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CHRISTIAN FACTS AND FORCES

BY THE SAME AUTHOR.

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CHRISTIAN

FACTS AND FORCES

NEWMAN SMYTH

AUTHOR OF "old FAITHS IN NEW LIGHT," "THE REALITY OF
FAITH," ETC.

" Who climbs Jcee^s one foot firm on fad
Ere hazarding the next ste/>.'* — Browning.

^^ OF CO/Vrf;

^' Sb>29]807 ^

NEW YORK -,..Of:.,VAo.H^v". /^

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
1887

WM, F. FELL Jt CO. w

PHILADELPHIA W

TO CENTER CHURCH

GATHERED, WITH ONE EXCEPTION, FEOM MY LAST YEAR'S MINISTRY,
IS NOW PRESENTED AS A THANKOFFERING,

AND DEDICATED

2!;0 tht p^m^yjj jaf Hat P^ttty <i^xm&^

WHOM I HAVE SEEN PASS FROM ITS COMMUNION, WHOSE DEAR LIVES

HAVE BEEN THE EVIDENCE OF THOSE VITAL CHRISTIAN

FAITHS WHICH I WOULD CONFESS IN ITS

HISTORIC rULPIT.

CONTENTS.

PAGE

The Changed World, 1

11.
The Honesty of Jesus, 14

III.
Standing in the Truth, 26

IV.
The Positiveness of Jesus, 38

V.
The Beginnings of Discipleship, 51

VI.
Signs of the Times, 62

VII.
The Note of Universality, 7t>

vii

viii Contents.

Zebedee's Absence, 92

IX.
The Christian Revelation of Life, 105

Eeconciliation with Life, 117

XI.

The Gloeification of Life, 130

XII.
A Real Sense of Sin. — A Lenten Sebmon, 144

XIII.
Personal Power, 157

XIV.
The Great Requirement, 170

XV.

Misunderstanding Christ, 184

XVI.
Putting the Witness Away, 197

XVII.
A Study for a Doctrine of the Atonement, .... 210

Contents, ix

XVIII. „ , ^ ^

PAGE

The Gospel a Gift to the Senses, 225

XIX.

The Limits of Spiritual Manifestation, 240

XX.

The Interdependence of All Saints, 254

CHRISTIAN FACTS AND FORCES.

THE CHANGED WOKLD.

^* %nis t%t 5f)tpSjerIifS rjeturmlJ, Slorifsiit^ aitJr praising (Kotj for all ti&e
ftiTtjgs tjat t!)£2 talJ f)iear]tr artlr sxm, jeitn ajsf it ^ks spoken unto tf)tm." —
Luke ii. 20.

The shepherds returned to their customary work in
the morning, or some time during the day, after Christ
had been born in Bethlehem. And in the course of
that day after the nativity, the shepherds^ story was
made known abroad, and " all they that heard it
wondered at those things which were told them by
the shepherds.''

The day after the hour of Christ's advent was a
new day in the history of the world. It was not the
same world the day after Christmas that it had
been the day before. Something liad happened, tliat
holy night at Bethlehem, while men were sleeping,
and only a few shepherds were watching, which
ushered in a new era in the history of the world.
Tlie old })assed away, the new era bc^gnn, and only
the angels knew what a revolution luul been wrought
by tlie quiet power of Cod. Tlie wonder of that day

Christian Facts and Forces.

after the Advent has grown with the years. Chris-
tianity has been an increasing miracle of the Lord's
presence on earth. That song which a few shepherds
heard, has sung itself into the thought of the world,
and is the key-note and harmony of all peace and
good-will on earth.

Let us think what a changed world it has become
because Jesus was born at Bethlehem.

Remember, first, that the Christian change of the
world's history is a fact. It has been accomplished.
The shepherds came to Bethlehem, and returned to
their flocks, and everything went on with them as
before; but in those still hours between two days
some unseen Power had descended, and quietly
altered the whole course of human history. Each
succeeding age increases the effect of that holy hour
at Bethlehem. The life which then came into our
humanity has been cumulative in its power.

When we speak with men about believing, they
will sometimes say, ^^ AVe cannot walk in the air.
We must step to our conclusions upon solid facts.
These Christian prospects are devoutly to be desired;
but we can go no farther than we can find firm foot-
ing from fact to fact of experience." Here, then, is
something for us to stand upon which is not as a cloud
in the air, but which is a fact of the earth. The
world has been changed by that life which was
begun in the manger. This changed world is a fact.
The new Christian evolution of humanity is a fact.
The influx through Christ of a new power into
the life of humanity is a known fact of experience,
as certain as the fact of the battle of Gettysburg, or
the island bf St. Helena, or the dawn of day. I may

The Changed World.

shut my eyes to it, and say, if I wish, " It is nothing
to me." But the fact remains that this world was
one thing the day before Christmas, and that it was
a different world, with a new life in its heart, and
a new creative power in its civilization, after Christ
had been born in Bethlehem.

This fact of the new power in the world through
the birth of Christ, we can see, also, belongs to a
series or connection of facts. The religion of the
Bible presents a continued succession and reveals an
exalted order of facts. It is a history of redemption
which confronts us. Christianity is a positive re-
ligion of historical facts from Moses to Christ, from
Christ to the last church which has been organized,
and the last communion-table which has been spread.
We may say that we do not understand these events ;
or we may seek to stretch the laws of nature suffi-
ciently to comprehend these Christian results within
the network of physical causes; but, however we
may learn to account for them, these effects of Christ
upon the world, we must observe, are facts, and con-
stitute an order of facts. In approaching the claims
of Jesus Christ upon us we have to do not with a
vague philosophy, or a pleasant hope, or some happy
dream, but with spiritual facts; and with f\icts, too,
which are become so concrete in the institutions of
society, and which are so present and vital in our
whole civilization, that it is utterly unscientific and
wholly unbecoming a logical mind not to take tliem
into consideration, and to reason from tlicm as facts
with at least as much assurance as we fool iu deal-
ing with any other class and succession of facts.
The fact that Jesus was born, and tluit his Spirit has

Christian Facts and Forces.

changed the world, and is changing it, is a simple,
undeniable fact to which every reasonable mind
should adjust its working-theory of life.

Let us proceed then to inquire, secondly, concern-
ing the nature and real significance of this fact that
the world has been changed since the advent of
Christ.

In Christianity we breathe a different air. We live
in a new order of society. Midway down the Simplon
pass the traveller pauses to read upon a stone by the
wayside the single word, " ItaliaP The Alpine pines
cling to the mountain sides between whose steeps
the rough way winds. The snows cover the peaks,
and the brooks are frozen to the precipices. The
traveller wraps his cloak about him against the frost
that reigns undisputed upon those ancient thrones
of ice-bound rock. But at the point where that stone
with the word Italia stands, he passes a boundary-
line. From there the way begins into another world.
Soon every step makes plainer how great has been
the change from Switzerland to Italy. The brooks,
unbound, leap laughing over the cliflfe. The snows
have melted from the path. The air grows warm
and fragrant. The regiments of hardy pine no longer
struggle in broken lines up the mountain side. The
leaves of the olive trees glisten in the sunshine.
The vines follow the wayside. The sky seems near
and kind. And below, embosomed in verdure. Lake
Maggiore expands before him. As he rests at even-
ing time he knows that the entrance into a new
world was marked by the word Italia upon that
stone at the summit of the pass. Humanity has
crossed a boundary -line between two eras. Up to

The Changed World,

Bethlehem was one way, growing bleaker, and more
barren, and colder, as m.an hastened on. Down from
Bethlehem has been another and a happier time.
The one civilization was as Switzerland shut in
among its icy Alps ; the other is as Lombardy's fruit-
ful plain. The one led up to Stoicism; the other
opens into charity. Judaism, also, and the Gospel
are as two different climes. We need deny no pagan
virtue, we need exaggerate no pagan vice, in order
to bring out the greatness of the change which be-
gan at Bethlehem. For it is not simply a difference
in men, or in civilizations which we have to observe,
great as, without historical exaggeration, that may be
shown to be ; but the advent of Christ marks a differ-
ence in motives, and in the motive-powers, which
make human life, and which are creative of civiliza-
tions. It was the coming of a new power to change
the world. The impulse which was imparted to
humanity by the presence among men of Jesus
Christ can be compared to nothing less potential thxin
the impulse which was given, we may suppose, to the
creation when motion first became a fact and law of
primeval matter. And from the advent of motion
dates the order of the worlds.

What was this new power which came into this
world to bring to pass a new era ? To tlie disciples
it was Jesus himself. He was the new Power that
made all things new to them. At tliis distance, and
in our familiarity with the completed Gospel, we
can hardly understand in wliat a wonder of life the
disciples dwelt in the presence of Christ. Tlie Gos-
pels make little note of tlic feelings of the disciples,
yet over and over again the expression of their wonder

Christian Facts and Forces,

occurs : " They were exceedingly amazed ;'' " They
were astonished with a great astonishment f " And
Jesus was going before them : and they were amazed."
There are many questions which we think we would
at once want to ask of Christ now, should he appear
once more among us as of old, — questions of our
hearts about the future, concerning the unseen world,
and what death really is, and what those many
mansions are like, and how there our dear ones are ;
and we have an immense curiosity sometimes to go
ourselves straight beyond death, to lift the veil, and
to know the great reality, what it is, which we must
believe lies just beyond our sight and touch, the First
and Last, the final Truth of things. But the disci-
ples, when Jesus was present with them, seem not
to have pressed these questions upon him, but to have
followed him wondering in the way ; and quietly,
surely, even as the coming of the dawn changes the
whole face of nature, Jesus' presence changed the world
to the disciples' eyes, and with his glory in it, never
could it become again the hopeless world that it had
been in the days before Christmas morn. The men
who had been with Jesus did not live any longer in
the Judea of the Israelites, nor did they know longer
the Samaria of the Samaritans. Galilee's lake had
seen the Son of God walking upon its waves, and
the risen Lord had appeared upon its shore. It was
not, it could not be, the same world after they had
once seen Christ in it. If we could put side by side,
and print in parallel columns the thoughts, and
wishes, and purposes, of Peter or John, when as
young men they went fishing on Galilee, and the
thoughts of life and death, of heaven and of God,

The Changed World,

which St. Peter knew on his way to martyrdom, and
St. John received on the island of Patmos, we should
have before us in those parallel columns the evidence
of as signal a miracle as has been recorded in the
Gospels — a greater wonder than the change of water
into w^ine, a sign more significant of divinity than
the physical manifestations and incidents of the new
power of God in Christ on earth ; for it would be the
evidence of a mental and moral revolution, of a
re-creation of character and a new birth of souls — a
marvellous work in the moral sphere revealing the
coming of a higher spiritual Power, and the unusual
presence of God with man. One cause, and one
cause only, measures the vastness of that change in
the mental and moral realm : " We beheld his glory,
the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full
of grace and truth.''

There are two particulars in which we may de-
scribe further this change as it lies before us, an
actual thing, in history.

First, Jesus has been to the world a new revelation
of God. Man has seen God in Christ as man never
saw God before. It is fashionable for intellectual
men, or rather, I should say- — for the fasliion of this
world's thought changes — a few years ago it used to
be in good intellectual form for men to say, " We may
believe that God exists, but w^e cannot know any-
thing of God." That passing fashion of thought,
however, was fatally illogical, because the very words
which were in vogue in some quarters about God,
such as. He is tlio unknown and unknowable
Power, really affirmed somctliing, of which we have
some latent idea, about the unknown God. And we

8 Christian Facts and Forces.

may have real, though finite knowledge of infinite
things. I can know what light is by a single ray in
my eye, although I cannot contain in my eye the
infinite flood of light which fills all space. And I
may know God by a single beam of truth in my
soul, although I cannot know God in his infinitude
of being. To us men who are capable, then, of re-
ceiving truth from God because we are made in the
image of God, Jesus Christ brought a new revelation
of the essential and eternal character of God. And
what was that revelation ? Not an image of deity
for the Holy Place of the Temple, in which was no
likeness of God. Not a map of the divine attributes,
such as are found in the books of the schoolmen.
Not a form of God which we may look upon and
worship as a picture of divinity in our imaginations.
Jesus is never depicted pointing his disciples to the
sky, as we do, when we say to our children, God is
there. Heaven is up above. You cannot find in
the teaching of Jesus one word about God's nature
which is addressed to these bodily senses. But when
Philip said, ^^ Show us the Father," — poor bewildered
disciple, finding the truth he had been learning too
great for him, and thinking, If I could only know
the Father, if I could only see God as I see man, —
then Jesus said, " Have I been so long time with
you, and dost thou not know me, Philip ? he that
hath seen me hath seen the Father." That was his
revelation, his new, world-changing revelation of
God. Himself, his Person, his character, his con-
duct— you know that ; such is God. The one word
which declares God is Christ. Christlikeness is what
God is. God is essentially and eternally Christlike.

The Changed World.

And is not that a new revelation of God ? It is new
still, even to some of us, for we have hardly dared,
even in our churches, always to think of God as
Christlike. It is sometimes new theology for us to
think clearly, boldly, gloriously of God as Christlike.
We receive that clear, white light from the charac-
ter of God, and break it into partial colors upon the
surfaces of our troubled thoughts. We do not often
enough let the simple truth that God is Christlike fall
full upon us, and illumine the depths of our souls.
We think of God as the Almighty One enthroned
above the world ; we reason anxiously concerning
his government and his decrees; we receive the
Roman image of an august Caesar, and in that im-
perial mould suffer our idea of Divine sovereignty
to take form, when the Gospels present Jesus
Christ to us as the express image of God's person.
We take texts of Scripture in hard literalness, and
draw rigid conclusions about God's eternal purposes,
which fall like blows upon tender consciences ; men
speak with cool confidence about God's dealings
with dead heathen, as though one day of nature were
enough for the God of grace to give to them, and
the Christ, who shall have been preached to every
creature, will not sit upon the final judgment-
throne; and zealous audiences applaud as though
the faith were defended ; and all the while there is
the Lord Christ of the Scriptures watcliing us, bear-
ing with our cruel misunderstandings of liis Fatlier
and ours, and waiting for us to come as little
children to learn of him, that he may show us the
Father, and give us such loyal confidence in him,
that when wo cannot understand his judgments, or

lo Christian Facts and Forces.

know the whole counsel of his will, we may refuse,
with a great-hearted and noble faith, to think any
thought of our God which may seem to cast a shadow
upon the infinite Christlikeness of his nature.
Martin Luther was a truer Christian and a braver
defender of the faith when he exclaimed, with a
grand impatience of the Papists who pressed him
with proof-texts from the Bible, ^^ I confide in Christ,
who is true Lord and Emperor of the Scriptures."

This knowledge of God in Christ, albeit we have
not yet begun to receive it as we may, has proved
itself to be a re-creative and reorganizing power
among men. It is the most practical and potential
influence in modern life. Nothing indeed can be
more practical than a man's habitual thought of
his God. A man's idea of his God is as practical
as is the north star. Deception about the star
means shipwreck upon the coast. And this revela-
tion of God in Christianity has been the pole-star of
modern history. This Christian revelation has been,
and is now, the guiding principle, the dominant
truth of human life. It were blindness not to see
and to follow it.

I can but glance now at the other aspect of
Christ's new epoch to which I have just alluded.

Secondly, Christ is also a new revelation of man.
As man is discovered to us in Christ, he is found to
be a new creature. Man is in Christ another man.
It will make a vast difference with us whether we
habitually look upon man as created in Christ, or
without Christ. You go down the street, and pass
some one who is only to you another of the multi-
tude of human beings of whom there seem some-

The Changed World, 1 1

times to be already many more than there is any
use for on this earth. You do not know that man,
and do not want to know him. He may be only
some worthless creature who hives, with other misera-
bles, in some tenement house which was built by
the devil of greed, and has been rented to demons
of vice and squalor. Only some Board of Health,
or the police, have occasion to know the habitats of
so much swarming and festering humanity ! Or the
man you meet may be respectable and honest enough,
for all you know, only he exists, and must live his
life, whatever it may be, in some one of those worlds
which lie below the one into which you were born,
and, properly enough, his name is not to be found
written in your book of life.

You owe him, you will admit, "equal rights,"
" liberty to make contracts," a certain humanity, and,
if he ever should happen to come to your church, a
seat in somebody else's pew. Something like that, in
spirit, was the old-world view of man before Christ-
mas. That is the view of him which you might
take had you not been baptized into the name of
Christ, in whom our whole common humanity exists,
redeemed and capable of a great salvation. When
that view of a man as a mere man was generally
taken in the days before Christmas, the sun looked
down upon this earth and saw Caesar on his throne,
and the slave at his oar in the galley ; the plunder
of whole provinces grasped by the hand of power, and
the Roman proletariat rotting in heaped-up Avorth-
lessness ; sensuousness filling its poisoned cup full at
Pompeii, while Vesuvius was gathering underground
its judgment-flames; conjuring priests in the tern-

12 Christian Facts and Forces,

pies laughing behind the altars at their incanta-
tions ; a few Stoics saying brave, impracticable
things, and a whole Roman empire dissolving in the
fervent heat of its passions and lusts. But what
thought Jesus Christ of humanity as he came from
the Father, and met that publican in Jericho ? As
he went to God what said the Lord Jesus to that
thief upon a cross ? As Jesus' revelation of God
was vivifying, and is potential with blessing for the
whole world, so also his revelation of man is wonder-
fully ennobling and transfiguring. Jesus brought
out, perfected, and showed in his own divine person,
the true image of humanity. Man is made to be-
come Christlike. Man may be saved to Christlike-
ness. That commonplace man whom we do not
know, that poor man whom we may help, is more to
us than merely another human being ; he has part
with us in the humanity of Jesus Christ. All men,
all generations of men, all nations of men, are
created in Christ, and belong to that one humanity
which Jesus Christ has taken to himself, and whose
sin he bore in his own body on the tree. And it
makes a vast difference in our thought, and hope for
men, whether we look upon men as crowding,
millions upon millions of them, within this brief
space of existence, and pushed on, generation after
generation of them, into the dark abyss of death and
oblivion, in which all is over ; or whether we look
upon them all as the children of God, belonging to
that humanity which was created in Christ, and
which Christ has redeemed, and, as members of that
humanity, having all around them its gracious possi-
bility of eternal life for all who will. And as indi-

The Changed World. 13

viduals we have to take our place, and to help
others find their place, in this saved humanity, this
redeemed society of Jesus Christ. There can be no
private salvation for us in Christ. There is no salva-
tion for us as individuals except as we belong to the
saved humanity which Jesus is redeeming. This is
the larger human truth beneath the old, Catholic
idea, that there is no salvation without the Church.
This revelation also of man in Christ we are only
beginning to understand ; but we may be sure that
the coming great missionary epoch of the Church
will be an era of faith moved, governed, and inspired
by a broader, higher, more generous vision both
of Christ's revelation of God, and his revelation of
man, — the one a manifestation of God in his essen-
tial and eternal Christlikeness, and the other a dis-
covery of man in the Christlike possibilities of his
being.

But I must break off my sermon with the per-
sonal question for each one of us : Am I living, by
faith in the Son of God, in the changed world ? Is
it in the history of my soul the day before, or the
better day after Christmas ?

THE HONESTY OF JESUS.

" W^t hioxhs tjal I j^ptait unto sou, It^ art spirit, aitlJ i^t^ wet lift."—
John vi. 63.

I WISH to speak of a certain quality of the Gospel,
of which, it seems to me, the Christian world is
gaining a clearer and firmer perception. This
peculiar quality of the Gospel I might define as
the thorough honesty of the mind that was in Jesus
toward the life of the world around him. The
teaching of the new prophet from Galilee was
honesty itself in comparison with the words of the
scribes. And still among all the books that have
been written, none has a ring so decidedly clear and
genuine as the New Testament. What is there in
the whole history of the world so honest as the
Sermon on the Mount? Yet honesty is not the
whole of this singular and significant quality of the
life, teaching, and work of Jesus, which I am seeking
to describe. For a man may be quite honest, and
yet be greatly mistaken. A man may have an
honest heart, and yet by accident of education, or
by some perversion of disposition, hold his mind at
anything but a right angle toward life ; so that in
his oblique position toward things very distorted
images of them may be reflected in his intellect, and
the light which would shine straight into the depth
of his soul may be mostly reflected and lost from his
14

The Honesty of Jesus. 1 5

thoughts. It is a great thing to have a candid mind,
one not obscured by the gathered dust of the years,
nor broken by the violence of passion — to have and
to keep among men a crystalline soul. But this is
not enough. A diamond is dark in a dark place.
The position of a mirror in the light, and the angle
in which it is held toward the object which is to be
seen in it, are quite as important as the clearness of
the glass. We cannot hope to gain true representa-
tions of life and death, and eternal verities, if we
persist in holding ourselves at a wrong personal
angle toward truths. It is precisely this quality,
over and above common honesty, which attracts and
commands us in the record of Jesus Christ. He
seems, with instinctive and natural adjustment, al-
ways to keep himself in a relation so true to men,
women, and things, that in his thoughts and judg-
ments all objects are represented in their simple
reality, and we see them just as they are. Hence
there is always an impression of reality in the words
of Jesus. Not only are they clear, honest words,
but they correspond to the truth of things. Jesus'
mind mirrors reality. This quality of the Gospel
might be called, accordingly, the realism of the
Gospel. Yet this word also, as well as the word hon-
esty, fails to bring out fully the truth of Christ and
Christianity, which the Spirit is showing to us anew
in these days. For not only do the narratives of
the New Testament give us honest portraitures, and
reproduce with vivid realistic touches the persons
who come and go before Jesus, but also Christ's
words seem always to reach straight down to the
moral substance of things, and his judgments dis-

1 6 Christian Facts and Forces.

close the moral realities which lie beneath all the
endless fictitiousness of human life. The moral
reality of the universe seems ever to be coming to
revelation in the teaching of Jesus. This quality,
accordingly, of which I wish to speak, might be
expressed, so far as a single phrase can denote it,
by the words, the moral realism of Christ and
Christianity.

Let me proceed, first, to illustrate and to describe
more particularly this preeminent characteristic of
the Gospel. You must often have noticed, in reading
the New Testament, how Jesus in his conversations
with men quietly brushes aside their Jewish notions,
or their personal deceptions and touches with his
saving power the real lives of people. And when
man or woman stood for a moment beneath Jesus'
eye, always then the real self was revealed. Men
could not help appearing before Jesus as they were.
They might have hidden the true self from others,
but Jesus saw it at a glance. They might have con-
cealed for years the real self from themselves, as so
many are doing in their comfortable, fictitious lives;
but when Jesus came nigh them they began to feel
as though the judgment day were at hand. Before
Jesus, in one word, men and women became real.
In his clear presence they knew themselves, and
I were made known as they were. It was so that
night in the quiet conversation upon the housetop
beneath the stars, when a Master in Israel discovered
that even he must be born again of the Spirit. So
by Jacob's well at mid-day, a woman whom disciples
looked upon only as a poor Samaritan, and who had
sinned and suffered enough to make her life hardly

The Honesty of yesus, 1 7

worth living more, discovered that she too had a
soul, was not a menial Samaritan, but a woman, who
even at her weary task of filling her pitcher at the
well might minister to the Lord Christ, and all the
way as she came and went, in any place, might
worship God in spirit and in truth. So the publican,
as wretched an outcast as ever was seen loitering down
by the water-side of a city, when the Lord's kind
word came in its great surprise to him, discovered
that he too was a man for all that, and he might
hope to live as a son of God in the kingdom. So
the Pharisee stands out in Christ's light, discovered
in his blindness of soul and pious hatefulness of
heart, judged for all time by Jesus' coming to him.
And so also the disciples who followed the Master
began to know themselves really and truthfully and
hopefully, as they never had seen themselves before.
Again, this same quality pervades the teaching of
Jesus. Not only did the Master bring out what was
real in men, but also his doctrine is characterized
throughout by this same note o moral reality. In
other words, there was never a conventional phrase
used, never an unreal thing said by our Lord in his
personal dealings with men and women. He gave
to each soul the bread of life which it needed at the
time he met it. Jesus Christ sought to make genuine
men — men not sound in word merely, or in profes-
sion and creed, but sound at heart — whole men before
God. Consequently his words went to the moral core
of their being. First, they were to become true men
at heart. They must have the right will of life, even
as he did the will of the Father. Jesus' word in
every instance of his conversation with men and

1 8 Chris tiait Pacts a^id Forces,

women goes straight to the moral heart of the char-
acter. He will not accept any homage, he will not
grant any prayer, he will not give his blessing to any
disciple, until he is sure that the right will has been
born of the Spirit in the inmost soul. That will to
do the will of God is the essential faith to which
Christ declares himself, and he made every work of
healing dependent upon that morally real faith in
him. We have read the Gospels to little purpose if
we have not discovered this. AVe may study the
doctrines of the church until we say we see, as the
Pharisees did, and are willing, as they were, to con-
tend for every iota of our traditions ; but we shall
be blind to the light which lies upon every page of
the Gospel, if we will not perceive that faith in Jesus
Christ means moral truth and moral reality at the
core of the character and in the substance of the
conduct, and that only in thorough-going honesty
and moral reality of life can we know the doctrine
of the man who has told us the truth which he
heard from God.

I have just been remarking that Jesus in his con-
versations with men brought their real dispositions
to the light, and, moreover, that his teaching was
intended to put men upon thoroughly honest, morally
real courses of life. More than this should now be
said of his teaching. His doctrine of God through-
out has this same practical relation to human life.
The doctrine of Jesus means real righteousness, real
justice, real love, one and the same in God and man.
The theology of Jesus is real theology. It is the
bread of life. It is truth of heaven brought down
to immediate human uses. It is truth of God, not

The Honesty of Jesus, 1 9

to be thought about merely, but to be done on earth.
It is the truth of the kingdom of heaven put into
parables, so that the people may take it home and live
upon it. The Lord Jesus Christ did not come into
this world to teach a comprehensive system of philos-
ophy, a subtle science of nature, or some perfect
scheme of divinity. He came to seek and to save
that which is lost. He came to establish the king-
dom of heaven on earth. His words are spirit and
life. Such is the theology of Christ— a truth of God
indeed, into which the thought of the ages may gaze
wondering and worshipping — a glory and a mystery
of Godliness which transcends our reason as the
heaven is high above the earth — a theology for the
intellect which will always yield new answers to old
questions, and which no age can exhaust — a revela-
tion of God having for our understandings authority
as the truth ; — but first and chiefly the theology of
Jesus Christ, in its whole scope of doctrine, and in
all its revelation of heaven and hell, is a theology
for the conduct of life, a teaching from God in which
divine truths and spiritual energies are brought into
vital contact with the real life of men and women
and children. Jesus' doctrine was not indeed first a
doctrine about God, but a fact of God with man and
for man, even as Jesus himself was not first to his
disciples an article in the creed of his church, but a
Person real, glorious, transfigured, divine. The Life
was the light of men ; the light came from the Life ;
the doctrine of Jesus shone from the life and work
of Jesus. That was real as God is real, real as lovo
is real, real as a new inspiration of life is real, as a
Cliristlikc s})irit is real, as the Power of CJod trans-

20 Christian Facts and Forces,

forming character is real in human history. And
if we do not understand this, if the Lord Jesus Christ
does not come to us in this moral reality of his
character, convincing us of sin, with his eye search-
ing what is true or false in us, and his divine man-
hood commanding us to rise and walk in the power of
God ; if we do not begin to realize down to the bot-
tom of our souls that the doctrine of Christ means
for you and me a real repentance and a real faith
which shall eventually make us Christlike as he is
Godlike, that we all may be made perfect in one, —
then, if we will not so learn Christ, and have the
Spirit of Christ, we are in danger of the judgment.
If we are resting in any fictions and falsehoods either
of empty religious profession or of devouring worldli-
ness, it is true of us that we are making our beds in
Hell ; and if any of us will go on in lives that are
shams, and with souls that are frauds, we ought to
be consumed at the last day by that Truth of God
which is to everything false a consuming fire. This
universe is honest from its foundation-stones up to
the throne of God, who made it in truth; and there
is no resting-place or final hope for a dishonest man
in an honest universe. As we would escape loss of
soul in lives that are foolish fictions or wicked lies,
we need to go penitently, every one of us, to Him
who is the most real man of history, the Man who
tells us the truth which he heard from God ; we need
to let him be Master and Lord to us, and before that
commanding Character to be converted, to become
as little children, and to take up our lives anew in
his name.

I have been speaking of the intense moral realism

The Honesty of yesus. 2 1

of Jesus' teaching. Yet one thing more must be
said of it. Jesus not only came as the Teacher sent
from God, but also put himself in the Father's place
among men. He represented God on earth. And this
representation of God in Christ was not something
scenic, or forensic, or pictorial merely. Jesus realized
on earth what God is in heaven. Jesus made real
in his life and death, Jesus realized in time and
space the whole eternal disposition and love of God
toward the world. The Cross of Christ is not only
the exhibition, it is the realization in the midst of
human history of God's mind, and will, and heart,
toward the sin of the world.

This truth of Christ as the real presence and power
of God in the life of the world, is visibly set before
us in the one memorial which Jesus left of his death.
He might have bequeathed, to be treasured from age
to age with reverent care, a parchment-roll written
with his last message and his name ; or he might
have given a new table of commandments graven
on stone. He might have left as his memorial an
institute of government, or a form of worship, or a
liturgy for humanity's prayer. But he gave as his
memorial the broken bread and the fruit of the vine.
This also is part of the moral realism of his Gospel.
These are the true, vital emblems of what he has
done for the life of the world ; these are signs and
pledges of what Christ is in the cliaracters of men.
The Lord's words are still startling in their intense
literalism: " He that eateth my flesh, and drinkoth
my blood." Can we not understand how he would
show us that our religion must be a vital principle,
that his words, which are spirit and life, must enter

22 Christian Facts and Forces.

into the substance and quality of our souls, as the
bread we break becomes the life of the body ?

Let me turn now, for a few moments, from this en-
deavor to describe the thorough honesty, or moral
realism of the Gospel, to some pertinent applications
of this truth. If we can gain a more thoroughly
real conception of what religion is, and what Christ
is, we shall understand better how the Spirit of God
is now moulding and developing the Christianity of
the world. There are two facts which are forcing
themselves upon our notice: first, ecclesiastical
Christianity, and to some extent dogmatic Chris-
tianity, have less influence among men now than
they ever have had since Constantine proclaimed an
empire to be Christian, or Augustine, and Calvin after
him, built and closed the massive Latin theology.
We may regret, or not, this fact ; but no one who
knows men, and the movements of modern life, can
ignore the evidence of it. The other present fact is,
that never has a morally real Christianity, a Chris-
tianity of real life, been more honored, more loved,
more believed in among men. It would seem, there-
fore, to require no prophet to predict that the Church
of the future will not be altogether the Church of
the past. Indeed, the way of the Spirit of the Lord
since Christ ascended has never yet turned wholly
back upon itself. It seems clear that the Church of
the future is not to be a church of vested ecclesias-
tical pretension, or of one-sided insistence upon some
particular tenet ; still less the church of local exclu-
siveness, provincial pride, or formal orthodoxism.
The Christianity that is living and growing, the
missionary Christianity which shall yet overcome the

The Honesty of Jesus, 23

evil of the world with its good, is real Christianity ;
it is the Gospel of the Son of God in the hearts and
the characters of men and women, preached through
the conduct of life ; and the Church of the future
will be the church in any town or neighborhood
which shall show to the world the most of this real
work of the Spirit of Christ among men. And if we
have any doubts as to just what this real Gospel is,
there is one sure way in which we can learn it. Take
the New Testament, and learn of what spirit, and
what manner of man, Jesus Christ was. Only re-
member that to do this is no light thing. It means
reading the Gospel of Jesus Christ with a willing
mind. Have we will enough to take some single
word of Jesus, and carry it with us in our hearts as
a commandment through the livelong day ? Are we
willing to seek what the Lord means, not in the dim
religious light of our churchly habits, but out in the
glare of our business ? Real Christianity means for
us something very different, and much harder than
coming to church, singing hymns or discussing
doctrines. Real Christianity is not owning a pew in
a church, and renting a building to the devil. Real
Christianity is not contributing a farthing to missions,
keeping a carriage, and paying fifty cents on a doUar.
Real Christianity is not saying, "Lord, Lord," and
leaving the mass of suffering humanity to take care
of itself. Real Christianity is not building the
sepulchres of the prophets, and guarding as sacred
trusts the dead bones of the past, and being as fools
and blind, when the Lord is i)assing by in the Spirit
of an age, and calling the Church to greater works
of faith, and larger visions of redemption. Real

24 Christian Facts and Forces.

Christianity is not professing to love the brethren,
and indulging in suspicions and all uncharitable-
ness. Real Christianity is not sitting in Moses' seat,
and binding upon men heavy burdens, and grievous
to be borne. Real Christianity is not — ^but we know
too well these spurious, beggarly and hateful things
which Christianity is not. What it is, something
most human and divine, we see and own whenever
a disciple shows Christ in some transfiguration of
character to us. It is Christ — Christ loved, chosen,
obeyed, as Master and Lord. It means for you and
me, not only following Jesus in grateful memory
along his way of mercy through Galilee and Judea,
but following him in glad service up and down these
streets.

There are some men among us who believe so far
as they think they can, but who do not profess to be-
lieve so many things about Christ as church-mem-
bers usually do. AVe think that, for your full salva-
tion, for your moral growth, poise of character, and
your refuge from the mystery of trouble and death
which surrounds us all, it would be far better if you
could believe more of the truth which we have found
in Christ than you have yet seen your way clear to
confess. But we would not forget, we would have
you remember, that. Jesus, even while teaching men
of God, fixed his ( j upon the heart. "While finish-
ing his work of atonement, by which all may be
saved, he asked of men the right heart before God.

We wish, indeed, that all kind and reverent men,
w^ith whom, in many ways, we work in the same Chris-
tian work of overcoming the evil of the world, and
making this life purer and richer, might come with

The Honesty of yesus, 25

us, and in humble and most reasonable confession of
the divine facts of the Gospel, sit down together with
us at the table of the Lord of all.

But as ministers of the one perfectly honest Man
of history, whose words are spirit and life, w^e have
always a Gospel to preach to the hearts of men which
is simple as it is real. The King shall say, " Ye did
it unto me," or " Ye did it not unto me." The
Christ has said, " If a man love me, he will keep my
word ; " and, " Herein is my Father glorified, that ye
bear much fruit; and so shall ye be my disci-
ples." Surely he wants of you and me a real re-
pentance, and a real faith, and such knowledge of
God's doctrine as may come to the servant who does
the will of God.

Are we willing, then, to receive Christ as we find
him in these Gospels, and to let him be the Master
of our business, the Friend of our happiness, the
Lord of our homes, the Shepherd of our thoughts,
the Light of our hearts ?

III.

STANDING IN THE TRUTH.

** ^t teas a miirtetr from t^t lt%[nnin%, mti JEftooir not in ^t tcutj,
itcaujjje i\tu iz no trulf) in i^im.''— John viii. 44.

I TOOK occasion last Sunday to speak of the thorough
honesty of the mind that was in Jesus toward the
Hfe of the world. I sought to describe a striking
characteristic of the Gospel, which may be called its
moral realism. I shall endeavor again and again
to put before you this characteristic of the Gospel,
and to bring our beliefs and habits to the light of
this real theology of the one honest Man of history,
who told the truth which he heard from the Father.
For surely no theology, old or new, is worth preach-
ing to men, if it be not a real theology, seeking
always to discover the real thing in religious ex-
perience, and in the history of divine revelation.
And the desire for more simple and honest reality
in living and in thinking is one of the clearest notes
of the Spirit in present Christianity. Along this
line of a more real Christian living and thinking
further progress is to be made in the knowledge of
God, and in the spread of the Gospel through the
world.

The chapter from which our text comes this morn-
ing shows Jesus' wonderful power of bringing men
out of their fictions of life, and leaving them as though
judged by God himself. The Lord's words with

Standing in the Truth. 27

the chief representatives of religion in Jerusalem
revealed the moral core and substance of things.
Our text illustrates Jesus' habit of discovering
the essential thing in life. It touches just that
vital point which in our exhortations concerning
standing in the truth, and defending the faith, we
are apt not to see or to care for. His word was,
" He stood not in the truth, because there is no truth
in him.'' The text discloses the condition under
which it is possible for a created being to stand in
the truth. It shows how a stand in the truth is to
be taken. It is no little thing, no easy task of a
moment, to stand in the truth. It were a great and
happy thing for a finite mind to stand confident and
serene, like a son of God, in the truth. You may
have stood some rare evening upon a mountain-top.
The veil of mists had been lifted from the valleys ;
the highways, the villages, the rivers' course were
etched upon the map of earth that lay beneath you ;
on the far horizon the sea and sky met in one
lustrous line; the few lingering clouds showed to
your eye, as you stood on that height, their upper
edges turned to gold, while the whole air, under the
great dome of heaven, seemed to have become one
clear crystal to let the light shine through. So is it
to stand in the truth. It were worth the eff'ort of a
life-time, if, after all toil and climbing, we could stand
bright-souled and exultant in the truth. So without
life-long toil and climbing, every hour, Jesus stood
in the truth.

You perceive thus that much more should be
meant than is often suggested to us by the common
exhortations, "Stand fast in the truth," "Stand lh*in,

28 Christian Facts and Forces.

holding the faith once dehvered to the saints." Men
may only mean by that, stand with us, or as our
fathers stood. Be obstinate on our side. Or they may
be thinking simply of standing steadfastly in some
limited conception of truth, and not of standing
Christlike in some large, luminous sense of God.
Or we may urge one another to stand in the truth,
as though all that is required of us were to stand
where we are, and in what we have been taught,
without once inquiring how a finite mind is to find
its place sure, serene, sunny, in the truth. And
particularly when men are debating about great
themes, or contending against what seem to them
grievous errors, the call to stand in the truth may
sound like a fierce battle-call, and in bitter contro-
versy for some truth men may even lose their per-
sonal abiding in all truth.

In this one short text Jesus puts before us the
real thing to be desired in our anxiety to stand in
the truth. And like all other real things of worth
to us, this object to be desired pertains to a man's
character. The truth must be in us, or we cannot
abide in the truth. Jesus' word was, '^ He stood not
in the truth, because there is no truth in him."
Having no truthfulness within, the Evil One lost
his standing in the truth of God's universe without
him. He had fallen from the truth because there
was no truthfulness within him.

This extremest case of Satanic falling from thq
truth illustrates the whole process of descent of soul
from the truth. According to this word of Jesus,
we may take it as general law, that a mortal being
must himself be truthful in order to maintain his

Standing in the Truth. 29

standing in the truth of things. A man cannot
know the truth of nature if he cherishes a lie in his
heart. The soul must itself be truthful to see the
truth. When we exhort men, therefore, to stand
fast in the faith, we need, if we would follow Christ's
example, to look to it first and last that we and they
are in our spirits of the truth. If not, we shall not
find, by all our logic, sure, sunny standing -place in
the truth.

I wish further to illustrate and to enforce what
seems to be the simple and universal law of knowing
the truth according to this deeply suggestive word
of the Lord Jesus. We will begin with some of the
more obvious examples of it.

First, this universe is a moral universe, and a man
to stand in it must himself be morally sound. An
immoral man can have no permanent standing-
ground in a moral universe. I say the universe is
moral, and I mean there is no untruthfulness, or
dishonesty, or hypocrisy, or favor of vice, or shelter
for falsehood of any kind, in the constitution and
nature of things. Nature invariably gives the same
answer, under the same circumstances, to chemist or
physicist. The laws of things know no crooked-
ness. The creation was made in truth, and con-
tinues in truth. The ocean-tides keep true time and
measure; the sun is steadfast in its course; the atoms
of matter are always the same definite regularities,
and the stars are honest. Nature throughout is one
piece of honest work. This veracity of nature lies
at the foundation of our industries. Every raih'oad
is built upon it; every revolving wheel of our facto-
ries is centered upon this infrustrable truth of things;

30 Christian Facts and Forces,

every man going forth to his labor under the sun
works in faith that the earth and sky will keep their
primal covenant, and all earthly happiness is nature's
plighted troth kept to all living creatures, and the
heart of man.

Now, then, when a man who is born to stand in a
truthful universe takes up some lie into his soul,
what happens ? What must happen but that fate
which befell the Father of lies ? He cannot stand
in the truth because the truth is not in him. Sup-
pose a man conceives a fraudulent thought, and says,
I will go about my business, and succeed with that
fraud in my mind. What is the end ? Defaulters
behind prison bars might answer. They did not
stand in the truth because they first turned false to
themselves. It may have been a little falsehood at
the start. Defalcations always begin in a man him-
self before, and sometimes months and years before,
they begin in the office or the bank. The real begin-
ning was not even when the first temptation to use
others' money wrongfully may have presented itself
It was before that; the fall began far back of that in
the man himself, when he let some falsehood come
into his life ; when he seemed to be more than he
was ; when he sought to keep up an appearance which
was not true ; when he let any untruth, whatever it
may have been, take possession of his desire of life.
And at last men were shocked to discover that he
stood not in the truth because the truth was not in
him.

Perhaps, however, the end has not come yet, and
men who are not truthful within seem still to stand
as though the universe were in their favor, and

Standing in the Truth. 31

nature's honesty not set against them. It is no new
thing to see the wicked prosper.

Nevertheless, the universe is a moral universe, and
its forces are honest forces. Soon or late, in this
world or another, the end of inward untruthfulness
is certain as the law of gravitation. The moral uni-
verse can be relied upon eventually to throw out
every immoral man. Without are the idolaters, and
every one that loveth and maketh a lie. It would
be necessary for moral infidels to do something more
than to shut up the pulpits, close the Bible, and
laugh at heaven and hell, in order to prevent the
final judgment of a universe which was created in
truth, and which keeps the truth to every man born
into it. And we do not have to look on to the last
day to discover how this law is working. Men, on
account of their falsehoods in themselves, are being
cast out by the truth of things. You can see it every
day in business. The laws of wealth are more than
laws of economics. They are laws also of success in
a moral world which throws out dishonesty. A man
cannot stand long in the world's credit, if the truth
of personal integrity is not in him. You can watch
the same moral judgment going on in society. A
rich or popular man cannot stand always in good
society if his heart is becoming rotten. IIo may be
allowed to stand there too long, but in the end
society must cast him out. And even in politics tlio
moral constitution of the world is sure uUimately
to prove itself stronger tlian tlio passions of men.
Many a po})ular leader lias not stood in the truth of
the people's final judgment because tlio truth was
not in huu. Tlie most fatal thing for any ambitious

Christia7t Facts a7id Forces,

young man is to let his soul hold companionship
with any lie.

This same condition of standing in the truth per-
tains, also, to work in the realm of science, where we
might suppose that purely intellectual perception of
truth would have no dependence u^^on morals. Yet
nature wants character in her pupil even when
teaching her laws of numbers. Clerk Maxwell's
character was a part of his fitness for his high scien-
tific work. So intimate is the connection between
inward truthfulness and the power to perceive the
truth of things, that personal honesty becomes essen-
tial part of preparation and fitness for the finest and
best scientific work. And certainly this same law
which Jesus taught has been confirmed over and
over again in the history of literature. ^Tiat a poet
for the coming years Byron might have been, had
there been in him higher and holier truth ! Xature
will own and echo long no poet's song whose soul is
not true to her divine order, and whose heart is not
pure as her skies.

