tihvaxy of t:he CKeclo^ical ^tminavy
PRINCETON • NEW JERSEY PRESENTED BY
Rev. C. R. Strong
BV 4501 .D76 1891 Drummond, Henry, 1851-1897 Pax vobiscum
PAX VOBISCUM,
AND
THE GREATEST THING IN THE WORLD.
BY
HENRY DRUMMOND, LL.D., F.R.S.E., F.G.S.,
AUTHOR OF "NATURAL LAW IN THE SPIRITUAL WORLD," ETC.
NEW YORK:
THE POLLARD PUBLISHING COMPANY,
13 Barclay Steeet.
189L
Copyright, 1891,
BT
POLLARD PUBLISHING COMPANY.
Fax Vobiscum,
INTRODUCTION.
Few authors have gained world -famed celebrity so quickly as did Professor Henry Drummond. From the pastorate of an obscure mission station in the island of Malta, he soared gradually in moral intellectuality until, having returned to Glasgow and won the titles of Fellow of the Royal Society of Engineers and Fellow of the Geographical Society, he appeared in North field, Massa- chusetts, in 1887, at the invitation of Mr. Mcody, and shone as a beacon in religious literature.
Born at Stirling— the historic Stirling of the Scottish
royalty— he was educated at the Edinburgh University.
Having joined the ministry, his first evangelical labors
were in far-off Malta. But, soon, his great Christian
soul ached for wider fields, and, returning to Scotland,
he was appointed lecturer at the Free Church College in
Glasgow, and took charge of a workingmen's mission in
that city. Here his philosophical teachings and deep
thought attracted attention ; and in a little while Henry
Drummond had sprung into the first rank of moralists
and social philosophers.
It was at North field, Massachusetts, that he delivered
3
4 Introduction,
the famous lecture, " The Greatest Thing in the World." Here, also, did he earn fame by other wonderful utter- ances.
Divines from every state in the union were present; men whose eloquence had stirred communities almost to frenzy-point. But Drummond talked, not with peculiar eloquence, but with a sense of decision in religious thought which was accepted in positive awe by those who had erstwhile posed as mentors in the science of religion. His arguments were positive. His writings expose his thoughts.
His work, " Natural Law in the Spiritual World," has had a sale in England and America of nearly one million copies. As an African traveller he has added a charming gem to travel-literature in "Tropical Africa." And, later, his brochure, "Pax Vobiscum," sparkles with fervid religious truths and literary ex- cellence.
Recently he has travelled with Professor Geike in the Rocky Mountains ; and it is more than probable that ere long the reading public will be favored with a work from his pen descriptive of that grand panorama of nature.
PAX VOBISCUM.
"Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light."
6
PAX VOBISCUM.
I HEARD this morning a sermon by a distinguished preacher upon " Rest." It was full of beautiful thoughts; but when I came to ask myself, " How does he say I can get Rest ?" there was no answer. The sermon was sin- cerely meant to be practical, yet it contained no experi- ence that seemed to me to be tangible, nor any advice that I could grasp— any advice, that is to say, which could help me to find the thing itself as I went about the world this afternoon.
Yet this omission of what is, after all, the only impor- tant problem, was not the fault of the preacher. The whole popular religion is in the twilight here. And when pressed for reiilly working specifics for the ex- periences with which it deals, it falters, and seems to lose itself in mist.
The want of connection between the great words of religion and every-day life has bewildered and discour- aged all of us. Christianity possesses the noblest words in the language; its literature overflows with tei-ms ex-
8 Pax Vobiscum.
pressive of the greatest and happiest moods which can fill the soul of man. Eest, Joy, Peace, Faith, Love, Light— these words occur with such persistency in hymns and prayers that an observer might think they formed the staple of Christian experience. But on com- ing to close quarters with the actual life of most of us, how surely would he be disenchanted ! I do not think we ourselves are aware how much our religious life is made up of phrases; how much of what we call Chris- tian Experience is only a dialect of the Churches, a mere religious phraseology with almost nothing behind it in what we really feel and know.
To some of us, indeed, the Christian experiences seem further away than when we took the first steps in the Christian life. That life has not opened out as we had hoped ; we do not regret our religion, but we are dis- appointed with it. There are times, perhaps, when wandering notes from a diviner music stray into our spirits; but these experiences come at few and fitful moments. We have no sense of possession in them. When they visit us, it is a surprise. When they leave us, it is without explanation. When we wish their re- turn, we do not know how to secure it.
All which means a religion without solid base, and a poor and flickering life. It means a great bankruptcy in those experiences which give Christianity its personal solace and make it attractive to the world, and a great uncertainty as to any remedy. It is as if we knew everything about health— except the way to get it.
I am quite sure that the difiiculty does not lie in the fact that men are not in earnest. This is simply not the
Pax Vobiscum. 9
fact. All around us Christians are wearing themselves out in trying to be better. The amount of spiritual longing in the world— in the hearts of unnumbered thou- sands of men and women in whom we should never sus- pect it; among the wise and thoughtful; among the young and gay, who seldom assuage and never betray their thirst— this is one of the most wonderful and touching facts of life. It is not more heat that is needed, but more light ; not more force, but a wiser direction to be given to very real energies already there.
The usual advice when one asks for counsel on these questions is, *'Pray." But this advice is far from ade- quate. I shall qualify the statement presently ; but let me urge it here, with what you will perhaps call daring emphasis, that to pray for these things is not the way to get them. No one will get them without praying; but that men do not get them by praying is the simple fact. We have all prayed, and sincerely praj^ed, for such ex- periences as I have named ; prayed, believing that that was the way to get them. And yet have we got them ? The test is experience. I dare not limit prayer; still less the grace of God. If you have got them in this way, it is well. I am speaking to those, be they few or many, who have not got them; to ordinary men in ordinary circumstances. But if we have not got them, it by no means follows that prayer is useless. The correct con- clusion is only that it is useless, or inadequate rather, for this particular purpose. To make prayer the sole re- sort, the universal panacea for every spiritual ill, is as radical a mistake as to prescribe only one medicine for every bodily trouble. The physician who does the last
10 Pax Vobiscum
is a quack; the spiritual adviser who does the first is grossly ignorant of his profession.
To do nothing but pray is a wrong done to prayer itself, and can only end in disaster. It is as if one tried to live only with the lungs, as if one assimilated only air and neglected solid food. The lungs are a first essential, the air is a first essential ; but the body has many members, given for different purposes, secreting different things, and each has a method of nutrition as special to itself as its own activity. While prayer, then, is the character- istic sublimity of the Christian life, it is by no means the only one. And those who make it the sole alternative, and apply it to purposes for which it was never meant, are really doing the greatest harm to prayer itself. To couple the word " inadequate '' with this mighty word is not to dethrone prayer, but to exalt it. What dethrones prayer is unanswered prayer. When men pray for things which do not come that way— pray with sincere belief that prayer, unaided and alone, 'svill compass what they ask — then, not getting what they ask, they often give up prayer. This is the natural history of much atheism, not only an atheism of atheists, but a more terrible atheism of Christians, an unconscious atheism, whose roots have struck far into many souls whose last breath would be spent in denying it. So, I repeat, it is a mistaken Christianity which allows men to cherish a blind belief in the omnipotence of prayer. Prayer, cer- tainly, when the appropriate conditions are fulfilled, is omnipotent, but not blind prayer. Blind prayer is a superstition. Prayer, in its true sense, contains the sane recognition that while man prays in faith, God acts by
Pax VobiscuiJi. 1 1
law. What that means in the immediate connection we shall see presently.
What, then, is the remedy ? It is impossible to doubt that there is o remedy, and it is equally impossible to be- lieve that it is a secret. The idea that some few men, by happy chance or happier temperament, have been given the secret— as if there were some sort of knack or trick of it — is wholly incredible and wrong. Rehgion must be for all ; and the way into its loftiest heights mast be by a gateway through which the peoples of the world may pass.
I shall have to lead up to this gateway by a very fa- miliar path. But as this path is strangely unfrequented where it passes into the religious sphere, I mast ask your forbearance for dwelling for a moment upon the com- monest of commonplaces.
EFFECTS REQUIRE CAUSES.
Nothing that happens in the world happens by chance. God is a God of order. Everything is arranged upon definite principles, and never at random. The world, even the religious world, is governed by law. Charac- ter is governed by law. Happiness is governed by law. The Christian experiences are governed by law. Men, forgetting this, expect Rest, Joy, Peacp, Faith to drop into their souls Prom the air hke snow or rain. But in point of fact they do not do so; and if they did they would no less have their origin in previous activities and be controlled by natural laws. Rain and snow do drop from the air, but not without a long previous history.
12 Pax Vobisciun.
They are the mature effects of former causes. Equally so are Eest and Peace and Joy. They, too, have each a previous history. Storms and winds and calms are not accidents, but brought about by antecedent cir- cumstances. Eest and Peace are but calms in man's in- ward nature, and arise through causes as definite and as inevitable.
