Where does the sky begin?

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WHERE DOES THE SKY BEGIN

WHERE DOES THE
SKY BEGIN

. 'by;

WASHINGTON^ GLADDEN

BOSTON AI^PNW YOR^., ;
HOUGHTON, MIFf Lt?H ..AND C^J^JP^NY

1904

'J?MrC LIBRAftY

V/65J494

c ' AS'^OR. LFNOX ANIB
iiLD U FCI't.'DAIIONS.

COPYRIGHT 1904 .BY V<'ASHTN3TON GLADDEN
AL^ RIGHTS RErERVED

Published September iq/04

c cc
c , c c

CONTENTS '.•'',•;!•;;.

I. Where does the 'Sky begin? . . » •'' ';i'_
II. The Fulfillment of Life . . . .20

III. Moments and Movements . . . 36

IV. The Permanent and the Transient . ,52
V. Knowing how Tcy^ pe ^cor . ., ,. . 71

VI. Knowing how to be Rich . "^,^ ^ *'••''*, *» ^1

VII. The Christian Law of Life' * . .' Ill

VIII. Free from the Law 133

IX. The Lesson of the Cross . . . 150

X. Who can forgive Sins? .... 170

XL The Might of Beginnings . . . 187

XII. The Obscuration of the Christ . . 203

XIII. The Earthy and the Heavenly . . 219

XIV. The Transforming Spirit . . . .233
XV. The Everlasting Yea .... 249

XVI. Spiritual Law in the Natural Woi^ld . 267

XVII. Show us th*© EATitea • . ," '.. > :i .. '. '. . 286

XVIII. The Education of oub Wants. . . 303

XIX. How to be SuRfi'o^ Gov- ,.,.•,» • • 319

WHERE DOES THE SKY BEGlN'^

WHERE DOES THE SIlr-BEmSSr-* '

Where is the way to the dwelling of light,
And as for darkness, where is the place thereof ;
That thou shouldest take it to the bound thereof.
And that thou shouldest discern the paths to the house thereof ?

Job xxxviii. 19, 20.

These are part of the words by which, in the great
dramatic poem of the Old Testament, Jehovah
answers Job, out of the whirlwind and the thunder-
cloud. The whole mighty message is a reproof of
the temerity of man in judging God. The vast-
ness of man's ignorance, the multitude of the
things happening all about him which he can nei-
ther control nor explain, — these are set before
him in a series of splendid pictures, that humility
and docility may be suggested to him. Among
these challenges and questionings his thought is
turned more than once to the upper realms, to the
wonder and mystery of the sky : —

" Which is the way to the place where the light is ?
Who hath cleft a channel for the water-flood,

2 .'.WH^ifep DOES/THE SKY BEGIN

»Or*a. Way^for the lightAivtg'ofWis iljunder ?

' ••C^fisf thou bind the cluster of the Pleiades,
. I , Or loose the bands of Orion ?

Canst thou lead forth the si^s of the Zodiac in their season ?
, Or canst thou guide the Bear \v.itli 'oat train ?
• KngVest thou the ordinance^ ot' the heavens ?
t CJanBt ^,hou establish the domiaion thereof in the earth ? "

Tne thought of Job is directed by these inquiries
to the immensity and th^ splendor of the kingdoms
of the air ; to their relation to the solid land which
they overhang and encompass ; to the part which
they play in the life of man. No scientific or phi-
losophical account of them is attempted ; their phe-
nomena alone are displayed before the imagination.

To these phenomena the eyes of the children of
men have been wonderingly lifted ever since that
dateless dawn when the morning stars first sang
together and all the sons of God shouted for joy.
Many and ingenious have been the explanations
given of things visible over our heads. The first
chapter of Genesis clearly conveys to us the con-
ception of the ancient Hebrews, which was not
unlike that of the ancient Greeks and of the
Romans also. What we call the sky, the blue
vault overhead, the Hebrews called the firmament.
They thought that a canopy of solid crystal or
translucent metal was stretched above the earth ;
that was the name they gave it. The word denotes
solidity, united with expansion and tenuity. Thus

WHERE DOES THE SKY BEGIN 3

Elihii, in the chapter of Job which precedes that
from which the text is taken, speaks of Jehovah as
having " spread out the sky " (rather hammered
it out), " which is strong as a molten mirror."
This firm roof above the solid earth carried on its
upper surface a vast ocean of water ; the writer of
Genesis says that " it divided the waters which
were under the firmament from the waters which
were above the firmament." The firmament was
supported by the mountains standing at the ends
of the earth, — at the extremities of the vast plain
which the ancients supposed the earth to be. In
this crystal roof were many windows and doors,
which were opened to let the rain and the snow
descend. The sun, moon, and stars were set or
fixed in this firmament, driven into it, as nails, or
hung upon it, as lamps. When, in some great cat-
aclysm, the " powers of the heavens were shaken,"
these lights might be loosened and fall down. The
clouds were vapors that gathered under this roof
and sometimes hid it from the sight of men.

Among the Hebrews, as among the other ancient
peoples, clearer astronomical ideas gradually ap-
peared, and the earlier conceptions survived only
as symbols or metaphors ; but there is no doubt
that we have, in the first chapters of Genesis, the
explanation of the phenomena of the sky which
was current in the days of Abraham and Moses.

We need not tarry over the theories which have

4 WHERE DOES THE SKY BEGIN

been evolved in the passing ages from human
brains, and dissolved by the progress of knowledge ;
over the Apollonian epicycles or the Ptolemaic
mazes ; the genius of Copernicus solved for us the
mighty problem, and the phenomena of the world
above our heads are now fairly understood by most
y of us. Still there linger upon our lips forms of
speech by which old conceptions are perpetuated,
and we find ourselves thinking and speaking in
terms which will hardly bear analysis.
f What, for example, do we mean by the sky?
What are the boundaries of the sky ? Where does
it begin ?

I am not asking you to entertain that great con-
ception of unlimited space through which our earth
and all the other heavenly bodies move; I am
speaking only of the phenomenal sky which always
overspreads that portion of the earth where we are
dwelling, which reaches from the one horizon to
the other. The word sky meant, in the old Eng-
lish, a cloud ; so Chaucer sometimes uses it ; but
in the usage of our later English it is thus defined
in a recent lexicon : —

" The region of clouds, wind, and rain ; that part
of the earth's atmosphere in which meteorological
phenomena take place ; often used in the plural.
The apparent arch or vault of heaven which in a
clear day is of a blue color ; the firmament ; often
used in the plural."

WHERE DOES THE SKY BEGIN 5

This is sufficiently precise and scientific ; we all
understand it. With this definition in our minds,
let us ask once more, Where does the sky begin ?

I am sure that our thought at once begins to
mount upward. It begins somewhere above us, as
we conceive it. Perhaps we have not tried to fix
any better boundary for it. Our hymns and poems
speak of ascending to the skies ; of mounting to
the sky; of climbing to the sky ; and our customary
use of the word carries us away upward to some
region far over our heads. We do, indeed, apply
the word "^sky-scraper " in a humorous way to our
tall buildings ; that is one of our exaggerations ;
we like to speak of these buildings as so lofty that
they pierce the sky. Perhaps we should all consent
to the idea that the entire region of the upper air
above the tops of the tallest mountains might be
regarded as the sky. But if any proposition to
transfer ourselves to the sky should be made to us,
we should begin to wonder where we could find a
ladder like Jacob's on which we could climb, or an
airship or balloon by which we could ascend to
that unknown region. What manner of people we
should be if we lived in the sky we cannot quite
imagine ; wings, of course, would be indispensable.
What, now, is the simple, solid, scientific fact?
It is that we are all dwellers in the sky. We have
lived in it all our lives, and could not live anywhere
else. The tallest ladder and the most buoyant air-

6 WHERE DOES THE SKY BEGIN

ship would take us no nearer to it than we are at
this moment. It is not the Matterhorn or Mont
Blanc alone that the sky kisses ; the lowliest mound
lies always in its loving embrace. The poor man's
cabin, not less than the millionaire's twenty-five
story block, lifts its roof into the sky. It is not
Phaeton alone, or Santos-Dumont, who travels
through the sky; the steamship divides the sky
when she ploughs the wave ; the swift railway train
is rushing through it ; the fine lady in her coach
moves gracefully in the same element ; the working-
man, going every morning with his dinner-pail to
his daily toil, is walking through the sky ! Earth-
plodders are we all ? Yea, and something more, if
we only knew it I Not one of us who is not through
all his days on earth a denizen of the sky !

I am speaking, of course, of the simple physical

fact. The inferior boundary of our sky can be no

other than the surface of the earth on which we

tread. All above the ground is sky. There can be

], no middle term between the two. Atmosphere and

light, these are the elements of which the sky is com-

i posed, and there is no division, real or imaginary,

i by which some realm above is separated from the

realm below. The atmosphere is less dense as we

ascend, but it is the same atmosphere. The vapors

which it bears, when they are condensed in the

upper air, we call clouds ; in the lower air we name

them fogs, but there is no difference ; a cloud is a

WHERE DOES THE SKY BEGIN 7

fog above the ground ; a fog is a cloud upon the
ground ; the sky has not fallen, as the ancients
feigned or feared, for its hither limit always is the
earth.

Kay, I think that if we wish to tell the whole
scientific truth we must go a little deeper, and say
that the sky is always seeking even lower levels.
For there is not a cellar or a cavern or a mine
into which it does not penetrate. If it cannot carry
its torch of light into these recesses, its vital breath
descends, contending there for the mastery with the
gases that the earth engenders. If men live at all
in those underground fastnesses, they live upon tlie
bounty of the sky, which follows them and minis-
ters to their life.

More than this, it is the chemistry of air and
light which turns the barren rock into the soil in
which all the kingdoms of plant-life are nourished.
It is the action of this atmospheric envelope upon
the surface of the earth which makes the earth
habitable. The heavens, the physical heavens, are
always mingling themselves with the earth, and
subduing the earth to the uses of living beings.
In every particle of the mould on which we walk
are elements borrowed from the sky. It is the nurse
if not the mother of all green things growing ; its
vitalizing elements enter into all living tissues ; its
tides of energy are dancing in our own veins. In
it, as the constant physical manifestation of the

8 WHERE DOES THE SKY BEGIN

" creator-spirit," who is the Lord and giver of life,
we live and move and have our being.

Where does the sky begin? It begins in the
dust of the pavement, in the roots of the grass,
at the threshold of the lips which drink its life or
fashion its waves into speech or song, at the por-
tals of the eye which receives its messages of light.
It is the medium and minister of life through every
moment of our earthly existence.

Is this, to any of you, a new way of thinking
about these things ? If so, what is its significance ?
How does it differ from the conceptions which are
traditional and familiar ? Simply in this, that it
removes an imaginary and unreal boundary line
which separated the sky from our world, and made
it something remote and almost preternatural,
whereas it is the one thing of which we have im-
mediate and constant experience ; the most common,
homely, every-day fact with which we have to do.
It is a frequent error of ours — this by which we
draw lines of demarcation through realms that can-
not be divided, and shut out of our lives by defini-
tion that which ought to be the most vital and inspir-
ing truth in our experience. Even as we are in the
habit of thinking of the sky as of some region far
above us to which we must fly or climb, so we are
in the habit of conceiving many of the present
realities of our lives as interests or experiences that
are a long way off, that belong to some other state

WHERE DOES THE SKY BEGIN 9

of being, into whicli we can enter only by long
journeying or laborious climbing.

I remember hearing an evangelist, at an evening
meeting where a solemn hymn had been sung, of
which the refrain was " Eternity ! eternity ! " break
the silence which followed the singing by the im-
pressive question, " Where will you spend it ? "
The purpose of the question was laudable, yet it
conveyed an idea which most of his hearers already
held, and of which it would have been well if they
could have been disabused, — that eternity is a tract
of duration lying wholly on the other side of death.
If they had been asked where eternity begins, most
of them would have promptly answered, " At death."
The common conception is that the grave is the
point at which time ends and eternity begins. But
time does not end, neither does eternity begin ;
and there is great moral as well as metaphysical
confusion in conceiving of any such boundary line.
The proper question about eternity is not " Where
will you spend it ? " — as if the entrance upon it
were a future experience, — but rather " When and
how ARE you spending it ? " The eternal life is not
a life which a man begins to live after he passes
out of this world ; if he hopes to live it at all he
ought to be living it now. It is not only true meta-
physically that eternity, by the very definition of
it, cannot have a future beginning, — that it must in-
clude the present moment, — it is also true morally

10 WHERE DOES THE SKY BEGIN

that the kind of life which is in its nature unend-
ing, the kind of life which possesses the power of
continuance, is a kind of life which has just as much
to do with the present moment as with any future
moment of duration. If one is living it now, no
questions need be asked about the future ; that will
take care of itself ; and to the one who refuses to
live it now, expectations about the future are vain.

Nay, let us not forget that all the realities of
eternity, all the motives of eternity, are gathered
up in the experience of the present hour. It is of
the very nature of moral conduct that eternity is
involved in it. The simplest decision between right
and wrong sets in motion causes which act and react
upon the character forever. If you do the thing
you ought to do, that deed is an everlasting fact ;
it belongs to your character ; the value of it can
never be taken from you. If you fail to do the
thing you ought to do, that deed undone is an ever-
lasting failure ; it subtracts so much from the sum
of good that might have been yours ; to all eternity
you will be so much the poorer for that omission.
Other things you may do, but not that thing. Eter-
nity is thus the coefficient of every moral choice.

If man is made for a life that has no term, and
if there is a genetic relation between his moral
actions, so that he reaps what he sows, so that the
deeds of to-day are seeds from which to-morrow's
harvest grows, and if this goes on and on indefi-

WHERE DOES THE SKY BEGIN 11

nitely, then it is evident that we are living this
minute the life of eternity, and Goethe's solemn
words, as Carlyle interprets them, come home to us
with tremendous meaning : —

" Heard are the voices,
Heard are the sages,
The worlds, and the ages :
Choose well ! Your choice is
Brief and yet endless."

Thus we see that our whole moral life must be
estimated, as the logicians say, sub specie ceterni-
tatis ; that element enters into the whole of it ;
eternity has the same relation to this day and this
hour that the ocean has to the child's well in the
sand of the beach. The rewards of eternity and the
retributions of eternity are not to begin by and by ;
they are now in full operation ; they are working
themselves out in your character.

This means, of course, that heaven and hell are
not distant facts, but present facts. The same illu-
sion which makes us conceive of the sky as beginning
somewhere above the range of the mountain-tops
makes us put the realities of heaven and hell away
to other places and future periods. But it is no more
certain that the sky comes down to the ground and
that we are always walking in it, than that heaven
and hell are immediate and inescapable realities.
Fundamentally, essentially, they are states of being ;
we do not get into them or out of them by going up

12 WHERE DOES THE SKY BEGIN

or down, east or west, north or south ; we change
our sky, said the Komans, but not our minds. And
it is in the mind, the character, that the essential
fact of heaven or hell is found.

If heaven has not begun for you already it is idle
for you to be looking forward to some future day or
some distant place when it will begin. And the dis-
content, the unrest, the envy, the jealousy, the bit-
terness, the groveling mind, the perverse will, the
unsocial temper, — if these are your present experi-
ences, they have only to continue and become chronic
to make a hell more dread than Milton ever painted.

The vision of God, the beatific vision, — where
does that begin ? When shall we stand in his pre-
sence and look upon his face and rejoice in his love ?
We are waiting for the day when this shall be re-
vealed. We are thinking of a place where He shall
be made known to us. But is not the same illusion
here, also, blinding us to the greatest facts of our
daily lives ?

It is not, surely, a novel conception that God is
always near, always accessible, always in vital com-
munication with our spirits. Of one of the earliest
of the Biblical heroes we are told that he walked
with God ; that seems to imply a real presence of
God in his daily life. And the psalmist cries : —

" Whither shall I go from thy spirit ?
Or whither shall I flee from thy presence ?
If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there :

WHERE DOES THE SKY BEGIN 13

If I make my bed in Sheol, behold, thou art there.

If I take the wings of the morning, _^^

And dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,

Even there shall thy hand lead me.

And thy right hand shall hold me.

If I say, Surely the darkness shall overwhelm me,

And the light about me shall be night ;

Even the darkness hideth not from thee,

But the night shineth as the day :

The darkness and the light are both alike to thee."

The presence of God in his life seems to have been
a real experience of this psalmist. For most of us,
I fear, this has become a kind of scholastic or dog-
matic formula ; we have turned the experience into
a creed and believe in the omnipresence of God
which is a kind of diffusion of infinite force through
space ; and in his omniscience which represents to
us an infinite detective agency, rather than a per-
sonal and spiritual friendship. But surely the psalm-
ists who speak in such warm and tender ways of
the nearness of God to them meant something other
than this ; and Jesus, in the many words that testify
to his immediate knowledge of the Father, makes
us see that communion with God is not a boon to
be awaited, but an experience to be enjoyed. It is
true, as Paul says, that " now we know in part ; "
nevertheless we know. Our spiritual nature is so
imperfectly developed that we are not so sensitive
as we ought to be to the Presence which at every
moment envelops us. Our partial knowledge is our
own defect.

14 WHERE DOES THE SKY BEGIN

" God is not dumb, that he should speak no more ;
If thou hast wanderings in the -wilderness
And findest not Sinai, 't is thy soul is poor ;
There towers the Mountain of the Voice no less.
Which whoso seeks shall find."

In two ways, at least, if we only had eyes to see
and ears to hear, the Presence of God would be made
known to us.

We should discern Him, first, in the common life
of man ; we should find reflections of his truth and
love in the characters and deeds of the people round
about us, from the humblest to the most exalted.
For even as the physical heavens mingle with the
substance of the earth to make it. fruitful and hab-
itable, to give life to the seed and beauty to the
flower, — even as the physical sky comes down to
the ground and organizes here the kingdoms of life,
— so the spiritual influences of the world of light
and life are always descending upon the human race
and organizing among men the heavenly society.
In human hearts, in human lives, in human institu-
tions God is always dwelling and revealing Him-
self. With much that is of the earth earthy divine
grace is always mingled, and disfigured ; we need
anointed eyes to discern it ; to the insight of love
alone it is visible ; one must be born from above
that he may be able to see the kingdom of God,
mingling as the leaven mingles, silently but per-
vasively, with the whole life of man. But it is here,

WHERE DOES THE SKY BEGIN 15

if we only have eyes to see it ; we need not climb,
nor fly ; we have only to keep our hearts in tune
and its sweet breath will make heavenly music in
them. Every day some loyalty that is born of God,
some kindness that his love has kindled, some truth
that his spirit has begotten, some parental love that
is the reflection of his fatherhood, some filial devo-
tion that is the response to his call greets us, as we
go on our way, and tells us more clearly than the
voice which spoke from the burning bush that God
is round about us, revealing Himself in the thoughts
and words and deeds of his children on the earth.
' But closer than this is the personal touch of his
spirit upon our spirits.

" No man can think nor in himself perceive,
Sometimes at waking, in the street sometimes,
Or on the hillside, always unforewamed,
A grace of being finer than himself
That beckons and is gone, — a larger life
Upon his own impinging, with swift glimpse
Of spacious circles luminous with mind.
To which the ethereal substance of his own
Seems but gross cloud to make that visible.
Touched to a sudden glory round the edge."

It is these "visitations fleet" — too fleet, alas!
with most of us, — because we have not learned to
woo and hold them — that make our lives sublime ;
because they reveal to us the Presence who com-
muned with Abram at the tent door, and with Jacob
at Bethel, and with Jesus on the Mount of Trans-

16 WHERE DOES THE SKY BEGIN

figuration, and who is surely not less near to men
to-day than in those olden times.

It is here, at the very heart of it, that our religion
is feeble and uncertain. The one thing that we fail
to realize is the nearness, the immediateness of God.
We keep conceiving that He is far away, — that some
climbing or traveling must be done to reduce the
distance ; that somebody, evangelist, prophet, medi- _• i
ator of some sort must go and fetch Him ; we do "; • ;;
not comprehend that He is as sure to occupy thi^ ;*•.;.
heart that will just make room for Him, as the ai'r'.'.Vv.vf
is to occupy all open spaces. That is all thai -i^rS^^
needed — to make room for Him; to open ttei; i;y'
thought and the desire to his influence. You ha^\V;^..
no more need to call and plead with God that H^Vy^;'
will come to you than you have to climb up an3f('.f!
bring the sky down into your garden. " WhostJ>:^j^>-:'
ever," says Dean Fremantle, " in humble faith, anA-^s.V:;
with a heart which longs for truth and goodne^^^'.j.'r'l.
opens his mouth and draws in his breath, that maiij; '^.
is straightway filled, — not with some vague influr''v.:",
ence only, but with all the fullness of God. Xhte .••.y:..'
desire and the power to do right which he acquire!^ ; ^'/-^
is none other than the central force which animates. Z;'^
the world. He lives and moves in God." fr.:>-*^-^

In the relation of the physical sky to the earth.'. "^
we found one fact which furnishes, I fear, a striking >
analogy to some things which are happening in the'^-v
spiritual world. We saw that the sky foUows men-v'^y

WHERE DOES THE SKY BEGIN 17

down into cellars and mines and caverns, only that
it leaves behind its torch of life-giving light ; that
it carries into those fastnesses the vital air by which
men live ; but that this air is liable there to be mixed
with poisonous vapors, so that it will no longer sus-
tain life.

Something like this is true of the relation of the
spiritual world to the present age in which we live.
So long as a man keeps above the world, — on top
of the world, keeps it under his feet, — the heavenly
influences in all their power are round about him,
and his life will be filled with strength and beauty ;
but when he burrows in the earth he leaves the light
of heaven behind him. The man who suffers him-
self to be immersed in material interests and cares
thus puts himself beyond the range of the purest
and most inspiring spiritual influences. The dwell-
ers in caverns lose their sense of the sky, their joy
in the light ; the fish in the mammoth cave are blind ;
men would gradually lose their eyesight if they
tarried in that darkness. It is not less true that
those who immure themselves in the underground
world of material goods and gains are likely to for-
get that there is a sky and to cease to have any
vision for its glories. And it often happens, I fear,
that the life of the spirit is stifled in the poisonous
damps of that nether world.

We are children of the light, not of the darkness ;
and if we would keep our souls alive we must not

18 WHERE DOES THE SKY BEGIN

suffer ourselves to be buried in the world ; we must
live above the world, where the light of God can
shine upon us, and where all the genial influences
of heaven can find entrance to our lives.

Just as sure as the sky is round about us, as
eternity is our habitation, as heaven is a present
reality more than a future hope, so sure is it that
He whose days are from everlasting to everlasting,
and whose love is the light and the law of heaven,
must be the one ever-present, inclusive, all pervad-
ing fact of the life of every man.

" O Life that breathest in all sweet things
That bud and bloom upon the earth,
That fillest the sky with songs and wings,

That walkest the world through human birth, —

" O Life that lightest in every man

A spark of thine own being's flame,
And wilt that spark to glory fan, —

Our listening souls would bear thy Name.

" Thy voice is sweet in brook and bird

And boughs that over our home-roofs bend ;
And dear is every kindly word

Borne from the lip of friend to friend.

" Thou livest, most human, most divine !
To no veiled Fate or Force we bow :
Far off, God's blinding splendors shine ;
His near deep tenderness art Thou."

Such is the life which is normal to the children
of men ; and if, in our experience, there is no con-

WHERE DOES THE SKY BEGIN 19

sciousness of such a relation to things unseen and
eternal, there must be great faculties in us lying
dormant that ought to be roused, and windows
in our lives long closed which cannot too soon be
opened.

II

THE FULFILLMENT OF LIFE

It is God which worketh in you both to will and to work, for
his good pleasure. — Phil. ii. 13.

"Canst thou by searching find out God?" de-
mands Zophar the Naamathite of the doubting Job.
" Canst thou find out the Almighty unto perfection ?
It is high as heaven : what canst thou do ? Deeper
than Sheol ; what canst thou know ? The measure
thereof is longer than the earth, and broader than
the sea." Zophar seems to have been something of
an agnostic, as respects the first question of theology,
yet, like many agnostics, he was dogmatic enough in
enforcing his own notions of God upon his suffering
friend. His questions are, however, pertinent for
the students of every generation. It is well for us
to understand that God cannot be comprehended in
any definitions which we can frame, and that the
limiting conceptions of Him which we are wont to
form, leave out infinitely more than they include. If
agnosticism signifies that we do not profess to know
all about the Eternal One we may all wisely confess'
ourselves agnostics ; if it signifies that we can know
nothing about Him, it is a libel on our faculties and

THE FULFILLMENT OF LIFE 21

an insult to our deepest intelligence. We do not
know all about this universe. The whole that the
wisest man knows about it is but a fragment com-
pared with what he does not know. Nevertheless
we do know something about it. We know, by evi-
dence which is irresistible, that it is a universe ; we
know much about its processes and forces ; we know
how our own lives are affected by some of them.
Science is the rational interpretation of the universe.
It is but a partial and fragmentary interpretation,
and there is no prospect of the coming of a time
when it will be a complete interpretation ; but sci-
ence does know something about the universe, some-
thing well worth knowing, something significant and
inspiring. May we not say the same thing about the
Source and Author of the universe ? We cannot
by searching find Him out ; we cannot explore all
the secrets of his being, but we do know parts of
his ways, and, in truth, of all our knowledge. He is
the central Element, the informing and ruling Prin-
ciple. If the universe is rational, if we can under-
stand and interpret its laws, it is because it is an
expression or revelation of the Eternal Keason,
which is another name for God. In truth, therefore,
all our science is but a tracing of the presence of God
in the universe. If we read the play of " Macbeth "
and understand it, it is because our minds follow
the mind of Shakespeare from sentence to sentence
and from scene to scene. If we hear the " Sonata

22 THE FULFILLMENT OF LIFE

Appassionata," and enjoy it, it is because our minds
follow the mind of Beethoven from phrase to phrase
and from movement to movement. If we study the
Book of Nature and understand it, it is because our
minds follow the mind of the Author from organ-
ism to organism and from system to system. If
Reason, the Eternal Logos, were not expressed in
nature, our reason could not interpret nature. All
scientific study proceeds, therefore, upon the as-
sumption of the presence in nature of thought rela-
tions, and thought without a thinker is inconceivable.
The very substratum of science is Reason in nature,
and if Reason in nature does not spell God, words
have no meaning.

The trouble, then, with those who by searching
do not find God is that they go too far afield in
their search. They are straining their eyes to some-
thing beyond the stars when the Reality that they
are seeking is " closer than breathing." They are
like those birds that fly from mountain-top to moun-
tain-top in search of air, or fishes that swim from
one shore of the ocean to the other in search of water.
For there is not a substance that we can touch, not
a force whose operation we can see or feel, not a
vibration of the air, not a pulsation of the light that
does not reveal to us God. The physicists used to
challenge us with that intractable word, matter.
That, they seemed to assume, was something life-
less and inert. No sign of the presence of God

THE FULFILLMENT OF LIFE 23

could be discerned in matter, they assumed. For
it was proved that all these physical substances
could be broken up by heat or electricity, that
everything could be resolved into minute particles
called atoms. The atom, it was supposed, was the
ultimate physical fact. Nobody ever saw one, of
course, but there were reasons for believing in
their existence. Lord Kelvin has shown by different
lines of argument that an atom cannot be more than
one one hundred and fifty millionth of an inch in
diameter. It takes considerable scientific imagina-
tion to picture a body of such dimensions, but the
physicists were formerly wont to assume that it had
" a definite weight, magnitude, and form." Some
supposed that these minute bodies were crystalline,
others that they were spherical. But it was deemed
certain that they were bits of resisting substance,
and the theory of those who were called materialists
was that these atoms are eternal and uncreated, and
that by their fortuitous concourse all natural forms
have been produced. The existence of these infini-
tesimal particles of non-living matter seemed to some
thinkers to contradict the idea of the spiritual origin
of the universe. "Here," they said, " is the ultimate
scientific fact, the atom. You cannot go behind that.
It is not alive, and it does not reveal any of the
attributes of mind. Matter and not spirit is the
primary fact in this universe." But that kind of
argument has lost its force. The recent investiga-

24 THE FULFILLMENT OF LIFE

tions into the nature of these atoms show that they
are not minute physical bodies at aU ; that they are
probably centres of motion. Thus at a recent meet-
ing of the British Association, the president of the
physical section entered into an elaborate exami-
nation of the latest speculations on the relations of
matter, electricity, and ether, in which the old theory
of the ultimate hard particle wholly disappears
from sight. The prevailing view now is, he tells us,
that what is known as the atom of matter is " of the
nature of a structure in the aether, involving an
atmosphere of setherial strain all round it — not a
small body which exerts direct action at a distance
on other atoms according to extraneous laws of
force." And the ether, in which these vortices
appear, is not "matter" in the sense usually
allotted to that word. It is rather, as one explains,
" the homogeneous and undifferentiated medium out
of which matter emerges. True, we do not know
what it is. But it has the power, at any rate, to
dissolve away the incubus of the solid atom, and
to give the enthralling suggestion of one ultimate
substance which is neither matter nor mind, but the
source of both." Is not that an "enthralling sugges-
tion ? " Put off thy shoes from off thy feet, O man
of science, for the place whereon thou standest is
holy ground ! I AM that I A31 is speaking unto
thee.

This does not look as if what men call matter were

THE FULFILLMENT OF LIFE 25

the ultimate fact of the universe. It looks as if
the ultimate fact which science finds to-day is some-
thing that better deserves the name of spirit. " We
have, indeed," says the writer I was just quoting,
" passed right through the cloud of materialism. We
have come out on the other side into the eternal
light." All the recent developments of physical
theory take us up to the very boundaries of the
realm of spirit. With the idea of a spiritual origin
of the universe the latest science can be far more
easily reconciled than with the idea of its origin
in lifeless matter.

But if we find in the inorganic realm such reasons
for reverential thought, how much stronger are our
reasons when we begin to deal with the facts of life.
If the Energy which is moving in the heart of the
atom claims our reverence, how much more does
that which appeals to us in the cell and in the
organism ! Non-living substances startle us by the
revelations which they make to us of an unseen
Power, but wherever we find life we find deeper
reasons still for awe and wonder and worship.

In all life the fundamental fact is the tendency
to perfection. Every living thing is endowed with
forces which are pressing it on toward the comple-
tion of its life, toward wholeness or health, toward
symmetry and beauty, toward maturity and fruit-
fulness. Matthew Arnold's well-known phrase de-
scribes the fact — " the stream of tendency hy which

26 THE FULFILLMENT OF LIFE

all things fulfill the law of their heingy It is true
not only of the days of June, it is true of every
month in the year and every hour in the day, that
everything is upward striving, — reaching out after
the fulfillment of its being. If it suffer wounding
or lesion, something is there which goes to work at
once to repair the injury. The whole drift and move-
ment of the central force of the organism is toward
health, toward life, toward perfection of being. This
is a fact on which we count in all our own husbandry,
in all our handling of the lives of plants and animals.
It is a tendency with which we are so familiar that
we seldom think of its significance. For it has tre-
mendous significance. It is a proof which no gain-
saying can weaken, that not Reason merely, but
Goodness also, is at the heart of nature. The opti-
mism of the race — for the race as a whole is always
optimistic — rests upon this fundamental fact. And
Matthew Arnold tells us that the best name for this
fact is God. *• That all things," he says, " seem to
us to have what we call a law of their being, and to
tend to fulfill it, is certain and admitted ; though
whether we will call this God or not is a matter of
choice. Suppose, however, we call it God ; we then
give the name of God to a certain and admitted real-
ity ; this, at least, is an advantage ; but the notion
of our definition does, in fact, enter into the term
God, in men's common use of it. To please God, to
serve God, to obey God's will, means to follow a

THE FULFILLMENT OF LIFE 27

law of things whicli is found in conscience, and
which is an indication, irrespective of our arbitrary
wish and fancy, of what we ought to do. There
is, then, a real power not ourselves which makes
for righteousness, and it is the greatest of realities
for us.

" When St. Paul says that our business is ' to
serve the spirit of God,' ' to serve the living and
true God,' and when Epictetus says, ' What do I
want ? — to acquaint myself with the true order of
things and to comply with it,' they both mean, so
far, the same, in that they both mean we should
obey a tendency, which is not ourselves, but which
appears in our consciousness, by which things fulfill
the real law of their being."

This tendency appears not only in our conscious-
ness, it appears in all the healthy movements and
functions of our bodies. Nay, it is even true that
what we call disease is often the same tendency
wrestling with organic or functional obstructions
and trying to throw them off. And this stream of ten-
dency by which we are borne onward — our bodies
and our souls — toward health and perfection and
fullness of life, — what is it, if it is not God, work-
ing in us, to will and to work, of his good pleasure ?
We have the power to resist this tendency or to
counteract it in any part of our nature ; we have
power to fight against God. We may check or turn
aside or vitiate by perverse or ignorant conduct

28 THE FULFILLMENT OF LIFE

the tendencies to health, and bring upon ourselves
feebleness and decay ; we may resist the Holy Ghost
gently leading us toward sanity and virtue and
serenity of soul, and fill our minds with darkness and
selfishness and envy and jealousy and malice and
despair ; possibly we may be able to stifle this divine
voice and to paralyze this gracious influence ; I do
not dogmatize about that ; I will only say that it is
certainly within our power greatly to lessen within
our own souls the volume and force of that stream
of tendency by which we are borne toward the ful-
fillment of life. But I hope and believe that I am
not speaking to-day to any one in whom God is not
working now, with the resources of infinite power,
to give health and life and peace.

" It is God which worketh [is working] in you
both to will and to work, for his good pleasure." To
whom does Paul speak these words, — to saints who
have entered into perfection of character ? Nay, but
to very weak and imperfect disciples — to those who
are working out their own salvation with fear and
trembling. It is such as these whom he assures that
God is working in them. This truth is not for elect
and holy souls ; it is for the sinner and the outcast
also. It is for every living soul. Wherever there
is life, there is that stream of tendency by which all
things fulfill the law of their being : there is God.
Of the physical nature we shall all admit the truth
of this : the immanent God is in our bodies, work-

THE FULFILLMENT OF LIFE 29

ing toward health and soundness and growth and
perfection all the while ; the most orthodox of us
does not doubt that. Is he not, then, in the soul,
as well as in the body, working there toward virtue
and goodness ? Has the divine operation ceased in
the souls of those who are known as the unregene-
rate ? Is there a class of people in this world in whose
bodies there is a stream of tendency by which they
fulfill the law of their being, but in whose souls there
is no such tendency ? There is theology, and a good
deal of it, which wants us to believe some such thing
as this, but I, for one, must decline to do it. For I
cannot imagine that God cares less for the soul of
man than for his body, or works less faithfully to
keep it sound and whole. I am sure that Paul must
be speaking, not of saints, but of all God's chil-
dren, and not of their physical natures, but of their
spiritual natures also, when he bears witness, " God
is working in you."

Good friends, will you not stop and think what
this means ? We are here in the house which we
call the house of God; we have come hither to
worship Him, to learn what we can about Him, to
put ourselves into the proper relations with Him.
Is this a fruitless effort, or a mere matter of form ?
Are we dealing here with any reality ? Or are we
saying with Job, —

" Oh that I knew where I might find him,
That I might come even to his seat !

30 THE FULFILLMENT OF LIFE

I would order my cause before him,
And fill my mouth with arg-uments.

Behold, I go forward, hut he is not there ;
And backward, but I cannot perceive him :
On the left hand, where he doth work, but

I cannot behold him :
He hideth himself on the right hand, that

I cannot see him."

How melancholy it is that such gulfs of darkness
and doubt should separate our thought from Him
whose life is thrilling at every moment in our veins !
For if there be a God, nothing can be so near to
us as He is. In every pulsation of the vital tis-
sues, in every throb of the pulses He is present, nor
can He be absent from any movement of our con-
scious life.

" There is no separation," says one, " between our
souls and that spirit in whom, in the most literal
sense, we live and move and have our being, be-
tween the world in which we live and that eternal
reality of whose substance and of whose activity it
is a part.

"All nature reveals God . . . He is in nature, yet
more than nature ; personal, yet more than person ;
on the one hand the great unity, omnipresent force,
and substance whence all things and beings proceed,
impersonal, infinite, unknown, transcendent, inde-
finable ; on the other hand relatively known, finite,
immanent, personal; an intelligent power, large

THE FULFILLMENT OF LIFE 31

enough to be the author of all life and near enough
so that Jesus could name him Father, and so that
we can perceive his activity in our daily lives ; near
to us in this present happy moment as in the count-
less seons of eternity of which this fleeting moment
is an integrant part."

What a conception it is that our lives are per-
vaded, flooded with streams of divine influence
steadily bearing us toward health and peace and bless-
edness ! Why is it that we are not aware of them ?
Is it because we have so long resisted or ignored them ?
A deeper reason may be that we have not been trained
to recognize them ; our thoughts have been turned
away from the revelation of God in our own lives to
some conception of a distant deity dwelling apart
amid the clouds of heaven. We have not learned
the truth that the place to find Him is within our own
consciousness, in the ongoings of our own life and
thought. The divine significance of our own lives
we have not known. Is it not time that we had be-
gun to be aware of it ? If what Paul tells us in the
text is true, it is the sublimest truth which the hu-
man mind can conceive. What is there for us to do
but to place ourselves under the power of these di-
vine influences and let them will and work for God's
good pleasure ? The power within us is making for
health and perfection of physical life. Let us ac-
cept that fact and rejoice in it. God means that
we shall be well and strong. That is the direction

32 THE FULFILLMENT OF LIFE

in which all the deepest movements of our lives are
tending. Let us not ignore that fact; let us hail it
with thanksgiving. Let us understand that health
is our birthright. The infinite love is working
in us to give us health and strength. That is his
will concerning us. Let us join our wills with his.
Let us choose for ourselves what he has chosen
for us.

The power that worketh in us is making for
righteousness, as well as for health ; for soundness
of heart and mind and character, as well as for
soundness of body. God means that we shall be
upright and pure and true. There is a constant
stream of spiritual tendency, flowing through our
souls, by which, if we will but suffer it to have free
course within us, we shall be delivered from the
thraldom of sense and selfishness into the glorious
liberty of the sons of God. Do you not know that
this power is working in you ? Look into your own
hearts, I pray you, and find it there ! Gently, silently,
lovingly, the spirit of all truth and grace is moving
in your thought, telling you of better things that
are possible to you, pointing you to the ways of life,
showing you the kind of man you ought to be, press-
ing steadily upon your choices to constrain you to
lay hold on the highest things. What are all these
thoughts, wishes, aspirations, but God that worketh
in you, to will and to work, of his good pleasure ?
Behind every pure desire, every upward striving of

THE FULFILLMENT OF LIFE 33

your soul, is the power of the infinite God. Why
not let Him have his way ? Why not get acquainted
with this Power that is working in you, and find out
what He is doing, and fling your own soul with all
its energies into the stream of tendency which is
bearing you onward to perfection of life ?

Is this any novelty or heresy of doctrine ? Oh,
no ! It is as old as the Bible. It is the doctrine of
Paul and John and James ; it is the fullness of life
which Jesus promised to all his disciples. It is
our meagre, narrow, formal theologic conception of
God's grace which has hidden from us the glorious
truth. I think, too, that our mechanical philosophy
of nature and creation has stood in the way of our
receiving it. It is the evolutionary philosophy, as
I profoundly believe, which has made it possible for
us to realize this truth about God. For this phi-
losophy helps us to see that God is always in his
world, in every part of it ; it makes creation a con-
tinuous process ; it enables us to understand that
all things come into existence through Him, and
that apart from Him nothing exists. The habit of
thinking which evolution has led in — if evolution
is t^ istically interpreted — makes it far easier for
us m it was for those who have gone before us,
to rb».ognize the presence of God in our lives. And
I am sure that all our thinking, if it is deep and
thorough, must be conducting us to the recognition
of this great truth.

34 THE FULFILLMENT OF LIFE

It ought to result in a revolution in the religious
life of most of us. It ought to make religion a mat-
ter not of theory, but of the most positive personal
knowledge. If God is working in us, after this man-
ner, we may know it, and we ought to be co-workers
with Him. If every man's soul is a temple of the
living God, the altar of the heart must not be neg-
lected or defiled. If the stream of divine tendency
is flowing through our lives, it is only by our own
indifference or resistance that we fail to reach per-
fection and blessedness. If the indwelling God is
putting forth the energies of omnipotence to give
us all the good which our souls are capable of receiv-
ing, and we are aware of the fact, then it is our
own fault if we are not well and happy and strong.
For worry or fear or doubt there can be no room
in our experience. Immunity from outward evil and
suffering we are not promised, but power is ours by
which all these ills may be transformed into bless-
ings ; by which we may find security and peace even
in the whirlwind and the tempest. For who is our
God ? He is one who is able to do for us exceeding
abundantly above all that we ask or think, according
to the power that worketh in us. And that sublime
prayer of Paul for his Ephesian brethren may
gather some new significance in the light of the
truth that we have been studying :

" I bow my knees unto the Father, from whom
every fatherhood in heaven and on earth is named,

THE FULFILLMENT OF LIFE 35

that he would grant you, according to the riches of
his glory, that ye may be strengthened with power
through his Spirit in the inward man ; that Christ
may dwell in your hearts through faith ; to the end
that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, maybe
strong to apprehend with all the saints what is the
breadth and length and height and depth, and to
know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge,
that ye may be filled unto all the fulness of God."

Ill

MOMENTS AND MOVEMENTS

And there was evening' and there was morning-, one day. —
Gen. i. 5.

The fact to be noted here is that the day includes
evening and morning, darkness and light, high noon
and midnight, twilight that broadens into dawn,
twilight that deepens into dark. All these phases
of light and shadow, of sunny warmth and nightly
chill, must be taken together when we make up our
account of the day. You cannot analyze the day
into instants and judge it by any given instant.
There is no moment of the day that can be taken
as typical of the whole. The day includes fourteen
hundred and forty minutes ; but if you take any one
of these minutes, no matter which one, with all the
contents of that minute, all that it brings to your
consciousness, and multiply it by fourteen hundred
and forty, the product will not be one day, but some-
thing wholly different — something that never ex-
isted upon this planet.

This leads to the consideration of a grave fault
of much of our modern reasoning. Its method is
quite too exclusively analytical. It expects to find

MOMENTS AND MOVEMENTS 37

out the truth of things by pulling them to bits and
studying each bit by itself. Much truth about some
things may be found out in this way, — the truth
about rocks and minerals of all sorts, perhaps ; but
there are very many things which cannot be studied
in bits ; they must be studied and comprehended as
wholes, or they cannot be comprehended at all. Nay,
you do not even understand the bits, until you see
them all together.

My thought was directed toward this theme while
looking at an instantaneous photograph of an athlete
in the air, vaulting the parallel bar. The picture
struck me as essentially untrue. I had seen the
movement often ; I had not seen anything like this.
Then I began to study instantaneous photographs
of men and animals in motion, and the more I studied
them, and the more I compared them with the real-
ity, the more unnatural they seemed to me. Those
photographs of trotting and running horses — how
unlike they are to all that we have seen upon the
track or the turf, — how stiff and angular and ap-
parently impossible ! Yet we have been inclined
to say that these, of course, must be true pictures ;
that the photograph cannot lie ; that here was
clear evidence of the imperfection of art, of the
inability of artists to see things as they are and
accurately to represent them ; and that the painters
must study these photographs and imitate them if
they wished to give us true pictures of living crea-

38 MOMENTS AND MOVEMENTS

tures in motion. Certain pictures which I have lately
seen, by eminent illustrators, indicate that they have
taken this view of the case, and have been learning
o£ the photographs instead of trusting their eyes.
I am quite sure that this suggestion is altogether
misleading. A photograph of a living creature in
motion is not and cannot be a true picture of a liv-
ing creature in motion. For why ? " Motion," says
Professor Tait, " consists simply in change of posi-
tion." Now what the instantaneous photograph
gives you is simply position, not change of position.
Out of an infinite series of positions each unlike all
the rest, it snatches one and gives you that to look at.
Of course there is and must be some lack of abso-
lute definiteness in the outline of this picture ; but
the indefiniteness is so slight that your eye cannot
detect it. The picture is so nearly instantaneous
that your senses do not observe the blur. What the
photograph gives you is, then, an instant of rest.
And a picture of rest, which is all that the photo-
graph can give, is a very different thing from a pic-
ture of motion, which is what it assumes to give.
In order that you may truly see this living creature
in motion, you must see it not only during this in-
stant, but during the instants which precede and fol-
low this — you must see not merely one position,
but the semes of positions^ of which there are not
two alike. This is why the instantaneous photo-
graph, as a picture of motion, is essentially untrue.

MOMENTS AND MOVEMENTS 39

The instantaneous photograph may give us a valu-
able report as to the groupings of moving individ-
uals ; as to their motions it can tell us nothing that
will not be misleading. The artists who trust their
eyes, and paint for us moving creatures as they look
to them^ will give us a better idea of their movement
than we can possibly get from a photograph. For
what the instantaneous photograph does is to ana-
lyze a movement into moments of rest and give us
a moment of rest, while the artist gives us some-
thing like what he sees ; he gives us a kind of artis-
tic synthesis of several consecutive moments, which
is much truer, as a picture of motion, than the photo-
graph can possibly be.

Let us take the simpler case of a curved line, the
arc of a circle, for example. That curve may be
analyzed into points. From one of these points, if
you could see it, whether with the bodily eye or with
the mind's eye, could you get any idea of the curve ?
No ; and you may multiply these points indefinitely,
and they will tell you nothing whatever about the
curve. You must know the position of other points
in the curve — of a series of these points ; you must
see what is their relation to each other; in other
words, you must know the law of the curve, the
length of the radius, the nature of the power that
strings these points together and generates the curve,
before you can get any idea of the curve. Imagine
a mathematician analyzing a curve into mathemat-

40 MOMENTS AND MOVEMENTS

ical points, and tlien attempting, by the study of
these points, by comparing them, and classifying
them, and reasoning about them, to formulate the
law of the curve. But we have a good deal of what
is called scientific reasoning which is quite similar
to this.

Take the case of a melody, which is a succession
of sweet sounds differing from each other in pitch
or in length, but related to each other by some un-
written law. That melody can be accurately ana-
lyzed into single tones ; will any one of these tones,
sung or played by itself, give you any idea of the
melody ? No ; you may shorten or prolong this tone,
you may sing it foj^tissimo, or 2)ianissimo, you may
repeat it a hundred thousand times, and you will
know no more about the melody than you knew
when you began. Nay, more. You may take all the
notes of this melody, and make a table of them,
classifying them as to pitch and length; and put
the classified table into the hands of the most learned
musician in the world, and he will not be able to
construct the melody, unless he knew it before. You
must know not only what are these individual tones,
but you must know their relation to one another,
you must know the succession in which they stand,
in order to comprehend the melody. The spirit that
made them into a melody analysis cannot give you.

Thus it is evident that, even before we reach the
kingdoms of life, among the phenomena of motion,

MOMENTS AND MOVEMENTS 41

and the phenomena of art, and in the representa-
tion to the eye or the thought of geometric prin-
ciples, this work of analysis may easily be carried
too far. It is quite plain that there are some things
that are not explained by pulling them to bits, that
cannot be understood at all when they are reduced
to fragments, but must always be taken in their
wholeness, whenever we deal with them or think
about them.

