Pax vobiscum, and The greatest thing in the world

tihvaxy of t:he CKeclo^ical ^tminavy

PRINCETON • NEW JERSEY
PRESENTED BY

Rev. C. R. Strong

BV 4501 .D76 1891
Drummond, Henry, 1851-1897
Pax vobiscum

PAX VOBISCUM,

AND

THE GREATEST THING
IN THE WORLD.

BY

HENRY DRUMMOND, LL.D., F.R.S.E., F.G.S.,

AUTHOR OF "NATURAL LAW IN THE SPIRITUAL WORLD," ETC.

NEW YORK:

THE POLLARD PUBLISHING COMPANY,

13 Barclay Steeet.

189L

Copyright, 1891,

BT

POLLARD PUBLISHING COMPANY.

Fax Vobiscum,

INTRODUCTION.

Few authors have gained world -famed celebrity so
quickly as did Professor Henry Drummond. From the
pastorate of an obscure mission station in the island of
Malta, he soared gradually in moral intellectuality until,
having returned to Glasgow and won the titles of Fellow
of the Royal Society of Engineers and Fellow of the
Geographical Society, he appeared in North field, Massa-
chusetts, in 1887, at the invitation of Mr. Mcody, and
shone as a beacon in religious literature.

Born at Stirling— the historic Stirling of the Scottish

royalty— he was educated at the Edinburgh University.

Having joined the ministry, his first evangelical labors

were in far-off Malta. But, soon, his great Christian

soul ached for wider fields, and, returning to Scotland,

he was appointed lecturer at the Free Church College in

Glasgow, and took charge of a workingmen's mission in

that city. Here his philosophical teachings and deep

thought attracted attention ; and in a little while Henry

Drummond had sprung into the first rank of moralists

and social philosophers.

It was at North field, Massachusetts, that he delivered

3

4 Introduction,

the famous lecture, " The Greatest Thing in the World."
Here, also, did he earn fame by other wonderful utter-
ances.

Divines from every state in the union were present;
men whose eloquence had stirred communities almost to
frenzy-point. But Drummond talked, not with peculiar
eloquence, but with a sense of decision in religious
thought which was accepted in positive awe by those
who had erstwhile posed as mentors in the science of
religion. His arguments were positive. His writings
expose his thoughts.

His work, " Natural Law in the Spiritual World," has
had a sale in England and America of nearly one
million copies. As an African traveller he has added
a charming gem to travel-literature in "Tropical
Africa." And, later, his brochure, "Pax Vobiscum,"
sparkles with fervid religious truths and literary ex-
cellence.

Recently he has travelled with Professor Geike in the
Rocky Mountains ; and it is more than probable that ere
long the reading public will be favored with a work from
his pen descriptive of that grand panorama of nature.

PAX VOBISCUM.

"Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I
will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me;
for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto
your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light."

6

PAX VOBISCUM.

I HEARD this morning a sermon by a distinguished
preacher upon " Rest." It was full of beautiful thoughts;
but when I came to ask myself, " How does he say I can
get Rest ?" there was no answer. The sermon was sin-
cerely meant to be practical, yet it contained no experi-
ence that seemed to me to be tangible, nor any advice
that I could grasp— any advice, that is to say, which
could help me to find the thing itself as I went about
the world this afternoon.

Yet this omission of what is, after all, the only impor-
tant problem, was not the fault of the preacher. The
whole popular religion is in the twilight here. And
when pressed for reiilly working specifics for the ex-
periences with which it deals, it falters, and seems to
lose itself in mist.

The want of connection between the great words of
religion and every-day life has bewildered and discour-
aged all of us. Christianity possesses the noblest words
in the language; its literature overflows with tei-ms ex-

8 Pax Vobiscum.

pressive of the greatest and happiest moods which can
fill the soul of man. Eest, Joy, Peace, Faith, Love,
Light— these words occur with such persistency in
hymns and prayers that an observer might think they
formed the staple of Christian experience. But on com-
ing to close quarters with the actual life of most of us,
how surely would he be disenchanted ! I do not think
we ourselves are aware how much our religious life is
made up of phrases; how much of what we call Chris-
tian Experience is only a dialect of the Churches, a mere
religious phraseology with almost nothing behind it in
what we really feel and know.

To some of us, indeed, the Christian experiences seem
further away than when we took the first steps in the
Christian life. That life has not opened out as we had
hoped ; we do not regret our religion, but we are dis-
appointed with it. There are times, perhaps, when
wandering notes from a diviner music stray into our
spirits; but these experiences come at few and fitful
moments. We have no sense of possession in them.
When they visit us, it is a surprise. When they leave
us, it is without explanation. When we wish their re-
turn, we do not know how to secure it.

All which means a religion without solid base, and a
poor and flickering life. It means a great bankruptcy in
those experiences which give Christianity its personal
solace and make it attractive to the world, and a great
uncertainty as to any remedy. It is as if we knew
everything about health— except the way to get it.

I am quite sure that the difiiculty does not lie in the
fact that men are not in earnest. This is simply not the

Pax Vobiscum. 9

fact. All around us Christians are wearing themselves
out in trying to be better. The amount of spiritual
longing in the world— in the hearts of unnumbered thou-
sands of men and women in whom we should never sus-
pect it; among the wise and thoughtful; among the
young and gay, who seldom assuage and never betray
their thirst— this is one of the most wonderful and
touching facts of life. It is not more heat that is needed,
but more light ; not more force, but a wiser direction to
be given to very real energies already there.

The usual advice when one asks for counsel on these
questions is, *'Pray." But this advice is far from ade-
quate. I shall qualify the statement presently ; but let
me urge it here, with what you will perhaps call daring
emphasis, that to pray for these things is not the way to
get them. No one will get them without praying; but
that men do not get them by praying is the simple fact.
We have all prayed, and sincerely praj^ed, for such ex-
periences as I have named ; prayed, believing that that
was the way to get them. And yet have we got them ?
The test is experience. I dare not limit prayer; still less
the grace of God. If you have got them in this way, it
is well. I am speaking to those, be they few or many,
who have not got them; to ordinary men in ordinary
circumstances. But if we have not got them, it by no
means follows that prayer is useless. The correct con-
clusion is only that it is useless, or inadequate rather,
for this particular purpose. To make prayer the sole re-
sort, the universal panacea for every spiritual ill, is as
radical a mistake as to prescribe only one medicine for
every bodily trouble. The physician who does the last

10 Pax Vobiscum

is a quack; the spiritual adviser who does the first is
grossly ignorant of his profession.

To do nothing but pray is a wrong done to prayer itself,
and can only end in disaster. It is as if one tried to live
only with the lungs, as if one assimilated only air and
neglected solid food. The lungs are a first essential, the
air is a first essential ; but the body has many members,
given for different purposes, secreting different things,
and each has a method of nutrition as special to itself as
its own activity. While prayer, then, is the character-
istic sublimity of the Christian life, it is by no means the
only one. And those who make it the sole alternative,
and apply it to purposes for which it was never meant,
are really doing the greatest harm to prayer itself. To
couple the word " inadequate '' with this mighty word is
not to dethrone prayer, but to exalt it. What dethrones
prayer is unanswered prayer. When men pray for
things which do not come that way— pray with sincere
belief that prayer, unaided and alone, 'svill compass what
they ask — then, not getting what they ask, they often
give up prayer. This is the natural history of much
atheism, not only an atheism of atheists, but a more
terrible atheism of Christians, an unconscious atheism,
whose roots have struck far into many souls whose last
breath would be spent in denying it. So, I repeat, it is a
mistaken Christianity which allows men to cherish a
blind belief in the omnipotence of prayer. Prayer, cer-
tainly, when the appropriate conditions are fulfilled, is
omnipotent, but not blind prayer. Blind prayer is a
superstition. Prayer, in its true sense, contains the sane
recognition that while man prays in faith, God acts by

Pax VobiscuiJi. 1 1

law. What that means in the immediate connection we
shall see presently.

What, then, is the remedy ? It is impossible to doubt
that there is o remedy, and it is equally impossible to be-
lieve that it is a secret. The idea that some few men, by
happy chance or happier temperament, have been given
the secret— as if there were some sort of knack or trick
of it — is wholly incredible and wrong. Rehgion must be
for all ; and the way into its loftiest heights mast be by
a gateway through which the peoples of the world may
pass.

I shall have to lead up to this gateway by a very fa-
miliar path. But as this path is strangely unfrequented
where it passes into the religious sphere, I mast ask your
forbearance for dwelling for a moment upon the com-
monest of commonplaces.

EFFECTS REQUIRE CAUSES.

Nothing that happens in the world happens by chance.
God is a God of order. Everything is arranged upon
definite principles, and never at random. The world,
even the religious world, is governed by law. Charac-
ter is governed by law. Happiness is governed by law.
The Christian experiences are governed by law. Men,
forgetting this, expect Rest, Joy, Peacp, Faith to drop
into their souls Prom the air hke snow or rain. But in
point of fact they do not do so; and if they did they
would no less have their origin in previous activities and
be controlled by natural laws. Rain and snow do drop
from the air, but not without a long previous history.

12 Pax Vobisciun.

They are the mature effects of former causes. Equally
so are Eest and Peace and Joy. They, too, have each
a previous history. Storms and winds and calms are
not accidents, but brought about by antecedent cir-
cumstances. Eest and Peace are but calms in man's in-
ward nature, and arise through causes as definite and as
inevitable.