EeaUze it thoroughly : it is a methodical not an acci- dental world. If a housewife turns out a good cake, it is the result of a sound receipt, carefully applied. She cannot mix the assigned ingredients and fire them for the appropriate time without producing the result. It is not she who has made the cake ; it is nature. She brings related things together ; sets causes at work ; these causes bring about the result. She is not a creator, but an in- termediary. She does not expect random causes to pro- duce specific effects— random ingredients would only produce random cakes. So it is in the making of Chris- tian experiences. Certain lines are followed; certain effects are the result. These effects cannot but be the result. But the result can never take place without the previous cause. To expect results without ante- cedents is to expect cakes without ingredients. That impossibility is precisely the almost universal expec- tation.
Now what I mainly wish to do is to help you firmly to grasp this simple principle of Cause and Effect in the spiritual world. And instead of applying the principle generally to each of the Christian experiences in turn, I shall examine its application to one in some little detail. The one I shall select is Eest. And I think any one who
Pax Vobiscum, 1 3
follows the application in this single instance will bo able to appl}^ it for himself to all the others.
Take such a sentence as this: African explorers are subject to fevers which cause restlessness and delirium. Note the expression, *' cause restlessness."- Restless- ness has a cause. Clearly, then, any one who wished to get rid of restlessness would proceed at once to deal with the cause. If that were not removed, a doctor might prescribe a hundred things, and all might be taken in turn, without producing the least effect. Things are so arranged in the original planning of the world that cer- tain effects must follow certain causes, and certain causes must be abohshed before certain effects can be removed. Certain parts of Africa are inseparably linked with the physical experience called fever; this fever is in turn infallibly linked with a mental experience called restlessness and delirium. To abolish the mental experi- ence the radical method would be to abolish the physical experience, and the way of abolishing the physical ex- perience would be to abolish Africa, or to cease to go there. Now this holds good for all other forms of Rest- lessness. Every other form and kind of Restlessness in the world has a definite cause, and the particular kind of Restlessness can only be removed by removing the allotted cause.
All this is also true of Rest. Restlessness has a cause : must not Rest have a cause ? Necessarily. If it were a chance world we would not expect this; but, being a methodical world, it cannot be otherwise. Rest, physi- cal rest, moral rest, spiritual rest, every kind of rest has a cause, as certainly as restlessness. Now causes
14 Pii''^ VobisciLin.
are discriminating. There is one kind of cause for every particular effect, and no other; and if one particular effect is desired, the corresponding cause must be set in motion. It is no use proposing finely devised schemes, or going through general pious exercises in the hope that somehow Eest will come. The Christian life is not casual, but causal. All nature is a standing protest against the absurdity of expecting to secure spiritual effects, or any effects, without tliC employment of ap- propriate causes. The Great Teacher dealt what ought to have been the final blow to this infinite irrelevancy by a single question, *' Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles ?"
Why, then, did the Great Teacher not educate His fol- lowers fully ? Why did He not tell us, for example, how such a thing as Rest might be obtained ? The answer is, that He did. But plainly, explicitly, in so many words ? Yes, plainly, explicitly, in so many words. He assigned Rest to its cause, in words with w^hich each of us has been familiar from his earliest childhood.
He begins, you remember— for you at once know the passage I refer to— almost as if Rest could be had with- out any cause: "Come unto me," He says, "and I will give you Rest."
Rest, apparently, was a favor to be bestowed ; men had but to come to Him ; He w^ould give it to every appli- cant. But the next sentence takes that all back. The qualification, indeed, is added instantaneously. For what the first sentence seemed to give was next thing to an impossibility. For how, in a literal sense, can Rest be given ? One could no more give away Rest than he
Pax Vobiscum, 1 5
could give away Laughter. We speak of "causing" laughter, which we can do; but we cannot give it away. When we speak of giving pain, we know perfectly well we cannot give pain away. A.nd when we aim at giving pleasure, all that we do is to arrange a set of circum- stances in such a way as that these shall cause pleasure. Of course there is a sense, and a very wonderful sense, in which a Great Personality breathes upon all who come within its influence an abiding peace and trust. Men can be to other men as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land: much more Christ; much more Christ as Perfect Man ; much more still as Saviour of the world. But it is not this of which I speak. When Christ said He would give men Rest, He meant simply that He would put them in the way of it. By no act of convey- ance would, or could. He make over His own Rest to them. He could give them His receipt for it. That was all. But He would not make it for them. For one thing, it was not in His plan to make it for them; for another thmg, men were not so planned that it could be made for them; and for yet another thing, it was a thousand times better that they should make it for them- selves.
That this is the meaning becomes obvious from the wording of the second sentence: "Learn of me and ye shall ^?id Rest." Rest, that is to say, is not a thing that can be given, but a thing to be acquired. It comes not by an act, but by a process. It is not to be found in a happy hour, as one finds a treasure ; but slowly, as one finds knowledge. It could indeed be no more found in a moment than could knowledge. A soil has to be pre-
1 6 Pax V obis cum,
pared for it. Like a fine fruit, it will grow in one climate and not in another ; at one altitude and not at another. Like all growths it will have an orderly de- velopment and mature by slow degrees.
The nature of this slow process Christ clearly defines when He says we are to achieve Eest by learning. " Learn of me," He says, " and ye shall find rest to your souls." Now consider the extraordinary originality of this utterance. How novel the connection between these two words, ''Learn " and "Rest " ? How few of us have ever associated them — ever thought that Rest was a thing to be learned; ever laid ourselves out for it as we would to learn a language; ever practised it as we would practise the violin ? Does it not show how en- tirely new Christ's teaching still is to the world, that so old and threadbare an aphorism should still be so little known ? The last thing most of us would have thought of would have been to associate Rest with Worl<:.
What must one work at ? What is that which if duly learned will find the soul of man in Rest ? Christ answers without the least hesitation. He specifies two things— Meekness and Lowliness. "Learn of me," He says, "for I am meek and lowly in heart." Now these two things are not chosen at random. To these accom- plishments, in a special way, Rest is attached. Learn these, in short, and you have already found Rest. These as they stand are direct causes of Rest ; will produce it at once; cannot but produce it at once. And if you think for a single moment, j^ou will see how this is necessarily so, for causes are never arbitrarj^, and the connection be-
Pax Vobisciim. 1 7
tween antecedent and consequent here and everywhere lies deep in the nature of thin^.
What is the connection, then? I answer by a further question. What are the chief causes of Unrest f If you know yourself, you will answer, Pride, Selfishness, Am- bition. As you look back upon the past years of your life, is it not true that its unhappiness has chiefly come from the succession of personal mortifications and almost trivial disappointments which the intercourse of life has brought you? Great trials come at lengthened intervals, and we rise to breast them ; but it is the petty friction of our evory-day life with one another, the jar of business or of work, the discord of the domestic circle, the collapse of om- ambition, the crossing of cur will or the taking down of our conceit, which make inward peace impossible. Wounded vanity, then, disappointed hopes, unsatisfied selfishness— these are the old, vulgar, universal sources of man's unrest. Now it is obvious why Christ pointed out as the two chief objects for attainment the exact opposites of these. To meekness and lowliness these things simply do not exist. They cure unrest by making it impossible. These remedies do not trifle with surface symptoms ; they strike at once at removing causes. The ceaseless chagrin of a self-centred life can be removed at once by learning meekness and lowliness of heart. He who learns them is forever proof against it. He lives henceforth a charmed life. Chris- tianity is a fine inoculation, a transfusion of healthy blood into an anaemic or poisoned soul. No fever can attack a perfectly sound body; no fever of unrest can disturb a soul which has breathed the air or learned the
1 8 Pax Vobisciim,
ways of Christ. Men sigh for the wings of a dove that they may fly away and be at Rest. But flying away will not help us. " The Kingdom of God is within you:" We aspire to the top to look for Rest; it lies at the bottom. Water rests only when it gets to the lowest place. So do men. Hence be lowly. The man who has no opinion of himself at all can never be hurt if others do not acknowledge him. Hence, be meek. He who is without expectation cannot fret if nothing comes to him. It is self-evident that these things are so. The lowly man and the meek man are really above all other men, above all other things. They dominate the world because they do not care for it. The miser does not possess gold, gold possesses him. But the meek possess it. "The meek," said Christ, "inherit the earth." They do not buy it; they do not conquer it; but they inherit it.
There are people who go about the world looking out for slights, and they are necessarily miserable, for they find them at every turn— especially the imaginary ones. One has the same pity for such men as for the very poor. They are the morally illiterate. They have had no real education, for they have never learned how to live. Few men know how to live. We grow up at random, carrying into mature life the merely animal methods and motives which we had as little children. And it does not occur to us that all this must be changed ; that much of it must be reversed; that life is the finest of the Fine Arts; that it has to be learned with lifelong patience, and that the years of our pilgrimage are all too short to master it triumphantly.
Yet this is what Christianity is for— to teach rnen the
Pax Vobisaim. 19
Art of Life. And its whole curriculum lies in one word — " Learn of me." Unlike most education, this is almost purely personal; it is not to be had from books or lectures or creeds or doctrines. It is a study from the life. Christ never said much in mere words about the Christian graces. He lived them, He was them. Yet we do not merely copy Him. We learn His art by living with Him, like the old apprentices with their masters.
