BENT i HE RLEDY Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2022 with funding from Princeton Theological Seminary Library https://archive.org/details/sixmarksofchrist0O0shat STIX MARKS OF A CHRISTIAN - ey ib =" fe aa a "s mk -_ ‘ ¢ i] : < >” Pod xe OF 7 < = Pg she : ie re Mes ere ai ck TL en, bee : ray : : : —s ie a. SIX MARKS OF A CHRISTIAN BY CANON ALLAN P. SHATFORD, M.A., D.C.L. RECTOR, 8T. JAMES THE APOSTLE, MONTREAL FELLOW GOVERNOR McGILL UNIVERSITY “TI bear branded on my body the marks of Jesus” RY OF PRINCE? pe THE JOHN C. WINSTON COMPANY Chicago Philadelphia Toronto Copyright, 1925, by Tur Joun C. Winston Company PRINTED IN THE U.S. A. AT THE INTERNATIONAL PRESS TuE Joun C, WINSTON CoMPANY, PROPRS., PHILADELPHIA PREFACE In the present conflict over dogmas and traditions, in the strife between modernists and fundamentalists, and in the hurry and bustle of modern con- ditions, it is to be feared that the real principles of Christianity have almost been lost sight of by many who call themselves Christians. It was there- fore distinctly refreshing to the writer of this brief note to hear these remark- able talks on practical Christianity given by Canon Shatford. They em- phasize in a plain, straightforward manner that those who profess to be followers of Jesus Christ should let such be known by manifesting in all their 7 PREFACE activities—domestic, social, political, and religious—those cardinal virtues that were such outstanding marks in the lives of the Saviour and His great apostle. Canon Shatford has been kind enough to approve of this transcription of his words and to consent to their publication. Doubtless many who formed part of the large and apprecia- tive audiences that have heard these talks will welcome the opportunity to read them over; and many who did not hear them will find help and encouragement in the stirring message they bring. CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE MORE WORD Sarit set ste oe ne ores oe He LGB eye Wiig aig BOS ERE Hee eee 15 Dis COURAGE bee srl anes Mace are as de 35 VUTep EP ATUONCH TS Sy Poe os owe ee els 53 EV eo TOMGRa tS ce ae ere cs cies on 71 NV tee PREDOMI se ark stig icv aise ciobeanealN ah 89 Gamrmosrry for as OCA Se aoe eee 107 ye) FAN FOREWORD The addresses printed in this little volume were originally delivered to large audiences in Philadelphia. They were taken down in short- hand and written out by Mr. John W. Lea, to whom I am very greatly in- debted for revision. The talks retain all the earmarks of spoken addresses and little attempt has been made to cast them in literary form. It is needless to say that I owe much to my reading for the ideas and illustrations of these addresses, and I thankfully pay tribute to my helpers. May this little book be a blessing to all who read it! ADs. 11 vt ae ‘ Dy I LOYALTY Rite ne 4 ¥, 4 LOYALTY St. Paul once said: “I bear branded on my body the marks of Jesus.” It is a very graphic figure. The man who wrote it was a prisoner at the time. He wanted some striking illus- tration of spiritual truth, and looking around he noticed that everything about him was marked and stamped with the sign of the imperial Ceesar. The clothes of the jailer were marked. The utensils that he used were stamped. The chains on his own wrist were branded with the mark of the Emperor. Even the guard who came in to wait on him had stamped in the palm of his hand the initial of the Emperor, de- 15 MARKS OF A CHRISTIAN claring to all the world whose servant he was and who was his master. And then Paul said to himself, “I also bear branded on my body the marks of the Lord Jesus.” He pulled up his sleeve, and there was a great mark that he had received when he was: at Philippi. He uncovered his shoulder, and there was a great red welt that had been left there when he was stoned at Lystra. And so his body was stamped and marked with the signs of his Master. He said, “These marks declare to all the world whose I am and whom I serve.” I want to take this figure as an illustration of certain signs and marks which every Christian ought to bear, declaring to all the world who his Master is and whose servant he is. The first mark that I wish to talk to you about is the mark of Loyalty. St. Paul certainly had loyalty, for you 16 LOYALTY remember that on more than one occasion he was asked to deny his Lord; they told him that he would suffer great affliction if he still persisted in loyalty to his new Master. And Paul on every occasion gave back the answer: “It matters not. I give my body to be burned. I will sacrifice everything. I hold nothing in this world dear. I count everything loss for Jesus Christ, and I will be loyal to Him, no matter what happens.” In this Paul was like his Master; for I want to say this about these marks of a Christian, that they were all found upon the Master himself. And both upon Him and upon us these marks are all of a very practical character and bear upon the ordinary relations of our everyday life. Jesus never went back on a friend. He was loyal to His God all through His life. “I come to do Thy will, O 2 17 MARKS OF A CHRISTIAN God,” He said. No temptation could draw His feet aside from the path that He had marked for himself. He walked loyally from the cradle to the grave, never flinching on one single occasion. Hath He marks to lead me to Him, If He be my Guide? In His hands and feet are wound-prints, And His side. The mark of loyalty was found upon the personality of Jesus and upon the life of Paul, and must be upon the life of everyone who would follow Him as a disciple. Loyalty, to my mind, seems to be very much required at this present juncture. For what is the opposite of loyalty? Lawlessness. I do not think there ever was a time when law- lessness was so marked as it is at this present time. All authority seems to 18 LOYALTY have gone by the board. Just come with me and look at the home for a moment. Is there the same loyalty in the home that there used to be? Is there the same authority exercised by the parents? Somebody said that there is as much authority in the home as there ever was, but the children are exercising it; and I am afraid that it is only too true. The decline of loyalty in the home is one of the paramount signs of a degenerate civili- zation. Look at the state, and do you find very marked loyalty there? Are the citizens loyal to all the laws? Why, we know that there has been a wave of crime over this continent that has simply shaken things to their very foundations. Often law is disregarded, and some of the laws on our statute- book are held in scorn, so that certain men take a good deal of pride and satis- 19 MARKS OF A CHRISTIAN faction in breaking the law. Now, whatever you may say about a law, as long as it exists on the statute-book there is only one thing for a citizen to do; that is, be loyal to it. He may argue and agitate for its change, but as long as it is there as the will of the people, he must be loyal to the law of the land. For if you break down one law, and wink at its being disregarded, you bring all law into disfavor; and that is why we have so much lawless- ness today. It has crept even into the church, so that there is a great deal of disloyalty being manifested among churches today, and we have men in high positions who are demanding their freedom and continually declaring they can no longer be loyal to the law. Dis- loyalty seems to be eating the very heart out of civilization. If there is not a check very soon put upon it, where are we going to arrive? Do we 20 LOYALTY bear branded on our lives this mark of the Lord Jesus? I want to talk very frankly and simply with you about this idea of loyalty, for I believe it is at the foun- dation of all healthy civilization and of all healthy church life. We must get back, after all, to the individual, for the home and the nation and the church are only aggregates of the in- dividual. And if the individuals will not regard law, and refuse to manifest a loyalty to existing institutions, how is it possible for the future to be safe- guarded? The one thing we must do is to bring about loyalty to the great Master. You know the secret of all good life is to have some central personality, some control in your life, some power that will knit all your life together, so that you can pay to that supreme person- ality the loyalty that will make for the 21 MARKS OF A CHRISTIAN strengthening of the life. And because I find a tendency to break away from loyalty to the personality of Jesus, there, I think, is the secret of all the lawlessness and disloyalty that is being practiced through our country just now. We must get back to that central loyalty to Christ. We are His servants by the fact of our creation and redemption. He has sealed us with His name. We bear upon us the mark of our imperial Cesar, the Christ. He owns us, and we are stamped by Him. There is but one thing for us to do, and that is to be loyal to Him. Hawthorne tells us a very beautiful story. I do not know exactly what its point is, but I will make a guess at it. He tells of a man who married, and his wife was a very beautiful woman, but there was a difficulty: she had a birth- mark upon her face,and they were very anxious to remove it. At last the 22 LOYALTY husband secured a combination of chemicals that would take it away, and finally the mark died away and dis- appeared, just as a rainbow dies out of _ the sky. But, the moment it was gone, the woman died. What can we learn from this story? Surely, that if we are stamped in the image of God, we have the birth-mark upon us; we belong to God, and any disobedience, any wandering away from Him, is dis- loyalty. If we try to rub out that mark of Christ’s ownership it is death, spiritual death, the worst kind of death. So you must have then, first of all, loyalty to one master; and where is there a Master more worthy of being followed and served than this Man whom we call Christ Jesus? Let me say another thing about loyalty, and that is that we must try to be loyal in little things. It is not in the great things of life that men prove 23 MARKS OF A CHRISTIAN disloyal; it