EeaUze it thoroughly : it is a methodical not an acci-
dental world. If a housewife turns out a good cake, it
is the result of a sound receipt, carefully applied. She
cannot mix the assigned ingredients and fire them for
the appropriate time without producing the result. It is
not she who has made the cake ; it is nature. She brings
related things together ; sets causes at work ; these causes
bring about the result. She is not a creator, but an in-
termediary. She does not expect random causes to pro-
duce specific effects— random ingredients would only
produce random cakes. So it is in the making of Chris-
tian experiences. Certain lines are followed; certain
effects are the result. These effects cannot but be the
result. But the result can never take place without
the previous cause. To expect results without ante-
cedents is to expect cakes without ingredients. That
impossibility is precisely the almost universal expec-
tation.

Now what I mainly wish to do is to help you firmly to
grasp this simple principle of Cause and Effect in the
spiritual world. And instead of applying the principle
generally to each of the Christian experiences in turn, I
shall examine its application to one in some little detail.
The one I shall select is Eest. And I think any one who

Pax Vobiscum, 1 3

follows the application in this single instance will bo
able to appl}^ it for himself to all the others.

Take such a sentence as this: African explorers are
subject to fevers which cause restlessness and delirium.
Note the expression, *' cause restlessness."- Restless-
ness has a cause. Clearly, then, any one who wished to
get rid of restlessness would proceed at once to deal with
the cause. If that were not removed, a doctor might
prescribe a hundred things, and all might be taken in
turn, without producing the least effect. Things are so
arranged in the original planning of the world that cer-
tain effects must follow certain causes, and certain
causes must be abohshed before certain effects can be
removed. Certain parts of Africa are inseparably linked
with the physical experience called fever; this fever is
in turn infallibly linked with a mental experience called
restlessness and delirium. To abolish the mental experi-
ence the radical method would be to abolish the physical
experience, and the way of abolishing the physical ex-
perience would be to abolish Africa, or to cease to go
there. Now this holds good for all other forms of Rest-
lessness. Every other form and kind of Restlessness in
the world has a definite cause, and the particular kind
of Restlessness can only be removed by removing the
allotted cause.

All this is also true of Rest. Restlessness has a cause :
must not Rest have a cause ? Necessarily. If it were a
chance world we would not expect this; but, being a
methodical world, it cannot be otherwise. Rest, physi-
cal rest, moral rest, spiritual rest, every kind of rest
has a cause, as certainly as restlessness. Now causes

14 Pii''^ VobisciLin.

are discriminating. There is one kind of cause for every
particular effect, and no other; and if one particular
effect is desired, the corresponding cause must be set in
motion. It is no use proposing finely devised schemes,
or going through general pious exercises in the hope that
somehow Eest will come. The Christian life is not
casual, but causal. All nature is a standing protest
against the absurdity of expecting to secure spiritual
effects, or any effects, without tliC employment of ap-
propriate causes. The Great Teacher dealt what ought
to have been the final blow to this infinite irrelevancy by
a single question, *' Do men gather grapes of thorns, or
figs of thistles ?"

Why, then, did the Great Teacher not educate His fol-
lowers fully ? Why did He not tell us, for example, how
such a thing as Rest might be obtained ? The answer is,
that He did. But plainly, explicitly, in so many words ?
Yes, plainly, explicitly, in so many words. He assigned
Rest to its cause, in words with w^hich each of us has
been familiar from his earliest childhood.

He begins, you remember— for you at once know the
passage I refer to— almost as if Rest could be had with-
out any cause: "Come unto me," He says, "and I will
give you Rest."

Rest, apparently, was a favor to be bestowed ; men had
but to come to Him ; He w^ould give it to every appli-
cant. But the next sentence takes that all back. The
qualification, indeed, is added instantaneously. For
what the first sentence seemed to give was next thing to
an impossibility. For how, in a literal sense, can Rest
be given ? One could no more give away Rest than he

Pax Vobiscum, 1 5

could give away Laughter. We speak of "causing"
laughter, which we can do; but we cannot give it away.
When we speak of giving pain, we know perfectly well
we cannot give pain away. A.nd when we aim at giving
pleasure, all that we do is to arrange a set of circum-
stances in such a way as that these shall cause pleasure.
Of course there is a sense, and a very wonderful sense,
in which a Great Personality breathes upon all who
come within its influence an abiding peace and trust.
Men can be to other men as the shadow of a great rock
in a weary land: much more Christ; much more Christ
as Perfect Man ; much more still as Saviour of the world.
But it is not this of which I speak. When Christ said
He would give men Rest, He meant simply that He
would put them in the way of it. By no act of convey-
ance would, or could. He make over His own Rest to
them. He could give them His receipt for it. That was
all. But He would not make it for them. For one
thing, it was not in His plan to make it for them; for
another thmg, men were not so planned that it could be
made for them; and for yet another thing, it was a
thousand times better that they should make it for them-
selves.

That this is the meaning becomes obvious from the
wording of the second sentence: "Learn of me and ye
shall ^?id Rest." Rest, that is to say, is not a thing that
can be given, but a thing to be acquired. It comes not
by an act, but by a process. It is not to be found in a
happy hour, as one finds a treasure ; but slowly, as one
finds knowledge. It could indeed be no more found in a
moment than could knowledge. A soil has to be pre-

1 6 Pax V obis cum,

pared for it. Like a fine fruit, it will grow in one
climate and not in another ; at one altitude and not at
another. Like all growths it will have an orderly de-
velopment and mature by slow degrees.

The nature of this slow process Christ clearly defines
when He says we are to achieve Eest by learning.
" Learn of me," He says, " and ye shall find rest to your
souls." Now consider the extraordinary originality of
this utterance. How novel the connection between these
two words, ''Learn " and "Rest " ? How few of us have
ever associated them — ever thought that Rest was a
thing to be learned; ever laid ourselves out for it as
we would to learn a language; ever practised it as we
would practise the violin ? Does it not show how en-
tirely new Christ's teaching still is to the world, that
so old and threadbare an aphorism should still be so
little known ? The last thing most of us would have
thought of would have been to associate Rest with Worl<:.

What must one work at ? What is that which if duly
learned will find the soul of man in Rest ? Christ
answers without the least hesitation. He specifies two
things— Meekness and Lowliness. "Learn of me," He
says, "for I am meek and lowly in heart." Now these
two things are not chosen at random. To these accom-
plishments, in a special way, Rest is attached. Learn
these, in short, and you have already found Rest. These
as they stand are direct causes of Rest ; will produce it at
once; cannot but produce it at once. And if you think
for a single moment, j^ou will see how this is necessarily
so, for causes are never arbitrarj^, and the connection be-

Pax Vobisciim. 1 7

tween antecedent and consequent here and everywhere
lies deep in the nature of thin^.

What is the connection, then? I answer by a further
question. What are the chief causes of Unrest f If you
know yourself, you will answer, Pride, Selfishness, Am-
bition. As you look back upon the past years of your
life, is it not true that its unhappiness has chiefly come
from the succession of personal mortifications and
almost trivial disappointments which the intercourse of
life has brought you? Great trials come at lengthened
intervals, and we rise to breast them ; but it is the petty
friction of our evory-day life with one another, the jar of
business or of work, the discord of the domestic circle,
the collapse of om- ambition, the crossing of cur will or
the taking down of our conceit, which make inward
peace impossible. Wounded vanity, then, disappointed
hopes, unsatisfied selfishness— these are the old, vulgar,
universal sources of man's unrest. Now it is obvious
why Christ pointed out as the two chief objects for
attainment the exact opposites of these. To meekness
and lowliness these things simply do not exist. They
cure unrest by making it impossible. These remedies do
not trifle with surface symptoms ; they strike at once at
removing causes. The ceaseless chagrin of a self-centred
life can be removed at once by learning meekness and
lowliness of heart. He who learns them is forever proof
against it. He lives henceforth a charmed life. Chris-
tianity is a fine inoculation, a transfusion of healthy
blood into an anaemic or poisoned soul. No fever can
attack a perfectly sound body; no fever of unrest can
disturb a soul which has breathed the air or learned the

1 8 Pax Vobisciim,

ways of Christ. Men sigh for the wings of a dove that
they may fly away and be at Rest. But flying away
will not help us. " The Kingdom of God is within you:"
We aspire to the top to look for Rest; it lies at the
bottom. Water rests only when it gets to the lowest
place. So do men. Hence be lowly. The man who has
no opinion of himself at all can never be hurt if others
do not acknowledge him. Hence, be meek. He who is
without expectation cannot fret if nothing comes to him.
It is self-evident that these things are so. The lowly
man and the meek man are really above all other men,
above all other things. They dominate the world because
they do not care for it. The miser does not possess gold,
gold possesses him. But the meek possess it. "The
meek," said Christ, "inherit the earth." They do not
buy it; they do not conquer it; but they inherit it.

There are people who go about the world looking out
for slights, and they are necessarily miserable, for they
find them at every turn— especially the imaginary ones.
One has the same pity for such men as for the very poor.
They are the morally illiterate. They have had no real
education, for they have never learned how to live. Few
men know how to live. We grow up at random, carrying
into mature life the merely animal methods and motives
which we had as little children. And it does not occur
to us that all this must be changed ; that much of it must
be reversed; that life is the finest of the Fine Arts; that
it has to be learned with lifelong patience, and that the
years of our pilgrimage are all too short to master it
triumphantly.

Yet this is what Christianity is for— to teach rnen the

Pax Vobisaim. 19

Art of Life. And its whole curriculum lies in one word
— " Learn of me." Unlike most education, this is almost
purely personal; it is not to be had from books or
lectures or creeds or doctrines. It is a study from the
life. Christ never said much in mere words about the
Christian graces. He lived them, He was them. Yet
we do not merely copy Him. We learn His art by
living with Him, like the old apprentices with their
masters.

