Nature and human nature. Three sermons preached during the month of January 1909 in Grace Church, New York ..

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Three Sermons Preached during

the month of January 1909

in Grace Church

New York

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'By the %ector

WILLIAM REED HUNTINGTON D.D.

i. PSYCHOTHERAPY

ii. MESSINA

ili. A STRANGER UPON EARTH

PRINTED AT THE REQUEST OF THE VESTRY.

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iOtature mh ^utnan Mature

Three Sermons Preached during

the month of January 1909

in Grace Church

New York

"By the %ecior
WILLIAM REED HUNTINGTON D.D.

i. PSYCHOTHERAPY

I. MESSINA

i. A STRANGER UPON EARTH

PRINTED AT THE REQUEST OF THE VESTRY.

#race ©ouise, ^eto gotb

--MOGI'X"

' THE NEW YOEK

PUBLIC LIBP.AKY

537726 A

A^rrOR, LENOX AND

, TILDEN FOaiMDATlONS

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Have all the gifts of healing? — I. Cob. xii. 30.

CHE question evidently expects a negative
reply. "No, all have not the gifts of
healing." And yet in this very negation,
there is an affirmative implied. Paul would
have had no occasion to ask, "Have all
the gifts of healing?" had he not been fully persuaded
that gifts of healing were a reality, and that some, even
though not all, possessed them. He is taking a stand
for order — that is what he is doing. The indiscriminate
exercise of a mysterious power by anybody and every-
body who chose to say "I have it," shocked the Apos-
tle's sense of the fitness of things. Though in one way
himself an innovator of the first magnitude, Paul as a
church-ruler believed in discipline and regularity, when
once the right course had been mapped. "God is not
the author of confusion," was one of his sayings. Ac-
cordingly it vexed and troubled him to find these Co-
rinthian converts of his spoiling a good thing by misuse.
More conspicuously than anywhere else in the Mediter-
ranean world, certain unsuspected powers latent in human
nature had, it would seem, manifested themselves at
Corinth. So exuberant was the religious life of the
Christianized portion of that community, that it broke

[7]

out into forms of activity altogether amazing. These
gifts, or "charisms" (to use an English form of the
Greek word) were various; there was the gift of tongues
apparently a form of exalted and unintelligible speech
which called for another charism, on the part of some
one else, a gift for the interpretation of tongues before
the tongues themselves could be understood by ordinary
listeners. Paul includes them, every one, under the
general phrase, "the manifestation of the spirit," which
he adds, "is given to every man to profit withal." But
there can be no "profit" to anybody, he goes on to show,
unless care is taken to guard against the spiritual self-
conceit which will lay claim to gifts not really in pos-
session, and also against the disorder that must needs
ensue upon leaving the whole matter unregulated. Have
all the gifts of healing? No. Well, then, see to it, ye
Corinthians, that those who have not are sharply distin-
guished from those who have. Let us preserve order,
even though a little self-repression has to be exercised to
secure it.

Certain utterances and happenings in our contempo-
rary Church life warrant us in looking into this matter
a little carefully, for, as in Edward Irving's d^y, in the
early thirties, there was an alleged revival in the Church of
the gift of tongues and the gift of prophecy, so is there
now an alleged revival of the gifts of healing. The
Church, we are told, has been for centuries neglecting
a portion of her inheritance, has been living a maimed
life because of her disuse of certain faculties and powers
that formed part of her original endowment. This claim

[8]

is certainly worth investigating, nay, I think it is our
solemn duty to investigate it, whether the subject be
one that particularly attracts us or not.

A complete treatment of what has come to be known
as psychotherapy, or the cure of the sick by suggestion
and auto-suggestion of a more or less religious character,
without the use of drugs, would have to cover a large
field. It would have to include a study of our Lord's
miracles of healing as recorded in the Gospels, a further
study of the witness borne by the Book of Acts and St.
Paul's Epistles as to the attitude of the primitive Chris-
tians towards the matter, an enquiry into the later expe-
rience of the Church as recorded by ecclesiastical histo-
rians, and finally some investigation into such recent
phenomena as those of Lourdes, Christian Science and
the like. So comprehensive a view is manifestly im-
possible within the limits of a Sermon. I shall content
myself with trying to make a few main points. Let us
start, then, from this indisputable proposition, that all
real healing whatsoever is brought about by an agency
working within the limits of the organism.

The Creator, or, to use the non-committal word
which present-day students of science prefer. Nature, has
lodged within this dual personality of ours, this soul-
and-body constitution, a certain restorative energy which,
when given full play, builds up in the system that which
was broken down, supplies in many and wonderful ways
that which is lost, and by so doing makes of the sufferer
that whole man who is called whole for the very rea-
son that his deficiencies have been supplied, his want

[9l

made good. The old-time physicians named this indwell-
ing power of rehabilitation the vis medicatrix Naturae.
The phrase has gone out of fashion, but no better one
has come to take its place. The gist of it is that, call it
Nature or call it God, there is a force within us that
makes for health, so that the great question of the heal-
ing art must always be. How can this force be given fair
play and full, how set free to act, supposing it to be
impeded, how stirred up, supposing it to be torpid and
quiescent ?