AVhen we rise into the kingdoms of life, the fool-
ishness of a merely analytical method becomes even
more apparent. Take the acorn or the apple seed
and put it into your retort. You can analyze it into
its elements ; but long before you have reached the
sum of them, all that made it an acorn or an apple
seed has ceased to exist. The chemical analysis of
any living thing destroys life, but makes no report
whatever concerning the nature of the life which it
has destroyed. You have, as the result of your analy-
sis, certain chemical elements which can be named
and weighed ; but you have not the faintest trace
of that mysterious coordinating power which had
marshaled these elements into an organism, and
which we call life. It is quite plain that we may
study these elements till doomsday and never gain
a particle of knowledge concerning acorns or apple
seeds.

And even though we stop short of chemical analy-
sis and content ourselves with anatomy, we shall

42 MOMENTS AND MOVEMENTS

not, by that means, gain any complete knowledge
of the living thing which we are trying to study.
Anatomy may enable us to take the organism to
pieces and study each organ by itself. That is often
a very useful process. Great have been the gains
of such anatomical investigation. Let me not seem
to disparage them. The conquests which have been
won for biological science by this means are mag-
nificent. But, after all, there is much that we need
to know about any organism which we do not learn
by taking it apart, — which we can only learn by
keeping it together. We do not understand, any
one of these parts until we see it in its place, and
comprehend its relations to all the other parts. You
cannot understand the heart until you understand
its connections with the arteries, the veins, the lungs,
the nervous system, the digestive system ; until you
know how it is affected by the other parts of the body,
and how the other parts of the body are affected by
it. And this holds true of pathology as well as of
anatomy ; for no one can be a thoroughly good
oculist or a thoroughly good dentist without a good
knowledge of general physiology. The man who
studies only the eye or the teeth will not under-
stand the eye or the teeth. The scientist may think
that he can afford to be a narrow specialist, and
confine all his study to a single organ, but the prac-
titioner cannot be ; he must know the working of
the whole mechanism, in order that he may know

MOMENTS AND MOVEMENTS 43

how to treat that particular part of it with which
he is trying to deal.

And as you cannot comprehend a life by analyzing
it into atoms, or by dissecting it into its constituent
organs and studying these separately, so you cannot
comprehend a life by even the fullest knowledge of
it at any single epoch or period. If you could per-
fectly describe the acorn, that would not be a de-
scription of the oak. If you could tell all about the
tree as it appears to-day, that would be a very im-
perfect account of the tree. You must take in all
the stages of its growth, from its germination to its
final decay, if you wish to give a true account of it.
An existence which extends through weeks or years
or centuries, and which is constantly changing, is
not adequately accounted for when you merely report
its present condition.

I had written as far as this, when I laid down
my pen and took up a book near my hand, wherein
I came upon this paragraph :

" The supposition that . . . the way of abstrac-
tion will lead to the highest truth is one of the most
pernicious errors in philosophy. Abstraction or
analysis is an element in scientific method, but taken
by itself it will produce nothing but a mere external
arrangement of things by genera and species, —
what is called in logic a ' tree of porphyry,' — the
tree that of all others best realizes the nursery
rhyme, — ' This is the tree that never grew.' Only

44 MOMENTS AND MOVEMENTS

in so far as the comparison of many facts enables
us to detect in them a principle of unity which domi-
nates all this difference and explains it, can abstrac-
tion lead to any valuable result. The abstracting
or analytic process, by which unity is separated
from difference, is nothing without the synthetic
process by which unity is discerned in difference,
as the principle which at once originates and over-
comes it." ^

This is certainly an apt philosophical statement
of the principle which I am trying to illustrate.
Let me go on to point out, very briefly, certain appli-
cations of this principle.

1. People often err in their judgments of the
course of history, because they see only the present
moment, and have no knowledge of the times which
have preceded and no power of foreseeing the times
to come. The man who stands on the threshold of
his own generation and takes his snapshot at the
scene before him, gets a view as distorted and un-
natural as that of the athlete caught in the air. He
does not discern the movement ; he only sees the
moment. One really needs to know a great deal
about what has been going on in the world for
several thousands of years, in order that he may be
able to express any rational opinion about present
tendencies. He cannot understand the facts which
he sees, he cannot comprehend the times in which

1 The Evolution of Religion, by Edward Caird : vol. i. p. 149.

MOMENTS AND MOVEMENTS 45

he lives, unless he has considerable knowledge of the
path which civilization has been traveling up to this
hour.

Some wide and careful reading of history is there-
fore a necessary condition of sound judgment upon
present affairs. To many a despondent saint it
would be a great means of grace. For pessimism it
is a sovereign cure. I have never known a compe-
tent historical scholar who was at all disposed to
pessimism. And as a knowledge of the movements
of history would correct our judgments of the pre-
sent moment, so would it also convince us of the
foolishness of many of the remedies which we seek
to apply to existing evils.

2. Some of the so-called sciences which attempt
to deal with the facts of human nature have fallen
into error in this way, by taking human nature to
pieces, and trying to found a science upon a single
isolated principle or motive. This was the trouble
with the old political economy. It abstracted from
humanity one motive — that of self-interest — and
based its reasonings about human conduct upon that.
The economic man with whom alone it was con-
cerned, was a man who was governed by self-interest
only ; to whom competition was the only law. The
fact is, that there are no such men. The science
which is based on a fragment of human nature is
sure to be a false science ; for all these human mo-
tives are so interblended, so constantly affected by

46 MOMENTS AND MOVEMENTS

one another, that you cannot understand any one of
them, unless you take it in its relations to all the
rest. The heart is an important organ of the human
body, but a specialist who studied the heart only,
and refused to take into consideration its relations
to the other organs, and their influence upon it, could
not have any adequate knowledge of the heart. And
no man can understand industrial and economic
questions at all who follows the method of the old
economists, abstracting the principle of self-interest
from the human nature, and basing his science upon
deductions drawn from that principle. Fortunately,
that method of dealing with industrial and economic
questions is now among scientific men well known
to be inadequate.

3. Theology has often proceeded much after this
fashion in making up its account of the teachings
of the Bible. It has shredded the Bible into bits,
and has then taken these bits and pieced them to-
gether to make up theories of its own. The proof-
text method of confirming theological propositions
is an aggravated example of the kind of reasoning
of which I have been speaking. Analysis was never
more industriously or more mischievously used than
it has been by this method. You can prove any-
thing you please in this way. Any doctrine, no mat-
ter how absurd, no matter how immoral, can be
abundantly established by searching the Bible and
taking a verse here, and a sentence there, as proof-

MOMENTS AND MOVEMENTS 47

texts. These texts are thus, very often, made to
yield an utterly false meaning. Taken out of their
connection, you do not understand them at all.

4. Indeed, you cannot understand the Bible at
all, unless you take it as a whole, unless you remem-
ber that it is the record of a long development of
religious ideas and institutions, unless you judge it
by its completed utterance in the life and teachings
of Jesus Christ. If you do not see it whole, you do
not see it at all. If you take any single period, any
single phase of that development, and try to judge
it apart from the rest, you do not understand it.
You might as well attempt to judge of an apple by
tasting or analyzing the half-grown, unripe fruit
which hangs on our trees in June, as to criticise
Biblical teaching by examining the separate details
of the Mosaic legislation. It would be well if such
critics would remember the Aristotelian maxim, that
the nature of a thing is to be discovered, not in its
origin, but in its end ; you must see the process
through before you make up your mind about it.
The man who forms his judgment of what the word
day means by observing and reporting all the phe-
nomena which appear about four o'clock on a De-
cember morning, will not have a very just opinion
of the true meaning of that word. And the fact
that the Bible is the true chronicle of a stupendous
moral development, and that it gives us all stages
of that development, from semibarbarism up to a

48 MOMENTS AND MOVEMENTS

high spiritual morality, with the customs, usages,
laws which were expedient at each of these stages,
is a fact which must never be lost sight of in judg-
ing the Bible.

5. I have already spoken of the error of attempt-
ing to found a science upon an abstracted and iso-
lated principle of human nature. There is another
and greater error, made by those who base upon
anatomy or analysis their whole doctrine of man.
If you cannot understand any single interest of
man by separating it from all his other interests,
much less can you discover and explain the complete
man by going to work upon him with the scalpel
and the retort. The impossibility of finding even
physical life by such methods has been already
emphasized. Much less can you by any sort of ana-
tomy or analysis get at the facts of mind.

I have found no more impressive testimony on
this point than that of one of the most distin-
guished and brilliant naturalists, Professor Shaler
of Harvard University, who testifies that his earlier
scientific studies led him away from Christianity,
while his later reflections have brought him back
toward the ground from which he had departed.
And the reason of this departure, as he clearly sees,
was the exaggeration of analysis. " Beginning," he
says, " with the simpler and apparently mechanical
facts with which they have to deal, inquirers into
phenomena are, at first, almost necessarily led to

MOMENTS AND MOVEMENTS 49

conceive nature as a great engine, which can be ex-
plained as we account for a combination of wheels
and levers. Gradually, as they are forced to more
extended views of their subject-matter, they perceive
that this simple explanation is unsatisfactory." ^

Most notable to this investigator is the failure of
naturalistic science to deal with one whole hemi-
sphere of phenomena. " The organic world," he
says, " has two distinct realms : the one includes
the vast assemblage of specific forms, — visible, tan-
gible bodies, explaining themselves to the senses, and
affording an infinite field for the employment of all
the observer's skill of eye and hand ; the other realm
is that of mental parts. Here the field of observa-
tion is as shadowy and perplexed as it is evident
and clear in the physical realm. . . . The whole
training of the naturalist, as it is now pursued, tends
to blind him to the observation of such obscure
things as the mental phenomena of nature. . . .
There are few naturalists, and those mainly of the
class that did not enter on the study of zoology by
the anatomical path, who have shown any skill in
the study of the mental parts of animals." ^

Could there be a stronger testimony to the fact
that the analytic and mechanical methods of dealing
with natural history have a tendency to obscure and
suppress one whole realm of the organic world?
Even the animals that the biolosfist studies he often

o
1 The Interpretation of Nature, p. v. ^ ibid. pp. 238-241.

60 MOMENTS AND MOVEMENTS

does not understand, and the main reason is that
his method is wholly anatomical : he tries to find
out what these living creatures are by dissecting
them and studying them under the microscope ; and
he is often disposed to think that it is only that
which he can see and weigh and chemically test that
has real existence. If, as Professor Shaler says,
this method is so utterly inadequate when it is ap-
plied to the lower animals, what must it be when
it is api^lied to men ? How completely must it miss
the cardinal facts of humanity.

That the method of " victorious analysis " does
conduct to just such results as are here suggested is
a melancholy fact. A large show of the agnosticism
of the present day is due to this cause. It is neces-
sary that the viciousness of the method should be
distinctly pointed out. The people who are analyz-
ing movements into moments can neither see nor
tell the truth about the movement ; the people who
are taking melodies to pieces and making classified
lists of their notes cannot show us in their tables
the soul of the melody ; the anatomists and the his-
tologists who are shredding life into fragments are
helpless when they undertake to speak in any ade-
quate way of the life which they have destroyed.
There are some things which must be seen whole or
they are not seen at all. The subtlest and the might-
iest forces, even of the natural world, can be found
beneath the microscope or weighed in the chemist's

MOMENTS AND MOVEMENTS 51

balances no more than the winds of summer can be
caught in a net, no more than the spirit of the
springtime can be penned into some farmer's well-
fenced field.

The age in which we live has been quite too much
addicted to pulling things to bits. It analyzes life
and kills it ; it individualizes humanity till the social
bond is shattered ; it turns a man into an aggrega-
tion of molecules and loses his soul in the opera-
tion. It is time that we were coming back in all
our thinking, in all our study of nature and of man
and of society, to that wider outlook, that larger
synthesis, which recognizes the mighty but invis-
ible forces and laws by which all these fragments
are knit together in unity. Let us recall and hold
fast that wise word of our philosopher, already
quoted, that " the analytic process by which unity
is separated from difference is nothing without the
synthetic process by which unity is discerned in
difference." When the thought of the age returns
upon that track, as it seems to be returning ; when
the unity which is discerned in difference begins to
engage the attention of the world, the path will be
found which will lead the men who study nature
straight into the presence of

" That God who ever lives and loves, —
One God, one law, one element,
And one far-o£F, divine event
To which the whole creation moves."

IV

THE PERMANENT AND THE TRANSIENT

For thus saith the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel ; In return-
ing and rest shall ye be saved ; in quietness and in confidence shall
be your strength. — Isaiah xxx. 15.

And the four living creatures, having each one of them six wings,
are full of eyes round about and within : and they have no rest day
and night, saying. Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God, the Almighty,
which was and which is and which is to come. — Rev. iv. 8.

Here seem to be two contrasted, if not contradic-
tory conceptions of the supreme good of life. The
word of the prophet puts the emphasis upon a pas-
sive acceptance of the divine bounty. It is not in
activity, but in receptivity, that the people of God
are to find satisfaction. It is not by any energetic
endeavors of their own, not by hasty flight or stren-
uous pursuing, but by sitting still and waiting, that
they shall see the salvation of God.

The word of the Revelator, on the other hand,
gives us a glimpse of the blessedness of the life to
come ; and this, as he discerns it, does not consist
in quiescence, but in tireless action. The four liv-
ing creatures, whose forms appear in this vision,

THE PERMANENT AND THE TRANSIENT 53

represent to us some type of creaturely intelligence,
in fullest harmony with the creative Power ; and
they are figured as most fully equipped for move-
ment — each of them has six wings ; as intensely
wakeful and vigilant — they are full of eyes round
about and within ; and " they have no rest, day and
night" — their praise, their service, before the
throne and round about the throne, is ceaseless and
untiring.

These contrasted conceptions of the highest good
of life are common in the Bible. AYe are often bid-
den to stand still, and we are as often bidden to
run. The stationary state is sometimes exalted, and
quite as often the transitional state. At one time
the condition of happiness is represented as a perma-
nency of relation — fixity, steadfastness ; at another
time we are admonished to remember that life is a
pilgrimage, that we have here no continuing city,
that we must

" Nightly pitch our moving tent
A day's march nearer home."

Sometimes we are told that the life of the right-
eous is like that of the tree planted by the rivers of
water — the growth whose environment is fixed,
whose home never changes ; and sometimes we are
likened to the bird that makes every bough of the
forest its perch, and every clime its temporary rest-
ing-place.

54 THE PERMANENT AND THE TRANSIENT

Which now of these contrary counsels are we to
adopt ? Shall we find our good in sitting and wait-
ing for what comes to hand, or in going forth in
quest of the blessedness that will not come ? Shall
we stand still and see the salvation of God, or shall
we run the race that is set before us, with energy
and perseverance, for the prize of the high calling
of God in Christ Jesus ? Shall we take root, or shall
we take wings ? Shall we rest and receive, or shall
we work and win ? Shall we hold fast what we have,
or shall we regard our gains of knowledge and char-
acter as temporary and provisional, and always be
ready to let them all go in exchange for something
better ?

It is evident that we have here what the philoso-
phers call an antinomy : two sets of laws or maxims
which stand over against each other in apparently
irreconcilable conflict, in an antithesis which logic
fails to reduce. And it becomes equally evident, as
soon as we begin to observe the attitudes and the
utterances of the people round about us, that a great
many of them are much inclined to take one set or
the other of these rules of life, and follow it, ignor-
ing or denying the other. This seems to be the only
view which some minds can take of these meta-
physical and moral antinomies. To admit that such
a question has two sides is beyond their capacity ;
it seems to them a kind of infidelity to recognize
any such thing. The shield must be either black

THE PERMANENT AND THE TRANSIENT 55

or white ; the man who says that it is both black
and white must be playing fast and loose with his
convictions.

It is amusing, and it is also pitiful to observe the
mental operations of these people who have got
hold of a half truth, and are waging warfare not
only upon those who hold the other half, but upon
those as well who hold both halves. The sun is the
source of light and heat ; a sect may yet arise which
shall maintain that it is the source of light only and
not of heat at all ; and another sect which shall in-
sist that it is the source of heat and not of light.
And the partisans of light, if they find in any man's
published words any reference to the fact that the
sun is a source of light, will be sure to claim him
as secretly belonging to their sect. " See," they
will cry, " this man admits the truth. He knows
that our side is right. If he dared, he would identify
himself with us. He is a truckler and a coward ; his
own words bear witness against him." And pre-
cisely thus the partisans of heat will be certain to
quote from the works of astronomers and physicists
every reference to the heat of the sun's rays, as prov-
ing their position and refuting and exploding the
theories of their antagonists. This may seem an im-
probable supposition; but there are persons who
suppose themselves to be intelligent, and who are
conducting discussions about plain matters on pre-
cisely this method to-day. They have got possession

56 THE PERMANENT AND THE TRANSIENT

of a half truth ; they are waging war on those who
hold the other half, and they are gathering from all
literature and science precisely those statements
which make for their partial view, while they shut
their eyes in the most determined fashion against
the complementary statements. How many human
beings there are in this world of ours to whom
one often wishes to say : " Good friends, what you
affirm is true, — no doubt of it ; but the trouble
with you is that what you deny is also true, and
you need both truths ; if your heads were a little
wider between the eyes, you could take them both
in, and then you would cease to be fanatics and
would become reasonable beings." The defect may
be due to natural limitation, or to bad education.
When it is congenital, we must try to be patient
with it, as we are with other infirmities of mankind.
So far, however, as it arises from bad education,
we must do what we can to overcome it ; and there-
fore it is well to keep steadily before our eyes those
contrasted statements in which the Scriptures so
largely deal.

I desire to bring before you at this time one of
these couplets, only one ; and to ask you to consider
with me the mutual relations of the permanent and
the transient as factors of our spiritual experience.
Between that which is stable and that which is in
constant flux — that which is fixed and that which
is fleeting — our life moves on. There is a tendency

THE PERMANENT AND THE TRANSIENT 57

to permanence ; it is a healthy tendency, a normal
tendency, no sound character is without it ; on the
other hand, there is a tendency to change, and that
tendency is equally healthy, equally normal; the
character which does not freely submit to it is un-
lovely and unfruitful.

There are two types of philosophy which repre-
sent these two contrasted tendencies of nature, —
the deistical philosophy of the last century, which
conceives of nature as an ordained and changeless
mechanical process, and the materialistic evolution-
ism of the present day, which conceives of nature
as having no point of departure and no certain goal.
The deistic cosmogony, as Dr. Martineau explains
it, represents that in setting up the cosmos, " the
Creator willed its order into being once for all ; de-
positing in its materials the properties which would
execute his purposes spontaneously, without need of
his returning to it again. In other words, it is a vast
magazine of ' Second Causes ' which enable it to go
of itself, and which would do their duty though he
were asleep." There is motion here in the world,
according to this theory, but there is really no
change ; the machinery is always running, but it is
always making the same things ; the order is stereo-
typed ; progress is inconceivable. Materialistic evo-
lutionism, on the other hand, follows the conception
of Heraclitus, of an eternal flux ; the universe is a
stream of tendencies ; nobody knows when or where

58 THE PERMANENT AND THE TRANSIENT

it rose ; probably it never rose at all ; probably it
has been always flowing ; nobody knows whither it
is going ; all we know is that it is moving by and
we are in it ; for a little while our heads are above
the surface, pretty soon they will sink out of sight ;
but the stream keeps flowing. " Heraclitus," says
Ueberweg, "assumes as the substantial principle
of things, ethereal fire, which he at once identifies
with the divine spirit who knows and directs all
things. The process of things is twofold, involving
the transformation of all things into fire and then
of fire into all other things. The former movement is
styled the way downward which leads from fire, iden-
tical with the finest air, and the way upward from
earth and water to fire and life. Both movements
are everywhere intertwined with each other. All is
identical and not identical. We step down a second
time into the same stream, yet not the same. All
things flow. Finite things arise out of strife and
enmity, from the divine original fire, to which, on
the contrary, harmony and peace lead back." This
was the doctrine which the Stoics afterward took
up and elaborated, and it is this theory, substantially,
which underlies the doctrine of evolution when this
doctrine is separated from theism and made to do
duty as a complete and sufficient explanation of the
universe. This was the idea which Tennyson was
trying to express in one of his earlier poems, after-
ward discarded :

THE PERMANENT AND THE TRANSIENT 59

" All thoughts, all creeds, all dreacos are true,

All visions wild and strange ;
Man is the measure of all truth

Unto himself. All truth is change.
All men do walk in sleep, and all

Have faith, in that they dream ;
For all things are as they seem to all,

And all things flow like a stream.

" There is no rest, no calm, no praise,

Nor good, nor ill, nor light, nor shade,
Nor essence," nor eternal laws,

For nothing is, but all is made.
But if I dream that all things are,

They are to me for that I dream ;
For all things are as they seem to all

And all things flow like a stream."

Both these conceptions, as we have seen, — the
conception of permanency in the relations of things
— of a fixed and constant order — and the concep-
tion of constant change, — must be somehow com-
bined and steadily held together, if we are to get
the meaning of life. Constancy there must be, and
there must be transiency also. We must stand
still, and we must move forward. " Haste not !
rest not ! " cry to us, from the skies above, the an-
gels of our destiny.

The value of permanency in relations becomes
clear to us, after a moment's thought. We see at
once, upon the scale of national existence, how
essential to all national growth is some fixity of
occupation. That, indeed, can scarcely be called a

60 THE PERMANENT AND THE TRANSIENT

nation which does not permanently occupy some
definite portion of the earth's surface ; until it
settles down and defines and defends its bounda-
ries it is no more than a wandering tribe. The
nomads live an incoherent and unfruitful life ;
they have no literature except folk-songs that live
in the memory ; none but the rudest art ; nothing
that is worthy the name of history, for history is
a record of progress, and the story of these no-
madic tribes is only a bundle of annals and tradi-
tions. Before a people can grow, before it can
bring forth the blossoms of art and the riper fruits
of civilization, it must become rooted, like a tree,
in the soil.

We find the same law governing the economic
life of our households. We must be planted some-
where, if we want to flourish. Constant shifting
of the location is fatal to prosperity. " The rolling
stone gathers no moss."

The family itself is meant to be a permanent
social organization. In order that fidelity, trust,
tenderness, sympathy, mutual respect, mutual for-
bearance, that all the beautiful traits of the most
perfect character may be developed, human beings
must be brought together in these rooted relations
of the home. In promiscuous and unstable groups
none of these virtues would have a name to live.
It is because husbands and wives, parents and
children, brothers and sisters are bound together

THE PERMANENT AND THE TRANSIENT 61

by imperishable ties, that the domestic virtues exist
among us ; and all the other virtues, social and
national, are but the development of these.

And when we come to study the elements of the
highest individual development, we see at once
that a character in which there are no fixed prin-
ciples, no stable elements, is worthless. The best
man, the highest type of man, is one who can be
depended on. You know where to find him. There
are principles of conduct, clearly defined to his
understanding, which he steadily follows, from
which he does not swerve. Probably, also, he is a
man of steady habits. A large part of his life is
under the law of habit. Courtesy, kindness, truth-
fulness, resistance to wrong, promptness in meet-
ing obligations, — these and many other virtues
have become habitual with him. Many of these
higher actions are now in a measure automatic.
They are not the result of reflection, delibera-
tion, choice ; they are instinctive manifestations
of his personality. Any character which we recog-
nize as really strong and beautiful and admir-
able, possesses much of this fixed and permanent
material.

The value of permanency in the national, the
domestic, the social, the individual life, is thus at
once made evident.

On the other hand, there is a divine transiency
whose uses we must not overlook. On the national

62 THE PERMANENT AND THE TRANSIENT

scale, what a mighty factor in the development of
the higher civilization has migration been. All the
great nations have been migratory. From the time
when Abraham moved west from Mesopotamia, and
our Aryan ancestors started from their home in
Central Asia, the harvests of the world's know-
ledge and power have been reaped by peoples who
followed the star of empire. The soil of England,
France, Germany, America, is all tenanted to-day
by nations that came from the far east, and that
never would have been what they are to-day if they
had stayed in their old nests.

And even of religions we may affirm that those
are most fruitful which are least confined. " Nearly
every great religion, " says Mr. Alden, " has flour-
ished in its transplantations rather than in its ori-
ginal birthplace. Every historic movement is like
a harmonic series, having its dominant, through
which is begun a new series. Through flight or
exile or wandering, the divine purposes are accom-
plished." The faith of Abraham was purified on
the plains of Palestine ; the Pilgrim Fathers, who
sought the western shore of the Atlantic because
of that great hope and inward zeal they had of
building on this continent the kingdom of God,
left behind them many of the fetters wherewith
faith was bound, and made room for the word of
the Lord to run and be glorified.

Our homes, even, have in themselves the ele-

THE PERMANENT AND THE TRANSIENT 63

ments of change, and they are not the least sacred
elements. The sentiments, the motives cherished in
the home, tend to scatter, after a little, the inmates
of the home. " Love," says one, " hath this hom-
ing instinct so fixed that it must needs have its
dominant or variant centre in marriage, so that
there may be at least new homes." The children
who have been nurtured thus in love, who have
learned at their father's and mother's feet the
blessedness of affection, must needs have homes
of their own ; and soon they take their departure
and leave us desolate.

" To hear, to heed, to wed,

Fair lot that maidens choose ;
Thy mother's tenderest words are said,

Thy face no more she views.
Thy mother's lot, my dear.

She doth in naught accuse ;
Her lot to bear, to nurse, to rear,

To love — and then to lose."

We said that permanence is essential to the de-
velopment of family life ; who shall say that this
impermanence is any less essential ? Who does not
see that these very vicissitudes with which family
affection is beset impart to it new tenderness?
Who does not know that the scattering of the
brood often strengthens the love that binds them
together ?

And while, as I have said, some fixity of tenure is

64 THE PERMANENT AND THE TRANSIENT

needful that character may be sanely developed, yet
the course of Providence seems to be ordered for the
very purpose of unsettling and disturbing our lives.
In spite of ourselves we often find it impossible to
tarry in one place. " No sooner," says Dr. Bush-
nell, "do we begin to settle, as we fancy, and be-
come fixed, than some new turn arrives by which
we are shaken loose and sorely tossed. When the
prophet declares that He will overturn, overturn,
overturn, he gives in that single word a general
account of God's polity in all human affairs. The
world is scarcely turned on its axis more cer-
tainly than it is overturned by the revolutions of
Providence. It seems to be even a law, in every
sort of business or trade, that nothing shall stand
on its lees. Credit is a bubble bursting every
hour at some gust of change. What we call se-
curities, are well called insecurities. Titles them-
selves give way, and even real estate becomes
unreal under our feet. Nor is it only we ourselves
that unsettle the security of things. Nature her-
self conspires to loosen all our calculations, meet-
ing us with her frosts, her blastings, her droughts,
her storms, her fevers, and forbidding us even to
be sure of that for which we labor. Markets and
market prices faithfully represent the unsteadiness
of our objects. The design appears to be to turn
us hither and thither, allowing us no chance to stag-
nate in any sort of benefit or security. Even the

THE PERMANENT AND THE TRANSIENT 65

most successful, who seem in our view to go
straight to their mark, get on, after all, rather by
a dexterous and continual shifting, so as to keep
their balance and exactly meet the changing condi-
tions that befall them. Nor is there anything to
sentimentalize over in this ever shifting, overturn-
ing process, which must be encountered in all the
works of life, — no place for sighing, * Vanity of
vanities ! ' There is no vanity in it, any more than
in the mill that winnows and separates the grain." ^

If such are the providential disarrangements
and developments of our lives, who shall say that
instability is not, in its way, as great a good as
stability ?

So, when we come to study the great laws of
personal character, we find that transiency, as well
as permanence, has its place in our development.
We said that the best men were men of fixed prin-
ciples and steady habits. That is true; and yet
they are men who in very many respects have
changed and greatly changed. Their opinions have
passed through many mutations. Beliefs which
they once held they have ceased to hold. Probably
their conduct, in many important respects, follows
different rules from those which formerly gave the
law to it. The man who has changed in no par-
ticular since he came to manhood — who has
modified none of his theories, who has gained no

1 Sermons for the New Life, p. 417.

66 THE PERMANENT AND THE TRANSIENT

practical wisdom — is not the best sort of man.
The political and the theological Bourbons, who
learn nothing and forget nothing, are the men who
make revolutions necessary ; and the necessary re-
volutions never fail to arrive, in the fullness of
time. The great men, the strong men, are the men
in whose intellectual history you trace a constant
progress. When Dr. Wayland was president of
Brown University, and professor of moral science,
his eldest son, who was a senior, in reciting to him
one day, drew from his father, by a question, the
expression of a certain opinion. " The esteemed
author of this book," said the young man, holding
up his father's text-book on moral science which
the class was using, " holds a different oi3inion."
" The author of that book, my son," said Dr. Way-
land quietly, "knows more now than he did ten
years ago." The teacher of any science who does
not know more now than he did ten years ago, who
never finds occasion to modify and qualify and re-
shape his utterances, is probably a cheap and poor
sort of teacher.

There is nothing in these truths that can be called
novel ; I have only desired to hold these two ele-
ments of experience before your thought to show
you how utterly contradictory they are, how mu-
tually exclusive they seem to be, and yet how abso-
lutely essential each of them is. And now what
lesson can we draw from this study ? Are we deal-

THE PERMANENT AND THE TRANSIENT 67

ing merely with curious phenomena, or have they
some clear instruction for us ?

Possibly, we may find in the view that has come
before us a principle of judgment that shall make
us more cautious and more sane in all our reason-
ings and our conclusions. We may be led to ques-
tion, sometimes, whether the view which we as
partisans have taken is not a half truth. It is a
common thing for honest and fairly sensible people
to say, " We know that tJiis^ which we believe and
affirm, is true ; that which you believe and affirm
exactly contradicts it ; therefore we know that it is
false." Now that is logic, but it is not life ; and one
of the first lessons for all of us to learn is that there
are a thousand facts of life that cannot be brought
under the laws of our formal logic. We have to
learn that truth of experience often bears two con-
trasted aspects — that one of them is just as true as
the other, and that we are never thoroughly sane in
our judgments till we get fast hold of both of them,
and hold them firmly over against each other in
our thought, letting them reconcile themselves as
best they can.

Perhaps, also, this discussion may have suggested
to us some defect in our own characters, as to over-
plus of one of these essential elements and defi-
ciency in the other. Perhaps, when we come to think
of it, we shall find that there is either not enough
stability in our characters, or else that there is not

68 THE PERMANENT AND THE TRANSIENT

enough mobility. Perhaps, as we have been thinking
this matter over we have become conscious that we
are too erratic, too volatile ; that we have not suffi-
cient firmness and solidity in our dispositions ; that
we fly too quickly from one opinion to another,
from one friendship to another, from one pursuit
to another ; that the permanent and stable elements
in our lives are sadly wanting. I am sure that I am
speaking to some of whom this is true ; I wonder
if it has come into their minds this morning that
it is true, and that the truth is one that ought to
cause them anxiety. Perhaps, on the other hand,
some have become conscious that theirs is the con-
trary defect ; that their thoughts are too stereotyped,
their lives too monotonous ; that their minds are
naturally inhospitable to new truth ; that they are
quite too content to walk in well-trodden paths, and
keep right on saying and doing the same things
over and over from year to year; that there is not
so much freshness as there ought to be in their
thinking, and not so much enterprise as there ought
to be in their work ; that what they need more than
anything else is to be shaken out of their old ruts ;
to get rid of a lot of their worn-out rubbish of max-
ims and theories, and to take in a fresh stock of new
ones ; to start in new lines of work and to get as
far away from their old selves as they can. I am
equally sure that there are some before me of whom
this is true, and I trust that the truth may have

THE PERMANENT AND THE TRANSIENT 69

been borne in upon their minds while we have been
talking this matter over.

It is evident that the right thing to do is to co'or-
dinate these two contrasted tendencies ; to keep
them fairly balanced ; never to let our stability de-
generate into stagnation, or our mobility into fickle-
ness ; to have enough of permanence in our thoughts
and habits to give strength and solidity to our char-
acters, and enough of freshness and motion in our
ideas and activities to keep our minds young and
our lives vital and fruitful. That is the problem, but
how to solve it — there 's the rub. Who will teach
us the proper formula ? Who will give us the scale
on which we may measure and test the strength of
these contrasted tendencies ? No man can do it. It
is utterly impossible to frame any coherent state-
ment, any practicable rule for the determination of
this matter. Logic, philosophy, practical morals,
are powerless here. To keep the balance between
stability and mobility — that is the problem ; but
how shall we know when we are keeping it ? There
is not a fossil in this congregation who does not
think that he has found the golden mean, nor a
flighty fanatic either. How can we convince them
of their one-sidedness ? How can we assure our-
selves that we are holding the scales evenly ?

I have thought much on this question, and I can
find but one answer. I believe that it is a problem
for whose solution the human reason is not ade-

70 THE PERMANENT AND THE TRANSIENT

quate. There are many points in our experience
where logic breaks down, where philosophy confesses
that it is at the end of its tether, — and this is one
of them. Standing here, before this question, so mo-
mentous, and so far beyond my skill, I confront one
of the emergencies in which I need a wisdom supe-
rior to my own. There is such a wisdom, I know ;
for I see it at work in the world round about me.
The Power who knows how perfectly to balance
attraction and repulsion in the constitution of mat-
ter ; how perfectly to match the centripetal and the
centrifugal forces ; how wisely to reconcile progress
with permanence in the ongoings of history, is a
Power to whom the secret is known which I wish to
possess. Is it possible for me to put myself under
his influence, to submit myself to his guidance, to
breathe his spirit ? I believe that it is ; and I expect
to find, in communion with Him, the inspiration by
which I shall be calmed and steadied and quickened
and invigorated ; by which I shall be able to abide
in quietness and confidence, yet rest not day nor
night ; by which, without any anxious pondering or
measuring, I shall knovir instinctively when to stand
still, and when to go forward ; when to take root,
and when to take wings ; how to wait and receive,
and how to work and win.

KNOWING HOW TO BE POOR

I know how to be abased. — Phil. iv. 12.

This letter of Paul to his friends in Philippi gives
us a beautiful revelation of the nature of friend-
ship. The bond that united the apostle with the
converts whom he had left behind in the Macedo-
nian city was strong and tender. The whole story
of his association with Philippi is somewhat idyllic.
He had been traveling through Asia Minor and had
come down to the shores of the ^gean at Troas,
and in the night he had had a vision or dreamed
a dream of a man standing by him beseeching him
and saying, " Come over into Macedonia and help
us." That was accepted as a divine call, and he
sailed at once for Neapolis and passed thence to
Philippi, a little way inland, the city where Octa-
vius and Antony won their great battle over Bru-
tus and Cassius eighty or ninety years before. It
was a Roman colony, and a commercial town of
some importance, with a Jewish element in its
population. Here the apostle, with his companions
Silas and Luke, tarried several days. When the
Sabbath came, they went outside the gate to a place

72 KNOWING HOW TO BE POOR

by a river-side, " where," Luke says, " we sup-
posed there was a place of prayer." The words in-
timate that they had no definite information about
it ; but they were looking for a place of worship,
and they found it, on the banks of this stream,
outside the city walls. Probably it was out of
doors, perhaps under the shade of trees that grew
by the river-side. Prayer places in the neighbor-
hood of running water the Jews were apt to choose,
because of the need of ablutions before their wor-
ship. The worshipers by this river-side, on this
particular Sabbath, were women ; if any men were
there, they are not mentioned ; and Paul and his
two companions sat down with them upon the bank
and told them the story which they were telling
everywhere, about the coming of the Messiah ; the
fulfillment, for which they had been so long waiting,
of the prophecies of their Scriptures ; the story
of the life and death and resurrection of Jesus of
Nazareth. Luke's narrative goes on : " And a cer-
tain woman named Lydia, of the city of Thyatira,
one that worshiped God, heard us : whose heart the
Lord opened, to give heed unto the things which
were spoken by Paul. And when she was bap-
tized, and her household, she besought us, saying.
If ye have judged me to be faithful to the Lord,
come into my house, and abide there. And she
constrained us."

Thus was Christianity planted in Europe. The

KNOWING HOW TO BE POOR 73

first European convert was a woman, and the first
church was organized in her house. How long Paul
and his friends tarried here we do not know ; it
must have been a considerable time. The converts
were not all women ; men were gathered in ; the
church was furnished with pastors and deacons, a
full official complement, it would seem ; and all
went prosperously until an outbreak of heathen
opposition interrupted their labors, threw Paul and
Silas into prison, and resulted in their sudden de-
parture from Philippi.

Twice, at least, in after years, Paul revisited
this flock, and strengthened the bonds which had
been so closely knit in his first sojourn among
them. And when he was a prisoner at Rome, this
was the only church which , succeeded in reaching
him with relief for his necessities. It was not, in-
deed, an easy problem to convey such bounty, in
those days, through long distances ; the telegraphic
order and the express messenger were wanting ;
the only way was to go and carry it. The messen-
ger of the Philippian church risked his life in
going to Kome, and was dangerously ill of a fever
after he reached there, probably on account of his
exposure. This letter of Paul's to his friends in
Philippi acknowledges their kindness, shown him
at such cost. It was a welcome relief that came
through the hands of Epaphroditus, and the best
part of it was the proof of their affection. "Not

74 KNOWING HOW TO BE POOR

that I speak in respect of want," he says, " for I
have learned in whatsoever state I am, therein to be
content. I know how to be abased, and I know also
how to abound : in everything and in all things have
I learned the secret both to be filled and to be hun-
gry, both to abound and to be in want. I can do
all things in him that strengtheneth me."

It is a strong claim that the apostle makes for
himself. He has gained the mastery of external
conditions. His life does not consist in the abun-
dance of the things which he possesses, and his
happiness is not affected by the diminution of these
things. He knows that plenty, if it came to him,
would not hurt him, and that poverty cannot dis-
turb his peace.

" I know how to be abased," — how to have my
fortunes brought low ; I know how to be hungry,
and in want ; I know how to be poor.

Let us think, a little while, upon the value of this
kind of knowledge. Is it not worth possessing?

Some of you are saying that it is a kind of know-
ledge which you, at any rate, have a good chance of
acquiring, since you are poor and have always been
poor, and see no brilliant prospect of escaping from
that condition. We all say these things facetiously,
and even those who to the eye of the multitude are
rich and increased in goods and have need of no-
thing, often seem to be and sometimes are oppressed
with a sense of want. The things which they have

KNOWING HOW TO BE POOR 75

not gotten are so many when compared with the
things that they have, that it makes them feel poor.
It is a commonplace to say that poverty is a relative
term ; and that it is apt to be used subjectively.
The man is poor who feels poor. If, however, we
should undertake to fix some kind of scientific stand-
ard ; if, for example, we should say that those Amer-
icans may be regarded as poor whose income is less
than the average income, counting all the people of
the country, black and white, native born and for-
eign born — then it is doubtful whether we should
find many poor persons in this room. If the en-
tire national income were divided equally, if Mr.
Morgan's share and Mr. Rockefeller's share and
Mr. Schwab's share, and the shares of all the rest,
were put into a common fund and divided by
seventy millions, — or whatever the national popu-
lation may be, — it is probable that nearly every
one in this room would receive less than he is receiv-
ing now, — most of us a great deal less. Such a
division would not, I think, give us an average, per
individual, of more than fifty or sixty cents a day
to live upon. Few of us, therefore, have really had
a very good chance as yet to learn how to be poor,
in any true sense of that word. Yet it is entirely
possible that some of us may yet be compelled to
face that condition. There is no guarantee that we
shall all be able to keep our incomes above the
average, and to live in the comparative plenty which

76 KNOWING HOW TO BE POOR

that fact implies. Sickness or accident or misfor-
tune may bring any of us down to the point where
Paul had sometimes found himself, — where we shall
be in real want ; where the absolute necessaries of
life will be hard to get. And those of us who are
far from being poor now may yet be a great deal
poorer than we are ; may be compelled to descend
to conditions which would now seem to us conditions
of hardship and destitution. It is a pertinent ques-
tion, therefore, a very practical question, whether we
know how to be poor, if it must come to that.

The question is not whether we know how to be-
come poor, to reduce ourselves to a condition of want;
most of us know that far too well. The indolence,
the inefficiency, the wastefulness, whereby men sink
into destitution and keep themselves there, are not
lessons which any of us need to learn. For we are
not to regard this as the desirable condition ; poverty
is not to be chosen by any of us as a vocation. That
is the monastic ideal, but we do not recognize it as
the proper ideal for any human being. We may be
willing to live simply and plainly ; we may accept
poverty cheerfully, if it comes to us in the provi-
dence of God, and we cannot help ourselves ; but
we are not to choose to be in want ; we are to do
what we can to keep ourselves out of penury, and
to maintain ourselves in decency and comfort.

It is not, then, the skill to impoverish ourselves
that we need to cultivate, but the skill to use pov-

KNOWING HOW TO BE POOR 77

erty, if come it must, with profit to ourselves and
to the world. How to live well in poverty is the
lesson that Paul has learned ; and the lesson that
we must learn.

It is needful to learn it, because, as I have al-
ready suggested, any of us may be called to practice
it, and we ought to be ready for any fate. The fail-
ure of life often occurs at this very point. There are
many who, having been born and reared in good
circumstances, and having lived in comparative
comfort, are reduced to narrow conditions, and
then find themselves utterly unable to adjust them-
selves to the simpler and humbler manner of life.
In their prosperity they were self-respectful and
contented and hopeful ; in their adversity they have
become shamefaced and misanthropic and wretched ;
they are inclined to assume that their neighbors
have lost their regard for them ; they dwell upon
their discomforts and limitations, and magnify and
mourn their losses ; life has distinctly less value to
them because they have lost some portion of their
estate. They seem to have known how to live a
fairly good life in plenty, but they do not know
how to live well in poverty. That is a grave defect.
Their education has been sadly neglected in one
important particular.

What, then, is involved in this knowledge which
Paul boasts, — of being able to live well in poverty ?

The man who knows how to live well in poverty

78 KNOWING HOW TO BE POOR

must know how to live independently. Paul does
not mean that he knows how to be a pauper or a
beggar. That lesson he never learned. He was
never chargeable, as he says, upon any one. He
accepted contributions for his support which came
voluntarily, recognizing his right to receive such
aid, that thus he might be able to devote his entire
time to the work of the ministry ; but he never asked
for contributions, and he never accepted them unless
they were freely given. He worked at his own trade
of tent-making when the support failed ; he was
not unwilling to dig, but to beg he was ashamed.
He knew how to keep out of the slimy paths of
mendicancy. No man has learned to live well in
poverty who has not learned that lesson.

To live well in poverty involves, therefore, some
economic skill. To make the most of a small in-
come was part, perhaps, of what Paul had learned.
There are those who can get sustenance and com-
fort and enjoyment out of resources upon which
others would pine and starve. Life can be sus-
tained, if one only knows how, upon a very small
income. Henry Thoreau lived in the Walden
woods eight months for $33.87|, — a little more
than four dollars a month. He gives us an itemized
account of his expenditures, and we can see that the
thing can be done. And it is surprising to observe
how healthily and comfortably some men and women
can live upon small resources ; how much strength

KNOWING HOW TO BE POOR 79

and beauty can be found by some in an allowance
which to others would mean squalor and barren-
ness. It is a beautiful art — the art of living well
down here on this lower plane. It calls for an alert
intelligence, and a cultivated taste, and a ready in-
vention. It is not the vocation of a dullard. Brains
must be mixed with it. One who takes it up with
courage and good- will finds in it culture for all the
finer faculties.

But we have been dealing only with the rudi-
ments of this high knowledge. To know how to
live well upon scanty revenues, one must have
gotten some new standards of value — some revised
notions of what is really worth while. The esti-
mates of the street and the exchange and the draw-
ing-room can never be followed by one who seeks
this knowledge. Much that men prize and lavish
large incomes upon is desirable only because it is
scarce and costly. Much that is of the highest
value, like heaven, is ours for the asking. What
one chiefly needs who seeks to live well on a small
income, is the power to discriminate between values
that are real and values that are adventitious.

This means, of course, a mind well trained to
think, and think sanely, upon the problems of life ;
an intellect emancipated from the bonds of use
and wont, able to put its own estimates upon life
and hold them quietly and firmly in the face of a
sneering or a frowning world. The sources of your

80 KNOWING HOW TO BE POOR

wisdom and your peace must be in yourself, not in
the judgments or preferences of your neighbors, if
you are going to live well in poverty. If what other
people think about your manner of life is a great
concern to you, that is an impossible task. This
present world will have the power to make you very
miserable in such conditions, if you are looking to
it for guidance and approval.

Suppose that you have gained the power of
choosing your own portion, what will you find in-
dispensable to the good and happy life ?

1. You must have, of course, an adequate supply
of the primal physical necessities, — sustenance,
shelter, warmth, covering. But these, as we have
seen, may be very simple and inexpensive.

2. You must have food, apj^etizing and nourish-
ing food, for the mind. Of that you need not be
deprived. Of that there is no lack. Even of that
concentrated and highly organized form of mental
nourishment which we find in the best books, you
can have all you want, in these days, almost liter-
ally without money and without price. The poorest
may, in this respect, be almost as rich as the rich-
est. The great books of all the ages, more of them
than you can ever dream of reading, are within your
reach, no matter how poor you may be.

Better than all, the great Book of Nature is wide
open before your eyes every day. What a store of
stimulating instruction is thus spread before you !

KNOWING HOW TO BE POOR 81

What mysteries are here to pique your curiosity ;
what problems to challenge your thought; what
wonders to elicit your admiration ! Poverty may
prevent you from spending upon such studies all
the time that you would like to spend, but it can-
not shut you out from this realm; the humblest
and most heavily laden of the sons of toil has op-
portunities of intellectual enjoyment and profit
which are simply priceless, if he has only the mind
to seize and improve them. And there is such re-
freshment and stimulus in these things as no man
finds in the goods of the market.

3. You must have pleasure, too ; the higher en-
joyments of the senses and the imagination must
be within your reach. And these, also, the best of
them, are free to all. Nature, who waits to be the
poor man's tutor, who flings open her laboratories
and bids him enter, who matriculates him, from his
childhood, if he will, in her great university, —
Nature herself organizes for him a perpetual festi-
val of pure and high enjoyment. Such spectacles as
she prepares for him in the firmament above and
in the earth beneath; such miracles of form and
color in cloudscapes and sunsets ; such restful de-
lights for the eye in soft meadows and hill slopes ;
such wonders of arboreal beauty in forests and
groves and willows by the watercourses ; such sym-
phonies in color as charm his eye from many a way-
side bank in May ; such orchestras as are tuned for

82 KNOWING HOW TO BE POOR

him at daybreak on every summer morning, — what
is there to compare with all this, in the costliest
art with which the rich man can surround himself?
Of all this his choicest pleasures are but a feeble
imitation. The poor man cannot have the counter-
feit ; but he can have the real thing, much of it even
without the asking, all of it at the smallest cost ; for
a few cents will bear him away from the filthy city
into the fields and the woods where all outdoors
waits to crown him monarch of imperial delights.

The beneficence of our later civilization is mani-
fest also in the fact that even in the cities the poorest
of the poor may have lawns and gardens far finer
than the richest can provide for themselves, the
parks and pleasure-grounds which are free to all
offering to all of us a common enjoyment of aU that
is fairest in nature.

The flowers, too, what democrats they are ! How
glad they are to share their fragrance and their
glory with the humblest of us. The royal rose, if she
be invited to a garden party in some poor man's
backyard, goes in her best array and smiles upon
him as benignly as if he were an earl. All she asks
is love and care, and she will take up her abode
with him, and lavish on him all her loveliness. I
have never seen roses fairer, or clematis of a more
piercing purple, or sweet peas with more delicate fra-
grance, or carnations of princelier rank, than some I
have seen growing in the little gardens of the poor.

