^•^^^

^^m

^v'--"/,-

y.- wf

m'^^_

.::^:^

i^.^:

I

'ftwibiwirTWirMiifc

The College-Man

and the Ministry of Christ

* MAY:i:-i[91] *,

A

ti^i

^SlC^l ^^^U'A^J

'HE REV. JAMES BBVERIDGE LEE

^,a.9

^^ PRINCETON, N. J.

'^

BV	639 .C6	L44 1911
Lee	, James	Beveridge.
The	college-man and the
ministry of Christ

The College -Man

and the Ministry of Christ

BY ^

THE REV. JAMES B£VERIDGE LEE, D.D.

Philadelphia, Pa.

Awarded Second Place in the Prixe Eisay Contest

igio

Published by the

Board of Education of the Presbyterian Church

in the U. S. A.

1319 Walnut St., Philadelphia

1911

\si

The College-Man and the Ministry of Christ.

BY THE REV. JAMES BEVERIDGE LEE, D.D.

"Remember the Lord afar off, And let Jerusalem come into your mind." — Jeremiah 51: 50.

Jeremiah has been commanded to speak this message to a people away from home. It is Jehovah's challenge to a nation in exile, — a nation whose decayed rehgious impulse was not merely neglecting to open the win- dows toward Jerusalem, but even neglecting to pray to God.

Less than a generation ago Neb- uchadnezzar's well-discipHned army of invasion had swept over northern Palestine, meeting with as httle resistance as the swelHngs of the

Jordan when they flood the lowlands in the time of harvest. Emboldened by unvarying triumphs the over- whelming wave rolled southward to Jerusalem, leaving its broad track strewn with the wreckage of war. Jerusalem, the pride and hope of a dissolute nation, for a brief time maintained a defence rather by the stubbornness of its walls than by any gallantry of its defenders, — a narrow island in the midst of a turbu- lent sea, — until driven by the lust of conquest, the fierce tide swept above the strongholds of Zion, engulfed the palaces of pride and added to the jetsam of war that splendid temple dedicated to Israel's God. The physi- cal wreckage of the campaign, — a wretched crowd of captives, was borne backward across the Euphrates by the ebbing tide of conquest, and scattered in the midst of world-con- quering Babylon. After the deporta- tion came the exile, and, in the midst

of the exile came a prophet of the Fatherland appealing for heroic altru- ism and fidelity to God.

THREE POTENT TEMPTATIONS.

Temptation to In Babylonia the Commercialism. Hebrew spirit was threatened by three potent temptations, each of them made more seductive by the peculiar conditions of the exile. In ever}^ age commerce has been fascinat- ing to the Jew. He is alert and suc- cessful in every profession, but he is born to business. That is his birth- right. His home is the market-place and his native air is the shop. His own sacred books affirm that God gave him the power to get wealth. That power has never atrophied. Whether he has little capital or large his commercial acumen and his meth- ods of bargaining enable him to succeed where others would utterly

fail. In the period before the exile Jerusalem offered a very restricted field to business enterprise. Palestine contained no great trade emporium, although the caravan route from the Orient to the Occident drew across its length. The world-marts lay out- side. But when the Hebrews were exiled they found in Babylon, opulent with the riches of subjugated nations, unlimited opportunities for the ac- cumulation of untold wealth. The danger was that, in the midst of such opportunities, a greed for gold would develop and neutralize the longing for the home-land; so that, when the exile ended, those who had found it financially profitable, and whose vast fortunes might be applied to the re- building of Jerusalem and its temple, would feel that the sacrifice was too great, and thus selfish advantage would prevail over religious duty. Indeed the records of the restoration show that there were many who

chose to remain in Babylon and serve Mammon, rather than to journey to Jerusalem in the service of God.

