote a reply\nwhich almost scorched the paper.  You picked the cruelest adjectives\nyou knew and sent it forth, without a pang to do its ruthless work.\nYou did that because your life was set in the wrong key.  You began\nthe day with the mirror placed at the wrong angle.\n\nTomorrow at day-break, turn it towards Him, and even to your enemy\nthe fashion of your countenance will be changed.  Whatever you then\ndo, one thing you will find you could not do--you could not write\nthat letter.  Your first impulse may be the same, your judgement\nmay be unchanged, but if you try it the ink will dry on your pen,\nand you will rise from your desk an unavenged, but greater and more\nChristian man.  Throughout the whole day your actions, down to the\nlast detail, will do homage to that early vision.\n\nYesterday you thought mostly about yourself.  Today the poor will\nmeet you, and you will feed them.  The helpless, the tempted, the\nsad, will throng about you, and each you will befriend.  Where were\nall these people yesterday?  Where they are today, but you did not\nsee them.  It is in reflected light that the poor are seen.  But\nyour soul today is\n\nNot at the ordinary angle.\n\n\"Things which are not seen\" are visible.  For a few short hours\nyou live the Eternal Life.  The eternal life, the life of faith,\nis simply the life of a higher vision.  Faith is an attitude--a\nmirror set at the right angle.\n\nWhen tomorrow is over, and in the evening you review it, you will\nwonder how you did it.  You will not be conscious that you strove\nfor anything, or imitated anything, or crucified anything.  You\nwill be conscious of Christ; that He was with you, that without\ncompulsion you were yet compelled; that without force, or noise,\nor proclamation, the revolution was accomplished.  You do not\ncongratulate yourself as one who has done a mighty deed, or achieved\na personal success, or stored up a fund of \"Christian experience\"\nto ensure the same result again.  What you are conscious of is \"the\nglory of the Lord.\"  And what the world is conscious of, if the\nresult be a true one, is also \"the glory of the Lord.\"  In looking\nat a mirror one does not see the mirror, or think of it, but only\nof what it reflects.  For a mirror never calls the attention to\nitself--except when there are flaws in it.\n\nLet me say a word or two more about the effects which necessarily\nmust follow from this contact, or fellowship, with Christ.  I\nneed not quote the texts upon the subject--the texts about abiding\nin Christ.  \"He that abideth in Him sinneth not.\"  You cannot sin\nwhen you are standing in front of Christ.  You simply cannot do it.\nAgain:  \"If ye abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ye shall\nask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you.\"  Think of that!\nThat is another inevitable consequence.  And there is yet another:\n\"He that abideth in Me, the same bringeth forth much fruit.\"\nSinlessness--answered prayer--much fruit.\n\nBut in addition to these things, see how many of the highest Christian\nvirtues and experiences necessarily flow from the assumption of\nthat attitude towards Christ.  For instance, the moment you assume\nthat relation to Christ you begin to know what the CHILD-SPIRIT\nis.  You stand before Christ, and He becomes your Teacher, and\nyou instinctively become docile.  Then you learn also to become\nCHARITABLE and TOLERANT; because you are learning of Him, and He is\n\"meek and lowly in heart,\" and you catch that spirit.  That is a\nbit of His character being reflected into yours.  Instead of being\ncritical and self-asserting, you become humble and have the mind\nof a little child.\n\nI think, further, the only way of learning what FAITH is is to\nknow Christ and be in His company.  You hear sermons about the nine\ndifferent kinds of faith--distinctions drawn between the right\nkind of faith and the wrong--and sermons telling you how to get\nfaith.  So far as I can see, there is\n\nOnly one way\n\nin which faith is got, and it is the same in the religious world\nas it is in the world of men and women.  I learn to trust you, my\nbrother, just as I get to trust me just as you get to know me.  I\ndo not trust you as a stranger, but as I come into contact with\nyou, and watch you, and live with you, I find out that you are\ntrustworthy, and I come to trust myself to you, and to lean upon\nyou.  But I do not do that to a stranger.\n\nThe way to trust Christ is to know Christ.  You cannot help trusting\nHim them.  You are changed.  By knowing Him faith is begotten in you,\nas cause and effect.  To trust Him without knowing Him as thousands\ndo, is not faith, but credulity.  