Before going a step further, let me call your atten-
tion to a point seldom noticed. St. Paul in the text,
as elsewhere in the chapter from which the text comes,
speaks in the plural and noticeably not in the singular.
He avoids saying the gift of healing, he says the
gifts of healing. It is a fair inference from this lan-
guage that to Paul's thinking there is more than one
way of setting the healing process to work, more than
one method of enlisting the help of the vis medicatrix
Naturae. I call your attention, therefore, to two ways
in which healing may properly be attempted, according
as the malady in hand be of one sort or of another?
These two methods we will call for convenience sake
the physical and psychical — vague terms, I grant you,
and sadly insufficient, but forced upon us as beings made
up of what we call body and soul, while yet given no
infallible criterion by which to determine just how much
of us is body and how much of us is soul.

Well, then, for the purpose of a parable, let us take
the familiar invention known as a dynamo, a contrivance

[10]

mainly consisting of magnets and coils of wire so ad-
justed as to convert the energy conveyed to it from a
stearp engine or a water-fall into electrical power such
as may be utilized either for lighting or lifting or any
kindred mechanical achievement. We will, for the pur-
pose of our parable, let the outward and visible structure
of the dynamo represent this mortal frame we call the
body, with all its ingenious adjustments, its connecting
threads of nerve and muscle, its glands and arteries and
veins; and we will let the power generated by the engine
or the water-fall, as the case may be, that which sets
the whole thing in motion, "the very pulse of the ma-
chine," we will let that stand for the soul, as good a
name as any for the animating principle in man. Sup-
pose now that complaint is made of a given dynamo that
it is out of order, will not work, as we say. Evidently
the condition of the machine is parallel to that of a man
who has fallen ill. The question at once arises. How are
we to account for the disorder? Is the trouble with the
dynamo, or is the trouble with the power supply? If
the trouble is clearly with the mechanism of the thing,
the complex of wires and magnets, call in the man with
the tools and let him mend the break; but if the trouble
is with the power supply, call in the expert in dynamics.
In nine cases out of ten (perhaps in a larger proportion)
the two would be one and the same person. The me-
chanic and the electrician would be combined in a single
individual. And yet we can easily conceive of cases, can
we not, when the man charged with the double duty
of overseeing both the dynamo and engine might say,

This particular trouble is beyond me. I want the advice
and help of some expert who interests himself in dyna-
mics alone and in nothing else, some one who, though
wholly ignorant of practical mechanics, has made a
special study of the sources of power. Here then, side
by side, not in opposition but in harmony, are these two
gifts of healing, that which makes the physician or sur-
geon, as the case may be, competent to deal with all
the mechanical mal-adjustments and disarrangements
that incapacitate the body for active service, and, on the
other hand, the gift (more inborn than acquired) th:it
enables the possessor of it to infuse fresh power into the
sick man by the ministry of the word, God's word of
sympathy, encouragement and cheer. That, after all,
is what is most central to Psychotherapy so called, the
power of the spoken word, rightly chosen, to reinvigorate
that life principle which is in all of us, and which, if
allowed to languish, may grow more and more ineffec-
tive until it flickers and finally goes out.

The trouble with the volunteer healers who propose
to work by psychic methods only, is that they begin by
ignoring that other gift of healing which by hard study
and careful training has earned the right for its possessor
to be regarded as the court of first resort. In plainer
words, it would be well if all sufferers, from whatsoever
ailment, were to go first to the educated physician, and
have him decide whether the case is one that the minister
of religion ought to try to help, rather than to go first
to the minister of religion to have him decide whether
the case be one that ought to be handed over to the

[12]

physician. That the men intrusted with these two sorts
of gifts of healing, the one of which derives its efficacy
from scientific training, and the other of which depends
for its power largely upon temperamental qualities,
trained solely in the school of life, the class-rooms of
experience; that these should misunderstand and antag-
onize one another is unfortunate.

Co-operation is the watchword of to-day; and as it
holds good in civics and economics, so also ought it to
hold good in therapeutics. The well-equipped medical
school should be regarded as one department of the
church's life, not as a rival or antagonistic institution. In
so far as "Emmanuelism," so-called, aims at bringing the
pastors of souls and the souls whose pastors they are into
close relations, Emmanuelism makes for good. There is
far too little of that confiding feature which, of old time,
added so much to the beauty as well as to the utility of
the minister's calling. Sympathy is the chief feature of
priesthood, and the pastoral duty which is done only in
the pulpit and never in the home, is a duty most imper-
fectly discharged. Many are the sicknesses of the soul
that tell upon the bodily health and bodily efficiency, and
for the cure of these, especially in their incipient stages,
spiritual counsel and friendly encouragement, such as it
is the Christian minister's high privilege to give when
they are sought, may often be more efficacious than
drugs.

But it is flying in the face of all experience to say
that, because suggestion and sympathy have efficacy in
the curing of some forms of disease, they are destined

[1.3]

presently to discredit and displace the science and the
practice of medicine. Only the light-headed decry the
value of technical training and acquired skill in what-
ever department of human activity. The doctors are not
hypocrites. It is an insult to speak of them as laying
claim to a knowledge they do not possess. They would
be the first to confess, certainly the leaders of the pro-
fession would be the first to confess, that their knowledge
is imperfect, that it needs supplementing at a hundred
points. Nevertheless, such as it is, we disparage it at our
peril; and this is just what the Emmanuelists, as distin-
guished from the Christian Scientists, affirm.

