Spiritual culture and social service

BR 115 .W6

M34 1912

c.

1

Macfarland

, Charles

S.

Spiritual <

::ulture and

social

service

Spiritual Culture
and Social Service

Spiritual Culture
and Social Service

CHARLES S. MACFARLAND

Secretary, The Federal Council of the Churches of
Christ in America

New York Chicago Toronto

Fleming H. Revell Company

London and Edinburgh

Copyright, 1912, by
FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY

New York: 158 Fifth Avenue
Chicago: 125 North Wabash Ave.
Toronto: 25 Richmond Street, W.
London: 21 Paternoster Square
Edinburgh: 100 Princes Street

In Affectionate Remenibrance

To the people of Maverick Chapel y East
Boston, Massachusetts, the Home Missioyi
where I began my ministry ; the Congre-
gational ChiircJi ill the little village of
Bethany, Coinecticiit, where I zvas or-
dained ; the Mapleivood Congregational
ChurcJi of Maiden, Massachusetts, where
I had six years of joyous serince ; and
the First Congregational CJiurcJi of
So2ith Norzualk, Cofinecticut, ivhere, in
a democratic, industrial community , I
zvas traiiied for my present zvork

Contents

Foreword 9

THE PATTERN IN THE MOUNT
The Imperial Spirit of Jesus . . 23

SOCIAL REDEMPTION

II. True and False Culture .

III. Rejoicing in Truth .

IV. The Hopelessness of Godlessness

V. The Universal Law of Service .

VI. The Life More Than Meat

VII. The Witness of the Unseen

45
62

69
81

91

lOI

THE CULTURE OF SELF

VIII. Acquirement by Renunciation . .121

IX. Out of Great Tribulation . .131

X. Going Beyond Duty . . . .139

XI. The Unheard Angel .... 149

XII. The Measure OF Religious Affection 158

XIII. The Upward Look and the Down-

ward Reach 168

XIV. The Culture of the Home . .1/9

XV. The Unknown Visitation . . .196

XVI. The Everlasting Reality of Religion 2 1 4

Foreword

UPON making the interchange of the work
of the local pastorate for that of the
Federal Council of the Churches of
Christ in America and its Social Service Com-
mission, it seems appropriate that the writer
should attempt to order and set forth his thought
upon the relation between religious devotion and
humanitarian impulse ; spiritual conservation and
moral passion. This book consists of recent
utterances in which the author has sought, in
guiding the thought of his congregations, to set
before them the sympathetic unity and essential
identity of spiritual culture and social service.

Lest the first section of the book, entitled
" The Pattern in the Mount," should seem
partial and inadequate, the reader is reminded
that this is in no sense an attempt to give com-
mensurate treatment to the person of Christ, but
simply to portray the Master as the living historic
example for human life and service and of the
noble spirit in which that service should be
rendered.

In his earlier devotional, theological and ex-
egetical books, ''The Spirit Christlike," "The
Infinite Affection " and " Jesus and the Prophets,"

9

lo Spiritual Culture and Social Service

the author has attempted to interpret Jesus of
Nazareth the Son of Man as Jesus the Christ the
Son of God, especially in the chapters of ** The
Spirit Christlike" entided *' God With Us,"
'* God Within Us," ** The Universal Incarnation,"
and in *' The Infinite Affection," the sections on
** The Person of Christ " and " The Sovereignty
of Christ." These former utterances are the
essential background and suggest the enduring
impulse of his social creed and faith.

** The reverent man who seeks, as men will
seek, and ought to seek, an adequate interpreta-
tion of Jesus to the intellect — be at the same time
his heart and motive pure — will find himself
lifted beyond the humanity in which he stands,
will find himself upon the height of Tabor, gazing
at a countenance transfigured before him, at a
face which shines as the sun, at garments white
as the light ; while the cloud of divine glory over-
shadows him, and in his ears resounds the voice,
' This is My beloved Son : Hear ye Him.' The
solitary, perfect, moral human light of these two
thousand years is clouded with ambiguous shad-
ows, the nature of the Infinite unknown, the faith
of men and all their moral life uncertain, the goal
of their achievement is unsure, and the whole
present scheme of human progress fails, unless,
with an authority that is divine, with an ideal
that is the form of God, Jesus Christ is God
with us.

Foreword 1 1

" To apprehend the moral magnitude and con-
template the spiritual force of Jesus is the solita-
rily supreme desire of the mind of man, and to
appropriate His life the loftiest endeavour of a
human soul. In Him the Infinite is reachable to
human contemplation. He is God with us.
Through Him attainable to human aspiration,
He is God within us. The Son of God, the wit-
ness and the earnest of the heavenly childhood
of the race, He is the sovereign possession of
mankind.

** The person, then, of Jesus calls for the hom-
age of the race. He is an eternal contrast to the
human life to which He came and comes. The
difference between His sinlessness and human
sin is an eternal moral contrast. Against the
sombre background of our darkened human
lives the perfection of His spirit is as the sun
at night. His exhaustless person calls for a
supereminent, unique distinction. His eternal
contrast between sinlessness and sin is the eter-
nal contrast between God and man, and when
men bow the knee to Jesus Christ they worship
and adore the God whom He ineffably reveals.

" The spiritual consciousness of Christ is the
eternally enduring object of the minds and hearts
of men. Thus, in Him was introduced into the
world, not merely a new decalogue, not only a
restored prophetism, but an absolutely new order
of life. The better moral, spiritual order of the

12 Spiritual Culture and Social Service

world, so far as it is better, is simply the light
of Calvary on human life. Any better life, any
finer vision, to be realized in any sphere or time
within the moral order, will come, and can come,
only by the yielding of the hearts of men, and
of the constitutions of human institutions, to the
sovereignty of Christ.

" * But I say unto you.* His word has never
been transcended. The true apprehension of
Jesus is not in the utterances of the Sermon on
the Mount, but in the mysterious scene upon the
mountain of transfiguration. 'This is My Son
. . . hear ye Him.' It is the eternal voice
from heaven to the race to-day. The vision and
voice must both be seen and heard. This is the
order of Christian evidence ; he who spiritually
apprehends the person will be mysteriously, sol-
emnly commanded by the utterance. The order
of experience will be both the mount of vision
and the Sermon on the Mount. To those who
see the vision, the voice will be the sovereign
compulsion of human thought and life. This is
the world's deepest need to-day and the sole
solution of its profoundest problems. To serious,
thoughtful men its problems are serious and
sometimes dreadful. Without the help of God
an earnest-minded man would not be able to
bear the weight of his own heavy heart. With-
out the light of Christ the shadows of human life
would be impenetrable.

Foreword 13

"Jesus' most significant method we have yet
to see. While His words relate to bodies of
men who have come together under the natural
associations of human interests, His words are
also spoken directly to the individual. He real-
izes that both the social and the industrial order
are made up of men and women. So He went
about to men and women. He said most of His
profoundest words to but twelve men. Yet wit-
ness the realization of His prophecy, fulfilling
itself for now twenty centuries, that they should
be the salt and leaven of the earth. The supreme
question of human life is that of the personal re-
lation of the individual to Christ. Who, in these
two thousand years, have done the most to bring
men to His feet? The framers of the creeds?
They have done much, and yet * Their little
systems ' had * their day ; they ' had * their day
and ceased to be.' The theorists of social re-
form ? They have done much, but it has been
fragmentary and transient. In the industrial
order, the organizations of labour? No doubt
they have accomplished a great deal for the
uplifting of men. But more, infinitely more, has
come from the perennial power of simple per-
sonalities who have been constantly shedding
Christ's spirit about them. Jesus saw these same
dreadful problems. They were worse in His day.
He met them by sending out twelve disciples.
He is meeting them to-day in the same way.

14 Spiritual Culture and Social Service

The sole hope of the world is to make men dis-
ciples of Jesus. He is waiting, as His parents
waited in the inn, to find room in the social and
industrial realms of life. He finds room as men
get Him in their hearts.

**The solution of all human problems is the
answer of religion. There is no religion known
to man higher than our Christian faith. The
solemn questions of society, the serious condi-
tions of industry, with its bitterness and hate,
simply await the second coming of the Son of
man through His disciples. The world to-day
is full of Bethesda pools and of men waiting for
a Christ in the form of a disciple to help them
in. The whole creation groaneth and travaileth
in pain together until men shall see the vision of
Mount Hermon and hear the voice of the Ser-
mon on the Mount.

*' ' O Saul ! it shall be
A Face like My face that receives thee ; a man like to Me
Thou shalt love and be loved by forever.

A Hand like this hand
Shall throv/ open the gates of new life to thee,

See the Christ stand ! '

" There is no other name, no other name,
given under heaven or among men, whereby
the v/orld can be saved. And the sovereignty
of Jesus Christ is the simple reign of human
love. ' But I say unto you ; ' * While He was
yet speaking . . . behold, a voice out of the

Foreword 15

cloud' said, 'This is My beloved Son . .
hear ye Him.'

*' The Gospel is outgrown, the Christian pulpit
is superfluous, the Church of Christ goes out of
existence, when the truths of the Gospel, the
vocabulary of the pulpit, and the constitution of
the Church do not contain the words God, sui,
judgment and redemption. We need, in this
heedless generation, to be first of all Isaiahs,
Jeremiahs, Malachis, Amoses, Hoseas, to pre-
pare the way for Jesus Christ. The voice of the
prophet is stilled in the land. We need to
become John the Baptists forerunning the Re-
deemer, with the stern raiment of camel's hair,
with strong leathern girdles about our loins,
preaching in a wilderness of religious indiffer-
ence, and saying, ' Repent ye, for the kingdom
of heaven is at hand,' that men may come and
be baptized of us, confessing their sins. We
must be more than John the Baptists. But we
cannot be more than John the Baptists until we
have been John the Baptists. Then, on the
morrow, looking upon the transcendent form of
the Son of God, revealing so ineffably the
Father's character and will and love, we shall,
with the joy of the Gospel making our voices to
tremble in the transformation of the message,
point suppliant and confessing sinners to the
Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the
world."

l6 Spiritual Culture and Social Service

The problems of the social order are pressing
and momentous. We should be solemnly and
joyously conscious that we hold the key to the
situation in the Gospel of our Master. There
can be no social redemption without divine re-
generation. Behind and permeating our social
science we need a great theology and a spacious
Christology, as the sovereign requisites of our
social faith. We must not forget that we are
charged with spiritual destinies and that the
commission of the Church is to save men ; that
we must never deal simply with material con-
ditions and neglect character, or relieve miser}'
while we ignore sin. The kingdom of heaven is
more than an economic state of equilibrium. To
resolve man's moral and spiritual life into an
economic program would be calamitous and sad.
It would leave men in the very treadmill and
grind of the human life from which they seek
escape. This, however, is not to say that spir-
itual and material things are unrelated. Per-
haps the question is, shall we make our economic
order the expression of our moral and spiritual
principles and shall we make our moral and
spiritual Hfe the ideal and the end of that eco-
nomic order ?

We can never have Jesus' Brotherhood of Man
until we gain the sense of His Fatherhood of God.
We can have no kingdom of heaven on earth
undl our economic programs are fashioned

Foreword 1 7

in the light of spiritual ideals and with spiritual
ends in view. Above us shines the Star of
Bethlehem, the light of all our human hopes,
and if we follow it, we find it standing over
the cradle of the infant Christ. Thus, the search
for all our human ideals ends in Jesus. The
world will come together in the consummation
of sympathy, tenderness, brotherhood, when all
men are brought to sit together at the feet of
Christ.

The Christian Church has the threefold voca-
tion of conscience, interpreter and guide of all
social movements. She should determine what
their motive and conscience should be, inspire
them with that motive and impose that con-
science upon them. She should interpret their
inner and ultimate meaning. Then, with a
powerful hand and mind and heart, guide them
towards their spiritual ends. The task of the
Church is to transform a chaotic democracy into
an ordered kingdom of heaven.

As we look out upon the social order, upon the
great ocean of democracy, with its waves and
billows, but also with its splendid, wide horizon,
the Church may hear the call of the Master to
those who, in these latter days, have toiled and
taken nothing, " Launch out into the deep and
let down your nets." In the burning, fiery
furnace, heated seven times hot, if we witness
with clear vision, we see the fourth form, and it

l8 Spiritual Culture and Social Service

is like unto that of the Son of Man. Jesus of
Nazareth is passing by.

We need some new commentators. A multi-
tude of economic terms and principles await their
translation into moral and spiritual speech. Two
things the Church must have. One is spiritual
authority ; the other is human sympathy. If she
gain or assume a spiritual authority without hu-
man sympathy, she becomes what the Master
would have called " a whited sepulchre filled
with dead men's bones." If, on the other hand,
her human sympathy be ever so deep, warm and
passionate, and she have no spiritual authority,
she can but lift a limp signal of distress, with a
weak and pallid hand.

Her disciples, then, must go to the Mountain
of Transfiguration with Jesus. The next hour of
the day they must go down with Him upon the
plain of human life to heal men of their diseases.
But they cannot do His work upon the plain, un-
less they have been upon the mountain top with
the Master, so that they may come down radiant
with the light that shines from His face.

*' The world sits at the feet of Christ,
Unknowing, blind and unconsoled.
It yet shall touch His garment's fold
And feel the heavenly alchemist
Transform its very dust to gold."

The author should acknowledge an indebted-
ness, covering the entire period of his ministry,

Foreword 19

to James Martineau, Phillips Brooks and other
prophets who have been among his greatest
teachers and inspirers from whom, in the utter-
ances of this book, he has drawn with freedom.

Charles S. Macfarland.

New York.

The Pattern in the Mount

THE IMPERIAL SPIRIT OF JESUS

THE creeds and confessions have largely
presented to us the eternal Christ in
speculative terms. They have been in-
terested in His relation to the universal order,
and deal with such philosophic questions as the
nature of His birth, His preexistence and the man-
ner of His resurrection. We have in them too
little of the human grandeur of the man, Jesus of
Nazareth. Indeed these in some measure have
been permitted to obscure the splendid manhood
of the Master. There has been some loss in this.
We have often failed to reach men by these
philosophic terms, psychological interests and
mystical rhapsodies. In our emphasis upon
these things we have failed to picture Jesus ade-
quately in terms of moral power.

While we should not depreciate this wealth
of thought, there will be great gain if we can
bring the moral power of Jesus to win the moral
mastery of men and to arouse great moral en-
thusiasm. I know it would have been a great
help to me, in my boyhood and young man-
hood, had I been led to appreciate the manhood
of Jesus. The creeds and the confessions had a

23

24 Spiritual Culture and Social Service

sense of vagueness about them, which resulted
in the obscuration of the Master as a great vital
source of human inspiration. It might have been
better if we had reversed the order and had
thought of Jesus, first, in human terms and then,
in the order of thought, in terms of His divine
being. Indeed the best approach to the divine
is through the human.

The moral beauty of Jesus' character centres
in the cross, which shone before Him and which
beckoned Him on from the very beginning of His
splendid life. Here, again, the m.eaning of the
cross has been greatly limited by human philo-
sophic speculation. It has been obscured as a
living inspiration to living men, with their duties
and temptations, with their noble aspirations to
be inspired and their moral weaknesses to be
shamed. The cross does not mean much to
men until it becomes the symbol of a great,
unutterably noble life. Looked at in this light
every man who wants to be a strong and noble
man might well have a crucifix ever before his eyes.

The moral greatness of Jesus is simply be-
yond compare. The Gospels glow with moral
courage from beginning to end. Seen in this
light men will come to love Jesus, as they be-
hold Him mingling in His uncompromisingly
democratic spirit with publicans and sinners,
while the Pharisees shower their scorn upon
Him. Their manhood will be stronger as they

The Imperial Spirit of Jesus 25

behold Him before Pilate and Herod in His
indifferent calmness. It is inspiring to look at
Jesus, combining, as He does, His great intel-
lectual power with an attractive modesty, His
tenderness with courage, His meekness with
boldness, His self-sacrifice with a great manly-
spirit, His enthusiasm with patience, His com-
passion with moral indignation. His humility
with self-respect ; *' the elements so mixed in
H[im that nature might stand up and say to
all the world : This was a man." The com-
pelling impression of these Gospels is that of a
sovereign personality. Before His august pres-
ence they fell back in the garden and trembled
at Calvary.

This moral power of Jesus is one great reve-
lation of the cross. It was a voluntary cross.
** And they were in the way going up to Jeru-
salem; and Jesus went before them: and they
were amazed ; and as they followed, they were
afraid. And He took again the twelve, and
began to tell them what things should happen
unto Him, saying : Behold, we go up to Jeru-
salem ; and the Son of Man shall be delivered
unto the chief priests, and unto the scribes ; and
they shall condemn Him to death, and shall de-
liver Him to the Gentiles : And they shall mock
Him, and shall scourge Him, and shall spit upon
Him, and shall kill Him ; and the third day He
shall rise again."

26 Spiritual Culture and Social Service

Amid all the variations and vicissitudes of
Jesus' life, with all its lights and shadows, He
walked undeviatingly in one straight path from
the Jordan to Calvary. Expediency found with
Him no place with her beseeching subtleties.
The consideration of consequence exercised no
guiding or repressive hand.

We have a beautiful prophetic gleam in His
young boyhood, of which, I doubt not, there
were many. '* Wist ye not that I must be about
My Father's business?" The baptism in the
Jordan was His maturer consecration. In the
wilderness we see His ultimate decision. At
Caesarea Philippi came the open avowal. At
the transfiguration came the frank prophecy of
His inevitable human fate. Now He is on His
way to Jerusalem and He knows where He is
going. It is evident that He saw it and felt it
all along. *' For this cause was I born." " To
this end came I into the world." And again
upon another occasion, " My time is not yet
come."

One meaning of the cross, perhaps the mean-
ing of the cross, is that at Calvary we witness
the fulfillment of the most heroic life the world
has ever seen. This moral Christ is King of
kings and Lord of lords. He has been for two
thousand years standing in the midst of the
world, the enrichment of its thought, the sov-
ereign embodiment of its ideals. The moral

The Imperial Spirit of Jesus 27

world has been made by Him, and His supreme
example is the alluring and uneffaceable picture
upon the walls of human memory. The surest
approach to the Divine Christ, the Son of God,
is by the following of Jesus of Nazareth, the Son
of Man.

So while it is true that the thought of Christ
heli^s me as I think of Him in His relation to
eternal Being, as the revelation of the heart of
God, it is also true that He helps me as He
reveals my prophetic to my untrue self, as He
shames me in His effulgent noble light and in-
spires me by His nobility. There are other
values to Jesus, but of supreme value is the
imitableness and the reproducibleness of His
character. I wish that with the brush of a great
artist I could paint a new picture of Him. I
would paint Him as a young man with His face
turned towards Jerusalem. I would make a
series of pictures. I would paint Him first as
a frank, open-faced boy in the temple ; and out
in a distant background I would put the cross
in its shadowy outlines. Then I would paint
Him in the wilderness, under the stress of the
temptation to kneel down and worship evil for
the sake of the kingdoms of the world. I
would picture the face of the young man looking
away again towards that distant cross, now a
little clearer. I would picture Him on the dusty
Galilean road with the disciples, some of them

28 Spiritual Culture and Social Service

turning their backs upon Him, but with His
face resolutely fixed towards the heights of
Calvary. I would go on and paint that face
again as He stands amid the scornful Pharisees,
the face averted from them, because He still
keeps it turned towards Jerusalem ; before Pilate
as he asks, and answers the question as he asks
it, "Art thou a King?" I should like to show
Him to men in the quiet hour upon the moun-
tainside, in Gethsemane, at that last supper,
with His eyes still looking out beyond upon that
same cross, now clearly seen between the two
other crosses.

And under each of these pictures I w^ould in-
scribe the words of Luke, "His face was as
though He would go up to Jerusalem." I
should like to have that series of pictures upon
the walls of every college room and upon the
mind of every young man in this nation.

The theological Christ has had its power, the
mystical Saviour has had His influence, but it is
a great loss if this magnificent picture of the
moral Christ is lost to view. If men could see
it, it would appeal to them. If men once could
witness it they would admire it. They w^ould
all say with the great soldier of old, " Nazarene,
Thou hast conquered." If they could see that
cross in this splendid light they would also read
on it the inscription of Constantine'p vision,
"By this sign, conquer." I remember how at

The Imperial Spirit of Jesus 29

one time a very liberal-minded hearer came to
me with a little theological objection, because I
ended my prayers, " For the sake of Christ.'' I
told him that I used that expression, not so much
as an appeal to the Father as an appeal to my-
self. With such a picture as I have tried to
suggest might we not all be moved to do great
things ** for the sake of Christ " ?

Another picture in the Gospels, wondrously
attractive, is that of the Master's last hours with
the disciples, as He gives His message of fare-
well.

*' Peace I leave with you ; My peace I give
unto you ; not as the world giveth, give I unto
you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let
it be afraid."

" In the world ye shall have tribulation : but
be of good cheer, I have overcome the world."

** Think not that I am come to send peace on
earth : I came not to send peace but a sword."
Jesus is reassuring His disciples. He says to
them : Be courageous, be bold, overcome the
world. By the world He means the temporal
life. Be masters, He says, over that life, let
your spirits overcome it.

What a sublime picture ! There He is, await-
ing the end. He is going down in apparent
defeat to human eyes. His life seems naught.
The cross awaits Him, a cross between the crosses
of two thieves. Barabbas is to be chosen in-

30 Spiritual Culture and Social Service

stead of Himself. He no longer has any fol-
lowers, except those faithful few, and even they
are trembling, fearful and ready to flee. Yet He
utters these strangely contradictory words, ** I
am the Master of the world."

We have here another revelation of the char-
acter of Jesus, of His triumphant, majestic per-
son, in which He stands out as the inspiration, as
the example for human life and of a noble atti-
tude towards human life.

His glorious life is still centering in the cross
towards which it has been leading. From the
beginning He has seen the end. Behind Him is
a long trail of moral strength. From Him goes
the impression of a sovereign personality. He is
again the supreme example of noble living, for
the manhood of our day, with its alternating
bravery and cowardice, with its noble resolve and
its weak compliance. Jesus becomes first the
shamer and then the inspirer of human living.

Having in some measure thus apprehended the
mind of the Master, and gathered something of
the moral grandeur of His life, w^e may, in this
scene, seek to discover the hidden secret of His
outward splendour. Let us try to look into His
soul and discover the meaning of this majestic,
brave, strong, impellingly attractive manhood.
Look again at the situation under which His
words were uttered, remember that He is facing
a cross, listen to His words : *' Peace I leave unto

The Imperial Spirit of Jesus 31

you," " Be full of confidence," " I have conquered
the world."

Another strange thing is the contradictoriness
of the Master. For upon another occasion did
He not say, ''Think not that I am come to send
peace on the earth ; I came not to send peace, but
a sword " ? Thus we have here two of the '' hard
sayings " of Jesus, as they are called in the New
Testament. Sometimes when He uttered such
sayings, men who had hitherto followed Him
turned their backs upon Him and " walked no
more with Him." These sayings are very often
in the form of an apparent contradiction. He
tells men, for example, that they save their life by
losing it ; that they live by dying ; that they are
served by serving ; that they receive by giving.

How are we to explain the paradox of these
two contradictory utterances? Shall we avail
ourselves of the liberty of criticism and say that
one appears in the synoptic Gospels and is his-
torical, while the other appears in the Fourth
Gospel and is unhistorical ? Shall we decide that
one of them is an interpolation ? This is alto-
gether too easy and ready a method. Let us
wait and see if we may not bring them into
harmony.

First of all look at the second utterance and see
how true it is. He sent those disciples forth into
the world. Did they not find the sword ? Their
story is a continuous one of persecution, impris-

32 Spiritual Culture and Social Service

onment, death. If therq was one thing they did
not find it was peace. Peter and John began at
Jerusalem. They were told they must not speak
or teach in the name of Jesus. They went out,
prayed for courage and went to preaching again.
For it they were beaten with stripes. They re-
ceived their hundredfold reward "with persecu-
tions."

One of the tragic pictures of the New Testa-
ment is that of another of their companions,
Stephen, stoned to death by an infuriated mob.
James, the brother of John, met death by Her jd's
sword. Peter finds himself within prison w^alls.
One of their persecutors was converted, Saul of
Tarsus. He goes to Lystra and Derbe, where he
is stoned and drawn out of the city, supposedly
dead. At Athens he is rudely mocked by the
wise men of that wise city. Conspiracies in-
numerable are formed against him. He finally
falls before them and dies at Rome. Thus he
tells in summary the story of his life ; in labours
many, in stripes above measure, in prisons fre-
quent, in deaths oft. Five public beatings with
forty stripes save one each time. Thrice beaten
with rods, once stoned, thrice suffered shipwreck,
a night and a day in the deep, in perils by the
heathen, in perils in the city, in perils in the wil-
derness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false
brethren, in weariness and painfulness, in watch-
ings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often.

The Imperial Spirit of Jesus 33

in cold and nakedness, and withal the care and
burden, not of one, but of many, unmanageable
churches. What mockery are Jesus' words to
him ! '' Peace I leave with you." How fortunate
if the Fourth Gospel were written very late and
is unreliable ! Does it not make our Lord guilty
of a false prophecy ?

The story goes on through succeeding ages.
The successors of these disciples Hve and die in
Roman catacombs and caves. They are hunted,
hungered, despised, persecuted, suffering unto
death. How it must have mocked them : " Peace
I leave with you." Jesus' bequest was broken,
or at least this codicil revoked.

But even all this is less perplexing than the ut-
terance coming from the lips of the man who
spoke it. Was it a mistaken prophecy of Jesus ?
Because His own life was so calm and peaceful
did He suppose that His disciples' would be also ?
Look for a moment at the life of the man from
whose lips these words come. Follow Him in
His weariness, in His rejection, in His disputes
with carping critics, with His misunderstanding
and quarrelling disciples. Not a place to lay His
head. Go with Him on the mountainside at
night. Witness Him in the garden where He
sweat as it were great drops of blood. Behold
Him on Calvary between thieves. Watch Him
crowned with thorns, buffeted, spat upon, mocked
in disdain. What a contrast and contradiction

34 Spiritual Culture and Social Service

are His words : *' Peace I leave with you ; My
peace I give unto you."

But if we go back and look at those disciples
again we behold another aspect of their life.
Peter is there, it is true, in prison. But we read
about the presence of an angel of the Lord and
of a light in the midst of the darkness. Think
of some of those little gatherings in the upper
rooms with the breaking of bread and prayers.
Look at Paul with his visions all full of beauty.
Read his epistles, vibrant with joy and hope and
faith. On the sinking ship he is the one buoyant
spirit of them all. He goes into the midnight
prison again where he sits thrust into the inner
ward with his feet fast in the stocks, and you
hear him, with Silas, singing hymns.

Go back again and look at the life of Jesus.
Look beyond the outward vicissitudes. Seek to
penetrate to the inner consciousness of the suf-
fering man. There is no thought of pessimism
in His Gospel. He is ever lighted up by faith
and hope and joy. Behold Him before Pilate !
His countenance is untroubled. Pilate is the dis-
turbed and restless one ; the troublesome dreams
were those of the chamber of his household.

Our paradox is partly solved. Both proph-
ecies are true. He did send a sword on earth. He
did at the same time leave His bequest of peace.

But our deeper question is not answered. Is
this true of human life in general ? Whence has

The Imperial Spirit of Jesus 35

come the finest hterature, the Hterature of peace,
joy, Hght, hope, inspiration, triumph? Has it
come from men whose Uves were free from suf-
fering, pain and disappointment? Sometimes,
perhaps, but not very often. It has not come
from those who Uved in kings' palaces and wore
soft raiment. Most of it has come out of the
depths of dungeons, from blind poets, from
disease-racked bodies.

It is the voice of Boethius from his prison cell,
of Defoe in the pillory, of Silvio Pellico under
the fiery leads of Venice or in the bitter cold of
his Austrian dungeon. It has come from John
Bunyan in Bedford jail. Hence has the litera-
ture of hope issued forth ; our hymns of joy ; our
stories of faith.