is usually in the small things. Do you remember, it was the man with the one talent that was un- faithful, not the man with two or the man with five, but the man with one? True it is that he that is faithful in little will be faithful also in much; and the man who takes care as to small loyalties, when the great emergency comes up against his life will stand fast and loyal. But it is in the filching away of the little things, by the little acts of immodesty, that the girl will surrender and at last set her foot upon the road of shame until she finds her- self in the slough of impurity, from which she cannot extricate herself. The little act of dishonesty by the boy in the shop, or the man in his business, at length leads to the great disloyalty until the bankruptcy or the misappro- priation of funds by some man in high position shocks the community. It 24 LOYALTY shocks the community only because we could not see the gradual process, the gradual eating away through little con- cessions and compromises and _ sur- renders. It is true that he that is faithful in little will be faithful also in much. The other day I went into a winter hotel, and there were a lot of people seated around a table and evidently playing some kind of gambling game. Of course there were money and chips there, and one whom I happened to know got up somewhat embarrassed. “‘Oh,” he said to me, “‘we are not play- ing for a very high stake. We are playing for only five cents a point!” As though it made any difference in the principle of the thing whether it was five cents or one thousand dollars. If it is wrong to gamble, it is wrong to gamble for the small as well as it is for the large. When women tell me that 25 MARKS OF A CHRISTIAN there is nothing wrong in playing for such small stakes, I say, “You are surrendering the principle. It will bring you at last into the great dis- loyalty.” You cannot bring up chil- dren, making these little concessions, without teaching them that after all there is no principle involved, that it is only a matter of the quantity or amount and not the principle. On the contrary, it is eternally true that the man that is loyal in the small things will be loyal in the large. I say to you, young men, and I say to you, old men, but particularly to the young people, “Watch carefully the small things. Never be guilty of making a compromise in minor matters. Take care of these little things, and then you need never fear the great emergency, because, having been in the habit and custom of loyalty all through your life, you will be aware 26 LOYALTY when the great temptation comes.” Let me say another thing about loyalty. Loyalty is the only way by which we can get more light, by which more knowledge will come to us. If you are loyal to your friend, is not he always giving you revelations of him- self? But if you are disloyal to him, he shuts himself up against you at once, and there can be no further privilege in his friendship. If we are loyal to God, God will reveal Himself more and more, according to our loyalty. As Jesus said, “Ii any man will do My will, he shall know of the doctrine.”’ It is only by obedience, by our loyalty, that God reveals Himeelf. Or, take the Bible. Only as you are loyal to the truth you know will more truth come to you. Sometimes men are puzzled as to why things are so mysterious. If you are refusing to do the duty which is plain to you now, Q7 MARKS OF A CHRISTIAN how can you expect God to reveal a further duty and more illumination until you have done what already is so plain to you? I do not ask to see The distant scene; one step enough for me. If we take that one step, then the way will be more and more opened up. And so it is by our loyalty that we can enjoy larger knowledge and more mag- nificent revelations until the whole seems to reveal itself to us in one great burst of magnificent revelation—all because we bear upon our lives the mark of the Lord Jesus, the mark of loyalty. Sometimes there comes a conflict of loyalty. Here are two persons or two things, and they both seem to have an appeal to you. The other day a young man came to me and said, “Sir, 28 LOYALTY I am in a great perplexity. I am in business. My employer has been good to me for ten years, has carried me along, and nursed, and encouraged me; but now he asks me to do something to which I cannot reconcile my conscience. Also, I am the only support of my mother. I feel a loyalty to my home. If I am thrown out of this position I am endangering my mother’s happi- ness. There seems to be a conflict of loyalty.” I said, ““My son, it is not a question of loyalty to your mother or loyalty to your employer; it is a ques- tion of loyalty to your own conscience and loyalty to the right—loyalty to Jesus. If you keep this ever dominant in your mind, all other questions will be very easily solved.” You remember that when Queen Victoria went to St. Paul’s Cathedral to give thanks to God for the recovery of the Prince of Wales, Tennyson wrote 29 MARKS OF A CHRISTIAN a very beautiful poem, and this was the first line: O loyal to the royal in thyself! I think that all loyalties are summed up in that sentence. Be loyal to God. Be loyal to the highest that is in you. Never smother the voice of conscience. Never try to drown that still small voice within you that says, “Stand right; be true; make no concessions; be loyal—loyal to thyself.”’ To thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man. When the Waldensians lost their leader, he was a young man, still in his thirties, but his hair was as white as the driven snow. And as they gathered around his bier to say the last farewell, 30 LOYALTY one came forward and took up his silken gray hair in his hands and said, “Comrades, this is the mark of his loyalty; he became white-haired and stricken because he was loyal to our cause.” It wrung a cheer from that great crowd and thrilled them with the desire to go out also and manifest in their own lives this mark of the Lord Jesus. That is the first mark, the mark of Loyalty—loyalty in little things, loyalty in inward things, loyalty in the home, loyalty in the church, loyalty in the state, loyalty in business. Wherever you may be, let this be manifested in your life, and then you will be a worthy disciple of Jesus Christ. 31 he ca a4 ea i tt Why That nM t ai at a 19 i ee 4 AO i i i ie oy PP H y rik ly um wh iin a * it ahi be eae II COURAGE i ary fe Ha { by Woe Me. COURAGE We are studying the marks of a Christian. We have considered Loy- alty as one of the essential marks of a Christian; now, I want to consider another just as_ essential, that is, Courage. I would recall to your mind the apostle’s words, “I bear branded on me the marks of the Lord Jesus.” All thesemarks, I said, are to be found in the life of the Master, as also in His disciples. The man who wrote that motto was Paul; therefore let me give you an illustration of his courage. He was stoned at Lystra so that they picked him up in the street for dead. His body was marked with the anger 35 MARKS OF A CHRISTIAN and persecution of the multitude. But after he recovered he said that he was going back to Lystra again. He was not dismayed nor discouraged. They said to him, “‘ You are foolish to return to the place of your defeat.” He answered, “‘I am not defeated.” And back he went to Lystra and faced the angry mob again, so splendid was his courage. St. Paul has been called “the undiscourageable”; and every disciple of the Master should manifest a similar quality in his life. Jesus was one of the most courageous souls of history. You read His life and it gives you a total impression of bravery. Nothing ever turned Him back. He faced the howling mob. He went out against the stoutest opposi- tion of His time. He was not afraid even of the bloodthirsty Herod; for when they sent a message to Him from Herod He merely said, “You go back 36 COURAGE NE and tell that old fox, that today and tomorrow I continue My work; even though he with all his entrenched power warns Me, I am not frightened.” And He went forward with the same courage and steadfastness which at length brought Him to the cross. Courage is an essential mark of a Christian. Sometimes I think that we need this virtue particularly in our age and generation; for while we show certain manifestations of courage, I think as a people we are not particularly noteworthy for our bravery. Men make all kinds of excuses for not follow- ing religion. I think if they were to give the real reason it would be because they haven’t the pluck. Religion is not an easy matter. Christianity is one of the most difficult things in the world, and young people turn back because they have not the courage to meet the requirements of Christianity. 37 MARKS OF A CHRISTIAN When somebody said that Christian- ity during the World War had been tried and found wanting, Chesterton replied, ““No, it has been found diffi- cult, and never tried.” There is much truth in that. We have not had the courage to face the emergencies and the demands of Christianity. I would say first of all to you, “Don’t evade the issue, but stand up loyally to all the dangers that are to be met in all the emergencies of life.’ Carlyle said that there is a hero and a coward in every man, and most of us will admit it. What religion means is to develop the heroic in man and not the cowardly. And yet, when I look at churches and Christians today, I wonder if any man would be impressed by their courage. They seem to be such a timid and halting lot. “Safety first” appears to be the motto of Christians today. They get behind the 38 COURAGE battlements of Christianity and there look for refuge, for their own security. “Tike a mighty army, moves the church of God.” Do you think that is characteristic of us today, that we move forward fearlessly and courageously against the enemies of our time? The church is more like a hospital for crippled children than like an army of soldiers. Over there in the subway is an in- vention for the lazy called a moving stairway. All you have to do is get on it and without any effort of your own it carries you up to the next floor. Some people look upon the church as a kind of moving stairway. All you have to do is to get into it, and it will carry you straight up to heaven with- out any effort on your part. Do you think with this kind of idea the church will ever develop heroes and make us courageous? 