KNOWING HOW TO BE POOR 83

Other delights there are quite within the reach
of the poorest. One sign that the New Jerusalem
is coming down out of heaven from God is the mul-
tiplication by science of the beauties of art, so that
good copies of the best of these are given away or
sold for a song ; and the poorest housewife, if her
eye is trained to know them, can adorn her home
with pictures such as only the richest could have
owned a century ago.

If, therefore, the good and happy life implies
some pure and high pleasures here below, there is
still no reason on this score why the good and happy
life should not be lived by those whose incomes are
very narrow.

4. To live well, in poverty, one must have friends.
The best kind of life cannot be lived alone. It means
fellowship, comradeship, the sharing of thoughts
and hopes with others. No man is sufficient unto
himself. Every man's life must be invigorated, re-
strained, chastened, inspired by that interdepend-
ence which is the normal lot of human beings.
Nor is this an impossible condition even in the lot
of poverty. The social functions of the four hun-
dred must of course be renounced, and there are
those to whom that would seem rather worse than
to be shut out of heaven, but such is not really the
case. Good and fruitful friendships can be formed
outside those inclosures. Even among the very poor
the soil for such culture is not wanting. Those who

84 KNOWING HOW TO BE POOR

are well worth knowing, and whose companionship
would be full of profit, may be found among the
least prosperous. Nor do I mean to say that there
are no possibilities of friendship for the poor man
among the most prosperous. Fashionable society
would have no room for him, of course ; but many
of the men and women who are found in fashion-
able society would be glad to number among their
friends a man in lowly life, whose mind was open
to hio^h thouo^hts and whose heart was full of the
enthusiasm of humanity ; who was neither afraid of
them nor ashamed of himself ; who knew that even
though his neighbor might live in a fine house, " a
man 's a man for a' that." A man who will show
himself friendly, and who is worthy of friendship,
will not lack for friends in this world, even though
he is poor. And there is a certain large advantage
that a poor man has in forming genuine friendships.
He knows that those who offer him the suffrages of
their affection are not moved by mercenary reasons.
It is not his possessions that they are coveting, for
he has none ; it is for what he is in himself that they
seek association with him. Friendship is a great
good of life which is not beyond the poor man's
reach.

5. To live the good and happy life one must have
interests beyond himself. Not only friendships, but
social services and aims must enlist his affection.
His own well-being is linked with the well-being of

KNOWING HOW TO BE POOR 85

humanity ; self finds its completion in the good
which is common to all. The poor man, not less
than the rich man, is called to a self -forgetful ser-
vice, and enters into life only through sharing the
life of his fellow men. Nor is this a privilege from
which poverty excludes any man. Those whose ma-
terial resources are the smallest can think and wish
for the welfare of their fellow men. If they cannot
endow colleges or build hospitals, if they do not
often get their names into the newspapers, they
can find many ways of ministering to the welfare
of others, of promoting, most efficiently, the public
welfare. The greater part of the best charity is the
work of the very poor, who, in a thousand neighborly
kindnesses, serve one another. And the best field
for the service of the community is that in which
the poor man spends his life. How much can be
done by any humble man of clear understanding,
wide knowledge, and high ideals, in his personal
contact with men of his own class, in pointing out
to them the truth they need to know, and in guiding
them toward wise action ! They will hear him gladly,
while the words of one from a higher social rank
would fall upon unheeding ears. The social oppor-
tunity, the philanthropic opportunity, the patriotic
opportunity of the poor man, must not be under-
valued. For him there are great and beautiful ser-
vices, and the rewards that go with them. We are
always wishing for money, that we might do good

86 KNOWING HOW TO BE POOR

with it. If we could only comprehend how little
there is, after all, of real good that money can do,
and how much there is of the most beautiful and
noble work that can be done without money, we
should see that one chief element of the good and
happy life is not at all beyond the power of those
who are poor.

6. But there is a better reason than any which
we have yet considered, for believing that the good
and happy life is possible to people of small in-
comes and narrow resources. The sources of bless-
edness lie deeper than our analysis has yet gone.
For man, who is the child of God, and who lives
and moves and has his being in God, enters into
the fullness of life only when that relation is well
understood, and the significance of it becomes the
fundamental fact of experience. If we have a
Father in heaven, infinitely wise and good, with
infinite resources ; if we know that his love can
never fail ; that all things are working together for
good to those whom He loves, how much does it
reaUy signify whether our earthly possessions are
few or many? There is no room for solicitude or
fear ; all our real wants are provided for. " Be not
anxious for your life," is the word that comes to us,
" what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink ; nor yet
for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life
more than the food, and the body than the raiment ?
Behold the birds of the heaven, that they sow not,

KNOWING HOW TO BE POOR 87

neither do they reap, nor gather into barns ; and
your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not
of much more value than they ? "

Well, is it really true ? Is there a shelter and a
strong tower here into which we may run and be
safe? Certainly it was a truth which Jesus be-
lieved, absolutely; and upon which he lived. He
knew how to be poor, to live the good life in pov-
erty. What the manner of that life may have been
during the thirty years when he was following the
trade of a carpenter, we do not know ; doubtless
it was a life, in very moderate circumstances, of
self-respecting independence. During his public
ministry we know how limited were his material
resources : " The foxes have holes," he said, " and
the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of man
hath not where to lay his head." He knew how to
be abased. Could any of us have chosen for him
a better fortune ? Could any of us conceive that a
greater measure of worldly prosperity would have
added anything to the glory or the blessedness of
the greatest life ever lived in human flesh ?

We may say of Paul, whose testimony we are
studying, almost the same thing that we have said
of Jesus. In this respect the disciple was as his
Master and the servant as his Lord. Paul's work
was done in absolute disregard of worldly gain.
The last thing he thought about was economic effi-
ciency. To be faithful to the great trust committed

88 KNOWING HOW TO BE POOR

to him, as he tells us in this very epistle, he had
suffered the loss of all things, and counted them
but refuse.

I am not pointing to the poverty of Jesus and
Paul as exemplary for us ; it may be that we are
not called to follow them in this ; but I want you
to see that the two greatest lives that were ever
lived in the world were lived in absolute poverty ;
and that what made these lives so large and lus-
trous and free and bountiful, what gave them such
perfect mastery of outward conditions, was the con-
stant sense of the presence of God, the implicit
and unquestioning trust in his goodness. What
can any man care, if he knows that, about the
small losses or adversities of this mortal life ?
" Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?"
cries Paul ; " shall tribulation, or anguish, or per-
secution, or famine^ or nahedness^, or peril, or
sword ? . . . Nay, in all these things we are more
than conquerors through him that loved us."
With such a conviction as this in our hearts, what
can disturb us ? Dwindling resources can cause us
no anxiety ; want can but deepen our trust ; death
itself can do nothing worse for us than open the
door into the Father's house where there is enough
and to spare.

This, then, is the secret which Paul says that he
has learned, by which he can make the conditions
of poverty tributary to his well-being. It is not a

KNOWING HOW TO BE POOR 89

secret which he sought to keep, it is one which he
longed to share with all his fellow men. You and
I may learn it, as he learned it ; and if we know
Jesus Christ as he knew him his secret will be ours.

So much, then, we have found easily within the
reach of the man of meagre income ; he may have,
besides the supply of his actual physical necessi-
ties, high knowledge in abundance, pure and stim-
ulating pleasures, precious friendships, great oppor-
tunities of social service, — above all, he may have
the abiding sense of the presence of God in his
daily life, and the assurance that nothing can sepa-
rate him from that unfailing love. Do you think
that the man who knows that all this is true of him
is likely to pity himself very much on account of
straitened circumstances or narrowing revenues ?

Let us try to learn to estimate rightly these
larger resources which may be ours, if we will, and
of which no misfortune can deprive us.

I do not wish to sink into poverty, — so any
of us might say, — I do not like discomfort ; I
prefer a reasonable competence. But that is not
granted to all God's children, and, with no fault
of my own, it may sometime come to pass that
my earthly fortunes will be brought low. If that
should befall, I trust that I shall still be able to
live the good and happy life. I will not forget how
many of the best and bravest of the children of
men have lived and wrought in poverty ; I will not

90 KNOWING HOW TO BE POOR

forget old Benedict Spinoza grinding lenses and
refusing largesses, yet stirring the world with his
great thoughts ; I will not forget Michael Faraday,
living on the wages of a common laborer while he
forged the tools with which the world's industries
have been revolutionized ; I will not forget Dante
Alighieri, wearing out his old age in exile and
want, yet singing his deathless song ; I will not
forget Richard Wagner, spending all the strength
of his youth and manhood in a desperate struggle
with want, and giving to the world in those dark
days an imperishable legacy; I will not forget
Thomas Carlyle, there on the bleak Scottish moors,
fighting the wolf from the door and sounding a
trumpet that waked the dead in " Signs of the
Times " and " Sartor Resartus ; " nay, I will not
forget him whom above all others I ought to re-
member, — whose disciple I profess to be. God's
well-beloved Son was he, yet he was very poor ; for
our sakes he was poor, that we through his poverty
might be rich. Was not God good to hira ? Let me
never, with the memory of that great Son of man
in my thought, say or think that because I am poor
God has forsaken me. Let me never doubt that He
whom a hundred generations have found to be " a
stronghold to the poor, a stronghold to the needy
in his distress," is my Friend in the day of adver-
sity, and that He will help me then and there, if I
trust Him, to live the good and happy life.

VI

KNOWING HOW TO BE RICH

I know how to abound. — Phtl. iv. 12.

We studied last Sunday morning one of Paul's
great claims of mastery over the conditions of life.
*' I know how to be abased," he said, " and I know
how to abound ; everywhere and in all things have
I learned the secret both to be filled and to be hun-
gry, both to abound and to be in want." Knowing
how to be poor was our theme last Sunday, — the
art of living well in straitened circumstances. To-
day we will consider Paul's other claim, — that he
had learned the secret of living well in abundance
as well as in want.

Just how his present conditions justified this
claim, it is difficult to see. He says, indeed, in a
sentence soon following those I have just quoted,
that at this writing he is enjoying abundance. " I
have all things and abound," he says, " having re-
ceived from Epaphroditus the things that came from
you, an odor of a sweet smell, a sacrifice acceptable,
well pleasing to God." The language is emotional ;
and it is fair to conclude that this abundance, of
which he makes such grateful mention, was prob-

92 KNOWING HOW TO BE RICH

ably a very meagre provision for his actual wants
while in the Roman prison. We cannot imagine
that his friends in Philippi had so enriched him by
their gifts that he was able to live in luxury.

We have also the best reasons for believing that
his life during all his missionary journeys was one
of hardship and privation ; we cannot suppose that
anything approximating to what we should call
abundance was ever known by him in all these
years of labor for the kingdom.

Yet he says that he knows how to be rich as well
as how to be poor ; that he has learned the secret
of living well in plenty as well as in poverty. It
may be that Paul had not been wholly without expe-
rience of life in prosperous conditions. We know
little of his parentage and early history ; but his
home was in Tarsus of Cilicia, a Roman city of
some importance in Asia Minor, the seat of a uni-
versity ; and Paul's father, who was, of course, a
Jew, had become a Roman citizen, which fact might
suggest good standing in the community. There is
some evidence in Paul's writings that the culture
of that centre of Greek learning had made some
impression upon his mind, and that would indicate
a fair social position. In his youth he was sent up
to Jerusalem to study the Jewish law in the school
of Gamaliel : that fact, though not conclusive, is at
least in harmony with the theory that he was the
child of prosperity. He may, therefore, have known

KNOWING HOW TO BE RICH 93

by experience something of the problems of charac-
ter which confront those who have abundance. The
power which he now boasts to handle such problems
must, however, have been gained since the days of
his prosperity ; and when he says that he knows
how to live well in abundance, his knowledge is
probably based on faith rather than experience.
He may know by experience what the rich man's
problems are, — because he remembers what they
were when he was living in plenty ; but it is by
faith that he knows that he would be able to solve
them if they should now arise in his life. He is
perfectly sure that in all places and under all cir-
cumstances he will be able to do the right thing,
because he trusts absolutely in the divine wisdom
and strength by which his life is guided. " I am
equal," he says, " to any fate. I know how to be
abased and I know how to abound. I can do all
things through Christ which strengtheneth me."

What a splendid outfit such a faith as that gives
a man ! It is not self-confidence, nor anything like
it; it is confidence in the unerring wisdom and
strength of that spirit of truth and grace with
which his life is indissolubly joined.

" I know how to be rich," says Paul, — not, mark
you, how to get rich. That is no part of his claim.
That, doubtless, is to most of us the burning ques-
tion. If Paul had anything of importance to tell us
about that, most of us would prick up our ears. If

94 KNOWING HOW TO BE RICH

I could convince this community that I had valuable
secrets to impart respecting the methods of get-
ting rich, this house would not hold the people who
would come to listen. But this knowledge of Paul's
is nothing of that kind. Whether he knew how to
make himself rich or not, I do not know ; if he did,
it was knowledge that he did not value and never
tried to impart. For myself, I am sure that I have
no knowledge on this subject worth anything to
anybody ; and I believe that I can truthfully say
that I never greatly coveted such knowledge. It is
not of knowing how to get rich, then, that we are
thinking this morning, but of knowing how to he
rich, — of knowing how to live well in the posses-
sion of abundance. That is the kind of knowledge
which the apostle says that he has gained.

But if he rejoices in the fact that he knows how
to be rich, it cannot be wrong to be rich. There can
be no necessary contradiction between the good and
happy life and the possession of abundance. That is
certainly a fair inference from these words of Paul.

How does this agree with the testimony of Jesus
concerning the possession of riches ? Are not his
judgments clear and strong upon this matter ? Did
he not say that it was easier for a camel to go
through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to
enter into the kingdom of God ? Did he not say,
" Blessed are ye poor, for yours is the kingdom " ?
Did he not say, " Whosoever he be of you that

KNOWING HOW TO BE RICH 95

renounceth not all that he hath, he cannot be my
disciple " ? Did he not require the discijiles who
followed him to leave all they had behind them ?
Did he not tell that rich young man who wanted to
be his follower that the first condition of disciple-
ship was to sell all he had, and give to the poor ?
Certainly these words are all there, and there are
enough of them to make a strong case if one adopts
the method of interpreting Jesus which is quite
too prevalent, and selects the passages which make
for his theory, neglecting those which cannot be
reconciled with it.

But other things must be taken into the account
before we determine what was our Lord's attitude
toward wealth and its possession. We must not
forget that a number of rich men and women were
his friends, — Nicodemus, Joseph of Arimathea,
Zacchaeus, Joanna, wife of Chuza, Herod's steward,
and Susanna, women of substance. " The home
at Bethany," says Dr. Peabody, " in which Jesus
repeatedly found tranquil release from the pressure
of his public life, was a home of comfort, if not of
luxury, and there was in it an [alabaster box of]
ointment of spikenard, very precious." Such a pos-
session could hardly have been found in a poor
man's home. And there is no hint that Jesus ever
reproved any of these friends of his for the posses-
sion of the wealth which must have raised them far
above the common economic level.

96 KNOWING HOW TO BE RICH

Moreover, we must also remember that the para-
bles of Jesus often assume that the possession of
wealth is a good thing. In the parables of the tal-
ents and the pounds, in the story of the unjust
steward, the ownership and productive use of pro-
perty is recognized as legitimate. It is impossible
to believe that Jesus would have used these illus-
trations of accumulation and large possession to set
forth the great truths of his kingdom, if he had
regarded such processes and results as essentially
evil. He could not have confounded the moral
sense of his hearers by making an essentially bad
thing the symbol of an essentially good thing.

Over against the epigrammatic sentences, and
the incidents first referred to, in which Jesus seems
to condemn and forbid wealth, we must therefore
place the whole tenor of his life and the constant
implications of his teaching in which it is justified.
And I think that we must hold both these classes
of teachings, which seem so contradictory, steadily
together, and accept the full value of both of them.
Holding them so, we shall get from the teaching of
Jesus some such result as this, — that it is possible
for the rich man to live the good and happy life,
but that there are tremendous perils environing
great fortunes, perils which nothing but ceaseless
vigilance and strenuous purpose can successfully
avoid. This is involved, also, in Paul's assertion.
The implication is that it is not less hard to live

KNOWING HOW TO BE RICH 97

the good life in abundance than to live the good
life in poverty ; that it takes as much grace and
as much heroism and as much divine wisdom to
know how to abound as it does to know how to
be abased. Either of these extreme conditions
furnishes a severe test of the character. A wise
man, indeed, was Agur, the son of Jakeh, when he
prayed : —

" Give me neither poverty nor riches ;
Feed me with the food that is needful for me :
Lest I be full and deny thee, and say, Who is the Lord ?
Or lest I be poor, and steal,

N And use profanely the name of my God."

\S

p Blessed are they who are able to keep in this safe
^^ via media. But as there are many on the one side
who feel throughout their lives the pinch of pov-
erty, so there are some in every generation who
by inheritance, or by their own strenuous effort,
find themselves walking in the dangerous paths of
opulence.

The truth on which we want to fix our thought
this morning is that it is possible, even for the
rich man, to live the good life. But what does this
imply ?

It must be assumed, in this statement, that the
rich man keeps his manhood ; that he is not merged
and lost in his fortune ; that he continues to be the^
master and not the slave of his money. Thj^Mah* '
in the depths of poverty is in danger of lef&'g his

98 KNOWING HOW TO BE RICH

manhood and becoming a mendicant ; the man on
the heights of affluence is in equal danger of losing
his manhood and becoming a miser or a money-
grubber. This is a loss which is not suffered all at
once ; the process is gradual by which the human
qualities, one by one, become blurred or enfeebled,
and the conscience becomes commercialized, and
the sympathies atrophied, and the whole nature
subdued, like the dyer's hand, to that which it
works in. The process is insidious ; those in whom
it is going on are not apt to be aware of it ; as
wealth accumulates, and the strife becomes more
and more absorbing, the tendency to become less
and less of a man and more and more of an eco-
nomic function constantly becomes stronger. The
man gradually comes to have no interest in life but
money-making; he lives and moves and. has his
being in that ; the larger and finer aspects of hu-
man life fade from his consciousness ; if he does
not gain the whole world he does succeed, by striv-
ing after it, in losing himself.

This is the one ever-present, all-encompassing
peril with which the pursuit and the possession of
great wealth is attended. Knowing how to abound,
in Paul's sense of the word, means, therefore, first
of all, knowing how to meet and master this evil
tendency ; how to keep from being dominated and
dehumanized by money ; how to be a free man and
not the slave of things. The man who has become

KNOWING HOW TO BE RICH 99

purely and simply a business man, whose sympa-
thies, thoughts, aims, ambitions, aspirations are all
absorbed in business, is a man who does not know
how to live well in abundance. He has simjDly lost
the secret of life. He is just as much of a failure
as the beggar is, at the other end of the scale.
Both have lost their manhood. Both are the vic-
tims of circumstance. The one has become a
sponge and the other a mere economic function.

When we come to think carefully upon the ele-
ments of this high knowledge which Paul boasts,
we are struck with the fact that its fruits must be
essentially the same in the one condition as in the
other. To live well in abundance is to possess the
same kind of equipment that one must possess who
lives well in straitened conditions.

1. It is just as needful for the rich man who de-
sires to live the good and happy life as it is for the
poor man that he should have a well-trained and
widely cultured mind. The rich man who despises
knowledge, or who undervalues all knowledge
which is not directly tributary to the increase of
his possessions, is not one who has learned how to
live well in prosperity. There are rich men who
have very little sense of these higher intellectual
values, and we often hear them discouraging edu-
cation, on the ground that it gives no important
aid in the rapid accumulation of wealth. Of any
other uses of knowledge they are quite oblivious.

65 J 494

100 KNOWING HOW TO BE RICH

But it is not necessary that wealth should shut its
possessor out of the wide realms of knowledge. It
is possible that a man of large affairs should have
some interest in the great world in which he lives,
and the other worlds moving with it through space ;
that he should be awake to the marvelous unfold-
ings of science ; that the history of mankind, of its
struggles with nature, of its stumbling steps in the
way of progress, should kindle his sympathy ; that
the great literatures of the world should stir his
thought and imagination. We have known men of
large means and large enterprises who kept their
minds open to these liberalizing influences. I had
a friend, a broker in Wall Street, who built a
small astronomical observatory in his garden and
bought a telescope, and freshened and fertilized
his mind with his exjjlorations of space. Sir John
Lubbock, the great naturalist, is a banker ; William
Smart, one of the most distinguished of the British
economists, is a merchant ; Rowland G. Hazard, one
of our most thoughtful American writers on philo-
sophy, was a manufacturer. The name, so often in
recent days upon our lips, that of Cecil Eliodes,
illustrates the possibilities of intellectual interests
and occupations for men of great affairs. It is
true, I suppose, that Mr. Rhodes was not nearly so
rich as he would have been if he had cared less for
other things ; his partner, who was a man of less
brains, made twice as much money. It may, per-

KNOWING now TO BE RICH 101

haps, be admitted that the cultivation of such
tastes is likely to reduce, somewhat, the man's ca-
pacity as a mere absorbent of wealth. If with all
his gettings he gets a little understanding, he is
probably able to see that money getting is not all
that life is for. To say that the acquisition and
possession of large wealth is no impediment to
generous culture would not be true ; it is a great im-
pediment, but it is not an insurmountable obstacle ;
one who is wise and strong enough may hold the
two things together, may live the intellectual life
in the midst of great prosperity.

2. It is as true of the rich man as of the poor
man, that his life is not complete unless he finds
room in it for high and pure pleasures. He needs
this refining and elevating influence as much as the
poor man needs it. For him the heavens declare
the glory of the Lord and the firmament showeth
his handiwork ; for him the spring keeps its promise,
and the mountains display their majesty, and the
rivers flow in peace ; for him are the anthems of
the forest, and the songs of brook and bobolink,
and the dear delights of daisies and anemones. He
is not a whole man whose life is not open to the
suggestions and inspirations which come through
tiiese higher enjoyments ; no matter how many costly
things he may gather about him, if his soul is not
attuned to the higher ministries of the Spirit of
Beauty — one of the pure spirits always proceeding

102 KNOWING HOW TO BE RICH

from the throne of God — something is wanting
to his perfection. But there is no good reason
why one whose hands are full of great enterprises
should not keep his nature open on this side to
pleasures that purify and ennoble life. "What I am
pleading for is a very different thing from the
splendor, the display, the ostentation of expense,
with which the lives of the rich and especially of
the new rich are apt to be overlaid and incrusted :
that is offensive and degrading; the soul that is
sensitive to beauty abhors such things. It is in a
much simpler life that the genuine love of the beau-
tiful takes root and blossoms. But it is possible
for the man who lives in affluence to keep himself
free from the sordid fopperies of fashion, and to
cultivate a true appreciation of all that is beautiful
in nature and in art. The man who knows how
to abound is one who knows how to make his
abundance enrich and replenish this side of his
life.

3. To live well in abundance as well as in poverty,
a man must have friends. The solitary life is no
better for the rich man than for the poor man.
The rich man's life is apt to be one of far wider
relations than the poor man's ; he touches many
more people in more vital ways, and his oppor-
tunities of friendship are therefore far more numer-
ous. It seems to be sometimes assumed that business
relations are essentially hostile relations ; that one

KNOWING HOW TO BE RICH 103

naturally regards those with whom he is brought
into contact in trade as rivals or enemies, but that
conception is not so prevalent to-day as once it was.
It is not now incredible to all of us that a sincere
good-will may find expression in a man's business,
and that great numbers of those who deal with him
may come to regard him as a friend. It seems to
me that the man who knows how to live well in
large affairs is one who has learned to emphasize in
his own thought this element in business ; to put
an ever increasing amount of good-will into it ; to
be glad to minister, just as generously as he can,
to the welfare of all whom he employs and of all
with whom he deals ; to be happy in the thought
that the enterprises which he is carrying on are
making for human welfare.

Of course, the rich man can make friends by his
benefactions. The gifts which he bestows on the
needy and the suffering may elicit gratitude. The
genuine rewards which thus come to him are not to
be despised. Of this side of his life I shall have
more to say presently. The relation between bene-
factor and beneficiary is not, however, that of which
I am now thinking. Every man needs friends who
are in no sense dependents on his bounty ; who stand
on his own intellectual and moral level and share
his life ; friends who will not cringe to him, and
who could not flatter him ; friends in whose manli-
ness and honor he can confide. The rich man, above

104 KNOWING HOW TO BE RICH

all others, needs such friends. There will be many
who, for purposes of their own, will be too ready to
fawn upon him, and burn the sweet incense of adu-
lation before him. It is difficult for a man who
possesses great power, on whose favor many are
dependent, to maintain a rational estimate of his
own merits and demerits. A large conspiracy is
always on foot to inflate his self-conceit. Therefore
he needs the comradeship of men who are not afraid
of him, and have no favors to ask of him ; whose
influence over his life will be tonic and bracing.
For one who would live well in affluence, that kind
of friendship is almost indispensable. The rich man
can have such friends if he is man enough to know
that he needs them, and will make himself worthy
of them.

4. It is a commonplace to say that the man who
knows how to abound must be one who knows how
to make his abundance tributary to the welfare of
his fellow men. To help and serve and bless, to
hold all his gains and possessions as a trustee and
administer them in such a way as to promote the
well-being and happiness of mankind, this is his
high calling. The man who liveth unto himself does
not live well, whether in abundance or in penury.

It must not, however, be imagined that this is
altogether an easy vocation. There are almost al-
ways within our reach some cases of real need to
which we are sure that we can minister out of our

KNOWING HOW TO BE RICH 105

abundance, and do more good than harm ; but a
multitude of the most clamorous appeals to the rich
man's bounty are wisely disregarded. We often
think that if we had plenty of money we could do a
great deal of good with it ; it is possible that we
might do a great deal of harm with it. The admin-
istration of large charity is no sinecure. It takes
brains, courage, conscientiousness, to dispense it in
such a way that its effects shall not be pernicious.
The poor man's bounty is far easier to dispense than
the rich man's, for the only largesses he has to give
are love and thought and care, and they can do no
harm, but money is often a doubtful good. The gift
without tl.e giver is always bare, and may be bane-
ful. But money can be made to serve if wisdom and
love go with it, and this is the great problem of the
man of wealth, — to find ways of dispensing his
benefactions so that they shall express a true wis-
dom and a genuine good-will. It is a difficult but
not an impossible task, and the man who works it
out becomes the heir of many beatitudes. It is a
great thing to have power, — such power as is con-
centrated in large wealth, — and to know what it
is for and how to use it. What a happy man must
he be who is able to turn the streams of his abun-
dance into the channels of life ; to give health to the
sick, and comfort to the careworn ; to send light
into darkened homes ; to clear the paths of oppor-
tunity before those who are hedged in by poverty

106 KNOWING HOW TO BE RICH

and ignorance, and lift up the beacon of hope be-
fore their eyes ; to replenish the torch of the light-
bearers and strengthen the hearts of those who are
working to fill the earth with the beauty of the
Lord. In all our communities we have such men
and women, and their works will follow them. For
generations to come the aged poor will dwell in
comfort and peace because of them, and the little
children of misfortune will find help and healing,
and the widow and the fatherless will have their
burdens lightened, and the dwellers in humble
homes will rise up and call them blessed, and many,
far away, walking in darkness, will be led into
the light by the unseen hands of those who have
finished their work and have gone to their reward.
This surely, in the kingdom that we pray for, the
kingdom that Jesus Christ came to bring, must be
the true use of abundance ; and those who have
learned how to employ it in such ways know how
to abound.

5. I can name but one more condition to be sup-
plied by him who wishes to live the good and happy
life in abundance, and that is more central and
vital than all the rest. The one thing needful for
him is the conscious presence of God in his life.
The one fact for him to face is that there is no
such thing as absolute ownership in this world ;
that the earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof ;
that whether we acknowledge it or not we are his

KNOWING HOW TO BE RICH 107

trustees, and are bound to use what we have in the
fulfillment of his purposes. To any man who is not
an atheist, this conclusion is inevitable. And the
first thing for any man to do who has large wealth
in his hands is to put himself into right relations
with that Silent Partner from whom all this abun-
dance comes, and find out what his purposes are in
regard to it. Nothing is right with him till this
main question is settled. To have abundance in our
hands and be using it, every day, for all sorts of pur-
poses, with no consideration of Him to whom it all
belongs, and to whom we must account for its use,
would seem to be an impossible conception. As
rational men and women, we cannot do that.

When we recognize this central fact, and bring
our lives into harmony with it, our problem is
solved. Whatever our possessions may be, if our
deepest wish is to know God's will concerning them
and to do it, it will be well with us. Even if we
sometimes err in interpreting God's will, it is the
purpose that consecrates the life.

'"T is not what man does that exalts him, but what man would
do."

And he who discerns the intent will see to it that
even our mistakes are turned to good account in
the working out of his great purposes.

See whither our thought has led us. We have
found that to live well in opulence calls for essen-
tially the same qualities of mind and heart that are

108 KNOWING HOW TO BE RICH

required to live well in poverty. In either condi-
tion a man must be a man, — the master and not
the slave of circumstance ; in either condition he
needs a well-trained mind, and a nature sensitive
to the beauty of the world, and friendships that
bring him stimulus and solace, and the enthusiasm
of humanity, and the abiding sense of the presence
of God in his life. And this we might have known
beforehand, for it is the same Paul the apostle,
whose words we are studying, who knows how to
be abased and how to abound ; and the essential
qualities of character by which he meets these tests
must be the same.

It is possible for men and women in these days
to meet the same tests securely and triumphantly.
"We must never imagine that it is an easy thing to
live the good and happy life in opulence ; it is a
very difficult vocation. " The Christian rich man,"
says Professor Peabody, " knows well that it is hard
for him to enter the kingdom of God. He observes
the characters of many men shrivel in the flames
of prosperity. He sees that conditions of luxury,
ease, and lack of the friction of life contribute to
a slackening of moral fibre. He holds before him-
self, therefore, the solemn alternatives of Jesus —
the mastery of wealth or the abandonment of it.
Thus the wealth of the Christian rich man becomes
a trust for the use of which he is to be scrupulously
judged. He administers his affairs with watchful-

KNOWING HOW TO BE RICH 109

ness over himself, and with hands clean of malice,
oppression, or deceit. He does not hope to atone for
evil ways of making money by ostentatious bene-
volence in spending it. . . . His business is a part
of his religion, and his philanthropy is a part of
his business. He leads his life, he is not led by it.
His five talents produce other five. And who is the
Christian rich woman? It is she who finds it not
impossible to be rich in purse and poor in spirit.
She accepts her opportunity watchfully. She knows
herself a servant of whom much is required. In
the midst of a world of foolishness she maintains
simplicity and good sense. She is equally at home
among the rich and the poor. No severer test of
the Christian life than this can be proposed for any
woman, and no fairer type of character is to be
met than that which issues from such a test, having
passed through the needle's eye. If Jesus Christ
should come again, he would know what it has cost
a man to put under his foot the lust of riches, or
a woman to keep her heart clean from the tempta-
tions of self-indulgence. Into the homes of such
men and women, however splendid their homes may
be, Jesus would enter gladly, as he entered the home
of Zacchaeus or that of Martha and Mary." ^

How many of those who listen to me will be
called to meet the test of increasing possessions, I
cannot say. To some of you it is already a practical

1 Jesus Christ and the Social Question, p. 223.

110 KNOWING HOW TO BE RICH

question, and to others it may yet be. I would not
dare to pray that any of you may become rich ; but
this, with all my heart, I do desire for all of you,
that whether you are rich or poor you may be able
to live the good and happy life.

VII

THE CHRISTIAN LAW OF LIFE i

Whosoever shall seek to gain his life shall lose it ; but whoso-
ever shall lose his life sha,ll preserve it. — Luke xvii. 33.

To formal logic this statement is absurd. " How,"
demands the scientific reasoner, " can it be affirmed
that gain is loss and that loss is gain ? You might
as well say that east is west, or that down is up, or
that something is nothing. The statement violates
the principle of contradiction — that which Sir
William Hamilton declares to be the highest of all
logical laws, the supreme law of thought." True ;
and by those who suppose that the only logic is
formal logic, and that all our reasoning about mo-
rality must be conformed to that which serves us in
the sciences of quantity, the objection will be con-
sidered valid. If the methods and maxims which
we employ in dealing with things abstract and in-
animate are applicable when we are dealing with
life and character, then this statement is perfectly
absurd.

It is evident that the tendency of thought, in
many intellectual circles, is to carry these methods
and maxims of formal logic up into the higher

1 Baccalaureate Sermon at Williams CoUeg-e, June, 1893.

112 THE CHRISTIAN LAW OF LIFE

realms of experience, and to insist that all know-
ledge in these higher realms must be submitted to
their measurements. The extension of physical law
into the spiritual world ; the attempt to unify all
knowledge by forcing the facts of the moral order
into the categories of causation — this is one of the
striking phenomena of the present age. Some de-
vout men have joined in this movement, and, in
their zeal to bring about a reconciliation between
religion and science, have made concessions which
are equally fatal to science and religion. The preva-
lent skepticism has arisen mainly out of the attempt
to explain spiritual facts by physical laws. They
cannot be so explained. The principle of friend-
ship cannot be found in j)hysics or chemistry ; nor
can it be deduced, by any process of reasoning,
from any physical phenomena. The sentiment of
honor cannot be accounted for by any quantitative
analysis ; the impulse of patriotism cannot be de-
rived by the most exact calculus from the tables of
the United States census. The law of the conserva-
tion of energy is supposed to cover all the operations
of nature ; but faith and hope and love can no
more be brought under its formula than knowledge
can be weighed in the scales of an apothecary. As
soon as we pass from the inorganic world, we find
these maxims failing us.

Take this law or principle of contradiction —
that a thing: cannot be and not be at the same time

THE CHRISTIAN LAW OF LIFE 113

and in the same sense. As applied to existences
purely inorganic, or to mere abstract generaliza-
tions, this is true ; but on the very threshold of the
kingdoms of life this masterful law halts, and can-
not enter. To nothing which lives and grows can
any such dictum be apjilied. Every living thing is
also a dying thing. It lives by dying. " As dying
and behold we live " is not merely an emotional
paradox, it is the biological formula ; it is the utter-
ance of every creature that possesses life. Listen
to these impressive sentences : " The animal body
dies daily, in the sense that at every moment some
part of its substance is suffering decay, is under-
going combustion. This breaking down of complex
substances, this continued partial decay, is indeed
the source of the body's energy ; each act of life is
the offspring of an act of death. Each strain of a
muscle, every throb of the heart, . . . every throw
of the vital shuttle, means an escape of energy."
This is not, as you might suppose, an extract from
some commentary on one of St. Paul's epistles ; it
is a quotation from one of the latest scientific trea-
tises upon physiology.^ In the face of statements
like these, it begins to look as if the principle
of contradiction or non-contradiction was somewhat
difficult of application when you come into the field
where life is at work, where the forces of develop-
ment are at play. "The notion of development,"

1 Encyclopcedia Britannica, vol. xix, p. 9.

114 THE CHRISTIAN LAW OF LIFE

says Principal Caird, " is one which cannot be ap-
prehended merely by affirmation, or by a series of
affirmations, but only by a process which includes
affirmation and negation, or, more preciseh^ per-
petual affirmation, perpetual negation, solved in re-
affirmation. At no moment of its progressive exist-
ence is it possible to determine a living organism
as merely that which is, or to compass the idea of
it by any number of positive predicates. ... At
every stage of its growth, and at every minutest
portion of that stage, the organism not only is, but
is passing away from that which it is." ^

It may be, after all, that these words of the
Christ, that we save our lives only by losing them,
are not the mere hyperbole of a rhetorician. Let
us see whether we can find any further confirmation
of this law.

The life-history of everything that lives is, as we
have seen, a commentary on Christ's words ; so also
do we find them confirmed in the relation which the
parts of every organism bear to the organism. Inter-
dependence is the law of every organized existence.
No part of any organism lives by itself ; it cannot be
understood by itself ; it has no meaning by itself ;
you cannot describe it or define it without men-
tioning the other parts of the organism to which
it is vitally related. This is even true of those mem-
bers of any living thing whose relations to it seem
1 Philosophy of Religion, p. 219.

THE CHRISTIAN LAW OF LIFE 115

to be only mechanical. How will you define an arm ?
What use has it, what meaning has it, apart from
the body to which it belongs ? What is a stamen ?
Is it possible to form any idea of it except in its
connection with the flower? Its definition is in its
function ; and you cannot describe its function with-
out bringing in the whole life of the plant of which
it is a member. How can you comprehend an organ
without comprehending the organism? How can
you separate, in thought, the heart or the lungs or
the brain from the human body, and get by your
analysis any adequate idea of heart or lungs or
brain ? You cannot think an organ without think-
ing the organism. Divide it in idea even from the
rest of the organism, and you have destroyed the
idea of it.

And as no part of an organism exists by itself,
so neither does it exist for itself. The condition of
its existence is not self-maintenance, but ministry.
The heart does not work for itself. The lungs do
not breathe for themselves. The moment any organ
should set up for itself, isolating itself from the rest
of the body, that moment its own supplies would
be cut off and it would cease to be. It lives by
what it gives to the other members and by what it
receives from them. If it should seek to gain an
independent existence it would lose its life at once ;
it is only by merging its life in the life of the body
that it preserves its life.

116 THE CHRISTIAN LAW OF LIFE

What, therefore, is true of the organism as a
whole is true of every part or member of it ; it has
no separate existence ; individuation would mean
death, and self-dependence would be self-destruc-
tion ; it is by losing its life that it preserves its
life.

Let us take this principle into a higher realm,
and test it by applying it to the life of thought, the
life of the mind. Not less true is it here that any
attempt on the part of the thinker to isolate his
thought would result in the paralysis of his think-
ing powers. We talk of independent thought; we
praise the independent thinker ; doubtless these
phrases must have some significance, but how much
do they signify ? Every thinker oiight to be to such
a degree independent that he shall be unwilling to
accept the conclusions of others if it is possible for
him to verify them by his own investigations. No
man ought to be a mere lazy pensioner on the labor
of other investigators. But there are those who
seem to imagine that intellectual independence re-
quires them to think nothing that other men have
thought and to believe nothing that other men be-
lieve, — to have a snug little intellectual world of
their own and live in it. Thus we have men who
evolve from their own consciousness their theories
of all things visible and invisible, and stamp on
these pet notions of theirs their own individuality,
and appear to take great pride in the mental fabri-

THE CHRISTIAN LAW OF LIFE 117

cations which they have thus excogitated. A good
many men have thus their own private interpreta-
tion of the universe, and of course they have no
use for anybody else's interpretation. John Doe
has his own theory of the solar system, of the con-
stitution of matter, of the nature of virtue ; and the
beauty of this theory, in John Doe's eyes, is that it
is his own personal property, his j)ro])rium ; he has
put his own trade-mark on it ; it represents his
work as an independent thinker. It must be con-
fessed that a type of mind which resembles this is
not uncommon, yet it may be doubted whether its
products are very valuable. An apostle has told
us that private interpretations of Scripture are not
of much account, — that the view which commends
itself to the judgment of only one man is not, prob-
ably, an important view. And it is equally doubt-
ful whether a theory of the universe or of any por-
tion of it which is confined to the apprehension of
any one mind is of much consequence. Truth about
the universe ought to be truth universal, one would
say. It is only the truth which is universally true,
which is true for every rational mind, that is of
highest import. Most of us have our own small
mental singularities and idiosyncrasies and pet no-
tions and whims and crotchets ; but mental pro-
gress consists in parting with these, and in sub-
stituting for them universal ideas, — truths that
are not peculiar to our minds, that are just as true

118 THE CHRISTIAN LAW OF LIFE

for every other ratioDal being as they are for us.
John Doe cannot afford to keep his own pet theory
of the solar system ; he becomes a philosopher by
abandoning that and getting possession of a theory
which every one of his neighbors must accept as
soon as the terms in which it is stated are explained
to him. Those portions of my knowledge which are
peculiar to myself, which no one can share with me,
are of doubtful utility ; let me make haste to get
rid of this esoteric knowledge, and to replace it
by knowledge that is not mine at all, by truths of
which it is impossible for me to gain a copyright,
by ideas which are the birthright of all sane minds.
Let us see if the principle of the text is not also
fundamental in ethical science. How shall we for-
mulate the law of duty ? Is duty an individualistic
conception ? Can I solve the problem of duty by
studying myself as an individual and neglecting all
thought of my fellow men ? No ! I can no more
isolate myself in finding duty than I can isolate
myself in seeking truth. The moral law is no more
a matter of private interpretation than is the law of
gravitation. When I undertake to make my moral
sense, my moral judgment, the criterion of right, I
make myself as absurd as when I undertake to
make my knowledge — be the same more or less —
the measure and standard of all truth. Not only is
duty for me a very complex thing, growing out of
multifarious relations to all my fellows, and incapa-

THE CHRISTIAN LAW OF LIFE 119

ble of comprehension except in full view of these
relations, but it belongs to the essence of moral
obligation that it is universal. Kant's law clearly
expresses it : " Act so that the maxim of thy will
can be at the same time accepted as the principle
of a universal legislation." You cannot deal with
moral questions at all — you have no conception
of what morality signifies — till you free yourself
from all personal piques and resentments and pre-
ferences and cravings, and are ready to put yourself
in the places of all those with whom you hold, or
may hold, any relations whatever, and to choose their
welfare as you choose your own. The first princi-
ple of morality requires that you abandon the point
of view of the individual and look at all questions
from the point of view of the universal welfare.

These illustrations will, I trust, have made it
l^lain that the maxim which we are studying is not
a mere rhetorical paradox; that it is the exact
statement of one of the deepest laws of life ; that
the principle which it embodies is one that no sane
man can afford to neglect. The Christian law of
conduct cannot, indeed, as we have seen, be assimi-
lated to the sciences of quantity ; when the methods
of reasoning which are employed in those sciences
are carried up into the spiritual realm the result
is mental petrifaction and moral putrefaction ; but
as we ascend into the kingdom of life, some glimpses
appear of those higher principles by which the

120 THE CHRISTIAN LAW OF LIFE

conduct of spiritual beings must be ruled. Here -we
seem to find a movement from another quarter —
spiritual law coming down upon tlie natural world ;
communion replacing competition ; it is no longer
a pure individualism ; the law of each for all and
all for each begins to find expression. And while
we can never reach, by any of these biological ana-
logies, the complete statement of the spiritual laws,
we find ourselves steadily drawing toward them, as
we traverse the kingdoms of life. In the very lowest
of these kingdoms, as Mr. Spencer has been good
enough to point out, we find the adumbration of
self-sacrifice in those sjoecies which multiply by fis-
sion — the parent giving up a portion of its own
life that the child may live. And with every step
that we rise, the signs become clearer of a kingdom
of heaven coming down upon the earth — of the
steady retreat of the law of a carnal commandment
before the power of an endless life.

By all these paths ascending to the superior
realms of life, we are ready, when we reach them,
for that clear statement of the highest law, given
by the Prince of Life himself, in the words that
we are studying.

The Christian law of life has not, however, I fear,
been generally believed by Christians themselves
to be a practicable rule. Those maxims into which
Christ condenses the legislation of the kingdom of
heaven have been regarded as presenting distant

THE CHRISTIAN LAW OF LIFE 121

ideals toward which, no doubt, we are bound to
strive, but to which, in the present state of society,
any close approximation would savor of fanaticism.
Actually to love our neighbors as ourselves, to do
to others as we could wish them to do to us, to pre-
fer one another in honor, to act on the principle
that it is more blessed to give than to receive — all
this, we have been wont to think, is visionary and
impossible. This is doubtless the law of the hea-
venly life, we say, but any attempt to follow it here
upon the earth would be fraught with all manner of
disasters. It is possible that in some secluded cor-
ners of human society — in the family, perhaps, —
to some small extent, it may be, in the church, — we
may look for obedience to these Christian precepts.
Even in the church, however, we have thought it
quite unsafe to depend upon Christian principles ;
we sell our church pews, for the most part, in the
dearest market, giving to the longest purse the
highest seat in the synagogue ; and in our sectarian
competitions we frankly recognize the principle of
the survival of the strongest. In the great service
of the state, and in the broad realms of industry
and commerce, there has been no more room for the
Christian law than there was for Christ himself at
his advent in Bethlehem.

" The form which the infidelity of England, espe-
cially, has taken," wrote John Ruskin, thirty years
ago, " is one unheard of in human history. No

122 THE CHRISTIAN LAW OF LIFE

nation ever before declared boldly, by print and
word of mouth, that its religion was good for show,
but ' would not work.' Over and over again has it
happened that nations denied their gods, but they
denied them bravely. The Greeks, in their decline,
jeered at their religion and frittered it away in
flatteries and fine arts ; the French refused theirs
fiei-cely, tore down their altars, and brake their
carven images. The question about. God with both
these nations was still, even in their decline, fairly
put, though falsely answered : ' Either there is or
is not a Supreme Ruler ; we consider of it, declare
there is not, and proceed accordingly.' But we
English have put the matter in an entirely new
light : ' There is a Supreme Ruler, no question of
it, only he cannot rule. His orders won't work.
He will be quite satisfied with euphonious and re-
spectful repetition of them. Execution would be too
dangerous under existing circumstances, which he
certainly never contemplated.'

" I had no conception of the absolute darkness
which has covered the national mind in this respect
until I began to come into collision with persons
engaged in the study of economical and political
questions. The entire naivete and undisturbed im-
becility with which I found them declare that the
laws of the devil were the only practicable ones,
and that the laws of God were merely a form of
poetical language, passed all that I had ever before

THE CHRISTIAN LAW OF LIFE 123

heard or read of mortal infidelity. I knew the fool
had often said in his heart there was no God, but
to hear him say clearly out with his lips, ' There is
a foolish God,' was something which my art studies
had not prepared me for. . . .

" Co-relative with the assertion ' There is a fool-
ish God ' is the assertion ' There is a brutish man.'
As no laws but those of the devil are practicable in
this world, so no impulses but those of the brute
(says the modern philosopher) are appealable to
in the world. Faith, generosity, honesty, zeal, and
self-sacrifice are poetical phrases. None of these
things can, in reality, be counted upon ; there is no
truth in man which can be used as a moving or pro-
ductive power. All motive force in him is essen-
tially brutish, covetous, or contentious. His power
is only power of prey ; otherwise than the spider he
cannot design ; otherwise than the tiger he cannot
feed. This is the modern interpretation of that
embarrassing article of the Creed, ' the communion
of saints.' " ^

Bitter words are these, terrible words, but it is
their sincerity that makes them pungent, and their
truth that makes them terrible. They are not so
true of England to-day as they were thirty years
ago, thanks to the faithful witnessing of men like
John Ruskin. Some dim apprehension that the
Christian morality may be true seems to be dawning
1 Modern Painters, vol. v. part ix. chap. xii.

124 THE CHRISTIAN LAW OF LIFE

upon tlie mind of that great nation. Can we say
as much for our own country ? Hardly yet, I fear.
Churches, here and there, are timidly venturing
to cast off the comj)etitive methods, and to trust
in the consecrated purpose of their parishioners for
their maintenance ; and there are signs in the in-
dustrial realm of a disposition to modify the harsh
rule of supply and demand by the principle of good-
will ; yet, for the most part, it is held, by the mem-
bers of churches as stoutly as by outsiders, that the
only rule that will work is not the Golden Rule, but
"the good old rule " of Rob Roy, —

" the simple plan
That they should take who have the power,
And they should keep who can."