Jesus* prophecy is true. The reason it did not
seem to be true was because we did not read
it aright. Read it again : " Peace I leave with
you." "yl/j/ peace I give unto you." "il^ peace."
''Not as the world'' It means that this outward
life is not our reallest life. It means that our
outward and inward life are in large measure
independent of each other. It means that true
peace does not come from external situations
but from something that is within us ; our in-
ward sense of our rightness with God, our con-
sciousness of true purpose and true heart. It
means the estimate of things by a view from
above. It means that heaven is not a place to

36 Spiritual Culture and Social Service

which we go, but a condition to attain. It means
that a man, within himself, may be like one
enfolded in the comfort of his home while the
storm rages outside. The ultimate victory of
human life is this triumph of the inward spirit
over the outward life.

We may make our appeal to the common life
we know. Those among us who are the calmest,
the strongest, the most peaceful, are not those
whose lives have been filled with frittering joys,
as we shall witness in another chapter of this
book. They are those who have known suffer-
ing, pain and disappointment.

One of the most beautiful and pathetic of all
the biographies I have ever read is the generally
unknown one of Anne Steele. Her life was that
of a constant invalid, with perpetual suffering
and abiding sorrow. The issue of that experi-
ence was in such a hymn as this :

** Father, whate'er of earthly bliss
Thy sovereign hand denies;
Accepted at Thy throne of grace,
Let this petition rise ;

** Give me a calm, a thankful heart,
From every murmur free ;
The blessing of Thy grace impart,
And let me live to Thee.

*'Let the sweet hope that Thou art mine.
My path of life attend ;
Thy presence through my journey shine,
And crown my journey's end."

The Imperial Spirit of Jesus 37

** Peace I leave with you ; Afy peace I give
unto you. Not as the world giveth give I unto
youT

'* Think not that I am come to send peace on
earth : I come not to send peace, but a sword."

So Jesus means here that every man has two
lives ; the outward and the inward Hfe. One of
them controls the other. Either man's spirit con-
quers his circumstances, or his circumstances
subdue a yielding- spirit. That spirit either hum-
bles and degrades itself and the man is a slave,
or that spirit is unconquerable and the man is a
monarch.

Just look back again a little and watch Jesus
in those closing days. He becomes stronger and
stronger as He approaches nearer the cross.
Thus the secret of the moral grandeur of His
life is the imperial power of His unconquerable
spirit.

I am trying, as I have said, to give to men a
vital meaning for the cross. Look at the Master
fresh from Gethsemane, facing that cross, with not
one brave soul to stand by Him to the end. Hear
again that calm, majestic utterance, *' I have
conquered the world." Imagine yourself there
with the disciples, facing their life, and hear Him
as He says to you, ** You may suffer and yet
dwell upon sublime heights." "The storm of
ruin may come and yet there need never be
any truce of the spirit." It was just what He had

38 Spiritual Culture and Social Service

been saying all along to them, ** I will give you
rest" He looked out on the city of His day ;
He saw men as we see them to-day, racing each
other for wealth, looking upon each other with
mutual suspicion. He was saying to them. " Do
not be like the frail craft, like the little steam
yacht ; be like the great ocean steamer with her
iron hull, as she moves on her way with her pon-
derous throbs ; do not let yourself be tossed about
upon the ocean, but ride through her billows."

He was bidding men, as He bids men to-day,
to seek and possess the great ultimate realities of
life. He was saying, " Forget to watch your little
engines and look out upon the ocean and up into
the sky,"

"And hear at times the sentinel
Who moves about from place to place ;
And whispers to the worlds of space,
In the deep niglit, that all is well.

"And all is well, though faith and form
Be sundered in the night of fear;
Well roars the storm to those that hear
A deeper voice across the storm."

Do not guard your business, your paltry
pleasures and little interests while you forget to
think about the deep things of life. Try to catch
His spirit as did the great Apostle Paul, who
learned how to abound and also how to be
abased, to rejoice in adversity and to let all the

The Imperial Spirit of Jesus 39

experiences of life give their lessons and their
strength. Do not long for some soft, pine-laden,
balmy southern air, but be made stronger by the
bleak winds of the rock-bound New England
coast. Get hold of something that is beyond the
reach of men, some joy which no man taketh
from you. Be like the rock unmoved by the
surging of the waters. When stricken down,
rise again mightier than before. Such is the
voice of these great Gospels. You remember
that picture of the Master in the midst of the
troubled sea, and that when He spake, "There
was a great calm." So the peace of Jesus was
not the peace of surrender, but the peace of vic-
tory.

We see in the world differing kinds of men.
Some take things easily, and they say, " All is
right, do not disturb things, let them alone."
The second see the wrong of the world, are
moved with indignation and waste their strength
storming over the ills of life. The third see all
of these wrongs, but face them with the inward
assurance of victory as they deal their mighty
strokes with calm, steady, quiet hand.

There are then these different methods of fa-
cing and viewing life. The method of placid
acquiescence is that of a false peace. The method
of a profound, divine trust is that of true peace.
Thus this peace of Jesus does not come by having
our trials taken away, but by the pouring in upon

40 Spiritual Culture and Social Service

us of a great strength. Sometimes we need to
have the helps of this earth taken away from
us, in order that we may be led to God. Jesus
felt these earthly supports withdrawn from Him.
His followers were failing Him. He was alone,
and so while the failing disciples were asleep, He
was with His Father in the garden of Gethsem-
ane, gaining His strength.

" My peace I give unto you." " Not as the
world giveth." Not the peace of ease, but of
struggle ; not of self-content, but of self-sacrifice ;
not of yielding to evil, but of conflict with it ; not
of accommodation to the world, but by the sub-
jugation of it. And so He adds, " I have over-
come the world." It is a strange parodox, this
peace of conflict ; it is the peace of an imperial
spirit, which rises by its own victory over human
circumstances.

The peace of Jesus Christ does not come only
through some mystical contemplation, or through
some vague experience. It comes more by our
sharing of the spirit of the Master, by the earnest
following of duty, the noble facing of responsi-
bility, the bold confronting of difficulties, the
patient bearing of calumny, the quiet endurance
of persecution, the brave carrying of sorrow and
the prayerful sanctifying of our joys. Gethsem-
ane and Calvary are the price of this spirit.
Rest can only follow labour. The overcoming of
outward things is the condition of inward peace.

The Imperial Spirit of Jesus 41

Religion is not simply something for women,
or for men when they are sick or dying. In
those closing days of Jesus they left this
noble man to be admired and worshipped
by a few faithful women. So men to-day
have done ; but now I ask ; do it humbly,
do it modestly, do it knowing that you are not
worthy to unloose the latchet of His shoes, but
be His disciples, admire His character, do
things *' for His sake," give Him a great, manly
affection.

You have been hearing it for years, *• Come to
Christ, give your hearts to Christ.'* Look again
at this scene. Hear His ** My peace I leave
with you." " Be brave men, overcome the world
as I have overcome it." Look at His cross, and
do not creep away and leave Him to Mary and
the other women.

'* And I saw heaven opened — and He was
called Faithful and True, His eyes were as a
flame of fire, and on His head were many crowns.
And He hath on His vesture and on His thigh
a name written, — King of kings and Lord of
lords."

**And I saw thrones and I saw them which
were brought to suffering for the witness of Jesus
and which had not worshipped the beast, neither
his image, nor received his mark on their fore-
heads, nor in their hands, and they lived and
reigned with Christ."

42 Spiritual Culture and Social Service

"Thou seemest human and divine;
The highest, holiest manhood Thou.
Our wills are ours, we know not how ;
Our wills are ours, to make them Thine."

You remember how Peter, in the sad moment
of his cowardly fear, looked and caught sight of
the face of Christ ; then went out and wept bit-
terly. So we should do, again and again ; for
again and again we play Peter's part. Like the
other disciple, Mark, we flee away, leaving our
cloak in the hands of His enemies. He sees us,
like the eleven at the crucial moment, as we fail
Him. Again and again, when we do Him honour,
we do it, as did Joseph of Arimathea, in secret.

" One look of that pale suffering face
Will make us feel the deep disgrace
Of weakness."

Social Redemption

II

TRUE AND FALSE CULTURE

"A I AHE Spirit of the Lord God is upon
I me ; because the Lord hath anointed
-B- me to preach good tidings unto the
meek ; He hath sent me to bind up the broken-
hearted, to proclaim Hberty to the captives, and
the opening of the prison to them that are
bound."

We are accustomed to associate and blend
this lofty prophetic utterance with the thought
of its fulfillment in the Saviour of mankind. Let
us, however, consider it in the light of its orig-
inal meaning and application. It refers to ** the
Servant of Jehovah." This term, as used in the
book of Isaiah, refers to a little group in Israel,
its "saving remnant." It means those men of
the nation who, in the midst of all its vicissitudes,
remained true to its highest mission. They were
the thoughtful few of the nation who steadfastly
kept their hearts and minds upon abiding truths,
and who, in the midst of the shadows, kept their
eyes fixed upon the guiding star of Israel's ideals.
They represented the culture of Israel.

In other chapters of Isaiah they are so referred
to, as in the fiftieth chapter, where the Servant

45

46 Spiritual Culture and Social Service

ot Jehovah represents himself as uttering his
prophetic message, **With the tongue of the
learned."

In its prophetic blending of the human and
the divine, the Bible throughout is mediatorial
in its estimate of humanity. It is ever giving to
us a wonderful succession of pictures of God, of
the human race, and of the great leaders of the
race standing between God and mankind, re-
vealing the Infinite to the finite, the divine to
the human, and ever bringing them closer to-
gether. The philosophy of Scripture solves the
question of individual and social life. It is ever
showing us that the individual fulfills his person-
ality as he gives himself to the social order of
humanity.

Two books recently appeared simultaneously.
The one is called "Beyond Good and Evil," giv-
ing us the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche.
The other is entitled " The Christian Ministry
and the Social Order."

These two books illustrate a contrast. The
philosophy of Nietzsche is that of an excessive
individualism. It is a bald confession of the
ruthless law of the survival of the fittest. He
tells us that it is all nonsense to talk of giving
ourselves for the sake of others. He insists that
we must yield to the inevitable law of selection.
While, doubtless, his philosophy is misunder-
stood and is not ?o bad as the reviewers have

True and False Culture 47

sometimes made it appear, nevertheless, in its
emphasis, it ultimately means, " Every man for
himself." The world is only made better by the
process of selection.

The other book gives a different emphasis. It
does not deny the necessity for self-culture, but
it goes on to insist on the use of self-culture by
the means of self-giving. It is a plea to young
men who are going out into the ministry, not to
withdraw themselves from the life of the world,
but to give themselves, heart and soul, to the
realization of democracy, to the uplifting of the
social order into a great brotherhood of man-
kind in which the strong will remember the
weak. Broadly speaking, the one book is really
a plea for the culture of the few at the expense
of the many ; the other is an exhortation for the
use of the culture of the few for the sake of the
many.

Our modern culture is under the fire of criti-
cism. There is wide-spread doubt as to its value.
When the people get together to choose those
who shall guide their destinies, they are more
and more electing from their own and are less
inclined to choose the cultured men of their city
for its elective offices. Our great democratic
leaders are not, in the main, men of culture. It
must be admitted that this distrust is not without
its grounds. The natural inclination of men
would be to select, as their leaders, those who

48 Spiritual Culture and Social Service

are above them in wisdom and consecration.
They do not intentionally mean to elect false
leaders. The trouble is, in part, that men of
culture have been tried by them and found want-
ing. They have not been sufficiently in touch,
in sympathy, with the feelings, the wants, the
needs, the hearts, the minds of those w^hose
destinies have been placed in their hands.

There is a true and a false culture. The great
prophets v/ere the exponents of a true culture.
Later on, the Scribes and the Pharisees, who
took their places, were the representatives of a
false culture.

When Jesus came to perform His great mission
He found the culture of His day largely unusable.
He had to build His great kingdom of heaven
with a few publicans and fishermen. The great-
est obstacle that Jesus encountered was the
counterfeit culture of His time, which even
pointed to Him with scorn and said, '' This man
eateth with publicans and sinners ; '* which said
again, *' This man cannot be a prophet, other-
wise He would have known that this was a sinful
woman and He would not have let her touch
Him." The fallacious philosophy which Jesus
encountered was much the same as that of
Friedrich Nietzsche.

History records the same thing over and over
again. The stone which the builders rejected
has become the head of the corner. Out of the

True and False Culture 49

mouths of babes and sucklings God has ordained
strength. Take for example the college or the
university in the midst of a great city. How
little influence it often has upon the life of that
city. How frequently it is cloistered. It keeps
its treasures to itself. How proportionately few
of our college graduates are really effective as
great moral leaders. Take our college clubs.
As I go through Clubdom in New York City,
about 44th Street, I often think of it. How little
those great bodies of men are doing for the life
of that great city. They are given over, at best,
to their own social culture. They might well
get together for this, but at the same time for
something larger. They might become great
organizations of strength in the moral life of the
city. It is only occasionally, among a few stu-
dents of economics, that we find our college pro-
fessors men of broad sympathies, wide contact,
and powerful influence in civic or in social life.

Not long ago I received a most suggestive
letter from a wage earner. It was filled with
great prophecies. It burned with sympathy. It
was a suggestion of the highest form of culture.
I passed it over to a university professor to read.
I suppose he could have read it had it been in
Hebrew or had it related to ancient Babylonia or
Chaldea, but it was an unknown tongue to him.
He was totally incapable of comprehending its
meaning.

50 Spiritual Culture and Social Service

In relation to our theological education, for
men going into the ministry, I have been asking
myself a few questions lately. Might not these
men better study less Hebrev/ and substitute a
little Yiddish? Might they not learn some Ital-
ian, German, Russian, Magyar, in order to come
into closer touch with the peoples from all over
the world who surround their little parishes, even
if they did it at the expense of some ancient
Greek and Latin ? Perhaps they might divide
their Greek and learn some ancient and some
modern. For it is true that much of our minis-
try is dying, or is dead, of culture.

Only a litde while ago, I heard a strange plea
from a minister whose parish is situated in a
great democratic manufacturing community.
His advice was that we must refrain from trying
to adjust the social order. He said we must
leave things to God, God would take care of it
all and we need not interfere with His designs.
In speaking with another minister, of great
movements for civic reform, for the purification
of the life of our municipalities, he dismissed the
whole matter by saying, '' Let those enter into
it who want to. I have no taste for it."

Another, in my hearing, recently congratu-
lated himself that, after a pastorate in a busy
cosmopolitan city full of all kinds of humanity,
he had succeeded in obtaining another pastorate
in a guiet, remote, suburban community and he

True and False Culture 51

ended by saying, " I am glad to get away from
it all." These are examples of false culture.

In a recent address at a student conference, of
men preparing for the ministry, a well-known
layman advised ministers to keep to what he
called ** the Gospel and to let all social and eco-
nomic questions alone.'^ This is the culture of
the Scribes and Pharisees.

I am always more than doubtful about the
notices which we sometimes read in church
calendars, requesting the people to let the min-
ister alone so many hours a day. He must not
be disturbed. Should he not find the way of
conserving his own inner life while he is in the
very midst of his outward activities ? He must
not become a victim of too much sobriety and
order. He must simply be willing to give him-
self to anybody and everything at any time of
day or night.

It is also true that our churches have come to
be considered as the homes of culture. Thus
construed, or misconstrued, that is why the
people have become distrustful of them. There
are many churches that have died of too much
culture of a spurious kind.

While all this is true, it is not really a criticism
of culture. It is a criticism of a wrong concep-
tion of culture. This false culture is the kind
which leads the woman, in her ambitions for so-
cial or literary distinction, to give up motherhood

52 Spiritual Culture and Social Service

and the home. It is the kind which leads the
professional man to worship at the altar of suc-
cess and to forget the altar of his fireside. To
gather up the whole thought, any culture is
counterfeit that separates us from our fellow men.

The saddest thing in the world is this misuse
of things good in themselves. Thomas Went-
worth Higginson once wrote an article in the
Atlantic Monthly entided, "The Cowardice of
Culture." He gave a long list of famous names,
of men who had proven false prophets. They
all had the same fault. They did not have confi-
dence in mankind.

The result is that such cultured lives are wasted
because their contact with the world is lost as
they lose the sense of sympathy. They are like
a great dynamo without any connection with the
belts and wheels. It is sad that in their prepara-
tion for the task of life they lose sight of the task
itself. Such men and women spend their lives
getting their tools in order and never do any-
thing with them when they are sharpened.
Among the greatest wastes of life is this waste
of culture. Take any college class and witness
the few who really use what they have gained
for the service of the world.

Phillips Brooks was a splendid example of true
culture. How beautifully he blended power with
sympathy, profoundness with simplicity. One of
his finest sermons is called " Visions and Tasks."

True and False Culture 53

He pictures Peter on the housetop, witnessing
his vision of truth, with the great human life be-
low, knocking at the door of the house, that the
apostle should come down and shed the light of
his vision upon the waiting race. He then gives
us the picture of Peter plodding over the dusty
hills as he follows his vision with service. He
shows us how we must bring together the truth
of God and the facts of life. He talks, with the
utterance of a prophet, on the double power of
knowing and of loving, of receiving and giving.

And yet the culture of the world is the life of
the world. This Servant of Jehovah was the
saviour of the nation. While it is sad to see
men who behold visions but do no work, it is also
sad to see men trying to work without inspira-
tion. So we may say that a false culture is that
which separates us from the world, from men,
from life, while true culture is the culture of serv-
ice.

The world is full of men to-day who are able
to think profoundly. It also has many men who
are able to feel deeply. Its sovereign need is
men who can both profoundly think with the
mind and deeply feel with the heart.

There are three kinds of men and women.
The first are those who both neglect and despise
all culture. The second are those who make
culture an end in itself. Each of these is blind
in one eye. Then there are the third who reveal

54 Spiritual Culture and Social Service

the splendid capacity of blending culture with
service.

We are going to have a new university in the
future. It is not to be represented so much by
the monastery as by the social settlement. The
so-called classics and classical education will be
greatly widened in their scope. This new uni-
versity will have as its aim the preparing of men
for service through culture, not simply the giv-
ing to them of culture itself. It will send out
men for civic leadership, political service, social
betterment

There are signs of the coming day. One of
the ancient universities of England, with all its
classic conservatism, has recently given its hon-
ourary degree to Commander Booth of the Sal-
vation Army. Here was an instance of the rec-
ognition of true culture. I am glad to see my
friend, Mr. Robinson, in his church down among
the mills of Holyoke, sending to Amherst Col-
lege and Mt. Holyoke College for students to
come over and help him. It rejoices my heart
to see Chicago Theological Seminary selecting
as its president, Dr. Davis, fresh from the envi-
ronment of his work among the foreign popula-
tion of New Britain. I rejoice to find Professor
Bailey of Yale bringing himself and his students
into touch with the civic life of New Haven.

One of the most beautiful pictures upon which
I ever looked is the picture of Jesus together with

True and False Culture 55

the fishermen. There He is, as always, the true
example. We see the light of culture reflected
from His shining face upon the countenances of
the eager toilers of the sea. Over against this,
witness the false culture of the Scribes and Phari-
sees. How splendidly Jesus gathered it all up
when He declared that we should love God with
mind and heart and strength, and our brethren
as ourselves. This was what Jesus meant when
He took this text of Isaiah and applied it to Him-
self.

True and false culture : the false, that which
removes us from the world ; the true, that which
gives its richness and becomes richer as it gives.
The false, that which divides humanity into se-
lective groups and widens the gulf between men ;
the true, that which touches every point of hu-
man life with human sympathy.

In yonder university city, there is that great
group of fine scholars, profound thinkers, earnest
truth seekers, and hard toilers by the light of the
midnight oil. I love to see them as I go about
among those massive buildings.

But then also, as I pass from the great univer-
sity to take my train to come home, I go down
through the other parts of that city with its multi-
tude of all the races of mankind and I think how
sad it is that the one touches the other so little.

The first group wends its solemn way back
and forth from the class room to the attractive

56 Spiritual Culture and Social Service

homes upon the avenue, while, at the same time,
the other procession also passes back and forth
every day from the mills and shops to the hum-
bler homes of the narrow streets and alleys.

They never cross each other's paths. They
do not know one another. They do not under-
stand each other. They live in two different
worlds. All this is wrong.

Again, every Sunday morning the one ele-
ment gathers in the churches, or in the College
Chapel, and then again in the afternoon in its
social groups, while the other meets in the in-
dustrial meetings and its other brotherhoods.
The two ought to meet together.

The great social problem of to-day, and there
is no greater problem, is how to bring these to-
gether, how to put culture at the service of
humanity and to thus fulfill the utterance of the
Master, '* He among you that is greatest is he
that serveth most."

The great mission of culture : " to preach good
tidings unto the meek, to bind up the broken-
hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and
the opening of the prison to them that are bound."

Suppose men gained this truth : every human
being a child of God. Would it transform busi-
ness? Would society be changed? Would it
transform the Christian Church ? Instead of that
we have gone on, and we go on, with the old
doctrine of election. Do you treat your fellows

True and False Culture 57

in your business life as though they were chil-
dren of our Father, every one of them a child of
God ? Your clerks, your partners, your office-
boy, your bookkeeper, your employer, your
fellow clerks, your subordinates ? What do the
trusts of capital and the combinations of labour
answer to the question ? How is it in society ?
Is it met by a few charity balls ? How is it with
women in the home and in the social realm?
Does the society in which you move recognize
every man and every woman as the child of
God ? How is it with your store-boys, your
neighbours ? Are we, with Jesus, lovingly re-
ceiving, and eating with publicans and sinners ?
Do you remember that these, and all other men
and women, are God's children, and your
brothers and sisters ? What is the attitude of
our nation ? Of our national life something
ought to be said. We are the marvel of the
world in building up a nation out of all the
peoples of the earth. But do we not regard and
use these peoples as the builders of our high-
ways, the constructors of our railroads and tillers
of our ground, rather than as weaker children of
God to be helped and uplifted by their stronger
brothers ?

How is it with the Church? How are we
interpreting the life of men ? We cannot say,
*' Our Father," unless we think of every human
being as our brother. Every human being ; how

58 Spiritual Culture and Social Service

is it with the Church ? Do we ever talk of the
" class " of people in our church and of the class
of people we want there ? We have no right to
interpret our individual life upward, and then
interpret our brothers' lives downward. That
is just what we are doing. The true and whole
view of life is its construction in the terms of
fatherhood, of human childhood, and of universal
brotherhood. Nothing less will do for Christ.
Moral and spiritual evolution ceases to be such,
and is immoral unless it take its path away from
the scientific law of the struggle for individual
existence and the survival of the fittest. The
analogy must break here. Moral and spiritual
order and progress is the survival of the fittest
for the sake of the unfit. It is the uplifting of
the weak. It is the fulfillment of Jesus' '*new
commandment" added to and superseding the
decalogue of science. It is universal, absolutely
universal. It must be so. Not one stray child
may be left out. Deny the divine childhood of
one single, solitary human being in the remotest
corner of the world : black, white or yellow ;
good, bad or undetermined ; enemy or friend —
deny or suppress or extinguish the God in any
one human being and the moral order of the
universe is broken, there is no God worth wor-
shipping, and you yourself are not a child of any
God. Interpret one human life downward and
they all go down. Election of any kind is ulti-

True and False Culture 59

mate atheism. Not one stray human being can
be left out. It means all men, of every colour,
race and degree of goodness. You are God's
child ; so then is the humblest servant in your
home. You are God's child ; so is yonder moral
outcast. You are God's child ; so is that bad man
behind the bars of human justice. It means every
man in an association of men. It also means every
man in every association. Brotherhoods cannot
take the place of brotherhood. It is not gained
when every black man considers every other
black man his brother. It is not gained when
every white man considers every white man his
brother. It is not gained when every black man
considers every white man his brother, and every
white man every black man, if they leave out a
single yellow man. It is not won when every
man in the grocery trade is brother to every
other man in the grocery trade. Nor when every
workman at the bench has joined the Brother-
hood of Carpenters. It is not realized when
every labouring man unites in brotherhood with
every other labouring man, any more than it is
when every capitalist so considers every man of
capital.

It is universal and reciprocal. It will come
when every business man says " brother " to
every working man. It will not come until every
working man says ''brother" to his employer.
These two truths stand or fall together. You

6o Spiritual Culture and Social Service

cannot give the upward interpretation to your
own life, if you give the downward interpretation
to the life of one single human being. In terms
of absolute and universal Fatherhood, in terms
of the divine childhood in the man construing,
in absolute and universal brotherhood, with the
eye fixed, not on the form of dust, but on the
godlike spirit in us, with the uplifting aim of the
growing of that spirit in self and other men, with
a heart that beats in love, tenderness and compas-
sion for every being in the universe ; ever saying,
"Father," *' Father," ** Father"; ever saying,
"Brother," "Brother," " Brother "—this is the
Gospel.

If one human child has been left out in the
Fatherhood of God, every man is left out with
him, and there is neither God nor Gospel left,
and Haeckel is right. Jesus proclaimed, and
proclaims to-day, that not one was left out. And
unless the feeling of your heart is of love for
every human being, from Jesus Christ down to
the man who blacks your boots and the woman
who washes your clothes, and you can say,
" Brother," " Sister," you cannot say, except as
a vain repetition, as the heathen do, " Our
Father."

I went into a hospital the other day. I wit-
nessed a parable. A pale, weak, bloodless man
was carried in. He was not strong enough to
'walk. He did not even come of his own volidon.

True and False Culture 6l

Following him came a great, strong stalwart man,
glowing with health. They brought them to-
gether. They bared an arm of each man. They
brought them into fellowship by a conductor
which carried the rich blood of the strong into
the frail body of the weak. That is the meaning
of spiritual culture and social service.

Ill

REJOICING IN TRUTH

WE live in no sluggard, slothful age and
generation. We are in an era of great
discoveries and marvellous inventions.
We are searching out the hidden secrets of
science and are finding ever new revelations of
the infinite energy. Men are reaching the in-
accessible, translating unknown tongues, availing
themselves of hitherto undiscovered forces.

Coincident with this, we are finding divine
revelations in the order of human life. Social
distinctions are being broken up. Just as in
science, the old groups and classes are gone, so
in human life, age-long customs are yielding to
new orders.

Human society is either to be reconstructed
or destroyed ; moral precepts are finding either
their destruction or fulfillment. Religion is either
departing or being transformed. On all sides
men are timid, doubtful, and are both questioning
and accepting at the same time. It is so difficult
to distinguish between change and dissolution.

For instance in the pulpit, some preachers are
preaching the old, which they only half believe,
while others are preaching the new, which they

62

Rejoicing in Truth 63

have only partially digested. We are facing
new problems. Everything seems new and un-
tried. The old rules will not work ; the new wine
cannot be contained in the old bottles. The
homiletic instruction of a quarter of a century ago
is largely displaced. Wise, strong, and search-
ing must be the moral leader of to-day, who can
maintain the balance between the warm heart
aad the clear head.

Thus, it is easy to be either a pessimist or an
optimist, and still easier to be without the wed-
ding garment, speechless before the problems of
our larger world. If we simply look upon the
surface of things we are doubtful. If we can
look into the depths, we are hopeful.

The Apostle Paul was in much the same
situation in his day, and in his letter to the
Corinthian Church he used one phrase which
gives the secret of his great leadership, " Rejoic-
ing not in iniquity, but rejoicing in the truth."
So the real leaders of to-day are those who are
finding and rejoicing in the truth. The sovereign
need of our generation, with its plastic social
order, is men who will work for creation and con-
struction. We may well hope that the critic and
the iconoclast have nearly had their day. For a
time we have been overcome with evil. We are
now ready to overcome evil with good.