Secondly, the universe is a divine universe, and
no man can stand in its truth who wishes to say in
his heart, "There is no God." There is a diviner
presence in this visible creation than is seen. There
is some divine reality behind all these shifting
appearances of things. There is some secret of
divinity hidden in nature's heart. There is an ex-
pression of divine intelligence playing over the face
of nature. God is nearer us than we know in this
infinite mystery of life and death. And what is seen
and touched is not the half of the glory of this king-
dom of God. Faith is standing in this diviner glory

Standing in the Truth, 33

of things. So the truths of the unseen world were
real as the hill-tops of Galilee to the man of Naza-
reth. God, the Father, was near as the human heart
to the Son of man.

We, all of us, would like to stand with more vivid
sense, and with calmer pulses, in this divine truth
which we must believe is the all-encompassing and
final truth of the creation. But we cannot do this
if the truth is not in us. St. John wrote — and the
same moral realism which pervaded Jesus' teaching
pervades the disciple's words : " If a man say, I love
God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar : for he that
loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, cannot
love God whom he hath not seen.'' Very plain, and
homelike theology is that doctrine which the beloved
disciple learned from the loving Master, and common
people can understand it. A man is not standing in
the truth of God if he is bearing a grudge in his
heart, or if he is seeking to pull himself up by put-
ting another man down, to grow rich by making
every one with whom he does business poorer. We
cannot stand clear-eyed, confident, and illumined
souls in the truth of God, if we are false in thought,
word, or desire, toward any man, woman, or child on
God's earth. When a person is thinking a hateful
thought he does not believe then in God. There is
no God in his heart at that moment. Though ho
should be making an argument to prove that there
is a God, no man with an undivine thought in his
heart could believe in God. lie is living in tliat
thought or passion in a Godless universe. lie is an
atheist in his own soul, denying the very essence and
glory of God, though ho bo saying, " Lord ! Lord 1 "

34 Christian Facts and Forces.

And it is of no avail for any man of us to try to
believe in God or immortality, or the whole unseen
universe, simply by thinking about them, or discus-
sing the natural probabilities for these beliefs, unless
we are first willing and eager to have some truth of
God in ourselves, living and pulsating in the heart
of our life, and so by the truth within us finding
that we stand in the divine truth of the world. If
any man of you, on the contrary, becomes so absorbed
in your aff*airs and ambitions that you can think of
your business, and little else, all the seven days of
the week, and even your wife, and the children God
has given you, become in your self-absorption as
unreal and almost as unknown to you as angels are,
and you choose purposely to live in that rush of
worldliness, from lust of gain, and not from absolute
compulsion for the sake of others, then you cannot
expect to have any real assurance of your Father in
Heaven, or of your own immortality, for the truth
of home is not in your own soul. Always the truth
must be in us before we can stand in it, — the truth
of love, of fatherhood, of humanity, the truth of
home, and friendship, and high purposes worthy of
immortality, before we can stand in the truth of God,
and the heavenly home, and the life eternal. Live
like a brute, and believe like a son of God ? No,
never ! We cannot do that, for the universe is truth-
ful as well as divine, and there must be truth within
answering to the truth of God without, and every
falsehood in the heart is a blind spot, and every sin
in the soul is a dead nerve, to the light and the love
in which Jesus lived on this earth every day as
though he were in heaven. Does any man among

Standing in the Truth. 35

you want us to prove the existence of God to him ?
We will not take with us our books of divinity ; we
will go and search your book of life, and see if we
can find any evidence of God there. And if we
should find that yesterday or to-day you put down
your own desires, and went and did some truth of
God ; if you, strong man, in your haste, stopped a
moment to make that little child happy, or were not
ashamed to espouse the cause of that poor man who
came to you for righteous help, or if you resisted
manfully the devil when he offered to give to you,
or your corporation, some kingdom of this world for
your compliance with his last fraud, or if you strove
even at cost to yourself to see some just thing done
on this earth, or in genuine repentance you sought
to undo some wrong which you have learned your
sin has done, then by these signs and evidences of
truth in your book of life, we will bid you find God
and worship him ; for justice and charity, and fair
dealing, and all virtue are essentially divine, and by
these things within our hearts we may know the
good God above us and all around us, whom having
not seen we love.

And then, if we have aught of divine truth in us,
we may turn to the evidences of God in the workl
and begin to appreciate them ; we may reason of the
Creator to some purpose from the regularities, like
manufactured articles, of the atoms, or from tlio
manifest providence of our human history, or from
the ideas wliich are the sacred trusts of the soul of
man.

Finally, tliis universe is a Cliristian univorso, and
if a man lias not the Spirit of Christ he cannot stand

36 Christian Facts and Forces.

in the full, final Christianity of the universe. The
Scriptures plainly teach that all things were made
by Christ, and that in him all things consist. He
is the Head of the creation. The incarnation — the
personal descent of the Creator, and His union with
His moral creation — is not for this little world only,
nor for the brief period of our history, but for the
whole creation and all the ages. The universe is
Christian in the sense that it was created for Christ,
and reaches its consummation in the Word made
flesh. It is Christian in the sense that God has
shown Himself to be Christian in His eternal thought
and purpose toward the world. And it is Christian
because its last, great day shall be the Christian
judgment. We must all appear, not before the
throne of Law, or to be judged by the light of nature
only, but we must all appear before the judgment-
seat of Christ. The universe is Christian, and all
souls in it are to receive Christian judgment.

Hence, if we would stand in this full and final
truth of the universe, we must have some Christian
truth in us which shall answer to the final, revealed
and perfect Christian character of the universe
around us. If we should fail of this, if we should
fail of becoming Christian at heart, how could we
hope to stand at last in the Christian universe?
Whatever is not Christian must eventually be cast
out as a dead and worthless thing. For Christ must
reign until all enemies be put beneath his feet. Sin
must go, and death must go, and all uncharitable-
ness must go, and all deceit. For the Christian
nature and character of the universe is to be re-
vealed. " And I saw a new heaven and a new earth :

Sta7iding in the Truth 37

for the first heaven and the first earth are passed
away; and the sea is no more." "And I heard a
great voice out of the throne saying, Behold, the
tabernacle of God is with men, and he shall dwell
with them, and they shall be his peoples, and God
himself shall be with them, and be their God."
"Then cometh the end, when he shall deliver up
the kingdom to God, even the Father." And God
shall be all in all.

THE P0SITIVENE8S OF JESUS.
'*Tnil^, tetlj, I sas uitto 20^-"— John i. 51.

This expression is one of the signs and evidences of
the divine originality of Jesus Christ. In the brief
reports which are given in the Gospels of the words of
Jesus this phrase, " Verily I say unto you/' has been
recorded by the evangelists more than seventy times.
It evidently was a characteristic and habitual ex-
pression of Jesus, which, in the disciples' memory of
him, distinctly marked his conversation, and sepa-
rated him from all other men.

When we wish to explain any natural phenome-
non, we proceed to classify it. We say it belongs to
such an order of events; it is an instance of a
general class of phenomena. But this "Verily,
verily, I say unto you " of Jesus Christ refuses to be
classified. It is an expression which stands by
itself The positiveness of Jesus cannot easily be
coordinated with any other known kinds of human
positiveness. It was unique.

There were in Jerusalem examples enough among
the scribes and Pharisees of one kind of religious
positiveness with which we are not unacquainted.
The dogmatists we have always with us. The
scribes, whether in theology or science, will open their
books and say, " It is written," and that is the end of
all controversy. The bigot will hold fast the letter
38

The Positiveness of yesus. 39

of his creed, and cry aloud, " So we believe, and,
without doubt, any one who does not believe as we
do is beyond the pale of the true Church." Igno-
rance will stand firm upon tradition, and swear to all
passers-by, I know. In Jerusalem, and in all times
and cities, there has lived the man who could not be
mistaken. This spurious kind of positiveness is not
unfamiliar nor unnatural. But we cannot read the
Gospels without discerning at a glance, that the
assurance of Jesus Christ was wholly contrary to the
blind positiveness of the learned scribes and the
dogged Pharisees. The common people, when they
heard Jesus affirm, " Verily I say unto you," instantly
recognized the fact that he spake not as the scribes.
It was not the voice of the dogmatist which the peo-
ple heard in the Sermon on the Mount. It is not an
immense and superhuman, but deceived self-confi-
dence which has confronted every generation since
with the Verily, verily, of the doctrine of Jesus
Christ.

Neither was the positiveness of the Son of man
like the positiveness of the prophets of old. We
cannot possibly classify Jesus among the prophets of
Israel. The nature of his assurance of God was differ-
ent from the former prophetic confidence in the word
of God. The prophet of old entered the city, passed
through the people, and stood before the king with a
" Thus saith the Lord " burning in his soul and
leaping like flame from his lips. lie did not say,
out of some indwelling consciousness of Jehovah,
" Verily I say unto you." " The word of the Lord
came to me," *' The burden of the valley of vision,"
— such was the prophet's manner of speech ; Jesus

40 Christian Facts and Forces.

alone said calmly, constantly, as one speaking
directly out of his daily consciousness of divine life,
and as though his word were enough, " Verily, verily,
I say unto you." By this one characteristic the Son
of man is separated from all the Hebrew prophets.
Jesus never had been taught those words of imme-
diate authority in any school of the prophets.
Where did he learn them ? Whence came to him
this habitual expression of his personal, spiritual
supremacy ?

The positiveness of the Son of man was not in any
manner like the confidence of the philosopher in his
reasonings, or of the student of nature in the verifi-
cation of his results. Jesus' Verilies precede rather
than conclude his teachings. He gave no demonstra-
tions ; he collated no facts ; he wrought no experi-
ments ; he carried his disciples through no prolonged
processes of reasoning. Jesus Christ simply stood in
the midst of men and said : " Verily, verily, I say
unto you." If he worked miracles, it was not as a
man would make experiments to verify for himself
the truth ; Jesus condescended to give disciples signs
of his glory, but for himself he could say, " I know
the Father."

Neither can Jesus' positiveness be classified with
those rare religious faiths which his disciples may
have attained in his name. For not only was Jesus'
positiveness greater than the positiveness of any
other man who has ever lived, but it has its distinc-
tive quality, and, moreover, its birth and growth in
his life cannot be traced, as we can follow the history
of faith in the lives of his disciples.

Faith is for us an achievement of life — often the

The Positiveness of Jesus. 41

last, as it is the noblest, achievement of a man's spirit.
And we know how hard it has often been for us to
believe. Our best faiths bear the marks of suffering
upon them. We have been compelled to believe in
order to live. There came a time when we said,
Now I must believe, or I cannot live. There were
moments when we might have perished had we
looked down, and not up. We know, some of us, in
what dear graves we have buried our doubts. We
know out of what trials, and sorrows, and disap-
pointments faith has been born of God in our hearts.
Our faith is often the peace after the storm, the light
that has quietly and surely dawned after hours of
darkness, and long watching for the morning. And
the Christ has come to us, and bidden us believe.
But no Christ came to Jesus. He was the Christ to
himself. There was none like him before him, no
Master and Lord in whose discipleship he could see
God revealed. He could go to no other for the words
of eternal life. He was the first-born among many
brethren. Jesus' faith was therefore original, and
not derived — the witness of God which he had in
himself, for there was no other who could be in God's
place as the Christ to Christ. Hence, in this respect,
also, the positiveness of Jesus was wliolly unlike tlie
faith of disciples in him which most nearly resembles
his positiveness. He was the first of men to say of
all unseen and divine things, " I know — Verily I say
unto you."

In this i)ositiveness of Jesus there is to be dis-
cerned no trace of our conflict, or doubt, our w (Airi-
ness of soul, contradictions of spirit and body, and
hard won victory perhai)s of the angels of light over

Christia7i Facts and Forces.

the demons of denial in us. Jesus seemed to believe
spontaneously and directly out of his own conscious-
ness of God. Other children becoming men grow
into man's inheritance of ignorance and spiritual
uncertainty ; the child Jesus grew as naturally into
a divine Sonship and its assurance of God. This
peculiar spiritual positiveness of Jesus marked his
teaching from the beginning. It was in the answer
which he gave the mother who found him teaching
in the temple. We may know that narrative of the
evangelist to be true to the reality, because no He-
brew disciple could ever have imagined or invented a
scene so unheard and undreamed of as the picture
which Luke has drawn of the child teaching in the
Temple. Jesus puts his " Verily I say unto you"
before his exposition of the law of Moses. And every
verse of the Sermon on the Mount is firm teaching.
Each blessing is clear, sure truth of God. The Ser-
mon on the Mount with its beatitudes shines by its
own light, piercing the world's moral darkness, and
positive as a constellation. And never, in all Jesus'
conversation, was there to be detected a hesitating
note. The doctrine of Jesus throughout was sure of
itself The Gospel of Jesus is so much clear, sunny
certainty. " Verily, verily, I say unto you," was his
announcement of himself to Nathanael in the begin-
ning of John's Gospel ; " Verily, verily, I say unto
thee," — so the Lord makes known his personal word
to Peter at the close of John's Gospel ; and in all the
chapters between is heard the same voice of divine
positiveness which never wavers, never trembles,
never ceases to sound.

The peculiar quality of Jesus' positiveness appears

The Positiveness of yesus. 43

still further when we reflect upon the subjects concern-
ing which the Son of man was absolutely sure. They
are the subjects of which other men are not sure.
Jesus was most positive where we can be of our-
selves least positive. He said, I know, where we can
only say, I trust. His Verities do not precede asser-
tions concerning natural truths which we can dis-
cover or demonstrate. Jesus gave no positive teach-
ing concerning matters of science. He did not put
his verily before some announcement of astronomic
laws or physical processes. Jesus left man to learn
for himself, by ages of experiment, the arts of life.
Neither did he put his " Verily I say unto you," be-
fore statements concerning matters of history, which
the scholars, by patient studies, may search out. He
did not say. Verily, verily, concerning the authorship
of any book of the Old Testament. He left all such
questions to the critics. Upon many subjects for
which our theologies grow most contentious, with
regard to which sectaries become most confident, and
over which denominations are formed, parties rallied,
and churches even divided, the Christ of the Gospels
seems silent. We cannot find any Verily, veril)^, of
our Lord for such things as Sanhedrims determine,
and bigots enforce. The cup of persecutions which
the church has filled, and which the martyrs have
emptied, so that only the bitter taste of the dregs of
it is left upon our lips, was never the cup of tlio
Christ which he would give to his disciples. Open
the New Testament, and follow througli the Gospels
for yourselves these Verilies of our Lord, and ob-
serve carefully at what times Jesus stands boforo his

44 Christiajz Facts and Forces,

disciples, or among the people, in this supreme posi-
tiveness of his knowledge. "Verily, verily, I say
unto you," — the Lord is speaking of the new heart,
the childlike spirit, and the true life into which
man must be born again — the eternal life which he
that believeth may have even here and now. He is
speaking of prayer, and of God's listening to it; of
faith, and its power of greater works ; of the disciple
who is to be as the Master in the w^orld, and of the giv-
ing a cup of water only in his name, and its reward.
The Lord is speaking, when he says Verily, of the
freedom of the son in the Father's house, and of the
bondage of sin, the poor slave of which cannot abide
in the house forever ; he is speaking of the possible
forgiveness of all sins, save only the sin against the
Holy Ghost — the soul's last, fatal rejection of God.
When Jesus used this word of supreme personal
authority, he was speaking of himself, of his power
from the Father, of his place in our human history
as the door and the way for all men into the heavenly
fold ; of his consciousness of indwelling divinity, in
which he could declare, " Before Abraham was, I
am." The Lord with his Verily, verily, in the midst
of his disciples, is speaking of his death, which must
needs be for the life of the world, as the grain of wheat
cannot bear fruit except it fall into the earth, and
die. And once more, in that hushed upper chamber,
w^here he had broken the bread and blessed the cup,
solemn and low, and tender as with an infinite
sorrow, yet clear and sure, and triumphal as though
some eternal joy were sounding beneath all its
sorrow, that divine voice is heard, saying, " Verily

The Positiveness of Jesus, 45

I say unto you, I will drink no more of the fruit of
the vine, until that day that I drink it new in the
kingdom of God."

Remembering these Verilies of our Lord, I would
have you take notice, first, that over against all our
human ignorance, sinfulness, and need, the Gospel
is one grand affirmation of God. The doctrine of
Jesus Christ is an assertion of those spiritual truths
and those eternal realities of which we most need to
be made sure. Oh, dear friends, if we take any of
these questions of our lives which trouble us, and
baffle us, and break our hearts, to Jesus Christ him-
self, we can find for just these vital needs of our
souls, some "Verily, verily" of our Lord. There
are, indeed, silences in the Gospel, and great shadows
left clinging close to its luminous truths ; revelation,
like the starry sky, has vast vacancies unillumined
between its points of lights. To our human curiosity,
seeking to make God's pure will a visible, tangible
thing on earth, instead of a living truth in the heart,
no sign shall be given. But the Lord Christ dwells
among men with some word of eternal life for all our
vital human needs. Christ is present every day with
his " Verily I say unto you," before your life and
mine.

I have seen strange providences during these past
few years meeting the lives of some of you, for
which I can find in all the books, and from all my
teachers, no reason and no answer. I have seen joy
coming, and joy going from your homes. I have
seen those you loved — and they were not, for God look
them. I have seen trials seemingly out of all \n'o-
portion to need and character sent to sonic, and

46 Christian Facts a7id Fo7^ces,

others left with hardly a burden to try their strength.
I have seen frail women compelled to bear the
weight of heavy responsibilities which strong men
could hardly carry. I have seen lives strangely
crossed, and high hopes crushed to earth, and joy,
after its first prophetic song in some heart, silenced,
seemingly forever ; and I have seen also doors of life
suddenly opening of themselves, where the world had
seemed closed as fate against youth's utmost efibrt ;
and, again, in some life which the storm had laid waste,
I have looked and seen some flower of paradise bloom
afresh, as from some seed dropped — God's spirit,
which bloweth where it listeth, only knows from
whence and how ; and I have learned, too, little by
little, what conflicts and trials, and defeats and losses,
lie beneath the peace, and richness, and fruitfulness, of
some dear and honored lives. The prosperity, the
adversity, the change, the darkness, the storm, the
peace, the sunset — all this comedy, and tragedy, and
epic of human life in a single parish, and among the
friends we love, — who of us can understand it, or
make one music of it all? Yet still, had we but
open hearts to see, there stands One in the midst of
us who knows the Father, who is come to us
from God. Lord, tell us of these things, of these
times and seasons of our lives, of that strange event,
of that hard providence, of that untimely death, of
all this fret, and worry, and weariness of our life ; of
this seemingly lawless mingling of good and evil,
this strange, forest-like blending of the shadows and
the light in the life of man. Oh ! Master, settle by
one commanding word of thine the last question
about which we disciples were disputing by the way ;

The Positiveness of Jesus, 47

divide for us our inheritance in thy truth, make all
plain to our reasons, and level to our feet, and let us
go in quietness, and be content ! But as we thus
reason among ourselves, and question in our hearts,
I hear coming from these Gospels no Verily, verily,
of our Lord. He answers not a word when we
would lift the veil from the future, or hear from
heaven now some one of those many things which
he has to say hereafter.

But if we want true hearts, and strength to do and
dare ; if we would learn the secret of brave, cheerful,
patient lives, full of grace and truth ; if we wish to
live with all our souls for noble purpose and with
great faiths, and immortal hope, then we cannot
open the New Testament without finding some
Verily of our Lord waiting to impart to us its power
and its peace. His divine positiveness is there for all
our human need to lean upon. His assurance of
God is there, pervading all his Gospel; and in it, as in
an atmosphere of light, our spirits grow strong and
clear. For all high beliefs, for all generous thoughts,
for all immortal aspiration, the ^^ Verily, verily I say
unto you " of our Lord sounds through this Gospel
as the voice of God. And because I have seen the
Lord Jesus Christ everywhere answering human life,
meeting all the tides of the human soul, and letting
them break, and grow still, upon the great positive-
ness of his Gospel, therefore, I believe that He is
the sure and abiding Word of God. Because I have
seen Jesus Christ in the midst of men putting liis
strength of God beneath their integrity, envelopinix
their personal consciousness with his presence of
God's righteousness^ surrounding ''their restlessness

48 Christian Facts and Forces.

with God's rest/' and opening all their selfishness out
into the largeness of his love ; because I have seen
Jesus Christ holding calm and strong in his assur-
ance of the heavenly Father, and the eternal life, the
wills of men that else would have grown faint, and
the hearts of women that else would have ceased to
beat; because I have seen Jesus Christ, and may-
behold him upon any day, and in any town or city
throughout the world, going before his disciples, and
answering still with his grand, triumphal Verilies the
men and women who have followed him, and who
look up into his revelation of God, and will do his
will on earth, therefore, I believe Him to be the true
Messiah, the Son of God, the Way, the Truth, and
the Life.

Eemembering these Verilies of our Lord, and with
regard to what truths they were spoken, I would bid
you observe, once more, that Christian unity is to be
realized up on the high plane of this positiveness, and
along the line of these great spiritual affirmations of
Jesus Christ. Christ's prayer for the oneness of his
disciples can never be fulfilled upon any lower
plane. The churches must go up where Jesus stood
when he said, ^^ Verily I say unto you," if we would
find the commanding truths beneath which we can
all have one Light in our eyes, and one Spirit in our
hearts. It is useless to seek for Christian unity any
lower down. The valleys below are full of echoes,
and in their depths who of us can disentangle the
passing shadows from the eternal truth ? We must
seek to bring all our churches up to the clear and
grand affirmation of the Gospel of God's redeeming
love. And all conflicts, discords, and clamor of con-

The Positiveness of Jesus, 49

troversy in the world and the church should only
serve to make us turn our faces the more steadily
toward the Christ, who dwelt always in the simple
and eternal truths of the Father among his disciples.
We need to live more in these Verilies of the Christ
and his Gospel of the kingdom of God. Our Christi-
anity here in New England, for the salvation of men
and the redemption of society, needs to care less for
differences between disciples or churches ; our New
England Christianity, our American Christianity,
nay, our missionary Christianity for the whole world,
should be emptied of the contending voices and the
harsh discords of the theologians and the churches,
who cannot fill, with all their childish efforts, the
trumpet of the Lord ; the Christianity of the world
needs to be filled, as a trumpet is filled, with One
single voice as of the messenger from before the face
of the Lord, calling upon men everywhere to repent
of their unrighteousness, and proclaiming that the
kingdom of God is come nigh.

And, finally, let us not go away thinking of others,
but of ourselves ; for there is some Verily, verily of
the Lord for each one of us. You may have heard
it often, and have struggled against it. It may have
come to some man as a clear, definite word of duty,
commanding him to pay that debt, to undo tliat
wrong, to make that crooked way straight. It may
have come to some one in the abundance of the
things which he possesses, and he knew it was i\w
word of the Lord saying to him, All mine was
thine, all thine should be mine. It may liavc come,
in some hour of better impulse, a greeting to your
soul from the God who made it, asking of you loss

50 Christian Facts and Forces.

love of money, and more love of man. It may have
come in some hour of joy or sorrow, for both are
alike prophetic words of the Lord to human hearts,
showing for you possibility of life, purer, richer,
fuller than you had dreamed. Some Verily of the
Lord your conscience may have heard many and
many a time repeated, and you know what service
was neglected and what duty left undone. It has
come to some from their childhood, a voice not lost
through their youth, and though now more easily re-
fused, still, at times, moving them by an almost resist-
less impulse to stand up and say, with a man's noble
humility, or a woman's true devotion, I too would be
a disciple, and follow no other than Christ the Lord
through the years, and the ages of ages. " Verily,
verily, I say unto you." " He that hath ears to hear,
let him hear.''

THE BEGINNINGS OF DISCIPLESHIP.

" Vtxil^ 3E JE»a2 unto ^m, 35xttpt ^z turn, aniJ Inomt ks IittU t\^iltsxm, jje
5]&aII in no Msz znUx into tj^ kingdom o£ Jta^m." — Matt, xviii. 3.

I WISH to speak this morning concerning the begin-
nings of discipleship. We need, every man of us,
to find out the real thing wliich is required of us in
order that we may become Jesus' disciples in deed
and in truth. We say that a man must be converted.
And when we would think particularly of the work of
the Holy Spirit in quickening souls, we speak of con-
version as regeneration, — a man must be born again.
To repeat words, however, is not to get at things.
And we have seen that it was the remarkable habit
of Jesus to go straight always to the real thing in
human life. In Jesus' doctrine the moral and divine
reality of the universe flashed its truth directly into
the souls of men. To be his disciple, therefore, can
be to indulge in no fictitious state of mind. Jesus
Christ surely can accept no discipleship which does
not begin in something thoroughly honest ; for wliat-
ever else the Son of man was, he certainly was the
most real man who ever looked other men in the
eye. He could remain surrounded by no fictions of
Hfe. The sun burns up the vapors, and in tlie true
Light the deeds of men are made manifest. Every-
thing around liim liad to become real and clear, wlien
Jesus himself stood in the midst of his disciples.

52 Christian Facts and Forces,

Hence, if we would learn what the vital thing
is which we ought to mean by that worn word con-
version, we cannot do better than to observe exactly
what Jesus required of men when he first met them.
We may take it for granted, certainly, that Jesus
desired to convert every man and woman whom he
met in Judea or Galilee. What he said and did,
therefore, will as certainly teach us what he thought
men and women ought to do in order to begin to be
his disciples. The one thing essential to becoming
a disciple we may trust Jesus to have had upon his
mind in every instance of his conversation with men.

Let us study, then, what Jesus sought in the first
contacts of his Spirit with men and women.

I remark, in the first place, that he required very
different things of different people. Need I do more
than to remind you of the instances mentioned in
the Gospels to substantiate this statement ? You will
remember that Jesus met Matthew, and told him to
give up the publican's business, and follow him. But,
on the other hand, when Nathanael came to him, all
that Jesus did was to recognize him, and to leave
him thinking of a beautiful vision of angels ascend-
ing and descending upon the Son of man. Once a
certain lawyer stood up and questioned him, and
Jesus gave to that man his first lesson in the Chris-
tian religion by teaching him, in the parable of the
good Samaritan, who his neighbor was. On the other
hand, a Master in Israel sought him, and in speaking
to Nicodemus, Jesus said not one word about human
neighborliness, but taught him how God loved the
world, and how man must be born anew in order
to see the kingdom of God. Again, one out of the

The Beginnings of Disciples kip, 5 3

multitude brought to Jesus some dispute about an
inheritance, and Jesus sought to put that man in the
way of discipleship by giving him a plain warning
against covetousness. Once a ruler of the Phari-
sees, who had a good house and knew how to enter-
tain, made a feast for him, and Jesus went, as he
was always willing to go among the rich or the poor,
whenever he was invited; and when Jesus would
convert that man to himself, he began not with
one of the higher truths of the kingdom of heaven,
but with a practical lesson concerning the most Chris-
tian way of giving and accepting a dinner or supper.
You can read it in the fourteenth chapter of Luke.
There were other people, like the centurion, and the
blind man whose eyes Jesus opened, of whom the
Lord at his first meeting with them seems to have
asked nothing but simple and entire personal trust
in himself. He did not bid them go and do any-
thing whatever, but only wait, nothing doubting, to
see what the Lord would do for them.

Then there was a man who had been possessed
with a legion of unclean spirits, which Jesus cast
out; and when he came down to the boat into which
Jesus was stepping, and wanted to go witli him and
be his disciple, Jesus sent that man homo to his
house and his friends, and bade him tell them how
great things the Lord had done for him, and how he
had mercy on him. Jesus did not let that man
become a disciple by becoming an apostle, giving
up his business, and setting himself apart in some
special apostleship ; he taught him that the ])lace for
him to be a follower of the Son of man was in liis
house, about his business, among his friends. Yet

54 Christian Facts a^id Forces,

there was a certain ruler of whom Jesus made just
the opposite demand. He had been an excellent
man, good from his youth up. He represented a
great deal of religious respectability, and you know
how hard it often is to convert that to any real sacrifice
or enthusiastic devotion. That correct man wanted to
know what good thing he should do in order that he
might have eternal life. Many men want to Ixave
eternal life, as they might have a piece of land, or a
property. And the Lord also wanted that man to
have eternal life, but Jesus wanted him to have it
really and essentially, as he himself in his daily doing
the Father's will had eternal life ; and you remem-
ber the very hard commandment which seemed to
the apostles to be almost impossible, but which Jesus
required of that man in order that he might be per-
fect : '^ Go, sell that thou hast, and give to the poor,
and thou shalt have treasure in heaven ; and come,
follow me.''

Two other instances only let me mention. Once
some Pharisees saw Jesus eating with publicans and
sinners. We sometimes wonder why the Pharisee
takes up so much room in the New Testament to the
exclusion of better things in which we should be
more interested. AVe read the Gospels, and every
now and then we come across the hateful Pharisee,
and behold Jesus judging him. But the room which
the Pharisee takes in the New Testament does not
seem disproportionate, when we consider how much
space the character of the Pharisee has taken in the
history of the church. We may presume that the
Lord desired above all things, if it were possible, the
conversion of the Pharisees. He could pray upon

The Beginnings of Disciples hip, 5 5

his cross for his enemies. And what then did Jesus
say to reach, if possible, those Pharisees ? He said —
and when he knew that the souls of Pharisees in all
the coming years might depend upon his saying the
right thing which the Pharisee must be made to hear,
or he is lost forever, — Jesus said simply this : ^' But go
ye and learn what this meaneth, I desire mercy, and
not sacrifice : for I came not to call the righteous, but
sinners.'' The theology of Jesus for Pharisees is
practical ethics. The Pharisee must begin with
Jesus' doctrine of common morals, if he would be-
come a disciple of the Lord.

The other instance is the story of the Canaanitish
woman. It was a disagreeable incident. Her coming
seemed to have been too much even for the disciples
to bear. It probably affected them as it might a
Christian congregation in a city, should some hag-
gard outcast, conscious of her need, come trembling
to church, and be put by some usher in the midst
of them. The Canaanitish woman nowadays, with
all the devils that vex her daughters, can find her
place in some Sunday meeting of the anarchists.
Peter, and James, and even Matthew the publican,
were respectable people. They said, " Send her away ;
for she crieth after us." And even the gentler John
may have looked as if he felt as the other disciples
did, though perhaps he was too kind to say so — and
Jesus himself at first answered her not a word.
There is a silence of God sometimes in tlie miseries
of poor people, and the mercy of that silence we do
not at first understand. And when Jesus at length
did speak, he jnit before that woman a doubt and
a difficulty. Doubts and dilHcuUies are often the

56 Christzafi Facts and Forces.

Lord's ways of increasing faith. Jesus began by-
giving that woman a suggestion of scepticism, and its
trial. I will not repeat the whole pathetic story. It
is in the fifteenth chapter of Matthew. Those disci-
ples, under Jesus' training, had become honest enough
not to forget to record the Lord's words which re-
buked themselves. After awhile, after Jesus had
tried that woman's faith and proved it real, he said,
'^ Be it done unto thee even as thou wilt."

Such was the way, very different from his manner
at other times, in which the Lord led one poor soul
to trust him forever.

Have I not reminded you already of instances
enough to prove the assertion with which we began,
that Jesus required very different things of different
people in his first contacts with them, in order to
put them in the way of discipleship?

I remark, in the second place, that Jesus required
the same morally real thing of every man and woman
whom he met. For, study these examples, turn
them over and over, and discover the intent of the
Lord in each instance, and you will see how in these
different ways, and by these various methods, he
sought in each case to do thorough work in the
character ; how he put characters to their supreme
test ; how his words brought each man to the dividing
of the ways of his life, so that he must decide
whether he would go God's way, or do something
else. You can observe at your leisure the remarka-
ble moral fitness of Jesus' tests of men to their dis-
positions. Master in Israel, scribe, Pharisee, publi-
can, Israelite in whom there was no guile, covetous
man, the women who sought him, — one and all, hear

The Beginnings of Disciples hip, 5 7

that word of God which is '' living, and active, and
sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing even
to the dividing of soul and spirit, of both joints and
marrow, and quick to discern the thoughts and in-
tents of the heart." And all those persons were in-
stantly directed by Jesus to some course of thought
or conduct which, if they had followed it, would
have led them to be morally genuine and true men,
even as he was true in his oneness wdth the Father.

I remark then, in the third place, that the begin-
ning of Christian discipleship must be for each one
of us in some real moral determination of character.
It cannot possibly be anything less than that ; for
was not Jesus of Nazareth the true man who wanted
real friends for his disciples? Our text shows this.
The disciples, you remember, had come to the Lord
with a question which Jesus himself never could have
asked of God. It is impossible for us to conceive the
Son of man asking the Father in heaven. Who shall
be greatest ? Those men whom Jesus had called to
be his friends needed to be converted from the
character which made it morally possible for them
to ask such a question as that. And he took a little
child, who could not have entertained such a thouglit
in its heart, and put the child in the midst of them,
and said. You must be like that child; except you
are converted you cannot enter the kingdom of
heaven. And then the disciples could not have
mistaken the morally real thing which Jesus meant
by tlieir conversion. The men who followed Jesus
of Nazareth could not remain religious dreamers.
He was sure in some such way as that to awaken
them from their comfortable iictions of i)iety, and

58 Christian Fads and Forces.

to show them that his discipleship meant letting his
divine character master them. And surely, to begin
to be a disciple cannot mean anything less now that
Jesus has ascended, and the Holy Ghost is here.

The Lord Jesus Christ inspired character and con-
duct among his disciples. The Holy Spirit is now
the power of character and conduct among men.
Salvation is the creation from sinful humanity of a
society of true characters, and righteous conduct, for
the ages of ages.

To be born again of the Holy Spirit may mean
for us to have in the course of our religious experi-
ence a great many suggested thoughts, awakened
feelings, inspiring desires, and even at times glad
surprises of light, or rare, restful calm of heart. We
cannot measure, we cannot define, what God's Spirit
may work in us and for us. But to begin to be a
disciple is for us to accept the truth, whatever it is,
which God's Spirit in our hearts brings personally
home to us, to hear the word, however simple, which
the Lord is speaking to us, and to turn from what-
ever else we are following, and to make it our first
business to do that truth of the Lord in our lives.
We may find that word of the Spirit, waiting for us
to obey it, in the next duty which may be sent to us
from God, or it may be already in our hearts in the
better thought of life and happiness which comes
unsought to us. Let us be sure, however, that the
real Christ from the real God asks of us real Chris-
tian determination. What the true Man who came
from God to tell us the truth will be sure to require
of us, is not that easy compliance with which we
would confess him while we follow our own desire

The Beginnings of Discipleship. 59

of life, nor that fashionable semblance in which we
think it becoming that religion should dress up
social respectability. The Lord asks of those who
would turn, and be his disciples in deed and in truth,
that right thing which it may cost a man something
to do ; that generous and genuine service which you
may not be ready to offer the Master ; or that decisive
conquest and subjection, so long postponed, of the
false, worldly self, which has been keeping down the
true and nobler self. Whatever may be the particu-
lar determination, sacrifice, or act of obedience and
faith which lies at the beginning of discipleship
for any of us, we may be positive that it is something
pertaining to the heart and substance of char-
acter, upon which Jesus has his divine eye of hope,
when he bids us repent and believe, and, with his
disciples, come and follow him.

It has sometimes been said, or feared, by verj^
excellent people that in the effort of the modern pul-
pit to teach men to live according to Christianity, as
an ancient Church father put the new theology of his
day, we may be in danger of dropping out or mini-
mizing the doctrines of the Church. On the con-
trary, the real spiritual forces at which the Cluirch
in her doctrines has always been grasping, we would
seek to bring to bear more directly, broadly, and
morally upon human life and society. AVe would
free them from any encumbrances which may })re-
vent their laying hold directly of character and con-
duct. In particular, this Scriptural doctrine of
conversion and the new birth needs to be preached
not only as a truth of dogmatic theology, or as a
formula for religious experience, but as a veritable

6o Christian Facts and Forces.

truth of the Lord to be done on earth, even as Jesus,
when he would make disciples, began by casting out
devils, rebuking covetousness, exposing whatever
was immoral and Satanic in men's conduct, and
turning men from such dispositions and desires as
were wrong, and all contrary to God, and setting
them on their way of new obedience into the king-
dom of heaven. Conversion ! Do not let us belittle
and desecrate the Lord's word by speaking it as
though it could mean anything else than the most
honest, decisive act and posture which a human
being can possibly take in the sight of God.

To be a disciple ! To become a Christian ! It
certainly does not mean to become perfect at one
leap. It does not mean at once, and as by magic,
to be a saint. But it means no little thing. It
requires real moral determination. It is a religious
decision. It means for the school-boy or girl to learn
the next lesson as though the God who made the
mind had set the task, and to try to do everything
as a child of God, whom Jesus would bless. It means
for the young man or woman to do the next thing
which youth may find it in its way to do, out of the
purest motive and from the holiest love in which by
God's grace a soul may go free and glad, j^et duti-
fully, upon its life's course, as upon an errand to
which it is sent from the Father. It means for
the mature man or woman to give up the false habit
and to forsake the sin which may have wound itself
around the life, and at any cost to do the right thing
in God's sight. It means courageous repentance, and
the most manly affirmation of the living soul and
its conscience, and sense of immortal destiny, of

The Beginnings of Discipleship, 6i

which in the power of the Holy Ghost we can become
capable.

And remember that Jesus Christ in his word put
the two things together : You must turn, and you may
enter the kingdom of heaven. Turning, and enter-
ing a kingdom, — these two things belong to Jesus'
teaching concerning conversion. It is not a mere
inward turning therefore ; it is a change which puts
the whole man into right relation and harmony with
the whole moral universe, and the eternal being of
the Godhead.

It is turning from the unreal, empty, sinful world,
from all its wilderness, and darkness, and terror, and
entering a kingdom which lies without us, and
around us, and beyond this earth, full of light and
companionship, which is just as real as a city with
its streets, and gates, and happy homes. The disci-
ple has his citizenship in heaven. Joining the church
symbolizes and expresses this. To have the Spirit
of Christ, and to be among the children of heaven,
is the real thing to be prayed for, and lived for, and,
when the time comes, to die for.

VI.

SIGNS OF THE TIMES.

l^tabm ; iut Joto 15 it Itat jJ^ ^^noio not iob) la titt-erprtt ll&ij? tim-e ?
a.itjtr bf)2 ;eiijeTt of jourstli^s jtt&^t je not b^at is ri^i&t?" — Luke xii.
56-57.

You notice that this word of our Lord was ad-
dressed to the multitude. The people were to in-
terpret the signs of the times. Public opinion
should be filled with intelligence, and judge what is
right. You will observe, also, that in this instance
the Lord applied to the people a word which ordi-
narily he reserved for their false teachers and leaders —
" Ye hypocrites." The word hypocrite charges false-
hood upon the character of a man. And a false
character necessarily results in a false judgment of
events. If the people failed of true discernment of
that Messianic time, it was owing to some falsehood
in their life. Make the life of the people true, and
public opinion can be trusted to judge that which is
right in every time. The instinct of true life is the
best interpreter of God's times.

We should fail to follow the command implied in
this saying of our Lord, did we not, as a Christian
Church and a Christian ministry, seek to interpret
the times, and on all questions to make public opinion
right.

No Christian pulpit, in loyalty to this word of
Christ, can hold itself altogether aloof from the pro-

Signs of the Times, 63

vidential problems of the hour. No Christian church
can sit in peaceful and pious seclusion from the
questions which press upon the life of the people,
and remain a true witness to the Son of man. Hence,
upon this first Sabbath of the new year I deem it
particularly appropriate to pass somewhat beyond
the range of those ordinary topics of the pulpit
which concern us more personally as individuals, or
as a local church, and to seek with you to interpret
some of the signs of this time. Let me remind you,
before we proceed to this task, that it is our mission
to be interpreters, rather than makers, of the prob-
lems and the duties of the times. It has been said
with profound historical insight that providence
makes the problems which present themselves from
time to time before the church.

I shall confine my inquiry this morning to only
two of the significant providential signs of this time.
I shall speak of present providential indications in
the social and theological problems which are before
us. The two are more closely related than may be
thought. For a socialism which would push man
along without any religion is laying down but one
single rail for human progress. So a religious belief
which does not run parallel with some practical line
of conduct would be of little use to the people. The
problem of history is to take humanity out of Baby-
lon and its iniquities, and to transport it to that
Jerusalem which is free. Christianity^ wliicli is tlie
way of human progress, is both truth and practice,
both theology and life. lie is no friend of man wlio
would separate the two. Our first inciuirv, accord-
ingly, concerns the social signs of the times.

64 Christian Facts and Forces,

We sometimes speak of the labor question as the
social question of our time. But it is not. It is only
one end of the social question. The question be-
tween capital and labor is not the real question
before us as citizens and as Christian men, any more
than the real question before Solomon was, which
mother should have which half of the child. The
child was one living whole, and the real question
was, Who should have charge of it, and bring it up ?

Society is one living, organic whole, and it cannot
be split into opposing halves without shedding its
life-blood. The real social question is, Who shall
have modern society — the true or the false mother?
AVhose child is it, the whole of it ? Does it belong
to the devil, or to God ? This has been the social
question of all times, and it is preeminently the
social question of this time. The church will say,
the life of society shall not be destroyed by any war
of classes ; humanity is one body, and it must be
kept as one divine creation, and in it we all must be
members one of another. Any power that would
divide humanity is false to man.

I point to it as one of the signs of the past year
that this truth of the organic unity, the living soli-
darity, the common humanity of men, has been
coming more powerfully into the consciousness of
the people. An hour of anarchy in Chicago has
aroused the conscience of the country to this truth
of our social integrity. The evil and failure of com-
binations and strikes of one class against another
class, is teaching the people anew that we must pros-
per together. And the social fever and excitement
which sometimes seem to make the whole head of

Signs of the Times. 65

our society sick and the whole heart faint — what is
not that compelKng us all to see ? Are we not learn-
ing that there is danger for the whole body if we let
any member suffer? Society cannot drag its feet
in the mire, and hope to keep its eye alw^ays clear.
Society cannot continue to let its hands be unpro-
tected or unclean, and keep its heart merry, or its
brains free from attacks of delirium. If from all
these labor troubles, and all this social agitation,
we are learning this truth of the solidarity of hu-
manity, this truth, as in our Christian language we
would put it, that God hath made us members one
of another, we shall read a sign of this time which
we must understand, if the blood of the people is
not to become hot with the sense of wrong, and the
whole constitution of our society is not to be torn
and rent by convulsive efforts for industrial liberty.

