The power of an endless life

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THE POWER

OF

AN ENDLESS LIFE

THE POWER

OF

AN ENDLESS LIFE

THOMAS C. HALL

PASTOR OF THE FOURTH PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH,
CHICAGO

CHICAGO

A. C McCLURG AND COMPANY
1894

o

THE NEW YORK

PUBLIC LlBllAaY

971236 A

A^OS, LBNOX AND

Copyright

By a. C. McClurg and Co.

A. D. 1S94

PREFACE.

Only the kind insistence of friends, and
more particularly of one friend, whose judg-
ment I have learnt more and more to trust,
and to whom I desire to dedicate this little
volume, leads me to add to the many books
that clamor for our time. Without any thought
of more than a possible and passing interest
in the form of the message, it is the earnest
hope that some may find in these pages a word
to their deepest life. The form is that of the
direct appeal. Repetitions mark the frag-
mentary character of the preparation, but the
sermons were written with the profound con-
viction that more deeply than ever must organ-
ized Christianity enter into the secrets of our
Lord and King, and learn from Christ " The
Power of an Endless Life."

T. C. H.

CONTENTS.

Page

I. Forms of Godliness 9

II. The Power of an Endless Life . . 29

III. Christ made Perfect 52

IV. The Impulsive Type of Christianity 71
V. The Intellectual Type of Chris-
tianity 88

VI. The Ethical Type of Christianity . 107

VII. The Mystic Type of Christianity . 128

VIII. The Three Crosses of Calvary . . 149

IX. The Temporal Kingdom 167

THE

POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE.

I.

FORMS OF GODLINESS.

Holding a form of godliness^ but having denied
the poicer thereof: frojti these also turn away.
— 2 Tlm. iii. 5.

nPHIS warning is interesting as an in-
dication of what Paul already saw
coming into the life of the ancient primi-
tive church. Some would persuade us
that the church of the first three centuries
was a model church in every way, but
even during the life of Paul very nearly
all the marks of degradation and disinte-
gration that are to be seen more clearly
working later on were already before his
prophetic eye. Indeed, before three cen-

lO POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE.

turies had passed the church had cor-
rupted herself ahke in doctrine and in
ritual.

It is also interesting to see that Paul
here makes the sharp distinction which
later philosophy has emphasized and
developed, the distinction between the
form and the essential, between expres-
sion and power, between accident and
that which is real. This distinction has
passed into the thinking of the present
generation more particularly through the
transcendental philosophy of Germany, so
that it is a commonplace, familiar thing
with us, many of us dwelling upon it with-
out knowing very clearly the origin of
the idea.

It is perfectly clear to any one that
reflects, that the form and the essence are
not the same, that the essence is some-
thing so intangible that it is often very
difficult to describe. But no matter how
imperfect the form, the essential under-

FORMS OF GODLINESS. II

neath the form is after all the real thing,
the other is accidental. The forms in
which men hold godliness are of infinite
variety. What is godliness ? Godli-
ness is just what the word tells you; it
is god-li-7iess, or the quality of being like
God. In Him we live, and move, and
have our being. The old Greek poet
saw that clearly, and Paul emphasizes
his statement and endorses it by quoting
him. We feel in our better moments
how helpless we are to do right, and in
our better moments we attribute all our
right doing to the divine impulse that
is in our life. This is the real spiritual
meaning of the doctrine of total cor-
ruption. It is the expression of the
sense within us that we are helpless
apart from God, that it is only as
God lives in us that ricrhteousness is
godliness. Wherever, therefore, we find
anything that is admirable, it has its
source in the divine, God is to have the

12 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE.

glory. This is the real foundation of
the hope that is strong in every one of
us, that Christ is much larger than the
historic knowledge of Christ ; that wher-
ever there is self-sacrifice, wherever there
is hungering of the soul for God, wher-
ever there is the breaking, contrite heart,
there is the revelation of the presence of
God. _ The Christ as manifested in the
historical form is the incarnation of that
complete godliness, the other forms of
which, so far as they are human, are
always more or less imperfect.

So you will see also that there are
forms of godliness so incomplete that
they are masked caricatures of the Christ-
like life. Indeed, if you thoughtfully con-
sider the familiar forms of godliness, you
will find in them all some element of the
caricature that men are so apt to trace
in the lines of the picture. The pagan
forms of godliness seem at first sight
warped out of all semblance to religious

FORMS OF GODLINESS. 1 3

life ; loaded down with iniquity, heart-
less selfishness, gross sensuality. Heathen
worship, so far as it has value, has it only
as an imperfect expression of the craving
of the human heart to come to that divine
source of which every man at some time
in his life feels a longing to drink. But
all worship has value as by it we find
ourselves in contact with God. This
contact is divine life, however much we
may caricature it, however poor the
expression we may give it, however
rude may be our conception of what the
reality is.

In history we see jostling each other
forms of godliness, such as the philosophy
of heathendom contrasted with primitive
Christianity, as paganism was contrasted
with Judaism. The forms of godliness
as we see them in pagan Greece and
pagan Rome, were such as indicate that
philosophy represented an advance on
the popular forms of Roman and Greek

14 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE.

godliness. Hence philosophy set to
work to destroy these older forms, but
its weakness was that it put in their place
a form only a little better.

Then there are the forms of godliness
which we see in the splendid basilicas
and glorious cathedrals and the mon-
asteries of the Middle Ages, — forms of
godliness splendid in their outward ap-
pearance, high, imposing, majestic to
the imaginations of men ; forms under
which the deep underlying craving of the
human heart for some expression of di-
vinity sought to make itself felt in the
world's real history. There are the forms
of godliness as we find them in the theo-
logical scholasticism of the seventeenth
century, — the scholasticism which, just
as the primitive Christianity undermined
the Jewish philosophy, sought in its turn
to undermine the forms of sfodliness under
which the religious spirit had expressed
itself for fifteen centuries, because it had

FORMS OF GODLINESS. 1 5

found, and knew in its heart of hearts,
that these forms were interfering with
the growth of the divine life in its fuller
expression. Scholasticism was also only
a form, and it had to give way to some-
thincr better. The Evano-elical Emotion-
alism was a form under which a better
godliness, a new appreciation of the
Christ life, a holier conception of what
life ought to be, sought to undermine
scholastic mediaevalism that Christ might
be still more plainly seen.

Now can any nineteenth-century com-
munity, I might almost say any nine-
teenth-century congregation, say that all
these forms of godliness are not more or
less expressed among us ? There is dog-
matism among us, plenty of it, undiluted,
most undisguised dogmatism. There is
heathenism among us, heathenism that
voices itself precisely in the sceptical,
cynical, sneering philosophy which was
on the lips of Cocsar and Cicero. There

1 6 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE.

is among us the baptized dogmatism that
formed the life of the church of the third
and tenth centuries, — a baptized dogma-
tism whose whole conception is aesthetic,
and which is satisfied with the husks of
externalism without coming in contact
with the reality. There is mediaeval scho-
lasticism amons: us. It is found most
largely expressing itself from the pulpit,
but there is plenty of it there. There is
evangelicalism in all its strength, in all its
weakness among us. Sometimes it is not
power, sometimes it is a form of godli-
ness that is made up of a great many
forms; it is the synthesis, the putting
together of many forms ; it is the cor-
ruption of the divine idea. We are, to-day
as ever, in danger of holding the forms
of godliness without the power thereof.
You may ask, then, is it a matter of
indifference whether we are pagans or
heathens ; whether we hold mediaeval
scholasticism, or evangelical forms ?

FORMS OF GODLINESS. 1 7

Yes, it may be a matter of complete in-
difference. If you are denying the power,
you might as well deny the power under
one form as another. If you are denying
the power of God, it is all one to High
Heaven under what form you make your
denial. In the last days there shall come
those who shall hold the forms of godli-
ness, but deny the power thereof.

What is the power of godliness ? The
New Testament is so full of it that we
have not seen it. It forms so much of
Paul's writings that we have almost en-
tirely ignored it. It is so important a
factor that we have left it out. It is of
so real moment in our religious life that
we have let it pass us. The power of
God is the divine indwelling promised
when the Holy Spirit came down at
Pentecost, promised to every man who
will share with the early disciples the
Pentecostal moment. It is God in us.
It is the Holy Spirit speaking to and

1 8 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE.

inspiring us in the inspired book, or in
the church, or in the pulpit, — inspiring
us to right doing, to right Hving, to right
thinking, to right sacrifice.

This is the power of godliness; and
our denials of it, however much we may
cover them in words, amount always to
the same thing. We deny it in a hun-
dred ways. We say to ourselves that our
form is convenient, that we are satisfied
with the present. The power of godli-
ness denied in the interests of the form
is the real weakness of the individual,
the social, the Christian life. Let us see
what is the power of this godliness. It
is the power of God. What did it do in
New Testament times? It shook men
so that with blanched faces they saw the
coming judgment, so that with trembling
voices they declared to their generation
what were the penalties of unrighteous-
ness. It shook men so that their lives
were changed. They forgot the past

FORMS OF GODLINESS. 1 9

and flung themselves into the future,
careless of what it brouo'ht forth for them.
The power of godliness made them new
men in Christ Jesus, sent them to the
cross if need were, that men might know
that the power of God was righteousness
and righteousness altogether, and that
denial was death.

There was seen the power of that god-
liness when about the tenth century men
began to realize that things could not go
on as they were going. The monasteries
were heaps of corruption. The priests
were blind leaders of the blind. The
nobles had added field to field and house
to house until there was no place for the
starving peasant, w^ho had to accept any-
thing the insolent nobles chose to give
them. These warred among themselves
until blood covered all the hills ; but if the
peasant dared lift his hand they would
stop their wars among themselves and
unite in still further trampling upon the

20 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE.

neck of the down-trodden serf, grinding
him into the dust, mingling his blood
with their sacrifices and his flesh with
their feasts. Things could not go on as
as they were. The power of godliness
seized on one or two men, and they went
forth with voices shaken with the thun-
ders of Sinai and melting with the mercy
of the Mount, telling men that the King
would come, and that their judgment
was of heaven. Men did repent for a
little. God did lift for a little the clouds
that hung over them. Yet they again
forgot him. Then he baptized Europe
in blood. Europe deserved it: and
out of her ruins he fenced a new vine-
yard, and built a new wine-press, and he
looks for grapes : it Is for you and me to
say what he will find. Will he find
grapes, or only wild grapes ?

The power of godliness was displayed
in a very startling way in two countries
very near to each other; and we have a

FORMS OF GODLINESS. 21

prophetic voice telling us in accents that
ought to ring down the ages what came
of the power of godliness denied in
France. Read Carlyle's History of the
French Revolution, and learn what the
power of godliness denied brought forth.
Over England hung precisely the same
prophetic clouds. The conditions in
England, if we are to trust the historian,
were not very much better than the con-
ditions in France ; but the power of god-
liness became manifest, and changed the
lives of two Oxford students, who gath-
ered a few more students around them.
The power of godliness shook them, and
they went down to the Cornish miners.
They gathered these miners about them ;
the tears rolled down their faces, these
poor, despised, outcast members of so-
ciety ! There were Pentecostal waves
which shook England from centre to
centre, rolled over into this country where
conditions were becoming very bad in-

2 2 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE.

deed, and they stopped for a little the
processes that were going on here with
such frightful rapidity. The power of
o^odliness saved Eno-land for a little.

Now the power of godliness is a very
strange thing. All power is. You can-
not put your finger upon it. If I were
to speak to you about the power of
gravitation, you might know its laws, you
might know its results. You might say
that it shows itself so and so, and in-
creases in such and such a ratio ; that it
holds the world together in such and
such a way. But what is gravitation ?
You do not know, nor does any one. The
best explanation that is given of it en-
counters so many insuperable mathemati-
cal objections that there is practically no
adequate explanation of what gravitation
is. The power that makes our spring
creep slowly upon us, — tlie power of the
sun's heat, — we know not either what it
is. We can change the heat into light,

FORMS OF GODLINESS. 23

and the motion into electricity ; we can
change the electricity into lifting power;
we can even take the electricity and in
some mysterious way change it into vital
power, and putting it through the roots
of trees and plants greatly increase their
vital activity. There is some strange
correlation of all the physical powers
round about us ; but if you were to ask
scientific men what is the power, they
would say they do not know ; they only
know its results, and that is all science
deals with.

Now we know the power of godliness
only as we see it exemplified in results.
You see the little bud in its hard case.
If the hail were to come it would only
jump off the hard enclosed bud; but
the power of the sun is going to break
through that hard case, and the little
bud will fling itself out into God's sun-
shine with all the lauQ:hter of new frreen
leaves to hail the joy of the coming

24 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE.

summer. The denial of the power of
godliness is the denial of that which can
change the forms of life as they are about_
us. If you say, " I do not believe in the
power of the spring : I do not believe in
this power of the sun ; I do not believe
what you tell me of the strange alchemy
of the chemists ; " I can only take you
out and show you the bud bursting into
the fulness of its joy, and say, " Some-
thing did that ; some power there was that
did that. I cannot analyze it for you, but
it is there." The form is nothing; if the
power is there it will make its own form,
it will find its own expression. The
denial of the power of godliness is the^
denial that there is in this world a di-.
vine life capable of changing the human
heart, breaking its hardness, changing
the stony heart into a heart of flesh,
making us sympathetic, tender, and true.
The denial of the power of godliness is
the denial of the power to do this thing.

FORMS OF GODLINESS. 25

' That denial is written large in the lives
of some of us, though we hold the forms
of godliness. You say, " I am sound in
in my orthodoxy, I accept the Shorter
Catechism and the Confession of Faith ;
I believe everything." And what does it
amount to ? It may amount to this, that
you are holding the forms of godliness;
and the servant in your household, the
employee in your ofHce, the tenant in
your dwelling, and the dependent upon
you or the employer who is over you,
looks for the true power, and sees rather
the awful denial of the power of god-
liness, making you selfish, making you
unlovable, making you a lover of pleas-
ure and not a lover of God, denying in
your lives the things you profess in the
church ; so that men and women who
know religion only as you have taught
it to them, say that it is hard and cold,
a dreary, barren intellectual belief, a
dogma, and tliey cannot accept it, and say,

26 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE.

" Away with it ! " They learn from you
to deny, not the power, that they never
see, but the form of godliness, and then
you weep over their scepticism. You
have friends, you have wives, you have
husbands, you have dependents, you have
employers ; how is it ? Are the forms of
godliness that you practise so full of
power that they are the natural expres-
sion of the divine life written on your
very brow? as when Stephen stood up
before those who denied the power of
godliness, and as he looked his face
became as the face of an angel, telling
them to their faces of their sin, rehears-
ing all the ills, all the vices, all the ini-
quity of the past history of the children
of Israel till at last they could stand it
no longer, and they gnashed their teeth
at him and took him and stoned him.
"Jerusalem! Jerusalem! thou that ston-
est the prophets and slayest those that
are sent unto thee, how often would I

FORMS OF GODLINESS. 2/

have gathered thy children together, even
as a hen gathereth her chickens under
her wings, and ye would not."

We come out from morning to morn-
ing to God's house. We sing hosannas
to Jesus Christ. We claim him as Mas-
ter. We entreat him to be with us.
We hold the forms of godliness ; but,
let us ask ourselves, are we holding the
forms of godliness and denying the power
thereof .f^ If it is so, that is the only in-
fidelity that will really wreck the world.
The infidelity that points out the mis-
takes of Moses from the public platform
will do no harm if only, being faithful
and not denying the power of godliness,
you do not give wings to every shaft of
infidelity. , If only you lift up the cross
in a life of self-denial and self-sacrifice, if
only you live so that the world will take
knowledge of you that you have been
with Jesus, if only Christ is in your life,
you need have no fear of infidelity, no

28 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE.

fear for the world. It is God's world, and
he wdll reign in it, even if he turn and
overturn until our present industrial sit-
uation, our organized Christianity, our
political institutions are broken if need
be into the trodden dust of the ages, and
there come a new heaven and a new
earth wherein dwelleth righteousness,
and Christ is King forever and ever.

II.

THE POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE.

And what we say is yet rnore abundafitly evident,
if after the likeness of Mekhizedek there ariseth
another priest^ who hath been made, ?iot after the
law of a carnal comma7idme7it^ but after the power
of an endless life. — Heb. vii. 15-16.

' I "HIS chapter is not strictly an ar-
gument in the sense in which we
shall find that word used in our books of
formal lo2:ic. It is rather a forcible illus-
tration. It is from the story of Mekhi-
zedek, with which the Jewish imagina-
tion had dealt rather liberally. As all
easily recall the details of that story, it is
unnecessary to dwell upon the various
conceptions that grew up in the later
Jewish history around this symbolic
fiorure. Melchizedek crreets Abraham.
Abraham acknowledges him as priest

30 rOWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE.

and king, and pays him tithes for some
reason that is unknown to us. That he
was a worshipper of the same God that
Abraham acknowledged, that Abraham
in some way or other was desirous of
acknowledging either his moral or reli-
gious supremacy, is undoubted. Beyond
that it is not useful for us to go. As an
illustration this story has great weight,
for the writer to the Hebrews has ex-
plained at considerable length to those
to whom he was writing that the Jewish
religion had not passed away, that they
did not of necessity break with the na-
tional Judaism when they accepted Chris-
tianity. All that had passed away was
the form, and that had absolutely passed
away. Now there was a better revela-
tion,— not a new revelation, but a better
and higher revelation of that very thing
toward which Judaism had been only
pointing. The argument of the book
centres around that one thought. The

POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 3 1

writer also points out that the real priest-
hood was not bound up with lineal
descent ; that the priesthood existed inde-
pendendy of the forms of Judaism ; that
such a priesthood, whatever its change
in character, was ever the same in its
essential religious meaning, — that it
was in fact the priesthood established in
Christ, who, he says, is a priest after the
order of Melchizedek.