Now we understand it all ? Christ's invitation to the weary and heavy-laden is a call to begin life over again upon a new principle— upon His own principle. '' Watch my way of doing things," He says. "Follow me. Take life as I take it. Be meek and lowly and you will find Rest."
I do not say, remember, that the Christian life to every man, or to any man, can be a bed of roses. No educational process can be this. And perhaps if some men knew how much was involved in the simple "learn" of Christ, they would not enter His school with so irresponsible a heart. For there is not only much to learn, but much to unlearn. Many men never go to this school at all till their disposition is already half ruined and character has taken on its fatal set. To learn arithmetic is diflQcult at fifty — much more to learn Christianity. To learn simply what it is to be meek and lowly, in the case of one who has had no lessons in that in childhood, may cost him half of what he values most on earth. Do we realize, for instance, that the way of teaching humility is generally by humiliation} There is probably no other school for it. When a man enters
20 Pax Vobiscum.
himself as a pupil in such a school it means a very great thing. There is much Rest there, but there is also much Work.
I should be wrong, even though my theme is the brighter side, to ignore the cross and minimize the cost. Only it gives to the cross a more definite meaning, and a rarer value, to connect it thus directly and causally with the growth of the inner life. Our platitudes on the "benefits of affiiction" are usually about as vague as our theories of Christian Experience. "Somehow," we believe affliction does us good. But it is not a question of " Somehow." The result is definite, calculable, neces- sary. It is under the strictest law of cause and effect. The first effect of losing one's fortune, for instance, is humiliation; and the effect of humiliation, as we have just seen, is to make one humble; and the effect of being humble is to produce Rest. It is a roundabout way, apparently, of producing Rest; but Nature generally works by circular processes; and it is not certain that there is any other way of becoming humble, or of find- ing Rest. If a man could make himself humble to order, it might simplify matters, but we do not find that this happens. Hence we must all go through the mill. Hence death, death to the lower self, is the nearest gate and the quickest road to life.
Yet this is only half the truth. Christ's life outwardly was one of the most troubled lives that was ever lived: tempest and tumult, tumult and tempest, the waves breaking over it all the time till the worn body was laid in the grave. But the inner life was a sea of glass. The great calm was always there. At any moment you
Pax VobisciiDi. 21
might have gone to Him and found Rest. And even when the bloodhounds were dogging Hitn in the streets of Jerusalem, He turned to His disciples and offered them, as a last legacy, "- My peace." Nothing even for a moment broke the serenity of Christ's life on earth. Misfortune could not reach Him; He had no fortune. Food, raiment, money— fountain-heads of half the world's weariness— He simply did not care for; they played no part in His life ; He '' took no thought " for them . It was impossible to affect Him by lowering His reputation ; He had already made Himself of no reputation. He was dumb before insult. When He was reviled, He reviled not again. In fact, there was nothing that the world could do to Him that could ruffle the surface of His spirit.
Such living, as mere living, is altogether unique. It is only when we see what it was in Him that we can know what the word Rest means. It lies not in emotions, nor in the absence of emotions. It is not a hallowed feeling that comes over us in church. It is not something that the preacher has in his voice. It is not in nature, or in poetry, or in music— though in all these there is soothing. It is the mind at leisure from itself. It is the perfect poise of the soul; the absolute adjustment of the inward man to the stress of all outward things ; the prepared- ness against every emergency ; the stability of assured convictions; the eternal calm of an invulnerable faith; the repose of a heart set deep in God. It is the mood of the man who says, with Browning, " God's in His Heaven, all's well with the world."
Two painters each painted a picture to illustrate his conception of rest. The first chose for his scene a still,
22 Pax Vobiscum.
lone lake among the far-off mountains. The second threw on his canvas a thundering waterfall, with a fragile birch- tree bending over the foam ; at the fork of a branch, al- most wet with the cataract's spray, a robin sat on its nest. The first was only Stagnation; the last was Rest. For in Rest there are always two elements— tranquillity and energy ; silence and turbulence ; creation and destruc- tion; fearlessness and fearfulness. This it was in Christ. It is quite plain from all this that whatever else He claimed to be or to do, He at least knew how to live. All this is the perfection of living, of living in the mere sense of passing through the world in the best way. Hence His anxiety to communicate His idea of life to others. He came, He said, to give men life, true life, a more abundant life than they were living; "the life," as the fine phrase in the Revised Version has it, "that is life indeed." This is what He himself possessed, and it was this which He offers to all mankind. And hence His di- rect appeal for all to come to Him who had not made much of life, vvho were weary and heavy-laden. These He would teach His secret. They, also, should know " the hfe that is hfe indeed."
WHAT YOKES ARE FOR.
There is still one doubt to clear up. After the state- ment. " Learn of Me," Christ throws in the disconcerting qualification, " Take my yoke upon you and learn of Me." Why, if all this be true, does He call it a yoke f Why, while professing to give Rest, dues He with the next breath whisper '' burden ^^f Is the Christian life, after
Pax Vobisann. 23
till, what its enemies take it for— an additional weight to the already great woe of life, some extra punctiliousness about duty, some painful devotion to observances, some heavy restriction and trammelling of all that is joyous and free in the world ? Is life not hard and sorrowful enough without being fettered with yet another yoke ?
It is astounding how so glaring a misunderstanding of this plain sAitence should ever have passed into currency. Did you ever stop to ask what a yoke is really for? Is it to be a burden to the animal which wears it? It is just the opposite. It is to make its burden light. Attached to the oxen in any other way than by a yoke, the plough would be intolerable. Worked by means of a yoke, it is light. A yoke is not an instrument of torture; it is an instrument of mercy. It is not a malicious contrivance for making work hard ; it is a gentle device to make hard labor light. It is not meant to give pain, but to save pain. And yet men speak of the yoke of Christ as if it were a slavery, and look upon those who wear it as ob- jects of compassion. For generations we have had homi- lies on "The Yoke of Christ"— some delighting in por- traying its narrow exactions; some seeking in these ex- actions the marks of its divinity; others apologizing for it, and toning it down; still others assuring us that, al- though it be very bad, it is not to be compared with the positive blessings of Christianity. How many, especially among the young, has this one mistaken phrase driven forever away from the kingdom "of God ? Instead of making Christ attractive, it makes Him out a taskmas- ter, narrowing life by petty restrictions, calling for self- denial \vliere none is necessary, making misery a virtue
24 P<^x Vobiscum,
under the plea that it is the yoke of Christ, and happi- ness criminal because it now and then evades it. Ac- cording to this conception, Christians are at best the vic- tims of a depressing fate; their life is a penance; and their hope for the next world purchased by a slow mar- tyrdom in this.
The mistake has arisen from taking the word " yoke" here in the same sense as in the expressions '"^' under the yoke," or " wear the yoke in his youth." But in Christ's illustration it is not W\QJugum of the Roman soldier, but the simple " harness" or "ox-collar" of the Eastern peas- ant. It is the literal wooden yoke which He, with His own hands in the carpenter shop, had probably often made. He knew the difference between a smooth yoke and a rough one, a bad fit and a good fit ; the difference also it made to the patient animal which had to wear it. The rough yoke galled, and the burden was heavy ; the smooth yoke caused no pain, and the load was lightly drawn. The badly fitted harness was a misery; the well- fitted collar was "easy."
And what was the " burden "? It was not some special burden laid upon the Christian, some unique infliction that they alone must bear. It was what all men bear. It was simply life, human life itself, the general burden of life which all must carry with them from the cradle to the grave. Christ saw that men took life painfully. To some it was a weariness, to others a failure, to many a tragedy, to all a struggle and a pain. How to carry this burden of life had been the whole world's problem. It is still the whole world's problem. And here is Christ's so- lution: " Carry it as I do. Take life as I take it. Look
Pax Vo bis cum. 25
at it from My point of view. Interpret it upon My prin- ciples. Take My yoke and leani of Me, and you will find it easy. For My yoke is easy, works easily, sits right upon the shoulders, and therefore My burden is light."
There is no suggestion here that religion will absolve any man from bearing burdens. That would be to absolve him from living, since it is Ufe itself that is the burden. What Christianity does propose is to make it tolerable. Christ's yoke is simply His secret for the alleviation of human life, His prescription for the best and happiest method of living. Men harness themselves to the work and stress of the world in clumsy and unnatural ways. The harness they put on is antiquated. A rough, ill- fitted collar at the best, they make its stra-n and fric- tion past enduring, by placing it where the neck is most sensitive ; and by mere continuous irritation this sensi- tiveness increases until the whole nature is quick and sore.