I know that some men of insight and intelligence
are beginning to say the present state of the country
is ominous, as were the signs of discontent and un-
easiness in that period which preceded the outbreak
of the anti-slavery conflict. It cannot, indeed, be
denied that great masses of our countrymen are feel-
ing a sense of grievance which they find it difficult
to define. And the past year has left as a sign of
what may be coming, not, indeed, the strikes which
have spent their force, not the method of boycotting
which has already become too dull a weapon for use,
but a new labor movement in politics; and tliat is
a sign of possible demands for wo know not what
upon tlie organic law of the land. AVo must recog-
nize this sign if wo Avoiild inter[)rei this iiine. 1>iit
over all the turmoil of tlio cataract, and (lie wiKIness

66 Christian Facts and Forces.

of the agitation, I see God's sign of hope. For this
also is plain, that an instinct of justice and a love
of humanity are still the deepest things, and the truest,
in the heart of the people. And the best mind of
this country is giving itself with scientific thorough-
ness, yet with consecrated enthusiasm, to the study
of these problems, and fitting itself for leadership
of the people through these dangers. I speak now
not merely of the discussion of these questions in
almost every religious assembly and in many pul-
pits— for much of our eSbrt may have its only use
in calling more general attention to social and in-
dustrial problems which others, more specially
trained, must work out in the halls of legislation,
and in the business of the world, — but I refer in
attestation of my statement, and as a reason of hope,
to the fact that the young men who gather at the
centres of education in this land are being trained
in our universities to understand and to meet these
social and political questions, as in my college days
no young man anywhere could be trained. Our
New England colleges, true to the memories of the
men who founded them for country and for God, are
educating our j^outh, the sons of rich men and of
poor men together, to be teachers and leaders of the
people along the lines of true progress; and the
influence of men so trained will be felt in the legis-
lation and the life of this country after the dema-
gogue shall have fallen with his blind followers into
the ditch, and the people will pass on under wiser
guidance to a civilization more prosperous, more
equal, and more just. It is no insignificant indica-
tion of this quiet, but potential work which is being

Signs of the Times. 67

done at our universities, when rich men in Boston
begin to inquire what influence at Harvard has led
their sons to develop an unusual interest in the con-
dition and ideas of laborers in their employ ; and it
is a gratifying sign also of this time of social agita-
tion and hope, that a graduate course of training in
these subjects marks the new era of the old Yale.
" The scholar/' to quote a phrase which I heard dur-
ing my college days and have not forgotten, *^ re-
ceives the people's oil, and is to return it to them in
light." The Christian pulpit, too, wherever, at least,
it has felt a fresh breath from the Spirit, is inspired
with the Lord's word of the Gospel of the kingdom,
and is preaching the truth not merely of individual
election, but of the redemption of the world in
Christ, and the election of all believers to service and
to usefulness for the kingdom of God's sake.

I pass now from the mention of this most interest-
ing sign, and succession of signs, of our time to the
consideration of the signs which are apparent in the
theological sky.

A glance through the past is necessary for any
appreciation of recent theological signs. In the
New Testament is to be found an Epistle to the
Romans. The very title marked a new era in the
history of the true religion. Christ was preached to
the Romans. And one distinguishing characteristic
of the style, and of the whole mode of approach to
the truth of Christ, in that Ei)istle is its adaptation
to the Roman habit of mind. St. Paul was fitted
and chosen for tliat special work. St. Paul was liim-
self a Hebrew lawyer. lie liad been trained in a
school of Jewish law; and besides that, he was a

68 Christian Facts and Forces,

Roman citizen, and as a Roman citizen probably-
understood something of Roman law. With that
Epistle to the Romans there begins the Roman con-
ception of Christianity. It is a forensic presentation
of Divine truth, such a presentation as Roman law-
yers might appropriate. Its practical principles con-
cerning the duties of the strong to the weak are
particularly fitted to Roman character and Roman
Christianity. This conception of truth which the
Apostle, who could be all things to all men, so wisely
presented, and which he was chosen and inspired to
begin to teach, has been wrought out through a long
history of controversy and creed. A distinguished
jurist has lately had occasion to point out how
thoroughly the Roman jurisprudence has saturated
our traditional theology. " The principles of the
Roman law colored theology after the Reformation
as well as before." Some time since a friend narrated
to me the difficulties in the way of a profession of
faith, which a thoughtful person had experienced
who had been brought up under current notions of
Christianity. Those difficulties were not doubts
of the Gospel of God's love in Jesus Christ our
Lord. They were found to resolve themselves
mostly into difficulties with the Roman law concep-
tion of Christianity, as that conception has been
elaborated in certain received formulas, and imposed
as a test of sound belief. They were difficulties which
might more properly be charged to the code of Jus-
tinian than to the Gospel of the Son of man.

Some of the ordinary phrases which are familiar
to us in our Protestant creeds have been transferred
almost bodily from the Roman law. Now, observe,

Signs of the Times, 69

I beg of you, that I do not suggest that this concep-
tion of Christianity, and its development in our Latin
creeds, is altogether false, or was unnecessary. It is,
in its way, and rightly understood, a true and help-
ful conception. It may still be useful to us, for ex-
ample, to conceive of Christ's atonement under the
old common law principle of the payment of a debt
by an accepted substitute, although that legal form
has fallen into disuse, and few are familiar with it.
I do not deny that the truth of Christ could adapt
itself without untruthfulness to the Roman habit of
mind, because that would be to refuse to accept as
canonical the Epistle to the Romans ; neither do I
deny that this whole Latin and legal conception and
systemization of Christian doctrine, although it has
been carried far beyond the scope of the Apostle
Paul's argument to the Romans, has been a most
necessary and providential development, and that it
has borne important fruits which remain for our use
and profit. But my point is that this whole Roman
era of Christianity is evidently in this century com-
ing to its period.

I state this as a fact which is too evident to be
denied by any one who is familiar with the history of
modern theology. Now I want to make plain to you,
if possible, in a few words, the significance of this fact
as a providential sign for us to interpret. I may
make what I would state clearer to legal minds, per-
haps, by comparing recent change and, as T believe,
progress in Cliristian tlieology, to the advauc^o whicli
has been made in modern juris})rudence. The
paralh^l is more ilUiminative because our jurispru-
dence and our formal notions of Christian doctrine

*]0 Christian Facts and Forces.

have, as was just stated, much that is common in the
phraseology of the Roman law. The progress of
modern jurisprudence, as I understand it, has been
made mainly in what Jeremy Bentham distinguished
as the adjective portion in contrast with the sub-
stantive portion of the law. There has been to some
extent a re-codification of law, but the progress has
been mainly in modes of procedure. The change
has been mainly not in the substantive, but in the
adjective, not in the essential principles of law so
much as in their mode of application. And in the
simplification of modes of law, in methods of bring-
ing principles of law to bear more directly and really
upon cases, progress has been made, and much pro-
gress remains to be made. Now, precisely this is
what the theology which began in this country with
Jonathan Edwards, and whose end of improvement
is not yet, has been doing, and will do. The essen-
tial principles of the Gospel have not been aban-
doned, and they will not be. They are older than
any of its existing forms. There has been no loss
from the substance of the Gospel, but there has been
much gain in the simplicity of the adjectives. We
have not abandoned, indeed, all Roman forms of
presenting the Gospel, but we have declared that we
will not be bound by them. And I am sure the
mode of procedure has been simplified, and will be
still more in all our churches. We have been reviv-
ing the older Greek theology, and have dared to
think with Origen, and Clement of Alexandria, and
with Justin Martyr, and with St. John, as w^ell as
with Calvin, and Augustine, and Irenseus, or in con-
tact with that one side of St. Paul's many-sidedness

Signs of the Times, 7 1

which is presented particularly in the Epistle to the
Romans. And the one common motto of the
theology of this present time is to be found in that
old saying of an ancient father, " Let us learn to live
according to Christianity.'^ Such, it has been justly
observed, is the distinguishing feature and sign of a
living and hopeful theology, " Let us learn to think
according to Christ Jesus."

I have spoken of this movement, which is now quite
general and powerful, as a movement which began
with Jonathan Edwards. He accepted, for he had no
other choice, the theological and philosophical forms
of his day ; but his spiritual being overflowed them,
and his spiritual thought to-day is flowing on in
broader channels than he knew. The theology of
New England has always carried in it a spirit and a
life which could not be confined in the swaddling
clothes in which its infancy was wrapped. It broke
loose from Calvinism by grasping boldly the princi-
ple of a universal atonement for all men. It shook
off a Roman limitation in its abandonment of the
idea of mankind as being bound, like one Roman
family, under the headship of Adam — the federal
theology as it used to be called, and which was re-
garded by many in its day as the faith once delivered
to the saints. It proclaimed with no uncertain
sound the individual responsibility of every sinner
before God. It still subscribed, but in no servile
subjection, to the Westminster Standards — the Cate-
chisms and the Confession of Faith — which were
statements of doctrine hvrgcly legal and ])olitical in
their origin and their forms. But it went boldly back

72 Christian Facts and Forces,

to the New Testament, and sought to become a dis-
ciple of Jesus himself. It dared believe that the
non-elect nations are not enemies, and it became a
missionary faith. It would be disloyalty to the best
traditions of our New England theology, and bond-
age to a yoke to which our fathers would have given
place by subjection, no, not for an hour, should we
not follow still onwards the way of God's providence
through the new problems, and among the new
sciences, and in the light of the growing revelation
which God is constantly making of himself in the
history of his redeeming love. I hail it then as a
happy sign of our times that we are working out
anew our forms and our statements of belief to
answer the vital necessities of faith, and to meet the
demands of the world upon a Christianity which is
to be light for the Oriental mind in India as well as
for ourselves. And I hail it as a hopeful sign of the
times that the instinct of the religious public, even
with swifter and surer discernment than the minds
of many of us clergymen, who have been trained in
the theology of the Latin confessions, has discerned
this need of a simple Gospel for the missionary
opportunity of the present.

I will suffer mj^self to allude but briefly to the con-
troversies of the day through all the alarms and the
clangor of which the new missionary era of Chris-
tianity is to be rung in. These controversies and
agitations are peculiar to no denomination, and they
are originated by no men. God sets the tasks of his
church in every age. Our problems of faith and life
are providential problems, and all churches, nay, all

Signs of the Times,

parties even in the churches, under God's overruling
wisdom, are working together for the greater good
and the further advance of Christ's kingdom.

In our own denomination, the general movement
which I have been describing has been obstructed
temporarily, or held back, at two separate points, and
two controversies have arisen. Of one of these* I
will not suffer myself at this time to speak. Of the
other, I will remark that the difficulty which has
arisen, and which is still unsettled, in the adminis-
tration of the American Board, may involve some
temporary loss of money and of men to missionary
service, but it should involve on our part no loss of
steadfast loyalty toward the work of the Board itself
Policies change, and men change, but the cause of
missions is the cause of Christ. And it is my firm
belief that, as the final result of this whole painful
controversy, all obstructions will be removed which
may now lie in the way of the best educated and
most catholic missionary service, and that whatever
traditional opinions or objections in the administra-
tion of the Board are now preventing our churches
from sending as missionaries our young men who are
prepared to teach in the spirit of free and reverent
Christian scholarship, as they have been taught in
our best theological seminaries, are obstacles and
obstructions to the kingdom of God which arc des-
tined erelong to bo swept away before the rising
public opinion of tlie Congregational churches, whose
servant, and not whose master, the American Board is.

Two signs of the times are meeting, and tlieir
interpretation is not obscure, — on the one liand an

■^ The Andover Controversy.

74 Christian Facts and Forces,

open door for the Gospel to the higher classes of the
pagan world, and on the other hand the education
of young men, in our leading theological seminaries,
to meet with broad and comprehensive Christian
wisdom the thoughts of men in all lands. If we are
wise to discern these manifest signs, and will bravely
follow the indications of God's will in them, we shall
see this century close in grander missionary triumph
than our fathers could have dreamed. And the
dawn of another of the days of the Son of man is
already in our skies. Let our faces be toward its
blessed light.

I would turn with hopeful earnestness now to the
younger members of this church and congregation.
I would have you feel that you are living in one of
the days of the Son of man. I would show you that
this is a Christian world, and that you may find
Christ's work everywhere to be done in it. I would
have you see what is coming to me with ever stronger
conviction, that in Christ, and in the company of his
disciples, you can find life worth living, and your
characters can become complete and radiant. The
new year has begun. The old is gone. The past
of this church is secure ; its future is with the young
men and the young women to whom I preach. Give
to all its work your help and your enthusiasm. And
if we should be permitted to stand together at the
close of this greatest of the Christian centuries, and
some who are now consecrating their early youth
to the Lord should be found still looking on into
years of service beyond any possibility of my age
then, may grace be given me to bid you still go for-
ward, bound to the past by no teaching of mine, with

Signs of the Times, 75

minds free to follow whatever truth of God may still
break from his Word, or be made manifest in his
constant revelation of himself in his works and in
redemption, with no fetters upon your thoughts, but
with the cross of Christ upon your hearts. And on
this first Sabbath of another of the years of the Son
of man, I would ask again some who are not num-
bered with us, but whose hearts are already Chris-
tian, to be truer to themselves, and to become more
helpful to others, by taking upon themselves with us
the vows of the Lord's house.

VIL
THE NOTE OF UNIVERSALITY.

" ®r tsts^ist ^t i\}t (^uxtb jof (KolJ ? "— i Cor. xi. 22.

It is important for us to put the work of the local
church in its right Christian setting. The single
congregation is a unit in the great multiple of com-
munions which constitute the Church of God. The
Church of the living God is the large, redeemed
humanity of which Christ is the Head, and of which
all Christian communions are the members.

It is necessary for us that the kingdom of God
should be localized for our service and devotion in
single and separate churches. The strong emotions
of men's souls gather around definite objects. We
want something near, distinct, realizable, to which to
give our utmost efforts. Men in battle look to their
regimental colors for their rallying-point. The
country is localized to their eyes in those colors, and
brave men will cling to them under hottest fire.
Yet those colors would be nothing of themselves,
did they not belong to the country and represent
the country. Thus the devotions of Christians
gather in our local churches and in our separate
denominations; yet these would not be worth the
service of men, did they not all stand for the large
idea and represent the grand truth of a redeemed
humanity, the Church of the Hving God. To follow
the colors of a particular church or sect for its own

The Note of Universality. 77

sake might prove to be treason to the Church of
God. " For the Kingdom of God's sake " is the
motto which should fly upon the flag of every church
in the world.

I wish this morning, accordingly, as a fitting
preparation for our annual church-meeting, to direct
your thoughts to this sign of universality which be-
longs to the true Church, and which must be kept,
therefore, upon its banner by any individual church
which is to represent in its place the Church of God.

The Church of God is a universal institution for
man. The Church is for humanity. The Church
belongs to all men, although all men may not con-
sent to belong to the Church.

If we listen to the Gospel which Jesus came preach-
ing, we cannot fail to hear ringing in it this clear
note of universality. It was the Gospel of the king-
dom which he came preaching. It was not a Gospel
of individual election merely, nor of personal salva-
tion simply, but the Gospel of the Kingdom w^hich
he came preaching — the Gospel of a redeemed society
organized in righteousness, and vital with the Spirit
of love — the Gospel of the kingdom of Heaven.

The daily life of the Son of man was marked
by this sign of universality. Jesus' conduct never
could be contained in the measures of the scribes
and Pharisees. His life overflowed Judaic limita-
tions. It was every day the life of man for man. As
such it was a constant surprise to liis disciples. The
one thing tliat perplexed the scribes and baffled the
cliief priests was this universality of Jesus' sympa-
tliy and teaching. It was a larger humanity tliau
Jerusalem could understand. The publican won-

78 Christian Facts and Forces.

dered at his kindly word, and the common people
never heard man speak like this man. On almost
every page of the Gospel some incident brings
out, or some passing word of Jesus reveals, this uni-
versal humanity of the Christ. All the barriers
which national pride, religious customs, or Pharisaic
misinterpretations of God's words had built and made
impassable between man and man, Jesus ignores
in his conduct, or sweeps away with his resistless
grace. Recall, for example, that scene at which
the scribes and Pharisees were shocked, when Jesus
sat at meat with publicans and sinners. Recall that
scene at Jacob's well at which even the good disciples
were surprised. Not even the ancient law of the
Sabbath, hedged about as it had been by the strict
interpretations of the Rabbles, could restrain his
divine humanity. He healed the impotent man,
and restored the sight of the blind on the Sabbath-
day, and proclaimed that even an institution so
sacred to God from the completion of the creation
as the Sabbath was made for man.

This note of some universal good for man to
man, to which Jesus' daily conduct was keyed, per-
vades also and harmonizes all his doctrines. No
teacher like the Son of man had ever used the uni-
versal adjectives in speaking to men. He did not
use the language of election and discrimination.
His call was for the many. Come unto me, all ye
that labor — if any man have ears to hear — if any
man will come after me — whosoever, therefore, shall
confess me — whosoever shall do the will of God.
We cannot take these universals out of the speech
of Jesus without taking all the music from it.

The Note of Unive7''sality, 79

Jesus' words of life are for humanity. His divine
speech of redemption is for man as man. Jesus'
promises are for us as individuals because they are
for us as men. Because we belong to the world for
which God gave his Son we can hope to have part in
its final redemption. Because we bear the common
human nature which he took upon himself, and in
which he made confession for our sin, and was
obedient unto death, we can have personal part in
that forgiven, regenerated, and restored humanity in
Christ in which God shall be glorified.

I have just been reminding you how universal
were the teachings and the life of Jesus in their sym-
pathy and significance ; but the Person also of Jesus
is distinguished from all others by this sign of uni-
versality. For when we wish to designate Jesus of
Nazareth, to describe him by the one word which is
most distinctive of him, what is the name which is
his as it belongs to no other? He has named himself
in his human place in history, " I, the Son of man."
" The Son of man goeth as it is written of him."
" The Son of man must be lifted up ? Who is this Son
of man T When the disciples began to realize who
and what manner of man the Son of man was, the
other confession followed of itself, " Thou art the
Christ, the Son of the living God." And upon the
man who first learned and confessed that whole truth
of the Son of man and the Son of God, Christ said
the church should be built. To Peter in his first
clear, conscious confession of what Christ is as the
Son of man and God, the Lord gave the promise of
his church.

The church, therefore, whoso promise was given in

8o Christian Facts and Fo7^ces,

that moment of the disciple's discernment of the
divine human Person of the Christ, should be char-
acterized by the same note of universality, and
marked by the same sign of sympathy and signifi-
cance for all men. It is not to be a chosen school of
disciples around their Teacher; it is not to be a
national church — another temple in Jerusalem ; it
is not to be a state church — a new Rome over the
whole world. Not as such a Master and Lord had
Peter discerned the Son of man to be, whom he con-
fessed as the Son of God. Peter had recognized,
dimly and darkly it may be, the divine humanity of
the Lord Jesus Christ. There would still be needed
the vision of the sheet let down from heaven, and
the call which came to him from Cornelius — that
righteous heathen man who was to have the Gospel
preached to him for his salvation, — and there would
be needed also the marvelous inspiration of the day
of Pentecost to fit Peter and to make him ready to
lay the foundation among the Gentiles of the church
of the Son of man. In due time the needed enlarge-
ment of his knowledge of Christ was given, and
afterward through all the Apostle's preaching and
epistles we can hear sounding the same note of uni-
versal grace and divine love for the world which was
struck in the song of the angels at the birth of
Christ, and which pervades, like celestial music, the
speech, and doctrine, and sacrifice of the Son of
man.

I hold, therefore, this idea of a universal good for
man to be the true idea of the Church of God — the
idea to be derived from the Gospels and the Person of
Christ, from Pentecost and from Peter, and from all

The Note of Universality, 8i

the apostles, at least after Pentecost. It is the idea
not of some select society, or exclusive body, or
isolated communion of men, but the grand, inspiring
idea of a society in which all men are to become one,
of a body in which all particular groups and affini-
ties of men are to be members one of another — of a
Church of the living God for the world.

How, then, is such an idea ever to be realized ?
Is it in any manner coming to realization on this
earth ? Or is this also a dream — a Christian
dream — of humanity ? A far-off vision, unsub-
stantial as a dream, will not satisfy the present social,
Messianic longing of our world. It would not be
enough to point men who are hungry to the empty
sky and say, See what golden color rims the far
horizon. It is something — indeed, often it is very
much — to be able to give to people a brighter sky for
them to live and to toil under. Eeligion does give
bright, pure sky for life, where otherwise there would
be no outlook, and only darkness. But more than
this the religion of Christ in our churches is required
to do for the people, if our Christ be the true ]\Ies-
siali. A hungry world wants not merely colors of
transfigured clouds to delight the eye and to cheer
the heart; it wants heaven's liglit as that light lias
been taken up, transformed, and oflered freely to it,
in good wheat and corn ; and the churches of ( u^d
are to be the fields and granaries in whicli tlie liglit
of the Gospel is converted and gathered uj) into tlie
bread of heaven for the life of the people.

Tlu^ churches are called, in the name of the Son
of man, to represent and to begin to n^ilize on (\irih
this true society, this large, generous, rrtKHMned

82 Christian Facts and Forces,

humanity, which is the Church of the living God.
And although the actual Christianity of an age may
seem to lie in sharp contrast against this divine ideal,
even as a low fen may lie in dark contrast beneath a
sunset, nevertheless, let us keep this ideal shining in
our eyes, let us cherish in our hearts the inspiration
of this hope of a Church of humanity. And per-
haps never more clearly or hopefully has the way
been shown in which the city of God is coming from
heaven, than it is revealed by the course of Chris-
tianity in these latter days. For this is preeminently
the age of missionary Christianity and the missionary
church ; and what is that but the beginning of the
holy catholic Church universal ?

Three days of the Son of man, at least, in Chris-
tian history have preceded our day. The first was
the Apostolic age, that day of glorious beginnings
of Christianity. It was necessarily, however, an era
of but partial applications of Christ's words to the
life of the people. The Apostolic Church must strug-
gle for its right to be in the Roman world ; it could
not reach out and lay hold in every direction of
Roman manners and institutions. The Apostles
were called to liberate and set in motion the Chris-
tian ideas, but not to apply them universally to their
world and its customs. The time, for instance, was
not yet come for Christianity to meet, and to settle,
according to Christ, the question of human slavery.
Paul indeed planted the Christian principle of liberty
in the epistle to Philemon. Put all the sentiments
of liberty together which may be extracted from the
Greek and Roman classics, and they would not yield
the principles and power of human liberty, sure in

The Note of Universality. 83

time to grow and to come to their hour in history,
which were potential in the Church-Hfe that Paul
planted and Apollos watered.

After this age of Apostolic beginnings and partial
applications of the Gospel to society there followed in
God's educational providence the age of the power of
external law, and the era of the outward unity of
the Church. The Roman age of Christian history
witnessed an external universality of the Churcli.
The Roman idea of unity and universality as a dis-
tinctive note of the Church of God was profoundly
true ; but its method of realizing that idea on earth
was the way of Caesar rather than the way of the
Son of man. A return from Roman Catholic su-
premacy to the authority of the Son of man followed
next, in the divine order of history, through the
reformation. And now that through Protestantism
and Puritanism we have been brought safely back
from the Latin Church to the Apostolic Church —
what is the next step forward as the signs of the
times show the way in which the Son of man may
be discerned still going before his people?

Obviously the providential tasks which are laid
upon our present Christianity, are compelling the
churches to take some further step forward ; or they
will die out if they stand motionless and idle in tlie
old ways. Look about you, observe the devouring
wants of our industrial civilization, and judge for
yourselves, if this necessity of further progress be not
a question of the life of our present forms of organ-
ized Christianity.

For what are the chief (juestions of life now the
world over? Clearly, they are social problems.

84 Chnstiaii Facts and Forces,

And what are these social questions ? Disputes be-
tween those who work, and those who win ? between
those who have little, and those who have enough,
and to spare ? No, no. These are only the surface
agitations of life. The social question goes deeper.
It is a broader and profounder problem than any
passing strife of labor and capital. How shall men
learn to live together ? Common physical necessities
force this simple, yet hardest social question upon
modern society. Because men burn coal, for exam-
ple, they must come to some understanding as to
how men are to live and work together. How not
only in this city, or this country, but how in the
whole world shall men live together ? That is the
real social question, and all labor troubles, or waste-
ful competitions, or hurtful combinations, are symp-
toms and signs of this social moral question, this
vital problem of society. And it is a world-question.
No country now by any tariff or embargo can take
itself out of the world. No nation can live for itself
alone. The fates of the modern nations are bound
together. The problem of healthful and prosperous
civilization in one land is involved in the problem
of healthful and prosperous civilization over the
whole world. There is nothing so foreign that it
may not become domestic to any country. The des-
tiny of this world, it is increasingly evident, is to be
one destiny.

To the Church of God providence is bringing home
this one social question of the world. How then are
the churches to answer it ? Not in the way of Rome.
The imperial age is past and gone. The Son of man
will not be enthroned as Caesar. There is no way of

The Note of Universality, 85

legislation to the millennium. The kingdom of
heaven is not coming through modern legislatures.
Once the Roman Church brought the people under
the law, and it was good for the world that it was
brought into some order and unity. The Latin
genius for ruling was providentially used in the
development of Christ's kingdom, and the strong
Roman mind of Calvin also was called of God to
rule Protestantism for a season ; when however the
necessity and the age for that talent and that service
are past, then a survival or forced imitation of it
may become obstructive and hurtful.

How is the present Church to meet this present
social problem of the world? In the sixteenth cen-
tury the old man of Rome, swollen with corruptions,
was not sent to do God^s work, but the Lord called
the new man of Protestantism to sound to the nations
its bugle note of Christian liberty. Neither shall the
old man of Protestantism, shrunken in muscle, its
separate members scarce hanging together, bound
helplessly to its past, mumbling its creeds of better
times, and living on the income of its capital laid up
in more fortunate days, be the new man of the
coming day, fearless of the light, strong in hope,
going forth unbound and unburdened, in the unity
of the Spirit, and with Christ's constraining love in
its heart, to cast out the devils of our modern civiliza-
tion, to heal tlie sufferings of whole classes of men,
and to preach. The Kingdom of lieaven is at hand.

Verily, the days are coming — are tlioy not now
at liand ? — when the Son of man will open his moulli,
and bless tlio mnltitudos in our clnirclios, and in the
power of his Spirit our Christianity shall boconio us

86 Christian Facts and Forces.

never before the Church of God for the world. We
are to see more of this redeemed, and true, and satis-
fied humanity here upon this earth. The churches
are becoming more deeply conscious that they exist
not for themselves, nor for the salvation of their own
members only, but for some divine blessing for all
men. The true Church is a divine institution which
belongs, like the creation itself, to mankind, and in
which all men born into this world have divine
rights. The Church of God is an order of human
society, a hearth of humanity, a household of God
in which, according to God's eternal purpose in
Christ Jesus, every human being has birthright and
promise of redemption; and it is the mission and
the work of the churches to proclaim to every crea-
ture that the Church of God belongs to them, and
that as men for whom, every one of them, Christ
tasted death, they have gracious rights in the Church
of the living God. The Church belongs to you,
whether you will belong to it or not. The Church is
for the world, whether the world now be for or
against the Church.

I have been speaking of a large subject — too great
for a brief sermon. But I shall reach my aim, what-
ever else be left unsaid, if by these remarks I may
succeed in putting our thought of our local Church,
its history, its present work, its future promise, into
this larger thought of the Church of God, holy,
catholic, universal, which is for mankind, and which
shall be the final society of this earth. I am sure
that if we can gain and keep, even in our hopes and
dreams, this larger, divine idea of a world-church —
a church for the world, — belonging by a divine order

The Note of Universality, 87

to the world, and not permitted to stop or rest in its
social and missionary endeavor until it becomes in
fact, as it is in idea and power, the Church of the
world, — we shall, thereby, receive an inspiration
and a joy in our particular church-membership and
our special church duties which we can find in no
other way.

Two further consequences of great moment follow
from this truth that the Church, by the decree of
God's love for the world, belongs to mankind, and
that the Church in the end is to prove itself to be the
world-church, the pure and happy society in which
heaven and earth are reconciled.

The first of these is that we who belong to particu-
lar communions of believers should be careful in our
administration of them not to interfere with the
divine rights of any man in the Church of God.
" Repent : for the kingdom of heaven is at hand,"
Jesus began to preach. Our authorized missionary
message still is. Repent and believe, for the Churcli
is here as the sign and witness of that kingdom
of God. We must look carefully to it lest by
incidental beliefs, or temporary forms, or rules of
expediency, we preach some other Gospel, and ex-
clude some souls from our churchly participation in
the kingdom of God. All men who come as disci-
ples of Christ, have divine rights to any table of
communion which is spread in the name of Christ.
If Christ be indeed set forth here, there is no heathen
man or publican who has not the right of one of
the children of God, and one of the Lord's brethren,
to be present and to commune where Jesus himself
is present in the midst of his disciples.

88 Christian Facts and Forces,

The missionary motive of the churches lies also
in this Gospel of the kingdom, and the claims of
the world upon disciples of the Son of man. All
men have gracious rights in the name of Christ to
some communication of the Gospel of a universal
atonement. The divine rights of the world to the
Church, and in the Church, impose upon us the pre-
sent and urgent missionary obligation ; and all be-
yond our power to accomj)lish belongs to the gracious
responsibility for the world which God in Christ
freely assumed upon the Cross. The commandment
which the ascending Lord gave his apostles is con-
sonant with his life and death, and with the essen-
tial character of his Gospel, which is to be preached
to every creature. Such is its nature and intent ; it
is its essential character that it is to be preached to
every creature, — to the utmost limit of present possi-
bility by us, and beyond our power, how, or when, or
where, we may not know ; for no man of us has
revelation or authority to determine the times and
the seasons of the coming of the Son of man to men.

The other consequence of this truth is the follow-
ing : men who are already in the Church have right
to stay there, and to work out honestly and patiently
within the Church any questions or doubts which
may trouble them. A Christian man in the Church
has the right of a disciple to meet with a candid
mind all facts which may be discovered, and to study
all questions which may arise before his reason. The
disciples of old were constantly going back to the
Son of man with some new question, or from some
fresh perplexity. We have the rights of students,
the rights of honest minds, the rights of reason, to

The Note of Universality. 89

life-long inquiries within the Church of God. The
worst faithlessness is to dodge truths, and to be afraid
of facts. Still, the Son of man as of old, dwells
among the questionings of men. I speak explicitly
and with emphasis, because I know there are men
already in the Church who sometimes wonder
whether amid all their mental difficulties, and with
the questionings of their growth in knowledge, they
have moral right still to belong to any church. Nay,
the Church of God belongs to you, and you have a
birthright in it. Your hearts having been there
almost from your childhood, your desires of life
being there to-day, you have within the Church of
God a man's right of reverent thought before the
Lord. Until you have made up your mind to take
all that you have, and go to a far country, you have
the right of a son to your Father's house. And
there is no better place than within the communion
of the Church for you to meet the questions of your
lives. Many difficulties and doubts you can settle
better in the company of disciples than j^ou possibly
can in any other fellowship. And nothing pertain-
ing to the life of a true, growing, honest soul should
ever be deemed foreign to the communion of the
Son of man. Every truth of the creation that ever
shall show itself to be true, belongs to the Church
of God. And surely in the most consecrated society
of souls the final truth of our human life and death
can best be studied and known. So Thomas of old
kept in the Church, although he doubted. 1 le know
that the best place where lie might learn whether
the Lord was risen indeed, was the ])laco where tlie
disciples were met together. And thougli lie was a

90 CJunstian Facts and Fo7'ces,

doubter, and had not hid his doubt, the disciples did
not think of closing against him the door of the
room where their Lord might find them and him.
And so, Thomas, the honest sceptic, became an honest
apostle. For every Thomas who has accepted the
word of the Lord, " Repent : for the kingdom of
heaven is at hand," although he may not yet
have learned to say with an undoubting mind, " My
Lord, and my God," the Church, like the disciples
of old, can surely afford to keep some place within
its chamber of communion, until Thomas shall also
see for himself, and worship.

In conclusion it follows from this truth that the
Church of God belongs to mankind, that every man
to whom it is presented has some corresponding
obligation towards it. A divine intention for man
creates a duty on the part of all to whom it is made
known. We hear this note of universality in the
Gospel, and to it our lives should make prompt
response. This divine fact that God has on earth a
Church for man, that there is to be gathered in the
name of Christ a true society of men, renders any
self-isolation, or unwillingness to throw ourselves
into this divine order of human life, or Church for
man, a serious failure on the part of those to whom
this divine call comes.

The world is redeemed in Christ, and it is a sin
and a shame to live in it as though it were not a
redeemed world. There is a Church of God, already
begun on earth and in heaven, forming, growing,
expanding, having a glorious world-task committed
to it ; and it is ignoble not to have part in it and
its work. There is to be a new heaven and a new

The Note of Universality, 91

earth, and all true and generous life which shall not
have shrunk in selfishness, and shrivelled in sin,
and hardened in impenitence, until like a dead bough
it be fit only to be burned, shall be quickened, and
perfected, shall blossom and bear fruit, in that king-
dom of heaven.

VIII.

ZEBEDEE^S ABSENCE,

*' W^m tzmz to tint lf)e molf)^r of Ztlt)itt'n t\iXtixm ^'\i\ \tx jEfons,
toorjsSippin^ Jim, aititJ toiriit^ a x-ertain tiiu^of tint." — Matt. xx. 20.

But where was Zebedee ? Why did he not come
too ? His sons and his wife were with Jesus. How
happened it that Zebedee never was found with his
family among Jesus' professed disciples, and that he
alone of his family was not at the cross ? It has
been conjectured that at the time of the crucifixion
Zebedee was dead. He may have been waiting then
in some other world for the full manifestation of the
Redeemer's love. Or possibly Zebedee may have
lived for weeks and months after his two sons had
followed Jesus, and after his wife also had gone up to
Jerusalem to minister to the Master, and yet for some
reason he may never have found occasion, or im-
proved his opportunity, to appear with his family
among the confessed disciples of Jesus Christ.

There is only one clear notice of Zebedee in the
New Testament, and that puts him before us in a not
unfavorable light. When Jesus at the beginning of
his public ministry was walking one day by the sea
of Galilee, he called James and John, and they left
their father with the hired servants in the boat, and
followed him. Zebedee made no objection. He was
willing they should go. We can see him in the
boat, looking up at the sound of a call so strange

Zebcdce s Absence. 93

from One who was already beginning to speak with
authority, and saying not a word against it, though
his sons left him to mend the broken nets, and went
away over the hills with the wonderful stranger.
Yet that silent acquiescence must have cost Zebedee
something. His sons were full-grown, and capable of
being very helpful in the boat. And Zebedee was
growing old, and needed their help. Although he
had hired servants, he must still go himself to the
shore, and look after the boat ; and the lake must
have seemed lonelier to him after his two sons were
gone. Many a man since has let his sons follow
some noble cause, although the call took them from
himself, and changed all his plan of life for them.

And Jesus who called James and John, we may be
sure, could not fail to notice Zebedee's sacrifice when
he let them go without a word. The Lord had not
asked Zebedee also to go with them. The hard ways
which he must tread with his disciples miglit have
been too toilsome for the father of James and John.
He may have been too old for that service. Jesus
called to be his apostles comparatively young men.
They would have erelong work to do exhaustive of
muscle and nerve, as well as taxing their faitli.
Jesus chose robust men in their vigor for his apostles
and witness-bearers totlic world. But tliougli Jesus
miglit not call a man like Zebedee to be an apostle,
he did ask of him a disciple's sacrifice ; and Zebe-
dee's still faithful, though lonelier work in the boat,
with the hired servants, may have l)oen his pari of
the service which Jesus desired of his disciples.

We may reasonably suppose, moreover, that Zc^ho-
dee, who could let his sons leave him and follow

94 Christian Facts and Forces.

Jesus, and who afterward suffered Salome his wife
to go up with them to Jerusalem, must have been at
least in a general way interested in their religion.
He could hardly have kept on an indifferent specta-
tor of the life and the work of the Nazarene which
had cost his home so much. Even if not personally
and openly a disciple he must have been pleased on
the whole with his sons' new faith, and glad also to
have his wife religious. And he was willing still to
work faithfully for his family, and to pay the bills,
whatever their religion might cost him. The apos-
tles must have somebody to provide for their living
expenses. Neither can we doubt that James and
John, as they had opportunity, must have been in-
terested in informing their father concerning the
marvelous works, and more marvelous words of the
new prophet whom they were beginning to know as
indeed the Messiah. They would not have been
true sons, had they not taken every opportunity to
let Zebedee know what they had found in Jesus
Christ. And it may have been through their word
and influence that Salome their mother came after-
ward to be known among the women who ministered
to Jesus.

Leaving all conjecture however one side, and
thinking of Zebedee as favorably as we may,
the single fact which appears from the New Testa-
ment narrative is, that at no time after that first call
of James and John is Zebedee seen with them among
Jesus' disciples. His mother comes with the sons,
worshipping him, but not the father. The family
of Zebedee is never seen, all of them together, in any
house where Jesus is, nor at the cross. And dropping

Zebedees Absence,

all conjectures about the reasons of Zebedee's absence,
I wish to speak further of this fact, which is too
frequently repeated in the history of our churches,
that often the family fails to appear before God
in the church as one Christian family, and that
usually it is not Salome, but Zebedee who is not
there. This fact particularly in our Protestant
churches challenges attention. It is not in accord-
ance with Christianity. In one passage, it is true,
Jesus taught that he came to make a division in
families, to set even mother and daughter at variance ;
but it is evident that Jesus looked upon such sepa-
ration in families as an incidental, and sometimes
unavoidable result of the preaching of his word,
but not as the intended and proper result of the Gos-
pel. When Jesus took the pains to go with his
disciples to Cana of Galilee, and to manifest his glory
for the first time in a human home, he showed how
God in his purpose of redemption meant to bless
and to use the family. Jesus evidently meant to
save the family in his kingdom. And Christianity
would be less than Judaism, if it should fail to make
the family the unit of the church. For the Old
Testament brought families as families under the
law of God. They went up to offer sacrifices by
families. No member of a Hebrew family thought
of being absent from the paschal meal, and least
of all the head of the household. The old dispen-
sation was a salvation of men by families. This
Old Testament religion of the whole household may
have been indeed an outward and formal kind of
salvation, a legalism rather than a religion ; but the
point is that the salvation whicli was of the Jews,

96 Christian Facts and Forces.

externally at least, was a family affair, and a social
salvation. And Christianity cannot be less than
Judaism. It must be more, as it becomes a real
salvation of families of men, and a redemption of
the whole civil state in the kingdom of God. We
must not forget that the Christian Testament closes
with the sight of the city of God on earth.

Jesus Christ, it is true, meets us individually, and
gives us personally his commandment. His teach-
ing still singles us out, and when in some solemn
hour a soul is confronted with the divinity of Jesus
Christ, it will seem to it as though it and its God
were alone in the universe. Yet intensely personal
as the Gospel certainly is, it is also the Gospel of the
kingdom, and the Christian family is the true unit
of the redeemed society. Infant baptism attests this
fact, and we shall miss one whole side of revelation,
from Moses to Christ, if we lose this view of the true
religion as the covenant of God with the Christian
family.

Since then it is not according to Christianity that
families should be divided in religion, but is in ac-
cordance with Christianity that the family should be
the living, organic unit of the kingdom of heaven,
it follows that there must be something wrong some-
where, if our Christianity is not composed of Chris-
tian families, or, in other words, if in our appHcation
of the Gospel we bring in Salome, and leave Zebedee
out. There is something contrary to Christ's inten-
tion in such a state of religion in the world. And
if our religious faith and life be the true thing, the
real thing, the absolutely good thing, which we be-
lieve it to be, there is no reason why any man of us

Zebedces Absence, 97

should be content to let the religion of the family be
monopolized by his wife and children.

Even in the pagan religions, in the old Roman
home, the images of the gods were set in the com-
mon room, and not hidden away in the women's
apartments. Christianity would prove itself to be a
religion less powerful than some pagan superstition,
if it should lose a large proportion of men from its
grasp. It will not always do this, for Jesus was the
Son of man, the Man of men.

When however I would go further, and locate the
trouble, or the breaks, in our present transmission of
the power of Christ along the complex lines of family
and social life, the exact points of failure are not always
easy to find.

I can imagine several reasons why Zebedee may
have been absent from the place where Jesus might
be found, when I think of the reasons why some-
times only the mother of Zebedee's children is to be
seen now in the church, or at the prayer meeting.
And the reasons are not altogether faults on one side.
Indeed we can never be sure that we have found out
the wrong in another until we Iiave first looked for
tlie wrong in ourselves. If James and John had mis-
intcr[)rcte(l Jesus to tlieir fatlier, or if Salome wliose
family pride at first seemed to be a considerable part
of her religion, had given him sonu^ lianl idea of
what following the Master meant, Zebedee might
thereby have been led to toil on by himself in the
boat, when, had he only known, and gone once for
liimself to see Jesus Christ, he might have come bark
to his nets with a light in his heart that wonKl have

98 Christian Facts and Forces.

lighted up the Tvhole long nights for him as he went
fishing on Galilee.

We have reason enough to inquire whether we are
giving to men such report of our Master and Lord
as must command their consent. We know — if we
have ears to hear the thoughts of men's hearts we
cannot help knowing — that a great many Zebedees
now-a-days are not to be found in professed disciple-
ship because of a certain passive unbelief which has
settled upon them. There is, on their part, at least,
a felt inability to believe some things which are com-
monly held as Christian beliefs. And ot'er-belief in
the pulpit has had something to do in provoking un-
belief just outside the church. Over-statement at
least of beliefs has had a tendency to produce unbe-
lief in many minds. And that unbelief lies like a
fog-bank around our churches, not active and vehe-
ment, a storm which might blow itself away, but an
atmosphere heavy with doubt, and cold. I have
just intimated that a natural reaction of over-belief
in men's minds is unbelief. Let me not, however,
seem for a moment to forget that in Christianity
there is commanding truth. There are revealed
truths to be studied, and to be thought out in all
their logical deductions to the utmost power of our
understandings. Systematic education in divine
truths is a part of the work of the church to be begun
with its children, and to be continued to the end of
old age. But all the truth which is to be studied by
the disciples as they follow Christ, and which may be
learned in ever larger and happier meanings in the
course of Christian discipleship, is not to be forced

Zebedees Absence. 99

upon men in a body of divinity as a condition of
their discipleship. The first and main thing for men
to discover and to own is whether they are willing to
let the Lord Jesus Christ master their character and
their conduct. There are many doctrines of the
church, and corollaries of the Gospel, which they can
more profitably study within his church after they
have settled that main proposition of Christianity for
themselves.

Yet I knew a man who was, I believe, a devout man,
and who throughout his life had been a cheerful sup-
porter of the church — and what report of Jesus
Christ did the church, with which through his wife
he was connected, bring to that man in order that he
also might come to Jesus in its communion ? It gave
him a confession of faith which had been cast in the
heat of the Unitarian controversy, all the parts of
which had been soundly riveted together, and which
then had been left for all future generations as the
faith once delivered to the saints. The Apostle
James would hardly have comprehended all of its
technical phrases; the Apostle Peter might have
found in it more things hard to be understood tliau
he read in the epistles of Paul his beloved brother;
and Paul himself with his trained Rabbinical intel-
lect might possibly have so interpreted it as to bo
able to accept its reasoned dogmas, while Joiin niiglit
have asked why in so complete a compendium of
Christianity his one word " God is love," and, '' LittU^
children love one another," had been left out. r>ut
that was the witness of that church {o (Iia( man of
the doctrines of the Divine One who 8j)ake not as the
scribes, and who went about doing good. Not one

lOO Christian Facts and Forces.

article or word of it did that Zebedee of whom I
speak openly deny ; only while Salome went to the
Lord's table, he kept quietly on mending his nets.
He too has gone now to receive, I trust, his first com-
munion in that world where Christ promised to drink
the cup anew with his disciples, and where Jesus
himself may say to him in his simple divine way,
as once he said of old, " Ye have done it unto me ; "
and, " This do in remembrance of me.'' My brethren,
these days in which our lives are cast are times of
great possibility for the true church of the real Christ.
These are days in which men, a great many honest
men, would rather believe than not believe. The
powers that have come into competition with Christi-
anity in the work of saving society are seen to be
failing. Upon all thoughtful men the conviction is
forcing itself that some thoroughly honest and com-
manding religion is needed to govern this world, and
to prevent modern life from sinking swiftly into the
hell of its own lusts and lies. The hour is most op-
portune for simple and sincere witness to Jesus Christ.
Oh fools and blind, if we waste this hour of the Son
of man in saving our truths and our pride of opin-
ion, when a world in its sins waits to be saved in the
name of our Christ ! There are men, and women
too, who do not believe because in their hard lot and
struggle the kingdom of heaven has not been brought
near enough to them by their employers for them to
see how it belongs to them also, and not to the higher
classes only. There are men who do not believe
because they have not found our Christianity going
before them in the way, and compelling them to
honor it, wherever there is a wrong to be made right,

Zebedee s Absence, loi

a soul to be helped, a fair wage to be given, a debt to
be paid, a devil to be cast out, or a home to be filled
with the Holy Ghost.

