NOV 19 1915 
 
 BV 4211 .K47 
 
 Kern, John A. 1846-1926. 
 
 Vision and power 
 
VISION AND POWER 
 
VISION AND POWER 
 
 A STUDY IN THE MINISTRY 
 OF PREACHING 
 
 BY \ 
 
 JOHN A. KERN 
 
 Author of " The Ministry to the Congregation," 
 *' Christianity as Organized," etc. 
 
 There is a depth below the depth, 
 A height above the height. 
 
 Our hearing is not hearing 
 And our seeing is not sight." 
 
 NOV 
 
 New York Chicago Tohonto 
 
 Fleming H. Revell Company 
 
 London and Edinburgh 
 
Copyright, 1915, by 
 FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY 
 
 New York: 158 Fifth Avenue 
 Chicago: 125 N. Wabash Ave. 
 Toronto: 25 Richmond St., W. 
 London: 21 Paternoster Square 
 Edinburgh: 100 Princes Street 
 
(KTo 
 
 my students in Christian Preaching 
 
 now scattered abroad in their own land 
 
 and unto the ends of the earth 
 
 I send 
 
 with grateful memories of twenty-nine years 
 
 this last word 
 
" Couldst thou in vision see 
 The man God meant for thee 
 Thou nevermore shouldst be 
 The man thou art, content," 
 
PREFACE 
 
 IF I might begin with a request, I would ask the 
 reader to turn from this page to the tenth and 
 eleventh chapters of The Acts. Not that, in what 
 is to follow, these two chapters of the New Testament 
 shall be made the text of a series of expository sermons. 
 But the story which they tell and re-tell of a certain 
 epoch-making experience in the life of the first Chris- 
 tian preacher will be taken as a thread of guidance and 
 suggestion for a study in Christian preaching. 
 
 Two words describe, as fairly perhaps as any other 
 two that could be chosen, the men who achieve notably 
 great results in the manifold work of the world. Such 
 results are achieved by men of vision and of power, in 
 some true sense of the two meaningful words. 
 
 To the minister of Christ these words are applicable 
 in the highest meaning they can be made to bear. Be- 
 cause to him vision is vision of spiritual realities, and 
 power is the power of God himself in the setting up 
 of his kingdom in the world. It was so not only with 
 such chief apostles as Peter and Paul, but with all 
 the first messengers of Jesus ; and it is equally true of 
 his messengers to-day. 
 
 This vision and its expression in Divine power, as 
 an equipment for the ministry of preaching, is our 
 theme. 
 
 Any readers whom I may hope to win are likely to 
 
 7 
 
8 PREFACE 
 
 be preachers of the gospel in the earlier years of their 
 ministry; and none certainly could be more welcome. 
 Such as these have already made me their debtor by 
 not a few kind and appreciative words, and I want 
 to be with them still in the companionship of the 
 spirit. 
 
 But none of us, I hope, will forget that the whole 
 enduement of God's truth and grace is alike for all his 
 children — for those who are not named by the Church 
 as its ministers as truly as for those who are. " The 
 gifts and calling of God " are unto a universal Chris- 
 tian priesthood and ministry. And for the man who 
 stands in the pulpit there is nothing better than to be 
 a big brother to his fellows. 
 
 J. A. K. 
 
 Randolph-Macon College. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 I. The Man 13 
 
 1. Easily recognizable and most human. 2. An 
 intellectual trait — impulsive speech. 3. A moral 
 trait — responsiveness to a leader. 4. Faith and 
 faults. 5. What did this faith in Jesus include? 
 6. A common man. 7. The opportunity and work. 
 
 II. The Housetop 36 
 
 1. How Simon Peter had learned to pray. 2. Where 
 to pray. 3. The Oriental housetop as a prayer 
 room. 4. Prayer as a duty. 5. Prayerless activity. 
 6. Praver a response. 7. " Wherefore didst thou 
 doubt?" 
 
 ill. The Vision 54 
 
 1. To sleep, which is to dream. 2. \Miat worth has 
 the dreaming mind? 3. The Divine presence in 
 dreams. 4. The trance, non-religious, religious. 
 5. " In a vision " and " mouth to mouth." 6. The 
 form of the vision. 7. The historic and the uni- 
 versal. 8. Conservatism and truth. 9. Religious 
 aristocracy vs. the religion of Jesus. 
 
 IV. The Interpbetation 79 
 
 1. "What think ye?" 2. Simon Peter thought 
 and was perplexed. 3. Thinking and mysticism. 
 4. A progressive answer. 5. Significance of the 
 spoken " words " at Csesarea. 6. A Gentile's prayer 
 is answered. 7. " I perceive that God is no re- 
 specter of persons." 8. The universality of Jesus. 
 
 V. Visions and Vision 104 
 
 1. Eyesight, ecstasy, insight. 2. What are our 
 visions ? 3. Vision is insight into visions. 4. What 
 means the vision of childhood? 5. Simon Peter's 
 vision of Jesus, and ours. 6. Spiritual vision of 
 one's own life. 7. The soul perceiving spiritual 
 facts and values. 8. The soul picturing spiritual 
 facts and values. 9. Vision the faith of realiza- 
 tion. 
 
 9 
 
10 CONTENTS 
 
 VI. Vision of Natube 130 
 
 1. What did nature mean to Jesus ? 2. The witness 
 of little and great in nature. 3. The witness of 
 utility. 4. The witness of beauty. 5. Nature's 
 revelation of the immanent God. 6. Mystery and 
 truth. 7. Nature's teaching through symbol and 
 proof. 
 
 VII. Vision of Man 152 
 
 1. How we know ourselves and one another. 2. 
 What is it that makes man man? 3. Oneself in 
 the light of Christ. 4. "The light that lighteth 
 every man." 5. The fulfilment of the hunger for 
 the Divine. 6. Sharing the vision of the Lord of 
 Love. 7. What are the human possibilities? 8. 
 The universalism of knowledge, civilization, Chris- 
 tianity. 
 
 VIII. Vision of Jesus 174 
 
 1. What is it to know Jesus? 2. Testimony of 
 Jesus' witnesses, spoken, written. 3. Such a per- 
 sonality must be historic — hence Divine. 4. The 
 Church's answer to the seeker of spiritual truth. 
 6. Vision in Jesus of our everyday life. 6. Vision 
 in Jesus of our moral relation to God. 7. Na- 
 ture's predictive symbols of the Cross. 
 
 IX. The Opportunity 194 
 
 1. Providence in the opportunities of service. 
 
 2. Opportunity alike in life and death. 3. Divine 
 opportunity through human service. 4. The preach- 
 er's wide-open door. 5. " Many adversaries." 
 
 X. Enlabgement of Opportunity 212 
 
 1. "I may, therefore I will." 2. Peter's world- 
 wide opportunity and ours. 8. America and human 
 brotherhood. 4. The peoples and the individual. 
 
 XI. Power through Evangelic Truth 227 
 
 1. Truth as facts and their meaning. 2. Jesus the 
 Evangelic Truth. 3. The imiversal hunger for 
 knowledge. 4. The universal antagonist of evan- 
 gelic truth. 5. The distinctive motive power of the 
 gospel. 6. Truth as personalized in Jesus. 7. The 
 highest truth creative of the highest life. 
 