Now we understand it all ? Christ's invitation to the
weary and heavy-laden is a call to begin life over again
upon a new principle— upon His own principle. '' Watch
my way of doing things," He says. "Follow me. Take
life as I take it. Be meek and lowly and you will find
Rest."

I do not say, remember, that the Christian life to
every man, or to any man, can be a bed of roses. No
educational process can be this. And perhaps if some
men knew how much was involved in the simple
"learn" of Christ, they would not enter His school with
so irresponsible a heart. For there is not only much to
learn, but much to unlearn. Many men never go to this
school at all till their disposition is already half ruined
and character has taken on its fatal set. To learn
arithmetic is diflQcult at fifty — much more to learn
Christianity. To learn simply what it is to be meek and
lowly, in the case of one who has had no lessons in that
in childhood, may cost him half of what he values most
on earth. Do we realize, for instance, that the way of
teaching humility is generally by humiliation} There is
probably no other school for it. When a man enters

20 Pax Vobiscum.

himself as a pupil in such a school it means a very great
thing. There is much Rest there, but there is also much
Work.

I should be wrong, even though my theme is the
brighter side, to ignore the cross and minimize the cost.
Only it gives to the cross a more definite meaning, and a
rarer value, to connect it thus directly and causally with
the growth of the inner life. Our platitudes on the
"benefits of affiiction" are usually about as vague as
our theories of Christian Experience. "Somehow," we
believe affliction does us good. But it is not a question
of " Somehow." The result is definite, calculable, neces-
sary. It is under the strictest law of cause and effect.
The first effect of losing one's fortune, for instance, is
humiliation; and the effect of humiliation, as we have
just seen, is to make one humble; and the effect of being
humble is to produce Rest. It is a roundabout way,
apparently, of producing Rest; but Nature generally
works by circular processes; and it is not certain that
there is any other way of becoming humble, or of find-
ing Rest. If a man could make himself humble to order,
it might simplify matters, but we do not find that this
happens. Hence we must all go through the mill. Hence
death, death to the lower self, is the nearest gate and the
quickest road to life.

Yet this is only half the truth. Christ's life outwardly
was one of the most troubled lives that was ever lived:
tempest and tumult, tumult and tempest, the waves
breaking over it all the time till the worn body was laid
in the grave. But the inner life was a sea of glass. The
great calm was always there. At any moment you

Pax VobisciiDi. 21

might have gone to Him and found Rest. And even
when the bloodhounds were dogging Hitn in the streets
of Jerusalem, He turned to His disciples and offered
them, as a last legacy, "- My peace." Nothing even for a
moment broke the serenity of Christ's life on earth.
Misfortune could not reach Him; He had no fortune.
Food, raiment, money— fountain-heads of half the world's
weariness— He simply did not care for; they played no
part in His life ; He '' took no thought " for them . It was
impossible to affect Him by lowering His reputation ; He
had already made Himself of no reputation. He was
dumb before insult. When He was reviled, He reviled
not again. In fact, there was nothing that the world
could do to Him that could ruffle the surface of His spirit.

Such living, as mere living, is altogether unique. It is
only when we see what it was in Him that we can know
what the word Rest means. It lies not in emotions, nor
in the absence of emotions. It is not a hallowed feeling
that comes over us in church. It is not something that
the preacher has in his voice. It is not in nature, or in
poetry, or in music— though in all these there is soothing.
It is the mind at leisure from itself. It is the perfect
poise of the soul; the absolute adjustment of the inward
man to the stress of all outward things ; the prepared-
ness against every emergency ; the stability of assured
convictions; the eternal calm of an invulnerable faith;
the repose of a heart set deep in God. It is the mood of
the man who says, with Browning, " God's in His Heaven,
all's well with the world."

Two painters each painted a picture to illustrate his
conception of rest. The first chose for his scene a still,

22 Pax Vobiscum.

lone lake among the far-off mountains. The second threw
on his canvas a thundering waterfall, with a fragile birch-
tree bending over the foam ; at the fork of a branch, al-
most wet with the cataract's spray, a robin sat on its
nest. The first was only Stagnation; the last was Rest.
For in Rest there are always two elements— tranquillity
and energy ; silence and turbulence ; creation and destruc-
tion; fearlessness and fearfulness. This it was in Christ.
It is quite plain from all this that whatever else He
claimed to be or to do, He at least knew how to live. All
this is the perfection of living, of living in the mere sense
of passing through the world in the best way. Hence
His anxiety to communicate His idea of life to others.
He came, He said, to give men life, true life, a more
abundant life than they were living; "the life," as the
fine phrase in the Revised Version has it, "that is life
indeed." This is what He himself possessed, and it was
this which He offers to all mankind. And hence His di-
rect appeal for all to come to Him who had not made
much of life, vvho were weary and heavy-laden. These
He would teach His secret. They, also, should know
" the hfe that is hfe indeed."

WHAT YOKES ARE FOR.

There is still one doubt to clear up. After the state-
ment. " Learn of Me," Christ throws in the disconcerting
qualification, " Take my yoke upon you and learn of Me."
Why, if all this be true, does He call it a yoke f Why,
while professing to give Rest, dues He with the next
breath whisper '' burden ^^f Is the Christian life, after

Pax Vobisann. 23

till, what its enemies take it for— an additional weight to
the already great woe of life, some extra punctiliousness
about duty, some painful devotion to observances, some
heavy restriction and trammelling of all that is joyous
and free in the world ? Is life not hard and sorrowful
enough without being fettered with yet another yoke ?

It is astounding how so glaring a misunderstanding of
this plain sAitence should ever have passed into currency.
Did you ever stop to ask what a yoke is really for? Is it
to be a burden to the animal which wears it? It is just
the opposite. It is to make its burden light. Attached
to the oxen in any other way than by a yoke, the plough
would be intolerable. Worked by means of a yoke, it is
light. A yoke is not an instrument of torture; it is an
instrument of mercy. It is not a malicious contrivance
for making work hard ; it is a gentle device to make hard
labor light. It is not meant to give pain, but to save
pain. And yet men speak of the yoke of Christ as if it
were a slavery, and look upon those who wear it as ob-
jects of compassion. For generations we have had homi-
lies on "The Yoke of Christ"— some delighting in por-
traying its narrow exactions; some seeking in these ex-
actions the marks of its divinity; others apologizing for
it, and toning it down; still others assuring us that, al-
though it be very bad, it is not to be compared with the
positive blessings of Christianity. How many, especially
among the young, has this one mistaken phrase driven
forever away from the kingdom "of God ? Instead of
making Christ attractive, it makes Him out a taskmas-
ter, narrowing life by petty restrictions, calling for self-
denial \vliere none is necessary, making misery a virtue

24 P<^x Vobiscum,

under the plea that it is the yoke of Christ, and happi-
ness criminal because it now and then evades it. Ac-
cording to this conception, Christians are at best the vic-
tims of a depressing fate; their life is a penance; and
their hope for the next world purchased by a slow mar-
tyrdom in this.

The mistake has arisen from taking the word " yoke"
here in the same sense as in the expressions '"^' under the
yoke," or " wear the yoke in his youth." But in Christ's
illustration it is not W\QJugum of the Roman soldier, but
the simple " harness" or "ox-collar" of the Eastern peas-
ant. It is the literal wooden yoke which He, with His
own hands in the carpenter shop, had probably often
made. He knew the difference between a smooth yoke
and a rough one, a bad fit and a good fit ; the difference
also it made to the patient animal which had to wear it.
The rough yoke galled, and the burden was heavy ; the
smooth yoke caused no pain, and the load was lightly
drawn. The badly fitted harness was a misery; the well-
fitted collar was "easy."

And what was the " burden "? It was not some special
burden laid upon the Christian, some unique infliction
that they alone must bear. It was what all men bear.
It was simply life, human life itself, the general burden
of life which all must carry with them from the cradle to
the grave. Christ saw that men took life painfully. To
some it was a weariness, to others a failure, to many a
tragedy, to all a struggle and a pain. How to carry this
burden of life had been the whole world's problem. It is
still the whole world's problem. And here is Christ's so-
lution: " Carry it as I do. Take life as I take it. Look

Pax Vo bis cum. 25

at it from My point of view. Interpret it upon My prin-
ciples. Take My yoke and leani of Me, and you will find
it easy. For My yoke is easy, works easily, sits right
upon the shoulders, and therefore My burden is light."

There is no suggestion here that religion will absolve
any man from bearing burdens. That would be to absolve
him from living, since it is Ufe itself that is the burden.
What Christianity does propose is to make it tolerable.
Christ's yoke is simply His secret for the alleviation of
human life, His prescription for the best and happiest
method of living. Men harness themselves to the work
and stress of the world in clumsy and unnatural ways.
The harness they put on is antiquated. A rough, ill-
fitted collar at the best, they make its stra-n and fric-
tion past enduring, by placing it where the neck is most
sensitive ; and by mere continuous irritation this sensi-
tiveness increases until the whole nature is quick and
sore.