Now what distinguishes this non-
Judaic priesthood ? It was the isolated
character of Melchizedek in bold anti-
thesis to the Jewish priestly family ; and
it is to this antithesis between the real
and the symbolic, between the temporal
and the eternal, that the author directs
our attention. Christ is claimed as priest,
not of law, but of power; not of carnal
commandment, but after the power of an
endless life. Here there are contrasts,
— law as over against power, law being
only the expression, in many cases indeed

32 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE.

only the temporary expression of power.
Power must be behind law. The law
may change. Indeed, because power
only can last, therefore the law must
change. This is a fact familiar to every
historical jurist.

And not after a carnal commandment
is Christ a priest, — a carnal command-
ment having to do simply with circumstan-
ces which are temporal and changing, —
but after the power of an indissoluble life.
This is the uniqueness that is claimed for
Christ, that he is the power that passeth
not away, — " Jesus Christ, the same yes-
terday, to-day and forever," a priest not
after a carnal commandment, not after
law, but after the power of an endless
life. I believe if we could only fix that
contrast in our minds it would give us
light upon some of the things that puzzle
and perplex us. We should sometimes
fail indeed to separate between the tem-
poral and eternal elements, but we should

POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 33

not be discouraged because we thus
failed. There are some marked phenom-
ena of life that might be more easily
explained to us if we would remember
this contrast between power and the ex-
pression of it. Take for instance the
religions, even those which are beyond
the pale of the immediate revelation
granted to us in Christ. Surely there
we may see something of this power
which cannot be identified with the forms
which we have come to recognize as weak,
imperfect, and temporary. Of course,
I cannot speak of the natural religions
from the standpoint of one that knows
them thoroughly ; I can only take the
testimony of those who are competent to
judge, as I am not. Take, for instance,
the testimony concerning Buddhism. It
is useless for us to deny the power that
Buddhism has had over men's lives. It
started very much as Protestantism
Started, as a reaction against the formal-

34 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE.

ity and corruption of the older Brah-
nianism. Buddhism started as a reform,
with no intention of breaking away from
Brahmanism, with no intention of doing
more than instiUing into the older reli-
gion a force and vitality which it was
only too evident it had lost. Now, the
forms in which Buddhism comes to us
are most evidently immaterial. Its phi-
losophy has changed so completely that
the schools of Buddhism are as numerous
as the schools of Protestantism. All that
is outward finds the greatest variety
exhibited in its development. It is, of
course, an easy explanation of its power
to say that it was born of the devil ; that
was the older Christian explanation, but
the ideas and spirit of the New Testa-
ment teach us to understand more prop-
erly the influence it has had over men's
lives. Certainly Its power was not in
that it was a popular proclamation. It
was not a mystic dream. Its power was

POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 35

not in pandering to men's appetites. It
preached sternly at all times upon a very
hio^h and noble level the doctrine of self-
sacrifice and self-abnegation. Nor did it
hold out certain popular dreams, certain
hopes that men would readily grasp after.
It did nothing of the kind. It never
tempted men with dreams of a paradise
in exchange for the life here. Its insist-
ence was upon a life of righteousness here
and now, and it held out as almost the
only hope for the future an escape from
the evils incident to the life that is now.

Take, on the other hand, the religion
of Mohammed. Again we see that there
is something that must be deeper than
the forms of Mohammedanism, for these
forms we have come to recosfuize as
weak and imperfect. Now it is a very
easy explanation of Mohammedanism to
say that it was advanced by the power of
the sword. But did you ever know of
another instance where a nation of drunk-

36 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE.

ards and gamblers was made moral by
any temporal power? If so, I wish very
much that Mohammed's sword could be
unsheathed in America. It is a very easy
explanation of the power of Mohammed-
anism to say that it was the genius of
one man. If that is true, how is it to be
explained that the genius of Mohammed
gave birth to a long succession of men of
genius, on the very lines of Mohammed's
power, that, for instance, it should pro-
duce a Saladin, who showed himself a
nobler man than most of his Christian
opponents ? It is a comparatively easy
explanation to say that the wild hopes
of a temporal paradise tempted men to
be moral. The experience of human life
is that men are not tempted to morality
by any such means. We must recognize,
if we are honest, that behind all that is
temporary and weak and imperfect in
Judaism, in Mohammedanism, in Bud-
dhism, in any of the religions whose

POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. ^il

forms we have come to recognize as in-
efficient, there is something that needs to
be revealed more perfectly, to be known
and grasped at fully, if we would have
the explanation of the religious life, and
the power of that religious life over the
characters and hopes of men.

We see in church history something
of the dangers of forgetting the human
character of Christ Jesus our Lord. We
see some of the perils that come from a
too sharp separation of his humanity from
our humanity. Nothing could be more
profitable for us than to dwell from time
to time, with anxious thought for God's
blessing as we do so, upon what is the
real power of Christ's life as he presents
himself to us as the explanation, not of
Judaism only, but as the explanation of
all religion wherever found, as the full
revelation and incarnation of that after
which we have been feeling, the full
revelation of the power of an endless

38 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE.

life over men's fallen ambitions and fallen
hopes, the power that raises men from
the dead and brings life again to the sick
and weary. And the power is not after
a carnal commandment, not after the
laws of the past, but it is the power of
an endless life revealed in the person of
our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

This power of an endless life has not
always been understood, and men have
often sought to explain it in such a way
that they have succeeded in explaining
it away. Men have tried to reduce Chris-
tianity to a very high code of morals.
Well, it is that. As soon as we are liv-
ing upon the level of the sermon on the
mount the Kingdom of God will be very
nigh unto us. But it is not that only.
The Stoic philosophy gave us a code of
morals in many ways to be compared
with the code in the New Testament.
The code of Confucius does not fall very
far short in the formal directions of life

POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 39

from those of Christ. If Christianity
were only a code of morals, If It were
only the direction of what you and I
should do and should leave undone,
Christianity would not have had the
power over men's hearts and lives that
it has had ; It would not have led to
right doing in the way it has done when-
ever faithfully proclaimed and accepted.
There must be some deeper and more
abiding explanation of the power of the
Christian religion over men's hearts and
lives than the explanation that would re-
duce it simply to a series of " Thou shalt
not," and " Thou shalt do this." It is not
and never has been a mere code of morals.
Some have sought to find this power
in its wonderful reviving of philosophy.
But as a matter of fact Christianity did
not revive philosophy. It only revived
certain phases of Greek philosophy, and
then often to Christianity's own great
disadvantage. Again and again Chris-

40 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE.

tianity has been explained away with a
certain deliberateness of purpose by seek-
ing to identify it in its essence with that
which any one may see to have been but
passing phases of a decadent Greek spirit.
Its power is not there. Its power has
been felt there. Its power has been felt
even in these decadent phases of Greek
thought, but it is not to be identified
with them in any sense ; for Christianity
is more than a philosophy, it is more
than a system, it is more than a tradition,
it is more than an organization, it is more
than law, it is the power of an endless
life.

The great mistake of some of the early
centuries was to identify the Church
with an organization, to make its power
felt only through an organization ; and
some, particularly one historian, who has
exercised great influence over the think-
ing of the English people, have sought
to show how by just coming at the right

POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 4I

time the religion of Jesus Christ was able
to subsidize the forms of an organization
already existing, and use it for its own
purposes. If this explanation of the
power of Christianity is true, it is a very
strange circumstance that it was able
thus to appropriate to itself so powerful
an organization ; some explanation is due
us as to how the lesser thus swallowed
up the greater. But a little careful study,
I think, will show you that though this
organization was used by Christianity to
a large degree, Christianity used it to her
great and permanent disadvantage ; and
far from identifying Christianity with the
Roman power which it subsidized, far
from seeking its explanation in the power
of that empire which it overthrew, we are
to find in the very fact that it did too
closely identify itself with this falling
civilization the weakness which overtook
it and wellnigh led to its absorption in
the Middle Ao^es.

42 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE.

Christianity is more than the visible
church. It is greater than the Roman
Empire ; for the church had influence
over men's hearts that the Roman Em-
pire could not exercise. Christianity is_
centred in the divinity of its founder ; it
is centred in the fact that the Divine
Life became incarnate. It has as its real
secret the fact that there has arisen an-
other priest, who hath been made, not
after a carnal commandment, but after
the power of an endless life. It is this
incarnation as a common meeting ground
between humanity and God that gives
Christianity its uniqueness. This un-
iqueness does not consist in certain
transcendental abstractions or metaphy-
sical distinctions. The uniqueness of
Christianity consists first in the insepar-
ableness of Christ from humanity, and,
second, in the inseparableness of Christ
from Divinity ; and on this common
ground between God and man the divine

POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 43

within us finds its expression in Jesus
Christ, the power of an endless life.

If you have followed the argument, I
wonder if you will be prepared to pass
with me to some of the more particular
applications of that truth to the life that
is about us. One of the difficulties of
all statement is that it may be made so
abstract that having made it and written
it down we close it up and put it away
upon our library shelves. But if it is
really true, if there is really a power of
an endless life, then it is for you and me
to come under its influence, — to feel it
ourselves, and make it a power felt in all
life.

Because there are so many substitutes
for this power of an endless life, it is
difficult for weak faith to grasp it and to
translate it into life. There is a substi-
tute found in a certain intellectual de-
structiveness. We are soaked with the
critical spirit, we revel in pulling things

44 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE.

to pieces to see what is inside ; and in
the process of our analysis we feel keenly
that triumphant sense that the little child
feels when she has torn her doll to pieces
and finds the saw-dust running out. We
find ourselves exulting over the things
we are analyzing. No man can take a
life, or a character, or a history, or a
church, or a doctrine, or a creed, and
analyze it, without putting himself in a
certain position of judge as over against
it ; and in that exalted position, even
though it is assumed by himself, he is apt
to find a certain satisfaction and pride,
which may lead him far astray. In our
present age there is this air of critical
analysis, of intellectual destructiveness,
of refined culture, and we are apt to
boast ourselves that we have found at
last some kind of substitute for this
power of which we hear so much down
the ages, and which the Nineteenth
Century would like exceedingly to do

POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 45

without. Well, we can do without it
possibly for a little while, but not very
lono^. No ao;e can do without it and do
its work. It is the one thing worth hav-
ing, all else fades in significance in rela-
tion to it. I The power of an endless life
alone brings all things into their proper
proportions. It shows the weakness of
mere critical analysis that, after we have
pulled our doll to pieces, we find our-
selves sobbing over the ruins, face to face
still w'ith the problems of death and dis-
solution, face to face still w^th shame and
unrighteousness and iniquity and op-
pression, our hearts still unsatisfied ;
and we w^onder if life is only this, — only
the satisfaction of pulling to pieces the
things that have pleased us for a moment,
and then leaving them, and going out
forever and forever without hope and
without God in the world. There is
nothing that we need so much as to get
away from our abstractions, our meta-

46 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE.

physics, our analysis and our culture,
and come face to face with the realities
of things ; and in our heart of hearts we
know, from the fact that it has had real
influence in our lives, that there is a
power of the Holy Ghost, that there is a
power of an endless life, that unless we
feel it and know it, unless it throbs in
our life, life is a failure, i

There is another substitute which I
think is not less a real temptation. It is
found less in the cogitations than in the
active lives of men round about us. It
comes, I think, more vividly into the
foreground on the Fourth of July and
Washington's birthday, and other great
occasions for parading the wonderful
prosperity and material advancement of
the Nineteenth Century, and more par-
ticularly our portion of it. Let me call
it the commercial antichrist, — the sense
in men's hearts, that religion is a very
good thing in its way, but that there

POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 47

are primary ends first to be reached;
that there is after all a real power in the
world, and that is the power of material
prosperity, which has to be attended to
first. Then again, this heresy tells us
that men cannot conduct their business
unless they do this or that, and the prin-
cipal thing is to conduct our business.
We have great confidence in ourselves
that once having attained our end, then
we can open the doors of heaven with
our gold and bribe the Almighty with
our successes ; we will give him churches
and asylums and colleges, and leave him
large legacies in our wills. There is
nothing that we need to come face to
face with more than this, — that the wor-
ship of the commercial antichrist is eat-
ing the hearts and lives out of men, and
that that worship must pass away, and
that only when it has passed away shall
we know in its fulness what is the power
of an endless life. For all things pass

48 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE.

away. We are in the midst of the cos-
mic stream of prosperity only to find
that our imperishable gold slips away.
You treasure it up, and those who are
most dear to you are corrupted and
damned by it. You have worshipped it,
and the image you have worshipped has
fallen upon and crushed you. You have
bowed to men for its sake, and they have
turned upon you and accused you of the
things they are doing themselves every
day, because they dread the exposure
which has come to you ; and so shame
and cursing have ever come because men
know not the power of an endless life.

This is what we need to know ; and if
anything can teach it to us it would be a
short review of the history we have been
sketching. " All things pass away," says
the writer to the Hebrews ; nothing can
be trusted, all things pass away. Only
one thing remains, " Jesus Christ, the
same yesterday, to-day, and forever."

POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 49

Over against Jerusalem he stood, and
Jerusalem condemned him, and stretched
him on the cross, and said, " Ha ! ha ! we
have done once and for all with this de-
ceiver, we have nailed him upon a cross
of shame." Jerusalem passed into his-
tory, and Christ into history to make but
more manifest the power of an endless
life. The Romans took his followers and
made torches of them to light their gar-
dens. The power of Rome passed away,
but the torches that lit their gardens sent
their light into the farthest North, re-
claiming men to righteousness, and even
barbarianism in all its brutality and igno-
rance felt the power of this endless life.
The Middle Ages said to themselves,
" We have found the last analysis ! "
They too failed of their high aims; and
when brave monks spoke up they cast
them from their synagogues, and haughty
Rome sat a queen in her power and
laughed at the troublesome monks quar-

50 rOWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE.

relling in their cells. But the power of
an endless life made itself manifest not
only in the Protestant North, it shook
even Catholic Rome, and called her
to face the bitter fact that if she would
not be destroyed she must hearken
to the voice of God. She hearkened,
and God spared her. He is speaking
yet, and Protestantism and Catholicism
have both to hear his voice in sorrowing
rebuke that they do not realize that the
power of all the past is this same power,
" Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, to-day,
and forever ; " a priest not after a carnal
comm.andment, not after the intellectual
destructiveness of the Nineteenth Cen-
tury, not in accordance with our phi-
losophies, not in accordance with the
traditions of our ecclesiasticism, not in
accordance with our refinements in the
religious life, not in accordance with our
industrial wrongs, but after the real
power that is within every man that sub-

POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 5 1

mits himself, crying aloud to his God to
make known the righteousness that is in
Christ Jesus, that our lives with all their
emptiness and poorness may be hidden
in the life that is in Jesus Christ. As
we look into his face sometimes it seems
to us there must be on that marred vis-
age a look of bitterness and despair that
we should have denied him thrice as we
have done ; but he still pleads with us if
we only will hear his voice, saying to us,
" Come unto me, and find rest for your
souls," and know that through his cross,
his self-sacrifice, his self-denial, his right-
eousness is the full and free forgiveness
of our God, and that forgiving love is the
power of an endless life.

III.

CHRIST MADE PERFECT.

Who, . . . though he was a Son^ yet learned obc'
dience by the things which he suffered ; and hav-
ifig been made perfect, he became unto all them that
obey him the author of eternal salvation. — Heb. v.
8,9.

'T^HE fulness of Gods revelation is
such, and our capacity is so limited,
that every age and every generation, cer-
tainly every epoch, has new light from
heaven upon the path that man has made
dark. We ought ever to be learning
more of the way of God. We should be
ever seeking: the revelation that God is
ever willing to grant in his Church, in
history, in our reasoning faculties, in the
study of his Scripture. There is, indeed,
the danger that, on the one hand, all that

CHRIST MADE PERFECT. 53

IS old may have such attraction for us
that we shall refuse to enter into the new,
and thus miss much of the revelation of
our God ; and on the other hand, that we
may be so charmed with the novelties
that we shall forget the continuity of
God's revelation, and in seeking these
new things have only one-sided views of
truth.

We must therefore seek constantly the
truth in that which is old, and holding
fast the profession of our faith, press
forward into that which is new indeed
to our thinking, but old to the eternal
wisdom of our God. The process is the
same as spiritual process is everywhere.
Truth is borne in upon us ; then we begin
to think about it, then we try to express
ourselves. When truth is borne in upon
us in the first instance, we are very likely
to be overwhelmed and confused ; there
is more light than we can walk in. There
falls on us that same darkness and con-

54 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE.

fusion in the very midst of the glare of
the light that seems to have fallen upon
the disciples, and for a little while they
needed to draw aside that they might
rightly consider this new thought which
had been unfolded to them. The process,
then, of analysis finds our spirits often
in the critical mood. The moment we
begin to express the things that God has
been seeking to reveal to us, we find our
words quite inadequate for the purpose.
So it is rather the expression of the truth
that is progressive than the revelation
itself ; rather that our capacity for seiz-
ing upon it develops gradually than that
God is giving us more and more light,
though that may also be said to be true.