39 MARKS OF A CHRISTIAN It is not Christianity on the defense, but Christianity on the attack, which reveals the superior qualities of our religion. Sometimes I think that we are defending things altogether too much today; for when you are con- stantly called upon to defend a thing you are likely to make people suspicious about its strength. When a woman always finds it necessary to assert her chastity I think perhaps we would be suspicious about it, and we would say, “Methinks the lady doth protest too much.” ‘There is a good deal of this sort of thing about the present defense of Christianity. Christianity can take care of itself. There is not so much necessity of our always running to bolster up some doctrine or some dogma. What we should do is to be on the aggressive, for it is in the attack that Christianity reveals its highest and its most enduring qualities. So I 40 COURAGE say to you, that no man can be a real disciple of Christ unless he shows courage. Now, there are two kinds of courage. There is the courage for critical occa- sions, and there is the courage for the commonplace, ordinary duties of life. If you ask me, I will tell you that the second kind of courage is the superior. For on critical occasions we are borne up by the excitement and the glory of the hour, and very few men fail in circumstances of that kind. But it is the constant, plodding, persistent duties of the everyday that require the commonplace kind of courage which demands all the strength and power that there is in a man. I knew a soldier overseas who won the Victoria Cross in a most brilliant dash of courage, and then he went home to live and he was drunk all the time. He was a victim of social 41 MARKS OF A CHRISTIAN custom. He had the courage to do a brave thing under the excitement and thrill of the battle, but he did not have the commonplace courage to resist social invitations to make a beast of himself. And so I tell you that it is the courage in the ordinary, common- place duties of life that is the great test of a Christian. They say that when Captain Scott was returning from that terrific journey to the South Pole, the feet of the men were frostbitten, and some of them were discouraged and desired to lie down and die. Then he gave out this command, “‘Men, slog on; slog on!” I tell you, it is the slogging on in the face of what seem to be insuperable difficulties in the ordinary, trying, trivial things of life, that requires much courage. You young men, in the face of all the temptations which meet your everyday 42 COURAGE life, perhaps when you are alone, when there is nobody to cheer you, when the friends that you ought to look to for support fail you—then is the hour when you need courage. Be strong and of a good courage, and go on loyally in the ordinary commonplace duties of life. I knew another soldier overseas who had been an absolute failure at home. When he was recommended for the croix de guerre, he refused it. He said, “T won’t take a decoration for bravery here until I go home and make good there; then I will accept the croix de guerre.’ AndIam sure that we admire that kind of courage, that was not going to be decorated for some magnifi- cent outburst; because courage is not an occasional thing, it is a habit of the soul. It is an essential, dominant, per- sistent, never-dying characteristic of our humanity. We need to practice 43 MARKS OF A CHRISTIAN and exercise it every hour of our lives. Particularly is it hard to have when you are alone. The battles of peace are harder to win than the battles of war. Victory in peace times is not an easy thing, as we are beginning to un- derstand since the War. Much more easy was it to win victory in the Great War than it is to win victory in these times of peace, because it requires the commonplace kind of courage. And that is the kind that we are in need of just now. But courage is not a contradiction to fear, because it is cowardice that is the opposite of courage. There are lots of people who are afraid, but they conquer their fears and go forward. I like that story told of King Henry IV of France. He was a great soldier, but he never went into a fight that he did not turn ashen pale and his knees begin to tremble. On one occasion, +4 COURAGE when his body seemed to be in a great state of fear, he looked down at his knees and said, “Tremble, you vile things; you would tremble a lot more if you knew where I was going to take you in half an hour.”” That is the kind of courage we want when all our desires and our temptations are to run away. It is a courage that is superior to fear. We want it today. A young man down at one of our bathing places, one of those “‘sloppy Susan”’ kind of men, complained to a comrade that his mouth was full of sand. His com- rade said, ‘“‘Swallow some of it; you need it in your system.” ‘There are a great many people who need some kind of grit in order to bear them over the hard places of life. Now, I want to give you a few simple rules for this courage of ours. How do we get it, and what is the secret of it? The secret of courage is, first of 45 MARKS OF A CHRISTIAN all, an overmastering sense of the presence of God. You know no man ever does any great things until he is moved and actuated and compelled by some person or fired by some cause. All the courageous deeds of history have been achieved by that very sense of presence. That is how Joshua be- came courageous. God said, ‘‘Have not I commanded thee? Be strong and of a good courage. As I have been with Moses, so will I be with thee. Be not discouraged nor dismayed. Go forward.” It was the presence of God that kept him up. It was the presence of God that was the strength of the courage of Jesus. And I tell you, friends, if you get into your hearts that God is on your side and that man can- not stand against you, if you have that presence always with you, you will be courageous and you will never become cowards. I believe that we are cow- 46 COURAGE ards because we think too much about ourselves—our own pains, our own dangers, our own inconveniences. But you get a man who can forget himself, and then he will do brave things. The mother that forgets herself and thinks of her baby will stand and fight like a tigress in defense of her child, because she is thinking not of herself but of her baby. The lover will protect his be- loved with his very life. The patriot will throw himself against the enemy because of his country’s cause. And if we can have such self-forgetfulness, then we will be courageous. We need also great faith in our cause. Sometimes we lack faith. We have a sort of half-faith in Christianity, in- stead of believing that Jesus must be invincible. Somebody asked an Amer- ican hero in the Civil War, “How is it your regiment always seems to con- quer? Why don’t the other regiments AT MARKS OF A CHRISTIAN have victory sometimes?” He said, “Tt is because they lack a cause. They have not the same faith in their cause that we have.” It is such faith that subdues kingdoms, waxes valiant in fight, turns to flight the armies of the alien, pierces through mountains, leaps over all kinds of obstacles and diffi- culties, will not be turned back. It is faith that makes a man courageous. There is one more thing that will give courage, and that is hope. Nothing will make a man so much a coward as despair. Amundsen said so when on his polar expedition. When they had reached the Pole, the men suddenly became discouraged. He asked why it was, and he realized it was because their hope had been fulfilled to get to the Pole, and now, having no hope to urge them on, they fell back and be- came slow. It is hope that keeps a man brave—hope, even in the face of 48 COURAGE evidences that seem to contradict our hope. ‘We are saved by hope.” Let me tell you a little story in con- clusion. It is a fine illustration of courage. You remember Henley the poet. He had something the matter with his foot, and he went and con- sulted a famous surgeon. The doctor said to him, “I think I can save your foot, but it will mean twenty months of agony. You will have to lie on your back with your feet up for weeks, and every moment will be painful.” Hen- ley said, ““Go ahead.” And while he was being saved, with the agony of twenty months’ pain, he wrote this poem: Out of the night that covers me, Black as the pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever gods there be For my unconquerable soul. In the fell clutch of circumstance I have not winced nor cried aloud; 4 49 MARKS OF A CHRISTIAN Under the bludgeonings of chance My head is bloody, but unbowed. It matters not how strait the gate How charged with punishment the scroll; I am the captain of my fate; I am the master of my soul. He came through, bearing upon his body the marks of his courage, for he limped all the years of his life. That is the kind of courage we want. If you manifest it in your whole life, you too will be able to say, “I bear upon my life the brand of the Lord Jesus, the mark of courage.” 50 iil PATIENCE © fa HA An ed we CM ‘Al ih tht ! ‘ i Ut Meee), é 7 Hs rt Peete A i le F ' cat bony? oti et eb Is we 2 i pahey id nike fy fA , ‘ f j ay , PATIENCE I want to think with you about an- other mark of the Christian, perhaps more typical than the two I have mentioned, and certainly just as neces- sary—the mark of Patience. I hope you see how one mark necessitates the other. They are all linked together; they are interdependent. Loyalty is a difficult thing and requires courage; and courage very often is nothing more than patient endurance. So you see that these marks are all dovetailed together; you cannot separate them. There have been few characters of history so remarkable for patience as Paul. I will give you just one illus- 53 MARKS OF A CHRISTIAN tration of it. St. Paul suffered from some unknown bodily affliction. He calls it “a thorn in the flesh.” We have not been able to gather what its exact character was, but it must have given him a great.deal of trouble, for he prayed again and again to be de- livered from it. But he got no deliver- ance, and all that God said to him was, *“My grace is sufficient for you. Go and patiently bear this affliction of yours; for it is the only thing for you to do.”’ Sometimes we fret and mur- mur because the burdens of life are not lifted from us. It might be the worst thing to happen. The better thing is to get strength to carry the burden; and God always provides that, if we ask Him for it. St. Paul therefore bore always in his life the mark of patience. In this particular he was but a dis- ciple of the Master; for Jesus mani- 54 PATIENCE fested a remarkable patience. There is not a single touch of impatience or fret or worry about the life of our Lord. He moves through the pages of the Gospels with an absolute calmness, an unhurried patience. Time and time again they tried to precipitate matters, to get Him to hurry a bit, and He said, “Mine hour is not yet come.” How very patient He was with the slow- witted disciples! Again and again He said, “Do ye not yet understand?” And He went on patiently, toilingly, without the least exasperation, en- deavoring to commit His teaching to their stupid minds; and all through the Passion He exhibited a very won- derful patience. So this is an essential and indispensable mark of a Christian —patience! It is very much needed, for we are not a very patient people. We live in an age of hurry and bustle. The 55 MARKS OF A CHRISTIAN slogan of our time is, “Make it snappy!”’ Everybody wants you to be on the continual go. When I was a boy I used often to see placarded up three letters, B B B, which meant Burdock Blood Bitters. But today we have B B B, and it means Bright, Brief, and Breezy. This is a char- acteristic not only of our whole life, but particularly of our religion. People are impatient of long services. They want their religion served up in tabloid form, a sort of spiritual pemmican. There is not the spirit of patience, I am afraid, manifested in our modern life; and because we are not patient we lose a great deal of the joy and the glory and the real spiritual value of our living. “He that believeth shall not make haste,” for leisureliness is absolutely necessary in order that we shall get the highest and the deepest values out of our life. 56 PATIENCE Now, this matter of patience is very difficult, and it has been very fre- quently misunderstood. Patience has usually been thought of as a passive virtue, whereas it shows its most splendid qualities on its active side rather than on its passive. It has of course this double relation. It is both passive and active, as I hope to show you in a moment. But patience— what exactly does it mean? You know it is a borrowed word; it is not English in its derivation, and it simply means one who is willing to suffer, who does not take things too easily, who is will- ing to manifest in his life a capacity for endurance, for suffering, for re- straint, for self-control. Perhaps I had better just single out one by one the necessary elements of patience, in order to show you exactly what is required. One of the essential qualities of patience is the ability to 57 MARKS OF A CHRISTIAN wait; and that is one of the things that we have not been greatly schooled in. During the War, we who were overseas knew that the ability to wait, to hold ourselves in leash, to wait until the time came for action, was one of the most necessary things of our ex- perience. We have all realized what is called “the psychological moment’’; if you act before the time you are only going to interfere with matters—you are only going to lose a great deal of the value of life. The man who knows how to hold himself back until the right moment arrives, who is not precipitate and rash and extravagant, is the man who will get the most out of his life. So that waiting is one of the necessary elements of patience. Some years ago there was a great mine disaster in the Western States, when a large number of men were buried. It was not known whether 58 PATIENCE they were dead or living. The mothers and the wives and the children were all at the pit-head and they could not do anything. They just had to wait until the buckets came up to bring the news whether their husbands and sons were living. And some of them broke under the tenseness of waiting; the nervous strain was so great that they collapsed. When at last the first word came up and they were told to go and get blankets, it was a great relief; the period of waiting was over. But I tell you, friends, it is such patience, in the sense of waiting, that we want very much to exercise in these days of ours. Then in the idea of patience there is resignation. This is a virtue not always in demand, for sometimes we practice resignation when we ought to be impatient. We sit down under things and bear them when neither God nor man demands that we should 59 MARKS OF A CHRISTIAN bear them. Some people use patience as another word for indifference, or for laziness or sloth. We blame God for a great deal, and say “It is the will of God” that we should patiently sub- mit. I think that about seventy per cent of the things we call the will of God are not the will of God at all; these troubles have been brought on us by our own stupidity and the sin and rascality of man. Some child dies of fever, and its mother says “‘It is the will of God.” It is nothing of the kind; it is just a condition of filth and contagion in the city. And when people die in tenements like flies and then talk about resigning themselves to the will of God, they misconstrue the whole idea of Christianity. But there must be resignation at some times in our lives. We must understand when it is really the will of God; then we must submit patiently 60 PATIENCE and bear that which we know in our hearts and consciences is ours to bear. Our own hearts and consciences are the only guides to us to bear what has been set for us. Then patience means endurance— the ability to see a thing through; and here is where a great many people fail. You business men know how many start out with high enthusiasm and fall by the way. Statistics tell us that of a hundred young men, who start out with ability and opportunity, only five ever reach complete success. The other ninety-five fall by the way, be- cause they have not the stick-at-ive- ness to see the thing through. They have not the patience to wait; they have not the ability of endurance. And there are a good many like that in the Christian church. Boys and girls in the Sunday school come up to con- firmation, and after that they fade 61 MARKS OF A CHRISTIAN away and we never see them any more, because they have not the endurance to stand the strain of Christian duty and to meet the responsibilities that are resting upon them. We must learn to wait. “Milton said, “They also serve who only stand and wait.” We must have resignation. “Thy will, not mine, O Lord, be done.” We must have endurance. “Blessed is the man that endureth to the end, for he shall receive a crown of life.’ But now we come to the active side of patience, and I am going to give you another motto: “Let us run with patience the race that is set before us.” You know that an impatient batter can very easily throw away the game; it is the man who knows how to hold himself in with an iron discipline and control until the right moment comes and then releases his energy, who will win. Watch the man down in the 62 PATIENCE arena. ‘There he is out racing with his competitors, and you can just see how he holds himself in restraint. He won’t put all his strength into the first hun- dred yards. He will wait until he is three-fourths over the course, and then he will open up his reserve and let go all his energy. Do you know that Philip Doddridge has written a hymn which exactly demonstrates this active side of? pa- tience? Awake, my soul, stretch every nerve, And press with vigor on! A heavenly race demands thy zeal, And an immortal crown. Is there enough stretching of nerves about our religion? Are we taut and tense to the endeavors of our Christian living? Is not this “walk” of ours a leisurely kind of business, a sort of go- as-you-please membership in the Chris- 63 MARKS OF A CHRISTIAN tian church? What have we sacrificed? Have we suffered? Have we bled? Have we made any sacrifice for our Christianity? Have we patience, in the sense of suffering for our great cause? I am going to give you three or four cases in life where patience is absolutely necessary, but also very difficult. The first is when we are in the presence of mysteries that we don’t understand. That is the time when we need to be patient and wait until God is pleased to show us the explanation. How many people there are who throw over their religion because there is some difficulty that they are unable to com- prehend! George Eliot, the great writer, dropped her faith in eleven days. Robert Elsmere dropped his in seven days. Not so very long ago a young man came up to me and said he had just read a pamphlet of fifty pages, 64 PATIENCE eS a criticism of the Old Testament. And he said, “My faith goes by the board, because I cannot understand these things.” He had no patience in the presence of inscrutable mysteries. I we were to throw over everything for so slight an occasion there would never be anything left! How much do we understand about life? There are inscrutable riddles on all sides of us, and the only thing for us to do is to be patient until the revelation comes, or until we have the capacity to receive that which God is just waiting to give if only we are able to receive it. Jesus said, “I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye are not able to receive them now.” It is only because we lack the capacity; and just as soon as we shall become qualified for the reception of this revelation, He will give it to us. In the meantime we must patiently wait, take it on trust 5 65 MARKS OF A CHRISTIAN awhile, until God is pleased to reveal