BV 4241 .M66 19 Morrison, Charl 1874- The American pulpit fire es Clayton, Library of the Theological Seminary PRINCETON *©® NEW JERSEY “SEE” Presented by Dr. Earl A. Pope Manson Professor of Bible Lafayette College The Earl A. Pope Collection HARVEY M. SHELLEY PUBLISHER AND BOOKSELLER 5513 Larchwood Avenue Philadeiphia Cock GE Ca oe ‘Digitized by the intend Archive > eat in 2022 with funding from Princeton Theological Seminary Li br . te ; ie nite Hy a ra Neat } ~- aes (a 7s : - Fs :* a. ae if : : ‘ bp 4 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NEW YORK = BOSTON - CHICAGO « DALLAS | ATLANTA * SAN FRANCISCO MACMILLAN & CO., Limitrp LONDON « BOMBAY ° CALCUTTA MELBOURNE THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Lrtp, TORONTO THE AMERICAN PULPIT A Volume of Sermons by Twenty-five of the Foremost Living American Preachers, Chosen by a Poll of All the Protestant Ministers in the United States, Nearly Twenty-five Thousand of Whom Cast Their Votes Edited by CHARLES CLAYTON MORRISON Editor The Christian Century Gare , OF PRINGETG °. es FER G. 2oouv A SS “Eo ogicat sew jQem Work THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1926 All rights reserved Copyricnut, 1925, By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY; Set up and electrotyped. Published December, 1925. Reprinted January, 1926. PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA BY THE CORNWALL PRESS FOREWORD The search for the leaders of the clerical mind in American Protestantism, of which this extraordinary book is the outcome, was undertaken in no spirit of idle curiosity or for purposes of mere publicity. It was in no sense a contest. There was no candidating, and no award. A serious purpose prompted the under- taking. It was to get at the mind of the ministry for the purpose of getting at the mind of the church. It goes without saying that the church’s mind is in large measure the creation of its ministers by their preaching. In perhaps an equal degree the preaching mind reflects the prevailing outlook and faith of the church. The mind of the clergy is thus a mirror of the standards and thought-currents of the contem- porary church itself. But how shall one have access to the mind of the clergy as a whole? No doubt there are many methods of approach. Obviously, a method thoroughly sound, so far as it goes, is to discover the few great leaders to whom the rank and file of minis- ters look up, whose thoughts and accents are most potent and contagious in the wide range of the preach- ing profession. Clearly the preaching of these leaders should afford a clue to the dominant thinking of the ministry as a whole, and thus also a clue to the stand- ards of thinking under which the contemporary church is operating. | [5] The American Pulpit It was in this spirit and for this purpose that the publishers of The Christian Century undertook to find the twenty-five most influential and representative living preachers of our time. The entire Protestant ministry of the United States was polled; ballots were put into the hands of about 90,000 ministers in all parts of the country—north, south, east and west. The poll included ministers of all groups and schools of theological thought in all denominations—funda- mentalists, modernists, conservatives, liberals—Meth- odists, Baptists, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Disciples, Episcopalians, Lutherans, Unitarians, Uni- versalists and many of the lesser bodies. Each minis- ter was invited to name ten preachers whom he regarded as the most influential in the entire range of the American church—the men of deepest and most prophetic vision, the men of outstanding pulpit power, the men whose messages, in his estimation, most vitally interpret the mind of Christ, the pulpiteers whose thinking most deeply and potently influences the thinking of the church and the course of events in the life of the nation. When the poll closed on December 15, 1924, the number of ballots returned was 21,843. After that date additional ballots came in, bringing the total vote almost to 25,000, but without changing the result. A total of 1,162 names were voted for. Credit was given to every name on every. ballot, and when the count was finished the twenty-five men receiving the largest number of votes were announced. The names appear in this volume in alphabetical order. No announcement has been made as to the relative standing of the preachers in the list of twenty-five. That there was a wide range in the final results can [6] Foreword easily be imagined, but it is believed that even those who received the largest number of votes will prefer that no statement of precedence be made. It is desirable to guard the reader against attaching invidious or fictitious significance to the results of this far-flung referendum. The poll has its own inher- ent value as an expression by so many ministers of their gratefulness and esteem for the men who do most profoundly influence their professional life, to whom they gladly look as leaders, and whom they think of as rendering pre-eminent service in the spiritual life of the nation. The ministers were asked to designate from among their colleagues those whom they regarded as their greatest leaders, but the word “greatest” was defined for them in terms of objective service. There is no infallibility in the method or its results. Cer- tainly no suggestion of an attempt to get at the secret of the way men rank with God can be attributed to the procedure. The result is simply what it is, a com- posite register of the reaction of the rank and file min- ister after searching his mind to discover the preachers who have most deeply influenced him and who seem most vitally to interpret the mind of Christ. Not the least gratifying aspect of the adventure has been the unmistakable tokens of humility and surprise with which the result has been received by the chosen ones. Expressions of unpreparedness for so high an honor came in from every man. These were accom- panied by words of the utmost affection toward their brethren, words limpid with tenderness “for the good- will of my brethren in our goodly, gracious calling,” as one letter expressed it. One says, “I only wish that I had been more serviceable to my brethren.” An- [7] The American Pulpit other cannot see how his “little ministry could have won a recognition in so general an expression; I endeavor only to be a preacher of the simplest gospel messages and to use the little ability God has entrusted me with to declare the fact of my faith and trust in him and his great cause.” Another warns, facetiously, against publishing the sermons: “If you print the ser- mons the vote will be 4 mystery, opaque and heavy.” Another who was reluctant to accept the dignity con- ferred upon him, points out that “the judgment day will show that a great many men of wider and more enduring influence were passed over by your voters. I imagine,” he continues, “that we shall discover then that some of the most powerful persons in the world were not very widely known among men, but were very well known on high.” All of these men of God think of themselves as fellow-servants of the least of their brethren. They all know they are not great. But their brethren know they are great! A word about the sermons. Each of the twenty-five preachers was asked to contribute a sermon “which springs from your own heart of hearts, and expresses what you consider to be, either in fact or in aspiration, the characteristic note of your ministry.” The ser- mons in this volume are the answers of these preachers to that request. I believe the collection, taken as a whole, is a most authentic deliverance from the heart of the contemporary pulpit. It thus affords a clue to the mind of the whole ministry of America, and through the ministry to the mind of the church itself. CHARLES CLAYTON MorRISON. December 1, 1925. [8 ] CONTENTS PORE WORD. volt. uses Tue SENSE OF HEARING By Cuaries R. Brown CHARACTER AND WorK . . By S. Parkes CADMAN From THE NATURAL TO THE SPIRITUAL . By Henry SLoANE CoFFIN ABOVE THE SNAKE LINE .... . By Russevt H. Conwetu THe Open Doors . }) jzal TIM... By Harry Emerson Fospick JOURNEYS Out AND HoME ... . By CuHarites W. GILKEY THE SENSE OF OBLIGATION . . . . By Gerorce A. GorDoN Slee CTOV PELE SEIPS igo eu ten ee By Newest, Dwicut Hmuis SHINING STARS OF EXPECTATION . . By Lynn Haroitp HoucH CRRA TOA RE Mame To Tae eh ite te wee By Epwin H. Hucnues Tue New CoMMANDMENT ... . By Cuaries E. JEFFERSON MME UT ROO Ko de eae crag Reh By Francis J. McConneiu [9] PAGE 27 43 107 123 Contents PAGE DHE, INTERPRETATION OF) LIFE .c,. VS ew Wie enon By WiLu1AM Fraser McDowe.u (LHE VIRGIN: Bieta: OF JESUS) amet ieee le eer le eeronnes | ey By Marx A. MatTtHEews CHRIST, \OUR) RELIGION |). Peep oats By Witu1AM Pierson MERRILL THE MIND OF CHRIST... | Myveeenain oy eee an By G. CAMPBELL Morcan Tur PRESENCE PME UN hi rn ite Siamese ie 2 By JoserpH Fort Newton THerei is Noruing So ae ee et By Merton S. Rice WALKING IN) GALILES (000 Oe oe By Freperick F. SHANNON Tue Curist WHo Lives In Men . .... . 297 By Rosert E. Speer Tue Victorious Lire MAE OS TS en) cr ey By Joun Timoruy Stone Foop.For A’ HUNGRY WORLD 28) 20) ee By Wru1AM A. SuNDAY EVoLUTION AND RELIGION De OU ge gly 6 eke a, en By Ernest Fremont Titre Aw AprouaTe (Gosprtt) i) uee We ne a By Georce W. Truett Tr OLp! Ruccen CRoss, We ee By James I. VANCE [10] THE AMERICAN PULPIT CHARLES REYNOLDS BROWN Dean Brown was born at Bethany, West Virginia, in 1862, and grew up in Lowa, where his father was a farmer. He was graduated from the state university of lowa with his A.B. degree in 1883 and his A.M. degree in 1886, and from the school of theology in Boston university with his B.D. degree in 1889, spending a year afterward in Harvard divinity school. He was in the pastorate for twenty-two years, first at Wesley Chapel, Cincinnati, 1889-92, then at Winthrop Church, Boston, 1892-96, and finally at First Congregational Church, Oakland, California, 1896-1911. At the height of his ministry in Oakland he was called to Yale Divinity School, as dean, where he has been since 1911, fourteen years. Dr. Brown’s fame as preacher in Oakland was augmented by the publication of a notable volume on The Social Message of the Modern Pulyit, which profoundly impressed the church leadership of America and led to his call to his Yale task. Twenty-three other titles bear his authorship, of which the best known are: The Art of Preaching, Why I Believe in Religion, The Religion of a Layman, Abraham LInuncoln, The Main Points, The Larger Faith, The Master’s Way, The Story Books of the Early Hebrews, The Honor of the Church, Faith and Health, The Young Man’s Affairs, What is Your Name?, Yale Talks, Living Again, Two Para- bles, Five Young Men, and Ten Short Stories from the Bible. For twenty years he has been a favorite preacher in the colleges of the country, being regularly on the list of preach- ers at Yale, Harvard, Princeton, Cornell, Chicago, Williams, Amherst, Lafayette, Vassar, Brown, Bryn Mawr, Smith, Wellesley, Mt. Holyoke. He has received honorary degrees [13 ] The American Pulpit of D.D., LL.D., and 8.T.D. from Yale, Oberlin, Brown, Ohio, Wesleyan, and Boston universities. Dean Brown has traveled widely in Europe, Palestine and the Orient. He supplied the pulpit of Silvester Horne in London the entire summer of 1911 and on one of his trips abroad spent some time in Russia. As pastor of his great church in Oakland, Dr. Brown kept in close touch with the university on one hand and the organized labor movement on the other. He was in demand as a lecturer at Leland Stanford Junior university on ethical and Biblical subjects, and for six years held membership in the Central Labor Council in Oakland, made up of delegates from all the labor unions. The council met every Monday night and Dr. Brown, representing the min- isters’ union, had a seat, a voice and a vote like any other delegate. This experience, enriched by social study through the years and by a multiplicity of similar sympathetic contacts with the life of working people, has given a kind of social tone and authority to all his preaching. In 1924 the World’s Work offered a prize of $500 for the best sermon. Over thirteen hundred sermons were sub- mitted. Dr. Brown offered a sermon on the words, “Such as I Have,” and was awarded the prize. The sermon was published in World’s Work for June, 1924, and appears also in the author’s little book, What Is Your Name? At its biennial meeting in Kansas City in 1918, he was made moderator of the National Council of Congregational Churches, an honor which he carried for two years, deliv- ering the retiring moderator’s address at the biennial meet- ing at New Haven in 1915. While President Wilson was at the Paris Conference in 1919, Dr. Brown was invited by former President Taft to Join a group of six speakers in a tour across the continent, speaking at great gatherings held in the interest of the league of nations. The distin- guished party spent over a month in this tour, traveling together in a single sleeper for the entire trip. [14 ] THE AMERICAN PULPIT THE SENSE OF HEARING By CHARLES R. Brown How many of you, I wonder, have ears! I do not mean these things on the sides of our heads—so far as I can see from here we are all equipped with two apiece. They will take care of acoustic vibrations, translating them into terms of personal consciousness. I am thinking of something more important than all that; the Master was, when he said, “He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.” I am thinking about a full-fledged, well-rounded sense of hearing, which is quite another thing. We can all hear eighty thousand people yelling at a football game in the Yale Bowl. We can all hear a brass band moving down the street playing one of Sousa’s best. We can all hear the roar of the stamp mill crushing the gold out of the quartz. But there are other sounds more significant than all that noise. Can you also hear those voices which speak from a deeper level? Let me ask you to listen for those other voices as they speak in the quiet of this hour. There are three of them. I First, the voice from within! However it came about, there is something in each one of us which says [19 ] The American Pulpit “ought” and “must.” It says: “This is the way, walk in it! This line of action would be wrong, spurn it!” The origin of this sense of right and wrong is not easily traced. Its psychological beginnings are lost in the dim past. But it is there. It has not been left out of any normal human life. Can you hear that voice? Do you hear it as clearly and as steadily as you ever did, or are you getting “hard of hearing,” as we say, in the moral realm? Alas, for the man who puts the silencer on that voice! The man who turns a deaf ear to its commands will reach the point, by and by, where they will cease to trouble him and he will find himself morally deaf and morally dead. How would you define this voice from within which we call conscience? Here is a definition given by a philosopher, and I know of none better: ‘Conscience is the soul’s sense of right and wrong as regards its motives.” It has to do with the purposes and intents of each man’s heart. The form and content of an action are to be determined in the light of reason and experience, but the purpose of each man’s life is declared by that voice from within. He knows whether he means to do right or to do wrong, to help or to harm, to do God’s will or to do something else of his own choosing. Touching the intent of each life, the court of conscience is a court of last appeal. Any man who does not know whether he wants to do right or not is a moral idiot. Here then is the real Mount Sinai, not away yonder in Arabia, but inside! It speaks always in the impera- tive mood—“‘Thou shalt!” “Thou shalt not!” When the boy Christ stood in the temple in the presence of the doctors, the voice from within bade him say: “TI [16 ] The Sense of Hearing must be about my Father’s business.” When Martin Luther faced the powers of church and state urging him to recant under threat of the direst penalties, it was the voice from within which bade him say: “Here I stand! God help me, I can do no otherwise!” He had put his hand to the plow and he would not turn back until he had laid open a clean, straight furrow across the religious life of a continent. When William Lloyd Garrison faced the mob in the streets of Boston which was howling him down and threatening to lynch him for advocating the abolition of slavery, it was the voice from within which made him say: “I am in earnest; I will not retract; I will not equivocate and I will be heard.” Thus conscience makes heroes or cowards of us all, according to the set of our sails. The voice from within is a mighty thing; it makes and shapes the destinies of men and of nations. It works righteousness and subdues kingdoms; it changes weakness into strength and turns back the armies of evil. It laughs at the violence of fire and scorns the edge of the sword. Gravitation, steam, electricity, all these mighty forms of energy have their place, but they are the servants, not the masters of human life. “Have dominion over them all,” God said to man at the start—they are here to serve his ends! But man, made in the likeness of God, the only created being, so far as we know, with capacity for spiritual fellow- ship with his Maker, is set to rule. And when he hearkens to that voice within, his strength is as the strength of ten because his heart is pure. The most stubborn fact that statesmen or military despots have to deal with is that might of conscience where it be- comes crystalized into the moral sentiment of a race. [17 ] The American Pulpit It was the austere morality of Cromwell’s army which made it so terrible in the eyes of the enemy. The soldiers who made up that army of Ironsides, according to the testimony of Macaulay, of Goldwin Smith, of John Morley, and of other historians who touch upon that period, became the wonder of the world for their moral integrity no less than for their heroic valor. They took scripture texts for their coun- tersigns; they sang the hymns of the faith for their battle-cries; and when they marched against the most renowned battalions of Europe, somehow no opposing force was able to stand before them. The voice from within, heard and heeded, clothes any life with power from on high. What a tragic thing, then, for any man to feel him- self becoming morally deaf! Men can live without eyes, without ears, without the sense of smell. They do in all the lands of earth. No man can live without the sense of right and wrong. There are men who are trying to do it, but they are dead. They are as dead as Lazarus. , They are deader than Lazarus was, because they have been dead longer. In fact, all the statements made about Lazarus in the Bible could be made about them. It is a terrible thing to have five senses but to be without the sense of right and wrong. When a man no longer feels the sting of pain in doing wrong, he is atrophied at the top. He is no longer a man—he is a corpse. Here is a story told by a well-known Frenchman. He was not a theologian, but an artist. He had studied life along the boulevards of Paris. He shows us a man who had been in prison nineteen years. The man escaped and under an assumed name he made a fresh [18 ] The Sense of Hearing start. He became prosperous and happy. He was the mayor of the city where he lived. He was using his wealth to minister to the needs of the unfortunate. One day another man, who strongly resembled him in personal appearance, was arrested and brought into court. The officials said that this man was “Jean Val- jean” (which was the former convict’s name), and they were about to send him to the galleys for having broken jail. Then the question came to the real Jean Valjean, “Shall I allow the law to take its course, or shall I tell them that I am the escaped convict, and suffer the consequences? Would it be right for me to give up this honor and prosperity which I have won by heroic effort? Would it be right for me to leave these needy people, whom I am helping, to their fate? This other old man will soon die anyway—had I not best live on in freedom as a generous public benefactor, rather than go to prison again as Jean Valjean?” He reasoned it all out and decided that it would be best to let the old man go to the galleys in his stead. “Then,” the author says, “there came a loud burst of hideous laughter from within.” It was cruel, mocking laugh- ter; it was the soul laughing at itself in the hour of its defeat. He could not endure it—he went to the court- house and proclaimed himself Jean Valjean. And then his soul, which had been walking in darkness through those strange, hard hours, saw a great light. Take heed, then, how ye hear! Listen at the doors of your own soul for that voice from within which tells you what you are! It isa glorious thing when it can be said of a man, “He hath a peace above all earthly dignities, a still and quiet conscience.” If you are aware of any dullness at that point, if the still [19] The American Pulpit small voice within seems to be losing its resonance, then take prompt measures for your own relief. Go straight to him who placed his fingers in the ears of a deaf man in Galilee saying, “Be opened!” He still opens the eyes of the blind, unstops the ears of the deaf and causes the souls of men to live. “TT In the second place, there is the voice from without! No man liveth unto himself—he cannot if he would. “We are all members one of another,” in a certain domestic and social, political and economic solidarity. If one member suffers, other members suffer with it. “The head cannot say to the foot’—the highest cannot say to the lowest—“I have no need of you.” We are shipmates on a common voyage. We are messmates at a common board. We are set here to learn the high art of living together—we cannot live at all on any other terms. It is imperative, therefore, that every man should be able to hear what his fellows are saying with their lips and with their lives. He will have a lonesome time if he lacks that power; his life will become as barren as a sand pile. Artemas Ward said that he was once sent for the winter into a logging camp in the Maine woods with a gang of forty men. The other thirty-nine were Norwegians who spoke no English. “That fact,” he said, “threw them a good deal to- gether; and it also threw me a good deal together for I could not speak Norwegian.”’ Any one who can- not understand the hopes and fears, the needs and interests of his fellows, is in for a lonesome winter. Here is a realm of being which lies deeper than [ 20 ] The Sense of Hearing acoustic vibrations! It takes mind, heart, soul to hear the best of anything. How much does any one hear of that which is uttered when he is physically present? How much of a lecture on Browning, or on Greek art, on chemistry or the French revolution or the Christian religion? He is there, but how much does he hear? It all depends. Men get as they bring. How much does he bring in the way of perception, appreciation, capacity to make response? If he lacks mind, heart, and soul to enter into the deeper meaning of that which is being uttered, he might just as well be off in the Maine woods with those thirty-nine Norwegians. You are constantly meeting people who are thus cut off. Well-to-do people who cannnot understand the language or the longings of the poor! Women of leisure and culture who can scarcely exchange a half dozen sentences with women who work for their liv- ings with their hands! College men who sometimes become so narrow and pedantic in their little round and round upon the campus that they do not know what the man in the street is saying, and they cannot talk to him! Healthy, happy people, who never hear the hoarse call of the defectives and the delinquents who need a strong arm, a wise head, and a warm heart to set them in a worthier mode of life! Alas, for that social deafness which springs from a lack of sympathy for others—it is pitiful, it is tragic! He that hath ears, let him hear! Here are ships sailing out upon the wide ocean from a dozen different ports—New York, Boston, Baltimore, Liverpool, Rotterdam, Bordeaux! They take as many different routes and they are so far apart they never [21 | The American Pulpit see one another by day or by night. But they are all equipped with wireless and radio. They whisper to each other across the wide stretches of open sea. If any ship is in distress the cry for help, “S.0.5.,” goes out and relief comes as fast as steam can bring it. But to maintain that sense of mutual protection, every ship must carry its own receiver adjusted and attuned to the wave lengths sent out by all the rest. It must be able to hear. A deaf ship is a dead ship, so far as giving help in time of need goes. Here are men and women, setting sail from all the ports of earth for the great voyage of life! They too go down to the sea in ships, prepared to do business in great waters. The seas they sail are swept by storms and they are fraught with all the perils of the deep. What a frightful thing for anyone of them to sail those high seas, selfish, heartless, indifferent to the calls which come, neither hearing nor heeding these more subtle forms of appeal which come from those who suffer from doubt and discouragement, from want and pain, from spiritual defeat and moral ship- wreck! There are lives which are sailing the high seas of human experience in all the chill and loneliness which belongs to the frozen regions around the north pole. Selfishness is the frigid zone of human life, I care not what may be its latitude and longitude. There are people so downright selfish that a clinical thermometer inserted in the heart rather than the mouth would show sixty below zero. How sensitive Jesus was—how quick to respond! He could hear the faintest whisper of human need. He could scarcely walk through a crowded street with- out inviting the touch of pain upon the hem of his [ 22] The Sense of Hearing garment which had healing in it. When that guilty woman cried at his feet in Simon’s house, he under- stood everything, even though she had not uttered a single word: “Go in peace,” he said, “thy sins are forgiven. Thy faith hath saved thee.” When he hung upon the cross in agony, he heard the broken whisper of a thief: ‘Lord, remember me.” He passed through the gates of paradise carrying that penitent robber in his arms. The Son of man could hear. Humanity at its best always hears the ery of need. What would be the use of living if we could not hear and make response! He that hath ears, let him hear the voice from without. III Finally, there is the voice from above! ‘He that formed the eye, shall he not see? He that formed the ear, shall he not hear?” He that gave man the power of speech, shall he not speak in tones which all can understand? To whom should we go, if not to him— he has the words of eternal life. The voice supreme is the voice of the eternal God. He is here at this moment, waiting to speak to everyone who has ears to hear. When a man prays, he takes down the receiver to listen to the voice of God. Prayer is not all petition— it is communion, fellowship, conference with him who is above all and near us all. Prayer has in it the ele- ° ment of give and take. It is the active interchange of thought and desire with the Most High. And that sense ° of contact between these finite spirits of ours and the Infinite Spirit enriches our lives beyond any other exercise known to the mind of man. Listen until you hear that voice from above! [ 23 | The American Pulpit He is not far from any one of us. He stands at every door and knocks. If any man hears that voice and will open the door, God will come in to establish him in a sense of peace and of joy which passeth all understand- ing. It will add tremendously to any one’s moral cour- age and to his sense of power to be conscious that the voice from above is addressing him in tones of com- mand, and of high promise, which he can understand. “T will hear what God the Lord will speak, for he will speak peace to his people.” “The word of the Lord” which came to the prophets and apostles of old was not a bit of cold print. It was a form of personal, spiritual energy—“‘living, powerful, sharper than a two-edged sword” for dividing asunder those lines of thought, feeling, and purpose which mer- ited the divine approval from those that did not. It was the spirit of the living God in action impinging directly upon these faulty human lives of ours for their correction and recovery. Let every man give instant and constant heed to that voice from above speaking in the depths of his own soul—it is the voice of his Maker. Here in the Old Testament is the story of a rugged man who had just fought a good fight. He had won out single-handed and alone against four hundred and fifty evil-minded men. But in the nervous depression which followed hard upon his victory, when his life was threatened by a wicked queen, he sank into the trough of the sea and wished that he might die. “O Lord, take away my life,” he said. He felt that he had nothing left to live for. j He fled into the desert. In that same hour there [24] The Sense of Hearing came an earthquake breaking the rocks in pieces—but the Lord was not in the earthquake. Then there came a strong wind tearing its way through the mountains— but the Lord was not in the wind. Then there came the fierce fire of the lightning—but the Lord was not in the fire. When all these forms of physical energy had spent their force, “there came a still small voice.” And the Lord was in that. All the rest had been mere noise, but the still small voice was divine and it brought hope, cheer, moral relief to the discouraged prophet. He rose up and went forty days and forty nights in the strength of that experience to do his duty as a man of God. Where any man stands ready to do the will of his Maker, that voice from above will speak to him words which are spirit and life. There was once a young man who stood in the temple of worship with a burden of grief upon his heart. The wise and good king who had reigned for fifty years in beneficent fashion over the country where this young man lived, was dead. The nation which the great king had served so well must now go forward as best it might without his guidance. But in that hard hour the young man had a fresh vision of spiritual reality—‘“In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord.” The upper air was filled with angels who were chanting his praise—‘“Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord of Hosts.” Face to face with the divine, the ardent young patriot was bowed down with a feeling of unworthiness—“Woe is me, for I am a man of unclean lips and mine eyes have seen the King”—the real King—‘the Lord of Hosts.” He prayed for cleansing until he saw a winged seraph [ 25 | The American Pulpit flying through the open spaces of heaven and placing a live coal from the altar upon his lips. His sin was purged and his iniquity was taken away. Then in the eager joy of that moral renewal he yielded himself in willing consecration to the highest he saw. “I heard the voice of the Lord saying, Whom shall I send? Who will go for us?” It was the voice from above, the Voice Supreme, and his heart leaped to an instant and final obedience. ‘Here am I, send me.’ He was commissioned from on high for his holy and arduous task as a prophet of the Most High. Whatever else you gain or lose, listen steadily among all the discordant sounds of this troubled, intricate life of ours for that voice from above. He that hath ears to hear, let him hear the voice from within, the voice from without, and the voice from above. If his sense of hearing is acute he will hear the morning stars singing together and all the sons of God shouting for joy. He will set ordinary duty to music and make a Te Deum of it. Human life is just that—if we will only have it so! Oh, that men would praise the Lord for his good- ness and for his wonderful gift of hearing to the chil- dren of men! [ 26 | SAMUEL PaRrKES CADMAN Dr. Cadman began his Christian life and his ministerial career as a Methodist and an Englishman. He was born in Wellington, Shropshire, England, in 1864, and was grad- uated from Richmond College of London University. At the age of thirty-one he came to the United States, accept- ing a call to the pulpit of Metropolitan Temple, New York _ City, which he resigned in 1901 to become pastor of Central Congregational Church, Brooklyn. There he found the great and still continuing work of his life. Almost equally as famous as his pulpit ministry is his conduct of the Sunday afternoon service at the Bedford Branch of the Y. M. C. A. in Brooklyn, where he delivers an address and answers questions. Drawing upon an encyclopaedic store of knowledge, and aided by an alert wit, Dr. Cadman meets helpfully a thousand and one questions ranging all the way from matters of practical life to philosophic speculation. The service is carried by radio, and it is estimated that from one to three million persons “listen in” each Sunday. Dr. Cadman’s intellectual interests cover a wide range, as indicated by his books, the best known of which are probably: Charles Darwin and Other English Thinkers and Ambassadors of God, the latter being the Drew lec- tures for 1920 on the Christian ministry. Other titles are: The Victory of Christmas, The Religious Uses of Memory, Life of William Owen, The Three Religious Leaders of Oxford, and Christianity and the State. At the outbreak of the war Dr. Cadman served as chaplain of a New York regiment. A significant enlargement came to his ministry in 1924 when he was elected President of the Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America, at the quadrennial meeting | 27 | The American Pulpit held in Atlanta, Georgia. In this office he followed Dr. Robert E. Speer. Taking seriously his new responsibility, Dr. Cadman is devoting such time as he can spare from his parish tasks to the congenial function not only of inter- preting the Federal Council organization to the churches of the country, but of influencing the churchly mind of America toward a higher and more efficient type of unity. His spirit is essentially catholic and irenic. The causes of our unfortunate divisions are small and inconsequential in his eyes, and he calls upon all disciples of Christ to manifest their union under a common Lord by a closer and more organic unity among themselves. [ 28 | CHARACTER AND WORK By 8. Parkes CADMAN But uf any man buildeth on the foundation gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay, stubble; each man’s work shall be made manifest: for the day Shall declare it, because it is revealed in fire. —I Corinthians iii, 12, 13. Zeal for the free grace of God toward all believing men and women should not tempt us to overlook the fact that they determine the degree of their immortal blessedness. Nor is there occasion to doubt that the disparities of the present life will reproduce themselves in the life beyond upon an inealculably vaster scale. To be sure, they will not arise hereafter in unequal oppor- tunities or arbitrary privileges, yet every conceivable diversity created by specific grades of character will reappear in the future realm. There is a minimum of attainment below which no redeemed human destiny ean fall; a diligence and fidelity for righteousness com- mon to those who have laid hold on eternal life. From that basis as a starting point upward, man’s spiritual development has marked variations. No arithmetic could express the number or the contrasting magni- tudes of the starry spirits of Christ’s paradise. There, as here, they differ in their capacity for so noble and majestic an inheritance as that of the saints in light, as well as in the extent and excellence of their acquisitions. [29 | The American Pulpit I Since what men do reacts upon what they are, St. Paul’s doctrine that the felicities of heaven wait upon sacrificial self-forgetting toil is entirely just and reason- able. In brief, the homeland in which the Everlasting Father presides is a democracy of opportunity and an aristocracy of character. It has one prevailing atmo- sphere of moralized affection, but those who enjoy its splendors range from spiritual infancy to measurable perfection. One personality is meager and barren of achievement; another is radiant and sceptered; its dis- tinction being the sequence both of salvation and of conspicuous service. As with the Lord, so with his disciples, the holy land determines the height of enthronement. In the text, therefore, the apostle implies the serenity and satisfaction of the pure in heart who have added to the general aggregate of good- ness. On the other hand, lukewarm or lazy Christians suffer the keen mortification due to consciously wasted life, and realize that they must now take up the disci- pline and the effort that long since should have been surpassed. In the context St. Paul reminds his readers of the doom that overtakes flagrant apostasy: “If any man destroyeth the temple of God, him shall God destroy.” Indeed, the entire passage is a wholesome treatment of the future in the light of past and present; yet one free from the illusions of finality. It indicates a heaven which the deserving ones can gladly anticipate, and a hell which, at least, is believable. For those who accept his conclusions, as I do, St. Paul shows that there can be no more red-handed betrayal of self or of others than to confront the mystery of the here- after without an equipment of all possible godliness in [ 30 | Character and Work character and deed. By the same token, there can be no severer disillusionment beyond death than to see one’s cherished projects disappear because they are not fit for preservation. The retroactive application of these stern yet magnanimous principles would reverse many of earth’s pet policies. Nevertheless, it is a consolation that though ignored here, those principles will be infal- libly asserted in that great assize where the last shall be first and the first shall be last. It Emotional or imaginative rhapsodies upon the environment of the blessed have some decided advan- tages. It is permissible that burdened and weary souls should be eased and stimulated by assurance that reunion with their loved ones will absorb the shock of death’s momentous transfer. But let us not lull our apprehensions of the inerrant judgment to come with unctuous melodies about “‘sweet fields arrayed in living green,” and a city so glorious that the richest symbol- isms of the Orient falter at its description. To enter that celestial abode and there face those whom we have lost awhile as self-confessed recreants; saved, though as by fire, is a meeting sufficiently painful to kill the sweetest bliss. The reproach is the more bitter when it is willfully incurred. Contrary to the sentimen- talism which usually defeats clear and balanced think- ing, the blessed lot of those beyond is not specially reserved for those who have failed here. If such sorry creatures enter heaven at all, they do so as objects of the divine clemency. It is a culmination, not an anticlimax, to bring the issue down to the ground we tread, and link it with the [31] The American Pulpit circumstances we must wisely employ before they pass forever. What is irretrievable cannot be improved. Yet those who have been rescued from an earthquake or a fire are thankful for their deliverance and for life’s renewed openings. The foolish ones who are busy with the cap and bells; with the dance and the drink; with the making of money and its spending, do not appre- ciate the apostle’s subhme philosophy. In them his out- breaks of inspired meditation and prediction find no lodgment. But words and deeds like his, that cannot die, become the property of trained and eager souls who realize that God’s call 1s echoed by the text; that his overtures are specific, not promiscuous, conditioned, not unqualified. While there can be no predestination of human choice or action which cancels our freedom and responsibility, all human beings have their prede- termined periods for character and work. The span of each individual existence is so arranged that the sum total of privilege to which it is entitled goes with it. The highest Wisdom counts beforehand the tale of our years, and fixes the ebb and flow of their vital tides. The susceptibility and zest of youth, the strength and reticence of mature manhood, the mellowness of age; the heart’s awakening time, the educational season for the conscience, the reason, and the will are as correctly calculated as the motions of the planetary system. We may damage or dismiss the gifts thus bestowed upon us in a natural sequence which is also supernatural. But we cannot recall these periods or their native impulses. We can only do as the farmer does—sow in the spring, reap in the autumn, and be as good hus- bandmen for the soul as he is of the soil. This fixed process, which is too rigid for the sluggard, | 32 | Character and Work ushers in the winter of his discontent without consult- ing his listless improvidence. Since infinitude of time is neither his nor ours, and what we are to become here- after we must begin to be here, the skillful spiritual artisan will be jealous of his working days. He will recall that sun dials and clocks were the harbingers of civilization: that no race rose to mastery till it had measured out the minutes as well as the hours. Man has not passed from stone to bronze, from iron to steel —and to its countless contrivances, without a jealous conservation of physical life’s duration, power, and purposes. In like manner he who will successfully contend for honorable life beyond the grave must heed the pregnant saying of our Redeemer: “My Father worketh even until now, and I work.” III The selection of materials for eternity’s preparatory labor is next in order. Two classes are named in this first Corinthian letter: the rare and imperishable; the ordinary and corruptible. By his use of metaphors the apostle points the plea for redemptive verities. Some doctrines, he tells us, tend to the purification and enlargement of character. Others leave it poorer than it was before: cheap, fickle, uncomely. Gold and silver are synonyms of wealth and ornamentation; marble and porphyry of strength and endurance. Wood, hay, and stubble are the shibboleths of weakness, worthless- ness, and impermanence. Without wishing to intrude irrelevant moralizings, would it not be considerate for those who place dogma above the realities it is intended to formulate, and a militant orthodoxy or heterodoxy above the charity without which all else in [ 33 | The American Pulpit Christianity is nothing, to inquire if they have chosen the perishable or imperishable material for life’s upbuilding? It is needless to say that neither theo- logical controversialists nor official teachers of the Church or guides of the State have any monopoly of the choice. With the spread of God’s kingdom all its members inevitably are made communicative. They deal with the facts and the factors which generate vari- ous qualities of character, and are obligated, not only to possess its highest elements, but to implant them in their fellows. Some ideals, theories, convictions are to humanity what the precious metals are to coinage, and marble and porphyry are to palaces. Other ideals, theories, convictions are the exact opposite; and comparable only to hay or stubble. It is a maxim often ignored by religious people that the lasting substances are the hardest to operate. Granite and gold cannot be handled as expeditiously as wood, reeds, and plaster. So the primitive tribes, with no facilities for lasting construc- tion, covered the open spaces of the jungle with their huts and shanties. These had serious drawbacks; one lick of flame, or a midnight foray by the foe, and they vanished. It 1s excusable in the Kaffir that he should build as he must. It is inexcusable in the Christian that he should in any way divert the building of human character from the beauty, truth, and goodness which are in Christ Jesus. Nor is the warning superfluous. It is just as easy to inflate religious propaganda with windy notions, emotional outbreaks, false teachings about war and peace, and vain or contradictory ordi- nances as it was to grow Jonah’s gourd in a night that a worm may smite it down with the dawn. [ 34 | Character and Work IV Unless I am mistaken, the chronic perils of Christen- dom are twofold: the subjection of Christ’s spiritual dominion to merely prudential aims, and the leaning of institutional religion toward those casuistries which have defamed its history. Some popular presentations of the Faith bulk large to the eye. They are much praised, and reckoned impregnable defenses of Zion. Their pinnacles of apologetic and eloquence often excite the admiration of the thoughtless multitudes. They reflect the enchanted glance of the politic and the worldly wise on their radiant fronts. Yet the devout mind goes back to the lakeside in Galilee and heeds once more the Voice that set all issues in a wholesome context, saying: “Everyone therefore that heareth these words of mine, and doeth them, shall be likened unto a wise man, who built his house upon the rock: and the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not: for it was founded upon the rock. And everyone that heareth these words of mine, and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, who built his house upon the sand: and the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and smote upon that house; and it fell: and great was the fall thereof.” The Temple not made with hands was decreed in this constitutional law of the process of character build-' ing. Its edifice does not arise, as a rule, in response to’ the great and learned of the world. Its unblemished strength, its stones of living souls, redeemed and pre- cious, its fidelity, proof against the lures of sensuous delight or profit, have been contributed by saints and heroes who counted earth’s rewards and emoluments as [ 35 | The American Pulpit less than refuse for the sake of the pattern in the Mount. The judgment fires consumed their dross, but left the pure metal in them well refined. They cemented with their blood the fortresses which shelter religion, law, justice, elevating literatures, science which is ethically applied, and the philosophies that simplify thinking. They wrestled for the truth which has not always been acceptable to professional religion- ists. Like Jacob at the brook Jabbok, they were often lamed in the conflict, and like him, they emerged from it princes of God’s Israel. He is very merciful to us in that he allows us to witness from time to time to the testing out of the values of character and work. The latter enables us to judge the former, and we can have, if we will, a conscientious insight into the prolonged _ welfare or disaster connected with both. Quite recently a conflagration raged in Europe which nearly destroyed its civilization. By the glare it spread around the globe the densest could discern the cunning shams, the painted frauds, the decorated lies, the pompous pre- texts, the honor rooted in dishonor, which were the combustibles of that holocaust. Faith, Hope, and Charity, by the Everlasting Mercy, withstood the fierce blastings of the crisis, or we had been as those that go down into the pit. Yet no sooner had wounded nations crawled from under the smoking ruins than their fatu- ous leaders resumed the piling up of wood, hay, stubble. The former cities of Japan, where houses are chiefly paper and bamboo, were rebuilt every four years, and no insurance company would assume risks on them. They afford us a parable of much present international- ism. What risks does it not assume? It warns us to choose well the material used, for the choice is endless. [ 36 | Character and Work Have regard for quality, not quantity; for the toll your thinking and your doing take from your dedicated being, for the patience which ensues in that scarcest of virtues—fortitude. Vv To choose thus, however, conscience must first be standardized by Christ’s rule, and scope and freedom given it to sanitate every evangelical doctrine. “Had it power,” protested Bishop Butler, “as it has author- ity, it would indeed govern the world.’”’ No work sur- vives unless done from the motives which a truly christianized conscience originates. Those who build ambitions to occupy the spacious areas, or to fill up the fields of vision, or from pride’s promptings rather than for God’s glory in human betterment, are left stripped and beggared at the last. They should demolish their monuments of selfishness and arrogance, while their day of grace endures. For as men’s spiritual evolution advances they will be as much ashamed of these destructive aims as they now are of petty pilferings or of detestable enormities. How much otherwise splen- did work is vitiated by the poison of egotism! And how lenient preachers are toward that poison! By it the angels fell, yet knowing this, some pulpit angels still take the plunge. Public servants, well-nigh indis- pensable as we see them, are infected with its virus. Would this or that renowned ecclesiastic, orator, reformer, or philanthropist care to have the secrets of his or her heart unveiled? If they do not, is it because they bring into the unseen Temple we all help to erect the lust for prominence which devours its spiritual resources? Sinners against themselves, injuring their [ 37 | The American Pulpit own souls, they also sin against the general enterprise by placing the hay and stubble of mixed motives in walls and niches meant for the precious stones of pure and undivided incentive. Alas! we all have to fight mixed motives, which are truly the most illusive foes. These microbes of immorality swarm in us like sum- mer flies, uninvited, but they cannot become a part of us, nor discredit our~efforts, unless we deliberately adopt them. So long as we resist them, searching them out with the candle of the Lord, and resenting their suggestions, we practice the victorious religion which our Lord made his own in the wilderness of the temp- tation. No greater help is rendered men and women by the Spirit of the Living God than to so animate and instruct their consciences as to inspire them with a blameless rectitude toward life and duty. Christian or Hebrew, it is your sense of the holiness of God, and of the well being of man that makes you a master builder of humanity’s House of Eternal Refuge. The core of this sensibility is always experimental. What is the grand reality which transforms and hallows even the iniquitous, and adds enduring value to that house? It is the character-creating power of a conscience fed by the truths verified in personal and profound experi- ences. No man, however faultless his logic and admi- rable his address, has the right to announce as authori- tative any doctrine that has not lived, breathed, and raced throughout his own spiritual history. I do not assert that every religious speculation is negligible. The intellect has its insurgent questions to which at least tentative replies must be given. But the verities by which men are made firm as granite, pure as marble, [ 38 | Character and Work refined as gold, chaste as silver, fervent as porphyry, are part and parcel of our inmost selves. Their regen- erative force is symbolized by these material sub- stances. It is useless for us to attempt to make others better than we are ourselves or to lead them beyond our own attainments into the power of the world to come. If what goes forth from us is to translate those who hear us into the realm of divine love, compassion, pity, and surrender to the supreme Will, we must first be of that realm, and sharers of these graces. The East has an ancient legend that crystals were once living things and propagated each other. The legend is con- sistent with the virtues and the vices symbolized in the text. We produce after our kind either stuff for the burning or costly stones for the Temple, and “the day” shall declare which; revealing it by an ordeal that can neither be eluded nor minified. VI Redemption of time, sagacious selection of material, painstaking labor from unmixed motives in its shaping and use, the cultivation of a conscience void of offense before God and man, an experimental realization of the . truths we communicate—who is sufficient for these things? They are not of our own origination. The qualities the text advocates proceed from the creative Spirit alone. The quarries of earth do not yield them. They come from the heart of Fatherly benevolence which beats at the center of all being, and everywhere broods over its chaos. The living God who sent his Son into the world still imparts to it the secret of man’s spiritual transmutation. For our wood he gives us iron; for our iron, brass; for our brass, gold and pre- [ 39 | The American Pulpit cious stones. This is the divine alehemy which explains the church, the Bible, the Over-World and its ringing challenge of the under-world. RELIGIOUS CRUSADES I am convinced that we yearn to put nobler material into our work. Our purpose is to be, and to help others to become more uniformly lovely of temper, more val- iant in devotion to life; to see ministers and laymen alike enrapt in mystic spiritual passion, and not spas- modically touched by it. Then let us believe that these wonders can be wrought in us, and greet with expect- ant faith the larger advent of the indwelling Christ. Some of us are so engrossed in religious crusades that we hazard our religion. We have scarcely time to pray. We lift our towering Babels skyward, but because they have not been submitted to the control of the God of right and justice, what are they but pretentious fuel? Our work must have in it the reproductive faith which Jesus sought while in the flesh with painful solicitude if we are to see that work glorified in the eternity at our thresholds. It must not halt at reform, philan- thropy, a social evangel, or any other milestone on the road to its divine appraisal. It must stop short at nothing until it seizes men and women by means of resistless grace into salvation. These assertions are illustrated by the example of an eminent servant of God, the late Cardinal Manning. He was a man of simple piety, though astute in tendency, and more distinguished for his philanthropic than for his evan- gelistic gifts. When he died, a well-known expert stated that notwithstanding the Cardinal’s unrelaxing efforts to promote the welfare of the industrial groups, [ 40 ] Character and Work it was questionable if he had ever won a single convert to Christianity from their constituencies. The one thing needful was lacking; learning, eloquence, gravity, statesmanship, humanitarianism, and an accurate knowledge of men and events were his. He was also a prince of the Church; and Newman declared that Man- ning was Britain’s foremost preacher. But in building the Temple with spiritual stones he was outranked by many an humble pastor in rural circuits. Let us not attempt any reconciliation with a human- ity we do not first strive to reconcile to God, nor fail to satisfy our nation’s deepest need, and to cleanse by prayer and fasting the mighty heart of its democracy. Our main mission is to herald God’s love and holiness in Christ for the redemption of our own age from its private and public sins, and unto eternal life. This mis- sion should be the staple of our thinking and the bur- den of our speech. Whatever it involves should be expounded in faith, in reason, and for its designed ends. If the objection is raised against such a ministry that its projects are fanciful, fall back, as did St. Paul, upon your soul’s felt communion with Christ. You have not chosen him; he has chosen you, and appointed you to be fellow workers with God whose toil shall endure, and whose joy shall be full in the day of final judgment. [ 41 ] Henry SLOANE COFFIN It is difficult to envisage the multifarious activities and ministries of Dr. Coffin. Pastor of the Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church in New York, he is also an active full-time professor in Union Theological Seminary. The inference would be natural that his relation to his church is that of preacher only, but such an inference would be completely mistaken. He administers an enormous organi- zation of workers, volunteer and professional, and himself lives as close to his people in his capacity as pastor as does any minister who carries half of Dr. Coffin’s responsibilities. As professor of practical theology his church affords his students a rare opportunity to test their teacher’s instruc- tion by observation, and by actual labor in the parish. For a “theologue” at Union Seminary to be invited to a place, be it ever so subordinate, on Dr. Coffin’s church staff, is both an honor and a privilege of service greatly coveted. Dr. Coffin has built up his church on the principle of adapt- ing it to the actual needs of the community. The ‘“com- munity” he conceives in the broadest and most democratic terms. He is under no delusion that because his church is situated in a wealthy section of Manhattan the whole of his community is wealthy and aristocratic. He too well knows not only that the East Side is hard by, but that in the houses of the wealthy there are many folk whose socio- logical classification is in quite different categories. For these he believes our Protestant churches must provide a ministry and a gospel. This problem of democratizing a Protestant church, of lifting it out of the narrowing class restriction which is one of its most unchristian character- istics, and of making it a humanly catholic institution— to this problem Dr. Coffin has set himself with a passion [ 43 | The American Pulpit and an intelligence which leaves no ground for wonder at the success he has already attained. As a teacher of preachers, Dr. Coffin is perhaps as deeply loved as any master of the homiletic art in any seminary in America. He draws upon what seem to be exhaustless reserves of sympathy and imaginative understanding of the young minister’s problems, and thus binds students to him with the double bond of personal affection and pro- fessional respect. He has lived in New York City all his life, having been born there in 1877. Yale is his college, from which he received his A.B. degree in 1897 and his A.M. in 1900, in the latter year receiving also his B.D. from Union Theological Seminary. He studied in New College, Edinburgh, and the University of Marburg. Two pastorates mark his career, the first at Bedford Park Pres- byterian Church, New York, and his present pastorate on Madison Avenue, which he entered upon in 1905. His professorship at Union synchronizes with his second pas- torate. Active in denominational affairs, he has been a member of the board of home missions, and a director of the church extension committee of New York presbytery. The colleges and universities of the country offer no more hearty welcome to any preacher than to Dr. Coffin. A volume of his sermons preached to students was published in 1914 under the title University Sermons. Other books of his making are: The Creed of Jesus, Social Aspects of the Cross, The Christian and the Church, The Ten Com- mandments, Christian Convictions, In a Day of Social Rebuilding, A More Christian Industrial Order, What Is There in Religion? He is also editor of the well-known hymnal, Hymns of the Kingdom. Dr. Coffin has been honored with the D.D. degree by New York, Yale, Harvard, Columbia and Princeton universities, [ 44 ] FROM THE NATURAL TO THE SPIRITUAL By Henry SLOANE CoFrFIN “To enter into life”’—Mark ix, 43. Have you ever been haunted by a passage of scrip- ture? To me there is an overpowering and inescapable earnestness in the words of Jesus, read a few minutes ago, in which he speaks with such intensity: Better for thee to enter into life maimed, crippled, one-eyed, rather than whole-bodied to be flung on the rubbish- heap and got rid of, as the city of Jerusalem used the valley of Hinnom, Gehenna, as a big incinerator to destroy its refuse. Wholeness was such a cult with Jesus—“I came that they may have life, and may have it abundantly”—that one is surprised at his advocating _ crippling one’s self—cutting off hand or foot or pluck- ing out an eye. We forget his insistence upon the extreme difficulty of “entering into life,’ and his frank statement that to him the gate seemed narrow and the way straightened, and “few be they that find it,” while the road to destruction is broad, and the gate wide, “and many be they that enter in thereby.”” One wishes he had not said that; it sounds harsh. But suppose he is trying