The same thing is true in all art ex-
pression. You no doubt have had feel-
ings that you would fain have expressed,
it may be of deep depression, of melan-
choly. You find your words inadequate ;
but some one brings to your notice a

CHRIST MADE PERFECT. 55

poem by some masterhand, and he not
only expresses the feeHng in your heart
that was seeking a voice, but he reveals
to you a higher self, and deeper feelings,
of which you had only been either dimly
conscious or wholly unconscious until
the artist revealed them to you.

But even words have their limits.
And so it may be that a picture grasps
at your thought and expresses it as even
words cannot. Take, for instance, such
a poem as that of Edgar Allan Poe s
" The Raven ; " place it alongside the
marvellous print from the hand of Diirer
of " Melancholia," and see how the pic-
ture and poem answer one to the other,
expressing tones and feelings of your
thought that neither is able wholly to
articulate. Even here there seems to be
a limit ; but you chance to come where
music is being played. Here words and
picture are supplemented with the tones
of the instruments. Your spirit is caught

56 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE.

up, and the minor chord that sings
through the refrain answers back to
your spirit, and you rejoice that not
only your emotions find expression, but
that there has been revealed to you per-
chance the meaning and secret that is
behind all emotion, so that your better
and nobler self finds itself in the artistic
expression of the moment.

So also on a higher plane is it true of
God's revelation of himself in the person
of Jesus Christ. There was very little
danger that the disciples would forget
the divinity of Jesus Christ ; there was
great danger that the world would do
that. The danger was rather that the
disciples would forget his humanity, and
that danger Christ seems to have fore-
seen all through his ministry. It is his
Sonship, it is his manhood, it is his limi-
tations that he emphasizes in the midst
of his devoted followers. How far he
saw into history, church history tells you.

CHRIST MADE PERFECT. 57

It was not his divinity, but his human-
ity that the Church forgot, and having
forgotten and laid it aside, the painted
image of the child, the Virgin Mary, or
the saints had to take the place that was
thus vacated, as revelations to man of
that link between him and the divinity
which he sought, but could truly find only
in the person of our Saviour Jesus Christ.
And so through many ages of church
history there was steadily lacking the
due emphasis upon this, the real human-
ity of our Saviour Jesus Christ. Christ
is the revelation not only of God to man,
but of man to his better self. Jesus
Christ is not only the fulness of the
Fatherhood revealed, he is also equally
emphatically a revelation of manhood as
it ought to be, the ideal of those things
for which in our better moments, when
the Spirit of God is moving upon our
spirits, we long to know and search after, _
ieeling that these things are eternal life.

58 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE.

Christ's humanity is emphasized all
through the New Testament. It is
not simply in his own words. We find
througliout the writings of Paul and of
John, throughout this letter to the He-
brews by an unknown author, through-
out the whole literature of the New
Testament, a constant emphasis upon
the absolute humanity of our blessed
Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. He
grew in wisdom ; he knew not the times
and seasons ; he did his miracles by the
authority of his Father ; he thanked his
Father that he had been heard when he
cried to him before the tomb of Lazarus ;
he knew his Father was able to save him
from death, and cried out in the bitter-
ness of his agony, " If it be possible, let
this cup pass from me ! " and he yielded
his will to the will of his Father, " Not as
I will, but as thou wilt." And so we
have Paul emphasizing the fact that he
took upon himself the form of a servant,

CHRIST MADE PERFECT. 59

that he emptied himself and became
man that he might enter into our hopes
and fears ; that he mig^ht enter into the
very temptations, into your sorrows and
my sorrows, and bleed with our bleeding
hearts, and weep with our tears ; that
he might reveal unto us that better
nature, that higher and diviner life, which
has been clouded by our sinfulness, and
can only be recovered by faith.

We find no stronger assertion of this
absolute humanity than we do here in
this letter to the Hebrews, and it is to
this particular clause that I shall ask
your more especial attention. " Who . . .
though he was a son, yet learned obedi-
ence by the things which he suffered ;
and having been made perfect, he becajue
unto all them that obey him the author
of eternal salvation."

If any one were to ask you what
the value of your life was, I have no
doubt at all there would be many

6o POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE.

responses of a different nature by those
who frankly answered. Some would say,
" Well, to be honest and frank, the whole
concern of my life just at present is my
business. These are times of depres-
sion, and there are many things I have to
neglect, and this is one thing I dare not
neglect. For my own sake, and for the
sake of my family, my business is at
present my chief concern." Ah ! then,
my friend, you are not prospering in
business, no matter how much money
you may be making. If that is your
chief concern in life, then life, indeed,
has its solemn question to you. Is that
life worth living.'^ Possibly you will say,
" Well, it is not so much my business as
my family. I live for my family ; they
must be supported and cared for. This
is surely my chief duty ; I should be worse
than infidel according to the sacred
writer if I did not care for those imme-
diately depending upon me." That is

CHRIST MADE PERFECT. 6 1

very true ; but if this is your chief con-
cern, you are not caring for them in the
best possible way : " He that loveth not
me more than father or mother, or sister
or brother, is not worthy of me." You
can care best for your family by not
making it the chief concern of your life.
You c^ care best for those whom you
love by not making them the real thing
for which you are living. Some of you
perhaps would be tempted to say, " It is
my country." I suppose, even in Chicago,
there would be some found loyal enough
to feel that the time of peace is more
dangerous for these United States than
the time of war. You say in your heart
of hearts, " It is my country which is my
chief concern." O patriot! you cannot
care for your country as you might if
it is the one thing for which you are liv-
ing. There is a higher secret of life than
country or family or business, and that
higher secret can be learned only in the

62 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE.

study of the life and sufferings of our
Saviour Jesus Christ.

Let us turn to see what was the secret
of his life. He learned in it ! That was
the thing ! You live that you may learn.
You are here, not to live for yourself, not
to die for yourself, but to learn, — to learn
the things that you cannot learn from busi-
ness or in the home circle or from your
country. You are here to learn to enter
into secrets and to find out mysteries, to
enter into the secret places of the Most
High ; you are here to make something of
your life ; you are here to be robed in a
robe of righteousness ; you are here to find
out secrets, not for yourself only, but for
others, — the high secrets of eternal wis-
dom ; you are here to learn, and unless
you are learning, though all these other
things may have their places in the
school of Christ, may be schoolmasters
to bring us to Christ, may have even
eternal value as they come into your

CHRIST MADE PERFECT. 63

life, 3^et unless they are ministers of
righteousness, your life is so far forth a
failure.

Is life worth living ? It depends upon
what description of life it is. The Christ
life was worth living ; and just so far as
your life is the Christ life it is of value,
and just so far as it is not the Christ life
it is of no value whatsoever : " If the salt
have lost its savor, wherewith shall it be
salted ? "

What things did Christ learn ? He
learned obedience, the basis of noble char-
acter. Let me venture a criticism upon
our American life and say that obedience
is one of the things lacking in our life,
that we are lawless as a people. We are
lawless in the home ; we are lawless on
the street, and we need as a people to
learn obedience before we shall be fit
to command as we ought. Some of you
know what are the exercises on the fen-
cing floor or in the boxing-place. PossI-

64 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE.

bly some of you have seen the weariness
with which the pupil constantly obeys the
master's commands. Blow after blow, de-
fence after defence, in barren, arbitrary
sequence : " Oh ! let me alone ; I can do
these things now by myself." But that
is not the point. He must do the thing
at once and in the exact moment of com-
mand. He must do it in obedience to
the master's ruling, because the master
knows that the pupil is soon to stand
before one whose every movement is a
command, whose every thrust must be
met at once and sharply with the proper
defence. He knows that the strife is
one constant obedience to demands made
upon him from the outside, and the pupil
is not fit to control himself, is not fit
to command his muscles, until he has
learned by absolute obedience what will
enable him in the conflict to answer with
the proper defence every attack.

So at the basis of all worthy character

CHRIST MADE PERFECT. 65

there is this absolute obedience; and it
is the only freedom. Lawlessness is not
freedom, license is not freedom ; license
is slavery, lawlessness is worse than slav-
ery. The only true freedom is obedience
to the highest, the search after the noblest,
the surrender of all to that which is in-
finite and eternal and unchangeable.

Christ came to teach us obedience.
And he taught it to us by learning obe-
dience himself by the things which he
suffered. We are a little squeamish now
about some things. The doctors bear
some of the blame of that. The pain
that they relieve us of leads us to dread
any pain they cannot assuage, so that
the things we bore once with perfect
ease now seem to us large bugbears. I
do not know that on the whole this is
for evil ; but, oh, friends, there is nothing
we need more than to be willinGf to bear
pain for others ; than the power of sym-
pathy to enter into the woes and pains of
5

66 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE.

those who are about us. There is noth-
ing that you and I need more than to be
able to enter into the world's agony ; and
in entering into it ours may seem a very
hopeless task ; but even in the going with
others into the vale of darkness, the
touch of God through us may help them
to Christ. The kind word means more
than he who speaks it can know, to the
heart that is bowed down. There is an
immense amount of pain in this world
because from sheer, culpable ignorance
and sheer selfishness we cannot enter
into the woes of those about us. We
need to throw ourselves into the battle
of the world's tears and sorrows; we
need to know something of these bruised
hearts in their agony ; we need to weep
with those who weep, that at last we may
rejoice with those who rejoice ; we need
to learn obedience through the things
that we suffer ourselves, that we may be
able as Christ did to enter into the woes

CHRIST MADE PERFECT. 6"]

of those who suffer. And so suffering
and pain have their sacred ministry ; and
Christ came, not to be ministered unto,
but to minister. He took upon himself
tlie burden of the world's wild woe ; he
entered into the trials and sorrows of
this life and was ground in the mad
machinery of man's devilish selfishness,
bigotry, and ignorance. In entire obedi-
ence to the mandates from above, he
learned obedience by the things which
he suffered, and has revealed to us a
higher manhood, a nobler ideal. He has
tausfht us that life is best worth livlno:
when we too learn obedience through
the things which we suffer. He has
taught us that it is not in seeking our
own, nor in seeking to escape the world's
misery, nor in throwing off the burden of
its woes and pains, but in seeking the
extrication of the whole world from its
woe, that we shall find our highest life
and enter into the joy unspeakable of our
Lord.

68 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE.

So it was that Christ learned obedi'
ence throusfh the thinQ:s which he suf-
fered, and has become the author of an
eternal salvation. Oh, surely there is no
nobler epitaph to be written over the
tomb of any one than that he served his
country and his God! There is no higher
ideal of manhood than that we enter into
the fulness of the salvation of which Jesus
Christ has become the author ! It would
be glorious simply to enter into it ; it
would be more glorious to take part in
the redemption. Who are we to be
counted worthy of this ? And yet Christ
has called us to it, and we are to fill
up in our bodies that which is lacking of
the sufferings of Christ for his body's
sake, which is the Church. We with
Christ are to become the redemption of
the world. Suffering as he has taught us
to suffer ; dying as he has taught us to
die ; living as he lived ; walking with him ;
knowing what true manhood is because

CHRIST MADE TERFECT. 69

he has revealed it unto us ; learning
obedience by the things which we suffer,
we shall enter with him as his brethren,
called no more his servants but his
brethren ; taking part with those whom
his blood has washed from their stains.
This, dear friends, is the meaning of
life. This is the bringing in of the eter-
nal salvation. This is the one secret
of the establishment of God's kingdom.
I know not the hearts of those before
me : who can enter into the secret places
of another's life? But I know enough of
life to know that there is no one heart
before me, even the youngest, which has
not had its woe. I know there is no one
before me to whom life has not from time
to time become aweary entanglement and
a maze that seems hopelessly ensnarled.
Dear friends, if life were perfectly plain
we should never learn ; we should never
know. It is because of this entangle-
ment that we feel the awful burden of

70 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE.

our helplessness, and groan within our-
selves waiting for the redemption. To
you that redemption is proclaimed.
" Freely ye have received, freely give."
God has forgiven you: walk in the for-
given life ; know him ; choose him ; learn
from these very sufferings, from these
very mistakes and tangled mysteries, the
obedience that is freedom, the life that is
eternal salvation. May God help us, and
grant us his grace and his peace.

IV.

THE IMPULSIVE TYPE OF CHRIS-
TIANITY.

Simon, Simoji, behold, Satan asked to have you, that
he might sift you as wheat : but I made supplica-
tion for thee, that thy faith fail not : and do thou,
when once thou hast turned again^ stablish thy
brethren. — Luke xxii. 31, 32.

"PROM the very fact that Christianity is
a life, we see that it expresses itself
in a variety of ways. From the very first
Christianity has been the synthesis, the
gathering and putting together, of a great
many tendencies and forces animated by
one impulse. From the very first, differ-
ent elements have entered into it ; some
to aid, some to hamper its development.
The infinite wisdom of God provided so
that every variety of character, and the
impulses of affection, of law, of intellect,

72 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE.

might all be used for the building up
and strengthening of his kingdom on
earth. We shall expect, therefore, to find
throughout Christian history, both in
its beginning and in its progress, very
great differences in types of character.
No one man gathers into himself all the
fulness of the revealed truth. We shall
find as we study the biography of the
New Testament that in a wonderful way
the various types of character are bap-
tized and redeemed, and, at the same
time, they preserve marvellously their in-
dividual peculiar characteristics, bringing
these with them into the service to which
God has called them.

We do not know so much about the
work that Peter did in the early Church
as we do concerning the work of Paul,
because the second part of the Acts and
the Epistles of Paul are the material upon
which we rely mainly for our account of
the early Church, and these of course

IMPULSIVE TYPE OF CHRISTIANITY. 73

dwell largely upon the subject of Paul's
labors and activities. But, at the same
time, there is enough left us to show that
Peter was a very strong, a very dominant
element in that part of the Church which
centred around Jerusalem, and which
influenced Bithynia and the more eastern
parts of Asia Minor.

The traditions about Peter's life are not
very trustworthy. We do not find very
many traditions at all concerning him
until about one hundred years after his
death ; and then, although the traditions
are many, they can be nearly all traced
back to one source, so that we have not
the advantage of a great many witnesses.
These traditions are moreover often so
evidently foolish and untrustworthy that
it is very difficult to build up any scheme
of his Christian activity upon the basis of
them.

But we do not need to go to any tradi-
tional story of Peter's life to get a definite

74 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE.

impression of the man. His Is one of the
marked characters of the New Testa-
ment's wonderful series of portraits, tak-
ing them merely as literature. It is
marvellous with what distinctness charac-
ter is etched throughout the Old and New
Testaments ! How many masterpieces
we have of character sketches, a few
words giving a whole character! This
is true, for Instance, of the patriarchs. It
is true also throughout the Old Testa-
ment history, sometimes the whole life
and activities of a king being gathered
together in two or three verses in a per-
fectly marvellous way.

With a few touches we have Peter's
character painted before us with a dis-
tinctness that it is hard to find the equal
of anywhere in literature. Peter is a
man essentially of impulses. Energetic,
marvellously useful along these lines,
but, like a good many impulsive people,
not very trustworthy, not to be always

IMPULSIVE TYPE OF CHRISTIANITY. 75

counted upon. Peter is the first to come
to Jesus walking upon the water, but
very soon sinks because his faith gives
way. Peter is the very first to draw his
sword in defence of the Master, — is the
only one to spring to his defence, but
denies him to the maid at the door.
Peter is the first to speak, but not always
the wisest when he speaks. Peter is
very ready to answer the question as to
who Jesus is, — " Thou art the Messias,"
but he is also very apt to take Christ
aside and rebuke him, when the Messias
tells about the suffering which lies before
him. Peter in his impulsiveness will
not have Christ wash his feet, and in
equal impulsiveness would have him
wash his hands and his head that he
might be all consecrated to the Master's
service.

This is characteristic of Peter not
simply before Christ's death ; but even
after his death, in his epistles, we find

76 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE.

the same characteristics. Peter is one
of the very first to try to bridge the gulf
between the Gentile and Jewish Christian
churches, but one of the very first to
retreat ignominiously from the position
he had taken, when he is in Antioch sur-
rounded by those who say to him, " Thou
being a Jew, eatest with those who have
not been circumcised." And Paul with-
stood him to the face because he was, in
his very impulsiveness, in his very super-
ficiality, in danger of permitting that to
be done which would have left the Chris-
tian Church in chains, and would have
hampered irretrievably its progress.

We find that Peter is impulsive ; and
yet we need impulsiveness, and we have
to take it with its weakness and with its
strength. There is an impulsive Chris-
tianity which is one of the largest and
most needed factors in the building up
of the healthy Christian life. Impulsive
Christianity has indeed weakness, with

IMPULSIVE TYPE OF CHRISTIANITY. ']^

which we have to reckon. The man of
impulses is a little like the kindling with
which you kindle your fire. You might
use a whole box of matches in trying to
set fire to the coals, and you could not do
it. Take a little kindling, strike your
match, and you soon have a steady glow.
It is true you could not very easily warm
your house with kindling, but at the same
time you could not very easily warm your
house without it. Impulsive Christian-
ity is very needful to set fire to the forces
that are in God s providence regenerating
the world. Impulsive Christianity will
have indeed its weakness in that like
Peter it is very much in danger of deny-
ing the Master. The man of impulses is
very apt to find himself stranded by
waves of a strength he has not taken
accurate reckonino- of; but, at the same
time, every great religious movement has
commenced with the fiery, impulsive ele-
ments of the community. It was the

jd> POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE.

impulsive Cornish miners who gave the
key-note to the evangelical revival whose
blessed force is not ended yet. It was
the impulsive classes in North Germany
that caught fire first when a lonely monk
defied the Romish power and proclaimed
liberty to the captive. It was the impul-
sive classes in this country who heard the
preaching of Finney, who accepted him
with all his extravagance, with all his
weaknesses, with all his want of accurate
thought. They accepted him because
they felt his was a message from on high,
that touched men's hearts with some-
thing better than the old dogmatism on
which the Church was starving herself to
death, a message that set this country on
fire ; and after it was set on fire, there
were steadier forces to complete and
carry on the movement to a better and
higher issue, out of which has come so
much that has meaning for our national
and individual life.