All thoughtful, loving men feel that they are
socialists in some right sense and true use of

64 Spiritual Culture and Social Service

that much misused word. But there are two
kinds ; those who content themselves with damn-
ing the world and those whose efforts are bent
towards saving it. Some are still satisfied to
storm and scold, while others are seeking to
transform and to mold. These latter are the
leaders of to-day and of to-morrow ; those who
can discern, find, and develop the constructive
elements of abiding truth in the midst of chang-
ing forms.

Jesus entered upon such an age and He de-
clared that He was come, " not to destroy but to
fulfill." Therefore, he who learned the secret of
Jesus, even though he were the least in the
kingdom of heaven, was greater than John the
Baptist.

We can witness this truth in our personal
human relations. It is always better to rejoice
in the truth, better to praise the good than to
blame the bad. Appreciation is better than de-
preciation. Thus it is that we call out the best
in men. In the treatment of the child, guidance
is infinitely better than repression.

Some people take the other attitude to the ex-
tent, sometimes, of seeming to rejoice in iniquity.
They are always counting the tares rather than
the wheat. Take the attitude of men towards
the Christian Church ! They are telling us that
it is in a serious twist. They even have the air
of rejoicing in what they term its iniquity.

Rejoicing in Truth , 65

As a matter of fact, however, there never was
an age when the ideals of the Church were so
lofty as they are now. It is true that it has less
creed, less ceremony and pharisaic punctilious-
ness. Yet it never was so vibrant with sympathy
or so searching as to life and action. It is cast-
ing off its selfish individualism and is more and
more becoming the kingdom of heaven. Take
its ministry; it is outreaching to every human
problem. To the man who wishes to rejoice in
the truth, there is a multitude of things which no
man can number.

This is not a plea for the doctrine of laisses
faire. Criticism has its place. Even destructive
criticism has its functions. There are wrongs to
be denounced and bad men to be rebuked. But,
at best, this is only preparation. Such prophets
did their work from Samuel to John the Baptist,
but it only prepared the way for Jesus Christ.
Even such prophets would have been useless
without their Messianic hope.

The real spirit of progress is wondrously
witnessed in the thirteenth chapter of Paul's letter
to the Church at Corinth. He was writing, very
likely, from Ephesus, a sad environment. The
church to which he was writing was in a still
sadder environment. Witness how he seeks to
draw forth the latent good in them.

They are to have the spirit of long-suffering
and modesty. They must be not easily provoked.

66 Spiritual Culture and Social Service

not thinking evil, but bearing all things, believ-
ing ail things, hoping all things, enduring all
things. The apostle was no easy-going moralist.
He saw the wrong and yet he believed in the
right.

So the order of the world in which we live
awaits such leaders, not those whose visages do
cream and mantle like a standing pool, not
those who unconsciously rejoice in iniquity
because it fulfills their own dark prophecies.
We need men large enough to rejoice in the
truth, to see below the surface and to distinguish
the difference between change and loss, men who
can work away with unfaltering faith and unfail-
ing hope, those who see that the critic or icono-
clast, the prophet of denunciation, has his place,
but that, at best, he is only the forerunner and
should say, with John the Baptist, '* There cometh
one after me who was before me." The saviours
of to-day and to-morrow must have the spirit of
Jesus, not to destroy but fulfill, the state of mind
of Paul, finding the truth and rejoicing in it.

It is easy to break the bruised reed and to
quench the smoking flax. To stand up and
denounce is not hard, but to call out the latent
good, to educate, and to develop is the harder
and the better task. The one method only needs
vehemence. The other calls for patience, long=
suffering, and all the qualities which Paul
enumerates under the general name of charity.

Rejoicing in Truth 6^

Then too, after all, fulfillment involves destruc-
tion, but it does it by the larger process of dis-
placement.

We have here one of the great measures of
character. The greatness of faith and hope is
simply the greatness of the man's own soul He
who would lift up must ever be looking up.
Take Jesus, for example ; the only perfect man
who ever lived was the one who had the most
faith in imperfect men.

How is it among men ? Are the severest
critics, as a rule, those whose own lives are the
loftiest ? Take it within the Church ; is it not
rather true that faith, hope, and patience are
proportional to moral attainment, and spiritual
power?

So, let us believe that the new Church will
come out of that which is abiding in the old.
Let us have faith in the new social order even
though it may come through a painful process.
Such is God's way. The new home will be fairer
and better than the old which we are leaving,
through the trying process of the removal of our
household goods.

The rocks are rending. The Son of Man is on
the cross, but after the third day the stone will
be rolled away. Truth may be obscured but it is
not dead. We shall yet see the Son of Man be-
yond the clouds of heaven.

Such is the spirit that is not overcome of evil,

68 Spiritual Culture and Social Service

but which overcomes evil with good. This is the
faith by which the kingdoms of this world will
become the kingdom of Christ. And now
abideth faith, hope, love, believing, hoping,
enduring ; — rejoicing not in iniquity but rejoic-
ing in the truth.

IV

THE HOPELESSNESS OF GODLESSNESS

"^^ THOM have I in heaven but Thee?
%/%/ and there is none upon earth that I
▼ ▼ desire but Thee.

" My flesh and my heart faileth : But God is
the strength of my heart, and my portion for-
ever."

A thoughtful man came to me the other day,
and after reciting a long list of great and griev-
ous evils, he asked : ** How can a man be an
optimist in the face of these awful realities?"
He said : ** So long as one remains an idealist,
and interprets life in ideal terms, his life is filled
with hope. But again and again the great
actualities of life bear upon him, sadden his
heart, and his great ideal is clouded by the
shadows of actual life."

It is always very encouraging to a modern
preacher to have a Nicodemus come to him in
this thoughtful way. We wish that they would
come oftener, even though it be to ask : *' How,
in the midst of prevailing and triumphant evil,
can we labour on with hope and faith ? "

In all probability the Seventy-third Psalm was
written during the exile, or, at any rate, in some

69

jc Spiritual Culture and Social Semce

similar experience. The children of Israel find
themselves in the midst of a terrible environment
of ev^A. It is evil of a kind particularly abhorrent
to them. The highest of their associations and
ideals are ruthlessly violated. The most sacred
things of their life are trampled under foot The
first part of this Psalm pictures the prosperity of
the ungodly in ver}- bitter terms ; the evil of the
world is " painful " to the writer. But the second
part of the Psalm is fuH of a triumphant tone.

This is the striking characteristic of this in-
spired book. It is a great alternating utterance
of hopelessness and hope. In many of these
Psalms we have, first, the bitter cr}' of the out-
raged sense of righteousness, with a correspond-
ing hopelessness. Then the second part sub-
limely rises to an assuring utterance of faith and
hope. Again and again the same Psalm consists
of a dirge and an oratorio, in very striking con-
trast There is a wonderful and apparentiy con-
tradictor}- contrast in mood. In general the
Psalm begins in despair but ends in a sublime
note of confidence.

" Lord, how are they increased that trouble me.
Many are they that rise up against me." So the
Psalm begins, but it rises on and on, and before
it reaches the end it swells out into a great
chorus of hope : " But Thou, O Lord, art a
shield for me, my glor\' and a lifter up of my
head.'' Another begins, " I am weary with my

The Hopelessness of Godlessness 71

groaning ; all the night I make my bed to
swim ; I water my couch with my tears." Then
it suddenly rises : '' Depart from me, O ye
workers of iniquit}', for the Lord has heard the
voice of my weeping." It is like two great
choruses ; the one a profound question, the other
a great and satisfying answer.

Sometimes the despair is almost bottomless.
" Kelp, Lord, for the godly man faileth : for the
faithful fail from among the children of men."
Then Hke a resounding echo : " I have set the
Lord before me ; because He is on my right hand
I shall not be moved."

So they move on, witii their alternating notes,
from the extreme of despair to the height of
faith,'the sense of horror ever changing place with
the sense of hope. There is unit}' among them
in this, that their one constant and unfailing
message is, " Hope thou in God." They all end
in the same last resort. It is a wonderfully
vibrating, pulsating picture, full of dignity,
breathing sincerit}', alive with pathos, charged
with the same solemnity', yet ever vibrant with
unfailing and responding confidence, filled widi
the gloom of realism, yet fuller still of a magnif-
icent and glowing idealism.

These Psalms are but the reflection of the
varied and \'ividly contrasting moods of any
seriously thoughtful man. No real man can
entirely escape the sense of despair unless he is

72 Spiritual Culture and Social Service

blinded by moral astigmatism or asleep with
stupefying selfishness.

The hopelessness of godlessness. A godless
world is a hopeless world. A world under the
guidance of God is a hopeful world, despite all
its seeming hopelessness. By godless we mean
the want of a great faith in the infinite guidance
and sovereignty. By hopeless we mean the ulti-
mate victory of evil.

This suggests two dangers which come to a
man who thus deeply and seriously reflects.
The first is the danger of pessimism, which is
really atheism. The second is a false optimism
which obscures the actual evil by a one-sided
view of the ideal. Any man who takes life
seriously finds himself facing a world which
sometimes makes him shudder, fills his soul with
horror, and at times with awful doubts and occa-
sional flashes of despair, a world dark with
griefs and graves, so dark that men cry out
against the heavens.

Perhaps he may have the will to shut himself
up within the walls of his comfortable home,
engross himself with his own selfish interests,
ignore the actual life about him, and give him-
self to selfish thought. But if a man bravely
faces life, I doubt if any serious soul has not had
moments when the questions have instinctively
arisen : Can there be a God ? If there be a
God, does He rule the world? If there be a

The Hopelessness of Godlessness 73

God, and He rules the world, can He be entirely
good?

Read to-morrow morning's paper. Whness
its story of the contemporary world. Read its
recital of degrading selfish human pleasures ; of
the slaveries of men's unholy passions, of the
doings of men's sordid greed of gold. Read its
story of the selling of the souls of men, the ever-
lasting blighting of the holy emblem of woman-
hood. Listen to its tales of bribery, corruption,
and the prostitution of life's most sacred trusts,
of the oppressions of the weak and the poor, of
its usurious and unearned profits, the devouring
of widows' houses and the binding of heavy bur-
dens grievous to be borne. Witness its manifold
repetitions, in actual life, of the parable of Dives
at his table and Lazarus cringing at the gate.
Look at the dead men's bones which are daily
drawn from whited sepulchres. Pursue the reci-
tal of its hypocrisies, its pretenses of long prayers,
its hollow philanthropies, its specious, degrade
ing codes of conduct, its heartless social castes,
its profanations of the sacred relations of the altar
and the home. Let any man do this and if he is
not heartsick he has no heart to be sick. If his
soul is not cast down he can hardly have a soul
to be cast down. A deep-thinking, serious man,
unless he has the witness of some prophetic
light, cannot, as he faces the real world, bear the
weight of the burden of his own heavy heart.

74 Spiritual Culture and Social Service

But the true seer while he thus views things
as they are, while he thus feels like the prophets of
old, must also answer to the other mood of the
psalmist, and say, ** I will Hft up mine eyes unto
the hills, from whence cometh my help."

For if we have no hope in God we live in a hope-
less world. This world would be too much for
us without a great abiding faith in the Infinite.
As I read, not long ago, Professor Haeckel's
" Riddle of the Universe," I said as I closed it,
" How can a man live in such a universe as his?
It is not a riddle, it is a great mockery and lie."
The materiaHst, the man who has no God in
whom he can have a great faith, how such a
man can want to live I cannot see or understand.
As he looks out on the lust, the greed, the cruelty
of the world he asks with Paul, "Who is suffi-
cient for these things ?" He is bound up by two
propositions, one of which he must accept. It is
either God and unquenchable hope or atheism
and absolute hopelessness. If he is to be a great,
strong man, he must lift his eyes from the val-
leys of the shadow of death and look up to the
eternal hills. His moral world is, at first sight,
just as the natural world was to the infant race.
It is a great enigma haunting him with a great
fear.

But even in ancient times man began to look for
a deeper meaning of the natural order. The
Book of Job is a magnificent example of the in-

The Hopelessness of Godlessness 75

terpretation of nature. The Nineteenth Psalm is
a splendid elucidation of the universe. Thus, as
men looked with longing, the light came. By
and by great and reverent scientists, like Drum-
mond and Fiske, witnessed to the moral impli-
cations in the order of nature. So, as men got
the sweep of vision, they began to see that down
througli the farthest ages back one increasing
purpose runs. Men have discovered purpose
and intention, goal and progress in the same
way. To meet the moral cry of man we must
have God as our interpreter of the human moral
order. Unless we do so we are like infants cry-
ing in the night and with no language but a cry.

But if we do find God we can say, " God is our
refuge and our strength, a very present help in
trouble. Therefore we will not fear though the
earth be removed and the mountains be carried
into the heart of the sea: Though the waters
thereof roar and be troubled, though the moun-
tains shake with the swelling thereof. God is in
the midst of her, she shall not be moved. God
shall help her and that right early."

Here is the eternal difference between the
hopelessness of atheism and faith in God.

You may find sin almost everywhere. You
may find God everywhere, in great brave souls.
Such a soul is an absolute impossibility in a god-
less universe. You may find God in your own
brave soul. Unless we do find God at the heart

76 Spiritual Culture and Social Service

of this perplexing universal order we live in a
hopeless world in which no real man would want
to live. The world has had its great acres of
darkness again and again lighted by the fires of
great souls, and they have always been great,
God-believing men. Of such were these cour-
ageous psalmists, the reformers like Luther and
his fellows, the Apostle Paul, who spoke of men
*' without hope and without God in the world."
Such a soul was Jesus Christ, passing back and
forth from the dark plains of life to the mountain-
side of prayer.

I confess that some of the great questions of
life are too much for me. I mean such questions
as that of human destiny. I must leave them to
God and I must have a God to whom I may
leave them. Here it is that we see man at his
best, bravely facing life, never trying to effect a
cowardly escape, but ever with his hand out-
reached for God. We see man at his finest
when we witness the great Godward outgoing of
his soul. Here he is at his noblest. It is a holy
inspiration to watch the mind of Plato as he
struggles to express his infinite vision of the
eternal goodness at the heart of the universe, to
meditate upon Spinoza, who was, as every great
man must be, a God-intoxicated man, to sit down
with Kant, to participate with him in his great
internal intellectual warfare, seeking God in one
place when he cannot find Him in another, crying

The Hopelessness of Godlessness 77

out like Job, '* O that I knew where I might find
Him." If is a great help also to sit down with
another of the psalmists as he bravely sings, in
the midst of his enemies and in the face of great
fears and transgressions, " Whither shall I go
from Thy spirit or whither shall I flee from Thy
presence ? If I ascend up into heaven Thou art
there ; if I make my bed in hell Thou art there ;
if I say surely the darkness will overwhelm me
and the light about me shall be night, even the
darkness hideth not from Thee but the night
shineth as the day. "

This is the great brave view of life — when we
feel that no falsehood can eternally defeat, that
no right can forever be crushed, that there is an
everlasting goodness which no evil can ever put to
death, that this universe has not gotten away from
God. Some men are saying that they are realists,
some that they are idealists. The true realist
is he who sees the depths, but not the depths
alone. The true idealist is not the one who
soothes himself with dreams. The true man is
he who sees and is touched by the wrongs of the
world, is saddened by them, whose heart aches,
whose tears are sometimes his meat, but who
also transfigures the picture with the sunlight of
the face of God. Then he can go forth, serious
and strong, joyful and courageous, to transform
that real, so far as he may touch it, into the ideal
of his vision. He will, like the psalmist, have his

78 Spiritual Culture and Social Service

alternating moods. Sometimes the world will
look black. Sometimes it will look like a great
unanswerable doubt. It will do no harm if he
lets it move the waters of his heart, but he must
never let this lead him to forsake the Being with-
out whom it is a hopeless world.

We have touched here the supreme and sover-
eign concern of human life. This longing for
God is the finest yearning of the human soul.
The most momentous crises and the finest hours
of our life are when we cry out and say, ** O that
I knew where I might find Him 1 " The Holy
of Holies of human life is the place where the
individual human soul, in the inviolable solitude
of its own being, faces towards the eternal reality,
and asks for God with a great unutterable cry.

So should we live and strive and hope and pray,
with the courage that faces the great moral prob-
lems of life, and with the bravery of an abiding
faith, that as the eternal power in whom w^e live
and move and have our being hath taken the
chaos of the molten mists of ages past and
wrought this universe of reason and of order ;
that as His molding hand hath raised man from
the crouching beast until he bears the image of
Himself ; that as He has, from age to age, brought
on this world by great movements of history to
higher ideals and larger visions ; that as He has
for these two thousand years been lifting hu-
manity by the power of the personality of Him

The Hopelessness of Godlessness 79

who is the brightness of His glory and the image
of His person ; so His hand is still upon the world,
so His eternal designs are being carried out, so
Christ still lives in our midst, and He will be
our guide, our Father, our strong deliverer, our
mighty fortress, who wilt continue in His undying
affection until the world is won by the appeal of
beauty, truth and goodness.

He who has commanded the morning and
made the dayspring to know his place, who
canst bind the influence of Pleiades and loosen
the bands of Orion, who biddest the lightnings,
who guideth the stars in their courses in a
universe unthinkable in its wonder and greatness,
hast might and power enough to guide the
moral movements of mankind, and as He hast,
out of the depths of universal chaos, made the
morning stars to sing in glory, so He will bring
His moral purposes to pass within His own good
time, with whom a thousand years are like a day,
and goodness, righteousness and truth shall fill
the earth with their praises.

Thus may we go on in our work with God,
and by His help, following Christ, carrying our
crosses, meeting our disappointments, facing our
Jerusalems, standing before our Pilates, bearing
our sufferings, shedding abroad our love, preach-
ing the kingdom and teaching righteousness, and
if need be ascending our Calvarys, that, with our
Master, we may help to be the saviours of the

8o Spiritual Culture and Social Service

world, from its sin, its suffering and its moral
wretchedness, and by our brave and loving
service, righting its wrongs and helping God.
And even greater than the great haggard hope-
lessness of godlessness may be the unutterable
hopefulness of our abiding faith. So should we
live and do our work with a great serious sense
of a sovereign joy, which no man taketh from us.

THE UNIVERSAL LAW OF SERVICE

" ■ ^ UT it shall not be so among you ; But
r^ whosoever will be great among you, let
-■— ^ him be your minister ; and whosoever
will be chief among you, let him be your servant ;
even as the Son of Man came, not to be minis-
tered unto but to minister."

The thought of Jesus might better be ex-
pressed by saying that He came not ** only " to be
ministered unto. He did receive and gladly ac-
cept the ministry and support of His disciples.
He felt a thrill of joy at their devotion. He
speaks by way of emphasis. His chief est joy
was that of loving ministry, suffering service and
the giving of His life. Yet perhaps it was no
less the joy of His heart to see His followers par-
ticipating in that same mutual loving ministry.
Indeed, He said that this service, to each other
and to mankind, was their best ministry to Him.
He gave utterance here to the twofold law of
life. Man is both to be served and to serve.
Jesus saw the two aspects of religion ; and taught
that the ultimate expression of religion was in
this law of service. The utterances of the Master
were always brief and simple. Yet every one of

8i

82 Spiritual Culture and Social Service

them implies a truth as deep as the ocean of
truth itself and impUcates a principle as wide as
the universe of God. Witness how fundamental,
how universal, how absolutely essential is this
truth of the law of service.

To show how universal it is we might begin
with nature. The great scientists, when they
have been reverent as well as great, have made
spiritual discoveries in the natural order of life.
We may witness the working of this law on
every hand. We find interdependence and in-
terrelation in the great solar system. Here no-
body liveth to itself or dieth to itself. In the
unity of the universe we find everywhere a mu-
tual dependence. Let one part cease its work,
lay down its service, and universal cosmos be-
comes universal chaos. Let the sun say, " I will
no longer render service in this common order I"
Let the swinging, whirling planet say, ** I will no
more do my task ! " And universal disaster
would follow. They are all bound up in mu-
tual service. Let even the smallest part of the
great machine get out of order and the whole
mechanism may be destroyed. Thus all things
live upon each other. The physical universe is
a great system of symbolic unselfishness. So let
the soil and rain refuse to serve their fellows, the
flowers of the field, and the earth is no longer a
garden of delight for the vision and utterance of
the poet. But while they do their task of minis-

The Universal Law of Service 83

tering, the lily of the field is clothed in beauty
greater than that of Solomon in his array of
glory. Let the elements of nature refuse to pro-
vide for the birds of the air and their song no
longer yields its joy.

Two books ha-ve been written in recent years
which deserve careful consideration from all
thoughtful people. One is Drummond's " As-
cent of Man," and the other, John Fiske's
" Through Nature to God.'* Professor Drum-
mond finds in natural evolution, first, the strug-
gle for life ; but also the struggle for the life of
others, from the very dawn of life. Professor
Fiske speaks of what he calls ** the cosmic roots
of love and self-sacrifice." He tells us that na-
ture has relation to the great moral end of mutual
ministry. He says : *' I think that it can be
shown that in that far-off morning of the world,
when the morning stars sang together and the
sons of God shouted for joy, the beauty of self-
sacrifice and disinterested love formed the chief
burden of the mighty theme." " The very doc-
trine of evolution is the everlasting reality of re-
ligion." ''We catch glimpses of the cosmic
roots of love and self-sacrifice." Perhaps our
highest and most beautiful type of service is in
motherhood, and the greatest thinkers of our day
find nature to be full of a beautiful maternity.
God has thus made an altruistic natural order, in
which the chiefest is the greatest server.

84 Spiritual Culture and Social Service

We find this same law in the relation between
man and nature. We are accustomed to think
of nature as serving man, yielding her bounty
for his food, giving her stuff for his clothing, let-
ting him harness her lightnings and her winds to
do his bidding. But here again the law of serv-
ice is mutual and universal ; man must nurture
and thoroughly care for her. He must till her
soil, he must care for his cattle and his sheep,
and give them food and shelter. Sometimes he
must take them in his arms and bear them to
their fold. Thus the association of man and na-
ture is one of interchanging care and service.
They help each other, and neither can live with-
out the other.

This same truth is just as true of God and
man. In the infant ages of the race it was
thought of as a one-sided service ; man must oc-
cupy himself with sacrifice and propitiation. To-
day, however, we think of God as a providing
father of men, the willing servant of His people.

We might go back in our thought a little and
think of the relation between nature and God, of
God delighting in His own creation and rejoicing
in the singing of the morning stars together.
But the truth is most beautiful in the relations
of God and man. Dr. George A. Gordon, in a
recent sermon, said some things which might
once have been considered as audacity or even
blasphemy. He said that God, having made

The Universal Law of Service 85

man, was under obligation to treat him well, and
that He owed him life and sympathy and love
and service. So the delight of God is the ex-
pression of His love by helping man. His joy is
also in the love and mutual sacrifice of man to
his brethren. This leads us to one of the finest
illustrations of our thought. God loves, above
all things, to see us helping and serving each
other. So He has put us in a world where we
must do so or die. Look about on our common
life and witness how it is transfigured by unself-
ish service and mutual ministry.

I go out to-morrow morning, and as I pass the
factory with its busy hum, I think of men and
women there, sometimes with very tired bodies,
hard at work for many hours every day, prepar-
ing for me the clothing that I wear, or the
materials with which I build my comfortable
home. I pass on to the busy store. There
stands the woman, perhaps with tired feet and
aching back, ready to serve my wants. I go by
the schoolhouse, and I think of the teacher with
her tired head aching, perhaps, in this great
service. I meet the lawyer hastening along with
his green bag, that he may serve his clients and
see that they have their rights. He reminds me
of the judge sitting for long patient hours in the
close room to see that men have justice. My
eyes wander to the summit of the hill and rest upon
the hospital where the soft-voiced, patient nurses

86 Spiritual Culture and Social Service

serve in their soothing ministry. I meet the
physician, after his nightly vigil, on his way to
help his fellows. I take the street-car and sit in
comfort, while another man faces the cold, winter
winds, that he may carry me upon some errand
of mercy. The call comes from some far distant
loved one. There stands the strong, brave man
with his hand upon the lever and the throttle
that he may bear me to my destination.

As I return to my home, in the silent watches
of the night, I pass the policeman, shivering on
the corner in his self-sacrificing service of protec-
tion. I am awakened from my sleep by the
alarm bell, and I think of those who are ever
ready to risk their lives to protect me and my
home from the dread ravages of fire. Or I hear
upon some stormy night the warning from
yonder lighthouse. I look out and see its ever-
burning beacon. There sits the watchman
through the long hours of the night to protect
the sailor on the sea, and he reminds me of those
who brave the dangers of the deep in this great
ministry of men. I look about my home. How
many hours of w^ork it took to build it ! I find it
in comfortable order and think in gratitude of the
domestic w^ho serves by night and day to keep
it so. I sit down to the telephone, and at the
other end waits the girl who often must endure,
perhaps, my impatient exactions, ready to serve
my instant call. I look out of the wdndow, and

The Universal Law of Service 87

there comes the newsboy with my paper, the
grocer with my food, the postman with my letters.
The great team comes up the driveway with my
fuel that I 'J] ay be com.fortable through the winter
months. x-\nd I must not forget the busy man
Oi trade and of commerce with his weighty re-
sponsibilities as he directs this indispensable
ministry. Inspired by these thoughts, I wish to
send out to the world this message of love and
help and beauty. The printer takes it from me
and hands it to the binder, and sends it out to
give men hope and faith. We are a great and
prosperous nation because men give themselves
in this and countless other ways to serve their
country.

Everywhere this world and life are instinct
with service. We are all living on each other.
It calls for the beautiful qualities of patience,
sympathy, compassion, gratitude and prayer. It
is ever calling out the best and noblest in us. We
do it all for pay ? You may look at life in that mis-
erable way if you will, but, as Shakespeare says,
*' Nature teaches beasts to know their friends."
Look out upon the wider life of mankind.
Think of the nations with their interchanging
commerce, each serving the other with food and
clothing. Think of the great body of immi-
grants ; they come to us that w^e may give them
protection and a chance in life, but they also
serve us. They build our highways, they go

88 Spiritual Culture and Social Service

down into the deep mines to help us keep our
houses warm.

Perhaps this great law is seen at its best in the
relations of the home. The father and husband
toils for long hours that he may bring comfort to
his loved ones, that he may provide for the wife
and educate his children. And while he is
doing this, the mother serves patiently in his
home, in order that she may make it happy for
him and bring rest after his weariness. There,
by the fireside, sit the aged father and mother,
who have already spent their lives, while the
children and grandchildren wait upon them, that
at eventide for them there may be light.

This law pervades the universe, natural and
spiritual. We are in each other's hands. We
are absolutely dependent upon each other. The
comfort of all is impaired when any cease to do
their service. Let the strike come in the mines,
and men shiver in their cold houses. It is all
mutual ; we cannot live without each other's
service. The true balance of life is gained when
we are joyously giving and gratefully receiving.
It is a beautiful world and a beautiful universe in
which nature, God and man are in the mutual
and interchangeable service of each other. It is
sadly true that all this is not actual, that, as a
matter of fact, men try to live on the efforts of
their fellows. But it is a degrading and miser-
able view of life to look at it as a great crowded

The Universal Law of Service 89

bargain counter, where women are trying to get
something for nothing. It is wretched to think
of life as a great stock exchange, where men are
madly seeking to gain at the expense of one
another.

That is not the true way of viewing life. It
will be an unmitigated misery unless you are
willing to idealize it. But if you will look at it
in the light of this sublime truth of Jesus, you
may make it noble, you may make it happy and
your hardest toil may be an abiding joy. When
Jesus was called upon to declare the great ques-
tion of human destiny. He drew a very striking
picture. He represented men as ministering to
Him inasmuch as they ministered to one an-
other.

What then shall we do when we think of this
vital truth? We must say, "I am receiving
this great service, and in return I must render a
full equivalent." Thus mercy is twice blessed.
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.