There was Zebedee trying to earn an honest living
by hard work. And he w^as willing to let James and
John go, and live for something better. He was
willing to let Salome go and look after them on the
way to Jerusalem. But if they had come back from
Jesus Christ disputing among themselves, and calling
each other hard names, looking with suspicion at
each other, and denouncing each other, because they
could not understand alike some word of their
Lord, and forgetting all about the poor Galileans,
and the lame, the halt, and the blind, whom they
had said Jesus had come to save, — do you suppose
Zebedee would have joined their church ?

While we may not always justify ourselves, we can-
not, however, let any Zebedee off vvathout having
somewhat also to say to him, if he persists in keep-
ing to his boat while his wife and children go and
find Jesus. Even if we do sometimes make clumsy
and cumbrous work of our testimony to Christ, Zebe-
dee has heard enough of Jesus to know that Christ
is infinitely nobler than we, and worthy of a man s
whole soul. I do not care to speak now of the
obviously wrong courses or the evil things whicli
keep men away from the family religion and tlio
clmrch. I will only suggest tliat possibly Zebodoo
was too old a man, when Jesus brouglit the rest of
his family into liis disciplesliip, to feel that lie could
make any groat cliango, or go so far as Jerusalem.

I want to speak, however, particularly of the way
a man will sometimes be holdeii by a oue-sidetl exag-

I02 Christian Facts and Forces,

geration of some good quality in him. I want to
point out what seems to me the frequent one-sided-
ness of manhood in your unbehef. For instance,
some man of us will say to himself, " I must be
honest with my own thoughts, I will not be tempted to
make-believe more than I believe/' And you ought
not. True godliness cannot begin with any intellec-
tual jugglery. But the mental honesty upon which
you rely is not the simple and easy thing which you
may think. It is vastly easier to be honest with
dollars or stocks in one's hand, than it is with
thoughts and desires in one's heart. Real honesty
of mind requires a thorough combination of many
virtues and habits, and among them, and above all,
it requires a genuine manly humility. Indeed I do
not believe it to be possible for a man to have a proud
mind and an honest mind at the same time. Our
reason is too feeble a spark, and the mystery of things
too infinite, for us to think and question except as
little children. And Jesus' call was, " Come, be my
disciple." Then again any one-sidedness of life must
throw a man out of right relation or fair position
towards some truth. It is quite possible for us to
stand so closely under one influence, or so habitually
in one relation of life, that we may become incapable
of large, roundabout vision. The other evening I
wanted to know if the sky were clear, and I looked
up, and saw over me a black sky. I supposed the
stars were hid. But I was standing under an electric
light. "When I walked on, and looked up again, the
stars came out. There is a man who is living under
the light of his one science. And it is honest, white
light. But in it he loses sight of the whole heavens.

Zebedee s Absence, 103

He needs to go further on in his life, and, not to
quench his science, but to widen the circle of his
experience until he too can see the ancient stars
again. Or here is a man who is living in the light
of his professional study, a lawyer, a physician. He
sees some things in a good light ; and he wants to
see everything else in the same light. Talk to him
about spiritual truths, and he wants you to prove
them to a jury, or demonstrate them as you would
anatomy. And very likely that man will not receive
the passing prophet's word, so long as he stands still
in that habit and position. He too needs to step out
from under his own blinding light, in order that he
maj^ gain faith's larger vision. May be he is a young
man playing at life, and fooling with all knowledge.
Let him begin to live in earnest, if he wants to know
in truth. Let a man be more than a man of busi-
ness, more than a man of science, more than a man
of professional habit of mind. Let him live in an
ever widening experience of life. Let him marry,
make him a home, and work to provide for it ; let
him meet with the needed enlargement of himself
every child that God gives him. Let him not only
go to his office, his laboratory, or his books, and
think ; but let him stop by his hearth, and look into
the life of trust and love and hope, in which he lives
as a man, and there let him think. Let him look
love in the face, and think. Let him look death in
the eye, and think. Let him in the long years look
at the empty places by his side, and the remembered
faces of tlie children whom lie has lost, and lliink.
Let liim think, honestly as a man may, earnestly as
a man can ; but let him think as a man, and not as

104 Christian Facts and Forces.

a lawyer ; let him think as a man, and not as a
scientist ; let him think as a man, and not as a scribe.
Let him think as a man, having within him the
spirit of a man, and praying for the Spirit of God
whose thought must be the ultimate truth of all
things without. Let him think as a man must think
when his soul rises within him in its divinity of
conscience and its immortal desire ; let him think too
of the larger, nobler, holier self, which he might have
been.

And to such thought of life into which the whole
lieart as well as the whole mind has grown, — such
thought deep as love, true as spirit, honest as con-
science,— let the Christ of these Gospels come. " Every
one that is of the truth heareth my voice.'' Let the
Christ of the Gospels come to you, — not our report
of him, not the Christ of the creeds, but the Christ
whom such thought of life may find in the Gospels,
meeting all its conviction of truth and sense of need
with the words of eternal life ; — and then, if no sin
breaks the vision, if no habit of indecision puts aside
the task, in this thought of life and of God, and with
the disciples' trembling confession upon your lips,
receive in remembrance of Christ the simple emblems
and assurance of the kingdom of heaven.

IX.
THE CHRISTIAN EEVELATION OF LIFE.

" glitir t!)m sftall It xthtKlzti i\)z UkiUBS om, bjom li^ BLorir Izsus
sr}Kll sIk^ ixiilft lf)£ inatS of ^iB mouti^, anlJ iriitig to Ttousfitig 16^ matti-
totalioTX of ])is romiit^." — 2 Thess. ii. 8.

In a passage in ^' Modern Painters '^ John Ruskin
reminds us of the delight which we are wont to ex-
perience in view of a bright distance over a compar-
atively dark horizon. At sunrise, beyond some line
of purple hills, we have seen the sky become a great
space of light, and through the shadows of the night
which were still lingering in the valley, and clinging
to the face of the rocks, we have looked into the
dawn. Or at evening we have gazed out over the
gloomy sea, and seen the restless ocean breaking
upon the horizon in a line of troubled waves against
the bright, quiet sky.

In the Bible we are always looking over a fore-
ground in shadow into a bright distance. In the Old
Testament prophecy the waste and tumult of history
were seen against the far Messianic glory. However
bleak and barren the earthly prospect, the sky be-
yond was a glory of the Lord. In the New Testa-
ment the Apostles have learned to see all wickedness
of the world horizoned by the manifestation of the
coming of the Lord. And in truthful Christian
vision these two aspects of human life and our world-
history should bo viewed together. It were ])artial

105

io6 Christian Facts and Forces,

and false vision to separate the two. If we have
been compelled to observe the evil of the world
around us, we need to look on until we can see its
darkness immediately beneath the brightness of the
Lord's presence. If we must see just before us some
hard way, some dark waste of life, all fissured,
gloomy, and forlorn, we need to gaze steadily on, and
to behold the near foreground against its background
of some divine light and peace. We never have the
full, large vision until we do. And on the other
hand we must not shrink from any knowledge of
the evil of the world. Faith must have open eyes
for the worst facts of human life. If some boat were
stranded amid the angry waves, and men were shout-
ing for present help, it were idle and cowardly for
us to stand gazing into the far evening peace. The
good shepherd will go seek the lost sheep on the
mountain-side, and not wait for the coming dawn.
There is a prospect and a glory for us to contemplate
beyond all the evil of the world, and there is a work
also for us to do in the midst of the sins of the world.

The knowledge, then, of the sin which exists in
human life, and also the heavenly prospect, — a quick
sense of the present evil, and some vision of the man-
ifestation of the presence of the Lord, — these two be-
long together, these must be made part and portion
of one and the same Christian view of life.

Observe how Jesus always seemed to see both as-
pects of our life. Those woes of his Gospel are heard
breaking beneath its calm blessings. The sin of the
world was an ever-present fact to Jesus ; but he saw
it all set in the holy love of God. Because he saw
the darkness against the eternal light, the restless-

The Christian Revelation of Life, 107

ness beneath the heavenly peace, he could at once
condemn sin and rejoice over it. This same double
aspect of human history is constantly kept before us
in the book of Revelation. We hear the confused
shouts of the warriors ; we see the dead bodies lying
in the streets of the great city ; we behold still an-
other beast coming up out of the earth ; but also
there is a sound as of a great voice from heaven,
there is that sea of glass mingled with fire, and them
that come victorious from the beast, standing by the
glassy sea, having harps of God ; and when all the
woes of history are over, in the world's far, bright
background, is that vision, of which we never tire, of
the light clear as crystal of the holy city coming down
out of heaven from God, having the glory of God.

A similar juxtaposition of these two aspects of
human life characterizes the chapter of St. Paul's
epistle from which I have taken our text. It is in
some respects an obscure passage. We do not know
exactly of what St. Paul was thinking when he wrote
this description of the man of sin, and of some hin-
dering power. But it is clear that he saw this double
aspect of life, the darker foreground, and the bright
distance, the mystery of iniquity still working, and
the manifestation of the coming of the Lord. And
our text comes still closer to the necessary relation of
these two, and discovers the law by Avliich the mani-
festation of the presence of Christ follows the rov-
qlation of the man of sin. The revelation of sin is
necessary for its judgment. As soon as the man of
sin becomes revealed, then follows liis dostructiou
in tlio brightness of the manifestation of tlu^ T.ord.
When wo see sins rapidly revealing tliemsolves,

io8 Christian Facts and Forces.

we know that the hour of their destruction draws
nigh. Things often have to grow worse in order
that they may be better. Evil must come to full
revelation in order that it may be consumed. Let
us think of this more closely.

Such has been the law of the revelation and de-
struction of evil in history. We can discover this
principle of the divine judgment at a glance when
we survey great historic masses of sin. Consider for
example the sin of Babylon and its destruction.
When her abominations were full, God's judgment
brought all her pomp, and the noise of her viols,
down to hell. It was not over Babylon in the wanton
beginnings of her iniquities, but over Babylon the
great, that the mighty voice was heard proclaiming,
" Babylon is fallen, Babylon the great is fallen." So
was it of those two Romes, the pagan and the medi-
aeval Rome. The Goths and Vandals were let loose
from the quiver which Providence held in the right
hand of its power, when the vices of a decayed
civilization had filled up the cup of wrath which was
held steadily, until it was full, in the other hand of
God's providence. And the papal corruption was
ready to be revealed, and ripe for destruction, when
Luther sounded his appeal to the nobles of the
Christian nation. God's day of judgment follows
the revelation of the man of sin. What availed the
hesitating voice of some solitary New England divine,
or the words of the Spirit to John Woolman among
the scattered Friends, to check the growing system of
slavery in this country? Both North and South
were making money by letting it alone. And our
fathers laid the keels of the slave-ships, and the

The Christimi Revelatio7i of Life. 109

wages of that sin found their way back to Northern
ports. But all the while slavery was growing up
under the law of God's judgment. Whether the tree
bear good fruit or evil, Providence does not make
haste to shake the branches, or to lay the axe at the
root, until the fruit be ripe. Jesus in the parable
suffered the vine-dresser to give the fig-tree, that had
been barren for three years, a fourth probation before
he should cut it down. Providence lets the wheat
and the tares grow together until the harvest. And
when at last that man of sin in this country was fully
revealed, the compromises which had restrained the
full growth and revelation of slavery being taken
away, — then came the hour of its destruction in the
manifestation of the glory of the Lord.

Such is the moral law of progress in history ; we
behold iniquity brought to revelation, and then
Christ's presence consuming it. There is always
therefore reason for hope when we see some evil
thing coming out of its concealments, and making
its power felt with a more shameless impudence.
Long ago a few prophets of humanity may have
cried out against that hidden evil. And most respect-
able citizens said, It is nothing. But God let it grow.
It begins to trouble some class of men. Its baneful
shadow creeps over some wliole section of civiHzed
life. Its woes among men arc brought to revelation
in the newspapers. Even commercial selfishness
grows vaguely aware tliat something is going wrong.
And then very likely people rush together and say,
"We must do something," and the first things they
do very probably make the evil worse and worse.
But all the while it is growing and waxing worse

iio Christian Facts and Forces,

under the divine law of judgment. That evil thing,
whatever it be, intemperance, the power of the saloon,
or greed, or lust, or ominous monopoly, or social
anarchy, if indeed it be growing worse, is but filling
up its measure of iniquity in order that it may be
revealed and consumed. Then when its woes have
been heaped up beyond endurance, when its mystery
of iniquity has worked itself out in our world of sin,
it shall be revealed, and brought to nought by the
manifestation of the coming of Christ among men.

This law of divine judgment under which evil
grows, and is doomed, is a reason for courage and
hope in all Christian work. Something may have
given you a moment's revelation of the man of sin
in this city. You may have seen in some instance
of dishonor or shame the mystery of iniquity which
is now working along these streets. And by that
glance, and moment of discovery of the sin of a city,
you are thrown back in discouragement, and you are
tempted to say, what is the use of our charity, or our
feeble Christian endeavor against such powers of
evil? Or in thinking some Christian thought, or
trying to carry out some idea born of love, and there-
fore of God, you may have run straight against some
dead wall of indifference, or found some custom
fortified against you, or some wrong method en-
trenched in some good institution. And because
rebuff'ed where you expected sympathy, rebuked
where you asked for aid, or suspected as an alien
where you went as a friend, you drop the work to
which God sent you ; or, if you keep on, it is with a
heartless persistence in your cause.

But have you failed to look up and on until you

The Christian Revelation of Life, 1 1 1

saw some bit of God's sky at the end of your way ?
Have you forgotten that in proportion as you come
to a knowledge of any evil thing, in that same pro-
portion you have reason to believe that it shall be
revealed in its evil, and be consumed ? If it has
discovered its sinfulness to us, if we are sure we have
seen the wrong and harm of it, we can be equally
sure that it will in its time be made manifest, that
sooner or later whatever hinders its coming to revela-
tion before the consciences and in the hearts of men,
will be removed, and then it shall be consumed in
the brightness of the Lord's coming. And is not this
the reason why those men who really have seen evil
things, and fought with all their might against the
sins of the world, as a rule have been not only the
bravest men, and the most self-sacrificing, the martyrs,
the heroes, the reformers, but also the cheeriest, the
most hopeful men? It is your indifferent man
to-day, the man who does not lift a finger to take
any burden oflf from men's shoulders, the man who
has not the soul to commit himself against any
wrong, who fears that the country is going to destruc-
tion, as it might for all of him. But let a brave soul
once be aroused to anything which is wrong, let him
see it and know it as contrary to God, and untrue to
tlie Spirit of his Christ, and then as he realizes its
sinfulness and is forced to discover its ancient power,
and its entrenched might even in Christian civih-
zation, or in the church of God, — how ho will see
also around it tlie glory of the manifestation of the
coming of the Lord, and in that knowledge both of
tlie evil and of the glory of his Lord, ho will keep
his faith, and his hope, and his patience, and tliat

112 Christian Facts and Forces.

joy too in his work in which all good can be most
divinely wrought.

The same principle obtains with reference to our
individual salvation. Sins one after another come
to revelation in our lives, and, as they are revealed,
will be consumed in some manifestation of Christ, if
indeed our hearts are Christian. They are revealed
to us in their sinfulness in order that they may be
destroyed. Under this principle we gain a clear view
of what a man^s conversion may be. He has gone
on in a life which was not satisfactory to his con-
science or heart. Something happens to bring that
dissatisfaction with his position or his conduct to
revelation. He sees that it is not true character.
He sees a larger, more generous, altogether diviner
self rising before his present self, rebuking it, con-
demning it, ready to consume it as by the presence
of Christ. That is a crisis for any man or woman.
And if we disown the man of sin in us, our false
self, partner with all the sin of the world, and own
the Christ-self, which may be our real and eternal
self, companion with the angels of God, then we are
converted, then we have passed from death unto life,
then we are saved children of God. And every time
any sin comes to revelation before conscience in our
hearts, then is God^s opportunity of grace for us.
Some ancestral sin, some inherited evil disposition,
may have been latent in us, almost unknown by us,
for years and years. And then in some flare of
temptation we see it, and read the mark of the beast
upon it. It is judged ; it is condemned already in
the revelation of it ; it is consumed, God be praised !
in the brightness of his coming. That sin may not

The Christian Revelation of Life, 1 1 3

be a very gross sin capable of great beastliness.
When it reaches its full measure, and is revealed, it
may not prove to be a vehement passion, or devour-
ing lust, but only some little meanness, some small
selfishness, some slight untruthfulness, some dullness
and bluntness of being to noble or generous things.
Only a little sin ! But the least sin of our hearts
would be great as a shadow over the whole heavens,
if we should think of it as imputed to the character
of Jesus Christ. And at last we see it. That we
know was ungenerous. That is not right. It is an
evil thing, wholly contrary to God. Then let it be
consumed in the presence of Christ. That revelation
of its sinfulness is our time of grace. In that dis-
closure of it the Spirit is saying to us, " Behold,
now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day
of salvation." And there is one benign pecuharity
about this law of the destruction of sin througli its
self-revelation in the Lord's presence. The purer
and nobler the character grows, the sooner does the
mystery of iniquity which now Avorkotli come t(^
revelation in it. Tlie more a soul is flooded \\\\\\
God's light, the sooner is everytliing of this earth
earthy in it marked for destruction. The sin of tlie
world whicli in tliat criminal was revealed in an
awful deed, and brought to its judgnuMit, is the same
sin of the world whicli that Christian child was
quick to recognize in an evil passion, and whoso
falsehood and liatred long cro this may have been
consunuHl l)y \\\<\ brit^htness of Christ's presence in
some mature and consiHTaii^l life. And tlio progress
upwards is one of i^vtT-increasing ((uickness of per-
ception of evil, and power over sin. Life's slowest,

114 Christimi Facts and Forces,

hardest work is usually at the bottom. We climb,
and toil ; the saints seem lifted up, and borne by-
unseen hands towards the gates of heaven.

Such is the benign law of growth in grace ; but
its alternative cannot be escaped. If the man of sin
in us is revealed, and we will not let him go, w^hat
then? The sin must be punished. That is sure.
God cannot hold heaven safe in one hand, and let
the sin of this world escape from the other hand.
The man of sin must be destroyed. That is the inev-
itable consequence of the omnipotence of righteous-
ness in the universe. And if we cling to the man
of sin, how can God himself separate us from its
fate ? We must go where the sin goes, if our hearts
cleave to the sin. We must fall where the sin falls,
if we hold fast to it. You know that is so in this
present world. Why should it be any different in
any other world ? Every man here clinging close to
his sin, goes with his sin, is hurried down the prede-
termined course, and meets the certain fate of that
sin. You see that happening with men who cling
to deadly sins. A crime will come to its hour of
revelation, and carry the criminal with it to its doom.
All dishonesties go straight and sure towards ruin,
and eventually carry the defaulters with them. The
decreed course of a lust in this moral universe is
marked by the signs, earthly, sensual, devilish, and
the end is death. Down that course the man who
clings to his lust has to go. If a sin comes from
hell, and reveals itself to be infernal, and a man
gives himself up to it, then to the hell reserved for
that sin he must go with it.

This law that whithersoever sins go, they take their

The Christian Revelation of Life, 115

men with them, is not only true of deadly sins at
whose deadly consequences we shudder ; but it is the
law of the working of all sin. It holds true of every
evil thing. If we are unkind or cross, we have to
live in the atmosphere which that ill-temper creates.
If we are ungenerous, we have to dwell in the
cell which miserliness inhabits. If we will cherish
small, churlish views of our duties to our fellow-
men, we shall walk all our days between the dead
walls where such dispositions find their beaten track.
We can often see how men are living in some small,
dismal world, because they choose the company of
some petty sins, or are kennelled with ill-favored
habits, when, if they would only break loose, and be
the Lord's freemen, they might walk forth in large,
helpful, and sunny lives. And many and many a
time they may have seen their sin revealed, — all its
uncouthness and meanness mirrored for a moment in
some Christlike character which passed by them along
its nobler life. Do we not remember that hour, it
may have been years ago, — do we not know that
moment, it may have been to-day, — when we saw
something wrong in our mode of life, somctliing
imperfect in our thought of ourselves revealed? It
came clearly out — what we are, and are doing — and
just above it, a luminous revelation, what we miglit
be, and ought to do. We are better or worse for that
liour. For remember that tliis law of the revelation
of sin unto judgment works downwards, as a law of
death, in precisely the same way in which it works
upwards as alaw of life. On tlie one lian(l,l]u^ more
prompt to give up anything false and evil a soul is,
the quicker the sin of the world conies to revelation

1 1 6 Christian Facts and Forces,

in conscience, and the less is the smoke of the tor-
ment of its destruction in the brightness of the
presence of the Lord. On the other hand, the less
willing a human soul is to repent, and be converted
from any sin, the duller grows the power of the soul
to perceive its sinfulness, and the severer becomes
the necessity of its judgment. Hence, even if we be
finally saved from the sin unto death, is the harm of
putting off, and putting off, the things which we
know we ought to do and to be. Hence the urgency
of the Gospel to us now. Hence the pressing reason
w^hy some of you ought to take your position at once
and with decision in that circle of light, and commu-
nion of all the saints on earth and in heaven, to
which your parents brought you in your baptism.
In the open and clear discipleship of Jesus Christ,
where the Christ of God stands in the midst of all
who are of the truth, and the glory of God is round
about him, — there is the one place in all this world
of sin and death for us to be found, — there our lives,
so earth-stained, and so marred and broken, may be
brought to perfect revelation, and the man of sin be
consumed from them in the manifestation of the
presence of our Lord.

EECONCILIATION WITH LIFE.

" Tflthtii^tltss 3E must ixialfe to-itias, anJj to-morroki, anil tf)£ ba^ £oI-
lobDin^: for it ta.mtot ^z IJat a propf)jet ji^risft out of JtrusaUm." —
Luke xiii. t^Z-

Sooner or later we all of us have to learn to say
those words, '' I must ; " and our whole character,
good or evil, saved or lost, will depend upon the way
in which we learn to say, " I must.'' How we should
learn to say " I must," is the subject of this morning's
sermon. The tone and temper in which we become
able to use those words may indicate a moral differ-
ence between men great as was the separation be-
tween the desperate Jew in the time of the calamity
of Jerusalem, and the Son of man when his hour
was come.

" Nevertheless I must walk to-day, and to-morrow,
and the day following." Not to the Son of man
alone, but to every man there come inevitable days
of life. No human will can escape the necessity of
saying at some hour, " I must." Even Napoleon lias
his St. Helena. We say, " I will ; " and the next day
find ourselves saying, ^' I nuist." Cu)d never sullrrs
us to say the one for many hours without cc>iu{)ollini^'
us to say the other. Thoughtlessly wo go our way,
and look up to find ourselves facing the inevitable.
There it is, steadily confronting us. It is lianl as
the face of a precipice. We cannot go arimnd it.

117

1 1 8 Christian Facts and Forces,

We cannot climb over it. We must stand still before
it. There is no word of our English speech which
we more cordially dislike than this same short word
mu^i. We will not brook it when spoken to us by
other men. Any friendship would be broken by it.
Love knows nothing of it. Liberty consists in re-
fusing to speak it when kings proclaim it, or any
foreign might commands it. Men have died rather
than yield to it. Yet nature every day compels us
to say it, and hard providences often wring it from
broken hearts. There is a strange contradiction be-
tween our vital instinct of freedom and this inevita-
bleness of so much of human life. AVe do not recog-
nize this variance between constitution and necessity
in other objects which have their appointed places
in the order of nature. We are aware of no contra-
diction to the nature of matter when we say the
molecules of oxygen and hydrogen must combine in
certain definite proportions. It would be no insult
to a star to declare, it must keep true time over our
meridian. Nature is one ordered compulsion. But
from the first impulse of infant consciousness our
human nature rebels against inevitableness. The
child always has to be taught the habit of obedience.
There is some spiritual power in us evidently created
for a free life unrestrained by outward compulsions.
Sin is wild outbreak of free-will, and its curse. But
the principle of rebellion against the power of nature
over us, and our objection to any outward control, is
a constitutional principle of human nature. It is
born in us, and we can never be content to say, " I
must," unless we can say in the same breath. " I
will."

Reconciliation With Life, 1 1 9

Yet consider how large a portion of our daily life
is put before us, and how much of our own person-
ality is given to us under some form of necessity ;
and how large consequently is the w^ork of recon-
ciliation to be accomplished, if it be possible, between
the I wills, and the I must, of our lives. There is,
to begin with, the must of heredity. We cannot
vacate our inherited individuality and choose another,
and a happier. We have to accept ourselves as we
were born. " Which of you by taking thought can
add one cubit unto his stature ? '' There is a must
for every human face and form in every looking-
glass. There is sometimes an awful inevitableness
in the laws of heredity. "Your mother was an
Hittite, and your father an Amorite.'' " Thus saith
the Lord God unto Jerusalem : Tliy birth and thy
nativity is of the land of the Canaanite ; the Amo-
rite was thy father, and thy mother was an Hittite."
So the prophet Ezekiel explains the false Israel and
his apostasy.

Besides this primal necessity of our birth, there
are the fixed grooves of natural law in which
our lives must run, and all the forms of circum-
stance to which our individuahties nmst be fitted. In
tlie midst of these physical, industrial, and social
necessities our space of si)irit and freedom seems
small as the cage of a bird, and hard sometimes as
tlie treadmill of a beast of burdiMi. Every day, every
hour, has its limitalioiis and thraldom of spirit for
us. The dawn of day in which the cand(\^s birds
sing, brings renewal of burdens to nuMi. The round
of cares nuist be run through again, it is for us,
"You must," "you must," every step we take, every

I20 Christian Facts and Forces,

effort we make. And this little earth still holds us
as in a vice. We can see the heavens, and know
that there must be wondrous spectacles, scenes mag-
nificent beyond all comparison, in those distant
constellations, but we cannot follow our thoughts to
the nearest planet ; we have not yet the freedom of
the skies. Even our arts mock us by disclosures
of things which we cannot touch, or handle, or own.
Photography reveals stars which cannot be seen even
in the telescope. The mighty universe opens around
us ; but we are tethered to one world, and must be
content with a dwelling-house, and a daily beat of
duties, on this insignificant earth until we die.

In addition to this general and constant compul-
sion of the world upon our free spirits, to which we
have become so used that only in thoughtful mo-
ments do we rebel against it, there are sent to us
hours when it seems like death to have to say, " I
must ; " — that hour when our hope and all its bright
colors broke like a bubble, and we knew in cold
disenchantment that it must be so ; that hour when
the bearer of evil tidings stopped at our door, and
a few hurried words subjected our hearts to the in-
evitable ; — those hours when we must enter the vacant
home, and live on in memory where we would hear
a present voice, and see a vanished face. Every
grave means, " You must."

And there is a law of death working in these
members. There is an inevitableness of change and
decay witnessed even by our pulse-beatings. And
by all our immortal instincts we resent it. The law
of death is something foreign to us. It is a bondage
of spirit to live in the fear of death. We were not

Reconciliation With Life. 121

made to cease to be. Pain is an insult to the spirit.
Sickness is humiliation of the soul. Death is the
triumphing as of an enemy over us.

I have been expressing thus our common feeling
of irreconcilableness to much that seems inevitable
in human life. In order that we may learn to say
" I must" in any true and free way, we should look
more intently into the nature of this great compul-
sion which is laid upon us all. What is it? It
wears ofttimes a face of fate. Is that its only and
eternal countenance? Is there any thoughtfulness
for us behind it ? What or whose is this will which
must be done on earth as in heaven ? Our tone and
temper when we say ^^I must/' will depend very
vitally upon our belief concerning the character of
the Power whose grasp is the inevitableness of human
life. To what voice, and to what voice alone, in the
universe may a man answer, " I must,'' and " I will " ?
For this also is true that there can be no reconcilia-
tion for us with the inevitable, no happy harmony
of our spirits with our circumstances and our neces-
sities, until in some way we have learned to answer,
" I will," from within our own free hearts, whenever
tliat Voice from without speaks to us its inevitable,
"You must." The two voices from without and
from witliin must become one, keyed to the same
note and making one music, before life can be har-
mony and peace.

My friends, the ways in whicli men liave tried to
liarmonizc^ these voices are familiar to us, and wo
know what discords liavo been left in human life.
We know too well wliat indifferent success we have
often had in seeking to make one music of our

122 Christian Facts and Forces.

necessities and our desires of life. We know that
every way except one of the many which have been
tried has failed. We can hope to gain nothing by
setting our lives to old tunes which have not worn,
and which never were happy efforts, even when mas-
ter-spirits tried them. Some tunes for Ufe long ere
this have been played, and played out, in human
history. Stoicism was one, with its monotony of
suppressed emotion. Buddhism was another with
its want of vital movement, and its one repeated note
of passionless resignation. Epicureanism has been
another, with its light notes, suited only to life's
lightest passages, and its want of voice and har-
mony for life's deepest motives, and its saddest,
holiest hours. These, and all variations of these
tunes for human life, have been played and repeated
over and over again, and not one nor all prove to be
accompaniment enough, true, and pure, and always
fitted for the ever-changing movement, the depths
and heights, the passion and the peace, of a human
soul in this mortal life.

I have noticed, also, that the men and women who
still try to suit life's necessities to these modes and
fashions of reconciliation with it, never persist long
in any single method which may for awhile seem to
them sufficient. They are stoical, or light-minded,
resigned or rebellious, passive slaves to life, or
violent non-conformists, by fits and starts, as they
meet now this, now that, inevitableness of their des-
tinies. They have learned no secret of deep and
abiding reconciliation with nature, fate, or provi-
dence. They have their moods, not their victory over
life and death. Perhaps most often they succeed for

Reconciliation With Life, 123

a season in chilling and hardening themselves
against life. There are human hearts like our lakes
in winter-time. The winds do not ruflfle the surface.
The deep waters are not moved in grand waves.
There is no pleasant ripple and play of feeling over
them. There is thick ice above, and stillness beneath.
So we may freeze ourselves into equanimity, and a
heart encased with ice need not be troubled. Few
men, however, can remain frozen in Stoic uncon-
cern through all the seasons of this mortal life. And
that is not life. Arctic isolation is not life. For this
human hearts were not made. If the equanimity of
a block of granite be the chief end of man, evolution
marched towards its greatest failure when it pre-
sumed to go beyond the age of primeval rock, and
began the ascent of life to end in the human brain
and the human heart; for the living soul cannot
lie still under all influences as a dead stone. All
ways but one of being reconciled to life have failed ;
— how can we most clearly see, how can I help
every young person find, that one way in which once
a human soul like ours became reconciled to all
things, in which human hearts have been joined
in happy union to strong, eternal law, in whicli the
word "must" has become to many a word of spirit
and of life ?

I might say that it is religion which does this
blessed work; that I have seen religion reconciliui^
men and life ; and that religion has joined soul to
life so liappily that henceforth no man can put tliein
asunder. I miglit urge that only wlien we gain
clear perception tliat every inevitable iliinij: is a
divine thing, every word " You nmst" in our life a

124 Christian Facts and Forces.

word of God, only then, can we begin to answer
with good heart, " I will." I might set in order the
reasons for believing that beneath this whole appear-
ance of inevitableness in human life and history
there is a will of divine righteousness, and a heart of
infinite love. When we feel the touch of the love of
God in the hand of fate, our hearts can say through
all our tears, "Thy will be done.'' I might urge
further that our present life with its civilized temp-
tations, and its polite lies of the devil, and its fashion-
able demons of unbelief and unrighteousness, lays
upon all true men an urgent necessity of realizing
the presence of the living God on this earth, if in-
deed we would keep the faith and the hope of a
man's spirit amid the shams, and shames, and
tumults of our world.

I might urge you to try this religious way of
reconciliation with life, to seek for some sign of God's
presence, and to wait for some revelation of God's
pure will, in all the events which come to you, and
which you must meet in your way of life. But
there is a nearer argument than this. There is
clearer proof of this one true way of happy and
harmonious life than even these evidences of our
reason and conscience. It is shown to us — the true
life, in its full strength, its noble harmony, and peace,
is all revealed to us — so that a little child can respond
to it, and men own its divine mastery, in the Christ
of these Gospels. That was the life of perfect recon-
ciliation with the world. There the flesh and the
spirit, there the world and the soul, there the inevi-
tableness of duty and of death, and the freedom of a
Son in the Father's house, were perfectly at one, and

Reconciliation With Life, 125

never was there a moment's rift in the music of that
Hfe, and all was one triumph and glory of man in
God. When Jesus was only twelve years old, —
before that age our wills have fallen out with duty,
and we have begun to tug at life's restraints, — Jesus
was found in the Temple, and in his boyhood he
made that memorable answer which with other but
half-understood sayings of the child Jesus his mother
kept in her heart : '^ Wist ye not that I must be in
my Father's house V Did you not know that I must
be amid the things of my Father ? What mud be
as his duty and his ministry was already Jesus' will
of life. " I must " and " I will " strike one note in
his diviner speech. When he said, " I must be about
my Father's business," it was with no cheerless tone,
with no heartless voice of resignation. It was his
meat to do the will of Him that sent him. Know-
ing this world to be God's world, and perceiving life
in it to be God's will, what he must do was what he
would do, and every necessity of his ministry was
welcome as a messenger from God's presence. The
tragic inevitableness of his life — that dark shadow
which he saw stealing over his path long before the
disciples noticed any sign of its approach — the need
of his sufferings and death, which even wlien he
went down Ids trial-way they could not understand
or believe — the cruel necessity of his betrayal, and
the crucifixion in a world of sin, which Jesus saw
must needs be the cup which it was the Father's will
not to let pass from him — all this was not oninigli to
set his heart at strife with the way which to-day
and to-morrow, and the day following, ho must wnlk,
to make him cease to call God's ordained hour, '' niv

126 Christia7i Facts and Foi^ces,

hour/' or to go, eager and strong, to meet it. '' How-
beit I must go on my way to-day and to-morrow,
and the day following: for it cannot be that a
prophet perish out of Jerusalem." Surely it is the
same eager voice speaking now which had been
heard years before in the Temple, saying, " I must
be about my Father's business; only it is deeper
now, and calmer in its triumph. In this obedience
unto death the will of God which is to be done on
earth and the \\dll of man are one and the same j)ure
will. Jesus going up to Jerusalem, making the great
mii^t of the eternal purpose of God for him his joy
and victory of spirit, shows the one sure way in
which every man of us may become reconciled to
life ; and He stands in the Temple, commanding and
serene, the Example and the Lord of all obedient
spirits who, in doing God's will, have found them-
selves ushered into an eternal power and peace.

Some of you may not see now what that meant
when Jesus said so royally, " I must walk to-day and
to-morrow, and the day following," and, " We go up to
Jerusalem." Some may feel as yet no need of under-
standing how the Christ could say, '^ I must." And
others of you, under hard trials, have been seeking
in broken speech to repeat those words after Christ.
None of us can yet say them perfectly. The martj^r
singing amid the flames, the saint of God, left alone
after father, mother, husband, children, perhaps all,
have been taken from her — life's many blows spent,
and death only waiting for her triumph, — knows
something, yet knows but in part, what Jesus the
Christ knew fully and for us all, when walking in
his way to-day, and to-morrow, he did God's vrill,

Reconciliation With Life, 127

and going up to Jerusalem to be crucified fulfilled
the work which had been given him of the Father.

There are some present who through great troubles
are trying to follow Christ in a grand Christlike
manner up to Jerusalem. They are thankful that
they did not wait until they had to go up to Jeru-
salem where they must sufifer, before they had learned
to walk towards their hour in some Christlike trust
and peace of God. It is hard if we have to be in
the way towards great duties and great troubles, and
at the same time have to learn in what spirit only
they can be met. Jesus might never have been able
to say for a world's salvation, as he drank the cup,
" Not as I will, but as thou wilt,'' had he not been
led of God to say when he was twelve years old, " I
must be about my Father's business."

Others of you have not yet felt deeply the need of
religious reconciliation with life through God ? Very
well ; but you have needed it, and you do need it,
although you may not yet see it or own it. Dis-
satisfaction with things around us begins earlier
than most of us can remember. Youth is always
wanting a larger objective, — something it would love
to do. And young persons not infrequently find
themselves in what for want of more definite self-
knowledge they call " a state of mind." You will
never get to the root of that state of mind until you
reach down to religion. You may put your discon-
tent from you, reason it away, or laugh it down, or
dance it off for the liour ; but tlie root of all dissatis-
faction and discontent with self, and with one's sur-
roundings and with one's prospects, never can be
reached until wc go down to the will of God in our

128 Christian Facts and Forces,

soul's birth and our souFs mission, and make the dis-
covery of that will for us, and the doing it, our chief
aim and hope. No change in life's circumstances,
no larger work, no happier outlook, will be enough.
We ourselves need to be born again ; it is not our
outward life that needs to be refashioned. There are
young men who occasionally attend church, who are
disgusted with certain ways of the world which they
know, who perhaps have not always been the best
that they should have been, and who have times of
serious thought. They know that they cannot escape
from any of the great commandments of a moral
universe. In the laws of things some " You must,"
stands written over against every " I will " of untruth,
or unholy lust. You must reap what you sow ; you
must suffer for every wrong deed; you must be
judged by what you are. All of us at times have
realized this. Whenever we really think of it we
know it. Yet there is something more, something
nobler than fear of consequences, or dread of death
and hell, in our hours of conscience and our moments
of inward vision of better things. It is a time of the
Spirit of God, whenever we become discontented with
our lives, dissatisfied with ourselves. It is a great
thing for us, and an opportunity of eternal life,
whenever something which we see we ought to do,
which we feel we must be, becomes full of attractive
power over us ; when the thought of it, though we
keep putting it off, will as often come back to us, and
our hearts begin to feel the spell of it ; when though
we turn our thoughts from it and would deny it, we
find it there waiting again to greet and to reprove
us at our first quiet moment ; when in the silence of

Reconciliation With Life, 129

the night it haunts our last waking thoughts, and,
when we awake, in that same thought we are still
with God.

You know some of you what I mean. It has
been your experience of religion. It is a genuine
experience of religion so far as it goes. And when
you submit to it, surrender to it, with an utter
abandon of soul give up all to it, then its hour of
blessing has come. When God says in your reason
and your conscience, " You must," and in your heart
you answer, " I will," the secret of life is opened — the
true life of reconciliation is begun — religion has
ceased to be a duty and become a delight. Although
in feeble stammering tones, and as children having
many things to learn, yet you have begun to say in
the name of Christ, " I came forth from the Father,"
'' I seek not mine own will, but the will of the Father
that sent me;" and, " I go to the Father."

THE GLORIFICATION OF LIFE.

*' %\zvi 3E saitr, 1 \Kht laior^lr (it hzin, 3E f)a:b.e spmt m^ sixzix%^ for
ttou^it, anlJ in iaiit : j^t 5uul2 mj ju^tr^mtnt is toitlj t^i 5^orJj, anJtr m^
kiork bits m2 (Scolr/' — Is. xlix. 4.

This is a small world, and a human life occupies a
very little space in it. This earth affords to man a
mere foothold upon space, and each generation can
cling to it but for an hour. Only a speck of matter
upon the infinite expanse — as a mere boat upon the
great ocean — is this world upon which the generations
of men are crowded. You and I are insignificant.
All the stars of heaven prove our littleness. The
infinite mystery of the night, as we are wrapt about
by the heavens and their silences, humbles our pride
in our achievement of a day. " What is man, that
thou art mindful of him ? and the son of man, that
thou visitest him ? " Even if we put all outlying
space from our thought, and would live upon our
little world as though it were the universe, we are
forced again to acknowledge our insignificance by
the shortness of the time allotted to us on earth.
We do not live long enough to achieve the lives
dreamed of in our youth. AVe die with our work
undone. Our lives are not necessary to the world.
Some one is always waiting for our place. There
are no vacant places in history, and there are so many
of us. Humanity, the mother of us all, has more

130

The Glorification of Life, 131

life and power always to bestow than there seems to
be room enough upon this earth to receive. No life
reaches far into the world's future. We soon shall be
forgotten, as our fathers before us. Our children
wall mourn us awhile after we are gone, but they will
live equal to their work without us. The tree by
your door has longer life than yours ; the rock over
which you climb exulting, was there ages before you
stood upon it, and will be there ages after you are
gone. And I said, ^^ I have labored in vain, I have
spent my strength for nought, and in vain.'' Who
of us at times, when we have felt our insignificance
and the littleness of our lives here, has not said some-
thing like that ? Even the greatest of men are but
for their hour. You look out upon the ocean, and
the waves flowing in catch the sunshine each for its
little moment of iridescence, and if some wave far
away, rising above others, flashes in your eye, you
look again, and it too has sunk into the common,
lustreless flood of water. This reflection of our
earthly littleness, and our human insignificance,
haunts our modern consciousness of life. Our
science teaches it, and our literature reflects it, and
enthusiasm dies beneath it. What is it to be a man ?
What is it to live ? Nothing great. Nothing endur-
ing. Only a few years' consciousness of the infinitely
small. And with this sense of our earthly insignifi-
cance there comes also a strange sense of isolation
and loneliness. It seems as tliougli in our human
littleness, and the briefness of our period here, avc were
separated from tlio great sum of things, and cut c^fV
from the glory of the whole creation. Tliero ni'o
within us subtle sympathies of soul whicli seoiii lo

132 Christian Facts and Foi'ces,

bind us with universal nature, and to make us con-
scious parts of the divine whole of things ; and this
little atom of a world, upon which we ride, holds us
aloof from the celestial spaces, and death soon breaks
all personal union even with human life and destiny.
There is something profoundly unnatural, some-
thing contrary to our inner sense of life, in this felt
isolation of our earth from the heavens, and this
loneliness of our life upon it. Our personal, con-
scious life of thought and love seems to be a brief
emergence into some larger and diviner element of
existence than we can measure. They tell us that
the meteors which appear in our November skies are
isolated little bodies, some of them probably no
larger than a cherry-stone, which have been travers-
ing space in darkness and separation, many of them
computed to be over two hundred miles apart, isolated,
cold, lifeless atoms of matter ; and at length, when
their hour is come, they enter our atmosphere, and
in our air they flash for an instant into brightness,
are seen for a moment of glory, and then are dissolved
forever. Are the souls of men, we wonder, only
momentary flashes of being in some spiritual ele-
ment? Do our souls, coming from the unknown,
kindle for an instant into consciousness, and die ?
Must we say of such a being, and such a life. It is
nought ? So Prof. Clifford thought when he wrote
beforehand his own epitaph : " I was not ; I lived ;
I loved ; I am not." Yet never atom of matter, or
created world, before the self-conscious soul of man,
could write its own epitaph. "Man," said Pascal,
" knows that he dies, and the universe knows noth-
ing of the advantage it has over him." This know!-

The Glorification of Life, 133

edge which we have of death might mean more for
us, if we could interpret it, than death itself. The
being who can leave after him his own epitaph is
able to do what no dissolving star can write upon
the sky. He has some power of being, therefore, be-
yond the stars. And that word, " I loved," written
between the words, ^^ I was not,'' and " I am not,''
contradicts them both. For out of love preceding
and eternal comes forth love ; and love once born in
a human heart begins to live for eternity.