It is to be noted that in the cures eflfected by our
Lord, as these are narrated in the Gospels, the psychic
element is never pressed beyond a certain limit. There
is an economy of the miraculous. An extraordinary
power is in each instance exerted; but the ordinary pow-
ers, the recognized and customary methods of restora-
tion, are never treated with contempt. Up to a certain
point the great Healer relies upon that mystic virtue in
Him that goes forth to heal, but He supplements this
with what we may fairly call hospital treatment. In the
case of the nobleman's son, care is taken to ascertain the
precise hour when he began to amend, showing that the
convalescence was a gradual thing. In the case of Jairus'
daughter, no sooner was the child brought back to life
than He who had brought her back commanded that
something be given her to eat. The Syrophenician's
daughter was indeed made whole from the very moment
when her mother's urgent plea was first allowed, but she

[14]

was left in an exhausted state that called for rest and
care.

Here in each instance was Psychotherapy in its ex-
tremest form. Nevertheless, respect is shown to the old,
familiar methods of nursing the sick back to health.

It will easily be perceived that 1 am trying, and
throughout my Sermon have been trying to mediate be-
tween two sides of an unhappy controversy. Instead of
dwelling exclusively, as just now so many are minded to
do, upon the dangers of what is variously called Em-
manuelism and Psychotherapy, 1 would rather endeavor
to discern what there is in it that is of value. Nothing is
easier than to cry out against the "perils" of every new
movement that is started; but depend upon it, the surest
way of warding off the perils is to search out and openly
to acknowledge whatever there may be in the movement
that is good and true. It is thus that unafraid we "pluck
from this nettle danger, this flower safety."

The strong points, the wholesome truths in the "Em-
manuel" contention, appear to be these four:

1. That there slumbers in everybody who lives a
certain rallying power, which admits of being stirred up
and made more effective as a stiffener of the will than
in its ordinary dormant condition it is.

2. That this stirring up process is oftener than not
a matter of personal responsibility, for which God our
Maker holds us accountable. "See," said Paul to Tim-
othy, "that thou stir up this gift that is in thee."

3. That this stirring up process may be greatly
helped by well directed encouragement, and assiduous

[IS]

cheer, especially if these be administered by those upon
whom this particular healing gift, by general acknowl-
edgment, has been richly bestowed, whether these be
ordained ministers of religion or simply religiously minded
men and women.

4. That forms of disease located in that debateable
land between soul and body known as the nervous sys-
tem, and which constitutes what may be called the in-
ternal telegraphy of man, — that maladies so posited are
peculiarly susceptible to psychic influence, and, therefore,
often more remediable by spiritual medicaments than by
material ones.

These statements, unless I am grievously in error,
cover what is sound and valuable in so-called suggestion
and auto-suggestion. In so far as suggestion means try-
ing to help people by telling them as true things that
simply are not so, I have no word of commendation for it.
We have seen enough, too much, of the results of sal-
vation by make-believe, the effort to escape from every
sort of evil by denying the existence of any sort. But
surely there are available in God's revelation of Himself
in Christ treasures of comfort and of cheer, treasures of
pity and compassion, treasures of loving-kindness and
tender mercy fully ample to meet the needs of all who
suffer, without our having to resort to falsehood as a
means of setting men upon their feet. "By manifestation
of the truth," writes Paul, "commending ourselves to
every man's conscience in the sight of God." Manifesta-
tion of the truth, — that is the sort of suggestion and auto-
suggestion that will be most mighty to save. For only

[i6]

think how splendid the truth is, how large, how comfort-
able, if only we can accept it, as it is in Jesus.

Note. — It is proper to observe that since this sermon
was preached the order of treatment recommended on
pp. 12 and 13 has been authoritatively declared by the
leader of the Emmanuel movement on his own initiative
the only proper one.

iWesis^ma

iHeggma

* * * See that ye he not troubled; for all these things must
come to pass, hut the end is not yet. — St. Matthew xxiv. 6.

^^^^^^HESE words, so reassuring in their tone, occur
^ C^\ in a pathetic outburst uttered by the Christ
^ J shortly before his crucifixion. Swiftly and

^^^^^ in vivid phrases the speaker pictures the
things that must be expected to happen be-
fore that Kingdom of God which He has come into the
world to found can permanently be established. It is no
holiday progiamme. The panorama He unrolls may al-
most be called a lurid one. He does not delude his follow-
ers by telling them to expect smooth sailing from that
day forward. On the contrary, his foretellings are dis-
tinctly tragic. Wars there shall be, He says, and rumors
of wars; persecutions there shall be and famines and pesti-
lences; yes, and there shall be earthquakes in divers places.
All these, He adds, in most significant phrase, are the
beginning of travail. But just because, in his view, these
sorrows and sufferings are but the preludes to a glorious
birth, the Master bids his disciples take heart. If they
will but possess their souls in quiet confidence. He tells
them, in hope, in patience, the final result will make
clear all that went before it; the outcome will justify its
antecedents, and angry criticism of the Almighty will be
shown to have been premature. "See that ye be not
troubled ... the end is not yet."