this thing to us. A second occasion in life when patience is difficult is under a sense of disappointment. You know some- times how our hopes are blasted and our expectations are unfulfilled. That is the time when it is very hard for us to be patient. We just simply want to cry out against the injustice of the thing. Principal Rainy was one of the great leaders in Scotland; he was fighting for a long number of years for the union of the Scotch churches, and at last it came up in Parliament. He sat in the gallery on the night when the vote was taken, and when it was taken he was de- feated. He went back home with his friend. Not a word of impatience was spoken. He sat down and said, “I wish I were ten years younger, so that I could take it up all over again.” He 66 PATIENCE ——— did take it up, and ere long it went through magnificently. This is the kind of patience we need in our dis- appointment. Oh, that we had just this kind of endurance, to take up our cross again and go forward! For I measure a man not by the number of his falls, but by the times he gets on his feet and goes forward to the fight. Another occasion in life when it is difficult to be patient is when things are moving slowly, when we are in the presence of a loitering progress. People are walking, and we want them to run; and they are running, and we want them to fly. Nothing is more difficult than to be patient when things seem to move altogether too slowly for us. I like the parent who is always patient with the stupid member of the family. Some of us would have had a hard time of it if the fathers and mothers had only looked after the brilliant ones. 67 MARKS OF A CHRISTIAN I like the teacher of the class who takes a lot of pains with the dull and backward pupils. And if God did not take a lot of pains with some of us who are so stupid and slow, I wonder what would become of us. So to him who exercises patience in these circumstances, in the presence of mystery, under the burden of dis- appointment, when things are slow, God will give his own recognition. The poor little girl in London died. She had spent all her life in a patient effort to bring up a little family and she had gnarled and broken fingers and hands. The clergyman said to her, ‘‘When you meet your Saviour just show Him your hands. He will see you bear on your body the marks of patience.” Do you bear on your body the mark of patience? It is a mark of the Lord Jesus. Without it you may never be able to see His face. 68 IV HUMILITY HUMILITY Now we reach the most difficult of all the marks of a Christian, and yet one that is the most essential and char- acteristic. It is Humility. Christian- ity made humility a virtue. It was not a virtue before the days of Christ. You could not insult a man more in the pre-Christian times than to say he was humble. It was considered to be a quality of a slave, and therefore was absolutely scorned. But when Jesus came into the world He lifted it to a place of great dignity, and ever since that time humility has been looked upon as one of the dominant charac- teristics of a Christian. 71 MARKS OF A CHRISTIAN Let me give you a simple illustra- tion of the humility of Paul. The most beautiful of all his letters is the letter he wrote to Philemon, when he committed to his tender mercy the slave Onesimus. Now, you need to understand the position of a slave in the days of the Roman Empire in order to understand how condescending was the act of Paul when he took this slave and made him his brother. Only Christianity could have persuaded him to do so humble and yet so glorious a thing as to elevate a man from the degrading position of a slave into that of a Christian brother. The mark of humility is undoubtedly found in the life of Jesus. He said, “Learn of Me, for I am meek and lowly.” There is not a suspicion of pride or haughtiness or arrogance in the whole of His life. He always appears in the garb of a servant, and 72 HUMILITY on the night before He died, you re- member how He took a towel and girded Himself and washed the dis- ciples’ feet, in order to give them an example of humility. He said, “I have given you an example that ye should do unto others as I have done unto you.” And there is no more magnifi- cent illustration of humility than the cross; for it was a thing of shame and degradation, and yet Jesus has, by dying on the cross, lifted it to a position of moral glory and dignity. Humility, therefore, you will admit, must be demonstrated in the life of anyone who would call himself a disciple of the Master. I believe, again, that this is a spe- cially necessary characteristic in these days of ours, for we are not a very humble people. We talk in super- latives. I am amazed how often men will sit by the hour and talk about 73 MARKS OF A CHRISTIAN themselves. Did you ever hear any man tell you a story where he was not the hero? If you ever meet one who will tell you of an incident when he was the defeated party, when he got a ‘licking,’ write it down as a very hopeful sign. But you won’t very often. We hear such things as this: the largest circulation, the finest goods, the prettiest dress, the largest congre- gation, the highest salaried officials, the most eloquent preacher; and so all the way it goes on, dealing with these terms of pride and of exaltation. You must admit that we do need a little more modesty and a little more humility in these modern times. Emerson, the great American essay- ist, said, “The positive is the muscle of the speech and the superlative is the fat.” If that be true, then our speech is suffering from fatty degeneration of the heart; for never was there a time 7A HUMILITY when there were so many superlatives used, and modesty is not a very dom- inant characteristic of ours. Humility teaches us that the way up is down. There is a very fine passage in one of John Wesley’s hymns: “Sink me to perfection’s heights.” There is almost a contradiction in it, and yet we know that the only way for us to be lifted up to perfection is by our passing through the valley of humiliation. Hu- mility is a dominant characteristic of all the greatest souls of history. The church particularly needs hu- mility for I hear the different denom- inations frequently boasting that they and they only have the way of salva- tion, that they have all the truth, that in them alone is the right doctrine of Christianity interpreted. I say to myself, ““O God, if we could only give our churches and our preachers and our congregations a little more humil- 15 MARKS OF A CHRISTIAN ity, so that they will not always be advertising themselves and flaunting their superiority over others in the face of the public!” There is no more dreadful sin in the world than the sin of scorn. “Blessed is the man who hath not sat in the seat of the scornful.” When I hear scorn poured out upon people who don’t walk in the same way with us, I wonder if we have learned the lesson of humility. Jesus, when He saw men all scrambling for the high seats, said, “Go and sit down in the lowest room; for he that humbleth himself shall be exalted, and he that exalteth himself shall be abased.”’ Now let me tell you, first of all, what humility is not; because it is very frequently misinterpreted. Humility is not a cringing, fawning attitude. I suppose that Dickens has forever made ridiculous and contemptible that kind 76 HUMILITY of humility—those people who come to you washing their hands with in- visible soap and fawning and cringing and making themselves very obsequl- ous. You know very well that this is not the right interpretation of humility. There was nothing cringing or fawn- ing about the Lord Jesus, and yet He was the humblest soul in history. Neither is humility self-depreciation. Those people are for the most part frauds who are always underestimat- ing themselves, who are saying that they are not clever, that they are not this or they are not that. After all, this is a kind of pride; it is false humility. A story is told of a philos- opher of Greece who went around clothed in rags in order that he might draw the attention of the public to his humility. Somebody said, you could see his pride peeping out of the holes in his garments; and that is very 77 MARKS OF A CHRISTIAN frequently the case. No, humility is not self-depreciation. And then, humility is not based on our sin and guilt. It has a different origin from that. Jesus was humble, but there is not in all His life the slightest consciousness of guilt. So do not think for a moment that humility springs out of our demerits or out of our guilt and sin. It must have a different origin from that. So these three things are not char- acteristic of humility—a cringing obse- quiousness, or self-depreciation, or a sense of our guilt and sin. It must have a different origin altogether. What is humility? Humility is just a modest estimate of one’s self. After all, every estimate is relative; all standards are comparative; and it depends entirely upon what standard is used as to whether you are going to be humble or not. When the Pharisee 78 HUMILITY came to say his prayers he had a com- parison. He said, “I thank God that I am not as other men are,” and look- ing round about him and seeing one other man he was lifted up with pride because he adopted the wrong standard. This comparative method is what brings us into pride and arrogance, for it is the easiest thing in the world to find people who are our inferiors. It is the easiest thing in the world to find something in yourself which is more excellent than in other people, and there is nothing more cheap than to do that very kind of thing. I remember some years ago that a public entertainment was coming to the town where I happened to be living. When afterward I took excep- tion to one of the members of the company he was very angry and wrote back and called me all kinds of names. He said I was a twopenny-halfpenny 79 MARKS OF A CHRISTIAN curate and that he could earn more money in one night than I could earn in a whole year. Therefore he was a much greater man than I was. The whole of his letter was just one out- pouring of pride and