It must be admitted that there are some reasons
for doubting whether this rule is working per-
fectly. The condition of the social and political
world is not all that could be desired. In the midst
of an increase in the productive energies of the
nation that is almost miraculous, and a multiplica-
tion of wealth that is phenomenal, there is a great
deal of hard and hopeless poverty. That it is pos-
itively increasing I do not say ; I only say that
there is far more of it than there ought to be in a
country as rich as ours. Neither do I assert that
this poverty is all due to social maladjustments ;
its causes are many ; but every man who comes in
contact with the lower stratum of society knows

THE CHRISTIAN LAW OF LIFE 125

that there is always a great multitude of honest
and willing workers vainly asking for work to earn
their daily bread, or laboring for wages that will
barely keep them in existence. No man can be
familiar with Darkest London or Darkest New
York, or the destitute districts of any of our great
cities, without feeling that the inequalities of our
civilization are intolerable.

Whatever may be said, however, about the eco-
nomic aspects of this problem, it will not be denied
that the moral aspects are serious. It may be main-
tained that the poor have no reasons for complaint ;
it is certain that the poor do not think so. Social
discontent is increasing ; the gulf which divides
the employed from the employing classes steadily
widens ; the tempers which are engendered by
strikes and lockouts are fierce and implacable.
How shall we account for these alienations and
antipathies, this steady growth of unsocial feelings ?
Shall we lay it all to the unreason and depravity
of the working classes ? I do not think that this
would be a rational explanation. If for the last
fifty years social classes which ought to be in
friendliest cooperation have been steadily draw-
ing apart ; if those who organize work and those
who perform it are becoming more and more an-
tipathetic ; if, thus, the very stability of society is
threatened by outbreaks of enmity, the explanation
must be that there is something radically wrong in

126 THE CHRISTIAN LAW OF LIFE

the social organization. Whatever gains of social
wealth may be credited to the competitive regime,
its fruits in the realm of character have been bit-
ter fruits. Shall we say that a system is working
well which fills the storehouses of the land with
wealth and the hearts of the people with hatred for
one another ? Might it not be better for the nation
to have a little less luxury and a little more good-
will?

And if our keen individualism has failed to bring
forth order and peace in its industrial world, much
more serious has its failure been in the political
world. Into politics the principle of private inter-
est has been intruding more and more during the
last half century. There are still men who serve
the state for patriotic reasons ; but that statement
will be thought in many circles incredible, almost
absurd. The possession and the hope of office, with
its rewards, are now popularly regarded as the only
adequate motives to public service. It is generally
assumed that political parties can be held together
by no other bond than the cohesive power of pub-
lic plunder. Under the tuition of this principle
how are our politics faring ? I will not attempt to
answer that question ; I will only call attention to
one frightful fact which no man can gainsay —
that the number of people in this country who will
not vote unless they are paid for voting is rapidly
increasing, so that each of the great political parties

THE CHRISTIAN LAW OF LIFE 127

finds it necessary to raise enormous sums of money
on the eve of every election for the wholesale bribery
of voters. That is only one ghastly symptom of a
state of affairs in which thoughtful Americans find
very little comfort. It must be admitted that the
individualistic principle is not working very well in
our political affairs.

Does it not begin to dawn upon some of the wise
leaders of business and politics that something is
out of joint in the social structure ? Is it not about
time to begin to inquire whether the laws of the
devil are the only practicable laws? whether the
maxim, Every man for himself, and so forth, is
the true regulative principle of all human affairs,
outside of the home and the church ? We have kept
saying, lo, these many years, that Christ's law
would not work in practical life. Certain it is that
the law of the kingdom which he came to overthrow
does not work very well. Might it not be worth
while to try the law so long discarded ?

Oh, it is pitiful, pitiful, that one must stand here,
at the end of the nineteenth century of our Lord,
and plead with the people who bear his name that
he is not a foolish ruler, a quixotic leader ; that
his word is the illuminating word ; that his way is
the living way ; that it is safe to trust him and to
follow him ; to trust him not only for the life which
is to come, but for the life that now is ; to believe
that he is able to lead and rule, not only in the

128 THE CHRISTIAN LAW OF LIFE

armies of heaven, but among the inhabitants of
earth. Too long have we been willing to put that
kingdom which he came to found away beyond the
stars ; to interpret all his glowing words about it as
the description of some visionary state which has
no relation to this world. That was not the pur-
pose of his mission ; that is not the meaning of his
gospel. Recall the words of that prayer which
he taught his disciples ; surely that must embody
all that is essential in his doctrine : and there is
not one word in that which signifies that you and
I are ever to live in any other world than this.
There is no intimation of a wish that we may go
to heaven ; it is a prayer whose sole burden is that
heaven may be brought to earth. That is the great
meaning of the Master — always his first meaning.
It is not to some unknown commonwealth that his
counsels and commands apply, but to this world
in which we live. If his laws have jurisdiction
anywhere, they have jurisdiction now and here, in
street and market, in factory and counting-room.

The real meaning of this gospel is beginning to
appear even to minds which have not been in sym-
pathy with its teachings. Thus, John Fiske, rising
from the contemplation of the fact that humanity
is gradually throwing off the brute inheritance —
passing out of that primitive social state " in which
he was little better than a brute toward an ulti-
mate social state in which his character shall have

THE CHRISTIAN LAW OF LIFE 129

been so transformed that nothing of the brute can
be detected in it," cries out : " AYhen have we ever
before held such a clue to the meaning of Christ in
the Sermon on the Mount — * Blessed are the meek,
for they shall inherit the earth ' ? In the cruel strife
of centuries has it not often seemed as if the earth
were to be rather the prize of the hardest heart and
the strongest fist ? To many men these words of
Christ have been as foolishness and a stumbling-
block, and the ethics of the Sermon on the Mount
have been openly derided as too good for this
world." ^ Yea, verily ; and now it is an evolutionist
who stands up in the assemblies of a half -believing
church and points out to them that the kingdom
for which they have been praying so long, but
whose advent they have put far away into some
distant millennium, is nigh, even at the doors.

" Truly," answers one genuine prophet of this
generation, — " truly, the children of this world
are wiser in their generation than the children of
lio:ht. . . . While the Christian theorist insists that
human selfishness is ineradicable, the movement
of an unregenerate society is tending to a point
where altruism will be accepted as a scientific ne-
cessity. Men have already so far comprehended
the divine teachings of nature as to know that
there is no individual health except through the
health of the community. They find also, now that
^ The Destiny of Man, p. 105.

130 THE CHRISTIAN LAW OF LIFE

they undertake vast industrial and commercial
enterprises, that, having called so largely upon na-
ture's vitalities, they are confronting also her larger
spiritual meanings, unheeded hitherto ; and that
their vast and complex machinerj^, with its accel-
erations through steam and electricity, will not
work without incalculable waste, friction, and un-
certainty as to its beneficent result to any one con-
cerned in its management, except through a human
fellowship in its control as universal as nature's
own cooperation thereivith. Thus the children of this
world, keeping close to natural uses, stand face
to face with vitalities whose laws point to Christ,
and compel them at least to assume that selfishness
is impracticable. Shall not the Christian accept
the reality when worldly science cannot evade the
similitude ? " ^

To the young men before me,^ let me especially
commend this truth. Some of you are already the
pledged disciples of the Master whose word we have
been studying. I trust that this discussion may have
helped you to see that in choosing him as your
Master you have made no mistake ; that his word
is indeed the sure word ; that his way is the only
way. Is not this clear to all of you ? Are there not
good reasons for believing that this Galilean peas-
ant, who nineteen centuries ago so clearly laid down

1 God in his World, p. xxxvii.

2 Williams College, June, 1893.

THE CHRISTIAN LAW OF LIFE 131

the law of the soul and of society, is the very Mes-
siah of God — Leader and Lawgiver and Captain
and King of men ? What nobler standard can you
find, what better leadership can you follow, than
that of Jesus of Nazareth ? And this law of his,
that you save your life by losing it, — has it not
been made plain to you that it is the law of life ?
Is it hard for a brave and chivalrous young man to
catch the spirit of this law ? Does it not at once come
home to him that self-surrender to a lofty ideal is
the truest self-mastery ; that he who loses himself
in enthusiastic devotion to the highest good he
knows, most surely finds himself ? Cling fast to this
conviction, I beseech you ; let it not go ; keep it,
for it is your life. It is not by what you try to get
out of the world that your life will be enriched ; it is
by what you give to the world. Join yourselves not
with those who seek to levy tribute upon the earn-
ings of thousands, but rather with those who study
to lift the burdens and brighten the lives of their
fellow men. I believe that the world is readier to-
da.y than ever before to recognize and welcome a
heroic Christliness. I believe that wonders can be
wrought in the industrial realm by men who will
put the spirit of Christ into the organization of
industry. I believe that great victories for purity
and decency can be won in any community by a
faithful few who will throw themselves into the
political arena with the same motive that sends a

132 THE CHRISTIAN LAW OF LIFE

missionary to Africa or a soldier into the slender
ranks of the forlorn hope. Great work is waiting
for you, young men ; I hope that you are getting
ready for it. I hope that you will find it and do it
with your might.

May God guide you into his own right way, and
gird you with his might, and clothe you with his
beauty, and fill you with his peace, so that round
about you, wherever you shall stand, there shall
be clear spaces for thought and work, so that out
of your lives a virtue shall issue which shall enrich
the poor, and comfort the sorrowful, and make the
burden-bearer strong ; so that, losing your lives in
Christly service, you shall keep them unto life
eternal.

VIII
FREE FROM THE LAW

Now we know that what things soever the law saith, it speaketh
to them that are under the law. — Rom. iii. 19.

For sin shall not have dominion over you : for ye are not under
law, but under grace. — Rom. vi. 14.

A SHARP distinction is here drawn between the
condition of those who are under the law and of
those who are not. Whatever may be the apostle's
conception of the law, it would appear, from these
texts, and from others of the same tenor, that there
are two classes of men, one of which is under the
dominion of the law and the other of which is free
from the law. And from some of these texts, taken
out of their connection and interpreted with verbal
narrowness, the doctrine has been drawn that Chris-
tian believers are not under law ; that no moral
obligation rests on them ; that they are free to do
what they will. This Antinomianism, as it is called,
has infested the church in all ages ; several of the
epistles attack it ; the Gnostic sects in the early
centuries taught it. Luther had a hard fight with it,
in the person of Agricola ; and in the days of the
English protectorate it had great vogue in England,
so that the Westminster Assembly of Divines was

134 FREE FROM THE LAW

obliged to testify against it. The doctrine is an
exaggeration of the gospel, as contrasted with the
law. If Christ delivers us from the condemnation of
the law, men said, then the law has nothing more to
do with us ; in our behalf it is abolished ; Christ has
suffered its penalty for us ; its claims are therefore
canceled, and we are free from its bondage. The
conduct of believers was therefore supposed to be
a matter of no consequence ; they were not saved
by their own good works ; they were saved by faith
in Christ ; good works were the beggarly elements
from which they were delivered ; there was merit
enough in the sacrifice of Christ to cover any
amount of transgression.

It is evident that men were carrying the doc-
trines of grace to this absurd extreme in Paul's
day, for he protests vehemently against this con-
clusion. " What then ? " he cries ; " shall we con-
tinue in sin that grace may abound ? God forbid."
There have been phases of theology in our own
time which have come perilously near to this
notion. That good Orthodox woman who said
that of course Unitarians had to be better than
the Orthodox because they had n't any atonement
to believe in, had got the idea. The belief has
not been at all uncommon that by the acceptance
of Christ as a substitute, one was freed, to a con-
siderable extent, if not wholly, from the power
of the law. There is a hymn which conveys.

FKEE FROM THE LAW 135

doubtless, to the minds of many who sing it, this
idea : —

" Free from the law, oh, happy condition !
Jesus hath bled, and there is remission ;
Cursed by the law and bruised by the fall,
Grace hath redeemed us, once for all.''^

So far as this suggests the abrogation of law,
it arises from an utterly unspiritual conception of
law, from a purely quantitative notion of morality
and its sanctions ; from a theology which borrows
its ruling ideas from mechanics or from commerce,
and has no understanding of the real forces which
are at work in the realm of character.

Paul uses the word law in various senses ; it is
only by uniting and comparing many passages that
we get at his meaning. I will not enter into this
textual elucidation; let it suffice to say that the
foundation of the moral law is laid in the order of
nature, in the constitution of man. Paul tells us
in this epistle that when Gentiles who have no law
— • no written law — do by nature the things of the
law, " these, having no law, are a law unto them-
selves ; in that they show the work of the law writ-
ten in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness
therewith, and their thoughts one with another ac-
cusing or else excusing them." That is where the law
is primarily written, in the nature of things and in
the nature of man. This means simply that things
are so made and that man is so made that right

136 FREE FROM THE LAW

conduct brings health and life and happiness to the
obedient while wrong conduct brings to the disobe-
dient disease and disorder and death, physical and
moral.

What is right conduct ? It is conduct that tends
to the perfection of being; conduct whose result
will be to make us the men and women that we are
meant to be. Right conduct is conduct which falls
in with that " stream of tendency by which all
things fulfill the law of their being ; " wrong con-
duct evades or resists that tendency. Sin is law-
lessness, the apostle says. It is the transgression
of the organic law of the nature. It is acting con-
trary to nature, to the real nature, which God has
impressed upon the soul. It brings, therefore, as
its natural and inevitable consequence, weakness,
disorder, suffering, death. Every violation of the
soul's law is followed by such consequences. The
moral constitution is under law in the same way
that the physical constitution is. If you transgress
the laws of health, if you eat unwholesome food,
if you breathe bad air, if you sit in a cramped
position, if you overstrain nerves or muscles, you
suffer the consequences of this transgression. In
exactly the same way, if you act selfishly or deceit-
fully, or cruelly or dishonorably, the consequences
inmiediately and inevitably follow ; your moral
nature is weakened and disordered ; your person-
ality is degraded.

FREE FROM THE LAW 137

Such is what we may call the natural moral law,
— the law which is impressed upon the nature of
man, and rules inflexibly all his conduct.

But, parallel with this law of nature, there is an
ideal morality, which reveals itself in our thought
and feeling, of which what we call conscience is
the witness. Something outside of us and above us
is always saying to us, " You must do right. The
way of righteousness is the way of life ; the way
of disobedience is the way of death." Something
within us consents to that law that it is good.
There is a feelino^ of oblio^ation to do that which
we believe to be right. To our choice alternatives
are constantly presented ; there is a higher and a
lower, a better and a worse ; a way that leads to
life and a way that leads to death. In multitudi-
nous forms this .choice is always before us ; every
day and every hour we may take the higher or the
lower good ; the path that conducts to integrity and
manhood or the path that goes toward moral en-
feeblement and degradation. And we know, all the
while, that we ought to choose the higher instead
of the lower. Our judgment may sometimes be at
fault ; the thing which seems best to us may not
infallibly be the best ; but our conscience never
fails to tell us that we ought to do the thing which
seems to us right. When we do that conscience
approves, and its approval gives us strength and
peace. When we fail to do that conscience dis-

138 FREE FROM THE LAW

approves, and its disapproval causes remorse and
feebleness of will and a sense of degradation. The
deepest thing in us is this sense of right and wrong ;
this feeling of obligation to do the right and shun
the wrong, to choose the good and refuse the evil.

Such, then, is the law, the moral law, which
governs our lives. It has this twofold character ;
it is incorporated into our natures, and goes on
working out its consequences there : it is revealed
in our consciences as the moral ideal, which bids
us choose the higher good and fills us with a sense
of guilt and shame when we fail to choose it.

Are there any of us who are now, or who ever
were or ever will be free from the moral law, in
either of these aspects ? Are there any of us who
are released from the obligation to do right? Are
there any of us who are not bound to choose the
higher good instead of the lower ; the better in-
stead of the worse ; the way of life instead of the
way of death? Is the responsibility to obey the
ideal of conduct relaxed or remitted for any of us ?
Is there one of us who can do the thing which he
believes to be right and honorable and beautiful
and not have a feeling of satisfaction and self-
approval because of his obedience ? Is there one of
us who can do the thing which he believes to be
mean and weak and unworthy and not have a sense
of guilt and shame and humiliation ?

Considering the law on the other side as working

FREE FROM THE LAW 139

itself out in our nature, — are any of us free from
that or can we ever be? Is there anyone here who
imagines that he can violate the law of his soul
with impunity ; that he can be selfish or brutal or
false or foul and not suffer instantly and inevitably
the reaction of that disobedience upon his own
moral nature ?

No ; this law, in both these aspects, is forever
binding upon every moral being. There is not a
saint on earth or an angel in heaven in behalf of
whom it is even for one instant remitted or relaxed.
There is not a saint on earth or an angel in heaven
who is not and will not forever be under the ob-
ligation to do right; who is not to blame if he
does wrong, and who does not know it ; who is not
promptly and instantly rewarded if he does right
and punished if he does wrong. The law which
brings peace and health and strength and life to
the right doer, and remorse and weakness and death
to the wrong-doer, is never, for one instant, in any
world, set aside or suspended in its operation, any
more than the law of gravitation is set aside or the
laws of chemical reaction are suspended. You can
never get out from under that law until you get out
of God's universe.

What, then, does Paul mean, when he says that
the Christians to whom he is writing are not under
the law ?

He does not mean that the natural moral law,

140 FREE FROM THE LAW

the operation of moral cause and consequence, is
ever repealed or suspended. He is speaking rather
of the relation of the soul to the ideal rule of right,
the law of the mind, — disobedience to which brings
down upon us the sense of guilt and shame.

When a man tramples his own ideals under foot
he blames himself, and he cannot help feeling that
the Unseen Power above him, which lifts up this
ideal before him and bids him obey it, also blames
him. He is false to his own better nature ; he is
disobedient to the heavenly vision in which, as he
very well knows, is the master light of all his see-
ing. He is under condemnation. That is a burden
which every one of you has borne. You have done,
more than once, what your better self disapproved.
A higher and a lower path were open before your
feet and you chose the lower. You stifled your
own sense of honor or justice in yielding to the dic-
tates of appetite or passion or selfishness or cow-
ardice. Therefore you disapproved of yourself. You
blamed yourself. And you knew that God must
also blame you.

Now the first thing for you to understand is that
this feeling of guilt and blameworthiness is a sound
and true feeling. What conscience is telling you
is the everlasting truth, and you must not deny or
belittle it. The sense of guilt is just as natural a
feeling as is the smart of a burn. Christian Science
may tell you that the burn does not smart, but you

FREE FROM THE LAW 141

know better. A false philosophy of life may tell
you that you need not be ashamed of yourself when
you have done a base or a mean thing, but you
know better. There is a good deal of this kind of
philosophy in the air nowadays, and nothing can
be more pestilent. You are sometimes told that
nobody needs to blame himself when he has done
wrong ; that it was probably an error ; that circum-
stances were responsible for it ; that he probably
did the best he could at that moment. All such
teaching is deadly. It saps the very foundations of
character. It obliterates the primal distinctions of
morality. It gives the lie to the whole testimony'
of human consciousness, since the world began.
Was David a victim of self-delusion when he cried :
" I acknowledge my transgressions and my sin is
ever before me ? " Was Judas mistaken when he
flung down the thirty pieces of silver saying, •' I
have sinned, in that I have betrayed innocent
blood?"

Putting aside the Bible, what is the witness of
all the great literature, ancient and modern? Is
that grim tale of Dante's a meaningless symbol ?
Are Shakespeare's pictures of remorse in " Mac-
beth " a false interpretation of life ? Was Richard
III. merely a superstitious dreamer when he awoke
on that night of agony, in which his misdeeds
had been filing in procession past his couch, and
cried : —

142 FREE FROM THE LAW

" 0 coward conscience, how dost thou afflict me !
The lig^hts burn blue. It is now dead midnight.
Cold fearful drops stand on my trembling flesh.
What do I fear ? Myself ? there 's none else by.
Richard loves Richard ; that is, I am I.
Is there a murderer here ? No. Yes, I am :
Then fly. What, from myself ? Great reason why :
Lest I revenge. What, myself upon myself ?
Alack, I love myself. Wherefore ? for any good
That I myself have done unto myself ?

0 no ! Alas, I rather hate myself

For hateful deeds committed by myself !

1 am a villain : yet, I lie, I am not.

Fool ! of thyself speak well ; fool ! do not flatter !
My conscience hath a thousand several tongues.
And every tongue brings in a several tale.
And every tale condemns me for a villain.
Perjury, perjury in the highest degree,
Murder, stern murder in the direst degree.
All several sins, all used in each degree.
Throng to the bar, crying all. Guilty ! guilty !
I shall despair. There is no creature loves me,
And if I die no soul shall pity me.
Nay, wherefore should they, since that I myself
Find in myself no pity to myself ? "

Is Robert Browning ignorant of the true facts of
human nature when he j^ictures the old man Martin
Relph, remembering a deed of his youth, that may
have been weakness or may have been jealousy, and
beating his own head with his fist while he cries : —

" If I last as long as Methuselah I shall never forgive myself ;
But — God forgive me, that I pray, unhappy Martin Relph !
As coward, coAvard I call him, — him, yes, liim ! Away from me !
Get you behind the man I am now, you man that I used to be ! "

FREE FROM THE LAW 143

This sense of guilt for sins and faults and mean-
nesses is the last thing any man can afford to ignore
or explain away. The first step toward manhood is
to face it, and own it, in all sincere humility and
contrition. That brings a man under the law, and
he feels the weight of its condemnation resting on
him. That is the natural, wholesome, right reaction
of sin in the consciousness of the sinner.

But he cannot remain in that condition. The load
will crush him, if he cannot be relieved of it. For
many and many of us the memory of past sins is
a discouragement and an impediment ; it clogs our
feet and unnerves our purpose when we try to turn
to better ways. We are under the law, in very deed.
It has got us down, and it taunts us with our mis-
deeds and failures. Is there any way to get rid of
that feeling of condemnation ? It is just here that
we must have help, and it is just here that the Gos-
pel brings us the help we need. What it undertakes
to do for a man is to get him out from under this
load. How does it do it ?

Does it tell him that God does not care about his
sin — does not disapprove it — and therefore he
need not ? No ; it does not tell him any such thing ;
if it did he would know that it was lying. He knows
that the Infinite Purity cannot but disapprove his
sin. He knows that the apostle's reasoning is sound :
" If our heart condemn us, God is greater than our
heart, and knoweth all things."

144 FREE FROM THE LAW

What the Gospel tells him is that God does
disapprove his sin ; nay, that his sin, which causes
pain to him, causes God a still deeper pain. It
makes that plain to him in the life of Jesus Christ,
whose perfect manhood is the perfect revelation of
divinity. The attitude of Jesus Christ toward sin
represents the Father's feeling. And we know that
the sin of the world laid a heavy burden on the
heart of Jesus ; that the selfishness and meanness
and malice of men made him the Man of Sorrows,
wrung from him the bloody sweat of Gethsemane.

And yet we know that deeply as he disapproved
the sins of men he did not despise them nor despair
of them, but loved them in spite of all, and believed
in them, — in the worst of them, and labored and
suffered to hplp them and save them. And he tells
us that in all this he is one with the Father ; that
the very meaning of his life is to show us the
Father; that like as he is wounded for our trans-
gressions and bruised for our iniquities, through
his identification with us, so the Father in heaven,
while grieving over our sins, loves us and longs to
help us.

This is the Father's forgivingness, which Jesus
manifests and illustrates. It does not mean the
repeal of the moral law or any suspension of its
action ; it has to do with the personal feeling of
God toward men who have sinned. " What is for-
giveness ? " asks Dr. W. N. Clarke ; and answers

FREE FROM THE LAW 145

thus : '' To forgive is to say to one who has done
wrong (and to have it true), ' I do not think of
you or feel toward you as one who has done this ;
I do not hold it in my heart against you ; I leave it
out of my thoughts, so that it does not embarrass
the relation between you and me ; it is between us
as if it had not been.' "

This is the assurance which comes through Jesus
Christ to sinnino^ men. It makes us see and under-
stand that the Infinite Purity is also the Infinite
Compassion ; that while the Father in heaven can-
not approve our sin and does not wish that we
should extenua^te it, he loves us in spite of it, and
is ready to pledge the infinite resources of his grace
to help us overcome it. This is the assurance which
brings hope and courage to the sinner. He feels
that while such is the attitude of the Infinite Love
toward him he has no right to be discouraged
about himself or to despise himself ; he is stirred
up to make the fight against the evil and to over-
come. Thus the sense of condemnation disappears,
being submerged in the tides of the divine mercy.
His trust in the forgiving love of God has made
him free from the bondage of the law.

There is still another way in which the Gospel,
when it is heartily received, makes us free from the
bondage of the law. So long as any one is doing
right merely or mainly from the sense of external

146 FREE FROM THE LAW

obligation, the law rests heavily upon him. Even
when he obeys it, it lies on him like a yoke, and it
often galls him. He does what he ought to do, but
he finds small pleasure in it. He is under the law.
Now it is far better to do right from a sense of
duty than to do wrong in obedience to an impulse.
But there is something far better than the action
whose motive is a sense of external obligation. One
may get into a state of mind in which he shall do
right from the impulse of good-will or enthusiasm
or affection, and not under the compulsion of law.

Employees are apt to find the strict rules irk-
some which require them to be on duty promptly at
a given hour, and which hold them to a rigid per-
formance of all their tasks. But suppose that some
day the employer says to them : " You need not be
hirelings, unless you choose ; I shall be glad to
make you partners, and a full share of the profits
of the business may be yours." Then, immediately,
if they are men of the right spirit, a new motive
takes possession of them. Their motive is no longer
the obligation of the rule, but the interest of the
business ; they are no longer under the law ; they
do the things which the law required for another
reason and in another spirit.

The illustrations of this truth are so many and
so familiar that I do not need to dwell upon them.
The musician who has got beyond the slavery of
technique, so that the spirit of the music takes

FREE FROM THE LAW 147

possession of his soul and utters itself freely, with
no painful thought of the movement of the fingers ;
the writer who no longer needs to think about the
laws of grammar or rhetoric but whose thoughts
spontaneously find expression in good literary form ;
the gentleman who has obeyed the laws of good-
breeding until they have become to him a second
nature, and the artless and unstudied language of
his life is courtesy, — all these give us some hint
of what is meant by passing out from under the
law. But there is something better than this. For
love is the fulfilling of the moral law, and the law
is never perfectly obeyed until a genuine affection
takes possession of the soul. It would seem natural
that when the great gospel of the divine mercy and
forgivingness is brought home to the heart of a man,
when he is made to understand that, in spite of
his sin, God loves him and longs to help him, an
answering love would spring up within him. How
can he help responding to such kindness as this,
with all the energy of his nature? What other
wish or purpose can he have but that of yielding
all his heart and soul and mind and strength to the
loyal service of this Almighty Friend ? And if that
impulse takes possession of his heart, the law will
no longer be to him a bond or a fetter or a goad.
The things which the law requires will be the
things that he will do spontaneously ; the statutes
of God will be songs in the house of his pilgrimage ;

148 FREE FROM THE LAW

the drudgery of obedience will become the delight
of loving service.

These, then, are the two ways in which the gos-
pel of Christ, when we heartily receive it, brings
us out from under the law. It banishes the de-
pressing sense of condemnation which torments us
on account of our past misdoing, and assures us of
the love that casteth out fear : it inspires us with
a great affection which makes the yoke easy and
the burden light.

I wonder if any one is here to whom the memory
of past misdeeds and failures is a heavy load, —
whose sense of condemnation for the past is so deep
and keen that he is discouraged and hopeless about
the future. My friend, you probably know your
New Testament well enough to recall the attitude
of Jesus Christ toward the people who were fur-
thest from the ways of righteousness. You know
enough about him to be sure that if he were here,
you could go to him, and tell him all about your
bad past, and be sure of his sympathy and friend-
ship. The purest, the truest, the noblest soul that
ever lived on this planet would treat you in that
way, if he were here. And he would tell you
that his feeling toward you is the feeling of the
Father in heaven. If you believe that, what right
have you to let those old memories haunt you and
shadow you and paralyze your will when j^ou try to
do right. What can you do but

FREE FROM THE LAW 149

" Drop your burden at his feet
And bear a song- away ? "

And I wonder if there are any disciples here who
are still laboring on under the goad of conscience,
driving themselves to duty, wearing the yoke of the
law, and galled by it often. Oh that to some of
you there might come to-day some revelation of the
great Friendship, the patient, tender, gracious, for-
giving, yearning, all-encompassing, never wearying
love of God for you, for you ! How much he has
done for you ! How much he has borne with you !
How often your waywardness and thoughtlessness
and selfishness have given him pain ! Yet all the
light and charm, all the beauty and grace, all the
hope and happiness of your life, are his gift to you ;
and he is always waiting to fill your soul with his
peace, and to crown your life with his loving-
kindness. If some dim sense of this great love of
the Lord and Giver of life could find its way into
your heart, I think you would stop doing drudgery ;
you would find some other motive for service than
the dry constraint of obligation. The law of love is
the perfect law of liberty. It does not cancel obli-
gation, but it transfigures it. " Whoso looketh into
the perfect law, the law of liberty, and so continu-
eth, the same being not a hearer that forgetteth but
a doer that worketh, this man shall be blessed

IX

THE LESSON OF THE CROSS

Giving- thanks unto the Father, who made us meet to be par-
takers of the inheritance of the saints in lig-ht ; who delivered us
out of the power of darkness, and translated us into the kingdom
of the Son of his love ; in whom we have our redemption, the for-
giveness of our sins. — CoL. i. 12-15.

We hear, quite often, in these clays, from the most
earnest preachers of the evangelical churches, strong
protests against the tendency to ignore the atoning
sacrifice of Christ. The deepest truth of the gospel,
they say, is contained in that doctrine of atonement ;
a theology which has no room in it for that central
truth will have no power over the lives of men.

I think that the point is well taken. The truth
which is made known to us in the sacrifice of Christ
is the central truth of the gospel. Without it our
doctrine is shorn of its power.

Certain it is that the apostles regarded it as the
very burden of their message. It was not merely
Christ the teacher or Christ the leader to whom
they were pointing men ; it was Christ who died
for us upon the cross. " I preach Christ crucified,"
cried Paul. " To the Jews he is a stumbling-block
and to the Greeks foolishness ; but to them that are

THE LESSON OF THE CROSS 151

called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ crucified is the
power of God and the wisdom of God." " God for-
bid that I should glory," he cries again, " save in
the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ."

And this has been the conviction of all the great-
est preachers of all the generations. Even those
known as Liberals have recognized the power which
resides in the cross of Christ. It was a good Uni-
tarian, Sir John Bowring, who wrote, following
Paul : —

" In the cross of Christ I glory,

Towering- o'er the wrecks of time ;
All the light of sacred story

Gathers round its head sublime."

It was Samuel Longfellow, a brother of the better
known poet, and a great Unitarian hymn writer,
who reshaped Charles Wesley's words, and set his
own seal to them, thus : —

" When my love to Christ grows weak,
When for deeper faith I seek,
Then in thought I go to thee.
Garden of Gethsemane.

*' There I walk amid the shades,
While the lingering twilight fades,
See that suffering, friendless One,
Weeping, praying there, alone.

When my love for man grows weak,
When for stronger faith I seek.
Hill of Calvary ! I go
To thy scenes of fear and woe ;

152 THE LESSON OF THE CROSS

" There behold his agony
Suffered on the bitter tree ;
See his anguish, see his faith,
Love triumphant still in death."

It was Dr. Frederic Henry Hedge, one of tlie
great philosophic teachers of Harvard University,
and, perhaps, the greatest of the Unitarian theolo-
gians, who wrote : —

"It is finished ! Man of sorrows !
From the cross our frailty borrows
Strength to bear and conquer thus !

' ' While extended there we view thee,
Mighty Sufferer, draw us to thee,
Sufferer victorious."

It would, indeed, be a strange travesty of the
gospel of Christ which disregarded the signifi-
cance of his death, or put little or no emphasis
upon it. Can you conceive that Christianity would
have had the conquering power over human hearts
that it has shown itself to possess if Jesus had
taught the same truth which we find in the gospels
— (omitting, of course, his own references to his
death) — and had lived the same life of service and
beneficence which is there described, but had died in
his bed — a natural death — of disease or old age ?
Would our Christianity be anything like what it
has been if the story of the cross and the passion
had not been its central theme ? Any thoughtful

THE LESSON OF THE CROSS 153

person would be able, after a very little reflection,
to answer these questions.

The earnest evangelical preachers are right, then,
in saying that there is a truth here which must not
be neglected. But, after all, not one of these ear-
nest evangelical preachers, if he is a really thought-
ful and spiritually minded man, can teach to-day
the same doctrine of Christ's death that was com-
monly taught fifty years ago. Sometimes, I fear,
there is a little insincerity just here. There is a
pretense of going back to the old doctrine, when
the preacher knows that the old doctrine has ceased
to be believable ; and there is an adroit use of am-
biguous phrases which seem to convey the old sense
but can be used in a very different sense. It is not
a subject concerning which we can afford to be in-
sincere. Here, if anywhere, we must be simple and
honest. And if we are, we shall say that the doc-
trine of the atonement, the theory of the atonement,
has greatly changed during the past generation.

What we found to be true of the doctrine of sin
has, however, been equally true of this doctrine of
sacrifice. In getting rid of the errors with which
the truth was overgrown, a good many of us have
thrown away the essential truth itself. Explana-
tions of the significance of Christ's death were
offered us that shocked our moral sense and con-
founded our reason. We have rejected those explana-
tions, and in doing so have, perhaps, rushed to the

154 THE LESSON OF THE CROSS

illogical conclusion that there was nothing there to
explain. That is a serious mistake. There is much
to explain. There is the death to explain, and its
relation to Christian experience in all the ages, and
to the whole of human history. It means some-
thing. It means more than any other event that
ever happened on this planet. Not to comprehend
the truth which is revealed in] the death of Jesus
the Christ is to lack what is ^essential to a real
Christian experience.

Let us say, then, that we are deeply interested
to understand not merely the teachings of Jesus
Christ, but also his sufferings. IIi_^lteachings can-
not be interpreted without understanding his suf-
ferings. If you disregard his sufferings, how will
you explain these words of his : " If any man will
come after me, let him deny himself and take up
his cross and follow me ? "

In his sufferings, we may say, " Christ does
something for us, and something in us."

What is it that he does for us ? We often say
that he dies for us ; but we cannot mean by this
that he dies instead of us — as a victim enduring
the death that we deserved. We cannot say this
because it ascribes injustice to God. We cannot
believe that God transfers to an innocent being the
penalty that belongs to a guilty being. Christ does
not suffer, as our substitute, the penalty of the law,
because the very essence of the moral law is that

THE LESSON OF THE CROSS 155

each man bears his own blame, and that substitu-
tion is impossible. Nor is it true that he dies to
appease the wrath of God, or to endure suffering
which God is willing to accept as the vindication of
his law so that he may safely forgive the sinner.

All these judicial, legal, governmental explana-
tions of the death of Christ are simply incredible ;
the unsophisticated moral sense is shocked by the
suggestion of them ; they have passed from human
thought. Christ does, indeed, die for us ; he dies
in our behalf ; his sufferings are endured in our
interest and for our benefit. He dies for us just as
he lives for us. / This does not mean that he lives
instead of us, so that we need not live ; it means
that he lives in such a way as to make his life serve
us, minister to us, enrich us, inspire and ennoble us.
In like manner his death is a great ministration
to our deepest needs, — our need of knowledge and
of virtue.

It reveals to us, first, something that we did not
know, and that has never in any other way been so
clearly revealed, concerning the nature and character
of God. It reveals to us the fact that our God is a
suffering God ; that he is not merely just and pure
and holy, but that he is capable of suffering with us
and for us, on account- of our sins and our griefs.

We may not be able fully to account for Jesus
Christ, but the one thing which seems most sure
about him is, that he represents or manifests God to

156 THE LESSON OF THE CROSS

men. This is what he claims to do, and his claim is
justified. We have learned from him that we are
all sons of God ; but we see that he is the Son of
God in a more perfect sense than any of " us ; his
character is the reflection of the divine character ;
he is the brightness of the Father's glory and the
express image of his person ; he is the most perfect
revelation that the world has ever seen of divinity.

The character of Jesus therefore reflects for us
the character of God ; and when we see Jesus suf-
fering on account of our sins, — bearing our griefs
and carrying our sorrows ; when we know that he is
wounded by our transgressions and bruised by our
iniquities, then we rightly judge that the Father in
heaven is pitiful and compassionate, that our suffer-
ings burden his heart and that our sins grieve him.

Here is the lesson of the cross, — the one great
lesson that the world has learned from the sacrifice
of Christ — that infinite Power is infinite Pity:
that the great Creator and Ruler is One who suffers
with and for his children.

That truth could hardly have been gathered from
those theories of the atonement with which we have
been familiar. According to those theories the First
Person in the Trinity was One whose function it was
to inflict or impose suffering ; he was One whose jus-
tice demanded suffering for his satisfaction. A part
of the Godhead was pitiful, but another part was
pitiless. The Son was ready to suffer and the Father

THE LESSON OF THE CROSS 157

accepted the suffering of the Son as the equivalent
of the suffering which he must otherwise have in-
flicted on disobedient men. In the light of these
theories God was not a sufferer, — it was even
denied with indignation that God could suffer ;
that was even deemed one of the most dangerous of
heresies. Since he is a perfect being, men argued,
he must be perfectly blessed ; to ascribe to him grief
or suffering is to impugn his perfection. Theology
was never entirely consistent along this line ; indeed
the best things in theology have often been its incon-
sistencies. For it was certainly believed that the
divine Christ was a sufferer, and it was also taught
that his suffering was not wholly experienced by the
human side of him ; that his divine nature must also
share in it. But of late the newer religious think-
ing has boldly affirmed that a divinity which could
not suffer would be undivine — less divine, indeed,
than our humanity. Dr. Fairbairn's orthodoxy can
hardly be impugned, and we find him saying : " The-
ology has no falser idea than that of the impassi-
bility of God. If he is capable of sorrow he is
capable of suffering, and were he without the ca-
pacity for either he would be without any feeling of
the evil of sin or the misery of man. The very
truth that comes hy t/esus Christ may he said to be
summed up in the passihility of God^^ — God's
ability to suffer.

The suffering Christ reveals and manifests the

158 THE LESSON OF THE CROSS

suffering God. This is the very significance of the
garden and the cross.

But what is the explanation of Christ's suffering ?
Why does he suffer ? What is it that wrings from
him in the garden the bloody sweat, — that fills his
soul with the horror of great darkness as he hangs
upon the cross?

Is it the dread or the experience of physical an-
guish ? No : that is an unworthy explanation. That
would be an accusation of weakness or cowardice.
Many a man has faced death and torture in utter
serenity of soul. It is not the fear of pain that made
the cup so bitter which Jesus pressed to his lips in
the hour of his passion.

Nor was it the sense of his Father's displeasure
with him. No : let us not blaspheme ! Can any
one imagine that the man Christ Jesus, in the hour
of his sublimest devotion to his Father's will was
under his Father's frown ; or that the infinite Good-
ness and Truth could feign an anger toward him
which he did not feel? The crudities of interpre-
tation have been many and fearful, but they have
not sunk to any lower depth of unreason than when
they twisted the outcry of agony upon the cross
into the dogmatic statement that the Son on the
cross suffered the Father's displeasure.

No ; it was not the dread of physical pain, nor
was it any sense of his Father's wrath, that filled the
soul of the Christ when he said in the garden, " My

THE LESSON OF THE CROSS 159

soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death." It
was his overpowering sense of the sin of the world.
It was the view that he had in that dark hour of
the selfishness, the malice, the treachery, the cruelty
of human hearts. The men among whom he had
lived, whom he had never wronged, whom he had
always sought to comfort and to bless, to whom he
had offered the most unselfish love that earth had
ever seen, had spurned his love and were going to
put him to death, simply because his truth rebuked
their falsity, and his kindness convicted them of
uncharity, and his purity shamed their uncleanness.
These were the men whom he loved, whom he
wanted to help and save. What a tragedy it was !
The more he loved them, the more he must abhor
the sin which had taken possession of their lives.
And it was the struggle in his soul between his
love for these men and his hatred of their sin,
that made his soul exceeding sorrowful even unto
death.

Some of us may have known something of this
kind of agony. I have seen a father whose love for
his son was deep and strong and constant, who had
spent the best energies of his life in trying to con-
fer the best gifts on his son, standing dumb and
stricken in the presence of evidence of his son's
treachery and perfidy. The boy for whom he had
been ready to give his life was ready not only to
rob his father, but to plunge the whole household

160 THE LESSON OF THE CROSS

into grief and shame. What could such a father
do ? If he were the holiest, the wisest, the best of
men, what would he do ?

One thing he could not help doing. He must
take upon his own soul the great burden of shame
and sorrow that this sin had brought with it.
Suffer he must, because he has the heart of a
father. The deeper and the truer is his love for
his son the more poignant must be his suffering.
And it is not his own losses that chiefly distress
him ; it is his sense of the depravity which has been
revealed in the character of his boy. That evil he
hates with a perfect hatred, and the soul that hates
the sin while it loves the sinner must be torn with
a terrible suffering. " Mercy," says Dr. Abbott,
" is hate pitying. It is the wrath of a great right-
eousness flowing out in a great compassion. It is
the reconciliation of these two experiences, the ex-
perience that hates and the experience that pities ;
and because it hates will destroy iniquity, and be-
cause it pities will destroy iniquity. If we are ever
to save our fellow men we must save them by this
mercifulness which is a joint experience of a great
hatred because of wrong and a great pity because
of wrong. Both of these elements must be within
us or we can make no step toward saving the wrong-
doer. In Wagner's drama, Parsifal is besought by
the wicked Kundry to accept her love and love her
in return. *No,' he says, ' 1 cannot and I will not.'

THE LESSON OF THE CROSS 161

' Come down,' she says, * for one hour to my love
and take it and give your love in return ; ' and he
answers, ' Were I to do it, it would be damnation
both for you and for me.' There is no way he can
save her except he retain the hatred for the iniquity
in her ; for if he sacrifices that he will not save her,
he will only destroy himself. If he did not pity
her, his wrath would destroy her ; if he did not
revolt from her his unwrathf ul pity would doom
both him and her to a common destruction. For it
is never possible for any one to save another unless
he has in him both these elements."

So this great-hearted father, of whom we are
speaking, must be relentless in his hatred of the
sin which has brought his son to the brink of ruin.
Love for the boy which was merely a good-natured
fondness, which deplored the disgrace and trouble
he had brought upon himself, but made light of
the wrong which he had done, would never save
him. He cannot be saved unless he can be made
to hate and abhor his sin as his father hates and
abhors it. The one thing needful for him is to see
in a true light and to judge with a clear judgment
his own base conduct. It will never do for him to
ignore it, or belittle it, or think lightly of it. No :
there must arise in his soul a mighty revulsion from
it ; he must set himself against it and put it out of
his life. Therefore his father must not ignore it
or belittle it or think lightly of it. The natural

162 THE LESSON OF THE CROSS

suffering which it causes the father may have the
effect to awaken in the mind of the son the proper
feeling toward it. When he sees how it hurts his
father, and knows that his father's pain is not any-
selfish feeling, but that it is wholly inspired by com-
passion for him, he may be aroused to some proper
sense of his own conduct. That, at any rate, is the
only motive that will reach him. The father's suf-
fering may reveal to the son the father's love and
his own sin, and may bring him to hate the sin as
his father hates it, and to accept the love that seeks
to save him from it. If that motive does not reach
him and reclaim him, nothing will. The suffering
of a righteous love — a love that will not compro-
mise with sin, but that clings to the sinner — is the
only power that is adequate to save from sin.

This was the love of Jesus Christ for men ; and
since we believe that the character of Jesus Christ
represents to us the character of God more clearly
than that of any one who ever lived, we believe
that this is God's love for men. This is the truth
that is brought to light in the garden and on the
cross. It is the greatest truth that was ever made
known to men ; and I do not know where in his-
tory it has ever been clearly revealed except in the
scenes of the garden and the cross.

This, then, is what Christ does for us in his suf-
fering. He reveals to us the heart of God. It is of
vast consequence that we should know both these

THE LESSON OF THE CROSS 163

truths about God, — that he loves us with an infi-
nite compassion ; that he hates our sins with a
perfect hatred.

"It is only by human experiences," says Dr.
Abbott, "that we can interpret the divine. We
are certainly not to think of God as one who is
wrathful and who has to be appeased by some one
outside of himself. We are certainly not to think
of him as though he were an infinite and eternal
Shylock who must have his pound of flesh, and is
appeased only because there is at his side a more
merciful Bassanio who will give the price and let
Antonio go free. But neither are we to think of
him as though good nature were synonymous with
love, as though he were an indifferent and easy go-
ing God who cares more for the present happiness
than the real character of his children ; who says,
' You have done some wrong things, you have com-
mitted some faults, you have fallen into some errors,
you have some stains upon you ; but we will let it
all pass ; it is of no great consequence.' We shall
never enter into the mystery of redemption unless
we enter in some measure into these two experi-
ences of wrath and pity, and into the mystery of
their reconciliation. We must realize that God has
an infinite and eternal loathing of sin. If the im-
pure and unjust, the drunkard and the licentious,
are loathsome to us, what must be the infinite
loathing of an infinitely pure spirit for those who

164 THE LESSON OF THE CROSS

are worldly and selfish, licentious and cruel, am-
bitious and animal. But with this great loathing
is a great pity. And the pity conquers the loathing,
appeases it, satisfies it, only as it redeems the sin-
ner from his loathsomeness, lifts him up from his
degradation, brings him to truth and purity, to
love and righteousness ; for only then is he or can
he be brought to God."

In showing you what Christ does for us in his
suffering, — what is the revelation that he makes
to us of the divine character, — I have also clearly
suggested what it is that he does in us. If he re-
deems us from our sin, it is by getting us to see our
sin as God sees it, and to hate it as God hates it ;
in getting us to believe that God loves us in spite
of our sin ; in getting us to accept the loving help
of God in resisting and overcoming it. When that
is done in us, we are saved, and never till then.
That is the revelation of the heart of God which is
made to us in the life and death of Jesu^ Christ.
It is made in part in his life and teachings, but it
could not have been fully made without the agony
of the garden and the cross. And when it takes
hold of us, and shames us, and humbles us, and
compels our trust and draws forth our affection,
then Christ, as Paul says, is formed in us ; and we
are ready to strive to put away our sins, and to rise
with him into newness of life.

But there is nothing, as you see, in all this, that

THE LESSON OF THE CROSS 165

is legal, or judicial or governmental; there is no
transference of penalty or guilt ; the transaction is
all moral or spiritual ; it is the struggle of right-
eousness and love in the heart of God which reveals
to the sinner his lack of righteousness and his need
of love.

There is a great lesson in all this for those of us
Vv^ho wish to have part in this great work of redemp-
tion. If it were a legal or governmental work, of
course we could have no part in it ; for we are not
called to administer the divine government, or to
enforce the law of God. But if it is a work that is
all done within the realm of character, — if it is a
work which depends wholly on moral and spiritual
forces, then we may have something to do with it ;
and the call to be partners with Christ in his sav-
ing work is not a meaningless call. And I suppose
that no man is ever truly saved who is not inspired
with the wish and the purpose to be a savior. If
this desire is kindled in our hearts, we shall need
to take the yoke of our Master upon us, and learn
of him. There is no salvation without suffering;
every savior must be a sufferer. We cannot save
men without so identifying ourselves with them,
that their sin and their shame become, through
sympathy, a part of our experience. We must love
them enough to be willing to suffer for them and
with them, that they may be saved. The deeper is
our affection for them, the more revolting to our

166 THE LESSON OF THE CROSS

moral sense will be the vice and greed and brutal-
ity tliat are destroying them ; their sins wiU pain
us, at first, far more than they will pain them ; but
if they can be sure that we really care for them, they
may at last be brought to hate their sins as we hate
them, and to strive to put them away.