In contrast to this oppressive sense of our human
insignificance upon this infinitesimal earth, let us
hasten to put the large and generous thought of life
which glows in the consciousness of the chosen ser-
vant of God. " Then I said, I have labored in vain,
I have spent my strength for nought, and in vain ;
yet surely my judgment is with the Lord, and my
work with my God." As the servant of God man
ceases to be for nought ; the life of man with the
Lord becomes great. In our connection with this
little world-atom we are as nothing, and we die ; but
in our relation to the infinite God, who has room in
his thought for all souls, we may possess the universe
and be immortal. Man can never say, " My world,"
" my universe," " my truth," until he has first said,
'' My God." To seek to say, " My world," without
saying, " My God," is sin, and Adam's fall. Only as
the Servant of God, can man possess all things, and
be as God.

The Servant of God in some passages of Isaiah's
prophecy was probably perceived to be the personal
Messiah, in whom the hope of Israel should be real-
ized ; but oftener when the prophet thought of the

134 Christian Facts and Forces.

Servant of God he had before his spirit the vision of
a collective humanity, the redeemed people of God,
the true Israel ; and of this society and holy city of
men he would say, " I have not labored in vain ; my
right and my recompense is with my God." I want
you in this connection to notice particularly this
fundamental truth of the Old Testament prophecy
that men together, in their collective capacity, as a
society, or holy city, were looked upon as the elect
Servant of God who should be glorified. You may
sometimes have wondered why so little hope of per-
sonal immortality pervades the Old Testament. It
seems to gleam from a few passages ; but the thought
of personal immortality in some other world was not
the pervasive hope of the Old Testament. In those
earlier Scriptures we read first the prophecy of the
salvation of men as the people of God — the prophecy
of social salvation, and social immortality. You
may be surprised, if you have not thought of it,
to see how the pages of prophecy grow bright with
this Messianic promise of a redeemed Israel, of a
coming humanity, which shall be the dwelling-
place and temple of Jehovah. The individual man
seems almost to be forgotten in the contemplation
of the glory of Zion, the city of God. The indi-
vidual man is to keep his name and have his per-
petual blessing as he shares in the glory of the city
of God, and its triumph becomes his. " Behold, the
Lord hath proclaimed unto the end of the earth. Say
ye to the daughter of Zion, Behold, thy salvation
Cometh; behold, his reward is with him, and his
recompense before him. And they shall call them
The holy people, The redeemed of the Lord;

The Glorification of Life, 135

and thou shait be called Sought out, A city not
forsaken.''

Think, then, of the worth and greatness of a
human life in that elect society and holy city which
is the Servant of God. Think of what it would be,
what power and worth, what hope, and strange, un-
earthly glory, would descend upon us, and wrap us
around, and comprehend us all as in something
divine and holy, if a single city — if this city of our
homes — should begin to realize this prophetic vision
of the people and city of God. If the corporate
consciousness of the city should become a judgment
and recompense with God ; if the sense of God and
His holy presence should envelop the whole city in
its power, and reach every man in it, even as the
morning light comes into every home; if the city
should awake with God ; if, throughout the day, in
the mind of the city, the thought of God should
have its dwelling-place, and if in the government of
the people the law of God should have its throne ;
if some awe of the divine righteousness should per-
vade the business of the city, and some deep sense
of divine blessedness, like a fountain of life, should
well up and abound in the happiness of the city, and
some greatness of the divine purpose should enlarge
all the work of the city, and make the least faithful-
ness a service of God ; if some peace of the divine
eternity should rest upon all life's changes in the
city, and the hope of some divine event bend over
every new-made grave, and the comfort of some
divine omnipresence fill as with an all-pervasive love
every licart in tlie city that had been left in loneli-
ness of grief; — if, in one word, a whole city, should

136 Christia7i Facts aiid Forces,

become, what Isaiah beheld in the far future, a city
of God, a Messianic city, the elect Servant of God, —
think you that in that city " Sought out, A city not
forsaken," any human life could seem to be a life for
nought, and its labor in vain ? a worthless thing to
be trodden under foot, or only a moment's flash of
pleasure ? a life not to be prized and kept as a sacred,
immortal trust? Would not every least life in a
city of God, full of the consciousness of God, become
a life of moral worth, a birth into an immortal con-
sciousness, a part in some universal good, a fellow-
ship with something celestial, an anticipation and
a share in some eternal triumph and joy of life?
Yet this — nothing less than this — was the revelation
of human life as redeemed and glorified, in the
inspiration and power of which prophets of old went
before kings with the word of Jehovah, and proclaimed
to the people the law of the Lord, who should redeem
Israel.

Time passed ; the vision of the prophet faded ; the
city of the scribes and Pharisees, and the Roman
soldiers in the courts of the Temple, was no city
of God. It had come to this, that even the chief
priests in the city of David could answer, " We have
no king but Caesar." The history of the holy people
seemed to be ending in this lamentation ; " I have
labored in vain ; I have spent my strength in vain."
But in the midst of the city I see one who is saying,
" I and the Father are one " — " And he that sent me
is with me " — " I seek not mine own will, but the
will of the Father which hath sent me " — " The
Father knoweth me and I know the Father," I
see One walking in a strange glory of divinity

The Glorification of Life. 137

among men, wrapt in an unearthly consciousness
of God, standing in the midst of the rulers and
speaking in the Temple as though the Infinite and
Holy God from beyond the stars were present filling
his woes against men's cruel falsehoods with an
eternal significance, and sounding, also, from the
heavens of His love, in that voice of the Son of God,
His eternal word of forgiveness and of promise. I
see One whom the people in their sins cannot under-
stand, whom the powers of this world hate with a
deadly hatred, whom a little company of timid fol-
lowers look upon with a dazed and confused expect-
ancy —Himself serene as a star of heaven, and his
face luminous with a divine consciousness — all his
judgment and his work with God — I see Him led
from Pilate's seat bearing a cross, crucified between
two thieves, and in the last moment of man's cruel
mockery, and death's relentless grasp, saying still
" My God," and, " Father, into thy hands I commend
my spirit." I see One risen from the dead, appear-
ing in the garden, still human, yet looking beyond
Mary's eager adoration to the glory which he had
with the Father into which he shall ascend ; I see
One who was crucified and buried, who appears in
the midst of the disciples, bearing only the marks
of his sufferings, and coming in the peace of eternity
to the friends among whom he had suffered ; I see One
who came from God, and who had kept his divine
Sonship unbroken through a life of temptation and
in dcatli, who had known God and was known
of God, and whom no man had understood or can
yet understand, because no man has so lived with
God and God in him, I behold Him — his sullbrings

138 Christian Facts and Forces.

over and the days of his humihation ended — bidding
farewell to this little world upon which he had mani-
fested the glory of the Highest, and from this earth,
which seems to us so separate and so distant from
all celestial realms, stepping into the unseen and the
heavenly from that mountain-top as though it were
but a moment's distance between the two, ascending
into the glory which he had with God from the be-
ginning even while the disciples stood gazing up into
heaven ! And from the eternal Presence, into which
the Lord has vanished, comes to all the generations
his word of power, ^^ Lo, I am with you alway, even
unto the end of the world.''

Is the city of God a prophet's vision, the far vision
still of the disciple who saw it descending from God,
having the glory of God? But the realization of
God upon this earth in the person of Jesus Christ is
no future vision, and no vain dream. Christ was
here upon this little earth in the presence and the
power of God. It remains a most significant and
indisputable fact of our human history that the God-
man was here, that his life from beginning to end
was one continuous and realized presence of God on
earth. When I may deny the sun in the sky, I may
deny that there has shone upon humanity a spirit
all luminous with God. I do not believe it simply
because disciples of old saw it, and were made new
men by it, and bare witness of it ; I believe it
because the light of it is still in our skies. I be-
lieve it because I see it shining still in a world's
thought, life-giving in our human experience, and
bringing to us in our darkness and our selfishness a
light, and love, and glory, in which our hearts may

The Glorification of Life, 139

become all aglow with such sense of God, and
thought of heaven, as men without Christ never had,
or can have ; I see it, Christ's own light of God, fall-
ing upon the characters of men and women, and
transfiguring them with a heavenly charity, and
still the evidence of it lies over the whole Christian
world, as the evidence of the sun lies upon the ripen-
ing fields. I believe that, "There was the true
light, even the light which lighteth every man,
coming into the world."

In what has just been said is contained the answer
to that question of real life which often presses upon
our spirits : How can I rise above this daily insig-
nificance of my life ? How can common life among
common things become glorious in my eyes ? We
may begin in Isaiah's way. We may seek to dignify
life by making it God's service. We may labor and
pray to make our city, by all good deeds, and prac-
tical philanthropy, a city Sought out, and a city not
forsaken. Every moral act is contact of the human
will with God's pure will. Every good deed is a
point of connection between a human life and the
Eternal righteousness. Every time a man does the
true, right, generous thing, he proclaims himself
thereby to be more than a soulless body upon a God-
less earth. Everything good and beautiful is of the
celestial order, and bears witness to it ; everything
wrong and impure is of this earth earthy. The liv-
ing God is present in conscience, and every sin is a
fearful thing. Let tlio presence of God bo felt in a
city, and whitlicr could its sin flee from that pres-
ence? Let the sins of a city come out from tlioir
darkness and corruption and be judged before the

140 Christian Facts and Forces,

brightness of Jehovah's presence. Those frauds and
deceits; those false promises and bitter words; all
that uncharitableness and hatefulness ; that slander
and lie; that overreaching and contempt of the
rights of a man; that conscienceless competition;
that fraudulent custom of the trade; that shiftless
piece of work ; that wretched selfishness in the home ;
that neglect of common humanity ; that petty pride,
and most worthless self-sufficiency ; — let them come
forth, and all those dark deeds, those cruel passions
of men, and shameful betrayals, and wrongs of women
and of children, — let them come forth from the
hiding places of the city, from the stores and the
homes, yes and from the secret thoughts of our
hearts, — let them come forth for judgment before the
living God, whose holiness is as a consuming fire.
They shall be brought to nought by the manifesta-
tion of his coming. We cannot escape from his
presence. He is in the heavens, and on the earth, in
the city, and in the conscience and the soul of every
man. Our life is bound up with God's, and our
right and our work is with God.

Thus, I would say, we may rightly begin the en-
nobling and glorifying of life in Israel's way of real-
izing Jehovah's presence. And we need a revival of
the righteousness of God, a revival of the Hebrew
conscience, throughout this land. But we may go
also beyond Isaiah, and find God very present to us
through Christ. After he had so personally and so
fully realized God's presence and love on earth,
Christ promised to send the Holy Ghost. And now
in all the Christian life and thought of our world the
Holy Spirit is working. Think the most Christian

The Glorification of Life. 141

thought you can ; cherish the most Christian feeling
to which your heart can expand ; go, do the most
Christian thing you can conceive, and you will be
nearest God, you will have most of God, your work
will be with God. You will be in Christ's name the
Servant with God ; and in that service of thought or
conduct you will know God, and be known of God.
For the manifestation of the Lord's presence is all
about us, to be found and known in everything
Christian. In discipleship of the Son of God there
opens for us the Holy Presence of God. Think of
that wonderful prayer of Christ for all who should
believe on his name : — " And the glory which thou
has given me I have given unto them ; that they
may be one, even as we are one ; I in them, and
thou in me, that they may be perfected into one.'*
He dwelt in the glory of God. Into that glory he
would take our lives. Of that glory which he had
with the Father he would have our lives receive.

Would that we knew more of this. Would that
we had about us and in us more of this divine
glorification of human life. For it is something for
here and now, for to-day and to-morrow, and every
hour, — this diviner consciousness and joy of a soul.
There have been times when even though we have
made little profession of religion, or pretense of spir-
ituality, we have had something of tliis diviner con-
sciousness of life. What was that grand sense of
danger braved and duty done, but a leaping up of
the spirit within us into the strength of the Eternal
God? What was that strange peace and comfort, in
that extreme hour of sorrow, but the descent upon
us of diviner mercy than we knew ? What is con-

142 Christian Fads and Forces.

science but God's own voice ? What is love but a
ray of God's blessedness ? "What is true thought but
the image of God reflecting the mind of its Maker ?
What is honest doubt but the spirit which is in man
seeking for the divine Spirit in the universe without ?
We want more real religion, more sense of God
around our little life. There is a sovereign, holy,
and loving Presence all around us. As this earth lies
ensphered in the all-encompassing sky, so, could we
but see it, each human soul has its being, and lies
embosomed in God and his eternal love. And this
age has its work too wdth God. If* from all these
years of questioning and of thought one conviction
has come to me stronger than another, and disclosed
its power — a deeper depth beneath all doubt — it is the
conviction that there is a God present upon this earth
near to every one of us. There is a divine current
flowing straight on through all the world-ages, a
divine power still moving through our times. It
is flowing through the world's thought and life — its
purest and deepest thought and life. It is flowing
beneath all churches, lifting them up to nobler
things, and bearing all on to some larger service and
happier Catholicity. Let us throw ourselves unre-
servedly into the full current and power of God's
love. Let us have hearts to feel his presence. Let
us have willing minds to perceive the movings of
his Spirit. Let us have loving thoughts to follow
the outgoings of God's grace among men. Let us not
wish to hold ourselves aloof from God. Let us give
up everything that would keep us apart from this
diviner sense and fellowship of life. Let us leave our
work with God, and dwell in the hope of the glory of

The Glorification of Life. 143

God. And when the light fails, and faith grows
dim, and we know nothing but our littleness, our
loneliness, and our mortality, 0 then let us trust
with a simple and a perfect trust the Son of God who
in our humanity, and for us, knew the Father, and
was known of God.

XII.

A EEAL SENSE OF SIK— A LENTEN SERMON.

"^nts t^t Sim mih xinto "i^im, jifKi\nx, I i^t sinmts a^atot Jtabm,
nnts in Iftj fiigljt: I am no mort toortftj to U tKlltij I62 ^fi^-" — Luke

XV. 21.

The observance of a season of fasting and prayer
before the return of the day of the resurrection, was a
custom which grew spontaneously out of the Chris-
tian consciousness of the primitive Church ; and by
one of those conserving providences which treasure up
in Christian history what is good for man, it happens
that this ancient testimony of the early Church to the
sufferings and death of its Lord has survived centu-
ries of change, and still has sufficient power to cause
a social hush throughout the Christian world. In our
liberty of conscience the martyrs and saints of the first
Christian centuries still rule us from their graves. But
in the passion and temptation of our world Christians
cannot afford to wear any formal habit, or to cling
to anything fictitious in religious experience. Life
is bringing everything religious to the test of
reality. Our spiritual experiences must be honest,
or they cannot claim to be religious. No second-
hand religion will answer the uses of our times.
Genuineness is the first necessity of the living
Church. Men are not to be guided through the
straits of to-day by echoes of the voices of yesterday.
Christians must still speak what they have seen and
144

A Real Sense of Sin, 145

do know, if they are to have apostolic success in
casting out the sins of men. Religious genuineness
is particularly desirable in all penitential expressions.
An unreal and imitated sense of sin enervates char-
acter. A fictitious, theological sense of sin, rather than
a vital, moral conviction of it, has produced no little
unconscious Jesuitism in Protestant communions.
Genuine penitence, on the contrary, is the soil from
which all virtue may spring.

I wish, accordingly, to improve this first Sunday
in Lent by leaving in the thoughts of all of you, if
possible, this question : — What morally real thing
for us corresponds to the once familiar phrase, a
conviction of sin ?

I think we are exposed to the temptation of re-
ligious fictitiousness in our use of penitential lan-
guage. We are liable to use forms of abject confession
from habit, or from a sense of duty, when there may
be little truth corresponding to such expressions in
our sense of life and happiness. For fear lest some
constituent element of religious experience common
to our fathers may be fading out from our piety, we
seek to reproduce tones and colors of experience
which do not altogether harmonize with the type and
habit of religious devotion most commonly produced
by the Holy Spirit in our churches. Occasionally
individuals among us may with inward sincerity
restore forms of spiritual experience which were
familiar under other conditions of religious thought
and life; l)ut sucli persons seem now to be tlio ex-
cerptions ratlior tlian tlie rule. I noticed, for example,
in reading the other evening, some })hrases in which

Oliver Cromwell in his letters describes his sense of

146 Christian Facts and Forces.

personal unworthiness, and his dwelling in Meshec,
as well as the allusion which he made to the experi-
ence of vanity and the carnal mind, through which
his young daughter was being led in the mercy of
God, and the account also of the searchings of con-
science, and the weeping even of the leaders of the
Parliamentary Army in preparation for their decision
to fight in their second civil war. Those expressions
of Oliver Cromwell and his soldiers have in them a
nerve and vigor which indicate their moral genuine-
ness ; but if this morning I should read a collection
of similar phrases from the passages of religious
biography, I doubt if they would seem altogether
natural and real even to many truly humble and
devout persons in a modern congregation. At least
we should have to interpret them by other feelings
and experiences to fill them with present moral
meanings.

Now there are two ways in which we may look at
this obvious state of things. We may say, men
ought to have such convictions of sin, such sense of
the utter wretchedness of man, as once characterized
profound religious experience; and, therefore, we
will continue using the forms of that experience, and
preaching the doctrines under which that experience
grew ; and we will resist as a defection from the faith
once delivered to the saints of the middle ages any,
even the slightest, deviation from those doctrines, or
from that type of religious experience. The chief
difficulty with this method of dealing with the fact
is that it attempts the impossible. For we are all of
us in these matters under a higher Power, and Provi-
dence creates for us the spiritual conditions of our

A Real Sense of Sin. 147

times. We may think that the general religious
temper of some former age was better than ours ;
but we have to breathe the religious atmosphere
which the Spirit, that bloweth where it listeth, pro-
vides in our times, and Christian wisdom consists
always in making the best of present providential
conditions. The atmosphere of the carboniferous
age w^as doubtless more favorable than that of the
present day for the formation of the vegetable
growths which have been left for our use in the great
coal beds ; but our present atmosphere is the air pro-
vided for our life, — and, indeed, there are more sing-
ing birds in it. We should gain nothing by bringing
back, if we could, the carboniferous age of theology
— ^the age of the dcDOsit of the great confessions ; —
our duty is to make the most profitable use of these
results of the past life of the Church, and let Chris-
tion faith grow now, as best it may, according to its
present spiritual environment.

The other, and better way, therefore, of regarding
this matter, is to accept thankfully and hopefully our
present religious conditions, and then to watch and
to pray, that we may conform our inward experiences
to the best and the truest wliich is now in the provi-
dence of God actually possible to us.

The question with which we started reduces itself,
accordingly, to this : Without attempting to repro-
duce exactly former religious experiences, what real
sense of sin should I gain under the circumstances
of my own life? In this effort to find further and
heli)ful answer to this question, I would ask altoiilion
to the following considerations: —

First, Our conviction of sin will correspond to our

148 Christian Facts and Forces,

idea of God. In other words what we may think of
ourselves, and of our sinfulness, will run parallel
with our thought of God and his relation to us. If
a man, for example, habitually thinks of his God as
only an impassive nature, or thoughtless Power, who
cares for none of these things, his corresponding
sense of human sinfulness will not rise above a con-
viction of human failure and misfortune. This
proposition that our sense of sin and our idea of God
go together, is so plain, that, without arguing it, I
pass to the next statement necessary to clear up this
subject.

Secondly, We cannot hold one conception of God,
and attach to it a conviction of sin which belongs to
another conception of God. AYe cannot retain a
religious feeling or experience which is the reflex of
one predominant conception of God, if we have
habitually in our mind a different thought of God.
For example, when St. Augustine ceased to think of
this world as under the dominion of two powers of
good and evil, and believed in one true God, he saw
the sins of his youth in altogether a new light. So as
we change, or clarify, or Christianize, our thought of
God, our religious feelings will naturally follow that
change, and our sense of sin, if it be genuine, will
correspond to our thought of what God is, and of
what we are towards God. Yet just at this point we
are apt to fall into religious fictitiousness. We may
not discern how great has been the change which has
come over men's thoughts concerning God, and so
vainly strive to force ourselves into emotions and con-
victions which were true to former ideas of God, but
which are not true to our prevalent thought of God.

A Real Sense of Sin, 149

This brings me to a third statement which I will
take just time enough to render intelligible, viz.:
there was once a prevalent thought of God, which
may broadly be defined as the Latin theology, and
corresponding to that theology there was cultivated
a peculiar conviction of sin. After the Gospel had
become domesticated upon this earth, and the apos-
tles had left the new heavenly faith to become
naturalized in the thoughts and customs of the
world, the Greek mind took Christianity to itself.
And the Greek mind seized strongly upon the truth
of the divine naturalness of Christ, of the fitness of
the Gospel to human nature, of the oneness of God
and man in the incarnation. The Nicene Creed
m.arks that faith of the ancient church. Then the
Roman mind appropriated Christianity. And Chris-
tian Rome was nothing, if not imperial. Rome made
of the Gospel a new law for the nations. Hence
Latin theology was moulded in the idea of God's
sovereignty. Augustine's theology had in it perma-
nent truths, which profound religious experience will
still recognize ; but it was formed and fashioned as
a theology for a church which was commissioned to
rule men. Bring the theology of Roman scholas-
ticism into comparison with the parable of the prodi-
gal son, and its distinctive character becomes evident
at a glance. The Father becomes an Emperor; and
he is not present every day in tlie common life of
the household, personally managing its affairs, but
he dwells withdrawn in august state upon his
throne, and the Churcli as cliief servant becomes (lie
lord of the house. Tlie ])r()(ligal must return to the
chief servant, and receive indulgence through him.

150 Christian Facts and Forces.

Calvinism revolted from this subjection to the church
and its hierarchy, and brought every individual
soul face to face with God. But Calvinism retained
the Latin idea of Christianity as a divine statecraft.
Calvin's idea of God shows still the lines of Augus-
tine's Latin mould in which it was cast. To God the
Sovereign Ruler, whose law had been broken, comes
man the sinner, to be elected, or to be reprobated,
according to God's good pleasure. The Calvinistic
idea of God exalted His wisdom and His holiness ;
but the Calvinistic theology was nothing, if not
imperial. "We should acknowledge that there was a
providence in this subjection of the modern nations
at their birth to an imperial theology. Man needs to
be mastered by the sovereignty of God before he
is ready for deeper and kindlier revelations of the
Spirit.

Such then, broadly speaking, was the Latin thought
of God. And my present point is, that this thought
was accompanied by its corresponding sense of sin
in the minds of the men who held it. They looked
up into the heavens, and saw, holding the stars in
his hand, an All- wise and Omnipotent Ruler, whose
law man had broken, and under whose condemna-
tion the whole guilty world was lying in its sin. They
believed that all souls had had their day of probation
in Adam, and all generations were bound together in
one common disobedience and original sin, and are
justly exposed to the wrath of God. They read the
Gospels under that conception of God's sovereign
holiness, and they dared trust Christ enough to be-
lieve that in the secret and gracious counsels of God
his sufferings would be sufficient atonement for the

A Real Sense of Sin. 1 5 1

elect. No wonder that under such conceptions of
God's supreme Will, and the awful majesty of the
divine law, the hearts of men smote within them,
that even young children, on their way to the Cross
of him who once took infants from their mothers'
arms and blessed them, must be made to pass through
horrors of contrition like the torments of the damned ;
and that poor Cowper " from a maniac's tongue "
sent up the cry, " Forsaken ! " And when God's love
prevailed, as it often did in men's thought of their
redemption, still their experience of grace was
darkened by a deep sense of the broken law and the
utter depravity of man's nature.

Now if we would reproduce in our churches ex-
actly that religious experience, and particularly its
conviction of sin, we must reproduce the conditions
of thought and life in the world under which that
experience was once genuine and true. But we can-
not do that, for, fourthly, during the past hundred
years, throughout the Christian world, a change has
been coming over men's thought of God.

What has happened is this : the sun has been
rising, and the shadow of Rome has been shortening
over the modern Christian world. And particularly,
— to keep close to my present subject, — the world's
thought of its God has been growing more Christ-
like. We have not been losing utterly the truth that
there is a divine law in the universe. Indeed physi-
cal science, with its exaltation of law, and its stern
creed of heredity, has been helping us keep in mind
what was true in the Calvinistic conception of tlio
infrustrable divine decrees. There is a will of (^lod
to be done in all the processes of life, and there is a

152 Christian Facts and Forces,

sovereign order of the Creator in the heavens. But
gradually, and almost without observation, our con-
ception of God's nature and His sovereignty has been
gaining a more Christian tone and color. A purer
and warmer light glows through our thought of God.
What Christ was seen by the disciples to be, that we
dare believe God is essentially and eternally. Any-
thing Christlike is absolutely to be trusted. The
Word was made flesh. Christ is the revelation of
God. All our thoughts of God are to be formed and
fashioned, not in the type of natural law, nor in the
mould of any human government, nor in the image
of Csesar, but after the likeness of Christ, who is the
express image of the Father's person. Our God is
exalted in the heavens, the Lord of hosts ; yet He is
a sovereign, holy, and loving presence in this world,
and there are not two kingdoms, one of nature and
the other of grace, but there is one Divine revelation
through all ; — God is in nature, and nature is God's,
and divine things are also most natural, and most
human, for Creator and creation are one in Christ,
the incarnate Word.

We now draw near the answer for which these
remarks have been preparatory. Corresponding to
this increasing Christian sense of God there is a con-
viction of sin which we may realize. We are to gain
it simply by coming into the Light of Christ's char-
acter in its adorable revelation of God, and seeing
ourselves in that Light. God is all around us, a
holy, sovereign, loving Presence; we have in all
things to do with that One omnipresent. Christlike
Character. Everything sinful, the least wrong,
touches and jars against the pure divinity around

A Real Sense of Sin. 153

us ; it is contrary to God in Christ, contrary to the
infinite Christlikeness of God. There is, indeed,
a divine order of the world, a law of righteous-
ness in nature, and in the life of man. And the
prodigal's sin was against heaven ; — sin is against
the whole celestial order of being. But this is not
all. We do not reach the truest and most convincing
experience of sin until we have said, ^^ Father, I have
sinned against thee !'' It is not simply, when we sin,
that we are breaking a law, and exposing ourselves
to punishment ; it is more like breaking the trust
of a friend. We are in the pure and friendly
presence of the living God. Sin wounds that. Sin
is the prodigal's wrong against the Father. Feel
that divine fatherhood, feel that all-encompassing
divine friendship, and in its presence you would
not think again that anxious, loveless, jealous
thought. We would not speak that uncharitable
word in the hearing of such a God as Christ reveals.
You cannot consent to that untruth ; you cannot re-
fuse that duty ; you must not yield to that tempta-
tion, if you realize the presence of the Spirit of
Christ round about you; — the disciples fell upon
their faces and worshipped, when the transfiguring
light of God's presence shone from the face, and the
very raiment of Christ upon that holy mount.

Corresponding also to this increasing sense of God
in his Christlike presence around our thoughts and
ways, tliore will si)ring up within us a growing sense
of the moral liatefulncss of particular sins. There
is a Christlikc scorn to be cherislied for things con-
temptible. To the cowardly scribes and Phariseos,
hypocrites, in our own thoughts we must learn to say,

154 Christian Facts and Forces,

and mean it, — Woe be unto you ! We have a per-
sonal example of God's rectitude by which to measure
our conduct. Take the Sermon on the Mount in
your heart down the street with you, and let it reveal
to you what the sin of the world is. Or come, take
the cup of the communion of Christ, and at the
Lord's table, while we receive the forgiveness of sin,
let us understand what thoughts of our hearts have
been with the multitude who cried, " Crucify him."
How should I remember that denial of duty ? how
think of that sin ? How did Peter feel when sud-
denly, while he was cowering in that angry crowd,
he saw Jesus' eye quietly resting upon him ? " And
the Lord turned, and looked upon Peter. . . . And
Peter remembered. . . . And he went out and wept
bitterly."

Again, in consonance with this increasing sense
of God's adorable Christlikeness there springs up a
strong sense of the worth of character. We want
character more than anything else. We want not
this or that virtue merely, but character equal to all
duty and trial; we want character worthy of all
admiration ; we want character which can never be
put to shame; we want character so strong, clear,
and pure, that God himself can look upon it and be
pleased. We look at Jesus Christ, and if we once
see him as he is, we must pray ever afterwards for
character — more character and nobler than we have
ever attained in our broken lives. We can never be
satisfied without Christlike character. Moreover,
this perception of perfect character and our admira-
tion of it in Christ, discloses to us our deepest need
of reconciliation. At the bottom of our hearts, at the

A Real Sense of Sin, 155

spring of our wills, we need to become at one with
such a God. Our God as revealed in Christ is too
noble, too righteous, too just, too attractive and
adorable, for us not to wish to be at one in our
inmost being with such infinite Christlikeness. And
we see and feel how our lives do not yet fit into that
divine element of our being. Our characters, all
around their edges, are ragged, and broken, and at
heart they do not rest quietly in God. They must
be poised and centered upon that pure will of God,
and be rounded and fitted to that perfection. There
can be no real peace for us, until our souls become
fitted to the divine element in which they were made
to have their being. There is no true, lasting recon-
ciliation with life possible for us, except through
reconciliation with God.

Once having seen and felt this divine Christlike-
ness to which human hearts are made to correspond,
we shall know what alienation from God our siri is,
and we shall turn with a strong repentance from all
our littleness, selfishness, and un worthiness. " Ye
therefore shall be perfect, as your heavenly Father is
perfect.'' That convinces us of sin. The spell of
an infinite attraction has been laid upon us. Con-
science within us has seen that gracious possibility
of character, and leaped for joy. Desert it, choose
lower good, be content with a fragmentary virtue,
and conscience would become an avenging torment.
Follow it, and conscience by its very rebukes be-
comes a herald of happiness. For "every man that
hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as he
is pure."

156 Christian Facts and Forces,

Along lines of experience like these we may gain
for ourselves, and in accordance with our present
spiritual conditions of life, genuine and profitable
conviction of sin. And to such penitence the word
of forgiveness is ever spoken, and from it ascends
the acceptable prayer of the new life.

XIII.
PERSONAL POWER.

i\tvitt into IJt tounlrs ix-ear to i\t kiiltemss, into a titj ^alUlJ JBpfetaim ;
anlJ i\^txt %t iznizii ixiiti tSt bis^ipUs." — John xi. 54.

During the latter part of February, or early in March,
Jesus withdrew from Jerusalem, and retired with his
disciples to a solitary place in the wild, hill-country to
the North East of Jerusalem. A few days before the
seventh of April — the day upon which that year the
feast of the passover fell, — Jesus left Ephraim, and
to the amazement and fear of his disciples went be-
fore them in the way which led up to Jerusalem.
Thus for several weeks, and at this time of the year,
Jesus, as John tells us, tarried with the disciples at
Ephraim. His enemies did not know where he was ;
he did not appear in the midst of the multitude in
the temple ; for a few quiet weeks he was doing per-
sonal work with his disciples.

It is helpful to us, whenever the Gospel narratives
permit it, to associate Jesus' words and deeds with
particular days or seasons of the j^ear. It serves to
make Jesus' wonderful life more real and present to
us to think. What was the Lord doing this very day?
What words did he speak at this time? During
tins season of our year, at this time which the Chris-
tian world is consecrating more and more generally
to religious thought and works of n^pentanco, Jesus

157

158 Christian Facts and Fo7^ces,

had withdrawn from the crowds of the great cities,
and was tarrying with his disciples at Ephraim.

Yet never since Jesus began to go about doing
good, had there been more need of his works of
mercy. There were many lepers besides those
wandering, God-forsaken, upon the borders of Sa-
maria. There were still sick folk enough to be
healed in Capernaum. There were devils to be cast
out from degraded souls in the towns and cities of
Judea. The common people were suffering under
burdens too heavy to be borne, which the ruling
classes had bound upon them. It was not because
the world was not waiting for Jesus' presence in it
that he tarried some five weeks with his disciples at
Ephraim. There w^as a will of God for Jesus, and
a work also for his disciples, to be done in those
quiet days at Ephraim. Doubtless that season was
for Jesus himself a preparation for his hour. But
Jesus did not depart to Ephraim for himself alone ;
he tarried there with his disciples. Those disciples
were strong, eager men, who felt keenly the evils of
their times ; they were men of the people who knew
how much wrong there was in the towns of Judea,
and how the populace throughout Galilee needed a
Messiah ; — impetuous men like Peter, quick to draw
the sword ; sons of thunder, like James and John ;
and also that cold, calculating soul called Judas, who
was "on the make'' even in the Lord's company,
and who was impatient to make more from the
revolution which he thought was coming. These
twelve disciples Jesus took with him, and kept
quietly with him, while he tarried in Ephraim.
Judas must have found it a dull town ; and, often

Personal Power, 159

the boisterous waves of Galilee may have leaped up
in Peter's memory, and he would think of the crowds
waiting for his Master on the shore; but Jesus
tarried with the disciples at Ephraim.

That time was for them an opportunity of per-
sonal concentration. It was a preparation for their
future apostleship. They might gain personal
power in those weeks. The Lord was with them to
teach them his truth. His example laid its spell
upon their spirits. His light was shining into their
inmost souls, and revealing them to themselves.
His peace kept them in its perfect patience. This,
accordingly, is the lesson of our text for us at this
time. In the Christian life, and for it, there is to be
a preparation of personal power. We need to gather
personal force for life. In order that the Christian
disciple may become a Christian apostle he is to gain
through companionship with Christ personal con-
centration and power.

In speaking further of this personal preparation
and power for our lives, let me remind you of the
danger of our becoming distracted, and almost losing
our souls, among the many things which we want to
do, or which we think ought to be done. I do not
refer merely to the innumerable little things among
which our lives may seem to run out into nothing-
ness, as some rivers are lost in the sands ; nor do I
have in mind chiefly that absorbing necessity of
business in which the heart of a man's life may be
in danger of becoming sucked dry. I am si)eakinii:
more especially of the services wliich Christians ari^
called upon to render, the kindly, heli)ful tilings
which some one must be always doing, if people are

i6o Christian Facts and Forces.

to be held up, and society is not to slip backwards.
The demands upon the benevolence, and the helpful
powers, of the Church have been steadily increasing
for a hundred years. When were there ever more
useful things needing to be done right off than there
are to-day? When did liberal and large-minded
Christian men and women ever have so many
opportunities to do good, and to do a great deal of
good, as the providences of God are now affording ?
Literally the field now is the world. Our Christianity
in sober truth has the opportunity now to overcome
evil with good throughout the whole world: The
twelve of old began to bear witness to their Lord
at Jerusalem ; and then providence led the way to
Antioch, and opened Asia Minor, and Macedonia,
and continued enlarging the scope of their possible
service, until we find Peter writing to the Dispersion
in several countries, and one brave Apostle had
made the discovery that the Gospel was for all the
Gentiles. That providence which enlarged the
horizon of the Apostles, has continued expanding the
task of Christianity, and by calls for men, and drafts
upon our property, from all quarters, in the name of
the Lord, we are taught that God loves the world,
and our Christ is for all men. Or consider the task
laid upon our Christianity within the limits of a
single city. We may not always realize it, but it is
a work set by the providence of God before the doors
of every church, and a good waiting to be done
around all Christian homes. The work of making
a single city righteous, pure, happy, like the city of
God, might task the resources of angels. Yet that
city, and nothing less than that city of God, is the

Personal Power, i6i

ideal of the true Church of Christ. In order to the
next possible approximation towards that Christian
ideal how many helpful things, and true things, and
strong things, need to be done, and as soon as possi-
ble ! Still coiled beneath our civilization is the ser-
pent whose head must be bruised by the heel of our
Christianity. We all know, or may know, men and
women, boys and girls, who need daily to be helped
to good, useful, and honorable lives. And confronting
the Church all the while is the popular atheism —
the dull, despairing, sometimes revengeful feeling
that the Christian's God has gone on a far journey,
and does not care for poor needlewomen, or mind
day-laborers. There is, also, that other atheism in
our hearts, which leaves us imagining that it is
practically impossible for our Christ to do as much
for many other people, or for nobody's children, as he
has done for us and our children. And here, in the
very heart of a city, upon whose streets during a
single year representatives of eighteen or twenty
different nationalities have been met, stands a house
of God, a Puritan meeting-house, whose foundations
were laid by men who believed with all their might
in the city of God, and who crossed the seas in search
of it; and all this fixed capital of religion is held by
Christians as a sacred trust in the name of the Lord,
every pew and pew door of it; and as faithful
stewards we would not deny our obligation to put
this fixed capital of religion, this wliole religious
'plani^ to tlic largest profits, and to use it not for our
own edification merely, and our children's, but for
the good of the whole community, and witli sc^ne
wise prevision of the kind of society, law-abiding

1 62 Christian Facts and Forces.

and free, or Godless and forsaken, in which we would
have our children and children's children receive
hereafter their inheritance from us. Such is the
briefest outline or suggestion of the good works to
which our Christian faith is pledged.

Yet notwithstanding all the work needing to be
done, Jesus departed with his disciples to Ephraim.
In those hours when the disciples tarried with Jesus
in some place near the wilderness, a deep personal
work was going on. Their lives during those quiet,
intense days, instead of expanding outwardly, were
folded in ujDon themselves. It was a season for
them of self-concentration in the presence of their
Lord. While the world was perishing in its sins,
Jesus took time to deepen and to intensify the per-
sonal life of his disciples before he sent them forth
finally into the world as his apostles. Renewed and
inspired personalities were to be the Lord's means of
grace to the world. The method of Christianity is
personal influence. The world is not to be saved by
institutionalism. Human society is to be redeemed
and glorified by the personal lives, full of light and
warmth, which shall strike through and illumine it.
Divine grace is not an impersonal property — ^a
sacramental magic, or a governmental provision — an
intermediate something between the soul of man and
the Spirit of God ; it is the love of God concentrated
and incarnate in the Person of Jesus Christ, and from
him working through his disciples as the living and
personal power of the new life of redemption. More
than anything else, essentially and vitally, Chris-
tianity is the personal influence of Jesus — his con-
tinual personal influence, always coming into human

Personal Power. 163

life — the Light of the world caught and reflected by
each succeeding generation, glowing through thous-
ands of lives that kindle in its beams, and becoming,
through the multitude of these, the diffused radiance
of a world's civilization. If we imagine that we can
substitute anything else for this personal influence
of Jesus we shall fail. Unless we can have among
us men who have tarried with the Lord at Ephraim
long enough to become personal centers and forces
of righteousness and truth, we shall make only a
formal and fruitless thing of all our charities and all
our churches. Yet just this truth that the power of
the Gospel lies in the personalities which it seizes
upon, and inspires, we are in danger of losing sight
of in the multiplicity of our agencies for doing good
in the world. Jesus Christ made men before he
made the church. Jesus created and concentrated
strong, personal forces among his personal followers,
before he gave to the disciples the cup of communion,
and ordained them as his apostles to gather congre-
gations of believers in his name. In Christ's work
the inspired personality came first, and afterwards
the New Testament and the Church. A true com-
munion, or saved society of men and women, was the
end sought from the beginning by Him who came
preaching the Gospel of the kingdom; but the
method of Jesus was personal influence, and the
inspiration of chosen personalities by his Spirit, i
The power of the Church consists in its fullness of ,
p(^r8onal forces. Your personal power for good may
be multiplied many fold in the organized life of tlio
Church ; but personal powers are the vital units

164 Christian Facts and Forces,

which, multiplied together, constitute that organic
whole which is the living body of Christ.

The same remark applies as pertinently to all
charitable work. Benevolence of late has been com-
pelled to organize in the face of modern wants.
Village methods do not answer city needs. Associa-
tion is becoming in all large towns the approved
method of charity. "We form societies for almost
every good work. The economic helpfulness of love
in modern society lies largely in its organization ;
and its weakness also is there. Its power for good is
increased by combination of the many in one work-
ing force ; but its danger lies in the ease with which
we suffer the organization to take the place of the
personal influence in our good works. j\Iany of you,
very many of you, are connected with one or with
several of the philanthropic and Christian societies
of this city. In those organizations your personal
influence may be taken up, and increased, as an in-
teger in a multiplication table. You can do more
through those societies than you could apart from
them. Yes, if you are doing what you may through
the organization, and not trusting the organization
to do it for you. If we make charitable proxies of
these societies, we may indeed help other persons to
do more ; but we cannot accomplish what we might,
if instead of making charitable proxies of them we
regard them as points of application for personal
influence. If your object is to keep your benevolent
society alive, you may indeed help others find oppor-
tunity of doing good through it ; but if you would
take that philanthropic society to which you belong

Personal Power. 165

and make it a means of your personal service, a
point of application of your personal force to some
want or sin of the city, for all the people of which
Christ tasted death, then some of the greater works
of faith might become possible here. But if we idly
subordinate the personal to the institutional, we
shall see around us anything except the Christianity
of Jesus Christ. Yet that is exactly the mistake
which for centuries the church made. For the per-
sonal power of Jesus, multiplied in apostolic lives,
men very early began to substitute the outward
power of the Church. Augustine saw the wicked-
ness of the world, and also the power of the Roman
Church to extend through the pagan world a system
of compulsory baptism and education of men into
Christianity. The papal power rose and fell. Then
the Reformation began with a new contact of the
Gospel with life through personal apostles of it.
And there is no other way for Christianity to win
its world-triumph than through the personal forces
which it vitalizes. So long therefore as a benevolent
or religious organization represents and multiplies
personal service, so long it is useful ; whenever it
stands by its own institutional weight, and for its
own sake, ceasing to be vivified and fructified with
personal influences, it cumbers the ground, and
should be cut down.

This principle holds true especially of the
Church. So long as it is a living multii)lication of
the influence of Jesus through personal powers
united in one body, it is an Apostolic church ; but
let it cease to be in any real sense a missionary
church, — a point of application, tliat is to say, of

1 66 Christian Facts and Forces.

organized personal forces to the work of the Lord, —
and, however venerable its customs, or distinguished
its past, or rich its inheritance of name, property,
or tradition, it would fall out of the true Apostolical
succession, and fail of the work for which it was
ordained of God.

Jesus' tarrying with his disciples at Ephraim in
the midst of the most active season of his ministry,
even while the pilgrims to the feast were already
seeking him in Jerusalem, contains thus a very
necessary lesson for all of us who would learn how
to live large and helpful lives. It is the lesson which
it seems to me young men and women must learn be-
fore they ever can begin to live as they are capable
of living. Our natures quickly open toward things
without, and respond happily to outward impres-
sions. We are mirrors of life, before we are makers of
our lives. And some go on for years and years
mirroring the world rather than making their souls.
This expansiveness of mind and heart toward the
world is a natural impulse, and a true impulse. But
there must be also a deepening of life, a concentra-
tion of soul for life, a gathering of personal power.
All serious times are hours when this outward, ex-
pansive impulse is held in check for the time by this
other deeper, intensive sense of one's soul, and its
vital needs. And if we should not gain clear con-
centration of soul in purpose, if we should fail of this
deepening and inflowing from God of personal truth
and power, then there would be danger that in the
heat of the world, and under the glare of social life,
our souls would evaporate from us into the world,
and our life become indeed as a vapor that passeth

Personal Power. 167

away. But we cannot gather deep, vital personal
power without religious experience. When the soul
is thrown in upon itself, it is put back directly upon
God. For at every vital centre of every living thing
is God. At the springs of life is always the living ^
God. This religious experience, this deepening and
intensifying, as well as purification, of the personal
life, is an experience most truly and fully to be
realized in the discipleship of Jesus Christ. Let the
disciple go with the Lord to Ephraim and tarry with
him, and we may observe what shall surely follow.
The Christ discloses to the soul its true self. He
brings out from our inmost being, and sets visibly
before us, even in his own image, that true, diviner
self, which God thought of as possible when he
created us. And the knowledge of that both con-
vinces us of sin, and at the same time fills us with
a new desire and great hope ; it humbles us in a
genuine repentance, and puts us upon a new life with
an inspiring faith. Such an experience, call it con-
version, or what you may, such a gathering of per-
sonal force for life under the personal influence of
Jesus Christ, has been with many the great epoch of
their years, — as a new birth of soul in the Spirit of
Christ. It was their call to apostleship. Tliat ex-
perience has put them in the succession of true and
consecrated souls. Life since then may have run too
much to waste ; they may have been unprofitable
servants; but, still kept by the grace of God within
them, is that vital centre of personal good wliich
may be quickened, and invigorated, and from which
a greater devotion and happier may yet grow.