This is the origin, among other things, of a disease
called " touchiness"— a disease which, in spite of its inno-
cent name, is one of the gravest sources of restlessness in
the world. Touchiness, when it becomes chronic, is a
morbid condition of the inward disposition. It is self-
love inflamed to the acute point; conceit, ivith a hair-
trigger. The cure is to shift the yoke to some other
place; to let men and things touch us through some new
and perhaps as yet unused part of our nature ; to become
meek and lowly in heart while the old sensitiveness is
becoming numb from want of use. It is the beautiful
work of Christianity everywhere to adjust the burden
of life to those who bear it, and them to it. It has a per-

26 Pax Vobiscum.

f ectly miraculous gift of healing. Without doing any vio-
lence to human nature it sets it right with life, harmon-
izing it with all surrounding things, and restoring those
who are jaded with the fatigue and dust of the world to
a new grace of living. In the mere matter of altering
the perspective of life and changing the proportions of
things, its function in lightening the care of man is alto-
gether its own. The weight of a load depends upon the
attraction of the earth. Suppose the attraction of the
earth were removed ? A ton on some other planet, where
the attraction of gravity is less, does not weigh half a
ton. Now Christianity removes the attraction of the
earth ; and this is one way in which it diminishes man's
burden. It makes them citizens of another world. What
was a ton yesterday is not half a ton to-day. So without
changing one's circumstances, merely by off ering a wider
horizon and a different standard, it alters the whole as-
pect of the world.

Christianity as Christ taught is the truest philosophy
of life ever spoken. But let us be quite sure when we
speak of Christianity that we mean Christ's Christianity.
Other versions are either caricatures, or exaggerations, or
misunderstandings, or shortsighted and surface readings.
For the most part their attainment is hopeless and the
results wretched. But I care not who the person is, or
through what vale of tears he has passed, or is about to
pass, there is a new life for him along this path.

Pax Vobiscitin. 27

HOW FRUITS GROW.

Were Rest my subject, there are other things I should
wish to say about it, a ad other kinds of Rest of which I
should like to speak. But that is not my subject. My
theme is that the Christian experiences are not the work
of magic, but come under the law of Cause and Effect.
And I have chosen Rest only as a single illustration of
the working of that principle. If there were time I
might next run over all the Christian experiences in turn,
and show how the same mde law applies to ea^h. But I
think it may serve the better purpose if I leave this
further exercise to yourselves. I know no Bible study
that you will find more full of fruit, or which will take
you nearer to the ways of God, or make the Christian
life itself more sohd or more sure. I shall add only a
single other illustration of what I mean, before I close.

Where does Joy come from ? I knew a Sunday scholar
whose conception of Joy was that it was a thing made in
lumps and kept somewhere in Heaven, and that when
people prayed for it, pieces were somehow let down and
fitted into their souls. I am not sure that views as gross
and material are not often held by people who ought to
be wiser. In reality, Joy is as much a matter of Cause and
Effect as pain. No one can get Joy by merely asking for
it. It is one of the ripest fruits of the Christian life, and,
like all fruits, must be grown. There is a very clever
trick in India called the mango-trick. A seed is put in

28 Pax Vobiscum,

the ground and covered up, and after diverse incantations
a fuli-blown mango-bush appears within five minutes.
I never met any one who knew how the thing was done,
but I never met any one who beheved it to be anything
else than a conjuring-trick. The world is pretty unani-
mous now in its belief in the orderliness of Nature. Men
may not know how fruits grow, but they do know that
they cannot grow in an hour. Some lives have not even
a stalk on which fruits could hang, even if they did grow
in an hour. Some have never planted one sound seed of
Joy in all their lives ; and others who may have planted
a germ or two have lived so little in sunshine that they
never could come to maturity.

Whence, then, is Joy ? Christ put His teaching upon
this subject into one of the most exquisite of His para-
bles. I should in any instance have appealed to His
teaching here, as in the case of Eest, for I do not wish
you to think I am speaking words of my own. But it so
happens that He has dealt with it in words of imusual
fulness.

I need not recall the whole illustration. It is the para-
ble of the Vine. Did you ever think why Christ spoke
that parable ? He did not merely throw it into space
as a fine illustration of general truths. It was not simply
a statement of the mystical union, and the doctrine of
an indwelling Christ. It was that; but it was more.
After He had said it. He did what was not an unusual
thing when He was teaching His greatest lessons. He
turned to the disciples and said He would tell them why
He had spoken it. It was to tell them how to get Joy.
*' These things have I spoken unto you," He said, " that

Pax Vobiscum, 29

My Joy might remain in you and that your Joy might
be full." It was a purposed and deliberate communica-
tion of His secret of Happiness.

Go back over these verses, then, and you will find the
Causes of this Effect, the spring, and the^ only spring, out
of which true Happiness comes. I am not going to ana-
lyze them in detail. T ask you to enter into the words
for yourselves. Remember, in the first place, that the
Vine was the Eastern symbol of Joy. It was its fruit
that made glad the heart of man. Yet, however inno-
cent that gladness— for the expressed juice of the grape
was the common drink at every peasant's board— the
gladness was only a gross and passing thing. This was
not true happiness, and the vine of the Palestine vine-
yards was not the true vine. Christ was "the true
Vine." Here, then, is the ultimate source of Joy.
Through whatever media it reaches us, all true Joy and
Gladness find their source in Christ. By this, of course,
is not meant that the actual Joy experienced is trans-
ferred from Christ's nature, or is something passed on
from Him to us. What is passed on is His method of
getting it. There is, indeed, a sense in which we can
share another's joy or another's sorrow. But that is
another matter. Christ is the source of Joy to men in
the sense in which He is the source of Rest. His people
share His life, and therefore share its consequences, and
one of these is Joy. His method of living is one that in
the nature of things produces Joy. When He spoke of
His Joy remaining with us He meant in part that the
causes which produced it should continue to act. His
followers, that is to say, by repeating His life would ex-

30 Pax Vobisciun.

perience its accompaniments. His Joy, His kind of Joy,
would remain with them.

The medium through which this Joy comes is next ex-
plained: "He that; abideth in Me, the same bringeth
forth much fruit." Fruit first, Joy next; the one the
cause or medium of the other. Fruit-bearing is the
necessary antecedent; Joy both the necessary conse-
quent and the necessary accompaniment. It lay partly
in the bearing fruit, partly in the fellowship which made
that possible. Partly, that is to say, Joy lay in mere
constant living in Christ's presence, with all that that
implied of peace, of shelter, and of love; partly in the
influence of that Life upon mind and character and will;
and partly in the inspiration to live and work for others,
with all that that brought of self-riddance and joy in
others' gain. All these, in different waj^s and at different
times, are sources of pure Happiness. Even the simplest
of them— to do good to other people— is an instant and
infallible specific. There is no mystery about Happiness
whatever. Put in the right ingredients and it must come
out. He that abideth in Him will bring forth much
fruit ; and bringing forth much fruit is Happiness. The
infallible receipt for Happiness, then, is to do good; and
the infallible receipt for doing good is to abide in Christ.
The surest proof that all this is a plain matter of Cause
and Effect is that men may try every other conceivable
way of finding happiness, and thej^ will fail. Only the
right cause in each case can produce the right effect.

Then the Christian experiences are our own making ?
In the same sense in which grapes are our own making,
and no more. All fruits g^row— whether they grow in the

Pax Vobiscuin. 31

soil or in the soul; whether they are the fruits of the
wild grape or of the True Vine. No man can make things
grow. He can get them to grow by arranging all the
circumstances and fulfilling all the conditions. But the
growing is done by God. Causes and effects are eternal
arrangements, set in the constitution of the world; fixed
beyond man's ordering. What man can do is to place
himself in the midst of a chain of spquences. Thus he
cen get things to grow: thus he himself can grow. But
the grower is the Spirit of God.

What more need I add but this— test the method by
experiment. Do not imagine that you have got these
things because you know how to get them. As well try
to feed upon a cookery book. But I think I can promise
that if you try in this simple and natural way, you will
not fail. Spend the time you have spent in sighing for
fruits in fulfilling the conditions of their growth. The
fruits will come, must come. We have hitherto paid
immense attention to effects, to the mere experiences
themselves; we have described them, extolled them,
advised them, prayed for them — done everything but
find out what caused them. Henceforth let us deal with
causes. "To be," says Lotze, ''is to be in relations."
About every other method of living the Christian life
there is an uncertainty. About every other method of
acquiring the Christian experiences there is a "perhaps."
But in so far as this method is the way of nature, it can-
not fail. Its guarantee is the laws of the universe— and
these are " the Hands of the Living God."

32 . Pax Vobiscum.

THE TRUE VINE.

"I AM the true vine, and my Father is the husband-
man. Every branch in me that beareth not fruit he
taketh away: and every branch that beareth fruit, he
purge th it, that it may bring forth more fruit. Now ye
are clean through the word which I have spoken unto
you. Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot
bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine ; no more
can ye, except ye abide in me. I am the vine, ye are the
branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same
bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do
nothing. If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a
branch, and is withered ; and men gather them, and cast
them into the fire, and they are burned. If ye abide in me,
and my word abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and
it shall be done unto you. Herein is my Father glorified,
that ye bear much fruit; so ye shall be my disciples.
As the Father hath loved me, so have I loved you : con-
tinue ye in my love. If ye keep my commandments, ye
shall abide in my love; even as I have kept my Father's
commandments, and abide in his love. These things
have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in
you, and that your joy might be full."

THE END.

THE GREATEST THING IN
THE WORLD.

Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and
have not Love, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling
cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and under-
stand all mysteries, and all knowledge ; and though I have all
faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not Love, I am
nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor,
and though I give my body to be burned, and have not Love, it
profiteth me nothing.

Love suffereth long, and is kind ;

Love envietli not ;

Love vaimteth not itself, is not puffed up,

Doth not behave itself unseemly,

Seeketh not her own,

Is not easily provoked,

Thinketh no evil ;

Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth ;

Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things.

endmeth all thmgs.

Love never faileth : but whether there be prophecies, they
shall fail ; whether there be tongues, they shall cease ; whether
there be knowledge, it shall vanish away. For we know in part,
and we prophesy in part. But w^hen that which is perfect is
come, then that which is in part shall be done away. When I
was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought
as a child : but when I became a man, I put away childish things.
For now we see through a glass, darkly ; but then face to face :
now I know in part ; but then shall I know even as also I am
known. And now abideth faith, hope, Love, these three ; but
the greatest of these is Love. — 1 Cor. xiii.