 XII. Power through the Personality of the Preacher 250 
 
 1. The personality of the first Christian preacher. 
 
 2. The preeminent power of personality, 3. The 
 
CONTENTS 11 
 
 mediating personality of Jesus and his witnesses. 
 4. The Church founded on truth embodied in per- 
 sonality. 5. Personality and personal presence. 
 
 6. " In pretence or in truth." 7. A special reason 
 for great personalities in the pulpit. 8. Personality 
 transfigured and unconscious. 
 
 XIII. PowEB OF THE Indwelunq Spibit 278 
 
 1. The Spirit with and without the gospel. 2. 
 Divine personal power in nature and in grace. 
 3. The Spirit and the free will. 4. Jesus as re- 
 vealed by the Spirit. 5. The gospel preached by the 
 Spirit. 6. The way of the Spirit in the truth. 
 
 7. The way of the Spirit in personality. 8. The 
 mystery of the Spirit's speech. 9. The Spirit and 
 the revival of religion. 
 
 XIV. Effects of Power 301 
 
 1. The soul in the face. 2. The inner spiritual 
 effects. 3. The mark of universality in Christian 
 experience and character. 4. Perfection a gradual 
 growth. 5. The new birth a reconstruction of the 
 soul. 6. Spiritual discipline and healing. 7. The 
 fruits of the Spirit bear witness. 8. Effects in the 
 individual, the church, the community. 
 
 XV. Certain Sigi.s of Power 324 
 
 1. "He will fall down on his face and worship 
 God." 2. The witness of psychology. 3. Interpre- 
 tation and misinterpretation of signs. 4. Use and 
 misuse of social excitement. 5. A transfiguration 
 and its value. 6. The danger of resting in a past 
 experience. 7. The danger of disheartening the 
 true-hearted. 8. The new birth in childhood. 
 
 XVI. The Way of Power 355 
 
 1. Spiritual power not through imitation or oflSee. 
 
 2. The way of vision and of power the same. 
 
 3. Prayer as a condition of power. 4. Obedience 
 as a condition of power. 5. The kingdom of free- 
 dom and of law. 6. The everyday walk in the light. 
 
 XVII. The Confession 379 
 
 1. Why a form of baptism in the religion of the 
 Spirit? 2. Personal benefits from the confession of 
 Christ. 3. Not chiefly self-regarding. 4. The con- 
 fessing Church. 5. A bearer of light and power. 
 
THE MAN 
 
 Now there was a certain man in Csesarea, Cornelius 
 by name, a centurion of the band called the Italian 
 band, a devout man and one that feared God with all 
 his house, who gave much alms to the people and 
 prayed to God always. He saw in a vision openly, as 
 it were about the ninth hour of the day, an angel of 
 God coming in unto him and saying to him, Cornelius, 
 And he, fastening his eyes upon him and being 
 affrighted, said. What is it, Lord? And he said unto 
 him. Thy prayers and thine alms are gone up for a 
 memorial before God. And now send men to Joppa 
 and fetch one Simon who is surnamed Peter. He 
 lodgeth with one Simon a tanner, whose house is by 
 the seaside. — ^Acts 10: 1-6. 
 
 AN invitation to preach may be the opening of a 
 /\ door to some infinite good. Always, even as an 
 everyday occurrence, it is an honour and an op- 
 portunity. But here is an extraordinary instance. 
 About the year 41 a.d. a Koman centurion at the mili- 
 tary headquarters of Judea is divinely directed to send 
 men on a two days' journey for a man to show him and 
 his household the way of salvation in Christ. 
 
 What manner of man, in spirit and speech, is the 
 preacher thus sent for ? Do not say that it makes no 
 difference — that the personality of the preacher matters 
 nothing, just so he bring a true message. It does matter 
 greatly. The messenger's words may or may not be a 
 fitting vehicle of that inner Word which he must deliver. 
 His spirit also may be no help but a hindrance ; or, on the 
 
 13 
 
14 VISION AND POWER 
 
 contrary, it may be exceeding serviceful in making a 
 way for his message. 
 
 When, therefore, it is asked who this chosen preacher 
 was, it may be answered, No more signally honoured 
 name than his in human history. For not only was he 
 one of those whom Jesus chose out of the whole number 
 of the disciples that they might be in constant compan- 
 ionship with himself, and be sent forth in due time to 
 preach the Good News of God, but he was recognized 
 as the very foremost of these apostles. When they are 
 all mentioned together in the Gospels, is he not always 
 the first mentioned ? And the same is true when three 
 of them are spoken of as taken apart from the rest for 
 some special nearness to their Lord. " And he taketh 
 with him Peter and James and John " — it was so in 
 the room where the ruler's little daughter was lying 
 asleep in death, and on the Mount of Transfiguration, 
 and in Gethsemane. 
 
 Also, he was the first of the Eleven to whom the risen 
 Lord was made known — " The Lord is risen indeed, and 
 hath appeared to Simon " — and the announcer to the 
 multitude at Pentecost, " devout men from every nation 
 under heaven," that this risen Jesus was the Saviour 
 Christ. 
 
 We recall, moreover, that it was by Jesus himself 
 that this Simon was surnamed Cephas — which, being 
 interpreted, is Peter, or Rock — and thus incited, we 
 may believe, to aspire after what it lay in his power, 
 through discipleship with the Master, to become. And 
 it was to him, standing up first of all men distinctly to 
 confess his faith in Jesus as the Christ, that the great 
 
THE MAN 15 
 
 word was spoken, " Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-Jonah " 
 — the only recorded beatitude the Master ever pro- 
 nounced upon an individual — " for flesh and blood hath 
 not revealed it unto thee, but my Father who is in 
 heaven." And then ? " And I also say unto thee, that 
 thou art Peter, and upon this Kock I will build my 
 Church." 
 
 As faithful Abraham was called the father of all them 
 that should afterward believe with a heart unto right- 
 eousness in the God of Israel and of Jesus Christ, so was 
 Simon Peter called the first foundation rock of all them 
 that should afterward be built as confessing disciples 
 into the vast and invincible Congregation of Christian 
 believers. 
 
 This was the man sent for by the devout centurion, a 
 representative of the nations' call for the gospel of the 
 Incarnation and the Cross. 
 
 Surely not in the whole elect brotherhood of men who 
 had worn the prophet's mantle, nor in the long line of 
 those upon whose heads had rested the crown of the 
 house of David, nor in the Hall of Fame of any age or 
 nation, has there been a personality or a career signal- 
 ized by a more memorable distinction than was that of 
 this fisherman of Capernaum. 
 
 On the other hand, it would not be easy to quote a 
 more terrible word of rebuke than this same foremost 
 confessing disciple suffered at the lips of his Lord. It 
 was such a word as had smitten the evil one himself on 
 the Mount of Temptation : " Get thee behind me, Satan ; 
 for thou mindest not the things of God but the things 
 of men." 
 
16 VISION AND POWER 
 
 Yet there is nothing awesome in our thought of this 
 man. We should not have dreaded to meet with him, 
 either alone or in company. He shows no kinship to 
 those characters that constrain one to admire them at a 
 distance but forbid familiar approach. 'Nor do we think 
 of him as intellectually a genius, or educationally more 
 than what the rabbinical schools of his day would have 
 called an " unlearned and ignorant man," or morally 
 an incomparable hero, or spiritually, except in the 
 sense in which the New Testament applies the title to 
 all Christians, a saint; but rather as a man of a 
 certain large and lovable humanness, honest, self- 
 confident, quick to receive impressions, sure to attract 
 attention and to awake something of sympathetic inter- 
 est, heartily religious withal, and of like infirmities with 
 ourselves. 
 