God has many Ephraims whore lie provides for

1 68 Christian Facts and Forces,

our tarrying with the Christ. The opportunity of
soul-quickening and deepening came to some of you
in the preparation to meet a new responsibility or
an approaching happiness. Others have found
themselves left alone with the Spirit through some
disappointment. Any call of life upon us may lead
us for a brief season to turn in upon ourselves, and
to seek for new gathering of personal power. Or
sickness may have kept some strong man for weeks
from his business, taken the man bodily out of his
customary surroundings, and given him time to
think. He learned in that Ephraim of his soul with
his Lord to measure the whole striving of his life by
a juster standard, to value at their true worth what-
ever he has of culture, power, or money ; to know
himself as he stands independently of all his posses-
sions in the sight of God. He has seen again per-
haps some heavenly vision of the new man in Christ
Jesus which he saw in his youth, or which years
ago dawned upon him at his conversion. Let him
not dare to forget again as he goes about his work
what the Spirit taught him when he tarried at
Ephraim. God knows every place in our lives
where we had time and opportunity to be quickened,
and deepened, and vitalized anew by the Spirit.

This special season of the year may prove to some
such a time of the Spirit. This time of Lent gives
opportunity to those who delight in life's outward
happiness to come to themselves. They will enter
again into that outward life with more heart, and a
happier appreciation, if now their souls should
deepen, and strengthen, and concentrate in the disci-
ple's decision : from that decision as from an exhaust-

Personal Power. 169

less motive their life might ever afterward expand,
and fill its whole opportunity of good, and overflow
into all the joy of the Father's house. Let the
Church, tarrying with its Lord for a season, become
full of the personal power of Jesus, and it might
do an Apostolic work wider, farther reaching, more
redemptive of the city, the country, and the world,
than any of us have ever seen or known.

XIV.
THE GREAT REQUIREMENT.

''^nts ttivxt, takjt up tf)t txoss, nnti hlloio mt.'* — Mark x. 21.

One afternoon in the year 1210, as Pope Innocent
III., surrounded by a sumptuous retinue of prelates,
was walking on the terrace of the Lateran, a com-
pany of mendicants laid at his feet the articles of a
new association. At their head was a young man
who but a few years before had been foremost in
every scene of merriment ; he had been a ^^ success-
ful merchant, a gallant soldier, and one of the most
popular of the sons of Assisi." But, while seeking
military service and adventure, he had endured a
protracted sickness; and when, upon his recovery
and his return, his friends gathered at one of the
gates of Assisi to welcome him, and merrily placed
in his hand the sceptre of frolic, to their astonish-
ment he remained grave in the midst of their
festivities, as one not of them, and suddenly break-
ing loose from his companions, (so the story runs,)
he proceeded to the church, and before its high
altar there was witnessed a wedding which has
been celebrated by Italy's great poet, and is still
represented in the same Cathedral by Giotto's art ;
and at the wedding of St. Francis the name of the
bride was Poverty, The solemn espousal of poverty
by this youth of Assisi was no meaningless ceremony.
To him the vow of his soul before that high altar

170

The Great Requirement, 171

meant emptied coffers, surrender of the comforts of
life, patient endurance of evil, and even self-torture,
and withal a love of all created things so joyous
and overflowing that, as he wandered among the
mountains or over the plains of Italy, he would
speak of the beasts of the field as his brethren, and
the twittering swallows as his little sisters. The
vow of self-sacrifice, and his espousal of poverty
meant the unflinching prosecution of a work of
moral purification for which Europe for at least two
generations was better, and the founding and resolute
administration of an order of missionary monks
whom, it has been justly said, the violent learned to
fear, the rich to respect, and the poor to love. The
command of Christ, " Come, take up the cross, and
follow me," was understood by St. Francis of Assisi
to mean a life given up as entirely to a noble
aim as the bow gives up the swift arrow to the
mark.

We read the story of St. Francis, and smile, and
put it from us as a pleasing bit of medievalism.
Such singular sacrifice might have place and fitness
in that odd mosaic of medieval manners and life.
It would not be in accordance with the sensible and
soberer coloring of real life in this most prosaic of
the centuries. Should the life of St. Francis be lield
up in the pulpit as an example for us, a comfortable
and well-dressed modern Congregation would rogard
it as a romantic picture, and we sliould not think
of imitating the visionary sainthood and unnatural
asceticism of those spiritual heroes and horoinos of
the middle ages.

Nevertheless, what do these words of our Master,

172 Christian Facts and Forces.

concerning losing our life, and taking up the cross,
mean to us ?

Let us look at another picture which is not
medieval, and which we cannot so easily put aside
with a smile of complacent wisdom. The scene was
in a city bordering on the wilderness. The time
was about the year 30 of our era, and in the early
Spring. One who was so human in all his sympa-
thies, and yet so unlike all other men that he had
become known as the Son of man, was in the way
going up to Jerusalem. And a young ruler met
him, and asked him that old and ever new question
of the human soul concerning the eternal life. You
have heard read this morning the account of that
meeting, which made so great an impression upon
the memories of all who witnessed the scene that we
find it recorded in each of the three evangelists. And
there may have come to us again the thought which
the narrative so often has suggested, why did Jesus
ask of that young Israelite a sacrifice seemingly
so unnecessary ? and who then can be saved ? We
may put the story of St. Francis from us as an idle
tale ; but here for us all to look upon in the Gospels
is this picture of the One Great Requirement ; — and
is that only as a medieval painting to us ? How
shall we catch the spirit of it, and in our lives, amid
present surroundings, reproduce what the Lord
would have us imitate in that commandment ?

My friends, we shall never understand these Gos-
pels of the life of Christ, if we read them as the
scribes read the Scriptures. We must look beyond
the letter, we must enter into the spirit of that hour
when Jesus stood before the young ruler, loving him.

The Great Requireme^it, 173

and asking of him a great requirement, or else we
shall not understand what its truth for all men is,
and we shall turn from it utterly, or make but cari-
catures of it in our poor efforts to reproduce it.

If we would rightly understand this sacred narra-
tive, we should not regard it as a chapter of dogmatic
teaching to be taken by itself, but we should look
upon it as a scene from real life to be studied, and
interpreted, in its time and place in the ministry of
Jesus. Remember it was while he was going up to
Jerusalem that the young ruler met him. Jesus was
on his way to the great sacrifice. It was no common
time even in the life of our Lord. His hour was at
hand. Some three years before he had gone to Cana
of Galilee, and blessed a wedding-feast. A few
weeks before he had entered a home of sorrow, and
had restored to its happy friendship the brother who
had been loved and lost. He had never asked those
friends of his to give up their pleasant home amid
the olives of Bethany. Never had his presence
hushed the song of a single pure joy of the human
heart. But now the great sacrifice of the ages awaits
him in the holy city. He has taken liis disciples
aside, and told them privately, even while the multi-
tude are ready to shout Hosannas, that he must
needs suffer. Think then, with reverent thought,
what must liavc been the divine consciousness of
Jesus when that young ruler, strong, liealthful, and
conscientious, but witliout sign upon liim of sacri-
ficial sympathies and self-denials, came to liim, the
Christ, on liis way to tlio Cross. It was tlie sudden
meeting of a conscientious and painstaking, and cold
moral nature, satisfied in keeping for itself the right

174 Christian Facts and Forces,

way to heaven, and an Incarnate Love, full of all
human sympathies and inwardly aglow with the
purpose of an infinite sacrifice. It was a great Char-
acter at its greatest, and before it our common recti-
tude in its commonest complacency. It was the
supreme Incarnation of what God is, before a fair
representation of what selfish man at his best may
be. Christ in the clear consciousness of the Love of
God stands before man in the half-hearted obedience
of his conscience. It is the supernal Good dwarfing
all lesser good. It is the commanding Love making
all easier sacrifice seem as nothing. It is God
revealing the glory of his eternal Love to man in his
poor selfishness. It is the Christ in his perfect sacri-
fice of himself convincing you and me of sin. Never
has scene like this been witnessed before or since : —
The Christ from God on the way to the Cross, the
ruler for a moment in his presence, meeting the great
requirement of the greatest Character, and returning
sad at heart to his possessions. Of how little worth
those possessions seem when put in contrast with
such a character. Nearly two years before a voice,
not like the voice of man, had been heard giving
new commandments, heralding strange blessings,
and saying to the common people, " Ye therefore
shall be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect."
And to-day man at his poor best came and stood for
a moment before the Christ who was walking in the
consciousness of his hour which was almost come;
and at that meeting of the Divine and the human
that strange promise of the Sermon on the Mount
became the seemingly impracticable requirement
which was laid upon our common humanity by that

The Great Requirement. 175

perfect character of incarnate Love ; " If thou wilt
be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the
poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven : and
come and follow me/'

In this passage of the Gospel we have for our imi-
tation not the letter, but the spirit ; not a specific
commandment, everywhere, and under all circum-
stances, to be obeyed, but a Character revealing itself
in its divinest power, to be chosen and loved by us,
to be imitated and followed in all men's ways of life.

What do these words, Take up the cross, go, sell
that thou hast, give to the poor, follow me, mean to
us ? That will depend upon how much perception
of the real intention of Jesus we may have gained,
upon how much willingness of heart we may have
to perceive the true Spirit of Christ.

Let us think of this further. Should imitation of
that Spirit of life as it was revealed in this impres-
sive scene, lead us to utter abandonment of our
present possessions? Would the Christ who stood
in his sacrificial purpose before that good and lova-
ble, but spiritually commonplace man, bid us remove
the pictures from our homes, the cheerful fire from
the hearth, and all pleasure from our hearts?

What is this Christian law of sacrifice? Is it
annihilation of self? Is it '^ at enmity with joy"?
My friends, we have indeed but little faith — not
faith enough to bear the least trial, or witli
which to look at any death — if we have not yet
learned that God is over all, God Messed forever,
and that life, and the joy of life, is the creation's
primal law, and the creation's chief end. When we
say, God is the Alpha and the Omega, wo confess

176 Christian Facts and Forces.

that blessedness and not pain is the first and the
last. When we believe that God in his blessedness
is from eternity to eternity, we believe that Life —
full, perfect life — life and not death — -joy of life and
not pain of death, — is the supreme law and universal
good. If now we must needs know death and pain,
it is because these unhappy facts have in some way
found place, and become entangled, in the midst of
things. They must be intermediate things, inciden-
tal, temporary, not eternal, — not the end of the crea-
tion, but only means to its end ; for the beginning
and the end, the first and the last, is God, — and He
who is over all, is God blessed forever. Life is the
Creator's law ; death the creation's incident; blessed-
ness is the supreme good, sacrifice the means to the
final good. The Christ must needs suff'er, not forever,
but once for all ; and in the same announcement it
was foretold that he should be crucified, and that
he should rise again. That supernal Character, the
Incarnation of the Love of God, on its solitary way
to the great sacrifice of the ages, met for a moment
the prudent morality of the good man, and in the
flashing of its self-revelation it became as a consum-
ing fire to his hard, dry goodness ; but the supreme
requirement of that divine Character was never de-
structive of living joy. Jesus on that same sacrificial
journey took little children in his arms and blessed
them. Jesus did not ask sacrifices of his disciples
because the loss and pain are virtues, but because
through them God's will may be carried on to larger
good. Let us not wrong the Son of man by putting
him into any wrong relation to human life. Asceti-
cism is not sacrifice. St. Francis of Assisi, were he

The Great Reqicirement. 177

living here and now, might do a nobler work for
humanity by setting a good example as a Christian
capitalist, upholding other men, building cleanly
homes around his factories, and causing his success
to bless his city, than he could possibly do by becom-
ing a missionary mendicant. The Christian law of
sacrifice has higher claims to-day upon the money-
power of the world than could be met by any reckless
abandonment of the world's stored up capital. And
the law of sacrifice should never be interpreted as
a commandment of misery. God does not love
wretchedness. Christ in the hour of his full sacrifi-
cial consciousness could speak not of his peace only,
but also of his joy.

The Lord has put us into this beautiful world not
that we may make it a place of torture to us, or so
abuse it that our hearts may become places of torment
in it. There is a divine blessedness which all life
reveals, a joy of the Creator in the light of the
morning skies, in the ringing clearness of the winter
air, in the laughing of the brooks unchained, in the
early spring, in the fresh, abounding life of the
summer fields, the colors of each flower, the ever re-
newed brightness of the earth, and in the happiness
of infancy around which " heaven lies." John Cal-
vin, spending most of his theological days in Geneva, in
the midst of the joy of that scenery which every trav-
eller doliglits to remember, thougli his eye must often
have rested upon tlie blue lake, and tlie purpling
mountains, and before him many an evening the
day's afterglow had bloomed upon the distant sky,
never, says liis biograplier, in all his letters makes
one allusion to the beauty of the world around him,

178 ChHstian Facts and Forces,

and God's pleasure in it. Yet in these brief Gospels
of the life of Jesus of Nazareth we still love to read
of the glory of the lilies, and of the vine and the
branches, and the place where there was much
grass, and the fisher's boat, and the fields upon which
the Saviour glanced, as men love still to look upon
a field white for the harvest. A logic which is not
open enough to let nature in, is not the logic of the life
of the Son of man. A theology of the Cross of Christ
which does not make love first and omnipresent,
and full always of an eternal joy, is not the truth
of God which we may learn from the life and the
death of the Son of man. " He shall see of the
travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied."

The law of sacrifice, I would declare then, is not
a law which puts a premium upon suffering in
God's universe, or makes a virtue of unhappiness.
It is a law which obtains in a universe made in joy
and made for happiness ; it is a law of Him who
gave his life for the world, and rose again, and sits
henceforth expecting upon the throne of God.

Having recognized, thus, that in the divine order
sacrifice is the means, and the blessedness of God the
end, that the Cross of Christ on earth is for the joy
of heaven, and that it was not borne for its own sake,
as though God could have pleasure in beholding suf-
fering, we may ask once more, and more discerningly,
the question whether every day our lives are held
truly under that law of sacrifice, whether when that
supreme Character may appear before us in some
supreme hour, we shall go away grieved to our pos-
sessions, or follow Christ to Jerusalem. This is a
question not so much of the quantity of your gifts,

The Great Requirement, 179

though that may help determine it, but of the spirit
of your giving. And by giving I do not mean
merely giving money. I mean personal giving, often
including money, but above all personal giving, like
Christ's giving of himself to the world. I mean
giving which begins in the heart, and becomes a
power of the character, and, working from within as
a new birth of the love of God in the soul, sweeps
all obstructions of habit and obstacles even of in-
herited temperament before it, and is the outflow
of the life, the influence of the man, filling his whole
possible opportunity of good, — even like that virtue
of which we read, that it went out from Jesus
and healed the suppliant who touched the hem of
his garment. How much of that inward sacrificial
virtue is there in our characters ready to respond to
the slightest touch upon us? How much consecrated
personal power is there in our churches, flowing out
in all possible ways upon the city, and into this world
for which Christ, in the glory of God, went up to
Jerusalem to die ?

In these days of social seriousness before Easter
we may remember him who counted it joy to give
his life for the world; we may see the Christ standing
even now before this church, as he stood before that
good man for a moment, as He was passing on his
way to the Cross; and as we grow conscious of his
Spirit in us, we may know whether our souls would
follow Iiim whatever he would have us do.

Only let us not this morning turn too easily away
from that sacred scene of the Gospel. It is no medi-
eval picture. It is a present revelation, and a present
judgment. It is here in the Gospel to-day, for tlio

i8o Christian Facts and Forces.

church still to look upon. AVhat willmgness of sac-
rifice for the people has the church of Christ in this
country at its heart? The answer to that question
is the prophecy of what this land will be at this cen-
tury's close. To-day there is the scattered home
missionary line, skirmishing with the godliness of
an eager civilization on the far frontiers, and our
Home Missionary society borrowing money to send
out necessary supplies ! There, opening all around
the horizon of Christendom, is the world-opportu-
nity, and the laborers are few; and we believers,
alas! are sometimes without faith enough in the
Gospel to trust it gladly to any earnest heart that for
Christ's dear sake would take it to the perishing.
And here at home are the multitudes who hardly
know how to live ; men discouraged or in tempta-
tion who need a kindly, brave word, or a helping
hand ; and young women, many of them, without
homes or good company, working for what pittance
they can earn, uneducated, and very likely uninter-
esting enough except to the God who made them ;
— and here are Christian girls, refined, and happy,
yet without the inspiration of real service in life ; —
are there not ways, which they by seeking may find,
of girding themselves and serving those others, and
in serving knowing who Jesus Christ is, and what
eternal life is ? A religion that costs us nothing is
of little value to ourselves or others. Are we spend-
ing six days of the week in laying up treasures for
ourselves, and then one in praying God to make sure
to us our eternal salvation ? Master, " Grant unto us
that we may sit, one on thy right hand and one on
thy left hand, in thy glory." Is discipleship of Christ

The Great Requirement, i8i

to become then a crowned selfishness, or must there
be some sign of the cross on every crown? "Ye
shall indeed drink of the cup that I drink of;" —
Jesus knew the disciples, and the power and the task
of the grace of God for the disciples, better than they
knew themselves and the work in them to be wrought
in Christ's name. There is more of the sacrificial
spirit of Christ deep down in the heart of our Christi-
anity than sometimes appears. In every crisis, it is
true, in every day of the Son of man, there shall be
first who shall be last, and last first. That poor
unknown saint met duty like a martyr ; and that
man who was a ruler in Israel flinched in the trial
of his manhood. But there always has been, and
there is still, the power of the Master's sacrificial
spirit among the true disciples. There may indeed
be sent times of trial to God's church to bring that
spirit out. The wisest cannot tell what destructive
forces are gathering beneath the surface of our
industrial civilization. One heroic age of our coun-
try has become a memory, and one of the last and
most eminent of the patriots and lovers of liberty
whose soul was fashioned, and tempered, and set
aflame by it, has just passed beyond our praises or
our blame.* Sometimes one could almost pray that
providence might kindle again flaming questions of
liberty and humanity, if only to bring out men, and
to show once more the possibilities of sacrifice in
women.

But now there arc rung out no sudden alarms, and
no great appeals of duty command us all; yet there
is a work to be accomplished for Christ and our

* Henry Ward Beetlior.

1 82 Christian Facts and Forces.

country, before which earnest souls should feel strait-
ened until it be done; and we need for its vast
achievement that spirit in all our churches which He
required w^ho said to the young ruler, '' Come, take
up the cross, and follow me." No community can be
saved without sacrifice. Somebody's sacrifice is in
every blessing we have received. No church can be
great without sacrifice. No home can be blessed
without the sacrificial spirit. No soul can becomic
fit for the kingdom of heaven without the consecra-
tion of the Spirit.

We cannot put off the supreme requirement of
that supreme Character which confronts us with its
commandment of divine perfection, by contenting
ourselves with any partial response to it. When
Jesus on the way to Jerusalem asked that j^outh to
give up his possessions, w^hat think you that the
Lord cared for that man's money ? He did not need
a shekel of it. Judas might have asked a higher
price for his treachery if he had had more in the
bag. The disciples did not need that ruler's prop-
erty. They were better off without it. That fine
example of charity in the first church at Jerusalem
might have been lost from Christian history, if that
ruler's possessions had been given and invested in
real estate for the Christians at Jerusalem. It was
not the ruler's money that Jesus cared for when he
bade him sell all, and give to the poor. He wanted
the man. And he could not get the man unless he
saved him from his money. Jesus w^anted that
man's will of life. He wanted that man's whole
purpose. He wanted that man's heart. Money
enough will go to the Lord's exchangers, if the church

The Great Requirement, 183

can put heart enough into the Lord's service. Where
your heart is, there will your money be found also.
And what humanity all around us needs is first and
above all the heart of the church, freely, joyously
given in Christ's name to Christ's service.

XV.

MISUNDERSTANDING CHRIST.

from fttm, anlJ t!)t2 p^rai^-elj not t!)t tijins^ ft at b^u saili." — Luke
xviii. 34.

This verse of Luke's Gospel records the disciples'
acknowledgment that at the time Jesus was going up
to Jerusalem to be crucified they had not understood
him. Luke takes pains to put into his narrative
three distinct avowals that the disciples had misun-
derstood Jesus' words. " And they understood none
of these things ; and this saying was hid from them,
and they perceived not the things that were said."

No living men had known Jesus so well as those
disciples had known him. They had been his near-
est friends. They had been some three years with
Jesus in his daily ministry. Yet the Christ must go
to the hour of his trial in utter solitude of spirit,
every hosanna of the people a misunderstanding of
his sacrificial will, and not a thought of his chosen
friends reaching into the deeper purpose of his obe-
dience unto death.

The disciples' failure to understand the Master
suggests an always timely question for the followers
of Jesus : What misunderstandings of Christ may
still be lingering in Christianity? Is it possible
that we may as strangely misunderstand our Master
and Lord ?

The question is the more pertinent and the more

184

Misunderstanding Christ, 185

necessary because one reason for the disciples' failure
to perceive the things that were said by Jesus on
his way to the Cross, was the knowledge of him
which they already possessed. Because already they
partly understood him, and his Messianic mission,
this other saying in its fuller revelation of the Christ
was hid from them. They already understood him
in some respects so well, that they were not ready or
willing to receive a revelation which went beyond
their thought of him. Their partial understanding
of him, in their contentment in it, became an obsta-
cle to a complete knowledge of him. The truth
which they had already learned of him they could
fit for the most part into their previous habits of
thought concerning the Messiah, and it satisfied their
ideas of what his kingdom on earth should be; so
that when Jesus would begin with their partial
understanding of him, and proceed to lead them out
into a larger and diviner knowledge of God's will,
they were not able to break loose from their comfort-
able contentment in the truth which they already
had received. Hence while these disciples cherish
in their hearts the thought that the Messiah is
already in the way which leads up to his kingdom,
and their thrones, the Christ goes before them, alone
in the Spirit, knowing that the Cross is first God's
will, and then the coming of the kingdom of
heaven.

There may have been some willfulness in the dis-
ciples' failure to understand new truth from Jesus ;
very likely there was resistance of liabit, and obsti-
nacy of desire, such as we may often observe in the
way of men's larger knowledge of truth ; but it is

1 86 Chris tzait Facts and Forces.

clear also that the disciples stopped short, well satis-
fied with some truths which they had already
learned of Jesus, and thus were prevented from going
on with Christ in his further revelation of God's
will.

Two truths in particular which they had learned
better than any one else concerning Jesus, they
allowed to stand in the way of their further under-
standing of him. They had been taught his wonder-
ful power. They had been eye-witnesses of his
mighty works. They knew, as others had not had
so good opportunities of knowing, that Jesus' miracles
were not carefully prepared deceptions, or results
of some studied mastery of occult arts. They
knew that his miracles were spontaneous, and natu-
ral to the Christ. They were the immediate outgo-
ings of the power of the Man. He himself was the
cause of which his works of healing were the effects.
Virtue went out from him. He was always greater
than his works. The Man was more than all that he
did. That they had seen and learned. They began
to believe that Jesus could do anything. This truth
of the power of the Son of man they were ready to
receive, and they stopped with the knowledge of it.
He who had power from God could not be taken and
killed by the Pharisees. So they grasped with eager
hope the truth that Jesus was the promised Messiah
of Israel, and missed the deeper truth of his char-
acter, that God so loved the world.

Then again the truth which they had learned bet-
ter than any others of Jesus' wonderful kindness, and
justice, and humanity, in their partial view of it,
may have hidden from their eyes the full revelation

Misunderstanding Christ,

which he would have them perceive of his divine
hfe. How could he who had power over death, and
who had so pitied two sisters that he had restored
their brother to them, and who had enveloped their
lives in a friendship of wonderful daily thoughtful-
ness, — how could he, having all power, go away from
them, leave them comfortless, throw them back again
upon the world, and disappoint their high hopes of
him ? No wonder Peter thought it was impossible,
and even said impulsively, "Be it far from thee.
Lord ! " The truth of Christ's friendship which they
did know prevented them from understanding the
diviner secret of God's sacrificial love for the world,
which they might have learned. So they who knew
the Lord best, misunderstood him the most; and
Jesus went before his disciples in a deeper purpose
and a diviner thought than they perceived.

You see thus how closely the question may always
come home to Christians concerning tlieir under-
standing, and misunderstandings, of Christ and
his kingdom. And a brief glance at the history of
Christ's revelation of the Father since those early
days will serve to give to the question still more
pertinency and point. For the history of Christ's
church in this world has been one repeated process
of partial understandings of Christ, with misuiulor-
standings, and then new and larger understandings
of his words. Men have learned some truth of
Christ, and gone bravely off with it, and embodied
it in the institutions of Christianity, or jnit it into
their creeds, and stopped contented with tliat lesson
of the Christ as though they understood \\\w\ ]hm*-
fectly. And then that partial idea of what the Cios-

1 88 Christian Facts and Forces.

pel is, or the church should be, has proved a barrier
to progress, and the stream has been checked, and
the scum of many corruptions has gathered on its sur-
face, until some refreshing from on high has swept
again all barriers away. At first perhaps the new flood
seemed to be a destructive torrent, but at length the
purified stream, and more fruitful fields on either
side, have proved that it was a new inflowing of
power from on high.

The history of the Christian church discovers this
threefold process often repeated, — first some true, but
partial lesson learned of Jesus Christ; then the
Churches contentment with that lesson, and teaching
the people to repeat it by rote ; and then some prov-
idential task and trial, and under the necessity of an
age the discovery of some new meaning in the old
truths, or some fresh interpretation of the words of
God which at first disciples had not understood, and
a new Christian movement, a reformation, a greater
work of faith, another of the days of the Son of man.

It is always in order, therefore, for us to ask, Are
we stopping short with lessons of Christ already
learned ? Are we in aught misunderstanding Chris-
tianity ?

In order that w^e may bring this matter more
closely home to ourselves some further preliminary
remarks should be made. Our text reads like a
devout apology of the disciples for their singular
misunderstanding of Jesus Christ. The providence
of God had taught them their mistake. And very
instructive for us is the method by which God cor-
rected the false perception of the disciples, and
opened their eyes to true and larger knowdedge of

Misunderstanding Christ, 189

the Lord. They overcame their misunderstanding,
and were brought to better understanding of Jesus
Christ, through the trial and the task of their faith.
These two, trials and tasks, are God's ways of cor-
recting men's imperfect faiths. For you will recall
how those disciples, at the time of the crucifixion,
and while they were waiting in Jerusalem, learned in
their disenchantment, and were taught through that
fearful strain and trial of their faith, as they had
never seen before, of what spirit Jesus was, and what
his real mission to this world was ; and thus they were
prepared to see and to become apostles of the risen
Lord. That trial of their faith, while Jesus was
mocked, and scourged, and delivered to death, and
crucified between two thieves, and buried, — all the
light blotted from their skies, all the proud ambition
broken in their souls, — yet in his death a new,
strange expectancy awakened in their hearts, and on
the third day a vision seen which made all things a
new world to them, — that trial of their faith was the
Lord's method of teaching the disciples what before
had remained hidden from them even in plainest
words of Jesus. And then this knowledge of tb(^
new, larger truth of Christ's work was rounded out,
and filled full of a steady, clear light to them, by tlie
task immediately given them to do in the nanio of
the crucified and risen Lord. They learned at IVn-
tecost what Christianity was to be. Peter loanuHl it
still further wlien a trial of his faith came to liiiu in
a vision on the house-top, and wliile lie doubted
what it meant, a work from Cod was givou liiin
by the messengers at the door. St. Paul U^arucMl
to know Christ after the Spirit witli an cvrr progress-

I go Christian Facts and Forces.

ive knowledge through the trials and the tasks of
his ministry. And I might continue with many an
historical illustration to show how the providence of
God, at sundry times, has corrected inherited or con-
genial misunderstandings of Christianity, and given
to each notable Christian age its new theology by
means of the trials and the tasks of its faith. Inter-
esting, however, as such historical illustrations of
God's methods are, let us seek rather to bring these
general truths as quickly as possible to a focus upon
ourselves. By our trial and our task of faith God's
providence may be clearing up some of our mis-
understandings of the Lord's words.

Our trial of faith comes to us mainly from the
intellectual side. It is witnessed by the difficulty
which many of you men feel in forming strong con-
victions on any religious subject. Ours is not a trial
of faith by persecutions or martyrdoms. Occasion-
ally we may be made to stumble over some hard
piece of medievalism which has been left in the way ;
but usually that proves to be only an irritation
rather than a trial of our faith ; and in these days,
even from a worldly point of view, it is no loss to a
man to join a Christian church. The world has
become in its manners and social usages so far
Christianized that there is very little outwardly
which he may be called upon to give up. It
may cost him something to help support the
Christian religion; but not nearly so much as the
heathen often pay in the worship of their idols.
Protestant Christianity seems to be the least expen-
sive of the religions of the world, notwithstanding its
frequent contribution-boxes, and foreign missions !

Misunderstanding Christ, igi

Yet in our time we have had trial enough of faith
from the intellectual side. Indeed, there are so
many things now to be thought of, that religion,
although acknowledged to be the chief concern,
seems to be crowded out of the lives of many intel-
lectual men. Religious questions, they think, can
wait ; other problems of thought and life are press-
ing. One peculiar trial of our faith arises from the
dissipation of convictions among multitudinous
things, newly discovered, partly known, everywhere
rising up to interest us, and presenting to our
reasons questions not lightly to be put aside. And
the effect of this peculiar trial of faith is a certain
faintheartedness among believers, or half-belief, or
make-believe, or even a cowardly falling back and
huddling together of frightened believers, like an
army in a panic, upon old intrenchments from which
they had marched out with banners flying. Such
briefly is our trial of faith ; but put beside it, as
God's providence does actually bind up with it, our
task of faith. It is easy to see what that is. Is it
not the great missionary work? I use the word \\\
its truest and broadest sense. Our task is the work
of the missionary church. Our Christianity is noth-
ing save as it is a missionary Christianity. It is to
be a witness of Christ " both in Jerusalem;' — and
that means for us in the center of our own city,
— "and in all Judea," — that means for us all Now
England, — "and in Samaria," — and that means in
the Indian reservations, and on the far frontiers of
American civilization, — "and unto the uttermost
part of the earth." I need not delay to argno tlio
matter; for what observant Christians do not i>er-

192 Christian Facts and Forces.

ceive that the task which is laid with urgent neces-
sity upon our common Christianity, is to establish
the kingdom of God here on this earth, in human
society, and to make the whole world Christian ? A
most singular providential coincidence surely, and
very instructive for us, — this subtle intellectual trial
of faith, and this great task of world-wide missions,
laid in one and the same hour upon the Church of
God.

This twofold providence is bringing out for all
who have eyes to see, a fresh interpretation of what
Christianity is. And as we catch some glimpse of
it, we find it inspiring and grand. We behold once
more a lifting up of Christ himself before the world
to draw all men unto him. We are going back to
where the first disciples began their knowledge of
the Christian life, even to Christ himself, to his char-
acter, his life and death, his personal revelation of
God and the will of God. In that hour when the
disciples began to understand his words which had
been hidden from them, when on that first day of
the week they were gathered together, we read that
Jesus himself stood in the midst of them. That scene
is the frontispiece of Christian history. Jesus himself
in the midst of his disciples ; — that is Christianity.
Christianity, true, living Christianitj^, is not the
Bible of the Protestants, not the Church of the
Roman Catholics, not the creeds of the ecumenical
councils. Christianity Aas a creed, but it is more
than a creed ; it Aas a Bible, but it is more than the
Bible ; Christianity is Jesus himself in the midst of
men ; it is the Spirit of Christ in the life of humanity.
Our trial and our task of faith are combining to

Misunderstanding Christ. 193

throw all churches back directly upon the Christ of
the Gospels. Let biblical or historical criticism tear
away from Christian beliefs anything that may prove
to be adventitious, traditional, or unverifiable ; let an
eager science press open door within door of this
mysterious succession of things which we call nature ;
suffer honest thought to penetrate as far as it may
into the secrets of life, and the creation's history ; —
at the beginning is a Power which we cannot com-
pass, and at the end a Purpose which we cannot
measure, and at the center, in the focus of all our
earthly lights, a Character having the glory of God,
which we cannot question. That Character is the
ultimate of our moral knowledge. It is center and
source of life in a new moral creation. It is revela-
tion of God. It is motive-power of a world's salva-
tion. Doubt, brought at last before that ultimate
and commanding Character, meets the transcendent
affirmation of God in the life of humanity. Christ
is the " I am " of God confronting here upon this
earth all our human denials. " Before Abraham
was, I am ; " — Eternal righteousness and truth, Eter-
nal Love dwells among men incarnate, and its Gos-
pel never to be silenced, is, " I am ; '' " Verily, verily,
I say unto you ; " " Believe me."

Thus the trial of our faith presses us back to
Christ himself; and no less the task of faith compels
us to preach Christ, and constrains us, like the
Apostle of the Gentiles, not to know any thing among
men save Christ Jc^sus and hini cruciruMl.

Observe how this ])rovi(lontial return of Cln'istian-

ity to (^hrist himself in the midst of his disciples is

correcting misunderstandings of him, is leading tho

194 Christian Facts and Forces.

general Christian consciousness to seize vfith a new
enthusiasm upon the vital, essential truths of the
Gospel which meet the real wants of real life, and
how, on account of our searching trial and our
mighty task of faith, we are learning to pour con-
tempt upon one after another of our hindering, and
divisive, and paralyzing misunderstandings of what
pure Christianity should be. The Church would
loiter far behind the providence of God in the mis-
sionary call of our century, should it linger and lag,
overweighted, under the burdens of the inherited
mistakes or dogmatisms of good men who have not
always appreciated the simplicity of the Gospel, nor
its universality. Jesus himself in the midst of his
disciples, the Spirit of Christ in the midst of conse-
crated men and women, — oh! this is not what a
church has sometimes misconceived itself to be. This
real Church of Christ is not a band of thinkers bound
together by a confession of formal propositions
mostly true ; nor is it a mystical body having its
heart in a sacrament ; nor an elect company waiting
for thrones; nor a favored society, suJSicient unto
itself, a special assembly whose names are written on
pew doors ! Not such is the conception of the Church
which we see when we look back and behold Jesus
himself, in the midst of his disciples, going about
doing good, now on the streets of Capernaum, heal-
ing the sick, now among the lepers and those pos-
sessed with devils, now in the temple driving out the
money-changers, or teaching the scribes a divinity
simple and sincere as the love of God, and human as
the joy of the Father over the prodigal who was lost
and is found. Jesus himself, the serene, radiant,

Misunderstanding Christ, 195

helpful One, doing God's will, Jesus himself, the risen,
adorable Master and Lord in the midst of his disci-
ples whom he sends forth in his Spirit as his apostles,
— oh, that is the true Church, the Church against
which the gates of the hell of the city's lusts and sins
shall not prevail, the Church to which all power is
given ! Something like this, something more like this
than we, or our fathers, have seen, is the Church of
God for which men are looking, blindly, ignorantly
ofttimes it may be, but after which the world is seek-
ing as its social Messiah, for the salvation of the
lives and the homes of the people in all these manu-
facturing towns and villages of New England, and
in every land, and now especially in India and
Japan. In the name of the Son of man let us be
ashamed of, and at any cost to our habits or our
pride let us repent of, any ideas of the Christianity of
Jesus Christ which we may have shared, which have
been less broad, less sympathetic, less divinely
human, than this vision of Jesus himself in the
midst of his disciples in the world.

And I want to leave this sermon resting in its
more personal applications. We ought to search our
conduct of life and our habits of thought to learn
whether personally and privately we are still misun-
derstanding the Lord's word to us, when we may
come to a better understanding of it. Are we being
mastered by the character of the Lord Jesus Christ?
That is the real question of personal religion. Wliat
does tliat mastery of a man involve? Anytliing
more tliau I am now doing, or giving of mysdr?
Anything other than I liavo boon doing for years,
and years, and years? Some of you, who have long

196 Christian Facts and Forces.

heard Christ preached, have not many years more at
the longest to live in this world, — five, ten, twenty
years perhaps longer, if no accident overtakes you,
and you are permitted to fill out the full circle of
the life allotted to man. Is there anything left that
you have not yet brought under the mastery of the
Lord Jesus Christ? Do you own anything over
which you cannot write in good conscience, Christ
is Lord ? Can you with sincere judgment subscribe
beneath every paragraph and codicil of your life's
will and testament, as you pray here in this church,
" For the sake of Jesus Christ, Amen? " Because our
whole will and testament of life shall be probated
not on earth merely, but by the Lord who has given
to every man his talent, and also these opportunities
of good in which any talent may be put to his
exchangers and multiplied.

To us all, old and young, the duty comes this day
once more of judging for ourselves, and deciding,
whether we have been misunderstanding, whether
we are willing to understand, the word of God to us
personally through the life and death of Jesus Christ.
Lord what would'st thou have me do ? I own thy
divine mastery; what would'st thou have me do?
I am as nothing ; but I will do it. By thy grace,
Lo, I come to do thy will, 0 God.

XVL

PUTTING THE WITNESS AWAY.

'* But ft^ t\iti pri£5tj5 took tounstl t^at t^tj mi^i put 5/a?aru5 also
to halt ; IttmxBt tftat i^ ttason of \m mans ^^ ^6-^ It'^s tomt ahja^,
anibf itlitbtl^r on I-esuK/'— John xii. lo-ii.

For the past few Sundays I have taken my texts
from those scenes in the life of Christ which the
EvangeHsts represent as having occurred at this
period of the year between the closing days of Feb-
ruary ' and the early part of April. During these
weeks the Son of man dwelt in the certain and near
prospect of his Cross. His words and his character
at this time evidently made a supreme impression
upon the disciples, — the Gospel narratives grow full
and clear at this epoch of our Lord's life ; and if we
have eyes to see the wonderful sacrificial Character
which then began more fully to disclose its divine
purpose and power to the disciples, and which after-
wards they understood, we shall find our lives brought
under a commanding influence, superior to all other
motives which may attract us. Let a man once really
see and feel these two things, — the humanity which
he shares with all others, and the salvation of that
humanity in the Person of Jesus Christ, which he
with all men may possess ; — let a man once really
know these two things, the sinful, anxious, loveless
humanity which is lost in the world, and the rich,
full, and redeemed humanity which is found in the
Person of Jesus Christ in the midst of his disci [)les, —

197

198 Christian Facts and Forces.

and the clear perception of these two opposite things,
contrasted as death and life, will henceforth hold
that man under the power of a new motive, and
pervade his whole soul with a consecration and en-
thusiasm for the kingdom of God's sake.

The narratives of the Gospels which depict the
closing scenes of Jesus' life bring out the most marked
and startling contrasts. We see Jesus on his way to
the Cross, drawing near to Bethany; and within the
walls of Jerusalem we look upon another scene in
the tragedy of the sin of the world, and observe what
the chief priests and rulers of the Jews w^ere doing,
in the hour of Christ, when he was approaching
Jerusalem. Beyond the holy city, in the quietness
of Ephraim, Jesus has been revealing God to willing,
but misunderstanding disciples ; and already on the
way up to Jerusalem he begins to show himself
openly to the people. Within the city of the prophets
those Jews have been taking counsel, and plotting
together; blinding each other, and strengthening one
another in hatred and pride, they have been prepar-
ing to enact, hardly knowing what they did, the great
crime of history.

The conduct of those men in Jerusalem presents
the chief difficulty in the way of the hope which
all Christlike hearts would cherish of some final
universal salvation. For those Jews in Jerusalem,
hardening themselves against Christ, reveal the power
of the human heart to grow malignant, and to be-
come utterly blinded to truth, even while the Life
of Love is an increasing light of God's presence
round about it. That council of desperate rulers
which was held while Jesus was on his way to Jeru-

Putting the Witness Away. 199

salem, shows how obdurate the human will may-
grow when divinity draws near its gates, and the
Christ could weep over its destruction. The thought
that checks and chills the natural Christian hope
that all souls at last may be restored, does not arise
while we are walking with Jesus on his way to the
city. He has come to seek the lost. Salvation can
hardly depend upon one's happening to be sitting
by the way-side when Jesus of Nazareth is passing
by. He who came to seek the lost, — shall he not in
his own times, and to the utmost power of his love,
seek up and down all the ways of his creation for
those who are lost ? But the difficulty is that those
Jews in Jerusalem, having eyes, see not ; and though
none of the people are more darkly lost than they,
they will not be found. "And ye would not!" was
Jesus' lamentation over the city of the prophets.
The mercy of the Lord — so Israel was assured even
in the Old Testament, when revelation w^as not yet
far from Sinai — is a mercy which endureth forever,
a mercy from everlasting to everlasting. We may
easily believe that the Love which by its nature is
eternal cannot subject itself in its divine seeking to
limits of time or place. The difficulty in the hope
of universal salvation is not to be found in the nature
of God, not at the Cross of Christ, not in any tem-
poral bounds put upon the omnipresence of the
Spirit of Christ; but the obstacle, at which our
knowledge must stop, lies deep in the will of man,
and its fearful possibilities of evil. We recall how
those Jews at the very hour of the revelation of the
most adorable Character upon which luiman eyes
had ever looked, blinded themselves to its glory,

200 Christian Facts and Forces.

mocked and rejected it, crucified Love, and would
nail Truth itself to a cross. That tragic scene, and
all repetitions of that fearful exhibition of the power
of sin, do not permit us to accept as an induction
from human experience the dogma of a universal
salvation ; as, on the other hand, a simple deduction
from tiie Christlikeness of God's nature, as that is
revealed in the New Testament, leaves us no reason
to doubt, or to deny, that God in Christ to the utmost
extent of moral possibility will be his own mission-
ary, the first and the last, to all souls of men ; — our
missionary service is but our part and privilege in
the divine work of the redemption of the world.
Exactly what shall become of Caiaphas and those
Sadducees, and of Judas too, when Christ's kingdom
shall have reached its completion, his judgment
come, and God will be all in all, these Gospels
do not undertake to declare; and he who would
presume to preach in this matter the whole counsel
of God is in danger of being bold beyond what is
written, or can be known by us in our present school-
term of existence. That man may need to be warned
against the mistake of the scribes who would put
upon our ancient and apostolic Christianity any
burden of his private interpretation too great for it
to bear. Meanwhile, this one revelation is plainly
to be seen, — and it were harmful sentiment to turn
our eyes altogether from it, for human history shows
and repeats in a thousand scenes this one tragic
spectacle, — Jesus Christ in the sacrificial power of
love drawing near the city, and men within, even in
mercy's hour, preparing to crucify him.

From the description of what was passing in the

Putting the Witness Away. 201

minds of those men in Jerusalem, I have taken for
our special lesson this morning a text which dis-
closes an incidental and subsidiary thought which
they entertained. " They sought to put Lazarus also
to death." We are so bound together in one common
humanity that we can enter into the consciousness
of the best and the worst of men, and understand
both the great virtues and the great crimes of history.
We hear the story of some magnificent deed and we
can feel burning within us the high resolves which
made that heroism possible ; our thought can inter-
pret another's noble deed. And the skillful lawyer,
pleading in our courts, knowing the common motives
and the common experiences of men, will unravel
the skein of circumstances which bound the crim-
inal in a net-work of temptations, deceptions, and
evil deeds ; and a jury of twelve ordinary men, from
their common knowledge of human passions can
judge whether the crime were possible or not, as
another man stands charged with it. We are all
of us sinful enough to comprehend the sin of the
world. On the one hand we have instincts of the
true, we have intimations of the Spirit within us,
pure enough, and noble, to enable us to follow the
Son of man who is in the way going up to Jerusa-
lem ; and also we are sinners enough to enter into
the counsels of the Jews within the city.