IMPULSIVE TYPE OF CHRISTIANITY. 79

We shall have to take the impulsive
man and impulsive Christianity into ac-
count because they form a large element
even of the most reflective life. We
would not give anything for a man who
did not have impulses, even though they
were not always wise. We would not care
to have even a wise man as our dearest
friend, if a cold, calculating intellect was
all you had to deal with. Impulses, even
if sometimes they are wrong, if some-
times they do disturb our judgment, so
that our emotions get the better of our
calculations, are divine factors in char-
acter building. Our calculations are not
infallible any more than our impulses,
and sometimes it is a good thing to give
our emotions free scope, and learn from
mistakes to guide them better, but not to
• suppress them.

We have to take into account impulses
because they are a force for good or for
evil. There is an impulsive class that

8o POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE.

will make itself felt, and it will make itself
felt for the kingdom of evil unless it is
baptized and captured for Christ. There
were some men of impulse no doubt in
the throng that cried: "Allelujah! Ho-
sanna to the Son of David ! " and then,
" Crucify him ! crucify him ! " but Peter,
even if he did deny his Lord, did not cry,
*' Crucify him ! " One man of impulse
at least had been captured for Christ,
for the future kingdom, for the glory of
the cross ! We need to see to it that
our Christianity is not purely reflective,
is not purely intellectual ; is not pure cal-
culation, is not pure thought. We need
impulses ; we need holy impulses. We
need to feel their throbs in our life ; we
need, indeed, sometimes to know the bene-
fits of impulsive repentance. It is good
for us sometimes to cfo out with Peter into
the lonely quiet at cock-crowing and yield
to the impulsive bitterness of our emo-
tions, pouring out our soul in the agony

IMPULSIVE TYPE OF CHRISTIANITY. 8 1

of repentance because our lives have so
often been a betrayal of the consecrated
trust God has committed to every one
of us to keep against that day. And I
should not wonder, if we knew Peter's
influence better we should find out that
he was a strength to all the brethren
because of his very sympathy with them.
I think that underlies Christ's remarks to
Peter. He says : " Lovest thou me more
than these ! " He did not simply rebuke
him, Peter had been professing his loy-
alty so very pronouncedly, possibly those
who sometimes were his rivals, his former
partners in his fishing concerns, may
have felt he was a little too forward.
" Now," says Christ, " when thou art con-
verted, strengthen thy brethren." It is
for the most part the man of emotions,
the man whose heart is largest, that is
felt in the time of trouble to come closest
to us and to strencfthen us most in our
hour of need. What warm sympathy

6

82 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE.

Peter must have had with those who
touched him, who, like himself, were apt
to betray the Master in the stress of
their temptation ! Peter, I have no
doubt, was many a time able to take
some weaker Christian than himself
and help him up, saying to him, " You
know very well the story of my betrayal,
but Christ has not given me up. No,
he said to me, ' Feed my lambs ; feed my
little sheep.' He looked me straight in
the eye, he took me by the hand, he
helped me up, and he will help you up."
Peter, I have no doubt, was able to
strengthen the brethren as some of those
who had sinned less were not able to
strengthen them, because of his sym-
pathy, because he was able to enter into
their lives and weaknesses and to take
account of the yielding of our whole
nature under the stress of temptation.
When so tempted we are able almost to
cry out with Paul, " It was not I that did

IMPULSIVE TYPE OF CHRISTIANITY. 83

it, but the flesh : therefore, the thing I
would, that I do not ; and the thing I
would not, that I do."

We need emotional Christianity, with
all its errors of judgment, that we may
come closer to one another and feel with
one another. With kindled emotions
and kindly impulses we need to go to
one another and help one another up,
even though the cooler, calculating judg-
ment will often speak about the hopeless-
ness and helplessness of it.

Christ on his cross felt also what it was
to surrender his spirit, and the dear loved
ones round about him with all their weak-
ness, into the keeping of his Father.
God needs us, even in our weakness.
He needs all that there is of us. He
needs the weakness; if it is committed to
him, if it is crucified with Christ, if it is
baptjzed unto his death, God can use it,
and will use it in o:ood time.

And when we are converted, let us

84 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE.

strengthen our brethren. We need that
sympathetic, impulsive Christianity, be-
cause it comes first, and will often go fur-
ther than the more calculating kind. John
got first to the sepulchre, but it was Peter
that entered in. John first recognized
Christ, but it was Peter who jumped into
the water to go to him. Impulsive, emo-
tional Christianity is needed because it
has power to carry us on, sometimes even
to victory that seems wellnigh hopeless.
God can cleanse and baptize our emo-
tions, and send them further and faster
than our poor weak judgments may deem
safe in the beginning. We need to bap-
tize our best and noblest jmpulses ; we
need to baptize our emotions; we need to_
commit them to God, to have them lifted
up, sanctified and made a burning fire.

This age prides itself upon being re-
flective, analytical, critical. So it is.
That has all its place. Sometimes we are
a little fond of staying back rather than

IMPULSIVE TYPE OF CHRISTIANITY. 85

setting ourselves against the wrong :
" Dear me ! we ought to do so and so.
We ouQ-ht to do this and that. Some-
body ought to go in and purify our poli-
tics ! " A crying need of the world to-
day is a baptized indignation at wrong-
doing. We need to feel that God can
use us when we are set on fire for him.
He will take care of the judgment, quick-
ening and sharpening it in the fires of
enthusiasm, by which we will set fire to
the world. Our impulses for righteous-
ness need obedience.

We need to have our emotions touched.
There is something very wonderful to me
in the way in which the cross of Christ
seems to have affected the northern bar-
barism. One might hardly think that
those wild, ferocious, blood-stained North-
men, accustomed to every sort of cruelty,
to every sort of iniquity, could be reached
on the side of their emotions. Yet it
was not those skilled in ecclesiastical

86 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE.

orthodoxy that reached the North. It
was not an elaborately reasoned system
that touched these men. What really
touched the north of Europe was a band
of brave but ill-trained monks, who went
holding up simply the cross on which was
nailed the suffering, bleeding body of
Christ. They were touched by that story
of atoning love as you would hardly have
thought these great brawny, blood-stained
Northmen could have been touched ; and
once touched, they became the ethical
power that broke the chains from off the
Church and set Europe free. We need
to have Christ lifted up, not only that our
intellects may be true, but that our hearts
may be touched with the message of
God s everlasting and infinite love, show-
ing itself forth in the suffering and pa-
tience of our Lord and Saviour Jesus
Christ. We need again and again to
be converted by looking at the cross and
seeing there all the love of the incarnate^

IMPULSIVE TYPE OF CHRISTIANITY. 8/

God, that we may_be ready to crucify
with him our impulses, our passions, our
affections, our lives; that we may look
into his face and be able to answer truly,
" Lord, thou knowest all things. I have
been wicked and sinful and untrue to

thee. My heart is well nigh hardened

with selfishness and self-deceit; but I
would have thee touch me, I would have
thee draw me closer to thyself. Thou
knowest all things ; thou knowest that
I love thee." May God help us to con-
secrate our emotions to the service of
Christ. May God help us to hear the
word that has come to many a weak and
wavering Peter : " Simon, Simon, Satan
hath desired to have thee, that he may
sift thee as wheat : but I have prayed for
thee, and when thou art converted,
strengthen thy brethren."

THE INTELLECTUAL TYPE OF CHRIS-
TLINITY.

With freedom did Christ set us free : stand fast
therefore^ and he not entangled again in a yoke
of bo7idage. — Gal. v. i. ' ; - o

TDAUL swept into himself in a very
remarkable way the three world
influences, — the Greek, the Roman, and
the Jewish. One of the great historians
of Germany has pointed out that in
these three world influences we have the
practical explanation of all that we value
as civilization. He was a Roman citi-
zen. There are, I think, decided traces
throu2:hout both Romans and Galatians
that he was fairly well acquainted with at
least the principles of Roman law. His
knowledge of Greek poetry we are possi-
bly inclined to exaggerate because of sucU

INTELLECTUAL TYPE OF CHRISTIANITY. 89

chance quotations from it as we find
in his writings ; but, at the same time, it
is not at all unlikely that he was fami-
liar with the literature of Greece, for in
his own native city of Tarsus Greek
influences were the predominant ones.
Tarsus was a city that had had a great
deal of influence, and its influence was
very largely intellectual. It had been
gready attracted by Greek thought; so,
for instance, the games of Tarsus were
in all likelihood prevalently Greek rather
than Roman, which would indicate a
predominance of Greek rather than
Roman thought

Of course, Paul was Jewish, and thor-
oughly Jewish; a Pharisee brought up
in the Pharisaic schools, thoroughly ac-
quainted with the history of his people,
thoroughly imbued with the best spirit
of his own time. Thus we have a very
remarkable figure, combining in one cen-
tre the synthesis of the great influences

90 rOWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE.

that were to mould the destiny of the na-
tions of the earth. It was natural, there-
fore, that Paul should make for himself
an intellectual atmosphere in which the
Church's thinking was to develop. He
did for the Church what neither James,
nor John, nor Peter could have done so
far as we know them. It was quite im-
possible for even the wonderful Fourth
Gospel and the writings of John to
have quite the effect upon the Roman
mind that Paul's writings were able to
exercise, in part through the limitations
of the Roman mind, and also, indeed,
owing to the limitations of the intuitive
and perceptive character of John's mind.
We take Paul, therefore, very natur-
ally as the type of what we may call in-
tellectual Christianity. Christianity must
be intellectual if it is to command the
respect of men whom God would save.
Christ will have the whole of man ; he
will have his mind, and his heart, and

INTELLECTUAL TYPE OF CHRISTIANITY. 91

his life. Christ's kingdom is not a one-
sided kingdom. It is to be social, it is to
be intellectual, it is to be moral, it is to
be spiritual, it is to be rounded out. The
intellect must be fired from above ; and
once fired from above, it enters forthwith
into the Christian life as a very large and
very important factor.

But the intellectual type of Christi-
anity has of course its dangers. The in-
tellectual life has a certain tendency to
arrosfance that is born and bred of the
constant comparison of its own self with
the grosser stupidity which it finds round
about it. A man does not need to be
very far on in the intellectual life before
he begins to compare himself with others,
greatly to his own advantage, however,
and to the disadvantage of those whom
he has left behind. The danger of
intellectual arrogance is especially per-
ceptible in the mind that is clear and
losrical. The mind that havinc: started

92 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE.

with certain terms must carry its reason-
ing on to the end has no patience with
the mind that insists on breaking in with
other Hnes of thought before the solution
is given.

Intellectual Christianity has also its
dano^ers in the fact that the intellectual
life is very apt to exclude us from some
other phases of life. The man who is a
mere intellectual machine cannot enter
into many of the hopes and fears and
wishes of the multitude about him, for the
multitude is not governed in the first
instance by the intellect. If we were
quite shrewd enough we should realize
that the intellect must come after a great
deal else, for the intellect is analytical, and
if there is not something to analyze it has
no place at all. But this is too often for-
gotten, and the danger to thinking men is
a certain dogmatic narrowness, a certain
hardness, and conventional type even, so
that we find that intellectual Christianity

INTELLECTUAL TYPE OF CHRISTIANITY. 93

as it has come down the ages has often
repelled instead of attracting even those
to whom intellectual Christianity ought to
have had power and value.

I think you will notice in Romans and
Galatians a tone somewhat different from
that which you will find in Philippians
and Ephesians, and different also from the
personal tone of the pastoral letters. No
thouo^htful mind can fail to see that there
was progress, decided progress, in the
spiritual life of Paul. When we leave
the first and second centuries and turn
to such men as Tertullian and Augus-
tine, and in the seventeenth century to
such men as the scholastics and the in-
tellectual leaders of the Reformation, we
are thoroughly and powerfully impressed
with a certain intellectual narrowness of
dogmatism., and a harsh and arrogant
tone, which shows us that on the intellec-
tual side of Christianity there are dangers
which it is scarcely possible to avoid, no

94 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE.

matter on which side of the controversy
we stand, unless we are fully baptized
with the spirit of the Lord Jesus Christ,
and have made intellectual surrender to
him as well as surrender of the heart.

Intellectual Christianity from the very
nature of the thing is analytical, and ana-
lysis is the pulling apart. From the very
nature of it intellectual Christianity has
in it a certain destructive element. It
must criticise, it must look behind, it is
never satisfied with the forms as they are
round about. It could not be, it would
cease to be, intellectual Christianity if it
did not thus insist, and sternly insist,
upon satisfying the conditions of God-
given reason. But there is the danger
that it may confine itself to the destruc-
tive, and that the constructive work be
left out of account, — to the pulling to
pieces of Sadduceeism with nothing as
yet to put in its place. But for all that,
we must take it as it is. We enter the

INTELLECTUAL TYPE OF CHRISTIANITY. 95

Christian life with our reason, and we
must take our reason along with us.
The forms of reason we cannot leave be-
hind any more than we can leave other
forms behind. When you first took
Christ into your life, you took him with
your many defects, which Christ in your
heart is goings to cure daily if you will
surrender yourself daily unto him. There
are faces about us that you have perhaps
seen Q:row beautiful because of the life of
sufferino: and sacrifice that has chano;ed
the plain features into a heavenly beauty.
But we cannot start with our faces shin-
iags_ We cannot start with anything but
reason as God has oriven it to us. Paul
had to start in his Christian course as a
Pharisee. He had to leave much behind ;
but it was because he surrendered his
reason, surrendered it wholly to Christ,
that it was changed and transformed into
one of the mightiest and most potent
weapons for the winning of the victory

96 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE.

of the Church and for the building up of
the temple whose strengthening God had
entrusted to his servant.

And so I think we can not go far
astray in taking Paul as a splendid type
of the proper use of the intellect, and as
the proper intellectual type of Christi-
anity. This is evident, because Paul
brought to the service of Christ every-
thing he had, — his learning, his Phari-
saic training, his knowledge of Greek
thought, his knowledge of the Hebrew
language ; and he laid it all as a sacri-
fice on the altar to his Master. His
intellect, his intellectual powers, these
were his Master's, because everything
he had was his; and what splendid
use he made of them ! Take, for in-
stance, that scene upon Mars Hill.
This little Jewish man, probably rather
unsightly, if tradition is correct, who
comes to Athens, where every one is
so graphically described as seeking only

INTELLECTUAL TYPE OF CHRISTIANITY. 97

to hear some new thinsf. He met these
Athenians with their scientific dogma-
tism, with their philosophical problems ;
they amused themselves with these things
and believed that they were living, pre-
cisely as a great many of us to-day amuse
ourselves by haunting the lecture-rooms
and discussing questions, without any
real intention of making them bear upon
our lives or, through us, upon other
people's lives. They were at Athens,
as we should find them in New York
and Boston and Chicago to-day, and to
this intellectual centre the despised Jew
comes. They will hear what this bab-
bler says. And could anything have
been more calculated to win their atten-
tion than the tact with which he com-
mences to speak of the things they believe
in common, leading them up to the things
he had come to proclaim as the one mes-
sage worth telling ? It is a study for
every Christian apologist, for every Chris-

98 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE.

tian missionary, for every Christian min-
ister. I suppose that some of those who
have objected to the Parliament of Re-
ligions would have found great fault with
Paul for quoting heathen philosophers,
and setting the seal of his approval to
what they said. How could any one ever
have complimented these empty-hearted,
though overburdened Athenians upon
their being too religious ! But Paul is
all things to all men, and he catches
them ; he gets their attention at least long
enough to tell them that the things he
had come to proclaim were what they
were hungering for, the things of the
risen life, and he tells them of the resur-
rection from the dead. He is a splendid
type of what intellectual Christianity
ought to be, because, bringing as he did
all things to Christ, and laying all things
upon that altar, his intellectual life is a
means to an end, and that only. There
is a tendency in us to grade all things.

INTELLECTUAL TYPE OF CHRISTIANITY. 99

We say, " How much higher is the ar-
tistic than the purely intellectual ; how
much hiQ:her the intellectual than the
practical ! How nice it is to see men
who have been absorbed in business give
now their time to intellectual work ! "
As though intellectual work were any
better than business ! There would be
no intellectual work if there were no
business. And so we set ourselves up in
little exclusive ranks, — the agricultural,
the poor farmer, he is one class by himself,
— and lose sympathy entirely in our arbi-
trary, exclusive distinctions, which ought
to be lost in the feeling that humanity
is one, that there is no man mean in
the sight of God. Intellectual work may
be as exclusive, as selfish, as ignoble, as
material, as debased, as any other work
in the world if it is not brouo^ht to the
altar of Christ; if it is not sanctified by
the presence of God's Holy Spirit ; if it is
not unselfish, and wholly unselfish, as a

97i226A

lOO rOWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE.

means to some greater end for the great
throbbing life of which we are a part,
and from which to cut ourselves off is
spiritual suicide. God is in life, and if
we would come in contact with God we
must be in contact with that life which
is his, and is all around us.