I believe a great deal of prayer\nfor faith is thrown away.  What we should pray for is that we may\nbe able to fulfill the condition, and when we have fulfilled the\ncondition, the faith necessarily follows.  The way, therefore, to\nincrease our faith is to increase our intimacy with Christ.  We\ntrust Him more and more the better we know Him.\n\nAnd then another immediate effect of this way of sanctifying the\ncharacter is the tranquility that it brings over the Christian\nlife.  How disturbed and distressed and anxious Christian people\nare about their growth in grace!  Now, the moment you give that\nover into Christ's care--the moment you see that you are BEING\nchanged--that anxiety passes away.  You see that it must follow\nby an inevitable process and by a natural law if you fulfill the\nsimple condition; so that peace is the reward of that life and\nfellowship with Christ.\n\nMany other things follow.  A man's usefulness depends to a large\nextent upon his fellowship with Christ.  That is obvious.  Only Christ\ncan influence the world; but all that the world sees of Christ is\nwhat it sees of you and me.  Christ said:  \"The world seeth Me no\nmore, but ye see Me.\"  You see Him, and standing in front of Him\nreflect Him, and the world sees the reflection.  It cannot see Him.\nSo that a Christian's usefulness depends solely upon that relationship.\n\nNow, I have only pointed out a few of the things that follow from\nthe standing before Christ--from the abiding in Christ.  You will\nfind, if you run over the texts about abiding in Christ, many\nother things will suggest themselves in the same relations.  Almost\neverything in Christian experience and character follows and\nfollows necessarily, from standing before Christ and reflecting\nhis character.  But the supreme consummation is that we are changed\ninto THE SAME IMAGE, \"even as by the Lord the Spirit.\"  That is to\nsay that in some way, unknown to us, but possibly not more mysterious\nthan the doctrine of personal influence, we are changed into the\nimage of Christ.\n\nThis method cannot fail.  I am not setting before you an opinion\nor a theory, but this is\n\nA certainly successful means\n\nof sanctification.  \"We all, with unveiled face, reflecting in a\nmirror the glory of Christ (the character of Christ) assuredly--without\nany miscarriage--without any possibility of miscarriage--are changed\ninto the same image.\"  It is an immense thing to be anchored in\nsome great principle like that.  Emerson says:  \"The hero is the\nman who is immovably centered.\"  Get immovably centered in that\ndoctrine of sanctification.  Do not be carried away by the hundred\nand one theories of sanctification that are floating about in\nreligious literature of the country at the present time; but go to\nthe bottom of the thing for yourself, and see the RATIONALE of it\nfor yourself, and you will come to see that it is a matter of cause\nand effect, and that if you will fulfill the condition laid down\nby Christ, the effect must follow by a natural law.\n\nWhat a prospect!  To be changed into the same image.  Think of\nthat!  That is what we are here for.  That is what we are elected\nfor.  Not to be saved, in the common acceptation, but \"whom He did\nforeknow He also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of\nHis Son.\"  Not merely to be saved, but TO BE CONFORMED TO THE IMAGE\nOF HIS SON.  Conserve that principle.  And as we must spend time\nin cultivating our earthly friendships if we are to have their\nblessings, so we must\n\nSpend time\n\nin cultivating the fellowship and companionship of Christ.  And\nthere is nothing so much worth taking into our lives as a profounder\nsense of what is to be had by living in communion with Christ, and\nby getting nearer to Him.  It will matter much if we take away with\nus some of the thoughts about theology, and some of the new light\nthat has been shed upon the text of Scripture; it will matter\ninfinitely more if our fellowship with the Lord Jesus become a little\ncloser, and our theory of holy living a little more rational.  And\nthen as we go forth, men will take knowledge of us, that we have\nbeen with Jesus, and as we reflect Him upon them, they will begin\nto be changed into the same image.\n\nIt seems to me the preaching is of infinitely smaller account than\nthe life which mirrors Christ.  That is bound to tell; without\nspeech or language--like the voices of the stars.  It throws out\nits impressions on every side.  The one simple thing we have to do\nis to be there--in the right relation; to go through life hand in\nhand with Him; to have Him in the room with us, and keeping us company\nwherever we go; to depend upon Him and lean upon Him, and so have\nHis life reflected in the fullness of its beauty and perfection\ninto ours.