 In Joppa the men who are to come for him from 
 Cornelius will find him lodging in the house of a tan- 
 ner by the seaside, and they will have to use no pep- 
 suasion to induce him to go with them to Csesarea. He 
 will take six brethren along with him. In Csesarea 
 he will not consent that Cornelius shall fall down at 
 his feet as before a superior being — " Stand up, I my- 
 self also am a man." No doubt he was likely in any 
 company to be in spirit as in fact a fellow-man — an " I- 
 myself-also." So, later, writing to the Christian elders 
 of the Dispersion, he says, " I exhort, who am " — ^the 
 foremost apostle of Jesus Christ ? IsTo ; " I exhort, who 
 
THE MAN 17 
 
 am a fellow-elder." * Temperamentally he would fall 
 into a class with the faulty and volcanic, yet masterful, 
 leader of the German Keformation, of whom his latest 
 biographer speaks as " one of the most human of the 
 world's great men." 
 
 It is a point upon which one may speak confidently, 
 because the Book in which his memoirs appear shows 
 all its historical characters, not with colourless, washed- 
 out faces, but as they actually were; and of them all 
 Simon Peter is the best known. And this not simply 
 because of the comparative fulness with which his 
 sayings and doings are reported, but also because of 
 his native transparency of mind and speech — the ab- 
 sence of the least shadow of reserve or suggestion of 
 second thought. 
 
 Furthermore, wherever he appears upon the scene, 
 in the Gospels, in The Acts, or in the Epistle to the 
 Galatians, his conduct, be it much or little — one might 
 add, be it in waking life or in trance — is unfailingly 
 characteristic. Simon Peter is always recognizable, 
 because always frankly and conspicuously himself — an 
 incidental proof of the truth of the evangelic narra- 
 tives. 
 
 " Thy speech bewrayeth thee." Thus did they make 
 answer, in the court of the high priest's house, to 
 Peter's denial of discipleship with Jesus — •" Of a truth 
 thou also art one of them, for thy speech bewrayeth 
 thee." And in fact his speech, in a much more indi- 
 vidualizing sense than that of his broad Galilean pro- 
 nunciation, was always bewraying him. If ever a man 
 
 * Peter 5: 1. 
 
18 VISION AND POWER 
 
 habitually spoke with a tell-tale tongue, unconsciously 
 disclosing the tone and temper of his mind, here was 
 such a man. Whatever he uttered, at any time or any- 
 where, showed manifestly the manner of man he was. 
 It has been said that " each spirit has its own voice." 
 Beyond a question this spirit had. No shadowy or 
 ghostlike figure flitting across the stage of human 
 history was Simon Peter, but a red-blooded and out- 
 spoken man, self-depicted, self-confessed. 
 
 II 
 
 Now it is upon two personal traits of this very know- 
 able disciple of Jesus that I would lay a bit of em- 
 phasis at this time. One is an intellectual and the 
 other a moral trait. 
 
 The intellectual trait is the impulse of utterance. 
 This, indeed, is a universal human endowment. Other- 
 wise speech would not be a universal human achieve- 
 ment. Self-expression, which is almost always for the 
 sake of self-communication, is an instinct of the soul. 
 It may be unmistakably seen in the two-year-old child, 
 who without it would never learn to talk. Through 
 this impulse, then, giving rise to that mystery of out- 
 going power, the living word, soul comes into contact 
 with soul. 
 
 But the difference between individuals with respect 
 to this constitutional impulse is very marked. There 
 are sons of silence. They have little or nothing, in 
 any ordinary circumstances, to say. Nor is it neces- 
 sarily because of lack of ideas or of suitable language 
 in which to express them, or because of a conviction 
 
THE MAN 19 
 
 that " in the multitude of words there wanteth not 
 transgression," but simply because of there being no 
 strong propensity of speech. 
 
 On the other hand, there are those whose thinking 
 itself seems informed with a spirit of communicative- 
 ness. They think aloud. Their very ideas are an 
 articulate effusion. In society they are ever conversers 
 — unless, indeed, as is not infrequently the case, they 
 become monologists. In parliamentary bodies they 
 must practise restraint to keep off their feet. In reli- 
 gious meetings their counsel, or testimony, or exhorta- 
 tion may always be expected. Any perfect portrait 
 of them would have parted lips. 
 
 And this was the temperament of Simon Peter. Ever 
 ready to speak his mind, he spoke at times when " he 
 wist not what to say." Whatever the thought or feel- 
 ing of the moment, it tends to utterance. At once it 
 becomes a word or some other kind of act. Why pause 
 to cite instances? Familiar to every reader of the 
 ITew Testament are such expressions as " Peter said," 
 " Peter answered Him," " Peter answered Him and 
 said," " Peter began to say unto Him," " Peter stood 
 up in the midst of the brethren and said." " The mouth 
 of the Apostles," Chrysostom called him. For he soon 
 became spokesman of the Twelve ; and we may be sure 
 not through election by them, or through his own seek- 
 ing, but simply through the spirit of speech that pos- 
 sessed him. At Csesarea he entered the house where 
 he was to preach, talking to the Roman officer who had 
 sent for him — " and as he talked with him, he went in." 
 
 It is an excellent spirit — if united with the rare 
 
20 VISION AND POWER 
 
 grace of good listening, a most excellent spirit. Reti- 
 cence and reserve are no doubt called for at times in 
 the conduct of life, but it is far from desirable that 
 they should dominate one's everyday speech. Let a 
 man be sure to live in truth and love, and then let 
 him speak out, with no such picking of words as would 
 suggest the habitual fear lest he say something that 
 might be used against him. 
 
 To be silent in the presence of that which is too 
 sublime and awe-inspiring for speech, to keep back and 
 inwardly renounce the unkind or boastful or captious 
 remark, to say nothing under provocation to make the 
 angry and bitter retort, to refrain from idle or irrele- 
 vant words — ^that, it may be cheerfully granted, is to 
 be a kingly man. " He that refraineth his lips is wise." 
 But even such silence is at best masterly inactivity, 
 while speech, on the contrary, is action. The word is 
 a positive and aggressive power. To know how to be 
 silent is well, but to have the truth both strongly borne 
 in upon the soul and as strongly borne out in spon- 
 taneous speech means far more for the personal 
 eifectiveness of one's life. There can be no doubt that 
 it is one of the good gifts to be cherished by the Chris- 
 tian preacher. Paul gave thanks for the Corinthians 
 that among other charisms they had that of " utter- 
 ance." 
 
 For the effective use of this gift of ready speech, 
 however, whether in public or in private, the guidance 
 and control of the thought must be as quick as that 
 of the vocal organs. Nor is this impossible; though 
 thought is quicker of movement than even the swiftest 
 
THE MAN 21 
 
 spoken word. And here Peter was at fault. 'Not lo- 
 quacious, yet under excitement he was prone to speak 
 rashly or with misplaced curiosity. " Lord, if it be 
 thou, bid me come to thee upon the waters ; " " Let 
 us build three tabernacles ;" " Thou shalt never wash my 
 feet ;" " If all shall be offended in thee, I will never 
 be offended;" " Lord, and what shall this man do? " — 
 these and the like were inconsiderate and inopportune 
 utterances. 
 