This is the lesson that we must learn if we want
to rescue the vicious and the wayward and the de-
graded and the miserable, and bring them back to
life and happiness. Both these elements must be
in our characters, — the righteousness that hates
sin, the love that yearns over the sinner. Right-
eousness without love is powerless ; love without
righteousness is degrading. When the two unite in
a struggle for the sinking soul, there is suffering,
and it is only through the suffering that there can
be salvation.

The two elements are often separated. There are
plenty who hate sin and are bitter enough in their
condemnation of it; whose moral judgments are
very keen and stern when they deal with the mis-
doings of their fellows ; who are ready to censure
and punish iniquity, but who have no love for the
sinner that moves them to identify themselves with
him, and share his shame and misery, so that they
may save him. On the other side there are many
who are full of a goody-goody philanthropism which
coddles and pets transgressors, which makes them
think that they are as good as the best of men,

THE LESSON OF THE CROSS 167

if not a little better, which sends them flowers in
prison and makes light of all their offenses and
thinks to reclaim them by a sentimental charity
that blots out the eternal distinctions of righteous-
ness. Neither of these ways of dealing with the
wayward and the depraved will be found effectual.
We can do nothing worth while for any human
being who is in deepest need unless we have in our
hearts a love that identifies us with him, — a right-
eous love that feels his sin as a stain or a wound,
and that makes him feel it too ; that will not gloss
over his offenses, and make him comfortable in
them, but that is ready to fight to the death for him
and with him, in recovering his manhood.

There is also a great lesson in all this for those
who know that they have sinned and need salva-
tion. Do not, my friends, imagine that there is any
legal scheme by which the penalty due to your sin
is to be inflicted on some innocent being, so that
you may go free. Do not conceive that by any
kind of legal arrangement God's displeasure may
be averted from you, and his favor guaranteed to
you. Nothing of that kind would satisfy your own
sense of justice. On the other hand, you must not
suffer yourself to believe that the Eternal God in
whose image we are made is one who is indifferent
to the evil that infests your life. He can no more
be indifferent to it than you can be indifferent to
the signs of depravity that you find in the character

168 THE LESSON OF THE CROSS

of the child whom you dearly love. You know that
the better man you are, and the more tenderly and
truly you love your child, the keener would be the
pain if you found him false or cruel or brutish.
If you, being evil, can suffer so much when your
child goes wrong, how much more must the infinite
Purity suffer when you go wrong. If you want
some inkling of how he suffers, look at Jesus in the
Garden. That comes the nearest to telling it of
anything that the world has ever seen. That is the
kind of love with which you are dealing, — a holy
love, a righteous love — which cares for nothing in
you so much as the values of character ; which can
never be satisfied till you are sound and pure and
true ; which must always suffer with you, and for
you, until you turn from your sin, and let him save
you by his love.

That, my friend, is what redemption means. You
see that it means suffering ; that the loving Father
of such children as we are must needs be a Sufferer.
Patterson DuBois tells us what is the true attitude
of a father toward his disobedient child. " We are
not," he says, " to say : ' I will conquer that child,
no matter what it may cost him ; ' but we are to say,
' I will help that child to conquer himself, no mat-
ter what it may cost me.' " That is the Fatherhood
of God as Jesus has revealed it ; that is the signifi-
cance of Gethsemane and Calvary.

I hope that this great truth has been made plain

THE LESSON OF THE CROSS 169

in this discussion. I have tried to use the simplest
words, and to avoid embellishments. It is not a
theme for rhetorical treatment ; it calls for quiet
tones and homely phrases. If it has not conveyed
to you a deeper and diviner meaning in the suffer-
ings of Christ than the traditional explanation
gave, then something essential has been lost in its
transmission from my mind to yours. That it is a
truth of tremendous import ; that it throws a flood
of aeonian light on all our philanthropic problems ;
that it shows us very clearly what our personal rela-
tion to God must be, — what is done for us and
what is done in us to save us from our sins, I hope
that you can see.

I wonder if any one can think seriously of this
truth that the cross reveals, — this truth of the
suffering love of God for us men, — and not be
touched and moved by it. What a pathos it lends
to life to know that such love as that is watching
us, waiting for us, grieving over us, longing to help
us, — yea, that even now it is wounded by our
transgressions and bruised by our iniquities ; that
a wrath that is holden by a love that will not let
go, and a love that is pitiless toward the sin that
destroys the soul, are struggling evermore in the
heart of the Father above. Is there no answer
from our human hearts to this great compassion,
this seeking, pleading, suffering love of the God
and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ?

WHO CAN FORGIVE SINS

Jesus therefore said to them again, Peace be unto you : as the
Father hath sent me, even so send I you. And when he had said
this, he breathed on them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the
Holy Ghost : whose soever sins ye forgive, they are forgiven unto
them ; whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained. — John
XX. 21-23.

This occurred after our Lord's resurrection, on
the evening of that first day of the week on which
he rose from the dead. The disciples were gathered
together and the doors were shut, for fear of the
Jews, and they were all talking, eagerly and wist-
fully no doubt, of the reports that had come to
them of his reappearance, when suddenly he came
in, unannounced and unnoticed, and st©od among
them, saying, " Peace be unto you ! " " The dis-
ciples therefore were glad when they saw the Lord."
It is not at all like a ghost story; his presence
among them seemed to them perfectly simple and
natural. And again he said unto them, " Peace be
unto you ! " How deep was the Master's wish that
his disciples should share his peace ! Is it not, in-
deed, the one gift of which most of his disciples in
these days are most in need ? What better word

WHO CAN FORGIVE SINS 171

could he speak to this company than to stand here
in the midst of us and stretch forth his hands and
say, " Peace be unto you ! You anxious, troubled,
restless, feverish, toiling, worrying souls, let me
share with all of you my peace ! "

" As the Father hath sent me," he goes on, " even
so send I you." Surely, if we are going out into
the world, as he did, to confront its sin, its mad-
ness, its envy, its spite, we need his peace in our
hearts.

" And when he had said this, he breathed on
them, and saith unto them. Receive ye the Holy
Ghost." It is a most impressive symbolism. In
many languages — in the language which our Lord
used as well as in our own — " the spirit does but
mean the breath." And what he meant was that
the spirit which had dwelt in him, the very life of
his life, the essential truth and love which he had
incarnated and manifested, was to pass into their
lives ; that, as he in his life had manifested God
to men, so, in their measure, should they in their
lives.

And now, because they are to be the sharers of
his life, inheritors of his spirit, he conunits to them
another august and momentous function. It is that
of forgiving sin. " Whose soever sins ye forgive,
they are forgiven unto them ; whose soever sins ye
retain, they are retained."

There is no use in beating about this passage

172 WHO CAN FORGIVE SINS

and trying to explain it away ; there it is, in lan-
guage most express and intelligible : the power of
forgiving sins belongs to the company of those who
have received from their Lord the impartation of
his life, who are partakers and inheritors of his
spirit. One of the modern commentators thus tries
to dispose of these words : " The meaning of the
passage is not that man can forgive sins ; that be-
longs only to God ; but the meaning is that they
[the Apostles] should be inspired ; that in found-
ing the church and in declaring the will of God
they should be taught by the Holy Ghost to de-
clare on what terms, to what characters, and to
what temper of mind God would extend forgive-
ness of sins. It was not authority to forgive indi-
viduals, but to establish in all the churches the
terms and conditions on which men might be par-
doned, with the assurance that God would confirm
all that they taught ; that men might have assur-
ance of forgiveness who would comply with those
terms, and that those who did not comply should
not be forgiven, and their sins should be retained."
It seems to me that this is about as complete an
evasion of the Master's words as could possibly be
fabricated. AYhat he says is not at all that his
disciples should have power to declare tlie terms on
which God will forgive sins, but that they them-
selves should have the power to forgive them. And
yet you will observe that it is to the body of the

WHO CAN FORGIVE SINS 173

disciples, and not to any individual, that this power
is given. There is no shadow of a hint that this is
an official function, committed to the priesthood
and withheld from the people. The Koman Catho-
lic notion of absolution — that it is only the priest,
in his official character, who can declare the for-
giveness of sins — finds no support in this nar-
rative. That notion, wliich is the foundation of
sacerdotalism, and which prevails not only in the
Roman Catholic Church, but in some sections of
the English Church, has wrought much mischief.
It was not to some powerful ecclesiastical machine,
it was not to some agent of that ecclesiasticism, it
was not to some class of religious officials, that this
power was committed. Those who were present on
this occasion were, as John tells us, " the disciples,"
not merely the Apostles. Luke informs us that
this company included " the eleven and them that
vjere with them^ And in the Acts of the Apostles
he makes it probable that the women, and Mary,
the mother of Jesus, and his brethren were present
on this occasion. There is no intimation that it was
upon the eleven Apostles, called apart from the
rest of the group, that Jesus breathed, saying unto
the,m., " Receive ye the Holy Ghost." If such a sep-
aration of them from the rest of the company had
occurred, it must have been mentioned. Every
trait of the narrative leads to the conclusion that
the whole company shared in this symbolical im-

174 WHO CAN FORGIVE SINS

partation of the divine spirit, and were included in
this divine commission. That the clergy, as the
successors of the Apostles, have the power to for-
give sins, and that this power does not belong to
the laity, is a conclusion to which this narrative
gives no color. And St. Peter himself, who is
sometimes supposed to have received this power in
some especial degree, declares in his first Epistle
that the people — not the elders nor the officers
of the church, but the people — *' are built up a
spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood." Peter
himself makes no claim of j^ower to exercise this
priestly function; he says that it belongs to the
people.

But the commentator whose words I have quoted
reminds us that Isaiah has reiDresented Jehovah as
saying that God only can forgive sin. This is his
citation : " I, even I, am he that blotteth out thy
transgressions." I am at a loss to know how this
text proves the doctrine. It simply asserts that God
does forgive ; it does not deny that man may for-
give. The Scribes and Pharisees are the only au-
thority, so far as I know, for the limitation of this
power to Deity. " Who can forgive sins but God
alone ? " was their indignant query when our Lord
once told a poor sufferer that his sins were forgiven.

It is the constant assumption of the teaching of
our Lord that men may and must forgive sin ; that
it is the fundamental duty of the Christian. Many

WHO CAN FORGIVE SINS 175

of his most impressive parables enforce this duty ;
no one ever offers the Lord's Prayer without ac-
knowledging it : " Forgive our debts, for we have
forgiven our debtors."

" But this," it will be said, " is not exactly what
we are talking about. Doubtless it is our duty to
forgive those who have trespassed against us, —
that is, to hold no grudge against them, to cherish
no personal resentment toward them. We may for-
give the injuries which they have done us ; but that
is not what is meant by forgiving their sins." I
answer that the highest Christian obligation to the
man who has injured us is not discharged when we
simply make up our minds that we will not cherish
a grudge against him. That may, in many cases, be
about all that we can do ; his state of mind may be
such that nothing else can be done for him ; but it
is by no means all that the genuine Christian spirit
will wish to do for him. The real forgiveness of sins
is not merely the cancellation of their penalties ; it
is the loosening of the sins themselves from the
heart of the sinner ; it is the fruit of that gentle
graciousness which softens the bad temper, and kin-
dles a better purpose, and gets the bad mind out of
the man, so that his offenses shall be repugnant to
his own feelings, so that he shall no longer find
any pleasure in his transgressions. This is what
Paul means when he says, "Be ye kind one to
another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, even

176 WHO CAN FORGIVE SINS

as God also in Christ forgave you." This means
a great deal more than ceasing to hold grudges
against those who have injured us ; it implies a
spirit and a purpose which sincerely compassionates
the wrong-doer — which is sorry for him more than
for ourselves ; which recognizes the fact that he is
doing himself a far greater wrong than he is inflict-
ing on us ; which will not rest until the evil spirit
that infests his life is somehow exorcised.

What are those great words of Paul's ? " For-
giving one another, even as God in Christ forgave
you f " Is that simply giving over the grudge — for-
bearing retaliation? Has the Christly forgiveness
this extent, no more ? No ; it is a forgiveness whose
main purpose it is to change the mind and the heart
of the sinner ; to conquer his alienation ; to sup-
plant hate by love, and suspicion by trust, and fear
by confidence. And we are to forgive one another
in the same way that God in Christ forgives us.
Our forgiveness, like his, is not merely wiping ojBf
the old score ; it is a patient, generous, self-sacri-
ficing effort to save the sinner from his sin.

It seems very clear to me, therefore, that what
our Lord says in the text is to be taken exactly as
he says it, with no abatement or evasion. His disci-
ples in this world are co-workers with him in every
part of his work. We are partners with him in his
death, in his resurrection, in his work of atonement,
in his work of redemption. We fill up that which

WHO CAN FORGIVE SINS 177

is behind of the sufferings of Christ ; we are cruci-
fied with him that we may rise and reign with him ;
we sit with him upon his throne. And, this being so,
the work of forgiveness is a part of the work of every
Christian disciple. To the church on earth this
function is especially committed. We might almost
say that it is the main business of Christian men
in this world to forgive sins. Surely that was our
Master's main business here ; and if we are sent
into the world upon the same errand that brought
him, it must be our main business too. Have we
ever so conceived of it? Has not this truth, as I
have sought to present it, — that the work of the
church is very largely the work of forgiving sins,
— struck your minds with some surprise ? How
sad and strange it is that a truth so nearly funda-
mental should be so utterly obscured by centuries
of dull philosophizing !

I have said that the power of forgiving sin be-
longs to every Christian disciple, and belongs to
him precisely to the extent to which he has received
the spirit of Christ and is identified with him in
his work of salvation. All those who have fully
realized the meaning of that symbolical act which
is described in the text — all those into whom the
Lord has truly breathed his own spirit — possess
this power. It is possible for all such, not only to
suppress their own resentments on account of the
wrongs which they have suffered ; it is also possible

178 WHO CAN FORGIVE SINS

for them to forgive sins, in a very much deeper and
more radical sense than this — sins which have no
reference to themselves at all.

Here is one who has brought sorrow and loss and
shame upon himself by his own misdeeds, and who
is now overwhelmed with a sense of his folly and
sin, and feels that he has made shipwreck of life.
In the depths of his remorse and despair there
comes to him a friend whose character he knows to
be pure and blameless, in whose truth and integrity
he has perfect confidence ; and this friend takes
him to his home, and speaks cheerful and reassur-
ing words to him, and tells him that he must not
despair ; that all is not lost ; that out of that decay-
ing past may spring a better future — even as the
new life of the plant springs from the decaying
seed ; that God's love and help are for the neediest
and the most miserable ; and that the love and the
help of all God's true children are for them also.
What effect would such a manifestation of friend-
ship have upon this unhappy man? What other
effect could it have than to lift, at any rate in part,
the burden of shame and woe that was crushing him
to earth; to send a ray of light and hope through the
darkness which was girding him round ? The fact
that a man as good as he believes this one to be
can think kindly of him and cherish hope for him
is like a cooling draught to the thirst of fever ; like
the cordial to the fainting heart. The doom of the

WHO CAN FORGIVE SINS 179

evil is not remediless, for this love and grace have
come in with a blessed alleviation. And this for-
giveness, revealed to him by this good man, helps
him to believe in God. " If there is such sympathy
and divine pity in the heart of godlike men," he
reasons, " what must there be in the heart of God
himself ? " And thus he comes back to hope and
faith and courage, and is set free, in large measure,
from the fetters with which his own sins had bound
him.

What is this but the very work of the divine for-
giveness ? And it is wrought in the life of this man
by the revelation to him of the divine love in the
heart of his brother. You may say that it is God
who really forgives him, it is true, but it is God
revealed in the life of a man. Such marvels are
wrought every day, all round the world, by love
divine manifested in human lives. And yet there
are those who will argue that there can be no such
thing as forgiveness — no such thing as the remis-
sion of sins. Nothing but law, they will tell you ;
nothing but stern, inexorable, relentless law ; all talk
about setting a man free from the consequences of
his sin is sentimental foolishness. Well, I believe
in law as strongly as anybody believes in it, and I
can see the dire consequences of sin, and I know
that so long as any man persists in doing wrong
those consequences will not cease to be visited upon
him ; but I can also see that there is something in

180 WHO CAN FORGIVE SINS

this world deeper and diviner and mightier than law,
and that is love. The consequences of the man's
sin — its worst consequences — were the moral
helplessness and despair in which it left him ; that
was the chain with which he was bound ; but love
came in and loosed this chain and set him free ;
made him believe in the possibility of a better life.
Strange that men who see this kind of work going
on before their eyes should doubt the possibility of
God's forgiving grace, should fail to see that the
greatest thing in the world — in all the worlds —
is not law, but love. The trouble is, of course, that
there is so much less of this kind of work 2:oino: on
than there ought to be. The world is never without
examples of such divine beneficence displayed in
human lives ; but they are, after all, far less fre-
quent than they should be at the end of the nine-
teenth Christian century. If you and I had only
understood what Jesus meant when he breathed on
his disciples and sent them forth to forgive and save
their fallen brethren, skepticism about the divine
forgiveness would find small footing in the neigh-
borhood where we live. For it is only men with this
foro'ivino^ and savino* love in their hearts who can
make their neighbors believe in the forgiving and
saving love of God.

To individuals, as I have shown, this power may
be communicated. Not to official individuals ; it is
a kind of power which officialism almost certainly

WHO CAN FORGIVE SINS 181

taints and perverts. No man can forgive sins ex
officio. That is the poison which paralyzes all kinds
of sacerdotalism. It is not by virtue of his office
that any man forgives sin ; it is by virtue of the
di^'ine life immediately communicated to him. And
this work of forgiveness will be done by him, not
when he assumes to do it, for the assumption of
such power does not at all help us to believe that
it is there ; it is the unconscious outgoing of human
love and sympathy that conveys it. It is not when
men pretend to speak for God that they really
reveal Jiim ; it is when they just speak out of the
tenderness and compassion of their own hearts that
they manifest the divine love.

But while the power of forgiveness does reside
in individual lives, — just to the extent to which
they are filled with the divine love, — it is also true
that this power is given in an especial degree to
the brotherhood of Christian believers. It was to
this brotherhood, as I have explained, that it was
first communicated. The main purpose for which
these disciples were banded together was that they
might receive the divine life and be able to mani-
fest it in this way. That is the purpose of the
church to-day. For I suppose that He who is the
Head of the church, and from whom all our life
comes, is saying to this brotherhood of believers,
as truly as to those in the upper chamber at Jeru-
salem, " Receive ye the gift of the Holy Ghost :

182 WHO CAN FORGIVE SINS

whose soever sins ye forgive, they are forgiven unto
them ; whose soever sins ye retain, they are re-
tained." O beloved, it is a tremendous responsibil-
ity that is thus committed to us ! Round about us,
on every side of us, in the shops and offices where
we spend our days, in the homes where we live,
here in these pews, how many there are who need
this grace of our forgiveness ! They have sinned,
and their souls are darkened and their hope is
quenched by their sin, and they go stumbling on,
lacking the courage to turn to better ways, needing
just the reassurance that our sympathy and love
might give them. If we would manifest to them
the divine goodness, they would be forgiven and
saved. How easy it is for a company of kindred
souls, all dowered with this divine compassion, to
gather round one of these hopeless and helpless
ones, and lift the burden of shame and despair
from him, and set him on his feet, and send him on
his way with a new song in his mouth ! How easy
it is — if only the spirit of Christ is in us ! I
knew one who, when a youth, fell into evil asso-
ciations, and was implicated in crime, and went to
prison. Some of the people of the church to whose
Sunday-school he had belonged found it in their
hearts to forgive him. They believed that he had
been more sinned against than sinning ; they be-
lieved that he could be saved ; they kept in com-
munication with him ; after awhile they secured for

WHO CAN FORGIVE SINS 183

him a pardon, and then they brought him home,
and set him in the midst of them, and said to him :
" Brother, the past for us is annihilated ; let it be
for you also. Go right back to your place in the
the choir, in the Sunday-school ; you have the same
friends you always had, only nearer and firmer
now, as your need is greater ; we will stand by
you ; you shall prove that you are a man." From
that hour the young man stood fast in honesty and
industry ; he rose to be a great manufacturer and
employer of men ; he poured out his gains by the
thousand in worthy charities ; the church which
had forgiven and saved him was enriched in after
years by his munificence. What worlds of just such
work as that are waiting at the door of every church,
— sometimes even within its doors, — and yet how
little of that work is done ! For, alas ! the other side
of this commission is fatally effective : " Whose so-
ever sins ye forgive, they are forgiven unto them ; "
yes, thank God! but "Whose soever sins ye retain,
they are retained." How many there are on whom
the shadow of disgrace has fallen who look in vain
for the glance of sympathy, who listen in vain for
the word of cheer ! In every company they meet
averted faces, garments pulled aside from the de-
filing touch, muffled words of greeting, as from
behind an impenetrable screen ! Nobody cares for
them, nobody sees any good in them, nobody be-
lieves in them.

184 WHO CAN FORGIVE SINS

Will you listen to these words ? I have cut them
from a newspaper that is in the hands of many of
you, but if you have read them once you can well
afford to hear them again : —

" There is a wonderful tonic in the consciousness
that others believe in us, see something aspiring and
noble in us, discern the possibility of recovery in
us. Discouragement and despair are the moods in
which men throw themselves away ; more men are
finally lost to themselves and to society in the hour
when no human being seems to believe in them
than at any other time. To make a man realize
that, despite all his sins, somebody still finds in
him ground for confidence and material for hope, is
often to revive his dying spirit and give him courage
for one more struggle with his temptations. When
everybody gives him up as lost, he is generally lost.
Faith is the vital spirit of great achievements, but
faith must find its resting-place in man as well as
in God ; one must inspire his fellow with its sub-
lime sympathy as well as inspire himself with its
sublime hope. There is no limit to the divine ten-
derness and love expressed in the words and works
of Christ, and there is, therefore, no limit to the
divine faith in the recuperative power of the human
soul ; for the unwearied seeking of those who are
lost is meaningless unless behind the search there
is faith in the power to find and succor. We ought
to believe in each other in the blackest times, be-

WHO CAN FORGIVE SINS 185

cause God believes in us. Not only did the dying
thief believe in Christ, but Christ believed in him.
The time to give up a soul as lost never comes in
this world ; God never deserts men, however they
may desert him. And the time to give faith its
greatest opportunity is the hour when the man has
lost all faith in himself ; when he feels that he has
severed all ties and stands friendless and solitary
in a world whose order he has violated. Faith ex-
pressed in another in such an hour has often been
the door through which a lost man has come back
to himself again, and in another's forbearance and
love has once more come to believe himself a child
of God."

It is the only door through which many of the lost
will ever get back to life again. There is a great
multitude to whom the divine forgiveness will never
be revealed unless it is revealed in human lives. If
the men and women who represent God stand aloof
from them, silent, unmerciful, they will not and can-
not believe in the pity and sympathy of God. We
are the ambassadors who are sent with this mes-
sage; we fail to convey it, and it never reaches
them. If we would forgive their sins, they would
be forgiven ; we withhold the love we ought to give,
and there is none to give it ; we retain their sins^
and they are retained, and the hapless souls go
darkling down to death bearing the burden of their
shame and woe.

186 WHO CAN FORGIVE SINS

O my people ! I would that we, who stand to-
gether in this brotherhood, could get some faint
conception of that solemn scene which we have been
studying, when the risen Christ bestowed upon his
church the benediction of his own spirit and life,
and called them to be his representatives in the
work of forgiving and saving men. For this is the
calling wherewith we are called ; this is the service
to which we are summoned. May he in his infinite
mercy forgive us that we so often have shut the
door of hope which he sent us to open, and have
stifled the word of life which he bade us speak.
And let us ask him once more, in all humility, to
breathe into our souls his own gracious spirit, that
we may find within our hearts the impulse and the
power of forgiving and saving men.

XI
THE MIGHT OF BEGINNINGS

Wherefore, if any man is in Christ, there is a new creation : the
old things are passed away; behold, they are become new. —
2 Cor. v. 17.

I HAVE given here the marginal reading of the
new version, which Is the exact rendering of the
Greek ; It Is not merely a new creature but a new
creation which results from the Implanting of the
Christ life In the soul. The Individual Is changed
and the change transfigures the environment. To
him, at any rate, the world Is a different world from
what It was before. Paul Indicates the significance
of the transformation by the word " Behold ! " It
comes to him with a delightful surprise. When the
cataract Is removed a new landscape, a new sky ap-
pear, with new meaning In human faces, and new
pleasure In all things beautiful. The change In the
powers of the man means a transformation of the
world In which he lives. If any man is In Christ
there is a new creation ; old things are passed away ;
behold, they are become new.

The m_arvel Is that such a change can take place
so quickly as here seems to be presumed. The

188 THE MIGHT OF BEGINNINGS

answer is that to the consciousness there need be no
such transformation. The figure of the couched
eye may here mislead us. The change which is
wrought in a man when the Christ life becomes the
central principle of his conduct does not always
signalize itself by such remarkable experiences.
That it does sometimes so reveal itself in human
consciousness, — that the man is made aware that
something very wonderful has happened to him is
not to be questioned. But I say that this is by no
means the uniform experience. And yet a mighty
change has taken place, even though the man may
have little comprehension of its significance. The
new creation is there, even though its beauty is yet
veiled and its vastness is undreamed of. " Now are
we the sons of God," cries the apostle, " and it
doth not yet appear what we shall be." The work
of regeneration has begun in us, and who can tell
the might and majesty of such beginnings.

Really, the most significant and wonderful things
in this world are what we call beginnings. In
life, that is to say in purely physical life, we hardly
know when to date the beginnings. The acorn is
the beginning of the oak ; the towering monarch of
the forest is there,- — the potency of it, every element
that lives in it, — in that small glossy inclosure.
When the acorn feels the moisture of the soil and
the warmth of the sun, and the germ begins to
swell, we say that the oak has begun to be. Even

I

THE MIGHT OF BEGINNINGS 189

ill that beginning there is something marvelous.
That there should be force enough in that small
germ to produce the giant tree that will wrestle
with the gales of centuries and produce the germs
of hundreds of thousands more like unto itself is not
much short of a miracle. Yet, after all, we cannot
quite clearly fix the beginnings of this life. It did
not really begin when the acorn sprouted ; it was
there before, packed away in its brown little casket,
waiting for months, perhaps for years. It was stored
there by the processes of growth while it hung upon
the parent tree. It was the life which was in that
parent tree that vitalized this acorn ; and the parent
tree drew its life from the acorn that inclosed its
germ. Thus we go backward, along this chain of
transformations, and we do not find the beginnings.
We only know that all these living things must
have derived their life from Him who is the only
source of life. " In the beginning, God." That is
all we can say. These processes of reproduction are
magical, — the crescendo and diminuendo of the
vital forces as they build up the organism, and then
shrink back into the germ — as they mount into
the stupendous Sequoia gigantea^ and then dwindle
to the tiny seed to which the life is bequeathed,
and by which it is perpetuated. All this is full of
wonder ; but we find here, after all, no true begin-
nings ; we have only the stages in an evolutionary
movement which has been going on for countless

190 THE MIGHT OF BEGINNINGS

aeons. Of all this we know that there was a be-
ginning ; and what a beginning was that, when God
said, " Let life be," and life was ! What a begin-
ning was that when, in the weltering inorganic
chaos, the first living cell trembled and palpitated
with the life that is the gift of God ! Out of that
beginning, what was yet to come ! — the mosses and
the grasses and the flower blooms and the forests ;
the fishes of the sea, and the insects in the sun-
shine, and the birds upon the wing, and the beasts
upon the earth, and all the tribes of humankind with
their age-long development of arts, letters, laws, —
with the rise and progress, the decline and fall of
empires, dynasties, civilizations ; with their thou-
sands of millions of human hearts beating with the
passion of love, the joys of home, the hopes of
heaven.

While, however, we cannot in any case distinctly
mark what we know to be a clear beginning of
physical life — since everything that lives draws its
life from a living parent — omne vivum ex viro —
yet there are, in the intellectual world and in the
spiritual world, true beginnings. " The soul," says
Lotze, "evolves from itself resolutions, starting
points for future movements. . . . The universal
course of things may at every moment have innu-
merable beginnings whose origin lies outside of it,
but can have none not necessarily continued within
it. When such beginnings are to be found we can-

THE MIGHT OF BEGINNINGS 191

not say beforehand with certainty ; but if experi-
ence convinces us that every event of external na-
ture is at the same time an effect having its cause
in preceding facts, it still remains possible that the
cycle of inner mental life does not consist through-
out of a rigid mechanism working necessarily, but
that along with unlimited freedom of will it also
possesses a hmited power of absolute commence-
ment ^ ^

There are, then, in the world of mind new things,
beginnings ; existences of each of which you could
have said, a little while ago, " It was not," but of
which you must now say "It is." Every conscious
human spirit is such an existence. There was a
time, my friend, when that mind of yours which
reasons and worships and hopes and loves, was not ;
there was a time when it began to be. I enter into
no speculation about the biological origins ; I am
talking about the conscious free intelligence ; and
that, I say, had a beginning. There is a date, not
very remote, which marks the origin of your think-
ing powers. That such a beginning should be, that
such a force should start from nothingness is, I
think, a miracle as great as any I have ever read
of. If to any man it is not miraculous, it is because
he has not thought of it.

But not only is there a beginning of existence to
every conscious intelligence, there are also many

1 Microcosmus, vol. i. p. 261.

192 THE MIGHT OF BEGINNINGS

beginnings of activities in every conscious intelli-
gence. "The soul evolves from itself resolutions,
starting points for future movements." Even in the
world of science this is true. For although science
is a collection of facts, and the facts on which it
rests have always existed, yet the triumphs of sci-
ence consist in putting these facts in their proper
relation, — in comprehending and stating them.
Science gives us not merely the facts, but the truth
about them. What is truth ? It is the correspond-
ence of thouo:ht and word to fact. The fact of
gravitation had existed from the morning of the
creation ; Newton seized it with his thought, and
put the thought into words ; he told the truth about
it. The fact was there in the atoms and the masses
of matter, but the truth had not yet dawned upon
the mind. The fact had always been, but there was
a moment when the truth began to be — when the
mind of the discoverer laid hold on the fact, and
set it in its relation to other facts, and thus made it
his own.

See Faraday in his laboratory, patiently experi-
menting, night and day, with his colls of wire, his
magnets, his voltaic piles ! Something is there, he
guesses, — but he does not know. It is something
that nobody yet has known, and that nobody but
him has guessed. For years he has been patiently
trying to get this guess to materialize. " I am busy
again," he writes to a friend, " on electro-magnetism.

THE MIGHT OF BEGINNINGS 193

and think I have got hold of a good thing, but
can't say. It may be a weed instead of a fish that,
after all my labor, I may at last pull up." Nine
days later he got it out of water, and it was not a
weed ; it was the tremendous fact of the induction
of electric currents, the discovery out of which have
come the immense developments of electric science,
of whose wonders we are just beginning to reap the
first fruits. There was a moment when this was a
mere hypothesis in Faraday's mind, such stuff as
dreams are made of ; the next moment it was not
a hypothesis, it was a scientific truth ; he had veri-
fied it ; he could say of it not, " It may be so," but
" It is so." Electrical induction had emerged from
the realms of intellectual chaos into the realms of
order and law ; it was a new creation. And what a
creation it was ! Nobody knew all that it signified ;
nobody knows yet ; but in that clearly ascertained
truth, reported by Faraday to the Royal Society,
November 24, 1831, was packed the vast outcome
of modern electrical science, as the oak is packed in
the acorn.

Here is Alexander Graham Bell groping after
a fact that his mind has not yet seized ; he has
followed the clue a long while, but it has eluded
him ; at last the truth dawns, the vision is verified ;
thought has wedded fact ; the conveyance of sound
by currents of electricity is no longer a possibility,
it is a reality. The telephone is all there, with all

194 THE MIGHT OF BEGINNINGS

that it implies, in that first successful experiment.
The apparatus is rude, but the principle is clear.
A few moments ago the telephone was not ; now it
is ; the idea, the constructive principle, the essence
of the whole marvelous method of communication
is there. You would not say of this rude machine,
" If it lives, and prospers, and is properly shaped
up and worked over and perfected, it will by and
by turn out to be a telephone ; " no : you must say
it is a telephone. It does the business. It carries
sound waves on electric currents. It may be im-
proved, no doubt ; it may be made a better tele-
phone, but a telephone it is to-day. This is the be-
ginning of its history.

And we must not fail to note that the step which
was taken when the induction of electric currents
ceased to be a conjecture and became a scientific
fact, or when the conveyance of sound by electricity
passed from a dream into a reality, was a far longer
step than any which followed in the development
of these principles. The difference between nothing
and something is far greater than the difference
between something and anything. From a poor
telephone to a good telephone the distance can be
measured ; from no telephone to telephone it is
immeasurable. It is this that makes beginnings
more significant and memorable than words can
exj^ress.

This truth about the greatness of beginnings

THE MIGHT OF BEGINNINGS 195

finds one of its illustrations in Christian experi-
ence. The New Testament teaches us that the life
of faith in Christ, the Christian life, has a begin-
ning. " Kepent ! " is its message. " Change your
minds. Begin anew. Get you a new heart, a new
spirit." It does not counsel us to make the old
life better; it calls on us to begin a new life. It
puts a strong emphasis on the need of beginning
anew.

This very fact is sometimes urged as a criticism
upon the Christian doctrine. " No such change is
possible," men say. " Character is not made in a
day. All this talk about being born again — about
becoming a new man — is misleading and mis-
chievous." Yes, it may be, if you do not un-
derstand it. Perfection of Christian character is
not reached in a day. The telephone was not per-
fected in a day ; but the idea, the essential tele-
phone, was born in a minute. So with the Christian
character. " Complete realization," says President
Harris, " lies in the future, but the type itself, in
the principle and power of it, is already actual.
Because the type now exists, its complete attain-
ment is to be expected. I regard this as one of the
most important considerations for Christian ethics
as well as one of the most unique features of the
Christian religion. It explains and combines the
statements of Scripture that man is to be saved
in the future and yet is saved in the present ;

196 THE MIGHT OF BEGINNINGS

that he will have and that he now has eternal
life."

The truth is, that becoming a Christian does
mean beginning a new kind of life. It is the aban-
donment of the life of self-pleasing, and the accept-
ance of the life of unselfish service. This is the gist
of it. To take Christ as Lord and Master and to
strive to become identified with him in heart and
life, can mean nothing less than this. We know
what kind of life he lived, and what must be the
nature of the life that we shall live if we become
his disciples. To become a Christian is to make
intelligent and resolute choice of this kind of life.
It is to look upon the Man of Nazareth, until the
real meaning of his life takes possession of our
thought, and then to say, with all seriousness, that
is the kind of man I am going to be, God helping
me.

Now, I have no doubt that there are many out-
side the church of God who have said this to them-
selves — or what amounts to this ; who are seriously
trying to live the unselfish life. Whenever or how-
ever they came into this state of mind it matters
not ; if this is their real purpose they are Chris-
tians ; theirs is essential Christianity, whether it is
nominal Christianity or not. But there are a great
many more, I fear, who have come to no such un-
derstanding with themselves ; who have no pur-
pose of living unselfishly ; who will hardly admit

THE MIGHT OF BEGINNINGS 197

that such a thing is possible ; who will frankly
say that they mean to look out for themselves, and
do not intend to be held back from pushing their
own interests by any fine notions about brotherly
love and kindness. There are a good many such
people, I fear, inside the Christian church. Of
course, it is not necessary to say that with them
the great beginning of which we are speaking, has
never taken place. That new creation, which Paul
refers to in the text, has not yet touched their lives.
Some of them are trying to improve the " old man,"
and are making very little headway ; the new man,
in Christ Jesus, has not been born in them.

Now let one of these, living a life that is con-
sciously self-centred, be brought to see that it is
not the true life for one of the sons of God, and let
him in his heart determine to live the life that
Christ lived — not to be ministered unto but to
minister ; not to get as much as he can from every-
body, but to give as much as he can to everybody —
when he has thoughtfully and heartily made that
choice, is it not true that he is a different man from
what he was before ; that the type has actually
changed ? The man may yet be very far from per-
fect ; the old selfishness and the ingrained mean-
ness are not extirpated ; he is often doing things
that he is ashamed of — and more things, perhaps,
that he ought to be ashamed of, and will be, when
his conscience is better educated ; but still this type

198 THE MIGHT OF BEGINNINGS

of the Christ life is before him ; this is his ideal ;
he knows that he has not attained, that he is not
yet perfect, but with Paul he follows after, if that
he may apprehend that for which Christ has ap-
prehended him. He sees the kind of man that he
means to be, and amid many discouragements and
defeats he presses on toward the mark of the prize
of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.

When this kind of life actually begins in any
soul, ever so feebly, ever so faintly, is it not a
mighty beginning? Is not this kind of life differ-
entiated, by the diameter of the infinite, from the
other kind of life ? Is it any extravagance to say
of one in whom this change has taken place, " There
is a new creation ; old things have passed away ;
behold, they have become new ? " And when a prin-
ciple like this has taken hold on a man's life, do we
not perceive that a power is at work which is able
to transform him utterly ?

" Starting points, epochs," says President Harris,
" are the points of chief importance. An intellec-
tual awakening occurs. The youth who had been
frivolous, fond of sports, a pleasure seeker, all at
once, by some book casually read, or under the
inspiration of a teacher, is aroused mentally and
finds himself in a new world. His intellectual char-
acter is changed, and he is already a scholar before
actual attainments have been made." I have seen
exactly this taking place more than once. Nay —

THE MIGHT OF BEGINNINGS 199

I must not withhold the confession — I have passed
through this experience. I was once a boy to whom
study was a burden, and I became a boy to whom
study was a delight. And this was not a growth,
it was an awakening. It took place because a strong
intellectual impulse came into my life. It took
place suddenly ; old things passed away, the old
indifference, listlessness ; all things became new ;
I had new purposes and ambitions. I was not much
of a scholar surely, and yet I had, in those first
hours, all the essential qualities of the scholar.
And when anybody tells me that a life cannot be
radically changed by the entrance of new ruling
ideas and purposes, I know better. So does every
man know better who has taken the least pains
to observe what is going on around him in the
world.

Changes of precisely this nature do take place
in the moral and spiritual life of men. Men are not
only gradually made better ; they are transformed^
as Paul says, by the renewing of their minds ; by
getting hold of a new idea of what life means. And
it is the greatest thing that can possibly happen to
a man, to get hold of such a new and noble idea —
an idea that commands the assent of his reason and
masters his will. " All is well with him now," you
say. " Loyalty to a truth like that will save him,
regenerate him, ennoble him. The work is not yet
done, but there is a power at work that wiU do it."

200 THE MIGHT OF BEGINNINGS

And this, the New Testament writers always as-
sume, is just what happens to a man when he comes
fully under the influence of Jesus Christ, and gets,
by induction, as it were, the mind of Christ into
his mind. He may still be a very imperfect man,
but he is a different kind of man from what he was
before, and he ought to know it. The type has
changed. There is a new ideal. Something of tre-
mendous importance has taken place in him, and he
ought to be aware of it, and to rejoice in it. It is
only a beginning, but beginnings are mighty. It
is a longer step than he will ever take again, even
though he rise to the heights of Christian attain-
ment ; for the difference between a self-centred and
a God-centred life is vastly greater than any differ-
ence between higher and lower in those who have
the Christ life in them.

My friends, I think that there are some among
you who need to lay hold upon this truth. You
have been trying, too long, to patch up and reno-
vate the old selfish scheme of life, and you know
that it is a difficult and a hopeless business. " No
man putteth a piece of a new garment upon the old ;
if otherwise, then both the new maketh a rent and
the piece that was taken out of the new agreeth not
with the old." What you really want is not to fix
over and piece out the old scheme of life, by which
you have undertaken to make yourself as comfort-
able as you can, and to have as little care as pos-

THE MIGHT OF BEGINNINGS 201

sible for anybody else, but to take up a new plan of
life altogether — a plan in which service, not mas-
tery, is the central idea ; a plan which shall involve
committing yourself, with all your powers and
possessions, to the same work that Jesus Christ
came into the world to do. Of course, when you
take up this purpose it will be only a beginning,
but it will be a mighty beginning, and you ought to
know and feel that it is. More than anything that
has yet taken place in your life, it will lift you up
and ennoble you. Perhaps some of you feel that
you are in danger of losing yourselves. Doubtless
there is danger. Do you not believe that this would
save you ? What will become of the petty griev-
ances and irritations which gall your pride and
wound your selfhood, when this great purpose te-kes
possession of your soul ? What are the losses and
the disappointments and the anxieties of our earthly
condition to one whose chief care is to do good to
all men as he has opportunity ? It is a new world,
indeed, into which a man is led forth, when Christ
is formed in him ; when his life is joined, by the
bonds of a living fellowship, with the life of the
Son of man. There is a new creation ; the morning
stars are sino^inoj tosjether and the sons of God are
shouting for joy. No one ever knows how beauti-
ful this world is, how fair its fields, how glorious
its skies, till he has looked upon it with eyes
anointed by a great affection. Under the spell of

202 THE MIGHT OF BEGINNINGS

such a revelation aU tasks are sweet, all burdens
light. Into this liberty of the glory of the sons of
God may some of you, who labor and are heavy-
laden, be led to-day, by Him who is the Way and
the Truth and the Life !

XII

THE OBSCURATION OF THE CHRIST

When Christ, who is our life, shall be manifested, then shall ye
also with him be manifested in glory. — Col. iii. 4.

Through all the epistles we find a note of suspense
and expectation. The consummation of the hopes
of these believers is deferred and they are anx-
iously awaiting it. They are identified with Christ
in all their thoughts and aims ; they live in him
and for him ; he is the champion of their days and
the inspiration of their dreams, but his glory is now
obscured : what they are waiting for is the mani-
festation of that glory to the world. The apparent
triumph of sin and death over him was only tem-
porary, of that they are confident ; the glimpses
that they had of him after his resurrection con-
vinced them of his power over all the forces of evil,
and they know that he must surely establish his
kingdom on the earth ; that he will come again and
reign till he shall have put all enemies under his
feet. Now he is beyond their sight, and the light
of his presence and the glory of his power are
hidden. But this period of obscuration cannot last.
He will be manifested in glory, and he will take to

204 THE OBSCURATION OF THE CHRIST

himself the kingdom. This is their faith, and it
nerves them to face governors and kings in calm
reliance upon his power ; to encounter hardship,
persecution, peril by sea and by land, in their great
work of proclaiming him as king and in calling on
all men to accept his leadership and to await with
them the revelation of his divinity. This was the
great hope which animated all the apostles of our
Lord, and all the writers of the New Testament.
Looking back to that dawn of the new dispensa-
tion, studying the words in which they set forth
their hopes, and trying to put ourselves in their
places, it is impossible not to see that they were
holding a great truth under an imperfect form. In
this, as in other matters, they saw, as Paul said, in
a blurred mirror dimly. They believed that the
man Jesus, whom they had known in the flesh, was
soon coming back to earth in human form, to set
up a visible kingdom here. Of course this visible
kingdom was, in their minds, only the outward
symbol of a spiritual kingdom ; what they really
longed for was the triumph of truth and love and
peace and good-will upon earth ; but they supposed
that this would be accompanied by and manifested
through the return of their Master in the form of a
man, to establish some kind of an organized visible
divine society on the earth. There is no doubt that
this was their expectation. Such a reappearance of
Christ they looked for to take place during their

THE OBSCURATION OF THE CHRIST 205

lifetime. Paul tells the Thessalonians very posi-
tively that Jesus is coming back to earth while they
are alive ; he argues to prove that those Christians
who shall have died will not miss the glory of the
reappearance ; that the living saints will have no
advantage over those who have gone on before, be-
cause the latter will be raised from their graves
to behold the glorious spectacle. About all these
details we now know that the apostles were mis-
taken. They must have misunderstood what the
Lord had told them ; they often misunderstood him
while he was here ; it is certainl}^ not incredible that
they should have put a wrong construction upon
words of his which they recalled after he had gone.
And we must not forget that their report of what
he said is all we have to go upon. If we find some
words of his respecting this matter which we can-
not understand, and which do not seem to have
been fulfilled, it is more reasonable to suppose that
the apostles misunderstood him than that he used
the language attributed to him.

It was, however, only the form and costume
of the great truth concerning which they were in
error. The substance of the truth they held and
taught ; that the Christ whom they trusted and
followed was hidden from the world, that his pre-
sence and his glory were now obscured, and that
by and by they would shine forth as the sun, — all
this was profoundly and grandly true. They could

206 THE OBSCURATION OF THE CHRIST

bear this temporary obscuration, because they knew
that the manifestation was sure to come. How long
the world would wait for this glory they did not
know, nor could they comprehend the way in
which the revelation of his divine royalty would
take place, nor did they fully understand " the
manner of the kingdom " which he would set up ;
but the fact that he was to be the Lord and Leader
of men, that his name was yet to be above every
name, they believed with all their hearts.

Perhaps this concealment of himself from the
world was part of what our Lord meant in that
word of his just before his crucifixion : " Except a
corn of wheat fall into the earth and die it abideth
alone, but if it die it bringeth forth much fruit."
It was not, perhaps, merely his death upon the
cross to which he referred ; it was the whole period
of his humiliation, and that was not ended by his
resurrection from the tomb of Joseph of Arima-
thea ; it is not ended yet. There were to be, as he
well knew, long centuries of obscuration, before
his glorious character should fully appear, and his
kingdom on the earth be fully established.

" The Life was manifested and we have seen it,"
is the triumphant announcement of the apostle
John. Yes, it was manifested. " The Word was
made flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his
glory, the glory of the only begotton Son of the
Father, full of grace and truth." But John puts

THE OBSCURATION OF THE CHRIST 207

this, already, in the past tense. This manifestation
was only for a brief space : suddenly the bright-
ness faded, and the gracious personality that re-
vealed God to man and man to himself passed
beyond our sight. Clouds have received and hid-
den him ; for the unveiling of his glory we must
wait, but it is sure to come. This is the mental at-
titude in which we always find the apostles, after
our Lord's departure from the earth. " We know
that he shall be manifested, " — this is what they
are always saying. As to the manner of his mani-
festation their ideas were dim and somewhat child-
ish ; that which was literal and material was min-
gled in their minds with that which was essential
and spiritual, and there have been many in all the
ages since who have seized upon their literal and
material errors and have failed to grasp the spirit-
ual and essential truth with which these errors were
blended.

May we not with entire safety assert that it is
the spiritual and essential Christ, rather than the
physical Christ, whose concealment from the world
is most to be deplored, whose revelation to the
world is the chief object of desire ? Is the presence
in this world of a physical frame in which the spirit
of Christ is incarnated, a consummation as devoutly
to be prayed for as the manifestation of the Spirit
of Christ in the church which is his body ? If any
intelligent Christian could by his choice secure

208 THE OBSCURATION OF THE CHRIST

the one or the other of these good things, which
would he wisely choose ? Which would the Lord
himself counsel us to pray for ? We may answer
this question more intelligently if we recall what
he said, just before his departure; that it was ex-
pedient for him to go that the Comforter might
come ; in other words, that his spiritual pi;esence
was far better for the world than his physical
presence.