\n\nIII.  The first experiment.\n\nThen you reduce religion to a common Friendship?  A common\nFriendship--who talks of a COMMON Friendship?  There is no such\nthing in the world.\n\nOn earth no word is more sublime.  Friendship is the nearest thing\nwe know to what religion is.  God is love.  And to make religion\nakin to Friendship is simply to give it the highest expression\nconceivable by man.  But if by demurring to \"a common friendship\" is\nmeant a protest against the greatest and the holiest in religion\nbeing spoken of in intelligible terms, then I am afraid the\nobjection is all to real.  Men always look for a mystery when one\ntalks of sanctification, some mystery apart from that which must ever\nbe mysterious wherever Spirit works.  It is thought some peculiar\nsecret lies behind it, some occult experience which only the\ninitiated know.  Thousands of persons go to church every Sunday\nhoping to solve this mystery.  At meeting, at conferences, many\na time they have reached what they thought was the very brink of\nit, but somehow no further revelation came.  Poring over religious\nbooks, how often were they not within a paragraph of it; the next\npage, the next sentence, would discover all, and they would be\nborne on a flowing tide forever.  But nothing happened.  The next\nsentence and the next page were read, and still it eluded them;\nand though the promise of its coming kept faithfully up to the end,\nthe last chapter found them still pursuing.\n\nWhy did nothing happen?  Because there was nothing to happen--nothing\nof the kind they were looking for. Why did it elude them?  Because\nthere was no \"it.\"   When shall we learn that the pursuit of holiness\nis simply\n\nThe pursuit of Christ?\n\nWhen shall we substitute for the \"it\" of a fictitious aspiration,\nthe approach to a Living Friend?  Sanctity is in character and not\nin moods; Divinity in our own plain calm humanity, and in no mystic\nrapture of the soul.\n\nAnd yet there are others who, for exactly a contrary reason,\nwill find scant satisfaction here.  Their complaint is not that a\nreligion expressed in terms of Friendship is too homely, but that\nit is still too mystical.  To \"abide\" in Christ, to \"make Christ\nour most constant companion,\" is to them the purest mysticism.  They\nwant something absolutely tangible and absolutely direct.  These\nare not the poetical souls who seek a sign, a mysticism in excess,\nbut the prosaic natures whose want is mathematical definition in\ndetails.  Yet it is perhaps not possible to reduce this problem to\nmuch more rigid elements.  The beauty of Friendship is its infinity.\nOne can never evacuate life of mysticism.  Home is full of it, love\nis full of it, religion is full of it.  Why stumble at that in the\nrelation of man to Christ which is natural in the relation of man\nto man?\n\nIf any one cannot conceive or realize a mystical relation with\nChrist, perhaps all that can be done is to help him to step on\nto it by still plainer analogies from common life.  How do I know\nShakespere or Dante?  By communing with their words and thoughts.\nMany men know Dante better than their own fathers.  Many men know\nDante better than their own fathers.  He influences them more.  As\na spiritual presence he is more near to them, as a spiritual force\nmore real.  Is there any reason why a greater than Shakspere or\nDante, who also walked this earth, who left great words behind Him,\nwho has greater works everywhere in the world now, should not also\ninstruct, inspire and mould the characters of men?  I do not limit\nChrist's influence to this:  it is this, and it is more.  But Christ,\nso far from resenting or discouraging this relation of Friendship,\nHimself proposed it.  \"Abide in me\" was almost His last word to\nthe world.  And He partly met the difficulty of those who feel its\nintangibleness by adding the practical clause, \"If ye abide in Me,\nAND MY WORDS ABIDE IN YOU.\"\n\nBegin with His words.  Words can scarcely ever be long impersonal.\nChrist himself was a Word, a word made Flesh.  Make His words flesh;\ndo them, live them, and you must live Christ.  \"HE THAT KEEPETH\nMY COMMANDMENTS, he it is that loveth Me.\"  Obey Him and you must\nlove Him.  Abide in Him, and you must obey Him.  CULTIVATE His\nFriendship.  Live after Christ, in His Spirit, as in His Presence,\nand it is difficult to think what more you can do.  Take this at\nleast as a first lesson, as introduction.\n\nIf you cannot at once and always feel the play of His life upon\nyours, watch for it also indirectly.  \"The whole earth is full of\nthe character of the Lord.