to report truthfully the facts as he sees them, and to tell us that desperate efforts are necessary to [45 ] The American Pulpit “enter into life’? Truth-telling is always a kindness. Who would live in a fool’s paradise and suddenly dis- cover himself bitterly mistaken? And how exactly Jesus’ conception of “entering into life’ corresponds with the scientific view of the way in which all creatures have evolved! It seems to be agreed that life on our planet began in the seas, and that the forest primeval was not that of which Longfellow sang in Evangeline, but its remote ancestor—the great masses of seaweed which swayed in the warm waters. In migration after migration, first plants, then living creatures dared the impossible and became dwellers on dry land. It was a momentous enterprise for denizens of the waters “‘to enter into life” on terra firma. Look what was involved. First, new breathing apparatus. There is oxygen in the water, and fishes take it in through their gills and through the membrane which covers their bodies. But on land skins had to thicken and the oxygen in the atmosphere be captured and passed into the blood through lungs. That involved a vast transformation. Second, an improved method of motion. In the sea creatures may move freely in any direction, up or down, forward or backward, right or left, and the water upholds their bodies. On shore movement must be much more precise, the body must be compact and capable of holding itself up, and every muscle must respond to the control of the brain. A jellyfish may sprawl or float about in the sea, but it would be torn to bits on land. You and I, for example, exercise fifty- four muscles in the half-second that elapses between raising the heel of our foot in walking and planting it firmly on the ground again; and happily we do not [ 46 | From the Natural to the Spiritual have to think of any one of them, for all fifty-four move automatically in response to our desire to step ahead. A finer brain directing a more complex nervous and muscular system—that was a mighty advance. Third, a new protection for the body against changes of temperature. In the sea the differences of cold and heat between day and night, winter and summer, are far more gradual and far less felt than in the air. Hence layers of fat and skins with hair or fur must be devel- oped, and the animal’s own blood-heat retained. Fourth, a new family and social life. The waters form a cradle for the young, but on land they must be carried by the parent, or hid in a hole, or safeguarded in a nest—that is the beginning of home. In the sea most creatures let their young shift for themselves, with large losses, so that families have to run up to the thousands or millions, and there is no tie between par- ent and offspring. On land families are small, and there is personal care, and the dawn of social respon- sibility. All which things are a parable; for “to enter into life” as Jesus conceived it was to advance from the natural into the spiritual, and closely parallel develop- ments are necessary. pe A finer breathing apparatus. The oxygen of the spirit of God—the spirit of trust and hope and love—is dif- fused everywhere in small quantities through the ordi- nary atmosphere that men breathe. One could not raise a family or do business or have friends without trust, hope, affection. The more Christian a community is, the more of this spirit pervades its homes and shops [47] ~The American Pulpit and theaters and public offices, and without being aware of it people are living in the spirit. But the best town or countryside known to us is oxygenated with the spirit of Christ to no greater extent than waters are oxygenated where sunlight is falling on their sur- face. To enter into spiritual life is like coming up on the shore and capturing the far more fully present breath of the divinein one’s own soul. Shelley has a phrase which expresses the atmosphere of Jesus’ king- dom of God, when he speaks of “realms where the air we breathe is love.” We see a fish out of water apparently gasping for breath. It dies from too much air, and from air coming to it in a form it cannot utilize. Frankly, how would you and I fare in “realms where the air we breathe is love’”—such love as the New Testament points to in the cross on Calvary? Could we do business in it? Or are we accustomed to only such diluted quantities that we should be fish out of water in an office or a factory or a store where it was the atmosphere? Could we function as citizens in it? Or are we so used to national selfishness and personal self-interest in forming our opinions on public questions, that we should gasp for breath? Could we work and worship in a church per- vaded by it? Or are we so habituated to the vastly reduced amounts of the redemptive spirit of Christ that percolate through the churches with which we are familiar, that we should be entirely out of our element in a congregation which thought seriously with the mind of Jesus and spent itself with his self-giving to bring lives under his mastery? And this is only another way of asking: Could we breathe in God, who is love as Christ was love? [ 48 | From the Natural to the Spiritual Nature never takes her forward steps suddenly. There are fish today which have developed rudimen- tary lungs and come to the surface to breathe; they would die if you placed a net an inch below the top so that they could not reach the air. Have you and I such an elementary spiritual breathing-apparatus? Do we pray—consciously entering into God’s thoughts and interests and sympathies? Do we accustom ourselves to the atmosphere of the New Testament by frequent excursions to it and by thinking out our current ques- tions in it? Fishes evolved lungs, using part of their swim bladders, and so became dwellers in the ampler air of our sunny earth. Religion is a developable instinct | —developable by those who try to breathe in and live by the truth and love and hope of Jesus. This is to enter into life—the life of God. II Precise and controlled movement. There are many people who are morally sprawling, and with no more compactness and stiffness than a jellyfish. The rough edges of decisive issues tear them. When the young ruler began to ask his questions of Jesus, he was told, “If thou wouldst enter into life, keep the command- ments.” They are clear-cut “thou shalt nots’ and “thou shalts.” Movement on the terra firma of the spiritual forbids flopping about, and drifting this way and that, and letting currents carry us. A man must hold himself up on his own moral legs, and let his every motion be directed by conscience. “If thou wouldst enter into life, keep the commandments.” And even then the young ruler would only have begun to move on the beach; there was more compacting of [ 49 | The American Pulpit himself to be done if he would settle permanently as an inhabitant of the spiritual. He must disencumber himself of things which dragged and prevented his easy movement. Everything that one is and has must be swiftly responsive to the Christ-prompted heart. You recall Huxley’s pointed dictum: “The test of being educated is, can you do what you ought, when you ought, whether you want to do it or not?” With some of us the trouble is lack of will-power; we cannot bring feelings and temper and power to heel. With others it is that our possessions and connections, like this young ruler’s, are too spread out, like some flabby and dis- tended octopus with numerous feelers and tentacles, and we are hopelessly entangled when we exchange the morally fluid existence for the decisive life of the morally solid and stable. You and I say that we wish to be useful Christians, active and forthright builders of the city of God, through home and industry and citizenship and the church. Unquestionably we wish it; but do we will it? And have we a controlling will that gets us out to the task, that arranges our time, and plans our efforts, and manages our outlays? Wishing may do for aquatic existence where you can float along with a current or let the tide carry you; but willing is necessary on the terra firma of the spiritual. “I must be about my Father’s business,” “the Son of man came not to.. . but to.” There is precise, controlled movement. Or are we entangled? One can be tied up in social customs, and spend endless time and money on things that never advance the community or any individual a single inch. One can be entwined in one’s own posses- sions—in their acquisition, their care, their enjoyment, [ 90 | From the Natural to the Spiritual their increase and never “enter into life,’ immersed in things, not in life. Jesus’ advice to the young ruler would be the wisest possible counsel to not a few: “Sell and give.” With less, many men and women would be far more useful. Possessions may impede personal service. Anything which one owns that is undedicated and not employed for spiritual ends is like a great limp tentacle which some sea-creature is trying to drag about on the shore. It must either be got rid of or transformed into a spiritual muscle. Are we sprawlers and floppers and drifters? or con- science-controlled, self-upholding and _ self-propelling beings, moving precisely and firmly on God-given purposes? LEE A better protection against atmospheric changes. The more developed a soul is, the more sensitive he becomes to drops in spiritual temperature. See it in Jesus’ career. When he descends from the mount of transfiguration, where in prayer and in fellowship with the exalted spirits of the mighty past, he has been aglow with a passion to free mankind from sin, he comes into the despairing company of disciples unable to help that father with his possessed boy. The chill of their unbelief pierces him. ‘“O faithless generation, how long shall I be with you? How long shall I bear with you?” Again in the supper room he has felt the warmth of his disciples’ loyalty: “Ye are they that have continued with me in my temptations’; but in the garden of Gethsemane, he felt a fall in tempera- ture. The three on whom he had counted most went to sleep: “What, could ye not watch with me one hour?” [51 ] The American Pulpit And the point is that despite the changes in spiritual warmth, his spirit was not chilled and rendered inca- pable of generous and believing activity. He bade them bring the afflicted child to him; he went from the sleep- ing disciples to a second prayer even more acquiescent in his Father’s will than the first, and then went to give himself up to the arresting guard. How much affected are we by variations in tempera- ture? How differently we talk in different groups— ardent with the enthusiastic, moderate with the con- ventional, cynical with those superior persons whose superiority is uniformly critical! In one community we are warmed to active Christian service: it is the atmos- phere of the place; in another we are shivering or frozen into stiff inertia: we have no protection against pervasive indifference. With one friend we glow—his fervor is inescapable; with another we always remain in the temperate zone—an excellent climate for calm thinking and moderated action, but unfavorable to luxuriant growth and passionate self-abandonment; with a third we are in the arctic circle and show no more fruits of the spirit than are grown at Point Barrow. There are few more searching tests to apply to one’s self than this: How proof am I against these variations of heat and cold? Can I continue, year in and year out, “fervent in spirit, serving the Lord,” in a household where the rest of the family are not interested in religion, in a place of business where my associates care for none of these things, in a church where the majority of the congregation are not more than tepid? It is not easy to raise tropical flowers and fruits in a Canadian winter; but it is done. It requires coal and [52 | From the Natural to the Spiritual a greenhouse so well built that it keeps the heat. To produce the graces and gifts of the spirit of Jesus in New York city, or in any other place you care to name, demands a large and constant supply of that spirit— fortunately always available—and a resolute conscience which retains the atmosphere of Galilee and Calvary, and excludes the intrusive chill of an unbelieving, unhoping, uncaring world. The spiritual thermometer on Mars hill, among those novelty-seeking, endlessly discussing Athenians, was many degrees below that on the mount where Jesus spoke the beatitudes, but Paul had his own furnace and protective covering, and his words kindle still. And as for Calvary—look at the taunting priests, the staring crowd, the dice-throwing soldiers, one fellow-sufferer mocking, and friends sob- bing and hopeless. Could anything have been more congealing to faith? But from within Jesus uses for warmth, as we today employ the forests of a remote past in coal, the words of psalmists: “My God, My God, why?” “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit.’ There is blood-heat retained against an out- ward drop to zero and below—blood-heat that warms across the centuries the most generous endeavors of today. Jesus entered into life, when another would have been spiritually frozen to death. IV A developed sense of social obligation. One can fairly grade the world of creatures by the amount of devotion they show to their young or to their own herd. There are faint beginnings of this among dwellers in the water—among nest-building fish or those vari- eties where the mother protects the young in her [53 | The American Pulpit mouth; but this sense of responsibility—call it embry- onic conscience—has advanced by vast strides on the dry land. It is certainly the chief factor to be consid- ered when we grade people spiritually, and estimate whether they have entered into life. Here is a devoted parent, but with no community spirit—an aquatic con- science. Here is a loyal patriot, but with no sense of obligation for the weal of other lands—a conscience akin to that of the wolf for the pack. Here is a busi- ness-man considerate of the few employees or imme- diate associates with whom he is thrown, but without imagination to feel the conditions and appreciate the state of mind of operatives in a mill whom he rarely sees and cannot personally know—a near-sighted con- science. | Here is a Christian, scrupulously careful about the expenditure of his income and eager to be generous, but unthinking of the conditions under which his income is produced, and never asking if he is worth to humanity what it costs to keep him—a class-bounded conscience. Here is a churchman interested in the work of his own congregation and perhaps in home missions, but questioning and disparaging foreign missions—a parochial or at best a nationalistic conscience. Here is a man with a general sense of obligation for others, which leads him to contribute to good causes, but with no feeling of responsibility to invest himself in service which sets him face to face with men and women who need what can only be communicated by direct touch of life on earth—a conscience akin to that of fish with an instinctive obligation to continue their species, but with no sense of duty to care individually for their kind. A congregation composed of fishy consciences [ 54 | From the Natural to the Spiritual will make annual offerings for the propagation of the genus Christian, but will not be a company of friendly men and women reaching out in personal contacts and drawing one by one their neighbors and acquaintances into the friendship of Christ. Where do you and I grade in social conscience? Did not Jesus, by his life and above all by that life laid down at Golgotha, reveal a more inclusive and more exacting social conscience— the all-embracing and self-giving conscience of God? To “enter into life” is to come up from this rudimental conscientiousness of the natural man—marine con- scientiousness as opposed to terrestrial—into the con- scientiousness of sons of God. What daring it took in denizens of the water to attempt the impossible and try to become dwellers on terra firma! And what faith! Had they been able to forefancy what was involved—a complete remaking of themselves—being “born again’—would they have ventured ?: Had discussion been possible, how the com- placent habitués of the sea would have argued with these crack-brained venturers! “A perfectly ridiculous project!” And as for the venturers themselves, how often must they have failed and been discouraged, and how many must have turned back or slipped back exhausted with trying, and how many must have had to part with fin or tail or scales or feeler or even some larger part of their fishy anatomies before they man- aged to live on shore! But today, we, who carry tell- tale reminders in our own bodies of the aquatic stage of evolution take life on land for granted, and earth is our native element and the only dwelling-place which seems to us natural. One hears a voice saying to those pioneers of eons ago: “I will give to thee, and to thy [59 | The American Pulpit seed after thee, the land of thy sojournings.” By faith they struggled, and for themselves and their descend- ants entered into ampler life. V Between denizens of the waters and dwellers on terra firma there is a large group of amphibians, who are in and out of both. “They are typical of ourselves— now in one element and now in another in our thinking and feeling and living. And notice that fear is the great factor that sends an amphibian back to the water. - Frighten a frog or a turtle or a newt or an alligator, and it will make for the water, if it can. Scare any one of us and, like Simon Peter, we deny our Lord and dive back into selfishness. But there is an upward urge in creatures which makes them crave to reach the sunnier existence of the land, and there is a mysterious faith that this is somehow possible. Certain species, nat- uxalists tell us, are coming ashore even now and con- tinuing the evolutionary march which began millions of years ago. There isin you and me a craving for the spiritual—‘We needs must love the highest when we see 1t’’—and an instinctive trust in ourselves and in the universe that we can attain to such life as Christ revealed. We are scared out of it again and again; but faith battles with fear. Are we ready to yield to the ventures of trust and to pay the cost of daily struggle to enter into life? Maimed, crippled, one-eyed, if need be, merciless with ourselves, are we resolved to live? The alternative is the rubbish heap. This is the stern and exacting summons of the gospel of Christ. But it 1s not the whole gospel. Jesus is no pioneering leader merely, bidding us follow him, even if it means [ 56 ] From the Natural to the Spiritual mutilating ourselves to keep up with him. “J, if I be lifted up, will draw’’; “Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give”; “Ye will not come to me that ye may have life.”’ A figure stands on the sunny shore calling to us frightened and doubting moral amphibians, fascinating us with the life he sym- bolizes and asking us to be his companions and stay with him, that with him we may become new creatures. He cannot relieve us of the necessity of struggling up and of struggling to stay up and of struggling to acquire the requisites for sons of God: but he draws and he holds—himself the strongest incentive to climb up and the staunchest preventive against slipping back —and with him we are acclimated and adapted to the climate of the kingdom of love. “He that hath the Son, hath the life.” [57 | Ps roa ue i ie ai Ms iM We i at Fp anh mie) Ae Ha 7 rr ‘Lanes j ‘ By eh | Ws Ay ee ee Ame The Bike ft a. fy) ‘4 a mt el Roi Tie r Fa Pika f RussELL HERMAN CONWELL The pastor of one of America’s largest churches, The Baptist Temple, Philadelphia, was born at Worthington, Massachusetts, in 1843, and spent his early days on a small farm situated in the most sterile portion of that mountain- ous region. Very early in his youth he was compelled to earn his own living, but managed by studying evenings to keep on with his classes until he had prepared himself to enter Yale College. There he “doubled up,” taking both academic work and law at the same time, studying law under a tutor. The Civil War interrupted his studies, and took him to the field as a captain of infantry. At its close he attended the law department of Albany University. After graduating he went to Minnesota and began to prac- tice. Appointed by the State of Minnesota in 1867 to act as its emigration agent in Germany, Mr. Conwell found himself standing on the threshold of another sort of career, that of newspaper correspondent. His articles to the New York Tribune and the Boston Traveler met with such favor that he was sent by these papers on a circuit of the globe, during which he accepted many lecture engagements in India and England. Returning, he settled in Boston, where he practised law for eight years. In 1879 he was ordained to the Baptist ministry, and in 1882 accepted a call to Grace Church, Philadelphia. From that date to this he has been its pastor, the name having been changed to The Baptist Temple when the present great house of worship was erected in 1891. For a period of ten years following the opening of the new edifice, the congregation was so large that admission was limited to ticket holders, and multitudes were turned away. On the lecture platform Dr. Conwell has attained nation- [59 | The American Pulpit wide fame. During a period of fifty-one years he lectured nearly nine thousand times. He was the intimate associate of the platform giants of the classic period of the lyceum in America—Gough, Beecher, Wendell Phillips, Everett, Chapin, and others. The most famous lecture of lyceum history is Dr. Conwell’s “Acres of Diamonds,” delivered in every State in the Union over a period of fifty years, to more than three million people, and netting the lecturer $4,000,000, all of which amount he gave to religious and educational philanthropy, being himself, as he put it, “gen- erously provided for by a loyal church.” The occasion of the 5000th delivery of this lecture was made brilliant by the gathering in Philadelphia on May 21, 1924, of an audi- ence that filled the Academy of Music. At the conclusion of his lecture Dr. Conwell was presented with a loving cup by Provost Smith of the University of Pennsylvania, a key of solid gold by Governor Tener, representing the freedom of the State of Pennsylvania, and an autograph album from five thousand friends containing $5,000. Dr. Conwell’s ministry has stressed teaching and healing, as well as preaching. In connection with his church he established the Temple University which enrolls as high as eight thousand students each year, and the Samaritan and Greatheart hospitals. The first book by Dr. Conwell was published in 1870 under the title, Why and How the Chinese Emigrate. His Life of Charles Haddon Spurgeon, his contemporary in the great London pulpit, appeared in 1893 and reached a sale of 125,000 copies within four months. Other books are: How to Live the Christ Life, Effective Prayer, Why Lincoln Laughed, Borrowed Axes, and Fields of Glory. [ 60 | ABOVE THE SNAKE LINE By RusspeLtut H. ConwELu The story of the prodigal son has taken on a new phase to me, and a useful one, without doubt. It is a wonder, a marvel, how sayings of Christ and the prophets can be found which apply to every circum- stance of human life and human thinking. When we change our circumstances, or our views of human affairs, we find them adjusting themselves to the new conditions. We need not be afraid of scientists nor of the discoveries of science. Because if science discovers a truth, the Bible throws a new light or color which we have not observed before. It does not change the Bible. It opens it out so that we understand it better. We are indebted to science, and we are not afraid of sci- ence, nor of any honest investigation in the world. This story of the prodigal son took a rather peculiar, but an interesting, phase as I thought upon it in the last few hours. The prodigal son went down from the lovely mountains of Judea to the plains and cities by the shore. That is an ancient tradition concerning him. He entered the gay city, and, among the wicked and licentious people, spent his father’s money and his inheritance. Then he was turned over to the swine. It reminded me so fully of an old tradition concern- ing the Hampshire highlands of the Berkshire hills of Massachusetts. In one of his letters the great poet, William Cullen Bryant, who so loved the Berkshire [ 63 ¢ The American Pulpit hills, mentioned the fact that when the hills were first occupied by settlers, they found that down in the val- leys were very dangerous serpents. The rattlesnake was there, the poisonous adder was there, the copper- head was there. In order to escape these serpents, they built their residences upon the hills. Ancient tradition related that there was a “snake line” above which no poisonous snake ever crept. If a person builded above an elevation of about twelve hundred feet above the sea, no poisonous serpents ever bit his children, or destroyed his property, or endangered his life. But if he built in the valley, he was subject to these deathly dangers. In the old times when the country was set- tled, every person who approached was advised to build his house “above the snake line.” Above the snake line the early settlers dwelt—those pioneer New Englanders whose emigrants formed the foundation of the middle and western states. The farms were small, the ground stony and difficult to clear for agriculture. The mountains were covered with the primitive forest. The valley soil was richer and more easily worked, but those wise and pious Pilgrim fathers endeavored to build their homes safely “above the snake line.” Above the snake line they built the red New England schoolhouses. In those schoolhouses have been inspired poets, scholars, martyrs, missionaries, states- men, inventors, philanthropists, teachers, musicians and lovely home-makers. There education really began for America. There the boys and girls were instructed in what they needed to know of the elements of a practical education. The red schoolhouse of New England—glorified by poets and orators and [ 62 | Above the Snake Line patriots throughout the land, where the eternal friend- ships were formed by those who attended them—was indeed the palladium of American liberty. They built their schoolhouses ‘above the snake line”! The churches also were constructed on the mountain- tops of that portion of the Green Mountain range where Vermont and Massachusetts unite. When the farmer leaned upon his hoe, he could look over the intervening hilltops and see the spires of many churches. They built them in the highest places of New England. They could be seen forty or fifty miles, and all, like the churches of Peru, Blandford, Worthington and Chesterfield, pointed all the people by sunlight and moonlight to God. From the cele- brated “Mohawk trail’ the traveler’s attention is called to churches sixty miles away. The farmer who built his house and made his home above the snake line, also constructed his place of worship above the snake line. The churches are built where sin does not enter, and where it is safe for children to enter and for all peo- ple to worship. It is a wonderful illustration. The virus of temptations, the malarias of secret sins seem never to be lurking there. Above the snake line there is health! Saranac lake, in the Adirondacks, famed for the cure of tuberculosis, has precisely the same climatic and local conditions as are found on the plateaus that crown the Berkshire hills. Tuberculosis is not native to that region and is never feared. In one of the towns of western Massachusetts—the town of Peru—there have been but two cases of death from tuberculosis since the entrance of civilization. But it is dangerous [ 63 ] The American Pulpit to descend to the distant valleys and live below the snake line. Above the snake line there is health, because of pure air and pure water. There is health because vigorous exercise is necessary to cultivate the stony land in order to make a living. There, too, is pure food. The most healthful food that can be found grows up where the air and the water are pure. Health was found up there above the snake line! The illustration goes deep and grows wide as I think it out. From the tops of those hills the resident enjoyed magnificent distant views of the wider world. Down in the dark valley you could see but a few hun- dred yards. Down in the valley you are walled in by the sides of the rocky cliffs. But on the mountain farms you could look away to the Catskills, the White Mountains, the Green Mountains, Mount Tom and Mount Holyoke, and far south into Connecticut, far north into New Hampshire and Vermont, and far away into the southern mountains that border the Hudson river. Ah, there are beautiful views above the snake line! How much further men and women do see who live above that moral line! The prodigal son went down below that line. He lived for a while among the serpents and poisonous insects of wickedness, that tempted him on every side, in Tyre and Sidon. He went down from that religious, praying home above the snake line, down ‘into the dark valley, and was bitten by the serpents there. What a startling, all-inclosing illustration Jesus selected when he told the story of the prodigal son! » There in that high land of the Berkshires the sun- rise reveals the glory of God, far above the valley, before the valleys have escaped the shadows of the [ 64 | Above the Snake Line night. Earlier in the morning it shines on the faces of the farmers on the hilltop, as they see the approach of the coming day with a distinctive glory altogether its own. Every land from north to south, and east to west, and every continent on earth, has a different sun- rise. The colors are peculiar to the locality and to the atmosphere. In the Berkshire hills the June or Octo- ber sunrise is a glory which great artists travel from afar to see. The sunsets, except on the most cloudy days, are enriched by thousands of vari-colored kaleido- scopic clouds. What a magnificent position for beauty it is above the snake line, where the sun rises early and sets late! Yes, the prodigal son went down below the religious snake line, down where the views were narrow and deceitful, down where he could not look away upon the white cliffs of God and realize in his soul what they all taught. The minds of men have a snake line. The charac- ters of men have a snake line. In those hills there was the spirit of poetry, where the trees seemed to sing, where the birds and fowls of the air, and the beasts of the field have their tuneful voices. They call in chants from hill to hill, which echo back from cliff to cliff. Wonderful sounds of music are up there. The poetry of life is there. The father of William Cullen Bryant, warned against living below the snake line, set his home atop the hill, where his son wrote those uplifting words: So live that when thy summons comes to join The innumerable caravan which moves To that mysterious realm where each shall take His chamber in the silent halls of death, Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night, Scourged to his dungeon, but sustained and soothed [ 65 | The American Pulpit By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch About him and lies down to pleasant. dreams. William Cullen Bryant wrote that as he sat beside one of the beautiful Berkshire streams, which, dancing down from the hillside, sang its own original song and inspired him to poetry. It was in these hills that Willis found the chiefest subjects for his most sublime writ- ing. There Longfellow wrote poetry, and sought his wife. These great poets lived intellectually above the snake line. They did not descend to the swamps of life; they lived where minds were free and hearts were pure, and characters were sound. They located their hearts where the air was pure! Wonderful waterfalls glittered from hillside and flashed from every grove. The birds in that land have their peculiar color and their peculiar dialect. The foxes that find their holes in the broken, rocky mountain sides are of a most fas- cinating color. Inspiring birds are there! The whip- poorwill, the blue jay, the swallow, the bobolink, the meadow lark, and the oriole, so harmonious in all their beautiful tribute of praise. Perhaps they are no more wonderful than in some other regions. But the birds there which live below the snake line are very different birds, having very much coarser voices. And there were once dangerous birds there. But above the snake line, where live the best of the fowl life, there is no danger to human beings. There, the fish that flash—the speckled trout which leaps up the stream, climbing the little falls from eddy to eddy far into the hills, is one of the most beautiful sights, to a boy who goes fishing with his old fish-pole, to be found on earth—above the snake line. Down [ 66 | Above the Snake Line below, in the dull and slow stream, is the “sucker,”’ the eel, and the slow fish, which many will not eat. The enrichment of life that comes to one who wades up these mountain streams, with his fishing rod, singing to himself and thinking great thoughts, wading in the streams, taking the trout home for supper, is only known to those who live in those forests, who seek their entertainment and food above the snake line. There are also in that land above the snake line the animals we all love. There are the wisest dogs. They seem to be so easily taught. There the farmer’s boys and girls stop to pick berries while the dog goes after the cows. In those hills has been bred the finest qual- ity of canine life. The farmer says to his dog, as he comes from the field, “Go get the sheep!” Away he goes to the distant pastures and drives them in, to the last one. If a person falls into danger, is lost in the forest, or 1s hurt in a fall, the dog immediately notifies friends and brings relief. Many a little child has wandered into a stream, or into danger, and the watching dog has seen, and, understanding the situa- tion, has raced for help for the little girl in danger. Lives are saved over and over above the snake line, where these dogs live. How much the horses seem to know! Even the wise old New Englander often felt that horses had “horse sense,” and often trusted it in the dark when he could not trust his own. Above the snake line there was power. The cascade, in every single drop that fell, furnished power for the wheels of the manufacturer, and of commerce. Yes, these streams were once the blessing of God, supply- ing mankind with nearly all the manufactured articles used in American homes. In the hills of New England [ 67 | The American Pulpit the streams have formed the heart and hand of the manufacturing of the United States. The stream falls through one waterwheel and a few rods on, through another, and then another, from cascade to cascade, and one brook may run a score of mills. When the prodigal son lived above the snake line he possessed the mental power, the strength of character, and the influence for good he could never secure below that religious line. It makes us think of the period when Adam and Eve descended below the snake line and became thieves. Above the snake line there were glorious winter eve- nings. The snows came upon the hills and covered them with a deep blanket which protected the vege- tation. The land was covered for three or four months of the year. In the evening there was the sound of sleigh-bells, and the gathering of young people in some old farm house. The great enterprises that came from these winter evenings have been written in many vol- umes. The Yankee spent much time studying, and how many of the most useful inventions were thought out in the winter evenings “above the snake line”! When the springtime came, life was safe above the snake line, because the streams did not stop to gather sufficient power to throw destructive volumes of ice. But in the valley, every spring, the farms were cov- ered deep with ice, and it was late in summer before some of the ice melted from the damp valleys below the snake line. Above the snake line, in apple blossom time, in June, the mountains and farms were covered with glorious apple blossoms. How Mr. Moody loved them! He instituted an “Apple Blossom Sunday,” still observed [ 68 J Above the Snake Line at Northfield. He always drove through the hills in apple blossom time to get the inspiration of the views. He said he could see heaven. But down below the snake line was shadow, and consequently the things which grew were the product of shadow, and could not compare in prophetic beauty with those above the snake line. Many aman, when the necessities of life have taken him through the valley, has inquired: “Why did God make the mosquito?” That is like some of the theo- logical questions that arise now to trouble people. When mosquitos bite them they ask why God made the mosquito—and never find out! These are the temptations of life. Some kinds of berries growing in the shadow of the valley are really luscious, and boys and girls are tempted to go for them with long coats and cowhide boots to protect them. The chestnuts are down there, for the frosts come earlier there, but the people who go down after them are often bitten by snakes. The monuments in the cemeteries above the snake line show that some persons met death by venturing below the snake line. There were wild roses down there. Sometimes they attracted people, who said: ‘Why should we not? God made the roses.”” Immorality was there; vice was there. Life below the snake line, morally and relig- iously, is well illustrated by the snake line of the Berk- shire hills. You see the shop girl. She had a home, but father and mother are dead. She had a little sister to care for, and undertook to get the money by going to the store or the factory, and taking an occupation there. Finding that the money she received would not supply the necessities of her little sister and care [ 69 | The American Pulpit for herself properly, there came the tempter into the region, for she lived in a locality which was morally down below the snake line. There is a line in poverty that is below the snake line, and it is dangerous for any boy or girl or man or woman to take his dwelling there. I remember a widow who was left with five children. She was determined to keep them together, though she could not live in the style her husband had maintained. So down in a narrow alley, a very narrow, dirty alley, her children were compelled to grow up, living in the temptations of that awful region. Every single one of the five children went wrong, and one is now serving time for manslaughter, and the poor woman died of a broken heart after she went away from the prison doors. Her son is condemned to live a life term in prison. Down below the snake line—God pity the poor that have to live down there amid serpents and sin, surrounded by evil! There are tempting things there, wild roses, chestnuts, and dangerous lurking ser- pents—and I need not say more than the word “ser- pent” to convey the moral meaning back of this life below the snake line. There are amusements below the snake line. Every one brought into association with them has his mind tainted and his heart grows cold, and his sense of right and wrong is disturbed, living among the amusements below the snake line. A story comes to me, as I think of this interpretation of the prodigal son, of an old eagle that lived on the mountain top for years and years. He was recognized as “the old eagle of the highlands.” He was very strong, and his wings spread very wide, but he was never dangerous to man. He never interfered with [ 70 ] Above the Snake Line anything to disturb the families or their farms. The story told to me is a striking illustration. The old eagle saw in the dark valley some five miles below his home—far down the valley—a little child with a basket, and barefooted. They tell the story that the old eagle followed down and saw the little child, whose home was above the snake line, wandering close by a dark stream in the depth of the valley. The little girl wore a white dress, with short sleeves, and with a basket was going to pick berries, unconscious of the fact that there ever was an adder or a rattlesnake. She went singing gayly. The story is repeated in almost every home in the hills, how the eagle fol- lowed the little girl, circling above and watching, and when the snake arose and prepared to strike, down swept the great eagle with its awful talons, and car- ried the rattlesnake, writhing and wriggling, through the air until he came to a place where he knew if he released his hold the snake would be killed by its fall on the rocks. They found it crushed to death, one of the greatest snakes ever seen in that region. The eagle watching over the little girl who wandered into these dangers and temptations is like the mission- ary who goes into the slums among the heathen; the missionary that seeks to protect little children, and goes with strength of wings and power of talons, and the love of a great heart, and seizes the serpent and bears it away, protecting the innocent child. What a marvelous illustration that would be for a poem! It is a wonder to me that such a tribute has not come down in some poetical form. The prodigal son went back to the hills above the snake line. ‘He said: “I have seen enough of this! I [71 | The American Pulpit have been among these vile things long enough! I know now that I am wrong, that my life must be lived above the snake line. I must live up where I can see the things of God and breathe the pure air and drink the pure water, and live upon pure food.” “Coming to himself,’ he went back to his father’s home, above the snake line—above the moral line. The illustration of his return we carry beyond the story and find that he was at last welcomed by his brother, and that he doubt- less lived there in peace until his dying hour. You have read of the Hampshire hills in October! You have seen the mountains round you there in the glory of fall! But no person in America can say he has seen the full glory of an October until he has seen the Hampshire highlands at that season of the year. The automobiles go over the Mohawk trail in October in a continual stream, looking upon forests blooming like roses, and great trees like lilies, so surpassingly beautiful! Heart and mind cannot find words to pic- ture the miles and miles of glorious combinations of every beautiful shade and color of gleam and loveli- ness brought forth in thrilling glory by those trees and fields—in October. All this is “above the snake line.” When the hour of death comes; when the October of life appears; when our lives are weakening; when the time comes that the trees of life must drop their leaves; when the time comes for the death of the season, then the glory of the October day is like the death of a Christian who lives and dies above the snake line. Full of hope, full of beauty, full of glory, surrounded by something indescribable in holiness, the most sublime gift of God is the dying hour. The Christian who loves God, in the dying hours finds heaven gleaming [ 72 ] Above the Snake Line all around him. He is safely above the snake line. Oh, “precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints!” BENEDICTION Now, O God, we appeal to thee for thy benediction. And if there be present in this house now, men or women, or boys or girls, who have been living below the snake line in character or in occupation, may they be lifted, in answer to our prayer, above the snake line, where they may maintain that Christian experience, that Christian character, that Christian life which will make their lives beautiful and useful and their death glorious. We ask thy benediction; and ask it in Jesus’ name. Amen. [73 ] ANS ii nw hh OM ae ue 1° f | | ms ne ‘ om Estat “pits Lae re ns vay ni Bits ew Wie . soar gba Ne yan ee Pa EN sini Ni, ie a) iy i aH » , ae AG ‘ Harry Emerson Fospick It seems like a work of supererogation to write an intro- ductory word concerning Dr. Fosdick, who without question is the most widely known living preacher in Christendom. Even at the moment these words are written the newspapers report his prophetic sermon delivered at St. Peter’s Cathe- dral at Geneva, Switzerland, in connection with the assembly of the League of Nations. But he needs no sounding board of situation or circumstance to give carrying power to his words. Public interest in his utterances traces back to a little book on The Meaning of Prayer, which he wrote in 1915. This little book has brought light and vitality to the baffled minds of millions of men and women. It has been followed by two others, The Meaning of Faith and The Meaning of Service, making a trilogy of interpretation of the most vital aspects of practical Christian life. It was while he was pastor of the Baptist Church at Montclair, New Jersey, that the first of these books was written, with the immediate result that the already considerable local and denominational reputation of Dr. Fosdick as a preacher became nationwide fame. Called from Montclair in 1915 to be the Morris K. Jesup Professor of Practical Theology at Union Seminary, from which institution he was gradu- ated in 1904, he resigned his pastorate to devote himself to his professorial tasks, and to a ministry-at-large in col- leges, churches and religious platforms throughout the land. During the war he spent almost a year speaking in Britain and at the front under the British war office and the Ameri- can Y. M. C. A. In 1919 he became special preacher at First Presbyterian Church, New York City. Being a Bap- tist, and having no desire to magnify denominational dis- tinctions by formally changing his affiliations, he could not be called to the conventional relationship of pastor; yet [75 | The American Pulpit because of the church’s desire to possess his pulpit ministry the special relationship was created. The final relinquish- ment of this relationship in 1925 was the dénouement of an ecclesiastical drama too fresh in the public mind to need comment here. To great multitudes it passes compre- hension how the author of The Meaning of Prayer could conceivably be charged by any Christian as a heretic. The storm of heresy agitation having been stilled by his resignation, Dr. Fosdick was called to the pastorate of Park Avenue Baptist Church, New York, which call he accepted under two principal conditions: one, that a new house of worship should be built near Columbia University; the other, that the congregation should adopt what Dr. Fosdick called an “inclusive” basis of membership instead of the narrower basis of immersion-baptism. These condi- tions were accepted, and Dr. Fosdick departed for his sab- batical year in Palestine and the Mediterranean countries, to return in the fall of 1926 for his duties. He continues his relationship with Union Seminary. . Dr. Fosdick was born in Buffalo, New York, in 1878 and was graduated from Colgate in 1900, spending an additional year in the theological seminary there before going to Union. He has received many degrees from universities: M.A. from Columbia; D.D. from Brown, Yale, Colgate, and Glasgow; LL.D. from Michigan and Rochester; $.T.D. from Ohio University. THE OPEN DOORS By Dr. Harry Emerson Fospick “Behold I have set before thee an open door, and no man can shut it.”—Rev. ii), 8. Our thought this morning springs from a verse in the Book of Revelation. John was on Patmos when this book was conceived. Patmos is a convict island some ten miles long and five or six miles broad, off the coast of Asia Minor. There the hapless prisoners, marooned for many causes from high misdemeanors to Christian discipleship openly confessed, like John’s, spent their days working in the mines or marble quarries and their nights in the convict huts. Save for the bare mention of the fact, John says nothing about his imprisonment, but more than one phrase reveals his hidden feeling. When he dreams of heaven he says, ‘“‘and the sea is no more.” ‘To some of us that would be rather a limita- tion on heaven, but even we can understand how John felt, every day looking out on the encompassing ocean, the symbol of his bondage, the shining but terrible jailer which shut him on that convict isle. I am convinced that our morning’s text also repre- sents John’s reaction to his imprisonment. God says, “Behold, I have set before thee an open door, and no man can shut it.” To be sure, John uses these words about one of the churches to which he is writing, but [77 ] The American Pulpit they must have welled up first of all in response to his own experience. His imprisonment had shut doors all around his life. Doors of opportunity, happiness, and privilege had been closed, and there in his pent and shuttered experience he heard the voice divine that cried, “Behold, I have set before thee an open door, and no man can shut it.” _ What do those words mean if not this: that all the doors which man and circumstance could get their hands upon had been closed, but there still were doors, inner doors, that no man could shut. No circum- stance could reach them; no man could get his hand upon them. They were not in this world’s control. They were his doors, which opened on broad vistas and he could go out and come in through them and be in the spirit free, though he was compelled on Patmos to look down upon the encompassing sea. I speak to you this morning about this inner kingdom of the soul and the doors there that God has opened and that no man can shut. One naturally thinks of such a subject and feels its importance at a new year’s beginning. We are going out into a twelvemonth wherein no one of us knows what will happen. Here we are this morning, a great com- pany of people upon this wandering island in the sky without the faintest idea of what will befall any one of us before the year is done. We praise those old explorers who dared to sail unknown and perilous seas, but every day we all of us are daring adventurers. The voyage of this new year takes us into strange new places. We never have been there before. No one has ever been there before, and we do not know what will happen there. [ 78 | The Open Doors In this situation it is important for us to see clearly that there are two sides to our lives. One side is at the mercy of man and circumstance; its happiness, its opportunities, and privileges can be shut out from us. And if that were the only side, then soon or late we all would land upon some hapless Patmos, pent in, body and soul, by the enclosing sea. Alas! with what tragic suddenness the doors do shut about some lives! But there is another side to us. It is a great gospel. There are doors in us that no man can shut. There are areas of our lives not at the mercy of man and circumstance. And all the sources of a man’s liberty, independence, spiritual richness, and resources lie in his uses of these inner doors that God opened and that no man can shut. The more a man knows about human life or reads biography, the more it is evident that here lies one of the chief differences between men. Set over against each other, for example, two powerful personalities like Napoleon and Paul. Outward circumstance treated them somewhat alike. That is to say: they both came from obscure beginnings little likely to issue in so resounding a consequence; they both rose to tremen- dous influence; and they both ended in prison. But there the similarity stops. Go to Napoleon on St. Helena. All the doors that man and circumstance could shut are closed around him. Are there any other doors through which he can go out and come in? None. It is a sad story, that last, mean, tawdry, quarrelsome, tinsel court of his. But step from that to Paul’s imprisonment. Once more all the doors that man and circumstance can close are shut about him. But as you watch him you are most aware of doors no man can shut. Nero had a [79 | The American Pulpit long arm, but there were gateways in Paul’s life that Nero could not get his fingers on. “Being rooted and grounded in love, 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,’”’—ah! Paul, you had heard that voice, too: “Behold, I have set before thee an open door, and no man can shut it.” It is evident that this realm where our thought moves this morning is the special realm of religion. There are realms where religion overlaps other human interests. It overlaps industry and pleads as the will of God for the application of Christ’s ideals there. It overlaps politics and pleads as the will of God for the working out of Christian principles in national and international relations. It overlaps philosophy and in theology endeavors to achieve a unified and rational outlook on the universe. But this morning we are deal- ing with religion at its heart, its unshared and incom- municable realm where, in the inward kingdom of the soul, it opens doors no man can shut. On the street corners they will talk with you about everything else under heaven, but not about that. In the lecture halls they will speak with you of many matters of high import to society, but not about this. This is religion’s speciality. And is there anything that in the long run makes quite so much difference to life? I do not see how any one can go far on this adventurous and haz- ardous enterprise of the human pilgrimage, seeing how much of our life is at the mercy of man and circum- stance, without feeling year by year an increasing ery for inward independence and resource. I do not want to be the slave of circumstance. I do [ 80 | The Open Doors not want to be at the mercy of man. I want inward resources that man and circumstance cannot touch. Even when ill fortune flogs me as an old tradition says they flogged Anaxarchus, the martyr, I would be able to say as he did, “Beat on at the case of Anaxarchus. Anaxarchus himself you cannot touch.” Even when unfortunate circumstance rims me round I would have a freedom of the soul. Stone walls do not a prison make, Nor iron bars a cage; Minds innocent and quiet take That for an hermitage. If I have freedom in my love And in my soul am free, Angels alone, that soar above, Enjoy such liberty. This morning, therefore, I talk with you in practical and homely fashion about these inward doors of the spirit that God has opened and no man can shut. For one thing, there is the door of spiritual growth. No matter what man or circumstance may do to you ontwardly, you always can use it for the development of a finer character inwardly. That door of spiritual growth stands open. You can shut it, but nobody else can if you really want it open. The Roman Goy- ernment can put John on Patmos and ring him round with cramping circumstance, but there is one thing that the whole Roman Government together cannot do. It cannot prevent John from being a better man because he is there. That John should be more patient, more fine-grained, more high-minded, more inwardly strong and courageous, the whole Roman Empire together cannot prevent that. [ 81 ] The American Pulpit Do you remember from our childhood those exciting stories where the hero of the tale was almost caught, his enemies were closing in, the trap was almost sprung, and, lo! a secret door through which in the nick of time he made his thrilling exit? In later life we have seen that happen often, in ways just as thrilling and twice as true. Blindness closes in on a man’s life. He has been active and energetic. Now the doors shut on every side. Avenues of action and vistas of vision close. He seems caught like arat ina trap. And then comes that spiritual miracle before which all men with eyes must stand with reverence and awe. He is not caught like a rat in a trap. There is an open door. Sight dimmed but insight deepened, he becomes inwardly beautiful so that, whereas once he was out- wardly active, he becomes now radiant within, and men and women draw closer to him in the walk of life that they may be reassured about the reality of the spiritual life. He, too, has heard a voice: “Behold, I have set before thee an open door, and no man can shut it.” You see, there are many things in our lives that do depend upon commodious and comfortable circum- stance. But there is one thing that does not primarily depend upon fortunate environment, and that is devel- opment of character. If you once get a fair start with that you can make it grow in all environments. If the south winds blow you can let them warm your roots. If the northeast gales land on you you can let them toughen your fiber. Hardship can pass over you and leave you a better man. Bereavement can come upon you and leave you a gentler and more sympathetic spirit. Enemies can rise against you until all your [ 82 ] The Open Doors friends are sorry for you, when all the time you are growing a more gracious soul, freer from the folly of bitterness and fuller of the wisdom of magnanimity. The door of spiritual growth stands always open. Whether we take advantage of it or not depends alto- gether on what our major objective is: whether we are making a living or making a life. If we are pri- marily making a living, then God pity us! for all those doors, soon or late, can shut. But if we are making a life, if we are growing a soul, if we are seeing that the most sacred entrustment God ever gave us was our personalities to be made as fine, deep, dependable, and courageous as they can be made, then we have an open door no man can shut,—treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth consume, and where thieves do not break through nor steal. . There is another open door, the door of high thought. No matter what man and circumstance do to you out- wardly, they cannot prevent you from inwardly living in the companionship of high thoughts. That door is open. You can shut it, but nobody else can if you really want it open. You have only to read the Book of Revelation to see that. The Roman Empire could put narrow limitations around John’s body, but it could not put narrow limitations around John’s mind. Marooned on Patmos, he saw a new heaven and a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness. He lived in a high world of great thought. Well, that is the world we all live in—the world of the thoughts we think. Walk up and down Fifth Ave- nue, look at the faces, and see. You say they live in New York. How little difference that makes! Look at the faces and see the worlds they live in, as diverse [ 83 ] The American Pulpit as the thoughts they think. For there are disillusioned faces and flippant faces and anxious faces and cynical faces and vicious faces and strong, calm faces over which the dove of peace has brooded. And as one sees the faces he longs for a voice that could make them all hear: O, you people, what are you doing to your lives by your thoughts? A young man came*into the minister’s confessional to all outward appearance in comfortable circumstance. Really he was living in hell. He built that hell. For long years with his thoughts he had been at work upon it and now he had moved in, and with everything to live for he did not want to live at all. As I listened to him I thought of another man who was in prison, but what a world he lived in! “Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honorable, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.” Ah! Keep that door open in your lives. Make fre- quent journeyings through it into the world of great thoughts. Let the books of the master spirits nourish your meditations. Learn what Sir Edward Dyer meant when he said, ““My mind to me a kingdom is.” Go deeper; learn what Jesus meant when he said, “The kingdom of God is within you.” For all around your lives today are open doors that will not always be open. You have your happy entrances and exits through them now, yet they will close. As you grow older you will inevitably grow accustomed to the sound of those doors closing shut. Happy then the man who knows how to step through a secret and familiar door [ 84] The Open Doors within, and, lo! he stands in a great world of high thought. There is another open door, the door of goodwill. Whatever man or circumstance may do to you, noth- ing can prevent you from living in undisturbed good- will. You can shut that door, but nobody else can if you really want it open. Do you recall that verse in the Sermon on the Mount which in our ordinary versions is translated, “if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of ight”? What does that mean? Who on earth can tell what it means with such a translation? Through that perversely literal rendering that verse has been largely lost to English-speaking Christianity, yet it is one of the truest things the Master ever said. Dr. Moffatt has given us the plain English for it: “if thine eye be generous, thy whole body shall be full of light.” That is to say, if you will look upon this world with generous eyes, your inward life will be illumined. So the Master lived. An unnoticed woman, with shamefaced modesty, puts her slender mite into the treasury, and appreciatively he looks upon her with generous eyes. Peter, fighting an unruly temperament, makes blundering endeavors at discipleship, and encouragingly he looks on him with generous eyes. Little children are held back from him by officious followers, and affectionately he looks on them with generous eyes. A prodigal returns stained by the sin and bowed by the shame of the far country, and for- givingly he looks on him with generous eyes. And at last his enemies crown him with thorns and hang him on the cross, and, praying for their pardon, magnani- mously he looks on them with generous eyes. All [85 ] The American Pulpit through his ministry they were trying to shut doors around his life, but there were some doors they never could get their hands upon. Nothing can keep any man from looking on this world with generous eyes if he wants to do it. And if he does do it, nothing can prevent the consequence; his whole body will be full of light. Is there anything we need much more to learn in these embittered days? This is a very bitter world but, thank God! I do not have to live in a bitter world. This is a world full of hate and vindictiveness and vituperation and envy and jealousy, but, thank God! I do not have to live in that world. There is an inner door—no man can shut it—through which I step into the world of magnanimity and friendship and goodwill, from which I look out upon mankind with generous eyes. That is the Christian’s inward triumph, his vic- tory over the world. No man but himself can keep him from that inward kingdom of good will that is Hushed by every thought that springs From out the bitterness of things. There is even another open door, the door of large interests. For whatever man or circumstance may do to you, they cannot prevent you from living in a world of large interests and great causes. To be sure, man and circumstance can keep you from active serv- ice for some of the causes that you are interested in. They did that with John. They cooped him up on Patmos. Was not the poignant sting of his captivity this, that he beat his arduous wings against the bars of his limitations, longing to be back again in his active service for the Christ? Yet, even so, marooned on [ 86 | The Open Doors Patmos, they could not make him live in a small world. Read the book and see. All the most important move- ments of his time swept through his mind. Thank God for that. You do not know and I do not know what crippling of health, what cramping of circumstance may come to us this year, but so long as we live at all and have any minds: we can live in a great world of large inter- ests. If you doubt it, look at Miss Helen Keller. If ever there was a life around which all the doors seemed shut, it was the life of that extraordinary woman. But see her now as one by one those inner doors have opened so that, marooned upon a narrow Patmos though she is, she lives in a great world. Those of you who know her know that all the major interests and greater causes of this exciting generation throng through her mind. She lives in a far larger world than most of the men and women who walk up and down Broadway. For a man’s life is as large as his interests and no larger. What exciting things there are to be interested in now. Education—we call this a civilized earth, but out of every three people on the planet two people cannot read or write. Think of the work that is yet to be done for the cause of making Christendom Chris- tian. We must do it. Christendom is the greatest handicap Christ faces. What scathing condemnation in that remark an Indian made to Dr. Robert E. Speer: “Jesus Christ is hopelessly handicapped by his associa- tion with the West”! Or consider the crusade against war. The reactionaries of America have thought that they ultimately would step on and quite crush Amer- ica’s better purposes to have a worthy share in build- [ 87 | The American Pulpit ing international substitutes for war. Well, we shall see. This crusade against war is barely under way. Once more, in our generation, “He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat.” Thank God, man or circumstance to the contrary not- withstanding, no one of us needs live in a small world! Last of all, there is the open door to faith in God and fellowship with him. No matter what man or circum- stance may do to you, that door stands open. You can shut it, but nobody else can if you really want it open. That is the heart of religion—that inner door through which one steps to stand, it may be quietly, in the presence of the Unseen Friend. A woman once said to me that prayer had utterly left her life, but, suspecting that I knew her better than she knew her- self, I said, “Do you mean to tell me that you are not conscious of a Presence in fellowship with whom you find your peace and power?” ‘Why,” she said, “I couldn’t live without that.’ But that is prayer. Behind all more formal and stated methods of devo- tion that is prayer at its very center. As Jeremy Tay- lor, the old preacher, said, prayer involves frequent colloquies and short discoursings between God and one’s own soul. Lord, what a change within us one short hour Spent in Thy presence will avail to make! What heavy burdens from our bosoms take; What parched grounds refresh, as with a shower! We kneel, and all around us seems to lower; We rise, and all the distant and the near Stands forth in sunny outline, brave and clear! We kneel, how weak; we rise, how full of power! [ 88 ] The Open Doors Why, therefore, should we do ourselves this wrong, Or others, that we are not always strong; That we are ever overborne with care; That we should ever weak or heartless be, Anxious or troubled, when with us is prayer, And joy and strength and courage are with Thee? Is that door open in your life? Isit wide open? No unforgiven sin that bars your way? No secret evil half hated and yet clung to, that trips you up when you would pass that threshold? No vindictiveness, no quarrelsome relationship with a brother man that pre- vents you from looking into the eyes of God? Is that door wide open? Then you know what the Psalmist meant: “Jehovah is on my side; I will not fear; What can man do unto me?” Here, then, are five open doors no man can shut: spiritual growth, high thoughts, goodwill, large inter- ests, fellowship with God. Is it not clear what the saints at their best have meant when they have defied the world? O world, take from me this next year what you will; these things are mine and no man can touch them. And when at last death seems to close the final door, even more manifest is the Christian’s triumph. Charles Kingsley often expressed his longing for that moment, saying, ‘God forgive me if I am wrong, but I look forward to it with an intense and reverent curi- , osity.” Just so! For even then he heard the word that John heard long ago on Patmos: “Behold, I have set before thee an open door, and no man can shut it.” [ 89 | ar x: he CHARLES WHITNEY GILKEY Dr. Gilkey’s ministry began in the Y. M. C. A. He was student secretary under the International Committee for three years after graduating from Harvard with his A.B. degree in 1903 and his A.M. degree in 1904. Resigning this work, he entered Union Theological Seminary, where he took his B.D. degree in 1908, and went abroad for fur- ther study at the universities of Berlin and Marburg, and at Scottish Universities and Oxford. The Hyde Park Baptist Church called him to its pulpit in 1910. The ministry thus begun has continued until the present time and waxes in popularity and power. Naturally Dr. Gilkey’s early bent toward work among students fits him in a special fashion for his great parish at the center of which is The University of Chicago. The student mind in all the great universities of the country comes into contact with his peculiarly modern spirit by the annual visits which he makes to Yale, Harvard, Princeton, Cornell, Toronto, Wellesley, and the rest. Born in Water- town, Massachusetts, in 1882, Dr. Gilkey belongs to the present generation of youth, and having spent his entire professional career in environments in which the presence of students was the dominant fact, he is peculiarly fitted to interpret their aspirations and to impart, in terms congenial to their minds, the everlasting truth of the gospel. He spent the year 1924 and part of 1925 in the Orient, whither he had gone to deliver the Barrows lectures. This Foundation was established in 1894, following the World’s Parliament of Religions, in order “to interpret Christianity in a friendly, temperate, and conciliatory way, to the schol- arly and thoughtful people of India.” The appointment gave Dr. Gilkey the opportunity to set forth his conception [91 | The American Pulpit of the Personality of Jesus at a moment when the Indian mind was taking keen interest in the figure of Christ as distinguished from the Western churches and civilization that wear His name. The entire course of six lectures was delivered in six leading student centers: Bombay, Lucknow, Lahore, Calcutta, Rangoon, and Madras. A total audience of 40,000 persons heard him, of whom at least 25,000 were university students, at least seventy-five per cent of the total being non-Christian. These lectures are now being published in India and in this country in book form, under the title, Jesus and Our Generation. Dr. Gilkey received the degree of D.D. from Hillsdale College and Williams College, both in 1925. Now at the zenith of his powers, and deeply loved by his entire parish, his contribution to the spiritual welfare of our time is destined to be conspicu- ous and abundant. [ 92 | JOURNEYS OUT AND HOME (An Easter Sermon) By CHarites W. GILKEY “The Lord shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in, from this time forth and even forever- more.”—Psalm exxi, 8. This promise was given to travelers long ago and far away, as they fared forth by swift camel or slow mule for journeys across the desert. On Easter morning our Christian faith claims it no less for all worthy voyagers across the sea of human life. “The Lord shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in, from this time forth and even forevermore.” Two great faiths lie plain upon its surface and deep at its heart. The living God in whom human life finds its ultimate meaning, its daily and hourly renewal, and its eternal home, is the God of all our worthy outgoings: but he is no less the God of all our true home-comings. He goes forth with us on every morning of high adventure; our guide, our guard, our great companion—if we will have it so. “The Lord shall preserve thy going out.” But when at the end of the long day we turn again homeward, laden with our trophies, our burdens, our hurts, our hunger- ings, our homesickness, our loves, he is waiting for us there, the eternal Home of the human spirit. “The Lord shall preserve thy coming in.” And our religion, [93 | The American Pulpit our Christianity, our faith in God, our view of life, if we prefer that phrase—are none of them big enough for the needs of men, for the heights and depths of human experience, for the riches of the gos- pel of Jesus Christ, unless they gather up both sides of this great text, and hold them together; not so much perhaps in a logical theory of the universe, as in a faith and hope and love in which men ean live and die triumphant. I “The Lord shall preserve thy going out.” If we must believe that the Living God is “cabined, cribbed, confined” within the black type and orthodox phrases of an ancient creed, or between the covers of a Hebrew history of long ago, or among the black tents of Abraham and Moses or the white dwelling houses of Peter and Paul, then it may be a bit hard for us really to believe this adventurous assurance that “the Lord shall preserve thy going out.” But the pioneers and the prophets, the explorers and the heroes of faith, the young men who see visions and the old men who still dream dreams, the great saints and the creat souls, to whom God’s journeying mercies “are new every morning,” have always been sure of it. They have found in their own experience that he is the God of every great adventure, whose spirit striving within our sluggish souls is ever urging us out and on and up into new and undiscovered regions. They know that whenever he thus leads us forth, he himself goes with us all the way. No place and no journey is strange to him, or need be lonely for us if we keep com- pany with him. His guidance is available for every [94] Journeys Out and Home crossroad’s perplexity; his radiant presence can trans- form and quicken even the dullest days of plodding routine; and to walk with him and learn to know him aright, is what chiefly makes life worth living, both here and hereafter. There are some memorable lines in Kipling’s “The Explorer,’ which have always appealed particularly to us younger men because they state in such unconven- tional yet convincing phrase this same faith of the text in the God who inspires and accompanies all high adventure: “There’s no sense in going further—it’s the edge of cultiva- tion,” So they said, and I believed it—broke my land and sowed my cfop— Built my barns and strung my fences in the little border station, Tucked away below the foothills where the trails run out and stop. Till a voice, as bad as Conscience, rang interminable changes On one everlasting Whisper day and night repeated—so: “Something hidden. Go and find it. Go and look behind the Ranges— “Something lost behind the Ranges. Lost and waiting for VOU. Go.” Then I knew, the while I doubted—knew His Hand was certain o’er me. Still-—it might be self-delusion—scores of better men had died— I could reach the township living, but . . . He knows what terrors toreme... But I didn’t . . . but I didn’t. I went down the other side. [95]. The American Pulpit Have I named one single river? Have I claimed one single acre? Have I kept one single nugget—(barring samples)? No, not I! Because my price was paid me ten times over by my Maker. But you wouldn’t understand it... . You go up and occupy. Yes, your “‘Never-never. country”—yes, your “edge of cul- tivation,” And “no sense in going further’—till I crossed the range to see. God forgive me! No, I didn’t. It’s God’s present to our nation. Anybody might have found it but—His Whisper came to me! But even those of us to whom these stirring lines appeal most, discover presently that this same faith was stated long centuries ago, in far finer poetry and with an infinitely larger setting and horizon, by the Psalmist: “Whither shall I go from thy Spirit? Or whither shall I flee from thy presence? If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: If I make my bed in 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.” Surely this must mean that the living God stands ready to be our guide on all high intellectual adven- ture, when our exploring minds, urged by our deep instincts and our pressing needs, go forth to new dis- coveries of the world about us, better understanding of [ 96 | Journeys Out and Home the life that is given us, broader conceptions of the God we “ignorantly worship,” worthier hopes of the immor- tality our hearts desire. Some of us have faith to believe that when our theology is considerably less pro- vincial than much of it is now, and our science per- haps just a little less provincial than some of it is now; when our thinking minds and our aspiring souls under- stand each other better and help each other more; we shall then at least recover the fullness of what is after all an ancient Christian faith, that God is the God of all truth. Huis guiding presence within the mind of man lights us along the narrow and difficult way that leads into larger truth. If some of us have been busy throwing overboard our childish conceptions of relig- ion because they have seemed too small for so great a voyage as we are now finding human life to be, we shall do well not to miss the point of Emerson’s assurance: When the half-gods go, The gods arrive. And it is equally true that the living God is the God of all high social adventure, who opens men’s eyes to the uglinesses and the wrongs that are round about them in the accepted order of things as they are, and thrusts them forth, in the face it may be of ridicule and sometimes even of repudiation, to seek what the epistle to the Hebrews calls “a better country.” So also is he the God of all high moral adventure, who opens men’s eyes to the unworthiness of the low and pestilential levels on which they have been living, and urges them to overcome the inertia of their reluctant flesh and climb to the uplands of the spirit. For wher- ever, in Paul’s great word, men forget the things which [97 ] The American Pulpit -are behind, reach forward to the things that are before, and press on toward the goal unto the prize of the upward calling, it is God who has thus called them— and he will preserve their going out. Sometimes it almost seems to some of us younger men that our fundamentalist brethren have forgot- ten the first part of this text. They appear to have difficulty in believing that God really calls men to the discovery of anything new; and that he has offered to go with them when they start out to find it. If God is really the God of all truth, surely we need not fear the search for larger truth, provided only we seek it under his good guidance. It was Jesus himself who promised that his followers would themselves be guided, step by step, into all the truth—not by the letter that killeth, but by the indwelling spirit that giveth life. And it was Jesus who declared that every teacher who really understands the kingdom of God, will be able to bring forth out of his spiritual eee ures things new as well as things old. And yet, at the same time, our more conservative brethren are quite right in thither adventure out of the old and into the new country is always a difficult and sometimes a dangerous expedition. Men who undertake it need not only to be guided and guarded, but, as the text suggests, to be “preserved”: preserved from the rashness and conceit of undue overconfidence, from the quick dogmatism of first impressions, from the easy distortion that comes from false perspectives, from the pride that goeth before destruction, from the way that seemeth right unto a man, the ends whereof are the ways of death. It is that very guidance and preservation which a living faith in God promises to [ 98 ] Journeys Out and Home all high adventure. “The Lord shall preserve thy going out . . . from this time forth and even forevermore.” II “The Lord shall preserve . . . thy coming in.” There is deep insight as well as lilting melody in the little song, “The House and the Road,” which Jose- phine Preston Peabody has inscribed on the first of her Singing Leaves: The little Road says Go; The little House says Stay. And O, it’s bonny here at home, But I must go away. The little Road, like me, Would seek and turn and know; And forth I must, to learn the things The little Road would show! And go I must, my dears, And journey while I may, Though heart be sore for the little House, That had no word but Stay. Maybe, no other way Your child could ever know Why a little House would have you stay, When a little Road says Go. There is equal wisdom in that shrewd remark of Kenneth Grahame in his delightful animal story, “The Wind in the Willows,” that both animals and men are by temperament either adventurers or stay-at-homes. The only truer thing he could possibly have said, would [99 ] The American Pulpit have been that many of us are sometimes adventurers, and then again stay-at-homes. Our own family has been evenly divided and widely separated these last eight months: we two parents in India on what we have often called “our great adventure’; while our two little folks have stayed at home in Chicago. But on Christmas Day in Delhi, 10,000 miles away from them, we cared a great deal more about being stay-at- homes than adventurers any longer, for the holidays at least; and for some little time after our return, we haven’t felt like ever adventuring forth again any- where. Miss Peabody’s song is just right when it sug- gests that out on the journeys of the road, we learn to appreciate the house we call home; that neither the adventures of the road alone, nor yet the affections of the home alone, are all of human life; and that human experience is never complete until it includes and does justice to both. It must preserve our going out and our coming in. This is not only good poetry: it is better religion. Very close to the center of any truly religious view of human life, and to the beating heart of any truly Christian confession of faith les the assurance that in God is the only ultimate and adequate satis- faction and fulfillment for our deepest desires and worthiest aspirations. ‘Thou hast made us for thy- self, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in thee.” Religion puts its trust here and here- after in the living God, who is in some simple yet profound sense the final unity and security for both these normal and natural aspects of human experience. He is not only our companion in all worthy adven- tures of the opening day and the climbing road. He is [ 100 ] Journeys Out and Home our dwelling-place in all generations, and our eternal home. To him we may return and come home like tired toilers at the end of the long day; like the prod- igal turning hungrily to his father’s house and his father’s heart; like little children running from their troubles, and even from their toys, to their mother’s arms. All that gives its deep human appeal to a song like “My Little Grey Home in the West”; all that trembles in men’s voices and aches in their hearts in a strange land, until they dare not trust themselves to sing “Home, Sweet Home’’:—all that is and shall be fulfilled, at long last, in men’s experience with God. “The Lord shall preserve thy going out and thy com- ing in.” We were recognizing just now that many deeply religious men, conservative in their thinking, find it hard to “keep the faith” in God as our companion and guide on all high adventures of social reconstruction and intellectual exploration. Is it not equally true that many of our modern social workers and scientific thinkers, radical in their thinking, find it very hard to “keep the faith” in God as the eternal Home of the immortal human spirit They are afraid there that the wish is father to the thought—and still more to the faith; that our hungry human hearts are here “putting it over” on our more impartial minds, and making us believe what our hearts want to. Let us frankly recog- nize the very real danger that religion may lapse into sentimentality—just as love often enough does. But no sane man would refuse to love parent or friend or wife or child, just because many people are sickishly sentimental about so doing. And there is very real danger in these modern days, not only that religion [ 101 | The American Pulpit should be too sentimental in its thought and its pic- tures of the other world, but also that many men who pride themselves upon being modern-minded should lean so far backwards to avoid sentimentality that they may narrow their vision and impoverish their experi- ence thereby. These matters all come down finally to the question how far we dare trust our deepest instincts and our highest capacities. The reflective scientist knows well enough that he cannot prove the validity of those assumptions on which all his science rests; namely, that our human faculties and senses give us a true report of the outside world—that there is any outside world for that matter—or that there is anything at all except his own solitary consciousness. What he does know is that when he goes confidently out on the course of conduct to which these assumptions natur- ally lead, he finds not only that his own life is enlarged and enriched, and his power to deal with “nature” is steadily increased, but that he can share these results most valuably with his fellows. Just so, the thought- ful Christian knows well enough that he cannot prove either God or immortality: but that when he starts out to practice the presence of God, and the kind of life that alone deserves immortality, he finds within himself a deepening life, and a growing power to meet and overcome the hardest tests of life and death alike, which he can share inexhaustibly with his fellows. These are not only “The truths that never can be proved”— this is “the way and the truth and the life” that can only be lived—as Jesus himself has given it to us, not [ 102 ] Journeys Out and Home in an argument or even in a creed, but in a life that we may catch from him and share with others. I wonder increasingly whether we have not been bas- ing our faith in immortality much too narrowly and individualistically on our own expectation of “glory for me” in “Beulahland.” There have been some of the greatest and saintliest souls of our generation who have not cared overmuch what happens to them beyond this present, if only the Beloved Community goes forward: and there have not been lacking learned men to argue that one who has learned from Jesus to be willing to lose his life for others’ sakes, will hardly set too much store by his own personal future. But is not a main support for our immortal faith, not so much my little claim on behalf of my insignificant self, as the claim of my undying love on behalf of those who have called it forth so irrevocably that there can be no real home for either them or me, here or hereafter, unless we share it together? My loved ones may be too humble or unselfish to demand immortality for themselves; but I who honor and love them, believe in it on their behalf far more confidently than on my own. Our love cannot let them go. Surely the in- finite Love that quickened ours, will not let them go. We had just borne from the church the worn-out body, paralyzed and speechless for years before death brought release, of one of the noblest Christian women whom some of us have ever known. As the funeral procession started for the open grave, her heartbroken husband, who had found his daily joy and privilege in caring for her dumb helplessness, put his hand on my knee and said in a tone that I shall never forget: “God must not let anything happen to her.” That was not [ 103 ] The American Pulpit the voice of selfishness claiming immortality for its little self: it was the voice of devoted love and loyalty claiming eternal worth before the God of all love, for her whom God had given him to love and to cherish, in sickness even more than in health. Devotion like that is surely a capacity not less high and not less deserving of continuing fulfillment, than our power to think straight or to observe carefully. And may we not then trust the assurances of our loving hearts, at least as far as we trust the assumptions of our inquiring minds and adventurous spirits? These assurances confirm themselves by the same kind of practical results in the enrichment and re- inforcement of life. The maiden whose heart has gone out irrevocably to her lover, cannot prove to her own friends, much less to his critics, that he is all that her love believes him to be, or that life with him will surely bring the bliss which she expects: but that faith and love of hers are nevertheless the only door into the richest experience that human life holds. And when the experience of motherhood lies before her, she cannot prove that her child will be worth the cost to her in blood and tears and toil: but that same gaunt- let of anguish and anxiety is her only road to all the joys and rewards of motherhood. Religious faith can- not prove that there is a Father’s house at the long journey’s end, where we shall be with him and with those we love, at home forevermore. But those who face life’s hardest gauntlets and its darkest mysteries in that faith, find in it here and now a peace that pass- eth understanding, a hope that is as an anchor to the soul, and a love that never faileth. By such living faith God surely preserves our “going out” into the [ 104 ] Journeys Out and Home life that now is: shall he any the less preserve our “coming in” to the life which is to come? The world knows Ramsay Macdonald as the first labor prime minister of Great Britain; but his neigh- bors and friends know him also and much more inti- mately as the author of a memoir to his wife which has reminded some of us—and there could hardly be higher praise—of Professor George H. Palmer’s Life of Alice Freeman Palmer. One incident in that memoir is worth more than any sermon can ever be, as evidence that however much forms of thought may have changed for modern folk as progressive in their think- ing as was Mrs. Macdonald, the faith with which great souls like her meet life and death is still as of old the faith in which our fathers lived and died. Her faith stood the test to the end. When she knew that she was close by the opening gateway of death, I asked her if she desired to see any one who would speak to her of what was to come. “That would be a waste of time,” she replied. “I have always been ready. Let us praise God together for what has been. He has been very good to me in giving me my work, my friends, and my faith. At the end of the day I go gladly to him for rest and shelter.” She was convinced that life and time were not the sum and substance of experience, and went away as though but start- ing on a journey which, beginning in darkness, would proceed through light. She would hold my hand, she said, till those who had gone before gave her greetings. [105 ] sat ee tire 4 ’ e a nal, BY Ed ‘ie flees f ALA ‘ 4 4 i . é ae i x PAA I Wage a ty) mh ert ? ad ayy % apy “cy FA Ore a! ihe At WG Ve NOM Ade rie Ny ty wa id (c.o3 ot Ane / Beare : “4 “Ah GEORGE ANGIER GORDON Forty-one years in one pulpit! And that a pulpit than which there is none in all America more exacting in its requirements of the man who occupies it. Here, surely, is a record and an achievement great with honor and bless- ing both to the preacher and his people. If we think of it only from the professional side, what drafts upon his in- tellectual resources a preacher had to be able to honor in the steady rhythm of recurring Sundays throughout more than forty years in so extraordinary a parish. With a con- gregation containing the elite scholarship of the land, with hundreds of inquiring and critical and perplexed students in the pews, no homiletical time-serving was possible. New furrows had continually to be plowed; new fields invaded; new frontiers established, the while the ancient and ever- lasting truth of the gospel was being uttered in ever fresh sermonic forms. As a revelation of the capacity of the human mind, the ministry of Dr. Gordon, subjected as it has been to so unique a test, is both a rebuke and a chal- lenge to all his brother ministers. At his fortieth anniversary as pastor of Old South Con- eregational Church, Boston, in responding to President Eliot’s address of appreciation, Dr. Gordon disclosed his own subjective reaction to the challenging circumstances of his parish. Recalling the examination he was put through by the church council at the time of his call, he went on to say: “Since then has come the examination of these forty years of living and thinking and serving in the presence of high character in men and women, living and thinking and serv- ing in the presence of the high mind and lofty character of this extraordinary community, till I have come to think [107 ] The American Pulpit of examination and judgment as the supreme privilege of life—to live in the presence of high, exacting standards of intellect, of character, and of behavior, and incessantly to undergo the great testing process of a moral community and a moral world.” It is not possible in this place even to begin to interpret the life career of Dr. Gordon who stands, as Dr. Newton has pointed out, “in the-dynasty of Edwards and Bushnell, as the third truly constructive theologian that America has known,” and who unites with intellectual powers of the ten talent order the special gifts of the preacher in equal degree. It must suffice to recall a few of the outstanding facts of his remarkable life. He was born in Scotland, in 1853, receiving his early education in the common schools of Insch. Coming to the United States in 1871, he entered Bangor Theological Seminary, from which he was gradu- ated in 1877. Later he studied at Harvard, leaving behind him the record of an honor student at the time of taking his A.B. in 1881. Ordained to the Congregational ministry in 1877, he held two pastorates prior to his call to Boston —at Temple, Maine, and Greenwich, Connecticut. He was university preacher at Harvard 1886-1890 and 1906-1909. As Ingersoll lecturer and Lowell Institute lecturer at Har- vard, and as Lyman Beecher lecturer and Taylor lecturer at Yale, some of his chief contributions to religious thought have been made. Among his books are: The Witness to Immortality, The Christ of Today, Immortality and the New Theodicy, The New Epoch for Fath, Through Man to God, Religion and Miracles, Revelation and the Ideal, Aspects of the Infinite Mystery. And now at the end of the list comes his own life story in a book entitled My Education and Religion, which thousands will read for the revelation it will give of a great soul whose long pathway has been on the heights, but whose comradeship has ex- tended with inspiring simplicity to the humblest of his fellow wayfarers. [ 108 ] THE SENSE OF OBLIGATION By Grorce A. GorRDON “Thou oughtest.”—Matt. xxv, 27. Two pillars sustain the great bridge by which the faithful pass over the deep and stormy ravine of life. One pillar is the sense of privilege, the other is the sense of obligation. Life cannot rest exclusively either on the one or the other. On the hither bank of the river, and on the yonder bank, the bridge must rest upon rock. Equilibrium cannot be otherwise attained; and for evenness and just balance in life it must be founded both on the sense of privilege and the sense of obligation. It is essential that men shall be able to say, “O how love I thy law,” and “We have done that which it was our duty to do.” Perhaps the normal Christian life is a pendulum- swing between the two. This moment we touch the sense of privilege and the next we return to the sense of obligation. One instant we fear as we enter the cloud, and the next we desire to build tabernacles under its great shadow. In following the Master one swings between the awe of conscience and the rapture of love. His appeal comes today through the task set before us; tomorrow it will come through the delight upon which we may enter. Every man who enters the tomb of Napoleon is obliged to uncover; [ 109 ] The American Pulpit soon he becomes absorbed in the high and solemn beauty of the mausoleum. But while he remains within the enchanted place, he passes from awe to delight and again from delight to awe. That would seem to be the normal mood toward human life. We awake in the sublime temple of humanity and we cry, “How dreadful is this place.’””’ We open our nature in reverence to the appeal of life and we sing, “This is none other than the house of God, and this the gate of heaven.” Perhaps these two feelings, the sense of privilege and the sense of obligation, are owing to one inspiration. Perhaps it will be found that as with the revolving earth up becomes down and down up, the highest becomes the deepest and the deepest the highest, so as the soul turns toward the Infinite, now with the heart and now with the conscience, the one divine appeal becomes now the sense of privilege and now the sense of obligation. And sometimes when both the heart and the conscience are struck at the same time, or when the heart is transfigured through the conscience, we feel, like Bushnell, that obligation is a privilege, and with him we sing, “Thy statutes have been my songs in the house of my pilgrimage.’ Perhaps it is the normal way for the sense of privilege to come through the sense of obligation. Look at the old-fashioned clock upon the wall. The force that keeps it going is the weight that is hung upon the chain. This is the poetry that lies at the heart of duty; this is the sur- prise and charm that come out of the burden of life. Nothing that keeps life in righteous movement can be other than privilege, and nothing can do this that is not weighted with the force of obligation. [110 ] The Sense of Obligation I The sense of obligation leads straight to reality. It is the voice of the personal conscience affirming the reality of the divine conscience and the human con- science in society. The sense of obligation, therefore, brings us close to the order of the universe, it touches reality, clears the surface of it and says, “Stand here, build here, live here.” It is like the sense of touch. The color that delights the eye may be an illusion; the music that charms the ear may be purely subjective; the flavors and perfumes that are an exquisite pleasure to the sense of taste and the sense of smell may have no meaning beyond the sensitive organism. Four of the five senses may revel in their happiest life, and yet existence may be a dream. Color, sound, flavor, and perfume lead nowhere necessarily; they are affections in the sensitive mind, but are they anything beyond? To the blind there is no color, to the deaf there is no sound, to the callous palate there is no flavor, and when the sense of smell is absent there is no perfume in the rose. Without these four senses these four worlds would not be. Where then is reality? It is given in the sense of touch. It is given through contact with the resisting mass and force of the world. We come to know the reality of the outward world because it blocks our way. Here is the river that you cannot ford, here is the sea that you cannot swim, here is the mountain that stands in your way, here is the rock that resists your digging. We find the reality of the outward world as the stream might be imagined to find it. It is sent out in one direction by the watershed; it is curved and bent, a hundred times blocked and commanded, checked in this [111 ] The American Pulpit path and driven in that, by the conformation of the earth. The ups and downs, the tumultuous miles and the slow-moving, the rapid changes of course among the hills and the endless windings in the plain, are the experiences through which the river might be sup- posed to come to the sense of the reality of the earth. And in the same way the world that determines and deflects our course, that blocks it and turns it, that compels us to walk and build, cross the land and the sea, in conformation to an order that is fixed, reveals its truth through this vexed and often baffled experi- ence. The man who runs up against the rock is thereby brought to confess that the world is real. Now conscience is this sense of touch for the reality of God and of the souls of men. Pleasure and pain, joy and sorrow, spiritual need and spiritual satisfaction may sometimes fail in the convincingness of their tes- timony to the eternal world. But the sense that one owes something implies that one owes it to reality. We owe something to the Infinite; the sense of obliga- tion depends upon the reality of the Infinite, and if we say there is no God, and the feeling of obligation to him is therefore an illusion, what follows? We bang ourselves against the moral order of the world, as a man who had willfully put out his eyes might bang him- self against the rock. God is there in the moral order of the world, and the march against that order is futile and leaves life broken and bleeding. So with the dis- regard of social obligation. The social order stands, and the man who tries to get at the sweetness of life in disregard of his social obligations finds that he steps upon a spring that throws him into the embrace of pikes and spears. [112 ] The Sense of Obligation That horrid inquisitional device whereby the victim in attempting to kiss the iron image of woman was girt and pierced with lances and held in the grasp of death, is the awful symbol by which the moral order reveals its reality to the bad man. He says there is no God, no righteous order, no way which he is bound to take in dealing with his fellow-men. But God and the righteous order and the path determined for him as a moral being are nevertheless there; and the day that he sets out in search of his own good in contempt of the good of others, that day he puts his foot upon the plat- form and touches the spring that will ultimately bring round him the terrible arms of Truth that will lock him in an embrace of agony that will reveal to him, through torture, the awful reality which he has denied. The way of the transgressor is hard. It is more; it is finally impossible. And conscience is the hand by which we feel after God and find him, the hand by which we grasp the hand of man and know that it is our broth- er’s. Behind the sense of touch is the mass and force of the real world; back of the sense of obligation is the truth of God, the souls of men, and the moral order. LE The sense of obligation breeds reverence. If this feeling is less evident among us than was once the case, it may be for two reasons. Reverence may have been wrongly or excessively given, and its withdrawal from an undeserving object or its moderation may seem like the decay of the great sentiment. When Oliver Cromwell defied Charles I, when he brought the mendacious king to the block, and when he was sup- [113 ] The American Pulpit ported in that act by those who had suffered and shed blood for the freedom of England, it was thought that there was a great decay of reverence. When the Amer- ican colonies defied George III, it was again asserted that the Americans were greatly wanting in reverence. If there is a loss of this high feeling among us, it may be because it has hitherto been blindly or excessively given. A whole world of thought is here opened upon the character of belief, upon the nature of the ideals that are presented to the young, upon the type of manhood and womanhood in parents and in the older generation. See to it that the God you offer shall compel reverence; see to it that the infinite love is set before the mind that has been wronged; see to 1t that the God and Father of Jesus Christ is offered to homage and trust. To what grim and dreadful idol have we often lent the holiest name; and how often our own hearts, warm and human, have put to shame the God of our worship. See to it that the ideal is that of the man according to the measure of the stature of Christ. See to it that in parenthood and in the older generation there shall be high seriousness, public spirit, sincerity, tenderness, and strength. The students of Cambridge could not but reverence Frederick Denison Maurice; the students of Harvard could not but revere Andrew Preston Peabodv. If the decay of reverence 1s through the loss or weak- ening of the sense of obligation, we see at once how it is to be recovered. Show what life has cost. Show the cost of life in parenthood, in the incessant service by which the world is kept alive, in the arts and sciences and institutions that have arisen as ministers [114 ] The Sense of Obligation to it, in the national sacrifice by which national free- dom and opportunity have been won, in the imme- morial sorrow through which civilization has come to its present richness and power. Bid the young look at Christ giving himself under the whole sovereignty of his conscience for human life. Tell them to reflect upon Christ’s estimate of human existence as shown in Christ’s sense of obligation, and in his conscientious death for man. Ask them further to behold with Christ the sufferings of the world. Note with him its toil, weariness, hardship, and heroism; regard with him its love and its sorrow, its range and pathos and mystery; listen with him to the voices of its lamenta- tion and the surge of its tidal and momentous hope. Place the young within sight of the cost of life, and it will command the sense of obligation. No one could see God and live; so ran the old saying. No man can see life and not feel in duty bound to serve it. And with the sense that we owe something to life, that we owe something deep and high to it, that we owe our best powers to it in their best consecration, life itself will emerge into august greatness. We shall fear to sin against man or woman because human life is so sacred. We shall see life in something of the inviolateness with which it stood in the vision of Christ. It will be the bush upon the hillside burning with God; and we shall bow before it in a great homage and listen to it in a vast hope. III The sense of obligation opens into a ceaseless inspi- ration. The fact that one feels that one is in duty bound puts the availing power in his will. The hope [115 ] The American Pulpit of eminence is an honorable motive; it operates upon the student, upon the professional man, upon the soldier, and upon men in general. The desire for knowledge or wealth, or power, or happiness, or appro- bation is a great motive in life. But no one of these is equal to the sense of obligation; all together they can- not take the place of that. They are to the sense of obligation like soldiers-to their commander. They are like the Army of the Potomac to General Grant. The army is helpless without him, it is as likely to aid as to defeat the enemy, to rush on to ruin as to move to victory. The general takes the force of his army, covers it with his plan, controls it with his will, carries it to triumph by his skill. Thus the sense of obliga- tion works. It keeps the control of life in its own hands. It holds down the headlong sense of pleasure and ambition, the furious longing for eminence and power; it keeps heart and courage in the humble soul, and in all those who feel that they are of small account; it curbs the spirit of the reckless, and it greatens the soul of the lowly; it organizes all, drills all, commands all, and through the long campaign leads on to victory. Inspiration for honorable work is a doubtful thing; the desire for knowledge, place, power, pleasure, praise, is unreliable; it is like the rainfall in the tropics, a flood this month and a famine the next. The people who work by spells are the saddest of all workmen; they wait for wind and tide, and they are half the time helpless. They are creatures of impulse and chance, and you may have them with you today but you can- not count upon them tomorrow. You go by the sense of duty and your friend goes on impulse. That means that the steamer and the sailing vessel are trying to [116 ] The Sense of Obligation cross the ocean together. It is impossible. The thing that goes by a constant inspiration cannot wait for the companionship of anything whose inspiration is in- constant and as likely to be contrary as concurrent. Go through life in all its departments and you will see the desperate condition to which they come who depend for their final inspiration upon anything except con- science. There is an Atlas in every human soul, some- thing from God strong enough to stand under the heav- iest burden, great enough to support the world and carry it whithersoever one will, with a courageous heart, and that Atlas, that world-supporting hero, is the sense of obligation. IV Confidence in the reality of the future comes largely through conscience. The wish for existence beyond death is natural, but it may be vain. The intellectual capacity for endless improvement is a prophecy of permanence, but the prophecy may be untrue. The love that counts human life too precious to end at the grave is great. In times of full humanity nothing can be more commanding than this voice of love. Yet there are hours when the universe seems to contradict the estimate which we place upon life. We think that those whom we love are too precious to perish for- ever, and the insight of love would seem to justify this august estimate as the estimate of God. Yet love needs the support of conscience. Men are here on a moral errand; all that they do concerns the conscience of God. They are answerable to God for the use and abuse of life, for the manner in which their errand is done or left undone, for the rectitude and the iniquity [117 ] The American Pulpit of existence. This interpretation of human existence through conscience scatters to the winds all doubt about the reality of the hereafter. Men are bound in a moral fellowship, the meaning of life consists in moral integrity, the constant law of life is moral accountability, the supreme issue of life is moral judg- ment. Life is thus set in immediate and permanent relation to the Eternal Conscience. We are, even now, through the normal action of conscience, in serious intercourse with God. The moral sense in its reflec- tion upon present issues, in its retrospective praise and blame, and in its high and persistent anticipation of final approbation and rebuke, is nothing less than a mute and awful dialogue with God. It is impossible to look at life in this way and yet to doubt that it goes on. According to this interpreta- tion of existence the fact of permanence is assured. It is given in the very meaning of the human career. The anxiety passes over from the fact of future exist- ence to the kind of existence which one’s conduct entitles one to expect; the solicitude is no longer about being, but about God’s judgment upon being. Here is the grandeur of the Puritan inheritance. It was the interpretation of life through conscience. The typical Puritan lived under the Great Taskmaster’s eye. He felt in his heart of hearts his amenableness to God for the deeds done in the body. His whole exist- ence was held under moral law, subject to moral judg- ment, with everlasting moral issues. The Puritan deathbed was sublime. It was the return of one sent upon a moral errand, that he might give an account of himself. Oliver Cromwell, greatest of the Puritans, | was a true Puritan in the hour of death; the moral [118 ] The Sense of Obligation conception of life filled and well-nigh overwhelmed his mind; while disease was tearing the body to pieces, his intelligence was engaged with the moral issues of his behavior in this world, with the ideas of the right- eous God, the righteous requirement laid upon man, the righteous judgment to which man is subject, and the gracious father in the gracious Christ, and faith, trust and eternal peace. What a deathbed is that! What moral sublimities in the heart of physical frailties and distresses! What mockery annihilation seems to be to this high mood sure of its return and its account- ability to God! y, Upon this matter of future existence we have kept our natural wishes, we have preserved the sense of our intellectual capacities, we have held to the witness of love; but have we not lost our consciences? ‘Dost thou not even fear God,” was the cry of the penitent to the impenitent thief, “seeing thou art in the same condemnation. And we indeed justly; for we receive the due rewards of our deeds; but this man hath done nothing amiss.” There is the clear, grand, sovereign play of conscience; and out of conscience came the great prayer, “Jesus, remember me when thou comest in thy kingdom.” The trouble with the man with the one talent was that he had lost the sense of obligation. The word “ought” was not in his speech, the thought which it covers was not in his mind. This was the essential source of his discouragement. There was indeed for him no hope of leadership or eminence of any kind; the inspirations that come from distinction were [119 ] The American Pulpit denied; hence the apathy that seized him; hence the mere wild likes and dislikes that ruled and that ruined his career. If he had possessed the sense of obligation, if he had only opposed to discouragement and passion the quiet force of conscience, if he had said to all the pleadings of laziness and selfishness, “I ought to do my duty,’ his career would have been an inspiring success. Then his little achievement with his little power would have set the world’s heart on fire for ages. It would have been the parallel to the widow’s mite. The infinitesimal gift from the infinitesimal store becomes of unsurpassed magnitude. The humblest life given to God in conscientious service becomes, through its humble issues, among the burning and shining lights of the world. The trouble with us all is here. We need a deeper sense of obligation. We need to consult our pleasure less and less and our conscience more and more. For the sense of God in his world and the souls of men, for the consciousness of the eternal moral order upon which human life rests, we must consult our conscience. For the great sentiment of reverence in the presence of man’s existence we must ultimately depend not upon sympathy, or love, or the sense of brotherhood, but upon the sense of obligation. Inspiration with the fullness of the river of God comes not through desire of knowledge or power or place or praise, but through the passion for righteousness. Certainty about the future can never be the fruit of our wishes, our mere capacities for growth, not even of our love; it is the answer to our conscience. When we interpret life through the sense of obligation, when we keep the word “ought” supreme in our speech, when we look [ 120 ] The Sense of Obligation upon our pilgrimage here as a moral errand, when we say in our hearts with awe and solemn joy, “We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ to give an account of the deeds done in the body,” we shall live in the happy certainty of the life with God beyond time, [121] SAL ms OL, By é wy oy NEWELL Dwicut HILuIs For twenty years Dr. Hillis stood at the zenith of popu- larity among American preachers. He leaped into general fame by his call in 1895 to succeed Professor David Swing in the conspicuous pulpit of the independent Central Church of Chicago, and from that high place was called to the pulpit made famous by Henry Ward Beecher, that of Plymouth Church, Brooklyn, where he succeeded Dr. Lyman Abbott. This was in 1899. Dr. Hillis continued his ministry in Plymouth Church until 1923 when illness rendered him unable to carry the responsibility further, and he was made pastor-emeritus. Dr. Hillis was born at Magnolia, Iowa, in 1858. He took his A.B. and A.M. degree at Lake Forest University and was graduated from McCormick Theological Seminary in 1887. Ordained to the Presbyterian ministry he found his first pastorate in Peoria, Illinois, from whence he was called to the pulpit of First Presbyterian Church, Evanston, I[lh- nois. Here his brilliant and distinctive style drew the at- tention of Chicago’s cultured public to him, and with the passing of Professor Swing he was the inevitable successor to that poet-preacher’s mantle. His sermons preached from this metropolitan pulpit were published in a Chicago news- paper every Monday morning. Throughout the nation it was made plain that a new star had arisen in the homiletical firmament. There were qualities in his sermon structure that marked him as an original contributor to sermonic method. Books also came swiftly from his pen. His earliest, A Man’s Value to Society, and The Investment of Influence attained wide circulation. Other titles, such as Great Books as Life Teachers, The Influence of Christ in Modern Life, The Quest of Happiness, Building a Working [ 123 ] The American Pulpit Faith, The Contagion of Character, Prophets of a New Era, Lectures and Orations of Henry Ward Beecher, Ger- man Atrocities, etc., have been widely read. In his latest book, The Great Refusal, Dr. Hillis shows signs of con- siderable modification of his characteristic style. There is less display of literary erudition, and a more forthright coming to terms with the moral problems of life. At the present time Dr. Hillis is at work upon a life of Christ. He includes a trip to Palestine as a chapter in the study of his theme before putting the touch of finality upon his interpretation. Northwestern University conferred upon him the D.D. degree in 1892, and later Western Reserve University gave him the degree of L.H.D. [ 124 ] “THERE GO THE SHIPS” By Newe.tu Dwicut HILuis ‘‘There go the ships’’.