His physical presence could be visible to no
more than a small fraction of the world's popula-
tion. With all the facilities for communication
that the world now possesses, it would be simply
impossible for one in a hundred of the dwellers
on this planet ever, during their natural lives, to
obtain a glimpse of the body in which the Lord
mig-ht dwell. And those who thus beheld him
would not all find profit in the sight. The prone-
ness of men to dwell upon that which is external
would be likely to find in this experience a striking
illustration. " Man looketh on the outward appear-
ance." It is an inveterate habit, and comparatively
few of the children of men ever go any deeper. In
Christ's time the people thought more about his
personal peculiarities than about his message. John
the Baptist came neither eating nor drinking, and
they said that lie had a devil ; Christ came eating
and drinking, and they called him a glutton and
a winebibber. It was not by the character nor by

THE OBSCURATION OF THE CHRIST 209

the doctrine that they judged either of them, but
by the mere external features of their life. You
will observe, to-day, that three fourths of the peo-
ple who criticise a public teacher are more con-
cerned about his gestures, his elocution, his man-
ner, than they are about what he has to say. What
such people would be thinking about if they saw
Christ in the flesh it is easy to conjecture. It is
expedient for you, he said, that I go away. You
yourselves will never understand me, the spiritual
power of my life will not appear to you, while I am
with you in the flesh.

It is not, then, I say, the hiding of his physical
presence that we have chiefly to deplore ; for that,
as he himself has told us, is gain rather than loss
to us. But his spiritual presence is also, in large
measure, hidden. The mind of Christ, the heart of
Christ, the life of Christ, how dimly have they ap-
peared to the church through all the centuries ! The
world knows more of them than it would have known
if he had been here in the flesh, yet how little it
knows ! May we not say that until this hour, the
Son of man has been very imperfectly revealed,
even to the best of his disciples ? We have the story
of Christ in the gospels ; we have the words that he
spoke, in part, and the recital of many of his deeds
of love and power; but, with this story in their
hands, how many even of the masters and the
teachers have ever seen the real Christ ?

210 THE OBSCURATION OF THE CHRIST

Had Christ been adequately revealed to the men
of the early church who taught that his atonement
was a clever trick by which he outwitted the devil ?
Read the account of that transaction as you find it
described by many of the old church fathers, and
judge whether they had ever fully discerned the
character of Christ. Was he fully revealed to the
men who have taught that he came to save a select
few out of the innumerable millions of hopeless hu-
man beings, letting the rest go down to eternal
burnings, without putting forth an effort to succor
them ? Was he clearly known to the men who taught
that he, as the Judge of all the earth, would con-
demn to everlasting woe children dying in infancy,
whose only fault was their descent from Adam?
Has he been fully revealed to those who conceive
that he is satisfied with rescuing a portion of the
race from sin and ruin and taking them away to
heaven, while he leaves this world to wax worse and
worse continually, and finally to be consumed with
fire ? Have those sectarians who shut one another
out of fellowship, and wage destructive rivalries in
their zeal for notions which never entered into his
mind, ever truly known him ? To the millions of
persecuting Catholics on the one hand and of perse-
cuting Protestants on the other, arrayed against one
another in deadly enmity, has the true character of
the Master they profess to serve ever been made
known ?

THE OBSCURATION OF THE CHRIST 211

Might we not say that the whole period of Chris-
tian history is little more than a record of the
obscuration of Christ ? Some elect souls in all the
ages have discerned his true character, and have
fully entered into his life ; and something of his
grace and truth have come to the great multitude
of those who have professed his name. There has
never been a total eclipse of his glory ; his light has
been always shining, and bountiful and beautiful
have been the fruits that have grown from even this
imperfect illumination. The men who taught those
horrible doctrines were far better men than their
theories would have made them ; the sectarians of
to-day, by a happy inconsistency, are often kind and
brotherly. But, after all, the true confession of
Christ's church until this hour must be, " Now we
see as in a blurred mirror dimly." The promise,
" Thine eyes shall see the King in his beauty," is
not yet fulfilled.

What is the reason of this imperfect revelation
of Christ to his followers ? It can be no other than
the reason which hindered his disciples from un-
derstanding him while he was here. How often he
was compelled to complain of their lack of appre-
hension. The light shone in the darkness and the
darkness comprehended it not.

To one who is destitute of sight, the brilliancy
of noon, the gorgeousness of sunset, the splendor of
the starry firmament, make no appeal. The glory is

212 THE OBSCURATION OF THE CHRIST

there, but the power to behold it is wanting. How
could the spiritual beauty, the moral sublimity of
Jesus Christ, be revealed to a man like Pilate, or
even to such an undeveloped moral nature as that
of Peter ? Something above them they all saw in
him ; something that affected them strangely ; some-
thing that made Pilate tremble, and that kindled a
wondering admiration in the breast of the fisherman
apostle ; but, after all, how far away he was from
the thoughts of the best of them !

In all the ages since, the same thing has been
true. "If our gospel is veiled," says the apostle,
" it is veiled in them that are perishing, in whom
the God of this age hath blinded the minds of
the unbelieving, that they should not see the light
of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the
image of God." How can the crude, hard, unspirit-
ual, selfish mind comprehend the perfect truth, the
perfect purity, the perfect love of Jesus Christ ?

Could the boy to whom long division is a task
and percentage a mystery enter into the thrilling
significance of Newton's " Principia," if its proposi-
tions and formulas were read over to him ever so
distinctly? Could the average child of ten discern
the kindling eloquence of an essay by Emerson or
Ruskin, or the deep meaning of Browning's " Death
in the Desert ? " Spiritual things are discerned
only by the spiritual : there must be some prepara-
tion of heart for the revelation of the divine hu-

THE OBSCURATION OF THE CHRIST 213

manity. The real reason why Christ has been hid-
den from the world is that the world's power of
beholding his glory and receiving the revelation of
his divinity has been very limited.

But there is another truth here that must not be
missed. The unspiritual mind fails of comprehend-
ing the brightness of his glory, yet the steady shin-
ing of this glory upon the unspiritual mind tends
to awaken in it some power of apprehension. Christ
cannot fully manifest himself to those who have
little in common with him, but some points of con-
tact with the lowest of them he finds, and he shows
them all that they are able to receive, and by this
means their power of apprehending him is grad-
ually increased ; he gives them all he can of his
fullness, and though their receptivity is at first
very small, it slowly enlarges ; the more they receive
the more they are able to receive. Nursery jingles
are well enough for a baby whose ear is being
trained to rhythm and melody ; but if you want his
mind to grow, something with more meaning in it
must soon be substituted, and it is well if the food
provided for the mind be a little above the mind's
present powers, something to pique its curiosity
and challenge its understanding. We often injure
our children's minds by reading down to them and
talking down to them ; intellects as well as affec-
tions are born from above. Give people good music,
and although at first they may not greatly enjoy it,

214 THE OBSCURATION OF THE CHRIST

every time they hear it it will mean more to them ;
it will create in them a taste for its own excel-
lence ; by and by they will not be able to tolerate
the trashy melodies which once they preferred.

The operation of this law of mind is familiar
enough. The nature is stimulated, vitalized, devel-
oped by influences that come down upon us from
above. The high calling of God in Christ Jesus is
really an upward calling, a call from above to come
up higher. Thus it is that though, because of our
own unspiritual conditions, the manifestation to us
of the Divine Humanity is always partial and ob-
scure, yet there is something in us that is fitted to
respond to this influence ; and if our wills consent,
and we do not perversely quench the light, our eyes
are gradually opened that we may behold more and
more of his glory.

A striking similitude of the spiritual law we are
now considering is found in the evolution of the
eye. That function which we call sight exists in
very different degrees, in different orders of living
creatures. In some of the lower orders there is
nothing more than a mere pigment spot on the sur-
face somewhere that is more sensitive to light than
other portions of the body. These eye-spots or eye-
specks are somehow adapted to the light; the light
affects them ; and the creature becomes aware
through them of the difference between darkness
and light. This is the beginning of vision.

THE OBSCURATION OF THE CHRIST 215

But as the light acts on these sensitive points,
and they respond to its action, they become more
and more sensitive to its influence ; the tissues are
changed in such a way that the light has more and
more affinity for them, and gradually the eye is
formed. The history of this process can be read in
the developing forms of the animal creation. It is
a marvelous history. Through it all we see these
two agencies cooperating ; the surface tissues that
were made for the light, and the light that was
made for the tissues ; under the stimulus of the
sun's rays the visual rudiments of the sensitive
creature rouse themselves to action, assemble and
organize themselves, and gradually become capable
of performing that wonderful function which we
call sight.

Is there not something like this in the gradual
revelation of the Light of the World to the World
that waits for the Light ? The degrees of spiritual
vision in human beings are as various as the capa-
cities of sight among living creatures. There are
some whose power of discerning spiritual things is
about as feeble as the visual power of the coelen-
terates and the echinoderms. They feel a differ-
ence between light and darkness, between good and
evil, but they can hardly be said to possess vision.
Others, like some of the worms and snails, begin
to exhibit the rudiments of a visual organ ; others,
like the moUusks, are able to see with considerable

216 THE OBSCURATION OF THE CHRIST

distinctness. Yet in the lowest of these mortals
there is some affinity for the light, some power of
response to the divine Humanity. And the love of
God in Christ, imperfectly revealed as it must be to
these imperfectly developed spiritual organs, never-
theless tends to arouse in them a craving for a
fuller revelation, and to stimulate and invigorate
the power of sight. And thus the Love that was
incarnate in Jesus Christ has been seeking, through
all the ages, to disclose itself more and more fully
to the men who need it, and are suffering for the
lack of it. He has been hidden from them by their
own infirmity, yet that infirmity his love ceaselessly
seeks to overcome. Though the darkness could not
comprehend the light, the light by its own persist-
ent shining has aw^akeued in the darkness some
power of apprehension. Thus the Spirit helpeth our
infirmities ; it not only waits to give us the good
things we ask for, but it silently steals into our
hearts and prompts us to ask for them. Christ is
hidden from us because our eyes are dim, but the
touch of his loving finger is upon our eyes to quicken
the power of sight that so we may discern him.

There is one thing more to remember, namely,
that this grace which helps us to receive can only
act in harmony with our free choice. The light
cannot create in us the power of vision, unless we
are willing to see. Our perverse choices may shut
this influence out of our lives.

THE OBSCURATION OF THE CHRIST 217

I can follow this thought no further, but have
we not discovered what is the reason of the con-
cealment from ourselves and from the world of the
spiritual presence of Christ ? Is not the dullness of
our own spiritual vision the explanation of it all ?

And is there any better thing that you or I could
hope for than the manifestation of Christ, the spir-
itual and essential Christ to us and to our fellow
men ? Suppose that the power could come to us of
apprehending his real character, his real nature;
of appreciating him, in some adequate degree ; of
entering into his feelings and wishes ; of taking his
view of life and of human destiny; of standing
with him by the couch of the sick, amidst the
throngs of sufferers, in the slums of the cities, by
the graves of the dead ; of going down with him
into the darkness of Gethsemane ; of ascending
with him the mount of transfiguration ; would not
this revelation to us of the real Christ have in it-
self a mighty transforming power ? If we could see
him as he is, should we not be like him ?

And suppose that to all the world this glory
could be revealed, the glory of his purity and truth,
his gentleness and grace, his patience and his cour-
age ; the glory of a soul that is strong enough to
love its enemies, to do good to those that hate and
to pray for those that persecute ; the glory of a
life that finds its gain in giving and its joy in min-
istering ; the glory of a kingdom whose only law is

218 THE OBSCURATION OF THE CHRIST

love ; suppose we could only see what is true, that
this, this is' the glory that excelleth ; suppose that
to this emulous, jealous, pushing, clamoring, roar-
ing world there could come a vision of the Prince
of Peace, and a vision of the fruitfulness and
beauty that his reign would bring, — some clear
revelation of what would happen if the spirit of
Christ should enter into the hearts of all men, and
if his love should become the law of their society,
— what a sudden hush would fall upon all this
clamor, and then what an anthem of praise would
rise, murmurous and sweet, then mighty and rever-
berant, like the voice of many waters ! The day
is coming when his beauty shall be unveiled ; every
sunrise brings it nearer ; some glimpses of the
glory even now we see. It only remains for us to
prepare the way for its coming; to lift up the
gates and open wide the doors, that the King of
Glory may come in.

XIII

THE EARTHY AND THE HEAVENLY

As we have borne the image of the earthy, let us also bear the
image of the heavenly. — 1 CoR. xv. 49.

The image of the earthy is that which is
stamped upon us by our contact with the earth ; it
represents the elements which find expression in
a purely sensuous life. I do not say sensual, I say
sensuous, — the life which has its springs in the
senses and in that which appeals to them ; the life
which finds its chief good in things^ of one sort
or another. They may be things which please the
palate, — delicious viands, pleasant flavors, stimu-
lating draughts ; or things that are grateful to the
touch, like soft surfaces and velvety carpets and
luxuriant couches ; or things that charm the sight,
like gems and silks and feathers and flowers, and
tasteful furniture and elegant upholsteries : or
things that minister to our physical comfort and
delight in many ways, like fine houses which give
us shelter in spacious and pleasant rooms, or car-
riages which bear us swiftly and smoothly along
attractive highways, giving us* the charm of easy
motion and satisfying the eye at every moment with

220 THE EARTHY AND THE HEAVENLY

changing scenes ; they may be things of beauty or
they may be things of magnitude, — things which
express the sense of largeness, of mastery, of power ;
great warehouses stored with merchandise ; great
factories filled with machinery, and sending forth
a constant stream of things, — wares of all descrip-
tions for human uses ; or they may be things like
bank notes or checks or mortgages or bills payable,
which are simply the representatives of things, —
orders for things ; in things of some kind, they who
bear the image of the earthy find their chief good ;
it is in things that their lives culminate ; things
which their senses can in some way appropriate
and use. Thus their life is rooted and grounded
in the earth.

What shall we say about this kind of life ? We
must be careful to say no extravagant things about
it. It must not be inferred, to begin with, that there
is anything essentially evil in the gratification of
the senses. The pleasures of sense are essentially
good. In the satisfaction of the natural bodily
cravings, in the enjoyment of palatable viands and
draughts, in the sweet odors of the springtime, in
colors and forms that ravish the eye and the sounds
that delight the ear, there is a good that belongs to
us, and of which some of us perhaps do not know
so much as we ought to know.

David's first song to Saul, in Browning's poem,
was a praise of these delights of sense : —

THE EARTHY AND THE HEAVENLY 221

" Oh, our manhood's prime vigor ! no spirit feels waste ;
Not a muscle is stopped in its playing, nor sinew unbraced ;
Oh, the wild joys of living ! the leaping from rock up to rock,
The strong rending of boughs from the fir-tree, the cool silver

shock
Of the plunge in a pool's living water, the hunt of the bear,
And the sultriness showing the lion is couched in his lair.
And the meal, the rich dates yellowed over with gold-dust

divine.
And the locust-flesh steeped in the pitcher ; the full draught of

wine.
And the sleep in the dried river-channel where brdrushes tell
That the water was wont to go warbling so softly and well.
How good is man's life, the mere living ! how fit to employ
The heart and the soul and the senses forever in joy ! "

And not the imaginary David, alone, but the
real Psalmist, in the Psalter^ tells us many things
about the joys of sense. He says that one reason
for believing that God is good is the fact that he
satisfies our mouth with good things ; that he feeds
us with the finest of the wheat and with honey out
of the rock. The ascetic view of life finds little
countenance in the Bible. It tells us that the earth
is the Lord's and the fullness thereof, and that this
fullness is for his children.

" He causeth the grass to grow for the cattle,
And herb for the service of man,
That he may bring food out of the earth,
And wine that maketh glad the heart of man,
And oil to make his face shine,
And bread that strengtheneth man's heart."

The things that are round about us are here for our

222 THE EARTHY AND THE HEAVENLY

use ; we live among them and upon them ; we can-
not live in this world without them. From the first
to the last moment of our earthly existence we are
dependent on things ; we cannot spurn the earth ; we
must walk upon it, and build our houses and our
temples on it, and utilize its products for our sub-
sistence, and organize its forces for our service, and
partake of its pleasantness and its beauty for our
refreshment and delight. Thus it is that we are
vitally related to the world of sense ; our roots run
down into it and our life is drawn from it ; we are
not to despise it but frankly and joyfully to use it.

Entering into this life so fully as we needs must
do, we must bear the impress of it. And this the
apostle, in the argument from which the text is
taken, fully recognizes. We are not pure spirits,
we are also creatures of flesh and sense. The two
elements blend inseparably in our experience. We
inherit our life from Mother Nature and from the
Father of Spirits. "Howbeit," he says, " that is not
first which is spiritual but that which is natural ;
then that which is spiritual. The first man is of
the earth, earthy ; the second man is of heaven.
As is the earthy, such are they also that are earthy,
and as is the heavenly, such are they also that are
heavenly. And as we have borne the image of the
earthy, let us also bear the image of the heavenly."

There is a little question here whether the right
reading of the last verb is in the present subjunc-

THE EARTHY AND THE HEAVENLY 223

tive or tlie future indicative ; following the margin
I have taken the subjunctive reading, which makes
the sentence an exhortation rather than a prophecy,
— " Let us also bear the image of the heavenly,"
instead of "z^e shall also bear the image of the
heavenly." The meaning is not essentially changed.
And the meaning is that while we inherit from our
human ancestry that part of our nature by which
we are allied to earth, there is a higher nature of
which we are also inheritors, and which is indeed
our superior inheritance, which is not dependent
upon the earth, but which draws its life from higher
sources. Adopting the Adamic allegory as the true
symbol of our origin, the apostle traces our ancestry
back to the first man, who was autochthonous —
sprung from the earth ; but he finds in us another
strain also represented by the second Adam, — the
man who came down from heaven, and who brings
into our lives another kind of forces and influences.
" The first Adam became a living soul, — [and by
soul Paul always means the lower intelligence, that
whose life is in the senses] ; the last became a life-
giving spirit y

I think that we have here the clear distinction
between the two constituent elements of our human
nature. The man who springs from the ground,
the man whose life is in his senses, the man whose
ruling interests is in things is a living soul ; the
man whose inspiration comes from above, whose

224 THE EARTHY AND THE HEAVENLY

life centres not in things of sense but in things of
wl ich the senses cannot take cognizance, — is a
life-giving spirit.

The distinction is also marked here by the words
natural and spiritual, but natural is a very mislead-
ing word when used to represent Paul's conception.
" Psychical " is his term ; and the psychical life is
with him the life of the lower part of the nature,
— the sensuous life.

The characteristic of this psychical or sensuous
life is that it is self-centred, absorbent ; it attracts
to itself the good which ministers to it ; it receives,
but it does not impart. The pleasures that come
to me through my senses are pleasures for me, but
I cannot share them. The enjoyment that I have
in palatable viands is mine alone. My delight in soft
surfaces and balmy airs and grateful odors I cannot
communicate. Sensuous good is good that culmi-
nates in the life of him who receives it, it is for him,
and for him alone. It ministers to his strength ; it
increases his life and happiness, but he cannot give
it away. The first Adam is a living soul. He has
life after its kind ; he receives life, such as he has ;
he enjoys life according to his capacity, but it ends
in him.

The characteristic of the other kind of life is
that it is expansive, outflowing, ministering. The
second Adam is a life-giving spirit. The spiritual
life is not absorbent, it is radiant. Through my

THE EARTHY AND THE HEAVENLY 225

appetites I enjoy what comes into my life ; through
my affections I enjoy what goes out of my life. ;

Now the apostle's argument here is simply this : we
are all of us inheritors of both these kinds of life, the
sensuous and the spiritual. We must all emjjloy the
senses, and deal with things which minister to and
gratify the senses. The impress of this material
world is stamped on us, and we shall bear it as
long as we live. But let us not forget that there is
a higher kind of life, of which we are heirs, and
into the full enjoyment of which we ought to enter.
Through our inheritance from Adam we became
living souls ; through our union with the second
Adam we ought to become life-giving spirits. To
bear the image of the earthy is just to get life, to
have it, to enjoy it : to bear the image of the hea-
venly is to impart it, to pour it out in a constant
stream of life-giving ministry.

Now the apostle does not mean, of course, that
this distinction between men is one by which they
can be exactly and infallibly classified, so that those
who live the life of sense can all be ranged on one
side of a line, and those who live the life of the spirit
all on the other ; for there is none of us so spiritual
that he is not for a good part of his life more or
less immersed in the things of sense, and there are
few of us, I dare say, so absorbed in the things of
sense that spiritual interests and realities do not
sometimes strongly appeal to us. But the question

226 THE EARTHY AND THE HEAVENLY

is, after all, which of these principles rules in our
habitual conduct. Which is the controlling force in
our lives ? Is it inward, in self-aggrandizement, or
outward, in ministry, that the strong tides of our
being flow ? In the ruling choices of our lives, are
we living souls or life-giving spirits ? It is a tre-
mendous question — none can be more searching,
and the answer to it involves vast consequences.
For although these two strains of tendency must
meet and mingle in every human life, they are not
of equal strength and purity : one of them is a river
of living water and the other will soon run dry.
This is not a truth of revelation, merely ; it is the
plainest fact of every-day observation. We all know
that the life whose chief good is in the things of
sense cannot keep its chief good very long. The end
of all that is coming very soon to every one of us.
The senses are functions of these bodies of ours,
which are not going to endure. All these things that
minister to sense, the things on which our hearts are
set, in which our joys are found, will soon be beyond
our reach. If our life centres here, in this realm of
material things ; if our interests are here, if our
treasures are laid up here, we shall soon be very
poor indeed. What a tragedy death must be to a
man whose life consists in the abundance of the
things which he possesses ! Suppose he gets the
whole earth : he cannot keep it very long. And he
has nothing else. I heard a man the other night ap-

THE EARTHY AND THE HEAVENLY 227

plauding those who wanted the earth and sneering at
those who said that they did not want it. Well, if a
man wants it so much that he has little room in his
life for anything that is not of the earth earthy, the
time is not far off when he will wish that he had
wanted something else. For the earth, if he gets
it all, will not remain in his grasp many days.
That is a scientific fact which nobody is likely to
dispute. And it does appear to be at least possible
that he might get hold of something worth having
which he could keep a little longer.

*' He that soweth to the flesh shall of the flesh
reap corruption, but he that soweth to the spirit
shall of the spirit reap life everlasting." That is
the statement in which this same apostle elsewhere
sums up the alternatives of the sensuous life and
the spiritual life ; the life which is in the image
of the earthy and the life which is in the image of
the heavenly. The one perishes and the other en-
dures. Selfishness returns to dust; love alone is
eternal.

What is the true relation between these two
phases of our experience ? It is that the one is a
preparation for the other. The sensuous life is the
first stage in our development ; it serves an excel-
lent purpose when it is regarded as provisional and
transitional, when we use its resources to fit us for
entrance into the larger life of the spirit toward
which it is meant to lead us. So long as it is a

228 THE EARTHY AND THE HEAVENLY

means to an end it is good ; as soon as it becomes
an end itself it is corrupting and accursed.

One stage of life is often conditional for and
preparatory to another ; we begin on one plane,
with one set of surroundings and incentives, that we
may make ready to ascend to a higher plane, and
to use the powers we have gained in a new element.

The balloon is constructed and inflated on the
earth, but it is meant to navigate the air. It could
not possibly be built in the air, it must be built on
the earth ; but as soon as its structure is completed
and it is ready for the fulfillment of its function, it
must leave the earth. It cannot be used as a vehi-
cle upon our city streets or along our country roads ;
it lives and moves in another element ; to drag it
on the ground is to destroy it.

The ship also must be built upon the land. By
no possibility could it be constructed in the air or
on the water. The materials of which it is built
are drawn from the earth, not from the water ; the
tools with which it is built are taken from the
earth ; through all the period of its construction it
rests on the solid land. But the purpose for which
it is constructed is only fulfilled when it leaves the
land and moves down into the water. From that
time onward the less it has to do with the land the
better. It lives and moves and has its being in
that other element for which, while it was on the
land, it was being fashioned.

THE EARTHY AND THE HEAVENLY 229

Suppose that its builders had concluded to leave
it upon the land. It would have been absolutely
worthless then. All the costly materials incorpo-
rated in its structure would have been wasted. It
would have rusted and rotted there upon the stocks,
an unsightly deformity.

Now there is something quite similar to this in
our human experience. We are to get our training
and preparation here upon the earth for the life of
the spirit. It is in our use of the things of this
world that we are to find out that we have interests
which are superior to things, interests which things
cannot satisfy. It is the conviction which reason
forces upon us of the inadequacy of the sensuous
life which opens to us the realm of the spiritual.

I do not know that we could learn this lesson
under any other kind of schooling. I suppose that
such creatures as we are must first bear the image
of the earthy, in order that we may be fitted to
bear the image of the heavenly. But the value of
this phase of our life is in the clear recognition of
the fact that it is provisional, transitional ; that it
furnishes us not the end of life but the means to
an end ; that we are not to stop in it, but to go on
through it to something higher and diviner ; that
as the air-ship is made on the earth to mount into
the sky, as the steamship built upon the land is to
sail the mighty ocean, so we are getting our school-
ing in the use of the things of sense that we may

230 THE EARTHY AND THE HEAVENLY

be able to live tbe life of the spirit ; we are fitting
our souls on the shores of time to sail the eternal
seas.

Keep this truth in mind, busy men and women.
It is the one truth you cannot afford to forget.
Live in the midst of the things of this world you
must; in handling them you get your discipline.
If you appraise them at their proper worth, if you
hold them always subject to the claims of the spirit-
ual order, if you learn, in the use of them, to make
them serve the interests of the life eternal, it will
be well with you. But if you come to live in them
and for them, to make them ends and not instru-
ments, it will be ill with you.

" Let us use this world," says Paul in this same
epistle, " as not abusing it." That is the old version.
The new version says, " as not usijig it to the full.'"
That is nearer the meaning of the word. Let us
use the world as not over-using it, — as not making
it our all in all. Let us learn how to grasp it firmly,
and easily to let it go ; how to hold and appropri-
ate its goods without letting them cling to us and
grow into our lives ; how to rise upon them and
push them behind us as the strong swimmer spurns
the waves, making them the fulcrum of his power,
instead of being enveloped by them and drawn
down to death. Let us use the world, as not using
it to the full, and why ? Because, says Paul, " the
fashion of the world passeth away." Ah, yes ; it is

THE EARTHY AND THE HEAVENLY 231

a fatal folly to wreak our souls on that which is and
must be ephemeral, upon things which perish with
the using.

Fellow men, you all know perfectly well that if
there is anything which endures it is not that which
bears the image of the earthy. Nothing that you can
handle or feel or taste or see is going to last very
long. Nothing that is bought or sold in the mar-
ket, nothing that can be covered by a title deed or
a certificate of ownership will be in your possession
many days. Suppose that these things of time and
sense make up your life, furnish your incitements
and your interests, what will your life amount to
when the darkness falls and they are forever out of
sight ? What is a man's life worth when all the
things that he cares for and is interested in are
stripped away from him forever ?

If there is anything that lasts it must be those
other elements of character which we call the spir-
itual elements. They do not spring out of the earth,
and there is no reason for believing that they return
to the earth. Love, truth, honor, purity, fidelity,
reverence, — such qualities as these seem to have
no relation to the material world. If your life finds
its organizing principle in such qualities as these,
you may have good hope that it will endure. These
things ought to last ; they seem to be imperish-
able ; it is difficult for us to conceive how they could
cease to be. If your character bears in all its larger

232 THE EARTHY AND THE HEAVENLY

lineaments the image of the heavenly, you may
safely trust that when the end of the earth shall
come, and the dulled senses drop their perishing
delights, and the things for which men toil and
strive slip from your nerveless hands, this corrupti-
ble will put on incorruption and this mortal immor-
tality, and to you will be verified the saying that is
written, " Death is swallowed up in victory ! "

XIV

THE TRANSFORMING SPIRIT

Now there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit. And
there are diversities of ministrations, and the same Lord. And
there are diversities of "Workings, but the same God, who worketh
all things in all. — 1 CoR. xii. 4-6.

The power of the spirit to express itself, to incar-
nate itself in beautiful and fruitful forms of life —
this is the thought now before us. It is the nature
of spirit — the function of spirit, we may say — to
mould the substances with which it deals into mani-
fold forms of its own choosing : it is plastic, in the
active sense; it is artistic; it is architectonic; it
is creative. When the spirit does its perfect work
upon the human material, it brings forth a great
variety of beautiful products.

Paul has been thinking of the work of the divine
spirit in the lives of men, and he points out the
many forms of excellent character and function in
which it issues. It makes one man a seer, and an-
other a philosopher, and another a mystic, and an-
other a healer of disease, and another a conqueror
of nature, and another a mind-reader, and another
a linguist, and so forth and so forth : the wonder-
ful thing is that its manifestations are so diverse ;

234 THE TRANSFORMING SPIRIT

that it finds so many types in which to express it-
self. Variation, — that is the great first word of
the spiritual as of the biological realm.

Perhaps we shall find our way more readily into
the heart of the truth we are seeking to understand,
if we follow the paths of life. We do know a great
deal about life ; and aU life is, in a very real sense,
a manifestation of God. Biology is the vestibule
of theology. There is much in the higher spiritual
realm which cannot be explained by the analogies
of physical life, and therefore it is vain to try to
apply the formularies of natural law to all the pro-
cesses of the spiritual world ; it is like trying to
explain the phenomena of life by the laws of me-
chanics or of chemistry. The mechanical and chemi-
cal forces are subsumed and used by the powers of
life ; but biology deals with other than mechanical
and chemical phenomena. Just so the spiritual life
takes up into itself and transfigures the physical
processes, adding other and higher elements. But
since all life is of God, the study of any life may
help us toward an understanding of the highest.

Note, then, the manifold nature of those phe-
nomena which we classify under th§ name of living
things. Here, indeed, the diversities of operations
are marvelous. From the mildew that grows upon
your garments, from the midgets that fly in the
sunbeams, from the infusoria which sail their fleets
in a drop of water, to the grasses, and the herbs,

THE TRANSFORMING SPIRIT 235

and the mighty trees, and the creeping things, and
the insects and the birds, and the beasts that fill
the pastures and roam the jungles, and the mon-
sters that play in the deep, what a wonderful variety
do we find in the wide kingdoms of life ! Yet there
seems to be a property common to all these living
things. The scientific people may insist that we
know nothing about it ; that we have no right to talk
about any princij^h of life, or to claim for living
things any different kind of power from that which
belongs to things not living. "It is now almost uni-
versally admitted," says Dr. Carpenter, " by intel-
ligent physiologists, that we gain nothing by the
assumption of some general controlling agency, or
vital Principle, distinct from the organized struc-
ture itself ; and that the laws of life are nothing
else than general expressions of the conditions un-
der which vital operations take place."

But whatever truth there may be in this, it is cer-
tain that things which are alive act differently from
things which are not alive. And the gist of the dif-
ference is thus expressed in question and answer by
one of the latest writers on physics : " What is the
distinction between what is called living and dead
matter ? One is able to transform energy for its
maintenance, and the other seems to be wholly inert."

Life, then, possesses this power of transforming
the substances which it touches. Wherever you find
life you find a process of transformation going for-

236 THE TRANSFORMING SPIRIT

ward, old things passing away, all things becoming
new. When the living germ is wakened to activity,
it immediately begins to lay hold on the materials
within its reach and to change them into something
else. The embryonic life hid in the kernel of maize
takes up first the food that is packed for the first
stage of its progress in the kernel itself, changing
that into living tissue ; then it reaches out into the
mould and up into the atmosphere and the sunlight,
and lays tribute on all these elements, drawing
their compounds into its laboratories, and submit-
ting them to its magical analyses, so that these
crude, non-living substances are changed into its
own forms of life ; so that the sordid earth, and
the noisome compost, and the unvital moisture and
the wayward air are all combined to make the
broad green leaf -blade, and the firm stalk, and the
waving tassel, and the ear with its tuft of dainty
silk. Out of these untoward materials life, by its
magic transforming power, produces such wonder-
ful creations as these. There is nothing, the chem-
ists say, in the plant which was not before in the
earth and the water and the air and the light ; but
see what has come forth, at the touch of life, from
these non-living substances ! Work akin to this is
going on continually, all over the face of the earth.
The tiniest organic germ has some power to change
the substances with which it comes in contact into
something other than they are. Every smallest

THE TRANSFORMING SPIRIT 237

plant or living creature is at work through the
whole period of its existence, transforming the
materials with which it enters into vital relations
into new and higher forms of being. Thus we are
brought, in the words of Dr. Bushnell, into that
wide " field of wonders, where the lives are seen to
be triumphing at every point over the chemical
affinities of matter, acting each as a chemist in his
own right, and constructing in this manner sub-
stances that under the mere laws of inorganic mat-
ter could never exist. All the animal and vegetable
substances have thus an imposed chemistry, a chem-
istry, not in the matter as such, but put upon the
matter by the lives working in it. Each life, in fact,
has a chemistry of its own, and, coming down thus
upon matter, it composes substances of its own."

It was a good many years ago that Dr. Bushnell
ventured the suofo^estion that " all lives were imma-
terial, and have a soul-like nature," — combining
this suggestion with an offer to conduct us into a
marvelous world, " where creatures busy as angels
and like them invisible save by their works, are
ever employed in building, repairing, actuating, and
reproducing these multiform bodies ; with a power
over matter and all chemical affinities as affinities
of matter, which is only the more sublime that it
appears to be a sovereignty from without, superior
to all forces within."

Thus life is ever more at work, all over the

238 THE TRANSFORMING SPIRIT

globe, changing substances into new and higher
forms ; producing, from the crude materials of the
earth's crust, and from the air that envelops it,
and from the sunlight that warms it, all the mani-
fold types of being that grow from the soil or swim in
the water or float in the air or walk upon the earth,
from the microscopic mite up to godlike man.

There is another side to this picture, however,
on which we must not fail to look. It is true that
life has the power of transforming all these non-liv-
ing materials ; is it not equally true that they have
the capacity of being transformed by life? The
great magician lays his spell upon them, and they
yield to his sorcery. Are not these substances made
to be thus transfigured and glorified ? If it is the
mission of the higher forms of existence to change
those beneath them into their own image, and thus
to lift them up and bear them on from strength to
strength and from glory to glory, is it not also the
mission of the humbler forms to yield themselves
to this reo^eneratino: influence ?

How, indeed, can either exist without the other ?
How can plants grow without soil and moisture
and the fertilizing elements ? How can living
things exist without the contribution made to their
sustenance by non-living substances ? There can be
no transforming life, unless there are things not
living which wait to be transformed.

Such, then, is the relation of that mysterious

THE TRANSFORMING SPIRIT 239

power which we call life to the non-living universe.
Living creatures enter into relations with non-living
substances in order to recreate them, to lift them up
into their own image, to introduce them into a new
realm, to make them part of themselves. Between
the living and the non-living there is a wonderful
correlation : each seems to be made for the other ;
neither can realize its possibilities without the other.

If now we ascend to the realm of the spirit, what
shall we find ? It may be well to keep in mind the
fact that what we call the spirit is simply a form of
life. " If Christ be in you," said Paul, '' the body is
dead because of sin, but the spirit is life because
of righteousness." The spirit is life. The man who
is most perfectly under the influence of the spirit,
whose nature is instinct with that highest princi-
ple of human conduct which Paul calls righteous-
ness, — this man is thoroughly alive. It seems to
be hardly necessary to stop to prove this to any-
body who believes even the elementary truths of
religion. If God is our Father and we are made in
his image, then we are spirits because he is a Spirit ;
manhood is essentially a spiritual thing ; the per-
fection of manhood is a spiritual perfection ; and
the man who is most completely dominated by
spiritual influences is most thoroughly a man,
which is only another way of saying that life in its
fullness belongs to him.

But what do we mean by spiritual influences?

240 THE TRANSFORMING SPIRIT

Here, again, the Scripture definitions will help us
to a clear conception. God is a Spirit, said Jesus.
God is love, said his best beloved disciple. If
things that are equal to the same thing are equal
to each other, then the life of the Spirit is simply
the life of love ; a spiritual man is a man whose
life is inspired by love to God and man ; spiritual
influences are the influences which tend to bring
men under the sway of the law of love ; and a
spiritual life is a life which finds expression in
words and deeds of love.

Now this kind of life, like the physical life whose
laws we have been studying, is a mighty magician,
with wonderful transforming energies. Indeed, it is
this higher element, hid in the heart of all the lives
of the world, that gives to them their transforming
power. The changes which life is constantly pro-
ducing in macrocosm and microcosm have their
origin in love. Is it not the whole work of life,
even in the physical world, to lift up, to refine, to
beautify ? Is not everything that it touches trans-
formed into something higher, and is not this the
work of love ? So it comes to light that something
closely akin to what we describe as the life of the
spirit, which is love, is found in all the transfigur-
ing: work of the lives below us. This is the new
light which is breaking forth from the latest scien-
tific discoveries ; this is the gospel which men like
Drummond find in biology itself.

THE TRANSFORMING SPIRIT 241

One of our hymns tells us that,

" Beyond the vale of tears
There is a life above,
Unmeasured by the flight of years,
And all that life is love."

But is it not true that there is a life less distant
than that, a life round about us, even a life below
us, of which we may say that the deepest thing in it
is love ; that we do not catch the real meaning of
it until we discern love as its central and construc-
tive element ? Surely if God is in his world, — if
that phrase has any real meaning, — if he is the
Life of all that lives, then this must in some way be
true. If this is true, then that true spiritual love
which is the fulfilling of the law finds its type and
prefiguration in the life of the lower orders which
transforms all that it touches. The life of the spirit
is really at heart the same kind of life as that
which works in the realms below us, and it has the
same kind of work to do, only higher and broader,
and finer and diviner.

We, then, who have received in any measure
this gift of life, may discern the function which we
are called to fulfill. The life that is in us has a
work of transformation to do. First, upon ourselves
its vital energy will be exerted. There is much
crude material in us that needs to be made over.
" Be ye transformed hy the renewing of your
minds ^^^ is the apostolic counsel. If the mind of

242 THE TRANSFORMING SPIRIT

Christ be in us, this transformation will be all the
while going forward. The thoughts of our minds,
the wishes of our hearts, the purposes of our lives,
will be subject to a silent process of renewal. Our
tempers will become sweeter, our aims clearer, our
ideals higher, as the days go by.

And the change will be seen, not only in our
conduct, but in our faces, our personalities. When
the spirit whose name is love becomes central in a
man's life, it is apt to carve new lines upon his
face, to transfigure his countenance, to ennoble his
bearing. He who has seen the King in his beauty,
and has gazed upon that glorious life till its full
meaning has taken possession of his soul, is changed
into the same image from glory to glory, even as
by the spirit of the Lord.

But this transforming work does not stop with
the character in which it begins. The Christian's
life is the principle of regeneration. The spirit of
love in the lives of the followers of Christ is a liv-
ing energy by which the characters of men and
the whole social order may be changed. When we
speak of the regeneration of men and of society as
the work of the Spirit we often get the notion of
some kind of abstract, atmospheric influence by
which the work is done, but the truth is much
simpler. It is in human lives that the Spirit chiefly
reveals his regenerating power. It is love incarnate
that most often convinces men of sin, and leads

THE TRANSFORMING SPIRIT 243

them to holiness. It is the touch of a consecrated
life that awakens the wish for higher living. It is
the vital contact of men who have the life of the
Spirit in them with those who are under the bond-
age of sense that sets the renewing power at work
in their lives.

I have seen this marvel how often ! the transfig-
uring touch of one life upon another ; a life instinct
with Christly love awakening by its very presence
and contact new impulses, new ideals, new aims ;
changing by its silent charm the very texture and
quality of the character brought under its power.
And this, I suppose, is what our Christianity means.
If there is any life in us, this is the kind of work
it will be doing. It is the nature of life — more
the nature of the life that we call spiritual than of
any of the lower forms of life — to exert just this
kind of power over all the characters with which it
is brought into relations.

It is well to emphasize this last phrase. This
life must be brought into relations, vital relations,
with the characters which it is to transform. The
acorn, the maple seed, the kernel of wheat have
power to change the dull substances of the earth into
forms of majesty and beauty ; but they can work
these changes only when they are brought into con-
tact with the lower substances. Here is the seed,
and here is the clod ; the one can transform the
other, but only when it comes down to its level

244 THE TRANSFORMING SPIRIT

and buries itself by its side. Some humiliation and
hiding of the higher life is necessary that the lower
may be touched and vivified. Except a corn of
wheat fall into the earth and die it abideth alone,
but if it die it bringeth forth much fruit. If we
want to transform the characters round about us,
we must not hold ourselves aloof from them, or
lift ourselves above them. Life identifies itself
with that which it transforms.

The truths which we are considering ought to be
full of inspiration to all who find in their conscious-
ness any signs of the love which is the fulfilling
of the law. Is it not well for us to apprehend the
true nature of this divine principle and the func-
tion which it is to fulfill? For it cannot be in any
free intelligence a merely unconscious force ; if the
stirring of this impulse is God working in us, then
we must be co-workers with him, or his work in us
will avail nothing. But is it not a great thought
that this principle of Christly love, when it gets
possession of us, and becomes through our co-work-
ing the ruling power of our lives, has such a subtle
energy in it to transform the characters of others ?
There is power here of which no words of mine can
give any true account. There are resources in every
loving heart which can only be computed in the
arithmetic of heaven. Here is the little seedlet of
the elm, falling into the ground : it seems feeble
and insignificant, but what a mighty mass of earth

THE TRANSFORMING SPIRIT 245

it will lift into the air and glorify within the next
two hundred years ! The law of the spirit of life
in Christ Jesus, working in any consecrated soul,
is mightier far than this !

We sometimes conceive of this work of transfor-
mation as done for the benefit of the plant itself.
" See," we say, " what the lily bulb has made of
herself ; what a glorious creature of God she has
become ! " But may we not think also of what the
lily has done for the substances she has trans-
formed, — for the clods she has regenerated and
clothed with the beauty of God ?

In one respect the analogy does not hold, for the
plant in transforming this baser matter absorbs it
into itself ; but the loving spirit works this change
upon the life with which it is brought into vital
relations, not by absorbing it into itself, but rather
by invigorating and enriching it ; by confirming
its individuality ; by making the man thus wrought
upon more truly himself than he ever was before.

So, then, to all of us, if any of the life of Christ
is in us, is given this power of the Spirit, this power
of lifting up unto newness of life the men and
women who are round about us. To a Christly love
this prerogative belongs. If we only love deeply
and truly and bravely enough we can change the
world. " Ama et fac quod vis," said Augustine :
Love, and you can do what you will.

For these people round about us who need our

246 THE TRANSFORMING SPIRIT

love are made to be loved ; it is their nature to
yield to the plastic power of love ; not less surely
do they respond to the call of a genuine affection
than the earth responds to the call of the vitalizing
germ. We can win them, we can save them, if we
can only love them enough. How many there are,
all about us, scattered abroad as sheep having no
shepherd, the poor, the friendless, the degraded ;
men and women into whose lives no saving and in-
spiring influences come, who are cut off by their
misfortune or their fault from all that could sanc-
tify and uplift them, who are gradually sinking,
under the dead weight of poverty and misery, into
desolation and despair ! And the miserable are not
all poor ! Many are there among the more fortu-
nate classes whose lives are daily growing more
sordid, more frivolous, more false ; greed and lux-
ury and selfish ambition are consuming their man-
hood and their womanhood. And what these sink-
ing souls all need is love, nothing but love, the love
that is life, the life that is love. If that kind of life
is in us, with all its victorious energies, we can reach
them and save them. Nothing can resist that power.
What a work we could do, what victories we could
win, if the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus
were only the law of all our lives ! What transfor-
mation we should see in the characters of the men
and women round about us ; what a change in the
whole face of society ! Suppose all the people in

THE TRANSFORMING SPIRIT 247

this city who profess and call themselves Christians
were full of the spirit of Christ, the spirit whose
fruit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness,
goodness, meekness, self-control, the love that can
stoop to the lowly, and suffer shame with the out-
cast, and bear injuries without resentment, and give
itself freely for the rescue and deliverance of those
who are perishing, how long would it be, think you,
before the community would be regenerated ? If
we only knew what power there is in love ! If we
were only willing to trust it and try it ! It is the
one thing that we have never tried. We have tried
almost everything else. We have tried to make
people good by every kind of coercion, driving them
into the church in the Middle Ages at the point of
the bayonet ; holding over them in modern times
all sorts of prohibitive and restraining statutes;
we have stormed their heads with all sorts of argu-
ments ; we have packed their brains with creeds
and dogmas ; we have allured them by sensuous
rites and forms ; we have threatened them with
the terrors of hell ; we have bribed them with the
blessedness of heaven ; and all our cunning schemes
have given us but meagre results. I wonder if we
shall not, by and by, find out that the world is to
be saved, not by might nor by power nor by logic
nor by ritual, nor by threats or promises, but by
love. What wonders we shall see, when once this
idea gets hold of the minds of men. What a change

248 THE TRANSFORMING SPIRIT

will pass upon the life of all our cities ! How quickly
this purifying flood will cleanse the Augean stables
of municipal misrule ! How surely at the touch of
it^ subtle energy the slums will be transformed into
cl^an streets and happy homes ! And it will not
stop there. For the energy of this transfiguring life
is yet to cleanse the whole world on which we dwell
from the curse that yet impoverishes and pollutes
it. The whole creation waits with earnest expecta-
tion for the revelation of the sons of God, — waits
to be delivered from its bondage of barrenness and
desolation into the liberty of the glory of the sons
of God. For when the Spirit is poured upon us
from on high the wilderness shall become a fruitful
field. The day is coming when there shall not be a
desert, nor a jungle, nor a pestilence-breeding marsh
in all this world ; when fruitf ulness and beauty and
health and peace and plenty shall fill the earth as
the waters fill the sea. Love, the love that springs
from the heart of the All-Father, and that makes
all men brothers, — resistless, victorious, all-subdu-
ing love will change the earth into the garden of
the Lord, will make the dream of Eden an ever-
lasting verity.

When will the people who bear the name of Jesus
Christ begin to believe that the one all-compelling,
overcoming, all-transforming power in this universe
is the love that is life and the life that is love ?

XV

THE EVERLASTING YEA

For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against the
principalities, against the powers, against the world-rulers of this
darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly
places. Wherefore take up the whole armor of God, that ye may
be able to withstand in the evil day, and, having done aU, to stand.
— Eph. vi. 12, 13.

Just what St. Paul means by the several classes
of adversaries which he here enumerates I do not
know. The commentators propose various interpre-
tations, more or less fanciful. It may be doubted
whether the apostle himself could have given any
scientific definition of them. His language sounds
as if it were an attempt to deal with generalities
that are somewhat vague, with realities that loom
through the mists of human experience but have
not yet been subjected to descriptive measurement.
What he means to say is, that our adversaries are
not visible and tangible entities, — that one great
difficulty in dealing with them is in the fact that
they are formless, flitting, elusive. They are " the
principalities, the powers, the world rulers of this
darkness, the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the
heavenly places." They lurk in all the shadow

250 THE EVERLASTING YEA

lands of our experiences ; the regions which are
sacred to high and reverent thought are not secure
against them ; even here they swarm in and take
possession, paralyzing our prayers and clipping the
wings of our aspiration. With these invisible and
intangible foes, haunting doubts, spectral fears,
questionings about the reality of goodness and the
utility of virtue, our hardest battles must be fought.

These are the enemies which I should like to
envisage with you this morning. Most of us, I dare
say, have had some knowledge of them. They some-
times rise up, a portentous horde, and threaten to
banish the greenness from the earth and the bright-
ness from the sky. The question is how to deal with
them. Are we at their mercy, or is it possible suc-
cessfully to resist and vanquish them ?

In answering this question it may be well to re-
flect that those who seem to have had the deepest
insight into the meaning of life have always assumed
that man is essentially a conqueror ; that he is not,
normally, in subjection to any form of evil ; that
when he realizes his true destiny he is not a menial
or a slave but a master and a ruler over things. In
each of those stirring messages to the churches
which are preserved for us in the first chapter of
the Book of Revelation, there is a promise to him
that overcometh. It seems to be taken for granted
that overcoming is the business of life ; that no
man accomplishes his destiny unless he overcomes.