\"  Christ is the Light of the world, and\nmuch of his Light is reflected from things in the world--even from\nclouds.  Sunlight is stored in every leaf, from leaf through coal,\nand it comforts us thence when days are dark and we cannot see the\nsun.  Christ shines through men, through books, through history,\nthrough nature, music, art.  Look for Him there.  \"Every day one\nshould either look at a beautiful picture, or hear beautiful music,\nor read a beautiful poem.\"  The real danger of mysticism is not\nmaking it broad enough.\n\nDo not think that nothing is happening because you do not see\nyourself grow, or hear the whir of the machinery.  All great things\ngrow noiselessly.  You can see a mushroom grow, but never a child.\nPaul said for the comforting of all slowly perfecting souls that\nthey grew \"from character to character.\"  \"The inward man,\" he\nsays elsewhere, \"is renewed from day to day.\"  All thorough work\nis slow; all true development by minute, slight and insensible\nmetamorphoses.  The higher the structure, moreover, the slower the\nprogress.  As the biologist runs his eye over the long Ascent of\nLife, he sees the lowest forms of animals develop in an hour; the\nnext above these reach maturity in a day; those higher still take\nweeks or months to perfect; but the few at the top demand the long\nexperiment of years.  If a child and an ape are born on the same\nday, the last will be in full possession of its faculties and doing\nthe active work of life before the child has left its cradle.  Life\nis the cradle of eternity.  As the man is to the animal in the\nslowness of his evolution, so is the spiritual man to the natural\nman.  Foundations which have to bear the weight of an eternal life\nmust be surely laid.  Character is to wear forever; who will wonder\nor grudge that it cannot be developed in a day?\n\nTo await the growing of a soul, nevertheless, is an almost Divine\nact of faith.  How pardonable, surely, the impatience of deformity\nwith itself, of a consciously despicable character standing before\nChrist, wondering, yearning, hungering to be like that!  Yet must\none trust the process fearlessly and without misgiving.  \"The Lord\nthe Spirit\" will do His part.  The tempting expedient is, in haste\nfor abrupt or visible progress, to try some method less spiritual,\nor to defeat the end by watching for effects instead of keeping\nthe eye on the Cause.  A photograph prints from the negative only\nwhile exposed to the sun.  While the artist is looking to see\nhow it is getting on he simply stops the getting on.  Whatever of\nwise supervision the soul may need, it is certain it can never be\nover-exposed, or that, being exposed, anything else in the world\ncan improve the result or quicken it.  The creation of a new heart,\nthe renewing of a right spirit, is an omnipotent work of God.\nLeave it to the Creator.  \"He which hath begun a good work in you\nwill perfect it unto that day.\"\n\nNo man, nevertheless, who feels the worth and solemnity of what is\nat stake will be careless as to his progress.  To become\n\nLike Christ\n\nis the only thing in the world worth caring for, the thing before\nwhich every ambition of man is folly, and all lower achievement\nvain.\n\nThose only who make this quest the supreme desire and passion of\ntheir lives can ever begin to hope to reach it.  If, therefore, it\nhas seemed up to this point as if all depended on passivity, let\nme now assert, with conviction more intense, that all depends on\nactivity.  A religion of effortless adoration may be a religion\nfor an angel, but never for a man.  No in the contemplative, but\nin the active, lies true hope; not in rapture, but in reality, lies\ntrue life; not in the realm of ideals, but among tangible things,\nis man's sanctification wrought.  Resolution, effort, pain,\nself-crucifixion, agony--all the things already dismissed as\nfutile in themselves, must now be restored to office, and a tenfold\nresponsibility laid upon them.  For what is their office?  Nothing\nless than to move the vast inertia of the soul, and place it, and\nkeep it where the spiritual forces will act upon it.  It is to rally\nthe forces of the will, and keep the surface of the mirror bright\nand ever in position.  It is to uncover the face which is to look\nat Christ, and draw down the veil when unhallowed sights are near.\n\nYou have, perhaps, gone with an astronomer to watch him photograph\nthe spectrum of a star.  As you enter the dark vault of the\nobservatory you saw him being by lighting a candle.  To see the\nstar with?  No; but to adjust the instrument to see the star with.\nIt was the star that was going to take the photograph; it was,\nalso, the astronomer.  