Modern sermons by world scholars

MODERN
SERMONS
BY WORLD
SCHOLARS

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
AT LOS ANGELES

GIFT OF CAPT. AND MRS.
PAUL MCBRIDE PERIGORD

ir of CAijKimMi^

AT
'■)S ANGELES
UBEAEY

Modem Sermons by World
Scholars

VOLUME VI
MACKINTOSH TO MOORE

Modern Sermons

BY

World Scholars

edited by
Robert Scott and William C. Stiles

Editors of The Ho mile tic Review

introduction by
Newell Dwight Hillis

Pastor of Plymouth Church, Brooklyn

IN TEN VOLUMES
VOLUME VI— MACKINTOSH TO MOORE

FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY

NEW YORK AND LONDON

144G20

Copyright, 190^, in

FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY

Printed in the United States cf America

CONTENTS

VOLUME YI

PAGE

The Hidden Life — Mackintosh .... 1

Messiah's Conduct and Reward — M'Caig . 19

Emphasis on the Affirmative — McClure . 39

The Storage of Spiritual Power — McCon-

nell 57

The Prayers of Jesus — McGarvey ... 73

The Kingdom of God in the Modern

'WoEi.D—McGiffert 89

The Power Proofs of Christ's Resurrec-
tion— McNeile 109

The Life that Knows no Defeat — Martin 129

The Church and Modern Thought — Moffat 141

The Courage op Religion — Moffatt . . . 165

Mary of Bethany — Montet 179

The Conscript Cross-Bearer — Moore . . 195

MACKINTOSH
THE HIDDEN LIFE

VI— 1

HUGH ROSS MACKINTOSH

Professor of systematic theology, New
College, Edinburgh, since 1904; bom
October 31, 1870; educated Neilson Insti-
tution, Paisley; Tain Royal Academy;
George Watson's College, Edinburgh;
Edinburgh University; New College,
Edinburgh; Universities of Freiburg,
Halle and Marburg; entered the ministry
of the Free Church of Scotland, 1896;
assistant to the Rev. Charles Watson,
D.D., of Largs, 1896,7; minister of Tay-
port, 1897-1901; Beechgrove church,
Aberdeen, 1901-04; author of transla-
tion (joint) of RitschFs "Justification
and Reconciliation,'^ of Loof's "Anti-
Haeckel," edited with Prof. Caldecott
" Selections from the Literature of The-

THE HIDDEN LIFE
The Rev. Prof. H. R. Mackintosh, D.Phil.

" Ye are dead, and your life i^ hid with Christ in
God."— Co\, 3: 3.

NO one can suppose a saying like this to
be addrest indiscriminately to the
world at large. The class of persons
whom it indicates, the audience who will
grasp and appreciate its meaning, is limited
in kind. It is not that the text is obscure. It
is not that it belongs to an age so far away
from ours. It is not that it raises needless
barriers. Only it takes for granted that we
have passed through a great experience, and
that this experience has brought us into a new
world. In short, it touches as very few verses
even of the Bible do the vital source and cen-
ter of the Christian life. It tells the open
secret of discipleship, and lays its finger on
the pulse of personal religion.

Now there is something remarkable in the
calnmess with which Paul utters this great
truth. Is it not one of the plain marks of its
higher origin upon the Bible that it speaks of
the most stupendous themes with this quiet,
assured power, with the composure of eter-
nity ? When men get hold of a great idea, or
an idea that seems to them great, how they

MODERN SERMONS

fret and fume over it, raising such a dust and
commotion as if the like of the new theory had
never been heard. But few things are more
wonderful than the calm, strong tranquillity
of the apostles. The message they brought
was not a message of their own. The gospel
was not their happy discovery. Hence they
did not need to claim a place for it with loud
protest and urgency, as tho jealous that
their voices should be drowned amid the
countless voices of the world. It was the
truth of God ; so that their simple duty was to
make it known, and it would do its o^vn work
and bear its own witness. With the same
quiet, sure restraint of tone Paul says to his
readers now: ^' Your life is hid with Christ
in God.*' He is so certain of it that he needs
no appeal or argument. For him the Chris-
tian's hidden life is a thing so real and sub-
stantial that proof may be dispensed with.
Like the beauty of the sunlight, like the sweet
freshness of morning, it is not an inference at
all; it is the clear presupposition on which
everything rests. It is the great immovable
fact on which we take our stand, and look out
from it with settled faith over the moving
scene of the world and up to the glory that
shall follow.

We have a wonderful proof of the power of
Christianity to touch hearts and change lives
in the fact that Paul should have felt it pos-
sible to write thus to people whose home was

MACKINTOSH

Colossae. Colossae was no worse, perhaps,
than the average Asian city of the time, but it
can hardly have been much better. And a few
years before the idea of sending a message like
this to any of the inhabitants of the place
would have been a sad irony. So it was a year
or two back, but mark the difference now. In
the meantime, the gospel of Christ had come,
and the tide of its power and joy was flowing
thro their lives. All things had become
new. They were risen with Christ now, and
the very springs of their being were hid with
Him in God. Once their life had no hidden
depths about it at all ; it had all been shallow,
specious, concerned with the surface only,
busy about things that mattered little, in-
finitely occupied with trifles, running to waste
pathetically over poor and passing aims. But
the grace of God had called them, as it calls us.
into a new life. In that old barren experience
wells had been sunk, and now fountains of
living water were springing up clear and
fresh. I\Iines of infinite wealth had been
opened in what before had seemed an un-
profitable land, and the gold and precious
stones of faith and hope and love were being
yielded now. Once they had been content
with a poor, starveling, hand-to-mouth moral-
ity, always precarious, always unequal to any
sharp and sudden strain; but to-day their
best stores of power, and their deepest springs
of joy, were away far and beyond the reach of

5

MODERN SERMONS

sorrow or temptation, because held and
guarded by Christ in the unseen.

Believers leave the old life behind them.
'' Ye are dead," Paul says to these Colos-
sians; or even, as it is in stricter accuracy,
" ye died." Sometimes the passage of a soul
into the kingdom of God is like the flight of a
bird in its swiftness. It arrives as the revolu-
tion of a moment. ** Within ten paces, as I
walked, life was transformed to me, ' ' says one
to whom the change had happened thus. We
lie down some night our old selves, and ere
we sleep again the great disclosure has broken
on the soul. Yet in itself the text says noth-
ing of this suddenness. It speaks of an event
in the past; it does not describe it as either
swift or slow. Men may die swiftly, and men
may die slowly ; it matters nothing, when they
have wakened on *' the immortal side of
death. ' ' When the ship comes to the equator,
no visible line is there which all see as they
cross over ; yet in point of fact the crossing is
made ; they pass from the one hemisphere into
the other. So when God's eye reads our past
many things stand clear before Him which it
was not given to us to perceive. He has
watched the rise and progress of our life in
Christ from the beginning. And where to our
eyes there showed nothing but a gentle imper-
ceptible advance. He, it well might be, may
discern a cleavage, sharp as though made by a
scimitar, between the old life and the new.

MACKINTOSH

The best metaplior to illustrate this change
that Paul can think of, is the passage from
one world to another which we name death.

You see the thought which is moving in his
mind. Union to Christ Jesus produces a
moral and spiritual transfiguration analogous
to death and resurrection. At death the soul
does not cease to be ; rather by the great tran-
sition it enters a new environment, like the
buds rising through the sod in spring. Just
so in regeneration the soul does not lose its
identity, but its attachment to Christ lifts it
into a new and higher realm. He died for sin
— to break its power, to undo the awful ruin,
to rectify the wrong : we, through Him, die to
sin, in response to His holiness, caught up and
borne on by His power, compelled by His
love. It is not that we become sinless. We
are under no such delusion. But whatever
sin remains, we still may have the glad and
honest certainty that our fixed desire and
choice are now one in will with the will of
Jesus Christ. He has made us new creatures,
in whom the tyranny of sin is broken. He
has given us a new self, the only self worth
having or worth keeping. And formidable as
the world, the flesh, and the devil are, we
know that from this time on there is a Brother
beside us in the battle, and a Presence within
us that will be ours for ever and ever. So
through Him, lives that were so hopeless will
become blest ; the barren will become fruitful,

MODERN SERMONS

and the weak strong. The old life dies on the
birthday of faith.

Brethren, surely it is a great thing to have
this settled once for all. The old life is dead ;
its day is over. The channels in which its
waters nsed of old to flow may still at times
seem to run as freely as ever ; but the parent
spring is failing, and one day it will have
ceased, to flow no more again. You who have
the new heart, but are sadly opprest by the
old, remember that. Do not say that the con-
flict avails nothing. If holiness and faith in
you have never ceased to wrestle with sin and
doubt, it is the greatest triumph you could
win. And besides, the battle is not to be un-
ending. Your hour of victory, final and com-
plete, and drawing ever nearer, is marked for
you on God's plan. Some day — as surely as
once you crossed the line that severs Christ
from sin, and chose your side with Him for
ever — some day you will overcome, and the
crown of perfect righteousness will be set
upon your head.

Note, secondly, the Christian's hidden life.
''Your life is hid with Christ." There is
something in every true disciple, even the
meekest and plainest, which it would tax the
wisest onlooker to account for. You cannot
explain the Christian character by anj'thing
that shows upon the surface. To unveil the
secret of it you must go down into the buried
depths, beneath a man's common words and

8

MACKINTOSH

thoughts. Frequently, as you cross a highland
moor, you come upon a bright streak of green,
winding in and out among the heather, its
pure and shining verdure in strange relief
against the dull brown of its surroundings.
What can it be, you ask ? How came it there ?
Whence rises the sap to feed this soft ribband
of elastic turf ? There is a tiny stream below ;
a rill of sweet water flowing down there out
of sight, only hinting its presence by the
greenness and beauty above. So the springs
of Christian life are hidden — hidden with
Christ in God.

For one thing, they are hidden from the un-
christian world ; but I will not speak much of
this. Something mysterious and inscrutable
must always appear to a man of the world in
those who live by faith in the Son of God. He
may merely wonder at the mystery, or he may
resent it, but he is always conscious of its
presence. And when he asks himself how
personal religion is to be accounted for, any
explanation but the right one often will suffice.
Fear, self-interest, hoary tradition, weak
delusion — we know the theories by which out-
siders have sought to explain Christian faith,
and by the explanation to rob it of its power.
It has always been their plan. Even of the
Master they whispered, " He is beside him-
self ' ' ; and of the apostles, with the fire and
life of Pentecost throbbing in their veins, they
deemed it enough to say, ' ' These men are full

9

MODERN SERMONS

of new wine/' All that the believer can
plead — and how much it is ! — of aid sent him
in temptation, or light that visits him in dark-
ness, or consolations that draw the poison out
of bitter grief, is counted a tale of little mean-
ing. The existence of all that deep life is not
perceived. The Christian secret is a secret
from the world.

But more than this may be said. There is
some profounder meaning here. For my text
declares, or, at least, it implies, does it not,
that a believer's deepest life is somehow a
secret from himself? Is this not so at the
origin and birth of religion in the soul, when
the Spirit quickens the dead to life? " The
wind bloweth where it listeth; thou hearest
the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence
it Cometh or whither it goeth " — thou canst
not tell ; no, not tho it be in thy heart that it
is blowing ! Regeneration makes us God 's in
a deeper fashion than we dream. And if it
be so at the first, it is so ever after. To-day
men of science are obviously moving about in
worlds not realized, among half-compre-
hended forces which only now and then flash
an isolated token of their nature into the
realm of knowledge. Do we not see that the
same holds good of the experience of every
true believer in Christ? He sees and loves
the fruits that spring from fellowship with
God, and in his o^vn heart he knows the joy of
it ; but the roots go far down out of sight. He

10

MACKINTOSH

is conscious that God is offering him grace and
love each day, and bringing him to respond
with trust and longing; but how the two, the
grace and trust, meet and mingle in his soul,
he cannot tell. He knows that communion
with God sets his mind perfectly at rest, and
that this strange inward power is never so
effectual as just in the midst of distress ; but
the rationale of it all is beyond him. He can
feel the power of Christ resting upon him,
raising him above himself, turning his very
weakness into strength; but how it comes to
pass he knows not, or as little as he does the
relations of soul and body. He can say what
the causes are, he cannot say how the causes
work. His life in Christ, at its deepest, is
hidden in a measure from himself.

What is this but to say that the sources of
our very life are in Christ's keeping, not in
ours? He guards for us the springs of faith
and love. The reservoir in which our sup-
plies are stored is yonder, not here; and
enough for each day's necessity is given. All
that Christ has, He has for those who love
Him; and one sometimes imagines that His
greatest sorrow, if perchance He sorrows still,
must be that we draw upon Him so sparingly,
with the fear lest we are asking too much.
Cases of hallucination have been known in
which men who had a fortune in the bank
dreamed they were paupers, and could hardly
be got to draw a check for the essentials of

11

MODERN SERMONS

life; and one is reminded of them now and
then by our own neglect of the treasures laid
up in Jesus Christ. Never judge of your
Redeemer's grace and power by what you
have yet received from Him. Had you suf-
fered Him, He would have done far more.
And if He has not done it, the reason always
is not that Christ is less bountiful than we be-
lieved, but that our heart is much shallower
and our faith far less open and simple than
it might be.

But if a Christian is thus in direct corre-
spondence with the infinite nature of Christ,
it follows that he is a man with great reserves
of power. Like some great commercial
houses, which have the more in the warehouse
the less there is of open display, a believing
life is a far richer thing than it seems. You
have noticed how the secret of the charm and
power of certain pictures lies in the suggestion
they give of a wide, illimitable background,
in which eye and fancy lose themselves
as we gaze; and the same subtle impres-
sion clings about everyone whose character
is rooted in the love of God. God in Christ is
the great background of the life of faith. Yet
how often worldly men have taken a simple,
quiet Christian at an utterly false valuation,
and deemed him weak because he is un-
pretending. They gathered round him with
their promises and threats, looking for his fall
as a thing of course; yet within that soul

12

MACKINTOSH

there were hidden stores of fearless power
they never dreamed of, and the foiled assault
drew back as harmless as the waves that fall
from the rock shattered into spray. What is-
the reason? It is that his life is hid with
Christ in God. He has access, and we all have
access, to the comforts of a love so deep and
broad and high that it passeth knowledge.
And the task of the Christian is so to walk
before men that they shall say : ' ' There must
be springs in such a life. That steady, sus-
tained gladness and peace could not be with-
out roots somewhere." Thus the experience
that came from Christ must be employed to-
point men back to Christ again, and the circle
of believing witness return to glorify Him
who made it what it is.

Then, besides that, the sources of our life,,
thus being hid in Christ, are protected against
dispeace and trouble. Here, it is true, we
must distinguish between what goes on upon
the surface and that which is passing in the
depths. Take the experience of any Christian
man, and even after a close study you might
be tempted to think it very like that of any-
one else. The believer is not spared the com-
mon vicissitudes of life. Like his neighbor^
he must enter the struggle of business and
bear its disappointments. He, too, may know
what it is to labor long in hope, and wait in
vain for the harvest that never comes. He^
too, must bear the pain of suspense and daily

13

MODERN SERMONS

care, and perplexity of conscience, and fear
for those he loves. He, too, may feel the
weight of the dread law of God which rends
loving hearts asunder and makes havoc of our
plans. All this is true, and more; it is the
common lot of man. But yet, let us remem-
ber with thankfulness and proclaim it with
joy — this, tho it were multiplied and intensi-
fied a hundredfold, need not touch the true
life seated in the depths of the heart. The
storm may rage upon the coast, yet not a
breath of its fury reach the sequestered val-
ley that sleeps in the bosom of the hills. The
ocean surface may be torn and buffeted by bil-
lows that race from shore to shore, and all the
while the untroubled depths be still. And
just so, amid his cares and occupations, and
even his adversity, the believer may have a
mind at perfect peace; for his life, his true
life, the life that really makes the man, is hid
with Christ in God. And this is our unspeak-
able privilege, this is the perpetual miracle
we may put in force, that it is open to us to
fall back upon this indestructible peace. In
a moment, without a sound, wherever we are,
we can pass from the street into the sanctu-
ary, from the world into the presence of our
Lord; and there find our true life, calm and
safe with Him.

The life that is hid with Christ is not to be
hidden for ever. It is hidden thus, because
Christ is yonder and we are here. But like

14

MACKINTOSH

the bud that sleeps in its sheath and waits
for the call of the spring, the life of the man
of faith is big with promise. One day the
secret will be out. The vestments that wrapt
it round will be taken off, for the present is
but a stage that passes. When Christ who is
our life shall appear, then shall we also ap-
pear with Him in glory.

Take an instance. Take the life of one of
our countrymen in India. Soldier perhaps,
or missionary, or merchant, he labors on with
brain and hand, doing his work as only a true
man can. But his home — his home is in Scot-
land. Those he loves best of all are there;
and where a man's treasure is, there will his
heart be also. He would scorn to neglect his
duty; yet all the time his true life is circling
not round the routine of his station, but round
his home far away. And often, as he rides
from post to post his thoughts go a-wandering
over the sea to some cottage on the hill where
his children are, and he hears them shout in
their play amid the heather and the bracken,
or sees the mother stooping over them as they
sleep. It is an inner life unperceived by those
around him, but from it rise all but the very
highest incentives of brave and honest man-
hood. And as he toils and labors on, it is with
a great hope that the day will come when,
foreign service over, he will go back to his
home. And then, and ever after, what used
to be only the private luxury of quiet thought

15

MODERN SERMONS

will, please God, be the open and endless in-
terest of every hour and every day.

Is there one of us who does not feel this to
be only a parable of the Christian life? We
give thanks to God for the supplies of love
and grace that are ours now; we bless the
good hand that gives them, and we strive to
use them for His glory. But all the while the
thought is uppermost with us that something
better — far better — is yet to be revealed. Not
that we should long for death, not that, in our
haste, we should call the world a barren,
weary desert. The earth is the Lord's, and
the fulness thereof ; and the time and the com-
ing of death we gladly leave to the secret
love of God. But more and more, if we are
Christians at all, we are coming to be sure,
and ever surer, that God has kept the best to
the last. Here we draw from the stream, but
one day we shall stand by the very fountain-
head. We shall leave the foreign land, and
travel to God, who is our home.

Our life is hidden now, because Christ is
hidden; hidden, not in darkness, but in the
light where He dwells with the Father. It is
better that it should be so, is it not? It is
better that our stores and treasures should be
outside of ourselves. Yes, and every new gift
that comes from Christ, every new grasp of
His hand, every reminder of His love, only
stirs us to think how much He has laid up in
store for the trusting heart, awaiting the dis-

16

MACKINTOSH

closure of the great day. How deep and
broad must be the ocean of that hidden life
and love, when out of it flows this clear, deep
river, so full of water, making glad the city of
God!

VI— 2 17

M'CAIG
GOD'S SUCCESSFUL SERVANT

ARCHIBALD M'CAIG

Principal of Pastors* College, London,
since 1898; born March 31, 1852, at
Bridge of Earn, Perthshire, Scotland;
brought up in Cowdenbeath, Fifeshire;
began to preach in 1869 ; colporteur at Of-
f ord in Huntingdonshire, 1874, under Met-
ropolitan Tabernacle Colportage Associa-
tion, and pastor of Baptist church; a
year later took the oversight of the church
at Buckden in conjunction with Off ord;
entered Pastors' College, 1879; in 1880
sent by C. H. Spurgeon as student-pastor
to Stratheam; settled there in 1881; in
1884 went to Brannoxtown in County
Kildare, Ireland, there pursued univer-
sity studies, taking B.A. and LL.B de-
grees at the Royal University; secretary
to the Irish Baptist Association and editor
of Magazine, becoming president in
1892; classical tutor at Pastors' College,
1892; LL.D., 1895; author of "How I
Became a Christian and a Baptist," " The
Grand Old Book," etc.

GOD'S SUCCESSFUL SERVANT
Prin. a. M'Caig, D.D., LL.D.

*' Behold, my servant shall deal prudently, he shall
ie exalted and extolled, and he very high." — Isaiah
52 : 13.

THESE words stand at the commencement
of the most evangelical portion of this
most evangelical prophecy. That the
person here spoken of is the Messiah there can
be no reasonable doubt. Upon no other hy-
pothesis can the words be explained. The
Jewish rabbis have generally applied them to
Christ paraphrasing them thus: ** He shall
be higher than Abram, more elevated than
Moses and exalted above the ministering an-
gels. ' ' We have New Testament authority for
applying them to Jesus. It was here the Ethi-
opian eunuch was reading when Philip ac-
costed him. It was concerning the One here
depicted that he asked '' of whom speaketh
the prophet this, of himself or some other
man? " and the evangelist satisfactorily an-
swered his question by beginning at the same
Scripture and preaching unto him Jesus.

The prophet has been addressing Zion,
speaking comfortably to the Jerusalem
Church, but now *' a change comes over the
spirit of his dream '^ and before him stands

21

MODERN SERMONS

not the Church, but the Church's head, not
Zion but Zion 's King. He tunes his harp to a
higher key and gives forth loftier music than
he has yet attempted. The sufferings and
glory of the Messiah form his theme and with
such a theme the meanest strains might well
be transfigured with celestial beauty. But it
is no unskilled hand that strikes that harp,
'tis no cold heart that conceives that melody !
*Tis Isaiah, the royal prophetic bard of Israel,
and 'tis Isaiah with every power of heart and
imagination set on fire by the divine Spirit.
This verse may be considered as an epitome,
as weU as the beginning of the poem that
closes with the fifty-third chapter. The first
burst is glorious, but as he recounts the humil-
iation that precedes the exaltation, as he de-
scribes the path of shame that leads to place
of glory, the strain sinks into a mournful
plaint marvelous in its heartstirring power,
anon he takes a higher flight and exultingly
proclaims the unrivaled glories of the once
suffering but now reigning Christ.

We are here called upon to behold Christ
performing His work — Christ receiving His
reward. It is as God 's servant that He works.
*' Behold my servant." Jehovah is the
speaker — Jehovah is the great Master of the
universe. He claims, and has a right to claim,
all things and all beings as His servants. The
rising sun goes forth at His command. At
His bidding the clouds gather, the thunders

22

M'CAIG

roll, the lightnings flash. The hoary ocean,
unfettered by mortal power, scorning the
lashes of one monarch, laughing at the com-
mands of another, is yet obedient as a slave
to Him who hath said, " Hitherto shalt thou
come, but no farther, and here shalt thy proud
waves be stayed. " * ' Fire and hail, snow and
vapors, stormy winds fulfil His word; moun-
tains and all hills, fruitful trees and all ce-
dars, beasts and all cattle, creeping things '*
and all flying fowl, men, angels and even
devils ; all are His servants.

But of all His servants there is none so
glorious, none so worthy of admiration, none
so much the object of His complacence as
Jesus Christ. To Him again and again in this
prophecy does Jehovah point, saying: *' Be-
hold my servant.'^ The idea that Christ in
His atoning work was the servant of God is
often overlooked, or at least is not kept so
prominently in view as the Bible puts it. It
is a glorious fact, that when * ' He made him-
self of no reputation and took upon him the
form of a servant," it was that He might
*' minister and give his life a ransom for
many ' ' and He was among men ' ' as one that
serveth," living and dying for their good,
working out their eternal salvation. But
while we dwell with wonder and gratitude
upon this blessed aspect of His work, we
should beware of being selfishly engrossed in
it to the exclusion of other and perhaps higher

23

MODERN SERMONS

aspects of that work. In all His work Christ
was God's servant. He came not to do His
own will but the will of Him that sent Him.
The primary object of His coming into the
world was not to save sinners, but to glorify
God. It is blessedly true that the two things,
in fact, are inseparable. In glorifying God He
secured our salvation. But still we can sepa-
rate them in thought, and doing so it is not
difficult to see that the glory of God must be
the primary object of the Saviour's work.
** Man's chief end was to glorify God."
Through his sin he failed to fulfil the end of
his being. God was dishonored. His law
broken. His authority defied. His claims set at
nought. Now it was necessary that repara-
tion should be made, that the divine glory
should be vindicated. Had it been otherwise
God might have saved man without the atone-
ment of a mediator. But this could not be.
There must first be ** Glory to God in the
highest " before there could be '* peace on
earth and goodwill to men. ' '

So, in order that salvation might be brought
nigh to us, Christ had to stoop to the servant 's
place to glorify God by His life and satisfy all
the claims of justice by His death. Leaving
the glory. His language is : * ' Lo I come to do
thy will," and aU through life He was about
his Father's business. His lifelong motto be-
ing * * I must work the works of him that sent
me,'^ It was most fitting that in the place

24

M'CAIG

where God had been dishonored, He should be
glorified, that in the place where His law had
been broken and despised, it should be obeyed,
' ' magnified and made honorable, ' ' that as the
sons of men had gone astray from the path of
His commandments a son of man should walk
undefiled in that way. With Christ the
Father was ever well pleased. His whole life
yielded a sweet-smelling savor unto God, and
at its close He could say, " I have glorified
thee on the earth."

He does His work well. ' ' My servant shall
deal prudently," or act wisely. The transla-
tion of the margin ' ' he shall prosper ' ' is con-
sidered by some to be a better rendering of
the Hebrew word. They are somewhat led to
this meaning by what follows. Others, how-
ever, think that our version is more correct ; it
is the usual meaning of the word and as we
have the prosperity in the next clause it seems
better to keep to the primary meaning — ' ' act
wisely." Even those who think it should be
' ' prosper ' ' admit that it is prosperity gained
through intelligent labor, so that we are
brought back to the original idea and are jus-
tified in referring these words to the work
which leads to the prosperity of the next
clause. How truly does this language describe
the conduct of our Redeemer. He ever acted
wisely — ^as the God-man He was the very em-
bodiment of wisdom, and looking at any part
of His great work we see that it was well and

25

MODERN SERMONS

wisely done. The work which Christ under-
took required the utmost skill. To glorify
God by obeying His laws, and to work out a
righteousness for man was no trifling task.
To remove the sin that dishonored God and as
a mighty barrier stood in the way of man's
salvation was no easy matter. There are some
works so important, so difficult of perform-
ance that they are only entrusted to the most
skilled workmen. It isn 't any novice in archi-
tecture that can be entrusted with the erection
of a '^ St. Paul's Cathedral," it requires a
Christopher Wren. It isn't any paltry
rhymer who can write a '' Paradise Lost,"
it requires a John Milton. The work set be-
fore Christ is out of all comparison the most
wonderful of all works — creation is nothing to
it — a word of His lips could bring that about.
Redemption must be a lifelong task involving
the most amazing humiliation and unparal-
leled sufferings. But all that had to be done
Christ did and did in the most perfect
manner. Do we behold Him in conflict with
the enemy of souls ? How wisely does He act !
How gloriously does He triumph! See the
fiend approach strong in his infernal skill,
confident in the gathered experience of cen-
turies, eager to overcome this second man as
he had the first. Mark the Saviour's condi-
tion ; in want and weakness through His forty
days ' fast ; isolated from all his friends, in the
wilderness with no companion save the wild

26

M'CAIG

beasts. Who that had any knowledge of
Satan's power and of man's weakness but
would have thought the tempter sure of an
easy victory. With Satanic sagacity and skill
he tries every weapon that before had stood
him in such good stead in his attacks on men.
But calmly, in the unfaltering confidence of
His integrity the Christ of God awaits the on-
slaught, parries every blow, wards off every
dart. Ah! Satan, thou hast met thy match
this time. It is no frail Eve or wavering
Adam with whom thou art now dealing.
There is no loose joint in His heaven made
armor, there is no vulnerable spot in this
AchiUes. '* The baffled prince of hell " retires
to the darkness of his den, while the Father
seeing how wisely His glorious Son had acted
sends a band of angels to minister to His
wants.

