The college-man and the ministry of Christ

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The College-Man

and the
Ministry of Christ

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'HE REV. JAMES BBVERIDGE LEE

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L44 1911

Lee

, James

Beveridge.

The

college-man and the

ministry of Christ

The College -Man

and the
Ministry of Christ

BY ^

THE REV. JAMES B£VERIDGE LEE, D.D.

Philadelphia, Pa.

Awarded Second Place in the Prixe Eisay Contest

igio

Published by the

Board of Education of the Presbyterian Church

in the U. S. A.

1319 Walnut St., Philadelphia

1911

\si

The College-Man and the
Ministry of Christ.

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

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

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

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

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

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

THREE POTENT TEMPTATIONS.

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

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

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

Temptation to Besides, Babylon

Sensualism. offered to the exiles

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

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

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

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

8

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

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

TEMPTATIONS OF THE
COLLEGE EXILE.

These facts have a very special

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

Commercialism. Commercialism is
here insinuating
that success is not

what a man is, but what he has;

that it is better to make a living

10

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

Sensualism. Sensualism is here

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

Paganism. Paganism, sowing

the student's mind
with bewildering

interrogatives ; darkening his soul-

II

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

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

12

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

REMEMBERING GOD.

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

13

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

14

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

15

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

The Great Today twin nations,

Adventure. speaking the Eng-

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

i6

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

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

17

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

REMEMBERING JERUSALEM.

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

The Appeal of It is not the city

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

i8

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

"How doth the city sit solitary!

She that was full of people !

The ways of Zion do languish,

None come to her solemn feasts,

All her gates are desolate.

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

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

19

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

The Soul There are J e r u -

a Ruin. s a 1 e m s in every

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

20

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

21

Servants But these plans

Needed. can be realized only

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

22

Prophets The age is calUng

Needed. for prophets, —

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

THE MINISTRY WORTH WHILE.

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

23

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

Calling and It is true that

Career. every calHng is an

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

24

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

Incarnating There is no calling

the Master. that is more worth

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

25

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

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

der the guidance

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

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

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

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

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

27

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

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

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

28

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

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

If thee, Jerusalem, I leave.

And count not God my chiefest joy.

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

29

Date Due

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