For a long time he worked in the dimness,\nscrewing tubes and polishing lenses and adjusting reflectors, and\nonly after much labor the finely focused instrument was brought\nto bear.  Then he blew out the light, and left the start to do its\nwork upon the plate alone.\n\nThe day's task for the Christian is to bring his instrument to bear.\nHaving done that he may blow out his candle.  All the evidences of\nChristianity which have brought him there, all aids to Faith, all\nacts of worship, all the leverages of the Church, all Prayer and\nMeditation, all girding of the Will--these lesser processes, these\ncandle-light activities for that supreme hour, may be set aside.\nBut, remember, it is but for an hour.  The wise man will be he who\nquickest lights his candle; the wisest he who never lets it out.\nTomorrow, the next moment, he, a poor, darkened, blurred soul, may\nneed it again to focus the Image better, to take a mote off the\nlens, to clear the mirror from a breath with which the world has\ndulled it.\n\nNo readjustment is ever required on behalf of the Star.  That is\none great fixed point in this shifting universe.  But THE WORLD\nMOVES.  And each day, each hour, demands a further motion and\nreadjustment for the soul.  A telescope in an observatory follows\na star by clockwork, but the clockwork of the soul is called THE\nWILL.  Hence, while the soul in passivity reflects the Image of\nthe Lord, the Will in intense activity holds the mirror in position\nlest the drifting motion of the world bear it beyond the line of\nvision.  To \"follow Christ\" is largely to keep the soul in such\nposition as will allow for the motion of the earth.  And this\ncalculated counteracting of the movements of the world, this holding\nof the mirror exactly opposite to the Mirrored, this steadying of\nthe faculties unerringly through cloud and earthquake, fire and\nsword, is the stupendous co-operating labor of the Will.  It is\nall man's work.  It is all Christ's work.  In practice it is both;\nin theory it is both.  But the wise man will say in practice, \"It\ndepends upon myself.\"\n\nIn the Gallerie des Beaux Arts in Paris there stands a famous\nstatue.  It was the last work of a great genius, who, like many a\ngenius, was very poor and lived in a garret, which served as a studio\nand sleeping-room alike.  When the statue was all but finished, one\nmidnight a sudden frost fell upon Paris.  The sculptor lay awake\nin the fireless room and thought of the still moist clay, thought\nhow the water would freeze in the pores and destroy in an hour the\ndream of his life.  So the old man rose from his couch and heaped\nthe bed-clothes reverently round his work.  In the morning when the\nneighbors entered the room the sculptor was dead, but the statue\nwas saved!\n\nThe Image of Christ that is forming within us--that is life's one\ncharge.  Let every project stand aside for that.  The spirit of\nGod who brooded upon the waters thousands of years ago, is busy\nnow creating men, within these commonplace lives of ours, in the\nimage of God.  \"Till Christ be formed,\" no man's work is finished,\nno religion crowned, no life has fulfilled its end.  Is the infinite\ntask begun?  When, how, are we to be different?  Time cannot\nchange men.  Death cannot change men.  Christ can.  Wherefore PUT\nON CHRIST.\n\n\n\n\n\nDealing With Doubt.\n\n\n\n\nThere is a subject which I think workers amongst young men cannot\nafford to keep out of sight--I mean the subject of \"Doubt.\"  We are\nforced to face that subject.  We have no choice.  I would rather\nlet it alone; but every day of my life I meet men who doubt, and I\nam quite sure that most Christian workers among men have innumerable\ninterviews every year with men who raise skeptical difficulties\nabout religion.\n\nNow it becomes a matter of great practical importance that we should\nknow how to deal wisely with these.  Upon the whole, I think these\nare the best men in the country.  I speak of my own country.  I speak\nof the universities with which I am familiar, and I say that they\nmen who are perplexed,--the men who come to you with serious and\nhonest difficulties,--are the best men.  They are men of intellectual\nhonesty, and cannot allow themselves to be put to rest by words,\nor phrases, or traditions, or theologies, but who must get to the\nbottom of things for themselves.  And if I am not mistaken,\n\nChrist was very fond\n\nof these men.  The outsiders always interested Him, and touched Him.\nThe orthodox people--the Pharisees--He was much less interested\nin.  He went with publicans and sinners--with people who were in\nrevolt against the respectability, intellectual and religious, of\nthe day.  