Temptation to Besides, Babylon

Sensualism. offered to the exiles

a profusion of sen- sual gratifications. Judea had not lacked innocent pleasures in those days when every man sat under his own vine and fig-tree. Jerusalem had not been without those that were base-born, but the Hebrew life was ordinarily simple and its pleasures recreative. In Babylon the profli- gate crowded out the innocent. Popu- lar craving for amusement developed into a passion and no diversion was certain of patronage unless it was florid, coarse and base. Luxury produced idleness, and idleness dis- soluteness; days became holidays and nights, revels. The exile thrust Israel into all this abandoned life. These

wanton follies beset and allured her. Thus, little by little, self-indulgence weakened self-control and the old heroic ideals yielded to vanity and vice, so that the Hebrew spirit, which was set for the world's pilot-star, faded and grew dim.

Temptation to And, in addition to Irreligion. this, Babylon was

a heathen land. The principal streets were crowded with temples, and unsheltered idol- figures were everywhere. Here Heb- rews who had never mentioned heath- en gods found their names passing readily over their lips; demoralizing superstitions were practiced without protest, and false religious teachings were accepted as commonplaces and tolerated. Synagogues were erected by the pious to preserve the hallowed memories of Moriah, but they were unvisited by the masses; the old

8

psalms were forgotten, the services of the priests were neglected, and the legal code disallowed. Long before the seventy years of exile ended it became evident that God's summons to rebuild His temple and to re- establish His worship would find people useless for His world-purposes by reason of a secularized and irre- ligious life.

Such was Israel's exile environ- ment. Its enticement was so per- sistent and successful that when Nehemiah, under commission of Ar- taxerxes, uttered Jehovah's call for the restoration of Jerusalem, only a "remnant" gave response and re- turned to make Jerusalem the joy of all the earth and the temple a house of prayer for all nations, according to the purpose and the promise of God.

TEMPTATIONS OF THE COLLEGE EXILE.

These facts have a very special

meaning for us who are college-men, because we too are away from home. Student-bodies are segregated. Stu- dent-life is an exile. Separated, for the duty of study, to the college or university quadrangle, we have our own little world, a microcosm, in which we live; but which is, notwith- standing its peculiar atmosphere, a very exact replica of the macrocosm outside. The big-world temptations crowd the campus, they attend the class-rooms more diHgently than do the best students; and beside every study table they are always to be found, unseen but not unfelt. Fore- most in the group are the three temp- tations that always beset exiles.

Commercialism. Commercialism is here insinuating that success is not

what a man is, but what he has;

that it is better to make a living

10

than to make a life, and that a man's business is to get on in the world rather than to help the world to get on — obscuring the awful fact that greed, when it enslaves the intellect to mere wealth -winning, leaves life a misshapen and shriveled dwarf.

Sensualism. Sensualism is here

arguing for self- gratification and ease; opposing self sacrifice and the appeal of the difficult; urging that there are gentlemanly vices, necessary sins and beneficial indul- gences; but concealing the wholesome truth that propriety is not piety; nor respectability, purity; nor cloist- ered sin, virtue. And here too is

Paganism. Paganism, sowing

the student's mind with bewildering

interrogatives ; darkening his soul-

II

windows and dulling his conscious- ness of God; silencing his prayers and interrupting his rehgious prac- tices ; substituting foot-notes and appendices for the fundamental truth-texts of revelation; and deny- ing that aspiration is God's promise of life's possibilities, and that "in- spiration is the prerogative of every man who stands on the windward side of the Almighty."

These are the pecuHar temptations that meet every man who matriculates for study in any college or university. The danger is that when men reach the end of the curriculum and stand at the exit-door of the school career, well equipped and dauntless, with the authoritative summons to the highest possible service of God and man sounding in their ears, they will be so possessed by the bread-and-butter idea of Hfe, so alienated from the cross- bearing Christ, and so depleted in religious enthusiasm that they will

12

live as citizens of Babylon rather than as citizens of the Commonwealth of God. For this reason every college exile should ponder the old-time ap- peal,— "Remember the Lord afar off, and let Jerusalem come into your mind."

REMEMBERING GOD.