So then, whatever may be our Intel-
lectual attainments, we have only to
compare ourselves with Omnipotence
to realize how pitiable and painfully
stupid the wisest among men have been
in all the ages. How puerile seems the
reason we have counted fine! how mis-
taken the dosfmas men have said would
last forever! how utterly wrong the gen-
eralizations men have thought they had
established ! Let us prostrate ourselves
before God, and find that the intellect is
of use only as God takes it and enlight-
ens it and makes it the means, as he
made Paul's splendid intellect the means,
for making known the message of salva-

INTELLECTUAL TYPE OF CHRISTLXNITY. lOI

tlon throusfh a risen Lord to a world
lying in wickedness.

And this also is to be learned from
Paul, that throughout his life he not only
seemed to use his intellectual life as a
means to an end, but he never misused
it. It is never thrust upon us, it is kept
ever as a means to an end, and he is con-
stantly and forever surrendering it to
the one thing, — to the voice within him
that speaks to men, and tells them that
rio^ht is rio;ht and wrong: is WTono^ to
all eternity.

So Paul used his intellect, and I be-
lieve that in the using of it for the
purposes of Christ it received not only
baptism but training ; that even for the
purposes of the intellect, to surrender
it to God is the best thing we can do.
I believe this is true alono^ the whole
range of life. It was when art began to
be practised merely for art's sake that it
not only became decadent, but the na-

I02 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE.

tional life became decadent. Mr. Ruskin
points out, but to me seems to offer no
adequate explanation of the fact, that at
the time art has reached its highest ex-
pression, the national life has seemed
generally to be most decadent, as in the
Augustan era, the Renaissance in Italy,
the period of Queen Anne in England.
This, however, seems to me to be one of
the solutions of it, that the age was deca-
dent because art was practised simply for
art's sake, and intellectualism was prac-
tised merely for the intellect s sake. As
soon as a man attends to his body merely
for his own sensuous bodily purposes,
just so soon not only is there decadence
of the best that is in him, but there will
be decadence of the body, decadence of
the mind, decadence of all that is essen-
tial to real life ; and if art must express
life, that life must be divine to be worth
expressing, and until we learn to trea-
sure what is divine, we shall find our-

INTELLECTUAL TYPE OF CHRISTIANITY. IO3

selves again and again upon the weary
slope up which men have crawled with so
much difficulty only to find the burden
dragging them down when they believed
they saw eternity from the top.

God needs our intellects, and never
more so than to-day. We need to sur-
render our intellects to God that the
pressing problems of the Church may be
solved. We stand divided. We have
been hair-splitting and fighting among
ourselves, and the great world outside
neither fears nor hates us. There is no
task more precious in the sight of God
to-day than the task the men of intellect
have before them in the solving of prob-
lems whose solution will unite us once
more in the face of the enemy, and thrust
us, even if we be cut in pieces, in the
face of the foe with the banner of Christ
and his Cross over us. Young men, some
of you with educational advantages of
which to your dying day you will have

I04 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE.

to render an account unto the Father,
take these advantages, take your minds,
and make them a sacrifice upon the altar
of the Lord Jesus Christ. There is no
more splendid use of the consecrated,
surrendered intellect than the solving
of the weary social problems that lie
before us. Christ saw how it would be
with us. He said, " The poor ye have
always with you, but me ye have not
always." It is just because Christ is
not always with us that the poor are
always with us. We have problems
that need more than mere goodness,
that need more than impulsive Christi-
anity, that need more than simply the
heart that goes out in pity and sym-
pathy ; we need surrendered intellects ;
we need consecrated brains ; we need
directing minds baptized from on high ;
we need you business men to take and
reform our accursed social and industrial
conditions. Must man be ever groaning

INTELLECTUAL TYPE OF CHRISTIANITY. IO5

in the weary tread-mill of life, finding
those who are on the top corrupted by
the eminence, and those below crround
to death by the weight? The world
needs your intellects set on fire from on
high, and never more than to-day. We
need to surrender them to God. What
the world needs is not surrender to a
church, nor to a priest, nor to a theologi-
cal school, nor to a general assembly, but
to God only. " Stand fast in the liberty
wherewith Christ hath made us free, and
be not entangled again in the yoke of
bondage." That surrender must be ab-
solute. Who are we that we should
strive with the Almighty .f^ Who are we
to think that we are sufHcient in our-
selves .^^ Our only use, our only dignity,
our only worth, will come from our lives
being the expression of the divine life
which breathes into our human minds the
message of God's love for his fallen crea-
tion. For God can redeem it, if it will

I06 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE.

only suffer itself to be redeemed. God
over all — even though he is crucified
— preached to all nations. God over all,
and Christ at the right hand of the
Father, who will come again to receive
a redeemed universe gathered into his
Church that we may be his sons and
daughters.

Dear friends ! Young men ! Young
women ! what are you doing with your
minds? What are you doing with your
culture? What are you doing with the
life God has given you? What are you
doing with your advantages? These
things are responsibilities which will
weigh you down before the judgment-
seat unless you share them with Christ,
unless you are working his law in the
Vv'orld. May God help you to do it !

VI.

THE ETHICAL TYPE OF CHRISTIANITY.

Take^ brethren^ for an example of suffering and of
patience^ the prophets who spake in the name of
the Lord. — J as. v. io.

I HAVE taken this text because the type
of Christian life represented by James is
as it were, the connecting link between
the Old Testament and the New. The
logic of the life of Christ, of his teachings
and sufferings, was a glorious manifes-
tation of that liberty which is in Christ
Jesus, and of which we see Paul to be so
splendid a type. But Christ himself left
those who were to come after him, under
the guidance of the Spirit promised, to
find their way to the logic of that posi-
tion. He himself attended the syna-
gogue ; he proclaimed himself as the

I08 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE.

fulfilment and not the destruction of
the Old Testament; and it is very easy
for us to leave the light of the New Tes-
tament and greatly exaggerate the gap
that separates the Old and New Testa-
ments from each other. We might very
easily altogether misunderstand the New
Testament or misinterpret the Old by
taking either of them separately, not re-
membering that in the revelation of
himself God has used the Old Testa-
ment as a preparation, and that the full
importance of this revelation is only
to be realized when we view it as de-
veloped in Jesus Christ in the New
Testament.

There was a section of the Christian
Church that was not in accord with the
complete logic of the Christian position
as set forth by Paul. It was very nat-
ural that the Jewish Christian church
should resent many things, find fault
with many things, and fail to understand

ETHICAL TYPE OF CHRISTIANITY. IO9

many things that came quite naturally to
the Christian Church that had broken
loose more completely from the old life
that still centred in Jerusalem. There
was antagonism; which antagonism was
bridged over by the wisdom and patience
of the principal apostles ; but the antag-
onism made itself felt, of which we have
evident sis^ns in the New Testament
history itself.

It is James that represents a type of
thouorht that is the intermediate link be-

o

tween the old dispensation and the new,
as represented by the Jewish Christian
wing of the Church. It was only after
the destruction of Jerusalem that the
Church, as it were, broke into the ful-
ness of the life, the fulness of the lib-
erty, the glory of the revealed form of
Christ's gospel. James, however, repre-
sents a type of Christian life that, with
all its limitations, with all its necessary
defects, has had a very glorious history

no POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE.

in Gods Church, a history that is not
yet completed. The type represented by
James will, I believe, always have its
message and its mission to the Christian
world. James represents what we might
know as the Puritan type of the Christian
life, — a type of Christian character whose
praises have been sung and whose limita-
tions have been pointed out so frequently,
that it has become to us usually either
a bugbear on the one hand, or an idol
on the other. The truth is between the
two. The Puritan type of Christian char-
acter had its invaluable message to the
Christian world ; it had a heroic work ;
and with all its limitations, its work may
have to be done over and over again by its
resurrection in the Church of God, speak-
ing, warning, and living the life which
has proved in the crises of the Church's
history of such momentous importance.

The limitations of the Puritan type of
Christian life lie somewhat on the sur-

ETHICAL TYPE OF CHRISTIANITY. I I I

face. There is an attachment to the for-
mal elements that has its cause in the his-
tory of the rise of the Puritan type. It
rose as a protest. The Jewish Christian
church was also a protest. This church
did not seek to separate itself from the
synagogue, nor from the sacrifices and
the temple. To the very end it wor-
shipped at the temple. Paul goes up at
the demand of the Jewish Christian
church to fulfil his vows, taking part in
the temple services. They were the re-
form party in the Jewish church, — a party
that did not care to break loose from the
old, but sought to rehabilitate it, sought
to breathe into it a newer spirit, protest-
ing against its weakness and rottenness ;
and in that protest there are the ele-
ments of some of the limitations which
have marked them. They became the
protesting or Protestant church, missing
some of the tenderness, and much of the
formative spirit, and in the very vigor of

112 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE.

their assaults becoming critical and de-
structive, rather than formative, in their
character.

This weakness may be seen, I think,
in what the Puritan type has done for
England, where it has appeared more fre-
quently and in greater purity than in any
other Christian civilization. The Puritan
type there has attached itself to certain
individual and distinct reforms. It has
begun in protesting against particular
lines of thought ; it has had its force and
strength from its pointed, direct, and un-
compromising attack upon particular and
visible evils. In doing this, whether it
gained its point or lost it, it has been in
danger from this undue emphasis upon
its purely protesting character, and in the
second and third and fourth generations
of Puritanism the danger has been that
each generation lived more and more
upon the protest and the traditions of
the past, and so failed to comprehend the

ETHICAL TYPE OF CHRISTIANITY. II3

new duty which was to take the place of
the things which had been destroyed.
Hence it has been that Puritanism too
often in the life of the second or third
generation has been marked by a vacuum
which has not always been filled with
those things which were most useful to
the Christian Church as a whole.

Then, also, this ever protesting charac-
acter of the Puritan type has always
brought with it the danger of a certain
sternness in its righteousness, that some-
times has produced a sense of self-right-
eousness and censoriousness extremely
detrimental to the entirety of character.
In the protesting, there has been a con-
stant tendency to self-assertion, first, in-
deed as against the world and evil, a
self-assertion that is justified by facts ;
but then, as a consequence of that, a self-
assertion as against any one that differs
with it, — a self-assertion too apt to regard
anything that opposes it as necessarily

114 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE.

an evil. Hence, there has always been
in the literature of Puritanism in its later
manifestations a certain narrowness that
has been one of the marked weaknesses
often pointed out. There has also been
a certain lack of tenderness, a certain
lack of the fine flavor that characterizes
Paul, for instance, and still more John in
his writings ; a tenderness one feels to
be indeed out of place upon some battle-
fields; a tenderness that it is only natural
that men should lay aside when they enter
into the sterner contests that Puritanism
has so often waged. At the same time a
lack of this tenderness has left Puritan-
ism often out of touch with the newer
life, has isolated it, has made it often the
embodiment of a religious type that with-
draws itself from the world in a way in
which Christ did not withdraw himself
from the world. This has exposed it to
the charges of bigotry and straight-laced-
ness, and even of hypocrisy, because in

ETHICAL TYPE OF CHRISTIANITY. II 5

its isolation being out of touch with the
world, not in sympathy with the move-
ments round about it, it has often yielded
unconsciously to other evils than those
against which it was called into being to
protest against. And so it has exposed
itself to the ready charge of deep incon-
sistency ; and, as we see in the repre-
sentative Puritanism of England, two or
three times these charges have been so
successfully emphasized that Puritanism
seemed for the time to have lost all its
moral and religious value.

After we have pointed out these limi-
tations, it will be proper also to remind
you that the type of Christianity which
we have called Puritanism, and which I
think is here represented in James, has
its mission and its message. This very
righteousness is the glory of such a letter
as this, and the Puritan theocracy at the
time of Cromwell has as its glory and its
strength, that it emphasized certain ele-

Il6 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE.

ments in our Christian life that have too
often failed of emphasis when the Church
has been either prosperous, or swinging
along in an easy rut. Often have men
failed to see, what the Puritan type
sees clearly, the danger and the ruts
that lie so much in front of us all along
the way. James has a message, first, to
those who are tempted and tried ; and
there is in his message a little of that
stern impatience with the weakness of
the unstable man. There is something
of the rigor and vigor of the Puritan
spirit which feels that manhood means
courage and strength, and that Christian
manhood is to be undaunted courage and
undaunted strength. What do you lack ?
Why do you whine ? Why do you com-
plain ? Let a man rather count himself
as in the way of grace when he is in the
way of trials and temptations. If he lack
wisdom, let him ask of God, who giveth
freely to every man ; but be brave, cour-

ETHICAL TYPE OF CHRISTIANITY. II 7

ageous and undaunted ; know this, that
our God is a consuming fire, and in his
strength we may have hope and grace for
ever and for evermore. There is some
fibre, there is some muscle, there is some
strength, there is some vigor, in the very
type of doctrine that is represented by
James, and which has been emphasized
with such care by the Puritan type
throughout Christian history. There is
need of that message. Constantly ought
we to emphasize this need for vigor; for
an undaunted and unflinching courage
of our convictions, a courage to do right,
a righteousness that trusts forever, that
does not waver, a conception of Jehovah
as King of kings and Lord of lords,
with whom to fight, for whom to struggle
is blessedness and courage itself. Let
not that man who doubteth think he
shall receive anything : he is like the
surge of the sea, driven by the wind and
tossed. It was not characteristic of the

Il8 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE.

Puritan to be tossed around like the
wave of the sea. Over and over again
he has unsheathed his sword and stood
for that which he considered right and
against wrong and iniquity even in high
places. There is a message of Puritan-
ism that rings down English history
which has given strength to the demo-
cracy, which has not feared king or
priest, which has not feared traditions,
which has feared nothing but Jehovah ; a
note that we need here from time to time
amidst our notes of triumphs and rejoi-
cings. Our victory over sin is not com-
pleted; we have still to see struggles;
righteousness is not yet crowned; the
cross is yet to be borne. Protestantism
has its struggles yet before it. I verily
believe that in this country the time will
come when there will be need again for
the Puritan spirit. It will be a blessing
to this country when men stand up for
rif^hteousness, seeking one another, and

ETHICAL TYPE OF CHRISTIANITY. I I9

standing united for the justice of God,
and when they feel that this letter of
James is an epistle of inspiration upon
which they can base their claims for a
higher life, a higher purity, a higher free-
dom from the subtle corruptions and
temptations which so often sap the Chris-
tian manhood, which so often weaken the
Christian character.

And again, Puritanism has some special
messages. I think it is rather character-
istic of the Puritan spirit that it does pick
out and specially emphasize special evils.
James has a message to the different
classes, — to the wealthy in danger of
abusing their wealth, to the intelligent
in danger of relying upon their intellects,
to those in high places in danger of
counting these things more than the
honor of Christ, — a message to the mere
will worker, to the mere talker, a message
to the man whose tongue is unbridled,
whose character is loose. These things

120 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE.

need emphasis. These things need some-
times the scourge of just such a holy
indignation as we see in the message of
James. There is a time in our own indi-
vidual life when it would be well for us
to take this message of the old Puritan
spirit as interpreted to us by James, and
read it page by page, line by line, and say
to ourselves, " Does that cut me? Does
that touch my life ? Is that a message to
my spirit which I need to give heed to,
that the man of God may be approved,
' thoroughly furnished unto all good
works ' ? " James has a message, as the
Puritan party has always had a message,
to the Church. The Puritan party has
risen in all the various denominations of
Christendom. There is a Puritan party
that rose in the Lutheran church, a
Puritan party that rose in the church
of England, and a Puritan party in the
Presbyterian church. In England, the
Independents and the Brownists have

ETHICAL TYPE OF CHRISTIANITY. 121

been the evangelical life which has
moulded the Church that largely repre-
sents the Puritan spirit. It is in the
English democracy to-day you see it ;
you read it in its literature, you feel it in
the democracy of England, which has as
its best foundation stone the old Puritan
spirit. This type, broadened, I hope
softened, more purely sanctified, more
rounded by contact with other types of
Christian life, but preserving throughout
something of the manhood and vigor that
marks the type, has yet a great message
to the world. The message to the Church
is very distinct, very pointed. Sometimes
there is criticism. The Church is subject
often to criticism that is captious, that is
a mere excuse for not taking up the
duties of the Church. The Church is
criticised by many who have no inten-
tion whatsoever of making any sacrifices
to bring her back to that perfection and
idealism whose lack they complain about.

122 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE.

Such criticism is unreal, unnecessary, and
imperfect. But there is also a criticism
of ourselves and of the Church which has
in it healing, if it comes in the same way
as the criticism of James ; in other words,
if it comes from a heart that represents
the hope of the Church, from a love
that is intertwined with the life of the
Church, and if it comes out of the very
yearning for that which is living, and
pure, and better than the past. Such
criticism is a saving element in the life
of the Church ; and such critics, far
from being cast out of the synagogue,
far from having their message or them-
selves despised, should be hailed as an
evidence of the real vitality of the Church,
— evidence that God's spirit is still speak-
ing in the conscience of the Church, re-
calling it to lost duty, pleading with it to
take up more fully the duties God would
have us do. Such, then, are the criti-
cisms of James. It would be well for us

ETHICAL TYPE OF CHRISTIANITY. 1 23

to weigh at our leisure in detail such
criticisms as we find in the very bold,
very pointed, very startling language of
Puritanism, reproduced all through his-
tory, and finding its warrant in this letter
of James. For it has been the spirit of
Puritanism, and one of the notes that
have marked its life, that it has ever been
lifting up and advocating the establish-
ing here on earth of a New Testament
theocracy, to complete the vision, to pre-
pare the way for the coming of our Lord.
Now, we do not share the hopes in every
particular of the Puritans who desired
a theocracy at the time of Cromwell,
because the theocracy that they desired
had very marked limitations, and be-
cause we have an instinctive feeling that
any such theocracy would sooner or later,
like the religious society of that time,
prove a failure. In some way the Jewish
Christian church however, has never lost
hope that it exists to found a theocracy.