This is the origin, among other things, of a disease called " touchiness"— a disease which, in spite of its inno- cent name, is one of the gravest sources of restlessness in the world. Touchiness, when it becomes chronic, is a morbid condition of the inward disposition. It is self- love inflamed to the acute point; conceit, ivith a hair- trigger. The cure is to shift the yoke to some other place; to let men and things touch us through some new and perhaps as yet unused part of our nature ; to become meek and lowly in heart while the old sensitiveness is becoming numb from want of use. It is the beautiful work of Christianity everywhere to adjust the burden of life to those who bear it, and them to it. It has a per-
26 Pax Vobiscum.
f ectly miraculous gift of healing. Without doing any vio- lence to human nature it sets it right with life, harmon- izing it with all surrounding things, and restoring those who are jaded with the fatigue and dust of the world to a new grace of living. In the mere matter of altering the perspective of life and changing the proportions of things, its function in lightening the care of man is alto- gether its own. The weight of a load depends upon the attraction of the earth. Suppose the attraction of the earth were removed ? A ton on some other planet, where the attraction of gravity is less, does not weigh half a ton. Now Christianity removes the attraction of the earth ; and this is one way in which it diminishes man's burden. It makes them citizens of another world. What was a ton yesterday is not half a ton to-day. So without changing one's circumstances, merely by off ering a wider horizon and a different standard, it alters the whole as- pect of the world.
Christianity as Christ taught is the truest philosophy of life ever spoken. But let us be quite sure when we speak of Christianity that we mean Christ's Christianity. Other versions are either caricatures, or exaggerations, or misunderstandings, or shortsighted and surface readings. For the most part their attainment is hopeless and the results wretched. But I care not who the person is, or through what vale of tears he has passed, or is about to pass, there is a new life for him along this path.
Pax Vobiscitin. 27
HOW FRUITS GROW.
Were Rest my subject, there are other things I should wish to say about it, a ad other kinds of Rest of which I should like to speak. But that is not my subject. My theme is that the Christian experiences are not the work of magic, but come under the law of Cause and Effect. And I have chosen Rest only as a single illustration of the working of that principle. If there were time I might next run over all the Christian experiences in turn, and show how the same mde law applies to ea^h. But I think it may serve the better purpose if I leave this further exercise to yourselves. I know no Bible study that you will find more full of fruit, or which will take you nearer to the ways of God, or make the Christian life itself more sohd or more sure. I shall add only a single other illustration of what I mean, before I close.
Where does Joy come from ? I knew a Sunday scholar whose conception of Joy was that it was a thing made in lumps and kept somewhere in Heaven, and that when people prayed for it, pieces were somehow let down and fitted into their souls. I am not sure that views as gross and material are not often held by people who ought to be wiser. In reality, Joy is as much a matter of Cause and Effect as pain. No one can get Joy by merely asking for it. It is one of the ripest fruits of the Christian life, and, like all fruits, must be grown. There is a very clever trick in India called the mango-trick. A seed is put in
28 Pax Vobiscum,
the ground and covered up, and after diverse incantations a fuli-blown mango-bush appears within five minutes. I never met any one who knew how the thing was done, but I never met any one who beheved it to be anything else than a conjuring-trick. The world is pretty unani- mous now in its belief in the orderliness of Nature. Men may not know how fruits grow, but they do know that they cannot grow in an hour. Some lives have not even a stalk on which fruits could hang, even if they did grow in an hour. Some have never planted one sound seed of Joy in all their lives ; and others who may have planted a germ or two have lived so little in sunshine that they never could come to maturity.
Whence, then, is Joy ? Christ put His teaching upon this subject into one of the most exquisite of His para- bles. I should in any instance have appealed to His teaching here, as in the case of Eest, for I do not wish you to think I am speaking words of my own. But it so happens that He has dealt with it in words of imusual fulness.
I need not recall the whole illustration. It is the para- ble of the Vine. Did you ever think why Christ spoke that parable ? He did not merely throw it into space as a fine illustration of general truths. It was not simply a statement of the mystical union, and the doctrine of an indwelling Christ. It was that; but it was more. After He had said it. He did what was not an unusual thing when He was teaching His greatest lessons. He turned to the disciples and said He would tell them why He had spoken it. It was to tell them how to get Joy. *' These things have I spoken unto you," He said, " that
Pax Vobiscum, 29
My Joy might remain in you and that your Joy might be full." It was a purposed and deliberate communica- tion of His secret of Happiness.
Go back over these verses, then, and you will find the Causes of this Effect, the spring, and the^ only spring, out of which true Happiness comes. I am not going to ana- lyze them in detail. T ask you to enter into the words for yourselves. Remember, in the first place, that the Vine was the Eastern symbol of Joy. It was its fruit that made glad the heart of man. Yet, however inno- cent that gladness— for the expressed juice of the grape was the common drink at every peasant's board— the gladness was only a gross and passing thing. This was not true happiness, and the vine of the Palestine vine- yards was not the true vine. Christ was "the true Vine." Here, then, is the ultimate source of Joy. Through whatever media it reaches us, all true Joy and Gladness find their source in Christ. By this, of course, is not meant that the actual Joy experienced is trans- ferred from Christ's nature, or is something passed on from Him to us. What is passed on is His method of getting it. There is, indeed, a sense in which we can share another's joy or another's sorrow. But that is another matter. Christ is the source of Joy to men in the sense in which He is the source of Rest. His people share His life, and therefore share its consequences, and one of these is Joy. His method of living is one that in the nature of things produces Joy. When He spoke of His Joy remaining with us He meant in part that the causes which produced it should continue to act. His followers, that is to say, by repeating His life would ex-
30 Pax Vobisciun.
perience its accompaniments. His Joy, His kind of Joy, would remain with them.
The medium through which this Joy comes is next ex- plained: "He that; abideth in Me, the same bringeth forth much fruit." Fruit first, Joy next; the one the cause or medium of the other. Fruit-bearing is the necessary antecedent; Joy both the necessary conse- quent and the necessary accompaniment. It lay partly in the bearing fruit, partly in the fellowship which made that possible. Partly, that is to say, Joy lay in mere constant living in Christ's presence, with all that that implied of peace, of shelter, and of love; partly in the influence of that Life upon mind and character and will; and partly in the inspiration to live and work for others, with all that that brought of self-riddance and joy in others' gain. All these, in different waj^s and at different times, are sources of pure Happiness. Even the simplest of them— to do good to other people— is an instant and infallible specific. There is no mystery about Happiness whatever. Put in the right ingredients and it must come out. He that abideth in Him will bring forth much fruit ; and bringing forth much fruit is Happiness. The infallible receipt for Happiness, then, is to do good; and the infallible receipt for doing good is to abide in Christ. The surest proof that all this is a plain matter of Cause and Effect is that men may try every other conceivable way of finding happiness, and thej^ will fail. Only the right cause in each case can produce the right effect.
Then the Christian experiences are our own making ? In the same sense in which grapes are our own making, and no more. All fruits g^row— whether they grow in the
Pax Vobiscuin. 31
soil or in the soul; whether they are the fruits of the wild grape or of the True Vine. No man can make things grow. He can get them to grow by arranging all the circumstances and fulfilling all the conditions. But the growing is done by God. Causes and effects are eternal arrangements, set in the constitution of the world; fixed beyond man's ordering. What man can do is to place himself in the midst of a chain of spquences. Thus he cen get things to grow: thus he himself can grow. But the grower is the Spirit of God.
What more need I add but this— test the method by experiment. Do not imagine that you have got these things because you know how to get them. As well try to feed upon a cookery book. But I think I can promise that if you try in this simple and natural way, you will not fail. Spend the time you have spent in sighing for fruits in fulfilling the conditions of their growth. The fruits will come, must come. We have hitherto paid immense attention to effects, to the mere experiences themselves; we have described them, extolled them, advised them, prayed for them — done everything but find out what caused them. Henceforth let us deal with causes. "To be," says Lotze, ''is to be in relations." About every other method of living the Christian life there is an uncertainty. About every other method of acquiring the Christian experiences there is a "perhaps." But in so far as this method is the way of nature, it can- not fail. Its guarantee is the laws of the universe— and these are " the Hands of the Living God."
32 . Pax Vobiscum.
THE TRUE VINE.
"I AM the true vine, and my Father is the husband- man. Every branch in me that beareth not fruit he taketh away: and every branch that beareth fruit, he purge th it, that it may bring forth more fruit. Now ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you. Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine ; no more can ye, except ye abide in me. I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing. If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered ; and men gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned. If ye abide in me, and my word abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you. Herein is my Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit; so ye shall be my disciples. As the Father hath loved me, so have I loved you : con- tinue ye in my love. If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love; even as I have kept my Father's commandments, and abide in his love. These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full."
THE END.
THE GREATEST THING IN THE WORLD.
Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not Love, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and under- stand all mysteries, and all knowledge ; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not Love, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not Love, it profiteth me nothing.
Love suffereth long, and is kind ;
Love envietli not ;
Love vaimteth not itself, is not puffed up,
Doth not behave itself unseemly,
Seeketh not her own,
Is not easily provoked,
Thinketh no evil ;
Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth ;
Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things.
endmeth all thmgs.
Love never faileth : but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail ; whether there be tongues, they shall cease ; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away. For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. But w^hen that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away. When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child : but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see through a glass, darkly ; but then face to face : now I know in part ; but then shall I know even as also I am known. And now abideth faith, hope, Love, these three ; but the greatest of these is Love. — 1 Cor. xiii.