[21]

To deny that such destructions as have desolated
Southern Italy, during the past week, and shrouded the
departing year in gloom, tax heavily our faith in the lov-
ing-kindness of the Almighty is idle. Events so porten-
tous necessarily subject even the most robust optimism
to a tremendous strain. How, we are tempted to ask,
can a Ruler for whom it is claimed that his sovereign will
ordereth all things, permit for a single hour such out-
breaks of violence within his realm ? Why does One who
expects his creatures to look up to Him with the words,
"Our Father" upon their lips, allow such heart-breaking
calamities to fall upon the children of his widespread
family?

1 confess 1 do not see how, upon the basis of that
natural religion to which many influential voices are now-
a-days inviting us, these questions can satisfactorily be met
and answered. It is a beautiful formula and a true one
which reads, the Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood
of Man ; but I look about restlessly and anxiously for some
warrant that shall justify me in taking up with it as my
Creed. Such a warrant Jesus Christ offers me. If I
believe Him to be the Son of God from everlasting, the
doctrine of the Fatherhood becomes credible, and in his,
"See that ye be not troubled, for the end is not yet."
I rest content. It is noticeable, for we gather it from the
history of nineteen centuries, that belief in the brother-
hood follows upon acceptance of the fatherhood. It is
fatherhood first and then brotherhood, not brotherhood
first and then fatherhood; and it is Christ who has so
widened men's sympathies and deepened them that the

[22]

task of realizing the brotherhood idea has taken on the
practical look it wears to-day. Heathendom is still tied
to tribal, or at best to racial, sympathies. Christendom,
the live portion of it, is aflame with the desire to recog-
nize as next of kin "all who in this transitory world are
in trouble, sorrow, need, sickness or any other adversity."

And that expression "transitory world" moves me to
call attention to a point that ought always to be empha-
sized in connection with these fearful disasters which from
time to time imperil the tranquility of religious faith. A
"transitory" world indeed it is, and where we make our
mistake is in letting ourselves ever think of it as being a
permanent world. That is a superficial scoff which taunts
Christians with too much "other- worldliness." We should
be in evil case indeed were there no other-world convic-
tions to fall back upon, when the shortness and uncer-
tainty of this life present is forced upon our notice, some-
times through calamities that shock us by their nearness
and sometimes by disasters that appall us by their vast-
ness.

But what is the hard fact which we are compelled to
face when we consent for a few moments to look at
things as they really are ? The hard fact is that, in every
twenty-four hours of the earth's history, twice as many
souls pass out of the world present through the portal we
call death as perished by this latest ripple of the earth's
crust in the neighborhood of Aetna. When the vital sta-
tistics of the whole world, the entire human race, for the
year 1908, are taken into account, the total mortality will
not be very greatly swelled, the death rate not perceptibly

[231

raised, by what has happened in the Mediterranean. So
then, our quarrel is not with the earthquake, terriffic as
that was; our quarrel is with King Death, that universal
monarch whom Paul pictures with a goad for sceptre
and whose other symbol is the scythe.

Therefore, it is not a question whether we can recon-
cile with the goodness of God the extinction, last week, of
one hundred or two hundred thousand lives in a few
moments of time, but, how can we reconcile with the
goodness of God the cessation of fifteen hundred mil-
lions of human lives within the space of only half a cen-
tury ? The concentration of the one or two hundred thou-
sand deaths at a single spot overwhelms the imagination
and fills the soul with terror, while to the fifteen hundred
millions of deaths, scattered over the whole surface of
the earth and distributed through fifty years of time, we
scarcely give a thought.

Yet it deserves a thought, dear friends, yes, more
than a thought, it deserves thought, this fact of the uni-
versal mortality ; and if an object lesson on a tremendous
scale is needed to convince us that we have here no
abiding city, and ought for that reason to be laying
plans for municipal rights in another, that is to come,
this horror of great darkness will not have been without
its use. There are times in man's history when no re-
ligious lesson is so much needed as that conveyed in the
short sentence of command, ''Be still, and know that I
am God." Self-confidence is a quality for which much
may be said, but now and then it needs checking and is
the better for rebuke. What these fearful scenes, de-

[24]

scribed to us from day to day, and still enacting, chiefly
emphasize is the infinite pathos of human life, with its
brief catalogue of joys and its long list of sorrows, down-
falls, disappointments and reverses. There is a poem
which is said to have been a great favorite with Abraham
Lincoln. It is devoid of literary merit, and can never
hope to find a place in the anthologies, but in the one line,
"Oh, why should the spirit of mortal be proud?" there
lurks a certain something that appealed to the great, sad
heart, weighed down by the spectacle of a mourning land.
A master of legions, he felt his weakness in the presence
of that sovereign Commander of all the worid, who, out
of sight, in the background of the battle, was the real
director of the fight. ''Non nobis,'' ran his Psalm, "Not
unto us, not unto us, but unto Thy Name be the praise."
Our modem life needs a larger infusion of humility.
We are altogether too vain of our achievements. Boast-
fulness is our besetting sin; and so since deaths must
needs be (we know not why), it may be well that now
and then they should be permitted to come in multitude
rather than singly, to the end that we may be forced to
see that we by no means own the earth in freehold, but
rather are tenants at will subject to dispossession on short
notice. Do not understand me as meaning to teach that
a sense of awe is the only foundation for a right religious
belief. A religion in which awe is the main ingredient,
is bound to lapse, first or last, into superstition. It is
not good for man that he should be stunned and scared
into worshipping. A loftier motive than fear must ani-
mate his effort to come to terms with God, if peace is

[251

to be the crown of his endeavor. All the same, there is
such a thing as too much belittling the part which holy
fear and reverent awe should play in the composition of
a true character and the growth of a godly life. A con-
ceited man or woman, standing at the steps of God Al-
mighty's throne, and essaying to open communication on
equal terms, is not an edifying spectacle. A vainglorious
arrogant or purse-proud suppliant looks strangely out of
place at that particular spot. It takes a good deal of hu-
mility to make a Christian, and an almost incalculable
amount of that trait to make a Christendom.