And following Him, we are entitled to give sympathetic\nconsideration to those whom He loved and took trouble with.\n\nFirst, let me speak for a moment or two about\n\nThe origin of doubt.\n\nIn the first place, WE ARE BORN QUESTIONERS.  Look at the wonderment\nof a little child in its eyes before it can speak.  The child's\ngreat word when it begins to speak is, \"Why?\"  Every child is full\nof every kind of question, about every kind of thing, that moves,\nand shines and changes, in the little world in which it lives.\n\nThat is the incipient doubt in the nature of man.  Respect doubt\nfor its origin.  It is an inevitable thing.  It is not a thing to\nbe crushed.  It is a part of man as God made him.  Heresy is truth\nin the making, and doubt is the prelude of knowledge.\n\nSecondly:  THE WORLD IS A SPHINX.  It is a vast riddle--an unfathomable\nmystery; and on every side there is temptation to questioning.\nIn every leaf, in every cell of every leaf, there are a hundred\nproblems.  There are ten good years of a man's life in investigating\nwhat is in a leaf.  God has planned the world to incite men to\nintellectual activity.\n\nThirdly:  THE INSTRUMENT WITH WHCIH WE ATTEMPT TO INVESTIGATE TRUTH\nIS IMPAIRED.  Some say it fell, and the glass is broken.  Some\nsay prejudice, heredity, or sin, have spoiled its sight, and have\nblinded our eyes and deadened our ears.  In any case the instruments\nwith which we work upon truth, even in the strongest men, are feeble\nand inadequate to their tremendous task.\n\nAnd in the fourth place, ALL RELIGIOUS TRUTHS ARE DOUBTABLE.  There\nis no absolute truth for any one of them.  Even that fundamental\ntruth--the existence of a God--no man can prove by reason.  The\nordinary proof for the existence of a God involves either an\nassumption, argument in a circle, or a contradiction.  The impression\nof God is kept up by experience, not by logic.  And hence, when\nthe experimental religion of a man, of a community, or of a nation\nwanes, religion wanes--their idea of God grows indistinct, and that\nman, community or nation becomes infidel.\n\nBear in mind, then, that all religious truths are doubtable--even\nthose which we hold most strongly.\n\nWhat does this brief account of the origin of doubt teach us?  It\nteaches us\n\nGreat intellectual humility.\n\nIt teaches us sympathy and toleration with all men who venture upon\nthe ocean of truth to find out a path through it for themselves.\nDo you sometimes feel yourself thinking unkind things about your\nfellow-students who have intellectual difficulty?  I know how hard\nit is always to feel sympathy and toleration for them; but we must\naddress ourselves to that most carefully and most religiously.  If\nmy brother is short-sighted I must not abuse him or speak against\nhim; I must pity him, and if possible try to improve his sight, or\nto make things that he is to look at so bright that he cannot help\nseeing.  But never let us think evil of men who do not see as we\ndo.  From the bottom of our hearts let us pity them, and let us take\nthem by the hand and spend time and thought over them, and try to\nlead them to the true light.\n\nWhat has been\n\nThe church's treatment of doubt\n\nin the past?  It has been very simple.  \"There is a heretic.  Burn\nhim!\"  That is all.  \"There is a man who has gone off the road.\nBring him back and torture him!\"\n\nWe have got past that physically; have we got past it morally?  What\ndoes the modern Church say to a man who is skeptical?  Not \"Burn\nhim!\" but \"Brand him!\" \"Brand him!\"--call him a bad name.  And\nin many countries at the present time, a man who is branded as a\nheretic is despised, tabooed and put out of religious society, much\nmore than if he had gone wrong in morals.  I think I am speaking\nwithin the facts when I say that a man who is unsound is looked\nupon in many communities with more suspicion and with more pious\nhorror than a man who now and then gets drunk.  \"Burn him!\"  \"Brand\nhim!\"  \"Excommunicate him!\"  That has been the Church's treatment\nof doubt, and that is perhaps to some extent the treatment which\nwe ourselves are inclined to give to the men who cannot see the\ntruths of Christianity as we see them.\n\nContrast\n\nChrist's treatment\n\nof doubt.  I have spoken already of His strange partiality for the\noutsiders--for the scattered heretics up and down the country; of\nthe care with which He loved to deal with them, and of the respect\nin which He held their intellectual difficulties.  Christ never\nfailed to distinguish between doubt and unbelief.  Doubt is \"CAN'T\nBELIEVE\"; unbelief is \"WON'T BELIEVE.\"  Doubt is honesty; unbelief\nis obstinacy.  