THE
GREATEST THING IN THE WORLD.
Every one has asked himself the great question of antiquity as of the modern world: What is the simimum honum — the supreme good ? You have life before you. Once only you can live it. What is the noblest object of desire, the supreme gift to covet ?
We have been accustomed to be told that the greatest thing in the religious world is Faith. That great word has been the key-note for centuries of the popular rehg- ion ; and we have easily learned to look upon it as the greatest thing in the world. Well, we are wrong. If we have been told that, we may miss the mark. I have taken you, in the chapter which I have just read, to Christianity at its source; and there we have seen, " The greatest of these is love." It is not an oversight. Paul was speaking of faith just a moment before. He says, " If I have all faith, so that I can remove mountains, and have not love, I am nothing." So far from forgetting, he deliberately contrasts them, "Now abideth Faith, Hope, Love," and without a moment's hesitation the
decision faUs, " The greatest of these is Love."
37
38 The Greatest Thing in the World,
And it is not prejudice. A man is apt to recommend to others his own strong point. Love was not Paul's strong point. The observing student can detect a beauti- ful tenderness growing and ripening all through his character as Paul gets old; but the hand that wrote, *'The greatest of these is love," when we meet it first, is stained with blood.
Nor is this letter to the Corinthians peculiar in singling out love as the summum honum. The masterpieces of Christianity are agreed about it. Peter says, " Above aE things have fervent love among yourselves." Above all things. And John goes farther, "God is love." And you remember the profound remark which Paul makes elsewhere, "Love is the fulfilling of the law." Did you ever think what he meant by that ? In those days men were working their passage to Heaven by keeping the Ten Commandments, and the hundred and ten other commandments which they had manufactured out of them. Christ said, I will show you a more simple way. If you do one thing, you will do these hundred and ten things, without ever thinking about them. If you love, you will unconsciously fulfil the whole law. And you can readily see for yourselves how that must be so. Take any of the commandments. " Thou shalt have no other gods before Me." If a man love God, you will not require to tell him that. Love is the fulfiUing of that law. "Take not His name in vain." Would he ever dream of taking His name in vain if he loved Him ? "Eemember the Sabbath day to keep it holy." Would he not be too glad to have one day in seven to dedicate more exclu- sively to the object of his affection ? Love would fulfil all
The Greatest Thing in the World. 39
these laws regarding God. And so, if he loved Man, you would never think of telling him to honor his father and mother. He could not do anything else. It would be preposterous to tell him not to kill. You could only insult him if you suggested that he should not steal— how could he steal from those he loved ? It would be super- fluous to beg him not to bear false witness against his neighbor. If he loved him it would be the last thing he would do. And you would never dream of urging him not to covet what his neighbors had. He would rather they possessed it than himself. In this way "Love is the fulfilling of the law." It is the rule for fulfilling all rules, the new commandment for keeping all the old commandments, Christ's one secret of the Christian hfe.
Now Paul had learned that; and in this noble eulogy he has given us the most wonderful and original account extant of the summum honum. We may divide it into three parts. In the beginning of the short chapter, we have Love contrasted ; in the heart of it, we have Love analyzed ; towards the end, we have Love defended as the supreme gift.
THE CONTEAST.
Paul begins by contrasting Love with other things that men in those days thought much of. I shall not attempt to go over those things in detail. Their in- feriority is already obvious.
He contrasts it with eloquence. And what a noble gift it is, the power of playing upon the souls and wills of men, and rousing them to lofty purposes and holy deeds. Paul says, "If I speak with the tongues of men
40 The Greatest Thing in the World.
and of angels, and have not love, I am become as sound- ing brass, or a tinkling cymbal." And we all know ■why. We have all felt the brazenness of words without emotion, the hollowness, the unaccountable unpersua- siveness, of eloquence behind which lies no Love.
He contrasts it with prophecy. He contrasts it with mysteries. He contrasts it with faith. He contrasts it with charity. Why is Love greater than faith ? Be- cause the end is greater than the means. And why is it greater than charity ? Because the whole is greater than the part. Love is greater than faith, because Uie end is greater than the means. What is the use of having faith ? It is to connect the soul with God. And what is the object of connecting man with God ? That he may become like God. But God is Love. Hence Faith, the means, is in order to Love, the end. Love, therefore, obviously is greater than faith. It is greater than charity, again, because the whole is greater than a part. Charity is only a little bit of Love, one of the innumerable avenues of Love, and there may even be, and there is, a great deal of charity without Love. It is a very easy thing to toss a copper to a beggar on the street; it is generally an easier thing than not to do it. Yet Love is just as often in the withholding. We purchase relief from the sympathetic feelings roused by the spectacle of misery, at the copper's cost. It is too cheap— too cheap for us, and often too dear for the beg- gar. If we really loved him we would either do more for him, or less. JC,-f. .
Then Paul contrasts it with sacrifice and martyrdom. And I beg the little band of would-be missionaries— and
The Greatest T J ting in the World. 41
I have the honor to call some of you by this name for the first time— to remember that though you give your bodies to be burned, and have not Love, it profits nothing— nothing ! You can take nothing greater to the heathen world than the impress and reflection of the Love of God upon your own character. That is the universal language. It will take you years to speak in Chinese, or in the dialects of India. From the day you land, that language of Love, understood by all, will be pouring forth its unconscious eloquence. It is the man who is the missionary, it is not his words. His charac- ter is his message. In the heart of Africa, among the great Lakes, I have come across black men and women who remembered the only white man they ever saw be- fore—David Livingstone ; and as you cross his footsteps in that dark continent, men's faces light up as they speak of the kind Doctor who passed there years ago. They could not understand him; but they felt the Love that beat in his heart. Take into your new sphere of labor, where you also mean to lay down your life, that simple charm, and your lifework must succeed. You can take nothing greater, you need not take nothing less. It is not worth while going if you take anything less. You may take every accomplishment ; you may be braced for every sacrifice; but if you give your body to be burned, and have not Love, it wiU profit you and the cause of Christ nothing.
THE ANALYSIS.
After contrasting Love with these things, Paul, in three verses, very short, gives us an amazing analysis of
42 The Greatest Thing in the World.
what this supreme thing is. I ask you to look at it. It is a compound thing, he tells us. It is like light. As you have seen a man of science take a beam of light and pass it through a crystal prism, as you have seen it come ont on the other side of the prism broken up into its component colors— red, and blue, and yellow, and violet, and orange, and all the colors of the rainbow— so Paul passes this thing, Love, through the magnificent prism of his inspired intellect, and it comes out on the other side broken up into its elements. And in these few words we have what one might call the Spectrum of Love, the analysis of Love. Will you observe what its elements are ? Will you notice that they have common names ; that they are virtues which we hear about every day, that they are things which can be practised by every man in every place in life; and how, by a multi- tude of small things and ordinary virtues, the supreme thing, the summum bonum, is made up ?
The Spectrum of Love has nine ingredients :— Patience . . "Love suffereth long." Kindness . . "And is kind." Generosity . " Love envieth not." Humility . ' ' Love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed
up." Courtesy . . " Doth not behave itself unseemly." Unselfishness " Seeketh not her own." Good Temper " Is not easily provoked." Guilelessness " Thinketh no evil." Sincerity . . " Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth
in the truth."
TJic Greatest Thing in the World. 43
Patience; kindness; generosity; humility; courtesy; unselfishness; good temper; guilelessness ; sincerity — these make up the supreme gift, the stature of the per- fect man. You will observe that all are in relation to men, in relation to life, in relation to the known to-day and the near to-morrow, and not to the unknown eter- nity. We hear much of love to God ; Christ spoke much of love to man. We make a great deal of peace with heaven ; Christ made much of peace on earth. Religion is not a strange or added thing, but the inspiration of the secular life, the breathing of an eternal spirit through this temporal world. The supreme thing, in short, is not a thing at all, but the giving of a further finish to the multitudinous words and acts which make up the sum of every common day.
There is no time to do more than make a passing note upon each of these ingredients. Love is Patience. This is the normal attitude of Love; Love passive. Love wait- ing to begin; not in a hurry; calm ; ready to do its work when the summons comes, but meantime wearing the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit. Love suffers long; beareth all things; believeth all things; hopeth all things. For Love understands, and therefore waits.
Kindness. Love active. Have you ever noticed how much of Christ's hfe was spent in doing kind things— in merely doing kind things ? Rim over it with that in view, and you will find that He spent a great proportion of His time simply in making people happy, in doing good turns to people. There is only one tiling greater than happiness in the world, and that is holiness; and it • is not in our keeping; but what God has put in our
44 The Greatest Thing in the World.
power is the happiness of those about us, and that is largely to be secured by our being kind to them.
<< The greatest thing," says some one, "a man can do for his Heavenly Father is to be kind to some of His other children." I wonder why it is that we are not all kinder than we are ? How much the world needs it ! How easily it is done! How instantaneously it- acts! How infallibly it is remembered ! How superabundantly it pays itself back !— for there is no debtor in the world so honorable, so superbly honorable, as Love. "Love never faileth." Love is success, Love is happiness, Love is life. "Love, I say," with Browning, "is energy of Life."