THE EVERLASTING YEA 251

Paul makes the same assumption in this text which
we are studying. " That ye may be able to with-
stand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand."
When the day is darkest, when the fight is hardest,
when

" the blasts denote
We are iiearing' the place —
The power of the night, the press of the storm,
The post of the foe," —

when all the evil of the universe gathers itself to-
gether and hurls its squadrons against us, — then,
in that evil day, we are to withstand, and having
done all, and suffered all that the world and the
flesh and the devil can bring down upon us, we are
to stand. That is Paul's conception of the normal
outcome of this conflict which he is describing.

Not a few of the great souls of earth have passed
through this conflict and have believed themselves
to have overcome. Whatever others may have
thought about it, they themselves had the con-
sciousness and the assurance that they were con-
querors. They recognized the mastery of no prin-
cipalities and no powers of evil ; they stood, free
and equal, under the blue canopy of heaven. Not to
any exclusive creed or cult do these victors belong :
Luther was one in whom the struggle was fiercest
and the conquest most decisive ; Bunyan had a
deadly fight and won a signal victory ; Tolstoy
gives us a vivid account of his battle and of the

252 THE EVERLASTING YEA

triumphant issue ; Carlyle met the enemy, in all his
strength, and slept upon the field.

Nay, there is a more signal instance. For the Son
of man himself, on the threshold of his ministry,
encountered the world rulers of this darkness in a
desperate combat and put them utterly to flight.

These are but illustrations of the truth that the
true life is a victorious life ; that although the con-
flict may be fierce with many and mighty foes, the
expectation with which we are equipped is the ex-
pectation that we shall overcome. Overcoming is
our vocation. We must strive, but our strife is for
mastery ; we must fight, but we fight to win. And
not only in our wrestling with flesh and blood, with
the material and palpable adversaries and obsta-
cles that rise up in our own path, but in our con-
tests with these subtler and more elusive foes of
the spiritual realm we may be conquerors and more
than conquerors.

What, now, is the real nature of this conflict of
which we are thinking ? Is it not, essentially, the
struggle for the mastery in our own natures be-
tween the spiritual and the carnal elements ? " Our
Life, " says Carlyle, " is compassed about with ne-
cessity ; yet is the meaning of Life itself no other
than Freedom, than voluntary Force ; thus have
we a warfare ; in the beginning, especially, a hard- ,
fought battle. For the God-given mandate. Work
thou in well-doing, lies mysteriously written, in

THE EVERLASTING YEA 253

Promethean, Prophetic Characters, in our hearts ;
and leaves us no rest, night or day, till it be de-
ciphered and obeyed ; till it burst forth in our con-
duct, a visible, acted Gospel of Freedom. And as
the clay-given mandate. Eat thou and he filled^ at
the same time persuasively proclaims itself through
every nerve — must there not be a confusion, a
contest, before the better influence can become the
upper ?

" To me nothing seems more natural than that
the Son of man, when such God-given mandate first
prophetically stirs within him, and the clay must
now be vanquished or vanquish, — should be car-
ried of the Spirit into grim solitudes and there
fronting the tempter do grimmest battle with him ;
defiantly setting him at naught till he yield and
fly. Name it as we choose ; with or without visible
devil, whether in the natural desert of rocks and
sands, or in the populous moral desert of selfish-
ness and baseness, — to such temptation are we
all called. Unhappy if we are not. Unhappy if we
are but half -men, in whom that divine handwriting
has never blazed forth in true sun-splendor, but
quivers dubiously amid meaner lights, or smoulders,
in dull pain, in darkness, under earthly vapors !
Our wilderness is the wide world in an atheistic
century ; our forty days are long years of suffering
and fasting."

This is the nature of the conflict before us, and

254 THE EVERLASTING YEA

the question of questions is whether the God-given
mandate, — the spiritual ideal which lays its com-
mands upon us, — or the clay-given mandate — the
craving of our lower selves — shall bear rule in
our lives. The law of the members wars against
the law in our minds. And this conflict finally re-
duces — in its deadliest phase, — to a subtle, insin-
uating doubt whether the things of the spirit are
realities ; whether truth and honor and integrity and
fidelity, and purity and unselfishness and sympathy
are not names rather than things ; whether, at any
rate, they are worthy to be the supreme objects of
the soul's desire. Sense fights against spirit by
discrediting, in our thought, the things of the spirit.
The things of sense you know very well : the food and
drink that satisfies the palate, costly raiment, jewels,
houses and lands, furniture and equipage, fine car-
riages stopping daily at your gate for visits of cere-
mony, footmen besieging your doors with engraved
invitations, your name every week in the society
column of the newspapers and somewhere near the
head of the lists, smiles of recognition wherever
you go from those whom the world esteems most
fortunate ; money, to sum up all, with all that
money will buy, — all these things are immediate,
indubitable : you know that they exist ; 3'^ou have
a keen sense of their value ; you want them greatly
for yourselves. And when it becomes a serious
question whether you can have those spiritual

THE EVERLASTING YEA 255

possessions, and gain and keep these, the grave
doubt begins to be insinuated whether those, after
all, are of supreme importance ; whether indeed
they are not shadows more than realities.

Thus this present world stands over us to chal-
lenge our spiritual choices, and to fill the corners
of our minds with skepticism respecting the author-
ity of those ideals to which we are seeking to be
loyal. And it must be owned that our experience
and our observation furnish us with reasons for
such skepticism. When we look at what we can see
about us in the world, outside of ourselves, we are
not always able to discover clear evidence that the
rewards of the life of the spirit are surer than the
rewards of the life of sense. The people who are
utterly loyal to spiritual ideals, who care more for
truth and honor and purity and goodness than for
money and promotion and social position — is the
world as kind to them as to those who set their
hearts on the things of sense ? Are they apt to be
as prosperous, and as popular, and as fortunate as
those who frankly make material things supreme ?
I do not think so. Certainly it is far from being
universally the case. It is not at all clear, when
we look about us, that the spiritual forces are in
the ascendant. At any rate, the present world is
able to make out a strong case when it impugns
the reality and the power of the things of the spirit.

Yet the man to whom the higher voices have

256 THE EVERLASTING YEA

spoken does not readily assent to this judgment.
" For the present," he says, " the flesh may prevail
over the spirit, but finally, in the long run, the vic-
tory must lie with the higher powers, and those
who have chosen the life of the spirit must win the
good of the world."

But the mocking voices will tell him that this,
too, is far from being the universal rule. Fidelity
to truth, devotion to the higher ideals, often go
utterly unrewarded with success and prosperity in
the sight of men. Thousands and millions of those
whose lives were loyal to the highest they knew,
have gone to their graves in poverty and shame.
Jesus, Paul, Socrates — what happened to them ?
If you are as faithful as they were to the in-
ward light, your fate may be as tragical as theirs.
This world has absolutely no guarantee of comfort
and prosperity for those who hold truth and justice
and love higher than gain and place and social
recognition.

But the soul that cleaves to the higher good is
not convinced. It still makes answer to the mock-
ing voices : " This may indeed be true. But this
life is not all. Death is not the end. For the great
compensations we must wait. Eternity is before us,
and there is time enough then, room enough there,
for the vindication of life's ideals.

' The high that proved too high, the heroic for earth too hard,
The passion that left the ground to lose itself in the sky,

THE EVERLASTING YEA 257

Are mnsic sent up to God by the lover and the bard,
Enough that he heard it once ; we shall hear it by and by.' "

Just here it is that the undertone of the mocking
voices begins its insistent dismal questioning : " How
do you know? What proof have you of any con-
tinuance of life after death? What does Nature
say?

' Thou makest thine appeal to me ?
I bring to life, I bring to death ;
The spirit does but mean the breath ;
I know no more.'

Is it not all a fond imagination, or a baseless tradi-
tion — this expectation that some unknown future
is to give you the reward which the present with-
holds ?

' For yain the tears for darkened years,

As laughter over wine,
And vain the laughter as the tears,

O brother, mine or thine ;
For all that laugh and all that weep

And all that breathe, are one
Slight ripple on the boundless deep

That moves and all is gone. '

How do you know that there is any other life than
that of which your senses testify? How do you
know that there is any heaven to which you can
hope to go, or any God in heaven to take your
part ? What is this faith of yours but an illusion,
the sediment of ancestral dreams, the straw at
which Humanity clutches as it drowns in the sea
of nonentity ? These ideals of yours do not repre-

258 THE EVERLASTING YEA

sent realities. They are the mirage that rises above
the desert of human existence ; weariness and death
are the portion of those who pursue them."

Such is the ever-droning doubt which pursues
us and beleaguers us and fills the air with its mias-
matic influence, and weakens the pinions of our
hope, and despoils our virtue of its vigor. This is
the conflict at which the apostle seems to be hint-
ing, in which the human soul grapples with its
deadliest foes.

What is our answer to these voices? Far too
often it is an answer of weakness and despair. " If
these things are so," men say, " what is the use of
sacrificing peace and pleasure here for a good that
can never be ours ?

' Deatli is tlie end of life ; ah, why-
Should life all labor be ?
Let us alone. Time driveth onward fast,
And in a little while our lips are dumb.
Let us alone. What is it that will last ?
All thing's are taken from us and become
Portions and parcels of the dreadful past.
Let us alone. What pleasure can we have
To war with evil ? ' . . .

Why should we not get all we can of the gains and
joys of this present world ? Why not follow the line
of least resistance to the goods which are imme-
diate and tangible. This present world is all we
have to do with. Plainly it has no sympathy with
our idealisms, no rewards for fidelity to our higher

THE EVERLASTING YEA 259

aspirations ; it is a thoughtless, lawless, loveless
monster to which our loyalties are meaningless ;
let us dismiss our hopes and stifle our scruples ;
let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die."

That is the answer that many men in this genera-
tion seem to be making to these mocking voices.
But did any man ever make this ariiswer, or in any
wise assent to it, without feeling and knowing that
in doing so he had suffered loss and degradation?
Did any man ever attempt to adjust himself to that
theory of life which these voices imply without a
sense of guilt and shame ? Eeward or no reward,
did any human being ever sacrifice the goods of the
spirit to the goods of sense, honor to gain, truth to
popularity, conscience to success, what he felt to be
the higher to what he felt to be the lower satisfac-
tion, without knowing that he had done a base and
unworthy thing ? It is the surrender, the weak and
treacherous surrender of the law of the mind to the
law in the members. It is the pulling down of the
flag from the citadel of manhood. It is owning
up that you are worsted in the battle of life, that
you are no longer a free man, but the creature of
circumstance, the puppet of caprice, the slave of
things.

That is the surrender, my friends, which none of
us can afford to make. Whatever else we win or
lose we can hardly afford to lose ourselves. That
is what it means to subordinate the spiritual ele-

260 THE EVERLASTING YEA

ments in our nature to the carnal elements, to pre-
fer things seen and temporal to things unseen and
eternal, the shows of sense to the solidities of char-
acter. And for those who find themselves in the
midst of this combat there is need of one firm
and stern resolve, that, in the words of Professor
Royce, " if the world [our world] will be tragic, it
shall still, in Satan's despite, be spiritual." Our
world shall be spiritual. The spiritual elements
shall bear rule in it. Love and truth and purity
and sincerity and goodness shall be things supreme.
We will never for one moment admit that anything
else can be worth as much as they are. We will
not barter them for money or place or applause or
social recognition. Whatever may happen to us in
the present or the future, we will cleave unto these
things which we know to be the essential things of
our lives. We would rather die with these to-mor-
row than live a thousand years without them. You
say that they are not realities. We say that nothing
else is real. To know that you are determined to
be true and upright and faithful ; that you have no
aims that are not just, no purposes that are not
kind ; that you are living, not to aggrandize your-
self, but to help and serve your fellow men, — liv-
ing to give as much as you can of time and thought
and labor for the welfare of your fellows, — to have
this consciousness in your heart is to be in posses-
sion of a reality far more positive and indubitable

THE EVERLASTING YEA 261

and precious than any amount of material gain or
of social recognition could possibly be. There is
nothing so valid, nothing so inalienable as this in-
ward assurance.

Your material goods and gains are by no means
sure. The things which the senses crave the senses
cannot keep. Riches take to themselves wings ;
moth and rust corrupt, thieves break through and
steal ; securities prove insecure ; the popular gods
are fickle; social recognition and leadership is
always held by a precarious tenure ; the senses
themselves, through which all this kind of good is
ministered, fail of their functions and refuse to
supply our cravings. These things are not realities.
But a clean heart, a just mind, a conscience void of
offense, an unselfish habit, a love of service, a quick
sympathy, a joy in all things true and beautiful
and good — who can despoil you of these ?

And these things of the spirit are not only in-
alienable, they are accessible. They are worth hav-
ing, and. you can have them if you will ; none can
hinder you. You can be clean and brave and un-
selfish and magnanimous ; you can choose the things
that are pure and honorable and manly and wo-
manly ; you can prefer these to all the goods of
sense ; if you want them more than anything else
you will have them, and nothing in heaven or earth
or hell can hinder you. " Blessed are they that
hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall

262 THE EVERLASTING YEA

hefilledy Yea, verily; there is no contingency about
it. The man who wants to be right more than he
wants anything else, will be right. Nothing in this
universe, not death itself, is more certain than this.

This is the point above all others, at which there
needs to be perfect clearness. The infidelity that
damns the soul starts right here. When a man
begins to say in effect, " I am afraid that I am not
able to do what I know to be right ; the law in my
members has got the better of me ; it is no longer,
as in Paul's case, a fight between the better and the
worse ; there has been a subjugation of the better
by the worse ; heredity and environment determine
my conduct ; I am a creature of the forces that
play upon me ; whichever way the currents of pro-
pensity and tendency bear me, that way I have to
go ; I must not be held strictly responsible for my
evil choices," — when a man begins to talk like
that, there is very little hope for him. He has
stopped wrestling with the principalities and powers;
he has gone over to them, and become their vassal.

There is, indeed, a certain sense in which a man
is subject to the forces of heredity and environ-
ment. They may have distorted his ideals. Because
of his inheritance, and his surroundings, he may
think some things to be good which he ought to
think evil ; he may be guided in the ways of death.
But when a man sees before him what seems to
him a higher good, and what seems to him a lower

THE EVERLASTING YEA 263

good, and has to choose between them, then the
power to choose the higher does belong to him. He
may find difficulty in realizing his choice ; there
may be a hard fight for him to win the higher good
after he has chosen it ; but he may set his heart
upon it ; he may make it his, and cling to it, and
highly resolve that he will have it, come life or
death, come heaven or hell. The power to do this
is what makes him a man. It is just here that the
battle of life is lost or won. And every man has
the power to win it.

" So close to grandeur is our dust,
So near is God to man,
When Duty whispers low ' Thou must,'
The youth replies ' I can.' "

When, therefore, you have resolved, with Profes-
sor Royce, that " if your world will be tragic it shall
still, in Satan's despite, be spiritual," you have re-
solved on nothing which is not within your power.
And when the mocking voices tell you that you will
be the loser if you make this choice, you will know
how to answer them.

"You warn me," I hear you replying to them,
'' that fidelity to the highest that I know is not the
path to gain and promotion in this world ; that
the powers which bear rule here are not friendly to
the nobler purposes ; and you say that there is no
positive assurance of any other life but this. I do
not admit your assertions ; I think there are reasons

264 TFE EVERLASTING YEA

whose force you cannot understand, — reasons which
have their strong foundations in the very kind of
life from which you are seeking to dissuade me, —
there and nowhere else. I do not believe that any
man can be quite sure of God and immortality until
he takes them both for granted and risks everything
on the assumption that they both exist. It is faith,
in all realms, under all conditions, that gives sub-
stance to things hoped for, and conviction of things
not seen. It is living the life that implies God and
immortality, which makes you sure of God and. im-
mortality, just as it is using and trusting any fac-
ulty which makes you sure that it can be trusted.
I do not think that it is necessary to remain in doubt
about God and immortality. I believe that some
strong assurance of faith is possible, and I mean
to win it. But admit your denials, and what then ?
Suppose there is no guarantee of worldly success
and prosperity to him who chooses the higher good.
Is not an upright mind, a pure heart, an unselfish
purpose, worth more than any amount of worldly
success and prosperity. Suppose that the loss of all
things, even life itself, is the possible consequence
of fidelity to the ideal ; what is life worth when
truth and honor and manhood are gone ? Suppose
that there is no guarantee of future compensation
for present sacrifices of temporal good. Suppose
that death does end all. Does that change the essen-
tial values ? If this life is all, so much the greater

THE EVERLASTING YEA 265

reason is there why this life should all be sound and
clean and true. If this short span of years is all
that is mine, let me make the most and the best of it.
If death is the end, let me wear the fair flower of
a stainless manhood unsmirched and unwithered to
the very end. The goods of sense which you coun-
sel me to choose cannot, on your own theory, be
mine very long ; why should I lower my standards
of manhood to get such ephemeral things ? Do you
expect me to whine and sulk because others by in-
trigue and baseness and heartlessness have gotten
possessions which I have failed to get, or have
secured smiles and favors which to me have been
denied ? Nay, but mine is the better part. If I did
not scorn to change places with them I should be as
base as they. The things for which they have bar-
tered their souls are not realities ; the only goods of
whose worth I am absolutely sure are those goods
of the spirit which are mine, of which no man can
rob me, and for which I am ready to suffer the loss
of all things."

This is the victory that overcometh the world,
even our faith. And it is, primarily, faith in the
reality and the supremacy of the things of the spirit
in our own lives, — faith in the heaven that is in
us now. He who feels that the world is well lost,
if only these can be held fast, has got the world
under his feet.

When that victory is won, the spaces soon widen

266 THE EVERLASTING YEA

about him, and the sky clears over his head. If
truth is immortal, if love is deathless, then his life is
anchored in reality. If such things cannot die, and
if his life is centred in these things, then his life is
secure. He is living the eternal life, and he is living
it now, a life over which death has no power. He
has fought the good fight, he has kept the faith and
he knows that he has won the crown of life.

XVI

SPIRITUAL LAW IN THE NATURAL WORLD

And when even was come, the disciples came to him, saying-,
The place is desert, and the time is already past ; send the multi-
tudes away, that they may go into the villages, and buy them-
selves food. But Jesus said unto them. They have no need to go
away ; give ye them to eat. And they say unto him, We have here
but five loaves and two fishes. And he said, Bring them hither to
me. And he commanded the multitudes to sit down on the grass ;
and he took the five loaves and the two fishes, and looking up to
heaven, he blessed and brake and gave the loaves to the disciples,
and the disciples to the multitudes. And they did all eat and were
filled ; and they took up that which remained over of the broken
pieces, twelve baskets full. And they that did eat were about
five thousand men, besides women and children. — Matt. xiv.
15-21.

I DO not wish to discuss with you this morning
the miraculous features of this narrative. Suppose
I should convince you that this thing here de-
scribed could not have happened : what value would
there be in that demonstration? Suppose that I
should convince you that it did happen ; how much
would that help you? You, at least, have no expec-
tation that anything of the sort will ever happen
to you. Loaves are never going to be multiplied in
your larder by miracle. It is only by labor that the
supply can be maintained. Let us rather take the

268 SPIRITUAL LAW IN NATURAI WORLD

story as an illustration of a spiritual law. What-
ever else we may say about them, every one of
these New Testament miracles is an object lesson,
setting forth, in concrete form, some principle or
process of the spiritual life.

Christ's parables bring before us the similitude
between certain physical facts and certain spiritual
facts. Thus one parable opens to us a beautiful
analogy between the work of the teacher of truth
and the work of the sower of seed. It is plain that
some of the phenomena of the spiritual world can
be finely illustrated by the operations of natural law.

But it is equally clear that some of the pheno-
mena of the spiritual world cannot be explained
by any physical operations with which we are fa-
miliar. Between those spiritual laws which we know
and those physical laws which we know, there are
similitudes, and there are also contrasts. The king-
dom of heaven is, in some respects, like what we
see going on in the garden and the field and the
forest, and in some respects it is unlike all these
forms of life. And it is these phases of the spirit-
ual life which are represented to us in the miracles
of our Lord. In the parable we see natural law
appearing in the spiritual world ; in the miracles of
Christ we see spiritual law appearing in the natural
world, and setting up unusual conditions there. A
profounder philosophy and a more perfect synthesis
may show us that these two realms are one, and

SPIRITUAL LAW IN NATURAL WORLD 269

that what we call miracle is really the action of
forces which are purely natural — the action of a
higher nature with whose processes we are not yet
familiar. But let us look at what lies on the sur-
face of this narrative.

Here, to begin with, is a great result achieved
with small resources. Five thousand and more are
abundantly fed with five loaves and two fishes.

Do we ever see anything like this happening in
the natural world ? We do see under the power of
life wonderful multiplications of natural organism.
A single kernel of corn may multiply, in one sum-
mer, to hundreds of kernels ; and there are many
orders of plants and animals, which, if their geo-
metrical increase were not checked, would soon
cover the surface of the earth. Life is, in many of
its tribes, marvelously prolific.

Yet this natural increase all goes on under the
law of conservation of energy. There are mar-
velous transformations of the materials existing
upon the surface of the earth, but there is no real
addition to them. The kernel of corn becomes a
great stalk, almost a tree, with its green bannerets,
and its tufted plumes, and its branching ears ; but
for all that it has thus become, it is indebted to the
earth and the air; every particle of the matter
which is thus organized has been drawn out of the
soil or the atmosphere ; by as much as its life has
been enriched, by so much are the earth and the

270 SPIRITUAL LAW IN NATURAL WORLD

air the poorer. Even in the kingdoms of life, what
one existence has another has not — what one gains
some other must lose.

Now it does not appear, in this narrative, that
the multiplication of these loaves and fishes involved
any diminution or loss of force or substance to any-
body. There was a marvelous increase, at no cost
to those by whom it was ministered. Nay, they
seem to have been richer at the end of their minis-
try than they were at the beginning. Each of the
twelve went out with a few fragments in his hand,
kept giving them away, took nothing from any
one, and came back with a basket full. This is a
process for which the natural order, so far as we
now understand it, furnishes no analogy.

Yet we constantly see, in the spiritual world,
something very like this taking place. We see the
smallest and feeblest resources multiplied indefi-
nitely, with no apparent diminution anywhere to
balance this increase ; rather with evident gains
to all by whom the increase comes.

Less than a hundred years ago a few young men
were wont to meet behind a haystack, in the edge
of a grove near Williams College, to pray that
God would provide a way by which they might go
forth as missionaries to the heathen. The new im-
pulse which had taken possession of their souls
sprang from the discovery of the truth that God
loves all men, and is ready to save all men. Up to

SPIRITUAL LAW IN NATURAL WORLD 271

this time the general belief had been that Christ
died for the elect only ; that the heathen nations
were not included in the plan of salvation. Now
there were those who ventured to assert that the
atonement was not limited ; that Christ had tasted
death for every man ; that whosoever would might
come and take of the water of life freely. This
was considered before that day a great and dan-
gerous heresy ; those who taught it were believed
to be the enemies of true religion ; harder words
were said about them than are said about any of the
new theologians of this day. Nevertheless, they
found in this heresy a great motive to work for the
building of the kingdom ; since the gospel was for
all men they desired that all men should hear the
gospel, those who were far off as well as those who
were near. But there were only a few of them,
obscure, humble, college students, in an out of the
way corner of New England. Nobody who had
stumbled upon the little group in their seclusion
would have been greatly impressed by what he
saw. If any one had asked him wherewith this
might grow, he would have stared at the sugges-
tion that anything important could come out of
it. Yet it was only a year or two later, as the re-
sult of this little prayer meeting, that the American
Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions was
formed ; and out of that germ has sprung the whole
great foreign missionary work in America, with its

272 SPIRITUAL LAW IN NATURAL WORLD

thousands of missionaries, and its hundreds of thou-
sands of converts, and its millions of dollars annu-
ally contributed for the prosecution of the work,
with colleges and high schools and schools for girls
in every part of the world ; with influences at work
that are leavening many nations. The beginnings
were small and feeble, but the issues are large and
fair. Out of resources that seemed insignificant
something very grand has been evolved.

Go a little further back in history. In an old
manor house, in Scrooby, Nottinghamshire, Eng-
land, a small company of religious outcasts were
wont to meet in the early hours of the morning, to
worship God according to the simple rites which
they preferred. Not many of the wise or the mighty
were among them ; ecclesiastically they were pa-
riahs ; the great English Church had made the ex-
ercise of their religion a crime, and was hunting
them, like venomous reptiles, out of her borders.
Nobody who saw that little company hiding before
day in the Scrooby manor house, could have sup-
posed that anything important was likely to arise
from such a meeting; yet that was the Pilgrim
Church, which landed a few years later in Leyden,
Holland, and a little later still, from the Mayflower,
on the sands of Plymouth harbor, in Massachusetts
Bay, and planted a germ which has developed into
a nation of seventy millions. Whatever other be-
ginnings may have been made upon this soil, the

SPIRITUAL LAW IN NATURAL WORLD 273

ideas and the forces which organized that Plymouth
Colony have been the constructive elements of this
nation. They were all represented there in that
little company at Scrooby manor.

Travel a little further back across the centuries,
and look upon that small congregation of very com-
mon people assembled in an upper chamber in Jeru-
salem and waiting for the promise of the Father.
There were about six score of them ; and they, too,
were despised and rejected of men ; none of the
magnates of their nation had anything but con-
tempt and curses for them ; but this was the germ
of Christendom ; it was by the testimony of these
men, by the manifestation of the life that was in
them, that the Christian church was formed, that
the influences were set in motion by which one third
of the population of the earth has been Christian-
ized.

Such wonderful results as these we are often able
to trace in the action of the spiritual forces. Nor
am I able to find in these phenomena anything
which indicates that they come under the law of
the conservation of energy. I do not discover that
spiritual effects of this nature, though they are stu-
pendous in their range and reach, are produced by
reducing life at other points. I do not see that the
world is impoverished anywhere, in order that it
may be enriched by this multiplication of spiritual

274 SPIRITUAL LAW IN NATURAL WORLD

In truth, the law of the spiritual life is unlike the
law of the physical life in this, that it increases by
what it imparts and lives by what it loses. We may
say what we will about this story of the feeding of
the five thousand ; but we know that in all the su-
perior realms of our life something exactly like
what is said to have taken place here on the shores
of Gennesaret is all the while going on. We go out
very often, with a few fragments, and by dint of
giving these away diligently, we come back with
baskets full. We have but little ourselves, and are
very conscious of the smallness of our resources ;
but the more we give to others the more we have
left.

Take a man like Mark Hopkins, like Theodore
Woolsey, like Noah Porter, like James Fairchild ;
the mind of any of them, in its youthful periods, is
crude and comparatively barren. Good scholars
they are ; they master their books ; certain amounts
of knowledge they have accumulated, but how
deficient are they in the larger quality of wisdom.
The early essays of Dr. Hoj^kins are correct in form,
and show a certain mental alertness, but how little
there is in them compared with what we find in the
later writings. But this man begins, in his youth,
freely to impart what he has freely received. He
has not much to bestow, at the beginning, but such
as he has he gives. Year after year he pours out
the treasures of his accumulated wisdom into the

SPIRITUAL LAW IN NATURAL WORLD 275

minds of his pupils. To one class after another, to
one generation after another, he seeks to communi-
cate the best he has — all he has ; to keep back no-
thing ; to share with these young minds his choicest
gains. Scores and hundreds of them glean from his
lips the fruit of ripe thought, of large experience ;
their ideas are cleared, their mental processes are
rectified, their judgment is steadied, their imagina-
tion is chastened, their whole intellectual and moral
life is invigorated and enriched by what he has given
to them. And how is it with him ? Is he impover-
ished by this lavish bestowal ? No ; every year his
knowledge widens, his wisdom deepens, his insight
clarifies, his temper becomes more genial, his sym-
pathies more comprehensive. He has given his best
life to thousands, but not one of the thousands of
receivers has gained one hundredth part of what he,
the giver, has won. Does any man believe that a
closeted recluse, absorbing and hoarding knowledge,
could ever have become so large-minded, so large-
hearted, so full of benignant wisdom ? No, it is the
very act of giving by which this mind has been
enriched. It is not merely the exercise of the men-
tal faculties, it is their benevolent exercise, it is the
use of these powers under the spiritual law, that has
wrought this enlargement of the nature.

Take a woman like Dorothy Pattison, — Sister
Dora, — in her youth rather willful, passionate, in-
considerate of others, and watch the effect upon her

276 SPIRITUAL LAW IN NATURAL WORLD

nature of a life of service. How steadily it broad-
ens and ripens under this regimen. She is giving
herself more and more unreservedly to the care of
the needy and the suffering ; she is never thinking
about self -culture ; she covets only those gifts that
can make her life more useful to those about her ;
delicate lady as she is, her days are spent amid the
most loathsome and repulsive scenes ; all that she
studies to do is to give comfort and relief and hap-
piness to others. And how is her character affected
by this discipline ? Those who estimate life by the
common worldly standards should expect to find her
growing hard and sour and shrewish ; they should
look to see her small stock of amiability and tender-
ness utterly exhausted by this daily expenditure ;
surely one who has so little and spends so much
must be impoverished. But this is not the law of
the spiritual realm. The more she gives of sym-
pathy and tenderness the more she has to give ; the
sources of her affection are deepened ; new foun-
tains of gracious compassion are unsealed ; the rather
hard-natured girl becomes the good angel of the
suffering poor of a whole city. There, to-day, in
the market place of Walsall her statue stands, the
tribute of the people who loved her. Look into that
calm, strong, radiant face. You do not need to be
assured that it is a good likeness ; the soul is shin-
ing through it. It is the glory of womanhood. And
it was w^on, as that glory is always won, not by

SPIRITUAL LAW IN NATURAL WORLD 277

grasping at personal good or gain ; not by seeking
recognition and social distinction, but by giving —
freely, constantly, lavishly — service, ministry, love,
life, to all who were in need.

There is no question about this law. The facts
that I am reciting to you can be multiplied in the
observation of every thoughtful person. You know
by abundant evidence, that the goods of the spirit-
ual realm are increased by dispensing them ; that
those and those only are enriched who give abun-
dantly, constantly, with no thought of return. Every
S2)iritual power or possession is enhanced by shar-
ing it with others. My faith is strengthened when I
can inspire some other soul with confidence ; if my
hopefulness is caught by other hearts, my own hope
is confirmed ; if I can kindle joy in a sorrowing
heart, my own beats with livelier pulsations.

No one can doubt that the whole superior realm
of man's life is under this higher law. It is not
the law of competition ; it is not the law of mutual
exclusion ; it is not the law of the conservation of
energy. We rise, in our moral and spiritual pro-
gress, into a region where these principles which are
of the earth earthy no longer bear rule. The law of
this higher realm is that which we see illustrated,
symbolized, at any rate, in the narrative before us.
It is the law which guarantees that those who go
forth with fragments, if they but diligently give
them away, shall come back with baskets full.

278 SPIRITUAL LAW IN NATURAL WORLD

We can clearly see that this law rules in the
realm of spirit ; but we are perplexed by the sug-
gestion that it can also be made to rule in the
material realm. When it comes to the matter of
loaves and fishes, we think that we must fall back
on the law of the material realm. We do not
expect to see the principle of the spiritual realm
prevailing over the principle of the material realm ;
to find our food and raiment, our goods and chat-
tels, our dimes and dollars multiplying as we dis-
pense them. No ; I do not think that it would be
wise for us to look for anything just like this. I
do not, indeed, know how far this process of spirit-
ualizing the material realm may yet be carried. I
do not know what will happen when the day comes
that the whole creation is waiting and longing for
— the day when it shall be manifest that men are
the sons of God. I imagine that what we call the
powers and laws of nature will be supple and
docile under their hands in ways that we do not
now comprehend. I surmise that some things
which we now call miracles wiU then become
mere commonplaces. And when I see this man
Christ Jesus, who stands at the summit of human
perfection, wielding forces whose nature I do not
understand, my reason is not confounded ; it is
what I expect. Certain it is that he seemed to
possess powers, which some of us do not possess, of
spiritualizing nature ; of making the forces of the

SPIRITUAL LAW IN NATURAL WORLD 279

material realm conform to the laws of the spiritual
realm. Every man in some measure does this who
learns to rule impulse by reason, and to bring appe-
tite under the dominion of love. But Jesus Christ
did it in many ways, and with such demonstrations
of spiritual power as are yet to our dull vision
marvelous. I do not think that it is well for us to
covet the powers that seem to us miraculous. The
very fact that they seem so to us is proof that we do
not know how to use them ; that we would surely do
mischief with them.

But it is possible for us to bring large spaces of
the lower realm under the influence of the spiritual
laws ; and when we come near enough to this Christ
to catch his spirit and learn his methods we shall be
doing this all the while. It may not be possible for
us, always, to subjugate matter and its laws by the
spiritual principle ; but it is possible for us to make
this principle regnant in our relations with men.
If physical substances cannot be made to conform
to spiritual laws, human relations can.

There is a book the title of which is "Natural
Law in the Business World." The natural law
which is expounded is Rob Roy's rule : —

" That lie should g-et who has the power,
And he should keep who can."

It is the law which authorizes and encourages
every man to get as much as he legally and safely

280 SPIRITUAL LAW IN NATURAL WORLD

can from every one of his fellows. That is what is
generally meant by natural law in the business
world. And the argument seeks to show that the
operation of this law must bring the greatest good
to the greatest number. This is precisely the point
on which I must dissent from a great deal of cur-
rent teaching. I do not believe that the business
world or any other world can ever be peaceful and
prosperous under the operation of this law. It
seems to me that what we want is the substitution
of spiritual law for natural law in the business
world. What would that signify ? Simply this :
that each, instead of getting as much as he could
away from everybody else for himself, should give
as much as he could to everybody else. Do you
think that that would be a quixotic rule in the
business world ? I do not think so. I believe that
the most successful traders to-day are those who
honestly try to give their customers as much as
they can for their money — not as little as they
can. I believe that this liberal policy proves to be
good policy. As much as they can, I say. The
business must be maintained; common prudence
must be used ; the methods must not be such as
shall destroy the business or make its manager a
pauper ; but within the bounds of ordinary sagacity,
the man who gives his customers as much as he can
afford to give them for their money is more likely
in the long run to succeed, than the man who gives

SPIRITUAL LAW IN NATURAL WORLD 281

them just as little for their money as he can prevail
on them to take. Down here, on this very lowest
plane, unmitigated selfishness is not profitable.
People recognize this fact when they speak of an
" enlightened self-interest " as being wiser than
mere crass egoism. But what do they mean by " en-
lightened self-interest? " The conduct which they
so describe is that which is not purely egoistic ; it
is that which admits some consideration for the in-
terests of others ; it is conduct which recognizes, to
some extent, the social bond that unites us, and
the mutual interests of human beings ; conduct, in
other words, which has come partly under the spirit-
ual laws. Until some small infusion of the spiritual
element has been imparted to society men cannot
live together at all. Society founded solely upon
what is by these philosophers called natural law,
ruled by no other principle, would be what is
commonly known as hell. And we can all see,
that even in the world of trade, a mixture of the
spiritual element with the element of competition
and conflict does not prevent, but promotes pros-
perity.

But let us try the principle in another realm
where human relations are a larger factor in the
problem. Let us think of the society which is com-
posed of the employer and the employed. Would
not a substitution of spiritual law for natural law
increase the welfare, the material welfare, of the

282 SPIRITUAL LAW IN NATURAL WORLD

whole of this society? Take a great industry in
which the employer, on his side, was trying to get
just as much as he could out of his employees, and
the employees, on their side, were trying to get as
much as they could out of their employer ; each side
acting from the principle of sheer selfishness. Let
the fundamental law of that society be changed.
Let the spiritual principle be brought in to modify
what men call the natural principle. Let the em-
ployer earnestly seek to give his men as much as
he can for their service, and the employees honestly
endeavor to give their master as much as they can
for the wages he pays them ; is not the prosperity
of that industrial group likely to increase ? Would
not the product of such an industry be consider-
ably enlarged, and would there not be more to di-
vide between employer and employed? I am not
saying anything about methods, now ; I am only
speaking of the spirit, the motive, that might con-
trol the relations of this industrial group. I am
supposing, also, that this spirit is manifested on
both sides of this relation. If the employer were
utterly selfish, and the employees only were inspired
with good-will, the relation could not be prosper-
ous ; neither would it work when the employer was
the only Good Samaritan and the employees were
mostly shirks and sponges ; but when each party
heartily wishes to do all he can for the welfare of
the other, there is, I say, a better promise of pros-

SPIRITUAL LAW IN NATURAL WORLD 283

perity for both, than where each is determined to
advance its own interests at the expense of the
other ? Can any sane man doubt this ? If the re-
lations of men in industrial society were spiritual-
ized to such an extent that the law of grasping
were supplanted, in some good degree, by the law
of giving, would there not be more for all ? Does
not the principle which we find in the story we are
studying — the principle that our possessions are
increased by sharing them — come pretty near ful-
fillment even here within the material realm. For
my own part, I do not expect that there will ever
be security or plenty or peace in the world, that
poverty and misery and strife will ever be banished
or greatly mitigated, until men have learned how
to make spiritual law broadly operative in the busi-
ness world.

But whatever the effect of the observance of this
law might be upon our material prosperity, whether
or not it would enlarge our gains and our revenues,
one effect it would certainly have ; it would greatly
enhance the value of what we do possess. The real
question is not, after all, how much we have, but
how much good it does us ; how much real satisfac-
tion we get out of it. There are millionaires, not a
few, who get less enjoyment and less real benefit
out of their vast incomes, than many a day laborer
gets out of his wages, than many a hard-working
clerk gets out of his small salary. The man whose

284 SPIRITUAL LAW IN NATURAL WORLD

character, whose manhood, whose essential happi-
ness is most increased by his possessions, is the man
whose portion is most to be coveted.

Now here is a fact that I know by experience,
and so do many of you — a fact that is just as dis-
tinctly a part of our consciousness as is our per-
sonal identity. "We know that when we divide our
portion, for love's sake, with our brother, what we
have left is worth more to us than the whole would
have been if we had kept it all for ourselves. We
know that the real value of our possessions is en-
hanced by sharing them with those that are in
need. We know that it is only when the love that
prompts us to do good and to communicate is in our
hearts that we derive the highest enjoyment from
our earthly possessions. We have gone out, more
than once, with our fragments in our hands ; we have
distributed more freely, perhaps, than we thought
prudent, and we have come back, if not with baskets
full, at least with hearts full, which is the main
thing, after all.

Here, then, are our every-day miracles. Whatever
may have happened to those loaves and fishes, we
know, that with the real bread of life, which is
love, this very thing happens every day. We di-
vide our portion with those less fortunate than
ourselves, and what is left is more because of what
was given ; the part is larger than the whole. We give
daily, all that is most truly ourselves, — give freely

SPIRITUAL LAW IN NATURAL WORLD 285

of thought and hope and love — and find our trea-
sure daily growing ; the more we bestow the larger
is our store. How fast this world might grow rich
if all men would stop hoarding their best, and
would begin to give it away, with unstinted bounty
to all who were able to receive it.

XVII

SHOW us THE FATHER

Philip said unto him, Lord, show us the Father, and it sufficeth
us. Jesus saith unto him, Have I been so long time here with you,
and dost thou not know me, Philip ? he that hath seen me hath
seen the Father ; how sayest thou, Show us the Father ? — John
xiv. 8, 9.

This is part of the last conversation of Jesus with
his disciples, the young men who had been his
constant companions for about three years, and
whom he had been training to receive his message
and to be the witnesses to the world of the truth he
had come to declare. They had understood from
him that it was his mission to reveal God to them
and to the world. He was the Word, the expres-
sion, the utterance of God ; the purpose of his
coming, as he says to the Father in the prayer
with which this last conversation closes, is that men
" might know thee the only true God and him
whom thou didst send, even Jesus Christ." Now
he is going away from them, and it seems to this
apostle that the purpose of his coming is not yet
fulfilled. It would appear that Philip had been
patiently waiting in the expectation of seeing God.
Perhaps he had treasured in his mind the beati-

SHOW US THE FATHER 287

tude, " Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall
see God," and had been trying to cleanse his own
heart and life that to him the beatific vision might
come. But he had waited in vain. The great dis-
closure had not been made. Now, therefore, he begs
his Master not to go away until the veil has been
drawn aside and the vision of God has appeared to
the disciples. " Lord, show us the Father and it
sufficeth us." With that sight we shall be content.
That will give us the certainty we need.

I wonder what Philip imagined that disclosure
would be. Doubtless he had some kind of concep-
tion of it. Beyond a question he supposed that it
would be some revelation to his senses. Perhaps
he recalled the old story of the three who came to
Abraham as he rested at his tent door in the even-
ing, and sat down and supped with him, one of
whom, as the narrative distinctly implies, was Je-
hovah himself. Such appearances of God in human
form the Hebrews had always believed in ; it may
be that Philip had thought that Jesus would come
into the assembly of the disciples some evening
leading in a venerable and majestic Form and thus
making known to them the Father.

Perhaps he thought of that marvelous disclosure
to Moses on Mount Sinai ; perhaps he remembered
the vision that Ezekiel describes, when between the
whirling wheels of fire, and under the outstretched
wings of the cherubim, "the glory of Jehovah

288 SHOW US THE FATHER

mounted up from the cherub and stood on the
threshold of the house, and the house was filled
with the cloud, and the court was full of the bright-
ness of Jehovah's glory. And the sound of the
wings of the cherubim was heard even to the outer
court, as the voice of God Almighty when he speak-
eth." Such pictures had, it may be, risen up before
the mind of Philip while he had been listening to
those words of Jesus in which he had spoken of
making known to them the Father. Some such
conceptions have always haunted the minds of men
when the name of God and the knowledge of God
have been brought before their thought. Often the
image thus appearing to them is frankly human,
and that, no doubt, is the least misleading; but
often, also, the imagination has sought in some
effulgence of dazzling light, in some splendor of
color or movement, to represent to itself the divine
Presence. So Dante, in that last sublime vision:

" Within the deep and luminous subsistence

Of the High Light, appeared to me three circles
Of threefold color and of one dimension,

And by the second seemed the first reflected
As Iris is by Iris, and the third
Seemed fire that equally from both is breathed.

O how all speech is feeble and falls short
Of my conceit, and this to what I saw
Is such 't is not enough to call it little.

O Light Eterne, sole in thyself that dwellest,
Sole knowest thyself, and, known unto thyself,
And knowing, lovest and smilest on thyself !

SHOW US THE FATHER 289

That circulation, which being thus conceived
Appeared in thee as a reflected light,
When somewhat contemplated by mine eyes,

Within itself, of its own very color
Seemed to me painted with our effigy,
Wherefore my sight was all absorbed therein.

As the geometrician, who endeavors
To square the circle, and discovers not
By taking thought, the principle he wants.

Even such was I at that new apparition ;
I wished to see how the image to the circle
Conformed itself, and how it there finds place,

But my own wings were not enough for this,
Had it not been that then my mind there smote
A flash of lightning, wherein came its wish."

But that experience Dante could not report. Un-
speakable words were these, not lawful for man to
utter ; albeit there is prophetic insight in that swift
glance which beheld in the full blaze of the glory
of divinity the image of the human form divine.

All these attempts to conceive or represent duty
are, however, not only fanciful but misleading. AIL
of them are pictures presented to the eye. They are
physical representations. They are sensuous revela-
tions. Into such forms as these men have always
been trying to put their thought of God. I am very
sure that if you who listen to me would stop and
try to give definiteness to your own conception of
the Supreme Deity you would find it taking a form
which might be represented in a painting or a
photograph and seen by the bodily eye.

It was some such representation of God as this

290 SHOW US THE FATHER

that Philip expected. He had been looking for it,
perhaps, for many months. On the mountain top,
under the stars at night, in the shady grove, be-
neath the shadow of a great rock in the desert, he
had hoped that the apparition might visit him;
he had waited and watched for its appearing, but it
had not come. But Jesus had promised, and Philip
was still hoping. Doubtless, he thinks, before he
goes away, the veil will be drawn aside and he will
see his heart's desire. So he ventures to remind the
Master : " Lord, show us the Father and it sufficeth
us."

There is a pathetic accent in our Lord's reply.
How little, after all, even these chosen ones have
learned from his lips, from his life ! How strange
it is that this man should still be clinging to a con-
ception so crude ! For Jesus sees that Philip thinks
that the only real way to see the Father is with the
bodily eye ; that no revelation of God to him will
give him any satisfaction but some majestic form,
some dazzling light, some physical or sensuous mani-
festation. Because he has been looking for God to
appear in such forms, he has been wholly unable to
discern him in the real revelations that he is making
of himself, all the while, in the world. These crude
and sensuous conceptions of God have even ob-
scured that brightest manifestation of God's glory
which the world has ever seen, in the person of the
Master at whose feet for three years he has been

SHOW US THE FATHER 291

sitting. It is to this that the Lord first seeks to
draw his mind. " Have I been so long time with
you, and dost thou not know me, Philip ? He that
hath seen me hath seen the Father; how sayest
thou, show us the Father?"

" He that hath seen me hath seen the Father."
It is not, I dare say, to any supernatural or miracu-
lous phenomena connected with his history that
Jesus is now referring. It is rather in his whole
life and character that the Father has been revealed.
It is in the purity and truth, the fidelity and con-
stancy, the patience and meekness, the long-suffer-
ing love, which have been disclosed in his words and
his deeds that the divine lineaments have appeared.
Jesus has often told his disciples that God is a
Spirit ; and if this is true, then the perfect revela-
tion of him must be in the spirit and to the spirit.
It cannot, then, be anything miraculous ; for mir-
acles appeal to the senses. A miracle, by definition,
is some apparent suspension of a natural law, and
a suspension of natural law must be cognizable by
the senses. But things of the spirit are not cogni-
zable by the senses. The eye cannot see, the ear
cannot hear the things which are revealed through
the Spirit of God to the spirit of man. When men's
thoughts are centred on the sensuous, the miracu-
lous, they always fail to see the deep and real
things of the Spirit. That was the trouble with
Philip. He had been looking for wonders and signs

292 SHOW US THE FATHER

so intently that he had not seen the real revelation,
the glorious revelation of God in the life and char-
ter of Jesus his Master. It was by the spirit only
that this divineness could be discerned, and he had
been watching all the while at the portals of sense.
The character of Jesus, the life of Jesus, was the
manifestation of the Father ; that was the great
fact which he had failed to comprehend.

Let us not fail to put the proper emphasis on
this word Father. As Philip uses it, it is only a
synonym for the Supreme Deity, but as Jesus uses
it it is something more than that. Jesus was not, he
never claimed to be, the revealer of the existence
of the Supreme Deity. That was not his mission.
He does not say, " He that hath seen me has seen
the Creator," or the Infinite and Eternal Energy,
from whom all things proceed. It is not God as
force, or as law that is manifested in him. " He
that hath seen me hath seen the Father.'^ That
was the revelation that men needed. That was the
knowledge of God which they had hitherto failed
to gain. There was no need of displaying before
them the power of God ; the evidence of that, no
matter how presented, whether in law or in miracle,
would have no effect whatever on their characters.
There could be no inspiration, no salvation in that.
Men's hearts are not changed by power. Men's
lives are not purified by force. It was the character
of God which needed to be revealed to men, and of

SHOW US THE FATHER 293

God's character Jesus was himself the revelation.
" He that hath seen me hath seen the Father."
That truth about God which you need to know, he
tells Philip — the truth that brings salvation, you
learn by listening to my words, by receiving my
spirit, by sharing my life.