arrogance, the arrogance of wealth because he could scratch in the dollars. It is the easiest thing in the world for us to find some- thing where we excel and to hold that up. And you know, when we make these comparisons, we generally pick out the inferiorities of others and our own superiorities, and bring them into contrast; and they always, of course, lead us into pride. I want to give you proper standards of comparison. It is not by the rela- tive, but by the absolute, that you must measure your life. You know that old proverb, ‘Better to be ruler in this city than second man in Rome.” It is one of the stupidest proverbs in 80 HUMILITY existence. You are the biggest man in a little city, but you are not nearly as big a man as you ought to be. I say, “‘Leave your little corner and match yourself against bigger men in order that you may be lifted up to your best. Don’t be always contrast- ing yourself with people smaller than you are. You ought to stand against the great characters of history, and then you will not be so.proud of your- self. The only absolute standard of life that we have is Jesus Christ. Instead of comparing yourself with other men, weak and faulty as you are, go and stand beside that matchless, peerless Life, and then you will be humbled to the ground.” I suppose that Mount Jefferson and Mount Washington up there in the White Mountains, when they look down on the little hills beneath them, must think they are the great summits of the 6 81 MARKS OF A CHRISTIAN world. But if they could go and stand beside Mont Blane or the Rocky Mountains, they would not be so proud of their inches. It depends entirely upon the standard. I give you that Standard which is the only standard that will bring us into a proper estimate of ourselves. Let us go and stand beside that Life, and He will bring us into humility. I remember a story of a young man who made application to go to China as a missionary, and when the board of examiners talked with him they felt that he would not suit at all. But he was so enthusiastic and zealous in the matter that they very timidly said to him, “How would you like to go as a servant?” He said, “I will be glad to be a hewer of wood or a drawer of water, if I can help at all in the great missionary cause of God.” Here was an evidence of humility that I am 82 HUMILITY sure we will all appreciate and admire. Let me give you another standard of measurement in order to teach you humility. We are so proud of what we do; but let us not be comparing our achievements with other achievements, but with what remains to be done. And when we look out upon the world and see how much still remains to do, will we be arrogant and haughty about what we have done? Some men pride themselves in the thought that they are self-made men. There is no such thing in all God’s world as a self-made man, for there were contributions to his making. He some- times is forgetful of all that had to be done in order to make it possible for him to achieve what he did. We take so many things to ourselves which we ought to accredit to others. Also when we look out and see how much misery there is in the world, how many 83 MARKS OF A CHRISTIAN tasks are left undone, how many build- ings are incomplete, is it possible for our hearts to be lifted up with pride and arrogance? Don’t think so much of the man you are, but of the man that you ought to be. If ever there is a person who is tempted to be proud and arrogant because he has made something of his life, then I would like to draw the veil aside and show him how much greater, how much taller, how much more charitable, how much more loving he would be if he lived to the highest capacity. Until you do, you must not be exalted or arrogant over your achievements. God gives His blessings only to the man of humble mind. He has nothing to bestow upon the proud, the uplifted, and the arrogant. So let us come and learn the lesson of humility. “‘Chinese”’ Gordon, who was one of the greatest men of the British Empire, was apply- 84 HUMILITY ing once for a position that he had longed for all his life. At night after it had been given to him he went out into the desert, and somebody found him there kneeling in the sand and groaning out to God, “Oh, take me out of myself! Do not let me be up- lifted by this that has come to me. Teach me to be humble that I may be able to perform my duty all the better.” So he was one of the great souls. He bore in his life the mark of humility, which is a mark of the Lord Jesus. Therefore be ye also clothed with humility. mit Ne | ; y i“ AY ANS et Hf ety it in MONA aah eae ay te Rs ‘ ith te ay ‘ es 2 \ : f | oe ek i ht Ne ia aN Ah wi fyi * rN ye | “" 5 , ae i : ‘ih dam mye ath - = if 2, eis LCG A ERD een | v q° a A} V FREEDOM FREEDOM And now we come to a mark which I am sure you will at once recognize as an essential of one who is a disciple of Jesus. It is the mark that St. Paul particularly refers to in the motto I chose for the direction of our thoughts. Let me repeat the whole statement for you: “Henceforth let no man trouble me, for I bear branded on my body the marks of the Lord Jesus.” The first phrase will show you what St. Paul means. He is claiming his freedom when he demands that no one interfere with him. He says, “The marks on my body show you that I am in the service of the Lord Jesus, and that fact 89 MARKS OF A CHRISTIAN makes me free from every other kind of servitude. Don’t let any man ask for my service. I am in the service of Jesus. Let no man interfere with me. Let there be no other claim upon me, for I have here the signs of my service to my Master, and that makes me free from all the bondages into which men might call me.” A little story will set forth very clearly what is meant. Years ago, when slaves were sold in Africa, an English nobleman was _ traveling through the country, and one day he visited the slave market-place and saw how flesh and blood were being sold and brought into bondage. He saw there a particularly fine specimen of human- ity, and he bought him in. Then he went up to this dark man and said, “You are now absolutely free, to go where you like and do what you like for your whole life. No man can call 90 FREEDOM you slave. You are perfectly at lib- erty to dispose of your time and strength as you desire.” And the dark man could not comprehend it, and said, “Do you mean that I am free to do exactly as I like with my life, that no man can dictate to me?” “Cer- tainly,” said the Englishman. “Then, sir,” he said, “I will tell you what I would like to do with my life. I would like to become your servant, to enter into your service as a valet, and for the rest of my life to try and show you how grateful I am that you have bought me out of the thraldom and bondage of slavery.”” “Henceforth let no man trouble me, for I bear on my body the mark of freedom. I am in the service of my generous Lord and Master.” This freedom is certainly a mark of Christ, for never was there a freer soul in all history than He, who was in 91 MARKS OF A CHRISTIAN bondage to no man. He was not held as a slave by traditions and conven- tions. He walked through all the traditions of His time, and _ they snapped under His feet like cobwebs. He said, “I will tell you the truth, and the truth shall make you free. So long as you are My disciples you are in the service of no other master. He that committeth sin is the slave of sin, but I have called you into the glorious liberty of the children of God.” So both St. Paul and his Master, Jesus, declare for us that freedom is an essential characteristic of a Christian. Now you live in a country that glories in the word “Liberty,’’ and we who live under the British flag also think that we are among the freest people of all history. And yet, when we look around us, can we be certain that we are just as free as we boast ourselves to be? Look for a few 92 FREEDOM moments at the conditions of our time, and search your own hearts as indi- viduals, and see if you are as free as you think yourselves to be. First of all, let us see about our affections. Is our love free? Have we not bound ourselves up by certain customs and conventions and parties and cliques? By our pride of race we have limited our affection to the people of our own speech and tongue. By our pride of birth we have constricted our hearts to the people of our own class in society. By our ecclesiastical prejudices we have cabined and coffined our affection with- in our own particular church and denomination. I do not think that our affection, our love, is as free as it ought to be! And there is nothing that impoverishes the soul so much as the limitation of our love and affec- tion. Do you Protestants love Roman Catholics? Do you Christians love 93 MARKS OF A CHRISTIAN Jews? Do you Americans love French people and Chinamen and Germans? Is your affection free, or are you limited to the people of your own par- ticular desires and speech and tongue and creed? Or look at it in the matter of our mind. Is our intellect free? How many of you allow your thoughts to roam out over the great world of liter- ature and intellectual progress? Are you hide-bound by traditions and cus- toms? “What was good enough for my mother is good enough for me” is about all the freedom of thought that there is among certain types of Chris- tians today. They do not believe, they do not wait for more truth to break out of God’s holy Word, and they hide themselves behind the bar- riers of ecclesiasticism or some other refuge, and never have any liberty of thought or any freedom of intellect to 94 FREEDOM find something new about the revela- tion of God. Our intellects are not free. Then as to conduct. We are often bound by continuation of customs. We have a sort of traditional righteous- ness. We live by ritual and by certain laws. Now, conduct can never be tied down by a fixed form. It must have direction, but it ought not to have definition. We ought always to be manifesting new ways of godliness, new ways of righteousness. Jesus said, “Except your righteousness shall ex- ceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.” We ought to