** For life, with all it yields of joy or woe And hope and fear.
Is just our chance o' the prize of learning love, — How love might be, hath been indeed, and is."
Where Love is, God is. He that dwelleth in Love dwelleth in God. God is Love. Therefore love. With- out distinction, without calculation, without procrasti- nation, love. Lavish it upon the poor, where it is very easy; especially upon the rich, who often need it most; most of all upon our equals, where it is very difficult, and for whom perhaps we each do least of all. There is a difference between trying to please ari^ giving pleasure. Give pleasure. Lose no chance of giving pleasure. For that is the ceaseless and anonymous triumph of a truly loving spirit. "I shall pass through this world but once. Any good thing therefore that I can do, or any kindness that I can show to any human being, let me do
The Greatest Thing in the World. 45
it now. Let me not defer it or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again."
Generosity. "Love envieth not." This is love in com- petition with others. Whenever you attempt a good work you will find other men doing the same kind of work, and probably doing it better. Envy them not. Envy is a feeling of ill-will to those who are in the same line as ourselves, a spirit of covetousness and detraction. How little Christian work even is a protection against un-Christian feeling ! That most despicable of all the un- worthy moods which cloud a Christian's soul assuredly waits for us on the threshold of every work, unless we are fortified with this grace of magnanimity. Only one thing truly need the Christian envy, the large, rich, generous soul which " envieth not."
And then, after having learned all that, you have to learn this further thing. Humility—to put a seal upon your lips and forget what you have done. After you have been kind, after Love has stolen forth into the world and done its beautiful work, go back into the shade again and say nothing about it. Love hides even from itself . Love waives even self-satisfaction. "Love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up."
The fifth ingredient is a somewhat strange one to find in this summum bonum : Courtesy. This is Love in society, Love in relation to etiquette. "Love doth not behave itself unseemly." Pohteness has been defined as love in trifles. Courtesy is said to be love in little things. And the one secret of politeness is to love. Love cannot be- have itself unseemly. You can put the most untutored persons into the highest society, and if they have a
4-6 The Greatest Thing in the World.
reservoir of Love in their heart, they will not behave themselves unseemly. They simply cannot do it. Car- lyle said of Robert Burns that there was no truer gentle- man in Europe than the ploughman-poet. It was be- cause he loved everything— the mouse, and the daisy, and all the things, great and small, that God had made. So with this simple passport he could mingle with any society, and enter courts and palaces from his little cot- tage on the banks of the Ayr. You know the meaning of the word "gentleman." It means a g:entle man— a man who does things gently with love. And that is the whole art and mystery of it. The gentle man cannot in the nature of things do an ungentle, an ungentlemanly thing. The ungentle soul, the inconsiderate, unsympa- thetic nature cannot do anything else. " Love doth not behave itself unseemly."
TJ7iselfisliness. "Love seeketh not her own." Ob- serve: Seeketh not even that which is her own. In Britain the Englishman is devoted, and rightly, to his rights. But there come times when a man may exercise even the higher right of giving up his rights. Yet Paul does not summon us to give up our rights. Love strikes much deeper. It would have us not seek them at all, ignore them, eliminate the personal element altogether from our calculations. It is not hard to give up our rights. They are often external. The difficult thing is to give up ourselves. The more difficult thing still is not to seek things for ourselves at all. After we have sought them, bought them, won them, deserved them, we have taken the cream off them for ourselves already. Little cross then perhaps to give them up. But not to
TJlc Greatest Thing in the World, 47
seek them, to look every man not on his own things, but on the things of others— icZ opus est. "Seekest thou great things for thyself ?" said the prophet; '^ seek them noty Why ? Because there is no greatness in things. Things cannot be great. The only greatness is unselfish love. Even self-denial in itself is nothing, is almost a mistake. Only a great purpose or a mightier love can justify the waste. It is more diflScult, I have said, not to seek our own at all than, having sought it, to give it up. I must take that back. It is only true of a partly selfish heart. Nothing is a hardship to Love, and nothing is hard. I believe that Christ's yoke is easy. Christ's "yoke "is just His way of taking life. And I believe it is an easier way than any other. I believe it is a happier way than any other. The most obvious lesson in Christ's teaching is that there is no happiness in hav- ing and getting anything, but only in giving. I repeat, there is no happiness in having or in getting, but only in giving. And half the world is on the wrong scent in the pursuit of happiness. They think it consists in having and getting, and in being served by others. It consists in giving, and in serving others. He that would be great among you, said Christ, let him serve. He that would be happy, let him remember that there is but one way— it is more blessed, it is more happy, to give than to receive.
The next ingredient is a very remarkable one : Good Temper. ' ' Love is not easily provoked. " Nothing could be more striking than to find this here. We are inclined to look upon bad temper as a very harmless weakness. We speak of it as a mere infirmity of natm*e, a family
48 The Greatest Thing in the World,
failing, a matter of temperament, not a thing to take into very serious account in estimating a man's charac- ter. And yet here, right in the heart of this analysis of love, it finds a place ; and the Bible again and again re- turns to condemn it as one of the most destructive ele- ments in human nature.
The peculiarity of ill temper is that it is the vice of the virtuous. It is often the one blot on an otherwise noble character. You know men who are all but per- fect, and women who would be entirely perfect, but for an easily ruffled, quick-tempered, or "touchy" dispo- sition. This compatibility of ill temper with high moral character is one of the strangest and saddest problems of ethics. The truth is there are two great classes of sins — sins of the Body^ and sins of the Disposition, The Prodigal Son may be taken as a type of the first, the Elder Brother of the second. Now society has no doubt whatever as to which of these is the worse. Its brand falls, without a challenge, upon the Prodigal. But are we right ? We have no balance to weigh one another's sins, and coarser and finer are but human words; but faults in the higher nature may be less venial than those in the lower, and to the eye of Him who is Love, a sin against Love may seem a hundred times more base. No form of vice, not worldliness, not greed of gold, not drunkenness itself, does more to un-Christianize society than evil temper. For embittering life, for breaking up communities, for destroying the most sacred relation- ships, for devastating homes, for withering up men and women, for taking the bloom off childhood, in short, for sheer gratuitous misery-producing power, this influence
The Greatest Thing in the World. 49
stands alone. Look at the Elder Brother, moral, hard- working, patient, dutiful— let him get all credit for his virtues — look at this man, this baby, sulking outside his own father's door. "He was angry," we read, "and would not go in." Look at the effect upon the father, upon the servants, upon the happiness of the guests. Judge of the effect upon the Prodigal— and how many prodigals are kept out of the Kingdom of God by the unlovely character of those who profess to be inside? Analyze, as a study in Temper, the thunder-cloud itself as it gathers upon the Elder Brother's brow. What is it made of? Jealousy, anger, pride, uncharity, cruelty, self -righteousness, toucliiness, doggedness, sullenness — these are the ingredients of this dark and loveless soul. In varying proportions, also, these are the ingredients of all ill temper. Judge if such sins of the disposition are not worse to live in, and for others to live with, than sins of the body. Did Christ indeed not answer the question Himself when He said, "I say unto you, that the pub- licans and the hai'lots go into the Kingdom of Heaven before you" ? There is really no place in Heaven for a disposition like this. A man with such a mood could only make Heaven miserable for all the people in it. Except, therefore, such a man be born again, he cannot, he simply cannot, enter the Kingdom of Heaven. For it is perfectly certain— and you will not misunderstand me— that to enter Heaven a man must take it with him. You will see then why Temper is significant. It is not in what it is alone, but in what it reveals. This is why I take the liberty now of speaking of it with such un- usual plainness. It is a test for love, a symptom, a reve-
50 The Greatest Thing in the World.
lation of an unloving nature at bottom. It is the inter- mittent fever which bespeaks unintermittent disease within; the occasional bubble escaping to the surface which betrays some rottenness underneath ; a sample of the most hidden products of the soul dropped involun- tarily when off one's guard; in a word, the lightning form of a hundred hideous and un-Christian sins. For a want of patience, a want of kindness, a want of gen- erosity, a want of courtesy, a want of unselfishness, are all instantaneously symbolized in one flash of Temper.
Hence it is not enough to deal with the Temper. We must go to the source, and change the inmost nature, and the angry humors will die away of themselves. Souls are made sweet not by taking the acid fluids out, but by putting something in— a great Love, a new Spirit, the Spirit of Christ. Christ, the Spirit of Christ, inter- penetrating ours, sweetens, purifies, transforms all. This only can eradicate what is wrong, work a chemical change, renovate and regenerate, and rehabilitate the inner man. Will-power does not change men. Time does not change men. Christ does. Therefore "Let that mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus." Some of us have not much time to lose. Remember, once more, that this is a matter of life or death. I can- not help speaking urgently, for myself, for yourselves. "Whoso shall ofiend one of these little ones, which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea." That is to say, it is the delib- erate verdict of the Lord Jesus that it is better not to live than not to love. It is better not to live than not to love,
TJic Greatest Thing in the World. 5 1
Guilelessness and Sincerity may be dismissed almost with a word. Guilelessness is the grace for suspicious people. And the possession of it is the great secret of personal influence. You will find, if you think for a moment, that the people who influence you are people who believe in you. In an atmosphere of suspicion men shrivel up \ but in that atmosphere they expand, and find encouragement and educative fellowship. It is a wonderful thing that here and there in this hard, un- charitable world there should still be left a few rare souls who think no evil. This is the great unworldliness. Love "thinketh no evil," imputes no motive, sees the bright side, puts the best construction on every action. What a delightful state of mind to live ia ! What a stimulus and benediction even to meet with it for a day ! To be trusted is to be saved. And if we try to influence or elevate others, we shall soon see that success is in pro- portion to their belief of our belief in them. For the respect of another is the first restoration of the self- respect a man has lost; our ideal of what he is becomes to him the hope and pattern of what he may become.