Is it not true that a great many people in these
days, believers and unbelievers, are searching for
God in the same way that Philip was searching for
him ; demanding the same kind of evidence that he
was demanding, and troubled as he was by their
doubts because such evidence is not forthcoming?
Is not the proof of God which many people in
these days insist upon a proof that appeals to sense
rather than to spirit, a demonstration in the out-
ward realm of physical fact more than in the inward
realm of spiritual feeling? And is not the answer
that Jesus gave to Philip the one that we need to
emphasize to-day? To those who ask us to show
them God, to make certain to them his presence in
the world, is it not sufficient to say: The convincing
signs of his presence are not to be found in the
physical realm. A miracle, what appeared to be an
interruption of the physical order, would not be good
evidence. The order itself, when reverently studied,
does give us reason for believing that he is in his
world. But, after all, it is not there, in the physical
order, that we find the most conclusive reasons for
believing in him. It is in thie moral world, the world

294 SHOW US THE FATHER

of spirit, the world of character, that we gather our
most convincing proofs. Christ himself was the
manifestation of God, and it is the Christliness
which the world contains which manifests him
to-day. Wherever the truth of Christ influences
human thought, and the purity of Christ helps to
cleanse and sanctify human life, and the patience
of Christ subdues human enmities, and the pity of
Christ heals human hurts and sorrows, and the gen-
tleness of Christ brings men together in unity, and
the love of Christ becomes, in any feeble and imper-
fect way, the law of human life, there we behold the
Father.

How far the human world is yet from being
transformed into the image of Christ nobody needs
to be told. How much there yet is of animalism and
greed and meanness and cowardice and spite and
hate the newspapers do not fail to let us know. But,
after all, some mighty changes have taken place in
humanity in the last nineteen hundred years ; even
in the limited and partial way in which Christli-
ness has become incarnated in human life, there is
much that ought to stir our hearts with deepest
gratitude.

The mind of Christ does not control all the think-
ing of men ; but over a great part of the world it
widely and deeply influences human thought. The
ideas of Christ have helped in a marvelous degree
to shape and color the literature and the art of

SHOW US THE FATHER 295

the roost civilized nations. The spirit of Christ
finds utterance in many of the laws of Christen-
dom by which the weak are protected and the poor
are befriended.

The inscription in St. Paul's Cathedral to the
memory of Sir Christopher Wren, the architect,
tells the reader, *' If you wish to see his monument,
look about you ! " The great cathedral itself, from
crypt to dome, is his monument ; he needs no other.
Reverently we may apply this saying to Him whose
life is the spring of Christian civilization. If you
desire evidence of the presence of the God and
Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, behold it in a
world which his love is steadily transforming. The
Father is seen in the work that has been done in
and for humanity through his well-beloved Son.

" Show us the Father," are you crying ? Well,
you may get at least a glimpse of him wherever the
sentiment of brotherhood has found a lodgment in
human hearts. Stand with me in a great church in
England and hear the congregation pouring out
their hearts in this hymn :

" When wilt thou save the people ?

O God of mercy, when ?
Not kings and lords, but nations !

Not thrones and crowns, but men !
Flowers of thy heart, 0 God, are they :
Let them not pass like weeds away,
Their heritage a sunless day —

God save the people ! "

296 SHOW US THE FATHER

You might think that that was a purely American
sentiment, but it is not: the feeling of brother-
hood is world-wide ; men of many nations respond
to the same inspiring call ; they have learned to
say "Our Father," and the meaning of the great
fact is slowly dawning upon human thought and
shaping human government.

" Show us the Father ! " Behold the multitudes
gathering on election morning from palace and
cabin, from boulevard and alley, and standing be-
fore the ballot box on the common level of citizen-
ship, every man a freeman, every man a sovereign.
The democracy in whose name they gather is but
the expression in terms of political rights of the
truth of the common Fatherhood which came by
Jesus Christ.

" Show us the Father ! " Stand here among the
busy wharves and see the ships from every shore
bringing throngs of men and women with strange
garb and outlandish speech, all made welcome, pro-
tected, feeling themselves secure, seeking and find-
ing home and livelihood among strangers. What
would have happened two thousand years ago to
companies of men who found themselves cast upon
a foreign shore ? Why is it that these are so safe
among us ? Because we have been reading the story
of the Good Samaritan, and have learned that
one of another race may be our neighbor, nay, our
brother.

SHOW US THE FATHER 297

" Show us the Father ! " See that little group
of men in the old Dutch capital, sitting around one
council table, and seeking by reason and justice to
compose national difficulties, for which, only a little
while ago, there was no solution but the sword. In
high places some one has been heard saying that
the children of one Father ought to be able to set-
tle their quarrels without war.

" Show us the Father ! " Far away, on the other
side of the world, there has been dearth and famine
and hundreds of thousands are perishing with hun-
ger. But see, from every shore swift ships are sail-
ing with bread for the hungry, and the compassion
that springs from the heart of the universal Father
unites in the bonds of brotherhood races divided by
half the circumference of the globe.

The head of a great nation falls by the assassin's
hand, — and lo, in every harbor, all round the world,
the flags are drooping, and the sorrow of one people
is answered by millions who can speak no other
tongue that we can understand but the eloquent
language of their tears. Are they not all our
brethren ?

" Show us the Father ! " Come and sit where
busy women have gathered the little children of the
poor out of cellar and hovel and are seeking to
guide them into the ways of life. Visit many a
home where charity begins, and does not end, but
goes forth on errands of service and compassion

298 SHOW US THE FATHER

the needy and the friendless. Tarry in the home it-
self and ponder the significance of its sacred order,
its enduring peace, its ministry of love ; the home in
which the mother is neither a drudge nor a slave
but the equal companion of her husband ; in which
the children are honored and sheltered and tenderly
nurtured, — and compare it with the homes of
Greece and Rome, whose civilization ruled the earth
when Philip and Jesus were talking together that
night in Jerusalem. What has built this Christian
home but the love of the Father from whom every
family in heaven and on earth is named ?

" Show us the Father ! " Nay, for the time would
fail me to speak of all the beautiful services of
compassion whereof the earth is full ; of hospitals
where sickness is healed and pain is lightened ;
where minds diseased are ministered unto and dark-
ened intellects are led into the light ; of the mes-
sengers of ]3ity who nurse the sick and comfort the
sorrowful ; of the shelters where the aged and the
homeless may find rest; of the bands of Good
Samaritans in the cities who go down and live
among the poor ; of the thousands of heroic men
and women in tropical jungles and on lonely islands
in the sea who are giving their lives for the rescue
of them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of
death ; — of the whole beautiful growth of Chris-
tian charity as it springs from the dark soil of
human selfishness and passion, and transforms the

SHOW US THE FATHER 299

mould of sordid greed and brutal hate into the
blossoms of sympathy and the kindly fruits of
benevolence.

Let us give one more thoughtful look into the
world about us, for signs of the presence of our
Father. Upon the faces of the children of men our
eyes shall rest, beholding there what painter can
never quite convey, the note of character, the sub-
tle lines that hint the quality of the inner life. The
faces of the children of men, as you see them up-
turned to you in an assembly like this, are an im-
pressive revelation. And these faces, in the mes-
sage that they utter, change from age to age. The
inward thoughts and feelings, the habitual emotions
and aspirations write their lineaments upon the
human countenance. As the ruling ideas of men
are modified, as the prevailing sentiments take on
new form and color, men's faces reveal the inward
transformation. And there can be no doubt that a
great change has passed over the human physiog-
nomy since the day when Jesus came to earth. Our
own ancestors were savages in the German forests
then ; their faces might have been searched in vain
for any spiritual beauty. But the sculptors and the
painters of Greece and Rome were men of quick
artistic sense ; and they have kept for us the effigies
of great numbers of those who were the first men
and women of their time. We know, therefore,
what were the types of the human countenance in

300 SHOW US THE FATHER

the highest civilization of that day. We can con-
jecture what the sea of faces looking down from
the stone seats of the theatre or the colosseum
must have been like. And we are sure that it would
have presented to the gazer a very different aspect
from that which he would behold in the multitude
of countenances on which he might look to-day in
any great assembly of Christendom. The human
form in those old days was no less beautiful than it
is to-day ; but the human face — how different it is,
in all the representations of it that have come down
to us from antiquity, from that which draws out
our highest admiration ! Those old emperors and
senators, those philosophers and heroes, those types
of manly and womanly beauty which live for us in
marble, present characteristics quite different from
those that we have learned to look for in the best
human faces. It matters not whether they were
portraits or ideals ; if the latter, they report no less
clearly the highest concej)tions of humanity which
then were known. And if you will compare those
old types with the realities of to-day, you will see
what a change has passed upon humanity. The
faces are hard, severe, strong, masterful ; those
which preserve for us the models of beauty, the
Antinous and the Phryne, present to us the perfec-
tion of feature and of sensuous form, but of the
higher graces of character they give no hint. Study
the heads in the Louvre and see how many you find

SHOW US THE FATHER 301

among them that kindle your admiration or warm
your heart. Then look into the typical faces of
men and women of to-day, into the face of Glad-
stone or Kuskin or Stanley or Cardinal Newman,
or Lowell or Phillips Brooks or George William
Curtis, or the strong, sad, sublime countenance of
Abraham Lincoln. What is in these faces that that
old world never saw ? A tinge of sadness, doubtless,
a note of pain, but pain over which joy and hope
are victorious ; they are faces that tell of spiritual
conflict and mastery ; lines are here that speak of
sympathy, of tenderness, of pity, of the courage
that is touched with gentleness; of the firnmess
that is born of faith. These faces reveal a whole
realm of habitual thought which to that old life
was foreign. What is the one word that describes
the difference between the typical Caucasian faces
of to-day and those of the first century? Their
look is more humane ; it reveals a life more truly
human, — and therefore more nearly divine. Some-
thing is reflected in them of that Face which was
so marred more than any man, yet that was fairer
than any of the sons of men —

" That one Face, far from vanish, rather grows,
Or decomposes, but to recompose.
Become my universe that feels and knows."

How many human countenances there are still that
very imperfectly reflect the divine light ! How many
that are darkened by ignorance and clouded by

302 SHOW US THE FATHER

enmity and disfigured by selfishness and sodden by
lust and shadowed by suspicion ; how many in which
the light of hope is quenched by trouble and care ;
how many that reveal few signs of high thoughts
and true aspirations ; how many that men call
beautiful which are empty and blank and destitute
of every sign of spiritual beauty ! But blessed be
God, there are many faces on which he is writing
his benediction ; true faces, pure faces, kind faces,
compassionate faces, happy, hopeful, winning faces ;
faces from which the light of the spirit shines ; and
we know and are sure that if the glory of God is
ever seen in this world, it will be in the love-light
beaming from human faces. We rejoice and praise
Him to-day that so much of it is visible even now ;
and we pray that we all, beholding with unveiled
face the glory of the Lord, may be transformed into
the same image, from glory to glory, even as by the
Lord the Spirit.

XVIII

THE EDUCATION OF OUR WANTS

He that gathered much had nothing' over, and he that gathered
little had no lack, — Ex. xvi. IS.

This is said concerning that marvelous bread from
heaven, the manna, which fed the chiklren of Israel
in the wilderness. Every evening it lay upon the
ground in small white flakes, an abundant supply
of it, and they were bidden to gather it, " an omer
a head, according to the number of your persons
shall ye take it every man for them which are in
his tent. And the children of Israel did so, and
gathered, — some more, some less." Some, per-
haps, were greedy and feared that they would not
get enough, and some were timid and withheld
their hands lest they should take too much. But
when they came to measure it, the communistic rule
was exactly and supernaturally enforced. All had
exactly the same amount. The large hoards shrank
and the scanty hoards expanded ; there was just an
omer apiece, all round, in every tent. The greedy
were no better off for their greed and the timid were
no worse off for their timidity. It is the only soci-
ety of which I have read, except that in Mr. Bel-

304 THE EDUCATION OF OUR WANTS

lamy's " Looking Backward," in which the por-
tions of all were exactly equalized. And it would
seem that the supply and the demand in every case
were precisely equivalent. No one had more than
he wanted : no one wanted more than he had.
Wants and possessions were in perfect agree-
ment.

This brings us to the theme which I wish to
consider with you this morning — the schooling of
human wants. AYe need a great many kinds of
education, — the education of our muscles, that
they may be vigorous and elastic ; of our nerves,
that they may be at once alert and sedate ; of our
senses, that they may properly mediate between
ourselves and our environment ; of our intellects,
that they may digest and assimilate the knowledge
brought to us ; of our imaginations, that they may
fashion for us creations sacred and beautiful ; of
our affections, that they may cleave unto whatso-
ever things are pure and honest and of good report,
— but not less of our wants, those imperious, insist-
ent, inward powers that do so much to give di-
rection and momentum to our lives. The education
of our wants — is there anything more serious or
pressing ? If every one of those who are listen-
ing to me could get his wants properly trained and
disciplined so that he should want everything he
needed and nothing that was not good for him ; so
that he should want the best things most and the

THE EDUCATION OF OUJEl WANTS 305

things of least value least, — what a happy com-
pany this would be ?

The beginning of this education of wants is the
awakening of wants. Certain primary animal
cravings are present in the infant of days, but the
range of instinctive desires is comparatively nar-
row, and without a stimulating education does not
greatly wdden. The history of civilization is the his-
tory of the awakening and multiplication of human
wants. The missionary finds the savages of Africa
to be creatures with very few wants. They require
a little coarse food, a very little clothing, a shelter
of mud with no window and no chimney, a bow or
a spear, a hatchet of stone, some rude family life,
some human attachment to the tribe or the clan,
some intervention, now and then, of priest or jug-
gler with weird rites to represent and propitiate the
powers of that other world of which the spirit must
have some haunting sense ; but when you have made
up your full catalogue of all the things this primi-
tive man ever thinks of and wishes for, how meagre
a list it is. All the elements of a man are there ; he
has a body with its appetites, a mind with reason-
ing power, a social nature that links him with his
kind, a spirit that holds converse with the unseen,
— yet how little it takes to satisfy all his desires !

The first thing to do for him is to make him
want more things and better things, — and this is
precisely the process which goes on in his life.

306 THE EDUCATION OF OUR WANTS

Some of us heard one of our missionaries explain-
ing it very vividly, not long ago. The savage by
his contact with the missionary finds unconsciously
awakened in him new wants. He begins to want
better garments to protect him from the cold and
to shield him from the sun ; a better house to live
in, in which the smoke of his fire will not blind
and strangle him, and into which the sunlight may
find its way ; better food to eat ; better imple-
ments, — an axe and a spade and a plow ; pre-
sently he wants that mysterious power of commu-
nicating with some one at a distance, which he sees
the missionary exercising, when he makes marks
upon a bit of paper, and it is carried to some
one else in the next village who understands it
and answers in the same way, — magic, it seems
to the wondering child of Nature, but- he wants to
possess it for himself and for his children ; and
thus his intellectual wants are awakened and he is
started on the long and gainful quest of the know-
ledge that can be transmitted by letters and the
power which such knowledge gives. By and by he
learns, through his love for the man who is bring-
ing him all these wonderful things, to listen to
what the man has to tell him about the Father
of us all, and the Lord and Leader of men, and
finds a want springing up in his heart for the love
of this all-Father and the friendship of this great
Friend.

THE EDUCATION OF OUR WANTS 307

We can all see that the deepest need of this
fellow creature, tied so close to the earth, is the
awakening and development of new wants. The
trouble with him in his native state is that he has
so few desires ; that he is not at all aware of the
many good things that are within his reach. We
can all see that the development of wants, even on
the material side of his nature, is a normal and
healthy process ; that it is as natural and whole-
some for the human nature to put forth these new
cravings as for the plant to put forth new buds and
branches ; that we advance toward perfection by
the awakening and the satisfying of new desires.
It is well for the Bushman or the Hottentot that
he has learned to want a garment for his naked-
ness, a house instead of a mud hut, a table, at
which he may sit down with his wife and children,
asking God's blessing on his food and making each
meal a sacrament, instead of snatching a morsel
here and there and eating as the wild beast eats, in
solitude, with a growl at every intruder ; it is well
that he has learned to till his fields, and store his
fruits and grains and protect himself against fam-
ine ; it is well that there has been kindled in his
soul that thirst for knowledge by which he has been
enabled to open the treasures of the world's learn-
ing ; above all, it is well that he has come to put
away from his mind the deadly and paralyzing
fear of things unseen, and to open his heart to the

308 THE EDUCATION OF OUR WANTS

love of the Father in heaven, and to the hopes
and promises of the life everlasting. We know
that when our ancestors, in the German forests, or
beside the British fens, were thus visited with in-
fluences from without and above themselves that
kindled in them the wish for other and higher life,
and led them away from barbarism toward civiliza-
tion, it was well for them, and for us, their children.

From that day to this the process has been going
on ; the awakened intellect of man has been dis-
covering new possibilities, new combinations of
natural force, new uses of natural products, new
ministries to human need, and thus has been devel-
oping and multiplying human wants. Progress con-
sists largely in the creation and diversification of
wants.

What a tremendous enterprise it has come to
be — the cultivation of wants in the breasts of the
children of men ! Whole armies of men are en-
gaged in planting the seeds of wants in the minds
of their neighbors. Invention largely takes this
direction; infinite energy is expended by multi-
tudes in contriving things which shall create wants.
Scores of beautiful and attractive pages in our
magazines, and striking displays in the columns of
our newspapers are devoted to making us want
things ; as the swift cars bear us across the country
our eyes are constantly caught by startling legends
whose purpose it is to make us want something that

THE EDUCATION OF OUR WANTS 309

we do not now possess. The business of advertising,
which has come to be perhaps the most extensive
/and the most expensive business now carried on in
highly civilized lands, is chiefly devoted to the stim-
ulation and direction of human wants. The artists
who arrange the shop windows and the show cases
;are masters in this branch of education. One can-
. not walk far in a city like this without coming upon
••>omethiDg which is designed to awaken in him a
T'want for what he does not now possess. A small
.•girl of my acquaintance, three or four years old, on
;'vii;er first visit to a toy store, stood still and looked
with wonder up and down the shelves and counters,
.and finally said, with an air of pensive surprise :
;;.V.Why, /have n't got all these things ! " The busi-
I'.jiess had been done for her; the response of her
nature to the appeal of the exhibitor was precisely
.what he sought.

•v V The business is partly effectually done for all of
.L-;jtis. Whatever else our enterprising captains of civ-
V!ilization fail to do, they do not fail in the production
:of wants; vast crops of them are sown and har-
vested every year; the supply does not quiet the
demand, but stimulates it ; the more we have the
more we crave. If those of you who have come to
maturity of years are able to take an inventory of
the things you find yourselves wanting now, and to
compare it with a similar inventory of the things
you were wanting forty years ago, you will be sur-

310 THE EDUCATION OF OUR WANTS

prised, perhaps, to see what an addition has been
made to the number of the things regarded by you
as needf uL If any of you can recall your life in col-
lege forty years ago and compare your wants then
with the wants of your own boys and girls now in
college, you will have another illuminating illustrar
tion of the way wants multiply.

In fact, there is reason to fear that this business
of creating and diversifying wants has gone quite
too far in the lives of many of us. We must not
quarrel with civilization, but it is hard to resist
the conviction that there has been developed a vast
number of unreal, superficial, artificial wants ; that
cravings have been kindled in many of us for much
that adds nothing to life, to its strength, its beauty,
its usefulness, its real satisfaction. Indeed, we must
say that many of us are possessed and dominated
by cravings for that which is hurtful and degrading
and destructive to manhood. But, putting aside the
debasing appetites, the hankerings for pollution and
poison, — there is still a vast number of unnatural
and trivial cravings through which a large part
of the vital energies of men in this generation are
poured out, and which bring into the life nothing
but emptiness and weariness and poverty of soul.
Take the life of our frivolous plutocracy, — the life
of the thousands of young men and women in this
country who have money to burn, as they say, and
nothing to do but amuse themselves, and make a

THE EDUCATION OF OUR WANTS 311

catalogue of the things which have become to them
imperative wants. What a pitiful exhibit it would
be!

I doubt whether a sadder, a more depressing pic-
ture was ever painted, in any age of the world, than
that which is found in a few of the middle chapters
of Richard AVhiteing's novel, " Number Five, John
Street " — his picture of the life of the rich young
men of London. It is not a grossly immoral life as
he shows it to us ; but it is so empty, so trivial, so
utterly devoid of purpose, so absorbed with inani-
ties. Neither Horace nor Juvenal can show us any-
thing more disheartening. Decidedly the people of
the slums, between whom and these heavy swells of
the West End the story vibrates, are a far more
hopeful class. The sketch of Seton Ridler is too
obviously a sketch from the life. Such a character
could not liave been invented.

The most striking and manifestly the most real-
istic feature of this description is the impression
it gives us of the labor and weariness of this kind of
life. The enfjajjrements are so multitudinous and the
demands of this artificial life are so exacting that
existence becomes a burden. " I tell you," says one
of these devotees of fashion, " it 's just like working
in mosaic, — so many little bits to fit in. I don't
think our set ever ijets a chance in life."

" Always slaving," comments his friend.

" That 's it. Sometimes when I feel I can't lay

312 THE EDUCATION OF OUR WANTS

hold of it all, I wish I was a ' bloke,' with four bank
holidays a year, and there an end."

"And yet we are called the idle rich.*'

" ' Idle rich ! ' Where would the poor be if we
struck for a quiet life ? I work ten hours a day in-
venting wants for myself, and work for them, and
very often eight hours overtime."

Such is the congestion of wants to which our
complex civilization is bringing many of those who
are regarded as the favorites of fortune. It is a
melancholy condition. There is no health in it for
body or mind or soul, — no comfort, no satisfac-
tion ; the pleasures are those of Sisyphus — always
rolling the stone uphill to see it go crashing down
again ; the recreation it brings is like the night-
mare compared with refreshing sleep.

It is a far cry from the Bushman in the African
forest to the denizens of the London Mayfair, or
the favorites of the New York " Four Hundred,'*
staggering under the burden of artificial cravings.
Sometimes the social philosopher, revolting from
the excesses of our complex civilization, harks back
to that primitive barbarism, making the gentle sav-
age his ideal, and proposing to return to that kind
of simplicity. That was Rousseau's idea, and Tol-
stoy seems to be of some such mind. It is a foolish
counsel. The bird will not return to the egg and it
is idle to talk about it. To throw away all the gains
of civilization would be treachery to humanity. To

THE EDUCATION OF OUR WANTS 313

propose forswearing all the new powers with which
invention has equipped us, all the comforts of life,
all the refinements of culture, all the pure and ele-
vating pleasures of art, is not a sign of sanity. The
barbarian with no wants is certainly quite as far
from the ideal of human perfection as is the Lon-
don swell, swamped beneath the burden of them.
The tree needs pruning, not cutting up by the roots.
It is not the extermination but the education of
wants that is called for. A being without wants
is a being destitute of motive power ; it is not to
stagnation and immobility that we wish to betake
ourselves, but to simplicity and health and vigor.

What then is our problem ? I think that I must
have brought it pretty clearly before your minds in
this descriptive sketch. The fact that confronts us is
the twofold danger to which human life is exposed,
on the one side to the dearth and on the other side to
the plethora of wants. There are many among us
who have not wants enough ; who are qiiite too well
content with squalor and stupidity and ignorance ;
on the other side there are too many who are so en-
tangled and enslaved by their wants that life has
ceased to have for them any high significance ; their
freedom and their strength are gone. It is well for
us clearly to discern both these dangers, and to be
on our guard against them. The awakening of new
wants may be to some of us a prime necessity ;
the elimination of artificial and incumbering wants

314 THE EDUCATION OF OUR WANTS

may be to others the first duty. The creature with-
out desire is a clod, the creature whose life is rav-
aged and overrun by hoards of clamorous desires
is an object of pity.

With most of us, I dare say, the danger is great-
est on this side. We have too many wants. A
large part of the energy of our souls is expended
in hungering and thirsting after that which is not
worth while. We are the slaves of cravings from
which, if we could but free ourselves, we should be
happier and stronger. I am not now thinking most
of indulgences essentially vicious and corrupting,
but of the excessive devotion to the mere external-
ities of life — to adornments, and amusements, and
sensuous gratifications, to the lust of the eyes and
the lust of the flesh and the pride of life. I am sure
that if the old prophet were here this morning,
and knew some of you as well as I know you, you
would hear him saying very earnestly : "Wherefore
do you spend money for that which is not bread, and
your labor for that which satisfieth not ? Hearken
unto me, and eat ye that which is good, and let
your soul delight itself in fatness.*'

We must educate our wants. And the first les-
son that we must teach them is that they are not
our masters. The motive power of life they may
be, but they are not its directing intelligence, and
they must not usurp the place that does not belong
to them. We wiU let them serve us, but they must

THE EDUCATION OF OUR WANTS 315

not rule us. That is the trouble with them. " Our
needs," says Charles Wagner, " in place of the ser-
vants they should be, have become a turbulent
and seditious crowd, a legion of tyrants in minia-
ture. A man enslaved to his needs may best be
compared to a bear with a ring in its nose that is
led about and made to dance at will. The likeness
is not flattering, but you will grant that it is true."
We must not be the slaves of our cravings. A mere
blind want must never be our master. We must
bring all these clamorous longings of ours under
the rule of reason, and let them be gratified or
suppressed according to its arbitration.

It is only an extension of the same idea to say
that we must teach our wants to know and keep
their places. They are not of equal rank ; there are
higher and lower, greater and less among them,
and the education that they need is that which
gives to each its true order and importance, which
forbids the lesser to usurp the places that belong
to the greater. To desire most strongly and most
constantly that which is most precious and most
enduring ; to shake from their hold upon our hearts
the legions of trivialities and vanities — this is the
beginning and the end of wisdom in the schooling
of our wants. To want the best things most and the
]:>oorest things least — if this were our happy state
of mind how beautiful our lives would be !

And what are the best things ? Plainly they are

316 THE EDUCATION OF OUR WANTS

the things that belong to character, — the things
that pertain to ourselves, more than to our posses-
sions and surroundings ; the essential manhood and
womanhood, and not its appendages of wealth or
rank or decoration. The wants which lay hold on
the qualities of character, that make us larger,
truer, better men, these we may cultivate and stim-
ulate all we will ; there is no danger that these
elements will be over developed. Blessed are they
that hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they
shall be filled.

Men and women, there are some of you who need
to lay this truth to heart. You have many wants,
some more imperious than others ; do they not need
from you some careful schooling ? Would it not be
well for you to take a prett}^ careful inventory of
them to-day ? Find a quiet place somewhere and sit
down and make an honest list of them. Think over
the things that occupy your mind most constantly
and enlist most fully the strength of your wishes.
Get the things that you are really hungering and
thirsting for clearly before your thought ; then put
down the things that your conduct proves to be
of secondary importance, and the things that you
sometimes wish for but do not greatly dwell upon.
Look them over and see whether the order needs
revising ; whether those which are really the great-
est in your estimation ouglit not to be the least, and
those that are least ought not to be greatest.

THE EDUCATION OF OUR WANTS 317

I have no doubt that in the hearts of all of you,
with some distempered and misdirected cravings
are many worthy wishes. One thing, I fear, is
uppermost in the desires of many, but that I will
not name. It is such a cheap and common thing that
we will not speak of it. Let it pass. But there are
other and better things. You wish for knowledge,
for skill, for capacity, for perfection in art, for a
good reputation, for recognition and friendship, for
the power of influencing men, and all these are
worth possessing. But none of them is entitled to
the first place in our affections. Surely you know
that the crowning wish, the commanding wish of
your life must be the wish to be right and true
and sound in the centre of your life, to be right
in your ruling purpose, to be right with God, — to
be in harmony with him in the governing prin-
ciples of your life. No good that you can think of
is higher than that, and you cannot get your own
consent to put anything which is lower than that
upon the throne of your choice. Put it there to-day.
Come to a clear understanding with yourself that
this is the principal thing, and the thing on which
your heart shall henceforth be set. You hope to
possess this great good some day. Kegister it then
in your own consciousness, as your chief want, and
make all the other objects of desire bow down and
serve it.

" It is the least that a man can do," says Canon

318 THE EDUCATION OF OUR WANTS

Mozley, " to wish with all his heart that he had
some valuable thing, if he is to expect some day to
have it. How simple a condition, could man only
resolve steadily to wish for the possession of that
which he knows to be his chief good ; could he but
cast aside, once for all, all those vain, those fruitless
longings for things that are out of his reach ; for
gifts and faculties which only glitter and attract
the eye ; and wish in the sincerity of his heart for
what is really to be had for the wishing, — for re-
ligious faith and temper."

It is really to be had for the wishing — this one
supreme good, of friendship with God, a heart and
life in harmony with his will. All we have to do is
to make it the supreme wish of our hearts, and it
will surely be ours. Of none of the other things
that we set our hearts upon can we be sure, and we
get most of them, if we get them at all, only at
heavy cost : —

" For a cap and bells our lives we pay ;

Bubbles we buy with a whole soul's tasking:
'T is heaven alone that is given away,

'T is only God may be had for the asking."

If we fail of this highest good, it is only because
we do not strongly wish for it, because we suffer
some lesser good to supplant this upon the throne
of our desire. " Ye shall seek me and find me when
ye shall search for me with all your hearts, saith
the Lord."

XIX

HOW TO BE SURE OF GOD

Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended : but this one
thing- I do, forgetting the things that are behind and stretching for-
ward to the things that are before, I press on toward the goal unto
the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. — Phll. iii.
13, 14.

We have come to the end of the year. The days
that are passing are days of accounting and ap-
praisal, — times when we reckon up our gains and
write off our losses ; when we try to put illusions
and visionary hopes aside and face the facts of life.
During the year we are apt to bank heavily on our
hopes ; we do not know how large the profits are ;
we have no means of judging accurately how the
ventures are coming out, but it is constitutional
with most of us to look on the hopeful side, to see
what we wish to see ; and there is apt to be some
disparity between the estimate and the reality. But
about this time of the year all these assumptions
and anticipations are brought to the test of cold
arithmetic. Now is the time not to hope, nor to es-
timate, but to know, and with some misgivings we
set ourselves to the task of finding out just where we
are. Sometimes, in these reckonings, it turns out

320 HOW TO BE SURE OF GOD

that we are better off than we thought we were, and
that is a disappointment which we can bear with
much fortitude ; but sometimes it is the other way,
and we are compelled to dismiss some expectations
and to brace ourselves for new efforts and sacrifices.

Much is said about the visionary and chimerical
thinking in which we are in the habit of indulging
at the turning of the year, and so far as the future
is concerned there may be something too much of
this ; but there are a good many of us, I am sure,
who get a little closer to the hard facts of life
about this time than at any other time of the year.

This is true of that part of our life which touches
the earth ; I wish that it might sometimes be true
of that part of our life by which we are lifted above
the earth. Here, to-day, in the quiet of the sanctu-
ary, I wish that we might all give a little serious
thought to the real condition of that part of our-
selves which is most worthy of our concern ; that
part of us which does not die when the body dies ;
which may be vigorous and vital when the bodily
powers are fainting, and may be sick unto death
when the body is rioting in strength ; which is not
enriched by the gains that are enumerated in our
ledgers, nor impoverished by the losses recorded
there ; that part of us which constitutes our proper
humanity and makes us to differ from the clods
beneath our feet and the living creatures by our
side.

HOW TO BE SURE OF GOD 321

There is something wonderful about this part of
our nature, the essential manhood and womanhood
which is our birthright. The wonder of it, the glory
of it, are, I fear, often hidden from our eyes. Nay,
who is there among us who has yet begun to appre-
hend the greatness of his own estate of being, the
marvelous significance of the divine humanity of
which he is the inheritor. " Thou hast made him,"
says the Psalmist, " but little lower than God, and
crownest him with glory and honor ; thou madest
him to have dominion over the works of thy hands."
What it is hard for us to understand is that the
very charter of our greatness is written in the spir-
itual conditions which appear to us because of their
uncertainty most untoward and disheartening. We
are here in the world, surrounded by the things of
time and sense ; animals, with the other animals ;
allied, through our bodies, with the soil and what
grows out of it ; having the power to possess and
use and find pleasure in the fruits of the earth and
the products of our own skill. All these things are
real and close, and they bring to us certain satis-
factions. At any rate, they are realities. We have
them, and know them, and enjoy them. That there
is something more than all this we cannot help feel-
ing. When we have reached the perfection of the
animals, when we have subdued and replenished
the earth, when we have gained possession of all
the good that pleases sense, we know that we have

322 HOW TO BE SURE OF GOD

not yet entered into our inheritance. There is some-
thing more and higher. There are haunting visions
of relations and possibilities not yet realized. But
all this is vague, distant, mysterious. And this is
often our trouble and complaint.

We hear the name of God ; it comes to us upon
the lips of those who tell us that they know him ;
generations and centuries of prophets and apostles
and confessors and humble believers bear witness
that he is, and that he is good, — the Creator of
the universe, the Father of our spirits, the source
of all truth and love, and that we are made in his
image to have fellowship with him ; that this is the
highest possibility of the human soul, to receive, of
his infinite fullness, the strength and the light and
the peace which shall satisfy all our deepest wants.
This is what they tell us, but we do not always easily
verify their testimony. '* Why," we are sometimes
inclined to ask, " is not this truth more clearly re-
vealed ? Why, in a matter so great as this, is any
room left for doubt ? Why is not God as palpa-
ble as the earth, as demonstrable as the sun in the
sky? Is not our need of him our deepest need?
Why should not the ministry to it be as direct and
inevitable as that by which our physical natures
are supplied ? It is not so. We may have reasons
for believing, but there are also many reasons for
doubt, and certainty is not attainable. And often
we are forced to cry with Job : —

HOW TO BE SURE OF GOD 323

' 0 that I knew where I might find him !
I would come even to his seat !
I would order my cause before him,
And fill my mouth with arguments.

Behold I go forward, but he is not there,

And backward but I cannot perceive him :

On the left hand where he doth work, but I cannot behold him ;

He hideth himself on the right hand that I cannot see him.' "

This often seems to us our misfortune and our
great disability, that the greatest interests of our
lives are involved in so much obscurity. We com-
plain about it sometimes bitterly. We do not know
why it should be so. We cry, with the prophet,
" Verily thou art a God that hidest thyself." And
there are not a few who, demanding proof which
they cannot get — mistakenly demanding a kind of
proof which is impossible, — and failing to find God
in the places where they are looking for him, aban-
don the search altogether, and suffer all those parts
of the life in which the precious fruits of the spirit
ought to grow, to lie fallow. It would be well for us
if we could understand that the laws of the spiritual
realm are not the laws of the physical realm ; and
that our knowledge of God must needs be a differ-
ent kind of knowledge from that which comes from
exploring the crust of the earth or searching the
stellar spaces. Spiritual things are spiritually dis-
cerned. The proof of God is not scientific and
demonstrable. There is room for doubt, and there

324 HOW TO BE SURE OF GOD

always will be. That is the very condition of spir-
itual development. The just shall live by faith, not
by logical demonstration.

" The desire and passion of God," says a modern
prophet, " is to beget souls of men through the long
birth processes and the eons of nature, — souls that
shall be separate from his own soul, and that shall
stand over against him, so that he can look upon
them, and have communion with them, and be not
alone. And in order that the souls of men shall
become thus separate and distinct from the soul of
God, it is necessary that God should hide himself,
and that men should learn to trust their own
thoughts and their own eyes. In this withdrawal
of God is the peril and crisis of creation, the in-
evitable opportunity of sin, the tragedy and pathos
of our life upon this earth.

" Do you not understand the taciturnity of God ?
Do you not see why it is that he does not blazon
his name in the sky or accost you with words, —
why he bosoms you in his arms, and turns away his
face and waits and is patient and silent? . . .

" God could not make a free soul out of hand.
He could not make it at all. The soul must claim
its own liberty and life.

" And so one must say that the free spirit of man
is uncreated, is not made by God, but begotten of
him. Words fail, for you touch here the hem of
the robe of the eternal mystery. But it is not to be

HOW TO BE SURE OF GOD 325

wondered at that God should suffer so long to in-
tegrate a soul out of his own soul — a soul that
should look him in the face and be faithful to
him."

Thus it appears that the very shadows that rest
upon our path are the signs of God's presence ; the
limitations of knowledge are the opportunities of
faith, divinely ordained. Never shall we find God
with the scalpel or the microscope or the syllogism ;
it is by venturing upon him, committing our souls
to him, that we find him. The only way to be sure
of God and the things of his kingdom is to make
the great assumption that he is, and act accord-
ingly, taking the risks which such action involves.
That may mean adversity, misfortune, desertion of
friends, the loss of all things, trouble, suffering,
death ; whatever it means, that we must accept, if
we want to be sure of God.

The great things of life are things which no
man ever gets without an unreserved surrender of
himself. The real good of fatherland no man pos-
sesses who counts his fortune or his life too dear
to give them for the safety and honor of his coun-
try. The man who is not willing to die for his
country is a man

" Who never to himself hath said
This is my own, my native land,"

with any deep meaning in his words. Those who
fall short of this last full measure of devotion are

326 HOW TO BE SURE OF GOD

men who value their country perhaps on account
of the benefits which they have received from it;
who are sensible of the protection which it affords
them, and proud, it may be, of its progress and its
triumphs ; but the deep sacramental love, which
links the patriot to his fatherland, they do not know.
It is this kind of love alone which makes national
existence possible ; and this kind of love, the love
that is ready to sacrifice everything, is the spring
and source of the national life in the days of the
throbbing war-drum, and not less in the piping
times of peace. When it disappears from the
hearts of the citizens, and the nation is to them
no longer anything more than a mutual insurance
agency or a commercial convenience, the day of
doom is not far off, and the prophetic voice is
heard in stern rebuke : —

" Must we but weep o'er days more blest ?

Must we but blush ? Our fathers bled :
Earth, render back from out thy breast

A remnant of our Spartan dead !
Of the three hundred grant but three

To make a new Thermopylae ! "

Without the spirit that is ready to risk everything
for country, patriotism is a hollow fraud, and the
life of the nation is a living death.

Not less true is it of the more intimate personal
relations. Are there any reserves in your deepest
loyalties ? Do you think that you could know the

HOW TO BE SURE OF GOD 327

secret of the truest and purest human love if there
were anything but truth and honor which you had
not laid upon its altar? What is there that you
hesitate to risk in the keeping of your faith with
those you hold most dear ? Are fortune or station
or life too precious to be surrendered for the wel-
fare and the honor of those you love ?

If, then, even patriotism and human affection
make these demands upon you for an absolute sur-
render of all you have, and refuse to let you into
their deepest secrets on any lower terms, it is not
to be supposed that that great friendship with God
which is the source of our spiritual life can be
yours for less than the frank surrender of your-
selves to him. There is no other way to know God
but to count everything but loss for the excellency
of that knowledge. The ship on the stocks, ready
to be launched, must let go utterly and absolutely
her hold upon the land and commit herself unre-
servedly to the deep. There is no such thing as
holding on to some of the landward props and
stays ; no such thing as trusting partly to the land
and partly to the water. She must take the risk of
believing that the water will support her weight.
She is built for the water — so all the shipwrights
say ; that is the element in which she was made to
live ; she is worthless on shore, and the sun and
the rain and the wind will soon make a wreck of
her if she stays on shore ; to save her life she must

328 HOW TO BE SURE OF GOD

go down into the deep. That is the voice of reason ;
but all the reason in the world can never prove
that the ship will float : the only proof is in com-
mitting her to the water, in letting her walk right
out upon the waves.

Just so, we may hear a great deal of argument
and testimony to prove to us that God is the ele-
ment in which we live and move and have our be-
ing ; but we can never be sure of it unless we try
it, and there is no other way of trying it except the
way of the ship when it lets go the props that hold
it high and dry above the earth and speeds down
into the sea.

The question of religion, the question of life ;
whatever faith a man may hold, whatever theology
he may believe, is just this question whether God is
such a reality to us that we are ready to risk our-
selves in his keeping. " If you should act with sim-
plicity and boldness," asks the writer whom I was
but just now quoting, " do you think that you would
have to stand alone and take the consequences?
Have you no idea that God would back you up ?
That is the question of religion, the question of
life. The man who can answer that question unfal-
teringly is the man of faith, the man who has ' got
religion.' The thing that is right, the thing which,
with your best judgment, you see to be right, —
that you believe to be God's will. If you believe
in God at all, if you are not an atheist, then the

HOW TO BE SURE OF GOD 329

thing which you believe to be right and the thing
which you believe to be God's will are one and the
same thing, and you cannot separate them even in
your thought. Do you believe that if you do God's
will he will stand by you ; that it is safe to trust
yourself in his hands ? That is the crucial question
of life, of character, of destiny/'

It is well, however, to understand what we ought
to mean by our belief that God will stand by us,
if we do the thing that is right and trust in him.
It is not true that those who thus commit them-
selves to him are assured of plenty and safety and
comfort and peace in this world. There is no
such assurance. Adversity, pain, loneliness, disaster,
death, may be the portion of those who walk with
God. To believe in God is not to believe that God
will deliver you from such misfortunes and calam-
ities, but that he is with you in them ; that they are
his ministers, who cannot hurt you, who will ^rve
you and bless you. " Who shall separate us," cries
Paul, "from the love of God? Shall tribula-
tion or anguish or persecution, or famine, or naked-
ness or peril or sword ? Nay, in all these things
we are more than conquerors through him that
loved us." " He leadeth me," sings the Psalmist,
"in the paths of righteousness for his name's
sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of
the shadow of deaths I will fear no evil, for thou
art with me ; thy rod and thy staff they comfort

330 HOW TO BE SURE OF GOD

me." Yes, it is when you go down into that sun-
less valley, —

" When the snows begin, and the blasts denote

You are nearing the place,
The power of the night, the press of the storm,

The post of the foe,
Where he stands, the Arch-Fear in a visible form, " —

it is then, in that infinite minute, that you are
conqueror ; then that the soul cries exultingly, " O
grave, where is thy victory, O death, where is thy
sting." What is death to a man who really believes
in God? The very meaning of faith in God —
what is it but contempt for what men call danger
and suffering and pain ? The man who is sure of
God is always

" One who never turned his back, but marched breast forward,

Never doubted clouds would break,
Never dreamed though right were worsted wrong would triumph,
Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better,

Sleep to wake."

If there is a God, and you and I are sure of him,
that will be the kind of temper in which we shall
face the fact of death. And if the last great enemy
has no terror for us, why should we be afraid of
the lesser things that men call calamities ?

The faith that sets death at naught is surely able
to overcome the world. When we are ready to as-
sume that God is, and to venture our all upon him,
the losses and adversities and disappointments that

HOW TO BE SURE OF GOD 331

darken our days and take all the color and the
music out of life will vanish as the fogs disappear
before the ascending sun. What does it matter
whether we have much or little, whether the prizes
of life are won or lost, whether the crowd praises
or denounces ? The great spaces of our thought are
full of light and peace ; all is well, no matter what
fickle fortune may bring.

This, my brother men, is real life — this is life
indeed. If we have attained to some understand-
ing, some realization of this truth, then we have
really begun to live. We know how to use the
world, and life, and time ; to get the good out of
them ; to reap the harvests of light which are sown
for the righteous. We are not unhappy, we are
not afraid, we are never discouraged, we are never
hopeless ; the pettiness and meanness of the world
do not trouble us ; all is well, because we are sure
of God. This is the heart of it all, the deep secret
of life, the pearl of great price, which, when a man
has found he will be ready to sell all that he has
that he may make it his own.

Do I speak to you as one who has fully entered
into this great inheritance ? Nay, I am making no
such claim. Often I am timid and despondent and
more anxious than I ought to be ; often small things
vex me, and the judgment of men irks me, and I
am afraid of losses and reverses ; the whole trouble
is that I am not nearly so sure of God as I ought

332 HOW TO BE SURE OF GOD

to be. I am not standing on some eminence above
you and calling down to you. I am standing with
you, on the common plane of our humanity, but I
am lifting my eyes to the hills from which our
help must come, and trying to get you to look in
the same direction. I have not yet attained, but I
know, as well as I can know anything, that the life
I am talking about is the right kind of life ; that
it would be worth to me more than everything else
that I ever wish and strive for to be perfectly sure
of God and to live, without flinching, right up to
that assurance. I know that if that knowledge were
in my heart all things would be mine, — the world,
life, death, things present, things to come. I should
never be a coward, I should never shrink from any
sacrifice to which the truth summoned me. I should
hold the prizes of pelf and praise for which men are
wearing out their lives very cheap. I should not be
bartering honor or integrity to get some little selfish
advantage, and I should be as happy every day
as the day is long. No ; perhaps I could not be
quite happy if those whom I loved were unhappy ;
I should have to carry their burdens, to take upon
my own soul something of their sorrow. But I
should be able, so it seems to me, to help them far
more than I help them now ; to lead them, if they
really loved me, out into the light of God.

And what a world it would be for me to live in,
if that were only my portion ; what bracing life in

HOW TO BE SURE OF GOD 333

the keen air of winter, what elation in the onward
march of the tribes of summer, what gladness in
the sunlight, what peace in the messages of the
ever-faithful stars !

Nor would the misery and woe of the world op-
press me if I could only lift up my thoughts to the
heavenly heights and see the old world emerging
from the elemental chaos and rolling onward through
the eons toward that far-off divine event which is
the goal of redemptive love.

I am sure, then, that I know what life means,
even if I have but feebly laid hold upon it yet.
And there often comes to me a great desire to get
rid of the husks and wrappages of things, and get
at the heart of the matter, — to put behind me that
which is superficial and phantasmal, and find and
know and live the life that is life indeed. O the
things that we are putting our hearts into, pouring
out our lives for, clutching at, crying after, — what
do they all amount to, anyway ? How long are we
going to keep them ? What real good will they do
us while we have them ? Is it all worth while ?

Fellow men, we come here every Sunday to talk
about God, to sing hymns to him, to pray to him :
are we sure of him ? How sure are we ? Would we
like to be more sure ? Is there anything else but
this, anything without this, that is worth while?
Shall we not pledge ourselves, one to another, here
to-day, that we will count all things to be loss that

334 HOW TO BE SURE OF GOD

we may know him ? The way to i&nd him we have
seen. We must just assume that he is, and act as if
he were. That is all. There is no argument needed ;
argument is futile. You cannot prove love by argu-
ment. You have just got to venture your whole self
upon it — nothing less. That is the only way to
prove its reality. If you want love, you must give
your life for it ; you can get it for no less. Would
you take it on any other terms ? Not if you are a
man — or a woman ! If it is worth anything to you,
it is worth all you have and are and can be. And
God is love ! That is the way, the only way to be
sure of him. " To seek the truth, wherever it leads ;
to live the life of love, whatever it costs — this,"
says one, " is to be the friend and helper of God."
And it is by being his friend and helper, by living
and working with him, that you get to know him,
— there is no other way.

This, surely, this is the heart of it all. This is
what makes life significant and beautiful and pre-
cious. This is the faith that purifies the heart and
overcomes the world and lights up the future with
its own unfading beam.

Let all men know that all men move

Under a canopy of love

As broad as the blue sky above ;

That doubt and trouble, fear and pain
And anguish, all are shadows vain, —
That death itself shall not remain ;

HOW TO BE SURE OF GOD 335

That weary deserts we may tread,
A dreary labyrinth we may thread,
Through dark ways underground be led,

Yet, if we will our Guide obey.
The dreariest path, the darkest way.
Shall issue out in heavenly day,

And we, on divers shores now cast.
Shall meet, our perilous voyage past,
All in our Father's house at last.

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