So, then, it may do us no harm to be humbled, now
and then, and made ashamed of talking about our gov-
ernments as the great powers, forgetful that there is no
power but of God, bragging of resources which, as we
well know, when we stop to think, are but the small dust
of the balance as compared with what the Almighty can
at any moment throw into the scale, to turn the beam
this way or that at his good pleasure. Nor is the coinci-
dence a wholly uninstructive one that, just at the moment
when we are priding ourselves upon the conquest of the
air, the earth which we had thought subdued should open
under our feet, as if to swallow up our pride.

There is yet another thought which, in the midst of
these doubts and questionings as to the goodness of God,
we shall do well to take into account, and that is this —
the riches, to borrow a phrase from St. Paul, the riches
of God's forbearance. When we think of the ruin and
desolation which the forces of nature, as we blindly call
them, have it in their power to bring to pass on what is

[26]

really a small, a very small, scale, and then compare that
with what would happen were these same forces to be
exhibited in their plenitude, we can hardly fail to be
more impressed by the immensity of the possible terrors
which we are spared than by the volume, however griev-
ous in our eyes, of those from which we suffer. "It is
of the Lord's mercies," exclaims the pessimist among the
prophets, *'it is of the Lord's mercies that we are not con-
sumed,"— and he is right. In the atmosphere of the
balmiest, quietest Summer's day you can remember,
there were latent forces that, if not held in check, would
have changed the countryside, with all its flowering gar-
dens and fruit-laden orchards, into a desolation. In the
water-mains that underlie our streets and daily minister
to our comfort, there is stored energy enough to do for
this city, with its towers and palaces, even worse things
than the earthquake did for Messina. Why are we safe ?
Why sleep we quietly? Because we are assured of the
firm grasp in which the mighty charioteer holds the reins,
and by a strong restraint directs the course. Yes, it is
of the Lord's mercies that we are not consumed, let us
remember that, when tempted to complain that by his
seeming want of mercy we are at times tormented.

How the natural order and the spiritual order stand
related to each other in God's governance of his universe,
we can but dimly conjecture. It was a puzzle to the an-
cients; it is a puzzle, perhaps an even harder puzzle, to
us modems. Sometimes, and under certain circum-
stances, the two orders, the physical and the moral, seem
to be working in harmony. At other times and under

[27]

other conditions, they look to be hopelessly at variance.
It was a fond belief with some of the early thinkers that
this world in which we dwell was not fashioned by the
Supreme Himself, but by an underworkman, who, while
he carried out the contract in the main fairly well, was
here and there at fault, failing to make the mechanism as
perfect as it might have been, and thus, through mere
incompetency, involving us who were to be the dwellers
in the house in manifold distresses.

To other minds, moving on somewhat similar lines,
it looked as if the malice of Satan, the worst of all God's
creatures, furnished a sufficient explanation of the unde-
served pains and sorrows of those upon whom towers
in Siloam and elsewhere fell to their destruction. But
the unity of the forces which control the worlds and all
that goes on in them, has, by modern research, been made
probable almost to the point of absolute certainty; and
this has put the supposition of an actively malicious
power for mischief out of court. It is still possible to
hold to the existence of a personal spirit of evil competent
to and equipped for much moral spoliation, but scarcely
possible to think of such a one as having cosmic forces at
his disposal and able to wreck cities as well as characters.

Again, a modern thinker of great importance in his
day, and that a rather recent day, seems to have inclined
to the opinion that actual omnipotence exists nowhere,
and that the infelicities of the human lot are not due to
blunders on the part of the underworkman but to a cer-
tain fateful lack of power and of wisdom in the great
Architect Himself.

[28]

But no one of these hypotheses, ventured from time
to time by baffled thinkers in their despair, are at all sat-
isfactory. We fall back upon the attitude of heart and
mind commended in the text; we fall back upon the
words of Christ, "See that ye be not troubled, for all
these things, these sufferings, which are the beginning of
travail for a mighty birth, must needs be, but the end is
not yet."