" Love rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth." I have called this Sincerity from the words rendered in the Authorized Version by " rejoiceth in the truth." And, certainly, were this the real translation, nothing could be more just. For he who loves will love Truth not less than men. He will rejoice in the Truth — rejoice not in what he has been taught to beUeve ; not in this Church's doctrine or in that ; not in this ism or in that ism; but " in the Truth.'" He will accept only what is real ; he will strive to get at facts ; he will search for
52 The Greatest Thing in the World.
Truth with a humble and unbiassed mind, and cherish whatever he finds at any sacrifice. But the more literal translation of the Eevised Version calls for just such a sacrifice for truth's sake here. For what Paul really- meant is, as we there read, "Rejoiceth not in unright- eousness, but rejoiceth with the truth," a quality which probably no one English word— and certainly not Sin- cerity—adequately defines. It includes, perhaps more strictly, the self-restraint which refuses to make capital out of others' faults ; the charity which delights not in exposing the weakness of others, but ' ' covereth all things;" the sincerity of purpose which endeavors to see things as they are, and rejoices to find them better than suspicion feared or calumny denounced.
So much for the analysis of Love. Now the business of our lives is to have these things fitted into our charac- ters. That is the supreme work to which we need to address ourselves in this world, to learn Love. Is life not full of opportunities for learning Love ? Every man and woman every day has a thousand of them. The world is not a playground; it is a schoolroom. Life is not a holiday, but an education. And the one eternal lesson for us all is hoiv better ive can love. What makes a man a good cricketer ? Practice. What makes a man a good artist, a good sculptor, a good musician ? Prac- tice. What makes a man a good linguist, a good sten- ographer ? Practice. What makes a man a good man ? Practice. Nothing else. There is nothing capricious about religion. We do not get the soul in different ways', under different laws, from those in which we get the body and the mind. If a man does not exercise his arm
TJie Greatest Tiling in the World. 5 3
he develops no biceps muscle; and if a inan does not ex- ercise his soul, he acquires no muscle in his soul, no strength of character, no vigor of moral fibre, nor beauty of spiritual pn^owth. Love is not a thing of enthusiastic emotion. It is a rich, strong, manly, vigorous expression of the whole round Christian character— the ChristUke nature in its fullest development. And the constituents of this great character are only to be built up by ceaseless practice.
What was Christ doing in the carpenter's shop? Practising. Though perfect, we read that He learned obedience, and grew in wisdom and in favor with God. Do not quarrel therefore with your lot in life. Do not complain of its never-ceasing cares, its petty environ- ment, the vexations you have to stand, the small and sordid souls you have to live and work with. Above all, do not resent temptation ; do not be perplexed because it seems to thicken round you more and more, and ceases neither for effort nor for agon 3' nor prayer. That is your practice. That is the practice which God appoints you ; and it is having its work in making you patient, and humble, and generous, and unselfish, and kind, and courteous. Do not giuidge the hand that is moulding the still too shapeless image within you. It is growing more beautiful, though you see it not, and every touch of temptation may add to its perfection. Therefore keep in the midst of life. Do not isolate yourself. Be among men, and among things, and among troubles, and diffi- culties, and obstacles. You remember Goethe's words: Es hildet ein Talent sich in der Stille, Dock ein Charac- ter in dem Strom der Welt. "Talent develops itself in
54 The Greatest Thing in the World,
solitude; Character in the stream of life." Talent de- velops itself in solitude— the talent of prayer, of faith, of meditation, of seeing the unseen; Character grows in the stream of the world's life. That chiefly is where men are to learn love.
How ? Now, how ? To make it easier, I have named a few of the elements of love. But these are only ele- ments. Love itself can never be defined. Light is a something more than the sum of its ingredients — a glow- ing, dazzling, tremulous ether. And love is something more than all its elements— a palpitating, quivering, sen- sitive, living thing. By synthesis of all the colors, men can make whiteness, they cannot make light. By syn- thesis of all the virtues, men can make virtue, they cannot make love. How then are we to have this trans- cendent living whole conveyed into our souls ? We brace our wills to secure it. We try to copy those who have it. We lay down rules about it. We watch. We pray. But these things alone will not bring Love into our nature. Love is an effect. And only as we fulfil the right condi- tion can we have the effect produced. Shall I tell you what the cause is ?
If you turn to the Eevised Version of the First Epistle of John you will find these words: *' We love because He first loved us." "We love," not " We love iJm." That is the way the old version has it, and it is quite wrong. *' We Zoi;e— because He first loved us." Look at that word " because." It is the cause of which I have spoken. ^^ Because He first loved us," the effect follows that we love, we love Him, we love all men. We cannot help it. Because He loved us, we love, we love everybody. Our
TJie Greatest Thing in the World. 5 5
heart is slowly changed. Contemplate the love of Christ, and you will love. Stand before that mirror, reflect Christ's character, and you will be changed into the same image from tenderness to tenderness. There is no other way. You cannot love to order. You can only look at the lovely object, and fall in love with it, and grow into likeness to it. And so look at this Perfect Character, this Perfect Life. Look at the great Sacrifice as He laid down Himself, all through life, and upon the Cross of Calvary; and you must love Him. And loving Him, you must become like Him. Love begets love. It is a process of induction. Put a piece of iron in the presence of an electrified body, and that piece of iron for a time becomes electrified. It is changed into a temporary magnet in the mere presence of a permanent magnet, and as long as you leave the two side by side, they are both magnets alike. Remain side by side with Him who loved us, and gave Himself for us, and you too will be- come a permanent magnet, a permanently attractive force ; and like Him you will draw all men unto you, like Him you will be drawn unto all men. That is the inevi- table effect of Love. Any man who fulfils that cause must have that effect produced in him. Try to gi/e up the idea that religion comes to us by chance, or by mys- tery, or by caprice. It comes to us by natural law, or by supernatural law, for all law is Divine. Edward Irving went to see a dying boy once, and when he en- tered the room he just put his hand on the sufferer's head, and said, "My boy, God loves you," and went away. And the boy started from his bed, and called out to the people in the house, " God loves me ! God loves
56 The Greatest Thing in the World.
me !" It changed that boy. The sense that God loved him overpowered him, melted him down, and began the creating of a new heart in him. And that is how the love of God melts down the unlovely heart in man, and begets in him the new creature, who is patient and humble and gentle and unselfish. And there is no other way to get it. There is no mystery about it. We love others, we love everybody, we love our enemies, because He first loved us.
THE DEFENCE.
Now I have a closing sentence or two to add about Paul's reason for singling out love as the supreme posses- sion. It is a very remarkable reason. In a single word it is this: it lasts. " Love," urges Paul, "never faileth." Then he begins again one of his marvellous lists of the great things of the day, and exposes them one by one. He runs over the things that men thought were going to last, and shows that they are all fleeting, temporary, passing away.
"Whether there be prophecies, they shall fail." It was the mother's ambition for her boy in those days that he should become a prophet. For hundreds of years God had never spoken by means of any prophet, and at that time the prophet was greater than tlie King. Men waited wistfully for another messenger to come, and hung upon his lips when he appeared as upon the very voice of God. Paul says, "Whether there be prophecies, they shall fail." This Book is full of prophecies. One by one they have "failed"; that is, having been fulfilled their work
The Greatest Thing in the World. 5/
is finished ; they have nothing more to do now in the world except to feed a devout man's faith.
Then Paul talks about tongues. That was another thing that was greatly coveted. "Whether there be tongues, they shall cease." As we all know, many, many centuries have passed since tongues have been known in this world. They have ceased. Take it in any sense you like. Take it, for illustration merely, as lan- guages in general — a sense which was not in Paul's mind at all, and which though it cannot give us the specific lesson will point the general truth. Consider the words in which these chaptei-s were written— Greek. It has gone. Take the Latin— the other great tongue of those days. It ceased long ago. Look at the Indian language. It is ceasing. The language of Wales, of Ireland, of the Scottish Highlands is dying before our eyes. The most popular book in the English tongue at the present time, except the Bible, is one of Dickens's works, his Pickwick Papers. It is largely written in the language of London street-life; and experts assure us that in fifty years it will be unintelligible to the average Eiiglish reader.