be blossoming always in new mani- festations of the Spirit of God; for when the Spirit of Jesus takes hold of us it cannot confine itself within the ordinary practices and conventions of our time. All conventions are only 95 MARKS OF A CHRISTIAN conveniences. We get into a rut; and do you know what a rut is? A rut is only a grave with the ends knocked out. What we want to do is to have such liberty of action, such liberty of conduct, that the Spirit of God will be able to manifest itself in large and fresh and new and unprecedented ways. But the greatest tyranny of today is the tyranny of things. We are in bondage to business. We are in bond- age to our domestic responsibilities. We are slaves to society. Why, I have known a woman to be so broken down after the marriage of her daughter that she had to go to bed for twenty-four hours to rest up—just a slave to the practices and conventions of society! Yes, and I have known business men so absolutely in bondage to their business that they could not even take Sunday from it, but would go down to the office and apply themselves to 96 FREEDOM business even on the Lord’s day. They have become slaves to things. One of the wealthiest men of our time said, “Tf I had to live my life over again, I would not own so much; for the things we own we do not own; the things we own, own us, and sometimes they get on our backs and drive us down to death.” And is not that true? It is the tyranny of things, the bondage of materialism, which has us in its grip. Now I want to tell you what freedom is. Freedom is the ability of a man to live his life completely and unrestrict- edly. Let me repeat that: freedom is the ability of a man to live his life completely and unrestrictedly. But do you think that a man is living his life completely when he gives himself over to the desires of the flesh? A man says, “I am going to have my fling; I am not going to be tied down by any of your piety or your righteous- 7 97 MARKS OF A CHRISTIAN Hiitenshyral acacia et ness. If I want to drink I will drink; and if I want to gamble I will gamble.” And so he thinks that he is free; and the fool soon finds himself in the bondage of lust, or in the bondage of gambling, or in the bondage of in- temperance. He is a slave to the very longings and desires, for freedom in which he has made such a clamorous challenge. There is only one freedom that will keep you free from bondage, and that is the freedom of the service of God. A man only is free to live his life com- pletely, fully, most unrestrainedly, who has devoted himself to the service of the Lord Jesus Christ. There are two sources of freedom. There is freedom from within and freedom from without. Freedom from without means that all constraints and bondages that have bound us at the outset are off. And law, after all, 98 FREEDOM is just external restraint. If you break a man’s leg, the first thing that you do is to put it in splints, and you bandage it around and around; but you don’t expect to keep them on forever. Just as soon as the life within the leg begins to act, you can take off the splints and other bandages. But suppose all the constraints of law and of society were taken off your life tomorrow—do you think you could trust yourself? Sup- pose tomorrow someone should say to you, “You can do exactly as you like” —could you trust yourself? Could you trust your neighbor? A great many of our laws are only crutches and props to keep a man from falling. It is the life within, the freedom of the spirit, the inward principle of truth, of doing the will of God, that will release us from every outward con- straint and make us the most abso- lutely free people in the world. And 99 MARKS OF A CHRISTIAN there is no other real freedom. The highest freedom is the freedom of the soul, that can express itself in outward actions without constraint and dicta- tion. Children are brought up, and they must be restrained. But when we grow up to man’s estate, surely we have sufficient power within us to keep walking right without the aid of crutches and props of various kinds. Such is the freedom that the Lord Jesus Christ gives us. It sets us free from all the bondages of the flesh, from all the bondages of the world. Can you have any single doubt about this if you look over the life of the world and realize the men who have been guided by the principle of truth— by what is true, not by what is con- ventional; not by what is expedient, but by what is absolutely true and cor- rect? Such freedom is the only thing. People talk a great deal about their 100 FREEDOM rights. I wish to heaven sometimes that they would stop talking about their rights and talk more about their duties, because our duties are much more important than our rights; and it is our duty in the face of God, who has given us this freedom of ours, to dedicate it to Him. “Our wills are ours to make them Thine.” That is the real glory and boast of Christianity. Now, there are at least three times in life when your freedom must be limited. The first is in the interest of your own highest personal life and character. No man has a right to do anything that is going to cripple his soul. No man is free to do as he likes: he is free only to do as God likes, who is his Lord; and it is not his highest good that he will take his fling and bring his soul in bondage to corruption. If he does, then he is a slave; he is not free. So your freedom is limited by 101 MARKS OF A CHRISTIAN your own highest and best interests. Oh, young man and young woman! will you remember that, the next time you are tempted to have your fling? Especially ask yourself, “Is this going to help my soul? Will it tend to the development of the highest and freest manhood and womanhood?” The second limitation of our freedom is our love of our brother. We are not free to do things that will hurt our brother. Paul said, “If meat maketh my brother to offend, I will eat no meat as long as the world stands.” And when you remember that your brother for whom Jesus Christ died is endangered by your freedom, that what you claim for yourself is going to hurt him, will you do it? The prin- ciple of Christian brotherhood demands that weshallsometimes sacrifice even our own lives in the interests of our brother. The third limitation of our freedom 102 FREEDOM is the cause which we have espoused. A man is not free as long as he has elected to support a cause. He cannot do wholly as he likes. He is free to do only what is in the best interest of that cause of which he is an advocate. A Frenchman was wounded—he had lost an arm—and somebody said to him, “Oh, my dear fellow! you have lost an arm.” ‘‘No,” he said, “I did not lose an arm; I gave my arm for my coun- try’s freedom.” And he bore upon his body the mark of freedom: for it is better for a man to lose an arm than having two arms to go into the punish- ment of hell. So I claim for you and for me to be free only in the sense in which that word is properly interpreted, free as children of God to obey Him, and to submit our lives to His guidance. If you do that, then you will bear in your body the mark of the Lord Jesus. 103 VI GENEROSITY BRE t's 8 Dis We is i sf a 4 4 nyt Dy \ J ei HS AO LANA ie cet Ra a+ GENEROSITY I have been a little puzzled about the choice of the closing mark. I wanted a word that would impress the idea of tenderness and compassion in our relation toward others. I thought of the word “love” but that has been so abused and narrowed down, and it has become somewhat sloppy and senti- mental, and I have therefore avoided it. I thought of the word “ charity,” which of course in its original meaning is one of the most rich and beautiful words in all our language; but it too has been strangely narrowed until it has an officialness and coldness about it, and we have the proverb, “As cold as 107 MARKS OF A CHRISTIAN charity.”’ I wanted, therefore, a word that would avoid all these limitations and be very comprehensive and warm in its meaning; and so I have chosen the word Generosity. It is one of the few words of our language that has not been abused, and the moment you talk of a man being generous, you get a very large and catholic idea both of his life and of his thought. So we will study the word “generosity” as the closing mark of a Christian. Let me remind you of our motto: “I bear branded upon me the marks of the Lord Jesus.” This brings our minds immediately back to Christ. He bore these marks originally, and cer- tainly there is no characteristic of His life more dominant than His generos- ity. He was the widest of men in His thought, in His life, in His attitude toward others. Although He was born of one of the most provincial races of 108 GENEROSITY the earth, of a race the most narrow and prejudiced in history, yet He was broad-minded, compassionate, and gen- erous almost to a fault. There is no suggestion of narrowness or of any limitations in all His life. Jew and Gentile, bond and free, male and female, rich and poor, all based a claim upon Him, and that claim was immedi- ately responded to in the most generous manner possible. So you will agree with me that generosity must be a characteristic of a disciple of the Master. St. Paul, who wrote these words, was also a very catholic-spirited man. He said, “I am made all things to all men.” He was born of the strictest sect of the Pharisees, and yet he allowed none of his prejudices to narrow his attitude toward others. He became perhaps the most liberal soul in all Christian history, ministering to people of all 109 MARKS OF A CHRISTIAN classes and conditions with a mind that was generous and a heart that was compassionate and a soul that was wide as the arms of the cross. Surely he was a generous-spirited man. We come now to consider this virtue. What do we mean by generosity? We mean a man’s doing a little more than might be expected of him. If he does only his duty he is not generous: he is merely just; but if he does a little more than may be justly demanded of him, if he exceeds justice in the point of duty, then he becomes generous. There are four classes of people in the world to whom we have to express some attitude and some sympathy, and I would just like briefly to touch upon them. The first class is our friends. It doesn’t require very much effort to induce us to be generous to our friends. And yet, strange to say, is it not often true that men are meaner 110 GENEROSITY with their close and loved ones than they are with a casual stranger? I know of no greater test of a Christian than the man who is generous to his family, generous to those who have the greatest claim upon him. The mean- est soul in the world is the husband who is narrow in his attitude toward his wife and his family; for when a man will not provide generously for those of his own household, then cer- tainly he has no claim to being a Christian, much less a_ generous Christian. The next group is our enemies. We all know very well that there is nothing harder in the world than to be generous to those who have hurt us, to those who have wounded us in some par- ticular. Yet you will admit that if there is any man who can do it, he is manifesting the true spirit of a Christian. 