Doubt is looking for light; unbelief is content with\ndarkness.  Loving darkness rather than light--that is what Christ\nattacked, and attacked unsparingly.  But for the intellectual\nquestioning of Thomas, and Philip, and Nicodemus, and the many\nothers who came to Him to have their great problems solved, He was\nrespectful and generous and tolerant.\n\nAnd how did He meet their doubts?  The Church, as I have said,\nsays, \"Brand him!\"  Christ said, \"Teach him.\"  He destroyed by\nfulfilling.  When Thomas came to Him and denied His very resurrection,\nand stood before Him waiting for the scathing words and lashing\nfor his unbelief, they never came.  They never came!  Christ gave\nhim facts--facts!  No men can go around facts.  Christ said, \"Behold\nMy hands and My feet.\"  The great god of science at the present\ntime is a fact.  It words with facts.  Its cry is, \"Give me facts.\nFound anything you like upon facts and we will believe it.\"  The\nspirit of Christ was the scientific spirit.  He founded His religion\nupon facts; and He asked all men to found their religion upon facts.\n\nNow, get up the facts of Christianity, and take men to the facts.\nTheologies--and I am not speaking disrespectfully of theology;\ntheology is as scientific a thing as any other science of facts--but\ntheologies are\n\nHuman versions\n\nof Divine truths, and hence the varieties of the versions and the\ninconsistencies of them.  I would allow a man to select whichever\nversion of this truth he liked AFTERWARDS; but I would ask him\nto begin with no version, but go back to the facts and base his\nChristian life upon these.\n\nThat is the great lesson of the New Testament way of looking at\ndoubt--of Christ's treatment of doubt.  It is not \"Brand him!\"--but\nlovingly, wisely and tenderly to teach him.  Faith is never opposed\nto reason in the New Testament; it is opposed to sight.  You will\nfind that a principle worth thinking over.  FAITH IS NEVER OPPOSED\nTO REASON IN THE NEW TESTAMENT, BUT TO SIGHT.\n\nWith these principles in mind as to the origin of doubt, as to\nChrist's treatment of it, how are we ourselves to deal with those\nwho are in intellectual difficulty?\n\nIn the first place, I think WE MUST MAKE ALL THE CONCESSIONS TO\nTHEM THAT WE CONSCIENTIOUSLY CAN.\n\nWhen a doubter first encounters you, he pours out a deluge of abuse\nof churches, and ministers, and creeds, and Christians.  Nine-tenths\nof what he says is probably true.  Make concessions.  Agree with\nhim.  It does him good to unburden himself of these things.  He has\nbeen cherishing them for years--laying them up against Christians,\nagainst the Church, and against Christianity; and now he is startled\nto find the first Christian with whom he has talked over the thing\nalmost entirely agrees with him.  We are, of course, not responsible\nfor everything that is said in the name of Christianity; and now\nhe is startled to find the first Christian with whom he has talked\nover the thing almost entirely agrees with him.  We are, of\ncourse, not responsible for everything that is said in the name\nof Christianity; but a man does not give up medicine because there\nare quack doctors, and no man has a right to give up his Christianity\nbecause there are spurious or inconsistent Christians.  Then, as I\nalready said, creeds are human versions of Divine truths; and we\ndo not ask a man to accept all the creeds, any more than we ask\nhim to accept all the Christians.  We ask him to accept Christ,\nand the facts about Christ and the words of Christ.  You will find\nthe battle is half won when you have endorsed the man's objections,\nand possibly added a great many more to the charges which he has\nagainst ourselves.  These men are\n\nIn revolt\n\nagainst the kind of religion which we exhibit to the world--against\nthe cant that is taught in the name of Christianity.  And if the\nmen that have never seen the real thing--if you could show them\nthat, they would receive it as eagerly as you do.  They are merely\nin revolt against the imperfections and inconsistencies of those\nwho represent Christ to the world.\n\nSecond:  BEG THEM TO SET ASIDE, BY AN ACT OF WILL, ALL UNSOLVED\nPROBLEMS:  such as the problem of the origin of evil, the problem\nof the Trinity, the problem of the relation of human will and\npredestination, and so on--problems which have been investigated for\nthousands of years without result--ask them to set those problems\naside as insoluble.  In the meantime, just as a man who is studying\nmathematics may be asked to set aside the problem of squaring the\ncircle, let him go on with what can be done, and what has been\ndone, and leave out of sight the impossible.