The key of human happiness is found in con-
stant, conscious participation, in mutual sym-
pathy and gratitude and patience, in this great
universal law, receiving by giving and giving in
receiving, saving by losing and losing by saving.
We must bear one another's burdens and we
must let others bear our burdens. But we must
ever be more solicitous to minister and do our
share than to be served sufficiently ourselves.

90 Spiritual Culture and Social Service

'* But it shall not be so among you ; but who-
ever will be great among you, let him be your
minister : And whosoever will be chief among
you, let him be your servant : Even as the Son
of Man came not to be ministered unto but to

VI

THE LIFE MORE THAN MEAT

AS the Apostle Paul ascended the slopes o!
Mars Hill, in the Grecian City, to speak
to the unheeding ears of its wise men,
he beheld the altar to " the unknown God." In
his classic address, he told the Athenians that,
though they knew it not, they were all seeking
this unknown God, and in the course of his
utterance he gave voice to these majestic words,
" For in Him we live and move and have our
being."

In all the great human movements of our day,
men are seeking this unknown God. These
words from the lips of the Apostle Paul are
representative of the greatness of the Holy
Scriptures. The Bible, above all books, is char-
acterized by the profoundness of its thought and
the appropriate majesty of its expression. It is
never trivial and superficial. Its words reach
down into the depths. Its inspired writers often
gather up a universal thought into one sentence
of speech. Take for example the sense of the
divine immanence that pervades the Psalms. In
its deepest utterances it always relates together

91

92 Spiritual Culture and Social Service

the divine and the human ; God and man are
brought into their oneness.

The transcendence of God in the Scriptures is
not that of the so-called absentee God of a later
theology. It is the transcendence of character.
With it there is always the immanence of sym-
pathyo The idea of God throughout the Bible
might be expressed in these words of the
apostle : ''In Him we live and move and have
our being."

We talk to-day a great deal about what we
call " other worldliness." as contrasted with a
more particular " this worldliness." If by the
sense of other v/orldhness we mean the isolation
of the reHgious spirit from the life of mankind,
then such other worldliness is harmful. If, how-
ever, we mean by it the sense of the Infinite in
humanity, then it is the last of our senses which
we should lose or impair.

All life, in its expression, is more or less ma-
terial and physical and we should have no pa-
tience whatever with that sort of spiritual benev-
olence which, in place of the bread for the
body, gives a tract on the Bread of Life.

But, at heart, all human life is spiritual, and
while the Gospel must glorify the fruits of the
spirit it must not forget the spirit itself. There
is a tendency to-day to obscure this truth and to
overmagnify environment over the inward life.

The kingdom of God will not appear simply

The Life More Than Meat 93

by doubling men's wages with no reference to
conscientious service. The kingdom of heaven
will not come through shorter hours of labour,
without regard to the moral uses of leisure.
Social regeneration wall not be performed by
building better houses, if there is no concern for
better homes within those houses.

At the same time, while the life is more than
meat, we must also remember that the meat is
necessary to the life. Our social reformers are
right in reaching up towards the heavenly
through the earthly. While, with the one hand,
we seek to transform the hearts and characters
of men, we must, with the other, seek to gain for
them human justice.

But it is true that sometimes a larger moral
existence and a deeper spiritual sense would
mean less necessity for philanthropy, and all
economic reformations must have their roots in
moral, spiritual impulse.

Our modern danger is that of divorcing social
betterment from spiritual life, while the one ought
to be the expression of the other. No social pro-
gram will ultimately avail that is not expressed
in terms of the spirit. The inward and the out-
ward life must reflect each other. Our modern
social movements will be good and abiding only
as they are the revelation of the divine mind,, as
*' In Him they live and move and have their
being."

94 Spiritual Culture and Social Service

The weakness of our social reformers is that
of substituting the circumference for the centre,
of dealing in effects without sufficient thought of
ultimate causes. In their passionate interest for
man they forget the God in whom man lives and
moves. This does not mean that we are to ac-
cept the alternative of Professor Forsyth, in his
recent book on ** The Person and Place of Jesus
Christ," that the great religious issue of the hour
is '* the God that serves humanity or the human-
ity that serves God." But, on the other hand,
we are not to serve man in place of God. We
are to follow the word of Jesus and serve God
through the service of man, with a thoughtful
comprehension of the relation between the Infi-
nite and the finite.

Of our social order, if it is to be abiding, of
our democracy, if it is to endure, we must learn
to say, in Him it must live and move and have
its being. So while religion without humanity
is sad, it is equally sad to have a humanity with-
out religion. Such a humanity is transitory and
specious.

Our real social leaders to-day are not those
men and women who, in their blind zeal, would
substitute humanity for religion, who would dis-
place the Christian religion by the club and
social settlement, who would neglect spiritual
truth in the supposed interest of human comfort.
Our real leaders are those men who have a pro-

The Life More Than Meat 95

found faith in a God who loves men, and whose
love of mankind is an expression of their faith in
the Eternal.

Yet our social reformers are right in reaching
up to the heavenly through the earthly. In our
training of the child we must first give him care
and comfort, in order that we may bestow upon
him truth and character.

Here then is the social gospel for to-day. We
find its analogy in the natural order, in the de-
velopment of the race. The difference between
the savage and the civilized man is not a differ-
ence in physical comfort ; it is that the later devel-
oped man has learned that his life, his movements,
his being are in the life of the Infinite.

To take another analogy, our national and
social life are under necessary laws. By
them the home is protected, human life is kept
sacred, justice is maintained. As we learn these
laws we find the eternal principles beneath
them. As in these laws we live and move
and have our being, life becomes harmonious
and safe.

Or again, in our human society we get the
most out of it by living in it, conforming to its
institutions of the home and the school and the
Church.

Thus life rises only as it finds its place in the
highest in the universe. And, at best, these are
only analogies. Ultimately man lives higher

96 Spiritual Culture and Social Service

than nature. At his highest he rises above the
social level of his social order.

Ultimately the world is not governed by nature,
by law or by man. Our highest life is in the
realm of truth and eternal principle. Nature
has no meaning unless it is the expression of the
Infinite thought, law has no sanction without the
will of the Lawgiver, man is unaccountable ex-
cept as the human child of the divine Father.

But what do we mean by living, moving and
having our being in God ? Not simply standing
in awe of Him, not by the sense of fear, not by what
we call faith in God, not even our love for Him
as of a pure and holy being. It is the sharing
of the divine heart and mind, coming to love the
things He loves, yea, to hate the things He hates.
It is thinking as God thinks ; it is not seeking
His favour, but seeking God Himself. This is
the heart of religion, this is the soul of moral
action. We have been afraid of the depths in
religion, w^ have moved upon the surface of its
waters, we have called religion by many other
names. We have called it faith, belief, creed,
action, deeds. By so limiting it we have been
afraid to think of it as our life and being in the
Infinite. This superficialism has gone in two
directions, in the direction of form and ceremony
on the one hand, and in that of outward act and
deed on the other.

Religion is not what we think about God. It

The Life More Than Meat 97

is thinking and loving God's thoughts. In its
social application it means loving men as their
heavenly Father loves them, their bodies and
their souls, their physical comfort and their char-
acters. It is a great deal to gain for men better
houses, food, wages and more leisure. It is infi-
nitely more to give them also better hearts and
characters.

Jesus is the sovereign example of a well-bal-
anced mind and heart. He fed. He healed, He
comforted men, He rebuked the rich with great
severity, but He was always saying that the life
was more than the meat. He was always lead-
ing men towards the fulfillment of their life in
God. His whole life is a picture of the blending
of religious faith with human sympathy, two
elements which in Him God hath joined to-
gether and which by man should not be rent
asunder.

This view of the social order transfuses philan-
thropy with a holy light. It irradiates action
with the light of motive. We see humanity as a
child of the divine, we learn that we can only rid
men of poverty as we rid either them or their
fellow men of sin. It becomes clear that we can
best reduce the former by uprooting the latter.

The question is raised to-day as to what is the
distinct message and aim of the Church. Some
men are saying, either outwardly or more timidly
to themselves, that with our great humanitarian

98 Spiritual Culture and Social Service

institutions there is little need of the Church.
They forget that these grew out of the Church's
gospel and, with their limited vision, they do not
see that they can never endure without it.

Take the gifts which come for our great phil-
anthropies. Who are the givers ? They are al-
most alvv^ays men whose hearts are touched by
the Gospel and who seek to live a religious life.
The Church is to do what Jesus did, find ways of
expressing the divine in human terms and of re-
vealing humanity in the light of its divine mean-
ing.

Christian disciples must do their deeds of kind-
ness and let them interpret and express their
religion. They must also seek to interpret the
life itself and find beneath in its eternal, guiding
principle.

There are some men to-day who really believe
that we can make the world both happy and
good without God. But this is not true, if our
ideal of a good world is a lofty ideal. The
prophet, the teacher, the reformer, is hopeless
unless he can see beyond the forces which he
may witness in the life of the world itself. He
needs ever to be lifting his eyes to the eternal
hills and to feel the gracious presence of God
mediating itself in human life.

Thus all life, all goodness, all permanent uplift-
ing of mankind must be the unreturning, endless,
Godward reach of the souls of men of faith. The

The Life More Than Meat 99

creature cannot do the task of the Creator, but if
he believes this truth of the great apostle, then
he knows that no falsehood can defeat, that no
right can be crushed a.nd he can work with faith
and hope and joy.

Our social movements, our philanthropic en-
terprises, our economic betterments and other in-
stitutions, instead of taking the place of Gospel,
pulpit, truth and religion, can never endure, can
never be more than the outward passing semblance
of a kingdom of heaven, without some institu-
tion, some spiritua.1 school which is ever teaching
men that salvation does not rest in political econ-
omy or in social enterprise. Above all these
mansions of the earth there is a house not made
with hands. In God all men and all their works
and movements must live and move and have
their being.

The thoughtful men and women among us
seek the light in this direction. The world that
they face is complex and difficult, its political,
social and economic problems are very hard to
solve. To such men only, and only to their vi-
sion, will the light of the Eternal bring much joy
to the temporal.

Such men and women must be those of our
churches, patient, thoughtful, passionate, wise
and spiritual ; those who pray, as did one of the
great psalmists, " For with Thee, O God, is the
fountain of life and in Thy light do we see light.'*

lOO Spiritual Culture and Social Service

Rolling back the problems, the tasks of the world
upon God, believing in truth, love and justice,
ever saying of all humanity, " We are His off-
spring, for in Him we live and move and have
our being."

VII

THE WITNESS OF THE UNSEEN

THE deepest of truths often appear in the
form of paradox. The Scriptures speak
frequently of the invisibility of the Infi-
nite and yet Jesus once declared that the poor in
heart were blessed because they see God.

The most striking utterance of this nature was
that of the apostle in his letter to the Church at
Corinth : '* While we look not at the things
which are seen, but at the things which are un-
seen ; for the things which are seen are temporal,
but the things which are unseen are eternal."
This paradox obtains in all human life. Every-
where are its visible foregrounds and its invisible
backgrounds. It is true that only as we see and
understand the unseen can we come to know
life at all.

When I looked upon Munkacsy's great picture,
called Christ before Pilate, and caught the first
impression, the subject seemed to be correctly
stated. It was Christ before Pilate. But as I
entered into the thought of the scene and re-
membered all its associations, and as I studied
the countenances of the two striking personali-

lOI

102 Spiritual Culture and Social Service

ties of the picture, I caught the spirit of Pilate in
the anxious, troubled look upon his face and I
remembered that the troublous dreams that
night were in Pilate's household. Then I looked
/at the face of the Master, clear, calm and undis-
turbed, as He said : " Thou couldst have no
power over Me except it were given thee from
above." It then seemed to me that there was
something wrong about the picture and I dis-
covered that it was misnamed. It was really
Pilate before Christ. Upon my first view I had
looked at the things which are seen, but my
second and truer vision was of the things which
are unseen.

So it is in all life. There are certain things
which make their immediate impression upon
us, the details of our living, our momentary in-
terests, our temporary judgments, the things
which are seen. But back and beyond these are
the great truths which we have come to know,
the splendid endeavours to which we have
pledged ourselves, the ultimate aims of our lives,
our hopes, our deeper impulses, our abiding in-
spirations ; these remain very much in the realm
of the unseen. Yet these are the real sources of
our life and power.

We need to witness both the seen and the un-
seen. We must not be mere distant dreamers
on the one hand, or mere thoughtless actors on
the other. But our greatest danger is that we

The Witness of the Unseen 103

shall not see into the background of the picture
and discover the meaning of life. The need of
most of us is of more distance and depth. We
use the word '* reality" as though it related only
to those things which are seen and may be
handled, while the truth is that the profound
and ultimate realities are not the things seen
and temporal but the unseen and eternal.

In considering these unseen backgrounds of
life two elements seem to cover them. First,
there is the spirit which animates and then
there is the ideal towards which we are ap-
proaching.

In the letter to the Hebrews the wTiter tells
us that Moses wrote as seeing the invisible. So
it is with us. We live our truest life, we are
our highest selves, we do our finest deeds,
under the light and impulse of our vision of the
unseen. The true measure of our life lies in our
apprehension of its background. Our true un-
derstanding of our own souls is reached when
we go back of effects to causes, behind events to
their meanings, beyond incidents to principles,
from facts to truths.

When we come to look at the deepest things
they are all invisible. There is the energy that
creates and sustains the universal order. There
are our human personalities, our minds, our
souls, our affections, all that is most real is the
unseen. Our human life almost reaches a mis-

1 04 Spiritual Culture and Social Service

arable drudgery unless we witness its divine,
eternal meaning.

Our duties, our deeds of service, our patient
toil, our cares, these are the foregrounds of life,
the things that are seen. They wait to be illu-
mined by the sunlight upon the mountains of
the unseen background of inspiration and abid-
ing impulse.

Take motherhood for an example. It is little
but care, trouble and even menial service, it is
full of little but haunting dread even from its
first intimations, unless over the mother is the
angel of annunciation and unless the mother be-
comes thus a holy mother.

Everywhere we see the truth of this paradox.
With only the sight of the visible, life is dark.
The light of life comes from the unseen. But
when life is looked at in this way it becomes so
radiant with its invisible, inherent beauty, that
" the meanest flower that blows can give thoughts
that do often lie too deep for tears."

Thus the true measure of ourselves, of our
fellow men, and of the great causes and move-
ments of our humanity, are gained as we are
able to look away from the foreground into the
realm of the unseen. We must discover the
spirit which animates and the ideal which
directs, and draws and lures us onward.

By this measure must we judge ourselves, ac-
cording to the utterance of Jesus, remembering

The Witness of the Unseen 105

that God knoweth our hearts. Our life is in-
finitely more than the outward actions which ap-
pear in its foreground ; it is in the intent, the mo-
tive, the spirit. It does not exist in the activity
of the immediate moment, but in the guiding
star in the East of some ideal which we are fol-
lowing, in the background of our living.

Are my thoughts pure, are my motives unself-
ish, is my purpose lofty, yea, if I am heaping
coals of fire on my brother's head am I doing it
only for the sake of scorching him, in rendering
my benevolence am I doing it because of its
comfortable feeling ? This should be the search-
ing method of our introspective judgment.

This searching method, on the other hand, is
also full of encouragement and uplift as we let
the lights pass over from humility and confession
to prophecy and aspiration. Perhaps we have
been misjudged by our fellow men. We are
conscious of lofty intent and of unselfish spirit.
Then the apparent foreground of our failure
recedes into the unseen background of success.

Character, some one has said, is the sum of all
our choices. But it is just as true, yes, truer, that
our choices are the issue of character. We need
to be ever getting behind the foreground of ac-
tion into this background of character. Our
outwardly noble actions are not noble unless
they express a great and good nature. The
smiles of our lips are as bad as lies unless they

io6 Spiritual Culture and Social Service

express the kindness of our hearts ; our utter-
ances, indignant though they may be, against
unrighteousness, are themselves unrighteous un-
less they proceed from hearts that are on fire.
The gifts of our apparent kindness bring us no
return unless they come from generous, unselfish
spirits.

Sincerity then is the harmony between the
seen and the unseen. It is bad enough if the
things we do are wrong, but it is worse if the
background of their spirit is not right. " If the
light that is in thee be darkness, how great is
that darkness ? "

In the same way that we thus judge ourselves,
so we must measure our fellow men. We need
to remember that we only see this foreground of
men's lives. Some of the greatest tragedies in
the world are the tragedies of misunderstanding.
We see men perhaps only as weak, blundering,
failing men. Perhaps, however, they are like the
man in the forest trying to find his way, going in
many circles, falling many times, yet in his un-
seen heart is the light of the home that he is
seeking, the light which he has lost for a little
time.

We all need to remember that " there is so
much bad in the best of us and so much good in
the worst of us," that while it is right to rebuke
evil, we should never do it without seeking to
transform it into good. We need to learn to get

The Witness of the Unseen 107

back of the seen to the unseen in our judgment
of men.

The saddest of our human failures to-day is
our estimate of modern causes and movements.
We hear a great babel of voices, but they are
like the tongues at Pentecost ; each man speaks
his own dialect, no one of them utters the whole
gospel, yet they are all seeking to express one
and the same ideal.

This is especially true in the growing relations
of this democracy of ours. We must keep in
mind two elements. First, the ultimate purpose,
intent and ideal. We must keep this clear of the
immediate means and methods by which men so
blunderingly seek the attainment of those ideals.

There is the great mob of people before the
palace of the Czar of all the Russians. To the
ordinary onlooker it is simply a mob to be sub-
dued. So thinks that blind ruler. But he who
is gifted with the eye and sense of prophecy can
look into the background and witness the pent-
up indignation of a wronged and oppressed
people.

This is the way in which we must look at all
our social movements. It is the duty of those,
who are called to guide them, first to understand
their spirit, and then to guide them towards their
higher ideals. Most men and women, as they
look upon human society, see only the man with
the muck-rake. If they would look beyond into

lo8 Spiritual Culture and Social Service

the unseen they would witness a crown sus-
pended over his head.

I stood one afternoon in one of London's busy
thoroughfares. The sound of distant and ap-
proaching fife and drum fell upon my ears. The
passers-by ceased for a moment in their hur-
ried pace, and we saw, marching up the broad
and busy street, with their Scriptural banners,
the blue-bonneted v/omen and the uniformed
men of the Salvation Army. A ludicrous and
ridiculous scene ! So thought those men and
women who stood about me. They saw in that
procession only an insignificant body of uncul-
tured and uncouth men and women. They
have nothing to bestow upon them but a pat-
ronizing, condescending smile, either of pity or
disdain.

But I thank God I had at least enough of the
gift of prophecy and true perspective to behold
that scene with other and with very different eyes.
I saw their place in a magnificent procession two
thousand years in length, in the grand army of
the saints, the martyrs, the spiritual warriors, and
the holy men of God, a legion that enrolls the
highest names of history. I saw the transformed
Augustine, the golden-tongued Chrysostom, the
heroic Savonarola, the self-sacrificing Francis of
Assisi, the good and brave John Bunyan, stern,
strong Oliver Cromwell, Baxter of Kidderminster,
Thomas Chalmers, Frederick Maurice, Frederick

The Witness of the Unseen 109

W, Robertson, and a myriad of other great and
holy men. My mind carried me on up to the lead-
ers of that magnificent march, and I beheld the
impulsive Peter, the loving John, Paul of Tarsus,
and their simple, stately colleagues. And finally,
at the head of the host no man can number, was
the supreme personage of history and more, the
Son of God, in His transfiguration glory, with
garments as the light, shining with the glory as of
the only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and
truth.

Again I retraced that long line. I looked once
more at that band of resolute men and good
women marching up Regent Street amid the
smiles of those affably scornful men and women.
I saw in them lives that had been transformed
by Jesus Christ, spending themselves to uplift
men ; women, daughters of the people and daugh-
ters of God, who go about the haunts of that great
city, by day and by night, serving and uplifting
their fallen and their falling sisters. The grotesque
was all obliterated. Beheld in the light of its
real significance the scene was a sublime one,
beautiful and full of dignity. They were men
and women seeking with Jesus Christ to help and
save their very scorners. I recognized their
place in a great historic pageant. It gave an-
other picture to me than to the shopping women
and busy men of Oxford Street, I witnessed
their true dignity as disciples of Jesus of Nazareth.

I lo Spiritual Culture and Social Service

There they are, they do their work, mighty,
magnificent, heroic, full of a pathetic goodness.
The great world of London knows them not,
though they be its saviours, or knows them only
by a mocking nod, a pitying or disdainful glance.
Thus we have witness of the supreme necessity
of a correct perspective.

When they had passed on, and the people by
me had forgotten that they were, I thought still
longer upon the inner meaning of tlie episode.
The things that were interpret those that are.
History is repetition, and the meaning of the
present is best seen in the outcome uf past move-
ments. The pages of history unrolled them-
selves. Back three hundred years, another band
of very simple men, unknown at first to the world
in which they lived. When known, known only
to deride and persecute. Driven to Holland,
ostracized by English civilization, forced to brave
the billows of the angry ocean in a frail craft.
Unknown, unheeded, or malignantly pursued in
that day. Forgotten in this day by the mass of
men, excepting a few students of historic annals.
I beheld them in their true dignity and greatness,
bequeathing the only conscience England has,
and giving to the world — America.

A few more pages back, another host, hiding
in Roman caves and catacombs. Scorned while
few, persecuted when many, growing like the
mustard seed and the kingdom of heaven, until

The Witness of the Unseen 1 1 1

the Roman world was theirs, though they were
dead of hunger, torture and neglect.

Pursuing the path of this world's chronicles
still farther I saw a little handful of fishermen and
publicans, unregarded and unknown by their
state, except by a few petty magistrates and
policemen. So insignificant that only one con-
temporary historian gives them note, and he but
one short line. But their message has trans-
formed the world. These are but instances out
of the multitude of their kind. I was back again
to the beginning of the great procession, to the
starting-point and personage of this score of
centuries. Out there in a desert, alone on a
mountainside, without a place to lay His head,
praying in the solitude of the garden, sought
only seldom by a throng, which waited only for
a moment and then went away to return no more
until it came to cry that He be crucified, speaking
mostly to that dozen fishermen and publicans,
moves the majestic form of the Son of God,
dropping from His lips eternal truths, that have
made subsequent moral history, living a life that
by its holy grandeur has transformed humanity.
While yonder is Herod, busy with his dances and
his card parties, Caesar with his plots and plans,
Pilate with his petty intrigues, the busy men of
Jerusalem, too hurried like the strenuous business
men and the feverous, frivolous women of to-day,
too preoccupied to give Him heed, except as a

112 Spiritual Culture and Social Service

mild and harmless fanatic whom they never
would have disturbed but for a few blind, hot-
headed Jews. These are but epitomes of history.
It has ever thus gone on ; it goes on to-day, re-
peating its blind and stupid errors.

On every hand to-day, in the movements of
the social order, we may witness many wrong
means and methods in the foreground, but we
should also try to see into the background of the
spirit behind them, of the splendid ideals of
justice and righteousness waiting to be inter-
preted and properly expressed. Most men and
women look simply at the foreground, condemn-
ing the immediate cause, while the greater task
is to recognize and bring out the true spirit and
ideal.

This is the way in which we must interpret
humanity and take the measure of all human life.
This is our true place in the universe, to work
with God, turning hatred into love, turning false-
hood into truth.

*' The spirit of man is the candle of the Lord."
All men and all human movements are the
garments of the divine Spirit. They all make
many errors and yet all uprisings are upliftings.
So while we condemn, if we must, the foreground
of men's failing means and methods, let us also
exalt and bring out the background of the spirit
and ideal.

Mankind is not, on the whole, a child of the

The Witness of the Unseen 113

evil one whom God is trying to steal. Mankind
are the children of God upon whom Satan has
laid his hand, as he sought to do with Jesus, " for
a season."

There are many lessons to learn from this
thought. We should cultivate the duty of look-
ing for the best. We must look for the best in
ourselves, in our better prophecies and our higher
impulses. We must ever be seeking the best in
others and idealize for them if they will not
idealize for themselves. As Frederick W.
Robertson put it, we must learn to find "the
soul of goodness in things evil." Thus only shall
we be able to draw out the best in ourselves and
in other men ; thus only shall we be able to guide
the movements of mankind towards their ultimate
ideal.

We should nurture the finest in our humanity
and never break the bruised reed or quench the
smoking flax. Here is the secret of a true
optimism. It is not blind, it only seems blind
because it sees more. It witnesses not only the
foreground of the seen but the background of
the unseen.

The world is growing better, as we look from
the foreground of the present into the background
of space and time, from the foreground of the
immediate and direct into the background of the
general and universal, out of the past and the
present into the background of the ages. Thus

114 Spiritual Culture and Social Service

it is that we may witness the hope of the future.
We must look out upon the landscape and not at
the few broken trees at our feet.

All human life is full of beauty, if we only
cultivate this art of seeing it, and our experience
will be that of Jacob ; we shall say again and
again, "Surely the Lord is in this place but I
knew it not." And even if we do not find all Hfe
a holy place, we shall find, at least, many Alpine
shrines along the way. In the Father's house
on earth there are thus many mansions.

The world is very like a great cathedral with
its many chapels, if we but discover them. Only
by thus seeing life shall we come to make it so.
This great optimism of faith must have three ul-
timate objects, — self, humanity and God.

We must believe in God, that we live in a
divine order even though He moves in a mys-
terious way.

Our faith in self, while not vain and presump-
tuous, should be real, knowing as we do that we
have within ourselves the prophecies of ever bet-
ter things.

We must believe in mankind because they are
God's children waiting to be uplifted. Thus only
is it good to live, to love, to hope, to work, to
sacrifice and to wait.

The shepherds in the fields heard the song of
the host in the Syrian sk}^, but the busy men and
women in the inn did not hear it. Thus may

The Witness of the Unseen 1 1 5

God and man work together as truth springs up
out of the earth and righteousness looks down
from heaven.

I love to look at that statue of John Bunyan in
the park at Bedford with its inscription, " His
eyes uplift to heaven, he stood as one who pleaded
with men."

To bring God down to man, to lift man up to
God, this is the work of our Christian service.
We may even learn to love men, not only for
what they are, but because of our faith in what
they are to be. We may look at our humanity
as I look at my boy, sometimes in his willful
wrong-doing. We may even love them for what
they might be. He alone who thus lives as see-
ing the invisible can face the saddest of human
realities with the undying faith and hope of an
unquenchable affection.

We then, that are strong, ought to bear the
infirmities of the weak. The mission of the
Christian Church is not to separate the good
from the bad ; it is to bring the latent prophecies
in mankind to their fulfillment.

Religion is not only a reverence for God, it is
reverence for His children, the reverence of min-
istry and service, the sense of the sacred worth
of the human soul. It is listening to the voice
of Jesus, " Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the
least of these My brethren, ye have done it unto
Me." One of the most beautiful scenes in the

1 16 Spiritual Culture and Social Service

life of Jesus was that upon the cross, when He
looked down and prayed, " Father, forgive them,
for they know not what they do."

I met a blind man the other day, and as I
helped him across the busy street, and asked him
about his blindness, he said, '' No, I am not wholly
blind, but I can see only the things at my feet."
So it is with many men and women. They see
only the foreground at their very feet.

" Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on
earth." In this the Master prayed that men, that
human causes, that the movements of mankind,
should learn to view life from above, the world as
part of God's moral order, investing life with its
divine meaning and seeing it in the sunlight of
the Father's face. Approaching things from
within, touching them with the heart and its af-
fections and then directing man, guiding causes,
molding the movements of mankind, in the direc-
tion of their spiritual ends.

Let us not forget this great sacred journey of
life itself in the little incidents that happen by the
way. Let us not keep our eyes so close to the
little wayside stones that we shall forget to watch
the beauteous twilight colours on the white Alpine
hills. For when the sight of life's background is
lost, its foreground is vain and has no meaning
or intent.