 Nevertheless, the temperament out of which such 
 expressions are apt to arise is not to be regarded by 
 the speaker as in itself a hindrance, but rather as a 
 help. It is an element of power in speech. " I have 
 often had occasion to observe," says Richard Cecil, 
 " that a warm blundering man does more for the 
 world than a frigid wise man." Somewhat as one 
 would rather have a friend who, though at times ill- 
 tempered, really loved him, than to be treated with uni- 
 form loveless propriety, so the heart of a hearer will 
 be more affected by the spontaneous and impulsive 
 (speaker, though the speech may be enfeebled at times 
 by temperamental faults, than by the speaker who is 
 free from such faults through lack of the ardent im- 
 pulsive temperament which would render him liable 
 to them. Spontaneity is at once the speaker's thrust- 
 power and his snare. 
 
 in 
 
 The moral trait to be noted in Simon Peter is that 
 of responsiveness to a cause and a leader. Let us re- 
 member the momentous time in which this man was 
 
n VISION AND POWER 
 
 called upon to make his life-choice and fulfil his course. 
 It was the day of all days that had ever been given 
 to Israel or to mankind. Spiritually sensitive spirits 
 seem to have felt that some great Divine movement had 
 begun, whose depth and fulness of meaning, however, 
 they knew not. Prophets were heard to speak again — 
 a Simeon, an Anna, a John the son of Zacharias. What 
 could it all mean ? 
 
 When John came forth to herald the new age, his 
 announcement was. The kingdom of heaven is at hand. 
 But when Jesus of N'azareth appeared, as the fulfilment 
 of that prophetic word, it was not in the glory of the 
 Christ who was expected. He called for followers 
 whom he might make his message-bearers, but foretold 
 the suffering and danger that would meet them in the 
 way. He promised them no earthly good, but quite 
 the contrary. Their one aim must be the reign of 
 righteousness, the supremacy of the kingdom of heaven, 
 in their own and all other lives — " as in heaven, so 
 on earth." And the law of personal allegiance which 
 he laid upon them was absolute: they are to follow 
 him, their Leader and Lord, though the path of advance 
 be like that of the condemned man bearing his cross 
 to a Golgotha. 
 
 Now, when among any people the voice of the mas- 
 terful man of the hour is heard proclaiming some great 
 and worthy cause and calling for followers, men are 
 judged, and separated to the right hand and the left. 
 The timid and selfish stand off, indifferent, irresponsive, 
 afraid. But the nobler spirits, the men of ideality and 
 vision, are thrilled with the high impersonal idea of 
 
THE MAN 23 
 
 a cause and with the personal appeal of the leader in 
 whom it has found embodiment. They want to be 
 bidden and to obey. It is their glory to serve. It is 
 their most uplifting hope to see the triumph of the 
 cause and its leader. 
 
 Evidently it was to this latter class that Simon Peter 
 belonged. Probably he had been a disciple of John; 
 certainly he soon became an eager and outright dis- 
 ciple of Jesus. 
 
 First, by the Jordan in Judea, he went and made 
 acquaintance with the new Master. For when his own 
 brother Andrew came to him, after having first spent 
 an evening in the company of Jesus, and said, " We 
 have found the Messiah," Simon suffered himself to 
 be brought to Jesus. 
 
 Shortly afterward, by the lakeside in Galilee, hear- 
 ing this same Master's gentle yet authoritative " Fol- 
 low me " (which involved an itinerant life) , he at once 
 obeyed the call. It was well to be catching fish out of 
 the lake ; it was better, he thought, dropping the imple- 
 ments of his craft, to become a fisher of men. It was 
 well to live uninterruptedly in his own house and fam- 
 ily circle at Capernaum; it was better to suffer pro- 
 tracted absence from home, if need be, for the king- 
 dom of heaven's sake. Here, then, is a plain, impetuous 
 fisherman who can respond to the touch of a higher life 
 upon his spirit and does not have to school his lips 
 painfully to say either " I seek " or " I serve." Here 
 is a man who promises to illustrate in conduct the 
 significance of both his names, that given by his parents 
 and that given by his Lord — Simon, a hearer, Peter, a 
 
24> VISION AND POWER 
 
 rock. And throughout his subsequent course of both 
 discipleship and apostleship, this same impulse of loyal 
 love is shown. The Gospels leave us in no doubt that 
 here v^as a disciple who loved the Master — that Peter 
 was a lover of Jesus, with a fervent, glad, adoring 
 affection. 
 
 IV 
 
 ISTot that the record is wholly clean and clear. Would 
 that it were. But even through the gravest faults of 
 this impetuous friend and follower of Jesus — the head- 
 iness of the " hearer," the shaking of the " rock " — 
 which have been so much commented on, there shines 
 at least a fragmentary and disordered image of fidelity. 
 When, for instance, he presumed to rebuke his Lord 
 for declaring that the Son of Man would be rejected 
 and put to death by crucifixion, it was because he could 
 gee nothing in the predicted cross but cruelty, calamity, 
 and failure; when, at the imminent risk of his life, 
 he smote a servant of the high priest with the sword, 
 the motive, it may be believed, was the same ; and we 
 may even remember that when, just from the Upper 
 Room, the Last Supper, and the scenes of Gethsemane, 
 he fell into open-eyed and awful apostasy, it was in 
 the court of the house whither he had gone, unlike most 
 of the disciples, to be near his Lord at the perilous 
 mock trial. Yes, even as the Master said of him, 
 the spirit was truly willing, but the flesh weak. 
 
 Let it be granted, therefore, that what we find in 
 this " brave and weather-battered Simon Peter " is an 
 obvious commingling of strength and weakness, and not 
 
THE MAN 25 
 
 an approximation to ideal character, !N^evertlieless, we 
 find a man of faith; and to him who believes, hope, 
 and love, and all things are possible. 
 
 For let us consider, What is faith ? Such a word has, 
 of course, too great a fulness and variety of meaning 
 to be compassed by any single definition or descrip- 
 tion. But we might make the question more specific 
 and ask, What is the very heart and essence of a Chris- 
 tian's faith in God ? It is not belief of any one or 
 more theological propositions; nor is it belief in the 
 Divine revelation as recorded in Scripture; nor yet is 
 it a persuasion that God hears some petition that I 
 am offering and does now give the desired answer. 
 Christian faith, in its most vital action, is opening 
 the heart to the redeeming God, who waits ever to 
 come in and take possession of his own. 
 
 It is illustrated in certain familiar human relations. 
 Let some chosen teacher enter your life, with his spir- 
 itual and luminous mind, his wealth of knowledge, his 
 patience and firmness and cheerfulness; yield yourself 
 to his influence. The effect will be to reproduce his 
 mind more or less in yours. Do you assimilate his 
 teaching? Therewith you assimilate him. Or, let 
 some magnetic politician so command your admiration 
 that you accept his ruling ideas and his ambition as 
 your own, and are ready to make effort and sacrifice 
 to help exalt him to the seats of power. He is con- 
 forming you somewhat to the image of his own mind 
 and character. Or, unlock the door of your heart 
 to a friend, and let love do its perfect work within 
 — you are coming under the personal power of your 
 
26 VISION AND POWER 
 
 friend and being changed unto his likeness. All this 
 is faith, natural, instinctive faith, and its effects. Its 
 pulse-beat, faint or strong, is felt in every human soul. 
 Some of its loveliest forms appear in childhood, which 
 is Jesus' chosen type of the believing, or divinely re- 
 ceptive, life. 
 