Do we consider this divine Servant as a
teacher, fulfilling His work as Prophet, re-
vealing to men the character of God, unfold-
ing to them heavenly mysteries ? There is the
same perfection manifest. How well He un-
derstands the needs of His audience; how
"wisely He adapts His words to their under-
standing; how thoroughly He holds the mul-
titude spellbound by His marvelous elo-
quence. Little children flock to His knees and
look wdth confidence into His eyes of love.
Publicans and sinners draw near to listen to-
the gracious words proceeding from His lips.

27

MODERN SERMONS

The common people hear Him gladly, while
those who have the temerity to cavil at His
teaching and engage Him in dispute are
silenced by the force of His replies and cov-
ered with confusion. The testimony of His
enemies and in that testimony all His friends
join, is *' Never man spake like this man."
Are we occupied with Him as obeying the law
of God? How well is that work done! No
half-hearted obedience does He render, no
passing over some duties as trivial, no obtrud-
ing of His holiness before men, no mere out-
ward observance of commands. His obedience
was perfect — perfect in kind, perfect in ex-
tent. The keenest eye, yea the eye of God
could see no fault in Him. You may find
spots on the sun, but there is no spot in this
Son of righteousness. The heavens may not
be pure in the sight of God, but He finds no
impurity in Him. He may charge His angels
with foUy, but of this holy Servant, He must
ever say * ' He acts wisely. ' '

Thus might we look at every part of His
work and see the same divine wisdom mani-
fested. Through all His miracles it shines,
in His contact with enemies it is conspicuous ;
in His dealings with friends and disciples it
is apparent.

If we could we would like to gaze upon Him
as He performs the most marvelous part of
His work, the bearing the wrath of G^d, the
putting away of our sin. But this is a work

28

M'CAIG

that baffles onr comprehension. AYe cannot
pierce the gloom that enshrouds Him in Geth-
semane, yet a glimmer of light shows us the
divine Man almost appalled at the magnitude
of the task, but a following flash enables us to
see Him strengthening Himself in God, fully
prepared *' to seize our dreadful right, the
load sustain, and heave the mountain from a
guilty world." Our vision cannot penetrate
the mysteries of Calvary. We cannot compre-
hend the transfer of sin to Him or the out-
pouring of divine indignation. "We cannot
conceive His soul agony. His terrible torture.
But we feel assured that He has done all that
was required as only a God-man could. We
know He has borne our sin ; we know He has
endured God 's wrath ; we know He has made
peace by the blood of His cross. And as we
hear Him cry *' It is finished,'* we can sing
with joyM hearts, ** He has done all things
well." To Him we can apply His own words
in a far higher sense than to any other:
' ' Well done thou good and faithful servant. ' '
At the crucifixion as certainly as at His bap-
tism and transfiguration Jehovah can say,
'' This is my beloved Son in whom I am well
pleased." Well might He, looking through
the ages to this unparalleled transaction, ex-
claim through the lips of His prophet, " Be-
hold my servant shall deal prudently. ' '

Although these words have had their ful-
filment in His life and death, there is yet a

29

MODERN SERMONS

sense in which they are being fulfilled. In
reference to His saving and blessing sinners,
to His guiding and perfecting His saints, to
His managing the affairs of His kingdom, we
may still say, He acts wisely, He deals pru-
dently.

Let us consider Christ receiving His re-
Tvard. There are three words used to indicate
this reward. He shall be exalted and extolled
and be very high. The second word which we
generally understand as referring to praise
seems rather to be held here in its original
literal meaning — " lifted up " — at least the
word for which it is translated means to be
lifted up. One commentator marking the dis-
tinction between the three words says, they
yield this meaning, '* He will rise up, He will
raise Himself still higher. He will stand on
high." Another adopting a similar interpre-
tation says, *' There is a climax here in these
words, each expressing a higher degree of ex-
altation than the other — the first to be set up-
right, the second to be raised from the ground,
the third to be lifted up very high. ' ' So that
taking this view I would venture to apply
them to Christ's resurrection, His ascension
and His sitting at the right hand of God, or
His glorification.

The resurrection of Christ is at once the re-
ward of His work and the proof of its accom-
plishment. It is the proof inasmuch as God
thereby declares that He is satisfied with what

30

M'CAIG

Christ has done. The claims made during His
life are thereby vindicated, no impostor could
have triumphed over the tomb, nor could God
have thus signified His approval of one whose
whole life was a lie. But the resurrection is
more than this, it is part of the reward of His
toil ; it is a portion of the joy that was set be-
fore Him, for which He endured the cross;
it is the beginning of that glory which as
Mediator He was to possess. Men having
done their worst, the Redeemer's body is laid
in the grave, but in prospect of that dark
hour. He thus expresses His joyful confi-
dence : ' ' My flesh shall rest in hope because
thou wilt not leave my soul in hell, neither
wilt thou suffer thine holy one to see cor-
ruption.''

He knew that the reward was at hand, and
when all was accomplished the Father was not
slow to fulfil the conditions of the glorious
covenant. Very early on that third morning
does He send His messengers to unlock the
prison gates and lead His matchless Servant
into liberty. How often do the apostles de-
clare that God raised Jesus from the dead,
frequently putting God's action in contrast
with men's, as *' Him ye have taken and by
wicked hands have crucified and slain, whom
God hath raised up; " ^' Ye killed the prince
of life, whom God hath raised up." Men by
putting Him to death said, this fellow is not
fit to live, He is a blasphemer, He is the ob-

31

MODERN SERMONS

ject of God's displeasure. God, by raising
Him said, '' Behold my Servant whom I up-
hold, mine elect in whom my soul delighteth. ' '
Ought not Christ to have suffered and to enter
into His glory? The glory is a necessary
consequence of the suffering. The suffering
was the necessary prelude to the glory. How
often it is so in God 's universe. You bury the
little bulb in the dark earth and it seems the
ruin of it, but soon it emerges from the gloom,
and blooms in all the beauty of a new life.
The gladsome spring follows gloomy winter.
The evening and the morning in God 's reckon-
ing make the day.

It was not enough that Christ should be
raised from the dead. He must be extolled,
lifted higher, taken up into heaven, and so in
due time His ascension takes place. Having
given to His disciples full proof of His resur-
rection, having unfolded to them all that He
purposed of the mysteries of the kingdom, He
gathers them around Him at Olivet, and after
a few farewell words. He gives them His part-
ing blessing, mounts His cloudy chariot, and
majestically ascends to the court of heaven.
Christ is sometimes represented as rising from
the dead and ascending to glory, by virtue of
His own inherent power. But both trans-
actions are also regarded as the work of God.
We have seen how the Scriptures which de-
clare that God raised Him abundant also in
the testimony that God exalted Him. *' He

32

M'CAIG

was received up into heaven." " He was car-
ried up into heaven." ^' Being by the right
hand of God him hath God exalted with his
right hand." And that this is part of His re-
ward is clearly shown by the apostle in the
Epistle to the Philippians, when after speak-
ing of the humiliation that Christ had under-
gone, he says: " Wherefore God hath highly
exalted him. ' ' What a time of exultation must
that have been for the inhabitants of the New
Jerusalem when our Lord as a victor ap-
proached the battlements. His attending
angels, eager to have Him in His rightful
place, cry : ' ' Lift up your heads O ye gates
and be ye lifted up ye everlasting doors, that
the King of glory may come in." And to the
inquiry that comes from within, " Who is
this King of glory, ' ' they rapturously give the
answer, " The Lord strong and mighty, the
Lord mighty in battle. ' ' In old Roman times
it was considered a special distinction for the
king or general, with his owti hand to slay the
leader of the opposing army and to present
his arms as spoils to the gods. Our King had
met in conflict the prince of darkness and had
completely vanquished him and now — " Ye
angel guards like flames divide and give the
King of glory way," for

'* He subdued the powers of hell,
In the fight He stood alone,
All His foes before Him fell,
By His single arm overthrown.

VI— 3 33

MODERN SERMONS

His the fight, the arduous toil,

His the honor of the day;
His the glory and the spoil,

Jesus bears them all away/'

He is sitting at the right hand of God. He
is made very high. The words denote the
position into which the resurrection and as-
cension have brought Him. It was not
enough that He should be raised and taken to
heaven. ** He must be made very high.*'
The words are most emphatic and indicate the
superlative glory that He has acquired. God
has not only rewarded Him with a place in
heaven but He has given Him the place of
highest honor. He has ** set him at his own
right hand in the heavenly places, far above
all principality, and power and might and
dominion and every name that is named, not
only in this world, but also in that which is
to come; and hath put all things under his
feet ' * ; angels and authorities and powers be-
ing made subject under Him.

Yes, He whose name was a byword of shame
below, has now '* a name that is above every
name. ' ' He who ' * for a little w£is made lower
than the angels," has been *' crowned with
glory and honor,'' ** being made so much
better than the angels as he hath by inheri-
tance obtained a more excellent name than
they." He who in the boundlessness of His
love for the lost *' descended into the lower
parts of the earth " hath ascended up far

34

M'CAIG

above all heavens that he might fill all
things. Yes ! ' ' the highest place that heaven
affords, is His, is His by right." In this all
His people rejoice, by faith they can see " the
glories of the Lamb amid the Father's
throne "; and triumphantly sing ** The head
that once was crowned with thorns is crowned
with glory now. ' *

But after all how imperfectly do we com-
prehend His glory. Our mortal eyes cannot
bear the sight. Paul was struck blind by the
glory of the light that shone from His pres-
ence, and John the beloved disciple, who had
reclined on His bosom and enjoyed the most
intimate fellowship with Him, when favored
with a glimpse of His glory, falls at His feet
as dead. Ah ! John had seen the Son of right-
eousness when obscured by the clouds of
humanity, but the Sun shining in His strength
utterly overpowers him.

As we think of the high position of Christ
let us remember that He occupies it by virtue
of His atoning work. As God He was in-
finitely glorious before His humiliation, but
He is now glorified as the divine Servant, the
God-man, the Mediator; and not only is He
glorious in His person and position, but also
in His saving power. He is a Prince and a
Saviour to give repentance and remission of
sins. ** All power is given unto him in
heaven and on earth," and the first use He
makes of that power is to send forth His disci-

35

MODERN SERMONS

pies with a message of mercy to sinners. He
is not only enthroned but He sitteth as a
priest upon His throne and is building the
spiritual temple. He will ever bear the glory.
"We have thus tried to consider the histori-
cal fulfilment of these wondrous words. We
have marked the three stages of His exaltation
as already accomplished. Let us now briefly
notice the spiritual and continual fulfilment.
It is a cause of rejoicing to every Christian
heart that Jesus has already been exalted and
extolled and made very high, but we look for
a more glorious exaltation. He has after all
only entered into His glory. He is yet to see
the perfect fruition of His soul travail and be
fully satisfied. His humiliation has indeed
yielded a rich harvest of glory. The first
fruits have already been presented to Him.
He has through these centuries been reaping
the precious fruits of His passion; but the
glorious feast of ingathering is yet future.
Every soul saved by His gospel, every saint
sanctified by His Spirit, every victory won
by His church, increases His glory, adds to
His reward, lifts Him higher, and so shall it
be till all His ransomed ones are saved from
sin and gathered into glory. The prophetic
words of the Baptist remain true and daily
receive their fulfilment. " He must in-
crease." These words are but the echo of a
strain from the same harp that gave forth the
soimd of our text, ' ' of the increase of his gov-

36

M'CAIG

emment shall be no end. ' ' He reigns and will
reign till all are subdued to Him. To Him,
the Father hath decreed that *' every knee
shall bow, and every tongue confess that he is
Lord." Even in this sin-curst earth He shall
be manifestly exalted and extolled and made
very high. The world is His by right, by pur-
chase and by conquest. The heathen have
been given Him for His inheritance, the utter-
most parts of the earth for a possession. He
has been *' made the head of the heathen, and
a people not known shall serve him, as soon
as they hear of him, they shall obey, the
strangers shall submit themselves unto him."
As His heralds proclaim His approaching
kingdom the rebels shall surrender and yield
Him grateful homage and so shall His revenue
of glory increase until the whole of His des-
tined dominion shall acknowledge His sway,
and give Him His well won meed of glory.
There is something very pleasing in the
thought that in the very world where He bore
the cross, He shall wear the crown ; that in the
place where He was covered with shame, He
shall be clothed with glory ; that where He was
despised, rejected and lightly esteemed, '' he
shall be exalted and extolled and be very
high." This ought to be, this must be, this
will be. Unbelief says *' How can this thing
be ? It is impossible. ' ' Faith replies " ye do
greatly err not knowing the Scriptures and the
power of God." William Burns gave a right

37

144620

MODERN SERMONS

answer to the lady who asked him what were
his prospects of success in China, when he
said, ' * Bright as the promises of God. ' * Even
so, and according to these promises *' the
earth shall be full of the knowledge of the
Lord as the waters cover the sea." *' The
kingdoms of this world shall become the king-
doms of our Lord and of his Christ." *' He
shall be exalted and extolled and be very
high."

** Kings shall fall down before Him,

And gold and incense bring;
All nations shall adore Him,

His praise all people sing.
For He shall have dominion,

O'er river, sea and shore,
Far as the eagle 's pinion,

Or dove's light wing can soar."

Nor shall this poor globe alone *' be filled
with his glory, ' ' but the whole universe to its
utmost bounds, shall overflow with the praise
of our glorified Lord.

38

McCLURE
EMPHASIS ON THE AFFIRMATIVE

JAMES G. K. McCLURE

President of McCormick Theological
Seminary, Chicago, since 1905; bom in
Albany, N. Y., November 24, 1848; edu-
cated in the Albany Academy where he
prepared for college; took a special year
of study in Phillips Academy, Andover,
Mass. ; entered Yale College, 1866 ; Prince-
ton Theological Seminary three years;
pastor at New Scotland, N. Y., five years ;
spent a year in travel in the British Isles,
on the Continent, in Egypt, the Holy
Land, Turkey and Greece; pastor of the
Lake Forest, 111., Presbyterian church,
1881-1905 ; president pro tempore of Lake
Forest University, 1892,3; president,
1897-1901; received the degree of D.D.
from Lake Forest, Princeton and Yale
universities, and the degree of LL.D. from
the College of Illinois; has been univer-
sity preacher at Hai-vard, Yale, Princeton
and other institutions ; author of " His-
tory of New Scotland, N. Y., Presbyterian
Church," "Possibilities," "The Man
Who Wanted to Help," " The Great Ap-
peal," " Environment," " For Hearts that
Hope," " A Mighty Means of Usefulness,"
"Living for the Best," "The Growing
Pastor," " Loyalty, the Soul of Religion,"
etc.

40

EMPHASIS ON THE AFFIRMATIVE

Pres. James G. K. McClure, D.D., LL.D.
* * Ee healed all that were sick. ' * — Matt. 8 : 16

IT is through emphasis that we influence our
fellows. The monotone is never listened
to for any length of time : it has in it no
power to stir another's soul and rouse it to
action. Only when a man, in speech or in
conduct, puts special energy into his expres-
sion can he awaken the attention of the care-
less and fire cold hearts. It was the emphasis
St. Bernard placed upon his assertion, ' ' The
Holy Sepulcher must be rescued ! ' ' that awak-
ened Europe and brought about the Crusades.
It is through emphasis, also, that we mani-
fest our individuality. Forceful individuality
cannot exist apart from emphasis. We be-
come mere ciphers as soon as all things to us
are equally important or equally unimportant.
Our glory lies in our having our own personal
convictions, our own personal enthusiasms
and our own personal determinations. These
personal possessions are our distinction, our
reason for being; they justify our existence.
By means of them we reveal ourselves to our
fellows, and we bring to the world our special
contribution to its thought and welfare. Em-
phasis thus becomes our distinctive sphere,

41

MODERN SERMONS

and our opportunity. It was his emphasis
upon his devotion to liberty that enabled Pat-
rick Henry to show what manner of man he
was and to voice his soul in the terms of
patriotism.

In the choice of emphasis we need to be dis •
criminating. All sorts of ideals, standards
and visions rise up before us. Some are safe,
some dangerous. On what are we to place em-
phasis so that we make no mistake in shaping
our own lives, or in influencing the lives of
others? The question is far-reaching; it has
in it the making or the unmaking of character,
the weal or the wo of society.

What says Christ to the question? His an-
swer is this : ' * Notice the things on which I
place emphasis and see if a general principle
of emphasis may be deduced from my
methods."

Christ placed emphasis on courage, not
cowardice ; on purity, not lust ; on peace, not
discord ; on hope, not despair.

There is one nature common to all these
qualities that Christ emphasized: the nature
of the affirmative, the constructive. The prin-
ciple of emphasis Christ thus would teach us
is '* emphasis on the affirmative." Accord-
ingly we find as we proceed to the considera-
tion of His courses of action that this prin-
ciple is recognized, and even asserted, by
every feature of His life.

In speaking of Himself, it is always in

42

McCLURE

affirmative tones : ' * I am the way, ""lam
the door," " I am the light of the world," " I
am the resurrection and the life." "Whenever
He speaks of His mission, that mission is de-
clared to be the giving of life, and the giving
of it more abundantly ; the opening of prison
doors, the delivering of captive^s and the heal-
ing of the broken-hearted. He found the
blind, and He made them see; the deaf, and
He made them hear; the lame, and He made
them walk. The ignorant He taught, the
suffering He comforted, and the wandering
He searched out.

Wlien it came time to send forth those who
were apostolically commissioned to continue
His work in the ages, He charged them to
bring new joys to human hearts, and to re-
cover the world to health and gladness.
Everywhere they were to bestow a benedic-
tion.

Thus in word and in deed, in spirit and in
instruction Christ placed emphasis on con-
structive things, passing beyond judgment to
helpfulness, beyond the detection of evil to the
relief of evil, beyond the discovery of error to
the provision of truth.

This principle of emphasis on the affirma-
tive is noticeable both for its effect on the in-
dividual and for its effect on society. In the
individual it develops self-mastery, self-
growth and self-ennoblement. Nothing in this
world is easier to cherish than the censorious

43

MODERN SERMONS

spirit, nor easier to utter than the censorious
word. Our fellow-creatures are weak and im-
perfect. There is not one of them unexposed
to sharp criticism by reason of his many
foibles. Besides, our own natures often have
within them the taints of jealousy and envy,
and we readily see, and magnify, the imper-
fections in our comrades' characters, and in
their writings and speeches. Once more, carp-
ing criticism loves to show off. The very
spirit that animated Don Quixote when he
posed before Sancho Panza, many times ani-
mates ourselves as, full-booted and spurred,
we exhibit our wit against the productions of
our associates. And the more scholarly, re-
fined and highly attuned we are, the quicker
we recognize the lack, whatever it may be, in
our comrades. That man must be a self-
master who will not allow himself to be swept
along the line of least resistance, of speaking
his first inclination in condemnation, but who
restrains that inclination, who brings it into
subjection to love, and who patiently awaits
the hour when he unselfishly may express his
matured consideration in actual helpfulness.

During the civil war, Abraham Lincoln had
many misgivings as to the prospects and
policy of the administration — both in camp
and in Congress. But he never told the pub-
lie one of these misgivings. To have pub-
lished them would have been easy, and would
have been a bid for sjonpathy. But to let the

44

McCLURE

nation have an inkling of these misgivings
would have been perilous. To withhold these
misgivings and suffer, was heroic and secured
safety. Such self-mastery was his that when
the war was over he could say, ' ' So long as I
have been here I have not willingly planted
a thorn in any man 's bosom. ' '

Self -growth also is developed by this prin-
ciple. When Leonardo da Vinci was asked
why he did not go about, telling the people of
his day wherein this painter and that sculptor,
this architect and that engineer, had failed,
he replied: " I criticize by creation.^' And,
lo, as he painted, as he carved his statues, as
he erected his buildings and as he constructed
his defenses of war, Leonardo — through crea-
tion, through betterment of that attempted by
others, came to his growth.

To pull down the outer covering of the great
pyramid may be done by the rude Arab, to
bum the Alexandrian library may be the
work of an ignorant fanatic, to find a spot in
the sun may be possible even to a little child.
But the building of the pyramid, the writing
of the Alexandrian library, the creating of the
sun, demand profound capacity. As men
stretch themselves to forward the world's
good, they develop. Dissent has its mission.
The man who protests is always needed.
Things indeed are not right in the world, and
he who refuses to be a part of the established
order of wrong must voice himself. But

45

MODERN SERMONS

merely to dissent, merely to find fault, leaves
a man stunted forever. Had not the Pilgrim
Fathers brought new material to the front and
stood for advance steps in learning and in
freedom, they to-day would be without recog-
nized place among the world's heroes. John
Knox said ** No " to Mary; but he said
'* Yes '' to all the rest of Scotland, and
through the provision he made for public edu-
cation and for national betterment he became
Scotland's inspiration.

And self -ennoblement waits on this princi-
ple. Here is a man who visits a South Sea
island. He finds debasement, wretchedness
and blank outlook. He truly has done some-
thing when he writes an accurate description
of these awful conditions — even tho he
does so in the spirit of hopelessness; for he
has made a certain contribution to ethnic
studies, and has increased humanity's knowl-
edge of itself. But it is far different when
another man goes to that same island, offers
his services of helpfulness to its people, dwells
amongst them, creates a written language for
them, lifts them up from vice to virtue and
makes their hearts to rejoice and blossom as a
garden of the Lord.

Constructive work is the most self-expensive
work that can possibly be done ; it is done at
the cost of brain and heart. There is always
blood, yes, the blood of the builder himself —
mingled with the mortar, when the perma-

46

McCLURE

nently good is laid, stone by stone, and the
edifice of human welfare rises in beauty. It
is when the seed that seeks to produce a har-
vest, falls into the ground and dies that it
comes to its glorification ; and it is when men
in pursuit of the good pour out their energy
and devotion like water, that they bring bless-
ings to their fellows and ennoblement to them-
selves.

In society as well as in the individual this
principle accomplishes most desirable results.
It answers to the world's need with provision
for that need. That it is part of true interest
in humanity to uncover sins is certainly true.
*' If I had not come, ye would not have had
sin. Now ye have no cloak for your sin."
Every foul spot must be foimd. Every cause
of disease and misery must be ascertained,
every error must be probed to its last root.
We are to be search commissioners for wrong.
Wherever Christ went He uncovered all
manner of sickness — both of body and of soul.
But humanity needs more than uncovering,
more than self -revelation. It needs healing;
it needs cheer, and strength, and wisdom.
The denial of every falsehood under the sun
will not germinate one thought of life. The
beauty of Christ was that when He found
hunger He fed it; thirst, He gave it drink;
sin, He imparted righteousness.

The men who have been its builders are the
world's benefactors — the men who have sup-

47

MODERN SERMONS

planted weeds with wheat, who have spanned
crevasses with bridges, who have made fear-
some electricity a servant of comfort, who
have sung the songs that changed night into
day, who have put hope into the disconsolate
and have added to human life an increment of
blessedness.

When now it comes to the practical applica-
tion of this principle, what shall be its sphere ?
Its sphere is as wide and inclusive as the
worthy activities of man.

Livingstone, at the time he went out to
Africa, purposed not alone to uncover its
sores, but also to provide everything that
should heal those sores. There was a vision in
his heart for that ill land: he saw steamers
plying on the rivers, commerce developed,
railways built, schools filled with youth, courts
established, hospitals in operation, churches
lifting thought skyward.

Lord John Lawrence, when he assumed civil
service in India, purposed that every feature
of native life should be advanced : that there
should be good agriculture, good roads, good
armies, good literature, good laws.

In the physical world, affirmative work is to
be done — in the protection of the laborer from
dangerous machinery and from diseases that
are incident to occupation ; in the abolition of
child labor ; in the safe-guarding of the health
of the community ; in the gradual and reason-
able reduction of toil to the lowest point, so

48

McCLURE

that there shall be work for all and every one
shall have that degree of leisure essential to
the highest physical and mental life ; in the
securing to man release from employment one
day in seven and the largest remuneration
compatible with general prosperity.

The intellectual world also has its sphere for
the application of this principle. It is not
enough to write the book that shows the stings
of conscience, nor to put upon the stage the
play that points the hard way of the trans-
gressor, nor to make clear in education what
the tendencies of evil are, and what its results.
Literature has not accomplished its end when
it leaves the human mind weary and the
human heart discouraged. Splendid as such
a book as George Eliot's '* Komola " is, set-
ting forth the smooth, deceptive, ruinous
course of evil — a master-piece of its kind —
side by side with ' ' Komola ' ' and as a comple-
ment to it must be the book that shows the pos-
sibility of another course, a course that calls
to manhood, and nobleness and high mission.

Kuskin declared that we should introduce
as much beauty into literature as is possible —
consistent with truth. " If there are a num-
ber of figures we are to make as many of the
figures beautiful as the faithful representa-
tion of humanity will admit. Not that we are
to deny the facts of ugliness, or superiority,
of feature — as necessarily manifested in a
crowd ; but, as far as is in our power, seek for

VI— 4 49

MODERN SERMONS

and dwell on the beauty that is in them, not on
the ugliness. ' '

The social world too waits for the applica-
tion of this principle. There are wrongs on
every hand. They invade trade, they lay their
hand on banking, they breathe over the gath-
erings of social pleasure. The ethics of the
market place are not satisfactory, the talk of
the drawing-room is not inspiring, the manip-
ulation of politics is not elevating.

Everything that is enervating is to be con-
demned. The denunciator is an ordained
John the Baptist whose place and part in the
world are divinely ordered. It may be
cowardly for us to hold back our rebukes — ^to
fail to cry aloud when we see the sword ad-
vancing.

But John Howard is to suggest our method
of action. He learned the dreadful condition
of the prisons of England. Then he took his
wealth, social position and learning, and con-
secrated them to the amelioration of such con-
ditions. He visited far and wide upon the
Continent, he wrote, he proposed legislation,
and in due time he brought about the very
amelioration that he sought. Nor must it be
forgotten that John the Baptist did not stop
with denunciation ; he pointed to the Deliverer
from sin, and he made denunciation merely
the awakening to the provisions of salvation.