Every city in which men live out their life has
ts mirage of prophetic beauty, and to every city

The Witness of the Unseen 117

of men there is a corresponding Holy City in the
mind and heart of the Infinite.

It is only as we come to see it, as we look not
at the things which are seen, but at the things
which are unseen, that we become ourselves and
become equal to the uplifting of our fellow men.

"A City throned upon the height behold,

The City of Man's Life fulfilled in God.
Bathed all in light, with open gates of Gold,

Perfect that city is in tower and street.

An Angel stands its occupant to greet.
Still shine, O patient City on the height.

The while our Race in hut and hovel dwells

It hears the music of thy bells
And its dull soul is haunted by thy light.

So once the Son of Man hath heard thy call,

And the Lord Christ hath claimed thee for us all."

The Culture of Self

VIII

ACQUIREMENT BY RENUNCIATION

THE law of compensation is one that is
not easy to apply universally and yet
one which finds a multitude of simple
illustrations ever at hand. The profoundest ap-
plication of that law is found in the teaching of
Jesus that acquirement comes through renuncia-
tion. " Whosoever will save his life shall lose it
and whosoever will lose his life for My sake shall
find it," says the Master. He then asks the
question, "What is a man profited if he shall
gain the whole world and lose his own soul, or
what shall a man give in exchange for his soul ? "
Among the most significant of the operations
in the universal order is that of convertibility.
The relations of the universe are reciprocal.
There is a divine law of exchange, in perpetual
operation, by which all giving is receiving and
all receiving is giving. There is no acquirement
without renunciation, no renunciation without
acquirement. Nothing is ever gained without
giving up something; nothing can be relin-
quished without gaining something. Somewhat
similar to the natural law of indestructibility, we
have, in the moral order, this law of compensation.

121

1 22 Spiritual Culture and Social Service

The sphere of human life is one vast market-
place ; everything is under the law of exchange.
Everything has its price. In it, there is no re-
ceiving without giving, no gain without loss, no
acquirement without renunciation. You cannot
get something for nothing. Whatever you get
you must pay for, and every spiritual possession
has its value in material terms.

For example, if you would gain wealth you
must renounce intellectual culture. You cannot
be an operator in Wall Street and be engaged in
intellectual research at the university. You can-
not obtain intellectual culture without renounc-
ing wealth. If you would have renown you
must renounce leisure. If you desire a quiet life
you must give up public honour. If you wish
physical vigour you must renounce indulgence.
If you would enjoy physical gratification you
must give up strength and health of body. If
you would know the meaning of the home you
must give up the life of the club.

While it is true that there is mediation in all
this, it still remains true that you are always gain-
ing the one at so much loss of the other. Noth-
ing is ever gained without the loss of something
else. We find what seems to be an eternal law
of inevitable exchange. Every moral act is a
decision to give up something and to gain some-
thing else.

The universe and its human life resolve them-

Acquirement by Renunciation 1 23

selves into two elements. We call them matter
and spirit. Life has two forms, the material and
the spiritual. These moral transactions in the
market-place of life consist of some exchange of
the one for the other, of God for mammon or of
mammon for God. We cannot serve both.

Moral retrogression is the exchange of the
spiritual for the material. Moral evolution is the
exchange of the material for the spiritual. It
does not change this law if we use other language
in describing it and speak of transforming the
material into the spiritual or of making the
material a garment of the spirit. All moral gain
involves some material loss, and on every hand,
as we view the world, we see men either buying
divine birthrights for messes of pottage or get-
ting messes of pottage in exchange for their
birthrights.

Every moral attainment, every spiritual acquire-
ment, has its market price in material terms.
Every moral decision involves the saving of life
by losing it or the losing of life by saving it.
Every moral act is the giving of something in
exchange for the soul or gaining the soul in ex-
change for something else. Here is money !
What is its moral use and value ? Does it not
consist in its renouncement? We exchange it
for a book, some sublime sonnet or the utterance
of some great philosopher. We send it to India
or to China to be used for the saving of the race.

124 Spiritual Culture and Social Service

This illustrates the continuous moral exchange
that enters into every act of moral progress. We
get money for the sake of giving it up, if we view
it rightly.

This truth of Jesus leads us into a question
which often troubles us. Are material blessings
proportional to spiritual merit ? Job's friends
wrestled with the problem for him and their poor
miserable philosophy would not adjust itself to
the facts of life. So the Psalms finally had to
put the reward over into the future.

Is there any rule by which men who serve
God are sure of gaining material prosperity ?
Is physical ease gained by spiritual devotion ?
The facts betray no such law. Will applause
sound in the ears of honour ? Can a man make
the most money by being honest or by cheating ?
Very often by being dishonest ? Do good peo-
ple suffer less than bad people ? We certainly
cannot see that they do. In fact, the experience
of the psalmist seems universal. It is the
strength of the wicked that seems firm. They
are not in trouble as other men. Their eyes
stand out with success. Neither are they plagued
as other men. They have more than heart could
wish.

Take the moral problems of any community
and witness the application of the psalmisfs
complaint. This at least we can see, that spir-
itual excellencies do not involve material bless-

Acquirement by Renunciation j.25

ings. If there is any rule, it is that spiritual at-
tainment is always gained by material loss.

If there are apparent objections to this state-
ment, it is because we need to remember that we
are speaking of those material things which stand
in the way of spiritual life. This Gospel of Jesus is
not a plea for voluntary asceticism. Jesus was
never disturbed by the sad doubts of the psalm-
ist. His clear spiritual eye saw the great prin-
ciples of life beneath it all. Jesus called His
disciples and made them many promises, but He
never mentioned ease, luxury, or material gifts.
What was His prophecy ? He said that they
were to be blessed, but it was when men should
revile and persecute them. Material things
would be in the way and they might need to cut
off the right hand or pluck out the right eye.
They must lose concern for earthly treasures.
Spiritual advance was by what He called a straight
and narrow way. The Gospel was a pearl of so
great price that one must be willing to give for
it all that he possessed. He promised His dis-
ciples a hundredfold reward, but He added,
*' with persecutions." He bequeathed them
peace, but it was His peace, not as the world.

His prophecy became realization ; His dis-
ciples found it so. His disciples have ever found
it so. Read the eternal lessons of saintly biog-
raphy. You find devotion to the truth paid for
by the persecution of men. Saints are at the

126 Spiritual Culture and Social Service

stake, holy men are hiding in caves or fastened
in the stocks ; pilgrims of heaven have little but
their pilgrim's staff and beggar's bowl. They
gained their hundredfold reward with persecu-
tions. They took the eternal prize but they all
paid the price.

The life of Jesus is ever the illustration of His
truth. He made the bargain in the wilderness
of temptation. The twofold opportunities were
set before Him. His answer was that He would
take the cross and the kingdom of heaven.
Saviours of the world since Him have been called
to make the exchange of Calvary, according to
their measure.

Men and women complain that if they work in
a noble cause they only invite criticism, censure,
opposition, and persecution. It is so wdthin the
Church of Christ. They constantly tell us that
the high callings are underpaid. It is true. A
bartender who can make certain complicated
combinations is paid much higher than the best
of school-teachers. Men are complaining that the
ministry is unremunerative. There is no doubt
but what it is true. They say further that the
nobler and braver the man the more he suffers
and the less he gets. In civic life the dema-
gogues get the praise and the reformers get
something else.

This is all true. There is no use in evading it
but it is simply a question : — Which will you

Acquirement by Renunciation 127

have ; the Cross with Jesus Christ or a supper
with Pilate? Shall it be honour or money ? It
is the opportunity of sharing the prison with John
the Baptist or being with Herod at his dance. It
is Barabbas or Christ, the Golden Rule or the
rule of gold. Every man is called upon to stand
before Jesus, as did the rich young man in the
story, and many of them go away sorrowful.
The ultimatum of Jesus was a willingness to re-
nounce all.

We must, however, not fail to see the prize as
well as the price. The disciple Peter, who so
often spoke first and thought afterwards, once
impulsively said to the Master, " Lo, we have
left all and followed Thee." What was the all ?
So far as we know, it was a few old boats and
fish-nets. What did he gain ? The keys of the
kingdom of heaven from the pierced hands of his
Lord.

Judas made the other decision. His gain was
thirty pieces of silver but what did he give for
it?

The prize and the price ; the prize is honour,
self-respect, manhood, character ; the price any-
thing that these cost. We cannot have the prize
without the price any more than we can be, at
one and the same time, honourable and dis-
honourable, brave and craven. The prize is the
soul, the price whatever the soul is worth.

This need be no specious plea for the ad van-

1 28 Spiritual Culture and Social Service

tages of poverty. I love to see business men en-
gaged in their honourable and profitable busi-
ness. I love to see wage earners getting to-
gether for more pay. This truth of Jesus does
not set aside the gaining of money by toil and
service. It raises the question as to what money
is for. The meat is necessary to the life but the
life is more than meat.

Nor is this a plea for the equalization of wealth.
There is no doubt but what some men are better
fitted to distribute wealth than others. There are
two sad classes of humanity : those who wor-
ship the mammon that they possess and those
who worship the mammon which other men pos-
sess.

It is a question of exchange. We must not
overlook, as we bear our losses, this law of com-
pensation. Besides the men and women of un-
blushing selfishness on the one hand and of
petulant complaint on the other, there is a third
class of whom there are too few in our day.
They are those who can find the medium of rea-
sonable content, who would learn that the real
things of life are the unsullied conscience, sym-
pathetic heart, the affection of the home, the joy
of service.

There is an adjustment between material pos-
sessions and heavenly treasures, but it is a straight
and narrow way and few are they who find it.
On the one hand, there is the unhappy home of

Acquirement by Renunciation 129

selfish luxury and on the other the unhappy
abode of pinched faces and starved forms. Some-
where there is a balance between the life and the
meat, between self-culture and self-preservation
and service.

In the last analysis, however, the law of Jesus
is true. In His divine providence, God often il-
lustrates it by His apparent exceptions. Here is
some man whom we know who has deserved
honour paid him by his fellow men. Go back into
his life a litde and you may find that he has paid
for it by suffering. Perhaps men did not always
give him their honour but their cold disdain.

The best example of this law of exchange is in
the home. Here it is perhaps the giving up of
the ease, complacency, luxury of the man in his
club for the anxiety, distress, and care of the
father in his household. Here we have the para-
dox illustrated ; the joy of suffering or the hap-
piness of sacrifice. The home is a sovereign
example of this law of compensation between the
material and the spiritual — the acquirement of
truth, joy, happiness, and peace by the renuncia-
tion of self, comfort, and material content. In no
other realm do we discover that we find life by
losing it as we do in our homes. True parents
are continually cutting ofit something for the sake
of their children. It is an example of the loss of
the world and the gaining of the soul.

We must not forget to put the law the other

130 Spiritual Culture and Social Service

way. We never can relinquish the material and
not gain the spiritual. Our real happiness is de-
termined by our attitude, whether it be that of
regretfully watching things that recede or keep-
ing our eyes fixed upon the things we are gain-
ing.

This is why some men and women learn to
bear increasing burdens with an ever-sweeter
spirit. It is often possible to gain something of
the unconcern of Jesus, who was the same Jesus
whether at the dinner of the Pharisee or appeas-
ing His hunger by plucking the ears of corn in
the fields. This splendid balance can only come
from the consciousness of this divine compensa-
tion.

Nor is this a religion of unhappiness. When
is the parent happiest ; when he is buying some-
thing for himself or for the child ? Yet, when he
is buying for the child he is buying still more for
himself.

If it be true that self-preservation is the first
law of nature, it is truer still that self-giving is
the finer law of spiritual attainment.

IX

OUT OF GREAT TRIBULATION

THE book of Revelation has been trivially
used, but it is not a trivial book. In
language of dignity, majesty, and fig-
urative splendour, it conveys thought of magni-
tude, profundity, and beauty. Almost every word
in it counts. In its summing up of the ultimate
order of human development, it frequently gives
expression to the meaning of perplexing human
experiences.

" What are these which are arrayed in white
robes and whence came they ? These are they
which came out of great tribulation and have
washed their robes and made them white in the
blood of the lamb."

In this utterance the robes of white are the
symbol of refinement ; tribulation is the human
experience of discipline ; the blood of the lamb
is the spirit of the Son of Man. The meaning is
that refinement of character is made in the cru-
cible of experience.

In our moments of trivial meditation it some-
times looks to us as though life would assume
perfection if it were only a more comfortable
order. We are dwelling much on this to-day.

131

132 Spiritual Culture and Social Service

There are two types of character to shun : one is
that of selfish and unconcerned content ; the
other is that of misguided philanthropic sym-
pathy.

There is no doubt a good deal of hypocrisy
and cant uttered by those who look out upon the
world in soft raiment from kings' palaces and
bid it be content in its suffering and resigned to
its wretchedness.

Yet it is, as George A. Gordon has said, a
profound fact of human existence that our
deepest human interests are at one and the same
time our most treasured possessions and our
dearest burdens. The things that bring the
deepest joys may also convey the keenest sor-
rows. The same thing may be the source of our
delight and of our distress.

We delight in it because it makes life rich and
full. It is our anxiety and distress because it is
so fragile and may so easily slip away. Our
human life is like the evasive sunlight on a
cloudy day. Take, for example, the joy of the
parent in the child ; at its best and noblest its
every moment is filled with the presentiment of
fear and the portent of disaster, beginning back
at the very first prophetic sense of motherhood.
The child becomes the perpetual anxiety of the
mother, and the mother is the serious solicitude
of the father, long before the infant sees the light
of day. This is but a figure of the days to come,

Out of Great Tribulation 1 33

and this experience is but the symbol of all hu-
man experience. There is, then, this great fact
of existence upon which hangs the very thread
of life. Give the man his highest joy and you
may also be handing him his deepest sorrow.

Common and universal as is this experience
there are, however, two contrasting ways of view-
ing it. There is no moral difference between
men that is so great. On the one hand, the man
is thinking how pleasant and beautiful ; or, how
hard and dark this is ! Other men do not so im-
press us. They seem above and beyond mere
questions of content or pain, beyond desire for
pleasure as such, or complaint of suffering in
itself. Some men and women are always like a
child, asking, " Will it hurt ? " while to others
the question seldom seems to come. We have
here another of those illuminating examples of
the truth of Jesus, that he who would save his
life loses it and he who will lose it saves it.

Here is the man who is eternally asking, Am
1 as happy as I ought to be ? Will this make
me happy ? Am I appreciated or am I mis-
judged ? Am I in health or am I in danger of
contagion ? He loses the very thing he seeks,
in grasping for it. How clear it is that self-for-
getfulness is the truest self-realization. How true
that our larger joys are in the realm of the un-
conscious.

Thus there is no wider difference between men

134 Spiritual Culture and Social Service

than their contrasting attitude towards the min-
istry of tribulation. Refinement of the human
character and spirit is in the crucible of its ex-
perience. The strength and the dignity of per-
sonahty is in direct proportion to the intensity of
moral struggle.

This ministry of tribulation comes in a myriad
of forms. In the first place, it may be in the
bearing of the burdens of life, the overworked
body, hard circumstances.

Then to them that hath is given, and the men
who can bear their own burdens bravely are
those who become the bearers of the burdens of
other men.

Take the man of ease and comfort and he is
apt to be a man of grudging sympathy. The
burdens of life increase upon those who are
strong by an alternating evolution. The law
rises and those who bear their own burdens are
those who fulfill the law of Christ in bearing one
another's. The larger the man the greater the
burden that comes to him, while the more he
bears the less conscious he is of its weight.

Thus we are led into this complex law that the
finer, nobler, deeper the person becomes, the
deeper are the waters of tribulation which open
before him.

Take for example the conscientious pursuance
of duty, the daring procedure of initiative action,
with its attendant resistance. The easy way of

Out of Great Tribulation 135

life is that of compliance and expediency ; the
avoidance of pain is the evasion of consequences.
It is a sad and glorious story from the days of
the prophets to our own day. Elijah's income
is reduced to the providence of ravens and poor
widows. The world, age after age, has been a
Jerusalem stoning those sent unto her. Great
messages come to deaf ears, visions of truth to
blind eyes, noble calls to faltering feet.

But this is just as glorious as it is sad, for, over
against this background, witness the light on the
pages of history. Who are these saviours of the
world pictured to-day upon the pages of biog-
raphy in robes of white ? These are they which
came out of great tribulation. They came out
of disloyalty, disappointment, and defeat, out of
coldness, censoriousness, criticism, and contempt;
out of resistance, recrimination, and reproach.
The light shining upon the darkness of the world
is from their souls.

Let us take something nearer to us, of our
common heritage of suffering, anxiousness, so-
licitude. How it spells those other words in the
lexicon of life, sympathy, sacrifice, affection, pa-
tience, calmness, if we only let it write these names
on our foreheads.

Yea, even peace. For he who foregoes the
anxious cares, the danger of loss, the hours of
trembling fear, he who has never known the sus-
pense of awaiting the verdict of the doctor, has

136 Spiritual Culture and Social Service

never held his ear to listen for the breathing of
the little child, who has escaped the vigils of the
night, has seldom known, or realized, or deepened
into all its finer meaning the glorious self-forget-
fulness of human affection.

Phillips Brooks has put it beautifully in another
analogy from the book of Revelation, *' The sea
of glass mingled with fire." The sea of glass is
the type of repose, rest, peace, but it is mingled
with the fire of trial and struggle. Repose
mingled with conflict. Fire, the symbol of the
process of refinement, and through the mingling
of the fire the transparent beauty of the glass.
Calmness pervaded by discipline, so that we may
even say, ** It is better to have loved and lost
than never to have loved at all."

The moral danger of life is not adversity. The
spiritual peril of existence is our thoughtless, self-
ish prosperity. As the seer of Patmos has said
again, " Him that overcometh I will make a
pillar in the temple of God." The word pillar
in the original is a word signifying the sense of
unusual strength and power.

This truth points out the way in which to meet
tribulation. Never by the answer of despair.
The sad wastes of human life are among those
in whom deep does not answer unto deep. Never
by the stoic answer of indifTerence, the hardening
of the heart, the dulling of affection. Never by
the Epicurean avoidance of pain and seeking of

Out of Great Tribulation 137

pleasure. The saddest of men are those who
seek to drown their fate, their sorrow, their dis-
appointment, for in drowning their disasters they
inundate themselves. The world is full of men
and women who seek escape from death by
suicide.

Let us cease asking, Will I be happy ? Let
us stop putting the question, Shall I get credit ?
Let us cease our inquiry, Will this minister to
my own culture ? He only is happy who does
not think of being happy. Thus, we may even
learn the gracious receiving of abuse with an
ever sweeter spirit. In the hour of the world's
clamour we may find the eternal sphere of silence.
Let patience do her perfect work of strength, let
sympathy wait on sorrow and affection deepen
with the touch of service. Let us not reverse
God's order, nor let the deeper need of life find
answer in increasing weakness, but rather, go
from strength to strength.

One of the greatest of arts is the gentle art of
non-resistance, the turning of the other cheek,
that with the psalmist we may say, ** Thy gentle-
ness hath made me great."

" They have washed their robes in the blood
of the lamb." These words bring us to the
secret of it all. He walked upon that sea of
glass mingled with fire. Nowhere in human life
has this ever been so true as in Him. Who
then shall separate us from the love of Christ?

138 Spiritual Culture and Social Service

Shall tribulation, distress, or persecution ? Nay,
in all these things, we may be more than con-
querors. We may then train our ears to hear
His voice : " Let not your heart be troubled."

Do you not feel this as the writer has felt it ?
Sometimes he has wished for a pastorate that
had no problems, has wished that the home
might be free from its anxious distractions, and
that human life might be relieved of its disturb-
ing cares. Sometimes it seems as though we
might then move on and upward, if there were
not so much resistance to overcome. But this is
the mood of peevish complaint.

The background of the mystery we may not
altogether penetrate. The wicket gate is still
beyond our clear sight. The clouds will always
obscure, but at least in this truth we may discern
the direction of the light and the clouds them-
selves may even reveal the sunlight that is be-
yond us.

X

GOING BEYOND DUTY

JESUS always spoke of human life in a di-
vine language. He discussed temporal
things in eternal terms of speech. For the
most trivial duties He gave the profoundest prin-
ciples. For all common, practical living He bore
witness to ideal visions.

The Gospel of John has given us many of
these spiritual ideals in philosophic form. The
Gospel of Luke, in contrast, tells much about
our moral living and gives us a plan of action.
Yet behind Luke there are always great prin-
ciples of life as deep as eternity itself.

The gospel attributed to the pen of the be-
loved physician reveals to us some of the Master's
difhculdes in molding the ethics of his day.
Those difficulties, strange to say, were not with
the sinners and the publicans. They were with
the moral leaders of his day, the Scribes and
the Pharisees. He had his chief controversies
with those men who were self-satisfied because
of their moral attainment. Therefore the third
gospel, with this subjective influence, has many
such passages as this one, " For every one that
exalteth himself shall be abased, and he that

139

140 Spiritual Culture and Social Service

humbleth himself shall be exalted." And again,
*'So likewise ye, when ye shall have done all
those things which are commanded you, say,
We are unprofitable servants, we have only done
that which it was our duty to do."

It is said that, in our day and generation, there
is, among those counted to be religious, a loss
in the sense of sin. Yet it is easier to-day to
bring a flagrant sinner to see the power of the
Gospel than it is to bring religious men and
women to comprehend its depth and height.

This human society of ours is pervaded with
self-satisfaction. We hear men say things like
this : I do about as near right as I can. My
conscience is clear. They can say this because
they have a very moderate sense of what is right,
they have a tempered idea of obligation, they
need a finer and more sensitive conscience.

The difference betv/een Jesus and the other
masters of ethics, is that His Gospel is the purest
of idealism. Christian attainment, according to
the Ma.ster of Christianity, is the pursuit of a
flying goal. Jesus took the satisfactory moral
standards of the ethical leaders and teachers of
His day to the mountain of transfiguration, and
shed upon them the light of His self-sacrificing
idealism. It was not enough even that men
should do their duty.

By the word duty we generally mean the re-
quirements of society or of our class in society.

Going Beyond Duty 141

We mean that which constitutes what might be
called the ordinary, or average, conscience. At
most we mean a conformity to strict right and
rigid justice.

According to Jesus the ultimate principle of
man's life is in its unseen motives ; the ideal
which is his guiding standard, not a performance
of immediate obligations, but his vision of some-
thing beyond, ever better than he is; not his
immediate action, but the larger light which he
is pursuing. According to the Gospel, moral
progress is not simply meeting the demands of
conscience. It is infinitely more. It is the ac-
quirement of an ever finer conscience. It is not
the reaching of an ideal. It is the constant wit-
nessing of another and a better vision beyond.

The largeness of a man's life is determined by
the way in which he measures it, whether by the
general consent and the contentment of his fel-
low men, or by the moral demands of Jesus.

The significance of the Master as a moral
teacher is just here. He takes our moderate
moral ideas and lifts them to divine ideals. He
gives us a higher law than that of satisfying
conscience. It is the law of an ever new and
better conscience itself. " Be ye perfect as your
Father in heaven is perfect." Thus the cross of
Christ, which is the symbol of a Christian ethic,
is infinitely beyond the moral codes which men
make daily.

142 Spiritual Culture and Social Service

The human conscience is generally conformed
to a certain standard of action. Jesus' law is the
impulse of spiritual being. Conscience is con-
formity to law and strict duty. The law of Christ
is conformity to an unmeasured love and sacri-
fice. Thus a man's life rises according to the in-
creasing measure of his standard and not by the
fulfilling of his standard ; it is determined not by
meeting the demands of his conscience, but by
the growing measure of that conscience itself.

One's moral valuation is determined by
whether he contrasts himself with those below
him, forgetting the inequalities of start, and
thanks God that he is not as other men are ;
with those upon his own level and congratulates
himself that he is no worse than other men ; or
by the standard of Christ, witnessing hov/ far he
is from being Christlike.

We do not begin our moral progress until we
know our own worth. We do not move on-
ward until our worth recedes in view of the bet-
ter that we might be. Moral evolution is the
pursuit of an ever flying goal. It is like the
ascent of the mountain, the higher we go up the
larger becomes our view. Our duties are ever
expanding upon the face of the scene of life, the
goal ever recedes as we approach it, goodness
grows larger as we draw near to it. Thus it is
that the holiest of saints have ever been the
humblest of sinners. We may pray at the close

Going Beyond Duty 143

of the day, " I have done my duty ; bless and re-
ward me, my Father " or we may better pray,
'' I have only done my duty ; lift me higher upon
the morrow and reveal to me the larger duties
which I have not done." Yet how often we per-
mit ourselves, with the air of relief, the sense of
attainment, the spirit of complacency, to say, ** I
have done my duty by him."

First of all, is it ever true, even at a moderate,
average estimate ? Of course, it depends upon
the ideal of duty, but, as commonly conceded,
have we ever met our obligations ? Suppose one
could say, " My present moral debts are paid."
How about the sins of youth ? We cannot go
before our Maker as w^e w^ould to the store-
keeper and pay him this year's debts, receiving
our release when we have not paid them for the
last year.

Do we ever return the good and the kindness
that w^e have received from the parents and the
teachers of our youth ? Can the one ever return
all that he has received from the many ? If we
say, ** I am now keeping the commandments,"
how about those that w^ere broken in days gone
by ? Are we ever square with the world, in view
of the misspent years which can never be re-
gained ? Is it not clear that our moral debts are
never paid except by the forgiving grace of both
God and fellow men ? Without this are not our
lives left with eternal moral voids ?

144 Spiritual Culture and Social Service

It may be that some higher lives seem to give
more than they receive, but at least with most of
us restitution in quantity is out of the question.

We are doing something good now, but we
ought to do that even if we had never done any-
thing wrong before. Thus, according to the law,
this day's good deed fills its own measure, but
not the void of yesterday's neglect. Thus every
one of us must avail himself of an atonement
and become a child of grace.

Sit down some time and let pass before your
eyes the past that never can return. Its evil
deeds, its procession of neglects, the multitude
of its wrong thoughts and unjust judgments.
Just witness the amount of time that we all spend
in repairing our misguided lives. Each day, ac-
cording to strict moral law, ought to be occupied
in the new and immediate duty of the present.
Is it not absurd for any one of us to suppose that
we can catch up with time ? No, there is always
the great wide desert of the past which no re-
morse can recall, no present goodness can undo.
No one of us can stand upon his record before
God. We need an atonement.

But suppose even that the past may be wiped
out, suppose according to the measure of the
world we may say, " I am now doing my duty."
Is even this the extent of moral obligation ? Not
according to the ideal of Jesus. Let us grant
that all our past debts are paid and we are now

Going Beyond Duty 145

doing right. Even this, according to Jesus, is
merely the starting-point and not the goal. If it
might have been the goal of yesterday, it has
moved on to-day.

By the Master's law there is no real merit in
moral debt paying. We must go beyond strict
moral obligation to free self-giving. Thus if all
the other men in the world could say to you,
*' I have received my rights," it would not be
enough.

Suppose it were the quality of generosity.
Some one asks you, *' Are you generous ? " and
you answer, " Yes, I pay all my debts." Would
not this be a poor, haggard generosity ? So in
the moral realm there are no bounds to duty.
He who asks with Peter, '* How many times shall
I forgive ? " has failed to catch the spirit of Christ.
There is only one man who has committed the
unpardonable sin and who is irrevocably lost. It
is the man whose moral sense and development
have been arrested, who wraps himself in the soft
garments of content and says, " I have done my
duty ; my conscience is clear." Such a man may
feel the gaze of his fellow men without the sense
of abasement, but he does not feel the eye of
God. He may have comprehended the law of
Sinai, but he has not seen Calvary, or Christ, or
heard His voice. He may have seen the right
which he has done, but he has not seen the
wrong which he might have prevented. Men

146 Spiritual Culture and Social Service

have quarrelled over the doctrine of atonement,
and yet every man must say, I cannot stand on
my own merit ; some one else must fill my moral
voids that I may stand before God.