It is not difficult for us to understand the simple
reason given in the narrative why they would put
Lazarus also to death. " Because that by reason of
him many of the Jews went away, and believed on
Jesus."

That thought of those priests, that desperate

202

Christian Facts and Forces.

thought, was only an exaggeration of a common ten-
dency of our human nature. That counsel of the
chief priests presents in a magnified form a natural
disposition which lies in a diminutive and unde-
veloped state, but capable under temptation of great
possibility of evil, in the minds of all of us. As we
are capable of it, and in what may seem unimport-
ant habits may have yielded to it, it lies within us,
one of the evil dispositions of human nature, one of
the possibilities of sin and death, which we have
inherited, and from which we should seek to become
free.

For consider how natural that counsel of those
Jews was. They had no special spite against Lazarus
himself. He was a quiet man apparently, who had
lived a quiet life out under the olive-trees at Bethany.
But they did not wish Christ to take their power from
them, and although as consistent Sadducees they
could not allow themselves to believe in the resur-
rection, the continued existence of Lazarus was an
unwelcome suggestion to them of its possibility, and
an evidence of it which was misleading the people.
They would not receive any proof of the resurrec-
tion, nor tolerate Jesus, preaching the Gospel of it.
Dogmatists always must close their minds against
evidences of new truth. Naturally they seek to put
the witness to it out of the way. Of old they
thought of killing Lazarus. Fifteen hundred years
later the same men would have thought of putting
him to the rack, and torturing him until he
recanted. Eighteen hundred years later they would
have thought only of breaking down his influence
by misrepresentation and appeals to popular preju-

Putting the Witness Away. 205

dice in the newspaper organs of their sect. The
world moves, and Christ^s Spirit grows in the
thoughts of men's hearts, and the same evil disposi-
tion which of old would have put Lazarus to death
assumes in our counsels and conversation milder
and more polite, but perhaps hardly less sinful
forms. If we do not want to receive Christ, or some
truth of his revealing, the next and natural thing for
us to do is to put out of the way anything that may re-
mind us of it. We have done something like that in
lesser things a thousand times. Some truth we had
made up our minds we would not listen to, and we put
its Lazarus out of the way. Some word of the Lord
drew near us, and was about to revolutionize our life
for us, and we did not want to see our world changed,
and we thought how we might silence its chosen
witness.

I might draw many an illustration of this com-
mon desire of human nature to put Lazarus out of
the way, from the counsels of men's hearts in other
than religious matters. Do you not remember, some
of you? those troubled days before the war, when the
storm portent was already visible in our Southern
skies, and the cloud was growing, and there were
men in our Northern cities who would not see it,
merchants who did not wish to have their commerce
interfered with and their profits stopped, timid and
selfish politicians who for the sake of office, and
their case, were willing to reject the truth of free-
dom and the redeemed nation which was already on
its way througli suff*ering towards its kingdom and
its crown; and because those men would not bo its
disciples, ready to give \\\) all for it, they sought also

204 Christian Facts and Forces.

to put down every Lazarus whose presence was lead-
ing the people away after that new faith ; and even
when its hour was at hand, they said, " It cannot
be ; this Truth shall not reign over us ; we will not
let it come and take the peace of compromise away
from our nation : we have no king but Cotton ! Let
us hustle down from the platforms, and put out of
our pulpits all men who are witnesses of the higher
law, for the people are going away after them ! "
Truly it is human nature, and we all share it, to put
Lazarus also to death.

I might open the book of the lives of the wit-
nesses and martyrs in the generations past, and find
on many a page illustration of this our inherited
and common tendency of evil which leads men's
thoughts to take counsel against Lazarus ; as Roman
emperors, when they would stop the growth of the
new religion, became persecutors of Christianity,
and as Julian the Apostate with a more crafty toler-
ance sought to suppress Christianity by prohibiting
Christian schools ; or as the papacy, in its effort to
suppress the better spirit stirring in its midst, sent
Savonarola to the stake ; as priestcraft would have
shattered the telescope in which the heavens began
to reveal their glory ; and as even to this day we
sometimes imagine we can prevent wild social move-
ments which threaten our vested rights, by sturdily
refusing to inquire what unheeded truths may pos-
sibly lie beneath them, or what more human Gospel
may be waiting to enter all our cities. But it is
never candid, or quite honest, to think of putting
Lazarus also to death.

I wish, however, to trace this common tendency

Putting the Witness Away, 205

in our minds through some of its religious pro-
cesses.

An obvious and gross exemplification of it is the
counsel of irreligious men to put the Church, or the
Bible, out of the way. Religion cannot be thrown
off by the people while these witnesses remain.
Therefore ridicule the Bible, and attack the Church.
And in this matter the instinct of irreligion is not
on a false scent. The social Sadducees cannot secure
their reign in an anarchical humanity, so long as
the people have the Bible in their homes, with its
Hebrew teaching of the sovereignty of God's law,
and so long as the churches stand to bear witness
to the Gospel of Christ. The Christian Church is to
the successive generations what Lazarus was to those
common people who came, " not for Jesus' sake only,
but that they might see Lazarus also, whom he had
raised from the dead." For the Christian Church,
so far as it breathes the Master's spirit, is as one
raised from the dead to newness of life. It exists as
the continual proof and witness among men of the
divine Power which has rolled away the stone from
the sepulchre of man's death in sin, and said with a
loud voice, " Come forth." The napkin indeed may
be still bound over the face of the witness to Christ's
power, and the smell of the corruptions of the world
still be about the garments of the Church; but,
dumb and scarce saved from the power of evil
though it may sometimes seem to be, it is living,
and it witnesses to a new life of humanity; it pro-
claims by its mere presence here the redeeming grace
of God. As it takes up again familiar duties in a
grateful love, and looks out to behold a fresh light

2o6 Christian Facts and Forces.

and a new sanctity upon this old earth, and abides
at the hearth of humanity in a love possessed now
of an assured consciousness of immortality, the
Church of Christ, living, redeemed, sanctified, is the
true witness to the Christ from God. Atheism,
anarchism, the powers of darkness, must put this
Lazarus to death, or the people will go away, and
believe on Jesus.

There was one thing which those Jews in Jerusa-
lem seem not to have taken sufficiently into their
counsels against Lazarus also. Even had they suc-
ceeded in ridding themselves of Lazarus' uncomfort-
able presence, they would still have been compelled
to confront in their temple Jesus himself. He did at
length meet them on their own ground. He went
to Jerusalem. He taught in the temple. He stood
before the Sanhedrim. " Behold, the Man ! '' Be-
hold those chief priests and rulers. " I judge no
man," said Jesus. " And yet if I judge, my judgment
is true."

Our witness to Christ we grant is imperfect. Laz-
arus may net always have borne in mind through
what a mighty change he had passed. The old ways
come back, and the new life may seem at times like
a dream. But, nevertheless, there is renewed Chris-
tian character enough in any common church, al-
ways present, to bear witness to the Christ who has
raised it from its death of sin. It is not altogether
candid, nor honest, to let that present and living
proof of Christ be to a man's reason as though it
were not.

Let us trace this evil tendency of our thoughts still
nearer and closer. There are hours when the Christ

Putting the Witness Away. 207

draws nigh the cities of our souls. There are per-
sonal approaches and appeals of the Lord to our
characters. For the religion which we profess, and
to which the Church is called to testify by its expe-
rience of redemption, is not a merely intellectual
creed, nor emotional state ; it is a creed of charac-
ter ; it is a state of life. And Christ has many and
various forms of appearing among the disciples, the
same true Master and Lord in all. Christ may come
near us from God in a duty, in some privilege, in an
opportunity, in a clearer perception of truth. How
do we receive these approaches of our Lord ? What
counsel do our thoughts take concerning the things
w4iich may remind us of him ? There was a duty
drawing nigh in the name of the Lord ; we saw it
would interfere with our plan of life. It might dis-
turb our ease ; it might spoil our pleasure ; it might
break our dream of power; it might leave us even
out of place, or poorer in pocket. We began to be
afraid that our thoughts would so go out tow^ards it,
and dwell upon it, that some day we should find
that duty in the name of Christ reigning over us.
And there was something near at hand which re-
minded us of it. At least we could get rid of that.
It may have been the sight of a friend. We avoided
that friend. It may have been some spectacle of
want or suffering. We passed by on the other side.
It may have been some inward feeling, some thought,
which, whenever it came to us, recalled that duty,
suggested that sacrifice, was a witness to that one
thing wliicli we ought to do. And we took pains to
avoid those feelings or thoughts; wx hurried from
anything that might bring them before us. So we

2o8 Christian Facts and Forces.

remembered to forget that duty. We put its Lazarus
where he would not trouble us.

Christ draws near souls sometimes in some new,
almost strange sense of faith, or hope, or possibility
of life richer, and truer, and happier. It is with us
as though a door were for a moment flung open into
some lovelier world, and radiant spirits strong and
full of life passed before us, and we see what better
days might be for us also, and then we turn, and
other desires of life gather quickly around us, and
" the vision splendid '' fades ^^ into the light of com-
mon day." We belong to the world again ; we throw
ourselves with fresh abandonment into it; we enjoy
its frolic, and are for the most part happy and care-
less enough ; but the memory of that door, once
flung open into something truer, and diviner, dwells
still within us. That vision keeps coming back to
us, our soul's witness to Christ. Will we put that
witness also to death ?

In those days of old, when Christ came to Bethany,
Lazarus was a proof of immortality to all who saw
him. His presence on earth testified to a power
which is not of this earth. The evidence of eternal
life is always present, stronger than death, in our
perpetual human sense of God, in our witness
of conscience, in the instinct which cannot be
silenced of human love. Little account indeed may
this witness of God in us be able to give of itself as
we question it ; little memory may it have of its
hour of awakening in the soul of man ; but it is
here with us, and in the life of humanity, even as
Lazarus was in the home of Bethany, the living wit-
ness of the word of Jesus Christ. We have this real,

Ptttti7ig the Witness Away, 209

vital, consciousness of God and hope of immortality
present with man to this day, God's proof, and God's
power in the thought and the heart of humanity.
It were not candid, it is not honest, to ignore it, or to
plot how we can put this witness of God to death in
the thoughts of our hearts. Let us cherish and
honor it, and keep it at its true worth, as the witness
and pledge of the Divine Power which is around us,
and which is always repeating its miracle by bidding
true life come forth from the dead.

Question, study, investigate, doubt, inquire, reason,
as the mind must or may ; Jesus Christ never for-
bade any man to ask his question of him ; — but let us
be careful, — as we would not reject God himself, and
blind ourselves to his revelation, — let us be careful,
how we turn from, or neglect, or wish to put out of
the way any presence, or word, or duty, which wit-
nesses of Diviner things than we know, and which
may prove to be to our experience of the world as that
man was to the disciples the witness by whom
Christ's power has been confirmed.

Let me leave the lesson of the text with any to
whom Christ is drawing very nigh, and who really
intend some day to crown him in their lives. Do
not seek to put out of mind those thoughts, those
suggestions, and those remembered words, or those
witnesses of your own experience, by which often
you have been almost persuaded to let yourselves bo
Christians.

XVII.

A STUDY FOR A DOCTRINE OF THE ATONE-
MENT.

''3Si!)oIlJ, ^t so up to IzxmKltm ; mtst})t%on of matt sWl ie Mihmts
unto tf)^ tW prusts anlj strities ; Kuis tfit^ sjall ^oithmn f)im to l:szKt\},
mts sWl Mihzx Jim unto ti^^ (&zntihs to motX anir to Siourigje, anif to
txmii^ : an^ tt^ ti^irlJ IJaj t^ jefiall Juerais^itr up." — Matt. xx. 18--19.

These Scriptures disclose Jesus' final consciousness
of the necessity of his sufferings. He knew that his
life was to be finished under the law of suffering for
sin. The cup could not pass from him.

That law of suffering for sin under which he must
bow in his sinless majesty, as though he himself were
worthy of death, was no outward necessity, or com-
pulsion of physical force. The miracle-worker could
have saved himself from those poor, cowardly Jews
in Jerusalem. No hostile power led the Lord as a
captive in the way up to Jerusalem. Jesus knew
that at his command legions of angels were waiting.
Having all power, he submitted himself to some uni-
versal moral law of suffering for sin. The doctrine
of the atonement is an attempt on the part of believ-
ers to comprehend that higher law of suffering in the
forgiveness of sin. The Gospels declare the fact of
Christ's death for us, and disclose Jesus' clear and
certain consciousness that his sufferings were neces-
sary for the completion of his work.

But the New Testament dwells mainly upon the fact
that Christ must needs suffer, and affords only passing
210

A Study of the Atonement, 2 1 1

glimpses into the reasons in God's mind for Christ's
death. To accept the simple fact, and to build all
our hopes upon it, is the chief concern of our Chris-
tian faith. Yet the Gospel is a gift of God to the
human reason, as well as to the human heart, and
consequently the Church has always pondered over
the deep necessities in the holy love of God for the
atoning sufferings of our Lord.

In other than religious matters we are not content
to rest in the simple facts which may present them-
selves to our observation, but we seek constantly to
bring all the facts of our experience into relation and
order, or to find the place of each separate thing
under some one general law of being. This is the
scientific habit of mind, and it is the strongest men-
tal habit of our age. Theology, therefore, as it would
fall in with this resistless tendency of men's minds,
will seek to bring the moral, spiritual, and divine
elements of human life and history under some con-
ception of law, and to view, especially, all the Chris-
tian facts as events in one divine order of the uni-
verse. Biblical faiths which, taken singly, might seem
incredible become reasonable faiths when they are
seen to constitute one consistent and harmonious
order and law of revelation. I must believe that in
answer to the prayer of reason for light, and in reward
for modern scientific fidelity, God is discovering to our
Christian theology conceptions of the supreme facts of
our religion in wliich tlicy still command rational con-
sent. We are learning to see that the supernatural is
most natural ; and to read creation and history as
one revelation and Gospel of divine truth and love. I

212 Christian Facts and Forces,

think profound reasons may be won from the depths
of modern scepticism for new faith in the Incarnation,
the miracles, the atoning death, and the resurrection
of Jesus Christ, as these events are regarded as con-
stituting one divine order and disclosing one law of
love. In the growing conviction that all the Chris-
tian faiths are in profoundest accordance with ultimate
law, I wish to bring to your thoughts this morning
a study for the doctrine of the atonement. I call it
only a study for a doctrine, because no creed con-
tains a complete doctrine of Christ^s atoning sacrifice.
And one reason why churches have been divided,
and theology itself brought into contempt in the
world, is because men have gone off satisfied with
their studies of God's truth as though these were the
truth itself, the whole truth, and nothing but the
truth.

The explanations which believers in other times
have sought to give of the reasons why Christ must
needs sufi'er, have been efforts on their part to bring
the fact of Christ's death into some intelligible relation
to their prevalent ideas, and general habits of mind.
It is a very interesting study to trace the connection
between the theology of the Church concerning
Christ's work, and the leading ideas, or current phi-
losophies of different times. In this manner, by the
effort of each age to interpret Christ and Christianity
to itself, all our traditional theories, or doctrines of
the nature of the atonement have been formed. The
early Christian fathers, for instance, lived in a world
which in accordance with much traditional philos-
ophy of their age they were predisposed to look
upon as a world belonging to Satan, and justly for-

A Study of the Atonement, 2 1 3

felted to him by sin. Naturally, therefore, in accord-
ance with the prevalent thought of their day, they
regarded the death of Christ as a ransom which Jesus
paid for sinners to the Evil One. Christ went down
to death for man, but the devil, outwitted by the
wisdom which he had sought to deceive, could not
hold within his power the divine Hostage after he
had let the captives for his sake go free. We may
smile at this primitive and crude attempt to under-
stand why Christ must needs suffer, but we may
profitably remember that to the ancient fathers it
was an endeavor to bring the fact of Christ's death
into harmony with their thought of the world, and
precisely that every Christian generation, which
would be honest with itself, will seek to do. This
primitive conception of Christ's death as a ransom
paid to the devil, lost something of its crudeness in
the more spiritualized thought of the later fathers
who still held it ; and from the first it represented a
genuine experience, in the early Church, of redemp-
tion by the power of Christ from the evil of the
world.

Several centuries later Anselm thought out his
masterly conception of the satisfaction of God
through the atonement of the Godman. Again in a
great thinker's mind the Cross of Christ was set in
the midst of the thought of an age. For Anselm's
theory of satisfaction is thoroughly Germanic in its
origin, and can be understood only as we familiarize
ourselves with the Germanic ideas of tlio reparation
which maybe made for an offense to the person who
has been injured. Eitlier some personal satisfaction
through some recompense worthy the lionor of the

214 Christian Facts and Forces.

person injured, and adequate to the offense com-
mitted, must be rendered, or punishment must be
inflicted. The satisfaction was not thought of as
some legal equivalent of the punishment of the law,
but to the Germanic sense of right either some fit-
ting satisfaction or punishment was the rule of
honor.* The sense of personal right, and of what
may be due in honor to it, pervades Anselm's thought
of the satisfaction which Christ by his act of atoning
suffering has rendered to the honor of God. So
chivalry passed by, and gave its interpretation of
the Cross.

Still later the conceptions of the atonement, vari-
ously modified, which we have inherited through
Calvinism, were largely drawn from, and corre-
sponded to, juridical and governmental ideas which
belong to Roman jurisprudence and the common
law. The conception, for example, of Christ's death
as the payment of a debt by substitution, is in ac-
cordance with the old common law principle that
any debt, however large, may be redeemed by any
thing offered, and received, as an accepted substitute
for its redemption.

To many thoughtful minds, however, these tradi-
tional conceptions of the atonement have grown to
be distant, and unreal ; they sound to them like far-
off murmurs of receding tides.

* For a thorough discussion of this important distinction between
Anselm's Germanic idea of satisfaction or punishment, and our
current Roman idea of satisfaction as equal to punishment, I would
refer the theological reader to an article upon ^* The Roots of
Anselm's Conception of Satisfaction'^ in the Theologische Studien
und Kritiken^ 1880, ersies Heft,

A Study of the Atonement, 215

What we need to do is to bring all Christian facts
and faiths into closest and most vital contact with
our own natural habits of thought. We should wish
to make Christian truths seem perfectly familiar and
real in our natural ways of thought. And one glance
down some line of our personal experience at the
Cross of Christ, were worth more to us than any
scholastic explanation of Christ's atoning sacrifice.

I shall proceed, accordingly, to indicate some per-
sonal ways in which it seems to me we may learn to
enter, in some degree, into Jesus' consciousness that
he must needs suffer. Yet only in some degree, and
in no full measure, can we hope to comprehend in
our human experience the mind that was in Jesus.

The open and most natural way of thought for us
to take, in our desire to understand this most sacred
truth, seems to me to be in general as follows : Let
us begin by observing our own poor attempts at for-
giving one another, learning what we must needs do,
or suffer, in forgiving those that trespass against
us, and then from our human experience dare to
reason and to think up and on, Christwards and God-
wards, until the love of God in Christ's atonement may
seem to us the larger truth in which all our human
knowledge of forgiveness is contained. Study what
forgiveness of injuries involves to the most Christian
man or woman, learn what forgiveness of wrong
may cost the most Christlike heart, and from
such knowledge gain the means of understanding
why the Christ from God must needs suffer on the
Cross. If we have not been compelled by some bit-
ter experience of our own to learn the moral neces-

2i6 Christian Facts and Forces.

sities of suffering in forgiving sin, let us search with
reverent sympathies the depths of the trouble into
which others have been plunged by some erring one
to whom they were bound by vital ties ; learn how
father, mother, wife, must needs suffer in the con-
tinued charity, and shielding love, and ever open
forgiveness of the home towards one who has gone
forth from it, unworthy of it, and been lost in the
world; — and through such experience, and such
knowledge of sin and of forgiveness, and of human
suffering for it beyond expression, with humble, and
tender thought enter into Jesus' consciousness of us,
and Jesus' knowledge of the necessity of his suffer-
ing for us, as He went to drink the cup which could
not pass from him, and to give his life for ours upon
the Cross.

Such in general is the vital method, the personal
way, in which we may study the doctrine of the atone-
ment of Christ for the sin of the world.

Let me briefly indicate several more definite truths
which we may find in such study of the Cross.

First, In our experience of forgiveness, and its
moral necessities, we find that there must be peni-
tence or confession on the part of the person who has
done wrong. We may have the disposition to for-
give, we may cherish the forgiving heart, but our
disposition cannot become an act of forgiveness un-
less there be some penitence for the wrong done, or
confession of it on the part of the person who may
have inflicted an injury upon us. The forgiving
disposition will seek to win from another that ac-
knowledgment ; the forgiving heart will be on the
watch for opportunity to exercise forgiveness ; but in

A Study of the Atonement. 217

any true and perfect forgiveness of injury these two
must always meet, the heart to forgive, and the will
to confess a wrong. A broken friendship requires
both for its restoration. The Christian duty is to
cherish always the forgiving spirit. And the for-
giving spirit will be quick to find occasion, and eager
to make the most of opportunities for the exercise of
forgiveness ; but as the seed requires the soil in which
to grow and blossom, so the forgiving spirit requires
humility and penitence in the mind of another for
its perfect fruit of righteousness and peace. I have
known earnest-hearted people who attempted to lift
themselves into unnatural and impossible virtue,
because they had falsely supposed that forgiveness
must be an act of free grace on their part without
any relation to the mind of the recipient of it, and
consequently they have struggled from a sense of
duty to throw themselves into a feeling which they
could not maintain without violence to other moral
elements of their natures. The sense of justice and
right which demands confession of wrong and resti-
tution is as human and as divine as the love which
would forgive an offense, and accept another's will-
ingness to make restitution.

Secondly, Human forgiveness involves a painful
knowledge of the wrong which has been inflicted.
Forgiveness is always born of suffering. There must
needs be pain and travail of soul in the birth of the
forgiving spirit. You surely cannot forgive a friend
if you liave never known and felt the hurt of his
unkindness. Your welcome would not be the liand
of forgiveness extended to him, if you have not real-
ized tlic wrong wliicli lie may liavo done your friend-

2i8 Christian Facts and Forces,

ship. Some suffering for the injury received is an
indispensable condition, or antecedent, of the exer-
cise of forgiveness.

Thirdly, We approach now another element in
the history of human forgiveness, which is of deep
moral significance ; viz., the suffering of the injured
person must be so discovered to the wrong-doer that
he can know it, and have some appreciation of it, in
order that forgiveness may be granted and received,
and its perfect work accomplished.

But you will ask. Is it not the glory of the forgiv-
ing spirit to hide its sense of hurt ? Do we not say,
Forgive and forget ? Yet now you declare that the
wound must be opened, and its pain made known,
before there can be real forgiveness ?

It is true that the sense of wrong, and the suffer-
ing for it must be forgotten at the end of the act
of forgiveness, and forever afterwards. The wound
must not be kept always open. Christ suffered once
for all. It is the glory of forgiveness not to remem-
ber what was suffered before the friendship was
restored. The forgiving heart keeps no scars. It
were contrary to all charity to carry a grudge after
hands have been shaken over an offense condoned.
But I am not speaking of the results of forgiveness, —
of its new grace and peace, — but rather of the condi-
tions and necessities of forgiveness, or of the things in-
dispensable to its exercise, when I say that there must
needs be some revelation of the evil which has been
done, and the hurt suffered, and the cost of the in-
justice to the person who has been aggrieved. And
the human forgiveness is never more than a polite
fiction, if there is not in the hour of reconciliation

A Study of the Atonement. 2 1 9

this frank declaration and acknowledgment of the
wrong done, and the suffering received from it.
Some revelation on the part of the person forgiving
of the suffering which has been inflicted by the sin
against him, is just as necessary to perfect forgive-
ness as is confession of that wrong on the part of the
person who has committed it. Let either be wanting,
and the reconciliation is only a truce, or a compro-
mise, not a real and full forgiving and forgetting.

Here is a man, for example, who in his youth was
thrown rudely upon the world by some one who
ought to have stood by him. In consequence he lost
opportunity, was put upon a hard struggle for him-
self, and received a wound upon his very soul, over
which indeed the years of his growth have closed,
and whose pain now in his better days for the most
part he can forget. It is there, however, a remem-
bered wrong, a sense of injustice which makes him
quick to resent all other injustice in the world. His
indignation for that sin against him is become a
controlled passion, yet he knows that the fire of it is
still alive at the heart of his character. Now how
can that man forgive that wrong ? Let the sinner
against him come to him, himself perhaps after many
years in need, broken down, and grown conscious of
the evil he had done. Now then the injured man
has the opportunity to forgive ; yet the sight of that
man who once wronged him, though a suppliant
now and in distress, arouses the old indignation, sets
again his soul aflame. He cannot lielp it. That
sense of injustice in him makes him tremble with its
passion. Yet ho would forgive as lie hopes to be
forgiven. How can ho do it, and satisfy tluii up-

2 20 Christian Facts a7id Forces.

leaping justice in his own soul? How can he give
his hand, and help his enemy, and forget the past,
and at the same time keep the integrity of his own
soul?

My friends, we have not touched the divine prob-
lem of atonement for the sin of the world unless we
have honestly attempted this task of human forgive-
ness, unless we have sounded for others, if not for
ourselves, the moral depths of this problem of a per-
fect human reconciliation. One thing in it seems
to me clear as conscience. That wronged man can-
not forgive his repentant enemy by treating his sin
as though it had been nothing, by making light of
it as though it had not cost him days of trouble, by
hiding it in his good nature as though it were not
an evil thing. Somehow that sense of injustice in
his soul must find vent and burn itself out. Some-
how that sense of wrong must manifest itself, and in
some pure revelation of itself pass away. It cannot
pass forever aw^ay except through revelation, as the
fire expires through the flame. Yet in forgiveness
justice must be a self-revealing flame, and not a
consuming fire. Something like this has been the
process of all genuine human reconciliations which
I have observed. As an essential element of the
reconciliation there was some revelation of pure jus-
tice. There was no hiding of the wrong. On either
side there was no belittling the injury. There was
no trifling with it as though a sin were nothing.
It was no thoughtless forgiveness out of mere good
nature, in which the hearths deeper sense of right-
eousness was not satisfied. When after conference,
confession, and mutual revelations of mind and heart,

A Study of the Atonement, 221

forgiveness was bestowed and received, when the rec-
onciliation was completed, then, if it were no super-
ficial work, soon to be undone again, this observation
I have always found to be true of it, that both parties
were satisfied in it ; the whole moral nature of each
person rested content in the good work accomplished ;
nothing more was left to be remembered, explained
or suffered. A personal satisfaction had been accom-
plished which both accepted, and on the ground of
that satisfaction the friendship was resumed, the old
life buried from memory, and the new life begun.
Anything less than that is not perfect reconciliation
between friends. Anything short of that is not com-
plete human forgiveness. Anything less thorough
than that is no foundation for a new, abiding friend-
ship.

I have left myself time only to point to the way
by which we may ascend from this our human ex-
perience of forgiveness to the Cross of Christ, and
the necessity for it in the love of God. In the Person
of Christ, and through the life of Christ, God has
identified himself with man, made himself as far as
the Infinite One may, subject to the conditions of
our human experience, and our human conscious-
ness of sin and suffering. We are so bound up with
one another that every day some innocent one suffers
with the guilty. It is a part of the penalty of sin
that in every human transgression some just one
must needs suffer with tlic guilty. This is a natural
necessity of our luiinan, or organic, relationship.
And because we arc so bound up together in good
and in evil, wo can bear one another's burdens, suller
helpfully for another, and to a certain extent save

2 22 Christian Facts and Forces,

one another from the evil of the world. Now, ac-
cording to these Gospels, God in Christ puts himself
into this human relationship, and, as one with man,
bears his burden and suffers under the sin of the
world. The Father of spirits in his own eternal
blessedness may not suffer wdth men ; but in Christ
God has humbled himself to our consciousness of
sin and death. In Christ the eternal love comes
under the moral law of suffering, under which for-
giveness may work its perfect work.

More particularly, in the life and death of Christ
these several elements which we have found belong-
ing essentially to our experience of reconciliation
with one another, have full exercise and scope. For
Christ, identifying himself with our sinful conscious-
ness, makes a perfect repentance for sin, and con^
fession of it unto the Father. Christ experiences our
sin as sinful, and confesses it. And again, Christ
realizes the cost of the sin of the world. His loneli-
ness of spirit, the cruel misunderstandings of him by
all men, his Gethsemane, his Cross, — all realize the
cost and suffering of sin, and in view of such suffer-
ings of the Son of man sin never can be regarded as
a light and trifling thing. And still further, Christ
reveals to the world what its sin has cost, and enables
man who would be forgiven to appreciate it, and to
acknowledge it.

Hence as we come to the Father in the name of
Christ, reading the condemnation of our sin in the
life and the death of Christ, knowing how God has
been aggrieved by it from the sufferings of Christ,
and making our own his confession of it, there is
no reason left in the nature of God why forgiveness

A Study of the Atonement, 223

should not have its perfect work, as under similar
moral conditions there is no reason why we should
not forgive one another. Thus, likev/ise, God can
be satisfied in forgiving and forgetting our sins. AH
the moral elements and conditions necessary to rec-
onciliation, so far as we have experience of them,
and the new sympathies and fresh hopes of restored
friendship, are met and satisfied in the divine for-
giveness through Jesus Christ.

And we may be confident that a way of forgive-
ness which satisfies God himself will be sufficient to
meet any demands of his law, or necessities of his
moral government. God himself is his government,
and is greater than his government. The moral
order of this universe is expressive of the ethical
nature of God. And above all it is with God him-
self, the righteous Father, that we have to do. Every-
thing in the Gospel is personal.

I have tried thus to draw out from our common
human experience of forgiveness, and its moral
necessities, some thoughts for the study of this most
sacred and spiritually difficult of themes. It is,
however, a true remark that a man can understand
only what he has the beginnings of in himself.
From the experience which we may have begun to
have of forgiving each other's trespasses, we may
derive some true knowledge of the divine forgive-
ness of our sins. And the moral laws and moral
necessities of the lower mirror '^the must needs
suffer" of the higher. Yet if any of you find more
readily comprehensible any of the older and more
familiar methods of presenting the doctrine of tlie
atonement, use those means which are helpful to

2 24 Christian Facts and Forces,

your thoughts, remembering always that they are
your ways of access to the truth, and not the full
measure of the truth of God^s atoning love in Christ.

Beyond and above all our attempts at explaining,
and our reasonings about, the death of Christ, let the
Cross of Christ be to us God's sign upon our world
of sin and sorrow.

We do not begin to know the depths of the love
of God. Our troubles only begin to disclose to us
his infinite mercies. God's love is deeper than the
skies, and all-encompassing ; our world in its sins,
and with all its graves, lies in the infinite heaven of
God's presence, and God's pure love.

XVIII.

THE GOSPEL A GIFT TO THE SENSES.

**'Stsu8 5ait6 UTtto ^im, ^^ovxks, Inmsz t^ou f)a5t stm mc, t^ou
f^KSt Mkhzi^i: hU>sstis kxz i^z^ ftat ^dihz not szzn, Knh jd Sabje IzUzhzl:}."
— John xx. 29.

The appearance and the words of the risen Lord to
Thomas disclose the lower and the higher evidence
which God offers of himself to the world in Jesus
Christ. The Gospel has been happily called a gift
of God to the human imagination ; it is also a gift
of God to the human reason ; but besides this the
Gospel is a gift of God to the senses of man. The
risen Lord on his way to the heavenly city from
Jerusalem, where he had been delivered to death, was
willing to be seen of men, and consented that a
doubter should touch his side. The appearances of
Jesus after the resurrection were all gifts of God
to the senses of men. In the whole life of Jesus
before his death and resurrection this same divine
condescension had been manifested. There had been
a continual gift of God in his teaching to the reason
and the spiritual imagination of the world ; and also,
together with this higher revelation, running side by
side with it, there had been in the visible presence
on earth of the Son of man, and through liis miglity
works, a revelation of God to the senses of men. I
wish u})on this Easter morning to take for our text
and our subject this lower evidence and lesser gift of
God to man in the sensible revelation of God in
15 225

2 26 Christian Facts and Forces,

Jesus' human form, and especiallj^ in his appearances
to men after the resurrection. I design, however, only
incidentally to discuss the value of these manifesta-
tions of the risen Lord as evidence to our faith; my
main object is to impress certain practical considera-
tions which are to be derived from reflection upon
this gift of God in Christ to our bodily senses.

It is precisely this lower gift of God in the physical
works and manifestations of Jesus both before and
after his death, which we find it most difficult to re-
ceive. Our age stumbles over the miracles of Jesus,
and seeks to keep its connection with Christianity by
idealising the Christ of the Gospel. The moral power
of the life of Christ commands men's devotion. But
the recorded gifts of God to the senses many find it
difficult to receive. Thoughtful minds have some-
times accepted the miracles of Christ because they
first have believed in Christ himself. Since they have
been compelled to believe in the divine originality
and power of Jesus himself, they believe also in his
works. Because they accept the higher evidence
and revelation of God in the sphere of the moral
and the spiritual, they will not deny the evidence
and revelation of God in the sphere of the physical
and the sensible.

Sympathizing with this process of faith, I come
back, however, to the gift of God through Christ's
life and resurrection to the senses of man, with the
conviction that it means more, and may be of more
worth to us, than we often think.

When we are pressed by the difficulties of conceiv-
ing spiritual realities, we usually remind one another
how partial and superficial is any knowledge of

The Gospel a Gift to the Senses, 227

things which we can possibly gain through our bod-
ily senses. And this superficiality and partialness of
our sensible knowledge, we reflect, is increasingly
apparent the farther our sciences penetrate towards
the inner principles and last laws of things. None
will be more disposed to admit how little he knows,
than the man who has gained the largest master}^ of
any physical science. We can translate into our
perceptions of sound, and color, and light, only a
small part of the influences which we know pervade
nature; and these perceptions represent only our
present modes of personal contact, at a few points,
with the infinite universe of God. Knowledge is
always seeking to push beyond sense, and we have
succeeded in naming and following many subtle
essences and magnetic influences which no man hath
seen, or can see. We may imagine, we cannot tell,
what worlds within worlds, what spheres beyond
spheres, might reveal their wonderful order and
beauty to some added sense, or finer faculty of being,
than we possess in our present embodiment. It is
common and customary for us to remind ourselves
of these limitations of sense when we would find
room in nature for supernatural effects, or believe
that Powers from the unseen world may have had
their hours of manifestation in tlie history of this
lower earth. All this is true, and may be profitably
rem.cmbercd ; and such reflections arc sufficient, if
we would answer simply the presumption of our sen-
sible experience against the possibility of a miracle.
We should need to know vastly more than any man
can know of the regions of forces and phenomena

2 28 Christian Facts and Forces.

which lie just beyond the visible and beneath the
tangible, before we should have reason to deny cred-
ible evidence of some event in nature which lies be-
yond all our experience of nature.

This often necessary and profitable view of the
meagreness and limitations of our sensible knowl-
edge is not, however, the only view of the matter to
be taken. I doubt if it be on the whole the largest
and truest view we may gain. For throughout the
Bible, and particularly in the Gospels, there is a cer-
tain positiveness of appeal to the senses which im-
presses us. God in the process of revelation has
honored even these imperfect and limited senses of
ours. There were voices of God sounding as audi-
ble words to the prophets, and the angel of God^s
presence appeared before Abraham's tent ; and this
beginning of miracles did Jesus at Cana of Galilee ;
and many mighty works followed the Lord on his
way of divine revelation ; and after his death the
stone was rolled away from before the sepulchre;
and the disciples were glad when they mw the Lord.
All the four Gospels show how carefully, with what
painstaking thoughtfulness, in what convincing ways,
Jesus after his resurrection, before his complete with-
drawal into the glory of God's unseen presence,
showed himself to the disciples, and gave the Gospel
of the resurrection as a gift to their bodily senses, as
well as to their reasons and their hearts.

Moreover, the emblems of his life and death for
us which Jesus with so much thoughtful provision
bequeathed to his disciples, indicate, in every fresh
presentation of them, how Christ condescended to

The Gospel a Gift to the Senses. 229

make his Gospel a gift even to our bodily senses.
Whatever Christ took pains to do, must have real
value and meaning for us, if we will receive it.

Accordingly, I would remind you, first, that the
appearances of the risen Lord to the senses of the
disciples are fitted to impress upon us the worth of
embodiment, and of the knowledge which is gained
through the body. The fact of the resurrection, as
it was witnessed even to the eyes and the ears of the
disciples, — the doctrine of the resurrection, as it stands
upon that testimony in the creed of the Church, — is
a grand affirmation of the worth of the body to the
soul, and a discovery to us of a divine law of life
which provides suitable embodiment for the spirit
through all its ascending power, and in its final per-
fection. The Christian doctrine of the resurrection
is a continual protest against any tendencies of
thought, or habits of life, which would despise mat-
ter, or regard a human body as a worthless thing,
born only of corruption and destined only to cor-
ruption. The gift of God to the senses in the life
and the resurrection of Jesus Christ, honors the hu-
man eye, and the human ear, and imparts a noble
worth and a holy sanctity to the embodiment of the
soul. It sanctifies for us and makes honorable the
whole nature-side of our existence. And you will
reflect how practically important it is that we should
rightly receive and value this honor wliich the ap-
pearance of Christ in the flesli both before and after
his resurrection has placed upon the human body
and its senses. The fact that Jesus rose bodily
from the dead puts all sins against the body under
greater condemnation, and it raises also to a Christian

230 Christian Facts and Forces.

duty not only the proper care of the body, but also
the culture of the physical faculties, and the training
of the soul for contact with divinity through its
physical powers of apprehension.

The distrust which good men have often felt of all
knowledge, refreshment of soul, or enjoyment, which
may come to us through the eye or the ear, or in the
study of outward things, or by means of any of the
influences of nature upon the soul through its mate-
rial organism, is a failure to honor the body as God
honored it when He took upon himself the form of
man, when Christ worked in the realm of physical
processes, and when he consented to be seen and to
be touched by doubting disciple. The resurrection
of Christ and its revelation of our continued embodi-
ment in forms more celestial, discloses not only the
worth of this body, but also the value of all acqui-
sitions which we may now gain in these bodies and
through their faculties of perception. Whatever you
may learn through the training of any power of ob-
servation, or in the perfection of any phj^sical faculty,
is a clear gain of soul for its immortal existence. All
physical culture and acquisition may have signifi-
cance beyond itself. In a higher sense than the
ancients knew we may learn to paint for eternity,
or to sing for immortality, for all knowledge gained
through these senses is true knowledge, and we shall
not have to unlearn it, but rather to enlarge and
perfect it, as after death and the resurrection we shall
pass on in better embodiment to larger studies and
finer knowledge of the creative thoughts of the Eter-
nal. For us to despise the body, or to ignore the
physical elements of life and knowledge, would be

The Gospel a Gift to the Senses, 231

to undervalue the significance of God's gift of his
Son to the eyes of the disciples, and to the touch of
Thomas.

The pages of religious biography abound with
illustrations of the misunderstanding or neglect of
the Gospel of Christ to the senses. Religion has
sometimes seemed afraid of nature, and has hesitated
to enjoy the whole pure nature-side of faith. Thus
the early Church was betrayed into a wasteful and
cruel asceticism by the pagan error of thinking that
God can be found only in the farthest spiritual
realms, and that the life of man in nature is some-
thing common and unclean. And that old false-
hood has lingered and lurked in Christian thought
until this day, to taint and to spoil not a few of the
good gifts of God to men. A similar hard error in
medieval theology drove a sharp distinction between
nature and grace, and the Roman church divorced
these two helpmeets of life which God has joined
together, and which the Son of man did not put
asunder. The result was to debase a considerable
portion of man's natural activity as something be-
neath moral attention ; and also, in consequence of
this separation between nature and grace, the
Church first neglected, then suspected, and then per-
secuted, the natural sciences. The evil of this
neglect and contempt for the natural has been felt
not only in an enforced opposition between religion
and science, but also in the loss from Christian
thought and life of certain healthful and heli)ful
elements of faith which God is always ready to im-
part through natural influences, and to a sincere and
humble love of nature. It would bo an interesting

232 Christian Facts and Forces.

study to inquire how far the reformed theology, with
all its massive strength, lost grace and restfulness,
and warm color, from that lack of appreciation of
God's thought in nature which characterized gener-
ally the literature of the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries. The sublime doctrine of God's high de-
crees might have been presented with less forbidding
sternness, and have seemed more habitable for men,
had there been more love of nature, and of the least
flower by the wayside, in the hearts of the Genevan
reformers ; had travellers in those days not been
wont to regard the Alps simply as obstacles to be
crossed, and had they lingered in those valleys of
loveliness guarded by white thrones of Deity. Cal-
vinism, it has often been observed, lacked humanness
and naturalness — a lack less felt in Martin Luther's
sermons ; and Luther, we know, loved children, and
his writings contain more reference to common
natural things than the other reformers were wont
to make. Jonathan Edwards, in one of his medita-
tions, seemed at a loss to account for the spiritual
influence which had led him to take delight in the
stern doctrine of God's sovereignty, which in his
earlier years had repelled and disheartened him.
But when we read of his walks upon the banks of
the Hudson, and of his communings with God in
the quiet forests, whose shadows are shot through
with the sunbeams, and where the rocks are covered
with mosses, and nature finds place to hang her
grasses and blue-bells in the clefts of the crags, it is
not a far fancy to suppose that the influence of the
Holy Spirit in the Gospel of nature to the senses of
Edwards may have worked more subtly than he

The Gospel a Gift to the Senses. 233

knew in causing the higher and holiest revelations
of the Divine glory to seem to him unspeakably
attractive and lovable.

Indeed with reference to the whole nature-side of re-
ligion the words of the Lord Jesus are a constant sug-
gestion and lesson to faith. I venture to say that more
allusions to natural objects, to the lilies, the birds of
the air, the vine, the trees, the grass, the white har-
vest-fields, the abundant fruit, the waters of the lake,
and the solitary places of the mountains, are to be
found within the compass of these brief Gospels than
may be discovered in whole tomes of Thomas
Aquinas, or in the Institutes of Calvin. Jesus came
to fulfill, not to destroy, and that men might have
life abundantly. It is interesting to reflect that the
Son of man lived with his disciples for the most part
out of doors, under the open sky, in the fisher's boat,
on the other side of the lake among the mountains,
or walking day after day in the quiet ways between
the towns and the villages of Galilee. Jesus trained
his disciples for the most part in the country, by the
lake, and in the wilderness ; he went up to the city
to be crucified by the sins of men. It is not irrev-
erent to think of Jesus as a true child of nature as
he was the Son of man ; for both nature and human-
ity come from God and are of God. The parables
and the tcacliing of Jesus are pervaded by a divine
naturalness, a simple truthfulness and healthfulness,
which the Church too soon lost in its asceticism, and
scholasticism forgot in its labored divinity, which
the reformed theology was slow to regain, and which
wc often miss in our artificialities and fictitious-
ness of religious manners and life. Our Christian

234 Christian Facts and Forces.

thought needs to honor and to love the truth of
God in nature, in the least things of God in the
fields, and in our ever fresh discoveries of His
works, in order that we may know better and keep
truly the revelation of God in his grace. Everything
unnatural is really un-Christian. " I should like to
see before T die," so Thackeray wrote in one of his
lately published letters, ^' and think of it daily more
and more, the commencement of Jesus Christ's chris-
tianism in the world. . . . We are taught to be
ashamed of our best feelings all our life."