The spiritual world waits for the applica-
tion of this principle. The mystery of ex-

50

McCLURE

istence will never cease. Knowledge only en-
hances mystery. The deeper we penetrate
into the knowable the more profound is the
surrounding darkness. What is needed to-
day, and always, is not the man who places
emphasis on the destruction of faith, but on
the construction of faith. Let criticism deal
severely with hypocrisy, let whited sepulchers
be exposed. Yes, and let every thing that mil-
itates agc.inst verity be fought to the finish
with the weapons of intellectual and scientific
investigation.

But Christ tried to make the hypocrite gen-
uine; to put faith where there was doubt,
and purpose where there was despair. And so
must we. The preacher is not the man to de-
clare all possible doubts, but to show the safe
way — like a pilot who may not declare every
rock, but who knows the course where there
are no rocks and takes his vessel over the safe
course. Positive truth that can be proved, il-
lustrated, applied, can be found. Such truth
is sufficient to occupy in declaration all a
man's time. There are standards and possi-
bilities that are sure. The world needs them.
They are the basis for its cheer and effort.
John the apostle did not close his Revelation
until after the story of woes and struggles and
bloodshed he set forth victory, and the way
thereto !

Let us turn to a consideration of the reasons
why this message has been preached.

51

MODERN SERMONS

It is preached to urge upon you — as your
lifelong treasure — the treasure of a heart of
love. No human being will be able all his days
to place emphasis on the affirmative unless
his heart is under the dominion of love : apart
from love he will be satisfied to be an on-
looker and an unmoved critic. Only the
Samaritan who has goodness will relieve the
world 's difficulties. Men without the goodness
of love will see, pass by, and render no help.
Love is ** the affirmative of affirmatives.'* It
is the power that dominated Christ : it is the
power tiiat provided Christ; love is Chris-
tianity. No other word may describe Chris-
tianity's spirit and Christianity's mission.

Matthew Arnold writing to Canon Farrar
said: ** Christianity like every other religion
will have its day and cease." No! Chris-
tianity will never cease, for there is one inde-
structible, imperishable element in the realm
of spirit, and that element is love. And so
long as Christianity is love, Christianity has
within it the power of an endless life !

This principle is preached to urge upon
men that they ally themselves with institu-
tions designed to be constructive of human
welfare.

The stranger standing before the Cologne
Cathedral was gazing at it in admiration, his
eyes lifted to its noble pinnacles and still
nobler towers. A man at his elbow touched
him. and proudly said, ' * I had part in build-

52

McCLURE

ing that cathedral! " Yes, he, the stone
mason, had had part in buildmg it, and well
he might rejoice in the cathedral he had
helped build.

We are to connect ourselves with the polit-
ical party that seems to us to have the purpose
and potency to answer to the largest good:
to unite with the ecclesiastical organization
that will make us the noblest, and will do, in
our judgment, the most for the world. Thus
we increase our own influence ; thus we be-
come a strand in the great rope; thus we
cheer on the workers who, in the love of God
and of man, would usher in the era of well-
being throughout the earth.

And again, this principle is advocated to
urge upon men to make their life-choices
along the line of the constructive. It is the
beauty of a liberal education that it puts into
its students the thought of service. Pew men
ever go out from a university to rent their
property for immoral purposes, or to engage
in commerce that is directly hurtful. They
would fear (were they moved by no higher
motive) to let their classmates associate them
with deteriorating occupations. Not for them
the saloon, the gambling hall, the place of
debauchery ! But there is always danger that
men will not choose occupations directly bene-
ficial; that ease, and refinement, and retire-
ment will allure them, and that they will fail
to be contributors to the world's advance.

53

MODERN SERMONS

This principle also teaches men to lay em-
phasis on the certainties of morality, to make
them loom large before their thought; live
them and live them to the full. There is only
one condition coupled with the gift to us of
truth, and that is that we incorporate it into
our life and practise it. Doubts are sure to
crowd around us. The burdens of care, the
vicissitudes of business, the disappointments
in our fellows, yes, and the disappointments
in ourselves will daze us and leave us uncer-
tain. And still we shall never be absolutely
uncertain. There will always be the beauty of
virtue, always the summons of duty, always
sweet friendship, always some particular truth
left to us. As we emphasize that truth, we are
safe: as we dwell upon it and use it, we go
from truth to truth, from strength to strength.

The only way to preserve the ideal is to con-
vert it into character: then we hold it, and it
holds us, forever more. This is the alchemy
whereby ** agnosticism is transmuted into
knowledge, and doubt into certitude."

As old Atlas carried the world on his shoul-
ders, so must we carry the world on our
hearts. Let us be sure that we live to lift it ;
to make it a wiser, safer, nobler world; to be
the physician who can build up health as well
as diagnose disease.

The unmet needs of the world are multitudi-
nous and they are complex. There is a place,
a large place, for every sincere man in the

54

McCLURE

meeting of those needs. They ask for the mas-
ter mind and the master heart. "We can keep
our strength only as we give it away. We are
never to let good stay in our hand until it
stales and corrupts. Paying out time, coun-
sel, effort — magnanimously and cheerily — we
thus put ourselves in the line of the world's
noblest leaders and in the line of Christ
Himself.

55

McCONNELL
THE STORAGE OF SPIRITUAL POWER

57

FRANCIS J. McCONNELL

President DePauw University, Green-
castle, Ind.; bom Trinway, Ohio, August
18, 1871; preparatoiy education at In-
dianapolis High School, Ohio State Uni-
versity preparatory department, Phillips
Andover Academy; Ohio Wesleyan Uni-
versity, 1894; S.T.B., Boston University,
1897; Ph.D., 1899; in the Methodist Epis-
copal ministry since 1894, with pastorates
at W. Chelmsford, Mass.; Newton Upper
Falls, Mass.; Ipswich, Mass.; Harvard
Street, Cambridge, Mass. ; and New York
Avenue, Brooklyn ; author of " The Di-
viner Immanence."

THE STORAGE OF SPIRITUAL
POWER

Pres. F. J. McCONNELL, D.D.

" Be shall he like a tree, planted "by the rivers of
water."— Vs. 1, 3.

THE Psalmist 's meaning is perfectly clear.
The righteous man shall, like the tree
on the river bank, have a never-failing
source of supply. According to the thought
of the Psalmist the tree flourishes because it is
near the river.

It is not with the direct meaning of the
Psalmist's sentence that I wish to deal. A
thought merely suggested by a Scripture pas-
sage can furnish a legitimate basis for our
religious meditation if only we are careful to
draw the line between what is definitely
taught and what is merely suggested. The
Psalmist thought of the tree as flourishing be-
cause of its nearness to the river. The mod-
em scientist puts forward also a companion
and reciprocal truth — the river flourishes be-
cause it is near the tree. The tree is supposed
to act as a reservoir or sponge for the storage
of rainfall. The roots underneath the sur-
face, and the matted soil made by the fallen
leaves catch the rain-drops and prevent their
rushing at once into the river. The waters

59

MODERN SERMONS

are gradually discharged and the river keeps
an even level. There is not flood in the spring-
time and drought in the summer. The tree
stores up the surplus riches of the excessive
rainfall for the dry days of a heated August.

So says the scientist. Whether his thought
has as much importance as he thinks it has, is
not for us to say. All that we urge is that
this emphasis on the function of the tree as
an instrument for the storage of water and of
power furnishes a suggestive starting point
for some reflections on the function of the
righteous man as a storage-place for spiritual
power. The great down-pourings of divine
blessing are not to be allowed to pass away at
once. The gifts of understanding and of
quickened affection for God, the insights into
the meaning of divine truth, the impulses to
larger activity are to be caught as they fall
and held for needs beyond those of the
moment.

As we look at the manner of the coming of
divine gifts we are struck by a certain irreg-
ularity. We cannot tell just Avhen the under-
standing of our dark problems is to come, or
just when we are to feel the uplift of affection
for which we long. The circumstances which
brought blessing yesterday may be attended
with no special gift to-day. There is some-
thing of an analogy between the coming of a
spiritual shower and the arrival of an actual
rain-storm. Each rests so completely upon

60

McCONNELL

elements as yet unknowTi to us that definite
prediction is hardly to be relied upon. Of
course the coming of each is dependent upon
law, but we do not as yet know all the law.
We can tell in general that certain conditions
will bring the refreshing which we crave, but
the laws do not help us to detailed forecasts.
The precise how and when are beyond us.
The weather prophet never makes more com-
plete failure than does the prophet of spirit-
ual things who undertakes to tell in advance
just how or when a soul will be helped or a
revival w^ill be started. The showers may fall
every day for weeks, and after that the
heavens may or may not be shut for months.

We are in the same plight in the religious
world that we feel in any realm where un-
certain and unknown factors have to be taken
into our reckoning. The business man studies
the financial and industrial sky more persist-
ently and carefully than the scientist looks
upon the rain-clouds, but the most astute cap-
tain of industry can see but a little way. The
elements of the problem are too vast and too
obscure. So it is also in the sphere of intel-
lectual achievement. Who can predict the
coming of another day of vast scientific ad-
vance like the latter part of the nineteenth
century ? Who can tell when there will come
another school of literary men like Longfellow
and Emerson and their contemporaries?
Who can tell us when we shall have another

61

MODERN SERMONS

class of statesmen like those of the day just
preceding and during the Civil War ? No, in-
tellectual showers of refreshing cannot be
foretold with satisfactory accuracy. There
are too many subtle and invisible factors.
There is for example, the inspiring power of
that something which we call the " spirit of
the age." The force of intellectual fashion,
a force which is almost omnipotent in its
power for good or evil, bloweth where it
listeth and no man can tell whence it cometh
or whither it goeth. Who sets the fashion
that makes a certain intellectual mood as com-
mon as the air we breathe? There is, again,
the coming of the genius to be taken into our
thought. Who now can tell when the next
genius is to come? We may try by culture
and training to bridge the gulf between ordi-
nary endowment and the endowment of gen-
ius but to no avail. We may say that the time
will produce the man, that when the genius
is needed he will appear, but the remark is
only partially true. When has the time not
called for the genius ? When has he not been
needed? Yet how seldom he appears.

All these considerations, and many more,
are to be held in mind when we are tempted to
make predictions concerning the arrival of
religious blessings. To be sure we all know
that with the fulfilment of certain conditions
certain results will manifest themselves in the
spiritual realm as well as in other reahns, but

62

McCONNELL

we must recognize that the conditions of many
blessings are as yet beyond our knowledge.
Even where we know the conditions we must
often simply wait for the fulness of the time.
Some uplifting revelations come out of the
peculiar circumstances of a particular period ;
but the circumstances can never be exactly re-
produced. How can we expect to have again
precisely the same throbbing love for the
truth which we felt in the instant of one su-
preme self -consecration ? Moreover, some
gifts of insight seem to come as the flow-
ering out of a line of thought or deed which
has been going on for months or years. The
insight is the result of spiritual fruit-yielding.
It may take years too grow to another insight
of equal forcefulness. Then there may be at
any time those sudden impressions which re-
veal to us so much of the glorv^ of God, but
whose comings we simply cannot anticipate.
In His dealings with His disciples Jesus never
encouraged them to believe that they could
foretell the precise time of His coming again.
We cannot feel that when He said that His
coming would have the unexpectedness of the
lightning's flash He meant merely a physical
coming. He must have meant those spiritual
comings for which the Church was to look.
When He warned His disciples to be on the
watch for His reappearing He also counseled
them to be prepared in case He did not ap-
pear as they expected.

63

MODERN SERMONS

Since we cannot tell the time of the coming
of the blessings which God sends us it would
seem to be the part of ordinary prudence and
sensibleness to recognize the fact, and to do
all we can do to store up within ourselves the
truths which have already come and which
may not be followed by other revelations for
many days. There is a way in which the
memory, the power of meditation, and the re-
flective interpretation of past blessings can
keep fresh those blessings. The old-time flush
of ecstatic enthusiasm may pass with the
moment, but the real significance of the spirit-
ual crisis can be stored indefinitely.

We must remember further, not only that
spiritual gifts do not come at regular and
stated intervals, but that when they do come
they are apt to come in larger abundance than
can be wisely used at the time. Here again
there are many illustrative analogies between
the religious life and other experiences.

The farmer strips his hill-side of its trees
and the washing torrents raise the river to
flood-height. By allowing the waters to sweep
unarrested down the hill-side the farmer has
sinned against the land and against the water
and against himself. In a sense he has been a
water spendthrift. What was intended to be
a store of wealth has rushed away in one de-
vastating waste. The money spendthrift is
slow to learn the lesson that money comes
often in larger volume than is intended for

64

McCONNELL

present use. The blessings have come to him
to be stored, but he allows them to rush
through his life with fearful destructiveness.

Thus it is also with more spiritual blessings.
Almost every intellectual good gift which
comes to men comes like a shower of rain, the
large part of whose waters should be stored.
Their usefulness is not for the present but for
the future. It is well knoT\'n, for example,
that the first discoverers of a new physical
force, or the first formulators of a new law in
any department of science are not the ones
who carry out the new gift to its highest use-
fulness. Patient men who come after,
plodders who perhaps have not the brilliancy
of the pioneers, work out the details by which
the new force is to be harnessed to the world 's
machinery, or the implications by which the
new doctrine is to take hold of the w^orking
truths of the world's daily life. Suppose the
first formulator of the doctrine of gravitation
had thought only of the intellectual ecstasy
which the new thought brought to himself.
That Newton was stirred to lofty intellectual
exhilaration by his grasp of gravitation we
know from his own words, but suppose he had
thought of the newly stated principle simply
as an object for his own enjojTuent. How
much of the force of the new principle would
have been thus utilized ?

It sometimes does happen that men think
that truths come to them entirely for imme-

VI— 5 65

MODERN SERMONS

diate application to existing circumstances —
that they themselves are the only ones whose
welfare is to be considered. Then we have the
flood-time of revolutions in which the truth
itself seems to be a rioter. We have only to
study a period like the French Revolution to
see the force of this statement. The revolu-
tionists were acting in the name of great
truths. The truths, however, were abstract
and needed careful and deliberate handling in
order to be most wisely applied to the partic-
ular situations which confronted a particular
nation. Some of the truths could have best
been stored away for a future and wiser day.
No, the revolutionists thought that the full
force of the flood power should be let loose at
once.

Coming now to the realm of the religious
life we find men who are somewhat like mate-
rial and intellectual spendthrifts. They in-
sist that a religious blessing is for immediate
use alone. This explains some of the frenzy
that has now and then attended great emo-
tional uplift in the unenlightened worshipers
of all times. They have not known how to
deal with a great spiritual crisis, and have
ended by letting it find immediate expression
largely of a physical kind. The thought that
a great quickening of the heart could be made
a theme for profound meditation and a foun-
tain of practical working power has been of
comparatively limited acceptance. On the

66

McCONNELL

other hand this same feeling that religious
gifts must be put to immediate use has been
back of much wild and impractical effort in
the field of Christian well-doing. The mistake
of hasty reformers has been repeated in the
field of religious endeavor. The idea of hold-
ing back our effort until the truth can really
be mastered has seemed to many to lack con-
fidence in God. Yet if there is any one point
upon which the Son of God used and coun-
seled caution it was as to the hasty, crude, im-
mature utilization of spiritual truth. Both in
society and in individual life He insisted that
great experiences come for the sake of the
future as well as of the present. As for the
Master's own statements of truth, they were
largely intended for that wiser day when the
Holy Spirit should bring to remembrance the
words which Jesus had spoken.

We pass to a still more important sugges-
tion when we think of the need of preventing
spiritual drought. If the waters cannot be
stored there is thirst in mid-summer. If the
spenders of money could have their way the
industrial life of nations would dry up in the
intervals between the financial floods. If it
were not that thought can be stored in lan-
guage and that wise men turn repeatedly to
the great intellectual gifts which have been
given in other days, the thought life of the
world would soon evaporate.

It is when we are dealing with religious ex-

67

MODERN SERMONS

perience, however, that we become most aware
of the effects of subtle evaporations and ex-
haustions which make the life die of thirst.
.The stream hardly starts before myriad forces
attack it. If it has no stored supply on which
to draw it perishes in the sands. Even if a
man desire for himself increase in spiritual
power, and victory against all the evils which
would steal away and dissipate his life, the
hot, evaporating forces of the world are force-
ful beyond all telling. We speak sometimes as
if men fall away because of sins which they
consciously and deliberately commit, but this
is far from being always the fact. The deadly
forces are the forces of a heated atmosphere
whose power is not suspected until the stream
is dry. The work of the weak, legitimate as
it is, the enjoyments of social life, permissible
as they are, the ambition for success, laudable
as it is — all these conspire together in a throb-
bing city to carry away the religious effective-
ness of the man whose head-streams do not
take hold on eternal reservoirs. Life in its
most legitimate activities will take from us the
power that comes from above if that power is
not renewed. It is not by deliberate evil do-
ing that we fall away so much as by failing
to store up in memory and to use in medita-
tion the riches which God has bestowed upon
us. The crying fault of the time is not only
deliberate selfishness and the craving after il-
legitimate pleasures. It is also and much

68

McCONNELL

more an intensity of life so desperate as to
leave no time for meditative draughts upon
the springs which God has filled for us; or
rather it is a feverish restlessness and super-
ficiality which allow crises in experience to
pass without yielding for future use the secret
of their inner meaning. The ordinary failure
in religious experience is quite apt to come
through a sort of spiritual evaporation — the
stream dries up because it has no reserve sup-
ply upon which to feed.

The determination to make the most of the
inspirations and insights and enthusiasms
which God sends us will keep us from the ex-
tremes of wasteful intemperateness of zeal on
the one hand and of parched and barren
drought on the other. Most of us need to be
delivered from the life of extremes. Our
Christian experience swings from intolerant
and over-zealous enthusiasm at one period to
complete drought at another. We speak of
the life as ''up and do^\Ti/' or of great up-
lifts of faith yielding soon to blackest despair.
We think that we please God by ranging
through all the experiences from ecstasy to
blind groping. There is very little real war-
rant for looking upon the " up and do-R-n "
experience as the truly normal. Moments of
high exaltation refuse to come according to
schedules but when they do come the true
wisdom thinks of them as gifts for the future
as well as for the present, and as for the work

MODERN SERMONS

of the world as well as for delightful enjoy-
ment. In other words the experiences are the
showers which not only refresh the earth as
they fall but also gladden the fields of mid-
sununer as they trickle from the soil-sponges
into the rivers.

Only as we thus think of our moments of
sublime uplift can we make our Christianity
usable. A force may be wonderful in itself
and yet be of very little real value unless it
can be depended upon. Only as we master
the secret of making them work continuously
and with some degree of uniformity can we
really use steam and electricity, and stream
forces. The rains will not fall according to
our program, but we can so master and store
up their forces as to make them work as w^e
will. So it is with religious experience. We
cannot tell beforehand the time of the coming
of the insight or the enthusiasm or the new
consciousness of the presence of God, but we
can receive these gifts with such tenacity of
grasp and such earnest search for their mean-
ing as to make them stores of power for days
of trial and temptation and exhaustion far in
the future.

It need hardly be said that in this respect as
in every other the example of the Master is
the final illustration for our guidance. Jesus
had His moments of rapt communion with
God. He would spend entire nights in
prayer; but the communion resulted not in

70

McCONNELL

ecstasies but in long days of healing and
teaching and preaching. He became so en-
tranced with the glories of the Mount of
Transfiguration that the fashion of His coun-
tenance was altered, but the inspiration of the
mount was set to work in the miracle of res-
toration in the plain. He passed through
Gethsemane into a peace which no mortal has
ever known, and the peace sustained Him on
Calvary. When He ascended to the skies He
left with His followers more power than they
can ever use at any one time. He foresaw all
contingencies and His truth is a preparation
for every crisis. We must remember, how-
ever, to take toward the power which He has
left us the attitude of wise and reverent con-
servators. In a sense in addition to that of
the direct meaning of the text we are to be as
trees planted by the rivers of water.

71

McGARVEY
THE PRAYERS OF JESUS

73

JOHN WILLIAM McGARVEY

President of the College of the Bible,
Lexington, Ky. since 1895; born Hop-
kinsville, Ky., March 1, 1829; graduated
from Bethany College, W. Va., 1850; re-
sided and preached for twelve years at
Fayette and Dover, Mo.; at Lexington,
Ky., 1863; since 1865 professor of sacred
history ; author of commentaries on " Acts
of Apostles," and " Matthew and Mark,"
" Lands of the Bible," " Text and Canon
of the New Testament," " Credibility and
Inspiration of the New Testament," etc.

THE PRAYERS OF JESUS
The Rev. Pres. J. W. McGarvey

'* Who in the days of his flesh, when he had offered
wp 'prayers arid suppUcations with strong crying and
tears unto him that was able to save him from death,
and was heard in that he feared; though he were a
Son yet learned he obedience by the things which he
suffered. ' ' — Hebrews 5 : 7, 8.

WHY did JesTis pray? Scoffers have
said that if He was divine He prayed
to himself, and His prayers were not
real. They forget that while He was here He
was less than Himself — that tho, before
His advent He was ' ' in the form of God, and
counted it not a prize to be on an equality
with God, ' ' He * * emptied himself, taking the
form of a servant, being made in the likeness
of men ; and being found in fashion as a man,
He humbled himself, becoming obedient unto
death, yea, even the death of the cross ''
(Phil. 2:6-8). This is the representation
from which to regard Him. Having thus
made Himself in a measure dependent on His
Father, it was proper for Him to pray.

Others have said that He prayed, not be-
cause He needed, as we do, the benefits of
prayer, but simply to set us an example. This
answer is little better than the other ; for if He
prayed only to set an example, it was a bad

75

MODERN SERMONS

example, for it would teach us also to offer
prayers for which we would feel no need.
That His prayers were real and heartfelt, is
manifest from the passage cited as my text in
which it is said that ' ' in the days of his flesh
he offered up prayers and supplications with
strong crying and tears. ' ' "When prayers are
accompanied by *' strong crying and tears "
on the part of a sane man, there can be no
possible doubt of their sincerity and reality.

The question still confronts us. Why did
Jesus pray? We are told that He was
tempted in all points like as we are, yet with-
out sin (Heb. 4 : 15) . If this is true, He must
have employed with unfailing success the
means of resisting temptation which we em-
ploy so ineffectually. One of these is prayer ;
for He said to His disciples, '' Watch, and
pray that ye enter not into temptation. ' ' To
* * enter into temptation, " is to come under its
controlling power. To watch and to pray
guards us against this. We watch, in order to
see the temptation ere it assails us. We pray
for strength to resist it when it comes. If we
study the prayers of Jesus with reference to
the occasions on which they were offered, I
think we shaU see very plainly that He faith-
fully practised the precept which He gave to
His disciples.

He began His public career by solemnly
submitting to John 's baptism. Whatever may
have been His trials and temptations before

76

McGARVEY

this, He knew that this act would introduce
Him into a career in which they would be
more severe and would end in a struggle test-
ing the utmost strength of His soul. He per-
haps knew also that immediately after His
baptism He would be subjected to the strong-
est temptations which Satan's ingenuity could
invent for that moment in His career. Most
wisely then was His baptism followed immedi-
ately by prayer. And it was while He was
praying that the heavens were opened above
Him, and the Holy Spirit came down upon
Him in the form of a dove, and entered into
Him (Luke 3 : 21, 22; Mark 1 : 10, 11). He
was now prepared for the worst that Satan
could do, and when, after forty days He tri-
umphed and drove Satan from Him, angels
came and ministered to Him.

We know not to what extent Jesus was
dependent on His Father for wisdom and guid-
ance respecting the affairs of His coming king-
dom ; but we know that He made His most im-
portant administrative act the subject of pro-
tracted prayer. That act was the selection of
the twelve men to whom He would entrust the
establishment and ordering of His kingdom on
earth after He should have returned to the
world whence He came. No . selection of
subordinate officers in any kingdom since the
world began has been of so momentous im-
portance. Suppose, if we can, that all had
proven as false to their trust as did Judas

77

MODERN SERMONS

Iscariot, who can begin to imagine the conse-
quences? We may not be able to see any
temptation that beset Him in making this
choice, unless it was in regard to placing
among the twelve the thief who was to betray
Him; but we learn that before making the
selection He spent the whole of the preceding
night in prayer (Luke 6:12-16). "Who can
tell to what extent the unequaled fidelity and
amazing triumph of those men in the inaugu-
ration and administration of the kingdom of
God resulted from the efficacy of that prayer ?
The answer is wrapt up in the secrets of
eternity.

On the morning of the day in whicli the five
thousand were fed the twelve apostles re-
turned to Jesus from their first tour of preach-
ing and healing (Luke 9:1-17). They had
not yet eaten their morning meal. An agi-
tated throng gathered about them and prest
them so that they could not do so. As Mark
expresses it, ** Many were coming and going,
and they had no leisure so much as to eat "
(6 : 30, 31). At the same early hour an ex-
cited group of John's disciples came to Jesus
with the crushing announcement that John
the Baptist had been beheaded by Herod, and
that they had taken his headless body and
laid it in a tomb (Matt. 14:12-14; Mark
6:29). Either of these reports was enough
to excite the people; and when they heard
both, they were wild. The people were al-

78

McGARVEY

ready thrilled by what the twelve had been do-
ing, and when they heard of the bloody deed
of Herod they went wild; for all counted
John as a prophet. The more they heard the
details of the bloody deed the more exasper-
ated they became.

But if this fateful announcement was ex-
asperating to the multitude of the Galileans,
what must it have been to Jesus? John had
been the best friend He had on earth next to
his mother. He had baptized Him, had given
Him honor in the presence of the multitude,
and had secured for Him His first disciples.
He was also a kinsman in the flesh, and even
his murderer had acknowledged him to be " a
holy man and just." No one who has not
been suddenly informed of the cruel murder
of a dear friend and kinsman, can realize the
conflict of emotions which agitated the soul of
Jesus when this annoimcement was made.
The pang was all the keener in that it fore-
shadowed what was soon to come upon Him-
self. He said nothing. Not a word of com-
ment is quoted from Him by any of the nar-
rators. What He was tempted to say we can
conjecture only by our knowledge of human
nature, and the apostle's statement that He
was ' * tempted in all points like as we are, yet
without sin." He only said to His apostles,
** Come ye yourselves apart into a desert
place, and rest awhile" (Matt. 14:34).
What other purpose He had in going to the

79

MODERN SERMONS

desert place we learn farther on. They
quietly entered their boat and struck out for
the pasture lands belonging to Bethsaida Ju-
lias, at the northeastern curve of the lake
(Luke 9 : 10). The people soon saw to what
point the boat was headed, and with a com-
mon impulse they started on a rush around
the northwestern curve and northern end of
the lake for the same spot. The news spread
like wild-fire through the villages, and almost
the whole population ran out to join the race.
Soon the largest multitude that ever gathered
about Jesus was before Him, and the rest for
which He had started was prevented. His
compassion for them and for the sick whom
they brought with them overpowered His de-
sire for rest and quiet, so He spent the day in
teaching and healing until it was too late for
the people to return to their homes without
suffering from hunger. Then came the feed-
ing. So wildly excited had the people been,
that they had come to this uninhabited plain
without food; and, reckless of consequences,
had remained all day.