Spiritual attainment is arrested at the point
where we may say at the close of the day, " I have
earned my rest because I have done my duty."
We ought to say, " I will rest this night for my
unfinished task to-morrow."

Duty then must be left behind as w^e enter
upon the paths of self-sacrifice. We must be
willing not only to meet our obligations but to
give even more than we can spare. We must
do more than bear our own burdens ; our hearts
must be heavy with the burdens of others. We
must not only repair our own wrongs but those
of other men and pay the portion of others who
cannot or who will not. This is the joy of the
cross.

Just imagine Jesus saying, ** I have done My
duty." We cannot think it of Him. Not until
He went to the cross could He say, " It is fin-
ished." He demands more of us than that we
should pay up our subscriptions. Human duty
cannot be kept by bookkeeping and the balanc-
ing of moral ledgers.

In the sight of God and under the sway of the
cross, our moral liabilities are always large, our
assets very small and only the cross of Christ can
save us from insolvency. We bear no burdens

Going Beyond Duty 147

that we can ever lay down and say, " I have car-
ried them long enough." We cannot pray,
" My hour is come, I have finished the work that
Thou gavest me to do, glorify me with Thine
own glory."

What use is there in talking about the repay-
ment of our wrongs, when we take into account
not only the evil we do but that which we might
prevent others from doing ? Suppose we could
repay for all the suffering we have caused. This
w^ould not answer for that which we might have
assuaged and comforted.

Again, suppose God gave to us strict justice,
who of us could stand ? Suppose we could say,
We have meted out to men due justice. Con-
sider this, that in the course of justice none of us
could see salvation. When, then, are our obli-
gations met ? Only when we have ceased to sin
and have atoned for all the wrongs we ever did.
Nay, not even then, for we should still say, *'We
are unprofitable servants, we have only done our
duty." One of the most dangerous things in
this world is a clear conscience. It means that
conscience has lost its burden or is too weak to
bear one. Even if it means that we have gone
as far as Mount Sinai, we have not reached Cal-
vary. Thus we may well reverence Kant in his
magnificent Ode to Duty, but our deeper rever-
ence is for Christ facing Jerusalem and looking
towards Golgotha.

148 Spiritual Culture and Social Service

Where, then, shall we try to take our place ?
In contented self-delusion, in intelligent self-con-
sciousness, or in noble self-forgetfulness ? Shall
we be contented with the common law of man
and bear our own burdens, or shall we bend our
backs to one another's burdens and so fulfill the
law of Christ ? If we do the latter all the burdens
of the world are ours. This seems hard, but God
has provided the way. The heavier the burden
the stronger grows the back to bear it. As the
goal recedes the runner's speed is hastened.
The finer the human conscience becomes, the
stronger is it to endure.

Be not deceived. Self-satisfaction is not joy
and peace. It is but a lying mask. These per-
sonalities of ours are like the widow's cruse, the
more we pour ourselves out the more there is left
to give. Think of it for a moment. There are
the qualities of affection and sympathy. The
more strong and noble things we do the more
are we able to do. The more we love, the more
we are capable of loving. Thus these words of
Jesus are searching but not discouraging. In-
deed the farther our moral goal recedes the more
sure we may be that we are moving onward.
This deepening sense of incompleteness means
that we are more complete in the nobility of our
ideals. The less feeling we have of the sense of
attainment, the more certain we may be that we
have seen Christ and are trying to follow Him.

XI

THE UNHEARD ANGEL

"^nr^HE people that stood by and heard it
I said that it thundered : others said an
-■- angel spake to Him."

The interpretation of the fourth gospel is full
of difficulties. It brings up a multitude of ques-
tions ; critical, psychological and philosophical.
We might thus begin our consideration of this
scene by discussing the nature of the incident.
Was it a miracle or was the experience subjec-
tive ? But I propose to illustrate a method of
treating Scripture which transcends all such
methods. Let us lay aside all critical problems.
Let us look at the picture and behold its mean-
ing. There is a lower and a higher criticism.
The highest criticism is that which seeks the
spiritual meaning.

So far as the nature of the incident is con-
cerned, it was doubtless a reminiscence upon
which the writer has laid hold, that he may use
it for his spiritual lesson. These words illustrate
Jesus' words in the context. He declares that
the method of the salvation of the world is the
principle of sacrifice. The Son of Man is to be
glorified. The consummation of the ineffable

149

150 spiritual Culture and Social Service

revelation is the cross ; not as a scheme of recon-
ciliation but as the revelation of self-sacrifice.

This is the order of thought. The selfish love
of life is its loss. Men serve Him by following
Him. Then He utters His natural prayer for
life, and His responding utterance of obedience
and surrender : ** Father save Me from this
hour." This is the voice of the human Jesus.
*' Nay, but for this purpose came I unto this
hour." This is the response of the divine
Christ. While He prays the answer comes :
"This is Thy glory. Now is the prince of this
world cast out." The prince of this world is hu-
man selfishness. It is cast out by human sacri-
fice. It surrenders to the power of a divine un-
failing love.

Then the narrator gathers up the varied ele-
ments of the picture and declares the attractive-
ness of the cross. " I, if I be lifted up, will draw
all men unto Me." Let us try to imagine the pic-
ture. There stand the serious, inquiring Greeks
and the wondering disciples. Outside their circle
is the bewildered throng. The Son of Man stands
in their midst, answering the supreme question
of life : How is the world to be saved ? Love
shines in His transfigured face as He declares that
it is to be saved by love ; by suffering ; by self-
denial ; by sacrifice ; by the cross. As the scene
becomes thus profoundly impressive ; as the
spirituality of this divine personality is felt; a

The Unheard Angel 151

voice comes, as at the Baptism and the Trans-
figuration. Something is represented as setting
upon His utterance the seal of truth in the minds
of those who hear it. " Thou hast declared it ;
this eternal divine power is self-sacrificing love."

The Greeks, the disciples and the multitude
are profoundly impressed. All realize that some-
thing- has happened. The meaning varies. Some
said, '' It thundered." Others said, '* An angel
spake." Some interpreted the experience as a
physical phenomenon. Others felt it as a spirit-
ual consciousness. Some eyes could behold only
the natural and material. Others could witness
a spiritual vision. Some said, " It thundered."
Others said, *' An angel spake to Him."

Then Jesus goes on and declares the very
thing which they reveal. ** Walk in the light,"
He says. The writer then applies Isaiah's re-
proach : " Their eyes were holden, their ears
deaf." They turned away and said, ** It thun-
dered." Others said, ** Behold the truth," and
lingered.

First of all, notice that this was the way of the
world in Jesus' time. More important than this,
however, that it is the habitual attitude of human
life.

It was the way of the world in Jesus' time. A
simple Hebrew boy was born in an inn. The
busy men and women in the inn knew only that
a Hebrew boy was born. A few shepherds on

152 spiritual Culture and Social Service

the plain and three wise men knew what had
really happened. These beautiful poetic pictures
in the gospels illustrate these contrasting attitudes
to Jesus throughout His life. Some said as He
passed by, "He is only a poor insurrectionist."
Others said, " He is a teacher come from God."
Only eleven recognized Him as the Master oi
masters and only part of that eleven knew Him
as the Saviour of the world. In history, the
historian of His time refers to Him in one short
line. The writer of the fourth gospel beheld His
eternal meaning. So it was all along. Some
said, " He is a prophet." Otlicrs said, " He is a
deceiver of the people."

There He was, always the same being, with the
same potent personality ; uttering the same
eternal truths upon the ears of all of them.
Some said, *' It thundered." Others said,
** An angel spake."

Our main lesson, however, is to witness the
prevalence of these two habitual attitudes in our
own human life.

As I stood on one of the busy streets of London
a little while ago, I beheld an approaching pro-
cession. It was a gathering of common horse-
shoers on their way to Hyde Park. As they
passed by, some saw in them only a body of
rough, uncouth, uncultured, misguided men, and
bestowed upon them a smile of pity or disdain.
Others witnessed the pathos of the scene. It

The Unheard Angel 153

suggested the age-long- struggle of mankind to
better the human conditions of its weary toil.
Some said, " It thundered." Others said, '* An
angel spake." Thus do the scenes of life in
eternal contrast impress men ; its cries ; its woes ;
its groans ; its sorrows ; its struggles and its
prophecies.

I walked the streets of historic Florence.
The city was full of visitors. Some, as they
walked about, marked the loftiness of its
cathedral, the colour of its glass, looked for a
moment on the faded frescoes of San Marco.
As they walked the streets, they were nothing to
them but bricks and pavements. Others could
hear the voice of Savonarola. They could see
his very footprints in the pavements. They
breathed his spirit in San Marco. Some said,
" It thundered." Others said, " An angel spake."

A little later I visited the villages of Saint Ives
and Huntingdon. Some men would say that
they were very common hamlets. Others could
feel the very air vibrant with the spirit of Crom-
well.

To change the illustration, one man passes by
a great cliff of rock. It is only a piece of stone.
It has no voice. It tells no story. It imparts no
truth. It yields no revelation. To a scientist,
however, it tells an age-long story of profoundest
interest.

Thus we have witness to two contrasting habits

154 Spiritual Culture and Social Service

of life. Some eyes behold the hidden signifi-
cance of things ; others see only outward forms.
Some men and women invest the most common
things with a spiritual meaning ; to others the
profoundest scenes are only natural and common-
place. Some are arrested by the voice ; others
only hear it thunder.

To show this common twofold attitude, we
might begin with the natural order. The world
is full of Peter Bells.

A primrose by a river's brim
A yellow primrose was to him
And it was nothing more."

Others behold the revelations of nature with
the poet's eye, ** To him who in the love of nature
holds communion with her visible forms, she
speaks a varied language."

To some a sunset glow, the majesty of an
ocean, the snow-crowned mountain, are nothing
but phenomena of nature. To others every
grove is a holy place, every passing beauty is a
shrine like those along the Alpine roads, and
every natural revelation speaks through its
charm, its majesty or its gentle stillness, of
another world.

This same thing is true and truer of practical
life. To some men and women, home is little
more than a dwelling place ; marriage is a con-

The Unheard Angel 155

venient (if not an inconvenient) way of living.
The household means a necessary drudgery.
The mart or shop are places for making money.
Human society is little more than an aggregate
of men and women. To others all are holy.
Home is a sacred place ; over some mothers
angels bend and speak their annunciations.

*' The soul that rises with us, our life's star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting
And Cometh from afar.
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home ;
Heaven lies about us in our infancy."

To such, love is a sacrament, the daily toil a joy-
ful means of the higher ends of sacrifice ; human
society is God's holy family on earth.

To some most things are secular and human ;
to others all things are sacred and divine. The
world is full of desecrated sanctuaries. Some
said, '• It thundered." Others said, ** An angel
spake."

To carry our thought still further, the religious
life of man yields this contrasting material and
spiritual vision. The preacher in the pulpit may
be, in his way, a conscientious man. Yet his
prayer ma}^ be little more than an exercise. His
sermon may be the delivery of a truth as a propo-
sition rather than the impartation of spiritual life.
And I am sadly aware that very often men may

1 56 Spiritual Culture and Social Service

well go away and say, '*It thundered." Yet
there are times when they might have said, ''An
angel spake."

So to hearers and worshippers the reading of
the Holy Scripture may impart neither instruc-
tion nor inspiration. The hymn may be neither
a confession nor praise. The sermon may be
only an artistic or an inartistic product. The
benediction may be either a signal to depart or
the gathering up of sacred feelings and experi-
ences.

Men often go away and say it thundered,
when they might have said, " God's voice spake
to me this morning ; in reproof of my sins, in
comfort for my sorrows, in courage and hope for
my discouragement and despair ; in refreshment
for my weariness. I beheld Christ this morning."

After all, perhaps, I have put this wrong. It
does not seem the truest to say of us that some
are blind and deaf while others hear it all. Both
things are true of all of us. Life has both as-
pects, and its real moral struggle consists in
this varying disposition. So, sometimes, home
seems a very practical and, at other times, a very
heavenly place. Some days life is nothing but a
vexing problem; other days it is a sacred joy.
Sometimes work is but a drudgery ; again it is
illuminated by a holy flame. Sometimes we
treat society with a selfish attitude ; at other
times we are softened by the spirit of brother-

The Unheard Angel 157

hood. Some Sundays our worship is all cold
and dull ; others it is a holy inspiration.

The order of life is the order of increasing
spiritual light ; as all the varied elements of toil,
of sacrifice, of joy and sorrow gain their holier
meaning and reach their mountain of trans-
figuration.

And yet again, I was not altogether wrong at
first. It is true that there is a prevailing temper
and cast of mind in every one of us, and, in the
balance, some men and women are materialistic
and earthly, while others by constant listening
have grown quick to catch the higher notes of
the universal order. Amid the same scenes, the
same environments of life, some pass by and say
it thundered, while others wait and listen to the
angel's voice.

The meaning is this : You may give to life
either its natural or its divine interpretation. It
means that two of you may be living side by
side, and yet living in two widely different worlds.

Some said, '* It thundered." Others said, ** An
angel spake to Him."

XII

THE MEASURE OF RELIGIOUS AFFECTION

" 'W ESUS saith to Simon Peter, Simon, son of
I Jonas, lovest thou Me more than these?
^ He saith unto Him, Yea, Lord, Thou know-
est that I love Thee. He saith unto him, Feed
My lambs. He saith to him the second time,
Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou Me? He saith
unto Him, Yea, Lord, Thou knowest that I love
Thee. He saith unto him, Feed My sheep. He
saith unto him the third time, Simon, son of
Jonas, lovest thou Me? Peter was grieved be-
cause He saith unto him the third time, Lovest
thou Me ? And he said unto Him, Lord, Thou
knowest all things ; Thou knowest that I love
Thee. Jesus saith unto him. Feed My sheep."

The lesson of this dialogue is : The test of
true discipleship, the nature of genuine allegiance,
sincere homage, and real devotion — the true ex-
pression of a true affection for Christ. It is not
my intent to disparage the worship of Christ or
the confessions of His name, but to indicate the
ultimate mode which their expression must
take.

Humanity without religion is an unfortunate if
not an impossible thing. But religion without

158

The Measure of Religious Affection 159

humanity is infinitely worse than humanity with-
out religion. If such a contrast were possible, to
love God and not to love mankind would be
supremely worse than to love man and forget the
abstract, theoretic God.

The heart of religion is the love of God. The
heart of Christianity is the love of God in Christ
and the love of Christ. The Infinite identified
Himself with Jesus, and to love Jesus is to love
the God whom He ineffably reveals. In like
manner, Jesus ever identified Himself with hu-
manity. Thus to love humanity is to love Jesus
Christ. The love of the disciple for the Master
is measured by the love of the disciple for his
brethren. To love humanity and to love Christ
are one and inseparable now and forever. This
is Jesus' lesson to Peter.

Worship and appreciation would not suffice.
On the memorable occasion of Cassarea Philippi,
Peter had been the first to declare in terms of
emphasis and absoluteness, "Thou art the
Christ," but it was not enough to satisfy the de-
mand of Jesus.

"Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou Me?"
"Yea, Lord, have I not left all and followed
Thee?" "Simon, it is not enough. Feed My
lambs." He saith again the second time, " Simon,
son of Jonas, lovest thou Me?" "Yea, Lord,
did I not say at the Last Supper that I will lay
down my life for Thy sake ? " Jesus saith again,

l6o Spiritual Culture and Social Service

" Feed My sheep." Again, the third time,
" Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou Me ? " *' Yea,
Lord, was I not the first of Thy disciples to de-
clare the divineness of Thy being ? " " It is not
enough. Simon, feed My sheep. Simon, you
love Me when you love men."

Council after council of the Church has re-
echoed the words of Peter at Caesarea Philippi,
** Thou art the Christ." Creed upon creed, con-
fession upon confession have been composed to
give the most exalted estimate of Christ. It is a
fine thing, this intellectual estimate of the person
of Jesus. That person gives the human mind an
exhaustless theme for contemplation. But these
things do not answer the imperative demand.
Nicodemus said, " Thou art from God," but he
did not join the Twelve.

The love of truth is fine, and beautiful the
appreciation of the glorious words which fell
from Jesus' lips. But it does not satisfy the claim
of Jesus on our human love.

The Christian Church has represented Jesus
as having a wonderful power over nature, and
has stood in awe before the miraculous, but to
adore in wonder does not answer the test of
love.

Again, the mystic mind may draw itself away
within the shades of contemplation to commune
with Christ, and lose itself in spiritual ecstasy. It
is not enough. Men may well go to Keswick,

The Measure of Rello:ious Affection l6l

t>'

but they must not remain there. They may well
follow Jesus up the mountainside, but they must
also follow Him when He goes down upon the
plain of human life to heal men of their diseases.

Thus the human soul may prostrate itself in
every form of human worship and yet not give
satisfaction to the test of Christ, and it may be
little more than bowing to an image. All these
manifestations, as such, were constantly repelled
by Jesus. He called those who were seeking
signs an evil and adulterous generation. He
said He would have mercy and not sacrifice.
Still He asks, '' Lovest thou Me ? " So men may
enshrine Christ in terms exalting Him to the
throne of the universe, may admire His tran-
scendent truth, may stand in awe before His ma-
jestic, ineffable presence, and yet never know, in
reality, a love for Christ.

The truth is larger than this. They may even
do some of these things imperfecdy and yet meet
His all-important demand. I was called to at-
tend a funeral service a little while ago. The
man was not called or considered a Christian
man. He had been filled with intellectual doubts
and could only see in Christ the nature of a hu-
man being. Somehow he had not been able to
fit himself into the life of the Church. He did
not believe that such a thing as a miracle had
ever happened. I know what men thought as I
mounted the pulpit before a great throng of his

l62 Spiritual Culture and Social Service

townsmen. They said, " What can the minister
say?"

But I had seen more of him than they. He
had opened his heart to me one day as we quietly
glided along over the canals of Venice. I had
seen the tears stream down his face at the Pas-
sion Play at Ober-Ammergau. I had seen his
heart as those church deacons had not seen it.
The man had a heart like the very heart of
Christ. He was full of self-sacrifice. He loved
men. He had wrought for men, comforted and
uplifted, fed and clothed them all his life. He
was a physician. God bless them and make
them followers of the Great Physician. I love
them as I behold them bending with anxious
solicitude over their fellow men.

What then had I to do, as I stood before the
form of this agnostic ? My task was simple ; I
simply brought him face to face with the final
judgment : ** And the King shall answer and say
unto them, Verily, I say unto you, Inasmuch as
ye have done it unto one of the least of these My
brethren, ye have done it unto Me.'' This man
had been a follower of Christ, had loved Him all
his life — in other men.

Yes, humanity without religion w^ould be in-
finitely better than religion without humanity.
The real ground of love is goodness. We could
not love such a quality as omnipotence. The
real reason we love Christ is for all that His cross

The Measure of Religious Affection 163

represents to us. He reveals God's pity and care
for men. He reveals God's suffering for His
children. We love Him because He so loved
men that He could say of those who put Him to
a cruel death, '* Father, forgive them." We love
Him because He was His own good Samaritan.
We love Him for forgiving that sinful woman
whom religious men were ready to stone. We
love the Master because He first loved us and
men.

If this be a true and real affection, it will make
us like Him. For we become like what we love.
If we thus love Christ because He was forgiving
we shall be forgiving. If we love Him because
He so loved men, we shall love them and give
ourselves for them.

Let us be honest with ourselves. You and I
know men and women who deny our creeds (I
am sorry that they do), who cannot worship with
us (I wish they could), who do not believe a
single miracle, who do not reverence our Bible,
and cannot repeat our confessions or use our
terms. Yet, construed by the great demand of
Jesus, they are followers of Him and love Him.

I wish I could make such men and women,
many of whom are noble souls, lose sight of our
faltering preachers, our fallible churches, forget
our theoretical terms which only confuse them,
and behold the Christ whom they really follow
in our Jesus of Nazareth. And again, I wish

164 spiritual Culture and Social Service

that I could make some very religious men and
\romen see that, because they are unloving, they
are far away from the Christ whom they acclaim.

The real love of Christ is the love of truth in
one who was true, the love of purit\' in one whose
heart saw the vision of God because it was so
pure, the love of compassion in a tender heart
which beat for every human woe, the love of
goodness in one supremely good, of love in one
supremely lo'V'ing. To love thus is to love Christ

He asks of us, " Lovest thou Me ? " We might
answer, "Lord, do we not worship Thee? Do
we not praise Thee in hymns ? Do we not con-
fess Thee before men ? " His answer would be,
" If ye love Me keep My commandment" What
is His commandment ? " A new commandment
I eive unto vou, that ve love one another as I
have loved you."

Yes, Christ is here, but not in our hymns, not
in this Bible, not in these confessions. He is
here in the man beside you. He is there in
those outside our doors who are His sheep and
have no shepherd, Christ will be with you to-
morrow. Where? In your clerk in the ofSce,
in the boy who calls to bring you your daily
food, in the sen-'ant in your home, in your asso-
ciates in business, in the man who runs the
motor or collects your fare upon the street-car.
Let the peals of the organ cease, let the voice of
our coronation be still, let the preacher's voice

The Measure of Religious Affection 165

be hushed and let him sit silendy with you while
the voice of Christ reaches our ven^ heart " Lov-
est thou Me?" "Do you love one another?'*
" Do the wrongs of men pain your heart? " " Do
their sorrows touch you deeply ? " " Do you
love your neig-hbour as yourself?" " Have you
a tender affection for men in their sins ? "

WTiat is our religion ? It is not a set of doc-
trines. It is a great overwhelming feeling. It
is a profound emotion of love leading us to a
great surrender and willing sacrifice. Do not
lose your emotional nature. You had a great
emotion once. You expressed it to her who sits
beside vou. You were moved througfhout vour
whole being. Let your feeling for Christ and
for mankind be like that It would do great
strong men good if they should break down
sometimes as my great strong friend did at the
Passion Play. It would do them good if often er
they wept the tears of children. Religion at its
best is a great affection. Its supreme object is
mankind, in Christ

The great white throne is set The judge is
there. The lines are drawn. They di^-ide. How
do they divide ? By creeds and confessions, by
faiths and unfaiths, by triunities and trinities ?

"\\Tien the Son of Man shall come in His
glor}% and all the holy angels with Him, then
shall He sit upon the throne of His glor}' : And
before Him shall be gathered all nations: and

1 66 Spiritual Culture and Social Service

He shall separate them one from another, as a
shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats :
And He shall set the sheep on His right hand,
but the goats on the left. Then shall the King
say unto them on His right hand, Come, ye blest
of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for
you from the foundation of the world. For I
was an hungered, and ye gave Me meat : I was
thirsty, and ye gave Me drink: I was a stran-
ger, and ye took Me in : naked, and ye clothed
Me : I was sick, and ye visited Me : I was in
prison, and ye came unto Me. Then shall the
righteous answer Him, saying, Lord, when saw
we Thee an hungered, and fed Thee : or thirsty,
and gave Thee drink? When saw we Thee a
stranger, and took Thee in : or naked, and clothed
Thee ? Or when saw we Thee sick, or in prison,
and came unto Thee? And the King shall an-
swer and sa}^ unto them, Verily I say unto you.
Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least
of these My brethren, ye have done it unto Me.

" Then shall He say also unto them on the
left hand. Depart from Me, ye cursed, into ever-
lasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels.
For I was an hungered, and ye gave Me no
meat : I was thirsty, and ye gave Me no drink :
I was a stranger, and ye took Me not in : naked,
and ye clothed Me not : sick, and in prison, and
ye visited Me not. Then shall they also answer
Him, saying. Lord, when saw we Thee an hun-

The Measure of Religious Affection 167

gered, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick,
or in prison, and did not minister unto Thee?
Then shall He answer them, saying, Verily I say
unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of
the least of these, ye did it not to Me. And these
shall go away into everlasting punishment : but
the righteous into life eternal."

Listen again, *' Whosoever causeth one of these
little ones to stumble, it w^ere better for him that
a millstone were hanged about his neck and he
were cast into the depths of the sea."

Two thousand years ago Jesus stood in the
midst of those who did Him homage and wept
His bitterest tears. To-day, over every human
heart that steels itself in icy coldness, that does
not respond with a great human love for man-
kind, the Saviour weeps and the Saviour's heart
is pierced.

What is to-day the supreme need of the Chris-
tian Church ? Some say an old theology. Others
say a new one. And I suppose it needs both.
But men by it need to say, with arms outstretched
to all men. Ye are ours, and we are yours, be-
cause we both are Christ's. The supreme need
is a great vibrating, pulsating passion for man-
kind, both soul and body. Jesus says to His
Church to-day as He said to Peter, " Lovest thou
Me?" ''Feed My sheep."

XIII

THE UPWARD LOOK AND THE DOWN-
WARD REACH

IN the world of science we hear much about
the law known as " the survival of the fit-
test." We have been discovering the wide
operation of this law. Meanwhile, however, in
the moral life of the race, especially in our great
modern social movements, we have rediscovered
another law, which was put into language twenty
centuries ago by one who had caught the spirit
of his Lord.

" We then that are strong ought to bear the
infirmities of the weak, and not to please our-
selves, for even Christ pleased not Himself."

As I stood one day looking at the original of

Hofmann's famous picture of the Master and the

Sinful Woman, two things impressed me in the

study of it. One was the countenance of Jesus

which, while it was turned with the look of

severity, mingled with patience, towards the

Scribes and Pharisees, also seemed peculiarly,

at the same time, to be looking upward. The

other was the attitude of the right hand of Jesus

which was stretched down towards the sinful

woman on her knees. The upward look and the

downward reach.

1 68

The Upward Look and Downward Reach 169

One of the great beauties of nature is her
mingling of things unHke each other, each serv-
ing the other's needs. The natural order is not
like a scientific show-case or like a library of well-
ordered books. This universal order, since the
stars sang their morning song together, has been
the blending of a multitude of things which, in
our human knowledge of them, we have set apart.

Nature consists thus of unity in diversit)^
Her divided and subdivided kingdoms exist only
in the thought of man. She is not like our
human life, marked off into its political states
with their boundaries and barriers. Her various
systems pervade and penetrate each other. They
live upon and by one another.

In our human order also, when we live its
freest and most natural life, we do not gather our-
selves together so much upon the basis of simi-
larity as that of unlikeness. The family is the
highest type of our mutual human life and it is a
bringing together of the unlike and opposite.
The gentle woman and the strong man, the little
child and the great father, the brother and the
sister. There are striking likenesses of feature
and of temperament, but these are no more
marked than the elements of unlikeness.

When, however, we pass out from this natural
social order of God into the realm of our artificial
human associations, Vv^e find that this divine law
is everywhere perverted and repressed. In God's

1 yo Spiritual Culture and Social Service

order it is the unity of unlikeness. Man's dis-
position is to bring things together by similari-
ties. The one completes the defect by some
compensation and gives a real and final unity.
The other takes one small portion, multiplies it
by itself and issues in a system of inharmonious
exaggerations, so that to him that hath much
more is given and from him that hath not is
taken away even that which he hath.

Thus it has been the tendency of our human
blindness and error to unite the like and to sep-
arate the unlike. We have largely ordered the
world not in complementary groups, but by a
cold analysis into classes, so that each man, in-
stead of living in the world, lives within his own
little class. Here he finds his own ways of doing
things repeated, his particular tastes are met, the
limited judgments of his little mind are con-
formed to, and his words stand for wisdom
among those who speak like him.

Thus our human society has been largely
formed after the classification of a schoolhouse
rather than like the organism of a family. Test
this by the population of the city in which we
live, by its rigid segregation of race and station.
Witness it in our commercial life, with the barons
of industry about the hotel table, while the sons
of toil meet in their dingy hall. Apply it to the
professions, to the calling of the ministry, and
note how we classify men, and to our churches in

The Upward Look and Downward Reach 1 7 1

which we often say, '' Our church does not have
^/la^ class of people."