Then Paul goes farther, and with even greater boldness adds, " Whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away.'" The wisdom of the ancients, where is it ? It is wholly gone. A schoolboy to-day knows more than Sir Isaac Newton knew. His knowledge has vanished away. You put yesterday's newspaper in the fire. Its knowledge has vanished away. You buy the old editions of the great encyclopaedias for a few pence. Their knowledge has vanished away. Look how the coach has been super- seded by the use of steam. Look how electricity has
58 The Greatest Thing in the World.
superseded that, and swept a hundred almost new inven- tions into oblivion. One of the greatest living authorities, Sir William Thompson, said the other day, " The steam engine is passing away." "Whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away." At every workshop you will see, in the back yard, a heap of old iron, a few wheels, a few levers, a few cranks, broken and eaten with rust. Twenty years ago that was the pride of the city. Men flocked in from the country to see the great invention ; now it is superseded, its day is done. And all the boasted science and philosophy of this day will soon be old. But yesterday, in the University of Edinburgh, the greatest figure in the faculty was Sir James Simpson, the discov- erer of chloroform. The other day his successor and nephew. Professor Simpson, was asked by the librarian of the University to go to the library and pick out the books on his subject that were no longer needed. And his reply to the librarian was this: "Take every text- book that is more than ten years old, and put it down in the cellar." Sir James Simpson was a great authority only a few years ago: men came from all parts of the earth to consult him ; and almost the whole teaching of that time is consigned by the science of to-day to oblivion. And in every branch of science it is the same. " Now we know in part. We see through a glass darkly."
Can you tell me anything that is going to last ? Many things Paul did not condescend to name. He did not mention money, fortune, fame; but he picked out the great things of his time, the things the best men thought had something in them, and brushed them peremptorily aside. Paul had no charge against these things in them-
TJie Greatest Tiling in the World. 59
selves. All he said about them was that they would not last. They were great things, but not supreme things. There were things beyond them. What we are stretches past what we do, beyond what we possess. Many things that men denounce as sins are not sins ; but they are temporary. And that is a favorite argument of the New Testament. John says of the world, not that it is wrong, but simply that it ''passeth away." There is a gi-eat deal in the world that is dehghtful and beautiful ; there is a great deal in it that is great and engrossing; but it will not last. All that is in the world, the lust of the eye, the lust of the flesh, and the pride of life, are but for a little while. Love not the world therefore. Nothing that it contains is worth the life and consecration of an immortal soul. The immortal soul must give itself to something that is immortal. And the only immortal things are these: " Now abideth faith, hope, love, but the greatest of these is love."
Some think the time may come when two of these three things will also pass away— faith into sight, hope into fruition. Paul does not say so. We know but little now about the conditions of the life that is to come. But what is certain is that Love must last. God, the Eternal God, is Love. Covet therefore that everlasting gift, that one thing which it is certain is going to stand, that one coinage which will be current in the Universe when all the other coinages of all the nations of the world ?hall be useless and unhonored. You will give yourselves to many things, give yourselves first to Love. Hold things in their proportion. Hold things in their proportion. Let at least the first great object of our lives be to achieve
6o The Greatest Thing in the World,
the character defended in these words, the character— and it is the character of Christ— which is built round Love.
I have said this thing is eternal. Did you ever notice how continually John associates love and faith with eternal life ? I was not told when I was a boy that " God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should have everlasting life." What I was told, I remember, was, that God so loved the world that, if I trusted in Him, I was to have a thing called peace, or I was to have rest, or I was to have joy, or I was to have safety. But I had to find out for myself that whosoever trusteth in Him -that is, whoso- ever loveth Him, for trust is only the avenue to Love- hath everlasting life. The Gospel offers a man life. Never offer men a thimbleful of Gospel. Do not offer them merely joy, or merely peace, or merely rest, or merely safety; tell them how Christ came to give men a more abundant life than they have, a life abundant in love, and therefore abundant in salvation for themselves, and large in enterprise for the alleviation and redemption of the world. Then only can the Gospel take hold of the whole of a man, body, soul, and spirit, and give to each part of his nature its exercise and reward. Many of the current Gospels are addressed only to a part of man's nature. They offer peace, not life ; faith, not Love ; jus- tification, not regeneration. And men shp back again from such religion because it has never really held them. Their nature was not all in it. It offered no deeper and gladder life-current than the life that was Hved before.
The Greatest TJdng iji the World. 6i
Surely it stands to reason that only a fuller love can compete with the love of the world.
To love abundantly is to live abundantly, and to love for ever is to live for ever. Hence, ettrnal life is inex- tricably bound up with love. We want to live for ever for the same reason that we want to live to-morrow. Why do you want to live to-morrow ? It is because there is some one who loves you, and whom you want to see to-morrow, and be with, and love back. There is no other reason why we should live on than that we love and are beloved. It is when a man has no one to love him that he commits suicide. So long as he has friends, those who love him and whom he loves, he will live; be- cause to live is to love. Be it but the love of a dog, it will keep him in life; but let that go and he has no contact with life, no reason to live. He dies by his own hand. Eternal life also is to know God, and God is love. This is Christ's own definition. Ponder it. "This is life eternal, that they might know Thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent." Love must be eternal. It is what God is. On the last analysis, then, love is life. Love never faileth, and life never faileth, so long as there is love. That is the philosophy of what Paul is showing us; the reason why in the nature of things Love should be the supreme thing — because it is going to last; because in the nature of things it is an Eternal Life. It is a thing that we are living now, not that we get when we die; that we shall have a poor chance of getting when we die unless we are living now. No worse fate can befall a man in this world than to live and grow old alone, unloving, and unloved. To be lost
62 The Greatest Thing in the World,
is to live in an unregenerate condition, loveless and un- loved; and to be saved is to love; and he tliat dwelleth in love dwelleth already in God. For God is love.
Now I have all but finished. How many of you will join me in reading this chapter once a week for the next three months ? A man did that once and it changed his whole life. Will you do it ? It is for the greatest thing in the world. You might begin by reading it every day, especially the verses which describe the perfect character. "Love suffereth long and is kind; love envieth not; love vaunteth not itself." Get these ingredients into your life. Then everything that you do is eternal. It is worth doing. It is worth giving time to. No man can become a saint in his sleep ; and to fulfil the condition re- quired demands a certain amount of prayer and medita- tion and time, just as improvement in any direction, bodily or mental, requires preparation and care. Address yourselves to that one thing; at any cost have this tran- scendent character exchanged for yours. You will find as you look back upon your life that the moments that stand out, the moments when you have really lived, are the moments when you have done things in a spirit of love. As memory scans the past, above and beyond all the transitory pleasures of Hfe, there leap forward those supreme hours when you have been enabled to do unno- ticed kindnesses to those round about you, things too trifling to speak about, but which you feel have entered into your eternal life. I have seen almost all the beauti- ful things God has made ; I have enjoyed almost every pleasure that He has planned for man ; and yet as I look back I see standing out above all the life that has gone
The Greatest Thing in the World 6"^
four or five short experiences when the love of God reflected itself in some poor imitation, some small act of love of mine, and these seem to be the things which alone of all one's life abide. Everything else in all our lives is transitory. Every other good is visionary. But the acts of love which no man knows about, or can ever know about— they never fail.
In the Book of Matthew, where the Judgment Day is depicted for us in the imagery of One seated upon a throne and dividing the sheep from the goats, the test of a man then is not, " How have I believed ?" but "How have I loved ?" The test of religion, the final test of re- ligion, is not religiousness, but Love. I say the final test of religion at that great Day is not religiousness, but Love; not what I have done, not what I have believed, not what I have achieved, but how I have discharged the common charities of life. Sins of commission in that awful indictment are not even referred to. By what we have not done, by sins of omission, we are judged. It could not be otherwise. For the withholding of love is the negation of the spirit of Christ, the proof that we never knew Him, that for us He lived in vain. It means that he suggested nothing in all our thoughts, that He inspired nothing in all our lives, that we were not once near enough to Him to be seized with the spell of His compassion for the world. It means that —
" I lived for myself, I thought for myself, For myself, aud uone beside — Just as if Jesus had never lived, As if He had never died,"
64 The Greatesc Thing in the World.
It is the Son of Man before whom the nations of the world shall be gathered. It is in the presence of Humanity that we shall be charged. And the spectacle itself, the mere sight of it, will silently judge each one. Those will be there whom we have met and helped; or there, the unpitied multitude whom we neglected or despised. No other Witness need be summoned. No other charge than lovelessness shall be preferred. Be not deceived. The words which aU of us shall one Day hear sound not of theology but of life, not of churches and saints but of the hungry and the poor, not of creeds and doctrines but of shelter and clothing, not of Bibles and prayer-books but of cups of cold water in the name of Christ. Thank God the Christianity of to-day is coming nearer the world's need. Live to help that on. Thank God men know better, by a hair's breadth, what religion is, what God is, who Christ is, where Christ is. Who is Christ ? He who fed the hungry, clothed the naked, visited the sick. And where is Christ ? Where ?— Whoso shall receive a little child in My name receiveth Me. And who are Christ's ? Every one that loveth is born of God.
THE END.
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