At this point an incident mentioned only by
John added immensely to the temptation
which had been oppressing Jesus since the
early morning. He perceived that the people
*' were about to come and take him by force
and make him king " (6:15). This was a
renewal of Satan's third temptation in the
wilderness. The people believed that He in-

80

McGARVEY

tended to set up a political kingdom ; and such
was the exasperation now felt toward Herod
that the moment for an uprising seemed to
have come. The five thousand men present
were ready to strike the first blow. Herod's
capital city, Tiberias, was in full view across
the lake, and it could be taken in a few hours.
With five thousand men ready to move at His
command and the whole of Galilee in a pop-
ular ferment, it would have been easy and
quick work to dethrone the murderer of His
friend, and then march with accumulating
forces upon Pontius Pilate and Judea. If His
soul had been fired with such passions as are
universal with men, how strong the tempta-
tion would have been ! But no ; the disciples
are hastily ordered into their boat with orders
to cross the lake, the multitude are formally
dismissed, and Jesus retires into the mountain
at the base of which He had spent the day.
Not till now did He find that for which He
had started in the morning. Alone in the soli-
tude of the mountain He spends the night in
prayer. Once more He applies the safeguard
against temptation; once more the tempest
within His soul, like that on the lake a few
days previous, hears the rebuke, " Peace, be
still "; and there is a " great calm." It was
now about the fourth watch of the night ; the
full moon of the passover week was shining
(John 6:4); and a very strong wind was
blowing from the west; but Jesus, knowing

VI— 6 81

MODERN SERMONS

that His disciples were struggling in the mid-
dle of the lake against that wind, walks out
to them on the boiling waves, a distance of
nearly three miles (John 6:1). The boat
soon glided over the remaining three miles, but
when it landed another day had dawned, and
the whole company had passed twenty-four
hours without rest, without food, unless they
partook with the multitude of the cold barley
bread and fish, and without sleep. This is a
specimen of the laborious life which Jesus was
leading, and into the hardships of which His
disciples were initiating the twelve.

Not long after this occurred that ever
memorable occasion on which Jesus was first
formally acknowledged by His disciples as
the '' Christ, the Son of the living God." He
was ** praying alone " when the disciples
came to Him and heard from Him the search-
ing question, ** Who do you say that I am? "
(Luke 9 : 18-20). What the especial occasion
of that prayer was, we are not informed ; but
it illustrates at least His prayerful habit.

About eight days after these sayings Jesus
went up into another mountain to pray^ and
now He takes with Him Peter, James and
John (Luke 9:28). Matthew calls it ** a
high mountain " (17:1), and as one of the
sayings from which the eight days are counted
was spoken near Caesarea Philippi, which
stands at the base of Mount Hermon, the
highest mountain in Palestine, it was proba-

82

McGARVEY

bly this or some of its outl^ang spurs that He
now ascended. It was a laborioiis climb to
reach the spot, and here was another night of
prayer. The three disciples soon completed
their short prayers, and fell asleep. They
were awakened by the sound of voices ; and on
looking up they beheld Jesus transfigured in
glory and two other men in glory deeply
absorbed in conversation with Him. They
soon learn by hearing their names called, that
the other two Avere Moses and Elijah. They
learn, too, that the subject of conversation
was " the decease which he was about to ac-
complish at Jerusalem." They had first
heard of this about eight days before from the
lips of Jesus Himself (Luke 9 : 22, 28) . Now,
to their amazement they hear it spoken of
again by these mighty men whose abode had
been for many centuries in the land of de-
parted spirits. What they said of it we may
never know; but may we not safely conclude
that the purpose of Jesus in that night of
prayer was to plead for an increase of forti-
tude as the shadow of His final agony was now
growing deeper as He approached it? His
prayer was answered by the words of sympa-
thy which came to Him from men almost di-
vine. How I would love to know what they
said. If my courage shall fail not when I
meet with Moses or Elijah, I shall inquire
what they said to Jesus ; and I shall also ask
how they knew that He would be on that

83

MODERN SERMONS

mountain that night, and how they knew that
He was going to die in Jerusalem.

Although Jesus was so prayerful Himself,
He was not persistent like the apostle Paul in
urging this duty on the disciples. Even in
His well-kno"v^m remarks on the subject in the
Sermon on the Mount, He did not exhort them
to pray ; but, assuming that they would pray,
He was content with telling them how. And
so, in the subsequent course of His ministry
He depended on the force of His example,
rather than on repeated precept for their
training in this respect. His method had the
desired effect ; for after what I have thus far
narrated, * * it came to pass, as he was praying
in a certain place that w^hen he ceased, one of
his disciples said to him, * Lord, teach us to
pray, as John also taught his disciples ' "
(Luke 11:1-4). Having been a disciple of
John, this man knew what John had taught
on the subject, and he also knew what Jesus
Himself had taught in the Sermon on the
Mount. Why then was he not satisfied ? Evi-
dently he thought from the protracted pray-
ers of Jesus, and perhaps from what he saw,
or thought he saw, of their effects on the life
of Jesus, that there Avas yet a secret in prayer
which he had not discovered. None of the
disciples could as yet pray all night ; and none
since then have learned to do so. Wlio ever
tried it without falling asleep ? And who has
prayed so effectually as to guard himself

84

M c G A R V E Y

against all sin 1 It is a high credit to this dis-
ciple— and probably he spoke for the others as
well as for himself — that he aspired to his
Master's devotion in this respect. He was
disappointed. Jesus answered only by repeat-
ing the major part of the simple prayer which
He had taught them before, and by adding a
parable to show the value of importunity in
pleading for what we need (Luke 11 : 5-13).

"While seated at the last supper, Peter met
with a surprise greater, perhaps, than any he
had ever known. Jesus said to him: '' Simon,
Simon, behold, Satan asked to have you that
he might sift you like wheat : but I made sup-
plication for thee, that thy faith fail not : and
do thou, when once thou art turned again, es-
tablish thy brethren " (Luke 22 : 32). "What
a revelation to Simon ! How startling to
know that Satan had thus reached for him,
that he might toss him up and down like a
farmer winnowing his wheat ! What could be
meant by his future turning again that he
^night strengthen his brethren ; and how
watchful the Master had been to intercede for
his safety when he was unmindful of danger.
Who knows to what extent the final salvation
of Peter depended on that supplication?
How sweet it is to know that we too may be
objects of similar solicitude in our days of
peril. While praying for Himself, Jesus did
not forget to pray for others. Did He pray
for Judas? He gave the traitor blood-curd-

85

MODERN SERMONS

ling warnings on that same fateful night, but
not a word about praying for him. Was it
true of Him, as the old preachers were once
accustomed to say, that He was no longer on
** praying ground or pleading terms with
God? ''

The longest prayer ever quoted from the
lips of Jesus followed after Judas had left
the upper room and the solemn feast. It con-
tains few words for Himself, and the rest for
the faithful to whom the destinies of His king-
dom were now to be entrusted till the final
day without His visible presence. Then fol-
lowed the silent moonlit walk through the
deserted streets and down the steep declivity
to the Kidron and Gethsemane. On reaching
the garden it was observed that *' He began
to be sorrowful and sore troubled. ' * The com-
posure that He had maintained thus far broke
down as He directed Peter and the sons of
Zebedee to go farther with Him, and said to
the rest, ' ' Sit ye here, while I go yonder and
pray." His supreme hour had come, and
what could He do but pray ? To the three He
said, *' My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even
unto death " — death, unless He could find re-
lief. '* Abide ye here and watch " (stay
awake) " with me." Three times He went
from them a short distance to pray, and three
times came back to find them asleep. He
could not endure to be thus left alone in His
anguish. But wakeful angels were watching

86

McGARVEY

over the scene and at the moment of His
keenest anguish one of them was permitted to
appear to Him and strengthen Him. The re-
ported words of this prayer are few. It was
doubtless now that His words were attended
with strong crjdng and tears, and by these He
was choked almost into silence. I can almost
hear the sob with which he prayed, * ' Father,
if it be possible, let this cup pass from me.'*
Who can fathom the depth of meaning in that
utterance, or weigh the temptation which it
implied? It was offered to *' him who was
able to save him from death," and He was
heard (Heb. 5 : 8) — heard not by saving Him
from death, but by sending the angel to
strengthen Him. How I long to know what
that angel said ! Some day I hope to ask him.
It did strengthen Him ; for when He next re-
turned to the sleeping disciples, instead of
waking them, as before, He said, *' Sleep on
now, and take your rest." Without another
cry, or another groan, He passed through the
arrest, the trial, the mocking, the scourging,
the crucifixion, till the moment when He
cried out, *' My God, my God, why hast thou
forsaken me? " In another moment we hear
the last prayer He ever uttered: ^' Father,
into thy hands I commend my spirit.'' His
Father had not forsaken Him. His tempta-
tions. His prayers and His tears were now
ended forevermore.

87

McGIFFERT

THE KINGDOM OF GOD IN THE
MODERN WORLD

ARTHUR CUSHMAN McGIFFERT

Professor of Church history, Union
Theological Seminaiy, New York, since
1893; born Sauqnoit, N. Y., March 4,
1861; graduated Western Reserve Col-
lege; D.D., 1892; D.D., Harvard, 1906;
graduated from Union Theological Semi-
nary, 1885; University of Marburg, Ger-
many, Ph.I)., 1888; studied in Germany,
France and Italy; instructor of Church
historj^. Lane Theological Seminary,
Cincinnati, 1888-90 ; professor from 1890-
93 ; author of " A Dialogue Between a
Christian and a Jew," a translation of
Eusebius " Church Histoiy," " A Histoiy
of Christianity in the Apostolic Age,"
" The Apostles' Creed," etc.

90

THE KINGDOM OF GOD IN THE
MODERN WORLD

Prof. A. C. McGiffert, D.D.

'* Go thou and 'publish abroad the kingdom of G&d.'*
—Luke 9 : 60.

THE age in which we live is notably re-
ligious. I will not say that there is
more religion within the Christian
Church than in other days, or that we Chris-
tians are distinguished above our fathers by
the sincerity and vigor of our religious life,
but certainly the multiform religious sects
that are springing up all about us, the grow-
ing discontent with existing forms of faith,
and the eagerness of many both within and
without the established religious communities
to listen to those who have anything new to
offer in religious lines are evidence of a deep
and wide stirring of religious impulse and in-
terest. Humanity at large is so constituted
that religion of some sort may fairly be re-
garded as permanently necessary to it, but as
the needs of men change the religions in
which they have been trained may easily cease
to meet their new demands, and a new faith
may come to be substituted for the old. This
has occurred repeatedly in history. The dis-
placement of the Greek and Roman paganism

91

MODERN SERMONS

by Christianity is one of the most notable and
familiar instances. Christianity won its vic-
tory in the Eoman Empire and became finally
the religion of the state simply because it met
the needs of the age as the older cults were
unable to do. The faiths of Greece and Rome
were the fruit of ancient conditions and even
before Christianity appeared new needs had
developed which made new religious concep-
tions and practises a necessity. The result
was that foreign cults of all sorts became pop-
ular and the old ones underwent large changes
in the effort, conscious or unconscious, to meet
the new situation. Had Christianity not come
upon the scene the traditional paganism, rad-
ically modified to meet the demands of the
day, might have retained a permanent hold
upon the Eoman Empire. But the new faith,
born in the new age, and responsive from the
beginning to its new needs, was fitted as the
older could not be to become the religion of
the new world and its victory was inevitable.

It has often been remarked that our age
bears a striking resemblance to the period in
which Christianity first saw the light. The
eager curiosity, the social unrest, the lively
intercourse between different parts of the
world, the developing spirit of cosmopoli-
tanism and sense of human brotherhood, the
disappearance of old and familiar landmarks,
the common questioning of traditional stand-
ards, the multiplying of religious sects, the

92

McGIFFERT

prevalence both of rationalism and of super-
stition, the loss of faith and the search for
certainty — in all these and many other re-
spects there is a close kinship between the
earliest and the latest of the Christian cen-
turies. It was a period of change on a vast
scale and so is this. Are we to suppose then
that as the ancient paganism gave way before
the young and lusty Christianity so Chris-
tianity in its turn is to be crowded off the field
by some new faith or by no faith ? There are
many who think so and who talk about Chris-
tianity as an outworn system fitted only for
an age that is gone. In reply to them it is not
enough to show that Christianity still meets
many needs of many hearts, needs which re-
main ever much the same — that it comforts
the sorrowing, strengthens the weak, raises
the fallen as it has always done. It must be
shown rather that Christianity not only does
this but also meets the new needs of the new
age. What then is this new age? What are
its characteristic features and its peculiar
needs ?

The modem age is marked by a vast confi-
dence in the powers of man. For many cen-
turies it was the custom to think of man as a
weak and puny thing. Humility and self-
distrust were the cardinal virtues, pride and
self-reliance and independence the root of all
vice. The change is not the fruit of specula-
tion, a mere philosophical theory as to man^s

93

MODERN SERMONS

relation to the universe, but the result of the
actual and growing conquest of the world in
which we live. We are not completely its
masters to be sure, but we understand it far
better and control it far more effectively than
our fathers did. The past century has given
the most brilliant demonstration the world has
ever seen of what human power can actually
accomplish in the material realm, the realm of
the tangible and the visible and the audible.
Science and mechanics have combined to give
the modern man a sense of mastery undreamed
of in other ages. What such a man most
needs from Christianity (and he is the rep-
resentative man of the modern age, whose
presence in overwhelming numbers chiefly dis-
tinguishes this age from those that have pre-
ceded it) is not condemnation for the pride of
accomplishment, exhortations to humility, and
the offer of healing from above, but the chance
to use his strength in ways that are most
worth w^hile — higher ideals, larger opportu-
nities, vaster realms of service.

Another marked characteristic of the mod-
ern age is its widespread and controlling
interest in the present world. With all its
sorrow and suffering and distress, the world
seems to the representative modern man a
better and a more satisfying place than it
did to the representative man of an older day.
It is not simply that this earth has become
more interesting as we have learned more

94

McGIFFERT

about it, and the present life more comfort-
able as material conditions have improved, but
that the future possibilities of human life
upon this planet seem so tremendous. Char-
acteristic of a former time was its conviction
that all had been learned and accomplished
that man was capable of, that the golden age
lay in the past and that nothing better was to
be looked for. Characteristic of the present
time is its imbounded faith in the future,
based upon its solid experience of the past.
Pessimism there is in plenty, as in every age
of the world, but optimism not pessimism is
the dominant temper of this young and confi-
dent century. And again, what the age needs
from Christianity is not a demonstration that
this earth is a poor and unsatisfying place,
but the vision of a work worth doing now and
here, a work worth doing for this world, in
which the thought and interest of the modern
age so largely center.

Another characteristic of our age is its
growing social concern, which is the fruit
in part of the modern interest in the present
life just referred to, in part of the general em-
phasis on solidarity and unity which suc-
ceeded the eighteenth century emphasis on in-
dividuality. The social conscience of Europe
and America is now more wide awake and
more generally active than ever before. Op-
portunities for social service are steadily mul-
tiplying, character is more and more inter-

95

MODERN SERMONS

preted in social terms, and their obligation to
labor for the promotion of the welfare of
society is increasingly felt both by individuals
and by institutions. Our generation is burn-
ing with zeal for social, economic and civic
reform, and is controlled by the idea of human
brotherhood and marked by its practise as no
generation ever was before. And again, what
such an age needs from Christianity is not to
be told the supreme importance of personal
salvation, but to be given a social ideal grand
enough to fire its imagination, to arouse its
enthusiasm and to enlist its devotion.
^Has Christianity then a message for the
modem world, or does it belong wholly to the
past and minister only to the same needs it al-
ways has 1 If so, it may expect to find itself
more and more disregarded by modem men.
All too many indeed disregard it now. It is
not that they are hostile to Christianity but
that they care nothing about it. It seems to
address itself only to interests which they do
not share. The old needs as experience shows,
may be revivified, or even recreated on a
larger or a smaller scale where they do not al-
ready exist, but to create artificial needs in
order to meet them when the modern world
is fuU of real needs of another kind is a sorry
business. If Christianity cannot do more
than this it is an outworn faith and the past
only not the future belongs to it. But Chris-
tianity is not an outworn faith and the future

96

McGIFFERT

does belong to it, for it has a message for the
representative men of this modern age. It
ministers not only to permanent human needs
which are common to all times and places, but
also to the new and peculiar needs of this
twentieth century.

The greatest fact in modem Christian his-
tory is the rediscovery of Jesus. He is better
known and understood to-day than He has
ever been before. The recent development of
historical study and criticism which has revo-
lutionized traditional opinion upon all sorts
of matters has given us a new insight into the
origin and growth of Christianity. The Jesus
of the sjrnoptic gospels has been finally set
free from the integuments in which the devo-
tion and the misunderstanding of the Chris-
tian Church early enswathed Him, and has
been allowed for the first time to speak for
Himself. And the striking feature of the
situation is that He speaks a language which
the modem age, with its genial confidence in
men, its vivid interest in the present world
and its profound concern for social better-
ment, is peculiarly fitted to understand. His
message is just the message that the modem
world is looking for.

The kingdom of God was the burden of His
preaching, not a kingdom lying simply in
another world beyond the skies, but estab-
lished here and now — " Thy kingdom come,
thy will be done in earth "; not a kingdom

VI— 7 97

MODERN SERMONS

made up of isolated human lives moving along
their several and separate paths toward
heaven, but of the society of all human kind
banded together in common labor under the
control of a common purpose; and not by-
some supernatural and miraculous means was
the kingdom to come, while men sat by and
gazed in awe upon the power of the Almighty,
but by the work of Jesus Himself and of
those that came after Him, by the devotion
and energy of human lives working at one
with the divine will. When Jesus said, ' ' Fol-
low me, ' ' He meant nothing else than laboring
with Him at the same task in the same spirit.

The kingdom of God on earth — what does it
mean? We answer perhaps glibly enough:
the control of the lives of all men and of all
their relationships one with another and of all
the institutions in which those relationships
find expression by the spirit of Jesus Christ
who has shown us what God is and what He
would have this world be. The answer is pro-
foundly true, but it needs to be given a more
definite content. What is actually involved in
the kingdom of God on earth? Is it only a
vague form of words, a beautiful but intangi-
ble mirage; or is it really something concrete
and practical? Does it affect only ethics and
religion, or social, economic and civic matters
as well? Does it mean merely the improve-
ment of individual character or also the trans-
formation of society and the State; the mod-

98

McGIFFERT

ification of detaife in our existing systems or
their radical reconstruction ; the grafting of
new principles on the old or the repudiation
of all we have and the birth of a new world ?
Can our present civilization really be Chris-
tianized or must it give way to an altogether
different order ? Is it a dangerous thing, this
kingdom of God? Does it cut too deep to be
welcome or is it simply the fulfilment of our
faith and hope ? And how is the kingdom to
be established? What methods are to be
adopted, what principles followed and along
what lines must the work proceed? It is
not to answer them that I have propounded
such momentous questions as these. Who in-
deed can answer them to-day? It is only to
emphasize the importance of the problem.
All other problems pale beside it. In it the
Church of the twentieth century, to which has
been committed the responsibility of leader-
ship has the most difficult, the most compli-
cated, the most pressing problem that it has
to face. We Protestants have hardly more
than played with it hitherto. In the Middle
Ages the Catholics grappled with it and act-
ually evolved an international state which
they called the kingdom of God and which
dominated western Europe for centuries. It
was a grand conception, magnificently carried
out, but it was not the kind of kingdom Jesus
was thinking of nor the kind of a kingdom the
world needs to-day. We live in the modern

99

MODERN SERMONS

age and the modern age has turned its back
forever on medievalism whether in State or
Church. We do not want the spirit of other-
worldliness to distract men from their duty to
this world, but to inspire them to it. We do
not want the future to overshadow the pres-
ent, but to transfigure it. We do not want the
supernatural to crowd out the natural, but to
fill it with divine meaning. We do not want
a recrudescence of priestly or ecclesiastical
authority, but the birth of the spirit of Chris-
tian service. Freedom, spontaneity, individ-
uality, opportunity, confidence and self-reli-
ance, all these precious gains of the modem
age we must preserve. But we must have also
love, sympathy, fellowship, cooperation and
an ideal worthy of our conunon devotion, our
common effort and our common sacrifice.

The kingdom for which medieval Christians
toiled was for still another reason quite a
different thing from the kingdom of God
which Jesus had in mind. He did not mean
another institution, set up in the midst of the
existing institutions of the world into which
a man could enter from without. The king-
dom of God which Jesus revealed is not identi-
cal with the Christian Church. It is the reign
of God, of His purposes, of His ideals, of His
Spirit, in the lives of men and in the relation-
ships and institutions of the world. It is the
world itself brought into harmony with God 's
will ; not a dualism of two kingdoms, but one

100

McGIFFERT

kingdom only — God's world and ours — con-
trolled by the spirit of Christ. For this the
Christian Church is called to labor ; not to en-
large and glorify itself and to seek to domi-
nate, but to make itself the most efficient in-
strument for the transformation of the world
into the kingdom of God.

It is a vast and splendid thing, this king-
dom of God of which Jesus dreamed. It is
not for one type of mind, one form of char-
acter, one sort of temperament alone, but for
all the sons of God the wide world over. It is
rich enough to supply the most varied needs.
It offers opportunity to the strong, activity to
the strenuous, visions to the seer, comfort to
the sorrowing, peace to the troubled, to all
service by doing or enduring, by giving or re-
ceiving, by the spirit of Christ in active con-
flict or in quiet meditation.

It is a divine thing, this kingdom of God.
In it God's supreme purpose finds expression.
His purpose to promote the reign of the spirit
of love among men. It is for this that God is,
and this is what God's love for the world
means. In human brotherhood the divine
Fatherhood finds fulfilment. Through human
brotherhood alone the Father's purpose for
His children comes to accomplishment, and
through human brotherhood alone His chil-
dren discover Him. God Himself is back of
the kingdom. We did not invent it. Its
ideals are not of our making. They have been

101

MODERN SERMONS

given us. They are higher than we could have
dreamed of. They lift us above ourselves.
We rise to meet them and find exprest in
them the best that we can know. In this king-
dom the divine and the human are inextri-
cably interwoven. In it there is communion
with God as His desires fill our souls and His
purposes are made our own, and in it there is
the power of God as the inspirations of His
presence lay hold upon us. And yet it real-
izes itself only in the experience of man. We
do not find it by turning our backs upon the
world and ceasing to be human, we find it
only here in human life itself. It is rooted in
the inner man, in his affections, his will, his
character, but it comes to visible expression in
all sorts of ways as the external relationships
of life are brought one after another imder
the control of the inner disposition.

It is both material and spiritual, this king-
dom of God. It ministers to the body and to
the soul. Not as in earlier days when the
Church thought only of the spirit and looked
upon the body with contempt ; not as to-day so
many social reformers, even Christians, seem
to think only of the body and disregard alto-
gether the higher things of the spirit. Unlike
both, Jesus ministered at once to the outer
and the inner man, and the kingdom of God
which He proclaimed means the weal of the
one as of the other, means a social order in
which there shall be food and drink and cloth-

102

McGIFFERT

ing and shelter, a just share of the physical
goods of life for all God's children, and in
which there shall be also for all of them the
consolations of divine communion, the inspira-
tions of human fellowship, the glow of sympa-
thy, the joy of service, the trinity of faith and
hope and love.

It is a Christian thing, this kingdom of God.
The greatest gift of God to the world is Jesus
Christ. It is just this which differentiates
the kingdom we proclaim from all man-made
Utopias. His life, His character, His teach-
ing, His work, His spirit of service dominat-
ing the world — this is what the kingdom
means. In it is not merely our self-taught
love and devotion, but the love and devotion
of the Christ, kindled in our hearts as we have
looked upon Him and caught the inspiration
of His vision of God. The prophets too
preached the kingdom of God, and exalted
their conception was; but they had not seen
the Christ, and it is not the kingdom of the
prophets we proclaim to the world but the
kingdom of the Christ. In Him God has
given the full revelation of His purpose for
the world, and His aims, His motives. His es-
timate of values, His hopes are those that we
would have the world share.

It is a uniting, not a dividing force, this
kingdom of God. Not setting the present over
against the past, the Church over against the
world, the conservative over against the radi-

103

MODERN SERMONS

cal, one community, one nation, one sect over
against another. It gathers them all up into
one ; for it is broad enough to include all the
best of the past and of the present and of the
future yet to come; grand enough to enlist
the devotion of men of every people, clime
and faith; and large enough to unite the
whole world in a vast confederation of labor,
not for the greatest good of the greatest num-
ber but for the greatest good of all; not the
good of competition, which blesses one at the
expense of another, but the good of coopera-
tion which blesses both alike. Not by jeal-
ousy and envy, not by sectarian zeal and relig-
ious fanaticism, not by national bigotry and
class prejudice, not by the forcing of opin-
ions and customs upon others, but by the
union of all men of good will of every race
and condition, by the sharing of their visions
and by the linking of their faiths and hopes
and efforts shall the kingdom of God come.
The great task of the Christian Church of
the twentieth century is ready to its hand.
Upon the Church devolves the chief responsi-
bility for the bringing of the kingdom, for to
it has been vouchsafed the supreme vision, in
Jesus' revelation of His Father's will. The
Church has had many large tasks in the past
which it has met in a spirit of consecrated
heroism — ^the conversion of the Roman Em-
pire, the planting of a Christian civilization
among the barbarian people of western Eu-

104

McGIFFERT

rope, the establishment of the world Church
of the Middle Ages, the recovery of the gospel
of Christ and its incarnation in new institu-
tions in the sixteenth century. It is in the
face of great tasks that the Church has always
shown itself at its best and it may well be
grateful when they come. If ever there was
such a task it is before us now.

We are on the eve of great happenings. No
one familiar with history and able to read the
signs of the times can for a moment doubt it.
Unfortunately the Church, as too often in the
past, has temporarily lost its leadership. It
continues to minister beautifully and effi-
ciently to its own members and to bless the
lives of multitudes of them, but it is not in the
van of progress and much of the best life of
the world has turned its back upon it and is
pushing on alone. There have been periods
when the world lagged behind the Church and
the Church's one task was to urge it forward.
To-day no small part of the world is ahead
of the Church.

We Christians are apt to be much too easily
satisfied. We are complacent if our churches
hold their own, if our better families can still
be counted on, if respectability still dictates,
even tho hardly so imperatively as in other
days, connection with the church and attend-
ance upon its services. But this is not to be
in command of the situation and it gives no
large promise for the future. We are content

1105

MODERN SERMONS

with too little and the great modern world
with its teeming masses, its eager enthusiasms,
its burning problems and its untold possibil-
ities, is in danger of slipping away from us.
And yet what a message we have for it ! The
kingdom of God on earth, the control of all
the relationships of life and of all the institu-
tions of society by the spirit of Jesus Christ.