THE

GREATEST THING IN THE WORLD.

Every one has asked himself the great question of
antiquity as of the modern world: What is the simimum
honum — the supreme good ? You have life before you.
Once only you can live it. What is the noblest object of
desire, the supreme gift to covet ?

We have been accustomed to be told that the greatest
thing in the religious world is Faith. That great word
has been the key-note for centuries of the popular rehg-
ion ; and we have easily learned to look upon it as the
greatest thing in the world. Well, we are wrong. If we
have been told that, we may miss the mark. I have
taken you, in the chapter which I have just read, to
Christianity at its source; and there we have seen, " The
greatest of these is love." It is not an oversight. Paul
was speaking of faith just a moment before. He says,
" If I have all faith, so that I can remove mountains, and
have not love, I am nothing." So far from forgetting,
he deliberately contrasts them, "Now abideth Faith,
Hope, Love," and without a moment's hesitation the

decision faUs, " The greatest of these is Love."

37

38 The Greatest Thing in the World,

And it is not prejudice. A man is apt to recommend
to others his own strong point. Love was not Paul's
strong point. The observing student can detect a beauti-
ful tenderness growing and ripening all through his
character as Paul gets old; but the hand that wrote,
*'The greatest of these is love," when we meet it first, is
stained with blood.

Nor is this letter to the Corinthians peculiar in singling
out love as the summum honum. The masterpieces of
Christianity are agreed about it. Peter says, " Above aE
things have fervent love among yourselves." Above all
things. And John goes farther, "God is love." And
you remember the profound remark which Paul makes
elsewhere, "Love is the fulfilling of the law." Did you
ever think what he meant by that ? In those days men
were working their passage to Heaven by keeping the
Ten Commandments, and the hundred and ten other
commandments which they had manufactured out of
them. Christ said, I will show you a more simple way.
If you do one thing, you will do these hundred and ten
things, without ever thinking about them. If you love,
you will unconsciously fulfil the whole law. And you
can readily see for yourselves how that must be so. Take
any of the commandments. " Thou shalt have no other
gods before Me." If a man love God, you will not require
to tell him that. Love is the fulfiUing of that law.
"Take not His name in vain." Would he ever dream of
taking His name in vain if he loved Him ? "Eemember
the Sabbath day to keep it holy." Would he not be too
glad to have one day in seven to dedicate more exclu-
sively to the object of his affection ? Love would fulfil all

The Greatest Thing in the World. 39

these laws regarding God. And so, if he loved Man, you
would never think of telling him to honor his father
and mother. He could not do anything else. It would
be preposterous to tell him not to kill. You could only
insult him if you suggested that he should not steal— how
could he steal from those he loved ? It would be super-
fluous to beg him not to bear false witness against his
neighbor. If he loved him it would be the last thing he
would do. And you would never dream of urging him
not to covet what his neighbors had. He would rather
they possessed it than himself. In this way "Love is the
fulfilling of the law." It is the rule for fulfilling all
rules, the new commandment for keeping all the old
commandments, Christ's one secret of the Christian hfe.

Now Paul had learned that; and in this noble eulogy
he has given us the most wonderful and original account
extant of the summum honum. We may divide it into
three parts. In the beginning of the short chapter, we
have Love contrasted ; in the heart of it, we have Love
analyzed ; towards the end, we have Love defended as
the supreme gift.

THE CONTEAST.

Paul begins by contrasting Love with other things
that men in those days thought much of. I shall not
attempt to go over those things in detail. Their in-
feriority is already obvious.

He contrasts it with eloquence. And what a noble
gift it is, the power of playing upon the souls and wills
of men, and rousing them to lofty purposes and holy
deeds. Paul says, "If I speak with the tongues of men

40 The Greatest Thing in the World.

and of angels, and have not love, I am become as sound-
ing brass, or a tinkling cymbal." And we all know
■why. We have all felt the brazenness of words without
emotion, the hollowness, the unaccountable unpersua-
siveness, of eloquence behind which lies no Love.

He contrasts it with prophecy. He contrasts it with
mysteries. He contrasts it with faith. He contrasts it
with charity. Why is Love greater than faith ? Be-
cause the end is greater than the means. And why
is it greater than charity ? Because the whole is greater
than the part. Love is greater than faith, because Uie
end is greater than the means. What is the use of
having faith ? It is to connect the soul with God.
And what is the object of connecting man with God ?
That he may become like God. But God is Love.
Hence Faith, the means, is in order to Love, the end.
Love, therefore, obviously is greater than faith. It is
greater than charity, again, because the whole is greater
than a part. Charity is only a little bit of Love, one of
the innumerable avenues of Love, and there may even
be, and there is, a great deal of charity without Love.
It is a very easy thing to toss a copper to a beggar on
the street; it is generally an easier thing than not to do
it. Yet Love is just as often in the withholding. We
purchase relief from the sympathetic feelings roused by
the spectacle of misery, at the copper's cost. It is too
cheap— too cheap for us, and often too dear for the beg-
gar. If we really loved him we would either do more
for him, or less. JC,-f. .

Then Paul contrasts it with sacrifice and martyrdom.
And I beg the little band of would-be missionaries— and

The Greatest T J ting in the World. 41

I have the honor to call some of you by this name for
the first time— to remember that though you give your
bodies to be burned, and have not Love, it profits
nothing— nothing ! You can take nothing greater to the
heathen world than the impress and reflection of the
Love of God upon your own character. That is the
universal language. It will take you years to speak in
Chinese, or in the dialects of India. From the day you
land, that language of Love, understood by all, will be
pouring forth its unconscious eloquence. It is the man
who is the missionary, it is not his words. His charac-
ter is his message. In the heart of Africa, among the
great Lakes, I have come across black men and women
who remembered the only white man they ever saw be-
fore—David Livingstone ; and as you cross his footsteps in
that dark continent, men's faces light up as they speak of
the kind Doctor who passed there years ago. They could
not understand him; but they felt the Love that beat in
his heart. Take into your new sphere of labor, where
you also mean to lay down your life, that simple charm,
and your lifework must succeed. You can take nothing
greater, you need not take nothing less. It is not worth
while going if you take anything less. You may take
every accomplishment ; you may be braced for every
sacrifice; but if you give your body to be burned, and
have not Love, it wiU profit you and the cause of Christ
nothing.

THE ANALYSIS.

After contrasting Love with these things, Paul, in
three verses, very short, gives us an amazing analysis of

42 The Greatest Thing in the World.

what this supreme thing is. I ask you to look at it. It
is a compound thing, he tells us. It is like light. As
you have seen a man of science take a beam of light and
pass it through a crystal prism, as you have seen it come
ont on the other side of the prism broken up into its
component colors— red, and blue, and yellow, and violet,
and orange, and all the colors of the rainbow— so Paul
passes this thing, Love, through the magnificent prism
of his inspired intellect, and it comes out on the other
side broken up into its elements. And in these few
words we have what one might call the Spectrum of
Love, the analysis of Love. Will you observe what its
elements are ? Will you notice that they have common
names ; that they are virtues which we hear about every
day, that they are things which can be practised by
every man in every place in life; and how, by a multi-
tude of small things and ordinary virtues, the supreme
thing, the summum bonum, is made up ?

The Spectrum of Love has nine ingredients :—
Patience . . "Love suffereth long."
Kindness . . "And is kind."
Generosity . " Love envieth not."
Humility . ' ' Love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed

up."
Courtesy . . " Doth not behave itself unseemly."
Unselfishness " Seeketh not her own."
Good Temper " Is not easily provoked."
Guilelessness " Thinketh no evil."
Sincerity . . " Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth

in the truth."

TJic Greatest Thing in the World. 43

Patience; kindness; generosity; humility; courtesy;
unselfishness; good temper; guilelessness ; sincerity —
these make up the supreme gift, the stature of the per-
fect man. You will observe that all are in relation to
men, in relation to life, in relation to the known to-day
and the near to-morrow, and not to the unknown eter-
nity. We hear much of love to God ; Christ spoke much
of love to man. We make a great deal of peace with
heaven ; Christ made much of peace on earth. Religion
is not a strange or added thing, but the inspiration of the
secular life, the breathing of an eternal spirit through
this temporal world. The supreme thing, in short, is not
a thing at all, but the giving of a further finish to the
multitudinous words and acts which make up the sum
of every common day.

There is no time to do more than make a passing note
upon each of these ingredients. Love is Patience. This
is the normal attitude of Love; Love passive. Love wait-
ing to begin; not in a hurry; calm ; ready to do its work
when the summons comes, but meantime wearing the
ornament of a meek and quiet spirit. Love suffers long;
beareth all things; believeth all things; hopeth all
things. For Love understands, and therefore waits.

Kindness. Love active. Have you ever noticed how
much of Christ's hfe was spent in doing kind things— in
merely doing kind things ? Rim over it with that in
view, and you will find that He spent a great proportion
of His time simply in making people happy, in doing
good turns to people. There is only one tiling greater
than happiness in the world, and that is holiness; and it •
is not in our keeping; but what God has put in our

44 The Greatest Thing in the World.

power is the happiness of those about us, and that is
largely to be secured by our being kind to them.

<< The greatest thing," says some one, "a man can do
for his Heavenly Father is to be kind to some of His
other children." I wonder why it is that we are not all
kinder than we are ? How much the world needs it !
How easily it is done! How instantaneously it- acts!
How infallibly it is remembered ! How superabundantly
it pays itself back !— for there is no debtor in the world so
honorable, so superbly honorable, as Love. "Love
never faileth." Love is success, Love is happiness, Love
is life. "Love, I say," with Browning, "is energy of
Life."