Significance to No Hebrew could the Hebrew. remember God without thinking of Him as existing at the heart of his racial history. Jehovah was inter- woven with all his past. To forget Him was to disregard his ancestry. It was to forget "the rock whence he was hewn and the pit whence he was digged." It was "to drink of the water of the old pool but to forget him that fashioned it long ago." It was to disclaim his heirship of far-off genera- tions and his indebtedness to his fathers' God. Nor could a Hebrew

13

remember God without recalling that he had been made partner in a divine world-program. Had not Abraham, newly migrated to Palestine, looked out upon the myriad stars of night and heard Jehovah promise that in him all the families of the earth would be blessed? And were not those promises which had been sung so gloriously by psalmists and declaimed in sublimest rhetoric by prophets still unfulfilled? How could a Heb- rew remember God without becom- ing conscious of God's claim upon his own life? That was the teaching of history, and that was the practical purpose in prophecy. Every thought of Jehovah was an appeal for him to resist the debasing tendencies of exile ; to cut the thread and to break the shuttle by which he was being inter- woven with a life meaningless and useless, and to answer back to the Godhead's call for human help, "Here am I, send me!"

14

Meaning to the Thoughts and feel- College Man. ings akin to these must stir and fer- ment in every exile of the quad- rangle who permits himself to remem- ber God. Our fathers did not always know a Father-God. The records tell us that our Saxon ancestors "wor- shipped the stern Woden, in the forests, at night, where amid the rays of flickering torches they sacrificed their own children in the worship of the gods. We were thus to the very twilight of the modern world." At that time, men whose souls had been fired by the wonderful message carried to them from Bethlehem, and whose eyes had been touched to clear vision of the meanings of life by the Gospel of Calvary, fought their way through the same temptations that beset us, and not counting their fives as owned by themselves, bravely bore the truth-torch to our race of blue-eyed, fierce-spirited giants, and kindled in

15

their hearts that fire-glow of Chris- tianity that makes us what we are.

The Great Today twin nations,

Adventure. speaking the Eng-

lish tongue, sit su- preme in the council chamber of world- powers, — kings among kings. But He whose kindness has made them great has promulgated in Christ the universal law, — "Exalted to give," and declared, "The greatest of all is the servant of all." Our privileges insist upon a propaganda. Our Christianity compels a crusade. It is the very evident expectation of God that the non-Christian world shall find its spiritual blessing through us. But the divine expectation will fail of its fulfilment if those who, because of their college and university privi- leges, have been told off for leadership, fail to assume the functions assigned them, and to accept the undertakings

i6

committed to them. In the past God struggled with our fathers for the privilege of blessing them, — the bless- ing has come. He promises that in the future He will engage in a similar struggle for the blessing of all man- kind,— that blessing waits. Those who remember God will understand why it waits. They will learn that God wants men, strong, capable men, men with red blood and fine spirit, men of intellect, of judgment, of spiritual passion, men who have received freely from God and are able to give freely to their fellow men. They will find God searching every class-room and quadrangle for men like that, whom He may make leaders in the divine work of regenerating a world.

EXILES OF THE QUAD- RANGLE, BY THE GRACE OF GOD AND FOR THE PURPOSES OF GOD AWAY FROM HOME, REMEMBER GOD! YE ARE NOT

17

YOUR OWN, YE ARE BOUGHT WITH A PRICE, THEREFORE GLORIFY GOD IN YOUR BODIES AND IN YOUR SPIRITS WHICH ARE THE LORD'S.

REMEMBERING JERUSALEM.

There is something in the prophet's appeal for a remembrance of God that carries down the years and impinges upon our reHgious indifference, sum- moning us, by the holiest motive, to enlist in God's redemptive under- taking. But when the prophet asks that Jerusalem shall come into mind, is not that an anti-climax, and does it not weaken his appeal? I do not think so. Jerusalem, of which Jere- miah is speaking, is a fire-swept ruin.

The Appeal of It is not the city

Desperate Need, "glorious for situ- ation," "the joy of the whole earth." His appeal does

i8

not spring from its greatness, but from its meanness; not from its populousness, but from its desola- tion; not from its glory, but from its shame. Elsewhere he describes it in this fashion :

"How doth the city sit solitary!

She that was full of people !

The ways of Zion do languish,

None come to her solemn feasts,

All her gates are desolate.

Is it nothing to you all ye that pass by?"