—Psalm 104 :26 This dreamer of dreams about ships was King Solo- mon, at once the wisest, the richest and the saddest man of his times. The occasion of his words was a visit to the capital of Hiram, king of Tyre. Standing upon the colonnade of the royal palace, Solomon looked down upon the harbor of Tyre and saw ships laden with wheat from Egypt; with tin from England; with gold and gems from Africa. The sight of these weatherbeaten ships kindled Solomon’s imagination and set his pulses bounding. His Hebrew people were a non-seagoing folk. All their investments were related to the land—to flocks and herds, to looms and silk and wool, to oil and wine, to wedges of silver and gold. Something took fire in the mind of the ambitious king. He began to dream about a world-trade and a world-commerce. In his dreams of a new era for his country, King Solomon saw rivers become lanes of trade, saw seas as broad streets, saw harbors as world markets. “There go the ships’—and the control of lands with them! For Solomon, ships became shuttles flying across the seas of time into the far-off harbors of wealth and influence. When the Golden Age comes, it will come, please God! riding upon the prows of ships. Perhaps the world shall yet be done—God’s world. By what agency? The answer was at hand— “There go the ships!” [ 125 ] The American Pulpit I Yonder goes a ship from Homer’s Troy to Philippi in Greece. For all lovers of literature, Troy is the city of poetry, romance and beauty. It is the city of brave _Hector and loyal Penelope; of Achilles and Ulysses; of the Iliad and the Odyssey. But the greatest moment that ever came to Troy was the moment when Paul entered that city of romance and battles. Than Paul, no greater hero ever walked our earth. As theologian, he gave the principles of fundamental thinking to every Augustine, Calvin, and Edwards. As philosopher, he gave us God, freedom, and immortality. As reformer, he attacked many social evils that were crawling like slimy serpents over the threshold of ancient society. As author, he wrote the odes to love and immortality. The little boat that brought Paul to Europe brought statesmanship—modern democracy, liberty of thought and liberty of speech. Freedom of the press also came to Europe in the little ship. More important still, Paul was earth’s greatest moral hero. All the sufferings that Paul endured for his great convictions— through stonings, mobbings, scourgings and the heads- man’s ax—would have made one hundred men immor- tal in the history of heroism. When Paul uttered that word, “Every man shall give an account of himself unto God,” he doomed every form of autocracy, politi- cal, industrial, and ecclesiastical. Instead of artificial kings and emperors, natural kings crowned by God became the divine rulers. Bacon once said that a great man rides upon his book as upon a boat across the seas of time. And won- derful the influence of the little boat that carried the great apostle across the Isles of Greece. There will be [126 | “There Go the Ships” born a hundred Washingtons and a thousand Napo- leons before there will ever be another Paul! To take Paul and his thinking out of this earthly scene, would be like taking a star out of yonder sky, leaving thick darkness to chill the world. Paul and Freedom—they . have one monument. That monument is one that will outlast marble and bronze. II “There goes a ship.” It sailed from Calais in France, its port was a harbor in England, its passenger was Augustine, sent by Gregory, bishop of Rome. The soldiers of Julius Cesar, returning from York and Chester, carried with them many stories of these Angles who held their annual meetings to distribute their lands and pass their laws... They were light of hair, with blue eyes and ruddy skin and strong bodies, but they were spoken of as “a sodden people giving themselves to much flesh and drink.” One thing was plain to all—they loved and practiced freedom. They were serious-minded men. ‘They tried to follow the gleam. They held fast to their great moral convictions. There is a legend that illustrates mental hunger. When the missionary, Augustine, was taken to the camp of King Ethelbert “the Red,” a heavy snowstorm was raging. As the stranger stood up to speak, a bird flew in through the open door of the banquet hall. When Augustine had told the story of the “good news,” one of the lesser chiefs arose in his place and addressed the King: “On this night of snow and hail, yonder door opened and a little bird flew in hiding from the storm. Here the bird found food and warmth, but [127] The American Pulpit when the door opens again, it will fly out into the night. Not otherwise is it with man. Out of the dark man comes: here he feasts at this board, but it is for a moment only. Into the night man soon disappears. If, therefore, this stranger can tell us whence man cometh and whither man goeth, and for what end he is here, he will do us much good. Let us, therefore, appoint to this man a house. Let this stranger eat with us at this com- mon board that we may know what secret he has for us.” That event took place in the year 597. Then more than a thousand years came and went. Cannibalism passed away. War clubs disappeared. Manners changed. The language became the language of Shakespeare, Milton and Bunyan. England became the land of Oxford and Cambridge, the land of York Minster and Westminster Abbey; a land of religion and toleration, government and justice, of property with good will and fair play. There goes Augustine’s ship, and England’s future goes with it. But for that little ship of that first teacher, Shakespeare could not have called the land of such souls, “that dear, dear land.” III Yonder, into the west, go three little ships, and the captain upon the prow of the Santa Maria is Colum- bus. A great ambition heaves his soul, as the tide heaves the sea. The teachings of Galileo have con- vineed Columbus that the earth must be round and that there must be a short route to India. In his hand [ 128 ] “There Go the Ships” he holds a piece of strange driftwood that has been tossed upon the shores of Spain. The Italian captain is certain that this strange tree did not grow on the shores of Europe. He is equally certain that the pebble caught in the crevice came from some far off western land. He determined to test his theories. Going from capital to capital, Columbus asked assistance from different kings. At last, he came to Spain. Ferdinand and Isabella were on the throne. These monarchs loaned him three little ships to test out his great experi- ment. Taking his courage in his hand, Columbus sailed into the golden west. When the ships had been out a few days, fear got hold of the sailors and shook them until they meditated suicide. But threats and menaces could not make Columbus turn back to Spain. Finaily, by sheer force of manhood, Columbus cowed these weaklings and forced them to sail on and on, conceal- ing from them the distance they had already gone. Many weeks passed. One afternoon, he noticed a golden bough from some strange tree floating in the waters. That night also he thought he saw men stand- ing upon the shore. When morning came, he looked upon a world new and hitherto unknown. Never did any man bring gifts so rich to his king and queen! When the people of Europe heard his wondrous story, they were dumfounded. They did not dream that only a tithe of the full story had been told. How could they know that this was a continent whose two oceans, the Atlantic and the Pacific, were separated by more than three thousand miles of land; that, here, rivers ran two thousand miles from the great plains, on toward the ocean, or that these two continents had homes for hundreds of millions of people? Soon the F129 ] The American Pulpit gold and silver brought from the new world stimulated the trade of all Europe. The old world wakened from the sleep of the dark ages. Wealth came in upon Spain like a golden river. The king of Spain became at once the ruler of Belgium and Holland, king of Italy, Emperor of Germany. Then the imagination of Cabot, Raleigh and Drake took fire. English ships began to explore every bay and inlet of the new continent. With commerce came prosperity; with prosperity came edu- cation, art, trade, literature. Now that centuries have passed, what achievement of man’s intellect is comparable to that of Columbus, who put out to sea in his tiny little ship of scarce a hundred tons and brought back, as cargo, two conti- nents that were ten thousand miles in length? The name of that continent was Opportunity. Columbus made San Salvador to be the Bethlehem of a new civ- ilization. ‘“What force can end the dark ages?” Then a voice answered—“There go the ships.” IV After Columbus, one hundred and thirty years passed by. One day shouts were heard and men exclaimed, “There goes the Mayflower.” One morning, a group of Pilgrims, headed by their minister, marched in proces- sion from the little church in Delft Haven down to the shore. Kneeling upon the deck, John Robinson committed his company to that God who holds the sea in the hollow of his hand. There is a tradition that his text for that day was the glorious promise made to Abraham when he left his city of Ur: “Get thee out of thy country and thy kindred into a land that I will show thee, and in blessing I will bless [ 130 ] “There Go the Ships” thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thee, and in thee and in thy children after thee shall all the fam- ilies of the earth be blessed.”’ What a moment for lib- erty was that! More glorious promise was never given save only to him whose name is above every name. Then the Pilgrim fathers put out to sea, not knowing that there was an unseen Pilot on the deck, an unseen chart and compass given for their guidance. Carlyle thought the Mayflower carried the most pre- cious cargo of any ship that ever sailed the sea. Not the Santa Maria, not Jason’s Argo but the Pilgrim ship kindled the enthusiasm of Carlyle. Another day came when the Pilgrim fathers signed their compact in the cabin of the Mayflower. Daniel Webster called that compact “the seed corn of the constitution,” and long afterwards Gladstone called the American constitution “the most important instrument ever struck off by the unaided genius of man.” Just as all forests of oak were once latent in the first acorn; just as all mighty engines were latent in James Watts’ rude tool, so our American constitution and the twenty-five resultant republics of our earth were latent in the compact of the May- flower. In the broad sense, the American constitution is nothing other than the visions of freedom and self- government that filled the souls of Hampden and Mil- ton, of Cromwell and Brewster and Bradford and filled them all their lives long! Therefore students of the rise of liberty have said such things about the May- flower and its influence on democracy as have never been said about any other ship in history. Wonderful the new fleets of modern commerce! Marvelous the treasure ships of the new inventors! But let us hasten to confess, the most important ship in history is this [131 ] The American Pulpit ship, the Mayflower, bearing the Pilgrim fathers to the new world. V Yonder goes a little Dutch ship upon its world voy- age. Hidden in the hold is a shoemaker called the “inspired cobbler.” While working at his bench, Wil- liam Carey read the command, “Go ye into all the world and tell the good news to every creature.” Assembling his friends, the shoemaker told them that God commits great things unto men, and expects great things from men. Meanwhile, the greatest wit and bishop of his time, Sydney Smith, bade Carey “mind his own business,” saying that if God wanted the heathen converted, he would do this in his own way and time. Denied passage upon a ship of England, William Carey went over to Holland and took passage to Bombay upon a Dutch ship. He slept in the steer- age, ate with the sailors, nursed the sick, and after incredible sufferings was dumped upon the shores of India. Soon he committed to memory the story of the prodigal son and of the crucifixion of Jesus. Standing upon the street corners he recited in Hindustani the story of the love of God and moved the Indian people to prayers and tears. Finding that he must support his own mission, Carey went into the production of indigo. He paid his helpers fully double what others paid or they could earn for themselves. He built churches, schools, and hospitals. He developed one of the great printing presses of the world. He founded a college that was to be attended by ten thousand natives. At night, while other men slept he toiled upon his dictionaries and grammars in Hindustani, Bengali, [132] “There Go the Ships” and Telegu. He mastered the Sanskrit language. His fame was world-wide. One day there came from Eng- land an invitation offering the “inspired cobbler” the position of Head of Indian languages and Indian litera- ture in Oxford University. Then hundreds of other ships followed Garey: s; Mor- rison went to Shanghai, where he translated the Bible into Chinese; Moffat and Livingstone sailed to Africa; Paton went to the cannibals of the New Hebrides; James Chalmers—the ideal hero of “R. L. 8.”—gave his life on the bloody coast of New Guinea. Everywhere, from the rim of dark lands, columns of light with young teachers and physicians began to march toward the center of these unknown regions. Wonderful the influ- ence of those ships sailing toward these continents of darkness! And everywhere history tells us the same story: the new era began when some youth in his dream saw a man come down to the shore of the sea and call aloud saying, “Come over and help us.” At last an era came when men felt that no scholar could paint in colors too rich the future of the ‘“‘dark conti- nent.” Why? It is all in one word, “There go Living- stone’s ships.” VI “There go the ships”: this time, battleships going to make the world safe for democracy! Sailing from this new continent, they bore food, raiment, and weapons to an endangered world. When God made the seas, he made them free for all his sons! When a half- crazy kaiser announced that the seas were his and his alone, and began to sink many a Lusitania, lovers of their fellow-men rose up in such an outburst of moral [133 ] The American Pulpit indignation as the world had never known! In that moment, men remembered the philosopher’s word that Christianity had brought to men “God, freedom, and immortality.” Without that freedom, men felt they could not live. Soon the battle of Armageddon was on. Armed hosts ravaged friendly towns and cities. Sea-wasps sank friendly ships carrying women and children. Flaming gases killed thousands of unsuspecting youths. Some, doubting, asked, “Does might now make right?” A dark hour came when it seemed as if militarism and autocracy would be victorious over democracy and lib- erty; over peace and fair play and good will. Then went forth the word, “Let us help British and French boys make the world safe for democracy.” Soon, look- ing down upon their harbors the people shouted, “There go the ships’; ships by thousands that carried two million of our soldier boys; merchant ships unafraid of submarines and undaunted; ships loaded with wheat and corn and cotton; ships carrying meat, leather, and iron; ships bringing tea from China and coffee from Brazil and sugar from Cuba. All the seas were white with sails. Months and years passed; six million tons of England’s shipping carrying men and goods went down; but for every ship that was sunk, two other ships hurried forward. At last the forces of lawlessness, autocracy, and mili- tarism surrendered. One day the word went forth that the seas again were free for self-governing republics. Many agencies combined to break the power of mili- tarism, but in calling the roll of the giant forces, we must make a large place for the ships that saved our liberty and even civilization itself! [134] “There Go the Ships” VII “There go the ships’—dreadnoughts, battleships, destroyers, submarines, that maim and kill men. A wise president with a kindly heart, President Harding; a broad-minded, just, liberty-loving statesman named Hughes; England’s Balfour with his ripe experience as to world problems; France’s soldiers, Joffre and Foche; the representatives of Italy and Japan—went forth with their ships; and above every sea there rose the shout, “There go the ships,” with our representatives, to the conference upon the “limitation of armament.” Never were statesmen so determined to make war upon every kind of weapon! Never were jurists more thoughtful, prudent, sane, and just. The hour came when they signed their agreement to end war. Then the ships sailed home. Upon an appointed day, out of the various shipyards of widely separated continents, captains sailed out into the great deep, towing battleships and dreadnoughts and destroyers. Once more the bombs exploded, but this time not to sink merchant ships, but to destroy destroyers! Down, down into the abyss, sank these instruments of death. Best of all, hate and jealousy sank with the battleships and their bombs. That night, wireless telegrams of congratulation passed under the sea from one world capital to another, carrying con- gratulations to distant rulers and peoples. At last hate itself was death struck. The sword was broken across the worker’s anvil; the rifle was broken across the banker’s counter, and the statesman’s desk. It was as if all fiery voleanoes had been extinguished and all cyclones and tornadoes ended forever! At last the world has learned that war never settled [135 ] The American Pulpit national problems. The German victory at Sedan did not settle the problem of Alsace and Lorraine. National victories put out, at compound interest, racial prob- lems. Military victories are sparks kindled and left to srow into conflagrations. But now comes the settle- ment of boundary lines by a world’s supreme court. Therefore these days are big with destiny. Take no counsel, then, of crouching fear! There is no room in the world for any prophet of ill-tidings! Pessimistic voices are like summer lightnings that flash on the horizon after the storm is over and the low rumbling is dying out of the sky. Gone the time when individuals will settle their disputes by duels. The era of Courts of Arbitration has finally come. Soon shall be heard the shout, “There go the ships.”’ What ships? Ships bearing representatives from every continent to the parliament of mankind, the federation of the world. [ 136 ] Lynn Haroutp HoucH It is doubtful that in all the range of the American pulpit there is another preacher whose talents reach into so many fields of human interest as is the case of Dr. Hough. So- cially minded and intensely contemporary in his outlook, he brings to every current question the kind of under- standing which can be gained only by long and joyous wandering up and down the highways and by-paths of history. Finding a theme or problem in modern life his favorite method is to carry it back into Greece or the early Christian centuries or the renaissance and, bringing it forth dripping with the juices of history, to urge his interpreta- tion upon the minds of his hearers in terms utterly modern and vital. If he does not actually execute this circuit in the presence of his auditors he never fails to do so in the background processes of his own mind. For his mes- sage is always seasoned with the wisdom of the ages, whose lore is the constant and established furnishing of his spirit. A British writer, commenting on Dr. Hough’s quality of mind on the occasion of his visit to England in 1925 to deliver the Fernley lecture before the British Wesleyan Conference, says: “Dr. Hough has the mental zest and appetite of an Italian scholar of the renaissance. More, perhaps than any man in the Anglo-American pulpit, he sees books and men and life in the radiant light which shone from those disinterred ‘brown Greek manuscripts’ into dark medieval cloisters. It is the light of discovery and rediscovery, the radiance of intellectual adventure and of a boundless belief in the capacities of man’s spirit.” Born in Ohio in 1877 he took his A.B. at Scio College, Ohio, in 1898, and his B.D. at Drew Theological Seminary Pay The American Pulpit in 1905, studying further at New York University. Four institutions have conferred upon him the D.D. degree— Scio, Mt. Union, Garrett Biblical Institute, and Drew. From Drew he also received the degree of Th.D. Alle- gheny gave him Litt.D., and Albion, LL.D. His profes- sional career is marked by these milestones: pastor, Arcola, New Jersey; Cranford, New Jersey; King’s Park, New York; Third Church, Long Island City, New York; Sum- merfield Church, Brooklyn; Mt. Vernon Place, Baltimore, professor of historical theology Garrett Biblical Institute, president Northwestern University, and since 1920 pastor Central Methodist Episcopal Church, Detroit. Probably no American preacher is more eagerly heard in the great churches of England and Scotland, whose acquaintance he began to make in 1918 when as a messenger of American aims in the war he was sent to England by the Lindgren Foundation of Northwestern University. Dr. Hough has been a contributing editor of The Christian Century since 1920. The titles of his books are: The Theology of a Preacher, A Living Book in a Living Age, The Productive Beliefs, Life and History, The Inevitable Book, Little Book of Sermons, The Imperial Voice, The Lion in His Den, and now in 1925, Evangelical Humanism. [138 ] f SHINING STARS OF EXPECTATION By Lynn Harotp HoveH “We saw his star in the East.”—Matthew ui, 2. Some men never see stars. They are not watching the sky with wistful eager eyes waiting for signs of a braver, better future. They never take long journeys in the name of moral expectation and spiritual hope. They have no imperishable dreams in their hearts which find an answering echo in the night sky. They miss a great deal. The great opportunities unseen pass them by. Only men with stars in their hearts can see the planets of promise flashing in the firmament above. The wise men who traveled from afar to find the infant Jesus are the perpetual symbol of that spirit of moral and spiritual adventure which believes in the future and finds in the very flaming orbs which glow in the night sky the promise of better things to come. They are always finding shining stars of expectation where other men with eyes cast down see only the dull, brown earth beneath their feet. These are the men who lead us forward. For when expectation dies progress is unknown, and when hope has entered the tomb crea- tive and noble activity soon follow. The great periods of the world’s life have been those when the sky was full of expectant stars. The heavy and unproductive periods have been those when nobody looked up. There is no more fundamental matter then [139 ] The American Pulpit than that of finding the stars of hope. A man must not only hitch his wagon to a star. He must hitch his mind to a star. He must hitch his heart to a star. He must hiteh his will to a star. He must always be following the guidance of the heavenly light. He must be seeking some Bethlehem where a divine ideal enters human life. Ability without creative inspiration is impotent. Nothing else can take the place of shining stars of expectation. These fiery lights of promise shining in the darkest night of doubt in the firmament of the human heart are witnesses of the imperishable hope which carries humanity forward. Let us think together of some of these stars which we must find and follow in our own day. I There is a shining star of expectation in respect of the physical life of man. The body is our constant com- panion and men have had various attitudes toward it. Many aspiring spirits have sought to conquer it. They have set all the militant energies of their personality in battle array against its assertion of supremacy. Many men have surrendered to it. They have allowed the body to sit on the throne. They have allowed the spirit to abdicate. Some men have tried to ignore it. By ignoring it they have sought to transcend it. But neither the ascetic nor the voluptuary nor the puritan has found a satisfactory life. And neither has found a truly Christian attitude. There is a fourth possibility. And here lies the hope of a nobler life for the race, The body is to be made the vehicle of moral and spir- itual meanings. The physical is to be made the instru- ment of the unseen and the Eternal. [140 ] Shining Stars of Expectation It is at this point that we come upon the strength of the sacramental view of life and of sacramental churches. And without surrendering to magical views of the relation between the material and the spiritual we may come to see that the very genius of the physi- cal, the climax of its development, is only understood when it becomes the visible expression of invisible values. The physical life of man is to be suffused with a quality which only comes when it is dominated by ereat ideals and great and commanding and noble sanctions. The man who thinks of his body as a foe to be conquered has a subtly wrong attitude. It is not a foe to be conquered. It is a friend to be welcomed to the activities of the great moral and spiritual tasks of life. It was made to be an instrument by which the invisible splendors of the spiritual world should become visible. What we call physical vice has an intellectual root. The mind sins and compels the body to follow. The body of a drunkard is his victim and not his tyrannical master. You always do a thing with your mind before you do it with your hand. So what we call the surrender to the body is really the surrender to a bad mind. The attempt to ignore the body is an aspect of the folly of leaving great energies unutilized. And these energies wholesome and noble in themselves are waiting to become the vehicle of the great eternal realities. Robert Browning put the matter with pardonable exaggeration when he declared that the soul does not help the body more than the body helps the soul. The gospel of the physical life as the ally of the spiritual vitalities will change the world for multitudes of young people, who, flooded with knowledge of physical proc- [141 | The American Pulpit esses, have come to think of the body as the foe of the invisible splendors of the life of the spirit. We do not go through life chained to a foe. We go through life with a supreme opportunity of guiding the physical to its true and normal goal in the service of the spiri- tual. There is a shining star of expectation here for every youth. And when you come to think of it the historic belief in the incarnation involves all this. Jesus could not have bound his spotless personality in a human body if the body were not the friend of the spiritual life. The Star of Bethlehem is a star of hope for the noble interpretation of the physical life. II There is astar of expectation in respect of the mentah life of the race. The life of the mind has several char- acteristic tragedies. One is the prostitution of the mind so that all its powers are used in a deft and adroit attempt to make the worse appear the better reason. Sophistry did not come to an end with the fall of ancient Athens. Another is getting lost in thought so that at last caught in the coils of its own processes our sense of reality is crowded and we become incapable of finding truth. The scholastic did not pass from the earth with the end of the Middle Ages. Even so noble a movement as modern science has proved capable of producing its own scholasticism. The recall to reality has always produced a new life for the mind. And in our days with a vaster array of technical knowledge than the world has ever known, we hear the call to place all this in its relation to the great personal and moral and spiritual experiences of the race. The insight that truth must be large enough to give [142 ] Shining Stars of Expectation a home to every significant human experience is giving us a new attitude toward the mental tasks of life. It means that the personal adventures of the scientist as he discovers truth must be included in the philosophy of science. It means that the personal adventure of the discoverer of differential calculus must be included in the philosophy of mathematics. It means that the whole vital experience of man must be recognized and interpreted with a frank admission of its rights in the complete view of truth. It means that even science must cease to be parochial. This sense of the mind as a great adventurer, and of truth as a record of the great adventure brings all the romance back into mental activity. Instead of reducing personality to mechanics, it sees mechanics in the light of the experience of the person who uses the machine. It sees life from the standpoint of the inventor and not from that of the impersonal movement of the well- oiled machine. So the glory which has departed from every man who has ceased to think of truth as the experience of a person is being brought back again. The shining star of expectation glows in the sky of the mind. Here again the whole attitude of Jesus authenti- cates the fresh new insight. For him existence was personal. He saw everything in its relation to per- sonality. To him truth was the story of personal rela- tions, and things were significant only in relation to personality. So the Star of Bethlehem is the star of triumphant personality. When Jesus said “I am the truth” he recognized truth’s oneness with personality. TIT There is a shining star of expectation in respect of [143 ] The American Pulpit the moral life of the world. The ethical experience of men has been characterized by manifold vicissitudes. Sometimes men’s very moral loyalty has been given to ends which were not moral. A man whose loyalty to our nation leads him to violate the rights of other nations is standing moral sanctions upon their heads. “His faith unfaithful makes him falsely true.” In all sorts of ways the moral life of man is a baffling and complicated matter. But it is coming to new hope in our own day through a fresh appreciation of the mean- ing of experience. We are coming to see that certain ethical sanctions are involved in the very structure of life and we are beginning to have a clear enough view of life to see that there is a kind of capacity for enforce- ment upon the part of these fundamental moral laws. As Gilbert Chesterton said, “When a man leaps from a high cliff he does not break the law of gravitation. He only illustrates it.” You cannot break our moral laws. You can only give them an opportunity to break you. So we are coming to understand that the moral sanc- tions not only live in the world of ideals, but that they also live in the world of facts. Men who once said that certain high moralities were impractical are learning that nothing else is practical. Men and institutions and civilizations which attempt to disobey the moral laws are ground to powder. Every period of ceaseless restlessness finds its body bruised as it is flung against a hard wall of moral fact. Emancipation from the moral restraints turns out to be nothing more than the choice of chains which will bear us to the ground. When men refuse to accept a moral ideal as a friend that meral ideal always returns as an executioner. [ 144 ] Shining Stars of Expectation Morality itself has a practical potency which is sin- gularly convincing. And all this sternly tragic as it is fills the men who believe in goodness with an awed and reverent joy. For only a world where goodness is structural is safe for a single tender and gracious virtue. But, more than this, we are beginning to learn that in a great many moral matters the world has been suffering from what the Freudians might call an inferi- ority complex. We have been defeated because we expected to be defeated. We have subtly assumed that of course some matters were too high for us, and so we have not reached them. The new psychology with all its faults at least enables us to see the fallacy of surrendering to a merely imaginative sense of inca- pacity. The relation between men and women would have been nobler for the last two thousand years if men had not cravenly surrendered to an inferiority complex whenever they thought of these things. The unexpressed feeling that of course he would fail sooner or later has been the very reason for much of the moral failure which has darkened the life of man. The new psychology is giving a fresh meaning to Emerson’s words: When duty whispers “Lo, thou must,” The youth replies, “I can!” In these matters, too, the attitude of Jesus is the one toward which we are coming. The man who feels that the moral law is a fragile piece of china which may fall and break any moment has never appreciated the constant assumptions of Jesus. And the man who approaches moral fights with a sense that he is fore- [145 ] The American Pulpit doomed to failure, has not appropriated the spirit of the Gospel. The Star of Bethlehem is a star of moral assurance and of moral hope. IV There is a shining star of expectation in respect of the industrial life of the world. To be sure, it is a star shining in the night sky. And the night may seem dark enough. The modern organization of life is capa- ble of crushing the individual and of creating institu- tions of mammoth selfishness whose very efficiency will wreck the world and destroy civilization. It may seem that our very achievements have raised up a Franken- stein which is destined to destroy us. It is scarcely strange that the mind of that baffling, elusive and fas- cinating saint and politician, Mahatma Gandhi, has attempted to cut through the confusion by repudiating our whole modern system of organized industrial life. “Back to the spinning wheel’ may seem a strange slogan. It is not without tremendous meaning for those who understand how near we may be to the breakdown of civilization itself. Yet this is scarcely the way out. And as we ponder on the difficult prob- lem we are ready to see the shining of a star of promise in the night sky. Suppose we should organize for the sake of conserving personality as well as for the sake of conserving material values. Suppose we should make our organization the method by which person- ality expresses itself instead of a method by which per- sonality is thwarted and all too often exploited. Sup- pose we should put human values at the very heart of the whole system. Suppose the great product of all our vast organization should be the captain in the serv- [146 ] Shining Stars of Expectation ice of humanity. Then the system would prove the slave of humanity and’ not its master. As a matter of fact, all economic and industrial proc- esses tend to break down and disintegrate unless per- sonality is kept at the very heart of everything else. The perpetuity of machinery is bound up with its serv- ice of humanity. Organization can only live as it ac- knowledges the lordship of the personal. There are signs not a few that these deep relationships are being understood more and more by men in command of the forces of economic and industrial life. It is not too much to hope that the monster of organization we have created may be turned into a household slave. And just because it is so clear that unless it is domes- ticated there will be no hope for anyone in any group, the promise of something better is all the more defi- nite. Here again the spirit of Jesus is a mighty reinforce- ment. You cannot admit him to our economic and industrial pursuits without an immediate amelioration of their pressure upon the personal life. A new per- spective is realized the moment his presence is felt. The Star of Bethlehem is a star of hope for the eco- monic and industrial world. V There is a shining star of expectation in respect of the social life of the world. The student of the great societies is gradually becoming aware of a tremendous fact. This may be put in rather blunt and homely fashion in these words: The golden rule works back- ward. It is not merely an ideal. It is a judge which pronounces sentences and enforces them. The golden | [147] The American Pulpit rule as poetry is rather likely to be lovely but im- potent. The golden rule as a grave and unhesitating Nemesis is rather likely to be taken seriously. Since the world war we are learning that if we do not learn to live like brothers we will bring the roof down upon the whole mass of men and women who make up the civilized world. And as Dr. John Kelman once bril- liantly put it, we will bring the world to the place where there are not even hovels, there are only graves. Strangely enough there are multitudes of men who seem only capable of becoming idealists when they confront the prospect of immediate catastrophe. And for such just now there is plenty of potential catas- trophe to be confronted. Out of all this a new sense that the structure of life itself is on the side of brother- hood is emerging. In the long run we must be broth- ers if we are going to be at all. Here again the ugly and bitter fact is the reverse side of what becomes a glowing and creative reality in the person and work of Jesus. He not only teaches brotherhood. He transfigures it. And he pours into life the whole series of motives which renew the social relations of men. When we draw back with a shock from a sense of impending catastrophe our eyes are somehow cleansed and our imaginations quickened so that we can understand the structure of love which Jesus Christ is building in the world. That structure is the world’s hope. The star of Bethlehem has the promise of the new society in it. VI Last of all, and most important of all, we may find a shining star of expectation in respect of the spiritual [148 ] Shining Stars of Expectation life of the world. There are moments when we are tempted to paraphrase the words of Emerson uttered in an unwonted mood of pessimism and to declare that the material sitting firmly in the saddle gallops toward the destructive precipices beyond which lies the deep abyss. But there is a deep sense in which the cult of the material carries its cure in the heart of it. For the material wears out. And interest in the material wears out. The hopeless ennui which descends upon the life devoted only to the physical tells its own tre- mendously significant story. If aman lives merely on the level of the senses, “wine, women and song” come at last to have a strange and unfathomable inner dis- gust. Vice can only be kept alluring by some pretense of spiritual beauty. When a man actually sees that what he thought the emblem of a new freedom, a large and rich enfranchisement, is only the old brutal slav- ery wearing garments it has stolen, only the old beastly lust telling les about itself, the fascination fades in a bitter disillusionment. The fact is humanity would be infinitely bored if it did not have access to spiritual hopes. Only the spiritual does not wear out. Anda personality with eternity set in its heart must at last turn from the husks to think of the father’s house. The revolt from merely material satisfaction is an inevitable result of the constitution of man. So it comes to pass that the very age of spectacular material splendors and physical satisfactions is to see the revealing of the complete bankruptcy of the mate- rial and the physical. The unappeasable cry of the spirit reverberates in the depths of the life of man. Even the strange and bizarre cults which try to answer the call are a proof of the power of the impulse to find [149 ] The American Pulpit food for the soul. The starving epicures, the anaemic sybarites, the emaciated dwellers in soulless palaces feel at last an inner revolt against the apples of Sodom which are only dust and ashes. The next great revival may come from the utter disillusionment of the rich. Poverty is always in danger of being tempted to think that wealth would satisfy. Wealth learns at last its own poverty. And so the spiritual life emerges once more mighty and imperial. And in the face of such disillusionment it comes with a power which sweeps its sanctions into the very secret places of human consciousness. When a highly gifted, achieving, wealthy race learns that what it called clothes have left it naked, what is called food has left it hungry, what is called satisfaction has never touched the sources of desire, it begins to call like a lonely child in the night. And that inarticulate cry is a call for God. Then the star appears. And the star is the Star of Bethlehem. [ 150 J Epwin Hour Hugues Bishop Hughes fulfills in his ministry a family tradition of preaching covering three generations. His father and his grandfather were Methodist circuit-riders of the hardy and devoted sort from which our classic conception of that brave and indefatigable missioner of the frontier is derived. The spirit of that lusty race of evangelists is in the modern bishop, albeit tempered by culture and the responsibilities peculiar to a highly organized church in a settled society. He rides in Pullmans where his forbears rode in the saddle across the hills of West Virginia. One has only to watch Bishop Hughes in the pulpit to see a marvelous example of spiritual heredity. A master of assemblies, the words come tumbling out in a torrent of passion, or are driven home with a deliberation of manner which underscores the importance of every syllable. And into the midst of his sermons there fall illustrations amaz- ingly apt and yet of the homeliest texture, or sallies of wit that shake speaker as well as congregation, but leave the truth at which the bishop is aiming clear in the mind of every listener. Bishop Hughes is not bound by the customs of the pulpit; he is bound to stir the souls of men. Born in West Virginia, in 1866, Bishop Hughes studied in West Virginia University and Iowa College, and took his A.B. degree’ at Ohio Wesleyan in 1889, and his A.M. degree in 1892. He was graduated from the theological school of Boston University in the same year, with the degree of S.T.B. He holds the LL.D. degree from De- Pauw, Ohio Wesleyan, and the University of Maine; the D.D. from Ohio Wesleyan; the 8.T.D. from Syracuse University, and the Litt.D. from West Virginia Wesleyan. f1b1)] The American Pulpit Bishop Hughes was ordained to the Methodist ministry on graduating from the theological seminary in 1892. He served two brilliant pastorates in Newton Centre and Mal- den, Massachusetts, and then accepted the presidency of DePauw University in 1903. It was while president of DePauw that the Bishop began to form those contacts with students which make him to this day one of the most effec- tive and popular speakers before student audiences in this country. After five years at DePauw the Methodist Gen- eral Conference of 1908 lifted him into the episcopacy of his church. He served his first two quadrenniums on the Pacific coast, with his episcopal residence in San Francisco, and then was stationed at Boston until 1924, when he be- came resident bishop in Chicago. As bishop he has been one of the acknowledged leaders of his denomination, with a leadership exerted through the power of his preaching and personality rather than through the administration of organizational details such as characterizes many contem- porary ecclesiastical officers. Such writing as Bishop Hughes has done has been uni- formly successful. A volume of Thanksgiving Sermons, an interpretation of A Boy’s Religion, a little book on The Teaching of Citizenship, and a series of lectures on The Bible and Life stand to his credit. But he is not, like his closest friend, Bishop McConnell, given to working out his ideas on paper. He prefers rather to take them into the pulpit and hammer them out there, where he can watch the effect of the words as they fall on living men and women. The sermon printed here is a good example of his preaching. It is hard to read it, even in this formal presentation, without a stirring of the pulse. It takes little imagination to understand what its effect must be once it is translated into the warm atmosphere of an expectant congregation. [ 152 ] FOR GOD’S SAKE By Epwin H. HucHEs “T, even I,am he that blotteth out thy transgres- stons for my own sake.”—Isaiah xliil, 25. The prophet represents that God is the speaker. His wayward people is the audience. The language, crowded with personal pronouns, is the language of great yearning and suggests a beseeching Lord. We feel at once that the words would be quite at home in the New Testament; and we can even imagine them on the lips of Christ himselfi—they make us under- stand why some have called Isaiah, whether first or second, the “evangelical” prophet; for there is here a piercing insight into the heart of a redeeming God. That insight is in no way more revealed than in the location of the forgiving motive. Often the scriptures reverse our expectations. The signal illustrations may be the instances where a statement is made that is apparently contradictory and yet deeply and everlast- ingly true—as, for example, that dying is living, weak- ness is strength, and having nothing is possessing all things. Yet the minor illustrations are seen in cases where the emphasis is different from our own. Consid- ering the text as showing an evangelistic Lord, we are interested in the fact that the motive for the forgive- ness of human transgression is placed in the divine heart. He blots out sins for his own sake. There is a reason for forgiveness in himself. pitas] The American Pulpit I The usual presentation puts the motive on the human side. We ask men to receive forgiveness for their own sakes. We tell them well and truly that they carry in their own natures insistent needs for pardoning grace. Nor do we lack for outer symbols of those inner needs. We say to the drunkard that if he will come to God for forgiveness and redemption, the cleansing power will remove the bloat from his body, the blear from his eye, the blotch from his face. Where the offense is less coarse, but not less terrible, we still plead with people for themselves, saying that the divine grace in the cure of jealousy or envy will bring to the freed soul the generous mood that in itself is peace. In other words, we have a right to put a reverent change into the speech of God and to declare that he says to each person, “I, even I, am he that blot- teth out thy transgressions for thine own sake.” The witnesses of that motive are almost as many as are the redeemed. Paul, and Origen, and Augustine, and Luther, and Francis of Assisi, and Wesley, and Moody would all bring testimony that their own sakes called for the plenteous redemption of God. To him they came because their hearts cried out for the living One, and because they knew that their rest was in him alone. Yet it is good and persuasive to discover the mutual- ity of the transaction—to find that the pardon con- ferred by the wondrous God is for his sake as well as for our own. With reference to a longed-for compan- ionship Christ stated much the same kindly law: “Father, I will that they also whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am.” It is really quite dread- [154 J For God’s Sake ful to be where you are not wanted. When we discov- ered in childhood that we were “taggers on,” the reve- lation brought a hurt to the heart; and when later we had occasion to feel that we were unwelcome guests, the experience became a bitter one, and no outward entertainment could ever compensate for the lack of the inner hospitality. In all satisfying relationships there is that element of mutuality. There is, there- fore, a sober joy in the assurance that when we draw nigh to God, God draws nigh to us; and that, even as we seek to receive pardon, so God seeks to give par- don. In forgiveness it is not an unwilling man seeking a willing God; nor yet a willing man seeking an un- willing God; it is rather the willing man met by the willing God. Going to him for our own sakes, we find that he comes to us for his own sake. II All of this gives the surety that, since there is rest- lessness in the divine heart when God cannot forgive, so there is peacefulness in the divine heart when God can forgive. With him, then, there remains always the double possibility of sorrow and joy. Speaking philosophically, we may shrink from the thought of a God who knows sorrow, but we still find no refuge for our thinking in a God who is so limited that he cannot suffer. If we are made in the divine image, then our double capacity for sorrow and joy must stand for something in the eternal nature. When we follow the Bible through with this twofold test, we find abundant evidences of a sorrowing God and of a rejoicing God. Or, if we care to fall back upon the text’s phrase, we find that there are things that God [155 ] The American Pulpit did for his own sake. Creation, by whatever form it came, must have met a desire of the eternal Spirit. Especially the creation of human beings must mean that the everlasting fatherhood expressed itself in the lives of countless children. The Incarnation must have been the highest effort of an anxious God to enter into the experiences of men. There must be partial truth, if not total truth, in the statement that God made the world, and peopled it, and came into its life for his own sake; and that the denied fellowship with his people brings him pain while the granted fellow- ship brings him gladness. Speaking experimentally, we note that as rank goes up, capacity for sorrow and capacity for joy both in- crease. One cannot excite much sympathy with the story of a pained or delighted polyp! Though the oyster be far higher in its vital organization, its pains and pleasures do not greatly move us. But when we reach the grade of higher life, we find that the birds have their songs of joy and their shrill notes of anx- iety, and that they mourn over the broken nest and are glad over the restored young. When those two possibilities reach our human lives, both become fairly exquisite. How we can suffer physically! If a thou- sand needles be pressed into the quivering arm, we shrink in agony. Yet it is far worse to have an arm that would not quiver—because pain is surely better than paralysis! How we can suffer in the deeper ways! Waves of anxiety, and ofttimes of anguish, sweep over our spirits until we seem overwhelmed. And then again, how good and joyous life is! This enlarged double capacity always goes with the growing rank of being. We cannot conceive that it stops short when [156 ] For God’s Sake it comes to the nature of God. Some one wrote these words: Can it be, O Christ Eternal, That the wisest suffer most? That the mark of rank in nature Is capacity for pain? That the anguish of the singer Makes the sweetness of the strain? If, then, God be the wisest and the best, the laws of sorrow and joy come to their highest in him; and within the life of God himself sorrow and joy reach their climax in the rebellion or reconciliation of his children. iil If we return once more to the suggestion of our like- ness to God, we shall observe that we do many things for our own sakes. We pay our bills, even when our creditor is worth far more than we are—partly because self-respect demands payment. We strive to keep our gallantry and our consideration for others in places where the etiquette is an unknown book—hbecause the true gentleman is such even when all the lower pres- sures are removed. We deliberately vote a losing ticket, sometimes year after year, and we heed not the super- ficial cry about “throwing your vote away’—because we dare not throw our consciences away and lose even a fragment of our own souls. These inner compulsions of spirit, how they do rule us, almost as if there were a kingdom of self presided over by a king who must keep his dignity and character and not soil the purple of his own soul. If we were to make a list of the things that we do, or do not do, simply because certain per- suasions abide in our innermost natures, we should [157 ] The American Pulpit find that large areas of life are affected, and that we are constantly doing things for our own sakes. When we pass into the realm of forgiveness and reconciliation, the law and likeness do not fail us. Two biblical figures of speech about God are based upon human relations, and in those relations we are ever- more finding lessons concerning him. One of these is represented by friendship, and the other by the family. The figure of speech based on friendship appears early in the Bible. Abraham, the father of the faith- ful multitude, gained the consciousness that he was “the friend of God,’ while in Chronicles there is a strong word of address to the Lord in which Abraham is called ‘‘thy friend forever.” But in friendship there must always be the mark of mutuality and reciprocity. God and Abraham are in the friendly covenant. The mood is not an abstraction; neither is it something hung in the social midair. Rather it is the joining of two lives in dear relations—with an interplay of love and help that must have meaning for each party in the spiritual transaction. Alice in Wonderland speculates on whether a cat’s smile is possible without a cat’s face, and reaches the conclusion that such a smile is not abstract. Neither is friendship abstract; it is doubly concrete. It unites God’s heart with a man’s heart; and the friendship has meaning for both. If man desires the divine friendship for man’s own sake, God desires the human friendship for God’s own sake. Two sakes are involved in the hallowed association. IV Yet there remains a tendency to regard God as an infinite iceberg, unmoved by our attitudes toward [ 158 } For God’s Sake himself. The correction of that tendency must come in part from any proper definition of friendship. With all of us advancing years lead to the feeling that the loss of a friend is an unspeakable tragedy. The nar- rowing circle on the earth makes us cling more closely to those who remain and dream more fondly of those who vanish from our immediate companionship; while the loss of any of them by misunderstanding and estrangement becomes a poignant sorrow. We seek reconciliation; and when we so do, we do not affirm egotistically that we do it solely for the old friends’ sake. Our own hearts are disturbed; and we cannot easily erase their names from the keepsake books. We go to them with a plea for restored friendship: and, as we go, each of us could say, “I, even I, am he that seeketh reconciliation for mine own sake.” All this must be a feeble commentary on the life of the friendly God. Is he less of a feeling friend than man? Do our betrayals of him bring no sorrow to the infinite Spirit, and do our loyalties bring no joy? Were the prophets right when they described a grieving God? And was the apostle speaking truth in the ex- hortation, “Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God?” If we have a friend that sticketh closer than a brother, and if that wondrous Friend is denied by our conduct and wounded by our indifference, have we not a motive in him for our renewed friendship? And does he not have in his heart a holy eagerness that expresses itself in a constant pressure upon our hearts, as if He said, “Behold I stand, and knock, and wait—for the open door?” Who can fail to believe that the even partial realization of this truth would bring to our land and to all lands the most piercing evangelism and the [159 ] The American Pulpit mightiest revival in all the history of the kingdom of God? And who ean fail to believe, also, that the in- difference of men cannot be overcome until men are made aware that with God there is no indifference: and that the prophet’s picture of him is forever true—as of one bending out of infinite and tender yearning to give the assurance that is itself an invitation, “I, even I, am he that blotteth out thy transgressions for mine own sake?” Vv The conception only gains in power when we carry it forward into the New Testament and find the pages of the later covenant sprinkled with the parental name of God. If a friend cannot be indifferent over a friend’s relation to himself, how much less can a father be indifferent to a son’s relation to himself? Perhaps we need a changed emphasis in interpreting the par- able of the prodigal son. Surely the wayward boy, though recovered from villainy, is not the hero of the story. On the contrary, the father is the pathetic and glorious principal in the account. If he is the final rejoicer, he is also the long sufferer. In the back- ground we catch the sense of wakeful nights, and of lights trimmed with a pitiful care, and of eager look- ings down the road that sloped toward the far country: and, at last, of the rewarded love of patient father- hood. Without possible question in the theology of Jesus the prodigal’s father stands for God, and the more so because in welcoming his returning son, he could have used without change Isaiah’s great words, “TI, even I, am he that blotteth out thy transgressions for mine own sake.” [ 160 ] For God’s Sake All homes that know not the grief of childlessness will offer the commentaries on this high doctrine. Good parents do not feel peace when their children are estranged or rebellious. Here is an intimate ex- perience that has had its million counterparts: The tiny mutiny of the child goes so far that, for his sake, something must be done. Punishment that is vigor- ous, but not brutal, is given, and the wee rebel is car- ried to his early bed and is left there weeping and un- reconciled. We go to sit by the hearthstone and to read the evening paper, only to find that the tragedy of the home has for our spirits larger headlines than the tragic tales of the daily press!) We wonder if we went too far with penalty; directly we think, “What a terrible thing it would be if he died tonight!” So we go quietly up the stairway, hearken at the bedroom door, enter on tiptoe, listen over the cradle to see whether the “breathing is all right,’ note the farewell sob in the little sleeper’s throat, and bend to kiss the slumberer’s face. Why that drama? Is it all for the child? Perhaps he may never know that he had a caller when he was unconscious! Nay, nay! Not for the child alone do we go. We are soothing our own hearts, driving away our own insomnia, searching for our own peace, and entering into such partnership with the prophet’s God, and Jesus’ God, that we could adopt his very words and whisper them to our own beloved, “I, even I, am he that blotteth out thy trans- gressions for mine own sake.” VI The truth has its terrible side, of warning and pre- venting. The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews [161 ] The American Pulpit speaks about those who “crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put him to an open shame.” He is not speaking of an ancient event, of a Calvary in a distant land and a distant century. It is rather the Golgotha of today, the cross of this hour, the thorns and nails and spears of this moment. The crucifixion is not merely historic: it may be in the present calendar of our own souls, in an indifference and disobedience that just now send Christ out to the Place of the Skull. The Lamb, “slain from the foun- dation of the world,” is likewise slain in the ongoing of the world. The Passion is not an episode in the divine heart: it is rather its eternal mood. John Masefield gives us a vivid illustration of all this in “The Everlasting Mercy.” Saul Kane, with the money won in the prize fight, is in the place of de- bauchery with his lewd companions. The knock is on the door, and a little Quaker woman, who is ever try- ing to bring God’s lost children back to him, steps into the room. Ere Kane can say coarse things to her, she says an amazing thing to him: “Saul Kane,” she said, “when next you drink Do me the gentleness to think, That every drop of drink accurst Makes Christ within you die of thirst: That every dirty word you say Is one more flint upon his way, One more mock by where he tread, One more thorn upon his head, One more nail, and one more cross, All that you are is that Christ’s loss.” Grammar, or no grammar, it is a true theology. The sorrowing God, revealed in the Lord Jesus, is not the one-day sufferer without one City’s walls; he is the [ 162 ] For God’s Sake perpetual companion in the sin and sorrow of his peo- ple, seeking them for their sakes, and for his own. VII The truth has likewise its glorious side, being a savor of life unto life, and offermg the chance of sowing to the spirit unto life everlasting. One song came to us out of the Moody and Sankey period and bore a lesson so scriptural and true that it deserves a place in the Christian hymnody. “The Ninety and Nine’ gives us the picture of the Good Shepherd seeking for the lost sheep—the Shepherd with the troubled heart until he finds his own; the Shepherd of the long and atoning search; the Shepherd whose spirit is not at rest until the drama of salvation comes to its finale— And all through the mountains thunder-riven, And up from the rocky steep, There arose a cry to the gates of heaven, “Rejoice, I have found my sheep.” And the angels echoed around the throne, “Rejoice, for the Lord brings back his own!” Who is the Good Shepherd? None other than the yearning God of whom Jesus told us! The emphasis in the parable is not on the wayward sheep; it is on - the seeking Shepherd. And the description tells us - not at all of the peaceful security of the lost when laid on the kindly shoulders or placed within the protec- tion of the fold; but it does tell us of the Shepherd’s glad heart, and crowds the words of joy into the story of the divine search. The Shepherd goes out for the lost sheep’s sake, and for his own; and the Shepherd is God. Here do we gain a new and reverent meaning for a [163 ] The American Pulpit phrase so often used flippantly—“For God’s sake!” We toss it from our lips with a carelessness that ap- proaches profanity. How readily may that profanity be turned into prayer! “For God’s sake’—what a slogan for all souls! What a prohibition of wicked- ness! What a persuasion to righteousness! Tell the world that the Friend and Father revealed in Jesus Christ is not a frigid being scarcely deserving the per- sonal name. Tell it that we deal ever with a sensitive God who broods over his children and waits for the sorrow or the joy that they bring to him. This truth about God will work like a veritable regeneration, put- ting the upper pressure upon our lives and adding the infinite motive to all our finite motives until all are gathered up unto him who is God over all, blessed for- evermore. Especially shall we proclaim to the sin- ning everywhere that the God of the prophet is still fully revealed in his Son, our Savior, and that in Jesus Christ we catch the message with still more heavenly accent, “I, even I, am he that blotteth out thy trans- gressions for mine own sake.” [ 164 ] CHARLES EDWARD JEFFERSON To be for twenty-seven years pastor of a church on Broadway, New York, in the midst of the bright lights of theatres and commercial advertisements—tokens of the secularity and pleasure madness of our generation—and to have preached a simple gospel of reality without executing a single stroke of sensationalism for the purpose of catch- ing the attention of itching ears, and to have succeeded, actually succeeded, from whatever point of view success may be estimated—institutional, numerical, spiritual— makes the ministry of Dr. Jefferson at Broadway Taber- nacle a monumental thing. It stands as a rebuke to all who cheapen the gospel with methods alien to the gospel itself, and as a demonstration that a ehurch which keeps itself churchly can actually function in the most extreme tests of modern life. There is no word that better describes Dr. Jefferson’s pulpit ministry than to call it an honest ministry. Steadfastly he has eschewed all meretricious and false appeals, both in the subject matter of his sermons and in his manner of preaching. He preaches as a man might talk to his friend. It is straightforward, honest dealing with life, unstrained, undecorated, realistic in the good sense. Dr. Jefferson was born in Ohio in 1860, was graduated from Ohio Wesleyan University in 1882, was superintend- ent of public schools in Worthington, Ohio, for two years, and went to Boston to study law. Hearing Phillips Brooks, he was drawn into the Christian ministry and received his S.T.B. degree at Boston University in 1887, becoming at once pastor of Central Congregational Church, Chelsea, Massachusetts, where he remained for eleven years. In [165 ] The American Pulpit 1898 he was called to the pulpit of Broadway Tabernacle, New York, and began a ministry which was crowned in a few years with the great new building in a new location, at Fifty-sixth Street but still on Broadway. His influence has been as profound far beyond his parish as within it. Particularly has he left the impression of his mind, his insight into spiritual reality, and his homiletic method upon his brethren in the Christian ministry. His writings and sermons are always meaty. The early legal ambitions from which he was deflected by the passion to preach the gospel were a natural expression of a precise and orderly mind. This precision marks his preaching. He thinks with the exactitude of a highly trained jurist, but the realm in which his thinking moves is anything but legalistic. A sermon to children he makes as piquant and arresting as a story told by the most expert kindergartner, and it is always edifying to the most sophisticated adult. This is because he never deals with anything but reality—no forced fictions for the sake of getting momentary attention, but always genuine and honest truth. Dr. Jefferson’s books are on the library tables of all ministers and students of vital religion. Some of their titles, all of them familiar, are: Things Fundamental, The Minster as Prophet, Faith and Life, The World’s Christ- mas Tree, The Character of Jesus, The Building of the Church, The Minister as Shepherd, Christianity and Inter- national Peace, What the War ts Teaching Us, Old Truths and New Facts, Quiet Talks with the Family, Friendship Indispensable, The Character of Paul, The Cardinal Ideas of Isaiah, the last mentioned being just from the press. In British pulpits Dr. Jefferson has always been an eagerly welcomed guest. Oberlin College gave him a D.D. degree in 1898, as did also Union College in the same year, Yale in 1903, and the University of Vermont in 1921. From Ohio Wesleyan he received the degree of LL.D. in 1905. [ 166 } THE NEW COMMANDMENT By CHar es E, JEFFERSON “A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another; even as I have loved you, that ye also love one another.”