 For the lower faith is a parable of the higher; the 
 child's faith, the pupil's, the citizen's, the friend's, a 
 parable of the Christian's. In fact, more than a para- 
 ble or analogue, the lower faith is a preparation for 
 the higher. Receiving our brother whom we have 
 seen may open the way for receiving our Divine brother 
 whom we have not seen. For the Most High has verily 
 drawn near, as Friend and Saviour, seeking to com- 
 mune with us all in the life of Jesus. He is ever 
 drawing near and speaking to us in Jesus, whom he 
 has made both Lord and Christ, and whose word is: 
 " If any man hear my voice and open the door, I will 
 come in to him." Therefore, to unlock the door of 
 the heart to Christ, with his strong and loving master- 
 ship, is to have faith in God; and the result is that 
 we enter into communion with him and are in the way 
 of becoming like him. " Yea, and our fellowship is 
 with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ." Thus 
 are we mortals made immortal partakers of the Divine 
 life — " and will sup with him and he with me." 
 
 But let us look a little more closely at this faith of 
 Simon Peter, as shown by his responsiveness to the 
 appeal of Jesus. Was it simply such open-hearted con- 
 
THE MAN 27 
 
 fidence as might have been shown toward a wise and 
 winning teacher, or a trumpet-tongued reformer, or any 
 great and good man — say, toward one of the prophets 
 or that more-than-a-prophet, John the Baptist ? No, it 
 was not just the same. It was the faith of trust in 
 One of whom John could say, " He shall baptize you 
 with the Holy Spirit." 
 
 Doubtless Simon Peter and the other disciples had 
 the impression from the first that this must be the 
 Christ. Ere long he became sure of it — knowing as 
 yet, however, very little of what the name implied. 
 And when Jesus would make it known to him, he rashly 
 resisted the interpretative word. But he did not turn 
 back. This was the point of distinction — he kept 
 following 
 
 " on eager feet. 
 On feet untired, and still on feet though tired." 
 
 When other disciples turned back, and Jesus asked of 
 the Twelve, " Will ye also go away ? " this disciple's 
 answer was prompt and undisguised : " Lord, to whom 
 shall we go ? Thou hast the words of eternal life, and 
 we have believed and know that thou art the Holy One 
 of God." Sincerely believing in the Master, even when 
 he least understood him, he never really withdrew from 
 him the tribute of a confident and loving heart. 
 
 Was his faith, then, at this time, altogether such 
 as that of spiritually minded Christians of the present 
 day? Not so. Whatever its intensity, it was far less 
 than theirs has become as to its content. Because, 
 as already suggested, it failed to include the truth 
 of the Christ's atoning love. But it did not remain 
 
28 VISION AND POWER 
 
 thus limited. Under the Divine discipline and teach- 
 ing, it grew unto the full measure of a Christian's 
 faith in the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. 
 
 Some have suggested that, as to distinctive spiritual 
 temperament and attainment, Peter was the apostle of 
 hope.* This as compared with his two great brothers, 
 Paul the apostle of faith and John the apostle of love. 
 But if this be so, let it also be remembered that the 
 apostle of faith has said that " by hope were we saved," 
 and the apostle of love, that he who has his hope set 
 on the Christ to be revealed in glory " purifieth himself 
 even as He is pure." Good reason, indeed, have we 
 to thank God for the buoyant and heartsome Chris- 
 tian soul, hoping unto the end in the way of Christ. 
 Hopefulness is sunshine and health. Welcome the 
 touch of the sanguine Cephas upon your life. But 
 " whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas ... all are 
 yours." 
 
 VI 
 
 'Note also that, among the original Apostles, Simon 
 Peter appears distinctively as a preacher. In fact, he 
 is the only one of the Eleven of whose preaching we 
 have any record. 
 
 And now it is certain memorable experiences in 
 the life of this first Christian preacher that have sug- 
 gested our subject in these chapters. I mean his 
 experience of spiritual vision and of its accompanying 
 power, in Joppa and Csesarea. 
 
 'Nor was this the first time that Peter had such a 
 personal experience. He had known it in himself 
 
 *I Peter 1:3, 13, 21; 3:15. 
 
THE MAN 29 
 
 and had seen it in others at Pentecost. On that birth- 
 day of the Church of Christ, he declared to his multi- 
 tudinous audience that the extraordinary signs which 
 they saw and heard were in fulfilment of a prophecy 
 of the Old Testament: 
 
 " And it shall be in the last days, saith God, 
 I will pour forth of my Spirit upon all flesh; 
 And your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, 
 And your young men shall see visions, 
 And your old men shall dream dreams: 
 
 Yea, and on my servants and on my handmaidens in those days 
 Will I pour forth of my Spirit; and they shall prophesy." 
 
 What is this? They should see visions and should 
 prophesy. Spiritual perception and inspired speech, 
 flash of insight and stroke of appeal, light and utter- 
 ance, vision and power, both of them gifts of the Spirit, 
 both of them common gifts for all classes and capaci- 
 ties — such was the ancient prophetic and the present 
 apostolic word. These were signs that the foretold 
 Christ had come, and, after a manner which the 
 farthest-seeing prophet could not foresee, had been ex- 
 alted and glorified. And they were never to cease. 
 They should be perpetuated through the coming ages — 
 signs of the living Christ in the midst of the Con- 
 gregation which he would ever be building. 
 
 N'ow, it may be distinctly helpful to have spiritual 
 truth mediated to us in a life like that of Simon Peter. 
 Because in him it is illustrated in the common man. 
 It appears in connection with the ordinary rather than 
 the extraordinary gifts of intellect and strength of 
 character. When James in his Epistle would show 
 the Christian people, one and all, to whom he is writing. 
 
30 VISION AND POWER 
 
 that it lies within their power to prevail mightily in 
 prayer to God, he reminds them that even the righteous 
 Elijah, whose supplication availed so much, was " a 
 man of like passions [or, Tiature^ with us." But the 
 reader of the Gospels needs hardly to be reminded of 
 such a fact as that with respect to Simon Peter. It 
 is quite apparent that he was a man of like nature 
 with us. Very fitting on his lips would have been such 
 words as those of his great fellow-apostle to the Gala- 
 tian converts who had not despised him because of an 
 infirmity of his flesh : " I beseech you, brethren, be as 
 I am, for / am as ye are." 
 
 And this suggests that we venture to compare, as a 
 further introductory word, the personal influence of 
 these two men. For these are the only two of the 
 Apostles whom we know as preachers — the one chiefly 
 to Israel, the other chiefly to the nations — and the two 
 with whose acts the greater part of the Acts of the 
 Apostles is occupied. The influence of Paul no doubt 
 appears by far the greater, as to both quality and 
 quantity. But let it be supposed that the Christian 
 people of to-day had only the Apostle Paul as a New 
 Testament example. They would indeed have a greatly 
 inspiring and instructive example. Think of our 
 being without that splendid figure in the Church of 
 the early age. But Paul was in every way extraor- 
 dinary. A born leader of men, richly endowed in both 
 intellect and will, intensely religious, with utmost zeal, 
 though with heart-breaking failure, seeking justifica- 
 tion through the keeping of the law, relentlessly striv- 
 ing in ignorance and unbelief to crush out the very 
 
THE MAN 31 
 
 Church of God; then suddenly receiving the light of 
 the knowledge of God in the face of Jesus Christ, 
 rejoicing in the fulness of joy in the Lord, living by 
 a faith that seemed to grow more triumphant unto th^ 
 end, latest called of the Apostles, yet laboring more 
 abundantly than they all — he was indeed the Great 
 Apostle. " Such a man as that," the present-day Chris- 
 tian is ready to say, " might well receive visions and 
 revelations from the Lord; he might well preach the 
 crucified Christ with soul-subduing power; but I, I 
 am too poor and low, I cannot attain." 
 