Is it a mere idle dream, the coming of God *s
kingdom on this our earth ? It is the dream of
Jesus Himself, and shall not His disciples
share His faith? Is it vain after all the
efforts of these nineteen centuries to hope that
the thing can ever be done? But the thing
has never been tried with that singleness of
purpose to which Jesus summoned His fol-
lowers. That is a momentous fact to be taken
account of in every estimate of the future.
The Christian Church has tried to do all sorts
of things and in many of them has been re-
markably successful. But it has never made
the kingdom of God on earth, the reign of the
spirit of Christ in all the relationships of life
and in all the institutions of society its su-
preme aim. And so we need not be discour-
aged because the work is still unaccomplished.
It is a new task to which the new insight of
the Church summons it. Made wise by all the
experiences of the past, endowed with a new
charity and breadth of vision, taught the evils
of disunion and the necessity of cooperation
with all the forces of goodness everywhere, the

106

McGIFFERT

Church is justified in entering upon its new
mission with courage and with confidence.

Let us no longer stand upon the defensive ;
let us no longer regret a past forever gone ; let
us no longer be content to minister to the
needs only of a small and select portion of the
community ; let us no longer indeed think so
much about needs and think more about op-
portunities and obligations; let us keep our
eyes fixed upon Jesus' glorious vision of the
kingdom of God, of a new earth in which
dwelleth righteousness, of a regenerated so-
ciety controlled by His spirit. So will Chris-
tianity again as in the days of its youth rise
exultant to a world-wide task. And this
strong, manly, eager, busy age will respond
with enthusiasm to an ideal worthy of its
wisest planning and its best effort, the trans-
formation not merely of individual lives into
the image of Jesus Christ, but of this great
earth into the kingdom of God, His Father
and ours.

107

McNEILE

THE POWER PROOFS OF GHRIST'S
RESURRECTION

ALAN HUGH McNEILE

Dean of Sidney Sussex College, Cam-
bridge, England, since 1905; bom in
1871; educated at Harrow School; Pem-
broke College, Cambridge, M.A,, D.D. ; or-
dained deacon, 1895; ordained priest at
Canterbury, 1897; curate of Ramsgate,
Kent, 1895-97; fellow and theological lec-
turer of Sidney Sussex College since
1897; examining chaplain to Bishop of
Worcester, 1902-05; to Bishop of Bir-
mingham since 1905.

110

THE POWER PROOFS OF CHRIST'S
RESURRECTION

A. H. McNeile, D.D.

" That I may Jcnow Mm and the power of his resur-
rection."—Vhil. 3 : 10.

IT is a striking fact that we do not find in
the New Testament any argument, any
attempt at logical proof with reference to
the resurrection of Jesus. Paul in his ear-
liest epistle takes it already for granted as a
simple fact which the Thessalonians already
knew from his previous preaching. That is to
say it is assumed as a piece of history well
known as far away as Macedonia, less than
twenty-five years after Jesus was crucified in
Palestine. And on that basis Paul argues for
the resurrection of all who have fallen asleep
in Jesus. Similarly in writing to the Corin-
thians, he draws the deduction that ' ' if Christ
be not raised, then is our preaching vain and
your faith is also vain, ye are yet in your sins. ' '
And the well-known fact that Christ had been
raised, which he had taught them before when
he was at Corinth, involved of a necessity the
raising of all men in Him. And we find that
in every epistle in the New Testament, except
the three short private letters, the Epistle to
Philemon, and the Second and Third Epistle

111

MODERN SERMONS

of John, Christ 's resurrection is either explic-
itly assumed as a fact, or is implied in state-
ments about His second coming from heaven.

When we pass to the early speeches in the
Acts, we find the resurrection again assumed,
but another deduction is drawn from it. It is
considered as an accepted fact which proves
that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God. And
Paul teaches the same in Romans ; Christ was
designated, marked out, proved, to be the Son
of God with power by the resurrection from
the dead. Thus in different parts of the New
Testament we see the writers taking the two
complementary positions: Because Christ
was the Son of God we can assume that He
rose; and because Christ rose we are corrob-
orated in our belief that He was the Son of
God. But the only sort of proof of the resur-
rection itself which the New Testament offers
us lies in the appearances of Jesus to individ-
uals on Easter and the following days. Those
who believe that mankind has been gradually
led on by God through a long process of men-
tal development, will be ready to admit that a
turning point in that process was reached
when the human mind conceived the idea of a
real existence after death. The primitive
notions of life in the underworld sufficed the
Hebrews for long ages. They assumed that
the dead were a shadowy, nerveless imitation
of the living; without feeling or desire, lan-
guage or action, not asleep yet not awake.

112

McNEILE

" The dead know not anything, neither have
they any more a reward, for the memory of
them is forgotten ; their love and their hatred
and their envy are now perished ; neither have
they any more a portion forever in anything
that is done under the sun." " The dead
cannot praise God, neither they that go dowTi
into Sheol." " Thou hast laid them in the
lowest pit, in a place of darkness and in the
deep ^ ' ; without light or warmth or movement
or activity, and yet denied the bliss of anni-
hilation. The Hebrew Sheol is a nightmare
to make one shudder. But as time went on,
Hebrew thinkers themselves revolted from the
awful picture. The thing was monstrous and
impossible, because a dawning conception be-
gan to illumine their minds that God was a
God of love and justice, and yet this world
failed to exhibit that justice or that love. The
wicked flourished like a green bay tree, while
the good more often suffered than not. Facts
cried out and would not be silenced. There
must be retribution somehow, somewhere;
there must be a future righting of frightful
wrongs; there must be punishment for sins
and rewards for righteousness, else God would
not be God. And thus the aspiration slowly
grew — the expectation of a resurrection
slowly deepened, until very late in the Old
Testament it found its classical expression in
the last chapter of the book of Daniel. And
it is an aspiration which all endorse, a hope

VI-8 113

MODERN SERMONS

that finds an echo in every human heart. But
it is difiieult to think that a hope which finds
an echo in every human heart is not destined
to be realized. The universality of the wish
shows that it is an integral factor in human
thought, and is itself an argument and a
pledge that He who made human nature in-
tended to satisfy its supremest longing — not
of course necessarily in the form in which
men's imagination portrayed it. The Jews
painted a variety of highly-colored pictures
of the future life, which are preserved in
many of the writings in the two centuries be-
fore Christ. But the longing was there ; and
it predisposes us to expect that in some form
or other it would be fulfilled. And then we
reach the records of its fulfilment in the New
Testament.

Now the modern spirit of criticism, the ten-
dency to sift the evidence for every fact in
history, has naturally not left the greatest of
all marvels untouched. There is no use in de-
nying that it is difficult to harmonize all the
details in the narratives of Christ's appear-
ances. The possibility must be frankly ad-
mitted that some of them may be unhistorical.
In dealing with criticisms on the subject, one
large class of them may be left entirely out of
account. I mean those which consist in the
argument that all miracles are impossible,
therefore the resurrection is impossible, there-
fore the appearances after the resurrection

114

McNEILE

are unhistorical. But dismissing such reason-
ings as that, which start by begging the whole
question, it is not inconceivable that at some
future time it might be really proved that no
human eyes saw the risen Lord. Manu-
scripts might be found, really contemporary
with the apostles, which might show that all
the present narratives of the resurrection
were a later growth. But suppose, for the
sake of argument, that it were so. We should
no doubt be deprived of an enormous help to
our faith, but the fact of the resurrection it-
self would not be disproved. The resurrection
marked Christ as the Son of God, but it did
not make Him such. We can confidently take
the converse position, which we saw was taken
in the New Testament and say. Since Christ
was the Son of God, and we have an over-
whelming mass of evidence which satisfies us
of that, He must have risen, and returned to
the Father wearing His humanity; and this
must be true whether men and women saw
Him with human eyes or not. On the day of
the crucifixion the divine Man lost His self
that He might gain it. But if He lost it, and
after all gained nothing, if He died as the
representative of all and then remained dead,
His work is not worthy to be praised or had in
honor.

It is sometimes said that Christianity stands
or falls with the resurrection. And some
Christians are in constant fear for their faith

115

MODERN SERMONS

because they go on to say that Christianity
stands or falls with the narratives of Christ's
appearances in the New Testament. And
they would rather shut their eyes and not
read modern criticisms than run the faintest
risk of their faith being shaken. But it is far
more true to say that Christianity stands or
falls with the divinity of the Lord, of which
the resurrection — quite independently of the
narratives — was a necessary and inevitable
consequence. It is here that we approach the
central mystery of mysteries. We are com-
pelled to employ words: but all words are
only symbols or tools, clumsy inadequate sym-
bols, rough blunt tools, to express our pro
foundest convictions and intuitions. The
words ' ' He that loseth his self shall find it ' '
contain a principle which prevails throughout
the length and breadth of the universe. But
the more we think about the words, the more
we feel that they are in some sense true also
of God. No man hath seen God. We can
only judge of what He may be from what man
is. And it is the supreme glory of man that
such a deduction is possible ; we feel unshake-
ably convinced that we are made in His image
and after His likeness. Judging, then, from
ourselves, it seems to us that perfection of
being must include love ; and love must in-
volve one who loves, and one who is loved — a
subject and an object. Now if we could con-
ceive of God's absolute being, we should have

116

McNEILE

to conceive of a subject without an object.
But it is inconceivable that God is not love.
A subject without an object is unthinkable.
And so we conclude that for the sake of His
own perfection of being, He limits Himself,
He sets before Him an object that He may
love. It is true that nothing can be imagined
that is not included in His absolute self. A
real, actual, eternal dualism cannot be. The
whole created universe must lie within the
boundless embrace of His infinity. And from
all eternity the object of God's love existed
in the person of Him whom we call the Son of
God. But, within the limits of time, by the
performance of the act that we call creation,
He caused the existence of a finite object —
something which, in our poverty of language,
we must describe as set over against Him, op-
posite to Him, different from Him ; dependent
of course for its being always and absolutely
upon His being, filled with His immanence,
kept in existence by His continuous fiat, a real
revelation of His activity; but yet an object
of His personal love.

But more than that, the love which a man
can have towards an impersonal object, a
thing, is not the highest love. The material
world obeys His laws without variableness or
shadow of turning. But its obedience is auto-
matic ; it cannot help being very good ; it can-
not give back love for love. When God set
the universe over against Himself as the ob-

117

MODERN SERMONS

ject of His thought, He caused it to be of such
a nature that it should pass through develop-
ment and evolution, until personal beings
emerged into existence who could return to
Him personal love, and return it of their own
free will — of their own deliberate choice;
otherwise they were machines, automatons,
mere things; and the love between Him and
them would not be mutual, and therefore it
would not be perfect. And not until that per-
sonal love of man to Him is perfect, can God
Himself be said to be complete. He wills to
be in some sense incomplete, and to grow to-
wards completeness by the growing perfection
of man's love to Him. In other words. He
limits, He sacrifices His self, that He may find
it. I cannot think that any line of thought
will touch even the fringe of the problems of
the universe unless it starts from this mystery
of God's self limitation ; self sacrifice ; the los-
ing of the absoluteness of His self, in order to
gain His self in the highest perfection. And
we cannot help supposing that even if there
had been no sin, God's self would have as-
sumed humanity, in order to bring about the
unity between Him and His creation. It was
man's sin which caused the life of the God-
man upon earth to be what it was ; and it was
man's sin which made Him die. And when
He died, His death was a repetition, a reflec-
tion, an imitation, but at the same time a nec-
essary completion of the eternal self limita-

118

McNEILE

tion, self sacrifice of the Godhead. But if
that sacrifice of the divine self was performed
in order to bring about the unity, the atone-
ment of all men with Him in mutual love, the
whole eternal purpose of the Father would
have come to nought if the dead Christ had
not become the living Christ, if the final union
of the divine self with Himself had failed.
Everything that we can imagine about the be-
ing of God is based on the analogy of the be-
ing of men ; and that analogy, if valid, leads
us to the incarnation. But once led to the in-
carnation, we find it impossible to stop. The
incarnation was a means to an end ; and if the
end was not accomplished, and the atonement
was not completed by the resurrection, relig-
ious philosophy becomes a meaningless enigma,
because the key to human history is lost.
And if so, we are surely right in thinking that
the question whether human eyes saw Him or
not after He rose, is of relatively minor im-
portance; undoubtedly an immense help to
faith, but not essential to the atonement of
God and man.

And yet we must not belittle this help to
faith. If Christ must have risen, whether men
saw Him or not, it makes it easier to believe
that they did see Him. And further, if the
history of the world is unintelligible without
the resurrection, it is no argument against it
to say that it is unique in the annals of man-
kind. From the nature of the case it must be

119

MODERN SERMONS

unique, because there can be only one infinite,
living representative of the universe.

And so, with a sure confidence in the divine
act which completed the atonement, we can
turn to ourselves. The world wanted a proof
in the days of the apostles, and the only proof
they eould offer was '' We have seen the
Lord! " ** This Jesus hath God raised up,
of whom we all are witnesses. '* And the
world wants a proof to-day. It will not be
satisfied with the Christian deduction that
because Christ was divine He must have risen.
It needs the converse argument — because He
rose He must be divine. And so it still asks
for proof that He rose. And what proof can
we give? In former days men accepted the
ipse dixit of Scripture. But now they wiU
believe anything rather than Scripture. They
will believe the Greek historians, or the Latin
historians ; they will believe Assyrian inscrip-
tions or Egyptian hieroglyphics. They will
accept thousands of unproved statements in
so-called secular writings of all nations. But
the Bible they will not accept unless it is
supported from other sources. We must
therefore offer them some other proof.

The modem mind is dominated by the
thought that effects always follow causes.
Nothing can be considered as a cause unless
we can point to its effects. When therefore
the Christian claims that a great power was
introduced into the world after Christ's death,

120

McNEILE

he is met with the question: What has it
done? What is it doing? Show that it is a
power. The statements in your New Testa-
ment are not enough. Granted that the uni-
versal aspiration of men after a future life
may incline us to expect that there may be
one, we cannot prove it until we experience
that future life for ourselves, until we creep
out of this life by the gateway of death and
discover for ourselves whether there is beyond
it everything or nothing. You say that Jesus
Christ has risen, and that His resurrection
is a power. A power that effects nothing is
no power. Show us the effects, here and now,
that we may see and believe.

Now, it ought to be enough to point to the
Christian Church. Christ's resurrection gave
it birth; it has stood firm amid the shifting
sands of time ; it has seen the decay and fall
of the great Roman Empire, and the rise of
many another kingdom; it has reached its
arms to every country and almost every island
under heaven. And we might boldly claim
that such a phenomenon, following upon the
public execution of the Master whom Chris-
tians worship, could not have taken its rise
from a delusion, an invention or a lie. The
existence of the Church is a solid fact, and it
is an effect which must spring from an ade-
quate cause. And we can go further, and
point to countless individuals whose lives have
shown the power of the resurrection. There

121

MODERN SERMONS

have passed across the stage of history a pro-
cession of saints, young men and maidens, old
men and children, a great multitude which no
man can number, who have lived the Christ-
like life in the strength of His risen life. To
those that ask a reason for the hope that is in
us, we can show all this. And to the Chris-
tian, it is proof, positive and convincing,
enough and to spare.

But the non-Christian may still be dissatis-
fied. The proof is too vague. The past does
not appeal to him. Other religions have en-
joyed a long life and numbered more ad-
herents than Christianity. The accounts of
dead saints have probably been exaggerated;
or he has never read them and doesn 't want to
read them. And above all, he says he might
have some belief in the Christian Church if
it were not for the Christians whom he sees
before his eyes every day. If Christ really
rose, it ought on their own showing to be a
driving, impelling force that dominates every
action and thought and word. j\Ien ought to
be able to recognize a Christian at a glance;
he ought to be like a city set on a hill which
cannot be hid; he ought to be visibly moved
like trees in a wind if he is really born of the
Spirit. His character ought to be so beauti-
ful and strong and pure that everyone would
be drawn to him and say, "We will go with
thee for we have seen that God is with thee.
Where then is your proof that Christ is risen ?

122

McNEILE

To begin with, it is not difficult to show that
this kind of objection rests upon a fallacy.
The objector will not see that the power of the
resurrection, the '' energy " of the Spirit, is
potential, and exists forever conserved and
undiminished. And if men do not make it
kinetic, appropriate and make it actual, in
their own lives, it does not follow that it has
no existence. It is quite superficial and un-
scientific to argue that there is no living
Christ because Christians are not perfect.
But still the non-Christian will persist in an-
swering that seeing is believing. And upon
the followers of Christ therefore lies the over-
whelming responsibility of showing him some-
thing that he can see, of exhibiting the power
in their own person.

Look at some of the alleged witnesses. The
narratives may be hard to reconcile, chrono-
logically or geographically. But the individ-
uals who saw the Lord may be taken as types
of those who see the Lord to-day. Mary Mag-
dalene is a type of pure womanhood, with all
her seven demons long cast out ; a type of all
virgin souls of men or women who go through
their daily life ever ready to hear the risen
Master calling them by name. A joy or a sor-
row, a gleam of beauty in nature or in art,
even the daily round, the common task, will
furnish all they need to ask. At any moment
they hear the Lord saying ' ' Marj^ ' ' and they
answer '* Kabboni." To them, the power of

123

MODERN SERMONS

the resurrection is an abiding fire of love, an
abiding contact with the divine. They are
like the delicate instrument which needs no
artificial wires to catch the faintest message
from afar. Such souls are rare ; and happy is
the man who knows even one of them, and can
call him friend.

Pure unsullied love will always be the first
to see her Lord. But next to love comes peni-
tence. The Lord is risen indeed, and hath ap-
peared unto Simon. The first apostle had
gone out into the night and wept bitterly. We
know not how many scalding tears he had
shed ; we know not a single detail of the meet-
ing between him and the Master. But we do
know that the power of the resurrection trans-
formed the conceited, over-confident, patron-
izing, but penitent fisherman into a veritable
rock, the first stone in the great house of God.
If we could only summon tears for our sins
and weep bitterly, and then in the depths
of our being, the secret place of the Most
High, see the living Lord, we too should
be transformed, and lifted out of our self-
confidence, self-centeredness, self-indulgence,
self-seeking, self-assertion, self-love, and we
should become a proof of the resurrection.

Love and penitence cover all requirements
for seeing the Lord. But the power of the res-
urrection has no limits in its manifold ca-
pacity to transform the thoughts of men.
Two disciples, we read, were walking to Em-

124

McNEILE

maus, disappointment written on tkeir faces.
They had been looking for the consolation
of Israel, for the coming of the divine king-
dom, for the millennium of delight when
the Messiah would be ruler of all the earth.
Their hopes were those of the writer who had
prayed a few years before : * * Behold 0 Lord
and raise up unto them their king, the son of
David . . . that he may reign over Israel
thy servant. And gird him with strength to
break in pieces unrighteous rulers, to purge
Jerusalem from the heathen that tread her
down and destroy. . . . And there shall
be no iniquity in his days in their midst, for
all shall be holy and their king is the Lord
Messiah." They had followed and reverenced
the man Jesus, and had hoped that it was He
who would redeem Israel. But He was dead.
There was no doubt about it ; crowds saw Him
die. And their new-born hopes had met an
untimely end, and had been buried in His
grave. It was true that a group of hysterical
women had come with a tale of angels and an
empty tomb. But Him they saw not. And so
the Messiah had not come after all; and the
downtrodden Jewish people must still go on
^with their weary waiting for Him, as they had
waited since the days of the prophets.

Ideals are grand things ; ideals for ourselves,
for society, for the nation, for humanity. But
ideals will always prove chimeras if they are
built upon an earthly and not a spiritual

125

MODERN SERMONS

foundation. The country is full of men and
women who follow and reverence the character
of the man Jesus, and are nobly spending
their lives in pursuit of social ideals. Settle-
ments, societies, acts of Parliament, personal
influence : they have pointed to one or another
form of activity, and they have hoped, oh so
earnestly, that it was that which should have
redeemed England. But the movement died,
the society failed, the act of Parliament was
not passed, or was passed and proved practi-
cally useless; and with it the hopes of the
would-be reformers are dying or dead. It is
the power of the resurrection which alone can
transform their disappointment into a sure
and certain hope. Nothing but the risen
Christ in the hearts of men will redeem the
drunkard, the adulterer, the extortioner, the
murderer, the gambler, the cheat. England
must be crucified with Christ, and rise to new-
ness of life with Christ; and without that,
nothing can save her. And the workers with
the magnificent ideals will forever be disap-
pointed, until they have seen the risen Lord,
and laid their ideals before Him to be trans-
formed ; until He, and not merely their social
schemes, shall have made their hearts burn
within them and taught them the lessons of
the Spirit of God.

One more type may claim our attention, a
university student. He was trained in Greek
philosophy and literature; a freeborn citizen

126

McNEILE

of the Roman Empire ; a specialist in Hebrew
literature and Rabbinic law and Midrash.
He was thus in touch with the three great
phases of the human thought of his day ; up to
date, widely read, and keen with a fine, youth-
ful enthusiasm. But Saul of Tarsus found —
not one more subject that he might add to
his versatile accomplishments, but something
which transformed them all. He learned to
know the Man whom the Romans had cruci-
fied, whose cross the Jews hated as a stum-
bling block and the Greeks scorned as foolish-
ness. As a Roman he was proud of his
citizenship; he was proud of the splendid
organization which welded men into one body,
governed by the same laws, and owning alle-
giance to Ceesar. But he found that which
lifted his imperialism into heavenly places.
Our citizenship is in heaven, we are one body
governed by the law of liberty, wherewith
Christ has made us free; a body in which
every man is a soldier, owning allegiance to the
King, eternal, immortal, invisible. He was
proud of his Jewish ancestry, and was never
tired of insisting on its privileges. But he
found that which transformed his Judaism
into universalism. He had drunk deep into
the fountains of Greek wisdom. But he found,
as we must find if all our pursuit of knowl-
edge is not to be a striving after wind, that the
only wisdom worthy of the name was God's
wisdom in a mystery, even the wisdom which

127

MODERN SERMONS

hath been hidden, which God foreordained be-
fore the world ; the mystery of Christ 's repre-
sentative self-sacrifice, of God's eternal self-
limitation, of the completed atonement of God
and man.

It is possible that we too are proud of our
English citizenship, of our good birth, of our
intellectual attainments. But we can count
them as refuse until they are transformed and
dedicated. Our life will be worthless until,
like Paul, we have come to know the incarnate
God and the power of His resurrection.

128

MARTIN
THE LIFE THAT KNOWS NO DEFEAT

VI— 9

GEORGE CURRIE MARTIN

Professor of New Testament language,
etc., and patristics in the United College,
Bradford, Yorks, and Lancashire Inde-
pendent College, since 1903; born Porto-
bello, Scotland, July 9, 1865; educated
George Watson's College, Edinburgh;
Knox Institute, Haddington; Edinburgh
and Marburg universities; New College,
London; minister of Congregational
churches, Nairn, N. B., 1890-95; Reigate,
Surrey, 1895-1903; author of "Foreign
Missions in Eras of Non-conformity,"
" A Catechism on the Teaching of Jesus,"
editor of " Ephesians, Proverbs," etc., in
"The Century Bible," "New Guinea,"
" How Best to Read the New Testament,"
et«.

130

THE LIFE THAT KNOWS NO
DEFEAT

Prof. G. Curree Martin, M.A., B.D.

** I can do all things in Mm that strengtheneth me.'*
— PMl. 4 : 13.

THESE words constitute a great boast.
Boasting is common enough, but justi-
fiable boasting is not so common. It is
true that humility is not the very highest
quality in character, and that the greatest
men have frequently astounded their contem-
poraries by the confidence of their utterances
about their ability. Our Lord Himself found
that one cause of the people's enmity lay in
the statements He made about His own per-
sonality, and the claims He assumed as His
own right. But here we find His great apos-
tle Paul speaking in a note of absolute assur-
ance that staggers us. The only justification
of such a claim is that it should be verified in
experience.

First, then, we want to look at the verifica-
tion of this boast. At first sight, it is true,
there does not seem very much justification
for it. Paul writes this letter from prison.
Now it would appear that the most obvious
thing for him to do at the moment, if he were
possest of the power to which he lays claim,

131

MODERN SERMONS

would be to escape from prison and go to the
assistance of his various converts and
churches. This very letter shows us that he
had a longing so to do. To break prison only
requires a certain amount of ingenuity. It
is said that there are no bolts so strong, no
fetters so heavy, no arrangement of a prison-
house so ingenious that men cannot escape if
they set themselves to accomplish the task.
Paul never attempted it. If the most obvious
and simple thing was not done, how are we to
find a justification of the statement ?

It will be remembered that a century or
two ago one of our English poets was in
prison, and in his cell he wrote a song that has
floated down the years to our own day :

*' Stone walls do not a prison make,
Nor iron bars a cage;
Hearts innocent and quiet take
That for a hermitage."

This was a wonderful accomplishment of the
poet's imagination. To him the constraint of
the prison became the refuge of the solitary,
and he found reasons for thankfulness in the
very circumstances of compulsory solitude.

When, in the days of the Scottish Covenant,
they exiled Samuel Rutherford from his
lovely parish of Anworth to the cold, gray
desolation of Aberdeen, he was wont to write
letters of comfort and consolation to his par-
ishioners, and sometimes he dated them, not,

132

MARTIN

as we might expect, from the dreary prison-
house at Aberdeen, but from " My Lord's
Palace at Aberdeen." This was what his
faith taught Rutherford, and transformed
the place of confinement to a room in which
he held high converse with his Lord. But
Paul's accomplishment is more wonderful
than either of these. For him the prison be-
comes a pulpit. They had confined him in
Rome, that they might silence what the Roman
historian called '* the mischievous supersti-
tion " of Christianity, and, behold, he finds
the prison a better place for extending his
evangel than the free travel that had formerly
been his lot. In this letter he tells us how
the whole company of the imperial guard
had heard the word of Christ, and those letters
of his reached the utmost limits of the empire.
Not only so, but they come down through all
the centuries, until to-day we read in this
word the same message of indomitable cour-
age, and unconquerable confidence.

But, says someone, at any rate the apostle
could not escape suffering and trial. No, he
could not, but let us read that great autobio-
graphical self-revelation — the Second Epistle
to the Corinthians — and we find the way in
which Paul dealt with such circumstances.
Once on his missionary journeys the multi-
tude stoned him. His attitude to every form
of suffering is just as if he had been able to
take the stones his persecutors threw at him.

133

MODERN SERMONS

raise them in his hands, and as he did so the
stones had turned to bright and flashing
gems, which he set upon his forehead as a tri-
umphal diadem. This was the manner in
which he treated all the trials that befell him.
He made them subjects of boasting. '* If I
must boast I will boast of my suffering, my
weakness, and my trial," he said. Here
again, much more truly than had he escaped
all, he overcomes in the power of his Lord.

Nor is death any terror to him. Again, in
the pages of this letter we find him saying,
*' To me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.'*
It is simply impossible to do an;^i:hing with a
man like this. There is no form of barrier
known to human skill which will stop him,
no form of terror the most demoniacal in-
genuity can invent that will in the least de-
gree dissuade him. Truly we find in Paul's
experience this great boast completely verified
— " I can do all things in him that strength-
eneth me."