124 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE.

The Jewish Christian church fondly
believed that Christ was to come to
Jerusalem, appearing in person to estab-
lish his kingdom ; that all nations would
come up to Jerusalem ; that under the
banner of the Messias come again in
power, the Christian Church might know
itself redeemed through Judah ; that, the
regenerated tribes once more restored, the
mission of the Christ would be completed.
I am not sure that Paul did not share
that hope in his early ministry, but, as
you can see from the second letter to the
Corinthians, and from his later writings,
especially the pastoral epistles, that hope
had taken a spiritualized form, just as
the hope of the Church to-day has taken
a spiritualized form, and we no longer
desire to see church and state identified,
doing one for the other the offices of that
theocracy we may have once desired.
But we have lost something indeed ; we
have lost much ; and our position, I

ETHICAL TYPE OF CHRISTIANITY. 1 25

think, will have to be taken upon higher
ground than we have stood on yet. We
should still cherish the hope of the the-
ocracy ; we should still hope for such a
union of Church and State that the lines
will run so parallel that there will be no
fear of friction, no fear of hypocrisy, no
fear of mere formalism. So long as the
State has secular power outside the in-
fluences of Christianity, so long we have
not as a church done our full duty. We
must seek to permeate the State with
Christian principles; we must seek to
secure the State for Christ ; we must
make these United States the re-incarna-
tion of the divine spirit. However glori-
ous the stars and stripes may be, how-
ever right that we sacrifice our life for
our country, we must see to it that the
cross of Jesus Christ is still supreme ;
and the best offering that we can bring
will be the stars and stripes baptized
from on high, washed from the stains of

126 rOWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE.

past history, that these United States
may be a splendid offering brought to
Jehovah, the seal of the triumph of the
suffering and patience of our Lord, —
such a theocracy as the kingdom that
passed before the vision, not of the old
Puritan of Cromwell's time, but such as
passed before the vision of the inspired
James. He too has a message to the
nations concerning the kingdom ; he too
has somewhat to say of a national right-
eousness, and of the kingdom that God
is building, to those of you who long for
the righteousness which is of Christ.
Let us feel that that righteousness is to
be a purifying fire ; that in our hearts it
is to burn and burn until our lives, aro-
moulded into the form of the life of Jesus.
Christ, as the melted iron is moulded.
Let us feel that love for righteousness, a
burning desire to hold to the cross of our
Saviour, is to be a purifying passion^ in-
spiring us and speaking to us as the voice-

ETHICAL TYPE OF CHRISTIANITY. 1 27

of God in conscience, making it impossi-
ble for us to swerve from the path of duty, _
because Jehovah, our God, is ever present
\yith us in all our temptations, strengthen-
ing us in the hour of struggle. Is there

' any one reading this who has not made
that surrender ? Oh ! I beseech you to
make surrender of your life to this Christ,
unto this passion for righteousness and

I purity, that you may feel your muscles
braced and your hearts stirred within you
to seek the higher, the new, the diviner
life, the breathings and whisperings of
which are now moving amongst the na-
tions. Oh ! may God grant that when
the time comes for struggles and con-
flicts, when the time comes for the estab-
lishing of the completed theocracy, the
inspiration of James may be the inspi-
ration of the Church, that we may lift
the cross as the banner of the victory of
our God.

VII.

THE MYSTIC TYPE OF CHRISTIANITY.

No man hath beheld God at any time : if we love
one another, God abide th in us, and his love is
perfected in us : hereby k?iotu we that we abide in
him, and he in us, because he hath given us
of his spirit. — i John iv. 12.

TN the formation of primitive Christian-
ity Paul has only one possible rival,
and that is John. So far as the intel-
lectual side of Christianity is concerned,
Paul stands unrivalled as a formative
element and factor. Probably Peter had
a more active part in the formation of
the external organization of Christianity
than the record shows. He probably did
much to forward the formation of many
churches, without leaving large records
of his activity ; for it is scarcely credible
that Peter should have maintained in

MYSTIC TYPE OF CHRISTIANITY. 1 29

the Church's tradition and history the
place he has upon so slender a founda-
tion as that which we find recorded in
the New Testament. It must have been
very largely as an executive, practical
man, that he left his mark and imprint
upon the Church, which circumstance
would explain perchance that it was
mainly upon the Roman church that he
left this mark. The Roman mind, being
practical and executive, would naturally
fall readily under the influence of that
particular apostle, to whom in God's
providence possibly had been committed
something of the formation of the gov-
ernment by which the Church was to be
strengthened and consolidated. How-
ever that may be, Peter is preserved
rather in tradition than in record, but
John and Paul go down in the records
as the two main formative agents in or-
ganized Christianity. They were men,
however, of very different types. John's
9

130 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE.

limitations were rather on the side of
that logical, philosophical, and intellec-
tual character which was so pronounced
in Paul. I presume that John, for in-
stance, would have had comparatively
little influence over some of the elements
in the Church's life that Paul has moulded.
Indeed, it appears that in the third and
fourth centuries of the Roman branch of
the Church, John was an almost forgotten
factor. In the Greek church, however,
John takes the place that in the Latin
church has been so largely taken by Paul.
John is to a very large degree the domi-
nant element throughout the Greek the-
ology, which has been so neglected by
Protestant theologians. A great deal of
the disturbance in the theological atmos-
phere around us now comes from the fact
that there has been a revival of Greek
theology and of the Greek spirit in
Protestantism. We are feeling on all
sides the power and influence of this

MYSTIC TYPE OF CHRISTIANITY. I3I

Greek revival. Once before the Church
felt the influence of a pagan renaissance
of Greek thought almost absolutely un-
touched by Christian ideas. To-day we
are feeling the influence of the Greek-
Christian thought that has been so deeply
and permanently affected by the spirit of
John. The conception of the Johannean
gospel has opened our eyes to large
realms of truth entirely neglected in the
history of nineteen centuries of Chris-
tianity. Once Dr. Hitchcock said, to
the class he was instructing in history,
that the Church had seen Petrine theology
in her organization, and Pauline theology
in her creeds, and now he felt, though he
felt it only dimly, that we were entering
upon a third period of theological strug-
gle, marked by the ascendant influence
of John. He thought the Johannean type
would be dominant only when the treas-
ures buried now in the Johannean writ-
ings had become the treasures of the

132 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE.

Church. I think we may look further,
beyond that prophecy even, and hope for
a time when we shall see the Church
doing what the New Testament does,
placing the elements all together, find-
ing for them all their proper provinces,
giving to every type of thought that
has its source in the divine mind its
proper place as a formative element in
the Church's life and organization, and
making the Church the expression of a
national longing for righteousness. If
only we do that, we shall find that we
are united as one spirit existing under
wide diversity. As we have limitations
or capacity, we shall enter more or less
fully into the thought of the entire New
Testament, and James and Peter, and
John and Paul will widen and instruct
us, giving us more glorious conceptions
of the fulness of the revelation which is
in Christ Jesus than has been possible
for us to achieve in our very narrow

MYSTIC TYPE OF CHRISTIANITY. 1 33

conceptions touching the New Testa-
ment revelation of God as it is in Christ.
We shall see the need of room for wide
differences of opinion and statement.

Were we to depend upon John simply,
there would be something lacking of the
practical Christianity which we saw so
pronouncedly in James, and the state-
ments of James are open to serious criti-
cism taken alone. John lays down the
law of love. He emphasizes it as it had
not been emphasized before in New Tes-
tament literature. But if you will read
John through, the fourth gospel, and
the three letters assuming the Johannean
authorship, you will be struck with the
thought that there is a class of minds
who would find his teaching extremely
unpractical. These persons would say
to themselves, I have no doubt, " I feel
it is true I ought to love my brother, but
how am I to love my brother ? How am
I to show my love ? " Were we to rely

134 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE.

upon John alone, we should have very
little light upon that question. We shall
have then to turn to James, and find that
he translates into very strong language
the rules and spiritual considerations of
John, and gives voice to the practical
every-day application of the truth which
John saw in such fulness and with such
spiritual clearness. So it is very well for
us that we are not left simply to John for
a conception of that revelation of God in
Jesus Christ. It is a great blessing that
we have John to give us such a spiritual
interpretation of the historic man Christ
Jesus as we cannot find even in Paul,
because Paul knew only the risen Christ,
and such as we cannot find even in the
synoptic gospels, because the writers of
the synoptic gospels were men of limited
horizons in many directions, and of little
comprehension along some lines of what
the real teaching of Jesus was; which we
cannot get in James either, because of

MYSTIC TYPE OF CHRISTIANITY. 1 35

the Judaistic limitations which prevented
James from entering into the fulness of
the spiritual truth which we find to be
in John. John was the beloved disciple.
I do not believe that was because of his
marked gentleness of character, as some
have thought, for we find that John is
characterized as the Son of Thunder.
He is one also of the impulsive disciples.
He it was who would have called down
fire from heaven to avenge an insult.
He was the beloved disciple surely be-
cause he leaned upon Jesus' bosom,
because he was able to enter into the
thought of Christ and comprehend his
mystic sayings. He did not need to
have the proverbs unfolded to him as the
rather weaker intelligence of the other
disciples required they should be. He
was one of that inner circle into which
Peter was taken, James and John and
Peter going with their Master into the
presence of the Transfiguration ! going

136 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE.

with their Master into the death cham-
ber ! sharing the secret counsels of the
Master, who could not unfold his whole
teachings to the dull and somewhat com-
monplace minds of the other disciples
round about him.

John knew Christ, he felt Christ, he
intuitively leaped to the conclusion even
before Christ finished all his teaching.
He alone was able to give us such con-
versations as that between Nicodemus
and Christ. Mark could hardly have faith-
fully portrayed that scene. It is doubt-
ful whether Matthew would have under-
stood it much better than Nicodemus,
where we find Christ opening to the
mind of Nicodemus the mysteries of that
spiritual contact between the spirit of
God and the spirit of man which is the
contact of history, of which history is but ;
the unfolding. It was John that was j
able best to enter into the mysteries of j
that new birth, which means the regene- I

MYSTIC TYPE OF CHRISTIANITY, 1 37

ration and changing of the whole thought
of man about God, and the formation of
that character which is the Divine intent
from the beginning. Who else could
have sriven us the scene of the woman of
Samaria ? And there are often touches
which we should be surprised, I think, to
find in Luke or in Mark or in Matthew,
— touches of spiritual insight, of the
comprehension of the fulness of the gos-
pel of our Lord and Saviour which strikes
us as being unique, and these touches
mark at once the teaching of that apostle
who had entered more than any other
into the spiritual character of our Lord
and Saviour.

And so it is that the picture we have
of Christ from the hand of John deals
mainly with his Jerusalem ministry, be-
cause in his Jerusalem ministry Christ un-
folded more than at any other time the
real spiritual Messianic kingdom which
he had come to found. It was the Jeru-

138 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE.

salem ministry that most revealed to John
the spiritual thought he unfolds to us.
Christ is for him the divine Messias who
had come to his own and his own re-
ceived him not ; who poured out his soul
in the death agony of the wondrous
prayer which John has given to us as a
priceless treasure in the seventeenth
chapter of his gospel. I think we should
be surprised to find in Mark or in Mat-
thew or in James such a chapter as the
fourteenth of John; and yet surely with-
out the fourteenth of John there would
be lacking much of the revelation of the
depth of the love of Jesus Christ, and the
assurance that was in him of union with
the Father, which was from the begin-
ning and unto eternity. " I am in the
Father and the Father in me. If ye have
seen me, ye have seen the Father. Why
sayest thou then, Show us the Father.^ "

Any one who has attentively studied
the language of the fourth gospel will

MYSTIC TYPE OF CFIRISTIANITY. 1 39

see at once that there can. be little
question as to the genuine character of
the three letters, whatever he may think
of the Apocalypse. They are in the
spirit, nay, they are in the very language
of the fourth gospel. Whoever wrote
the one, wrote the others. In the first
letter of John, we have the emphasis laid
again and again upon that which formed
for John the basis of his religious life, the
enthusiasm of love. What is Christian-
ity ? It is impossible for us to define it
in a word. We have to define it as the
contact in and through Christ with God.
We might also define it In its outward
aspect as the new enthusiasm for good
that was brought Into the world by the
divine manifestation of the Christ. It is
enthusiasm, the divine enthusiasm of love,
which John makes the basis of his mes-
sage to all time.

We cannot live for the most part upon
what is known as doctrine, useful as doc-

I40 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE.

trine is in its place ; we cannot live upon
forms and ceremonies, useful as forms and
ceremonies may be. We cannot live
upon law, although law has its place. If
we are to be loving Christians, if we are
really to do the work of God, our souls
must be stamped with something of the
same divine^ enthusiasm which will burn
away within us the dross, which will make
us the children of the loving Father,
wliich will send us seekincr over the wide
world for the service of the ^^laster, that
we maybe united with him in this divine.
love, and feel that in love alone can we-
find union with the Father, that only
through love can we know what God is,
for God is love.

This is, I think, the real meaning of
John's message. His message was an em-
phasis upon love, — the law of love is the
law of life. In one of the Buddhist writ-
ings, the Suttas, that especially sets forth
the message of Buddha to the learned

MYSTIC TYPE OF CHRISTIANITY. I4I

Brahmins, there is a wonderful chapter
upon what is known as Universal Love,
and Buddha describes universal love as
being a factor in life which the learning
of the Brahmins had left out. Confucius
dwells upon love as one of the factors of
life. We have in Confucius the Golden
Rule on its negative sides. The Avesta
teaches love as one of the elements out
of which the perfect world is formed and
the absence of which marks the lower
world, which forms the dualism of the
Zend-Avesta system. But nowhere that
I have been able to discover, in Buddhist
literature, or in the wTitings of Confu-
cius, or in Plato, or anywhere else, is love
laid down as John lays it down, not only
as a law and clement in life, but as the.
law of life, the very essence of life, the
very being of God, the very evidence of
God. to the hearts of men that He really
exists. There is an infidelity which is
the infidelity of a half-truth, an infidelity

142 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE.

that would try to make us believe that
God is something else, that he is sov-
ereignty, or decrees, or law, or judgment,
with love thrown in to temper all these
things. This is the pagan conception,
resulting always in some form of either
intellectual or practical dualism. We
have had many a caricature of God. Ac-
cording to the picture that John has
drawn of him, God is not decree, he is
not sovereignty, he is not law primarily,
he is love, and his very decrees are the
outcome of his love. He is sovereignty
because he has proclaimed the sover-
eignty of love, and this law of love is
the law of life. This is the message that
is revealed to the Church, the law of love,
the emphasis upon which comes to us
with tremendous and distinct power as
we open the pages of John and find that
he emphasizes only more distinctly and
exclusively that which Paul too recog-
nized as central in his system, which James

MYSTIC TYPE OF CHRISTIANITY. 1 43

too recognized as central for him, which
unites the writings of the New Testa-
ment into one splendid chorus of praise
to Jehovah who sitteth on high, — which
is lisfht ! which is love ! which is God !

o

Walk ye in it.

The second characteristic of John's
teaching is the emphasis he places upon
what we describe as the intuitive type of
Christian character. Paul is reasoning
with the Romans and the Jews. He sought
to lead the intellects of the Romans and
Jews to enter into the secrets of the
Most High. For Paul there were many
entrances into the mysteries of God's
reigning. There was the historical. His-
tory was to Paul the steady unfolding of
the life of God. Philosophy had mean-
ing for Paul as an entrance into the
secrets of the Most Hio;h under the scuid-
ance of God's spirit. Law had for Paul
special meaning as an entrance into the
method of the Divine Life. For John

144 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE.

these things may have had theoretically
their place, but for him and for his peculiar
temperament there was practically one
access only. He knew God, — " For I
have beheld him; I have seen him."
He does not need to dwell upon history
or philosophy or law. That might help
others, that was necessary to others, no
doubt ; but John had seen Christ ; he
needed no other testimony. He had
beheld him. He knew him, not as Paul,
who had a vision, who knew best the
risen Christ, and then had been strength-
ened throughout the years of his pilgrim-
age, but because he had sat with him :
" The things which our eyes have be-
held, that which we teach, that which we
know and declare unto you to be the
manifestation of God." So he entered at
once without process into the secrets of
the Most Hio;h. There must be that
element in all Christian life. I do not
suppose it is equally developed in all of

MYSTIC TYPE OF CHRISTIANITY. 1 45

US. Some of us are sceptical by nature ;
if we find God at all it must be through
weary reasoning, walking with tired feet
along the beaten road of controversy.
But those more blessed, those sometimes
whom the world has despised, the mys-
tics, the women in their solitude and in
their suffering, tender children in their
ignorance, and sufferers on beds of pain,
to whom such weary wandering would
be impossible, these have known the
blessedness of entering at once, as John
did, into the life and love of him whom
to see was to know and believe, because
God had given him of his Spirit. God
is love. His love is perfected in us.
" Hereby know we that we abide in him,
and he in us, because he hath given us of
his Spirit." Shall we not sometimes in
the heavenly world, if we are permitted
to reflect upon our past, wonder at some
of the processes that we were pleased to
call intellectual by which we tried to

146 POWER OF AX ENDLESS LIFE.

understand the workings of the divine
mind ? All around us, was God and we
knew it not; all around us were oppor-
tunities of love that we never entered into.
All around was the life of God, and be-
cause, forsooth, it walked and talked and
spoke as we did, we never knew it !