** For life, with all it yields of joy or woe
And hope and fear.

Is just our chance o' the prize of learning love, —
How love might be, hath been indeed, and is."

Where Love is, God is. He that dwelleth in Love
dwelleth in God. God is Love. Therefore love. With-
out distinction, without calculation, without procrasti-
nation, love. Lavish it upon the poor, where it is very
easy; especially upon the rich, who often need it most;
most of all upon our equals, where it is very difficult,
and for whom perhaps we each do least of all. There is
a difference between trying to please ari^ giving pleasure.
Give pleasure. Lose no chance of giving pleasure. For
that is the ceaseless and anonymous triumph of a truly
loving spirit. "I shall pass through this world but
once. Any good thing therefore that I can do, or any
kindness that I can show to any human being, let me do

The Greatest Thing in the World. 45

it now. Let me not defer it or neglect it, for I shall not
pass this way again."

Generosity. "Love envieth not." This is love in com-
petition with others. Whenever you attempt a good
work you will find other men doing the same kind of
work, and probably doing it better. Envy them not.
Envy is a feeling of ill-will to those who are in the same
line as ourselves, a spirit of covetousness and detraction.
How little Christian work even is a protection against
un-Christian feeling ! That most despicable of all the un-
worthy moods which cloud a Christian's soul assuredly
waits for us on the threshold of every work, unless we
are fortified with this grace of magnanimity. Only one
thing truly need the Christian envy, the large, rich,
generous soul which " envieth not."

And then, after having learned all that, you have to
learn this further thing. Humility—to put a seal upon
your lips and forget what you have done. After you
have been kind, after Love has stolen forth into the
world and done its beautiful work, go back into the
shade again and say nothing about it. Love hides even
from itself . Love waives even self-satisfaction. "Love
vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up."

The fifth ingredient is a somewhat strange one to find in
this summum bonum : Courtesy. This is Love in society,
Love in relation to etiquette. "Love doth not behave
itself unseemly." Pohteness has been defined as love in
trifles. Courtesy is said to be love in little things. And
the one secret of politeness is to love. Love cannot be-
have itself unseemly. You can put the most untutored
persons into the highest society, and if they have a

4-6 The Greatest Thing in the World.

reservoir of Love in their heart, they will not behave
themselves unseemly. They simply cannot do it. Car-
lyle said of Robert Burns that there was no truer gentle-
man in Europe than the ploughman-poet. It was be-
cause he loved everything— the mouse, and the daisy,
and all the things, great and small, that God had made.
So with this simple passport he could mingle with any
society, and enter courts and palaces from his little cot-
tage on the banks of the Ayr. You know the meaning
of the word "gentleman." It means a g:entle man— a
man who does things gently with love. And that is the
whole art and mystery of it. The gentle man cannot in
the nature of things do an ungentle, an ungentlemanly
thing. The ungentle soul, the inconsiderate, unsympa-
thetic nature cannot do anything else. " Love doth not
behave itself unseemly."

TJ7iselfisliness. "Love seeketh not her own." Ob-
serve: Seeketh not even that which is her own. In
Britain the Englishman is devoted, and rightly, to his
rights. But there come times when a man may exercise
even the higher right of giving up his rights. Yet Paul
does not summon us to give up our rights. Love strikes
much deeper. It would have us not seek them at all,
ignore them, eliminate the personal element altogether
from our calculations. It is not hard to give up our
rights. They are often external. The difficult thing
is to give up ourselves. The more difficult thing still
is not to seek things for ourselves at all. After we have
sought them, bought them, won them, deserved them,
we have taken the cream off them for ourselves already.
Little cross then perhaps to give them up. But not to

TJlc Greatest Thing in the World, 47

seek them, to look every man not on his own things, but
on the things of others— icZ opus est. "Seekest thou
great things for thyself ?" said the prophet; '^ seek them
noty Why ? Because there is no greatness in things.
Things cannot be great. The only greatness is unselfish
love. Even self-denial in itself is nothing, is almost a
mistake. Only a great purpose or a mightier love can
justify the waste. It is more diflScult, I have said, not
to seek our own at all than, having sought it, to give it
up. I must take that back. It is only true of a partly
selfish heart. Nothing is a hardship to Love, and
nothing is hard. I believe that Christ's yoke is easy.
Christ's "yoke "is just His way of taking life. And I
believe it is an easier way than any other. I believe it is
a happier way than any other. The most obvious lesson
in Christ's teaching is that there is no happiness in hav-
ing and getting anything, but only in giving. I repeat,
there is no happiness in having or in getting, but only in
giving. And half the world is on the wrong scent in the
pursuit of happiness. They think it consists in having
and getting, and in being served by others. It consists
in giving, and in serving others. He that would be
great among you, said Christ, let him serve. He that
would be happy, let him remember that there is but one
way— it is more blessed, it is more happy, to give than to
receive.

The next ingredient is a very remarkable one : Good
Temper. ' ' Love is not easily provoked. " Nothing could
be more striking than to find this here. We are inclined
to look upon bad temper as a very harmless weakness.
We speak of it as a mere infirmity of natm*e, a family

48 The Greatest Thing in the World,

failing, a matter of temperament, not a thing to take
into very serious account in estimating a man's charac-
ter. And yet here, right in the heart of this analysis of
love, it finds a place ; and the Bible again and again re-
turns to condemn it as one of the most destructive ele-
ments in human nature.

The peculiarity of ill temper is that it is the vice of
the virtuous. It is often the one blot on an otherwise
noble character. You know men who are all but per-
fect, and women who would be entirely perfect, but for
an easily ruffled, quick-tempered, or "touchy" dispo-
sition. This compatibility of ill temper with high moral
character is one of the strangest and saddest problems of
ethics. The truth is there are two great classes of sins —
sins of the Body^ and sins of the Disposition, The
Prodigal Son may be taken as a type of the first, the
Elder Brother of the second. Now society has no doubt
whatever as to which of these is the worse. Its brand
falls, without a challenge, upon the Prodigal. But are
we right ? We have no balance to weigh one another's
sins, and coarser and finer are but human words; but
faults in the higher nature may be less venial than those
in the lower, and to the eye of Him who is Love, a sin
against Love may seem a hundred times more base. No
form of vice, not worldliness, not greed of gold, not
drunkenness itself, does more to un-Christianize society
than evil temper. For embittering life, for breaking up
communities, for destroying the most sacred relation-
ships, for devastating homes, for withering up men and
women, for taking the bloom off childhood, in short, for
sheer gratuitous misery-producing power, this influence

The Greatest Thing in the World. 49

stands alone. Look at the Elder Brother, moral, hard-
working, patient, dutiful— let him get all credit for his
virtues — look at this man, this baby, sulking outside his
own father's door. "He was angry," we read, "and
would not go in." Look at the effect upon the father,
upon the servants, upon the happiness of the guests.
Judge of the effect upon the Prodigal— and how many
prodigals are kept out of the Kingdom of God by the
unlovely character of those who profess to be inside?
Analyze, as a study in Temper, the thunder-cloud itself
as it gathers upon the Elder Brother's brow. What is
it made of? Jealousy, anger, pride, uncharity, cruelty,
self -righteousness, toucliiness, doggedness, sullenness —
these are the ingredients of this dark and loveless soul.
In varying proportions, also, these are the ingredients of
all ill temper. Judge if such sins of the disposition are
not worse to live in, and for others to live with, than sins
of the body. Did Christ indeed not answer the question
Himself when He said, "I say unto you, that the pub-
licans and the hai'lots go into the Kingdom of Heaven
before you" ? There is really no place in Heaven for a
disposition like this. A man with such a mood could
only make Heaven miserable for all the people in it.
Except, therefore, such a man be born again, he cannot,
he simply cannot, enter the Kingdom of Heaven. For it
is perfectly certain— and you will not misunderstand
me— that to enter Heaven a man must take it with him.
You will see then why Temper is significant. It is not
in what it is alone, but in what it reveals. This is why
I take the liberty now of speaking of it with such un-
usual plainness. It is a test for love, a symptom, a reve-

50 The Greatest Thing in the World.

lation of an unloving nature at bottom. It is the inter-
mittent fever which bespeaks unintermittent disease
within; the occasional bubble escaping to the surface
which betrays some rottenness underneath ; a sample of
the most hidden products of the soul dropped involun-
tarily when off one's guard; in a word, the lightning
form of a hundred hideous and un-Christian sins. For a
want of patience, a want of kindness, a want of gen-
erosity, a want of courtesy, a want of unselfishness, are
all instantaneously symbolized in one flash of Temper.