A rooted belief that the issue will justify the process,
that the outcome will explain the mystery of all which
shall have led up to it, that the finale will fitly crown the
work, when the crowning day arrives, this is the Chris-
tian's mainstay in the thick of the perplexities, opposi-
tions and misunderstandings, in the midst of which we
all of us live and breathe and strive and suffer. There
may be some more satisfactory position to be taken up,
some better path to full assurance. If there be, I do not
know it. As I see things, and in my character as your
minister and guide in matters spiritual, I am by both
honor and duty bound to report to you with all frank-
ness such findings as I reach — as I see things, it is Chris-
tianity or nothing; it is either taking the Son of Man at his
word ana waiting it out till the end comes, or it is aban-
doning altogether the search for what is real and true,
and leaving all to chance and fate. To be sure, leaving
things to chance and fate will not make the earthquakes
and the devastation which they cause any more intelligi-
ble to the moral sense which would still cling to us, at
any rate for a little while, after we had thrown religious
laith to the winds; but we should at least be able to wash

[29]

our hands of explanations which do not explain. If in
reply to this you say, "Your dilemma does not help me,
for Christ is to me nothing better than a name," my an-
swer would have to be, "If Christ is nothing to you, cer-
tainly his minister must be still less, and I must give up
the effort at persuasion." But think again, my friend,
before you finally conclude that Christ is nothing to you.
Surely in these troublous times his words, "See that ye
be not troubled," are precious words, yes, golden, if we
can but see our way to taking them at their face value.
Meanwhile, let us rejoice in the one feature of this
week of sorrows that actually wears a smile. I mean,
of course, the eager rivalry among the nations to see
which can be the first to carry food to the hungry, com-
fort to the sick and bruised, and cheer to the despondent
and half crazed. Such evidence of an ever-growing sense
of kinship among the races and peoples of the globe
must fill the hearts of all men of good-will with hope.
No protest would be made against the building of more
battleships, could we be assured that they would always
be engaged in such contention as that which is now
bringing the navies of the world so swiftly to the point
of utmost need. Yes, let competition in brotherhood
thrive. Acknowledged or unacknowledged, it is the out-
come of the work of that Bringer of good tidings from
heaven to earth at whose feast of love we are presently
to meet as brethren all.

[30]

^ Stranger upon €artli

la Stranger upon Cartlj

/ am a stranger upon earth: O hide not thy commandments
from me. — Psalm cxix. : 19.

^^^^^^ HE one hundred and nineteenth Psalm num-
^ C^\ bers no fewer than one hundred and seven-
m^ J ty-six verses, and attention has often been

^^^^^ called to the fact that in every one of the
long succession there is a reference to the
law of God, its universality, its sanctity or its precious-
ness. To be sure the language, in order to escape mo-
notony, is varied as we pass from verse to verse; some-
times the word employed is "statutes," sometimes "judg-
ments," sometimes "testimonies," sometimes "command-
ments," sometimes "precepts;" but, everywhere and al-
ways the thought is, — "The law of the Lord is perfect,
and man's blessedness consists in learning it and keeping
it." But before we go a step further, I beg you to take
note of an important point. This law about which the
author of the Psalm has so much to say is law of the
moral and spiritual sort, the kind of law that addresses
itself to the conscience and binds the will. Strictly speak-
ing, this is the only sort of law that properly deserves the
name.

One of the highest authorities in modern jurisprudence
defines law as "the command of the sovereign." This

[331

word, that is to say, upon which the one hundred and
nineteenth Psalm lays such repetitious stress, stands for
the control of human conduct by an authority competent
to say what ought and what ought not to be done if sin
and guilt are to be escaped. But there is another and
quite diflFerent sense in which we are continually hearing
the word law employed, and it is of the utmost impor-
tance, if we would have our thinking clear thinking, that
we keep the two notions separate and apart. We hear con-
tinually, nowadays, about the laws of nature. Moreover,
these laws of nature may be said to have been codified
under different heads or titles. Thus men speak of the
laws of physics, the laws of chemistry, the laws "of elec-
tricity, and so on. Doubtless this phraseology has come
to stay, and it would be useless to protest against it; but
we are bound always to remember that, when we use it,
we are using language of a highly figurative and met-
aphorical sort. The Capernaum centurion whose servant
Jesus healed anticipated this poetical conception of law
when he spoke of the forces of nature being under
Christ's control very much as his legionaries were sub-
ject to his own. "I am a man under authority,'' he
said, "having soldiers under me, and I say to this man.
Go, and he goeth, and to another. Come, and he cometh,
and to my servant, Do this, and he doeth it." The
thought implied in what he said was, "You, O, Galilean,
are in command of the forces of nature precisely as I
am in command of the forces of the Emperor. Issue
your orders, therefore, I pray you, and they will . cer-
tainly be obeyed, and my sick servant will be healed."

[34]

There is, therefore, very ancient precedent for this
symbolic or figurative conception of the order of nature
as a code of law, a statute-book ; and we need not quarrel
with it, so long as we keep fast in mind the fact that sym-
bolical and figurative it most certainly is. Thus we see
that the scientific interpretation of nature is in a way fully
as poetical as in another way the Biblical interpretation
confessedly is. The loftier minds in science will all of
them acknowledge this without hestation ; it is the school-
master minds who cannot see beyond the literalism of the
text books that will demur.

The next point worth observing is this, that much,
very much of what is said in this one hundred and nine-
teenth Psalm hold good of law in both those two senses
of the word to which I have been calling attention, of law
as an authority controlling human conduct, and of law
as the observed method according to which the various
forces of nature do their work. The primary reference
is to law m its true sense, but in m.any of the verses the
language can be interpreted in the other sense as well.
The particular verse chosen for our text clearly has this
double application, and that is one reason why I fastened
upon it, though another and the controlling reason was
the touch of pathos that takes the saying out of the region
of pure thought and carries it over into the realm of
feeling.