Secondly, there lies in the words a note of
victory. Paul is a victorious man, and I beg
you to think for a moment or two of the forces
that were arrayed against him. I speak of the
special forms of enmity with which the apos-
tle in his peculiar work was conversant. In
the main there were three : First, the power of
the Jew was a mighty force. It was the force
of his own countrymen, and we all know how
intense a patriot Paul was, and how difficult

134

MARTIN

it is for the patriot to resist the persuasion
or the pressure of those he loves with such in-
tense devotion. But not only were they his
own countrymen — ^they were the people who
possest the finest and most spiritual religion
of that day — in fact, the most spiritual relig-
ion of any day, except that which grew out of
it — Chriptianity itself. It was a religion not
only hoary with antiquity, but able to point to
vast achievements, and to a large element of
spiritual power. Secondly, there were the
Greeks. Now the Greeks stood for two things
— the religion of beauty, and the religion of
pleasure. They taught the world such lessons
of loveliness, as it has not been able to surpass
in all the centuries since. Even to-day we
have to go to the school of Greek sculpture
and the Greek architects in order to know
some of the secrets of purest beauty. And
they were the pleasure-loving folk. They
preached the doctrine of enjoyment of life to
the full. All the world had listened to the
message and thereby it increased its stock of
joy. And, thirdly, there was the might of
Rome. Rome stood for many things, but in
this particular connection let us confine our
attention to two — her sense of justice, and her
might of civilization. Rome had evolved such
a system of law that upon it is based the great
legal systems of modern Europe. And the
effectiveness of her civilization was such
that probably never from that day to this

135

MODERN SERMONS

has the world been so safe a place in which to
travel.

Now, these three mighty powers were ar-
rayed against the apostle, and he had to con-
tend with them, and, if the words of the text
are true, he not only contended with them but
felt he had the secret of their subjugation.
This might only be an interesting historical
fact, if it were not that these same forces are
arrayed against the Church of Christ to-day,
and the individual Christian has now a battle
upon which to enter similar to that the apos-
tle had to fight. We do not indeed call the
forces by the same names, but the realities are
there. Do we not all know of churches which
pride themselves upon their past achievement,
upon the correctness of their creed, or the an-
tiquity of their ritual, or the splendor of their
worldly power? Has Christendom ever been
free from such conflict, and is it not one of
the hardest tasks of the spiritual church to-
day to resist and vanquish such enemies
within her own ranks? Was it only the
Greeks that preached the popular gospel of
pleasure? Are there no echoes of it amongst
ourselves? Have not young men and women
€ver in their ears the voices which bid them
fill life with beauty, with gaiety, and with
gladness ? Take the cup of life, and fill up to
the brim, and drain it, care for nothing but
pleasure! say these voices. If ever an age
listened to that message it is our own. And,

136

MARTIN

finally, the gospel of the might of empire, and
the greatness of civilization has never been so
loudly proclaimed as to-day. Are there not
many who suppose that the great glory of
England lies in the extension of her imperial
might? Are the English people not told to
acquire by any means, but certainly to ac-
quire; and to hold what they have acquired,
with an iron hand, if it must be, but certainly
to hold? Ajid, further, those who are most
keenly interested in the spread of the gospel
of Christ in foreign lands are often met with
the argument that might well have come from
an old Roman. *' Go to China, or to India,"
we are told, * * and take there all that Western
science has taught you, all that modem dis-
covery has been able to find, share with these
people all knowledge except the knowledge of
the cross.'* Often, when we are brought into
relation with primitive peoples, men will tell
us, ' ' Yes, make them good citizens of the em-
pire, teach them how to increase our com-
merce, how to be of advantage to our money-
making endeavor, and once you have civilized
them, perhaps one day, far off, you may speak
the message of Christ. " To a very large num-
ber the order of events is, civilization first,
Christianity afterwards. There are many
even within the ranks of the Church who seem
to hold that view. It is said that the religion
of the Sikhs in northern India is sometimes
phrased by its followers in one brief utterance

137

MODERN SERMONS

— ' * Victory ! Victory ! ' ' That is the ' ' good
morning'' and ''good evening" of Sikh-
dom. Such is their phrase of confident as-
surance. I have sometimes wondered whether
the modern Church of Christ dare say the
same thing. Could we, in the face of the
world, declare '* Victory! Victory! That is
the ' good morning ' and ' good evening ' of
Christendom? " But if we cannot do so,
ought we not to feel ashamed for Paul to do
so? For have not we the intervening cen-
turies to add their witness to the faith which
he preached, and in the power of which he
lived ?

Thirdly, in these words we find the note of
vision. ** In him that strengtheneth me."
All Paul's religion centered in the person of
his Lord. Whenever you come into the secret
places of Paul's inner life you are made aware
of one unforgetable event — the event which
altered the whole current of his experience —
the vision of his Lord on the way to Damas-
cus. Not only before King Agrippa, but in
face of all inquiries, Paul would have said * ' I
was not disobedient unto the heavenly vision. ' '
There is no great religion in the world that
has not acquired its power, and so long as it
had any vitality, preserved it through the
strength of its vision. Buddha was able to
reach his great achievements, because of the
vision he had seen of the world's need, and the
means whereby he felt that it might be met.

138

MARTIN

Mohammed found in his religion the light of
the vision of the one God he had beheld in the
solitudes of the trackless desert, and whatever
might has attached to that great faith has been
found where such a vision has been renewed.
It is not the power of the sword, but the power
of its vision that has made Islam what it is,
and Christianity is a religion of vision. The
older faith of Judaism said that * * To see God
was to die," the new religion says ** To see
God is to live. " ' ' He that hath seen me hath
seen the Father," said its Founder. *' No one
knoweth the Father save the Son, and he to
whomsoever the Son willeth to reveal him,"
and he who knoweth God and Him whom God
hath sent has the secret of eternal life.

From vision, then, comes power. Power, in
the first instance, of pardon, in the second in-
stance, of peace, and, in the third instance,
of achievement. But the vision must not be
only for one occasion — it must be a vision
that is perpetually renewed. For Paul there
was nothing so certain as the presence of
Christ, and the lives that are lived in that
consciousness are the lives that know conquest.
It is said that there was once a great musician
visiting this country, and that his host took
him to church with him on one occasion. A
week later he extended the invitation again,
but the musician replied, ** No, I will not go
with you unless you can take me to hear some-
one who will tempt me to do the impossible. ' '

139

MODERN SERMONS

** Tempt "US to do the impossible '' — that is
what Christ is ever doing. Nothing can have
seemed more hopeless than the quest upon
which He sent Paul. Standing on the thresh-
old of the Roman world, He beckoned to the
apostle to follow Him in order that He might
bring all that proud Roman empire to His
feet. Nothing could have seemed more quix-
otic and unpractical than that, yet the apos-
tle not only accepted the challenge, but here,
after long years of experience, not any more
a young man with untried enthusiasm and un-
tested zeal, he says, ** I can do all things,*'
and, as we have seen, the boast was no vain
one, but a reality that can be tested by his
life.

These, then, are the tests of a true Chris-
tian experience. Are they to be found in our
lives — these notes of verification, of victory
and vision? If not, it must be ours to catch
them, or to recall them, and the only secret of
their acquirement or renewal is to come into
close and intimate fellowship with Jesus
Christ through His Spirit, whereby our hearts
also will be assured in the day of conflict,
strengthened in the hour of temptation, and
made more than conqueror through Him that
loveth us.

140

MOFFAT
THE CHURCH AND MODERN THOUGHT

JAMES DAVID MOFFAT

President of Washington and Jefferson
College since 1882; born New Lisbon,
Ohio, March 15, 1846 ; educated Washing-
ton and Jefferson College, Pa., 1869; stu-
dent at Princeton Theological Seminary,
1869-71; D.D., Hanover College, Ind.,
1882, and from Princeton in 1883 ; LL.D.
from Western University, Pa., 1897; Uni-
versity of Pennsylvania, 1901, and Mis-
souri Valley College, 1906; ordained to
the Presbyterian ministry. May 8, 1873;
pastor of the Second Presbyterian church.
Wheeling, W. Va., 1871-82; assistant
editor of the Presbyterian Banner, 1893-
1905; moderator of the Presbyterian
Assembly, Winona Lake, Ind,. 1905

142

THE CHURCH AND MODERN
THOUGHT

James D. Moffat, D.D., LL.D.
" Increasing in the knowledge of God." — Col. 1 : 10.

THIS is one short clause in a comprehen-
sive prayer. Paul's chief desire was
that the Colossian saints should live a
life of obedience to the will of God. To this
end he prayed that they might know God's
will, ^' be filled with the knowledge of his
will," and that they might " walk worthy of
the Lord unto all pleasing." Paul was con-
vinced that if these petitions should be an-
swered, two results would follow: first, they
* * would be fruitful in every good work, ' ' and
second, they would be " increasing in the
knowledge of God." These two results must
therefore be regarded by us as results that
were esteemed very highly by the apostle
Paul.

These two — abounding good works and in-
creasing knowledge — are so closely conjoined
by the apostle that we may consider them in-
separable in fact. They are, however, separa-
ble in thought and for discussion; but we
should not overlook their connection. Doing
good out of regard for the will of God may
be the condition of growth in the knowledge of

143

MODERN SERMONS

God. Some knowledge of God is essential to
the life of obedience; but knowledge of God
that is not employed in the obedient endeavor
to do good may lack or lose its power of
growth. On the other hand, putting religious
knowledge to good use in the spirit of devo-
tion to God must give to the individual a per-
sonal knowledge of God obtained in no other
way.

In the first instance, this increasing knowl-
edge of God must have been purely a personal
attainment. But as Christians compared
notes it would become evident that there had
been a common growth in the knowledge of
God. Differences would also be discovered.
While the community might rejoice in the
growth of its knowledge as compared with
that of other communities or of former gen-
erations, it might also lament the growing dif-
ferences and endeavor to remove them by
friendly discussion. Without any additional
supernatural revelation of God there would
seem to be possible an increasing knowledge
of God in a Christian community, as a result
of a life of obedience to the divine will.

But the increased knowledge of God may
come in other ways. The increase of general
knowledge must exert some influence upon the
existing stock. A normal mind will not tol-
erate incongruity. When a new item of
knowledge is taken into the mind a place must
be made for it, and this often necessitates

144

MOFFAT

modifying some conceptions already there, or
even the expulsion of some beliefs because
they seem to be inconsistent with the newly
accepted belief. Knowledge of all sorts is a
construction of the knowing mind, so built up
as to harmonize its parts and to be true to
what is believed to be reality. Even when
confronted by what is believed to be a divine
revelation of truth, the Christian mind is com-
pelled to interpret the communication and to
employ for this purpose its own knowledge
gathered from other sources. Hence, with the
same words of Scripture before them two good
persons may derive conceptions that are not
identical. What we bring with us to the study
of the Bible has much to do with determining
what particular meanings we carry away from
that study.

But the Bible is not the sole source of our
knowledge of God. God's works of creation
and of providence afford information concern-
ing him. The only way we can find out what
God has foreordained is by reading history,
studying science and observing the times in
which we live. Since, according to our com-
mon creed, God has foreordained whatsoever
comes to pass, it must come to pass, and we
must know it, before we can trace it to God
and draw any inference from its happening.
We must study the event itself and learn its
relations to other events and in its place in the
whole movement before we can know its sig-

VI— 10 145

MODERN SERMONS

nificance and what light its occurrence may
reflect upon the purpose of God.

No one who is familiar with the great
strides that human knowledge has been taking
in the past century can be ignorant of the very
important bearing this modern thought has
exercised upon the intelligent man's concep-
tion of God. The history of the material uni-
verse as set before us by science, now almost
wholly devoted to the evolutionary principle,
has apparently limited the creative energy of
God to the mere origination of the ultimate
elements of matter in the far distant past.
But in leading us to think of God's method
as evolutionary in time and as creative only
in the beginning of time, modern thought has
made possible a conception of God that is im-
mensely in advance of the conception held in
earlier ages. We may now think of God as
working out an eternal plan. He does not put
forth creative fiats — just as an inferior being
might do upon impulse, or upon discovering
in some part of his world a need of something
unprovided for. We must think of him rather
as seeing the very end from the very begin-
ning, and as so creating the ultimate elements
of matter and endowing them with such prop-
erties and so disposing of them that millen-
niums of progress from lower to higher stages
became possible and actual. Our knowledge
of the physical universe is not yet sufficiently
matured to enable us to form any definite

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MOFFAT

conception of what * * creation ' ' is ; but I be-
lieve it is rational to rejoice that we do not live
in a world where the exercises of creative
power are often needed and occur so fre-
quently as to weaken confidence ; for we have
learned, at least in these modern times, to rely
upon the regular working of every force in
nature. It is this confidence in what we call
the uniformity of nature that has given such
a rapid development to our ability to control
physical forces and make them serve our ends.
I think also that it is not too much to say
that our theistic conception has been im-
proved by the scientific and philosophic ten-
dencies of our time. Human thought has
shown tendencies to swing to the extremes of
deism or pantheism. But the theism of to-day
strives to embody what is positive in both
these extremes — at least what has been at-
tractive. Deism exalts God above the world,
but puts Him at such a distance from it that
we think of Him as indifferent to what goes
on here, and disposed to let men bear its ills
without sympathy or assistance. Pantheism
so identifies God with the world as to make it
almost impossible for us to think of Him as
personal and conscious. On the other hand,
what a strong tendency has been shown in
scientific thought to identify physical force
with the very will of God ! I cannot feel that
the identity of force and will has been estab-
lished, but this very tendency to establish

147

MODERN SERMONS

identity shows the desire of the intelligent
scientist to obliterate the distance between
God and His world, which the deist has en-
deavored to magnify. Again, since evolution
has revealed a plan that through the ages as
*' one increasing purpose runs " the Creator
is not to be so identified with the universe as
to render His intelligent planning inconceiv-
able. It is not too much to claim that modern
scientific speculation has certainly helped to
revive the idea of the apostle Paul that God
is both personal and immanent, but our con-
ception of the divine immanence has signifi-
cance for us that it probably did not have for
Paul, and it is destined to play a more import-
ant part in our theology.

I mention these modern conceptions of God
to illustrate how modern thought may give us
increased knowledge of God. Yet it is not
new knowledge that supplants former concep-
tions. The continuity of belief has not been
broken. It is only that human conceptions
have undergone modification as knowledge has
increased. The God known in Old Testament
times became better kno^vn to New Testament
readers, and He is still better known to men
w^ho know so much more about the world that
God made and governs than men could know
nineteen centuries ago.

But there is another consequence of the
growth of human knowledge that must be
dealt with. There are most perplexing prob-

148

MOFFAT

lems created which are difficult to solve.
What is offered for our acceptance may be
truth or error. If we fight it as error and it
proves later to be truth, or if we accept it as
truth and it comes to be seen to be error, we
have wasted time, disarranged our stock of
knowledge and created a state of doubt that is
difficult to get rid of. Until we have satisfied
our own minds of the truth of what comes to
us as modem thought, we cannot make the
new adjustments its presence in our minds
requires ; and when we are fully satisfied it is
still a question to what extent the old concep-
tions and beliefs must be changed. Few men
have the logical insight of theologians and
philosophers. Besides, many of these prob-
lems are far-reaching. Their solution de-
mands extensive research and may depend
upon results gathered from different depart-
ments of human thinking. Only the few who
are equipped for this kind of work can hope to
make progress in solving such problems. Yet
some of these problems are fundamental,
nearly all of them are important, and only a
few can be treated as trivial. So pressing have
some of these questions become, so well sup-
ported are they by an abundance of modern
scholarship and an array of distinguished
scholars, that alarm is exprest and men talk
of the crisis of belief. The Christian Church
may be in no immediate danger, for these
great debates are not known by the masses of

149

MODERN SERMONS

church members ; but there is a very real dan-
ger that the Church may lose its influence
over a large portion of the most scholarly
men.

In these conditions what should be the pol-
icy of the Church ? I assume that the leaders
of the Church, its theologians, philosophers,
scholars, must continue to meet these prob-
lems squarely in the intellectual field and
carry on discussion; not in the spirit of con-
troversy but in that more modem spirit of
honest investigation, that leads, not to the tri-
umph of a party, but to the construction of
the temple of truth. We need not fear the
final result. Some errors of human source may
be abandoned, some modes of expressing truth
may be modified, some new points of view may
be taken, many technical terms may be dropt
as creating false impressions; but the new
truths that may finally emerge, will be seen to
stand in harmonious relation to the essentials
of Christian belief.

But meanwhile, the Church cannot stand
still and wait for the contest to end. Its work
to-day is the same that it has ever been, and
it is as greatly needed as ever. What then
should be the attitude of the ministers and
members of our churches while the intellectual
contest goes on ?

There are three possible courses: The
Church may regard what is new and appar-
ently in conflict with any article of its creed,

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MOFFAT

as something to be rejected and denounced as
inimical to the cause of Christ, and it may en-
deavor to convince the world of the truth of
its entire creed. It may in the second place
relegate creed to the background, treat belief
as a matter for individual choice, and expend
its energies in ethical discussions. It may
proclaim to men '' the creed is indifferent, it
is the conduct that is important. Salvation is
not by faith but by character." There is
something commendable in both these posi-
tions ; there is something blameworthy in each
of them. A third course — that combines the
good of these two — would seem to be the
wisest policy. Let the type of human charac-
ter that Christ has set before the world as the
ideal be presented alwa^^s as the chief end that
the Church is endeavoring to have realized,
and let the beliefs that inspire men to strive
after that end and encourage and assist them
to reach it, be urged as the divinely appointed
means whereby that end is to be attained.
This is no middle ground, this is no compro-
mise between those who seem disposed to make
creed everything and those who make conduct
everything. It is a recognition of the attitude
of the Christian Church when it has been do-
ing its best service in the world. It is a course
of action that may be pursued in, at least,
comparative independence of any of the great
intellectual disputes that may be going on in
the world.

151

MODERN SERMONS

It assumes that it is not God's desire that
all men should think alike or form the same
opinions. Certainly such identity does not
seem to be attainable in this life, and I do not
see how we can hope that it may ever be so.
The worship of truth for its own sake, of
which we sometimes hear laudation, is the wor-
ship of an abstraction, and too often means de-
votion to one's own thoughts. All truths are
not equally important. Our very life depends
upon some truths, but there are others of
which we may say it is wholly indifferent
whether we know them or not. But even of
the most important truths it may be said that
their importance arises from their relation to
our conduct. It is inconceivable that God,
either as revealed in the Bible or in nature,
should make heaven or hell depend on a mere
assent to any one truth or any body of truths ;
and yet this has been seriously supposed to be
the ease by some critics of the Christian
Church. If there is any one truth taught in
both the Old and the New Testaments more
clearly than any other concerning God's will
it is this : that the one thing He most values in
men is righteousness. The sum and the sub-
stance of all His requirements of man is that
man shall love God and his neighbor as him-
self. Personal and social, religious and ethi-
cal character is thus emphasized as man's
chief end.

Moreover, this relationship of creed and

152

MOFFAT

character was that which Jesus Christ recog-
nized and emphasized in His teaching. He
did not seem to care to correct the opinions
of men except as that might bear on their
conduct. It is surprising how small a pro-
portion of His teaching can be classed as theo-
logical and how large a proportion of it was
ethical. It is true that He assumed the cur-
rent creed to be true except in the few cases
in which He would free it from the additions
and perversions of tradition, and we cannot
doubt that His ethical teaching had a broad
basis in religious beliefs. But what He held
before men as the ideal toward which they
were ever to strive was a character personally
and socially righteous. He began His minis-
try with the Sermon on the Mount and He
ended it by commanding His disciples to teach
all men to observe all things whatsoever He
had commanded them. It vexes my soul to
hear ministers speak disparagingly of the Ser-
mon on the Mount, as if it were the trial ser-
mon of a young minister who preached dif-
ferently near the close of his life. It is still
to be regarded as setting forth in illustrative
principles the kind of men we are to strive
to become. It is the ideal, altho it does not
specify all the means we are to employ to
attain that ideal.

And Paul, esteemed the one great theologi-
cal writer of the New Testament, never seems
to lose sight for a moment of the Christlike

153

MODERN SERMONS

character of believers as the goal toward
which they were to strive, and his doctrines
are no sooner expounded and defended than
they are applied practically to the regulation
of ethical conduct.

Now may I ask you, by way of contrast, to
note the change of relationship between creed
and conduct that the Church has at times ex-
hibited?

The well known ** Apostles' Creed " is
simply a series of propositions to which one
may give his assent. There is nothing in it
calling for consent. The Nicene Creed is an
expansion of these propositions and the Atha-
nasian Creed a still more expanded statement
of these propositions. But in all three of
these ecumenical creeds there is not a clause
in which the most devout reciter can pledge
his obedience to God, or recognize his obliga-
tion to live a righteous life. In the last of
these creeds the assent is made a condition of
salvation — without that assent man perishes,
altho it is not said that mere assent will
save. It may be said that it was not neces-
sary to incorporate in the creed any statement
about conduct, or any pledge to cultivate
righteousness, for that would be taken for
granted. And it is possible that priests were
faithful in instructions and exhortations.
StiU, when the emphasis of the great creeds
of the Church was placed exclusively on the
things to be believed, and the things to be

154

MOFFAT

done were not even mentioned, it does not
seem so strange that a great moral reforma-
tion was needed in the fifteenth century. It
is true that reformation had a doctrinal basis
and required a change of policy; but it was
the enlightened conscience of Luther that was
so mortally offended by what he witnessed in
Rome that led to his protest. It was con-
science, too, in John Calvin that urged him on
and dominated his whole career in Geneva.

Luther made classic his doctrine of " Jus-
tification by faith and not by works," but he
so emphasized his doctrinal statement that the
important place that belongs to works has
often been neglected. Even Luther himself
thought the Epistle of James gave too promi-
nent a place to human works. It is not un-
common to hear in evangelical and evangelis-
tic circles works disparaged, and the broader
term '* salvation " is often substituted for
Luther's ** justification," and then it is
taught that * * Salvation is by faith and not by
works." The purpose of the Protestant doc-
trine was to exclude human works from the
ground upon which pardon and restoration to
the favor of God should be expected. Pardon
is purely gracious. But this change in a sin-
ner's relation to God is his initiation into the
true Church of God and occupies but a
moment of time. From that moment the jus-
tified one is under the solemn obligation of
* * working out his own salvation with fear and

155

MODERN SERMONS

trembling, for it is God which worketh in him
both to will and to do of his good pleasure."
If salvation be used to cover the entire process
by which a sinner becomes whole, then it is
proper to say *' Salvation is of works — but
works that proceed from faith." The Prot-
estant doctrine, properly understood, allows
no one to believe that he may expect God to do
for him what he can do for himself. No de-
"cree of God, no act of grace, will do the works
for us which God's law and Christ's com-
mands require us to do.

It is chiefly due to this disparaging of the
place of works that the Scriptural teachings
concerning rewards have been so neglected in
modern preaching. The fear that men may
think it possible for them to deserve some-
thing from God and so overlook their depend-
ence on grace, has made us timid in our
teaching that believers are to be rewarded ac-
cording to their works, in this life and in that
which is to follow. Earning is not in itself
sinful, nor is it futile for us to endeavor to
earn anything that is not placed beyond our
reach. We cannot, indeed, earn our justi-
fication for that is an unearned gift. It can-
not be purchased. But if we are to be
rewarded for our works and in proportion to
our works, works that we do in obedience to
the commands of our Saviour, then our re-
wards are to be earned, or they can never be
-enjoyed. The more deeply we can impress

156

MOFFAT

Christians with the thought that they are mak-
ing their heaven by the fidelity and earnest-
ness with which they follow Christ in abound-
ing in good works, the more earnest and faith-
ful may we expect them to become. We can
avoid the confusion of the Roman Catholic
theology by excluding all thought of works
from the ground of our reconciliation to God^
and yet give to works that place in the Chris-
tian life that both revelation and conscience
assign to them.

I am not pleading that the ethical side of
preaching shall be the only side, nor that it
shall be made so prominent that the creedal
side shall be lost sight of. I would have these
two sides placed in their proper relation ta
each other. One is the end toward which all
Christian endeavor should strive; the other
is the means that Christianity provides both
to urge men to enter upon the life that leads
to that goal and to inspire and assist them as
they pursue that way. Creed has value, but
only as means to this Christian end, and the
value of any creed is to be measured by its
tendency to promote that end. Character is
the end, conduct is character in the making,
creed is the guiding principle and the inspira-
tion of conduct.

Creed may change, it may grow, it is de-
sirable that it should grow, becoming fuller
and clearer and freer from doubt, but these
changes should render it more effective as a

157

MODERN SERMONS

guide and inspiration to right conduct. I
refer now to the creed of the individual, not
to that of the organization. It may be desira-
ble to shorten the creed of the organization so
that the greater emphasis may be given to the
end in view. But all the beliefs of an indi-
vidual that are true and sincerely held con-
tribute to his progress in righteousness.

Putting the creed into this relationship to
the Christian's final goal gives us ground for
our confidence that no serious changes in this
kind of creed are impending. If we believe
in a righteous God, who desires above all else
that His moral creatures shall grow into the
stature of perfect manhood in Christ, we need
not fear that the growth of knowledge, the
knowledge of His universe, will furnish obsta-
cles to man's upward progress. The belief
that is helpful will prove to be permanent.

But the Church must stand for belief, es-
pecially^ for those beliefs that have contrib-
uted so much toward the uplifting of human-
ity. It must stand for these beliefs, not for
their owti sake, if I may so express it, but be-
cause they tend to bring men into personal
relations to Jesus Christ. It is not belief in
doctrines that brings us into sonship with God
but faith in a person, faith in the Christ. But
once united to Christ, beliefs have much to do
with intensifying loyalty to our Lord and
Savior. We cannot assume an attitude of
indifference toward them, nor allow our confi-

158

MOFFAT

dence in them to be weakened by doubtful dis-
putations or superficial objections.

In the interest of ethics, rather than that of
systematic theology, we may view with con-
cern the tendency to take lower views of the
person of Christ than those which have proved
so effective for good in the past nineteen
centuries.

The metaphysical aspects of the Christolog-
ical problem may be modified, but the world
can not afford to lose the ethical effects of the
affection, trust and devotion created in the
hearts of men because of their belief in His
divinity.

His resurrection as an abstract proposition,
or a mere event in history, may be regarded as
an academic question; but when we consider
the direct effects of belief in the testimony of
the apostles to His resurrection, namely, the
foimding and perpetuating of the Christian
Church, with all its civilizing and sanctifying
results, we can not be indifferent spectators
to what is going on in the intellectual world.

When we note the place of the cross in apos-
tolic. Catholic, Protestant and evangelical
preaching, we cannot believe that after all the
death of Jesus was nothing more than the end-
ing of a human life. We may be indifferent
to theories of sacrifice and atonement: but
when we meet men who refuse to accept par-
don as offered in the gospel preaching, be-
cause of their own deep-seated conviction that

159

MODERN SERMONS

their sins deserve punishment, shall we re-
frain from saying to them, ** God has pro-
vided for meeting this demand of the human
conscience ? ' ' We may deny that God needed
that death, but can we deny that men need it ?