The early Church had as its spirit that
which the Church in the moments of her
forgetfulness and infidelity has some-
times not fully realized, that Christianity
is a divine inspiration, a divine contact,
— not an inspiration for the apostles only,
not in the New Testament only, not only
in the first three centuries of the Church,
but a divine contact now and always. " I
am with you always, even unto the end of
the world." The question for our consid-
eration is. What is the character of your
inspiration ? rather than, What is the
character of the inspiration of the canon-
ical books .-^ We are far more likely to
be unsound and infidel on the question

MYSTIC TYPE OF CHRISTIANITY. 1 47

of the possibility of God's inspiring you
and me to do his work in the world,
than on the question of the possibility
of his having inspired those who have
passed to their rest, and have left the
record of their inspiration as a heritage
to God's children. We need to feel the
power that John felt, the baptism of the
Holy Spirit bringing us into contact
with God the Father of spirits, that we
be no dead memories of the past, but be
living channels of the present, telling
men of the judgment that is round about
us, speaking to men's hearts of the awful
and fearful neglects and dangers of the
present, and the consequences of such
neglects in the past.

John knew him because he had seen
him. We, too, shall be able to make men
see Christ when we too have beheld him,
and have entered into the secret places
of the Most Hicrh God throucrh contact
of our spirit with Jesus Christ. We

148 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE.

must be the incarnation of God's living
love. We must know God as Love, be-
cause he has revealed himself in our
spirits, and daily we take up our cross
and follow him, becoming like him, see-
ing him as he is, knowing him, having
him dwell in us, and his Spirit to direct
us forever and ever more.

This is the message of John; and it is
not a past message ; it is a message to
our hearts to-day. Would you know
God? Know him as Love. Would you
feel him? Have him in you. Would
you live the life that God would have
you live, — the life of love ? " If any man
say, I love God, and hateth his brother,
he is a liar. For he that loveth not his
brother whom he hath seen, how can he
love God, whom he hath not seen ? "
May God help us to feel the inspiration,
to know the baptism, to walk in the love
and lig^ht that is reflected from the face
of Jesus Christ our Master.

VIII.

THE THREE CROSSES ON CALVARY.

And one of the 7nalef actors which were hanged railed
on him^ sayi?ig, Art not thou the Christ? save thy-
self and us. But the other answered^ a?id rebuking
hi?n said, Dost thou not even fear God., seei?ig thou
art in the same condemnation ? And we indeed
justly ; for we receive the due 7-eward of our deeds :
but this man hath done nothing amiss. — \s[5Y\
xxiii. 39-43-

It was a strange circumstance that
thus linked the hfe and death of those
two unknown robbers with the life of
one who was to form the centre of his-
tory. We do not even know their
names. The traditions about them are
somewhat confused ; but we find them
here the victims with Christ of the
cruelty and barbarism of the age in
which they lived. They are called rob-

150 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE.

bers, and no doubt belonged to that class
for which Barrabas stood, half robber,
half rebel against the existing condition
of things, a product of their time, much
as Robin Hood was a product of his
time, much as the bandits of Sicily to-
day are a product of the misgovernment
in that part of the world. For, after all,
character is a strange synthesis of vari-
ous factors, and it is quite impossible for
us to analyze a character exactly and deal
out to each factor its particular share of
importance. There is heredity of which
we have heard so much, and there is also
a personality of which we are, I have no
doubt, soon to hear quite as much as
once we heard of heredity, as one of the
foremost evolutionists of Germany has
already pointed out that there could be
no progress unless there were new factors
in some way evolved out of the old, for
unless there are some new factors, there
can be no advance over heredity and

THREE CROSSES ON CALVARY. I51

environment. You cannot take out
more than you find in.

We shall be glad to call that creative
factor, personality or will, the element
that gives responsibility, the element
that should sit enthroned, that should
use all circumstances but as a means
to work out the highest in human life.
There are social conditions, environ-
ment, and education. These, too, are
important factors, but if we permit the
will to be enslaved by lust, selfishness,
and other passions, these things become
dominant, and we become slaves to those
that should be but our servants in the
progress of righteousness.

So, no doubt, it would only be the al-
mighty wisdom of God that could separ-
ate, in the life of this poor thief hanging
in his misery, the victim of the cruelty of
the time, between the factors that went
to make him the character that he was.
Social suffering and environment had
somethinsf to do with it. No doubt in-

152 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE.

herent tendencies had something to do
with it. No doubt the surrender of his
will had much to do with the melancholy
state in which he finds himself. What
interests us most, however, is to find
what is the effect of this his treatment,
what is the result upon the man of the
measures that society took to prevent
him from being any more a menace to
the safety of the community. We find
that the poor fellow is but the more hard-
ened and injured by the course that is
taken, and the presence of Christ but
seems to stir the ill feelings within him
all the more, and he delights in railing
at his fellow-victim upon the cross. In
the gospel there is no hint of the reason
for the state of mind in which he finds
himself. It must have been some bitter
thought, or some very strange uncon-
scious feeling in him which suggested
his railing cries. He might perhaps say
to himself : " Had I only possessed the

THREE CROSSES ON CALVARY. 1 53

personal magnetism of that leader; had
I only been able to work the miracles
that he claimed to do ; if I only had
obtained the ear of the multitude as he
did ; had a party in North Galilee been
at my call, — do you think that I would
have submitted to the Roman power as
he has cravenly submitted to it? Do
you think that I would have permitted
myself to fall into the hands of those
who hate me and my people ? I at least
bared my sword ! I at least haunted the
highways, and so long as my weakness
would let me, I fought the tyranny that
is crushing the Jewish people. I did my
little best to make known that there was
still manhood in Judaism. But this poor
teacher, he claims to be the Christ, the
Saviour, the Messias ! If he is the Mes-
sias, let him come down from the cross
and save himself and us! But how can
I follow any such craven leadership ? I
am glad that the multitudes cried, ' Away
with him ! ' "

154 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE.

Such a process of thought would no
doubt do much not only to harden the
man's heart, but to blind him to the
high meaning of Christ's death ; and
physical agony and defeat and humilia-
tion and shame only deepened and em-
phasized all that was bad in the man.
His conflicts with society, his outlawry,
his wildly obeyed impulses to disobedi-
ence, these things crowded in upon his
life, and all the worst elements of the
man's character were but intensified by
his suffering.

That cross of Calvary is an example of
unsanctified suffering such as the world
has very often seen since. There are
those who to-day are suffering, as there
have been those who have suffered all
down history, from the injustice, wrongs,
and barbarism of the time. This suffer-
ing has sometimes been but dimly under-
stood. Sometimes it has found a voice
in a leadership saying very much the

THREE CROSSES ON CALVARY. 1 55

same things as were on the lips of those
poor sufferers on Calvary. This unsanc-
tified suffering does but harden men's
hearts. There are many to-day just as
bitter as these thieves who rebelled
ascainst Rome! And in all ao^es there
have been poor criminals who in their
wild despair have wreaked savage ven-
geance upon those who have thus ignor-
antly and harshly entreated them. We
know very well how easy it is for men to
emphasize all that is wrong in the social
condition round about, how easy and
how natural it is for us to lay upon the
social condition and environment, upon
the things that are external, the blame of
what they and we are. When we are
prosperous and successful in our business
and things go well with us, when every-
thing is very much as we should plan it,
then we pat ourselves upon the back and
say, " See how shrewd and clever a busi-
ness man I am ! What wonderful pro-

156 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE.

fessional success I have ! How well I
have dealt with the circumstances of my
life ! " But when the adversary overtakes
us, when adversity enters into our soul,
then we look outside ourselves for the
explanation of our misfortunes, because
we cannot bear to divide the responsibil-
ity as it ought to be divided between the
things outside and the things within.
And to-day all the factors that have dis-
turbed human history and soaked it in
blood and selfishness are at work in our
land. There is danger of our adopting
to-day merely that which Rome sought
to adopt as a cure for all the evils. To-day
there is danger of lack, or even of entire
absence, of sympathy with those who suf-
fer, with those who are wronged, with
those who feel with fearful bitterness and
passion all their wrongs ; and it is an
awful condition of things when these
wrongs are driven home on the one side,
and those who are more or less con-

THREE CROSSES ON CALVARY. 1 57

sclously oppressing the weak are out of
touch with them, and hardening their
hearts have sought to array themselves
against them.

I remember once a passionate, nervous
boy, in ill health, being tormented in
mere play by two or three stronger than
he. I remember the passionate fury and
hate that burnt in that boy's face, a sense
of helplessness and wrong no doubt that
changed everything in him. There was
murder in his heart. It was only weak-
ness that prevented him doing anything
to wreak savage vengeance. At last,
springing at one of those who were his
tormentors, he half drew and half flung
him over the stairs with himself, and they
fell down together. I remember, I shall
never forget it, the white, drawn face of
my comrade as I saw one limb was
doubled under him and he could not
move, and I thought how easily that fall
might have killed him. Then, alas!

158 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE.

when it was too late, remorse came.
Oh ! the passions that are roused in
hearts that burn and cry and curse all
the more as their wrong is seen. And
when force meets force, when the conflict
is over and the French Revolution has
done its worst, then superior shrewdness
and force has but to stretch on crueller
crosses the weaker elements they have
wronged.

So history has still the cross of Cal-
vary, still hears the cry of the poor thief
railing in his misery at the helpless vic-
tim whom he would at one time gladly,
no doubt, have summoned to his aid if
that aid had been the sword and revenge.
And then there is the other cross, with
the other victim of the same passions and
selfishness of his time. He, too, railed
at first at the Christ in their midst, but
some word of Christ's went to his heart,
or some look of Christ's won his soul,
and he ceased his railing, and even re-

THREE CROSSES ON CALVARY. 1 59

buked his fellow sufferer : " He Indeed
without sin, but we justly." He takes
it all to himself, all the bitterness that
might have had some legitimate place as
over against the wrongs he was suffering.
For no crime gives any man a right to
torture his fellow beings as the cross
tortured them. But he has forgotten
that. He feels his own sin. The justice
of the sentence seems to him absolute in
the presence of that which rose over his
soul. " We indeed justly." No doubt
he contrasted in some half-conscious
way the wild scenes of violence upon
the highroads, and the willing submission
of this victim in the midst, and he sur-
renders his soul to the Christ. There
was no one there to instruct him in the
mysteries of Nicene orthodoxy. There
was no one there to tell him what the
meaning of the words he had just heard
was. There was no one there to explain
to him the philosophy of salvation. He

l6o rOWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE.

only knew that here was one to whom
he could surrender his soul : " Lord,
remember me when thou comest into thy
kingdom."

Oh ! what must it have been thus to
share the sufferings of Christ, — thus
to be a help in the last agonies of the
one perfect hero of the world's his-
tory ; thus to strengthen the Christ
even by a word when all others mocked
him ; to cfive the word of cheer and
comfort that this poor robber must have
given him ; thus to give, even in the
midst of his death agony, the last al-
legiance ! Splendid was it, indeed, thus
to share the sufferings of Christ, and
to enter with him at once through the
opened door ! " To-day thou shalt be
with me in Paradise ! " Thus he heard
the Saviours voice speaking, throwing
open the door of heaven and letting him
in. Oh, what a difference in the sanctified
suffering of this other cross of Calvary!

THREE CROSSES ON CALVARY. l6l

For any suffering either hardens or
softens. It is one or the other. Either
the rain steals into the earth, watering
the roots and making them glad, or it
beats it harder and harder as it falls; it
is always one or the other. The world s
sufferinof will do for the masses and for
you one of two things; either it will
harden and drive you away from the real
life, or with broken and contrite hearts
you will find, in the sorrow of the world
and in the tears which you shed, the
entrance into the real life, the life that is
hid in Christ.

Which would you sooner be, Pilate, or
that thief .f^ Now, with all history behind
you, which would you rather be, the proud
Jewish hierarchy, or that robber whose
very name is unknown ? No justice was
done to him ; no doubt the crowd reviled
him as before. Even religious tradition
does not do justice to the poor fellow, for
this is the only gospel that marks the fact

II

1 62 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE.

that he turned to Christ. But he had
Christ in his heart, and in the touch of i
that unseen hand he had found the j
real hfe that passeth not away, — a peace i
which the world could not give, which
the world could not take away even by its
cruellest cross, but which is from ever-
lasting to everlasting.

Then there was the cross that formed
the centre of this picture, with the Christ
praying not for himself only, but for all
of us in the loneliness and bitterness of
apparent defeat. It were something to
defy those who are greater and stronger,
and to die fighting ; but to be hurried
away in the midst of the night, to be '
stealthily dealt with, to be crucified before ;
men could know of it, ah, that was hard !
In the solitude of the cross there was the
shame and agony of defeat, of broken i
plans, of purposes thrown aside ; it was i
the trial of Christ's faith. " My God ! my |
God ! why hast thou forsaken me i " !

THREE CROSSES ON CALVARY. 1 63

We cannot suffer as Christ did in all
points, for he was without sin, and we
never to all eternity shall forget the sin
that we have done. We shall never want
to. Some of you have listened to the
strains of the Ninth Symphony. The
music opens with an impatient struggle
with fate, then in calmer melancholy the
music grows very simple, very rhythmic,
but extremely delicate. Then you notice
deeper tones and gradual earnestness,
until at last all is caught up and swept
together in one last glorious outburst of
song. But even then, if you have listened
closely, you can still hear the refrain of
the minor note that sings to the very last,
giving to the whole the earnestness and
tenderness that makes it the most perfect
of all music.

We shall enter into Paradise with God.
We shall know ourselves forgiven, freely
forgiven, without condition and without
price, — not on the basis of any belief,
not on the basis of any opinion, not on

164 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE.

the basis of any surrender. We are for-
given freely ; all he asks is that we walk
in the forcyiven life, that we feel the
heart of love going out, loving men even
as we have been loved. But even when
we join, as we may join, in the Paradise
of our God, there still will be given to
our song a note of earnestness. We
have been forgiven freely indeed, but our
hearts must go out over the world's
suffering, incarnate in the sign of the
cross. This suffering is our doing, its
cross we must take up daily, but with
the joy of deliverance. It is to this cross
that you and I are to be consecrated.
There is suffering about us. There is
wild despair in the world. There are
awful wrongs. There are fearful iniqui-
ties. How shall we go forward.'^ With
the bayonet ? With the sword ? With
the cross on which we have drawn and
tortured those that rebel against the
authority which taunts them with weak-
ness, knowing that at last in the ever-

THREE CROSSES ON CALVARY. 1 65

lasting strife superior intelligence and
superior force must ever in the end
crucify the forces of those who seek in
tlieir weakness to throw off tlie yoke?
Or shall we go with the look of Christ,
with conquering love, even though it
costs pain and toil ? For that love
means life, and sanctifying every tear,
every sorrow, brings back to human
hearts the peace that passeth not away, the
joy that comes from suffering if only the
sufferer knows that sympathy is there.
That love lifts men up, adding grace to
grace, and a sweet entrance into the ful-
ness of the everlasting life. The greatest
wrong is not the cross, the greatest wrong
is the hate and bitterness that made that
poor thief rail at Christ. The greatest
wrong is not oppression, the greatest
wrong is the hate and bitterness that op-
pression calls forth. The only remedy,
the only thing that will stand between
the two is the cross of self-sacrifice.

1 66 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE.

This will sanctify your sufferings. To this_
bring your experience, to this bring youjr_
powers, to this consecrate your life, thaj_
the Christ in you may look with infinite^
tenderness even on those who revile the_
divine, if perchance one among the multi-
tude may turn to him and say, " Lord,
remember me when thou comest into thy
kingdom," finding in the very prayer 3.
solace, and in the very agony its escape.
Or you may crucify the Christ pleading
to-day. The historic Christ is beyond
our reach, but Christ is with us alway,
and you may still crucify and taunt the
real indwelling Christ and put him to an
open shame ; but he cannot be holden of
death. He will rise in power and come
in judgment to the. life, whether personal
or national, and who shall abide in the
day of his coming? Lift up your eyes to
Christ, share his death, live his right-
eousness, bear the world's sorrows, and
share with Christ the everlasting life !

IX.

THE TEMPORAL KINGDOM.

The voice of one crying in the wilderness^ Make ye
ready the way of the Lord^ make his paths straight.
Every valley shall be filled^ and every mountain
and hill shall be brought low ; and the crooked
shall become straight^ and the rough ways smooth ;
a?id all flesh shall see the salvation of God. —
Luke iii. 4, 5, 6.