There might have been less reason for this re-
proach of the kindly humanist, had Christian
thought always been possessed with a truer sense of
the value which God has placed in the person of
Christ, and by his resurrection, upon this human
body and all the life of nature into which the spirit
is born and baptized through its embodiment.
Thackeray recalls a thought too often missing from
our reasonings concerning foreknowledge and de-
crees, when he writes in the same letter, " An angel
glorified or a sparrow on a gutter are equally parts
of His creation. The light upon all the saints in
Heaven is just as much and no more God's work, as
the sun which shall shine to-morrow upon this in-
finitesimal speck of creation, and under which I shall
read, please God, a letter from my kindest Lady and
friend." Ruskin's remark is profoundly true that
under similar circumstances he that has the most
love of nature will have the most faith in God. Is
it saying too much to afiirm that distrust of any
natural law is unbelief, and denial of any scientific
fact is atheism ? Any thought or habit which dis-

The Gospel a Gift to the Senses, 235

honors the body, or disdains the Gospel of God's
truth to the senses of man, despises also the temple
of God, and contemns the holy presence of the Crea-
tor. " What ? " said an indignant Apostle, " know
ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy
Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye
are not your own ? ''

By putting such emphasis upon the natural even
in the name of him who was crucified, do you
mean, then, to make a religion of natural instinct ?
to tell young men to follow their healthful natural
impulses, and be saved ? Surely not that. Nature
is not yet conscience. And there are fires of un-
natural passion which sin has kindled in the veins
of man. Sin has also become incarnate in this flesh,
and must be crucified. But I mean that in the
kingdom of grace nature is to be owned, consecrated,
sanctified, blessed. I mean that the natural is for
the spiritual, as well as the spiritual for the natural.
I mean that each shall be perfected with the other
in the kingdom of redemption. The gift of God to
the senses in the bodily form, the miracles of healing,
and the resurrection of Jesus, reveal the truth that
the full and final life for the children of God will
not be a solitary life of pure spirit, unembodied, and
without participation in the beauty and the joy of
all this *^ mighty world of sound and sense," but that
it shall be the perfect reconciliation and immortal
harmony of nature and spirit, of sense and soul, of
our inward consciousness of thought and love, and
all outward things.

Yet there is one further question which thrusts
itself upon us, the old question which in tiiuos past

236 Christian Facts and Forces,

has led men to shrink from this body, and from
contact with matter as though it were a curse ; — the
question how can this fire of sin in our veins be
quenched, how can we be freed from temptation,
sickness, pain, the darkening of the light of the spirit
within us, and death, unless we escape wholly from
imprisonment in this material element, and live as
pure spirits before God ? And when you dwell upon
the healthfulness of nature, and of delight of soul in
it, and of its enlarging and softening influence upon
our thoughts of the Father of all, are you not for-
getting the evil of it, the dark side of it, " the moun-
tain's gloom," as well as "the mountain's glory?"
Do you remember how many there are to whom
their bodies are life-long afflictions ? how many who
carry about with them daily some thorn in the flesh?
how many to whom embodiment means confinement
for years in a single chamber of sickness ? and how
for all of us nature under the curse of sin goes trem-
bling down to the grave ?

My friends, we can none of us forget these facts
of sin, and death ; they are always before us. The
shadow of them lies across our whole life from the
cradle to the grave. Nevertheless, this evil aspect
of things is but the half truth, a shadow thrown
athwart life, not the whole revelation of God to us.
Death is not the whole, or final truth of life. For a
lifeless body seems to be not only a denial of man's
free spirit, but a mockery of nature also. Was it for
that, nature's noblest work was fashioned ? Was it
for that, the most repulsive of all corruption, that
her finest elements were mixed, her subtlest essences
compounded, her power of organization carried to

The Gospel a Gift to the Senses. 237

its last degree of intricacy and complexity ? Truly,
if a dead body were the end of embodiment, nature
would be from the beginning to the end of her work
one awful lie. If the dead body in the grave were
the end of human embodiment, health is a mockery,
delight in nature an irony, all our acquisition of
knowledge of the world and the stars a hopeless
folly, and that growth and culture of spirit which
we gain through the training of eye or ear, or the
skillful use of our hands, were a vain and profitless
task. Ij the dead body be the end of human em-
bodiment ! You say you find it difficult to conceive
of the resurrection, and of bodies celestial ; but think
how much more difficult it is to conceive that this
body which dies is to be the end of all God's great
thought of human embodiment, of all life of the
immortal spirit in contact with nature, in perception
of the harmonies of the spheres, in sight of the glory
of God's infinite creation! It is against nature to
imagine that a dead body must be an end — death a
blank wall at the close — of God's way of embodi-
ment. Were there no gift of the Gospels to the
senses we still should find our life here in nature,
and for nature, a prophetic life. It contains in itself
the earnest expectation of the creature for the mani-
festation of the sons of God.

Thus we are led to the second great truth wliich
was attested by the appearances of the risen Lord ; —
our present bodies are preparatory and prophetic
forms of embodiment. They are predictions of some-
thing better to come. Tlicy are preparations for future
embodiment. And the fact of tlie resurrection is a
revelation to us of this complete truth, that (u)d has

238 Christian Facts and Forces,

made us to live in nature, and in happy contact with
things natural, and also that in our present bodily
existence we do but begin to be what we shall be
when God's whole thought of us as embodied souls
shall be at length fully developed, and confirmed in
our eternal life.

In this world we can take cognizance of the hu-
man body only in its first growth and its imperfect
fitness to our spiritual powers. Then, when it reaches
its full stature, and its utmost draft of vitality upon
the material forces of this earth is exhausted, it
returns to earth, and we know not whence its ani-
mating principle has fled. Jesus Christ, in those
days between the morning when he rose from the
dead, and the hour of his final disappearance, exem-
plified and illustrated a still further continuation
and development of the divine law of spiritual em-
bodiment, for he discovered to the senses of his dis-
ciples a risen body, which was still like the human
form that they had known, and yet which was unlike
this body of flesh ; it came and went ; it appeared
and disappeared, as a form belonging to some higher
order, and freed from the compulsions of corruptible
matter. And towards the close of that interval of
forty days the body of Jesus seemed to become even
more spiritual, and less like the forms of this earth-
liness, and we read of his last appearance to the
eleven in Galilee upon a mountain, that when they
saw him they worshipped, but some doubted. Already
the embodiment of the Holy One, whom God would
not suffer to see corruption, was being carried on and
up into forms spiritual and celestial beyond the power
of human eye to see, or human hand to touch ; and

The Gospel a Gift to the Senses, 239

when at last the earthly was laid aside, and the res-
urrection was completed in the glorified humanity
of Jesus, he ascended from them, and came back no
more to be seen of men. The record of the Gospel
to the senses was finished, and the dispensation of
the Spirit followed according to His promise.

XIX.

THE LIMITS OF SPIRITUAL MANIFESTATION.

" 9v6i5 IS itobD i\t lf)ir& timt l!)at il^sus bas manifesto to tit Ijis-
tqjlrs, aft^er t^at Jt kias lizm from tjje jtitali/' — ^John xxi. 14.

*'%viii ii tamt to pass, txil^iU ftt iltsstlr tt^m, f)^ parttlr from tjm,
anlj ixias ^arruiJ up into fttabm." — Luke xxiv. 51.

I WISH to speak this morning concerning the mani-
festation of divine and spiritual things. We often
wish that they could become more apparent to men.
We wonder why so much of the Gospel is left to
faith, why more of God's glory is not given to sight.
I think it may prove helpful to bring out into clear
declaration some of these spiritual disappointments
which shadow sometimes the faith of ordinary Chris-
tians. We find it difficult to realize spiritual things.
AYe look at death, and say one to another under our
breath, No man knows. The thought will come un-
bidden, since there is a God, as man must believe,
why does God not impress himself with visible evi-
dence upon us ? If there be a city of God, why do
its inhabitants never appear, coming and going,
through the atmosphere of this earth ? If the Lord
be risen indeed, why should not each generation
have its manifestation of his presence ? Why are we
left to wonder, to reason, and to preach ? Why are
men left at liberty to believe, or to eke out their lives
as best they may in unbelief, when it would seem as
though the Christ who showed himself to the disci-

240

Limits of Spiritual Manifestation. 241

pies might manifest himself by visible signs from
heaven, and God be revealed with demonstration to
the senses so convincing that every man must see
him, and cry out, What must I do to be saved ?

I ask these questions because I think that we may
obtain some partial answer to them, and because I
believe that it is always the truest and wisest thing for
us to take the secret questionings of our thoughts out
into the open, and to look all around them, and to
go on our way.

The season also of the Church year after Easter
and before the ascension and Pentecost, naturally
suggests the inquiry. How did Jesus manifest him-
self to the disciples, and why did he cease manifest-
ing himself after forty days ? For this is the remark-
able fact of history, according to these Gospels, that
our Lord after the resurrection could appear to the
disciples for a period of forty days apparently at his
own will, and that then He ascended from them be-
yond either his power, or his will to manifest him-
self again sensibly to them; and since that brief
season of his manifestation no man of all the doubt-
ing or tried or sorrowful ones in this world has ever
seen the Lord.

There must be some reason for this. There must
be some law in it. We cannot admit that anything
in revelation is accidental. We cannot suppose tliat
anything supernatural is capricious or lawless. There
must be one divine order of this universe including
both the supersensible and the sensible, the super-
natural and the natural, and all the relations and
interactions of the two. Jesus' manifestations of liini-
sclf, tlicroforo, after his resurrection must have fol-
ic

242 Christian Facts and Forces.

lowed some law of revelation, and his ceasing to
show himself to the disciples must also be in accord-
ance with some law of nature and of God. In other
words there must have been some reasons why he
could show himself to the disciples as he did during
those forty days, and why afterwards he could not
manifest himself as he has not done during these
eighteen centuries. Perhaps if we could discover
some hint, or follow a little ways some suggestion of
this law of God's revelation and God's withdrawal
of himself from us, we might find our faith greatly
helped and strengthened. For this purpose I must
ask thoughtful attention while I offer some ideas
which seem to me tenable.

Let us begin with the side of this subject which
lies nearest at hand, and then follow it out in the
direction of our present inquiry.

Consider, first, how the spirit which is in man
manifests itself, and what the limits of our spirits are
in showing themselves. The life of man is a manifes-
tation of his soul, yet it is a partial, imperfect manifes-
tation of it, having certain fixed limits. All parents
know how interesting — what a daily wonder, — is the
process by which from infancy the mind of a child
begins to disclose itself. Could we understand better
that common daily miracle of the manifestation of
mind in the growth of the new born child, we should
solve many a hard question of the philosophers. But
the one always impressive thing is, that in a body and
through a life something unseen, imponderable, in
its spiritual essence unknown, comes to manifesta-
tion, discloses its personality, makes itself a felt and
influential presence amid the facts and forces of this

Limits of Spiritual Manifestatio7i. 243

world. Every human life is a revelation of soul.
Spirit is showing itself in every kindling eye, and
through each living voice. But this is not all. The
manifestation of spirit in body can be carried only
to a certain extent. Soon a limit is reached which
cannot be passed. Some faces may bring more spirit
to manifestation than others ; some lives may be
more tremulous with soul than others ; but all find
in the body a limit, as well as a means, of manifes-
tation. Earthly matter can receive and express only
so much of spirit ; the overplus of soul, if any there
be, remains unmaterialized, unexpressed. Indeed
there is more every day in human thought than can
ever get itself into definite speech ; there is more in
human love than can be revealed by look or word or
gift. The spirit which is in man is never fully mani-
fested in these bodies, is never wholly revealed in
things seen and present. There is more soul in
humanity than has ever shown itself in history.
The electricity which is seen in the flashes of the
cloud is but a moment's visibility, at a single point,
of the pervasive electric power with which this earth
is charged. The history of humanity is overcharged
with spirit. What has thus far come to manifesta-
tion in art, in literature, in achievement, is but as the
flash in the cloud. If common matter cannot possi-
bly bring to manifestation all of the subtle magnetic
forces with which it is pervaded, still less can tilings
seen and tangible bring to revelation the Spirit and
the Divinity with which the creation is vivified and
inspired.

I have been dwelling upon this thoiiglil because
it is necessary to our purpose tliat wo should porcoivo

244 Chris tia7i Facts and Fo7'ces.

clearly this general law of spiritual revelation; and
its lira its ; viz. : Our human spirits can manifest
themselves in bodily forms, and be thus seen and
known of men ; but this manifestation has certain
fixed limits in the nature of matter beyond which it
cannot possibly be carried. Xow it seems to me that
in this simple general statement we have a very
useful and helpful hint for our understanding of
God's revelation of himself to us. The creation is a
manifestation of something beyond sense and sound.
Science speaks of all outward things as phenomena,
things which do appear, not things which are. Na-
ture is appearance of some Power behind nature, as
a human face is expression of some spirit or char-
acter beneath it. All outward nature is a suggestion
of some intelligence. Hills and clouds, trees and
flowers, all these endless combinations of elementary
forms in nature, are symbols, types, means of ex-
pression in what, with the simplest as well as pro-
foundest science, we call the book of nature. Hence
we speak of nature as a revelation of God. It is the
oldest Testament, and to all honest, devout minds a
sacred Scripture. So Kepler the astronomer read
God's thoughts after him in the laws of the planetary
motions. True science is a discovery of some higher
order of things than seem to be.

Then, besides this manifestation of God in nature,
we read the record in human history of some higher
providence than man's wisdom. Exactly as a hu-
man life from youth to manhood, and in the achieve-
ments of its maturity, brings the spirit of a man to
revelation, so that by the life and its works we know
the man, so human history taken as one whole, the

Limits of Spiritual Manifestation, 245

life of humanity in its progress and destiny, seems
to discover to our knowledge some Power greater
than man, and a Providence which imparts unity
and continuity to man's history. And the particular
line along which this revelation of God has been
clearest, most impressive, and purest, has been in
the historic line from Moses to Christ, and on in the
spiritual power and progress of Christianity.

In the life of Jesus Christ the revelation of God
has reached its intensest, whitest light. All mani-
festations of Spirit and of God seem to have culmi-
nated in the person of Christ. Read the life of Christ
even before his crucifixion and resurrection, and it
seems at times as though this earth could not hold
so much of divinity. When Jesus speaks some of
those gloriously new words, when he is doing some
of those wonderfully gracious acts, it seems as if the
Divineness within him would consume its veil of
flesh in the brightness of its manifestation. The
transfiguration upon that holy mount is what might
have been expected at any moment of the ministry
of such a Being, so luminous with God. On the
shore of the lake, on the mountain as he blesses the
people, in the way up to Jerusalem with the disci-
ples, in the Temple among the rulers, there is such
a glory of God coming to expression in his teachings,
such a wonder of divinity in his manner and his
speech, such a fuUness of tlie presence of God in his
person, that, the earthly and tlie human shine and
burn, and almost give way and vanish in the tran-
scendence of his Spirit. The transfiguration is tlie
overphifi of Divinity, the unrevealablo glory of tlie
Father in the Son of God, surcharging even his rai-

246 Christian Pacts and Forces,

ment, and transforming for a moment the face of
Jesus and enveloping disciples in its overawing light.

Surely we draw near the fullest human disclosure
of God, and the last possible limits of divine revela-
tion, when at length we see such a Man as Jesus
had shown himself to be taking up his cross, accept-
ing death, giving his life for the world. Love — the
divinest thing in all the universe to be revealed —
m.anifests its glory, the glory of the Father, in the
ministry unto death of the Son of man. " Greater
love hath no man than this, that a man lay down
his life for his friends." How can God's love find
intenser manifestation than in the Life of the Son
of his love, who gave himself for us all ?

Had the Gospels stopped with the account of the
crucifixion, had God shown himself to us men only
in the sinless life, and the sacrificial death of Jesus,
and left only the record of his works, his teachings,
and his Person more marvelous than all his works,
for our faith and hope, still we should have had
reason to believe in him as the Messiah, and believ-
ing in him to live true, manly lives here in the hope
of some still better life beyond. We might have
said, even had the Gospels stopped at the Cross,
" Truly this was the Son of God.'' We might have
thought that God had manifested himself in Jesus
to the utmost, and that we must needs go ourselves
beyond death in order to become able to receive more
spiritual discoveries of God's presence.

But mercifully, condescendingly to our great hu-
man need of signs and evidence of divinity, God in
Christ, according to these Gospels, has carried the
manifestation of the spiritual yet one moment and

Limits of Spiritual Manifestation. 247

degree further in the realm of the visible and sen-
sible. We read, " This is now the third time that
Jesus was manifested to the disciples, after that he
was risen from the dead.'' There is an accuracy of
detail, a perfectness of simplicity, and withal a re-
serve and absence of excitement or exaggeration
about this chapter of John's Gospel which greatly
impresses us with its truthfulness. The art of the
narrative is too perfect to be art. It is a mirror of
reality. " Simon Peter saith unto them, I go a fish-
ing." There can be no doubt that Peter said that. The
other disciples naturally say, " We also go with thee,"
and "they went forth, and entered into the boat;
and that night they took nothing." They were per-
haps too bewildered, purposeless, absent-minded men,
to notice what they were doing that night on the
lake, or to go and find where the great schools of
fish might be breaking. It was the hour when the
day was dawning ; and they saw a form, which they
did not at first glance recognize, of one standing on
the shore. He told them where to cast the net ; and
it is true that John with his quick instinct of love
divined instantly before the keen eyes of Peter had
discerned that it was the Lord.

And Peter threw himself into the water and struck
out vigorously, Peter-like, for the shore; and the
other disciples, — we can see it all, — did not stop to
sweep the larger boat from its anchorage in upon
the beach, but " came in the little boat (for they were
not far from the land, but about two hundred cubits
off), dragging tlie net full of fishes." The fire of
coals, the fisli laid thereon, and broad, Simon Peter
going up to draw the not to land, and counting thu

248 Christian Facts and Forces.

fishes, the exact number being a hundred and fifty
and three, and all large ; — all these minute particu-
lars and details of the sacred narrative are taken
from memory, just as they must have happened ;
there is the unconscious truthfulness of an eye-wit-
ness in all this.

But what of the divine manifestation ? There is
no description given of Jesus' appearance although
these little natural details of the scene are repro-
duced so exactly. His words are repeated, Christlike
words, like Him who spake as never man spake,
words which are so Christlike that we know disciple
never invented or could have imagined them ; but
the manifestation of the presence of the risen Lord,
how he came, and went, how he appeared, — there is
no description attempted of that. It is simply
affirmed and attested that it was the Lord, and that
this was the third time he was manifested. We
have the record of two other appearances of the
risen Lord, and then the limit is reached, and the
Lord has become too transcendent and divine to be
seen again in bodily manifestation by his disci-
ples. " And it came to pass, while he blessed them,
he parted from them, and was carried up into
heaven." Henceforth they shall not meet him in
Galilee. They must follow him beyond death to
see him again, and to be forever with the Lord.

In the appearances of Jesus after death we have
the manifestation of that which is spiritual and
divine carried to its last degree of earthly possibility.
These material conditions can reveal so much of the
spiritual, and no more. Matter would break down
under more spiritual pressure. Earthly elements

Limits of Spiritual Manifestation, 249

would dissolve in intenser radiance of divinity.
There is a limit in the nature of the carbon point
even for the power of electricity to show itself. The
incandescence may be too great for the point of
manifestation, and both disappear. There is a limit
in the nature of the spirit beyond which it must fail
to become apparent to the disciples' senses. In the
appearances of Jesus after death the power of the
spiritual to reveal itself seems to be nearing its
utmost limit. One step further into the spiritual
realm, and Jesus himself will become invisible. One
more manifestation, and the limits of nature's power
to show Divinity will be reached. One more gracious
and commanding revelation to the eleven of the
glory of the risen Lord, and the end of the whole
history of Divine manifestations will be gained, the
risen Lord will pass henceforth beyond the powers of
our mortality to apprehend his presence, and He
will be with us always in his Spirit.

If you have followed me thus far along this line
of thought, these further reflections will now be in
place, and may prove clearing of doubts, and helpful
to faith.

First, We observe that everything in the life of
Christ, — his nativity, his divine teachings, his mira-
cles, his obedience unto death, his resurrection, his
appearances after the resurrection, his ascension, — all
are in accordance with a law of divine revelation.
These arc not arbitrary, accidental, unaccountable
events, contrary to experience, but they fall in with
and constitute one law and history, one order and
purpose of God's self-revelation even to the utter-
most to us men. I will not delay to illustrate or

250 Christian Facts and Forces.

enforce this; I leave the suggestion of it to some
doubting minds with the remark that when we fairly
grasp the idea of a divine law of revelation running
through the whole creation, and reaching its highest
power in Jesus and the resurrection, we have seized
upon a principle of reasonable faith which lifts us
above a thousand diflficulties and objections.

Secondly, It is comforting and assuring for any
man of us to reflect that one reason why we have to
believe so much, and can see so little, is simply be-
cause there are such glorious and divine things to
be revealed that they cannot possibly be manifested
to our bodily senses. Too dazzling light would con-
sume the eye uplifted to it. And I want to enforce
this remark.

A man is active, full of life and spirit, and he dies.
We can see no more manifestation of him. He has
gone from us. What is the reason that we cannot
see him, or hear him, or meet him ? Why does he
not come back and counsel us and comfort us ? We
never needed him more. Ah ! my friends, — what is
this law of spiritual manifestation and its necessary
limits ? Have we not been remembering that spirit
is greater than matter, soul diviner than body, and
that spirit by its very essence and fineness of being
may easily pass on wholly into the invisible ? may
reach a point of love and life, of joy and purity, be-
yond further contact with this mortality, and hence
beyond possibility of our recognition? If any de-
parted spirits still have power to enmesh themselves
in gross matter, must they not be still earthly, sen-
sual— gross demons — not pure, free spirits ? For if
any pure spirits have power to come back and be

Limits of Spiritual Manifestation, 251

seen again on earth, none surely of all who have
vanished into the unseen and holy would have more
desire and more will to appear again, than would
Christ. He knows all our need and grief. He loves
his disciples to the end. Surely if any spirit can
return, it will be the Lord. He first will show him-
self, for his love is greatest. I will wait for his ap-
pearing. I will listen to no others, until he comes.
I must see the Lord first. I remember how the
Christ lingered, as long as the risen Christ might,
within the confines of this world, appearing for forty
days to his disciples ; but at length even the Christ
came to the end of his power of possible manifesta-
tion to us men in these mortal bodies, on this side
death. Christ in his risen and spiritual body be-
came, at last, in the blessed ascent of his life to God,
so remote from earthly temptation and touch of pain,
so transcendent and glorified, that while the disci-
ples were gazing up into heaven he vanished from
them, not in the long centuries to come again until
this world-age shall reach its appointed end, and
these elements be dissolved in the brightness of the
manifestation of the presence of the Lord.

A man, we are observing, full of soul and spiritual
power, more than life has measured, dies. We say,
We do not know. One thing, however, we do know.
If there is any truth in science, forces do not sud-
denly end in nothingness. In some forms they are
continued and conserved. We cannot conceive that
spiritual and personal forces are exceptions to all
that we know of force and its conservation. Some-
how, somewhere, in some future possibilities and
powers, that personal life-force goes on and o\\. The

252 Chdstian Facts and Forces.

only question is, In what form does it continue, or
with what body does it come ? And the appearances
of Jesus after death answer sufficiently for us that
question. The manifestation of the risen Lord
shows that personal force goes on after death as per-
sonal force. The manifestation of Jesus to the dis-
ciples leaves many questions unanswered which we
are curious to ask, but it reveals personality continu-
ing in a higher order of existence as personality. It
was Jem^ who was manifested. The beloved disci-
ple knew that it was his Lord who stood, while the
day was breaking, upon the shore. The disciples are
as sure that it is the Lord as they are certain that
there were taken in the net a hundred and fifty and
three great fishes — and no break to be found in any
of the meshes of the net !

We do not really need to be assured of anything
further. This is enough ; " It is the Lord !'' Master, it
is thou ! Friend, it is thou ! Father, mother, hus-
band, wife, child beloved, it is thou !

In the Christian knowledge of the life which is to
be revealed, we can wait yet a little while for the
manner and the time of its manifestation. It is only
a question of manifestation. It is not a question of
reality, or existence, but only a question of mani-
festation of whatever is of the spirit and of God. This
world manifests the divine somewhat, — all the spir-
itual light that can work through the thick meshes
of matter ; all of the divine presence that a material
network of forces can be charged with ; all of the
influences of angels that dull human brains can be
made to feel ; all celestial sympathies and love this
earth can know. But this little world cannot con-

Limits of Spiritual Manifestation. 253

tain it all. The fragrance cannot all be held in the
flower's cup. Spirit transcends matter. There is
more to be revealed. The manifestation is not over.
The revelation of God has but just begun in this
world, it will be continued in a better. " Howbeit
that is not first which is spiritual, but that which is
natural; then that which is spiritual. The first
man is of the earth, earthy : the second man is of
heaven. As is the earthy, such are they also that
are earthy : and as is the heavenly, such are they also
that are heavenly. And as we have borne the image of
the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heav-
enly.'' " When Christ, who is our life, shall be mani-
fested, then shall ye also with him be manifested in
glory."

XX.

THE INTERDEPENDElSrCE OF ALL SAINTS.

*'S.nh t'btst all, %Khin% Ik^ feitass iorne to ti^tm tl^rougl^ i^tix
Cailf), xtmhzi:s not t|)e promijeif, (fScoIr j&abirtg probihI)r somt Ititn tiding
fomcrrtinij us, tf)at apart from U5 ti^je^ s^oullr not lit maitrt :^zxiuV'
— Hebrews xi. 39-40.

Years ago rows of elms were planted on either side
of the street upon which stands our church. Each
elm was a separate, isolated thing. It was to grow as
straight as it might from its own individual root.
But when the trees had reached their full height, and
each trunk had become strong and large, the branches
of the separate elms began to touch in the upper air,
and their symmetrical tops cast down upon these paths
the friendly shadows of meeting boughs and leaves
interwoven across the sky. And long ere this, too, I
suppose, the single roots which struck down into the
deeper soil have formed a living net-work in the
common ground, and may share the same raindrops
in their interlacing life. The growth of these elms
is a parable of the growth of truths in human insti-
tutions. Single ideas take root in history. A sepa-
rate truth gains firm possession of some ground pre-
pared for its reception. And opposite it another idea
is implanted in history. Let the growth of either
become stunted, and they will remain opposite and
separate truths. But let each reach its full and per-
fect development, leave both alone until they have
time to grow into large symmetry, and they will
254

The Interdepe7idence of all Saints. 255

begin to meet above, and to draw their ample life from
the same springs below. And so it happens that
while hardly two hundred and fifty years ago our
forefathers left the whole calendar of the saints
behind them and planted upon this spot a separate
church, as though it were the year one of Christian
history, and all things were to be made new, — to-day,
this All Saints' day, a child of the Puritans, whose
are the fathers, finds his thoughts easily intertwining
with thoughts that have grown from a different
stock, and we perceive that the separateness which
was our fathers' strength has become, in its larger
growth, graceful fellowship with other communions
from which they stood apart. Here in a historic
church, beneath which lie buried the bones of many
a stalwart Puritan whose spirit we believe is still
marching on abreast with the years of God, we now
without fear of the superstitions from which our
fathers fled, and in the exercise of the Christian lib-
erty which they won, may observe Christmas^ and
Easter, and Good Friday, and many a holy-day of
the ancient Church. All Saints' day was first com-
memorated in the Eastern Church whose noble wit-
nesses and martyrs were many times more in num-
ber than the days of the year ; afterwards, and at a
different season, it became a festival in the Western
Church; and many pious and reverent believers,
in several Protestant communions, at this harvest
time of the year, delight to keep this day sacred to
the thought and the memory of that great multitude
whom no man can number, of all nations, anil kin-
dreds, and tongues, — the souls of all saints, which

256 Christian Facts and Forces.

are the Lord's harvest from the ages of our human
history.

In order that we also may enter into the associa-
tions of All Saints' day, let us suffer our thoughts to
take the hint and to run gladly forth in the direction
which is indicated by the Scripture chosen for our
text : " They apart from us should not be made per-
fect." The Apostle had been speaking of the saints
of the Old Testament. He had been building, in
that famous chapter, the triumphal arch of Old Test-
ament history. The names of the world's spiritual
conquerors are written there. But at the close of
this triumphal commemoration you cannot fail to
notice the unexpected turn of the text. The con-
clusion towards which this whole chapter of faith's
heroism seems to move would be an ascription of
our indebtedness to these valiant servants of the
Lord who " have made it a world for us." Without
them, the writer of this sacred history would natu-
rally have said. Without them we are not made per-
fect. But instead he said, " That apart from us they
should not be made perfect."

The generations of the past were not made per-
fect without the generation to which Christ's Apostle
spoke. The last living generation was in some way
necessary for the perfection of all the generations
which had been upon the earth. We hardly tran-
scend the text, we do but follow the inspired word
out to its larger revelation, when we say. Each
Christian generation is necessary to all before ; the
last saint belongs in some measure to the first ; the
better thing of each age is for all who have lived and

The Interdependence of all Saints. 257

died ; not only is it true that we inherit the lives of
the saints, but they also are to inherit ours ; we are
for them as well as they for us ; neither they nor we
are to be made perfect apart ; the last century of
human history shall crown all the centuries; the
consummation of the world is the perfection together
of all the saints.

This is hardly our customary thought of the saints.
We think of them as passed beyond all participation
in this world's history, withdrawn from its trials and
having no concern henceforth in its warfare and vic-
tories; made perfect in their own pure hearts, and
their lives elsewhere no more bound up with this
world's destiny. We remember with grateful love
what they have been to us in the years gone by ; we
remind one another in our public places of our com-
mon inheritance in the lives of good men ; we build
monuments to the memory of the brave who died
for their country; we draw inspiration for youth
from the illumined historic page, and the spirit of
the martyrs blends still with all sacrifice of love.
But while we remember these worthy and sainted
ones, we should not forget that we too are to be for
them, as they have been for us ; that Moses and Elias
are not perfect apart from Peter and John in the pres-
ence of the Christ of the ages ; that James waits for
Irenseus, and Paul for Luther; that Augustine and
Calvin are not perfect without Edwards and Mau-
rice; that these all wait for some better tiling which
God hath provided concerning us ; tliat we too are
dependent upon our cliildron, and our chikhvn's
children, for the fullness of our lives, and the com-
pletion of our work ; that all the saints from all the

258 Christian Facts and Forces.

ages are for one another ; that not in solitary glory
of martyrdom, nor in singular beauty of grace, nor
yet in separate happiness, nor upon any throne apart,
is the saint of God to be made perfect ; but, in the
mutual triumphs and in the living interdependencies
of the Lord Christ's kingdom, all are to be made
perfect together when the city of God shall come.
Let us dwell now upon this truth awhile.

Let it be known -that this truth of the mutual de-
pendence of the saints of all ages is a Biblical con-
ception— one which we ought not to lose.

If you contemplate, for example, any sacred char-
acter from the Old Testament, you will observe that
such character is never held apart either from the
men of God who went before it, or from the servants
of the Lord who are to follow after it. Each of these
characters is put in the Bible into relation with all
before and all after it — as a link in a chain ; all per-
sonages that carry on God's gracious revelation, are
as links in one continuous chain, — and both ends
of this unbroken chain of sacred history, running
through the ages, with its many links of lives inter-
locked in one purpose of redemption, are bound to
the throne of God, — the beginning of it by the first
divine act of creation, and the final end of all in the
glory of the Son of man at the right hand of the
majesty on high.

The interdependence of all saints, the living and
the dead, and those who are to be, appears in certain
events in the life of Christ, and may be inferred also
from certain inspired hints in the apostolic writings.
It is clear from the narrative of the transfiguration,
that Moses and Elias had not been cut off by death

The Interdependence of all Saints. 259

from personal interest and anticipation in the pro-
gress of God's kingdom on earth. Moses upon the
Holy Mount was as real a figure in our human his-
tory as he was upon Mount Nebo, when he stood
looking toward the promised land. And Elias was
still as really a character of our human history, when
he became visible in Christ's transfigured presence,
as he was when he waited for the appearance of the
cloud which should bring heaven's blessing to the
parched fields of Israel. Whatever may have been
their work, or rest, in their intermediate life, Moses
and Elias certainly were not removed by death be-
yond personal share and part in the ministry of
our Lord, and personal sympathy and hope in the
progress and triumph of redeeming love upon this
earth. What was done here upon a place called
Golgotha, was to be done for them also there in that
place called Paradise. And it is deeply significant
and suggestive that the apostle Peter who was one
of the two to witness this revealed intimacy of the
saints of the Old and the New, and to see upon the
Holy Mount this close contiguity of two worlds, is
the same apostle who has dropped in his epistle quite
incidentally, and as a matter of course, that word
which we have practically left out of our Protestant
Bibles concerning Christ's preaching to the spirits in
prison, and again concerning the preaching to those
that are dead. I am drawing no doubtful inferences,
I am indulging in no new speculations, I am simply
asserting what fidelity to the Scriptures conii>els us
to believe, and what the early church found room
for in its ampler creed, when I say that Christ de-
scended into Hades, and that he did the work

26o Christian Facts and Forces.

appointed of the Father for him in that hour there
among the dead, and that the fact of Christ's descent
into Hades, upon the very day between his death
and his resurrection for us, reveals some near rela-
tion between the two worlds, this earth and Hades.
The Lord's life here, and the life of the dead there,
were and are correlated ; the history of the two
spheres, the realm of the dead, and the kingdom of
God on earth, were and are in some way connected
and parallel histories ; the two lands are contiguous,
and One Lord passes back and forth across their
boundary-line, to-day in the body, to-morrow in the
spirit, and the third day risen again, and seen by the
disciples; and he has the same administration of
perfect justice and grace in both worlds. This much
is not theory, but Biblical fact. We may deny
utterly the fact of this revelation, if we will ; but if
we believe the Scripture, we should accept this fact
of the dependence of both worlds upon Christ, and
his activity in both, as it has been revealed to us,
and we ought not to dwarf any inspired Scripture, to
the low stature of some human system of theology,
or seek to crush its vaster truth into any of our little
theories of God's government.

These two facts at which we have just glanced,
namely the part taken by Moses and Elias upon the
mount of transfiguration, and the fact of Christ's de-
scent into Hades and his activity there in the Spirit,
while his body lay in the tomb awaiting the resur-
rection, are sufficient to show that the two realms —
the one where the dead are living, and this other
where we are dying — are not so far apart, are not
altogether separate realms in God's government and

The Interdependence of all Saints. 261

purpose, have correlations more intimate and vital
than we know; " that they apart from us should not
be made perfect."

This truth of the mutual life and interdependence
of all saints appears further from the whole manner
and tendency of the New Testament in its treatment
of the subject of death. There is hardly anything
more contrary to Scripture than is our common ex-
aggeration of the importance of death. Do we not
remember how Jesus seemed always to be putting
death into the background as a very secondary and
even incidental thing in the history of a soul which
has attained the true, the eternal life? He minimized
death when he called it a sleep. We magnify it
when we call it destiny. The Apostles, catching
Jesus' diviner tone, called sin death, and love life.
Death in the Apostolic speech was turned into a
metaphor; it served to illustrate something far greater
and more important than itself. Conversion to them
was the great change ; to die may be the greatest
event which can happen to a man ; but to die is one
of the least important things which a man does;
to repent of sin, to surrender to God, to live unto
Christ, — this is the great thing for a man to do. We
think of death as a vast gulf between friends ; as a
great barrier between hearts that would go on loving
and being loved forever; as a wall of adamant sud-
denly reared by a divine decree between mother and
child, husband and wife; and with the years the
great silence widens between men and women wlio
were friends. But when one wlio liad been taught
of Jesus has occasion to refer to deatli, he thinks not
of chasm or adamantine wall, but of tho veil of the

262 Christian Facts and Forces.

temple — the mere veil between the holy, and the
holiest place. "And this hope," he said, "enters
within the veil."

" No adamant between us uprears its rocky screen ;
A veil before us only ;— thou in the light serene.
That veil 'twixt earth and heaven a breath might waft aside ;
We breathe one air, beloved, we foUow one dear guide :
Passed in to open vision, out of our mists and rain.
Thou seest how sorrow blossoms ; how peace is won from pain."

Let this truth that all saints are for one another
and are to be made perfect together, stand out in its
Biblical simplicity before our faith, unencumbered
by any attempts of ours to imagine the modes of this
mutual dependence of the living and the dead.

Imagination has indeed its high and holy task in
aid of faith ; nor do we fail to feel, even in this life,
touches upon our spirits as of unseen powers, and
influences upon our hearts whose coming and going
no man knows. There may be more points on earth
for celestial magnetisms to attract than any science
can determine. The stars of heaven are distant, we
know not how far ; and yet they are present in the
motions of this earth, we know not how much. The
moon to-night will not be exactly in the spot where
our science of the forces balanced in her motions
would bid her rise and walk across our sky; and
our astronomy, doubting not the ancient order of
the heavens, must yet make room in its perfect cal-
culations for the observed fact of some uncomputed
celestial influence. There are heavenly facts but
half understood in commonest human experience.
What sweet influences they who have gone from us
still have over us, we cannot tell; what magnetic

The Interdependence of all Saints. 263

lines reaching down to human hearts, Moses and
Elias, the prophets, and the saints from our own
homes may touch from celestial places, passes our
knowledge ; but this we do know, this at least can-
not be gainsaid, that in this earthly life, after every
analysis we may make of it, there is found a sacred
residuum of spiritual experience, which fails under
every test to be reduced wholly to common earthly
elements.

Without allowing ourselves to be betrayed into
curious and possibly very misleading imaginations
of the methods and the manner of the sympathies
of all saints, we may take great comfort in the fact
of their mutuality and interdependence of existence
and destiny, as this fact of the unity of their lives
and ours has been partially disclosed in the Scrip-
tures. Does it not revive us like a breath of the
Spirit to know this truth of All Saints' day, that we
all shall be made perfect together, and none apart ;
that in God's plan our lives and theirs, whom for a
little while we do not see, have been interwoven, and
still run on interweaving their threads and colors ;
that still we are living for them, and they for us in
the one kingdom of our Lord; that they in their rest,
or in their new activities, are resting, or are minis-
tering, not apart from us, as we in our toils and in
our dreams still are living and still are loving not
without them; that whatever in higher spheres is
transpiring in their lives has also its worth yet to be
revealed for us, as our thought and love mny liavo
growing worth for them; that whether in some
silence of divine light round about them they are
becoming holy and radiant with perfect love in their

264 Christian Facts and Forces.

own pure hearts, or whether along some way of God
they are now made strong to run with some glad
tidings, or whether with the Lord Christ they be
permitted with their dear hands to give some added
grace and human, homelike touch to the places in
his many mansions which He has gone to prepare
for us, — still, still, they think, they fly, they rest, they
love, not apart from us, and in them and their large
happiness the great God thinks also of us; that with-
out us they may not be made perfect in that final
unspeakable perfection of all the saints in the last
day. And we too — herein is a comfort which we
must not suffer any man to take from us — we also
are living for them ; as the early Church before its
Latin corruption did not hesitate in its childlike faith
to express in its prayers for the sainted dead this
most Christian sense of the mutuality of the believers'
lives both here and there. We also are living for
our fathers, for our friends who have passed before
us, for all the saints, if indeed we are living truly
and unselfishly ; if we are ripening for their com-
panionships, and becoming strong and pure for celes-
tial thoughts and deeds in the ages of ages.

Men and brethren ; you may turn if you will in the
scepticism of the understanding from this blessed
hope, and rend if you can from your hearts all faith
in immortality. You may believe, if indeed in any
worthy and unselfish moment you can, that at death
we living souls fall into the jaws of eternal darkness;
but if we trust as little children the voice of God in
our personal consciousness of life, if we are Christians
and believe in the Gospel of the resurrection, then
why do we belie this hope ? why do we belittle and

The Interdependence of all Saints. 265

dwarf this mighty faith by our comfortless griefs, by
our slowness of heart to understand that we are living
with all saints? that in fresh sympathies of heart,
and active, joyous interest in each new day of the
Son of man, we are living most truly with all saints,
living best and with most vital hearts with our own
dear saints above, hastening with them the day of
the Lord, and becoming ourselves meet to be par-
takers with them in the final beatitudes of God's
grace?

Another lesson from this truth of All Saints' day
lies close at hand. I shall have spoken in vain if
you do not perceive once more the truth that to be a
Christian and to be saved is not merely to become
perfect for one's self, and to carry off a crown of glory
at the judgment day. It is rather to come to the end
of self, and to begin to be a member of a blessed soci-
ety of spirits. No man is to be saved apart from all
the saints. God's law of salvation is a social law,
the law of a redeemed society. The social life of the
church, therefore, the social unity of the church, is
not an adjunct or accessory of the divine constitution
of the church ; it is an element of the divine idea of
the church ; it belongs to its essential Christianity.
And hence it follows that churches are not revived,
and do not grow, if this divine idea of the covenant
of believers and the household of faith, is lost sight
of, or practically ignored.

Once more, let the lesson come liomo to us from
what I have been trying to say, tliat individually wo
cannot grow in grace apart from all saints, 'i'liero
is a beautiful Scripture, the most iuiporlaiit rlauso of

266 ChHstian Facts and Forces.

which we are too apt to hurry over as we read it :
" That ye may be able to comprehend with all saints
what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and
height ; and to know the love of Christ, which pass-
eth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the
fullness of God." The condition of knowledge of the
love of Christ is that we find it and share it with all
saints. Yet this is just what many of us sometimes
are not willing to do. We would know the love of
Christ with our favorite saints. With all saints, said
Paul. You must keep All Saints' day if you would
know the length and breadth of the love of Christ.
Our theologies must be learned not of our New Eng-
land divines only, but of all saints. We shall never
comprehend the love of Christ, if we sit barred and
separated from all saints within our own pews. Pew
doors are contrary to Scripture, if they do not open
easily to all saints. And still less can any cultured
man hope to know God in the capacious solitude of
his own intellect. It w^as Paul, to whom were given
personal revelations above measure, who felt the need
of learning the love of Christ with all the saints.
Yes, those unknoTvni saints, those humble saints, those
poor saints, untaught, unlearned, are to be your fel-
low-helpers to the truth. There are faces among
them — I have seen some such — in whose light we
may learn more of the secret of the Lord than from
any books. Oh, when will we understand that our
Christ is the universal Christ? All men come to
him. All history is in him. " Behold, the man ! "
" Behold, the Lamb of God, which taketh away the
sin of the world!" Only in universal sympathies
can we know the universal Christ. We must come

The Interdependence of all Saints, 267

out of ourselves, we must live more with others and
in others, we must make All Saints' days in our
homes and in our hearts, if we would be learners
of the universal Christ, and enter into all the fullness
of God.

And finally, for I must close with the half not
uttered, let me remind you that to join the Church is
to begin to keep All Saints' day before the Lord. It
is for any of you to confess that apart from us you
cannot be made perfect. It is to act upon your belief
in the communion of the saints. It is to come with
us and to confess your faith in the Saviour of the
world in that simplest form of words, the Apostles'
Creed, which more than any other is the creed of the
holy catholic Church universal, and henceforth to
seek no more alone, and apart, but with all saints to
know that divine love which passeth knowledge.

THE END.

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