This appeal of helplessness and misery gripped the heart of the patriotic exile with a pathetic imperative that sent him out to rebuild Jerusalem. It was this that came to Nehemiah, in Shushan palace, by the lips of Hanani, lately come from Jerusalem, and so appalled him that the King, seeing his melancholy face, questioned," Why is thy countenance sad? This is nothing else but sorrow of heart." To whom Nehemiah answered, "Let

19

the King live! Why should not my countenance be sad when the city, the place of my fathers' sepulchers, lieth waste and the gates thereof are burned with fire?" Jerusalem was a ruin ; its physical desolation being the accompaniment of a more woful ruin that had overwhelmed an apos- tate nation. To let Jerusalem come into mind meant to renounce personal ambitions, to stretch the mind to un- selfish proportions, and to dignify life with a motive and a purpose worthy of the Hebrew name.

The Soul There are J e r u -

a Ruin. s a 1 e m s in every

spiritual landscape, and ruins in every human soul. Whoever passes among men observing their altars and their creeds, their doubts and their disbeliefs, will dis- cover, like Nehemiah, that the ruins are very wide and that there is " much

20

rubbish," and whoever studies human- ity man by man, will find the ruined temple and the violated shrine in every life. These world-ruins have made their appeal to God. The divine answer to their appeal is Jesus Christ, who is God revealing Himself in human life as its Master-builder. God's plan of restoration is magnifi- cent and His purpose is a divine passion, but the work drags wearily, because the human helpers are few, He designed the rebuilding of Jeru- salem, but his design was compelled to wait for Babylonian volunteers. He planned to replace the temple in its ancient grandeur, but the building was delayed and left incomplete be- cause exiles whom He summoned to become porters and priests, denied Him their service. And God pur- poses the restoration of all the ruins in the world's life. He has promised, not only a holy city, but also a new heaven and a new earth.

21

Servants But these plans

Needed. can be realized only

as His exiles put on the working clothes of servants, as He did whose name they bear, and offer themselves unselfishly and un- reservedly for the rebuilding of life according to the plan of God. These world-ruins make their appeal to us. I am not mistaking the temper of the age when I say that it has dissatisfac- tion in its own disbelief. It is ready to exchange denials for affirmations. It is eager to discover God and to know Him. It is willing to submit its intellect to the authority of truth. It will welcome the man, for it is both searching for him and expecting him, who will interpret truth and vindicate faith in such fashion that the whole man can submit himself, in sincerity, to their sway.

22

Prophets The age is calUng

Needed. for prophets, —

men who have found their way through those be- wildering passages where humanity gropes, who feel and resent the tyranny of sin, who have caught in Jesus Christ the vision of the true and the possible and who wilUngly devote to Him everything by which He may be advantaged in restoring to men their ideal and their hope. The ap- peal of the age should have an en- thusiastic response from the Christian men of the quadrangle, who, sensible of God's help hitherto in their own lives, ought to devote themselves to the helping of God in other lives hereafter, saying with Paul, "As much as in me lies I am ready to preach the gospel."

THE MINISTRY WORTH WHILE.

A writer in a recent journal de- clares that "The sensible and well in-

23

formed as well as the eccentric and hypercritical are asking in all honesty today, ' Is the minister worth while?' " I would answer, — All ministers do not have the same value, much de- pends upon ability and personality. Sometimes a minister is found who is not, apparently, worth while. But the ministry is always worth while.

Calling and It is true that

Career. every calHng is an

opportunity to serve mankind, but it is also true that the supreme empire of service is that to which Jesus Christ gave His Hfe. Man's ministry to man in the things of God is always worth while. You may work upon marble, but better mate- rial is a human life ; you may spread your canvas with beauty, but it is rarer art to color divinely a human soul; you may write a song or sym- phony, but it is higher service to give

24

to men a heart of joy ; you may grind your lens and discover unknown worlds, but it is truer service to enable men to vision the unsuspected good- ness of God ; you may use your meter and balance, charge your crucible and alembic, forge your piston and crank, — but you will better serve men's deepest needs if you tell them the fact of the historical and the living Christ, if you teach them that Chris- tian living is unselfish Hving, that the successful life is the helpful life, and that helpfulness is the imperative of holiness-.