—John xiii, 34. Everything conspires to make these words impres- sive. They are from the lips of the world’s greatest religious teacher—the man whose name is above every name, and who spake as no other man has ever spoken, and whose words will outlive the stars. He is speaking to his followers, the little company of men whom he has trained to carry on his work after he has gone. These men are to discipline the nations, teaching them to observe all the things which he had commanded. They are the nucleus of the church against which the gates of hades will never more prevail. He is speaking on the last night of his earthly life. Death is looking on. The shadow of the cross lies athwart his face. The time has arrived for him to go back to God. In the last hour, only the most mo- mentous subjects can be touched on. He will now speak the word which is cardinal and final—whisper the secret of power and victory. His language shows how deeply his own heart is moved. He calls these men “little children.” He had never called them that before. He had usually spoken [ 167 ] The American Pulpit as a teacher or as a friend. He will now speak as a father. He has always been near to them. He will now draw nearer. He has always been affectionate, but his affection will now take on a parental tender- ness. He will speak as a father speaks to his children whom he is leaving to fight life’s battles in the midst of a cold and unsympathetic world. Having awed their hearts by his looks and manner, he is now ready to bring his teaching to its climax: “A new command- ment I give unto you, that ye love one another; even as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.” I No more important words are recorded in the Gos- pels. The disciple who wrote them came to prize them more and more highly as he grew in grace and in the knowledge of Jesus Christ his Savior. At last the whole message of Jesus summed itself up for this dis- ciple in the new commandment. In his commentary on Paul’s letter to the Galatians, St. Jerome reports a tradition current in his day, that when John, the be- loved disciple, was very old and unable to walk, and was carried before the congregation in Ephesus, he was wont to repeat again and again the words of Jesus, “Little children, love one another.’ When asked why he said this so many times, his reply was, “It is the Lord’s commandment, and if it only be ful- filled, it 1s enough.” It is noteworthy that the man who came the nearest to Jesus’ heart, came to feel that the new commandment was Jesus’ crowning word. John could never forget the Master’s words—“By this 168 ] The New Commandment 9 shall all men know.” The disciples’ love for one an- other is the badge of Christian discipleship, the crown- ing proof that men belong to Jesus. Jesus in his clos- ing hour talks like a king. He does not give sugges- tions. He announces a law. Obedience to this law is the test of loyalty. It is the sole sufficient evidence of the divine origin of the Christian religion. It is the only orthodoxy recognized in heaven. The tragedy of Christian history is that the new commandment has been continuously neglected. Mil- lions of Christians have lived and died without know- ing that there is a new commandment. The average congregation of today is largely indifferent to it. The ordinary church member does not keep this command- ment in the front of his mind. When Christians con- fess their sins, they do not confess the sin of breaking the new commandment. When they cry to God for help, they do not ask for grace to keep the new com- mandment. In a long ministry, I have never found a single applicant for church membership worried about his inability to keep the new commandment. I have found men and women hesitant to join the church be- cause they could not give enough money, or because they could not attend certain meetings, or because they could not engage in church work, or because they could not pray in public, or because they did not be- lieve in the deity of Jesus, or in the virgin birth, or in the resurrection of the body, or in the vicarious atone- ment, or in verbal inspiration, or in the miracles, or in everlasting punishment, but I have never found any one who held back from confessing Christ because of his fear that he might not be able to keep the new commandment. So far as I have been able to see, the [ 169 ] The American Pulpit new commandment is not in all the thoughts of thou- sands who are reared in Christian homes. Young people do not include it in the list of things which they must do. They do not feel its divine authority. Older people do not meditate upon it day and night. They do not measure their fitness to become members of the Christian church by their willingness to obey this new commandment. Every one knows the ten commandments. Many know the two commandments commended by our Lord. Alas, the new command- ment lies in the shadow. II Here is a phenomenon worth thinking about. Why is the new commandment so persistently ignored? The answer is that ministers of the gospel do not press it upon the attention of their people. They do not often preach about it. Other subjects have prior claims upon their time and thought. I have recently looked through two hundred volumes of modern sermons, and have found only one sermon on the new command- ment, and that one was preached by a preacher who has been dead over seventy years. Why do preachers overlook the new commandment? Is it not because the theologians overlook it? The theologians have never been interested in this commandment. The Christian scholars most revered, have never taken time to explore the meaning of it. The theologians have busied themselves with the doctrines stated in the his- toric creeds, and the historic creeds know nothing of the new commandment. No congregations have been trained in any land to repeat Sunday after Sunday, “T believe in the new commandment. I believe in loy- [ 170 ] The New Commandment ing my fellow Christians, even as Christ has loved us.” If the church through nineteen hundred years had only kept this commandment at the forefront of its teach- ing, what a different world we should have today. Has not the time arrived when we ought to make a serious effort to understand it? It is not easily un- derstood. One has only to turn the pages of the old commentaries to see how the ablest Christian scholars have again and again fumbled and blundered. Many of them have only understood it in part. Others have missed its meaning altogether. The verbal structure of the sentence is unfortunate. By placing a semicolon after “another,” the sentence is broken in two, and the expression, “Even as I have loved you,” seems to be an afterthought, something negligible added after the main thing has been said. It is better to read the sen- tence without punctuation marks at all. Fortunately punctuation marks are not an integral part of the New Testament. They are the invention of men who, by their works, have given indubitable evidence that they were not inspired. lil - Another difficulty lies in the ambiguity of the word “love.” “Love” is one of the most indefinite and baf- fling of all our words. Love is sometimes a passion, sometimes an affection, sometimes a sentiment, some- times a charity, sometimes a philanthropy, but love on the lips of Jesus was something different from all these. Fortunately for us, he did not attempt to define love. He illustrated it. By drawing a picture of it, he made it possible for us to see what it is. He never left men at critical points to grope in the dark. When he told eeeraly The American Pulpit the scribe that he should love his neighbor as himself, he at once drew a picture of what he meant. The scribe saw the point at once, and so does everybody else. We all understand pictures. When Jesus com- mands his disciples to love one another, he does not leave them in darkness. He hangs up a lamp above the commandment, in the light of which they can read his idea. They are to love one another as he has loved them. To the scribe he gave a picture of a fictitious person. To the twelve he gave the portrait of him- self. Nothing but his own self was adequate to ex- plain the meaning of love. His conduct was the only sufficient interpretation of that great word. His career alone threw light into the fathomless depths of its meaning. Christians are to love one another after the style of Jesus. Many Bible students have stumbled over the word “new.” One commentator translates it “illustrious,” another one “ever new,” still another “the renewed,” another “renewing,” another “unexpected,” another “last.” Many commentators try to prove that the new commandment is really old. If that be the case, why did Jesus call it new? It is old, of course, if it means nothing more than the commandment recorded in Leviticus, “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself,” but that is not the commandment which Jesus gave to his disciples on the last night. The commandment in Leviticus is a general commandment; it was intended for Israel. Our Lord makes it wide as mankind. But the new commandment is quite different. It is not for the world; it is for disciples—for professing Christians —for members of the Christian church. We lose the meaning of it when we make it general. It is a special [172 ] The New Commandment love for a limited set of people which our Lord has in his mind. We are ultimately to love the whole world, but we must begin by loving our fellow Christians. We are to learn to love all humanity by loving the members of the Christian family. Loving is a fine art, the most difficult of all the arts, and we are to master the art in the school of Christ. The whole human race is to be made a brotherhood, and we are to begin the stupendous work by making the church a brother- hood. The followers of Jesus must first be brothers to one another if other men are to become brothers also. IV This, then, is indeed a new commandment. Never before had there been known a commandment like this. Never before had there been upon earth a society of men whose business it was to love one another be- cause they were bound to Jesus Christ. Their bond to Jesus Christ created a new bond between them. They were knit together because they were knit first to him. A new standard of love was now set up—loving after the manner of Jesus. What patience, forbearance, for- giveness, long-suffering, generosity, devotion and sac- rifice this love involves! Love on the lips of Jesus is a greater word than the world had ever spoken. Chris- tians are to love more than others. We are to love one another after the fashion of the Son of God. This is the only kind of love which will save the world. Lov- ing one’s neighbor after the fashion of the Good Sa- maritan will not save it, nor will the love commanded in the golden rule. It is only the love prescribed in the new commandment which will make a dent in the [173 |] The American Pulpit hard heart of the world. It is this exalted and purified love practiced by Christians toward one another, which is to bring a lost world to God. How far we have wandered from the viewpoint of Jesus is shown by the customs and conventions of Christendom. Our churches are commonly measured by numbers or by wealth or by prestige. Sometimes they are measured by sacraments, or by clerical orders, or by creeds. Men speak of the “true” church, and of “a valid ministry” and of “orthodoxy” without any reference to the new commandment. How strange that a,.church should imagine itself to be the true church while it excommunicates and ostracizes mil- lions of the followers of Jesus, even refusing to pray with them. How pathetic that a church should bend its energies to persuade men to accept a certain form of church government, instead of manifesting to all the followers of Jesus the love which he himself showed to’ all his disciples—the love of fellowship and co-opera- tion! What folly to discuss the definitions of the creeds when we are indifferent to the only article in the creed which is fundamental, “Love one another after the fashion of Christ.” The discussions about orders and sacraments are bootless so long as we do not endeavor to keep the new commandment. How can we hope to convince the world that our religion comes from heaven if we refuse to obey the supreme law imposed upon us by our Master? The Savior of the world did not place the primary emphasis upon forms of worship, or upon sacraments, or upon clerical orders, or upon church government, or upon creeds. These are not the notes of the true church. There is only one [174] The New Commandment note of the true church, and that is the love of Chris- tians for one another after the fashion of Christ. It is not by celebrating the Lord’s supper, or by the reci- tation of a creed, or by obedience to an ecclesiastical superior, that we show we are disciples in the school of Christ. It is only by our love for one another that we give evidence that we belong to him. We are his friends only as we keep his commandments, and his greatest commandment to his followers is, ‘Love one another as I have loved you.” V It is because of our neglect of the new command- ment that we find ourselves face to face with problems which are insoluble, and with tasks which are beyond our strength. The world is full of idealism. Men are dreaming everywhere of brotherhood and reunion and co-operation and peace, but up to the present hour all suggested schemes have broken down. All dreams have failed of fulfillment. We see what ought to be, but we cannot bring it to pass. For instance, we can- not bring the nations together. We cannot induce them to lay down their arms. We cannot do this be- cause we cannot bring the churches together. If all Christians were together, the time would be within sight when nations would learn war no more. We cannot bring the great branches of the church together, because Christians have not been brought close enough together in the local congregation. It is in the local congregation that the primary and all- important work is to be initiated. It is here that Christians are to be taught the art of loving one an- other after the manner of Jesus. It is here that they [175 ] The American Pulpit are to be trained to love one another across social lines, and economic lines, and cultural lines, and racial lines. Every church is to be a melting pot in which hetero- - geneous human elements are to be fused. It is in the local church that the heart is to be broadened and sweetened. It is here that broader breadths of love than those created in the home must be woven. It is in the church that all sorts and conditions of men are to meet and mingle and learn how to live and work together in love. The spirit of sympathy and good will and co-operation developed in the local church will overflow into wider fields, and little by little sepa- rated groups of the Lord’s followers will come into fel- lowship with one another, and work together to ad- vance the kingdom of love. Most of the work done for the reunion of Christen- dom has been expended at the wrong poin ~ have looked to the ecclesiastical leaders to show i —_—_ ay, and they have invariably begun with ceremonies and sacraments and creeds, but there is no progress pos- sible in that direction until a preliminary work has been accomplished. Church union will come about through love, and this love has not yet been born in the hearts of the masses of Christians. Even mem- bers of the local congregations do not in many cases love one another. In multitudes of cases they do not even know one another, and what is worse, they do not want to know one another. The result is we have many pagan hearts worshiping in Christian temples. We have a host of professed disciples who have no re- gard for the new commandment. Loving their fellow church members is not a vital factor in their conduct. But the Christian church, if it be a church after the [ 176 ] The New Commandment mind of Christ, is a band of lovers, a brotherhood, a family, in whose life the heart is trained to come close to other hearts. This is insisted on by all the New Testament writers. vi What the world most needs is the spirit of friendli- ness. It is full of rancor and strife and bitterness. It needs a fountain flowing love. That is what every Christian church should be. One often hears voices clamoring for applied Christianity. There are many who cannot understand why Christianity 1s not more widely applied. The explanation is that the stock of Christianity is low. There is not enough of it to go around. We cannot apply what has not yet been cre- ated. We cannot impart a friendliness we do not pos- sess, YT as rich in members and in money, but we are. .{ sp love. The world is waiting for a great society oi Prien and women who will love across all dividing social, political, ecclesiastical, and racial lines. The church must give itself to its one supreme task— that of developing a more loving type of human being. The average Christian is not pre-eminent in love. The virulence and bitterness of doctrinal controversies among Christians are proof that a large part of cur- rent Christianity 1s formalism, and that hearts may boast of allegiance to Jesus and still remain untouched by his spirit. A theological controversy sometimes lights up as by a flash of lightning the whole moral situation. We suddenly discover that instead of being rich, we are wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked. Since the various branches of the universal church [177] The American Pulpit have trained their communicants only half-heartedly and imperfectly to love one another, it is not surprising that these various communions find it difficult or im- possible to work in harmony together. The type of character built up in the modern church is not one which the spirit of friendliness can readily use in co- operative enterprises for the common good. In num- berless communities the different denominations hold aloof from one another, often envying one another, sometimes slandering one another, and finding it diffi- cult even to exercise what is known as “church com- ity.” It is because of this lack of fellowship that the spiritual life languishes, and that dispositions grow rank which the religion of Jesus is expected to kill. It is because of this division of the army of the Lord that so many battles are lost. Vil It is an appalling fact that it seems easier for anar- chists and socialists and communists and agnostics and skeptics and atheists to co-operate than for Ro- man Catholics and Greek Catholics and Protestants to work together for the extension of the kingdom of good will. It is because Protestants are not taught from their cradle to think kindly of the Roman Catho- lic church, and because Roman Catholics are not in- structed from babyhood to have friendly feelings to- ward Protestant churches, that the union in worship and work of these two great bodies of Christians is relegated by the prophets to a future incalculably far off. Neither the Protestant nor the Roman church is orthodox. They are both heretical on the supreme Christian doctrine. We do not love after the fashion [ 178 ] The New Commandment of Christ, nor do we try to do so. We are content to battle valiantly for what we call the truth, forgetting that the supreme truth is love. No truth is worth having which is bought by the surrender of love. Christ was a friend, a brother, a fellow-worker. We Roman Catholics and Greek Catholics and Pro- testants, Presbyterians and Methodists, Baptists and Lutherans, Episcopalians and Congregationalists, Uni- tarians and Quakers, and all the rest of us, no matter what our name, must be friends, comrades, brothers and fellow-workers. It is not necessary that we use the same forms of worship, or the same forms of gov- ernment, or the same forms of theological opinion, but it is indispensable that we be friends, comrades, broth- ers and fellow-workers. We must trust one another, and help one another, and sacrifice for one another. That much is certain. If we are not willing to fight side by side on the great battlefield against falsehood and wrong or to work side by side in the same vine- yard for the cultivation of the same fruits of the spirit, or to combine our forces in the same town for the pull- ing down of the strongholds of evil, we present to the world a spectacle which is a scandal. VUI We need to take lessons from our Lord and Savior, and also from the apostle Paul, who knew the Master’s mind as few have ever known it. To Paul the church is a temple. In the temple all the stones are fitted to- gether and one stone supports another. To Paul the church is a body, the body of Christ. In that body every member is knit to every other member by vital bonds. Every joint—or as we would say, every social [179 ] The American Pulpit contact—contributes to the vital force by means of which the whole body is built up. To Paul the church is a family, and all the followers of Jesus are brothers and sisters, living their life under the law of love. Let the pope and the patriarchs and the cardinals and the archbishops and the bishops and the ministers and the priests and the elders and deacons, all set themselves to the work of finding out what Christian love really is. Why leave that word vague when it is the keystone of the Christian arch? Why ignore, “As I have loved you,’ when such love is the test of dis- cipleship and the proof of the divinity of our religion? If every Christian pulpit throughout the world should once a month in every year expound and glorify the principle of life set forth m the New Commandment, these sermons would be so many leaves from the tree of life for the healing of the nations. “Love one another as I have loved you.” This is the passionate desire of our Lord. It is his deepest desire. It was his dominant longing in the last hour of his hfe m the flesh, and it is his dominant longing still. He is the same yesterday, today and forever. His last word in the upper chamber was not an exhortation or a command, but a prayer. Before starting for the gar- den of Gethsemane he poured out his heart unto God. In this prayer there was one supreme and often re- peated petition, “That they all may be one even as we are one.” In his prayer as in his conversation, he was still dwelling on the conviction that the one and only way in which the world can be persuaded that God has indeed sent his Son, is the spectacle of his follow- ers loving one another. His prayer was not for the entire human race. It was for the men who were with [180 ] The New Commandment him in that room, and also for the innumerable com- pany who should believe on his name. He prayed, therefore, for us, and his prayer is now, as it was then, “That they may be perfected into one,” for only as we are perfected into one will it be possible for us to be with him where he is and behold his glory. [181] ae { Francis JouN McConneEtu Many who look upon our American ecclesiastical life with thoughtful eyes wish that our great Methodist Church had some recognized alternative honor which it could be- stow upon its outstanding leaders besides making bishops of them. Such observers look with misgiving upon the like- lihood that this or that great teacher or preacher who has arisen to a place of commanding influence will be seized by force of his brethren’s affection and thrust into the bishop’s chair at the next quadrennial conference. It has come to be a kind of proverb that the spirit of a prophet and that of a bishop do not go well together; the chances being that the functions and considerations belonging to the office of the bishop will smother the spirit of the prophet. What- -ever ground exists for this foreboding, there are surely shining exceptions enough to prove that it is the stuff in the man, rather than the tradition of the office, which is determinative of the final result. In Bishop McConnell we have a singular convincing example of such an exception. He is a fearless and unshackled prophet, and has become a sort of Isaiah’s rock under whose shadow many a lesser prophet finds refuge and renewal of courage. Instead of losing his prophetic function in the narrowing limitations of denominational administration, he turns his great office to account as an asset and instrument of the higher min- istry which he carries on in the interest of essential and catholic Christianity. Bishop McConnell was born in Ohio in 1871. He was eraduated from Ohio Wesleyan in 1894, and took his theological course in Boston University, where he received the Degree of Ph.D. in 1899. While studying in Boston he preached at Chelmsford, Mass., and Newton Upper [ 183 ] The American Pulpit Falls, Mass. He accepted the pastorate at Ipswich, Mass., in 1899, and the Harvard Street Methodist Church in Cam- bridge, Mass., in 1902, where he remained only two years, when he accepted a call to the New York Avenue Metho- dist Church, Brooklyn, New York. After six years there, De Pauw University called him as president. By this time fame and denominational affection decreed that he should be a bishop, and at the general conference of 1912 he was elected to that high office: He was assigned to the mission field of Mexico. There he flung himself into the task of getting on terms of understanding with the Mexican people, their oppressions, their aspirations, and the way of helpful approach to their hearts and their social needs. As an interpreter of Mexico—and, indeed, of all Latin America —to the American people, his testimony and counsel have been drawn upon by our highest authorities in the succession of crises which our relations with our neighbors to the south have experienced. Bishop McConnell’s part as chairman of the Commission of the Interchurch World Movement, whose specific task was to investigate the conditions prevalent in the steel industry, brought him and his coadjutors much criticism. But recent reforms in the industry have confirmed not only the justice of the commission’s diagnosis but the practic- ability of its proposed remedies. Bishop McConnell’s books have greatly enriched the life of the church in respect of . personal religion, the philosophy of faith, and the social application of the gospel. His leading titles are: The Divine Immanence, Religious Certainty, Personal Christianity, Democratic Christianity, Public Opinion and Theology, The Preacher and the People, Is God Limited? Ohio Wes- leyan gave him the D.D. degree, and both Hanover College and Wesleyan University gave him the LL.D. degree. His episcopal area centers in Pittsburgh, Pa. [ 184 ] PETER THE ROCK By Francis J. McConngELL “—__thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church.” These words of our Lord to Peter probably have been as much debated about as any passage in the New Tes- tament. Almost all who comment on the commission to Peter are agreed at one point—they seem to feel that the words could not have referred to Peter as he then was. Jesus was thinking of Peter after he became hardened by trial into rock—not the unsteady disciple who was yet to betray his Master. Or Jesus was building his church not upon Peter, but upon Peter’s confession, ‘Thou art the Christ.” Or Jesus was look- ing forward to Pentecost, which would make Peter over from a man of sand into aman of rock. Even the Roman Catholic student will at times insist that Peter was chosen as the foundation-stone of the church not because of any special fitness in Peter himself, but because of self-sufficient arbitrary decree—the weak- ness of Peter being supplemented by miraculous aid. In reading the scriptures it may be just as well to take passages in their obvious, first-glance meaning. If the obvious meaning does not make sense we are, of course, at liberty to search for more recondite interpre- tation. It seems to me that the surface meaning of the passage does make sense, that our Lord’s words to Peter mean Peter, just as he was. Not that Peter was [185 ] The American Pulpit not to become stronger and better with the years, but that Peter, whose only extraordinariness consisted in his being extraordinarily like the ordinary man, was a type of that common human strength, and human frailty, of which any founder of a church must take account. Any human organization must at least start from humanity as we find it. Any democracy, which is to endure at all, must begin with men as they actu- ally are. Peter asked foolish questions, committed his Master to action in reckless ways, at critical moments blun- dered most sadly. Yet the noticeable fact is that Peter never asked Jesus a foolish question without getting a wise answer, never committed his Master to a course without throwing a light on the pathway which others must tread. There is hardly any disciple of Jesus today but who at times feels himself to be more like Peter than like any of the twelve. I am thinking of Peter as a representative man, as George Matheson would say, a man who represents possibly the largest group of Christians, a man wholly devoted to his Leader and yet stumbling and blun- dering along, not into the darkness but into the light. Those of us in whom there is enough of the boy left to read and re-read Robert Louis Stevenson’s “Treasure Island” with delight will recall that the boy in that story is always doing the thing that he has been told not to do, and yet by his heedlessness is always getting the party of adventurers, not into scrapes but out of them. Perhaps that is the aim of the story, if it has any aim besides the sheer giving of pleasure, to show that a boy’s impulse may be better than a man’s wis- dom. There is a good deal of the boy in Peter, at least [ 186 ] Peter the Rock a good deal that is well intentioned but heedless and impulsive. Jesus never showed his understanding of the human mind and heart more unmistakably than in his dealing with this headlong disciple. I First of all, Peter never asked a foolish question but that Jesus gave him a wise answer. Take the scene at the transfiguration. Peter is greatly impressed at the vision of Moses and of Elias and of his transfigured Lord. He unselfishly suggests that booths be built for Jesus and Elias and Moses, with the comment: “It is good to be here.” The writer of the gospel, in the light of the after-years, saw that this comment was not appropriate and apologized for Peter. Peter, it ap- pears, was sore afraid and wist not what to say. He belonged to that rather numerous class of persons who, when they do not know what to say, say it. I am glad he did. He said about what I would have said, if I had been there, or rather what I would have thought without daring to say it. It must never be forgotten that in Peter’s speech the thoughts of many hearts were revealed—for the sufficient reason that Peter spoke out what many others were thinking, but did not dare to say. Now as to Peter’s suggestion about the booths for a long stay on the mount of transfiguration. Peter here has stumbled upon a problem which men have been debating from his day to ours. Just last week I read through Professor Charles A. Bennett’s Philosophie Study of Mysticism, the best discussion of that theme, by the way, that I have ever seen. Professor Bennett brings out clearly the puzzling contradiction between [ 187 ] The American Pulpit the duty of holding fast an experience which is su- premely worth while on its own account, and the duty of leaving the experience, so to speak, for the task of winning others to experience of the divine. That was Peter’s problem. Peter instinctively felt that such an experience as that of the mount of transfiguration was good on its own account. The hearts of multitudes might have been perplexed to the end of time if Jesus had not answered the suggestion of Peter by starting forthwith to minister to the needs of men at the foot of the mount. Consider another question of Peter, the query as to how many times he should forgive an offending brother. Until seven times? How wildly Peter missed the point, we say. The Lord’s reply, “Until seventy times seven,’ makes it clear that the mere number of times we forgive has nothing to do with the real duty, which is that of an inexhaustible spirit of forgiveness. Jesus did not mean that forgiveness was to be ex- hausted even with the four hundred and ninetieth pardon. Peter ought to have seen this without asking a foolish question. Ought he? If we are tempted to think severely of Peter’s folly in asking such a ques- tion, let us reflect that it was Peter’s folly which led to the Master’s perfect answer. Let us remember also that Peter’s suggestion of seven was generous. Out- side of parents dealing with erring sons not one human being in ten thousand ever forgives the same offender seven times. | One other question, that question in Matthew, nine- teenth chapter and twenty-seventh verse: “Then an- swered Peter and said unto him, lo, we have left all and followed thee: what then shall we have?” We [ 188 ] Peter the Rock feel like hanging our heads in shame over this, but before we blame Peter let us see if we do not properly belong at his side as he speaks so outrageously. Then answered Peter. The “then” refers back to the inci- dent of the rich young ruler and the Master’s comment on that incident. Let us be honest with ourselves. Is not that incident of the Master’s dealing with the rich young ruler a hard enigma? The young man was morally excellent, well reared, lovable, eager to be a disciple. Why shut the door in his face just because he had money? Above all, why speak of the possession of money as a lack, or deficiency? If that incident were to recur today I would feel like saying to my fellow- Methodists: “We must deal tactfully with this young man. He comes from among our best people. Pos- sibly he is not quite ready for full membership with us, but one as earnest as he will not object to coming in and remaining ‘for a season’ on probation. Even if he never comes into full membership he is nevertheless eligible, by our book of discipline, to a position on our board of trustees.” If, after I had pleaded thus, I were to hear the blunt answer: “It is easier for a camel to go through a needle’s eye than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God,” I would probably have asked, or have whispered to Peter to ask: “Who then shall be saved?” “Lo, we have left all and have followed thee, what then shall we have?” Peter’s ill-mannered, pre- sumptuous, indelicate question forced a crisis, led to a facing of a situation which might not otherwise have been so squarely met. The question, indelicate or not, is one that we repeatedly find skulking about in half- consciousness. Peter’s question brought out into the [ 189 ] The American Pulpit open a doctrine of spiritual ownership which is one of the great contributions of Jesus to the world’s religious treasures. If I have spoken of Peter as given to forcing his Mas- ter to action by ill-considered statements or requests on his own account. I do not wish here to raise any questions concerning miracles but, whatever our in- terpretation of miracles, the fact remains that wher- ever Peter’s conduct is described in connection with a miraculous incident that conduct is perfectly consist- ent with the total picture of Peter. The collectors seek tribute for the temple, and ask Peter if Jesus will contribute. Peter evidently has not thought about it, and so he says yes. According to the narrative a miracle by Jesus makes good the word of Peter. Peter hears Jesus call across the stormy waters of the lake and asks permission to come to him. The permission is granted, involving miracle. Peter takes it into his own head and hands to defend Jesus after the arrest in the Garden, making necessary a miraculous healing by Jesus. Miracles to one side, however, the history of the early church in part turns around the extent to which Peter ran on ahead into policies about which he had not thought carefully, but which the divine spirit sanc- tioned with success. Paul is given credit for the ad- vance of Christianity into the Gentile world and Paul is entitled to credit. We must not forget, however, that in so radical a forward movement as that of preaching to the Gentiles the first steps are hardest, and Peter was the leader among those who took those [190 ] Peter the Rock hard first steps. Of course Peter had the help of a dream divinely sent, the vision of the sheet full of beasts clean and unclean and the hearing of the voice: “Kill and eat.” The dream, however, seems to have come to Peter because he was Peter, because the dream answered questions he was already asking him- self, and because he could be counted on to follow the vision. In any case Peter immediately drew a far- reaching practical conclusion. When he went to An- tioch and found that, under the preaching of the risen Christ, men among the heathen had responded, had passed out of darkness into light, had left their idols and were worshipping the God of Christ, Peter had but one word: “Take them into the church.” “What about the old Jewish requirements?” “Never mind the requirements; take them in.” When, a little later, Peter was called to account by the elders at Jerusalem for not charging the Gentile Christians to keep the law of Moses he broke out: “Why make ye trial of God that ye should put a yoke upon the neck of the disciples which neither our fa- thers nor we were able to bear?” Some of the critics insist that Peter never could have made so extremely an anti-Judaistic speech as this. Such a speech has the stamp of Peter all over it. Suppose it is extreme and ill-balanced. Suppose, as a matter of fact, the fathers had borne the yoke for hundreds of years. When a great call toward spiritual freedom is sounded, we may well thank God that the Peters push the bet- ter-balanced brethren to one side. Anyhow, Peter was dealing with a fact-situation. He may not have seen far ahead, but he saw far enough to take the next step. He may have weakened a little later on the matter of full social privileges for Gentile Christians, but he [191 ] The American Pulpit could not undo his own work. He had started some- thing that he could not stop. As for social equality among all classes of Christians, we of today are not in any position to blame Peter. The truth seems to be that Peter had hit upon a principle of ecclesiastical, or social, dealing that he had learned from his Lord in personal activities: He that doeth the will shall know of the doctrine. The path to individual salvation is not by endless debate. Out of actually doing the will of God comes the conviction as to the truth of God. Having seen the effects on the church itself of preaching the gospel to all men alike, Peter was not going to let a body of debating elders try the patience of God with a lot of wornout ecclesi- astical mechanism. -Peter’s speech at Jerusalem is one of the great charters of Christian liberty: “God gave to the Gentiles the Holy Spirit—even as he did to us. He made no distinction between us and them, cleans- ing their hearts by faith.” Every word of this is the plain man’s appeal to fact, an appeal which has arisen out of actual application of the gospel to Gentile groups. Having seen God at Antioch, Peter drew the sensible but radical conclusion that God was not lim- ited to Jerusalem. ITI This is not at all intended to be an exaltation of the non-intellectual factors in religious activity. Thought- fulness has its assured place, but the severest reflection must work upon what is given—upon “data,” in other words. Paul’s mighty achievement is sometimes in- terpreted as if, after seeing the vision on the Damascus road, Paul had retired into Arabia, had thought out the implications of the vision and had then proceeded to [ 192 ] Peter the Rock carry the gospel to the Gentiles according to set plan, largely conceived beforehand. This is not the exact historic fact. Paul worked upon “data,” part of the data coming from the experience of Peter. The data Paul so interpreted as to make the gospel move to- ward larger effectiveness in evangelical statement and appeal. Peter could never have given us the epistles —Galatians, Romans, Corinthians—but he created situations which in the long run made Paul’s theology necessary and inevitable. In Peter’s career we see in miniature the career of the church, human beings trusting impulses whose farther reach they do not fore- see, drawing back at times almost aghast at the con- sequences of their own deeds, at other times almost turning their backs on their own plans, yet never re- treating to the position from which they started, and on the whole getting ahead. IV Still, a certain type of biblical student will not let us forget Peter’s faults. Think of his awful betrayal of his Master on the night of the trial! Well, suppose we think of it. Peter was not the only one who at the supper had said: “Even if I must die with thee, yet will I not deny thee.’ Amazing candor marks the gos- pel story and the narrative frankly states: “Likewise also said all the disciples.’ Moreover, let us not for- get that at the critical moment Peter was the only one of the eleven near enough to Jesus to be able to do any betraying. The others had forsaken Jesus and had fled. Once more the betrayal of Peter was the be- trayal of weakness, of exhaustion following strenuous endeavor to keep close enough to the Master to be of some service to him. He was caught off guard at two [ 193 ] The American Pulpit o’clock in the morning, with all his resources paid out and empty. He was caught in the back-wash of that rhythm which is a peculiarity of all human experi- ence. The conduct of Peter at the betrayal is a ground for charity in our thought of the betrayals of hosts of ordinary men, betrayals which come not out of insin- cerity or meanness or choice, but out of bodies and minds exhausted in an overwhelming combination of evil circumstances of which they for the moment can make nothing. As soon as the tide swings back toward fullness the soul returns to its Lord in genuine repent- ance. The vast majority of followers of the Christ can be depended upon, even after momentary lapse, to do just what Peter did. There are not many Judases. One other scene in the closing days of the earthly career of Jesus is somewhat marred by Peter, the scene at the lakeside after the great draught of fishes. Peter has just received the three-fold commission: “Feed my lambs. Feed my sheep. Feed my sheep.” The Mas- ter speaks the solemn word about Peter’s being guided by another and led where he would not choose to go, which prophesies a violent death. How splendid it would have been if the scene could have been closed with Peter kneeling in silence as the last word is spoken? Peter broke the silence, with the question: “What shall this other man do?” It would have been better, of course, if Peter had not so spoken as to receive the rebuke: “What is that to thee? Follow thou me!” Nevertheless, if he just had to speak, it is well that he asked that question, for the problem of the inequalities in the lot of disciples, all of them alike devoted to their Lord, has been a mys- tery from the beginning. The only answer is that made by Jesus to Peter, an appeal to increased faith [194 ] Peter the Rock in Jesus himself. The world might not have had that utterance except for Peter. This then was Peter, asking the wrong questions and getting the right answer; obeying impulses which, though they seemed like the whim of the moment, proved to be sound, practical wisdom, blundering grievously and yet blundering productively. Peter was imperfect, to be sure, but the kingdom of God does not rest on hard-and-fast infallibilities in men. If the kingdom had infallibility in men as its foundation it might indeed stand, but nobody would pay much at- tention to it. It would have to lie off the main high- way of the world’s life. The only kingdom that will help us is one founded on men like ourselves. Peter does not say anything the ordinary man might not have said—if he had dared. When Peter puts his ques- tions we look a little to one side, not in shame for Peter as much as for ourselves. We had half wished somebody would ask that question. When Peter starts on a risky course it is the course we would have taken —if we had dared. When Peter blunders he blunders much as we would blunder, and his fall keeps us out of his pit. Peter is in himself a sort of cross-section of ordinary humanity. On that type of life the kingdom abides. We need prophets, seers and saints, but a kingdom of humanity cannot rest on such alone as a foundation. There are not enough of them. There are enough Peters. In the Peters there is enough sound- ness, not to make a perfect kingdom, but to make one that will stand. The thought of Jesus concerning the possibilities of the Peter-type as foundation stone is prophetic of the permanence of the church, and, it may be said, of Christian society as well. [195 ] a WILuiAM FRASER McDoweE.uu Measured by breadth of culture, by practical wisdom, preaching power, length of service, and richness and ripe- ness of experience, Bishop McDowell holds unquestioned rank as the dean of Methodist bishops in America. As a preacher he keeps alive the classic tradition of the pulpit of the past generation enriched by sympathy with science and the culture of the present time. Dignified, not in pres- ence and carriage only, but in the very temper of his mind, he greatens with a new importance any theme or cause which he touches. His position in his own denomination and in his wider ecclesiastical relationships is best char- acterized by the term religious statesman. Engaged with large thoughts and far-reaching movements, he has drawn to himself responsibilities of churchmanship which only a calm soul, unawed by the hazards of new adventures, could effectually discharge. Probably there is no ecclesiastic in our Protestant organization in whom our various non- ecclesiastical movements have found such support and encouragement and constant counsel as in Bishop McDowell. He has been vitally, albeit unofficially, related to the Y. M. C. A. movement, giving to it the steadying and directive aid of his statesmanly counsel for many years. In the early stages of the Student Christian Movement he was drawn by Dr. Mott and Dr. Speer and their coad- jutors into the innermost circles where the character of that movement was fashioned. On all its programs his has been an ever-recurring voice. A program at Lake Geneva or an international Student Volunteer convention without him is even to this day unthinkable. In the Federal Council of Churches his has been a guiding spirit. Bishop McDowell [197 ] The American Pulpit is the sort of man other men instinctively lean upon. Dis- interested, unselfish, sagacious, broadly informed, cool, and withal possessed of imaginative understanding, his presence at any cabinet table leaves no doubt as to where the head of that table is. At thirty-one, Bishop McDowell was made chancellor of the University of Denver. This was in 1890. In nine years of service he laid deep and strong the foundations of an institution of the highest academic rank. Born in Ohio in 1858, he received his college education at Ohio Wesleyan where he was graduated in 1879. He was graduated at Boston University School of Theology in 1882 and received Ohio Wesleyan’s Ph.D. degree in 1903. Wesleyan, Ohio Wesleyan, Denver, and Northwestern Universities con- ferred the D.D. degree upon him, and the University of Vermont the degree of L.H.D. Previous to 1900 he held three pastorates, first at Lodi, then at Oberlin, and finally at Tiffin, allin Ohio. He left Denver to become correspond- ing secretary of the Board of Education of the Methodist Church, where the general conference of 1904 found him and made him a bishop. A preacher of commanding popu- larity in all the colleges and universities of the country, Bishop McDowell has also been invited to deliver the lec- tures on the various special Foundations in many institu- tions—Cole lecturer at Vanderbilt in 1910, Lyman Beecher lecturer at Yale in 1917, Mendenhall lecturer at De Pauw in 1922, Merrick lecturer at Ohio Wesleyan in 1924. Assigned by his denomination to the area of which Washing- ton, D. C., is the “see” city, Bishop McDowell, in addition to his duties as bishop, has actively led the Federal Council of Churches in these activities which center at the nation’s capital. He visited India, China, the Philippines, and Japan in 1910-11 on an official mission for his church. Among his books are: In the School of Christ, A Man’s Religion, Good Ministers of Jesus Christ, Making a Personal Faith, This Mind. [198 ] THE INTERPRETATION OF LIFE By Wiuu1AM Fraser McDoweruu “And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up; and he entered, as his custom was, into the synagogue on the sabbath day, and stood up to read. And there was delivered unto him the book of the prophet, Isaiah. And he opened the book, and found the place where it was written: The spirit of the Lord is upon me, Because he anointed me to preach good tidings to the poor; He hath sent me to proclaim release to the cap- tives, And recovering of sight to the blind, To set at liberty them that are bruised, To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.” —Luke iv, 18, 19. Horace Bushnell called the gospel a gift to the im- agination. He meant, in part, that the first thing to do with the gospel as a whole and in its parts is to see it clearly and vividly. The gospel is like history and science in this respect. It remains dead and lifeless until the religious imagination makes it live and move before our eyes. Coming to this event in the gospel story, through the gate of the imagination we see a village congrega- tion, made up of ordinary people, “dull and respect- able” as they have been called, engaged in the usual, formal, routine act of worship. They were devout and orthodox as to the past, and probably as to the future. [ 199 ] The American Pulpit They were sure that God had been with their fathers, with Abraham, Moses, and Isaiah, and the others who had made historic Judaism illustrious. They hoped for great days to come in some undefined, unfixed fu- ture when the Messiah should appear. But they did not expect any mighty thing to happen in their meet- inghouse, at a regular service before their eyes, and especially to one of their neighbors’ sons. They be- lieved there had been a burning bush and that some time there might be another, but they did not expect it to be seen at Nazareth. “The blight of ordinari- ness” had fallen on them. Then Jesus stood up to read, possibly the lesson for the day. He opened the prophecy of Isaiah at one of the noblest passages in any literature. They had heard it scores of times. It had become that pathetic thing, “a dead letter’—a noble utterance which had practically ceased to be alive. It had been read in their hearing in a dull, meaningless way, with no em- phasis upon the personal terms, without causing any heart to throb, any pulse to quicken or any throat to choke. They believed it but did not see it. It was inspired but had ceased in their lives to be inspiring and living. It is so tragically easy for even a glorious word to go to death in the hands of men! JESUS READING As Jesus read the great, old words he opened a new gate by his emphasis upon the personal terms. ‘The spirit of the Lord is upon me. He hath anointed me, He hath sent me, . . . this day is this scripture ful- filled in your hearing.” And the words became alive and glowing and personal and began to move about [200 ] The Interpretation of Life like a person before their eyes and to ring with the tones of life in their ears. Right there before them, in their ordinary services was another burning bush with the voice of God coming out of it as in the older day. They rubbed their eyes, they looked around at one an- other in wonder. They had not been looking for any- thing like this to happen in their orderly service. And they were so far from the spiritual condition that would have given them spiritual insight into and un- derstanding of what was happening, that they went to discussing Jesus’ family. They spoke well of Jesus. They wondered at these gracious words, but they added: “Is not this Joseph’s son?” Knowing his people they could not see how it was possible that a new glory of God had broken out of the skies through him to them. But whether we come to the scene by the gate of imagination or the gate of emphasis we come upon one of the finest spectacles our world has to offer, the spec- tacle of a person at the beginning of his career, set- ting its tone, defining its purpose, fixing its relations in such a way as to make this scene luminous for youth to the ends of the world and the end of time. This is both an event in the life of Jesus and a principle for human life everywhere. You would know from this scene what this Person would do with his life. And you would know also that his way with his life was the only way for him and for all who would live at their best. Jesus walks through this picture forever in the right way. The rich young ruler walks through his picture forever in the wrong way. Each episode was an event, each was also a principle. One was the wrong principle, one the right principle. The record of life [ 201 1 The American Pulpit is forever being written. It is not a closed book. Men of youth are always at life’s threshold, always going into life as the rich young ruler did or as the Master of life did. Let us look at the matter in a measure of detail. I The first thing that strikes us as we study this scene is that Jesus interprets his life on the highest possible level. Whatever may happen to him in coming days he will not begin on a low level. His purposes and plans are not going to be conformed to a moderate standard. “He pitches his life high” and does not flinch from doing it. Even the low state of life about him does not cause him to hesitate, or adapt his ideals to his environment. He knew how men do shrink, how they take refuge in what is sensible, rational and humanly possible. ‘Let some one else go up the rugged steep of the mountain and see God face to face.” That is the story of human life. And the world accepts us at our own lowered estimate and our own moderate levels. But we men, with life before us, no matter what we mean to do with it, ought to be grate- ful every day of our lives that that one Person started his life off in the presence of men at the highest pos- sible level. He was in the sacred synagogue, sur- rounded by the best people, standing in the line of the holiest history, quoting a noble passage from the noblest literature in existence, with the tides of God’s spirit, the presence of God himself in full flood upon him. There could be no higher level than this. Under such conditions timid men shrink. They are afraid of their own highest emotions and impulses. [ 202 ] The Interpretation of Life They “take themselves in hand.” They wait to cool off, to talk things over with other people “who have good sense,’ who are not excited, who have seen no visions, climbed no mountain sides, have not seen God face to face, who allow dead letters to remain dead letters, who do not allow inspired sentences like Isaiah’s to clutch them in their hearts and choke them in their throats. They do not want to start life on a level that will be hard to maintain. They will be pru- dent and safe in such important matters. And if the spiritual world of today dies of anything, it seems likely to die of the miasma of low levels, the levels of caution and prudence, the levels that would have ruined Jesus if he had accepted them, the levels that were ruining his people before his eyes. LAUNCHING LIFE HIGH Speaking of our own times, the late Bishop Creigh- ton said: ‘I have no doubt what is the greatest dan- ger of the new century—it is the absence of high aspira- tions.” For my part I have no question as to one of the deadliest doubts prevalent in our time. It is the doubt as to the practicability and possibility of life at Christ’s level. We are eager to be active and useful, bound to be orthodox if it takes all the shibboleths that ean be quoted. We are strong on historic Christianity and weak on practical Christianity. We loudly assert the deity of Christ as a doctrine and then go on with perfectly ordinary, conventional emotions, decisions, lives. We stand off and admire a scene like the one before us and grow eloquent about the behavior of Jesus in that dull service in the synagogue in his home town, and never even seem to dream of getting into [ 203 ] The American Pulpit the scene with Jesus in any modern Nazareth. We are afraid of being so fanatical as to make a scene, espe- cially before our neighbors and relatives. We will exhibit our religious idealism somewhere else, in some town or before some congregation where they do not know us and our people. Meantime there is no way into a life like Christ’s except his way, and no hope for the world of our day as there was none for the world of his day except the hope that such lives bring. Why do we hold him so far away in practice? Why do we admire his way so much and use it so little? Keep that scene before us. T covet here the gift of fresh and convincing speech. What lies at the bottom of Jesus’ use of those noble old words, the use that set them to blazing with life right there before the eyes of his neighbors and rela- tives? It was surely not that he used the words with a new accent and emphasis. An elocutionist might have done that and only made the people conscious of his own presence. But as Jesus read those ancient words, with the per- sonal emphasis upon the personal terms, the people be- came aware of the presence of God, because Jesus him- self was, as Browning said, so “very sure of God.” They did not simply rediscover the beauty of some sentences written by their famous prophet, nor that their strange townsman had used those words in an unusual way. Out of the scene came and comes the revelation that God means something in a personal life that has either been forgotten or never before seen. T am not afraid here either of mysticism or of spiritual extravagance, for I am sure we have never gotten any- where near to a realization of the place of God or the [ 204 ] The Interpretation of Life meaning of God in the life of Jesus, or any other life, for that matter. Maybe our next great discovery in religion, as we come to that new day in which the Holy Spirit will have his true place in experience, will be the discovery of the meaning of God in the earthly life of Jesus. Maybe this is one of the things of Christ which the Holy Spirit has to show to us in this age in which spirituality and materialism are fighting for human personality as never before. I am not trying to make a doctrine of God or a doc- trine of Christ, but I am trying to discover and set out for other men facing their lives in modern synagogues the personal meaning of God, the personal sense of God, the personal presence of God as the very basis of life. This was the thing that gave steadiness and depth, transparency and power to his life. Thomas Arnold said of the boys of Rugby that “God was not in all their thoughts,’ meaning that God was not in any of their thoughts. One has only to quote that old