\n\nYou will find that will relieve the skeptic's mind of a great deal\nof\n\nUnnecessary cargo\n\nthat has been in his way.\n\nThirdly:  TALKING ABOUT DIFFICULTIES, AS A RULE, ONLY AGGRAVATES\nTHEM.\n\nEntire satisfaction to the intellect is unattainable about any of\nthe greater problems, and if you try to get to the bottom of them\nby argument, there is no bottom there; and therefore you make\nthe matter worse.  But I would say what is known, and what can be\nhonestly and philosophically and scientifically said about one or\ntwo of the difficulties that the doubter raises, just to show him\nthat you can do it--to show him that you are not a fool--that you\nare not merely groping in the dark yourself, but you have found\nwhatever basis is possible.  But I would not go around all the\ndoctrines.  I would simply do that with one or two; because the\nmoment you cut off one, a hundred other heads will grow in its\nplace.  It would be a pity if all these problems could be solved.\nThe joy of the intellectual life would be largely gone.  I would\nnot rob a man of his problems, nor would I have another man rob\nme of my problems.  They are the delight of life, and the whole\nintellectual world would be stale and unprofitable if we knew\neverything.\n\nFourthly--and this is the great point:  TURN AWAY FROM THE REASON\nAND GO INTO THE MAN'S MORAL LIFE.\n\nI don't mean, go into his moral life and see if the man is living\nin conscious sin, which is the great blinder of the eyes--I am\nspeaking now of honest doubt; but open a new door into\n\nThe practical side of man's nature.\n\nEntreat him not to postpone life and his life's usefulness until he\nhas settled the problems of the universe.  Tell him those problems\nwill never all be settled; that his life will be done before he has\nbegun to settle them; and ask him what he is doing with his life\nmeantime.  Charge him with wasting his life and his usefulness;\nand invite him to deal with the moral and practical difficulties\nof the world, and leave the intellectual difficulties as he goes\nalong.  To spend time upon these is proving the less important\nbefore the more important; and, as the French say, \"The good is the\nenemy of the best.\"  It is a good thing to think; it is a better\nthing to work--it is a better thing to do good.  And you have him\nthere, you see.  He can't get beyond that.  You have to tell him,\nin fact that there are two organs of knowledge:  the one reason,\nthe other obedience.  And now tell him there is but One, and lead\nhim to the great historical figure who calls all men to Him:  the\none perfect life--the one Savior of mankind--the one Light of the\nworld.  Ask him to begin to\n\nObey Christ;\n\nand, doing His will, he shall now of the doctrine whether it be of\nGod.\n\nThat, I think, is about the only thing you can do with a man:  to\nget him into practical contact with the needs of the world, and\nto let him lose his intellectual difficulties meantime.  Don't ask\nhim to give them up altogether.  Tell him to solve them afterward\none by one if he can, but meantime to give his life to Christ and\nhis time to the kingdom of God.  You fetch him completely around\nwhen you do that.  You have taken him away from the false side of\nhis nature, and to the practical and moral side of his nature; and\nfor the first time in his life, perhaps, he puts things in their true\nplace.  He puts his nature in the relations in which it ought to\nbe, and he then only begins to live.  And by obedience he will soon\nbecome a learner and pupil for himself, and Christ will teach him\nthings, and he will find whatever problems are solvable gradually\nsolved as he goes along the path of practical duty.\n\nNow, let me, in closing, give an instance of how to deal with\nspecific points.\n\nThe question of miracles is thrown at my head every second day:\n\n\"What do you say to a man when he says to you, 'Why do you believe\nin miracles?'\"\n\nI say, \"Because I have seen then.\"\n\nHe asks, \"When?\"\n\nI say, \"Yesterday.\"\n\n\"Where?\"\n\n\"Down such-and-such a street I saw a man who was a drunkard redeemed\nby the power of an unseen Christ and saved from sin.  That is a\nmiracle.\"\n\nThe best apologetic for Christianity is a Christian.  That is a\nfact which the man cannot get over.  There are fifty other arguments\nfor miracles, but none so good as that you have seen them.  Perhaps,\nyou are one yourself.  But take a man and show him a miracle with\nhis own eyes.  Then he will believe.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nThe Project Gutenberg Etext of Addresses by Henry Drummond\n\n*** x-header ***","title":"Addresses by Henry Drummond","tradition":"scripture-revelation","translated_text":null,"word_count":33124}