 Here, however, on the other hand, is a man who, 
 without the natural endowments, or the early religious 
 struggles, or the subsequent attainments and achieve- 
 ments, of his later called brother, did nevertheless be- 
 come a true Christian disciple and the foremost apostle 
 of those who companied with Jesus. He loved, trusted, 
 followed, and " spite of fears " did open his heart 
 more and more to the progressive revelation of his 
 Lord. So may we. The " God of patience and of 
 comfort " was his God. Jesus bore with him, " remem- 
 bered not past years," continued, as Lord and Friend, 
 to care for him. " Having loved His own that were 
 in the world, he loved them unto the end." And not 
 only unto the cross, but beyond it, " he appeared to 
 Cephas, then to the Twelve." So, likewise, may we 
 be recipients evermore of the divine friendship and 
 self-revelation of Him who is the image of the invisible 
 God. 
 
 It matters not how crude may be one's spiritual 
 character at the outset. For all living things, as we 
 
S2 VISION AND POWER 
 
 know, are valuable in their beginnings not so much for 
 what they are as for what they have been creatively 
 intended to become. Their potentiality is the true 
 measure of their value. A single apple seed or grain 
 of wheat may indeed be eaten, but its chief signifi- 
 cance lies in the fact that it may be planted. A little 
 child is of priceless worth; but suppose that through 
 all the coming years he should remain a prattling 
 child. Similarly, spiritual character is never a fij^ed 
 quantity, never a finished product. The very least of 
 it is, to be sure, exceeding precious; but it must grow. 
 If it does not grow, it will die. Moreover, it is ca- 
 pable of growth and increasing fruitfulness evermore. 
 It is astir with an infinite possibility. 
 
 VII 
 
 And now as to the providential opportunity and work 
 unto which the Lord Jesus would prepare his faulty 
 but true-hearted and improving disciple. It was the 
 opportunity and work of an apostle, which was that 
 of a gatherer and caretaker of the flock of the Chief 
 Shepherd in a time when such apostleship meant pri- 
 vation, peril, and martyrdom. 
 
 Did a man, then, so lacking at one time in knowl- 
 edge and self-poise as this man ever attain unto a 
 trustworthy preparation for such an opportunity? Let 
 the last chapter of the Gospel according to John, the 
 first twelve chapters of The Acts, and Peter's own 
 Epistles (which are not without the self-revealing ele- 
 ment) make answer. 
 
 So we are prepared to meet with that Christian sense 
 
THE MAN SS 
 
 of service which pulsates through this " fellow-elder's " 
 own exhortation to the elders of the Church to tend 
 and oversee the flock of God which is among them — 
 even as he himself had been bidden of the Chief Shep- 
 herd, " Tend my sheep " — not because they must but 
 willingly, not for money's sake but " of a ready mind," 
 not lording it over their charge, but making them- 
 selves " ensamples to the flock." * 
 
 We are told that in our modern age the man on the 
 street is coming to his own. The days of caste, intel- 
 lectual, political, religious, are numbered. Some per- 
 sons, it is true, are inclined to deplore its breakdown. 
 " Life in our day is losing all its picturesqueness," said 
 to me a cultured Roman Catholic priest — in criticism 
 of the leveling influence of the democratic spirit. There 
 is a modicum of artistic truth, no doubt, in such a 
 lament. But the spirit of moral truth and spiritual 
 humanness is conspicuously absent. Personality, free- 
 dom, brotherliness, righteousness, opportunity, not pic- 
 turesqueness, are the ruling ideas of a Christian civili- 
 zation and the demand of the human heart. A tatter- 
 demalion may be picturesque, but one would prefer 
 to have good clothes ; and an Irish peasant's cottage or 
 an American Highlander's cabin might well afford to 
 exchange " all its picturesqueness " for a building fit 
 for the habitation of a household. The picturesque 
 feudal lord and his dependents are not to be accounted 
 of beside a free, self-dependent, enlightened, indus- 
 trious, and neighbourly countiyside. So, there is a 
 new appreciation of simple personality and human 
 
 * I Peter 5 : 1-4. 
 
34 VISION AND POWER 
 
 worth, and a new account of them must be taken in 
 the oncoming life of the world. 
 
 But whatever may be the conditions of such an 
 awakening, we may be sure that the great historic 
 cause of it is not to be found in the twentieth century, 
 nor in the nineteenth, nor yet in the century of the 
 Reformation. Its date is the day when the prophecy 
 was fulfilled in a synagogue of Galilee, " The poor 
 have good tidings preached unto them," and when they 
 themselves preached it unto others. Its author was 
 the Son of Man. " How knoweth this man letters, hav- 
 ing never learned ? " " Is not this the carpenter ? " 
 Truly so, a fellow-ISTazarene of the astonished inquir- 
 ers, a worker with his hands — for 
 
 "The Lord of Love 
 Came down from above 
 To dwell with the men that work " — 
 
 untitled, without ecclesiastic oflSce, uncrovsmed with the 
 honors of ruler or scribe, but in deepest truth and 
 reality the Divine Man. His day was the day of man 
 as man. The Greatest of all would fain become the 
 nearest kinsman of all ; " Whosoever shall do the will 
 of my Father who is in heaven, he is my brother, and 
 sister, and mother." 
 
 What we have before us, then, first of all, is simply 
 a man in the common ways and circumstances of life. 
 Not a man equipped with extraordinary gifts and 
 graces. A working man, a wide-awake fisherman of a 
 thriving lakeside town — as Hilary said of John the 
 son of Zebedee, " dripping clothes, muddy feet, every 
 
THE MAN 35 
 
 inch a fisherman." A man in some respects of an 
 excellent spirit, but not without conspicuous faults and 
 weaknesses. A " two-talent " man, like most evangelic 
 preachers of our own time. But coming under the 
 mastership of Christ, the eyes of his understanding 
 are enlightened and his often hasty speech is new- 
 made into a gift of power. The metal of his char- 
 acter, though genuine yet mixed, is tested, purified, 
 and tempered, as iron ore may be made into finest steel. 
 So, the gifts which he has received are used as he 
 himself has taught that such gifts ought to be used — 
 " According as each hath received a gift, ministering 
 it among yourselves, as good stewards of the mani- 
 fold grace of God." * 
 
 Such was Peter the Preacher. Perhaps we can see 
 more of ourselves in him than in any other of the l^ew 
 Testament people. It may be our blundering self; it 
 may be our worse self; it may be the self we hope to 
 become. In any case, for this apostolic " brother of 
 the common life " we give thanks and are glad ; be- 
 cause he is veritably our brother, and in him it may 
 be seen that the blessing of the vision of God, with 
 its attendant spiritual power, is not for a rarely gifted 
 few. It is for the student with his books, the work- 
 man at his bench, the farmer following his plough, the 
 preacher before his congregation. Some of its bright- 
 est manifestations are in the invalid of years, with 
 her illumined face and chastened Christian speech, on 
 the bed of pain. 
 