"I am a stranger upon earth: O hide not thy com-
mandment from me." When we stop to think of it, man,
though he calls this mysterious world his home, and in
his more despairful moods thinks of it as the only home

[351

he is likely ever to know, is in reality "but a stranger
here." He is in a wonderland, bewildered. He hears
voices which he cannot, without some interpreter, under-
stand; and sees sights which either by their intricacy
baffle or by their terror startle him. In both of the two
orders into which he tmds himself introduced, the nat-
ural and the spiritual, he is sore perplexed to know what
to think and what to do. That there is a supreme Power
supervising and controlling all things, he dimly feels,
but what would that Power have of him? How is he
to ascertain the regimen proper to life under such puz-
zling conditions, how pick his way through what looks to
him at times like a morass? No wonder that this psalm
is a prolonged appeal for light and help. No wonder
that he cries out in most beseeching tones, "I am a
stranger upon earth: O hide not thy commandments
from me!"

What now is the counsel that ought to be given to
such a suppliant? It is this, I venture to think. Live
up, O son of man, to such light as thou hast, whether
in the natural or the spiritual order, and be constantly
on the lookout for more. Suppose we bring these
thoughts and others like them to bear upon a recent
event which has been engrossing the attention of us all.
There is nothing sensational in a preacher's attempting
to turn the incidents of the passing day to spiritual ac-
count, to make them tell in the interest of a firmer faith
in God. It is in this spirit and with such an end in view
that I should like to dwell briefly upon some of the
aspects of what is destined to go upon record as the most

[36]

noteworthy of all remembered shipwrecks. I call it that
because it has illustrated upon a large scale and in a most
vivid way the principle upon which, and the method by
which God is carrying out the primeval promise that man
shall ultimately have dominion over the whole realm of
earth and sea and sky. True, we do not yet see all things
put under him, but we do see many things put under him
which of old time triumphed over him, and we see plain
intimations of like conquests still in store. And what is
the method by which this progress towards ultimate do-
minion over nature has been effected? It has been the
invention and the elaboration of tools. By means of the
tool or instrument, man accomplishes what for eye or ear
or hand unaided would be impossible. The bark canoe
of the savage can be made wholly by hand; the ocean
liner, on the contrary, only became possible through the
invention of adequate tools.

In the natural order, God answers man's prayer "O
hide not thy commandments from me," by showing him,
through the process known on the divine side as revela-
tion and on the human side as discovery or invention,
how to yoke together such forces as are in the line of his
endeavor, and how to combat and divert and scatter
such as are antagonistic. With every such access of
knowledge granted him by the Father of lights, man feels
himself less a stranger upon earth than he was before,
in so far as bodily safety and comfort are concerned.
When we remind ourselves that the wireless telegraphy
which saved the crew and passengers of the Republic and
the resistless power which drew the great ship down into

f37]

the vortex were mutually cooperant parts of one and the
same vast system of forces whereby the universe is kept
stable, we realize what it means for man to be given the
knowledge that enables him to make one of the forces
help him, while another one of them threatens to destroy
him, thus making Nature combat Nature.

It is written in the Gospel for this day that, centuries
ago, so wild was the tempest on a certain inland sea, that
a ship which had on board a prophet and his handful of
followers was covered with the waves. The Master, so
it happened, was asleep, apparently indiflferent to the
fortunes of the craft. They awoke Him with the cry,
"Lord save us, we perish." Then He arose and rebuked
the winds and sea, and there was a great calm. "A mir-
acle," you say — yes, but how wrought? Not by any
suspension of the so-called laws of nature, we may be
very sure, but by aid of such an acquaintance with the
workings of the divine will as made possible the coun-
teraction of one force by bringing another into play. Why
not say of modem man (to-day in his own thoughts less
of a stranger upon earth than he was a month ago) —
why not say of him, even as was said of the Christ by
the rescued crew of the little Galilean fishingboat, by
courtesy called a ship — What manner of man is this, that
even the winds and the seas obey him?

So much for one lesson suggested by this thrilling
incident. Now take another and even more important
inference. We are continually assured and reassured by
the defenders of that relic of savagery and barbarism
known as war, that, were it not for this stem school

[381

of courage, manhood would be certain to decline and all
the virile virtues give place to a general effeminacy, leav-
ing us a race of poltroons. Only the other day a con-
gressman had the crass brutality to urge, as an argu-
ment for more battleships (of which we have already
too many), the probability that the coming generation
of young men would demand its war, just as previous
generations had done. Therefore, it behooved us to get
ready. Doubtless the speaker had much to encourage
him in his malign expectation, seeing how eagerly every
fresh discovery, in whatever department of the arts and
sciences, is hailed by the armies and navies of the world
as making the destruction of human life more possible
and easy, always, be it observed, with least risk to the
party of the attack.