I cannot, indeed, accept the pragmatic test
that makes usefulness the sole or chief evi-
dence of truth, but surely twenty centuries of
usefulness among people of all races and con-
ditions in life, is not to be lightly esteemed
as confirmatory evidence of those beliefs that
have undoubtedly promoted ethical advance.

Let our scholars seek to determine the
authorship of the books of the Bible, and the
circumstances of their composition, even if
their conclusions shall be such as to reverse all
our traditional beliefs; meanwhile we may
continue to use its contents for religious and
ethical purposes as heretofore. Systematic
theology may be revolutionized if some of
these critical contentions prevail, for the Bible
can then be employed by theologians only as
other literature is appealed to. But the Scrip-
tures can still be used effectively for the doc-
trine that bears directly on life, ' ' for reproof,
for correction, for instruction in righteous-
ness; that the man of God may be perfect,
thoroughly furnished unto all good works. ' '

I am afraid I may be understood as under-
estimating the importance of some cherished
beliefs now ' ' under fire. ' ' I am not suggest-
ing that the Church give any of these up until

160

MOFFAT

intellectual honesty compels their change or
abandonment, but I believe that the Church at
work may refuse to be alarmed or anxious.
Let us rather trust our scholars and thinkers
to meet these issues as they arise. But let us
not be drawn away from our proper work of
laboring together with God for the Christian-
izing of our fellow-men, who do not so much
need to have their ideas cleared and harmon-
ized as to have their conduct brought into con-
formity with the will of God. If the Church
devotes its energies and enthusiasm to this
kind of work it will be apparent to the men of
the world that the Church is not a mere philo-
sophical association, whose members are
chiefly interested in certain abstract proposi-
tions; nor an ethical society, debating ethical
questions, but doing little or no practical work
toward the ethical improvement of men ; but
an organization of men whose beliefs are prin-
ciples that work practically toward their own
moral and religious development and whose
lives are devoted to securing a similar develop-
ment in all mankind.

The cry, ' ' Back to Christ, back to the apos-
tolic Church," has a meaning that can only
be determined when we know the motive of
those who utter it. But I venture to say that
if we go back to the apostolic age for our
knowledge, we shall know less than we do now.
If we go back for our theological conceptions-
we may be better fitted for living in the first

VI— 11 J61

MODERN SERMONS

century than in the twentieth. But if we go
back to the apostolic age for our knowledge
of how closely correlated creed and conduct
should be, and the order in which they should
be regarded, we shall be making a forward
and not a backward movement.

Nor will this devotion to work, and to care
for creed only as it is related to work, hinder
our growth in knowledge. I believe it will
leave us freer to accept truth when it comes
to us properly authenticated. Our strongest
prejudices are connected with our theoretic
systems of thought. Whatever threatens the
integrity of our system is for that reason alone
often denied even a hearing. There is a parti-
zan loyalty that must be reckoned with. It is
almost impossible to secure any change in a
political creed — except to avoid defeat. A
similar conservatism is often exhibited by the
advocates of a philosophical system ; and it is
to be feared that a theological system may be
guarded in a similar way. If we wish to
know the truth we must keep our minds open
to receive it, whenever its evidence is suffi-
cient, whatever may be our fear as to the
effect of it on our other beliefs. It is just as
dangerous to refuse to accept a truth as it
is to accept an error. In either case we are
somewhat heretical.

My conclusion then is that the policy for
the Church of our times should be that sug-
gested by Paul's prayer for the Colossians.

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MOFFAT

Our first and most earnest desire should be to
know the will of God, in order that we may
walk worthy of our Lord ; and then our lives
will surely abound in good works, and we will
be free to increase our knowledge of God.
And this will be a kind of knowledge that we
can rely upon and put to the best of uses.

163

MOFFATT
THE COURAGE OF RELIGION

JAMES MOFFATT

Of the editorial staff of the Hibhert Jour-
nal; minister of the United Free Church
of Scotland ; born Glasgow, July 4, 1870 ;
educated at the academy, university and
Free Church College, Glasgow; ordained
in 1896; Jowett lecturer, London, 1907;
author of " The Historical New Testa-
ment," " English Edition and Translation
of Hamack's ' Aushreitung des Christen-
turns,"' "The Golden Book of Owen,"
"Literary Illustrations of the Bible."

THE COURAGE OF RELIGION

James Moffatt, D.D.

''And David said in his heart, I shall now perish one
day by the hand of Saul." — 1 Sam. 27 : 1.

BUT he did not perish by the hand of Saul.
He lived to pronounce a eulogy, and a
generous eulogy, upon his dead foe.
Saul perished first ; his attack seemed irresist-
ible, but it came to nothing, and David 's fear
proved vain.

Thus do even strong, religious natures often
make trouble for themselves out of a future
about which they know next to nothing.
David was terribly discouraged at this
moment. The fond hope which he had cher-
ished of succeeding to a high position in the
kingdom had ebbed away. Wherever he
turned, he saw nothing but the prospect of
further peril and privation, whose end, sooner
or later, meant defeat. Saul's resources were
so numerous, and his power was so versatile,
that the result of the struggle seemed to
David to be merely a question of time.

Now, forethought is one thing. We have to
be on the alert against the risks of life and
open-eyed in face of any horrible combination
which may threaten our position or affect our
interests injuriously. But it is another thing

167

MODERN SERMONS

altogether to collapse weakly in despair of
heart before apprehensions and anxieties
which may turn out to be quite unfounded.
In the early part of last century a young
scientist once wrote: ** It has been a bitter
mortification to me to digest the conclusion
that the race is for the strong, and that I shall
practically do little more but be content to
admire the strides others make in science."
It was Charles Darwin. He was in bad health,
and bad health is apt to bring low spirits. Yet
Darwin lived to do work which made others
only too glad to follow his strides in science.
That is one instance of the mis judgments
which we are prone to make about our future,
and David's bitter cry is just another.

"We can aU see how wrong it is for a relig-
ious man to yield thus to depression, and how
foolish this perverse habit is, but surely we
can also feel how natural it is to lose heart and
courage for the moment. Only those who
have had to make the effort know how difficult
it is to be brave at certain times in life. I am
speaking not of the courage required for some
enterprise or heroic action, but of the quieter
courage which holds depression at bay, which
braces the soul against anxiety and which ena-
bles people to be composed and firm under cir-
cumstances of hardship, when doubts as to our
own usefulness and prospects occur, or when
the pressure of things seems to thwart and
even to deny any providence of God within

168

MOFFATT

our sphere of life. At such moments, the
strain almost overpowers us. David was liv-
ing the anxious life of a hunted creature, like
Hereward the "Wake, or Bruce in the Athole
country, or Wallace in Ayrshire and the
North, obliged to be on his guard against re-
peated surprises, his nerves aquiver with the
tension of pursuit. As he bitterly com-
plained, Saul was chasing him like a partridge
among the hills. True, he had first succeeded
in outwitting his foe, but at night reaction
came over him like a wave. How long could
this guerrilla warfare go on? One day the
fugitive pretender would be sure to fall into
an ambush! He could not expect always to
foil the attack of his enemies ! And so think-
ing he lost his heart. *' I shall now perish one
day by the hand of Saul.''

We must be on our guard against such
moments of reaction, especially toward even-
ing, when after the tiring day the body is too
exhausted to help the mind against the inroad
of oracle fears. Then doubts about our faith
and health and work and income rise and
shape themselves into dark possibilities of evil,
and feelings are apt to get the better of our
self-possession, and faith is shaken for the
moment. It is a great part of life's manage-
ment to be on our guard against such appre-
hensions. Towards night, or when you are
run down, whenever reaction sets in, the judg-
ment and the content of faith are apt to be

169

MODERN SERMONS

disturbed by fears which either vanish or at
any rate shrink to their true proportions in
the light of the morning. You are bound to
remember that, and to lay your account with
it.

The mood is almost constitutional with
some. Owing to inherited disposition or to
imperfect training, some are tempted to dwell
repeatedly upon the darker side of things.
They are highly strung, by nature. Their
sensitive hearts get easily deprest. The sense
of danger, which acts upon certain people like
a pacific stimulus, only serves to damp their
courage. They belong to the class for which
Bunyan, with all the generosity of a strong
nature, felt such evident sympathy — Mrs. De-
spondency, Miss Much-Afraid, IVIr. Fearing,
Mr. Feeble-Mind, the ready inaction of Giant
Despair and of Castle Doubting.

At the same time, neither circumstances nor
character can altogether explain the occa-
sional failure of moral courage in life. David,
for example, lived in the open air; his body
was strong; there was nothing morbid about
his habits of life ; he loved music and fighting.
But nevertheless he was subject to fits of de-
pression and dismay, which discolored life
and made God seem actually indifferent or
hostile to him. Now, what is to be done, when
the spirit is thus overwhelmed within us ?

In the first place, there is usually something
that can be done. Action is one of the best

170

i

MOFFATT

means of banishing idle shadows from the
path. There is this to be said for David, that
he never allowed self-pity to benumb his
faculties. Despair made him energetic; it
drove him at this crisis to seek shelter outside
the boundaries of the coimtry for himself and
his household. Instead of folding his hands
and letting things drift, he did his best to se-
cure a haven for his family and to provide as
well as he could for himself. Such is the first
note of practical courage in our religious life.
Often, to lose heart means, with us, to lose
vigor. People brood on their difficulties and
perplexities until hardship is allowed to para-
lyze their faculties of resistance. Now David 's
example summons us to face our troubles
and to make the best of them, instead of sit-
ting down to bemoan ourselves as the victims
of fate. We all have our moments of coward-
ice. Thank God if they are only moments.
Thank God if we have enough faith and nerve
left to rise, as David did, even with a hea\'y
heart, and put our hand to some business of
the day. The mere feeling of movement will
help to raise our courage. It will inspire us
with the conviction that w^e are not meant to
be mere driftwood, at the mercy of the wild
risks and chances of the current. Our very
proverb about '' rising to the occasion " is
based upon this truth. And to rise to the oc-
casion means that we shake off the selfish tor-
por of self-pity and depression, standing up to

171

MODERN SERMONS

grapple somehow with the difficulties of our
lot.

The second mark of returning courage is to
get away from the circle of our own feelings,
and this is the escape of faith. Remember
what David forgot for the moment — God's
purpose and God 's faithfulness. Long ago he
had been chosen from the sheepfold for a
career which neither he nor anyone else antic-
ipated. God had lifted him from the country
to the court. His vocation had opened up,
and now, altho everything appeared to con-
tradict this purpose, could it have failed?
Could the will of God be shattered or re-
called ? Was the past experience of His favor
accidental or delusive? Such is the heart's
logic of the religious man. It is in fact the
underlying faith in providence which rallies
and restores our nature in its broken hours.
Newman once called it the true religion of
Great Britain. *' What Scripture illustrates
from its first page to its last," he declared,
' ' is God 's providence ; and that is nearly the
only doctrine held with a real assent by the
mass of religious Englishmen. Hence the
Bible is so great a solace and refuge to them
in trouble." The reason w^h}^ people draw
hope and encouragement in this way is that
religion means not simply an ordered view of
the universe, which excludes caprice and tyr-
anny alike, but a sense of the divine control
and care for the individual. A vague impres-

172

MOFFATT

sion of providence would not rally anybody.
"VYhat is needed to reinforce our moral
strength is the conviction of God's personal
interest in the single life, and of a wise, loving
Will which never fails anyone who loyally fol-
lows it at all hazards. No outsider can form
any idea of the change produced in a human
soul by this resolute trust in the higher re-
sponsibility of God. The center is changed
from nervous worry about oneself to a pious
reliance on the care of the Lord, and a real
but unaccountable sense of security passes
into the very secrets of the soul. According
to our temperament it takes many forms,
from quiet calm to an exulting confidence, but
in every form this faith does its perfect work
by putting the entire concern of life into
God's sure keeping.

Here, then, lies another remedy for ner-
vousness and agitation about our prospects.
Even in your hours of panic, when life seems
brought to nothing, you can reflect : ' ' After
all, I am the object of my Father's care and
purpose. I can trust Him absolutely. He has
put me here and been with me hitherto. I am
not left to myself. I cannot, I will not, be-
lieve that He has grown weary of the respon-
sibility for what He made." To say that in
your heart is not vanity ; it is the sheer trust
of faith, won from long experience and still
to be verified during the days to come. Un-
known as your future may be, you are at the

173

MODERN SERMONS

disposal of One whom you have learned to
truvst, whose management of life you are pre-
pared to accept, not coldly but with a steady
and even a cheerful consent. The deepest
thing you know about your life is that you
are His choice and charge and handiwork.

That naturally opens out into a third
source of courage, namely, gratitude. Faith,
in order to do its perfect work, needs to pass
from dull submission and acquiescence into a
habit of thankfulness to God. The spirit of
praise ministers to our sense of God's reality
by calling up before our mind and heart those
acts in which we see His character and from
which we are intended to gain a firmer im-
pression of His continuous and personal in-
terest in ourselves. When we thank God, we
realize Him more profoundly and intimately
than ever. Too often, I am afraid, most of us
are thankful to get past some difficulty, and if
we remember it at all it is to congratulate our-
selves secretly upon the skill and good for-
tune which carried us over the jolt in the
road. But these steps and stages should be
precious to the soul. They ought to be accu-
mulating for us, as the years go by, a steady
faith in God's sure faithfulness. Now that is
impossible unless we are in the habit of saying
to ourselves, as each favor comes: '' This is
the doing of God. I thank thee for this my
Father. Thou art very good to me. ' ' Dejec-
tion is frequently the result of nothing more

3 74

MOFFATT

than a failure to practise this habit of thank-
fulness. We forget to praise God for His
daily mercies, and so they pass away from
us without leaving any rich deposit of assur-
ance, as they would have done if we had
owned His hand in every one. Now the full
good of any deliverance and help is not
merely the outward benefit which it confers
upon our life. The relief is something. But
surely we are also intended to win from it a
new confirmation of our faith in God 's charac-
ter and a deeper apprehension of His purpose
in relation to ourselves. The repeated acts of
God within our personal experience are so
many glimpses into the constancy and truth
of His will, and it is our privilege to use those,
from time to time, in order to learn how
surely He can be depended upon. David
seems to have forgotten this, for the time be-
ing. He had rejoiced over his recent exploit,
but he had not allowed it to bear home to him
the sense of God's unfailing care, and that
was one reason why he lay open to misgivings
and fear. It is always so, in human experi-
ence, when we face the future without having
won from the past a more settled faith in the
continuity of God 's living will.

Such are some of the methods by means of
which religion ministers to strength and con-
stancy of life. Courage indeed varies with
our disposition and our training. ** The
French courage," Byron wrote once to Mur-

175

MODERN SERMONS

ray, " proceeds from vanity, the German
from phlegm, the Turkish from fanaticism
and opium, the Spanish from pride, the Eng-
lish from custom, the Dutch from obstinacy,
the Russian from insensibility, but the Italian
from anger. ' ' A generalization like this is al-
ways loose, but it serves to remind us how
many forces in life will call out courage; an
inspiriting example, sympathy, indignation,
pity, the sense of self-respect — any of these
will often keep us from breaking down and
giving way. Faith can pour strength along
these and other channels, but most directly of
all it helps us, if it is real, to be self-possest
and brave by calling up before us the entire
compass of the situation. Where we fail is in
forgetting to include the greatest element of
all, or in undervaluing it. We leave God out
of our estimate. David said, *' I shall now
perish one day by the hand of Saul." Was
there no more in his life than that? I and
Saul? What about God? Had life resolved
itself into a mere trial of strength between
David and his foe ? Was there no longer any
providence in it? What of the splendid con-
fession before Goliath, '' The Lord who de-
livered me from the power of the lion and the
bear will deliver me out of the hand of this
Philistine ? " Ah, there spoke the true David,
the man after God's o^vn heart, who recog-
nized God 's hand in the action and passion of
his days, and who was no more sure of his

176

MOFFATT

own existence than of God's answer to the
faith and effort of the soul.

The sterling courage of religion is to be
satisfied with this assurance, to win it from
experience and to hold it by due care of the
mind and body and by a habit of sincere
thankfulness to God. It may be that for a
time your life is very different from what you
expected. You may have to face difficult pas-
sages and dark turns when it is not easy to
feel much more than the annoyance and un-
certainty and strain that sometimes crowd
upon you with disturbing force. There are
days when you scarcely venture to look ahead,
in case you are unnerved by the prospect. It
seems as if almost everything conspired to
strip life of its just hope and vitality. When
such clouds of physical reaction and brain-
weariness come down, wiU you believe that
God has not abandoned you? Do not reckon
up nervously this chance and that, pitting the
one against the other, but fall back on what
you know of God 's character and goodness in
the past, till His word and witness put some
fresh hope into j^our soul.

Say not, The struggle naught availeth,
The labor and the wounds are vain;

The enemy faints not, nor faileth
And as things have been, they remain;

say it not, even in your heart. Believe it not.
What does remain is the undying interest of

VI— 12 177

MODERN SERMONS

God in you. What faints not, nor faileth, is
this redeeming purpose. Don't give way.
Whatever you do, do not lose heart and hope,
under the gray sky. Tell yourself to wait, to
wait for the living God, and see. And you
will see what thousands of men and women
have rejoiced to see, that, whoever fails you,
whatever may be thrust on you or taken from
you, nothing, neither life nor death, nor
things present, nor things to come, will be
able to separate you from the love of God
which is in Christ Jesus, our Lord.

178

MONTET
MARY OF BETHANY

EDOUARD MONTET

Dean of the faculty of the University of
Geneva since 1897; vice-rector, since
1908; professor of Old Testament exege-
sis, and lecturer on the Semitic languages :
Hebrew, Aramaic, Arabic ; bom at Lyons,
June 12, 1856; secondaiy studies at the
Lycee de Lyon, collegiate studies in the
universities of Geneva, Berlin, Heidelberg,
and Paris; doctor of theology of the fac-
ulty of theology of the University of
Paris, 1883; appointed professor to the
faculty of theology of the University of
Geneva, 1885; has traveled much, es-
pecially in South America; in Morocco
made an expedition for scientific explora-
tion ; author of " The History of Chris-
tianity," and other works on Semitic lan-
guages, on Islam, and on the Old Testa-
ment.

MARY OF BETHANY

Edouard Montet, D.D.

* ' Then tooTc Mary a pound of ointment of spiTcenard,
very costly, and anointed the feet of Jesus, and wiped
his feet with her hair: and the house was filled with
the odor of the ointment.

Then saith one of his disciples, Judas Iscariot,
Simon's son, which should betray him.
Why was not this ointment sold for three hundred
pence, and given to the poor?

This he said, not that he cared for the poor; hut he-
cause he urns a thief, and had the hag, and hare what
was put therein.

Then said Jesus, Let her alone : against the day of my
hurying hath she kept this.

For the poor always ye have with you; hut me ye have
not always.'* — John 12 : 3-8.

THE action recorded of Mary of Bethany,
which cannot fail to seem strange to
Western minds and to folk of the twen-
tieth century, must have produced a profound
impression on the first disciples of Jesus, see-
ing that we read the story in all four gospels
of the evangelists. It is not that the material
fact of anointing, so frequently practised in
the East, would create any surprise to those
round about the Master. But the enthusiastic
laudation by Jesus Christ of an action ordi-
nary enough in itself, and the excessive praise
which was not self-explanatory, must have

181

MODERN SERMONS

powerfully concentrated their minds on this
religious enigma. Hence the divergences in
the records which we possess of the transac-
tion. Hence also the different interpretations
which this incident has received, and the com-
ments which have even modified and changed
the circumstances of the event.

But these variations do not in the slightest
degree diminish the irresistible attraction and
captivating charm of this page of the gospel,
which has so often impressed us by its immor-
tal freshness, its pure and fervent enthusiasm,
constituting a fountain whence our sentiment
of religion has so often drawn that living
water of which the Fourth Gospel speaks,
and which evermore quenches our spiritual
thirst.

In Bethany, called the place of poverty, was
found the little circle of intimate friends
upon whose fidelity Jesus could always count.
It was at first that Simon who had been a
leper, and at whose tables the Master did not
disdain to sit. It was that Lazarus who later
gave his name to the hamlet, that friend of
Christ of whom amongst the crowd marvelous
things were told. It was the sisters of Laza-
rus, it was Martha, always eager to serve
Jesus, of whom she made herself the humble
servant. It was Mary, that woman of the
simple but fervent heart, who attached herself
passionately to the steps of the Master to
drink in His words and His teaching, and who

182

MONTET

lost herself in the contemplation of Christ till
she forgot all the world and especially forgot
her own self. She so sincerely endeavored to
efface herself that she has been taken for one
unkno^^Ti by some of the evangelists, and the
writer of the Fourth Gospel, who has so ex-
actly seized upon her character, and so highly
respects her modesty, contents himself with
describing her in these words: *' Mary, she
who anointed the Lord." In the midst of
humble people, without pretensions, without
learning, without great education, but also
pure from corruption, free from vice, from
the low and infamous sentiments of the con-
temporary aristocracy, Jesus felt Himself at
home, amongst His own.

A cleansed leper, some peasants, certain of
the common people, the apostles, various rep-
resentatives of the lowest class of the multi-
tudes— such are the guests that press round
the Master at the table of Simon. We are at
the eve of the crucifixion, only six days before
Passover. It is a Saturday, probably March
28, in the year 33; on April 3, Jesus will
perish on the cross. That is to say, the cir-
cumstances are solemn and saddening.

Jesus is served by Martha herself; Lazarus
and his sisters partake of the feast ; besides it
is not rare in the East that a person who is
attached to you by the bonds of affection (and
this was the case of Martha for Jesus) follows
you to wait upon you in the house to which

183

MODERN SERMONS

you have been invited. While the guests, re-
clining on the divans, eat as they lean on the
left elbow, Mary goes to seek a very precious
ointment which she possesses and returns to
kneel at the Master's feet. There, breaking
the neck of the flask which she holds in her
hand, she pours forth its contents over the
feet of Christ, which she covers with her hair,
and the whole house is filled with the odor of
the ointment.

The first inclination of the witnesses of
this scene was to reproach Mary for her prodi-
gality ; it was not necessary to employ a pound
of ointment of spikenard for anointing the
feet of Jesus ; the Master would have been as
greatly honored, if Mary had been content to
use only a portion. Judas, who filled the
function of treasurer to the apostles, made
himself the interpreter of this commonplace
judgment. * * Why was not this ointment sold
for three hundred pence, and given to the
poor?" cried he. In truth this plea for the
poor was a mere pretext on his part. Think of
Judas professing solicitude for the poor at the
very time when he was intriguing with the
worst enemies of Jesus! He made a calcula-
tion as to what the ointment was worth. It
was a large sum, and he bitterly lamented the
loss — he who estimated the value of his Master
at about twice the amount. The poor! But
this was not the moment for him to trouble
about them. And yet in that solemn hour

184

MONTET

many were concerned who w^ere indeed in
want ! Had not Jesus come to give help to the
"unfortunate ? How restricted and how closed
against the light of the gospel was the spirit
of the apostles up to that hour !

Jesus must have experienced a feeling of
bitter disillusion concerning His disciples, on
hearing this judgment. But repressing the
legitimate indignation awakened in Him by
such unjust words concerning ^lary, He con-
tented Himself with saying to Judas : ' ' Let
her alone. She hath wrought a good work
upon me. The poor ye have always with you,
and when you wish you will be able to do good
to them, but me ye have not always." And at
the thought of His death, ever present to His
mind, the anointing of Mary assumed one of
the most elevating of symbolic meanings.
" For in that she hath poured this ointment
on my body, she did it for my burial. ' ' added
He. She, His friend, had embalmed His body
beforehand; she had in advance performed
this supreme duty with regard to which no
one would show meanness. And appreciating
at its true worth this testimony of love regis-
tered some days before His death, this pledge
of profound attachment all the more precious
because the rupture of these bonds of affec-
tion is imminent. He gives it as an example
to His disciples present and to come, exclaim-
ing: '* Verily I say unto you, wherever this
gospel shall be preached in the whole world,,

i 185

MODERN SERMONS

there shall also this, that this woman hath
done, be told for a memorial of her.*'

How could the apostles have forgotten these
words and the scene of which they were like
an epilog? How could they have remained
insensible to the contrast which such words
placed in evidence? Here was the trouble of
the apostles, who were by no means ready to
bestow on Him the royal anointing, and whom
this dolorous announcement of death aston-
ished, demoralized and crusht with the most
profound consternation ; it was caused by the
serenity of Jesus, approving the last funerary
preparations which Mary, without doubt or
hesitation, had just devoted to Him in the
shape of this final and solemn anointing as
the crown of His life. Here was Judas, profit-
ing by his title of apostle so as to effect a good
business realization ; there was Mary, all love
for Jesus. Here, finally, the unanimous re-
proaches of the spectators belonging to that
present generation, deaf and blind ; there, the
exaltation of Jesus and the praises of pos-
terity. It needed a heart very withered, a re-
ligious sentiment very impoverished not to
feel these things.

Features of the record which we have just
analyzed deserve specially to attract our at-
tention: the simplicity, the artlessness of
faith, the vivacity of religious feeling and the
ardent love in the face of Mary for Jesus.

Try, in fact, to unravel the secret move-

186

MONTET

ments which agitate her heart, the impressions
by which she is stirred, and which she would
demonstrate to others and above all communi-
cate to Jesus. You will find here at one and
the same time a boundless admiration for the
Savior, an ardent love for Him, an attach-
ment, a devotion to His person that nothing
could equal, and an eager need to express at a
single stroke, without any hesitation which
might be suspected of lukewarmness, this ad-
miration, this love, this devotion, rendering
them visible and tangible, so that the Master
could see and touch them. The deeper the
religious feeling is in a Christian, the more
he doubts his ability adequately to translate
it into intelligent expression, and the more he
fears to weaken it, to attenuate it, to tarnish
it in his effort to express it. Mary was that
salt of the earth of which Jesus spoke in the
Sermon on the Mount; the savor of Chris-
tianity was in her : for nothing on earth would
she have consented to have subjected it to the
least commingling, much less would she have
allowed it to be supposed by others that she
was capable of using an atom of it.