It is true that this principle is not altogether
bad. It would not be bad at all, if it were not
carried too far. Our deep mutual sympathies
uplift us in common and invigorate the will and
purpose. The trouble is that, in proceeding
along the lines of these classifications, we have
depreciated the finer graces of human life and
have impaired its affections, so that everywhere
upon the face of its sympathy is written the com-
mercial title *' limited."

In it there is more of self-will than of pity,
more of the law of the survival of the fittest than
of Jesus' larger law by which the strong are to
sustain the weak. We are the schoolroom with
its childish method, which never should have
been its method, of the boy at the head of the
class and the other at the foot, when perhaps the
first ought to have been last and the last first.
Our human order is too much like this and too
little like the home.

Our tendency has gone all too far to find our
equals and to associate with them ; the weak
with the weak, the strong with the strong, rich
with rich, poor with poor, the cultured with the
cultured, the uncultured with the uncultured, the
wise together with the wise and the ignorant
with the ignorant.

We not only do this, but with a still lower aim

172 Spiritual Culture and Social Service

and motive, we like to talk with those who think
as we do and who applaud our knowledge. We
read the books that meet our tastes or justify our
opinions and confirm our ideas and conceptions.
We go to hear the preachers who echo our own
notions and the tenor of whose words is to con-
firm us in our self-satisfaction.

We resent those who stand over in contrast to
us and again and again we assume the contemp-
tuous attitude of the Scribes, " These people that
know not the law which I know are accursed."

Thus v/e fall into a dwarfing egoism. We be-
come in our self-satisfaction very near to the
classic man who talked to himself, as he said,
first because he liked to talk to a sensible man,
and second because he liked to hear a sensible
man talk. Our little narrow world reflects our
little narrow self, or at best the class in which we
have been disposed.

We have thus destroyed the family idea of na-
ture and have substituted for it a well-ordered
set of classes with the poor dullards to keep
misery company, while the brilliant shine in their
mutually reflected splendour and become, un-
known to themselves, a society for mutual ad-
miration. The result is that life has fallen largely
into the order of the survival of the fittest ; to him
that hath is given, from him that hath not is
taken away ; the weak become weaker and the
strong stronger.

The Upward Look and Downward Reach 173

The great commotion in the social order of
our day and generation is the effort to change
this current into the splendid order of democracy^

Nothing opposes this classification but religion.
Knowledge does not do it, because we classify
ourselves upon the basis of its attainment.
Morals do not do this work, because, as in our
churches, we have sought to classify ourselves
upon this basis. We permit our personal integ-
rity to dwarf and limit our human sympathy and
even a falsely so-called religion has been thus
misused.

The one serene force that makes for the new
order is the faith of Jesus, v/hich has been put in
this striking language by His apostle, " We then
that are strong ought to bear the infirmities of
the weak, and not to please ourselves." In these
words we have what v/e might call the law
of the attraction of the dissimilar. The two
Greek words used might be translated " mighty "
and ** decrepit." The purpose of Jesus was to
change the order of civilization into the similitude
of the family. This was the meaning of the new
word which He gave for God, the word Father.

This, however, has not been the way in which
discipleship to Him, as revealed in the Church,
has been carried out. His Church has followed
too far the law of the survival of the fittest. He
maintained that the experience of discipleship
with Him should mean the vanishing of the

174 Spiritual Culture and Social Service

burning glow of self-reliance into the softer light
of trust. He opens before us two worlds, the
world above us with its light shining upon the
world beneath us. We are, as it were, sus-
pended between them with a higher existence to
attain and the lower existence to assist.

In Jesus, aspiration and sympathy meet to-
gether. These are the two attitudes of Christian
discipleship, th^ attitudes of Jesus in Hofmann's
famous picture, the upward look and the down-
ward reach. We should have both. We must
understand that we are to be strong in admira-
tion of the lofty as well as in pity for the lowly.
Some great German philosopher is said to have
defined religion as reverence for inferior beings.
It is certainly one of the results of true religion.

Each attitude must be maintained and neither
yielded to the other. The duty of Christians is
both to visit the fatherless and widows and to
keep themselves unspotted from the world.
They must keep strong themselves, in order that
they may become the strength of the weak.

It is too bad to see culture without service and
it is just as sad to witness service without culture.
Indeed we have to-day, in our great social move-
ments, too man}^ men who have the downward
reach without the upward look, and they are
thus blind leaders of the blind.

To evade and despise the knowledge which is
greater than our Own, the vision that is larger,

The Upward Look and Downward Reach 175

the aim that is higher, may be as bad as to lose
sympathy and tenderness. To stifle aspiration
is as harmful as to repress compassion and to
dwarf our faith as to lose our sympathetic touch.
We cannot feed the fires of human life from its
own fuel.

The downward reach may mean the depression
of hope, without the upward look. Sympathy
with human needs is vain without communion
with divine grace. He who would bring the
light of the world to the darkness of man must
possess the riches of God as well as witness the
poverty of the race. There can be no nether
springs of service without the upper springs of
inspiration. None of us can uplift even himself,
how much less can he uplift others. Thus every
one of us stands between the appeal of the things
above him and of those beneath him, between the
human reality and the divine ideal, between the
discipline of duty and the peace of faith.

The great Gentile apostle declared that every
man in Christ was a '' new creature." Most of
us have gone only a little way. We are still
followers of temperament ; the slaves of taste and
tendency, the victims of environment. If we
have tried to do the one duty, we have left the
other undone, have sought to gain the upward
look but have failed to witness the infinite vision,
because our horizon is bounded by our own nar-
row sympathies and our grudging self-denial.

176 Spiritual Culture and Social Service

Such men were the Pharisees of Jesus' day.
They could not see His face because its hght
radiated over the expanse of too large a human
world. Then on the other hand there was the
opposite class, the Zealots, the Essenes, busy with
their plans for the salvation of the chosen people,
so lost in them, that they did not witness the
kingdom though it stood in their very midst.

It is sad to see men and women in religion
trying to save themselves and forgetting all the
rest of the world except perhaps their own
charmed and chosen circle. It is just as sad to
find men trying to save the world without any
vision beyond their own horizon and with no
strength stronger than their own.

Let us look again at the picture of the Master.
His picture is always thus, with the upward look
and the downward reach. Sometimes He com-
munes with the best beloved disciple, the saintly
John, at other times with the multitude. He
passes from the presence of God in Gethsemane
to the com.panionship of Judas. He is always
blending knowledge and love, aspiration and
sympathy, truth and love, strength and duty,
righteousness and pity, virtue and charity, cul-
ture and service. The very last moments on the
Cross bear witness to it. ** Father, into Thy hands
I commend My spirit.'' There was the upward
look. ** Father, forgive them, for they know not
what they do." There was the downward reach.

The Upward Look and Downward Reach 177

''And not to please ourselves." Ah, but that
is what we do. We intend to please ourselves.
God's law for us is that of an affectionate, sym-
pathetic conformity to our human environment.
We constantly transgress it and try to conform
our human environment to meet our tastes, to
suit our tempers, to minister to our own dis-
torted selfish desires. God meant that our
environment should embrace humanity. We
have narrowed it down to our own little group.

" Even Christ pleased not Himself." ** We
then that are strong should bear the infirmities of
them that are weak." ** They that are strong " ;
there is the upward look. ** The infirmities oi
the weak " ; there is the downward reach.

The best of us, in our attitude towards human
life, are very far from this picture of the Master.
Our vision of the spirit is so dim, our arm of
flesh so short that we need to pray with Francis
Ridley Havergal :

" Lord, speak to rae that I may speak
In living echoes of Thy tone.

" O lead me. Lord, that I may lead

The wandering and the wavering feet,

0 feed me, Lord, that I may feed

The hungering ones with manna sweet.

*' O strengthen me, that while I stand,

Firm on the Rock and strong in Thee,

1 may stretch out a loving hand

To wrestlers with the troubled sea."

lyS Spiritual Culture and Social Service

One of the great pictures of the world is that
of the Transfiguration by Raphael, in the Vatican
at Rome. I always love to look at it and yet I
always wish that I might place another beside it
which I would entitle, *' The Next Hour of the
Day." The picture which I would place there in
the Vatican beside Raphael's Transfiguration
would be that of the Master who has just come
down from the mountain upon the plain of
human life, touching the poor human lunatic and
healing him of his disease. Most of us have seen
only the one picture of Jesus in that story of the
Transfiguration. We have seen in it the upward
look. In the other picture, we should have, side
by side with it, the downward reach.

XIV

THE CULTURE OF THE HOME

WHETHER or not this be the right mes-
sage, there is need for some message
to our American people regarding the
home.

I shall try to treat the subject in an ideal way,
although, holding as we do these treasures in
earthen vessels, we all fall short of our ideals.
So much the more reason why, fall though we
may, we should ever be looking up to them as
our guiding stars.

The home is the great background of life.
When the sight of life's background is lost, its
foreground has no meaning and intent. All life is
miserable drudgery unless we witness its divine
eternal meaning. We rise only by looking up-
ward. We know only by looking inward. Life
is in its intent, its motive, its spirit, not in the
thing we are doing at the moment, but in the
guiding star in the East of some ideal we are
pursuing. There is no realm of human life
which needs to-day to have cast upon it the sun-
light of a lofty idealism more than the family and
the home.

The dearest of conceptions and the finest
179

l8o Spiritual Culture and Social Service

thoughts of life are associated and are blended
with the word and the idea of *' home." Its
origin and sanction are divine, not only as
ordained by the authority of Scripture, but be-
cause taken at its highest and its best it is filled
with sacred meaning and is its own revelation.
It is the symbol of the highest and the holiest in
human life.

The mind and heart of man, in reaching out
for God, in their effort to give the finest and the
ultimate expression to our conception of the in-
finite, have taken the synonym of Jesus, the
word "Father." In our ideal for the human
race, the brotherhood of all mankind, we have
united on the home as the highest and the final
expression of our humanity.

When the Eternal Father, in the fullness of
His goodness and His glory, was to make Him-
self known fully among men. He did it in a very
sweet and simple way. He found first a good
and pure and holy woman. The Incarnation
was the supreme investiture of human life with
its divine light, and it began in the earliest mo-
ments of the prophetic home of Nazareth and
sanctified maternity with all its holy meaning.
The first mark of the Incarnation was the divine-
ness of human motherhood.

Later on, in the dark Middle Ages, when
theologic thought presented to the mind and
heart of man a God who was a monarch and was

The Culture of the Home 181

not a father, in natural simplicity, the human
hearts of men sought a divine and holy object
which they could love, as well as fear and wor-
ship, and so they put upon the throne of their
affection the Holy Mother.

When Jesus wanted to reveal in living parable
the meaning of the kingdom of heaven and of
God He stretched forth His hands upon a home,
and took a little child from it and set him in the
midst of them.

So, also, we have tried to think the better
name for what we commonly call heaven, and
we go to the same vocabulary of the heart and
say, " Man goeth to his long home.'* The great
apostle, in one of his noblest utterances of faith,
speaks of eternity after the analogy and symbol
of the home as the ** house, not made with hands,
eternal in the heavens.'*

When the Christian Church sought to make
its distinction between the secular and sacred,
and to determine the essential sacraments, it em-
braced marriage in them ; and it is one of the
saddest retrogressions of religion that we have
removed it from its holy place.

Thus, in our human effort to reach up through
the human to the divine, we have taken as the
highest point of meeting the human home. It
is not possible to discern the line between heaven
and earth. As we look out over the horizon
and ask ourselves where the sky begins we find

l82 Spiritual Culture and Social Service

that it begins at the very earth. The one comes
down and touches the other. The divinity of
Christ is the sovereign revelation of the humanity
of God.

Witness how naturally we have turned to it in
our effort to reveal and to express the true, the
beautiful, the good. The art of the ages has
largely spent itself upon the Holy Mother and the
Holy Child. As we pass through the galleries
of the Old World, we linger the longest before
Murillo and Raphael and a multitude of others,
who, in their effort to picture the divine in the
human, have given us these symbols of the abid-
ing-place of time.

While the poet has inspired us with truth, with
patriotism, with righteousness, his sonnets have
been mainly of that human love which prophesies
the family and home.

Not long ago there came to me a book from
its author, and before I opened its pages I read
its title, "The Dearest Spot on Earth." How
immediately and instinctively I knew that it was
a book about the home !

Is it not because within its sacred walls we find
our highest and our largest opportunity for self-
expression ? Do we not there best interpret the
teaching of the Master, that we gain by losing,
that he is highest who serveth most ? It is there
that we find the finest chance for sympathy, for
self-denial, for self-sacrifice. The finest expres-

The Culture of the Home 183

sion of religion is the religion of the fireside. It
may seem strange to say it, but, as a religious
institution, the Church ought to be secondary to
the home and never a religious substitute for it.

During the earlier years of every little human
life, the father and the mother are God to the
child. " I do not need to say my prayers to-
night," said a little girl, *' because father is here
with me." I rem.ember once asking a little child
in one of my classes, " Ought we to love God
more than father and mother ? " "Yes," he said,
" we ought to, but we cannot." Thus out of the
mouths of babes and sucklings God has ordained
strength. Again and again the little child may
lead us.

The order of religion is always this, first the
natural, then the spiritual. It was a sad and a
false teaching when men were taught that the
sacred and divine must be gained by the sup-
pression of the natural and human. We can
only pass up into the realm of the divine through
that which is divinely human.

Ours is a sad lot if we have allowed the home
to become incidental in our life, if there we do
not find the unfailing shelter, the great strong-
hold, the very source and impulse of all our liv-
ing. The saddest thing in this world is a broken,
ruined home where love has been turned into
hatred, patience into petulance, self-sacrifice into
selfishness.

184 Spiritual Culture and Social Service

There are a multitude of men and women who
have allowed themselves to grow away from the
home, to whom it has lost its meaning in the
stress of common daily life. The performance
of its duties has crowded out its sweetness and
its light, and while human life has gained in its
intensity and movement, it has lost in depth and
grace.

Many men and women of our day have lost
this deeper sense of need, and as life's obliga-
tions have increased, as its circle has widened,
their need of holy preparation for those needs
is forgotten, and they substitute the vague cir-
cumference of life for its sacred altar at the
centre.

Oftentimes the human duties are performed
but the human graces are not gained and cul-
tured. Such lives know not those quiet hours
and places in which the symmetry of life is
gained, so that its length and height and breadth
and depth are equal.

Such men and women have no hours for the
inner motives of the heart. They have no silent
times ; no hours of withdrawal from the life of
business or of toil ; no still small voices to
strengthen and to calm. The things of the
material life, its losses and its gains, never re-
cede into their proper background. They learn
not to rejoice in the more costly treasures of the
mind and heart. They do not approach life

The Culture of the Home 185

from within. It has no guiding impulse. Yea,
even in the home itself, its own cares and duties
are often permitted to crowd out its graces and
its beauties. This is a sad mistake.

Such men and women fulfill the sad prophecy
of Wordsworth's ode : The heaven that lay
about them in their infancy is lost. The shades
of prison house have closed. The deepest and
the sweetest things of life are left to die away and
fade into the light of common day. The first af-
fections, the fountain light of all our day, the
master light of all our seeing, no longer uphold
us, cherish or have power to make our noisy
years seem moments in the being of the eternal
silence.

Witness the meaning of the home. From its
earliest prophetic beginnings, the marriage is be-
gun in faith, in confidence, in unselfishness, in de-
votion. The vocabulary of human beauty is ex-
hausted in its holy service with its words, love,
comfort, honour, serve, keep in sickness and in
health, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer.
Into it is gathered up the myrrh and frankin-
cense of life and laid upon the altar of God.

And I think most men and women mean it all,
intend it, feel it, but by and by the strain of life
comes, the great tests of unselfishness. How
easy then it is to let sad changes steal over us.
Those beautiful attentions which make all the
world love a lover are crowded out and one by

l86 Spiritual Culture and Social Service

one are lost. The attitudes of deference, of care,
of constancy, like the frailest and most beautiful
of flowers, are so easily destroyed by the cold
winds of time. The old allurements, the thought-
fulness of other days, become but shadowy recol-
lections of all those first affections.

Never cease to be lovers. Let the old names
never be blotted out of the book of life. The old
language should be abiding and eternal. The
vocabulary of love should never sink into the com-
monplace of every-day speech.

It is said in pleasantry, when it ought to be
said in sadness, that " the happiest life that ever
was led is always to court and never to wed."
It is also a sad truth that ** the lover in the hus-
band may be lost."

Keep in sacred beauty all the anniversary days.
Stop on the way home to carry a few flowers ;
perhaps more inexpensive than of old, but yet
with a deeper fragrance and a meaning all their
own. Be lovers again as the day comes that
marks the first confession. Have a wedding day
every year, if it be only for one evening hour.

One of the great needs of the home to-day is
that '' the other days " should be always in re-
membrance by conserving the habit of being suf-
ficient to ourselves. There should always be
many times when the third person is a crowd
and only two are company. If love was blind,
let love never again regain the sight of censure.

The Culture of the Home 187

*' Be this of coming days the pride,
The wife is greatly dearer than the bride."

This life of the home ought to be a growing
order in its meaning and its beauty. As wife-
hood is more beautiful than the earlier relations
of prophecy and hope, so motherhood is still
more beautiful than wifehood.

I delight to look at the Madonnas of Murillo
with their celestial colour. I also love to think
that every mother may be a holy mother if she
will. This life of ours together ought to be one
great, abiding and unceasing transfiguration from
holy into hoHer.

And then, in most true homes, comes child-
hood with all its hopes and prophecies. How
sadly often, however, instead of bringing joy, of
deepening patience, of enlarging self-sacrifice
and sell-denial, it only spoils the home. God
meant that children should be the great devel-
opers of care and love. We often think and
speak about the training of our children but do
we not forget that, if we let them, they are train-
ing us in the finest graces of the human life, are
drawing out, if we will let them, both our sweet-
est and our strongest elements of character.
That it is not so is generally because the father
and the mother have not learned to live together
first as husband and wife. They have divided
their functions and their cares instead of holding
them in mutual unity.

i88 Spiritual Culture and Social Service

As there is nothing more beautiful than the
union of beauty and strength, of greatness with
simplicity, of power with tenderness, so there is
nothing better for the father than to participate
in the affections of the mother for the little child.

It is inspiring to see great, stern, bold Oliver
Cromwell on the battle-field of Worcester, but it
is finer still perhaps to see that great, strong man
forsaking the affairs of state to sit for days by
the bedside of his little child. I like to think of
Martin Luther as he writes his splendid '* Ein
feste Burg," but I am also glad that such a man
could bring together strength and beauty, pro-
foundness and simplicity, so that he could also
write, '' Away in the manger, no crib for His
bed."

So, to strong men, who are husbands and
fathers, I would say. Never let the time come
when your hearts may not be touched with the
finger of a little child, when the great feelings
and emotions of human love and passion may
not have their way.

One of the saddest things of human life is the
way in which

" Years following years steal something every day ;
Until at last they steal us from ourselves away."

Then there is the home itself. The true culture
of life is really that which binds us most closely

The Culture of the Home 189

to its most common things. Any culture that
wends its pathway away from the home is false.
The sovereign need of the world is men and
women who both profoundly think and intensely
feel, who, while they let knowledge grow from
more to more, also let more of reverence in them
dwell, that heart and mind according well may
make one music as before, but vaster. A true cul-
ture is that which touches every point of human
life with the tendrils of human sympathy.

The home ought to be, for rich or poor, for
great or small, as my friend the author calls it in
his book, ** the dearest spot on earth." Beware
then when the club begins to take its place or
when the ambitions of the world make the home
seem a tame and useless place, when you are
restless within its walls. Do not let the work of
the profession, the duties of public service, or
even the duties of the church, take the place of
the home.

In order that this should be so, it should be
kept attractive. To make it beautiful it should
have the most that the purse can afTord. It
should be a means of culture. How often I long
to tear the diamonds from the fingers of women
that I might sell them and invest their material
worth in the beautifying of their bare and care-
less homes I I have sometimes wished for a new
profession, the art of the decoration of the home,
so that there might be some one to go about and

igo Spiritual Culture and Social Service

teach men and women how to make their homes
the places of culture ; to teach them the differ-
ence between good and worthless books, the dif-
ference between a costly chromo and an inexpen-
sive work of art. The very poorest and simplest
of homes might be made to breathe a culture of
their own.

And yet, of course, after all, the true culture of
the home is that of its spirit. The best way of
keeping the father, the wife, the boys and the
girls from evil is to make the home attractive
and sufficient to itself. A man's home ought to
be enough for him so that if everything else in
the world were taken away he might console
himself with its abiding treasures.

To do all this it must be a religious home. Its
religion must be natural and simple, not hard,
but joyous. I think it would be helpful towards
having the spirit of the church in the home if we
thought more about having the home in the
church. As I look out over the congregation,
my greatest joy is to see the home in the church,
the family pew with all the family there.

How I v/ish the husbands, who in days gone by
shadowed the one they loved, were always by
her side, would be lovers still, and not let the
wife pursue her lonesome way by day and night
to the house of God ! A husband and father
came to me the other day and it was encouraging
and hopeful to have a man come with so unusual

The Culture of the Home 191

a trouble. It was because the wife and mother
was unwilling to bring the home into the church.

It is far easier to keep the true religious spirit
in the home if in some simple way the fireside be
made an altar and the father and mother God's
priests. I am glad that my little boy regards it
as a punishment if he must be sent to his room
for some wrong-doing and kept there during the
morning hymn and prayer. I am not speaking
now of a severe religious observance in the na-
ture of a penance. Each parent must find his
own way of doing it, but it may be done. Per-
haps it need only be the singing of a hymn and
the repeating together of the Lord's Prayer. It
may be the gathering of the family together for
the reading of a Psalm, not a long and impre-
catory one, but perhaps the Twenty-third, or, in-
deed, the reading of a poem. When there are
little children perhaps it is best to sing some
children's song that they like. Religion in the
home may be made attractive if we will only try
to find the way.

One thing more I want to speak of. There are
many burdens to be borne in the home. It calls
for much of patience, of fortitude, of courage. It
brings toil and care and pain. These things may
be used in either of two ways. They may be the
developers of sweetness and of light, or they may
make the home a place from which to flee, and
not a place of help.

192 Spiritual Culture and Social Service

In the first place, husbands and wives, fathers
and mothers, you need to learn to bear one
another's burdens. But you also need to remem-
ber the other injunction of the apostle, that every
man must bear his own burden. Keep some
things to yourself. There are some burdens of
the wife which the husband ought not to know.
On the other hand, let not the husband, at the
close of day, pour out his difftculties of the day
upon the tired wife. At least be sure to choose
the right and proper time. Let not your added
burden be the last straw. Never break the
bruised reed or quench the smoking flax.
Then, too, remember the third message, that of
the psalmist, that there are other burdens which
together we must cast upon God.

Above all things, no matter what comes, no
matter how tired, no matter how many distrac-
tions, keep the home cheerful.

So you see that this home life may tend in
either way. How sadly w^e see it when, as the
years pass, the husband and the wife grow away
from each other and all the beauty of their life is
gone, even though they may still perform its
duties and keep its outward obligations ! But it
may grow the other way, the wife more beautiful
than the bride, the mother more an object of af-
fection and of w^orship than either, the husband
with more reverence and care than the lover, the
father even more tender than the husband, and

The Culture of the Home 193

the home with the Httle children happier than all.
This is the way it ought to be. If it is not so, be-
gin over again. Go back and find the place where
the paths divided and bring them together again.

You remember that in the days of the Middle
Ages, when men might be hunted for their lives,
if they could only gain the portals of some church
or temple, when once across its threshold, they
were safe from harm. Not even the monarch of
that despotic day could touch them. That ought
to be our feeling towards our home ; it ought to
be a place from which we can shut out every-
thing that harms us or disturbs us.

I am not pleading for a narrow selfishness.
We must remember other homes and other men
and women. We ought to think also of the
homeless, many of whom are doing such splen-
did service in the world. We must give our-
selves to the service of the world. We ought
sometimes to forsake the comfort of our own
firesides to serve in the great kingdom of heaven,
of social life, of public life, of business, and of
culture, but some men whom I know seem to be
good and helpful and of service everywhere ex-
cept in their own homes. I have seen those who
were angels without and devils within. They
seemed to reserve all their meanness to be visited
upon the wife or the children. They could be
patient and strong among men but wretchedly
weak and false to their own.

194 Spiritual Culture and Social Service

I am suggesting a well-balanced life, a life
that is strong in the great world of action be-
cause it has behind it a great centre of impulse.
Let the circumference of life's activity and service
be as broad as it may but keep ever returning
to its centre of unfailing sources. Go out upon
the battle-field, but do not forget to have some
fortress to which you may retire for comfort,
strength, and rest, for the larger conflict of
to-morrow.

This message is needed to-day. The home as
a sacred place has been lost. The old traditions
have gone. Many of us never saw, to know it,
the spot where we were born. We do not live
out our days, as did our fathers, within some
sacred enclosure. We move about from place
to place and year to year. So much the more
need of learning to keep the true spirit of the
home.

This true spirit can only be kept by an unceas-
ing return to early days. There is something
really beautiful about the childishness of age.
The old man or woman forgets the things of
yesterday but remembers the incidents of child-
hood. This ought to be typical of life. It should
have its great returning tides ever sweeping
backward and gathering up the dearest things
of all the past, but then sweeping onward to the
better and the larger future.

And so, husbands and wives, fathers and

The Culture of the Home 195

mothers, if necessary, begin it all over again.
Your life perhaps has become hard and stern.
Begin again and let patience wait on toil and
care. Let reverence be the handmaid of the
passing years. Get back to other days. Say
it over again to yourself : " For better for worse/'
" For better for worse." Let them creep over
you again, the old impulses, the old ways, the
thoughts, the feelings, all the touches of happi-
ness and love. Learn to smooth out the wrinkles
of time. Mingle again the poetry with the prose
of life.

Let the minister join your hands again to-
gether, and what God hath joined together let
not man, let not yourselves, put asunder. Real-
ize the prophecy of the book's title and make
your home *' the dearest spot on earth."

XV

THE UNKNOWN VISITATION

A THOUGHTFUL consideration of the
character of Jesus reveals a most strik-
ing and significant reconciling of appar-
ent contradictions. It is the way of men to re-
joice in the day of their recognition and honour
and homage ; to despair in the hour of disestab-
lishment and dishonour ; to be calm, peaceful
and joyous in the presence of the most mo-
mentary success ; to become disheartened and
distressed by an apparent defeat.

With Jesus the process seems ever to be re-
versed. A betrayed captive in the garden of
Gethsemane, He is led away by His captors in
majestic silence ; a prisoner before the high
priest, He hears the false charges of perjured
witnesses without a word of protest ; in the pres-
ence of Pilate He opens not His lips and He
has no remonstrance for a miserable, mocking
Herod. Throughout those last days, from Geth-
semane to Golgotha, He seems altogether undis-
turbed. His only utterances upon these occa-
sions are of a sublime confidence and hope.
*' Thou shalt behold the Son of Man coming in
power and glory, upon the clouds of heaven."

196

The Unknown Visitation 197

The final human defeat inspires a profound faith
and a sublime courage.

How strangely does the reverse appear in the
event of The Triumphant Entry, He is enter-
ing the Holy City, hailed as a King, surrounded
by an acclaiming multitude, amid the waving of
palms and with the shouts of triumph in His
ears. He halts the great procession upon the
city's heights, stills the voices of the throng, and
in words of deepest bitterness, intermingled with
His tears, utters the despairing cry of a rejected
prophet, *Tf thou hadst known the day of thy
peace, but it is hidden from thine eyes. The
days shall come upon thee, when thine enemies
shall cast up a bank about thee and compass
thee around and keep thee in on every side and
shall dash thee to the ground and thy children
within thee and they shall not leave thee one
stone upon another."