word to see at once that Jesus had no thoughts at all that God was not in. One student writes: “It is surely fair to begin where Jesus began; and Jesus began with God.” And another adds: “The object of Jesus was to induce men to base all life on God.” Here is where modern life is weak and unstable. Its sense of God is vague and indefinite, its consciousness of God dim and uncontrolling. The modern world relies upon a hun- dred secondary powers and fails to place itself fully and fairly upon the real basis and center of life. Jesus standing there in that home synagogue saying “the spirit of the Lord is upon me,” and “he hath anointed me’ is at the place where his own personality centers, and where all personality must center. [ 205 ] The American Pulpit GOD AND THE HALF-GODS You remember how Wells puts it in the word of Mr. Britling: “Religion is the first thing and the last thing, and until a man has found God and been found by God he begins at no beginning, he works to no end.” The half gods have come. They are in control of men’s lives. The God of Jesus Christ is in eclipse in our age. He has no vital, practical meaning for a large part of our modern world. The prosperous classes think him superfluous, the unprosperous think him useless. Scholars shut him out of their thinking, and the ignorant and educated alike all too largely shut him out of their living. We have new idolatries and polytheisms, conventional and official beliefs about God and a vast unconcern toward him. More than one thoughtful student of Europe feels that the crash came because Europe was without a keen sense of the place of God in human life. I know perfectly well, looking at Jesus in the synagogue and elsewhere, how high his level was and how hard it is for us to walk on the level. I know what cowards we are in the ' face of supreme visions, how we see the heights, then flinch and turn back to the moderate lowlands that we count safe. But I know also that whether we will take it or not, there is no other way into life than Jesus’ way, no other way to treat God in life than his way, that the half gods will ruin us at last and that the half gods will not go until the real God comes. We know the difference between Jesus Christ and ourselves, between his matchless life and ours. We make all too much of that difference. We exalt it into a doctrine and make our own lives thin and futile by [ 206 J The Interpretation of Life the process. I have many wishes for the youth of my generation. Their faces, as I] have seen them in col- lege and conference through a lifetime, are ever before me. Their voices are in my ears. But I have no wish for them that surpasses, none that equals, my wish that the youth of this day shall stand close up to Jesus Christ as he stood in that synagogue, that God may be to them in fullest possible measure what God was to him. We need not be afraid either of mysti- cism or supernaturalism. Nor do we need to fear to imitate Jesus as far as we may. Once it was believed that no one could see God and live through the experi- ence. In this better day which Jesus brought we know that no one can live without seeing him. There is no other basis for personal life. There is no other level than this level upon which Jesus stood. We may not be big enough or brave enough to stand with him, but having seen him there we know that there is no other place to stand. On those heights he stood to interpret his life, to declare its purposes, define its spirit and relations. If he had stood or tried to stand on any lower level his life would have been lost, all life would have been lost. We see that for him. We must see it for ourselves if our own lives are to be redeemed from the things that destroy them. II The second thing that strikes us as we study this scene is that Jesus was acutely aware of his relation to the world’s deep need. This New Testament is an inexorable book. When you begin to read a story you are forced to read clear on to the end of it. You cannot stop with the spec- [ 207 ] The American Pulpit tacle of a burning bush, a curious phenomenon on the landscape. There will come a voice out of the bush before the story is concluded, and a duty, a conflict with Pharaoh, and the long hard task of emancipat- ing a race of slaves. You cannot stop just with a per- sonal interest in getting eternal life as an additional possession. The inquiry for that is not fully answered until the inquirer gets adjusted to his other posses- sions, sees the faces of the poor, feels the grip of other men’s needs, and catches step with that sandal-shod man walking through service and sacrifice toward Cal- vary. You cannot stand on these heights in Nazareth with Jesus while the Spirit of God falls on him and the anointing comes like the favor of God unless you will go on to the redemptive service to the deaf, the blind, the poor, and the prisoner. FROM PRIVILEGE TO SERVICE You cannot stop to enjoy the transfiguration splen- dors, or build booths for permanent residence on the high hill where that glory shines. What happens there is too near the foot of the hill where evil spirits of many sorts are destroying priceless youth while im- potent disciples stand around in helplessness and prob- ably futile talk. Emotions that exhaust themselves in being felt, admirations that end in admiring, raptures that go no further than exaltation of feeling, all stop far short of their full reach. The New Testament car- ries you, when it gets a grip on you, straight on with Jesus. He knows the way from privilege to service. He keeps the doctrine of election straight and true. He sees the path from anointing to sacrifice. His emo- tions are not aesthetic but ethical and redemptive. [ 208 ] The Interpretation of Life He knows the logic of life and does not falter or fail to follow through to life’s vital conclusions. And again I know no way to go with Jesus at all except to go the whole way with him, first mile and second mile and all the uncounted miles over which he goes. I see no way in any age, our age or any other, to keep fellow- ship with him and avoid his kind of fellowship with those others, the blind, deaf, prisoners, lepers and the like. They all go together, he and they. If we go with him we must also go with them, and with him to them. How human those sentences are! One can easily imagine the tones of the Master’s voice and the look on his face as he spoke them. There was nothing pro- fessional or formal in the way he quoted these noble old words. He knew their immediate application to his own life and experience. He knew where they would lead him. We know where they did lead him. Why do we not go on to say that we know where they are leading him? For is he not Toiling up new Calvarys ever, With the cross that turns not back. It is easy also to imagine what we would have done if we had been present in the synagogue that day. Im- agined, hypothetical reactions to such scenes are very common with us. We have multitudes of heroisms and noble emotions as we view the distant scene. We are very positive about what we would have done if we had been present at Nazareth or elsewhere when those who were present were behaving in ways that seem very bad to us. For example, I like to think that if IT had been sitting or standing in the synagogue that [ 209 | The American Pulpit day, a young Jew knowing Jewish history and sensi- tive to the spirit of prophecy, I would have dis- cerned the meaning of this scene, and when Jesus re- peated these words and outlined this program for his life I would have leaped to his side to take my place with him, to share his life, to go any length with him. I like to think that I would have thrown my cap in the air, and would have disturbed the dull meeting by crying out to him: “If that is your program, if that is your spirit, I am with you, I am with you!” Of course, that is what I hope I would have done, what I know any young person ought to have done. It would have meant so much to me and so much to him. But in the long history of high matters like re- ligion, men’s reactions to such scenes as this are not very creditable or encouraging. Men are genuinely tested by their reactions to just such occurrences, their vital response to great utterance or significant action. Life has few tests that are severer than this. We are always nobly responsive to other speeches than those we are hearing, other calls than those that are flash- ing before our eyes or sounding in our ears. But our ears are dull to the call of Christ to us, our eyes are closed to the open vision of Christ given to us, our hearts dull and fat, heavy and complacent in the face of his current, living, redemptive activities and rela- tions. I know what I ought to have done if I had been at Nazareth that day, but in the face of my own conduct in other Nazareths, and the conduct of other men in history, I am compelled to carry my shoes in my hand and bow my head on my breast. Some day he will get a group, large or small, who will stand with him on his high levels, and walk with him in his re- [210] The Interpretation of Life demptive ways, and when he does, this scripture will be fulfilled afresh. SECONDARY DEVOTION In his redemptive ways, I have said, for there is where we must go with him. This word he quoted, and personally applied to himself, was from that Old Testament evangelist who most clearly saw the figure of the redeemer. He had no illusions as to his place or work in the world. He was not come to be simply an oculist or an aurist or a prison reformer; not simply to be a wonder worker or a wonder speaker. He knew why he was called Jesus. And upon every day of his life, every act and every event of his life, the light of his own cross was falling. His cross did not cast a dark shadow upon a bright world. It cast a bright figure upon a dark world. There is no way to stand with him except his way. Men can stand away from him, ad- miring his teaching, praising his character, exalting his deeds of mercy and help. Men are doing it every- where. They are making a shibboleth of Jesus, an imposing and logical orthodoxy about him. Probably never in Christian history was there a larger body of secondary devotion and secondary rela- tion to Jesus Christ than at this hour. It is not all meant to be secondary but no relation or devotion to him can be primary that lacks the redemptive quality. We cannot get a Christian civilization except by the way of spiritual redemption. “If we aim at reform or civilization, we shall fail. If we aim at redemption, we shall win.” Jesus never got away from the primary position. He had not two centers for his life. And just as I can see no other level for life than Jesus’ [211] The American Pulpit level, so can I see no other center for life than Jesus’ center. We can never stand in true relation to him except by standing all the time where he stands, at the redemptive center of life and personality. It is the habit of many good men to do this part of the time, in weeks or months of special relation in the year. But Jesus was not the redeemer just on occa- sion or for part of his work. He was the redeemer all the time, the redeemer for all men, the redeemer for all groups, the redeemer for all nations and races. It is this at last that sets him in a class by himself, his God above all other gods. It is this that gives us our message to modern society and to the non-Christian world. “There is no other name” than the name given to him before his birth. This purpose of redemption is what gave unity to his life, that set its key, determined its direction, created its spirit and made it all of one piece. This gave direction to his earthly life as it began, and kept it coing steadily ahead to its end. This redemptive passion kept his whole life together in an evenly bal- anced, unbroken unity. This keeps it one through the centuries. What he was yesterday he is today and will be forever. ‘The redemptive passion of Christ did not begin at Nazareth and end at Calvary. From before the foundations until this hour the Redeemer works. It was this that he was thinking of that day in the village church, surrounded by his neighbors and relatives. He could not keep his touch with all life by getting off the true center of his own. He was tempted over and over to become a reformer, a wonder worker, a superior teacher, but he kept on the high level and at the true center through it all, the redemp- [ 212 | The Interpretation of Life tive level and the redemptive center. And there is no other way. Let us close as we began with that Nazareth scene before us, with those matchless accents in our ears, with that supreme figure standing there on the heights and at the center. He was not speaking with detach- ment or with academic composure. These old words that he was quoting had him by the heart and were carrying him out to the hard, fruitful, bitter, glorious years. I think they still have him by the heart and are carrying him on in these troubled days. There does not seem to be any other place than a place with him, on those heights and at that center. No wonder the Father said more than once, “In him I am well pleased.” No wonder that at the end he could look his Father in the face and say: “I have finished the work thou gavest me to do.” Shall we not move up to him saying: “Here we stand. We can do no other. God help us. Amen.” [ 213 ] : ey" ay iy Shy 5 Ht Ha ane AF sence ty im ti vt vA . pis aiy ake cl a ~*| ieee A ;g ip i, Bt ne heal i» Sve BEA a on : aan i \ biel 124 las) ; Mie Ai etry e Ay Hanes t , h a Ni aie ih es ve 4 ba } h ae Ai Marx ALLISON MaTTHEWS Dr. Matthews has the distinction of being pastor of the largest Presbyterian church in the United States. Prob- ably there is no church in the country of white Protestant connection that outnumbers it. The First Presbyterian Church of Seattle includes 7,500 on its membership list. By his genius for organization as well as his power in the pulpit Dr. Matthews has extended the ministry of his church into some twenty-five branches which, although carrying on independent services and Sunday schools keep their affiliation with the mother church. In denominational affairs and the church at large Dr. Matthews has taken a con- spicuous place. His activity in general assembly and in various movements growing out of theological controversy has made him one of the half dozen most influential guides . of conservative procedure in not only his own but other denominations. He was moderator of the Presbyterian general assembly which met at Louisville in 1912. Dr. Matthews is a Southern man by birth, and by resi- dence up to the time he became pastor in Seattle. Born in Calhoun, Georgia, he received his academic education at Calhoun, which also honored him with the degree of D.D. Whitman College conferred the degree of LL.D. upon him in 1908, and Huron did the same in 1912. He began to preach at nineteen years of age, being ordained in 1887 and becoming pastor of the Presbyterian Church at Cal- houn, Georgia, where he remained for the following five years. From Dalton, Georgia, where he remained for three years, he was called to Jackson, Tennessee, where he re- mained for six years, accepting in 1902 the call to his pres- ent church in Seattle. As an avocation he studied law and was actually admitted to the bar in Tennessee in 1900, [ 215 ] The American Pulpit though he never engaged actively in practice. He is the author of Gospel Sword Thrusts. A vigorous and positive contender for his convictions, Dr. Matthews holds the esteem and affection of those whom he opposes in debate. In the crisis faced by his denomination in 1925 he was appointed on the committee of fifteen to bring forth some recommendation tending to heal the wounds of controversy and to further the unity of the church. [ 216 | THE VIRGIN BIRTH OF JESUS By Marx A. MatrHews “The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.”’—Isaiah xl, 3. “Behold, I will send my messenger, and he shall prepare the way before me: and the Lord, whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to his temple, even the messenger of the covenant, whom ye delight in: behold, he shall come, saith the Lord of hosts.” —Malachi 11, 1. “Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.”—Isaiah vii, 14. The most important subject that could possibly be discussed is the virgin birth of Jesus. It is the battle ground of belief, and within the confines of its discus- sion are to be found two contending forces—the enemies of God, and the children of God. The enemies of Christ are making an attack upon his virgin birth, they are trying to discredit the records. It produces confusion in the minds of the people, and prevents them from accepting, believing in, and being benefited by this great truth. God’s children know, experi- mentally as well as historically, the truth of the doc- trine. They have experienced its blessedness, and are not shaken in their faith nor in their conception of the truth. You ask, Why is it the battleground and why is it [217] The American Pulpit so important? It is not important to the saint, you might say, because he is redeemed; but it is important to the saint in his message to the lost world; and it is absolutely essential to the unsaved man because he cannot be saved if the virgin birth is not true. If the statements as to the birth of Jesus are not infallible, and if he was not born of a virgin, then it is impossible for one to be saved. Therefore, the whole plan of salvation is involved, and the salvation of men is at stake in this fight. I am very glad the fight is on, that the battle is raging, because, in the days gone by, while we were asleep Satan sowed tares in Christendom, and there are those in the visible organization, known as the church militant, who are unsaved. They are, no doubt, rationalists, direct agents of Satan. If they want to fight God, and if this doctrine is the battle- ground, then, when we have finished with them, if they have any conscience at all, we hope they will leave the visible ecclesiastical organization and go out into the world into the synagogue of Satan and stay there, for they most assuredly have no place in the real church of Jesus Christ. Now, there are two great truths that must be taken into consideration in discussing the virgin birth of Jesus: First, it is prophetically stated. Secondly, it is historically stated. I In the Old Testament it is prophetically stated, pro- phetically outlined, prophetically promised, and pro- phetically determined. Now, let us see if that is true. One great writer on the subject has said that God put this prophetic truth as a blazing star between the [ 218 ] The Virgin Birth of Jesus cherubim when our first parents were driven out of the garden. Prophetic utterance states that the seed of woman shall bruise the serpent’s head. That is a prophetic statement of fact, and promise. It must come true or fall of its own weakness. Is it false, or is it a fact—which? Will it be possible for the seed of woman? Which woman? is the great question. We find prophecy begins to define which woman—not only the seed of woman, but the seed of Abraham. Prophetic utterance says the seed of woman, the seed of Abraham; the seed of Isaac. And then the line begins to lengthen. We find that Isaac had two sons, and we wonder through which one this prophetic truth is to come. Scripture states it shall be the seed of Jacob. Again, we find that there must be more explan- ation, because Jacob had more than one son, and we find that it must be through the seed of Judah, the fourth son. We get a little closer and there must be another definition. It must come through the seed of Judah, through the seed of David, that this seed of the woman must come in unbroken line and through this royal family in unbroken steps. And in these unbroken steps, and through this unbroken line pro- phetic history, prophetic promise and prophetic truth portray that he must come through this regal family, and from him this royalty will never depart. The divine heir who is to be born must be born in Bethlehem—Bethlehem of Judah and of David. This was the divinely selected spot. He must have his fore- runner; and he must be called Immanuel, which when literally interpreted means, “God with Us—Divine- Human Being.” That is the meaning of Immanuel— Divine-Human. [ 219 ] The American Pulpit Those prophetic utterances are there, and no Jew on earth can deny them, and no one who can read history can deny them—they are there. Well, they must be there for a definite reason. They must have been placed there by almighty God. They were super- naturally written, they reveal a supernatural fact and a supernatural line, for the purpose of bringing a super- natural person into existence. What are you going to do with such prophetic utterances? Prophecy, infalli- ble prophecy, states that a virgin shall give birth to this person I have outlined in this line of genealogy. What are you going to do with it? You cannot destroy it. Some men have tried to. They begin, as one great writer has said, by saying that it is one of the most unscientific statements ever made. Why? Because it is in violation of all formulas, doctrines, etc., that can be taught. Now is it possible for this individual to come into existence with only a mother? We grant, for the sake of argument, that it is just exactly as they say—the most marvelous statement ever made and the most marvelous fact ever announced. But scrip- ture does not state that Jesus Christ was without a father. All history recognizes Mary as the mother. The battle is around the question of the fatherhood of Jesus Christ. The scientific world says to speak of the virgin birth is to speak of an unscientific fact. We frankly say to you that, so far as the scientific method is con- cerned, it does contradict it. But that is not the reason he is of virgin birth. Thank God, it is an unscientific fact in the language in which you use the term. You have proved the case. But scripture, my friends, does not so state it. You say it is unthinkable, as certain [ 220 | The Virgin Birth of Jesus writers have said it is, that one child could come into existence without a father. Scripture does not say that he came without a father. Scripture specifically states who the father is. But, you say, this doctrine we are now discussing is a useless doctrine. It is the most important doctrine ever presented to the people. Why? First of all, the credibility of scripture rests on this doctrine. The whole question of the credibility of scripture rests on this doctrine. Why? Prophetic utterances state that he would come in the line of which I have spoken. Prophetic utterances state he would come of a virgin; prophetic utterances said he would be born in Bethlehem; prophetic utterances said he would be called Immanuel. Now is that true, or is it false? If it is true, then all scripture stands as the infallible word of God. If it is false, the whole Bible is false. Is that not important? Again, some one has said the scripture does not announce his paternal side. Scripture does nothing else but announce it. What does scripture say? It says that he is the son of God; states, all the way through, that he will be born of a virgin and will be the son of God. Scripture announced his father’s side. Scripture stated that the Holy Ghost conceived his body in the womb of the virgin. But, you say again that scripture seems to contradict. Luke traces his genealogy through the mother. Matthew traces it through the father. Matthew speaks of the legal father in legal terms of the census, and speaks of Joseph back through the line I have mentioned—all the way back. Luke speaks of it through Mary, David, and all the way back. But, one critic has said, there seems to be a question. Well, when Joseph is men- [ 221 ] The American Pulpit tioned in one place as having two fathers, Matthew names the father who begat him and his father-in- law. Luke traces through Mary and recognizes the son-in-law position. Scripture mentions both. Why? In order that it might be possible for anyone to trace the genealogy of Christ. Scripture states the relation- ship of Joseph as a son begotten and a son-in-law, but nowhere does scripture. speak of Joseph as being the father of Jesus Christ. There is not a line in scripture that has ever intimated that Joseph is his father. But every line speaks of Mary as the mother. What else? Every line in scripture in which the statement is made speaks of God as being the father of Jesus Christ. Not only did God say that he was the father, but he never said or intimated anything else. Why did not God on the day of the baptism say: “He is the son of Joseph, in whom I am well pleased?” Scripture speaks of the only-begotten son of God, the first-begotten son of God. Again: Jesus Christ at no time mentioned, or in any way intimated that he was the son of Joseph. He says he is the son of God, and never intimates anything else. There is not a single line anywhere in holy writ indicating that Joseph ever claimed to be the father of Jesus Christ. Some one is going to say—has already said—did not Christ say that he was the son of man? Yes; doesn’t scripture say that he was the son of man? Is it not admitted that he is the son of man? But it does not say any specific man. Why? And why does Jesus speak of himself as the son of man and the son of God? Is it possible for one to be the son of man and the son of God at the same time? Yes, if the virgin birth [ 222 The Virgin Birth of Jesus be a fact. That is the only way by which one can be the son of man and the son of God at the same time. But how? He must have a divine father and a human mother, and, by having a divine father and a human mother he is the son of God and the son of man. How? By that process which scripture shows forth—that like begets like. Is that not true? Is it not possible, if God touched the earth and made Adam, and touched Adam and made Eve, that the sovereign God of this universe could touch the womb of the virgin and con- ceive the body of Jesus Christ? That is the only way it could be possible for him to be the son of God and the son of man at the same time. When you speak of the virgin birth you are speaking of the great plan, for that is the way of the incarnation. But some one is going to say: “Then Jesus Christ did not come by generation.” He did not. He came by the extraor- dinary process of divine conception—conceived by the Holy Ghost. Now turn back to the question of the importance of this great doctrine. On the fact of the virgin birth rests the credibility of scripture. On the fact of the virgin birth rests the sinlessness of Christ. If you are going to bring Christ into existence with a human father and mother, if incarnation is to come about by the natural process of generation, then the son of man must come with a sinful body. But, being of a divine father and a human mother, his body being by divine conception and not by generation, he takes on himself the human form without inheriting, by generation, the sinfulness of nature. If he had inherited, then he could not have assumed sin. [ 223 ] The American Pulpit Again: the virgin birth of Christ makes it possible for Christ to be the redeemer, and it was impossible for a human being to be the redeemer. The Epistle to the Hebrews states that he was clothed with human form, that he was made flesh, that it was conceived for him for the purpose and in order that he, the son of God, might redeem men. There could have been no redemption if the virgin birth had not occurred. Oh, that precious truth! That God conceived for him a body that he might come into existence, born of a virgin, free from sin, and that he might stand before God possessing divine nature and offer sacrifice suf- ficient that men might be redeemed. Only God could suffer for you sufficiently to redeem you from sin. Only God in human form, incarnated by the conceiving power of the Holy Ghost, could vicariously die for you. So, not only is the credibility of scripture resting on the truth, but the redemptive work of Christ is resting on this truth. The sinlessness of Christ and his vicarious death rest on the truth of the virgin birth. Is it not worth fighting for? Extraordinary? Yes. It could not have been ordi- nary. Of divine origin, Christ could not have been merely human. Oh, it could not have been otherwise. The everlasting son of God was born of the virgin that he might take on himself our form and in that form die for us in order that we might live in his divine form for ever and ever. Oh, this blessed Christ, our everlasting redeemer, is doubly precious because of this fact. Will you take him as your Savior? He is yours if you will accept him. He came to save you. The supernatural son of God, supernaturally incar- [ 224 J The Virgin Birth of Jesus nated, supernaturally sacrificed, supernaturally raised, is supernaturally coming, will supernaturally gather you unto himself, because he is the son of God. Will you take him? “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.” [ 225 | LEN DLN na Va ee\ A Oy Lt reas Pepe ab ds, otis Ve tae rit ON ety NACHADaS nhs | Nha bak aA! ie Wa f ye ; “hed © Fig 7] y i La ive i Se, Lele thy bak Oey re ih ala ' ' has % WILLIAM Pierson MERRILL Dr. Merrill has come both by temperament and by force of circumstances into a position of definite leadership of the more liberal forces, not of his denomination alone, but of American Protestantism. And this without being in any sense a radical or ruthless modernist. Indeed, it is prob- able that the very moderation of his theological views fits him for the responsibility which his brethren recognize as belonging to him in the present state of the church. Soundly evangelical in his own convictions, he insists nevertheless upon the principle of liberty for the preacher as itself of far greater importance than correctness of theological opin- ion. To his mind the church can keep itself morally and intellectually sanitary only as it gives free play to the expression of truth as each teacher sees it, subject to the one unifying condition of loyalty to Christ. The Protestant principle he maintains is the liberty of testifying to the faith that is in the soul without dictation or repression from any human authority. In his book on The Freedom of the Preacher, Dr. Merrill has wrought out his thesis, not in its theoretical terms alone, but in terms which involve the actual practice of the preacher as the leader of a congre- gation and a member in the fellowship of a body of believers from whose tradition and prevailing views he may be com- pelled to dissent. The problem is delicate, as any fair mind must admit, but the principle at stake is vital for free Protestantism. As pastor of Brick Church on Fifth Avenue, New York City, Dr. Merrill may be said to have risen to one of the most influential pulpits in America. Along with his pulpit and parish ministry he has allowed his brethren to lay upon him many responsibilities of a denominational and general [ 227 ] The American Pulpit sort. Since 1915 he has been president of the board of trustees of the Church Peace Union established by Mr. Carnegie. Born in New Jersey, in 1867, Dr. Merrill was educated at Rutgers College from which he was graduated in 1887 with the A.B. degree, receiving his A.M. degree in 1890. In the latter year he was graduated with the B.D. degree from Union Theological Seminary, and has been the recipient of the honorary degree of D.D. from both Rutgers College and New York University. Previous to his Brick Church ministry he held two pastorates only—at Chestnut Hill Presbyterian Church, Philadelphia, for five years, and Sixth Presbyterian Church, Chicago, for the sixteen years between 1895 and 1911. His books are Faith Building, Faith and Sight, Footings for Faith, Christian Internationalism, The Freedom of the Preacher, Liberal Christiamty. CHRIST, OUR RELIGION By WILLIAM Pierson MirriLu “T am the way, and the truth, and the life.””—John iv, 6. It is natural to distrust one who thrusts himself forward. We instinctively discount the worth of one who says “I” very much. What then shall we think of Jesus? Did anyone else ever so confidently and calmly offer himself as important, even essential? Who else ever made so much use of the first personal pro- noun? Run over his great sayings: “I am the door’; “T am the bread of life”; “I am the light of the world” ; “T am the good shepherd”; “Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” Take this text: “I am the way, the truth and the life.” That is the same as saying, “I am religion.” What shall we think of one who talks in such fashion about himself and his own importance and place? It is an evidence of the divine nature and authority of our Lord Jesus Christ, more potent even than many of the proofs we rely upon most readily, that he could say such words, and be met, not with incredulity and derision, but with adoration. Let any other character in the history of the world, even the greatest and most honored, stand and say, “I am the resurrection and the life”; “I am the way, the truth, and the life’; “Heaven and earth shall pass away but my words shall not pass [ 229 | The American Pulpit away”; and we would pity him for his megalomania, or despise him for his vanity. Jesus says it, and we fall at his feet and worship. Somehow it does not detract an atom from his humility, his meekness and lowliness of heart. Two centuries ago and more, the Grand Monarch of that time said, “J am the state’; and while many bowed, and a few were impressed, thoughtful men knew it for the vain boast of a braggart. When he died, the people followed his body to the grave with curses. Within a hundred years his own nation rose, and gave a terribly effective answer, in blood and fire, to his boast. So men meet unfounded claims. But nineteen centuries ago, a carpenter from Galilee, with a little following of plain men, said, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life’; and the days of his birth and of his death are honored increasingly every year, and every year the number grows of those who look on him only to worship him as God. What other explanation is there than that Jesus was what he claimed to be? I I have stated that to say, “I am the way, the truth, and the life,” is equivalent to saying, “I am religion.” Is not that true? Suppose you could somehow go to all the religious people you know, and ask each one of them, “What is religion?” You would get a bewilder- ing variety of answers, for each soul has the inalien- able right to see God for himself, and to come to God for himself. But the great bulk of the answers could be readily classified under three heads. First of all there would be some who would answer, [ 230 ] Christ, Our Religion “Religion? Why, religion is a way. It has to do most of all with conduct, with what we do and how we live. The essential thing in religion is morality,” they would say; “religion is a way.” There is truth and value in that answer. Certainly there is no true religion that does not make a difference in the way one lives his life. Morality is inseparable from religion. A very large part of the message of the great prophets has to do with conduct, how men live. One of the earliest names for the Christian movement, before the name “Christian” was thought of, was, we learn from the New Testament, “The Way.” It was as if, looking at that little original company of Christians, people instinctively said, “They are different; they live and think and act in a special way.” It is a good answer, so far as it goes. A second group would be found, who would say, “Religion? Why, religion is a truth, or a system of truth. What marks the Christian is what he believes, what he holds to be true. Christianity is a doctrine above all.” There has always been, in the church, a large and strong group that would give this answer, as on the whole the best. There is truth and value in this view. Religion would not get far or do much, unless it had at its heart some great, sure beliefs, truths, about God and duty and the soul and life, about sin and salvation from sin. Those who say religion is a truth, give a strong and splendid answer, so far as it goes. A third group would answer, “Religion? why religion is life. It is not something put on, but some- thing put in, a spirit, an inner experience. It is ‘Christ dwelling in the heart by faith.’ It is ‘the life of God in the soul of man.’ It is, more than it is anything [ 231 ] The American Pulpit else, a spiritual experience.” There is truth and value in that answer. Religion is life—the whole Bible says so; the heart of man knows it to be true. Indeed, if one must choose among these answers, taking one and rejecting the others, perhaps he may better take this than either of the others. To many of us religion is life, even more than it is truth, or way, if we must choose. If we must choose; yes! But that is exactly what we must not do. To take any one of these three as an adequate answer is a mistake. Each is insufficient. They belong together. And Christ and his gospel put them together. This is the word of the Master, “the way, and the truth, and the life.” The saying is the more significant that it was given in answer to a request for one of the three things only. “How shall we know the way?’ asked Thomas; and Jesus answered, adding truth and life to way. It is as if he said, “You need more than way; you must have way and truth and life all together, fused, blended in one experience.” In fact, Christ our Master does two wonderful things for us in this saying. The first is to show us clearly that religion is not one of these, but all three; that each needs the others. Is not that the fact? Plain proof comes from seeing what happens to religion when any one of these ele- ments crowds the others out. There have been, and are, bodies of religious folk that have stressed and emphasized the idea that religion is above all the way; that its chief concern is with conduct. They have slighted truth and life; they are hazy as to doctrine, and cold as to spiritual experience. And there is a sterility, a deadness, a self-righteousness, a lack of [ 232 ] Christ, Our Religion warmth and passion, about them which makes us think of William Watson’s characterization of the church— Outwardly splendid as of old; Inwardly sparkless, dull, and cold; Her strength and fire all spent and gone, Like the dead moon, she still shines on. A religion which is only a way is not enough. Con- fucianism is only a way. Christianity is a way; but it is more, vastly more. Nor is it hard to find instances of religious bodies, or parties, that have held that religion is truth, so completely, so all but exclusively, that they have slighted and neglected the way and the life. There are men, and parties, there have been denominations and ecclesiastical bodies, so intent on doctrines as to identify their “little systems” with essential Christi- anity, and to belittle moral conduct and spiritual experience. And always there is an intolerance, a bitterness of spirit, a pride of opinion, a cold and barren dogmatism, about such parties and groups which bear irrefutable testimony to the defectiveness of their religious ideal. Mohammedanism isa dogma. Christi- anity is more, immensely more. Certainly it is not hard to find, in the many mystic cults and emotional fads that abound today, instances which prove how inadequate and dangerous is a relig- ion which is only life, without the truth and the way. There is life in these new forms of religious experience. There is spiritual fervor, zest, enthusiasm, a sense of being “in tune with the infinite,” of rhythm and har- mony. But along with it goes a cloudy, vague, shift- ing sense of truth, and an easy morality which con- [ 233 ] The American Pulpit fuses good and evil, and leaves conduct without an adequate conductor. There is a decisive proof that a religion of life, lacking truth and way, is shallow and unsafe, and, in the end, unsatisfying. No, religion must be all three—a Way, a Truth, a Life. A Christianity which is only the way becomes ethical culture; a Christianity which is only the truth becomes dogmatism; a Christianity which is only the life becomes mysticism. Each is imperfect. Just as water must have its two atoms of hydrogen and one atom of oxygen, and they must blend, or there is no water; so way, and truth, and life, conduct, belief, and spiritual experience, must blend, or there is no Christianity, no true religion. We need and must have, way, and truth, and life. The way lighted by the truth, and traveled by the life; the truth set aglow by the life, and opening into the way; the life, informed by the truth, and guided in the way—that is religion, as nothing less can be. But this is only one of the two great gifts our Lord bestowed upon us when he gave us this wonderful saying. It is a question if the second is not even greater. For he not only makes us see that religion is all three, way, truth, life, fused in one blessed and beautiful experience. He also shows where we may find all three, best expressed, and fused in one supreme object of trust, love, and worship, in himself. “J am the way, and the truth, and the life,” is his message. The earnest soul asks, where shall I find “the way”? How can I know what to do, how to live, a path to follow in my conduct? Countless books have been [ 234 ] Christ, Our Religion written on moral principles and ethical standards, giv- ing good counsel and guidance. But the real Christian goes, for light on how to live and walk, not to these books chiefly, but to the teachings and example of Christ. Better than to search out and attempt to apply the wisest books ever written on the way of life is to see Jesus, and to hear him say, ‘Follow me,’ and then to follow, simply, trustfully, without reserve, just doing every day what we know he wants us to do. He is the way. And he is the Truth. Our restless minds seek after truth through the ranges of the universe. Thank God for the freedom and boundless expanse of that quest! But where shall we find that sure, eternal rock of truth on which our souls may build for eternity, and know that they are safe and sure? What mighty efforts the masters and doctors, the creedmakers and teachers, have made, to find and set forth the truth. But, friends, you know, as I do, that no creed ever written, apostles’ creed, Nicene creed, Westminster confession, or any other, is the truth in such sense that the human soul can say, “Here I rest; I have found all I need.” Why, the most glorious, the most Christian, statements in the Westminster confession of faith are those in which it expressly disclaims its own infallibility. Where shall we find the truth? In Christ. He is the truth. You find in him, better than in any creed or learned book, the truth about God and man and duty and all that concerns life. Do I want to know the truth about God? I look to Christ, and there I see God, as I see and know him nowhere else. Would I know the truth about myself? I look to Christ, and there I am revealed, in my sin and selfishness, in my [ 235 ] 3 The American Pulpit poverty and weakness, and no less in my possible god- liness; revealed as I see in him what I am not but know I ought to be. Christ not only teaches the truth; he zs the truth. He not only tells us what man ought to be; he is what man ought to be. He not only tells me about God; he is God. He is the truth my soul and your soul needs. And, above all and gloriously, Christ is the life. It is in him that we find our souls renewed, our spirits quickened, our strength made sufficient for all things. The most wonderful fact about our religion is that it is a way of life, a power within, a dear and real com- panionship, a walking with Christ, the possession of a “life hid with Christ in God.” We rejoice in one who gave us precepts for conduct more beautiful and real and useful even than those the great prophets gave. We delight in one who gave us truth as no theologian has given it. But here is the joy and the glory of the Christian faith—that it gives us life, a vital experi- ence, a fellowship with God, a friendship deepening with the years, “Christ in us, the hope of glory.” iil It is here that Paul found the center and value of his religion. How he gloried in this Christ life within his soul! The cross meant much to Paul. But the cross without the resurrection would have meant little or nothing to him. “If when we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son; much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life.” So he always speaks—“Christ our life,” “Christ in me,” “Christ in the heart by faith.” That is what Chris- tianity meant to Paul, and means to us. [ 236 ] Christ, Our Religion “T am the way, the truth, and the life.” Christ is religion. Having him, we need nothing more. All that is essential to Christianity is in him. The most certain and glorious fact about Christian- ity is that it centers in a person. That is why it is a living religion, a religion that can adapt itself with equal ease to men of the first century, or men of the twentieth, or men of the two hundredth, if there shall be so many; to Greeks, Romans, barbarians, Anglo- Saxons, Chinese, Africans. That is why it grows with our growth, and fits the mind of today as perfectly as it fitted the minds of the first century. It 1s a relig- ion of personality, the religion of personality. There is something about personality which makes it indefin- able, yet sure, a grace, a charm, a truth ever-changing yet ever the same. Every one of us here present knows that his personality has developed and changed through the years, and yet is in deepest reality the same. Christianity is universal, the hope of the world, because it is a religion of personality. When I stood in the great Yerkes Observatory in Wisconsin, I said to the director, “I suppose you went down to solid rock to find a firm foundation for your telescope.” “No,” was the unexpected answer. “Solid rock is too rigid. It transmits earth vibrations. We made a huge pocket in the rock and filled it with fine sand, and on that we set our telescope.” So God has based our faith, our life, on what sometimes seems to over-rigid souls shifting sand, the grace of personality. It ultimately rests, not on ways laid out by Christ, or truths laid down about Christ, but on Christ himself, who zs the way, the truth, and the life. [ 237 ] The American Pulpit IV My friend, have you found him? If not, you are missing the way, and missing the truth, and missing the life. It is only in Christ that you will find the true and rich way of life. It is only when he lives in you, and you in him, that you will find the sure way, and the real truth, and the complete life. If only we would alt be content with him! If we would seek no other way, hold no other truth, desire no other life, than that which we find in Christ! How the things that divide us would fade away, shamed, from his blessed presence! How the great simple uni- ties and verities would stand out, like mountain peaks above sand-dunes! How we would love each other, and trust each other, and go on together along his way, in the light of his truth, in the power of his life, if we could forget ourselves and all else in him. The best gift that could come to the church of Christ as a whole, to every soul everywhere, would be such an experience as came to the disciples on the mount, when they opened their eyes, and “saw no man save Jesus only.” May we sosee him, filling the whole field of our vision, may we hear him saying to us with a divine authority that cannot be gainsaid, “J am the way, and the truth, and the life. Follow me! Live in me, and I in you!” Yea, through life, death, through sorrow and through sinning, He shall suffice me, for he hath sufficed. Christ is the end, as Christ was the beginning; Christ the beginning, for the end is Christ. [ 238 ] GrorGE CAMPBELL MorcAN In Dr. Morgan we have the case of an Englishman who has preached so widely and so much in America, and gath- ered here so great a following, that when his brethren came to choose the twenty-five leading American preachers hun- dreds cast their ballots for him, perhaps without thought of his British connection. Since 1897, Dr. Morgan has been repeatedly in this country. Indeed, he has crossed the Atlantic forty-three times since that date, first as a preacher at Northfield in response to D. L. Moody’s invitation, and afterward under many auspices in all the larger cities of the United States and Canada. Six years ago he came with the purpose of staying indefinitely. Making a home for himself at Athens, Georgia, he is being kept so busy with preaching engagements throughout the country that it looks as if he could not return to England if he wanted to. Dr. Morgan’s mission as a preacher he conceives to be that of the interpreter of the Bible. He knows the text of the Scriptures with a familiarity of which few preachers can boast. Born in Gloucestershire in 1863, he was educated privately in a deeply religious home and early was thrust into the task of mastering the Scriptures. His early habit was further stimulated in his maturing years by the con- tact of his mind with the prevailing free thought of that day, which called itself agnostic. That God could be defi- nitely and consciously known by profound and exacting study of the Bible, Dr. Morgan believed, and he devoted himself to such study with intense passion. From his first modest pastorate at Staffs, England, through Westminster Road Church, Birmingham, and New Court Chapel, Lon- don, he was known all the way as a Bible preacher. The [ 239 | The American Pulpit climax of his career, at Westminster Chapel, London, where he preached from 1904 to 1917, found him standing before great congregations on Sunday and on week nights, unfold- ing the Scriptures to eager hearts. To him the Bible is God’s word, and he early found that the best way to get at the divine meaning was to study the Bible itself rather than books about the Bible. His lectures and sermons, there- fore, do not characteristically stress problems of mere authorship and date of this or that portion of the Scripture, nor any other questions of mere criticism; he deals with the subject matter of the Book itself, making the text its own interpreter. He is author of many books, nearly all dealing directly with biblical themes. Among his books are God’s Methods with Man, The Practice of Prayer, The Hidden Years of Nazareth, The Ten Commandments, The First Century Message to Twentieth Century Christians, The Crises of the Christ, Evangelism, The Analyzed Bible (10 volumes), Messages of the Books of the Bible (4 volumes), The Bible and the Cross, The Parables of the Kingdom, The Mission- ary Manifesto, The Ministry of the Word, The Acts of the Apostles. Though all churches and communities have wel- comed Dr. Morgan’s ministry, he has been especially favored with many engagements and large congregations at Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church, New York, and at First Presbyterian, Cincinnati. Chicago Theological Seminary conferred on him the degree of D.D. in 1902. [ 240 ] THE MIND OF CHRIST By G. CampseLtt Morcan “We have the mind of Christ.”—I Corinthians, u, 16. This is one of the superlative apostolic claims for the church of God. It has nothing to say of the church’s organization, of its polity, or of its methods of service. It is concerned with what we may imme- diately describe as its philosophy or wisdom; with that whole of truth which the church is to express through its organizations, which is to be the criterion of its polity, and which ought to govern all its methods of service. The words were written to “The church of God in Corinth . . . them that are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called saints; with all that call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ in every place, their Lord and ours.”’ Such were those of whom the apostle was thinking when he said, “We have the mind of Christ,” and so the words apply to the whole church of God, at all times. Corinth, at the time when this letter was written, was one of the wealthiest of the Greek cities. It was a center of learning, a veritable haunt of the school- men. Its abounding wealth made it a seething center of corruption; while the professed leaders of thought were largely occupied in disputes as to terms, and views; and being so occupied, were contributing noth- ing of moral or spiritual value to the life of the city. [ 241 J The American Pulpit The whole of this letter shows that the church of God in Corinth had passed very largely under the baneful influence of its false wisdom, and to correct that was a part of the purpose of the apostle in writing this letter. The apostle declared that his preaching to them had had nothing in common with these things. One can- not read the letter without feeling the almost vibrant sarcasm in his references to these supposed leaders. He refers to the wisdom of these wise, these scribes, these disputers, and declares it to be a wisdom wholly of the world, and that therefore all its rulers were coming to naught. Moreover, he affirmed that there was no need for the Christian church to be influenced by this false wisdom. It possessed its own wisdom; it had a Chris- tian philosophy; that wisdom was a mystery, hidden in the past, but now revealed through the Christ and by the Spirit of God. Paul quoted from that great passage in Isaiah, “Things which eye saw not, and ear heard not, and which entered not into the heart of man, whatsoever things God prepared for them that love him,” and having made the quotation, he went on and said, “But unto us God revealed them through the Spirit.” There is a wisdom which the eye cannot detect, which the ear had never heard, which had never entered into the heart of man; but this wisdom has now been revealed to us by that Spirit who knoweth all things, and searcheth the deep things of God. That is the wisdom of the Christian church. She is not con- cerned with the discussion of the disputers, wrangling [ 242 ] The Mind of Christ over changing human opinions; her wisdom is expressed in its totality in the declaration, “We have the mind of Christ.” IS If these introductory sentences have proved of true value, they have led us to a great gateway through which we may look. I am conscious that no preacher can adequately deal with the theme. I shall be happy if that consciousness possess you. We may, however, stand at that gateway and looking through, consider the subject in broad outline. The mind of Christ. We must not confuse this word with another word of Paul, also of tremendous signifi- cance, which has connection with this, and yet must be considered separately. In writing to the Philippians he said, “Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus.” Here he says, “We have the mind of Christ.” Whereas the connection is vital, the sepa- ration is important. When in writing to the Philip- pians he charged them that they should have the mind that is in Christ, he employed a verb, the verb that describes an exercise of mind, emotional and inspira- tional. When he said, “We have the mind of Christ” he was using a common word, that is, common because often used; by no means common if by that you mean’ commonplace in any sense of inferiority. It was a word that means understanding, intelligence. We have the understanding of Christ, we have the intelligence of Christ; and the understanding, or the intelligence of Christ not as capacity, but as consciousness. The word implicates first, intelligent apprehension; and secondly, emotional response; and finally, volitional result. The [ 243 ] The American Pulpit mind of Christ is his knowledge, his consequent feeling, his resultant will; his conception of things as to the truth concerning them; as to the feeling produced within his personality by that truth; and as to his resultant choices and volitional activity. We must now remind ourselves of the limitation of our consideration, and its unlimited inclusiveness. The consideration is limited by the context, and by all the purpose of the apostle in writing. When we speak of the mind of Christ, if to us Christ is God incarnate, we realize immediately that the sum total of wisdom is involved in our phrase, for it pleased the Father that in him should all the fullness dwell corporeally. We believe that the consciousness of Christ was the con- sciousness of God; that the understanding and knowl- edge of Christ was the understanding and knowledge of God; that the emotional activity of the Christ was the emotional activity of God; that the volitional action, the willing and the choosing of the Christ, were the willing and the choosing of God. That includes the universe, but the reference here is not universal, save in implications and results. The limit of observation is the sphere of human failure. That is true of all the Biblical revelation. The Bible is the literature that deals with God’s activity in the midst of failure. The Bible never tells me what God would have done if there had been no evil in the uni- verse. The Bible never tells me whence evil came. The mind of Christ here is his mind as it came into the presence of human failure. That is why this wis- dom of the Christian church was foolishness to the Greek, and a stumbling-block to the Jew. The sign of the wisdom of the church is the cross. We have [2441 The Mind of Christ only the revelation of the mind of Christ in human history and human failure. The theme is finally unlim- ited, because this central fact includes and affects all things. Was not that in the mind of Paul when in his Colossian letter he wrote: “For it was the good pleas- ure of the Father that in him should all the fullness dwell; and through him to reconcile all things unto himself, having made peace through the blood of his cross; through him, I say, whether things upon the earth, or things in the heaven”? That is a great decla- ration, dark with excess of light. What then is the mind of Christ? From my own understanding and apprehension I find first in the mind of Christ, the consciousness of the beauty of holiness. I find secondly the consciousness of the worth and value of lost and degraded things. I find finally the consciousness of the glory of realizing the possibility of all lost things. These are the cardinal elements in the mind of Christ; elements mastering all his appre- hensions, inspiring all his emotional life, the reason for all his volitional activity. II The beauty of holiness. To him God was known completely, finally. In his great final prayer, praying out of the deepest thing in his own life, and also in all human life, he said: “This is life eternal, that they should know thee the only true God.” He knew God, and all things were by him seen for evermore in their relationship to God. Flowers that blossomed, birds that poised themselves on wings, little children at their play, all the affairs of life, he measured them all by his knowledge of God. And that means that to him [ 245 ] The American Pulpit for evermore the secret of beauty was holiness, and the issue of holiness was beauty. “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God,” a saying from his lips, the crystallization into a saying of his mind, his con- sciousness. He moved through all the days of his earthly life, those days of revelation for you and for me; and in teaching and in action, the deep underly- ing inspiration and passion of all was his knowledge of the beauty of holiness. That was so moreover, and supremely, in his going to his cross, and was vindicated in his resurrection. He not only knew God; he knew man. What a remarkable declaration that is that John makes, at the end of what we call chapter two, in his gospel. Quite incidentally it flashes upon the page, but what an essential revelation it is: “He needed not that anyone should bear witness concerning man; for he himself knew what was in man.” That is a great generic declaration. He knew man. I see him take his way through earthly life, always dealing with man as spiritual in essence, as capable of having positive and direct first-hand dealing with God. Therefore in spite of all his failure, he saw man as capable of redemption, worth saving at any cost. That is the meaning of the cross. It is first the vindication of the beauty of holiness, refusal to have any compromise with sin. It is secondly, a revelation of the value of man; in spite of all his sin, he is worth dying for. III Yet once more. The mind of Christ was therefore mastered by his consciousness of the glory of realizing the possibility of lost things. ‘He emptied himself.” [ 246 ] The Mind of Christ “He humbled himself.” “He endured the cross, despis- ing the shame.” “Therefore doth the Father love me, because I lay down my life.” ‘This authority received I from my Father.” I would speak with reticent rever- ence, and yet resolutely, when I declare that he counted , it his chief glory to empty himself for the rescue and ransom and redemption of men; that he might restore them to the beauty of holiness. “We have the mind of Christ.” I am saying nothing at all about the value of philosophic inquiries outside the realm of human failure. Let these inquiries be reverently continued, but the church of Christ has this revelation of his mind in that realm of human failure, as its deposit; she thinks with him, she feels with him, she chooses with him, the church knows the beauty of holiness, feels the possibility of lost things, chooses the call of the cross to rescue the lost things. That is the point of our halting. That is the point of our wonder, our wistful wonder. I am inclined to say, and some of you are inclined to say, all that is true of the church ideally, but not actually. If that shall be said, I shall reply it is so actually, if not actively. It is actively so when the church is loyal to her own deepest consciousness, and disloyalty to that consciousness destroys capacity. Here is the true test of church membership. Do I see things as Christ does? Am I really convinced of the beauty of holiness? Can I see in those faces battered and bruised and spoiled by all the sin and shame and sorrow, the possibility of the recovery of the image and likeness of God, and the recreation of beauty? Do I feel that the greatest glory that can come to a human being is that of sacrifice, in order to the recovery of lost men [ 247 ] ~» * The American Pulpit and women to the beauty of holiness? The sacra- mental host of those who share the life of the Christ, share the light, and share the love, and share the liberty. The light of Christ in the soul, is Christ’s vision of things; his thought, the beauty of holiness. The love of Christ in the soul is Christ’s feeling, emo- tion, passion; his conviction of the possibility of the recovery of the lost and debased. The liberty of Christ in the soul is Christ’s freedom for the exercise of voli- tion on the highest possible level: his franchise of self- emptying service. | That is the mind of Christ. The church has it, because she shares the life of Christ; because she is indwelt of the spirit of God, whose office it is first to take of the things of Christ and reveal them, and then to make them part of the personality of all her mem- bers. By that spirit her members are born; by that spirit they are indwelt; and in proportion as we are yielded to the energizing spirit, we have the mind of Christ. IV What then are the responsibilities of the church if these things be so? To proclaim his ideal, the beauty of holiness; to announce his confidence in the salvabil- ity of the lost; and to express his activity in sacrificial service. The church is called for evermore to proclaim his ideal, the beauty of holiness. Out of the heart and core and center of her wisdom, she is to declare that truth is the foundation of order, that justice is the law of life, that righteousness is the principle of action; and that there can be no beauty that lives and lasts [ 248 ] The Mind of Christ and flames and grows except the beauty that comes out of purity of heart. We must for evermore pro- claim the message of the mind of Christ, which is the message of the supremacy and sovereignty of holiness, in order to the realization of beauty. But she must also announce to men his confidence. A Christian man or woman cannot look into the eyes of a depraved man or woman, and think hopelessly. Oh, but there are cases! Yes, I know. I think I have seen the cases you have; but the measure in which this Christ is dwelling in me and masters me is the measure in which when all the light of hope seems to have gone out, I see that depraved soul radiant with possibility. That is Christ’s vision, and if I speak of the indi- vidual, I do not forget that the individual is for ever microcosmic. I declare today when I look out upon the world with all its turmoil, with all its strife, with all its reversion to past types of badness, I still sing. I still sing confidently. Because in Christ I see the possibility of the regeneration of the individual, I see also the assurance of the ultimate realization of God’s divine order. It was that outlook that made Milton say, and say so well, we Argue not Against heaven’s hand or will, nor bate a jot Of heart or hope; but still bear up and steer Right onward. It was that vision of the ultimate through the Christ that made Robert Browning sing of greeting the unknown with acheer. The consciousness of the Christ is the consciousness of the possibility of the recovery of lost things. [249 | The American Pulpit V Let me say very bluntly, and almost brutally: all that is very cheap, unless or until we come to the final thing. The mind of Christ is the mind that empties itself, or that constrains himself to self-emptying; and it is our duty today—our duty, hard word, harsh word —may I be forgiven, and dismissing it say it is our holy privilege to share with him the travail that makes his kingdom come. We are true to our philosophy, to our wisdom, to this great deposit, to this mind of Christ, when our lives are self-emptied, expressing themselves in service, service tinged with the fine red blood of sacrifice. | “We have the mind of Christ.” Would to God that we might be delivered from spending time either taking part in, or listening to the discussions of the rul- ers of this world; and that there might be given to us a new enduement of power, enabling us to go out to the world with this great mind of Christ; holiness as right relationship to God, the condition of all beauty and all order; the possibility of realization of God’s sreat ideal, in spite of the darkest outlook; and there- fore a consuming passion that nothing salvable shall be lost, if by the touch of our hand, or the ministry of our life at a sacrificial point, we can do anything to rescue. So moving out into the world, having the mind of Christ, yielded to the mind of Christ, revealing the mind of Christ, we shall serve our generation by the will of God. JOSEPH Fort NEwTon A Texan, born in 1876, Dr. Newton was educated at Hardy Institute, University of Texas, and the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary at Louisville, Kentucky, with later studies under Josiah Royce at Harvard. He was ordained a Baptist minister at the age of eighteen and preached while pursuing his college courses. His first pas- torate after leaving the seminary was at First Baptist Church, Paris, Texas, followed by a brief ministry in First Christian Church in the same city. In 1898, he became associate to Dr. R. C. Cave in the Non-sectarian Church, St. Louis. In 1901 he founded and was for eight years minister of the People’s Church, Dixon, Ill., removing to the Liberal Christian Church, Cedar Rapids, Iowa, in 1908, where, during a ministry of eight years, he became widely known as preacher and university teacher in the State University of Iowa, where he had a popular lecture- ship in English literature. Dr. Newton was a founder of the National Masonic Research Society and the first editor of its journal, The Builder. His book, The Builders, appeared in 1914, and has since been translated into four languages, including a Syrian edition published in the ancient city of Damascus. In 1909 he wrote David Swing: Poet-Preacher, a study of a teacher whom he greatly loved and from whom he learned much. The following year appeared Lincoln and Herndon. His first book of religious essays appeared in 1912 entitled, The Eternal Christ. While at the crest of success in his inland city far removed from the metropolitan centers whose pulpits are sounding-boards carrying their preachers to nation-wide and international fame, a strange thing happened. He was [ 251 ] The American Pulpit called to what is generally conceded to be the most con- spicuous pulpit in English-speaking Protestantism—that of the City Temple, London. The story of this call reads like a romance. The slender thread of initial contact between the far-away mid-western American preacher and the powerful pulpit of England’s metropolis, was the casual reading of a sermon of Dr. Newton’s in The Christian Cen- tury by an influential vestryman of the Church. Impressed, he wrote to Cedar Rapids asking for other sermons of Dr. Newton’s, and these sermons convinced the London com- mittee that a preacher of rare distinction, worthy of suc- cessorship to Joseph Parker and Reginald J. Campbell, lived in the distant city previously unheard of by any of them. He was called, and he accepted, beginning his min- istry almost at the moment of America’s entrance into the war. During the stressful days of the conflict, and for nearly two years after the Armistice, he preached in the spirit of an ambassador of good-will from the United States to Great Britain. In 1920 he returned to America as min- ister of the Church of the Divine Paternity, New York City, whose pulpit he resigned in September, 1925, to become rector of the Memorial Church of St. Paul, (Pro- testant Episcopal), Overbrook, Philadelphia. Dr. Newton does not regard his change of ecclesiastical relationship as a thing of significance, so far as his own convictions are concerned. He regards all the churches as parts of one church of Christ. In his theological attitude he would be described as a liberal evangelical. Of his later books mention should be made of An Ambas- sador, The Sword of the Spirit, The Religious Basis of a Better World Order, Preaching in London, Preaching in New York, Some Living Masters of the Pulpit, together with an annual volume entitled Best Sermons, two issues of which have appeared. Dr. Newton is a contributing editor to The Christian Century. He received the degree of Litt.D. from Coe College and that of D.D. from Tufts College. [ 252 ] THE PRESENCE By JosepH Fort Newton “Did rot our heart burn within us, while he talked with us by the way?”—Luke xxiv, 32. If the Bible were about to be destroyed, and we could save only one flying leaf, what page would it be? Each of us would try to snatch from the flames many a precious passage, scenes as familiar and holy as the home in which we were born, dear and blessed words that have in them the music of eternity and the echo of voices long hushed. It would be hard to select from among the great psalms—the twenty-third with its melody of faith like the Christmas shepherds, the fifty-first with its final candor of sin confessed, the one hundred thirty-ninth celebrating the everywhereness of God. How could we part with the fifty-third chap- ter of Isaiah, the story of the nativity, the sermon on the mount, and the great parables? What a host of hands would try to rescue the fourteenth chapter of St. John, to which millions have turned in hours of lone- liness or heart-break, and found help for today and hope for the morrow. But, honestly, if I could have just one page of the Bible, and only one, much as I should mourn my loss, I would keep the story of the walk to Emmaus. No other scene in the book of vision, whose leaves are for the healing of human hearts, is so perfect an example [ 253 ] The American Pulpit of that naturalization of the unseen which is the goal of religious insight and experience. It has a restraint, a dignity, a delicacy, and withal an unutterable grace, which give it every mark of authenticity, uniting the authority of beauty and the vividness of spiritual real- ity. Its human color and its awful yet tender dis- closure blend as naturally as the earth and the sky on the horizon. It never fails me. Weary, dejected, or beshadowed, I have only to turn to that page and there is a human accent, as of a friend standing near. The words thrill me. A radiant personality touches me. Ages of doubt and cruelty may lie between, but the light shines and there are footsteps by my side. There the great religious ideals become real; there theology melts into fellowship. Of all pages of the Bible none is more profoundly satisfying, none more luminously revealing. It is an epitome of Christian history and experience, in which the very genius of our faith finds focus. No theism, as such, meets our need. Philosophy is ice; religion is fire. Something deep in me approves the proposal to write underneath every painting of the crucifixion the one word—Adequate; and when to the cross we join the pilgrim Presence on the road to Emmaus, for me it “unlocks the gates of significance and sets free the fountains of strength.” It is enough: I know that behind the dark tragedy of life there is a great ten- derness, in its deepest shadow a brooding love, in its else bewildering enigma a divine meaning to which all facts contribute. The road toward the sunset is no longer lonely and forsaken; and at the end there is not a black silence, but a sacrament—the bread of blessing broken by a hand broken for me. 254 ] The Presence Hence the center of my thought today, as always, is the figure standing at the cottage door at Emmaus, in the falling daylight, making as though he would go further. One thing is certain: the living Christ and his continuing ministry in the lives of men created Christianity, and nothing else can keep it alive. Not his teachings, not his works of mercy, but he himself is the soul of our faith—his personality its revelation, his character its verification, his presence its inspira- tion. Not to his personal charm or his social idealism, but to his victory over death and his sway over the lives of men from the Unseen, must we trace the renascence of wonder, the heroic and glad enthusiasm, the new and haunting kind of goodness which marked the morning years of the church. No ideal, no vague and lovely memory can explain an experience so pro- found, a power so creative of the highest values, an influence so redeeming in the life of man. I The scene on the road to Emmaus is not a bit of ancient history; it is a picture of an abiding reality. The pilgrim Christ is an eternal contemporary of humanity, and the record of his faith is the story of his journey adown the centuries; a commentary on the words, “And he appeared unto them in another form.” In every age he has made his advent, revealing himself where the struggle for justice is fiercest, where human need is most piteous, where the tragedy of life is sharp- est; only, alas, he is not recognized, and men do not know who is leading them until he is leaving them—to continue his great errand in the world. Like the dis- ciples of old we would fain dwell in a cottage and keep [ 255 ] » The American Pulpit Christ with us; but that cannot be. He will abide with us long enough to interpret the scroll of prophecy and bless our bread of fellowship, but if we would abide with him we must be pilgrims too, following where no path is, save that made by his feet. Ever- more the wind is on the heath, and the great adven- turer beckons a laggard church to follow him in our new, clever, critical, agitated, erotic, wistful and hurry- ing age. Today, as at Emmaus, he is with us as the great Companion in a day of appalling spiritual loneliness, in the wake of a tragedy which has left us sad, dejected, and unhopeful. Never were human bodies so jostled; never were human souls so much alone. The poignant need of the human heart today, as each of us can testify, is for a friend stronger than man, more tender than woman, and more intimate than either, whom time does not change nor death take away. At times, in rare moments, the sea which washes between soul and soul—“unplumbed, salt, estranging”’—rolls away, and we meet spirit with spirit; but only for a brief time, so profound is our isolation. In every life there are hours when those nearest to us seem strange and far off, hours of temptation, of depression, of misgiv. ing, when no human hand ean help. Somehow, in a way known to no other, Jesus can enter, the doors being shut—a dear familiar friend—into the innermost cham- ber of our hearts. It is true; some of us know it as we know nothing else! Such a fellowship is especially needed in a day when we see that the purpose of life is the development of personality, and yet the tendency of thought is toward the impersonal. The ideas of God set forth in recent [ 256 ] The Presence philosophy leave us wondering whether he is more than personal, or less. For years, while the mind has been struggling with the difficulties of divine personal- ity, the heart has suffered a sad loss of rich, warm, vivid fellowship with God. Faith fades, prayer dies on our lips, religion falls to a lower octave in the presence of the impersonal, in a universe which has become so vast that every man by himself is lonely in it. Here, no doubt, is the explanation of the Christward tendency in poetry, drama, and fiction, so remarkable in the last twenty years. Here, too, lies the secret of the redis- covery of Jesus in recent scholarship, leading us through the Jesus of history to the mind of Christ— the one satisfying revelation. It is an awakening, in response to a deep need, of what Goodwin called “the instinct for Christ”; a passionate yearning for a vivid sense of the personalness of God. Happy are they who know, as all may learn in the fellowship of Jesus, if they be humble and obedient of heart, the truth of the lines: Whatever way my life decline, I felt, I feel though left alone, Thy being working in my own, The footsteps of thy life in mine. II Nay, more. Christ is with us today, as on the road to Emmaus, as the one adequate Interpreter of an otherwise ambiguous and unintelligible universe—its walls pushed back into infinity, its depths an abysm no mortal can fathom. The pastor of the Pilgrim fathers urged his flock, at parting from them, to expect further light to break forth from the word of God. In our [ 257 ] The American Pulpit day the word of God written in nature has been read in a way to dazzle and appall, revealing new light of truth and new shadows of mystery. It is a stupendous scene which science unveils—a universe vast, orderly, unfolding—now luminous and lovely, now dark and terrible, in which man seems as insignificant as a mote floating on the evening air, and as fleeting. What won- der that reflective minds are troubled about the value of life and the validity of its highest ideals. Their concern is not whether they are sinners, but whether there is anything or anybody in the universe who cares enough about us to even frown upon our sins. The number of wistful worshipers at the altar of the unknown God in our day is very great. Many of them remain in the church, as the thing to do, carrying on by the momentum of memory and habit; but they are sorely perplexed about the meaning of life. The Rus- sians feel more acutely than we do, perhaps—as the stories of Tchekhov reveal—the agony of life without God. Ideas become deceptive, ideals a mirage, work unmeaning monotony, and life a tedious tale ending in ennui, futility, and the fatigue of despair. Devices of escape are many. Some take refuge in music, others in revolt, others in daring speculative thinking, others in giddy-paced pleasure, and others in realistic novels, acrid and unhappy—the sternest, darkest and most pathetic of tales. In less degree the same mood is felt among us, deepened by the war and the ultimate issues evoked by its horror, as well as by the ever-present mystery of sorrow and suffering, tragedy and death, and the tedium of secular things. Such is the poignant need of the sure word of faith which Jesus brings us, alike by his life and his vision. [ 258 ] The Presence Now, consider. Out of the fathomless depths of the universe, amid a clash of forces we may not reckon, in the fullness of time there emerged the life, personality and character of Christ. He was neither alien nor exotic. He was one of us, growing up out of the heart of humanity, a babe, a boy, a man, browned by the sun, wet by the rain. Three swift and vivid years he taught and was put to death; but he still lives, of all world-powers making for the higher life the most potent and persuasive. What must the heart of the universe be out of whose bosom was born this shining figure of heroic moral loveliness! Years ago Meredith asked: Into the depth that gave the rose Shall I with shuddering fall? Surely not. Still less should we be terrified by dark thoughts of fatality, or blind fears we know not nor can name, in a universe out of which arose that life of love and pity and joy, revealing what God is and what man was meant to be. Midway in history he appeared, a man among men, living in purity, power, and poise, walking in liberty by the law of love, faithful and friendly, facing the worst and finding the best, as if to show us, historically, the meaning of life, and, prophetically, the goal toward which the whole process of life is moving. His advent marked a new era, dividing time into before and after —like the emergence of personality out of animality: not another man but another kind of man. In him life passed from selfishness to otherness, and love came to perfect flower, with the result that his per- sonality has acted thereafter as an elemental, trans- forming energy in the life of man. Like moral radium, [ 259 ] The American Pulpit in contact with him men of all ages, types, races and ranks have found that they are set free from inner dualism, and made masters of life and death by the moral power that is in him. Here is the reality, attested by ages of experience, in heroic love, in holy character, in human service, upon which our faith rests, to expound which some contrive theologies and others sing anthems. As Markham put it in a quatrain he sent me recently: Here is the Truth in a little creed, Enough for all the roads we go: In Love is all the law we need, In Christ the only God we know. No wonder our hearts burn within us along the way with such a pilgrim to keep us company, in whom the mighty aspirations of the heart find answer. Christ is the Yes of God to all the eager, aching, wistful yearn- ings of humanity, the token of our hope, the evidence of our faith. In him love finds fulfillment, and becomes the prophet of unknown revelations. Our lonely longings, our dim intuitions, our vague mysti- cisms—even our dark superstitions—become radiant at his touch. There is that in him which takes the stain of sin away, and heals the deep hurt of death, as sing- ing centuries testify. His words—so bright with color —have strange cadences in them, and far-sounding melodies, evoking old, half-forgotten memories of the soul and echoes of ineffable things. Here is one who knows the restless human heart and its mysteries; and about him are gathered, as he predicted, the weary and heavy-laden whom life has defeated, those who have culture without faith and knowledge without hope—the sick of soul, the palsied of will, and those [ 260 ] The Presence . who have learned the failure of success—seeking, as of old, the forgiving word, the healing hand, which makes them know that they may still hope, for the impossible is true! III There are three stages in the experience of Christ, and they are not unlike the three great periods of Christian history. In youth we are ardent rational- ists, lovers of logic, eager to measure the mystery of Christ with the tape-line of reason. Theology is thrill- ing, its majestic conceptions fascinate us. It is like the five formative centuries, in which the issues of faith were fought out and thought through in a fash- ion hardly equaled since. Then it dawns upon us that a man may believe all the creeds and not be a Chris- tian; may believe in the resurrection of the body and yet be dead of soul. Slowly, through the teaching of sorrow and the deepening of life, we are drawn into the mystic way, urged by something hitherto unknown in our nature. In company with the shining ones we follow an inward path, finding new wonders in the fellowship of Christ. It is like the middle ages over whose long still years there hung a nimbus of romance, and out of whose broodings there grew personalities fragrant with a wondrous aspect: a Francis preaching to the birds, an a-Kempis “in a little nook with a little book.” It was the poetry of faith, and it brought a bit of heaven to earth. At last, by a process untraceable, one comes to find the highest wisdom, the deepest joy, the sum of the duty and discipline of life, and the ideal of its dedica- tion, in the words: ‘Follow me.” Ever the reason [261 ] The American Pulpit toils to fathom the revelation of God in Christ. Ever the mystic quest goes on. But life becomes simpler, more real and rewarding, at once easier and harder, more complex in its demands yet more compelling in its persuasions, as we seek to make the will of Christ our own. It is like the practical, realistic, fact-loving, social age in which we live today; and as the ages agone found in Christ satisfaction for their needs—finding him where he found them—so our age will find in “the Son of Fact” the supreme realist it seeks. Alike to mystic, rationalist and ritualist comes the challenge, “Tf any man will do the will of God he shall know of the teaching.” And the refrain echoes in every heart: “Why call ye me Lord, Lord, and do not the things I say.” For such an adventure we need all inspiration—mystical communion, lofty worship, noble thought—but these must issue and bear fruit in the union of those who love in the service of those who need. Once more, as at Emmaus on a sacramental eventide, the living Christ makes as though he would go fur- ther; and in that adventure lies the way out of the muddle into which the world has wandered. No timid, tepid Christianity is equal to the demands of our age. Old issues are dead, old sectarianisms are obsolete. It is anew world in which we live, with new insights, new outlooks, and we need an altogether other dimension of faith more magnanimous, more heroic: the higher unity of things which differ, and “the eye of a fresh mind upon our tangled time.” There must be a greater faith, in which the vision of the mystic and the skill of the scientist shall unite in a new syn- thesis of insight and endeavor. Science gives us facts [ 262 ] The Presence and laws. Christ gives us meanings and values. These two must work together in a fraternity of fact and faith, love and law, if we are to have a triumphant life. One panacea after another has been tried and found wanting. Something deeper, more daring, more creative and comprehensive, is needed. Let us give ourselves to it, following him who is the Life that inter- prets life, until the day is ended, And without a screen at last is seen The Presence in which we have always been. Half a life ago Solovyof, a Russian seer, wrote an apocalypse in which he forecast the final battle between materialism and spirituality—the ultimate issue of his- tory. Slowly, in his vision, the world divides into two fundamentally hostile camps, on one side Christ, on the other anti-Christ. A final effort is made to com- promise, as in the days of Constantine, but, fortu- nately, it fails. A dire crisis ensues, a desperate battle shakes the world; and in the depth of that dark night the church, so long divided into sects, is welded into one fellowship. In the end the hordes of anti-Christ are overwhelmed at Armageddon; but not until Jew and gentile are found fighting side by side, defending the eternal mysticism by which man lives, singing “the song of Moses and the Lamb!” Is it a fancy or a prophecy of the things that lie ahead? Shakespeare is dead, and will not come To question from his Avon tomb, And Socrates and Shelley keep An Attic and Italian sleep. They will not see us, nor again Shall indignation light the brain J 263 ] The American Pulpit Where Lincoln on his woodland height Tells out the spring and winter night. They see not. But, O Christians, who Throng Holborn and Fifth Avenue, May you not meet, in spite of death, A traveler from Nazareth? [ 264 J Merton StacHuer RICE Few men have looked upon their pulpit ministry as a higher ministry than the office of a bishop. But it is gen- erally recognized that at the last two general conferences of the Methodist Episcopal Church, the pastor of the Metropolitan Methodist Church of Detroit could have been elected to the episcopal honor had he not decisively dis- couraged the activities of his friends. Dr. Rice is a preacher, primarily and instinctively a preacher; and his love of preaching to a flock of his own, from Sunday to Sunday, rather than to various flocks in the itinerating ministry of a bishop, is so strong in him that it is doubtful whether he would be fully happy were he to exchange his pulpit throne for the bishop’s chair. Be that as it may, all won- der at his hesitant attitude toward the proffer by his breth- ren of a bishop’s title will immediately vanish if one looks at the stupendous work in Detroit of which he is the head. Metropolitan Church is just completing an edifice on North Woodward Avenue costing a million and a half dollars. A marvel of architectural art, it 1s the last word in variety and adequacy for housing a modern church’s multifarious activities. Nothing appears to be left out. All this is a testimony and tribute to the twelve years of Dr. Rice’s leadership of that particular flock. ‘Flock’ is too modest a word, perhaps. It is nothing less than a throng that waits on his ministry on Sunday morning and evening. His popu- larity is city-wide. No great name worn by some imported preacher from outside Detroit can be counted on to draw so huge a crowd at the climax service of the holy week series as can the oft-tested and proved name of Dr. Rice. His preaching is virile, forthright, without airs. There is a touch of Talmage in him, yet entirely without those bizarre [ 265 } The American Pulpit effects which Talmage loved to produce. Perhaps he is more like the late Bishop Quayle, who was his friend and whose mantle seems to have fallen upon Dr. Rice. The sermon spread before us in these pages is typical. It is more restrained than was Quayle’s preaching. The rhetoric is not so tropical, the emotion not so riotous. But that it is charged with tremendous emotional content even the dullness of the printed page cannot conceal. Dr. Rice car- ries On an inspiring tradition in homiletic art which if it -should slip from our hands would leave the pulpit and the church poor indeed. He was born in Kansas in 1872. Baker University gave him his education and three degrees—B.S. in 1892, M.S. in 1896, and LL.D. in 1920. Upper Iowa University gave him the D.D. degree in 1901. He studied law at the University of Michigan, 1893-4, but abandoned his purpose of prac- ticing law and entered the Methodist ministry. His first “charge” was at Westphalia, Kansas. Subsequently he was pastor at Fontana and Ottawa, Kansas; West Union and Towa City, Iowa, and Duluth, Minn. He went to Detroit in 1913. His books are Dust and Destiny, The Expected Church, Preachographs, and The Advantage of a Handicap. [ 266 ] THERE IS NOTHING By Merton 8. Rice “And (he) said to his servant, Go up now, look toward the sea. And he went up, and looked, and said, There 1s nothing. And he sad, Go again, seven tumes.”—1 Kings xviii, 48. “And (he) said, There is nothing. . . . And he said, Go again.” That furnishes the point of real interest to me in this famous story. It is a quick- drawn sketch of faith, faced by a lack of evidence, which refuses to allow such a report to be final. There is always an illogical conduct before faith. It is for- ever drawing its conclusions just beyond its observa- tions. “There is nothing.” ‘Go again.” These are days of expert observation. Never were men so sure of what they could see, or could not see, as they are now. Their report is set in a confidence of finality too. When it is in, there is no appeal. The scientific report has a bearing that brooks no dispute. It has presumed upon its accuracy with a conduct that has made marked impression upon religion, and the “oo again” response of faith has not had a very large recognition of late. “There is nothing,” has sounded so conclusive. There is a very clear call today for a faith that will be content to be just faith. We need a vision in religion that will catch the true testimony of an “evidence not seen.” Something that will vin- [ 267 ] The American Pulpit dicate the great apostle’s definition of what faith really is, is the prime need of the hour. One of the very interesting, and surely one of the most indicative-of-the-times books, that has been pub- lished within the recent past, carries the very apt title, “A Faith That Enquires.” It is in every way a strong book, and always in defense of a faith that eagerly hunts for a reason for. its position. It goes inquir- ingly. It not only is not afraid, it is determined rather to know whatever is to be found out. The treatment is purely modern in its interpretation of faith, and puts that wholesome flavor upon the con- duct of religion today which it must never allow to be questioned in a scientific age, namely, that there can be no fear in facts for true faith. Religion can never be built up on the crumbling idea that anything true can ever hurt it. A policy of concealment is not permissible in genuine Christian evidences. There is, however, something unsatisfactory in such an attitude of faith. There seems ever to be an ele- ment of suspicion, and a lack of genuine confidence in the manifest eagerness of such inquiry. It is a mod- ern edition of the apostle Thomas, who doubtless pro- duced a very fine result in Christian service, and helped disclose some valuable evidence by what he required, but he never wrote his own faith in the highest terms, as long as he stood with shaking head, declaring that he would never believe in a resurrected Lord until he could actually thrust his bold fingers into the torn, tender palms of him whose death had broken down his whole interpretation of what the true Messiah should be. There is a finer conduct of faith than inquiry. It is not at its best with a question-mark for its guide. [ 268 ] There Is Nothing There is an uncompromising confidence that charac- terizes faith at its best. “There is nothing.” It is the short, conclusive report of the servant of Elijah, who had been sent out to a favorable point of observation, to look for a cloud in a sky that had been so long cloudless that any sort of a cloud would be news. There was not much enthu- siasm in the servant as he went, for he could see enough of the sky from where he was to settle his own con- clusions. It was a quite listless sort of a report he brought back that time, that was to prove but the introductory report, as he said, “There is nothing.” He was startled at the sharp answer his report stirred, as his master replied, “Go again.” The attraction in this incident to me lies in our use of it as an approach in studying the content of faith. The situation is tragic in liability. Faith stands chal- lenged by facts, a thing not uncommon, and a liable essential in the victory of every soul’s faith. Can I hold my faith when all signs fail? That is a fair ques- tion. It isallright to inquire. Send the servant out to look. Tell him to look well too. But don’t hold your faith with so slight a grip as to endanger it if the in- quiry brings a negative report. Faith may need the challenge of a contradictory report. I am sure the very fact of present-day emphasis on inquiry is to prove to be the refining fire of a finer faith that shall come out of our super-inquisitive tendency and show itself pure and permanent in its ministry. Written all around this text I have chosen, is the tragic story of one of the most crucial periods of Elijah’s life. For more than three years the people of suffering Israel had turned their sun-browned faces [ 269 ] The American Pulpit up to a brazen sky hoping for some sign of rain. The earth had been swept clean of all vegetation by the hot breath of a continuous drouth. The springs and pools had all been licked dry. The King had given Obadiah his servant, and the governor of his house, a special commission to seek out all fountains and pools —peradventure grass enough might be found to save the lives of the horses and mules of the royal stables. Day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, the skies refused to bring relief. You who have never experienced a real drouth of even one season cannot imagine the torture there is in looking upon parched fields. The flying, choking clouds of dust! The dead rustle of the dried foliage shaken by hot winds. The panting cattle, driven long dis- tances once a day for a drink in some wasting pool of a one-time river. The unflecked dull sky that burns with the concentric rays of a merciless sun. The people, at first angry with Elijah, began to wear down to distressful appreciation of their helplessness. Distress has often been a constructive process in reli- gious inclination. It seems so easy to forget God while brooks run full, and flowers bloom to fresh fragrance, and rich crops hang heavy afield. It may be a neces- sary process in growing character, to drive folks, at times, out of their little pastures of selfishness into which their prosperity has blindly led them. Knock a man’s earth props out from under him, and see how quickly he looks for God. I am sure many of these people changed their attitude toward Elijah as they went choking along in the dust, month by month. The Lord was able to change his servant’s boarding place, and release the ravens, and send Elijah over to Zare- [ 270 ] There Is Nothing phath to be the unexpected guest at the table of a poor widow woman, whose wasting barrel of meal he renewed, and kept supplied. Events come on hurrying feet now. The great meet- ing in challenge with the false prophets was convinc- ingly concluded, and the acclaimed victor arose, and said in welcome confidence, “Behold, the sound of abundance of rain is in the land.” It was surely the word of a prophet. The keen ear of faith alone could hear rain then. None other could detect it. They listened intently too. There was not a cloud. They would believe such a testimony when they could see great lowering clouds and hear the welcome roar of thunder on the hills. But the man of God, whose ear heard beyond the sound of the fields, declared he could hear the sound of an abundant rain. And so saying, he withdrew him- self to the top of Mount Carmel to pray. I have wished we had the record of some of those prayers. In a matter-of-fact manner he said to his servant, ‘Go now, and look over toward the sea for the coming of a cloud.” How good a cloud does look—just any cloud— in a season of drouth. The servant was not gone long. He swept the heavens with an easy glance that was sure before he looked, and came back in a most unin- teresting manner to say, ““My master, there is nothing.” “Go back and look again, I fear you did not look with care.” To his knees the prophet fell, and as he awaited the returning message, he poured out his soul to God. It was not long, however, for to the servant the trip was a mere confirmation of what he had already reported. He came back with a step more firm than it had been before, and with an inflection [271] The American Pulpit in his sentence that carried somewhat of a sense of triumph he said, “Master, there is nothing.” “Go again!” came the command of the challenged faith. “Maybe you have been too expectant. Don’t look now for a storm. Remember, you are only look- ing for a cloud.” Again the prophet prayed. After a somewhat longer absence the servant came and said, in the manner of carefully formed conviction, “Master, there is nothing. I tell you there is nothing.” Good servant that he was, I fancy that he suggested then, as a possible offering in encouragement, “Shall I go once more?” “Go again,’ was the unfaltering word. I have thought, as the servant climbed again to the point of lookout, that there might have been in his soul a won- dering how he could find somehow an encouragement for his famous master. But the brazen sky held no sign, and there was no possibility of concealment, for he could sweep the whole horizon. “There is noth- ing,’ once more the report was made. There is an ancient tradition that this servant was the son of the widow of Zarephath, the boy whom Elijah had raised from the dead. I like the story any- how, and the way the boy acted in this repetitious test bears evidence that he was no ordinary servant. Again the fifth time he ran to look while his master prayed. The returning feet of the messenger startled Elijah, and he looked up to ask, ‘““What did you see?” “There is nothing!” “Well,” said the prophet, “you know it takes a cloud some time to form into visible shape, and by the time you get back there again you will likely make out the outline of a cloud. There is one forming out there. [ 272 ] There Is Nothing It is now either not quite dense enough to see, or else you have grown so used to a bare sky that you look for no other sort. Go now again.” Shortly he came stumbling back, almost carelessly now. Mocked, perhaps, he felt, by the constant repe- tition of cloudless skies, and he said with utter weari- ness in his voice, “There is nothing. Not a spot in the sky. My eyes are good, too. I am speaking the truth. There is nothing.” “Go again!” answered the faith whose challenge had been but the means of brightening it. “Go now and look carefully along that misty line where sky and sea meet yonder. You know there are some clouds that he below the horizon; clouds that have not yet thrust up heads of recognition. Maybe you can find a poimt of higher vantage. Over to the right there it looks a bit higher than where you have been. Try that. Stand on tip-toe now and see if you cannot make out the lines of a cloud out there.” Yonder on the very highest point he stands. Away to the west lies the great sea. The sun was sinking again as it had for so many months toward a cloudless evening. Suddenly the eye of the tired watcher caught something not visible before. Just a bit of unevenness on the horizon’s edge. He shaded his face from the reflecting glare. It’s a cloud. Not a big cloud. No larger than a man’s hand. But I have not been cau- tioned as to size. All I am to report on is facts. It may seem a small vessel in which to carry a drink to so thirsty a land as is this. But it is a cloud. I will report. Walking hurriedly back, he ran a little as his faith increased. He interrupted his master even at his prayer, and said with a new inflection in his voice, [273 ] The American Pulpit “Yes, I saw a cloud. It was no larger than my hand. It is coming up out of the sea.” Elijah cared nothing about the size of the cloud. He knew that God is forever growing great things out of seeming littles. Without even going to look for him- self, or to confirm the report, he said in active com- ment, “Arise quickly. Run and tell Ahab the King that he get his chariots and rush home that the rain stop him not.” And hurrying for shelter themselves— you know the story of how it rained. I I learn here that even in the face of explicit prom- ises, the Lord for a time may allow us to see no signs. Elijah had been told that rain would come again only on his own word, and he had all the reason of his faith to believe it. But, cherishing the promise, he must still linger, and wait, and pray, and believe, straight into the repeating report of a negative observation. There is significant spiritual truth in this for this peculiarly confident day of ours, that prides itself on its ability to discern the sky. There is oppressive influ- ence on spiritual life in every scientific negative. Faith seems to have grown faint in many places, and to accept the ordinary observations of the sky as the conclusive reports for religion as well. There may be, in most of us, an instinctive impulse that will express itself in prayer once, for something, and maybe in anxiety, and in hope that is born of anxiety, we can pray twice. But when three and four times we have had to be told there still is visible absolutely noth- ing, we are ready to quit. It is so easy for men and women with eyes to walk by sight, and it is so hard [ 274 ] There Is Nothing to walk by faith. ‘There is nothing,” is a report to chill faith. I incline to the judgment that this is to be the finest religious contribution which we are to receive from this super-scientific age of ours, a challenge to true faith. It is a great thing to hear Elijah say as he looked out over those parched fields, and up into those dried- out skies, “I hear the sound of abundance of rain.’ We must never get delay and denial confused in our interpretation of faith. It is not a denial for our answers to be delayed. Though we cannot see a cloud, we have the promise, and that is enough. They had no weather bureaus in those days. Had there been one, there would have been flying from the staff on Mt. Carmel a square white flag. The people would have said, ‘“There’s no use praying against that, wait till they change flags anyhow. There will be plenty of uncertainty even then to make the risk large enough to try faith.” But Elijah did not pray by the barometer. He stood on the promises of God. The world has always had to stand in respect before the character of genuine faith. The Bible carries the fact often. Fascinating figure of patient faith, that poor stumbling blind man whom Jesus met along the road one day. The very mixing of a bit of mud to paste upon his sightless sockets was in itself a severe test. What a super-test it must have been, as with mud- spattered face he felt his dark way through the crowd, going blindly on to do a strange thing he had been told to do. All sorts of things must have been said to him as he went. What a mark for ridicule he must have presented! Many souls would perhaps have [ 275 ] The American Pulpit made the start, simply because of the desperation of blindness. But few of them would have gone stumbling on toward the designated pool, and not have stopped to dig off that humbling clay with cha- erined disgust. If this Jesus could cure me, or really desired to cure me why did he not do so? This thing of sending me along this trying way with mud in my blind eyes, to be the butt of all this ridicule, is too much. Many souls would have argued thus, and would have received the short-sighted congratulations of the logical crowd along the street, as they turned in at some wayside basin to wash the humbling mud away, rather than go on to the pool; and then would have lifted again their sightless faces to grin a sickly embarrassed grin out into the same persistent dark- ness they knew so well. But thisman went on. Faith- fully he stumbled out the last step along the way to the place Jesus assigned, and there found, to his great joy, that everything God commands finds full justifi- cation in its performance. God’s ways do not always burst clear upon our vision. It is entirely for our good, that the cloud is not always to be seen the first time we scan the hori- zon forasign. Along this rugged pathway the genuine adventurers of faith have always come. The apostle Paul, that fierce night of shipwreck, when everything had gone to pieces, and all feared they were doomed to destruction, stood amid sinking hull and broken spars and said, “Be of good cheer, for I believe God, that it shall be so as it hath been spoken to me.” Dost thou believe? Then stand thou to that belief. Never mind the cloud. Listen for the rain, which can be heard in the very promise itself. [276 | There Is Nothing va The second deduction I would make here is that God’s promises are better than signs in the sky. The real spirit of faith is concerned but very little with signs. It knows the sign will come, not as a cause of faith, but as a credential of faith. Don’t get them crossed. What more do I want than God’s word? His promise is my incentive. On it I take no denial though all reports agree against me. There is noth- ing! What a silencer that report has been. If men were looking for signs, a cloud as large as a man’s hand would have been mockery. That drouth had been across whole years. The vessel that brings relief to such desperation must not be a little thing. The Church of God on earth must take a bolder stand in the expectant promises of God. We have been watching too diligently for signs, and our endeavors have been constantly hampered by a demanded encouragement. We want religious business to be made just as humanly plain in its action as any of the business we construct on our own market reports. A man said to me recently, with the inflection of a confident criticism in his sentence, ‘“‘What are the signs that we are doing any good in the missionary field?” I answered him quickly that the visible signs are today genuinely abundant. But in doing our God-directed duty we are not to move on signs. We would be just as much obligated today if through all the years the sacrifice of the watchers and workers had brought no report whatever. If the Christian church had moved only on signs it would still be in the narrow place of its birth. During one of the most trying and desperate days in [277] The American Pulpit the early period of American history a man wrote Ben- jamin Franklin in pessimistic conclusion, “The sun of liberty has set.” The great old patriot who was not afraid of the dark wrote back, “Then light up the can- dles.”” Sometimes God does hold back all signs, to test our faith. We are expected to presume on the promises. Our faith has been timid, and has ventured only as far as we could clearly see. The world awaits, and not only awaits, but challenges a confident church; a church that laughs at the report, “there is nothing,” as a mere sign men have always dared read into a barren sky, and declares triumphantly to every negative find- ing, “There is something! We have God’s word.” March on, O church of God! Cloud or no cloud, we hear the sound of abundance of rain. Til My final observation is that failure is an unknown experience for faith. The temperature of faith is always the same, sign or no sign. The report comes in, there is nothing; faith answers, there is God, and that’s enough. This is faith’s test, can it wring con- fidence out of a cloudless sky? Can it be so unfalter- ing that even the seventh time it can calmly reply to the messenger, “Go back again, for surely if you want to see a cloud there is one out there somewhere.” We are not to have faith in God because of a cloud. Any- body could do that. We are to have faith which will insist that clouds must come because of it. The sky is sure one day to have the credentials of faith stamped upon it. But faith must be strong enough to stand secure without a cloud in sight. [ 278 ] There Is Nothing I am not called upon to explain the actions of my God according to the laws of nature I have thus far been able to decipher, and of which I feel reasonably sure. Very many of the explanations I have tried to read would make God out as a huge sleight-of-hand worker, who makes use of natural laws just beyond our range of knowledge, and that he merely fools our vision. Explainers thus have busied themselves drawing parallels in what we know today that would have been incredible to the generation just gone. Thus by human process they seek to reduce so-called miracles to the simple acts of a master-mechanic before a class of dull pupils. As for me, I have never expected to find out God with human wisdom. When I believe him God, my idea of understanding him vanishes. There is a passage somewhere in the writings of Sir Hum- phrey Davy that expresses the desire of a truly great mind when it stands before the consciousness of its own easily realized limitations, “I envy no quality of mind or intellect in others, be it genius, power, wit, or fancy; but I would prefer a firm religious faith before every other blessing.” The true ministry of Christian experience has puf this confident note into life, and even down to the very last report that can come; when the closing shades of death seem to screen all vision, so the watchers in the attendant gloom say there is nothing, even there we find that faith has not failed, and has transformed groping into vision. I know not where His islands lift Their fronded palms in air; I only know I cannot drift Beyond His love and care. [ 279 ] The American Pulpit Say you there is nothing? Go and look again. Go back again, and again, and again. For against such a report I will forever match my deathless faith in God. We have God. [ 280 ] FREDERICK FRANKLIN SHANNON In the very heart of Chicago, at the center of the “loop” district, a section crowded on six days of the week as is perhaps no other spot of the earth, and deserted on Sun- day mornings, there is a church with no church building, but a true church of Christ for all that. It was born in a heresy trial. The famous trial of David Swing resulted in Professor Swing’s leaving the Presbyterian ministry, fol- lowed by a large group of the members of Fourth Presby- terian Church, of which he had been pastor. They estab- lished Central Church, with regular Sunday morning serv- ices at Central Music Hall. With the passing of Swing came Newell Dwight Hillis. With the departure of Hillis to Brooklyn came Frank W. Gunsaulus, who moved the church to the famous Auditorium Theatre, where he preached until 1920, having a short while before his resignation moved the services to Orchestra Hall. Dr. Gunsaulus was asked by his trustees to find his own successor. He named a young preacher whose fame had been steadily growing, chiefly through the publication of his sermons in the Brooklyn press and in several volumes which had come from his pen. Dr. Shannon was that man. He is a homiletic genius. Sermon making is almost an instinct with him. He fell into step in the illustrious succession of pulpit masters with a humility that was matched only by his courage. The city listened to him at the start with those misgivings which are inevitable to people who had been sitting at the feet of such masters as had gone before him. Steadily the num- ber of his hearers has grown until today he preaches regu- larly to a congregation that comes near filling the great building. How many thousands besides hear him on the radio can only be imagined. His sermons are poetical, some- [ 281 J The American Pulpit times fanciful, but always soundly practical and genuinely helpful. Hundreds of people who have heard him on the radio in their distant homes pour out from the Chicago hotels where they are spending Sunday and make their way to Orchestra Hall to hear him in the flesh. His min- istry is thoroughly evangelical. He makes no bid for popularity by sensationalism or the wielding of an irre- sponsible free-lance. His fellowship with his brother min- isters of the ecclesiastical churches is full and fruitful. Dr. Shannon was born in Kansas in 1877, on a farm. He was educated in Webb School, Bell Buckle, Tenn., and at Harvard. His beginning ministry was in Methodism as pastor at Logan, West Virginia, from 1899 to 1900, and at Grace Church, Brooklyn, New York, from 1904 to 1912. Called to the Reformed Church on the Heights in Brook- lyn, he remained there until 1920, when he went to Chicago. Books, the very titles of which suggest the quality of their contents, have come from his hand as follows: The Enchanted Universe, The Breath in the Winds, God’s Faith in Man, The Infimte Artist, A Moneyless Magnate, The New Greatness, Sermons for Days We Observe, etc., etc. [ 282 ] WALKING IN GALILEE By Freperick F. SHANNON “After these things, Jesus walked in Galilee: for he would not walk in Judea, because the Jews sought to kill him.”—St. John vii, 1. But why this refusal to walk in Judea? Was it lack of courage on the part of Jesus? If courage be the quality of mind which enables one to look danger and difficulty in the face without fear, Jesus had cour- age to the uttermost. It would be difficult to think of Jesus as afraid of anything or any being in any world. Be assured, then, it was not for lack of courage that the Master remained away from Judea at this particu- lar period. Rather, as the context shows, the time was not yet ripe for him to go into Judea and die. He had much hard and glorious work yet to do, and neither the taunts of his brethren nor the threats of the Jews must be allowed to stop that work. “Christ,” said Napoleon, “proved that he was the son of the Eternal by his disregard of time; and all his doctrines signify one and the same thing—Eternity.” This may be true; but I think, as here, the Master’s regard for time and “times” is most profound. “My time,” he said to his brethren, “is not yet come; but your time is always ready. The world cannot hate you, but me it hateth; because I testify of it, that its works are evil.” What a judgment day is that for any [ 283 ] The American Pulpit soul or society! You do not have enough of moral resistance to cause the evil world to even consider you! When a spiritual judgment doom like that falls, there is bound to be an awful crash. No wonder M. Renan regards the first part of this chapter as a “gem of his- tory.” But I think it is more than that; it is at once full of history made and full of history in the making. If the future is only the past entered by another door, it may be well for us to enter this spacious textual door and glimpse how, by walking in Galilee, the doors of the past and the future open and close in Christly majesty. I Walking in Galilee, consider that the divine is humanized in a transcendent fashion. “Jesus walked in Galilee.’ How importantly this fact tugs at our spiritual consciousness! We believe that God may be found in all provinces of his universe; this is an out- standing element of our Christian faith. To perceiv- ing minds and understanding hearts, the divine exposes itself in star and cloud and wind and rain. As Chris- tians, let us boldly say we give no hostages to panthe- ism, or to any form of nature-interpretation or nature- worship. We claim all that is beautiful and true and good in all systems, and more; and in that more lies the inexhaustible fullness which God in Christ is con- tinuously pouring into our ever-breaking mental molds. The fact is, we are in danger of making entirely too much of the molds. A mold is good and useful so long as it fulfils its purpose. But when a scientific, phi- losophic, or theologic mold gets in the way of reality, the mold is bound to crack. And does not the history [ 284 ] Walking in Galilee of thought show that, at the proper time, it is neces- sary for existing molds to be broken to make room for larger and better? As the Master suggests, the old wine bottles are incapable of containing the new wine of thought which God is everlastingly making in heav- enly wine vats for his children. Thus, it is our duty to be on the lookout for fresh disclosures of the divine in all realms. Yet, after wandering through many goodly kingdoms and discovering much spiritual gold therein, we invari- ably come back to Galilee to see how uniquely the divine is humanized. Whatever the cosmos has to ' say about God—and it is very much ndeed—we are firmly grounded in the belief that it cannot say enough to satisfy the needy souls of men. Seldom has this truth been more goldenly sung than in Francis Thomp- son’s ode, ‘The Hound of Heaven.” Based upon one ’ of the great psalms, and also growing, doubtless, out of the poet’s own experience, he shows how a human runaway attempts to hide from God in the mysterious pockets of the natural world. But it is all exhaustingly vain and futile. “The Hound of Heaven” bays upon the fugitive’s track until, panting and broken, marred and charred, he falls into the Everlasting Arms. So, I love to walk in Galilee because the divine is so satisfyingly humanized there. “Jesus walked in Galilee.” Here taken in its dry, bald literalness, the word Galilee is not especially melodious; for Galilee simply means a circuit or “district.” But when I begin to walk around with Jesus in Galilee, I catch glimpses of the divine behavior so melting, so inspiriting, so illu- minating, so life-giving, so tenderly human, that I have 285 ] The American Pulpit to pause and say: “Behold, God is in this place, and I know he is here!” I go to Nazareth—Nazareth, with its flat roofs and narrow streets, nestling “like a hand- ful of pearls in a goblet of emeralds” among the hills. Did not Jesus walk the winsome ways of his boyhood there? And that carpenter shop in Nazareth—ah! what an honest day’s labor within those walls! What well-wrought yokes were turned out by that shop! I think that each yoke was as perfect as any flower of the field or any star in the spaces. And Cana—is not Cana in Galilee? Jesus walked to Cana to attend a wedding. While the festivities were going on, the wine gave out and the host was embarrassed. Then did the divine behave so beauti- fully that, ever since, weddings have held a deeper joy for responsive souls. Turning the water into wine, Jesus did suddenly what nature and man do leisurely. Look at your atlas again. You will find that Caper- naum is in Galilee. One day a centurion sends a mes- sage to Jesus, asking him to restore his servant, who is ill. The Master starts at once upon his mission of mercy; but he is met on the way by messengers from the army-captain, disclaiming his own unworthiness that Jesus should enter hishome. “Just say the word,” he said, “and let my servant be healed.” Hearing this, Jesus marveled at the centurion’s faith; and in honor of that faith, he flashed a message of recovery along the constitution of the universe. Look at your map once more. Nain is in Galilee. As Jesus, his disciples, and a large crowd draw near the gate of the town, the dead son of a widowed mother is being carried out. Seeing that weeping mother, the Lord drew near and said to her: “Do not [286 J Walking in Galilee weep.” Ah! Master, dost thou not understand that this fountain of tears has been opened by death? Yea, none but God so well understands! ‘Then he went forward and touched the bier; the bearers stopped, and he said, Young man, I bid you rise. Then the corpse sat up and began to speak; and Jesus gave him back to his mother.” Walking in Galilee, I have seen more than one funeral broken up. Beyond the power of words, the divine is humanized in Galilee—wondrous, golden, glorious Galilee! We may not climb the heavenly steeps To brirg the Lord Christ down; In vain we search the lowest deeps For Him no depths can drown. But warm, sweet, tender, even yet A present help is He; And faith has still its Olivet, And love its Galilee. II A second reason why I love to walk in Galilee is this: Since Jesus walked there, Nature is profoundly meaningful. In his “Peter Bell,’ Wordsworth discloses, alas! the nature-blindness of multitudes: A primrose by a river’s brim A yellow primrose was to him, And it was nothing more. Now, I find that a lily is not just a lily, and nothing more—in Galilee. “Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin; yet I say unto you, that Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.” Is not the essence of all [ 287 ] The American Pulpit thought here? Your Platos and Bacons and Kants, with their intellectual brethren of the ages past and to come, are not able to overpass this immeasurable horizon of thought and insight. For God is at work amid the untoiling, unspinning lilies. Consider how they grow! Get at the roots of a growing lily and you will get at the roots of a growing universe. The God who embroiders clusters of stars into the robe of space weaves atoms into the petals of a lly with more than Solomonic splendor. Greater wonder than this has not been disclosed to the seeking mind of man. Let us forever dismiss the un-Christian idea that God either stoops or condescends when he writes his signa- ture upon what men thoughtlessly call the mean and commonplace. The fact is, God could not be God and fail to tabernacle in the ordinary; and, therefore, let us hasten to add, there is no ordinary; we merely make ourselves mentally ordinary by giving the word so large a place in our vocabulary. And in asserting that the lily is arrayed in more than regal splendor, Jesus is not using poetic language alone. ‘There is poetry, to be sure, poetry that will last as long as the idea of poetry itself; but there is more. There is a passion for reality that cuts into the heart of things. “In short,” said the late President Burton, of the Uni- versity of Chicago, “Jesus was the first great exemplar of the scientific spirit as the most enlightened men of science understand and practice it today. He faced facts squarely, made them, rather than opinions, how- ever ancient and honorable, the guide of his thinking and the basis of his action, set facts in relation to one another, penetrated beneath their surface to find their meaning, brought imagination into service, and to all [ 288 ] Walking in Galilee that mere induction or deduction could prove, added an estimate of values and a strong element of faith. Slowly the world is learning that this is the best way to think, and all the progress of our modern times is due to this method of thought.” Yes, let me reiterate it. Nature is thrillingly alive and meaningful in Galilee. A bird is not just a bird— in Galilee. “Behold the birds of the air, that they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns.” “Well, what of that?” rejoins the atheistic wiseacre. “Have not untold generations known that much, and more, about birds? Moreover, it is hardly to be expected that a bird should exhibit as much foresight as human beings.” But hold on, my friend! You have ignored the most important fact regarding birds. It is not bird-nature, primarily, that Jesus is talking about, but God-nature. “And your heavenly Father feedeth them.” Moreover, the sun is not just the sun—in Galilee. Astronomers tell me an almost incredible story about the sun—how far it is from the earth; how its size overwhelms even as its light dazzles and warms; how it furnishes life and light to its own immediate family of revolving planets; how, also, it is constantly throw- ing off heat into other realms of space—why and where nobody knows; how it is gradually shrinking in size year by year. A number of things the scientist tells me about the sun, for which I am grateful. But, walking in Galilee, I learn something else about the sun; I learn that the sun is just a vast solar pen held in the hand of “Our Father who art in Heaven.” With his wondrous sun-pen, he writes the language of the seasons in grass and trees and birds. [ 289 ] The American Pulpit I learn, also, that rain is not just rain—in Galilee. Dipping my finger into Lake Michigan, I find that a drop of water still clings to the finger tip. But within that single drop hides a physical unity with the great deep which no power can destroy. If God hangs the earth on nothing, he hangs the seven seas together by a drop of water. But suppose I follow the advice of the physicist and multiply that single drop into a glass filled with drops of water—what then? Why, he tells me that if I magnify each molecule in my glass of water to the size of a grain of sand, I shall have enough sand to build a road three miles wide and seven hun- dred feet deep all the way from New York to Los Angeles. Yet, walking in Galilee, I find something more arresting still. I learn that rain is not just rain in that lovely land; for crossing its frontiers, I hear one say: “Your Father sendeth rain on the just’—Ah! if I stopped there, I should be caught with a blistering lie on the tip of my tongue! How reads it? “Your Father sends rain on the just and the unjust.” Rain is not just rain—in Galilee. While he was still with us in the flesh, I frequently wrote a letter to Bishop William A. Quayle. If con- fession is good for the soul, I desire to register this public confession: I wrote these letters not so much that Quayle might get a letter from me, but, rather, that Shannon might get a letter from Quayle! I wrote my blessed friend one of those subtle, double-dealing, back-handed letters, knowing him to be so unsophis- ticated and simple that he would never suspect my ruse. Sure enough, my villainy worked! And here is the evidence in this extract from the letter I feloniously stole from Quayle’s golden heart: [ 290 ] Walking in Galilee “T wish you had been here at Dream Haven these last few weeks. God has been here in all his beauty. His first Christmas could not have been so fair. Dream Haven is a garden of about three acres. Our village is hidden, even in winter, save for the tower of a col- lege building, giving an Oxford effect that I love. Our trees are young enough to be dreamy, old enough to be of size to hold the eye and make admirable winter etchings with their winter boughs. The ground has been, and is, white and wonderful; and when, as last night, the sunset is wine-drenched, the snowy fields stretching near and far, hills crumpling up on the hori- zon, our young tree-branches etching on a sky crimson as a Turner, a body could well have a rapture in his heart. God was in this place. Jacob had no monopoly.” I think Quayle must have learned the meaningful- ness of Nature by walking much in Galilee. Likewise, I think my friend, Thomas Curtis Clark, must also take long walks in Galilee. Otherwise, I hardly see how he could have written this great sonnet, which he calls “Knowledge”: They list for me the things I cannot know: Whence came the world? What hand flung out the light Of yonder stars? How could a God of Right Ordain for earth an ebbless tide of woe? Their word is true; I would not scorn their doubt, Who press their questions of the how and why. But this I know: that from the star-strewn sky There comes to me a peace that puts to rout All brooding thoughts of dread, abiding death; And too I know, with every fragrant dawn, That Life is Lord; that, with the Winter gone, There cometh Spring, a great, reviving Breath. © It is enough that life means this to me; What death shall mean, some sunny morn shall see. [ 291 ] The American Pulpit Ill There is a third reason why I love to walk in Gali- lee: Human life is of infinite value there. Everywhere else men, women, and children seem so heartbreakingly cheap. Go to Egypt, go to Assyria, go to Greece, go to Rome, and inquire how much human beings are worth. No matter what their philosophy may be, their practice will tell you that souls. made in the image of God are so paltry and cheap that they are auctioned off to the highest bidder for less than a mess of pottage. Oh, the degradation, the horror, the shame of it all! Go to England of a century ago and listen to the testimony for the year 1818 as reproduced by Dean Inge: “I have copied the official record for the Lincolnshire assizes for that year. A retired soldier entering a house and steal- ing a coat and jacket, death. A boy of fifteen breaking open a desk and stealing £1, 3s, 6d, death. A boy of seventeen entering a house with intent to steal, death. A boy of nineteen firing an oat stack, death. Two young men for the same offense, death.” But whatever you do, don’t tarry too long back in the ages of antiquity, of medievalism, or even of a century past. Go through the modern world and see what scant value is placed upon human life. Ask Russia, Germany, Italy, France, England, and America how much a mere mortal weighs in the scales of nation- alism, of war, of industry, of politics, and lo! he seems to be so exceedingly light that the beam is scarcely made to tremble at all! Once a man demonstrated the sensitiveness of his scales for me at the New York electrical show. He laid upon the mechanism a small piece of white paper. Instantly the register responded. [ 292 ] Walking in Galilee Then he took the same bit of paper, wrote my name upon it, and the register immediately showed the dif- ference—the fractional added weight—of the name written with a lead pencil! Well, as we walk up and down the centuries, a human being seems to weigh just about as much as the lead expended in writing one’s name on a sheet of paper. Widely, indeed, is Montaigne’s outlook reflected by pilgrims in the cen- tury-old roadways. ‘He is always charming,” says Professor Saintsbury, “but he is rarely inspiring. except in a very few passages where the sense of vanity and nothingness possesses him with unusual strength.” I have italicized the latter part of the statement that we may readily lay our mental fingers upon the chief source of inspiration to one of the most prolifie of all minds known to literature. Yes, Montaigne is always charming, but rarely inspiring, concludes the great critic, except in stray passages where the vinegar and vulgarity of life—for that is what it all comes to— command him with unusual strength! But, walking in Galilee, I find that one soul weighs more than the whole world. I find that children are so precious that their angels do always behold the face of God. I find that a shepherd has a hundred sheep. Only one out of the hundred is lost, but the shepherd rests not until, searching the wilderness, he finds the lost one. Returning home, he calls his friends and neighbors, saying, “Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep which was lost. I say unto you, that even so there shall be joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine right- eous persons who need no repentance.” God is like [ 293 ] The American Pulpit that in Galilee. A woman has ten pieces of silver and loses one. She sweeps the house and seeks dili- gently until she finds it. Calling in her friends and neighbors, she asks them to rejoice with her because she has found the one lost piece. “Even so,” says the Master, “I say unto you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth.” God is like that in Galilee. A father has two sons. One gets lost at home, the other gets lost away from home. The father waits and watches for the return of the one lost in the far country, while he lovingly endures the one already lost in the near country. At last the far-country stranger comes back and makes his penitential confession. But the father, forgetting to argue theology in a downpour of tears, said to his servants: “Bring forth quickly the best robe, and put it on him; and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet; and bring the fatted calf, and kill it, and let us eat, and make merry: for this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found.” And to the sullen,angry, near-country lost son, the self-same father said: “Son, thou art ever with me, and all that is mine is thine. But it was meet to make merry and be glad: for this thy brother was dead, and is alive again; and was lost, and is found.” How to manage a household, part of which gets lost at home, and the other part gets lost away from home—that, I submit, is a tremendous problem. But the Christian God can do it—and God is like that in Galilee. Still, I must not forget the latter part of my text: “For he would not walk in Judea, because the Jews sought to kill him.” No; it is not yet time for him [ 294 ] Walking in Galilee to walk the way of death in Judea, but he will walk the road of atonement in due season. And not fear, but love, will tune his steps to the goings of redemptive agony. “Therefore doth the Father love me, because I lay down my life, that I may take it again. No one taketh it away from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This commandment received I from my Father.” Oh, yes, he will go out of Galilee into Judea to die. Watch him move thither like a sweet wind of salvation, blowing across the No Man’s Land of human life! Just south of Galilee is Samaria—to all orthodox Jews that unorthodox, unpatriotic province! “And he must needs pass through Samaria.” And why? Well, it is the most direct route—and my Lord is grandly direct—always, everywhere. That is one reason for his going through Samaria. But there is another: one soiled woman is waiting for him in Samaria, and he will talk through that soiled, sinning woman to the soiled and sinning ages. Arrived in Judea, he gently smites the dead eyes of two blind men in Jericho with waves of revealing light. Arrived in Judea, he stops at Bethany long enough to stop the mouth of that age-long old braggart named Death. Arrived in Judea, he takes up his cross and makes for the skull-shaped hill. Yea, arrived at Calvary in Judea, when the day is all black and plashed with bloody rain, he forgets to die long enough to forgive his enemies even while he gives hope and consolation to a dying outcast. Thus, my walk in Galilee comes to a hushed and holy pause. Standing with that blind minstrel whose [ 295 ] The American Pulpit soul was full of light, I ask him to lend me the golden ending of his unending song: O Cross that liftest up my head, I dare not ask to fly from thee; I lay in dust life’s glory dead, And from the ground there blossoms red Life that shall endless be. [ 296 Rogsert EvLIoTT SPEER Dr. Speer was born to Christian leadership. From the day of his graduation at Princeton Theological Seminary, at the age of twenty-four, to the present time, he has been secretary of the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions. In his student days at Princeton University he was the marked man in both scholarship and personal influence. His connection, as a junior secretary, with his denomina- tional missionary organization marks the date of a new epoch both of practical expansion and missionary vision for the entire missionary enterprise in all the churches. He envisaged the missionary task in new dimensions and by his writings and addresses and policies has lifted the world- wide objective of Christianity to a higher level. Positive in his views, and sturdy in his support of them, the quality of his spirit has made him a kind of personal common denominator of churchmen of all varieties of con- viction. His nature is too broad for partisanship. He thus stands in the fellowship of American church life as an irenic and constructive force, equally loved and followed by both conservatives and liberals. When the Federal Council of Churches, emerging from the war period, faced the new day with the misgivings arising not only from the confusion naturally inherent in the situation but from the deplorable failure of the ambitious Interchurch World Movement, it was to Dr. Speer the leaders turned, in the belief that under his presidency the fragments of the grand ideal of Christian unity might be gathered up again and refashioned in the consciousness and program of the churches. His acceptance of the responsibility for the quadrennium, 1920-24, is believed to have established the Federal Council on a sure foundation. In his denomina- [ 297 ] The American Pulpit tion, too, Dr. Speer exercises this gracious ministry of con- ciliation, holding diverse minded partisans together between whom but for his presence irretrievable divisions would almost certainly occur. Born in Pennsylvania in 1867, he has made the world his parish. On all the mission fields he has come into closest contact with the missionaries and the native leaders, both Christian and non-Christian. He made tours of visitation to the missions in Persia, India, China, Korea and Japan in 1896-7, to all the fields of South America in 1909, to Japan, China, the Philippines and Siam in 1915, to India, Irak and Persia in 1921-22. With Dr. John R. Mott he shared the major responsibility in preparation of the ecu- menical missionary conference held in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1910. He was president of the conference on Christian work in Latin America, held in Panama in 1916. As chair- man of the general war-time commission of the churches his labors were abundant and fruitful during the period of conflict. Yale University conferred upon him the degree of A.M. in 1900, and the University of Edinburgh honored him with the degree of D.D. in 1910. This latter recognition pos- sesses added significance in that Dr. Speer has never been ordained to the ministry but classifies himself as a layman. Books have come from his hand as follows: The Man Christ Jesus, The Man Paul, Missions and Politics in Asia, Remember Jesus Christ, Studies in the Book of Acts, Christ and Life, The Principles of Jesus, Missionary Principles and Practice, A Memorial of Horace Tracy Pitkin, Missions and Modern History, The Marks of a Man, Christianity and the Nations, The Light of the World, South American Problems, Studies rn Missionary Leadership, The Stuff of Manhood, The Gospel and the New World, The New Oppor- tunity of the Church, Race and Race Relations—a prodi- gious output, almost a book a year since 1896! [ 298 ] THE CHRIST WHO LIVES IN MEN By Ropert E. SPEER “T am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth wn me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the farth of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.”—Gal. 11, 20. Sometimes it is given to a man to say it all in just a few words. I read not long since a list of such great sayings in each one of which the man had really gath- ered up the whole of his life, and through which he has been long remembered. There was Lincoln’s word in his Cooper Institute speech, ‘Let us have faith to believe that right makes might, and in that faith let us to the end dare to do our duty as we understand it.” There was the famous saying attributed to Mr. Cleve- land, “Public office is a public trust”; and a long list of such great and characterizing words as these. It is one of these words, greater far than any that were on that list, that I speak here. It is the word which one would pick out of all the sayings of Paul as most com- pletely gathering up the fullness of the man’s life and bringing home to us the very heart of his conviction and of his message. It is the one word in which more perfectly than in anything else that he ever wrote or, as far as we know, ever said, Paul gathers up the mean- ing of his new and his real life. And what a life it was! The names of the great statesmen and merchants and scholars of his time have [ 299 ] The American Pulpit almost all of them been forgotten. The few that we remember best we remember chiefly because they had some contact with the life of Paul and with the great enterprise which had been begun and to which he had consecrated his career. This was his supreme interest, how to live the deepest and most powerful life that he could; how not merely to endure his life, how not merely to accept it, but how to live it at its maximum of meaning and of content and of influence and of power. And to everyone of us in some grave and earnest hour of our lives, the question has come which Paul answers for himself and for every other man, as to what life is, where it springs from, where it is to be wrought out, what the inner secret of it is to be, how we, coming these long generations after, can per- haps be laid hold of by just such principles and powers as laid hold of him, and be enabled to do in our own time, please God, the same necessary work that he did in his. I What we have here first of all is his explanation of where his life came from, the spring and the source of it. “I am crucified with Christ.” His life began in death, in death and life with Christ. I suppose all living must begin in some such place as that. “The vine from every living limb,” wrote Garibaldi’s friend, Ugo Bassi— The vine from every living limb bleeds wine. Is it the poorer for that spirit shed? The drunken and the wanton drink thereof. Are they the richer for that gift’s excess? [ 300 ] The Christ Who Lives in Men Measure thy life by loss instead of gain, Not by the wine drunk, but the wine poured forth; For life’s strength standeth in love’s sacrifice, And whoso suffers most hath most to give. Christianity began there. It had to die before it ever lived. It came out of the black shadows, out of a grave where Christ’s faith was laid away with his body. Christianity came forth out of death into life and power. ‘Thou fool,’ writes Paul in another of his letters, “that which thou sowest is not quickened, except it die.’ And what is he doing but catching up our Lord’s own great word, “Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone’? The life of man has to begin in shadow, the life of power and strength in Christ’s death. And we do not need to flinch from the deepest and the most mystical inter- pretation of all that is contained in that idea of Paul’s. Elsewhere he unfolds it. “What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound? God forbid. How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein? Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death? Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death; that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection; knowing’ this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin. For he that is dead is freed from sin. Now if we be dead with Christ, we believe that [ 301 ] The American Pulpit we shall also live with him: knowing that Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more; death hath no more dominion over him. For in that he died, he died unto sin once: but in that he liveth, he liveth unto God. Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord.” And this is not to be thought of as a curiosity of exceptional religious experience, as a category of antiquated ideas in which a man who belonged to a different race and a different time cast a religious experience which is to be depersonalized and to be made simply moral for us. This is the real fact about a life of fullness and power and reality to the end of time. It begins in death with Christ to sin, that it may live with him unto righteousness. And yet this does not mean that one is not prepared to cast the meaning of Paul’s words also in real social and ethical terms for our own life now. Being cruci- fied with Christ and taking up out of that death a new life with him must mean for us, if we put it in those terms, that we accept his attitude toward life and fix duty as the highest of all our moral values; that we take up his spirit of mind with regard to our enemies and make forgiveness a fundamental principle of our own hearts; that we hold fast to his faith in the sure triumph of innocence even over wrong and fear; that we cherish his undying hope of the possibility of a better world even against the background of murder and of crime. When Paul says that he died with Christ and came out through that deep experience to the living of a new and powerful life, he meant things like these as realities in his daily relationships with [ 302 ] The Christ Who Lives in Men men. The cross was the mark of the beginning of that new and real life. There is a story of a company of men who had been gathered in the earliest days of our participation in the war. The whole group could not be sent over to the other side at once, and every man was eager to go; at last they decided that they would put a lot of papers in a hat, one for every man, and they would put crosses on as many papers as there were men who might be sent, and every man who drew a paper with a cross on it was to be allowed to go. When it was all over one lad who belonged to the group wrote home to his father, ‘Father, if I ever prayed in my life, I prayed today that I might draw a cross.” He wanted the life that bore that symbol and mark and all that it opened up in the possibility of service and of sacrifice. Do we want to find our way into a life that can do in our time what Paul’s life did in his, that can leave its deathless scar on the soul of humanity as Paul’s life left his, his healing scar? Well, here is the beginning and the foundation of it all for us as for him: “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live.” II Paul goes on next to tell us where this life of his was to be lived, the area and sphere in which the great battle was to be waged and the great work was to be done. Not in any quiet islands of the blest elsewhere than here, not in some far-distant heavenly age with another environment from that in which men actually live in our real world. “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me . . the life which I now live in the flesh.” [ 303 J The American Pulpit We have been asking ourselves these last few years over and over again whether, after all, Christianity is a practical thing; I mean, the original idea of Christi- anity, or whether it has not to be vacated in some way, some of its old ideals toned down, some of its old demands reduced, some of its old ideals bedimmed. Can Christianity be lived, we ask, here and now in this meat of our body, in the midst of all this mael- strom of evil that whirls us around by day and by night? Can Christianity be lived? That is exactly Paul’s ideal about his life. “The life which I now live in the flesh.” It is the glory of the human body and it is the glory of Christianity that Christianity can be lived inside a man’s flesh, that there are no passions here that are right that cannot be purified and consecrated, and that anything that cannot be so transformed does not belong in the man. Paul lived his life, this great life of his, full and com- plete, deficient in nothing, not truncated, not con- stricted, but abounding, Paul lived this life in the flesh. It was to make the divine life possible in the flesh that Christ himself was incarnate, to demonstrate to men the possibility that the godlike character might be realized in bone and blood and sinew and gristle and flesh, and that today it is possible for men to live this life, the high, complete, full life in their flesh. And of course this means more than the mere flesh and blood, meat and bone interpretation of it. It means the whole range of our human relationships; that inside the family, in all our actual living rela- tionships from which we cannot escape, Christ must be supreme, and the life of Christ be lived; that Christ is to be our life in the flesh of all human experience [ 304 ] The Christ Who Lives in Men and all human need and all human activity. And not in these narrower ranges only; but across the width of all the life of man. Professor Lang, of the University of Alabama, tells of an experience that he counted one of the most singular in his life, which happened when he was a graduate student in the University of Edinburgh some years ago. He had gone to McEwen Hall to hear Mr. Balfour deliver an address on the moral values which unite the nations. It was a wonderful address. As Professor Lang looked across at the audience to see the effect of it on those who listened, he saw opposite him in the gallery a Japanese student leaning over the gallery and drinking in every word. And when Mr. Balfour had ended naming the moral values which he conceived bound the nations together, or were at last to accomplish the unity of man, there was an instant of appreciative silence over all that great hall, and in that moment of silence the Japanese student stood up and leaning over the balcony said, “But, Mr. Balfour, what about Jesus Christ?’ He had spoken of the moral values that unite the nations and left out the only value that can unite them; the only undying, valid bond, the only power by which at last the whole life of the world is to be made harmonious and complete. “The life which I now live,” says Paul—and he is embodying in himself the whole collective Christian experience; for this that he went through was only the thing that all Christian men and women to the end of time were to go through—“the life which we . live in the flesh we live by the faith of the Son of God.” We live it not elsewhere, not far away, not [ 305 ] The American Pulpit in some other stage of social progress to which some day we may come. We may live it in the flesh, the only flesh we know, the life that is here, that is today. Til But men ask themselves, “How can we live this life, accepting Paul’s account of where it comes from and of where it is to be experienced? We know enough from our own lives, of the difficulty of realizing any such great achievements as these on the battle ground of our experience. Can it be?” Men say that for them it cannot be. They know it cannot, for they have tried, and again and again have been beaten down on this very field. Well, Paul goes on to tell us the secret and the power of this absolutely unlimited and invincible life: “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.” One great weakness of our Christian life today in our colleges and outside of our colleges is that we have thinned it out; we have crowded out the miracle and the mystery and the supernatural of it. We have made it just a veneer, a moral purpose or an admiration; and we have lost those great dynamic energies by which alone the thing can ever really be. “I am cruci- fied with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.’ I do not mean to say that the thing can be explained. Life cannot be explained. It runs far deeper than our understanding of it. But there are some things about it that Paul intimates here which make the mystery after all not so dark and impenetrable. How was it that Christ could do this in him? For one thing, by the obvious and experienced principle of our multiple [ 306 ] The Christ Who Lives in Men personalities. Paul does not balk at it at all. We think that ideas like the subliminal self are modern dis- coveries. But Paul knew long ago of these layers of a man that make up the man, of the conflict between these different levels of his life and the secret that one possessed of coming down through the upper levels to deep buried potentialities. How many I’s and me’s are there here? “I am crucified with Christ”; what “T” is that? ‘Nevertheless I live’; is that the same “T” that was crucified? “Yet not I’; what “I” is that? “But Christ liveth in me”; what “me” is that? “And the life which I now live’; is that the old “TI” before the crucifixion or the new “I” after rising again, the “T’? in his own energies and ambitions, or the “I” permeated with the indwelling Christ? ‘The life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me’”—what “me” is that ?— “and gave himself for me.” Paul knows perfectly well what we know, that every man of us is half a dozen men, this man and that man and the other. And the wonder of Christ’s insight into personality has always been that he does not confuse, as we do even in our self-judgment, these multiple men, but can make his way among them until he finds the last and the least soiled of them all, the man in whom there is most of the undeveloped power, the man who has lost least of that great birthright of kinship with him in whose image we were first of all made; and Christ uncovers that and washes it in his own blood and breathes confidence into it and strips away all the shackles of the sins that so easily beset it, and sets that inner best man free. And not by the principle of the multiple personality only does Christ work, but by the principle of the real [ 307 ] The American Pulpit and the ever repeated resurrection as well. We remem- ber what Donald Hankey said in those last hours which he had with his men just before the great hour came, as he walked up and down the trenches while they waited and spoke to them one by one and in little groups: “Boys, we are going over the top tomorrow. Remem- ber if you are wounded, it’s blighty; if you are killed, it’s the resurrection.” . Through Christ it was a legiti- mate inspiration to work with in that black hour. But the resurrection is not a principle that comes in the last and ultimate moment alone; the resurrection is a principle of life every hour of every day. It is the power available in men that knows no moral limits whatsoever, the power that God put forth when he raised Jesus Christ from the dead, the power by which in conquering death our Lord showed that there was not anything that he could not conquer. There is that evil habit that comes when the light has gone out and you lie alone. You know its face well; and you have always said when you saw it come, “Here comes my enemy that is too strong for me.” Yes, but not for the power of the resurrection, the power that is adequate to deal with any foe, the power that is strong enough to nerve a man for any sacrifice, the power that is mighty enough to lift any load and break the very bars of death. There is many a man to whom life is just a half thing. The vast deeps have not been cut open for him. Sin seems to be a venial affair. The great moral realities have never burst on him as they burst that day in one blinding vision upon Paul on the highway. Well, the power of the resurrection is adequate in the life of every one of us today to lift us out of all this half [ 308 ] The Christ Who Lives in Men living, out of all these partial visions, out of all these toned-down fellowships, out of all these abstentions from the sufficient power of God. The power of the resurrection is adequate to lift us out of all this and to tear these lives of ours open for the coming in of the energies that are in Christ. IV There is one more thing that Paul tells us here: not alone about the spring and the power of this great life, not alone about the area and the sphere in which it can be lived, not alone the secret and the power of it, but he is laying bare here also the method and the process of it. “And the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.’ We may take this legitimately in two different senses, I suppose. “I live it,’ says Paul, “by the faith of the Son of God”; by the same kind of faith that he had, by the principle of life and relationship with the unseen that controlled him; “TI live my new life by that faith.” It would mean a new world if we would begin to live our lives that way, by Jesus Christ’s faith in God as his Almighty Father, in goodness at the heart of everything, at the back of the tragedies of life, at the back of the moral disciplines both of the individual and of the nation, by Jesus Christ’s faith in God as the heart of love at the very center of all the life and experience of man, by his faith in humanity. One can name men and women all over our land to whom that faith is an utterly strange thing today. They do not believe in humanity as Christ believed in it, although they have far more reason for believing [ 309 ] The American Pulpit in it than he did. “He came unto his own, and his own received him not.” He took on human flesh, and human flesh crucified him. The very mankind that he came to save demonstrated that it was not worth his saving, and he still believed in it. If we had Christ’s faith in mankind today we would not balk at the little things that are proposed for the making of a new world—if we had his faith in possibility. “All things are possible,” said he in a day of moral penury, of national insularity, when the whole world was dead in lust and evil. Even in that day all things were possible to them that believed. What ought not to be possible in a day like this to men who believe that there is nothing that ought to be that cannot be, “by the faith of the Son of God’! Or there is the other meaning. We find it in Mof- fatt’s translation of this passage. “The life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself up for me,” by vital per- sonal relationship with Christ, by the loving trust that sees in him grace beyond all my deserving, a patience that my sin and moral indifference might well have outworn but have not. I thought His love would weaken As more and more He knew me. But it burneth like a beacon, And its light and heat go through me; And I ever hear Him say, As He comes along His way,— “Wand’ring soul, O do come near Me; My sheep should never fear Me; I am the Shepherd true, I am the Shepherd true.” His was a love strong enough to wear down our [ 310 ] The Christ Who Lives in Men love of the things that he hates, and to make us will- ing to bring our lives in complete surrender to him, that his fulfilling and enriching hands may make us complete and like himself. I know well how imperfectly this draws out what Paul was trying to get into words. But I know that even this imperfect way of putting it cannot hide the truth that is here, and that this is a truth that we are needing today, in order that we may experience again just what the gospel of Jesus Christ is. Christ is not simply a beautiful figure for us to admire across nine- teen hundred years. The gospel is not a mere whole- some moral teaching, part of which we accept, the rest of which we reject because it is now too hard to live by. The gospel is a great deal more than that. The gospel is the living God confronting men’s lives today in the record of what Jesus Christ was and did and in the reality of all of this still as a permanent and ever- continuing work inside the souls of men, and calling us in our lives to leave what is only partial or out on the skirts of spiritual reality, and to come in to share Christ’s death, and then to go out to live his life. I remember coming down on a railroad train many years ago from Eaglesmere with a crowd of railroad men who had been there for a summer Bible conference. We rode in some open freight cars on the old primitive railroad which was all there was then, and which has not been much improved since. As we sat on the boards laid across the open cars, the men were telling about their experiences. There was one man, who had drunk the cup down to the very lees of it, and they had been bitter. And then the Voice had called him, and he had risen up to a new career. He was [311] The American Pulpit an old, gnarled veteran of the civil war. He was telling us about his experience and he said: “It at last all came down to this with me. I sat down one day in the midst of my sin, with the Savior near mak- ing his offer, and I closed with it, and I rose up in his strength and power. He died my death for me that I might live his life for him.” He died for us to all our sin of imagination and of desire and of deed; and he rose for us that we might live with him today the new life of cleanness and of joy and of power and of vic- tory. Yes, and what is equally wonderful, we died in his death with him that he might live his life and our life in us. This is the gospel of reality. This is the reality of the gospel. [ 312] JoHN TiImMoTHY STONE The Fourth Presbyterian Church of Chicago, of which Dr. Stone is pastor, is one of America’s greatest and most resourceful churches. All types of people attend it. It includes in its membership a large list of people of great wealth and social leadership, and there are also large num- bers of people, young men especially, who live in boarding- houses and work for small salaries. The church is located on Chicago’s gold coast, well downtown, and maintains three flourishing public services on Sunday—at 11 A. M., 4 p. M., and 8 p. m.—and innumerable meetings through the week. Its Gothic structure ranks as one of the finest pieces of ecclesiastical architecture in America. The dynamic of this immense organization is John Tim- othy Stone. When he came to Chicago in 1909 from Bal- timore, he found the church a pretty dull affair. It was running on survival power, not on power presently gener- ated. The coming of Dr. Stone acted like the installation of a new and powerful dynamo in a factory. The whole situation was soon a-throb with the heartbeat of the new leader. Dr. Stone was born in Boston in 1868, and graduated with his A.B. degree at Amherst College in 1891. His divinity studies were carried on at Auburn Theological Seminary, from which he was graduated in 1894. Immediately he began his ministry at Olivet Church, Utica, New York, which was followed in 1896 with a pastorate at Cortland, New York. In 1900 he was called to the pulpit of Brown Memorial Church, Baltimore, the mention of which pulpit revives memories of the loved and lamented Maltbie D. Babcock, a predecessor. After nine years there he came to Fourth Church, Chicago, where his leadership in church taki The American Pulpit and civil life has been outstanding and fruitful. Finding a church of 500 members in a worn-out aristocratic old building, he convinced them of the importance of putting their work on a more commanding level, and raised in one year over $850,000 for this purpose. His church now has 2600 members and raises a budget of over $200,000 annually. Dr. Stone gives himself without stint to public enterprises in his city and to the promotion of the organized work of his denomination. He was elected moderator of the General Assembly in 1913. As chairman of the committee of fifteen to reorganize the missionary and benevolent boards of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America he proposed and carried through a plan to reduce the number of boards from sixteen to four. He is a trustee of McCor- mick Theological Seminary, and of the Presbyterian Hos- pital in Chicago. The religious press of the country draws freely upon his rich fund of personal experience in dealing individually with the spiritual needs of all sorts of people. Notably in the Continent he conducts a regular depart- ment of such personal guidance. Books carrying his name are Recruiting for Christ, The Life of Whitfield, Places of Quiet Strength, To Start the Day, etc., etc. Dr. Stone is a frequent preacher at the leading universities of the East and Middle West. [314 ] THE VICTORIOUS LIFE By JoHN TimotHY STONE “But if any man buildeth on the foundation gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay, stubble; each man’s work shall be made manifest; for the day shall declare it, because rt 1s revealed in fire.”— Corinthians 111, 12, 13. “He that overcometh shall inherit all things: and I will be his God and he shall be my son.”—Revela- tion xxi, 7. There are two divisions in our thought: the victory and the reward. Under the first of these there is the contest. The great contests of life, however, are not the public strifes. Great battles are of the soul. The greatest victories are those contested in the fight for character. History is made up of biography, biography of the individual life. The enemy without has never equaled the enemy within. There is no nation under heaven which can injure our own nation as her indi- vidual citizens can injure her. There is not only great pathos, but great discern- ment in the great cry of Shakespeare’s Caesar, “Et tu, Brute.” Caesar need not fear the outward enemy. He could cross the Alps; he could overcome all the ele- ments, and meet all adversaries, but he could not stand with treachery. He must trust his own. His fall came from within. The honest conviction of Brutus seemed treachery to the emperor. [315 ] The American Pulpit Roosevelt could withstand the wild beasts of Africa and fill the Smithsonian and other notable collections with rare specimens, but he could not withstand the subtle, microscopic, imperceptible foe in the animal life of South America. . The subtle power of sin is not seen in the external foe, but the character is injured by the enemy within. The strife of life is the strife of the soul. The real contest is within the heart. Many a man who can withstand the outward enemy is helpless before his own soul, as he yields in indulgence to the temptations of his own life. Dishonesty seldom starts with pre- meditated falsity, but unconsciously within the indi- vidual soul of man. Corrupt organizations grow out of dishonest souls. The man who deceives society, injures and robs humanity, and deludes justice, may not be part of a great organization, but he who is really dishonest and deceives his own soul is deceiving others. The great lie of the ages has been the lie of perjury, and perjury is the false swearing of an individual soul. The real law of deception is the law of self- deception. Sin has that remarkable influence over men until in time they fail to see evil as evil and grow to interpret evil as good. He fails to see evil as evil, hence the adage: “Evil to him that thinketh evil.” “As a man thinketh in his heart so is he.” If man is corrupt within he is likely to see good people as corrupt. Self-deceived! The contest of the soul is inward. Many a man can win battles on a field of glory who cannot win the battle of his own life. Napoleon moved tens of thousands and influenced millions by his mar- velous personality, but he died on a far-distant isle, [ 316 ] The Victorious Life looking out with remorseful spirit over a sea, for he realized he had been conquered by his own soul and that One greater than he had won, for he was self- deceived. The most heroic lives in the whole world are not the heroic lives whom the world honors, but who in the darkness strive on to win the victory of their own souls. Cast on the shore of a boundless ocean, wrecked, with all his human possessions gone, save the Word of God, Alexander Duff won an age and a nation and a continent, for he had a faith which realized that he was victorious; he knew he could over- come in the present possession of a God who was his God and his Father. I This strife of the soul is the contest which every man must face. The idler misunderstands and over- looks. The careless is uninterested and thinks of nothing but his own present selfish desire. The unin- telligent cannot face the issue. He is carried away by superficiality, if not by conventionality. But the thoughtful soul realizes that the only safe victory of any man, woman or child is the victory of the indi- vidual soul. “I will do right,” “I will not do wrong,” are spoken by the individual soul to himself. Now this contest goes on everywhere. Study the records of human history in the commercial and eco- nomic world, in the world of pedagogy and teaching, in the world of public speech, in the realm of law, in the field of medicine, wherever we look, everywhere, we find that the contest of the individual soul has been the means of attaining and has given the victori- ous life. What high school child wants to study Latin, Fekeny The American Pulpit or delights in beginning geometry? What college lad loves study from the sheer joy of it? But the student is made in high school and college days by the stern fact of discipline. This last week I addressed one of our high schools where some eighteen hundred students were gathered—a most stimulating audience. They were eager and responsive, but the whole spirit of the high school age is the_spirit of attaining that the indi- vidual may overcome. Children do not love to study any more than we do. They do not like to do finger exercises on the piano, but the overcoming, the dis- cipline, the constant training of the mind makes the youth the worthy man or woman. We have seen a careless, independent Jad of high school age become one of our great leaders. When he graduated the whole university, from professors to students, looked up to him with great esteem. Why? Those years from high school days on through college and university had been years of overcoming and of victory, and today he stands head and shoulders above his fellows in the great business world because this same line of personal victory has dominated his life. It has been a contest all along, but he has overcome. The victorious life has sacrifice in it, personal sacri- fice. Just here a danger occurs in many souls amid the great currents of human life because the shallows and rocks are unseen. The dangers beneath the surface are often inner human feelings, not external! Those who can conquer great adverse conditions and temptations which are physical or mental often go to pieces by inward feelings. They are controlled by the impulses of life, by temperamental conditions and are tempted to excuse themselves by saying, “Oh [ 318 ] The Victorious Life well, my father was morose. He did not have a san- guine temperament. It was natural for him to be dis- couraged. Life is not fair. Life has not the same chance or opportunity. We are not born free and equal.” Our constitution never said we were. It said, “We are created free and equal.” But mark you, these same souls say, “I cannot over- come my feelings,’ and excuse themselves on this basis. Such thoughts are the Scylla on the one side and the Charybdis on the other in the great channel of human life through which all must pass. Personal sensitiveness may be the Scylla, but the Charybdis, the rocks of which are so dangerous and cause wreckage, are generally our feelings. You say, “Yes, but I am not sentimental; I am only sensitive.’ Who, that is worthwhile, is not? But remember the conquering of human life is an outward strife, a strife against a sensitive nature, a control of the soul, needing God within the inner life, together with the finer instincts and temperaments, which must be controlled. To illustrate: I talked with a grandfather whose home was Godless—no religion, no Savior, no God, no church, though his father had been a man of deep piety and had trained him with splendid influences at home; but he had brought up his own children with- out religion. They were Godless, and had chil- dren of their own who were Godless—three generations without God, and all this because the young man, the year after he was married, went to a certain church where an officer did not happen to extend a very cordial welcome to him, and he turned on his heel and said: “T will never enter the house of God again if that is [319 ] The American Pulpit what the church stands for!” Ninety-nine men would have welcomed him, no doubt, and the man who failed to greet him that morning may have been suffering or careless, and still, because he misjudged that officer and turned away, he and his home had grown up a Godless home; his sons and daughters were Godless; his grandchildren were without faith and hope—all because he did not conquer a sensitive nature when some one was unjust to him. “How great a matter a little fire kindleth.” I plead with you this morning to realize that the contest of the soul is our own contest. The state, no matter how loyal her law, nor how just her courts, can never make you good. The state cannot save you, nor can the church. The gospel of Jesus Christ cannot save you unless you exercise your own will- power. The contest must be within. It is God with man that makes a majority, not God without man. The contest, if victorious, must be the conquest of our own soul, first with our own hearts and lives. The inward strife, the victory over self must be a sure one. II Again, there is in our text not only the matter of victory, but that of reward. ‘He that overcometh shall inherit all things.” 'That means present as well as future possessions. You say, “No, inheritance means something future.” Not in the text. “Shall inherit all things.” Not sometime, but now. We read in our Scripture lesson of heaven and the golden streets of wonderful jewels and marvelous foundations. It was a beautiful picture, a wonderful imagery, but we are not so much interested, after all, [ 320 ] The Victorious Life in heaven as in earth, for heaven will take care of itself if our faith and life are right. Jesus Christ said, “The kingdom of heaven is in your midst.” The “shall inherit” is a present possession. The man whose religion simply gives him an inheritance ticket into heaven has not a religion worth while. We are not thinking now of purchasing tickets ahead. We are thinking now of a heaven and a religion which are a part of the life we live in this city, or wherever we live, “by the faith of the Son of God who loved us and gave himself for us.” The inheritance is “shall,” a present possession. “He that overcometh shall inherit all things.” The present possession of the soul is the religious condition which we would this morning consider. It is the value of the present soul in the life which now is. The Christian who is going to receive something is not worth so much as the Christian who has something, who lives now in the spirit of the possession of Christ. If we have the love of God and faith in our souls now, we will not be much troubled about the future. I have no sympathy, although I do not lack respect, for the old-type Christianity which used to pray—‘“O God, help us to do right here in order that we may have heaven there.” It was sincere, but the vision was limited. “The kingdom of heaven is within you.” God has prepared marvelous things for those who love him. “Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.” This verse is not a funeral text only. It has present possession. He hath prepared those things for us now. The Christian who is victorious is the man who has [ 321 ] The American Pulpit now that inheritance and lives now in the spirit of that inheritance. The man who knows how to enjoy the things of this world is better than he who does not enjoy them, and has greater possessions. I have seen men so cramped with gold, bonds and property, that they spent most of their time thinking how _ to protect with steel bars that which they have. Some men spend most of their time protecting their possessions, without giving any thought to their use. That was a great gift given to our city last week for Northwestern university. Why should not more such gifts be made to such institutions? Of what value is it for men to lay up millions of dollars for their children without endowing the city, the nation or the world with the great blessings of their wealth? Nine out of ten children will be injured by a great fortune rather than blessed. The disintegration of families of wealth is one of the great tragedies in American life. It is scarcely ever true that a family ean hold large wealth for three or four generations without disintegrating in character. There is not one son or daughter in ten inheriting a great fortune who has the character and wisdom to make proper use of it. There are some exceptions. For instance: A father said to his son, “Lad, you have the blood and the brain and the industry that I had; now go ahead and make your life better than mine has been.” I once knew a lad who refused to take the fortune which his father offered him. “But,” he said, “I will borrow from you on the basis of a consistent policy, and if that money is not returned in full to you, I will spend the rest of my life paying it back.” | 322 | The Victorious Life You say he had his chance, but he did not take his ease because his father left it to him. And today you can go to a certain city in this country and see a busi- ness ten times as great as his father’s business ever was. And why? Because the brain and the heart of that youth worked out something better than his father gave him in money. The inheritance of life is not leaving to others that which they may use, but char- acter to make use of life. The kingdom of heaven is not a matter of accept- ing possessions in the future, but utilizing that which we have here. Men and women who have been able to acquire great fortunes owe something to the age in which they live, to the cities of which they are a part. There would never be required a plea for for- eign or national missions, for relief, or educational institutions if men and women realized that their money was God’s money and that they were the trustees of God’s money to use it for mankind and for the generation in which they live. “The kingdom of heaven is in our midst.” What we do now, not only with our money, but with our lives will stand the test of heaven. ‘He that overcometh shall inherit all things.” Any man who is so much interested in pro- tecting what he has that he fails to see the vision of opportunity in its use, will always be in trouble. Nine- tenths of such men break with nervous prostration and die prematurely burdened with lives that are unfruitful. Riches and wealth are great gifts, but must be used aright in the present age in doing God’s will. The American Pulpit III In conclusion, let us realize that the contest for the life of victory has two other elements: It has worship and it has home. In other words, God and Love. You see how this verse concludes: “He that overcometh shall inherit all things; and I will be his God and he shall be my son.” Victory, reward, but more, worship and home. “I will be his God and he shall be my son.” That word “son” means fatherhood, for it implies it. “Son” means home, for where there is a father and mother and son there is a home. “I will be his God and he shall be my son.” Is there a sadder human experience today in all the world than a man or woman or a home where worship is left out? No God, no heaven, no faith, no hope, no love! More than six times this last week I have been called to deathbeds and officiated at funeral services. It is at such times that we realize what worship is. Many a secret has been revealed to me this past week, and throughout the years, of men who worship in their inner hearts. One cannot but regret that such men do not make public confession, but the worship is there. Oh, when the soul is heavy, and the eyes weep alone, and in the silent moments of the night, in the troubled consciousness of the weakness of sorrow, when it bears in upon the heart, what a comfort to have a God, to have a place of worship! I have talked with those who have said, “TI could bear it if I only had a faith, a grasp upon God.” Then we pray with them and say, “Let the everlasting arms be underneath and round about,” but they do not know that arm; they do not know [ 324 ] The Victorious Life that God. If they only had a faith; if they only had a God, then they would have a hope. “He that overcometh shall inherit all things, and I will be his God and he shall be my son.” A faith with a God! A life with a hope! A death with a resurrec- tion! A crucifixion with a tomb from which He arose again!