Incarnating There is no calling

the Master. that is more worth

while than the ser- vice of Christ, and in the service of Christ there is no ministry that so closely reproduces His own as that of the gospel preacher. "To be like Christ, to stand in His stead and

25

speak in His behalf, sensible of a divine commission, persuaded that we are His ambassadors not by fallible sacerdotal selection, not by the mar- ket law of supply and demand, but by the immediate, internal, effectual call of God; and thus persuaded, to take the truths of Holy Scripture and unfold, illustrate, amplify them for enlightenment and

W^^* \^ospe^ persuasion, and un- Preachmg? ^ ^, •-,

der the guidance

of the Holy Spirit, to have them intensified by profound personal con- viction, fused in the fires of one's own soul, poured upon waiting ears and hearts from hearts and lips touched with God's own altar-fire, and ac- companied by every possible adjunct of effective posture and voice — this is preaching."* This is the need of the times. There are other divinely-ap- pointed implements and weapons, but the instrument of instruments is the

• "The Ideal Ministry," Johnson, p. 17. 26

preaching of the gospel. Every man who is graduating from student privileges and pressing forward to take a helpful part in the world of men, ought to stretch out his hand toward the Christian ministry with as much eagerness as David, when he reached after Goliath's sword, saying, ' ' There is none like that ! Give it me !' '

EXILES OF THE QUAD- RANGLE, LISTEN! TWO VOICES ARE APPEALING TO YOUR LIFE TODAY. ONE IS A VOICE WITHIN. IT SPEAKS TO YOU OF YOUR PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY. IT REMINDS YOU OF YOUR DUTY AND YOUR DESTINY. IT BIDS YOU REMEMBER GOD!

THE OTHER VOICE IS THE HEART-SOB OF RUINED HUMAN- ITY, THE CONFUSED, MULTI- TUDINOUS OUTCRY OF ITS SOR- ROW AND ITS SIN, ITS YEARN- ING AND ITS HOPE, ITS BE-

27

WILDERMENT AND ITS DIS- TRESS. IT BIDS YOU IvET JERU- SALEM COME INTO YOUR MIND.

IS IT NOT TRUE THAT YOU HEAR THESE VOICES? THEY BRING TO YOU THE PRIVILEGE OF FELLOWSHIP IN THAT PAS- SION FOR GOD AND ENTHUSI- ASM FOR MEN WHICH MAKE THE AGE-LONG ATTRACTION OF THE CROSS: THEY BRING TO YOU THE OPPORTUNITY TO MAKE YOUR LIFE A PART OF THE BLESSED ENGINERY OF REDEMPTION: THEY ARE YOUR CALL TO THE MINISTRY OF CHRIST.

When Jeremiah had delivered his inspired summons, one Hebrew exile, quickened to a sincere soul-passion, uttered his vow of undying faithful- ness to sacred ideals and purposes. His fellow-exiles, swept by the splen- did contagion of his zeal, caught up the words of his vow, and setting them to the solemn music of one of the old chants of the temple service,

28

sang them to hearten one another as they too volunteered their Hves in loyalty to Jehovah and in devotion to the Holy City.

My tongue to my mouth's roof let cleave, Nor e'er my voice in speech employ,

If thee, Jerusalem, I leave.

And count not God my chiefest joy.

CAN YOU SING THAT SONG? WILL YOU DO IT? WILL YOU RESPOND TO THE DIVINE AP- PEAL AND CALL WITH A VOW LIKE THAT? IF THIS SOUL- PASSION IS YOURS, TELL IT OUT! ITS CONTAGION MAY IN- SPIRE OTHERS WHO WILL ALLY THEMSELVES WITH YOU AS PART OF THE GREAT ARMY THAT IS CONSECRATE TO THE PROPAGANDA OF THE CROSS. WHEN THE MEN WHOM CUL- TURE HAS QUALIFIED FOR LEADERSHIP VOW LIKE THAT THE CHURCH WILL BECOME THE JOY OF THE WHOLE EARTH, AND JEHOVAH-JESUS THE WORLD'S GOD.

29

	Date Due
' .■ ■• " *A r,i
- 4S
^

Princeton Theological Semmary-Speer Library

1 1012 01028 1709

^«fif';+.-7"

4