 •I Peter 4: 10. 
 
n 
 
 THE HOUSETOP 
 
 Now on the morrow, as they were on their journey and 
 drew nigh unto the city, Peter went up upon the house- 
 top to pray, about the sixth hour. — Acts 10: 9. 
 
 TO witness prayer is to be touched with the sense 
 of a higher world. You have come inadvertently 
 where some one was alone on his knees — in- 
 stantly there fell a hush upon your spirit, as upon an 
 intruder on holy ground. A little child is repeating, 
 not without some real sense of their meaning, the sim- 
 ple words of petition and thanksgiving that have been 
 taught him. A silver-haired patriarch, compassed with 
 infirmities, is bowed before the God of his fathers — 
 
 " For thou art my hope, O Lord God, 
 Thou art my trust from my youth." 
 
 But more deeply impressive, perhaps, than the prayer 
 of either infant or octogenarian is that of the strong 
 man of affairs in the midst of life. What must be 
 the meaning and worth of the hour of prayer to him ? 
 
 Such a one, as we have already been reminded, was 
 Simon Peter — neither youthful nor aged, certainly no 
 cloistered pietist or lonely thinker, but an outdoor man 
 
 86 
 
THE HOUSETOP 87 
 
 of speech and action. It would be difficult to think 
 of him waiting through long years, as John waited in 
 the wilderness till the appointed time of his appear- 
 ing unto Israel. Had he been secreted for the saving 
 of his life, like Luther in an out-of-the-way castle, he 
 would have quit the enforced solitude, as Luther did, 
 before the danger was over, and given himself to 
 exhorting the people. " I go a-fishing," said he when, 
 in the absence of the Master, there seemed to be nothing 
 better to undertake; for he must be doing something. 
 It was a mark of the man; and it showed him to be, 
 certainly not less than others, in need of devotional 
 retirement. 
 
 For he who is continually with the outside world, 
 responding readily to its appeals, who speaks much with 
 men, must also learn to be alone and to speak much 
 with God. Otherwise the consciousness of the Divine 
 presence will tend to fade out of his life. 
 
 See, then, this notably practical and energetic dis- 
 ciple of Jesus climbing the steps of Simon's house in 
 Joppa for solitary prayer. 
 
 Besides, let it be remembered that here is the case 
 of a naturally rash and self-confident spirit. A special 
 need of Simon the son of Jonas on the way to become 
 Peter the apostle of Christ was repose of spirit, 
 equipoise, self-mastery. So far, therefore, as he might 
 be lacking in these elements of moral strength, there 
 was exposure to the sudden access of temptation and 
 consequent need of both watchfulness and prayer. Was 
 it not Jesus' perception of this very danger that called 
 forth his own prayer for his imperiled disciple just 
 
88 VISION AND POWER 
 
 before the Betrayal — ^" I made supplication for thee, 
 that thy faith fail not " ? And it was in this same time 
 of the power of darkness that, again singling out Simon 
 Peter, he said to him : " Watch and pray, that ye 
 [disciples] enter not into temptation." 
 
 'No wonder, then, that such a man, amid the de- 
 mands of a special ministry of word and deed in the 
 towns of Lydda and Joppa, should have it to tell that 
 he went upon the housetop to pray. 
 
 And it was no wonder, for still another reason. He 
 had seen the Master in prayer. " It came to pass, as 
 He was praying in a certain place, that when he ceased 
 one of his disciples" — which one, probably? — "said 
 unto him. Lord, teach us to pray, as John also taught 
 his disciples." Jesus praying — what a vision of the 
 Way, the Truth, and the Life! Surely if anything 
 could have awakened in the mind of disciples a keener 
 sense of their need of prayer and of instruction therein, 
 it would have been to see him, the Holy One of God, 
 kneeling in prayer. " Does he need it ? Then, how 
 much more we. And does not this Prophet, this Mas- 
 ter, know the way to the very heart of God ? Then, 
 let us ask him to show it unto us." It was a lesson 
 which they could hardly fail to draw from such an 
 example. So Jesus was ever illumining for them the 
 path of prayer, not only by precept and promise and 
 parable, but most tenderly and forcibly by his own 
 prayers, alone or in their presence and the hearing 
 of their ears, and by the life of communion with the 
 Father which he lived among them. 
 
 Not, however, that Peter and the others perfectly 
 
THE HOUSETOP 39 
 
 understood and imitated this side of their Lord's life 
 at that time. As yet such wisdom was too high for 
 them. One morning, for instance, during the Galilean 
 ministry, when, after a day of crowds and of labor, 
 to be followed by many other such days, Jesus rose up 
 a great while before the dawn and went out into a 
 solitary place to pray, " Simon and they that were 
 with him " (note Simon's early leadership) " followed 
 after him," and having found him said unto him, " All 
 are seeking thee." It was no time, thought these nov- 
 ices in Christian service, for one whose work as teacher 
 and healer were in such demand, to be alone in prayer ; 
 and accordingly they broke in upon that holy solitude. 
 They did not understand the vital relation of prayer 
 to service in the life of the Divine Worker. They did 
 not see that in secret he received strength which he 
 spent openly. But " Simon and they that were with 
 him," then only beginning the Christian life, learned 
 many things afterward through their discipleship. For 
 had not Jesus himself said : " If ye abide in my word, 
 then are ye truly my disciples ; and ye shall know the 
 truth " ? And a part of this very truth which they 
 were to know in him was the necessity of secret prayer 
 to the fulness of spiritual vision and the peculiar power 
 of a prophet sent forth from God. 
 
 n 
 
 Therefore, let us pray. And among other things 
 it may be asked, Where may I find a fitting place for 
 this time of communion with the Highest ? " But thou, 
 when thou prayest, enter " — ^where ? Into a sanctuary 
 
40 VISION AND POWER 
 
 where no religion except Christianity sends its wor- 
 shippers — " into thine inner chamber." Thanks be 
 to God, there are many inner chambers and doors 
 that may be shut. This old, old earth, the scene of 
 so much sin and sorrow, has also been the scene of 
 much calling upon God. Though daily reddened by 
 the hand of violence and murder, 
 
 " And crimson with battles and hollow with graves," 
 
 it is also daily sanctified by kneeling worshippers. It 
 offers many a silent retreat beside its busy thorough- 
 fares for those who would be alone with the God of 
 their life. The secluded spot is still shown at Valley 
 Forge, where in that darkest hour of his country's strug- 
 gle for independence the great leader, who probably 
 did not pray very much under ordinary conditions, was 
 found upon his knees. " It was the custom of our 
 fathers," says the biographer of Jesse Lee, " to retire 
 to the woods at the close of the day, whenever circum- 
 stances allowed it, for the purpose of prayer." I had 
 a friend who asked that he might be sent from a city 
 pastorate back to the country, because, for one thing 
 at least, he longed to be where he could " go into the 
 woods to pray." 
 
 To many, indeed, " the trees of God " have afforded 
 a veritable sanctuary. A spirit of life and of peace 
 is there; God himself is there, speaking in a voice of 
 gentle stillness — the God of nature, who is the God 
 and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. " Break forth 
 into singing, ye mountains, O forest, and every tree 
 therein." Was it not to such temples of the spirit that 
 
THE HOUSETOP 41 
 
 our Lord was wont to go for secret prayer — to the 
 solitary place, the mountain by the Lake, the Mount 
 of Olives ? 
 