What then shall she do in order to open to
Jesus this heart that she gives Him, this con-
science which thrills in unison with the gospel,
which only demands to penetrate always more
effectually and always more progressively into
the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, that
conscience which only aspires to advance in

187

MODERN SERMONS

adoration and in faith? Shall she tread in
the footsteps of the prophet, shall she cele-
brate with the psalmist the songs of thanks
and of glorification ? Shall she ask of Job the
aid of his divine lyrism, in order to tell Jesus
how she holds Him for her Master, her sover-
eign guide, her bread of life, her salvation?
No, she knows that the Deborahs and the
prophetesses have only been the exception in
Israel; she wiU not depart from the modest
but sacred role which suits womanhood; she
is not ignorant that the most useful instru-
mentalities are not always the most brilliant,
and that she is none the less appreciated by
the Lord because she is less conspicuous. So
she will follow her own inspirations. Her in-
tentions are so holy that she does not think
of the objections that she will excite, or of
what will be said of her : to the pure all things
are pure. Impatient to testify to Jesus the
faith that animates her, she ponders upon the
ointment that she possesses ; it is evident that
she has some of the most precious. Judas,
who understands the matter, wiU value it at
three hundred pence, that is all. The more
the value of the gift, the greater will be that
of the homage paid; to give that which is
dearest to one is to render the greatest honor.
Well, without asking what she could do more
or better, she will go and take the vase con-
taining the ointment, and approaching Jesus,
will pour the contents upon that body which

188

MONTET

soon will be exposed to cold contact with the
sepulcher.

Poor woman, what illusions you have pre-
pared ! Poor innocent ! You expected to see
faces showing amazement, you believed even
that perhaps tears would flow, when, before
the guests invited to this funeral feast, you
embalmed beforehand the body of Christ for
the burial. You thought that you would be
altogether understood by these apostles, whom
Jesus had trained and who had lived in inti-
macy with Him, and that if the others re-
mained insensible to the sad witness that you
rendered to Christ, you would at least find
favor in the eyes of the disciples ! Undeceive
yourself, Mary. The apostles themselves are
without intelligence; their meager mind sees
only useless expense, folly, vain prodigality
and aimlessness in the impulse of your heart ;
they traffic against current coin the most deli-
cate sentiments of your soul ! And yet what
should they not have had to learn of Mary of
Bethany !

And we, we who so often trumpet forth the
expression of our religious convictions ! We
who, in matters of religion, so often consult
the opinion of the world, the dogmatic fashion
of the day, the popular current of the moment !
We so sensitive, when the gospel is concerned,
to human estimates ! What do I say — we who,
like the apostles, appraise at the price of
money moral actions, and weigh the most in-

189

MODERN SERMONS

timate feelings, and the consciences of others
in equivalence of gold or bullion ! We who, I
am ashamed to confess it, have for the most
part lost the frankness, the simplicity, the in-
fantile charm of confidence in God, the spring-
tide impulse of religious feeling ! What have
we not also to learn from Mary of Bethany ?

From her let us learn above all to surrender
ourselves entirely to God and to Christ. It is
in this voluntary and absolute gift of her
whole being to Christ, and, by His mediation,
to God, that the rare merit and the high value
of the anointing of Jesus by Mary consisted.
It is because this woman witnessed to the es-
sential duty of religion, that which contains
and sums up all the obligations of religious
law, that Jesus declared that wherever the
gospel should be preached, there also should
be celebrated the good deed of the sister of
Lazarus. Such a promise, unique in the gos-
pel, could only be applied to an exceptional
action.

Mary was right : she had grasped the essen-
tially new and fruitful principle of the gospel,
she understood, in listening to the Master, in
penetrating His instructions, in the living of
His life, that Christianity is the religion of
love. She could not be content with what
sufficed for the best children of Israel; the
severe monotheism, strictly moral of her an-
cestors did not satisfy her heart ; the enthusi-
astic worship by the prophets of the Eternal

190

MONTET

was no longer adequate ; the Messianic hopes,
the hope of the resurrection, so much spoken
of amongst her contemporaries, could not any
better fill the voids. She was a woman: that
is to say she vindicated, with all the per-
suasive eloquence of the feminine heart, the
rights which the heart possesses in virtue of
the di\nne will, those rights which cannot be
alienated from it, those rights which consti-
tute the chief and the best privilege of life.
She knew that nothing here below equals the
affections of the heart ; she could willingly re-
peat with the Song of Songs that love is strong
as death, and she rightly reckoned that the
best part of earthly life is also the best of
celestial life. What happiness for her when
she heard Jesus affirm the same truth, pro-
claiming that God is love, that religion is es-
sentially love for God, and that there should
be between us and God only the most tender
relations and the most intimate affection ! To
give oneself to God without regrets, without
restriction, without reservations of any kind,
to give oneself to Him immediately without
taking counsel of anyone ; to give oneself to
Christ, whom He has sent, His representative
on earth. His well-beloved son; to give one-
self to Christ by a decision of one's o^vn will,
still more by a spontaneous impulse of the
heart; to give oneself to Christ and God, in
order to submit to their holy will, to become
perfect like the Father, to walk no more hence-

191

MODERN SERMONS

forth excepting by the light of the gospel in
the path of salvation — this is how Mary un-
derstood the preaching of the Master, this is
how she lived according to it !

Do we thus feel the preaching of Christ,
and especially do we thus live according to
His word? I am convinced that the compre-
liension of the gospel should be more profound
among us, that we should understand better
its spirit, that we should enter more inti-
mately into the sense of the sacred text. But
I am still less persuaded that we have made
commensurate progress in evangelical life,
that we have realized the imperious necessity,
in order fully to act out the Christian life, of
giving ourselves to God and to Christ. I fear
that we too much resemble Bossuet who,
preaching on the poor, at a time when more
than ten thousand persons in a single province
were dying of hunger, found nothing better
to say with his eloquent voice than to prove
the eminent dignity of the poor in the
Church: and truly, that was not an occasion
for expounding the mere letter of the gospel :
it was to the heart, to the heart only that the
preacher should have spoken.

Let our hearts speak. Ah ! Who will restore
life to our weary and burdened soul, loaded
by the weight of material cares, and by the
burdens not less heavy of moral sufferings?
Who will restore life, that is to say the possi-
bility of loving and of surrendering self, to

192

MONTET

our hearts which this earthly life gradually
withers day by day — to these hearts, slow to
feel, slow to weep with those who weep, in-
capable of those spontaneous impulses under
which one pours forth his soul into the soul
of his brother? Who will restore life to our
faith, who will restore its native freshness,
the eternal youth which it would not have
lost, if, as watchful guardians, we had de-
fended it from access to the corruptions of the
age?

That which will restore life to our faith is
the gospel better felt and better lived; it is
the gospel, not only embraced by our mind,
but also by our heart ; it is the gospel passing
in us from the domain of the understanding-
into that of feeling, from the will into action.

That which wiU give life to our faith is imi-
tation of the example of ]\Iary. It is not nec-
essary to be amongst simple ones and little
ones in order to be able to assimilate this ex-
quisite delicacy of the sentiment which ^lary
experienced in its simplicity. The kingdom of
heaven has not been promised to the poor
only: none are specially privileged to enter
it. The heart may be as young, as poor, as
loving, as enthusiastically holy in the aged as
in the child ; faith can be as absolute, as living,
as ardent in the soul of the sage as in that of
the unlearned man, because the heart of man
is everyw^here the same, no matter which step
of the social ladder you may consider.

VI— 13 193

MODERN SERMONS

Let us then sacrifice to Christ and to God
the most precious of our benefits; let us not
fear, in order to give ourselves to God and to
testify our love to Jesus, who has revealed
Him to us, to place at the feet of our Creator
and at those of our Savior, the most precious
treasures that we possess. Alas! for the
greater part of us it will not be an ointment
worth three hundred pence: it will be our
passions and our self-esteem !

194

MOORE
/THE CONSCRIPT CROSS-BEARER

EDWARD CALDWELL MOORE

Parkman professor of theology, Harvard,
since 1902; born September 1, 1857, in
Westchester, Pa.; educated at Marietta
College, Ohio, 1877; A.M., in same, 1880;
B.D., Union Theological Seminary, 1884;
fellow of Union Seminary, 1884-86, study-
ing in Giessen, Gottingen and Berlin;
Ph.D., Brown University, 1891; D.D.,
Yale University, 1909; minister of the
Westminster Presbyterian church, Yonk-
ers, N. Y., 1886-89; Central Congrega-
tional church, Providence, R. I., 1889-
1902 ; preacher to Harvard University and
chairman of the board of preachers to the
university, 1905; lecturer in Mansfield
College, Oxford, England, 1894; in Yale
Divinity School, 1906-7; Lowell lecturer
in Boston, 1903; author of "The New
Testament in the Christian Church."

THE CONSCRIPT CROSS-BEARER

Prof. Edward C. Moore, D.D.

*' "And they compel one Simon, a Cyrenian, who
passed hy, coming out of the country, the father of
Alexander and Bufus, to bear his cross." — Mark
15 : 21.

THIS is one of the little touches in the
story of the crucifixion which it would
be easy for us quite to overlook. The
climax overshadows everything. Our minds,
like the feet of the crowd which followed
Jesus, hurry to the issue. The tide which is
rushing toward that great event drags us also
with it, just as it seized the people of that
quarter of Jerusalem and swept them up the
slope of Calvary, with no thought but of one
person and one awful spectacle. Later, we
discover that, as often under great excitement,
we had noted many things we did not know
we noticed. So is it here. In truth, it seems
to me that there are in the whole gospel few
more touching and instructive episodes than
this one of the Cyrenian who, at that moment
of Christ 's need, by chance came by.

He is mentioned in three gospels. Some
things that are said of him suggest that he
was, later on, a follower of Jesus. The
manner of his mention here makes plain he

197

MODERN SERMONS

was no follower as yet. He was just passing
by, when they laid hold on him. He was go-
ing into the city as the rabble with the
Sufferer came out. He may have had knowl-
edge of Jesus and no interest in Him. He
may have had very little knowledge. He was
a foreigner, a Jew by name but African by
residence. There were hosts of Jews engaged
in business in Egypt and thence westward
now three hundred years, since Alexander
gave the race commercial privileges which the
Ptolemies and the Romans never took away.
This man 's family may have been for genera-
tions thus merchants in self -chosen exile, and
not pining much in exile. There were stran-
gers from Cyrene present at the Pentecost a
few weeks after the crucifixion. There was a
synagog of the Cyrenians in Jerusalem. This
man may have been attending one of the few
feasts of his lifetime in the sacred city of his
nation. Or he may have been a man who did
not trouble much the feasts and synagogs.

He was coming out of the country in most
natural fashion, intent upon his own affairs.
He was perhaps no more than curious about
this mob which was going out to see an exe-
cution. He must have been astonished and
Indignant thus to be laid hold of. The word
is a rough one. It is the word for impressing
a man into the service. It is to be taken in all
its harsh literalness, no doubt.

The man to be executed often added this to

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MOORE

his torment and humiliation, that he had to
carry on his own back the rough beam on
which he was to suffer. John says Jesus went
forth thus bearing His cross. After a time
perhaps, overwrought, His strength had
yielded. He had faltered, may be fallen, un-
derneath the load. There was no time to look
about for one of Jesus ' followers, to force him
to do the service. I fear none was nigh. Any
back would do. But the mere man of the
rabble never gets this sort of thing on his
back. And so it was, I fancy, that this clean-
washed, neutral stranger, on his little morning
journey, found himself one moment well at
the roadside, a mere spectator, and the next
dragged by some mailed hand into the midst,
faced sharp about and forced to follow Jesus
with that accursed beam upon his neck. After
all, Jesus was hardly to blame. The crowd
jeered if Simon showed discomfiture. One
might as well remonstrate with wild beasts
as with the soldiers. What was to be done?
What but to go on, to get done, and, soon as
possible, to slip away ?

Imagine for this man any relation to Jesus
that you choose, it was a trying experience.
It was most trying if he had had no relation.
So far as we know, nothing could have been
farther from Simon's purpose for himself.
Few things could have been less characteris-
tic, so far as he yet understood his own char-
acter. And here, right out of the even tenor

199

MODERN SERMONS

of his chosen way, there has seized him bodily
this absolutely unexpected force. Here he is^
Simon of Cyrene, toiling up Calvary after
Jesus, with that strange thing, the latter 's
cross, upon his neck.

Now the lot of this all but unknown man
would not be worth to us the time that we
liave spent in trying to imagine it, were it not
for the fact that it seems to me to picture, in
most interesting and suggestive fashion, the
lot and life of many a man and woman whom
we have known, to illuminate some fragment
of experience which we may ourselves have-
had.

It suggests, namely — ^this story of the Cy-
xenian — a holy and spiritual interpretation
of some events in our lives, of certain whole
aspects of those lives. They were unexpected
events, they were forced, imwelcome aspects,
when they came. They have continued un-
meaning, tho they have been long time
with us. They bid fair to remain unfruitful,
tho we should carry them to the end of
our days. Perhaps they have continued un-
meaning and unfruitful to us because we have
persisted in regarding them as merely the net
result of the misfortunes, the stupidities and
iniquities of our fellow-men, instead of seeing,
as we might, that in these very things we are
being suffered to bear after Him a part of the
true cross of Jesus Christ. For what was the
€ross of Jesus Christ, in one way of looking at

200

MOORE

it, but just the net result of the misfortunes,
the stupidities, the iniquities of his fellow-
men? And who are we that we should feel
ourselves thus injured at being asked to bear
a part ? AVe might come to healing of our own
torn souls and reconciliation with a mysteri-
ous hard lot, we might come to joy in it and be
glorified through it, did we but realize that
what has happened to us is precisely what be-
fel this Simon, when he was so unceremo-
niously compelled to put his flinching shoul-
ders and his bewildered and rebellious spirit
under the Lord 's load.

A good part of the load in life which serious
men and women find themselves carrying was
not created by themselves, it was not due to
themselves, it was not chosen for themselves.
Do I not accurately describe the case when I
say they find themselves carrying it? This
load was not created by Simon, it was not due
to Simon, it was not chosen of Simon. He
found himself carrying it. For that matter
it was not created by Jesus, it was not due to
Jesus. But you will say to me that it was, at
least, freely chosen for Himself of Jesus. He
was not simply caught under the load of the
misfortunes and iniquities of His fellow-men,
He had the insight and the courage freely to
accept His cross before He came to it. And
that makes a difference. Yes, and His fol-
lowers have learned to do even that after Him.
But sometimes, apparently, God asks no

201

MODERN SERMONS

harder thing of you and me than this, that
we shall have the insight and the courage to
accept our cross after we get it. Get a good
deal of it we shall, anyway, if we are true
men and women, this cross hewn by the mis-
takes, the miseries and sins of men. Get a
good deal of it, I say, we shall anjrway, if
there is any manhood in us. So that what we
choose, after all, is merely this, whether we
ourselves shall be curst or else blest and glori-
fied in the bearing of it.

Or let us look at the matter in another way.
This story of what happened to the Cyrenian
affords us some rational and natural and
everyday explanation of what we mean by the
phrase, *' the cross of Christ." The phrase
through much use has often become hackneyed
and conventional. Jesus laid great stress
upon the thought. We are sure it is a thing
we ought to do, to take up some cross. But
we have most vague and mythological notions
as to how it is to be done. Superficial people
talk most arrant platitudes. They manufac-
ture some absurdity. They put this holy name
upon some trivial and artificial thing. They
rack imagination and bring forth some small
asceticism. Zealots do unreal and unneces-
sary things, bigots even wrong ones, and call
that the bearing after Him of the cross of
Jesus Christ. And all the while the grand
course of life has been trying to force on us
something which perhaps we never thought of

202

MOORE

save as an imposition upon us, our ill-luck,
blunder or badness of somebody in which we
have got tangled, violence, wrong, even if un-
intentional, which someone has done us. We
are still animated by the paltry hope that
some day we shall give the soldiers the slip, or
even get redress. We have spent a good part
of our life in trying to be rid of this burden.
Or, we have gone on bearing it grimly, embit-
tered against men, and all the space dark
between us and God.

I have seen men and women do this thing
grandly, bear loads for men in general and
men in particular, for parents unfortunate,
brothers foolish, friends treacherous, or even
wicked — loads which they neither had part in
making nor could escape part in bearing. I
bow in reverence before them. But all the
time my heart goes out to them. They do not
seem to know what they are doing. They do
not realize that this was just what Jesus did,
and that in thus doing, they most closely fol-
low Him. They probably have manhood and
womanhood enough not to say anything. But
in their hearts, at least in tired moments and
by wakeful nights, they dwell on the gross in-
justice which was done them. They cannot
forget that they have been rudely laid hold
of. They were passing innocent along the
road. They have been by unseen and unloved
hands compelled. It rankles. It rankles
enough to make men and women who bear

203 '

MODERN SERMONS

grandly all their lives just miss the trans-
figuration of their owti characters, the glorifi-
cation of their own spirits, which ought to go
therewith.

Do not you know men and women who have
carried just as much lumber up a lifelong
Calvary, have set their shoe soles in the still
warm footprints of the Christ of God, and
hardly got more good out of it, just now, you
might say, than one of the thieves? It cannot
fail but that they will get that good by and
by, in that day when all eyes are opened. But
one could mourn for them, whoever they may
be, that they do not get that blessedness now.
So near is the glory of life to some who do not
seem to know it. So far is it from some who
prate most about it but shun these galling
loads.

The Christian life is, at bottom, no new life
which we lead after we are converted. It is
rather, a new and noble and blessed way of
looking at the same old life which, if we are
half way true men and w^omen, we have to
lead in any case. And the cross of Christ is
no pious decoration of our existence which we
carpenter together or cast of gold and set with
sharp points of steel and put next our skin.
Nay, but it is the same old bloody, wooden
thing which the weakness, folly, wickedness of
mankind has been forever creating, and the
true part of mankind has been forever carry-
ing, and the one perfect Man bore perfectly,

204

MOORE

happily, triumphantly, and longs only to
teach us how to do the same.

The same heavy wood is with us still. I
think that one day we shall give thanks, that,
as Paul put it, there are things behind of the
sacrifice of Christ which we are to fill up. I
think that some day we shall give thanks that
we took life as it was, or rather that life took
us as we were. The soldiers dragged us
whither we were not wise enough or had not
sufiicient grace to wish to go. So much of the
meaning of life opens to us only as life opens.
And all is good that opens life to us. Ah,
they were our ministers, those soldiers who
took us by the throat, the mob who jeered at
us, the clean people who got behind us. They
did not exactly mean us the good. But now
that we are calm we see also that they did not
mean us all the harm. They were our minis-
ters, I say, and we could pour out our thanks
to them, only, I fear, they might not under-
stand. Surely the day came when the Cy-
renian gave thanks to God for nothing so
much, as that the brave Christ *s flesh proved,
for a moment, insufiicient, and that, at that
moment, he, Simon, chanced to be passing by.

And now I think that you will have seen
coming all the rest that I have to say. Almost
I am of divided mind, whether it is better to
draw examples or to let you draw them for
yourselves. Your own are best. You are a
man whose bit of wood, dropt from the shoul-

205

MODERN SERMONS

ders of the Christ, and forced on you in the
rough soldiering of life, goes back to your
very youth. It weighed on your sensitive
spirit when you were a child. You wanted an
education, you had a right to a start in busi-
ness, an opening in a loved profession. And
the money which should have gone into that,
may be God did not let your father earn, or
let him earn and lose. And may be that was
part of his cross, that he could not do for you
as he hoped. And you and he might clasp
hands over that bit of wood instead of mis-
understanding one another as perhaps you
have done.

Or somebody was a fool or wicked and
squandered that money, or frittered away a
commercial or personal influence, forfeited a
reputation. Some family shame overshadows
us, some sin or crime is committed by one to
whom we ought always to have been able to
refer with pride. Somebody's over sanguine
temperament in business and loose sense of re-
sponsibility involves a whole vride circle in
lawsuit or indebtedness. Somebody's tower-
ing and imscrupulous ambition, or again
somebody's sheer inefficiency, improvidence,
laziness or plain vice, piles up loads of obli-
gations which almost break the faithful souls
to earth. Sickness, misery, fall within our
circle so closely that even the world says,
there is something for you manfully to bear.
Sickness, misery, misfortune, fall outside

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MOORE

what we have called our circle, but which
somebody has to bear. You see, it is only a
matter of the size of the circle and the
strength of the carrying sense. And Christ
was only He to whom the whole race was but
the circle of His brethren, and every mortal
wo lay on His willing heart.

You will feel that I have described not some
lives, but some aspect of every life which rises
into seriousness or worthiness of any sort.
And that is true. That is only to say what I
have said before, that the opportunity of
Christliness almost forces itself upon us so
soon as our eyes are open to see. Every true
man or woman knows the sensation, knows the
shame which for affection's sake we tenderly
cover, knows the patience called for by the
faults of those we should revere, knows the
burden which is borne for those who cannot,
and sometimes even for those who will not,
bear it for themselves, knows the complication
and annoyance, lifelong pain and embarrass-
ment into which somebody's thoughtlessness,
vanity, obstinacy, may have plunged a whole
connection, knows the debts that must be paid,
the weakness that must be shielded, the
wrongs that, so far as may be, must be atoned
for, the wretched consequences that must be
kept from others, must be taken quietly upon
ourselves. That is life to those who deeply
live.

Jest has been made of the fact alleged that

207

MODERN SERMONS

there is enough wood of the true cross in
Europe alone to build several ships. The jest
is a sorry underestimate. Of the real stuff or
the true cross, of the kind of material we have
just been speaking of, there has been enough
to give to every man ind woman, every child,
in every generation since the Christ, a good
large piece. And so far as one can judge,
there will be enough to last till Christ shall
come again.

You stand by the wayside some bright
morning of your life. We all do it in our
turn. Fresh from your rest in the country,
you are going into the city of your choice, per-
chance to worship in some synagog or offer in
the high temple, as befits your state. So stood
the Cyrenian. And he wist not of what sort
the offering and worship of that day should
be.

You are intent on business, your own profit-
able, pleasant business. Has not every man a
right to his own successful business? And
what a monstrous wrong it is that all the
wretched business of others should be made
into a load for you to bear. You have your
owa clear right and privileges, your own
bright plans. So had the Cyrenian. He had
no idea what his real business and privilege of
that day should be.

And suddenly someone starts out of the
crowd. You have hardly time to know what it
is all about, no questions asked, no remon-

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MOORE

strance heeded. Resistless hands are on you.
The tide of the world is bearing you along
with it. It would all seem a bad dream were
it not for the plain duty, too prosaic and ur-
gent to admit of being dreamed about. You
never proposed to do it. But you are going
to do it. You are too much of a man, too true
a woman not to do it. There is that responsi-
bility. It was not you who incurred it. But
it is you who are going to have to carry it.
There are the consequences which you even
warned your friend against. There is that
unending patience to be shown, that unfalter-
ing faithfulness to be manifested, there is that
wisdom to be exercised, loved, cherished, even
against greatest odds. There is the wood.
And there is the Christ going before us, bear-
ing what He can of all the burden of the
world, and leaving behind Him just enough
to make all men great and Christlike if they
will but follow in His steps. Perhaps you
never said that you were going to follow Him.
But you will. You are too much of a man not
to. You may not have called your following
by that name. That makes but little differ-
ence. It is the Christ that goes before us in
all noblest human life. And we follow Him
when we do nobly bear.

And now, are we going to accept this inter-
pretation of the things that have been wear-
ing upon us ? Shall we not let all the rebellion
in our hearts be healed, and then go out to

VI— 14 209

MODERN SERMONS

take up those tasks again, rejoicing in Christ
as we had never done before ?

We noted at the start that trait in our text
which makes us feel reasonably sure that this
Simon stood near to the Christian circle, later
on. Mark, writing for that circle, brings his
man forward out of all uncertainty with one
swift stroke — ** the father of Alexander and
Rufus " — he it was whom they compelled to
bear the cross. He assumes that these names
are well known to his readers. One cannot
help letting his imagination play with this
fact. Simon's sons would seem to have been
Christians, and his family one of standing
among the supporters of Christ's cause. Does
it seem unlikely that the father was a Chris-
tian from that April day ?

I think that at the first he meant, when,
with the cross, he should have reached the top
of Calvary, to slip away. I think that as he
watched the holy Sufferer the world was
changed. I think that the clean rebellious
man whom we saw at the foot of the hill,
Simon of Cyrene, was all changed. I think
that the soiled and stricken man, believing
and transfigured, that crucifixion evening,
would not have changed his lot with that of
any man on earth. It was a strange way to
become a follower of Jesus, was it not ? And
yet I am sure the like has happened since.
I think that through the mist of years and
dust of other services, he looked back to that

210

MOORE

morning and to the violence then done him,
as the pinnacle of mortal privilege and only
wondered why the heavenly privilege should
have fallen just to him. I think he was recon-
ciled.

But you will say to me it is easier to be
reconciled to my own cross than to that part
of it which projects into my children's lives.
It is easy to see the spiritual profit for me.
But what of them? That is the last straw
upon the weight of many a man's cross. You
think on some fair morning as you go into the
city, that the blessing for your children will
lie in the fortune that you make for them, in
the position, public or social, that you win.
You are often thinking of them far more than
of yourself when you say you cannot bear this
cross. * ' My father, there is the wood for the
burnt offering, but where is the lamb ? ' ' said
little Isaac. '' My son, God will provide him-
self a lamb," said Abraham. But who shall
say what was in his heart as he looked at his
only boy?

Oh, my friend, those things we named are
good — sometimes. But I do also know that
there is no heritage on earth like that which
those children do enjoy who have seen their
father or mother go bravely up life 's Calvary
with the cross of Christ upon their backs. I
think they would not change the lot. I think
they are reconciled. It is rather a strange
way of ensuring that one's children will be

211

MODERN SERMONS

followers of Jesus. But it is rather a common
way, and rather sure. Never fear. Your
Alexander and Eufus will bless you. And the
world will have cause to bless your Alexander
and Eufus. The world will never know —
there are many things which the world need
never know — that it all goes back, this grace
and benediction which those lives have been,
that it all goes back to a morning when you
were dragged from your vantage by the high-
way, as Christ passed to be crucified so long
ago. But in the stillness of your heart you
may know, and in that will be happiness
enough for earth and almost enough for
heaven.

My friends, these things are a parable. We
think our crosses wooden. It is we who are
wooden and do not see. "We curse men when
we ought to be blessing God. We are cast
down when we should be lifted up. Let us
have done. Let us appreciate that what then
in the wood could happen to but one man,
may happen, in the spirit of it, to every soul
of us, to be allowed to bear after Him a little
of the burden of the true cross of Jesus Christ.

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BEARING

THE DRILL=BOOK OF
VOCAL CILTIRE

By Prof. EDWARD P. THWING.

A Comprehensive Study of the Fun-
damental Constituents of Effective,
Graceful Speaking. Heartily Com-
mended by the Highest Authorities.

OUTLINE OF CONTENTS,

What Elocution Really Is — Outline of Prepara-
tory Physical Training by Respiratory Exercises
and Gynmastics — The Production of Tone — Cul-
tivating the Articulation Along the Lines of
Pitch, Melody, and Force — Rate of Movement
— Personation or Picturing — Gesture and Ex-
temporaneous Speech — Facial Expression.

Prof. J. W. Churchill, Andover : "It is an invalu-
able treatise."

The lndei>endent. New York: " Compact and inex-
pensive, but it omits nothing essential."

16mo, HI pp.. Illustrated, Paper Covers,
25 cents. Post-free,

FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY, Publishers,
44-60 East 23d Street, New York.

This booK is DUE on the last
date stamped below

,,|JC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY

B 000 004 925

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