But are we really shut up, dear friends, to such dismal
reasonings? Is there no escape for us, in this nineteen
hundred and ninth year of our Lord, from such utterly
unchristian conclusions? Let the scenes that accom-
panied the wreck of the Republic reply. Had that captain
on the bridge acquired the splendid courage that enabled
him calmly and resolutely to face a sea of troubles within,
as well as a sea of billows without his broken ship, had
he acquired it, I ask, by any large experience in the art
of killing? Had the ship's officers, had the sailors, had
the stewards, learned the intrepidity which by all accounts
they uniformly exhibited, had they learned it, I ask, as
bluejackets on ships of war? Some of them possibly
had, but probably the most of them had been trained
in the mercantile marine, with none of that so-called "sea-

39

537726 A

soning" which transforms men naturally averse to blood-
shed into the veterans whose efficiency turns upon their
having become quite indiflferent to it.

And what of the passengers? From all that can be
gathered they faced a danger which nothing could con-
ceal, a peril which it would be difficult to exaggerate, with
a fortitude and nerve which even to men inured to jeop-
ardy and familiar with alarms would have been most
creditable. Had all or even many of these acquired such
powers of self-control by having "drunk delight of battle,"
or having faced batteries in a charge? Far from it.
These were not people who had war in their hearts, not
people possessed of the slightest disposition to slaughter
their fellow-creatures if they had the chance; their pluck
and stamina were simply a part and parcel of the heritage
of their race. They thought it unworthy to let fright un-
man them, and unman them it did not. So then, let us
hear no more of the necessity of occasional war as the
only school of courage. The war with Nature offers
ample opportunity for the development of manhood.
Fire and tempest, pestilence and earthquake, let us fight
these with the best weapons we can fashion; and we need
have no fear that we shall be found weak-kneed and
tremulous at the danger-points in life. Blood can be kept
red in men's veins without their reddening the ground
with blood of others.

The firemen and policemen, some of whom, almost
every day in this city of ours, risk their lives in saving
men, women and children from threatened destruction,
these men have not been taught heroism by war; they

[40]

have learned it in a conflict which is upon us all the time,
a conflict incident and essential to our acquisition of that
dominion over nature which is man's predestined reward
of toil. Until the holy city comes down from God out
of heaven, in that war there can be no discharge.

There is one more deeply religious lesson taught us
by the incidents of the wreck, and that is the tremendous
importance of leadership. The coolness and self-control
pf those on the doomed ship was partly, not wholly,
perhaps not mainly, but certainly partly, due to the cool-
ness and self-control of the man on the bridge. It was
splendid leadership that told. Here also we find our-
selves in line with the teaching of the text. What was
it that made this psalm-writer so sorrowful and his cry
so plaintive? It was his sense of loneliness, occasioned
by a felt need of strong, skilled and friendly leadership
to bring him out of the dark into the daylight. "I am
a stranger upon earth," he sorrowfully cries, "O hide not
thy commandments from me." What accentuates and
intensifies the man's sense of strangeness is the lack of
clear vision. If in the midst of the dense fog which shuts
him in, he could only discern the sharp outline of God's
commandment, no longer hidden but openly made mani-
fest, this uncomfortable feeling of not being at home
would pass away. Leadership, guidance, a distinct voice
saying, 'This is the way, walk ye in it," — that is what
the soul man craves, perplexed, befogged, in the thick
atmosphere of this life present.

How beautifully, wonderfully and forcefully this truth
is imaged to us in the similitudes of both Testaments,

[41]

the Old and the New. In the wilderness days, when
Israel was literally a stranger and a pilgrim, God's lead-
ership embodied itself in the pillar of cloud by day and
the pillar of fire by night. Later on, the relation of the
shepherd to his flock becomes the accepted parable of
leadership. The Good Shepherd, so we read, calleth his
own sheep by name and leadeth them out; and when he
putteth forth his own sheep, he goeth before them, and
the sheep follow him for they know his voice. Yet
again, and further on, we find the author of the Epistle
to the Hebrews giving Jesus Christ the striking title
"Captain of our Salvation," a style employed in that
one place and nowhere else. But whether it be pillar
of cloud or pillar of fire. Shepherd or Captain, the truth
suggested to our imagination and offered for our accept-
ance is this — that the soul needs guidance, goverance,
a leader whose command when known, when communi-
cated, when no longer hid, will take away our dreary
sense of strangerhood and loneliness, making us know
and feel that we are accompanied, piloted, safeguarded,
kept.

Dear friends, it is by no means necessary that one
should have had the experience of a shipwreck in order
to become aware of the value of leadership in his own
endeavor to make the journey of life. Is there a soul
present that will not frankly own up to the need? You
may not be convinced that Jesus Christ is the Leader,
the Captain you are looking for; or, if convinced, you
may not yet have brought yourself to the point of ac-
knowledging the conviction ; but deep down in your heart,

[42]

you know full well that in so strange a world as this a
stranger you must continue until, at some point of the
spiritual compass, a light breaks, revealing to you the
Commander of whom the old prayer says that his service
is perfect freedom.

How different from our Psalmist's querulous and
plaintive cry, *i am a stranger upon earth," sounds the
clear voice of Paul, saying to those whom his Gospel had
enlightened and converted, "Now, therefore, ye are no
more strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with
the saints and of the household of God." Oh, if we
could only make the modem man see in the Christian
Church that city and that household which to Paul's eyes
it looked to be, his hymn would no longer run,

"I'm a stranger, I'm a pilgrim,"
but rather thus,

"Safe home at last."