It is the lament of a prophet over the nation
and the age that has blindly rejected a prophet
and a prophet's truth. Its day of visitation had
come and gone and it had known it not.

Beneath lay the great city engrossed in its lit-
tle narrow life, busy with its miserable babblings,
its Scribes and Pharisees religiously washing
their cups and platters, straightening out their
phylacteries, mumbling their prayers, counting
their fastings, repeating their laws and creeds,
memorizing the traditions of their forefathers, all

igS Spiritual Culture and Social Service

with their faces set rigidly towards a dead and
dying past, propping up an outworn temple,
patching garments that are rent with age, and
guarding with watchful eye an outgrown ritual.
There are the merchants busily hastening back
and forth, between the inner court where they
may say their prayers and the outer where they
are turning the sacrifice of God into an unholy
gain. Pilate sits in his judgment hall thinking
how he may retain a wretched Caesar's friendship ;
Herod revels in his unhallowed pleasures. And
saddest of all, the great throng of the people, in
utter blindness, permit priest and Pharisee to
rob them, and choose as their teachers the falsest
of Scribes. While, j ust above them, their greatest
prophet, their true high priest, their sovereign
King stands weeping over their rejection and
they behold Him not.

We have here but an instance of the ceaseless
repetitions of history. The world has again and
again rejected its prophets. Age after age had
this nation refused to listen to the voices of the
men of God. It had left an Elijah to be fed by
ravens and poor widows. How like unto that of
Jesus was his last lament, " The children of Is-
rael have forsaken Thy covenant, thrown down
Thine altars, and slain Thy prophets with the
sword ; and I, even I only, am left ; and they
seek my life to take it away." An Isaiah follows
in a succeeding age. He utters truths that to

The Unknown Visitation 199

the ages are immortal, but to the age that heard
them unknown ; to a people whose heart was
gross, whose ears were heavy and whose eyes
were shut.

A Jeremiah appears, and to another generation
he proposes the displacement of one type of wor-
ship by the substitution of a loftier. His reward
is a prison cell. His priceless record is cut in
pieces, thrown into the fire upon the hearth and
consumed, by a people that angrily demands,
*' Wherefore dost Thou prophesy these undesir-
able things ? " Ezekiel stirs the dry bones of a
later Israel, rebukes and upsets the teachings of
her ignorant leaders, false instructors and lying
prophets. He too is rejected by his generation
for the proclaimers of falsehood and the prophets
of a dead past. The history of Israel's succeed-
ing years is too sadly epitomized in the lament
of its fulfilling prophet, *'0 Jerusalem, Jerusa-
lem, thou that killest the prophets and stonest
them that are sent unto thee."

Finally the Prophet of prophets has appeared.
From the very beginning Israel has had no place
for Him. He is born in a stable, because there
was no room for Him in the inn. He has never
known a home. ** The foxes have holes, the
birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man
has no place to lay His head." He begins the
utterance of His immortal truth at His home in
Nazareth. He is indignantly rejected, a prophet

200 Spiritual Culture and Social Service

dishonoured by His fellows. He is cast forth out
of the city, ** led to the brow of the hill whereon
their city was built that they might throw Him
down headlong." He goes thence to the coun-
try of the Gadarenes. The city came out to
meet Him *' and when they saw Him they be-
sought Him that He would depart out of their
borders." He goes back to His own again, only
to meet a half-doubting mother and a household
of unbelieving brethren. He casts out demons
and does many mighty works. If so it must be
that He is in league with devils. His forerunner
doubts Him, sends an embassy from His prison
cell to ask, ** Art Thou He that should come or
look we for another?" He stands in their pres-
ence and walks in their midst, a standing moral
miracle. They shut their eyes to His transcend-
ent life and ask for a petty, trivial '* sign." He
is misunderstood always by all, except a little
handful of the humblest followers, and even of
them, again and again, He has to ask, '* Are ye
also without understanding ? " They fall asleep
during the agony of Gethsemane. They flee in
the face of danger. One moment He is teach-
ing the beauty of humility and the next they are
quarrelling over which of them is greatest.

Sometimes, rejected by the Church, He turns
to the world. But His connection with the
Church is against Him. Because His face is
towards Jerusalem the Samaritan village will not

The Unknown Visitation 201

receive Him. He must go another way. He
turns again, on the road, to His disciples for com-
fort. They shake their heads and tell Him that
His sayings are " hard sayings." Some of them
turn back and walk no more with Him.

The great world does not even know that He
exists. The Caesar at Rome has never heard of
this King of men. No annalist records His name
and He would have been unknown to the ages
He has transformed but for a few publicans and
fishermen who turned historians. A learned man
is writing of the Church. To him Jesus is either
an unknown or an unworthy name. Herod pre-
fers the company of a Herodias ; Pilate chooses
Cesar's friendship ; Judas takes thirty pieces of
silver ; the Church of God and the people select
Barabbas, in place of Jesus Christ. And the Son
of God goes on to Calvary, leaving the most im-
mortal truths that ever fell upon the ears of men
in the sole possession of a few Marys, Johns and
Nicodemuses.

But history does not cease its sad repeatings
here. The apostles proclaim the truths be-
queathed to them. They are called to drink
His cup and share His baptism. The Galatian
Church repudiates its Paul. The brethren for-
sake him. The deacons and the elders have
serious doubts as to whether he ought to be
permitted to preach to the churches or not. He
is left to end his days in a prison cell and passes

202 Spiritual Culture and Social Service

on to death alone. Each age goes on and re-
lentlessly repeats the doings of its predecessor.

In the name of religion Galileo must recant
the truth, and because the church so dictates,
shout in the presence of the congregation that
the earth is flat and that around it moves the
sun. Savonarola, in the name of God, by the
vicar of God, is stretched upon the gallows, his
body burned at the stake and his ashes cast
upon the Arno. Giordano Bruno declares for
the Copernican theory of the universe and lights
the piazza at Rome with his burning body. The
golden-tongued Chrysostom is subjected to
every kind of indignity, and banished. One
after the other Huss, Cranmer, Latimer and
Ridley walk to the stake. John Knox goes into
exile, John Bunyan lies in Bedford jail, Roger
Williams is hunted out of the commonwealth of
Massachusetts. The fine and sensitive soul of
Frederick Robertson is pierced through and
through. Bushnell stands pilloried before a
Connecticut consociation, Beecher before a
Congregational Council and Phillips Brooks be-
fore a synod of the church.

In the light of history, both Church and
world stand equally condemned for their false
judgments and mistaken verdicts. By divine
right of kings and by infallible popes and by
authoritative councils, has the truth been denied,
its prophets put to shame and its Saviour cruci-

The Unknown Visitation 203

fied. It is not confined to any age, or to any
sect or church. Again and again have the
Church's prophets become the Church's martyrs
and at the Church's hands.

Thus have the sowers sown their seed in
rocky places. Prophet after prophet has arisen
in an age that has asserted, ** We will not have
this man to reign over us." Thus has humanity
either entertained its angels unawares or cast
them out-of-doors into the silence of the night.
Thus has the Church hugged to its bosom
ancient tradition and outworn method saying,
The old is good, that which has been is better
than that which is and that which is to be.
Blind peoples have gone on choosing blind
leaders of the blind, ** and unto them is fulfilled
the prophecy of Isaiah, which saith :

** By hearing ye shall hear and shall in no wise under-
stand ;
And seeing ye shall see, and shall in no wise perceive :
For this people's heart is waxed gross.
And their ears are dull of hearing
And their eyes they have closed
Lest haply they should perceive with their eyes
And hear with their ears
And understand with their heart."

History tells many of its lessons in dark pic-
tures. But in the face of these sad but undeni-
able witnesses what have we to say of progress ?
If this be the repeated verdict of history from

204 Spiritual Culture and Social Service

the Israel of Isaiah to the Israel of Jesus Christ,
and from the Christianity of Jesus Christ to the
Christianity of to-day, what is to become of the
race that kills its prophets and stones those sent
unto her ? Is not this a hopeless world ?

For our answer let us turn again to the atti-
tude of Jesus. To-day He overlooks the city and
bitterly laments. And yet to-morrow we hear
His confident voice ring out through the cor-
ridors of the high priest's hall, " Before this
generation pass away, ye shall see the Son of
Man coming in glory and power." What is the
ground of this sublime assurance ?

Likewise if we turn again to the pages of the
prophets we find alternating hope. The proph-
et's ground of hope is that he has found in Israel
a little group of souls with open ears and sus-
ceptible hearts and willing minds. Every prophet
had his litde school. Isaiah gathers these up
and calls them the " Servant of Jehovah."

So Jesus had His litde band of faithful souls.
He beholds from the cross a John, a Mary, a
Joseph of Arimathea.

The entrance to the way of truth is straight
and narrow, but still a few do find it. While
the many called have deafened ears, a few are
chosen. These form the connecting bridges for
the transmission of truth from age to age. Here
is the reality of apostolic succession. The Church
that slew its unknown visitants was not the

The Unknown Visitation 205

Church. It only arrogated to itself the name.
These fewer open-hearted men have been the
true Church of Jesus Christ.

Through these do the rejected prophecies of
one age become the truths of God to the next.
Each succeeding generation has builded sepul-
chres to the prophets whom their fathers stoned
and slew, and has said, ** If we had been in the
days of our fathers, we should not have been
partakers with them in the prophets' blood."
Thus are Sauls converted into Pauls. The stone
which the builders of to-day reject becomes to-
morrow the head of the corner.

The history of both Church and world reveals
significant lessons here. The judgment of one
day is the reversal of its predecessor's verdict.
The relative judgments on Charles the First
and Oliver Cromwell furnish a most striking
instance. For more than two centuries the right
and the greatness of the king were asserted
against the alleged wrong and the falseness of
the Man of Iron. Within the last half century
the verdict has been universally reversed. When
Plato died, the academy refused to elect Aris-
totle as his successor. Aristotle had to wait for
an age beyond his own.

Thus has the light appeared unto one genera-
tion and been hidden by it, because it knew not
the day of its visitation, but onl}^^ to be uncovered
by the next. One age has cast forth its prophets

2o6 Spiritual Culture and Social Service

in the darkness of the night for its successor to
discover in the morning sun.

With the great host of mankind the cause is
indifference. Most men know nothing of the
signs of the time. Most churches do not. Pilate
is busy with his intrigues, Herod involved in his
licentious orgies, others busy with their farms
and merchandise, asking no other questions than
*' What shall we eat and what shall we drink and
wherewithal shall we be clothed ? " The most
priceless and immortal truths of heaven fall un-
heeded and unheard upon the babel of earth's
petty shouts and sounds.

Within the Church too often it is a blind rejec-
tion. Jesus reverses the traditions of the elders,
He upsets accustomed ideas, and makes men fear
by startling them. For this the truth is resolutely
shut out and its proclaimer silenced.

Thus it was with the superb commanding
figure of the ages, unheeded by an age and
church that knew not the day of its visitation, or
the things belonging to its peace and progress.
Thus in each succeeding age and church have
those who reflected His ineffable light been put
to shame and silence by a blind humanity and an
inhospitable church.

The attitude of our times is much the same.
New light is coming upon the horizon of to-day.
We also have our prophets. The great mass of
men within our churches are not in touch with

The Unknown Visitation 207

the world's best and highest thought. Sadder
still is it that so many, when the reflections of
these great souls are cast upon them, resolutely-
close their eyes and say without a moment's
thought or reflection, " We will not that He should
reign over us." Only a few years ago a rela-
tively insignificant church heard as a candidate
for its pulpit and passed by in ignorant disdain
a man who to-day is recognized as one of the
profoundest thinkers upon religion in America.
They knew not their visitation.

These lessons of history should give us pause.
For our age has its prophets. The voice of the
saintly Martineau still lingers on the air. A
Drummond left us but yesterday and his spirit is
still here. The shadow of Phillips Brooks is on
us. Let us be willing to listen to living voices.
Let us be heedful how we turn our backs to the
present and the future. Let us take heed that
we do not hand down to our children the task
of raising monuments over the graves of the
prophets unheeded or rejected by their fathers.
A recast of history may well allow the native
hue of a rejective resolution to be sicklied o'er
with the pale cast of thought.

One of our most significant prerogatives is our
choice of leaders. Every age has its self-con-
stituted teachers, ordained by a self-conceited ig-
norance, consecrated to a darkened mind, unto
whom is fulfilled the prophecy of Jesus, " Ye take

2o8 Spiritual Culture and Social Service

away the key of knowledge. Ye enter not in
yourselves and them that would enter in ye
hinder." The verdict of self-repeating history
sends out again the warning of the great teacher
of the Christian faith who, when teaching things
both nevvT and strange, urged upon his hearers,
** Take heed how ye hear."

Does this seem to be a dark and doubtful
view ? Must we linger with the Master weeping
over a lost church ? Or may v/e follow Him upon
the morrow and hear the echo in our ow^n souls
of His triumphant note ? There is this hope for
our own age. The human mind, though all too
slow in its awakening, has in every instance
finally aw^akened to every truth. The decision
of the Greek academy was at last reversed and
Aristotle elected to his rightful place. Each
succeeding age does and will build sepulchres to
the prophets slain by its fathers. Let us revert
again to the sublime strain of hope in every
prophet's message and experience. Isaiah re-
joiced in the little saving remnant, the chosen
few with open ears and willing hearts who did
receive, conserve, interpret and hand down the
truth. The Great Master left His priceless
heritage to a little handful of devoted followers.
Later there was the little band of Pilgrims, flee-
ing to an unknown land in preservation of relig-
ious liberty.

So the prophets of our time are gathering to-

The Unknown Visitation 209

gether a few Marys and Marthas and Johns.
Every Socrates has at least his Plato, and every
Plato his Aristotle. These are the leaven of the
age. This is the true apostolic succession of the
truth. Many within the Church are called to its
highest truth, and while but few are chosen,
there are still a few. Some wise men have seen
the star in the East and hold its glittering rays in
sight that they may be guided to the cradle of
truth.

The supreme prerogative of human personality
is the prerogative of choice. There is no more
solemn choice before the Church than the selec-
tion of its leaders. There is danger of confusion.
For many say, " Lo here," and " Lo therCo" It
is significant in our study of the period of
prophecy in Israel that in every case the false
prophets were those who prophesied that which
the king and people wanted. The true were
those who made hard, unwelcome utterances.
Clear it is, at least, that a thing may not be the
truth because we want to hear it. There are
other and better indications that we may follow.
The best of these are character and competency,
seriousness and depth ; these combined qualities
of heart and mind. If we were to ask, What is
the mark of a worthy teacher and leader of the
people's thought? it could best be answered in
the words of Jesus to Pilate : " To this end have
I been born and to this end am I come into

210 Spiritual Culture and Social Service

the world, that I may bear witness to the
truth."

I have a fervent faith not only that this world
was in the hands of God but that it is in His keep-
ing. I profoundly believe that, in its thought, it
is moving onward. I must believe that as God
spoke to His prophets of every other generation,
so He speaks to those of our own ; that as to
every one of them He gave new glimpses of the
truth, so He does to-day. I cannot believe that
God is dead, nor can I believe that He is the
God only of the dead. If the Holy Spirit spoke
to men of old, so it must to men of our age, if
God still be God and this be still His world.

If this be true, the attitude of all should be the
attitude of listeners. It is the duty of every in-
telligent being to put himself in touch with the
highest thought and to seek out the real prophets
of his time. No process should be slower than
that of rejection. For whosoever rejects the
truth or is indifferent to the truth rejects Jesus
Christ and is indifferent to the Son of Man.
*'Take heed how ye hear."

The centre of the thought of our time is upon
the person of Jesus Christ. The sublime figure
of history, the supreme teacher of all time, the
transcendent moral ideal of the race, is under the
search-light of human thought. To all this no
true and intelligent follower of His can be in-
different. If it be that the prophets of our age

The Unknown Visitation 211

are discovering truths about His Gospel that
have not been seen by earlier eyes and we re-
ject them, we reject the Son of God.

It is this little remnant of earnest seekers for
the ultimate realities that makes for the perpet-
uation of His life and truth. No school or sect
confines these prophets.

The Holy Spirit is not dead. It is not with-
drawn from the world of thought. It hovers
over the reverent souls within the schools who
search the Scriptures. It is with the deep and
serious thinker in the quiet of the hour of mid-
night oil. Choose well the molders of your
thought. It is the supreme function of the
preacher of to-day to wisely choose his teachers
and then to bring his people to their feet. Sad
it is that the great mass of the Church is kept so
far from the thought of the best thinkers, that so
many choose blind leaders.

If there be those of our day who would them-
selves not enter in, at least let them heed how
they take away the key of knowledge and hinder
those who would. The Spirit of God is moving
upon the waters of contemporary thought. The
vision of truth has not come only to the past.
There is truth and glory in the things that were ;
there is more of truth and glory in the things
that are ; there will be greater truth and glory
in the things that are to be. God is not only the
God of the past that is dead but of the present

212 Spiritual Culture and Social Service

that lives and moves and has its being in His
eternal life. Take heed, take heed, lest the visi-
tation come and go and be unknown.

Thus the voice of the people is the voice of
God only when the people hear and echo the
messages of the great prophets of the Spirit.

Bring Jesus into the life of the world to-day,
to His own world of which He has been for two
thousand years the moral creator, to His own
Church, and men would call His sayings " hard
sayings." He would speak to deaf ears, He
would look into doubtful countenances. He would
find fainting hearts. This would be the answer
to His own question, "When the Son of Man
Cometh shall He find faith on the earth ? "

His message would be too great for the small
minds of men. Yea, His voice does speak, but
men are refusing to hear Him. Thus the world
is easily misled by fraud and pretense. Still
more are good men and women willing to listen
to him who gives them the easy task ; they can
appreciate the calculating voice, understand
shallow personalities and readily appropriate
little ideals.

But the really great message deafens them ; a
great burst of truth is blinding. Therefore the
prophet's voice to-day is often lost upon the
chilly atmosphere. Or, men and women are
willing to wave palm branches for the Master to-
day, but not to follow Him to Calvary to-morrow.

The Unknown Visitation 213

The lesson is this. The Church of Christ to-
day is hearing a new message, is facing a new
mission. She does not yet see it ; her face is
largely towards the past. But she too has her
chosen few, whose vision is becoming large
enough, whose spirit brave enough, to save her
from her own blind, sluggish self. There are
those who witness this day of her visitation ; they
will hold the torch of truth until another genera-
tion shall fulfill, to-morrow, the vision of her
prophets of to-day.

XVI

THE EVERLASTING REALITY OF RELIGION

THE title of this chapter is the phrase of
a great scientist, one who was a rever-
ent worshipper as well as a profound
thinker. It is simply the echo of the words of
Simon Peter, when the Master asked His dis-
ciples if they were to forsake Him. " Lord, to
whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of
eternal life."

In the reUgion of Jesus we find the sense of
finality, of ultimate reality, and thus of last re-
sort. The knowledge, the sense and the reality
of the infinite lie behind our moral universe.
Human life, without this consciousness, is vain
and void. In the last analysis it is without
meaning and interpretation, unless with the
psalmist we can say, *' In Thy light do we see
light." This comes to us often as the sense of a
great necessity. In the case of Simon Peter, he
had become conscious that Jesus had become an
absolute necessity to the life of the disciples.

How often we find this to be true of the mas-
ter spirits who live among us, of our great proph-
ets, of our spiritual men. We neglect them, we
forget them, we do not realize that we could not

214

The Everlasting Reality of Religion 2 1 5

live without them, but by and by there comes
some moral, spiritual crisis. Then it is that we
realize the spiritual man as the lord of life, we
look for one who is capable of dealing with the
spirits and souls of things. Our humanity, in its
relation to such spirits, is like the thoughtless,
wayward son and the patient father.

There is no substitute for religion. We can-
not live in the human without the assurance of
the divine. Religion is not a mere epoch in the
upward rise of man. It is an everlasting reality.
We may outgrow religions but not religion. We
may outgrow our faiths, but not our faith.

It is not easy to define religion ; it is evasive
because it is so all pervading. It is the life of
God in the soul of man, the sense of the divine
guiding the human, the consciousness of the spir-
itual meaning and reality of life. It is the reali-
zation that above us, beyond us, and yet about us,
there is a spiritual order in which we live and
move and have our being.

Religion itself is essentially changeless, abid-
ing. It is not subject to the processes of substi-
tution. Theology, the Bible, the Gospel itself,
these are expressions of religion, these are ever
changing, but each change is merely a new re-
turn to religion.

Man is by nature religious. It is not some-
thing unnatural and abnormal. The sovereign
action of the universe upon man is the appeal of

2i6 Spiritual Culture and Social Service

the infinite affection to conscience, love and faith.
The supremely surpassing reaction of the human
soul upon the universe is its response to this in-
finite appeal. Prayer is one of the most natural
attitudes of the human spirit. Take the life of
Jesus as the revelation of our human nature at
its highest and its best. His life breathes relig-
ion. His personal influence is religion.

There are many reasons why religion is an
everlasting reality. It comprehends the ideal.
It is true that we try to live without ideals, but
we also realize that such lives are failures. Re-
ligion is the comprehension of moral ideals. In
proportion as we rise above the actual to the
ideal, in any sphere of life, we blend the human
and the divine. Religion then will not be gone,
so long as moral and spiritual ideals remain.

The religious sense is an everlasting reality
because it is also the sum of all our motives.
Behind and beyond all that v^e say or do are the
great truths we believe, the lofty consecrations
we make, the impulse of our actions. Back of
all effects are the moral causes in our souls. The
background of all the incidents of life is the great
principle of living. When we are at our moral
heights we are asking, Are my thoughts pure, my
motives unselfish, my purpose lofty? Religion
is another name for the reality of sincerity.

Religion is an everlasting reality, because it is
the interpreter of life. Our commonest human

The Everlasting Reality of Religion 217

living is radiant with invisible, ideal beauty.
Take anything — motherhood, wifehood. When
we come to idealize, we discover that these as-
sociations are fraught with divine and holy mean-
ing. Religion is the sense, the consciousness of
this meaning, the final interpreter of human life.

No human problem receives its satisfactory an-
swer except by the light of the divine. As the
psalmist put it : " Not until I went into the sanc-
tuary of God did I understand." Human life is
clear, without any need of interpretation, to only
two classes of human beings. First to those who
do not think at all and second, to those who think
reverently and deeply. To those in between, it
is full of moral difficulties. Science may find
some understanding of God through man and
nature, but it can never fully understand man ex-
cept by its knowledge of the Infinite. Light and
understanding come to us not only from our
knowledge of the things beneath us ; it must also
shine down upon us. Religion is the only final
explanation and interpretation of the universal
human order.

Some substitutes have been proposed for re-
ligion, as, for example, morals. But morality ex-
ists only in the realm of motive. The two sad-
dest things in human life are the separation of re-
ligion from ethics and the separation of ethics
from religion. The relation between the two is
that of cause and effect. Morality is obedience

2i8 Spiritual Culture and Social Service

to law, but we know that all human law is im-
perfect, except as it is the law of God. Religion
and morality are one and inseparable now and
forever. When the divine sanction is gone,
moral obligation inevitably follows. Such is not
only the verdict of philosophy, but the story of
human history.

The true relation between religion and morals
is that of inspiration and action, vision and serv-
ice, holy thinking and godly living. Thus the
one cannot live without the other. In a well-or-
dered life the deeper man's experiences become
in the realm of the temporal the profounder is
his faith in the eternal. Deep calleth unto deep.
The more we love God, the more we shall love
our fellow men. The more that we love truth
the truer we shall be. The more we feel the
divine, the more do we become truly human.

Thus man comes to himself and realizes him-
self in religion. Not until he cries, ** Search me,
O God, and know my heart, try me and know
my thoughts," does he search and feel and know
himself. The secret place of the Most High is
the inmost soul of man. Not until we find God
do we find ourselves. The deepest in us is the
reflection of the Infinite. All our better loves,
our higher aspirations, are the answers of our
nature to the spirit of the Eternal.

How deeply Jesus felt it, this truth that within
our spiritual natures our personalities of earth

The Everlasting Reality of Religion 219

and heaven might inextricably twine and indis-
solubly blend. *' Thou, Father, art in Me and I
in Thee." This is another definition of religion
and another revelation of its everlasting reality.
In all these relations we find religion to be the
very heart of things.

Another reason that religion will never die is
because man's interests are eternal. There are
the experiences of suffering and sorrow, the bear-
ing of the heavy burdens of life. They come
some time to all of us. In these hours, if in no
others, when we face life and look within our-
selves, we cry with Peter, *'To whom shall we go?"

Is there then any power beside religion to
bring life up to its highest and best ? Is there any
substitute for it ? Is not religion life itself ? Have
we no human limitations ? Must not the finite
reach out to the Infinite for its living and being?

If our life is to have length, must it not stretch
outward ? If it is to have height, must it not
reach upward ? If it is to have depth, must it
not be deeper than itself ? If religion is the sum
of all ideals and motives, the background and
the interpretation, the cause of which morality is
the effect, if it is ourtrue self-realization, if man's
needs are infinite, are not men very shallow who
talk to-day of the passing of religion ?

Perhaps, we are saying, this is a broad and
unusual definition of religion. This has nothing
to do with church religion, or with religious

220 Spiritual Culture and Social Service

institutions. May not these pass away? Let
us look at this for a moment.

In the history of Israel we find a certain essen-
tial relation between the sacred temple of Jeru-
salem and the religious life of the nation. In
proportion as they were removed from the cen-
tral sanctuary, they lost their spiritual integrity.
It is true that the school is not education. The
boy in the class room at college might learn his
lessons in his own room. It is equally true that
the church is not religion. But under human
associations, there is a reality between form and
spirit, between institutions and culture. It is
true that some men who never go to college are
better educated than some who do. It is true
that there are many people in the church not so
religious as those without. But let us not de-
ceive ourselves by the *' unsupported therefore,"
by generalizing from the particular. The simple
facts are that a waning church means a loss in
religious influence. It is true that forms and
expressions have no value without life. Is it not
equally true that life expresses itself through
forms ? At any rate, for most of us, there is
some relation between the two. We should not
expect literature to flourish without its school.
We recognize that art is largely dependent upon
its galleries. Imagine, if you can, a city with no
church. How long would it be the habitation of
religion ?

The Everlasting Reality of Religion 221

Our day and generation is one of sad neglect,
but the world will come back. Our world of
to-day, more than anything else, is restless, and
it will come to say with Augustine, " Thou hast
made us for Thyself, and our souls are restless
until they find their rest in Thee."

Many a time have I seen a little child sur-
rounded by his toys. So interested is he in them
that for the time he forgets the mother and feels
no need of her. But I know that by and by the
toys, one by one, will be cast aside, and he will
turn to his mother. Thus

*« We older children grope our way,
From dark behind to dark before,
And only when our hands we lay.
Dear Lord, in Thine, the night is day."

If thus we face the world thoughtfully and
then we face the Master who is the sovereign
revelation of religion, we shall ask with Peter,
" To whom shall we go ? "

" Here let us pause, our quest forego,
Enough for us to feel and know
That He in whom the cause and end,
The past and future meet and blend,
Speaks not alone the words of fate
Which worlds destroy and worlds create;
But whispers in my spirit's ear
In tones of love, or warning fear,
A language none beside may hear.
To Him from wanderings long and wild
I come, an overwearied child."

222 Spiritual Culture and Social Service

** He went out into a mountain to pray, and
continued ail night in prayer to God.

"And when it was day . . . He came
down . . . and stood in the plain . . .
there went virtue out of Him, and healed them
all."

Thus, with the Master, he who does the work
of an unselfish ministry in the daylight hours
must find his way back, at eventide, to the
sources of his refuge and his strength ; there is
no lasting, perfected social service without its
commensurate spiritual culture, and the one will
be as real and abiding as the other is deep and
reverent.

Printed in the United States of Ayyierk*

THE MINISTER AND HIS WORK

THISELTON MARK, D.LiU

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