Hence it is not enough to deal with the Temper. We
must go to the source, and change the inmost nature,
and the angry humors will die away of themselves.
Souls are made sweet not by taking the acid fluids out,
but by putting something in— a great Love, a new Spirit,
the Spirit of Christ. Christ, the Spirit of Christ, inter-
penetrating ours, sweetens, purifies, transforms all. This
only can eradicate what is wrong, work a chemical
change, renovate and regenerate, and rehabilitate the
inner man. Will-power does not change men. Time
does not change men. Christ does. Therefore "Let
that mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus."
Some of us have not much time to lose. Remember,
once more, that this is a matter of life or death. I can-
not help speaking urgently, for myself, for yourselves.
"Whoso shall ofiend one of these little ones, which
believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone
were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned
in the depth of the sea." That is to say, it is the delib-
erate verdict of the Lord Jesus that it is better not to live
than not to love. It is better not to live than not to love,

TJic Greatest Thing in the World. 5 1

Guilelessness and Sincerity may be dismissed almost
with a word. Guilelessness is the grace for suspicious
people. And the possession of it is the great secret
of personal influence. You will find, if you think for a
moment, that the people who influence you are people
who believe in you. In an atmosphere of suspicion men
shrivel up \ but in that atmosphere they expand, and
find encouragement and educative fellowship. It is a
wonderful thing that here and there in this hard, un-
charitable world there should still be left a few rare souls
who think no evil. This is the great unworldliness.
Love "thinketh no evil," imputes no motive, sees the
bright side, puts the best construction on every action.
What a delightful state of mind to live ia ! What a
stimulus and benediction even to meet with it for a day !
To be trusted is to be saved. And if we try to influence
or elevate others, we shall soon see that success is in pro-
portion to their belief of our belief in them. For the
respect of another is the first restoration of the self-
respect a man has lost; our ideal of what he is becomes
to him the hope and pattern of what he may become.

" Love rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the
truth." I have called this Sincerity from the words
rendered in the Authorized Version by " rejoiceth in the
truth." And, certainly, were this the real translation,
nothing could be more just. For he who loves will love
Truth not less than men. He will rejoice in the Truth —
rejoice not in what he has been taught to beUeve ; not in
this Church's doctrine or in that ; not in this ism or in
that ism; but " in the Truth.'" He will accept only what
is real ; he will strive to get at facts ; he will search for

52 The Greatest Thing in the World.

Truth with a humble and unbiassed mind, and cherish
whatever he finds at any sacrifice. But the more literal
translation of the Eevised Version calls for just such a
sacrifice for truth's sake here. For what Paul really-
meant is, as we there read, "Rejoiceth not in unright-
eousness, but rejoiceth with the truth," a quality which
probably no one English word— and certainly not Sin-
cerity—adequately defines. It includes, perhaps more
strictly, the self-restraint which refuses to make capital
out of others' faults ; the charity which delights not in
exposing the weakness of others, but ' ' covereth all
things;" the sincerity of purpose which endeavors to see
things as they are, and rejoices to find them better than
suspicion feared or calumny denounced.

So much for the analysis of Love. Now the business
of our lives is to have these things fitted into our charac-
ters. That is the supreme work to which we need to
address ourselves in this world, to learn Love. Is life
not full of opportunities for learning Love ? Every man
and woman every day has a thousand of them. The
world is not a playground; it is a schoolroom. Life is
not a holiday, but an education. And the one eternal
lesson for us all is hoiv better ive can love. What makes
a man a good cricketer ? Practice. What makes a man
a good artist, a good sculptor, a good musician ? Prac-
tice. What makes a man a good linguist, a good sten-
ographer ? Practice. What makes a man a good man ?
Practice. Nothing else. There is nothing capricious
about religion. We do not get the soul in different ways',
under different laws, from those in which we get the
body and the mind. If a man does not exercise his arm

TJie Greatest Tiling in the World. 5 3

he develops no biceps muscle; and if a inan does not ex-
ercise his soul, he acquires no muscle in his soul, no
strength of character, no vigor of moral fibre, nor beauty
of spiritual pn^owth. Love is not a thing of enthusiastic
emotion. It is a rich, strong, manly, vigorous expression
of the whole round Christian character— the ChristUke
nature in its fullest development. And the constituents
of this great character are only to be built up by ceaseless
practice.

What was Christ doing in the carpenter's shop?
Practising. Though perfect, we read that He learned
obedience, and grew in wisdom and in favor with God.
Do not quarrel therefore with your lot in life. Do not
complain of its never-ceasing cares, its petty environ-
ment, the vexations you have to stand, the small and
sordid souls you have to live and work with. Above all,
do not resent temptation ; do not be perplexed because it
seems to thicken round you more and more, and ceases
neither for effort nor for agon 3' nor prayer. That is your
practice. That is the practice which God appoints you ;
and it is having its work in making you patient, and
humble, and generous, and unselfish, and kind, and
courteous. Do not giuidge the hand that is moulding the
still too shapeless image within you. It is growing more
beautiful, though you see it not, and every touch of
temptation may add to its perfection. Therefore keep in
the midst of life. Do not isolate yourself. Be among
men, and among things, and among troubles, and diffi-
culties, and obstacles. You remember Goethe's words:
Es hildet ein Talent sich in der Stille, Dock ein Charac-
ter in dem Strom der Welt. "Talent develops itself in

54 The Greatest Thing in the World,

solitude; Character in the stream of life." Talent de-
velops itself in solitude— the talent of prayer, of faith, of
meditation, of seeing the unseen; Character grows in the
stream of the world's life. That chiefly is where men are
to learn love.

How ? Now, how ? To make it easier, I have named
a few of the elements of love. But these are only ele-
ments. Love itself can never be defined. Light is a
something more than the sum of its ingredients — a glow-
ing, dazzling, tremulous ether. And love is something
more than all its elements— a palpitating, quivering, sen-
sitive, living thing. By synthesis of all the colors, men
can make whiteness, they cannot make light. By syn-
thesis of all the virtues, men can make virtue, they
cannot make love. How then are we to have this trans-
cendent living whole conveyed into our souls ? We brace
our wills to secure it. We try to copy those who have
it. We lay down rules about it. We watch. We pray.
But these things alone will not bring Love into our nature.
Love is an effect. And only as we fulfil the right condi-
tion can we have the effect produced. Shall I tell you
what the cause is ?

If you turn to the Eevised Version of the First Epistle
of John you will find these words: *' We love because He
first loved us." "We love," not " We love iJm." That
is the way the old version has it, and it is quite wrong.
*' We Zoi;e— because He first loved us." Look at that
word " because." It is the cause of which I have spoken.
^^ Because He first loved us," the effect follows that we
love, we love Him, we love all men. We cannot help it.
Because He loved us, we love, we love everybody. Our

TJie Greatest Thing in the World. 5 5

heart is slowly changed. Contemplate the love of Christ,
and you will love. Stand before that mirror, reflect
Christ's character, and you will be changed into the same
image from tenderness to tenderness. There is no other
way. You cannot love to order. You can only look at
the lovely object, and fall in love with it, and grow into
likeness to it. And so look at this Perfect Character, this
Perfect Life. Look at the great Sacrifice as He laid
down Himself, all through life, and upon the Cross of
Calvary; and you must love Him. And loving Him,
you must become like Him. Love begets love. It is a
process of induction. Put a piece of iron in the presence
of an electrified body, and that piece of iron for a time
becomes electrified. It is changed into a temporary
magnet in the mere presence of a permanent magnet,
and as long as you leave the two side by side, they are
both magnets alike. Remain side by side with Him who
loved us, and gave Himself for us, and you too will be-
come a permanent magnet, a permanently attractive
force ; and like Him you will draw all men unto you, like
Him you will be drawn unto all men. That is the inevi-
table effect of Love. Any man who fulfils that cause
must have that effect produced in him. Try to gi/e up
the idea that religion comes to us by chance, or by mys-
tery, or by caprice. It comes to us by natural law, or
by supernatural law, for all law is Divine. Edward
Irving went to see a dying boy once, and when he en-
tered the room he just put his hand on the sufferer's
head, and said, "My boy, God loves you," and went
away. And the boy started from his bed, and called out
to the people in the house, " God loves me ! God loves

56 The Greatest Thing in the World.

me !" It changed that boy. The sense that God loved
him overpowered him, melted him down, and began the
creating of a new heart in him. And that is how the
love of God melts down the unlovely heart in man, and
begets in him the new creature, who is patient and
humble and gentle and unselfish. And there is no other
way to get it. There is no mystery about it. We love
others, we love everybody, we love our enemies, because
He first loved us.

THE DEFENCE.

Now I have a closing sentence or two to add about
Paul's reason for singling out love as the supreme posses-
sion. It is a very remarkable reason. In a single word
it is this: it lasts. " Love," urges Paul, "never faileth."
Then he begins again one of his marvellous lists of the
great things of the day, and exposes them one by one.
He runs over the things that men thought were going to
last, and shows that they are all fleeting, temporary,
passing away.

"Whether there be prophecies, they shall fail." It
was the mother's ambition for her boy in those days that
he should become a prophet. For hundreds of years God
had never spoken by means of any prophet, and at that
time the prophet was greater than tlie King. Men waited
wistfully for another messenger to come, and hung upon
his lips when he appeared as upon the very voice of God.
Paul says, "Whether there be prophecies, they shall
fail." This Book is full of prophecies. One by one they
have "failed"; that is, having been fulfilled their work

The Greatest Thing in the World. 5/

is finished ; they have nothing more to do now in the
world except to feed a devout man's faith.

Then Paul talks about tongues. That was another
thing that was greatly coveted. "Whether there be
tongues, they shall cease." As we all know, many,
many centuries have passed since tongues have been
known in this world. They have ceased. Take it in any
sense you like. Take it, for illustration merely, as lan-
guages in general — a sense which was not in Paul's mind
at all, and which though it cannot give us the specific
lesson will point the general truth. Consider the words
in which these chaptei-s were written— Greek. It has
gone. Take the Latin— the other great tongue of those
days. It ceased long ago. Look at the Indian language.
It is ceasing. The language of Wales, of Ireland, of the
Scottish Highlands is dying before our eyes. The most
popular book in the English tongue at the present time,
except the Bible, is one of Dickens's works, his Pickwick
Papers. It is largely written in the language of London
street-life; and experts assure us that in fifty years it
will be unintelligible to the average Eiiglish reader.