111 MARKS OF A CHRISTIAN The story is told of Abraham Lincoln, that once one of the bitterest of men toward him in the nation was Edwin M. Stanton. Stanton hated him so much that he said he didn’t see any reason for going away down to Africa to get a gorilla, when they had one in Abraham Lincoln. Yet Lincoln was so generous to Stanton, that when he wanted a secretary of war he appointed Stanton, because he believed that he had the qualifications for the position. And his generosity so won over his enemy that when the great president lay dead, Stanton said of him, “There is the greatest ruler of men that ever lived.” It was generosity to his enemies that made the greatness of the martyr president; and it is generosity toward our enemies that is the finest characteristic of a Christian. Listen to Jesus upon the cross: “Father, for- give them, for they know not what 112 GENEROSITY they do,” and you will realize that the most difficult and yet the most con- stantly Christlike characteristic of a Christian is to be generous to our enemies. Then there is generosity to our rivals, to those who are competing with us in the affairs of life. You business men know how hard it is. You pro- fessional men understand—to be gen- erous to those who are competing with you in business. You women know— to be generous to those who are your peers in society, who are perhaps demanding a little more attention, and getting it, than you. How very diffi- cult it is to be generous to those who are our rivals! There is nothing more difficult than that, for jealousy is one of the things that is constantly coming in and interfering with the spirit of generosity. I like that story of Maeterlinck. He . 113 MARKS OF A CHRISTIAN is one of the great men of his nation, and at last they decided to honor him. He went to the committee and asked them instead of honoring him to give the honor to his great rival artist and poet. That is one of the finest ex- amples of generosity that I know of, that he was willing to make place for the man who was his rival in the favor of the public mind. It requires a great deal of generosity to be fair to your rivals. Yes, even in the church! There is little enough generosity when the Anglicans and the Presbyterians are jealous of each other, when a Methodist leader is viewed with jeal- ousy and distrust and suspicion by his brethren. His motives are questioned, or his methods are criticized, or they look upon him and add, with a shrug of the shoulders, “He is not quite orthodox,” and use all their influence to discredit him. Jealousy is the great 114 GENEROSITY enemy of generosity where our rivals are concerned. Then there is another class of people to whom it is very difficult to be gen- erous—people who are outside of our class, outside of our nation, outside of our creed. We will call them “out- siders”; I don’t know any word that will describe them better. How very difficult it is to be generous to them, for prejudice is always cropping up to hinder our generosity — prejudice ! Now, Jesus was never guilty of preju- dice, although He was a Jew according to the flesh. You see how kindly dis- posed and generous he was to the people outside His own race and outside His own creed. Today I received a letter written to me asking me why I have not pleaded for the negro. Have I not been talk- ing all through six days and saying that there ought to be no caste or creed 115 MARKS OF A CHRISTIAN or color in our religion? For Jesus is the Saviour of all men, and God hath made of one blood all nations of men to dwell upon the earth; and if there is any prejudice of color or of creed, then we have failed to measure up to the standard of Christianity. Now, these are the classes: Our opponents, our rivals, and the out- siders, to whom we need to practice generosity. Let me give you two or three motives for generosity, for you know that very often a deed of generosity is spoiled by its motive. Some people give because their names are going to be in the paper, because they are on the sub- scription list, because they are going to get something in return for it; and a quid pro quo is not generosity. Let me give you some motives that will lift generosity to a higher plane. One is this: ‘Freely ye have received; 116 GENEROSITY ————— freely give.” It is because God has been generous to us. Oh! when you remember and think of all the streams of contribution that have come down through the years, ministering to your happiness, what have you today that you did not receive? The most price- less heritages that we possess today have been bequeathed to us, the lega- cies that have come from the men of the yesteryears. We hold in our hands the treasures of the men who have died, that have all come down from their day toours. “Freely ye have received; freely give.”’ Be generous because you have been treated generously. I know of few better motives than this for generosity. Then the second motive is, because we are all stewards. Whatever we have we hold in trust. We did not receive these things entirely for our own appropriation. God has given bg MARKS OF A CHRISTIAN you your talent, whether it be of music or money, or whatever it may be, in order that you may bless others with it. Itis not merely for your own selfish aggrandisement. And the man who believes that he is a steward, that he is holding these things in trust for the good of mankind, is bound to be generous. Another motive for our generosity is the good it does for others. Generosity makes decent men. You know that if you are being vindictive to a man he is bound to pay you back in your own coin. If you are suspicious of others they will be suspicious of you. There is nothing that will awaken generosity in a man’s soul like your own gen- erosity. The story is told that there was a man in the army during the Crimean War, who was a veritable black sheep. Everybody had his hand raised against him. He did not seem 118 GENEROSITY to be able to do right at all. And when he was brought before the colonel once for a criminal offense and the colonel was about to punish him severely, he said, “I am going to try generosity,” and forgave the man. Shortly after- ward the plague broke out there, and the man who did the best service was that black sheep. He caught the plague himself and died. It was an act of generosity in the colonel that awakened compassion and tenderness in the soul of that black sheep. And we have seen that happen time and time again. If you want generosity in others, be generous yourself. Thus the Christian centuries are bringing their tribute to Jesus, flowing back to Him in surging tides of gratitude be- cause He was the most generous soul of history. One other motive. Begen- erous because that is what makes you a better man. Nothing so strengthens 119 MARKS OF A CHRISTIAN your soul as generosity toward others. The story is told of Leonardo da Vinci that he had an enemy, and he decided that he was going to put that enemy of his in one of his pictures. So when he painted “The Last Supper” he painted the face of his enemy on the figure of Judas Iscariot. When he had done that he tried to paint the face of Christ and he could not do it. Every effort that he made failed, until at last he realized why it was—because vindic- tiveness in his soul was crippling his handicraft. He went and painted out the face of his enemy on the figure of Judas Iscariot, forgave him, and then came back and painted the face of Jesus Christ with great power. It is generosity that will make you a finer, a better, and a bigger soul. This is our last mark of a Christian--- broad, sympathetic, loving, warm, te - der compassion toward all men. 120 GENEROSITY Do you know that there are only two marks mentioned in the Bible— the mark of the Lord Jesus and the mark of the beast? I have been trying to set before you some marks of a Christian. Don’t you see the orches- tral effect of them? Every mark helps the others. Loyalty might become very narrow if it were not for patience. Courage might be a mere swagger and braggadocio without humility. And so one mark helps the other. In a great orchestra are the horns and the viols and the drums and the basses, and they all come in and make a glorious harmony. So these marks that I have given you, all coming in together, will make the harmonious and complete life of a Christian. If I can only leave with you that motto, “I bear branded on me the marks of the Lord Jesus,” so that you 121 MARKS OF A CHRISTIAN may never forget it, I will have done something. If I have taught you in any way something more of what it means to be a Christian, the glory, the inspiration, the happiness of dedicating oneself to the highest and the noblest as the servants of Him who is our Master and Saviour, then my work shall not have been in vain. 122 ” “a ah) } Tey. Ue if . al ng \ mn i ot - 5 cw / say UMA areas un Fe ta eae ea Os eth “a ny va e144.) a \ ae | Hf ; Latah ey “ (is Oe) er Rey 4 le D Ane ; Pil uit et 17.4 ‘asl ae } a ' gr Thi | 012 01183 7590 i if i ; ome ~~ Hh i He HH He dani: - . i - et iat