All have heard, no doubt, from pnlpit
and press unfair criticism of the Jewish
people and the Jewish hope on the
ground that they expected a temporal
kingdom. They had every reason to
expect a temporal kingdom. It was
promised to them. The whole religious
life of the Old Testament was centred
in the State. The prophecies echoed
and re-echoed the hope that Zion should
be the dwelling-place of Jehovah, that

1 68 rOWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE.

the scattered children of Israel should be
gathered on the mountains of Judea, that
all nations should come up with their
offerings to Jerusalem, that Jehovah
should reign in Zion and the kings of
the earth should see his glory. The
Christian Church would lose much if it
were to brand such a hope as Judaistic
or wrong. We all ought to feel that
there is a glorious hope of a new heaven
and a new earth wherein dwelleth right-
eousness ; w^e ought all to expect, and
expect with more faith, the consumma-
tion of these prophecies of the Old Tes-
tament in the establishing of God's
kingdom on earth, and work with more
energy of faith for it. But I am afraid
that we are just as likely as were the Jews
to fall into the real mistakes that under-
lay their interpretation of the prophecies.
These they interpreted to mean, in the
first place, that the kingdom should be
set up quite apart, and independent of

THE TEMPORAL KINGDOM. 1 69

the ethical demands that Jehovah made
upon the Jewish people. They expected
that kingdom because they were the
chosen people, apart from their responsi-
bility toward Jehovah, apart from his
ethical standard. So even some of those
who had penetrated most into the secrets
of the Old Testament and the thought
of Jehovah interpreted his demands too
much as a form of ritual. They thought
that as long as they worshipped in the
temple, and obeyed the demands of the
ritual and the letter of the law, they were
fulfilling all duty; the temple worship
would indeed be established on the basis
of ritual observance, where the law would
be read daily and interpreted by the
authority of the scribes. They assumed
that a kingdom might be built on things
external.

And they further fell into the mistake
of believing that the kingdom would be
national and exclusive. It would be a

170 rOWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE.

Jewish kingdom as over against the
world. The nations indeed might share
some of the droppings from the sanctu-
ary; some nations might be chosen out
to become Jews and so enter into the
privileges of the Jews; indeed, it might
happen that all nations would at last be
conquered, and in the conquest share the
privileges of this divine kingdom. The
Assyrians, w^hom the rod of God's anger
broke, and Egypt with her people might
at last worship Jehovah, but the kingdom
would be to the Jews first, and to the
nations afterwards.

Such a kingdom was never contem-
plated in the message of the more spirit-
ual of the Old Testament prophets, nor
would such a kingdom be anything but a
wrong interpretation of Jehovah's law.
The divine kingdom must be, in the first
place, ever bound up in every fibre with
the kingdom of his righteousness. It is,
in fact, to be a kingdom of righteousness,

THE TEMPORAL KINGDOM. I7I

not of ritual nor of law. Some of the
prophets saw that. " Jehovah is weary
of your sacrifices, your blood offerings;
these things are an offence to him, this
is not what he wants," said they; "the
temple service may be kept in its glory
and beauty, but that will not satisfy the
demands of the heart of Jehovah. He
seeks righteousness. These things are
but a means to righteousness ; and as
soon as they cease to be a means toward
righteousness they have no meaning,
nay, they are an offence."

The kingdom of the Jews is only, there-
fore, for a purpose. The election of the
Jew is only an election to responsibility.
It is a privilege, — all responsibility
ought to be a privilege, — but it is a re-
sponsibility that is bound up with the
privileges, and we cannot have the privi-
leges unless we manfully bear the respon-
sibility. Thus as soon as the Jewish
people ceased to be a missionary people,

172 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE.

the Jewish people ceased to be an inter-
pretation of God to the world. They
lost their election, which was to national
responsibility. They themselves knew
tliat the spirit of prophecy had died
among them. They felt they had no
open vision, and so had no message.
From the older prophets of action to the
later prophets of deed and word there
had been a constant interpretation of
God's word to the world around, but so
soon as prophecy had died, the Jewish
people ceased to have meaning. Now,
unless the spirit of prophecy can be
awakened, unless they recognize that
they were only the mouthpiece of Jeho-
vah, they are to be no longer a people.
When they rejected that which was
offered them, and stoned those that
were sent unto them, then Jehovah
said, " Away with them ! '* and Jerusalem
perished from the earth ; a prophetic
people without a message was absurd.

THE TEMPORAL KINGDOM. I 73

But the idea of the divine kingdom
did not perish with the Jewish nation.
The idea of a divine kingdom, a God-
kingdom, is the promise of God to all
the nations of the earth, and it is not
lost in the ruins of Jerusalem. It was
revived in the resurrection of Christ;
and we all as Christians are to look for-
ward to the time when all flesh shall see
the salvation of God.

" Seeing is believing," the old proverb
says. But Christ says, " Blessed are
they w^ho have not seen, but yet have
believed." There was very gross mate-
rialism in the make-up of Thomas when
he needed to put his hands actually upon
the wounds to be convinced that Christ
was risen from the dead. A fine spirit-
ual insight, such as that of Paul in
his later career, would have needed
no such handlinof of evidence. Christ
resurrected was ever with him ; Christ
was in his life. Henceforth he did

174 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE.

not even want to know Christ " after the
flesh " if only spiritual vision remained.

" Blessed are they that have not seen,
but yet have believed." We look for-
ward to a kingdom. We may never see
it, but there is no reason why it should
not be real for all that, so real to our life,
so real to our hope and to our wish, so
real to our feelings and to our hearts,
that it becomes a reality in the great
life about us. The things of time may
pass away, but that kingdom we have
seen, and no man can rob us of it. You
might go to the poet and tell him there
was no beauty, that you had examined all
the images he produced in his poetry,
you had analyzed them, and had found
that they were a strange mixture of the
commonplace things round about us;
they were not beauty, the beauty was
but the imagination, and that it was
often in the way of real life. The poet
knows better. The artist knows better.

THE TEMPORAL KINGDOM. I 75

Every man that is touched with the
artist's life, every man to whom the poet
speaks, knows that beauty is a real thing;
that not chemistry nor mathematics has
truths more powerful or lasting than
these realities that give temper to life,
and beauty and glory to the thought
of man.

" All flesh shall see the salvation of
God." For this prophet I suppose that
refers to the terrible time when men shall
be compelled to acknowledge the power
of God against their wills. But we ought
not to be waiting for that time. Should we
wait for the time when we shall be com-
pelled to acknowledge against our wills
that God is not only omnipotent, but that
his kingdom is to be the kingdom of his
Christ ? We ought to be so filled with
the faith of the salvation of our God,
so very confident in our hearts that his
kingdom is a reality, and that we are
his children and subjects, that w^e can

176 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE.

enter now Into that kingdom in joy and
peace.

What is salvation ? Wliat do you
mean when you speak of God's salva-
tion ? What does the pulpit mean when
it comes to you and asks if you will ac-
cept salvation .f* Is it conduct? Some
have so defined It. A very thoughtful
school of Unitarians In New England, In
natural and wholesome reaction ao;aInst
the metaphysical subtilties of a certain
doctrinal teaching, said, " Salvation has
nothing to do with opinion whatsover.
It consists in conduct." But the general-
ization is as faulty as the one attacked.
Salvation is not conduct. Salvation Is
not character. Salvation results In con-
duct, results In character. Salvation is
no more conduct or character than It Is
belief. Salvation Is not opinion, it is not
belief. // ts divine life. The salvation
of God is the touch of the divine spirit
with his world that brings Into It light

THE TEMPORAL KINGDOM. 1 77

.and life, that changes conduct, that
changes habit, that changes opinion, that
changes social organization, that produces
revolution and evolution out of which is
to come the glory and beauty of the sec-
ond incarnation of Jehovah here on earth.
Salvation is this touch, this precious con-
tact of the soul with Christ, that contact
which sooner or later produces the ef-
fects which that Hfe needs. Look at those
who came in contact with Christ, —
for instance, Nicodemus, the hair-split-
ting, intelligent, refined Pharisee, won-
dering what this new teaching was that
stirred his heart in some way that the old
teaching had not done. He was hungry,
as many to-day are hungry, for some-
thing more than opinions. He went
there to find out what was this new
teaching, and Christ did not give him a
new theology, he did not change his be-
lief, he did not say to him that he must
leave all his old traditions and accept

178 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE.

him as teacher. What he did was to
infuse into the old teaching new life. He
said : " All these old traditions must be
born again in heaven. Into this past
must be breathed the word of God.
_your life must come new life." How
does it come ? I do not know that Christ
ever answered that question, because it
was already answered. Nicodemus had
come to Christ, and in that personal con-
tact and submission to Christ as teacher
had found a salvation which I have no
doubt at last changed his conduct and
belief. But it did not begin with that, it
only ended with that. Take the woman
who came to Christ as he sat weary and
worn by the well in Samaria. The poor
woman seems to have been densely igno-
rant, to have had her mind filled with
the crudest of teaching, the vulgar super-
stitions which had found their greatest
strength, as always, in the sectarian ani-
mosities between them and the Jews.

THE TEMPORAL KINGDOM. I 79

Christ does not speak to her as he spoke
to the Pharisee. He puts his finger upon
the weak spot in her life, which had been
on a plane she herself knew to be poor
and mean and unholy. Christ gave her
no new ethical code, but contact with
purity, holiness, and peace brings out in
the woman's darkened mind the question
which Christ ever asks and which seems
scarcely answered, because in the per-
sonal contact with Christ she found the
answer. " He told me all things whatso-
ever I did." Here was somebody she
could submit to, here was a healer of her
ethical wounds, here was a purifier; the
woman was saved by contact.

There was Zaccheus, whose life seems
to have been fairly right as to conduct,
but it lacked something. He climbed
into a tree out of mere curiosity, the
world thouorht, to see Christ. But Christ
knew there was something deeper in his
heart, and he says, " I shall sup with

l8o POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE.

you," and in that personal contact, Zac-
cheus finds the thing he needs; a relation-
ship is established between himself and a
spiritual righteousness, and out of this
relationship springs a new conduct, a
changed belief. And out of this rela-
tionship and this contact, shall spring a
changed social organization, a changed
life, a new kingdom of God, when all
flesh shall see the salvation of God.

No one of us surely has been without
in his life some personal contact which
has helped and elevated and lifted him
up. We have felt the power of men with
whom we did not agree, men whose in-
tellectual life possibly we felt was far
below our own, men whom in many ways
we could not always admire, but they
had something that we had not, and per-
sonal contact with them helped us, gave
us nobler views of life, stirred us to new
thoughts, made us more ambitious for
the future both of ourselves and those

THE TEMPORAL KINGDOM. l8l

about US. We have felt the power of
personal contact, because we have come,,
face to face with n:ien whom we admireA;_
but how with Christ? We cannot come
in contact surely with Christ, for he has
passed away. If only we could walk
with him, if only we could see him, if
only our hands could touch him, that
personal contact would mean for us per-
chance what it meant to many of the
disciples ; but he has passed away, and
with him there has passed a glory from
this earth and forever! No, dear friends,
that contact is possible now and to-day
and forever. It is that personal contact,
that personal relationship, which is the
real spiritual life of the community to-
day. Under all the passing forms of
doctrine and creed the real power is this
personal indwelling life.

Where is Christ? "I am with you
always." Where? "Everywhere." There
is no reason why your life may not come

152 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE.

'^n__ contact with Christ if only you will,
seek him. He seeks you, if only you wilt
be sou2:ht. Christ is ever willino^ to make
you see his salvation that you may so
walk and never miss it again, never wan-
der as^ain in the mists and darkness which
have sometimes come over your life. I
do not know what you think your life-
needs, but it needs everything if yiiu
have not found Christ. It is sometimes
in moments of business depression, some-
times in moments of darkest sorrow that
Christ makes himself most felt, because
Christ came to the lost, he came to the
suffering, he came to the sorry of heart.
It was not to the contented, the self-
righteous, he came, but to those who
needed him. And it is in the moments
when our hearts are bowed down that we
most feel the need of Christ and our
hearts go out to him. When your life is
resdess and discontented, when you feel
that your life needs something, some

THE TEMPORAL KINGDOM. 1 83

purpose, some direction, some guidance,
it is in such a moment that Christ is
nearest to you, reachinir out his hand to
you and telling you that he will be your
teacher, your helper, your guide, he will
_be to you what you need him to be to
_^gu^ It may be that your opinions do
not need changing. You may have been
well brought up. Your opinions may be
so far different from your w^ay of life
that to change your opinions would not
change your life. Then it will not be
your opinions that Christ will change
first. It may not be your conduct. Your
conduct may be outwardly what the
world will call moral, what you yourself
regard as fairly satisfactory. You may
have been able to keep your life fairly
clean, fairly pure, but what does it need .i^
If your conduct needs life Christ will give
it. On one of the great estates of Eng-
land the passing traveller is shown an
artificial tree, wonderfully painted to imi-

184 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE.

tate the natural branches, but made of
unyielding iron. At a little distance the
eye may be deceived, but only for a little,
and the second impression is one of dis-
appointment and ugliness, for there is no
life there. Far more beautiful are the
little shrubs that grow about the grounds,
that will never reach the stateliness of
the imitation tree, but which have within
them the life that forms anew each
spring the glowing freshness of their
green. What is your morality ? Come
to Christ that he may breathe into it the
life that will grow into his beauty, slough-
ing off the old branches that there may
be new life, new glory, new beauty, that
there may be life born of God and quick-
ened by his Spirit.

Where shall you come to him that you
may see him.^^ You do not require to go
to seek him, he is everywhere. Some
have told me where they found Christ.
One in the bow of an ocean steamer,

THE TEMPORAL KINGDOM. 1 85

where he had crawled one stormy night,
having coaxed the sailor to let him stay
there. There, as he looked out into the
darkness of the storm, he found Christ.
It was not in the hush, it was not in the
storm, nor in the still small voice, it was
simply in the touch of that spirit with
spirit. He went back tempted to believe
it was his imagination playing upon him,
but felt as the day went by and night fol-
lowed day, that Christ had really been
with liim in the midst of the stormy
wave. He found Christ, and in con-
tact and touch his life was made new.
Amidst the business of Wall Street,
amidst the tramp of many feet, amidst
the plunging rush after gold and success,
a man walked down that street burdened
with the cares of the world and of life.
Just as he reached the door of the shop
the bell of Trinity struck one, and to his
soul it was the voice of Christ calling
him from shame into a new life, into a

1 86 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE.

new happiness and a new hope. It may
be in the hush of sacrifice, when we wor-
ship together at the feet of Christ, that
you have come in scarcely knowing if
you believe or if you believe not. Christ
was there, loving, pleading, lifting up,
ever saying, " My peace I give unto you.
Not as the world gives, give I unto you.
Let not your hearts be troubled," and in
that touch you have felt the salvation of
our God. And then, if you are true, you
will go out and let that salvation be
seen. Men may not possibly be inter-
ested in your opinions, they will look at
your conduct, they will look at your life.
Your conduct may not bear marked pro-
gress at first, but in the spirit in which
you hold your opinions, the spirit in
which you go about your daily duties, in
the new inspiration for righteousness,
holiness, and truth, you will show to the
world around the salvation of our God, —
that Christ is a reality, that he still speaks

THE TEMPORAL KINGDOM. 1 87

to men, that his touch is still felt ; and
men will know, even if they do not con-
fess it, that you have something of good,
that life is more than they have made it,
that God is still in his world, is still
teachins: men, and " all flesh shall see the
salvation of our God."

Let us avoid one mistake as we try to
make that salvation seen, — the mistake
of the exclusive spirit of infidelity. This
infidelity thinks Jehovah is going to take
out one here and one there from a great
number, and transfer them into his king-
dom. That is not election. Election is
not the arbitrary, sovereign act of Jeho-
vah, going here and there and taking out
one to transfer into his kingdom. Elec-
tion js_t_he choosing in God's sovereign
_grace of you and of me to be his instru-
ments in making his salvation seen.
And if we will make our calling and
election sure, then we are to make that
salvation show, — show in business, show

1 88 POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE.

in politics, show in our life, show in our
national life. We are chosen to respon-
sibilities, to contact with Christ, that he
may have contact with the world through
us, — Christ in us speaking to men, tell-
ing men that there is a judgment seat,
and a righteousness, that there is an in-
finite and tender forgiveness, and the
yearning of the All Father for the hearts
of his wandering children. " All we like
sheep have gone astray; we have turned
every one to his own way ; and the Lord
hath laid on him the iniquity of us all."

The kingdom of God is coming
through us if we are faithful ; a pro-
phetic, sacrificial, and kingly Church is
yet to rule this world's destiny. The
voice is now crying in the wilderness.
Christ is coming in power, the power of
divine indwellins: love. He is to make
all things new. Now, organized Christi-
anity actually obscures for some the
vision of the Christ. Doctrinal discus-

THE TEMPORAL KINGDOM. 1 89

sion, sectarian strife, unholy zeal, arc the
mountains to be moved, as well as athe-
ism, materialism, and agnosticism. And
the reign of Christ is to be a personal
reign, for no other kind of reign would
be of any use, just as no other kind of
contact than personal contact is salva-
tion. The Church is to be the Temple
of the living God; its message the voice
of the indwelling Christ.

" All flesh shall see the salvation of
God." Are you trusting in that salva-
tion ? Are you making it seen ? Do _
men feel it in the touch of your hand-
clasp, in the way in which you do your
business, in the way in which you draw
up your contracts, in the way in which
you argue your cases in court, in the way
in which you live in society, in the way in
which you do the little deeds of kindness
that come naturally to your heart ? Are
men seeing tlie salvation of our God, and
attributing: it to Christ.^ Are men sceincr

IQO FOWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE.

that salvation because they see your life
sweet, Hfted up, ennobled, purified, right-
eous ? Then we do not need to wait for
the coming of Christ ; he has come. He
has come in our hearts, he has come in
his Church. And when all Christian
men so live, the Church will be a real
incarnation, — the glory and beauty of
his countenance, and " all flesh shall see
the salvation of our God." God s salva-
tion and the needs of the world are one.
All flesh shall bow at the name of Jesus,
and we shall have no need any more to
say one to another, " Know Jehovah,"
for all shall know him from the least
even unto the greatest. We shall joy in
our salvation, for " all flesh shall see the
salvation of God," and shall feel forever
and forever the touch of God's infinite
love. May he grant it !

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