Then Paul goes farther, and with even greater boldness
adds, " Whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish
away.'" The wisdom of the ancients, where is it ? It is
wholly gone. A schoolboy to-day knows more than Sir
Isaac Newton knew. His knowledge has vanished away.
You put yesterday's newspaper in the fire. Its knowledge
has vanished away. You buy the old editions of the
great encyclopaedias for a few pence. Their knowledge
has vanished away. Look how the coach has been super-
seded by the use of steam. Look how electricity has

58 The Greatest Thing in the World.

superseded that, and swept a hundred almost new inven-
tions into oblivion. One of the greatest living authorities,
Sir William Thompson, said the other day, " The steam
engine is passing away." "Whether there be knowledge,
it shall vanish away." At every workshop you will see,
in the back yard, a heap of old iron, a few wheels, a few
levers, a few cranks, broken and eaten with rust.
Twenty years ago that was the pride of the city. Men
flocked in from the country to see the great invention ;
now it is superseded, its day is done. And all the boasted
science and philosophy of this day will soon be old. But
yesterday, in the University of Edinburgh, the greatest
figure in the faculty was Sir James Simpson, the discov-
erer of chloroform. The other day his successor and
nephew. Professor Simpson, was asked by the librarian
of the University to go to the library and pick out the
books on his subject that were no longer needed. And
his reply to the librarian was this: "Take every text-
book that is more than ten years old, and put it down in
the cellar." Sir James Simpson was a great authority
only a few years ago: men came from all parts of the
earth to consult him ; and almost the whole teaching of
that time is consigned by the science of to-day to oblivion.
And in every branch of science it is the same. " Now we
know in part. We see through a glass darkly."

Can you tell me anything that is going to last ? Many
things Paul did not condescend to name. He did not
mention money, fortune, fame; but he picked out the
great things of his time, the things the best men thought
had something in them, and brushed them peremptorily
aside. Paul had no charge against these things in them-

TJie Greatest Tiling in the World. 59

selves. All he said about them was that they would not
last. They were great things, but not supreme things.
There were things beyond them. What we are stretches
past what we do, beyond what we possess. Many things
that men denounce as sins are not sins ; but they are
temporary. And that is a favorite argument of the New
Testament. John says of the world, not that it is wrong,
but simply that it ''passeth away." There is a gi-eat
deal in the world that is dehghtful and beautiful ; there
is a great deal in it that is great and engrossing; but it
will not last. All that is in the world, the lust of the eye,
the lust of the flesh, and the pride of life, are but for a
little while. Love not the world therefore. Nothing
that it contains is worth the life and consecration of an
immortal soul. The immortal soul must give itself to
something that is immortal. And the only immortal
things are these: " Now abideth faith, hope, love, but the
greatest of these is love."

Some think the time may come when two of these
three things will also pass away— faith into sight, hope
into fruition. Paul does not say so. We know but little
now about the conditions of the life that is to come. But
what is certain is that Love must last. God, the Eternal
God, is Love. Covet therefore that everlasting gift, that
one thing which it is certain is going to stand, that one
coinage which will be current in the Universe when all
the other coinages of all the nations of the world ?hall be
useless and unhonored. You will give yourselves to
many things, give yourselves first to Love. Hold things
in their proportion. Hold things in their proportion.
Let at least the first great object of our lives be to achieve

6o The Greatest Thing in the World,

the character defended in these words, the character—
and it is the character of Christ— which is built round
Love.

I have said this thing is eternal. Did you ever notice
how continually John associates love and faith with
eternal life ? I was not told when I was a boy that " God
so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son,
that whosoever believeth in Him should have everlasting
life." What I was told, I remember, was, that God so
loved the world that, if I trusted in Him, I was to have a
thing called peace, or I was to have rest, or I was to have
joy, or I was to have safety. But I had to find out for
myself that whosoever trusteth in Him -that is, whoso-
ever loveth Him, for trust is only the avenue to Love-
hath everlasting life. The Gospel offers a man life.
Never offer men a thimbleful of Gospel. Do not offer
them merely joy, or merely peace, or merely rest, or
merely safety; tell them how Christ came to give men a
more abundant life than they have, a life abundant in
love, and therefore abundant in salvation for themselves,
and large in enterprise for the alleviation and redemption
of the world. Then only can the Gospel take hold of the
whole of a man, body, soul, and spirit, and give to each
part of his nature its exercise and reward. Many of the
current Gospels are addressed only to a part of man's
nature. They offer peace, not life ; faith, not Love ; jus-
tification, not regeneration. And men shp back again
from such religion because it has never really held them.
Their nature was not all in it. It offered no deeper and
gladder life-current than the life that was Hved before.

The Greatest TJdng iji the World. 6i

Surely it stands to reason that only a fuller love can
compete with the love of the world.

To love abundantly is to live abundantly, and to love
for ever is to live for ever. Hence, ettrnal life is inex-
tricably bound up with love. We want to live for ever
for the same reason that we want to live to-morrow.
Why do you want to live to-morrow ? It is because
there is some one who loves you, and whom you want to
see to-morrow, and be with, and love back. There is no
other reason why we should live on than that we love
and are beloved. It is when a man has no one to love
him that he commits suicide. So long as he has friends,
those who love him and whom he loves, he will live; be-
cause to live is to love. Be it but the love of a dog, it will
keep him in life; but let that go and he has no contact
with life, no reason to live. He dies by his own hand.
Eternal life also is to know God, and God is love. This
is Christ's own definition. Ponder it. "This is life
eternal, that they might know Thee the only true God,
and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent." Love must be
eternal. It is what God is. On the last analysis, then,
love is life. Love never faileth, and life never faileth, so
long as there is love. That is the philosophy of what
Paul is showing us; the reason why in the nature of
things Love should be the supreme thing — because it is
going to last; because in the nature of things it is an
Eternal Life. It is a thing that we are living now, not
that we get when we die; that we shall have a poor
chance of getting when we die unless we are living now.
No worse fate can befall a man in this world than to live
and grow old alone, unloving, and unloved. To be lost

62 The Greatest Thing in the World,

is to live in an unregenerate condition, loveless and un-
loved; and to be saved is to love; and he tliat dwelleth
in love dwelleth already in God. For God is love.

Now I have all but finished. How many of you will
join me in reading this chapter once a week for the next
three months ? A man did that once and it changed his
whole life. Will you do it ? It is for the greatest thing
in the world. You might begin by reading it every day,
especially the verses which describe the perfect character.
"Love suffereth long and is kind; love envieth not; love
vaunteth not itself." Get these ingredients into your
life. Then everything that you do is eternal. It is
worth doing. It is worth giving time to. No man can
become a saint in his sleep ; and to fulfil the condition re-
quired demands a certain amount of prayer and medita-
tion and time, just as improvement in any direction,
bodily or mental, requires preparation and care. Address
yourselves to that one thing; at any cost have this tran-
scendent character exchanged for yours. You will find
as you look back upon your life that the moments that
stand out, the moments when you have really lived, are
the moments when you have done things in a spirit of
love. As memory scans the past, above and beyond all
the transitory pleasures of Hfe, there leap forward those
supreme hours when you have been enabled to do unno-
ticed kindnesses to those round about you, things too
trifling to speak about, but which you feel have entered
into your eternal life. I have seen almost all the beauti-
ful things God has made ; I have enjoyed almost every
pleasure that He has planned for man ; and yet as I look
back I see standing out above all the life that has gone

The Greatest Thing in the World 6"^

four or five short experiences when the love of God
reflected itself in some poor imitation, some small act of
love of mine, and these seem to be the things which alone
of all one's life abide. Everything else in all our lives is
transitory. Every other good is visionary. But the acts
of love which no man knows about, or can ever know
about— they never fail.

In the Book of Matthew, where the Judgment Day is
depicted for us in the imagery of One seated upon a
throne and dividing the sheep from the goats, the test of
a man then is not, " How have I believed ?" but "How
have I loved ?" The test of religion, the final test of re-
ligion, is not religiousness, but Love. I say the final test
of religion at that great Day is not religiousness, but
Love; not what I have done, not what I have believed,
not what I have achieved, but how I have discharged the
common charities of life. Sins of commission in that
awful indictment are not even referred to. By what we
have not done, by sins of omission, we are judged. It
could not be otherwise. For the withholding of love is
the negation of the spirit of Christ, the proof that we
never knew Him, that for us He lived in vain. It means
that he suggested nothing in all our thoughts, that He
inspired nothing in all our lives, that we were not once
near enough to Him to be seized with the spell of His
compassion for the world. It means that —

" I lived for myself, I thought for myself,
For myself, aud uone beside —
Just as if Jesus had never lived,
As if He had never died,"

64 The Greatesc Thing in the World.

It is the Son of Man before whom the nations of the
world shall be gathered. It is in the presence of Humanity
that we shall be charged. And the spectacle itself, the
mere sight of it, will silently judge each one. Those will
be there whom we have met and helped; or there, the
unpitied multitude whom we neglected or despised. No
other Witness need be summoned. No other charge than
lovelessness shall be preferred. Be not deceived. The
words which aU of us shall one Day hear sound not of
theology but of life, not of churches and saints but of the
hungry and the poor, not of creeds and doctrines but of
shelter and clothing, not of Bibles and prayer-books but
of cups of cold water in the name of Christ. Thank God
the Christianity of to-day is coming nearer the world's
need. Live to help that on. Thank God men know
better, by a hair's breadth, what religion is, what God is,
who Christ is, where Christ is. Who is Christ ? He who
fed the hungry, clothed the naked, visited the sick.
And where is Christ ? Where ?— Whoso shall receive a
little child in My name receiveth Me. And who are
Christ's ? Every one that loveth is born of God.

THE END.

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