 Most commonly the Christian's place of prayer is 
 some room in his own dwelling-house — ^the Master had 
 no dwelling-house, no room, of his own. Or, it may 
 be at his place of business, a room where he withdraws, 
 day after day, seeking strength, amid besetting tempta- 
 tions, to make his business a true service of God. In 
 the case of the Christian preacher, the scene of his 
 most strenuous intellectual exertion will at the same 
 time be a scene of the outpouring of his soul to God, 
 his study his oratory. Outside there may be the surg- 
 ing waves of a great city's population, but within he 
 is alone with the heavenly Father. In John Wesley's 
 house on City Eoad, London, the study, where he 
 wrought with such tireless mental industry, opens into 
 the bed-chamber, in which, from half-past nine o'clock 
 in the evening — ^was it not? — until four in the morn- 
 ing, he received the gifts of God's beloved in continu- 
 ous and restorative sleep. But the bed-chamber opens 
 into another room, unfurnished, too small to be fur- 
 nished — ^the prayer-room of that busiest and mightiest 
 organizer of evangelism in modern Christianity. " En- 
 ter into thine inner chamber, and having shut thy door, 
 pray to thy Father who is in secret, and thy Father 
 who seeth in secret will recompense thee " — even there. 
 
 The most distressing evil attendant upon lack of 
 room in the homes of the very poor — ^those of the 
 crowded tenement, for example — is the denial of pri- 
 vacy. For this means denial of needful provision in 
 
42 VISION AND POWER 
 
 the culture of the individual human soul. Such pro- 
 vision is demanded for comfort's sake, for modesty's 
 sake, for refinement's sake, for morals' and manners' 
 sake; and not for these only, but also for the sake 
 of private prayer. Somewhere and somehow the Chris- 
 tian must have his prayer-room. And shall not the city 
 churches, also, like true houses of God, keep unlocked 
 doors, that passers-by and whosoever will may come in 
 to rest and pray? 
 
 ni 
 
 All this because a chosen and secluded place is essen- 
 tial to the devotional life ? No, but because it is need- 
 ful. By the family fireside, on the street, at the daily 
 employment, a prayerful heart will have its upward 
 look, its song of praise, its quick petition for guidance 
 and grace. The heart may be alone with God amid the 
 jostling of any crowd. But such a worshipper will 
 also be drawn to the still hour and the cloistered room. 
 It was he from whose lips fell the words, " neither in 
 this mountain nor in Jerusalem " and " in spirit and 
 truth," that commended the inner chamber and the 
 shut door. It was the same Lord Jesus, full of grace 
 and truth, who in the presence of others rejoiced in 
 spirit and said, " I thank thee, O Father, Lord of 
 heaven and earth," that withdrew from his disciples, 
 went into a solitary place, " and there prayed." 
 
 Now, the Oriental housetop was no unfit place for 
 meditation and prayer. It represented detachment, 
 though not complete seclusion, from the human world 
 below, and communication with the God of heaven. 
 
THE HOUSETOP 43 
 
 For this " inner chamber " was open to the sky ; and 
 instinctively we think of that visible heaven as sym- 
 bolizing the heaven that is so " high," in nature though 
 not in distance, as to be invisible. For what does it 
 mean — this vast celestial dome above our heads, with 
 the light of worlds innumerable from the infinite of 
 space softly shining through — if it be not a symbol of 
 the infinite range and domain of the soul ? 
 
 In like manner we think of prayer as an ascending 
 of the soul, a climbing heavenward for closer commun- 
 ion with God. Such is the form it takes in our pic- 
 torial thought and speech. " When we had vainly 
 explored all other paths," wrote a victorious Christian 
 witness, " we found God upon the Hills of Prayer. 
 We were comforted. There is no word tender or 
 blessed enough in human speech to explain how. All 
 that we can solemnly affirm is that the great majestic 
 presence of the Father abides upon those everlasting 
 hills." 
 
 Thus it seems fitting that Moses should go upon the 
 Mountain to receive the Law and behold the glory of 
 Jehovah. And thus the homely city housetop, in a 
 less sublime but no less real way, was significant of 
 the spiritual heights of Prayer. It was fitting that 
 Peter in Joppa should go up there to pray. Beneath 
 were the house with its " many things " of bodily pro- 
 vision and care, the well-trodden streets of the town, 
 the fruitful gardens, the shipping in the harbour, 
 the sunlit sea; above were the unsearchable depths 
 of heaven, " at the sixth hour " clear and radiant, 
 its zenith aflame with intolerable splendour, at the 
 
44 VISION AND POWER 
 
 evening hour gathering the solemn mystery of the 
 stars. 
 
 Here, therefore, was a blending place of earth and 
 sky which might well help, after its manner, to pre- 
 pare the mind of an apostle of Jesus to see in vision 
 *•' the heaven opened " and to hear the Voice proclaim- 
 ing the gracious will of God for mankind. 
 
 IV 
 
 And now, thinking upon the act itself, rather than 
 upon the hour and place, we have to ask, Why should 
 secret prayer ever be neglected in the Christian life? 
 Some of the reasons are, unhappily, but too evident. 
 
 There may be a lacTc of freedom in prayer. I^either 
 the heart-cry of the Psalmist, " My heart and my flesh 
 cry out unto the living God," nor the triumphant dox- 
 ology of the apostle, " But thanks be to God who giveth 
 us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ," is 
 always the voice of our own hearts before God. Some 
 may even be ready to declare that it is seldom, if ever, 
 so. The conscious filial spirit may be wanting. The 
 sense of hunger for righteousness and of gratitude for 
 the great goodness of God in our daily life has some- 
 how been dulled. The world enters even through the 
 shut door. It is hard to lift up the heart unto the 
 Lord, l^either the ideas nor the feeling nor the lan- 
 guage of devotion come at command. Prayer is felt 
 to be at best a duty, and the question arises, whether 
 in such a spirit it is worth while to pray at all. 
 
 But it is worth while. 'Never insincerely, never as 
 a meritorious or expiatory exercise, but under a sense 
 
THE HOUSETOP 45 
 
 of obligation, if that be the only present motive, let 
 a man pray. Let him meditate upon the things of the 
 spirit, let him make confession of his sins, let him 
 offer thanksgiving to the Father of mercies, let him 
 tell as best he may the inmost desires of his heart — 
 let him pray. For though it were nothing more, it 
 would still be a debt to be paid. It is due from a man 
 to himself, to his fellows, and to his God, that he seek 
 through prayer the highest good, which only can fit 
 him for the highest service. 
 
 Putting himself thus in the way of the Spirit, 
 he may rest in the Lord till duty shall be glorified 
 with love and praise. It was so in Israel when the 
 statutes of Jehovah rose to the lips of the faithful 
 as songs — " His delight is in the law of the Lord." 
 Duty and love, indeed, are so near together, and in 
 such perfect accord with each other, that duty may 
 be quickened by love into a true law of the spirit of 
 life in Christ. The true-hearted bond-servant may be- 
 come a true-hearted lover of his Master; and surely 
 the heart of the Master will turn in recompense and 
 kindness toward him. " ISTo longer do I call you bond- 
 servants . . . but I have called you friends." 
 
 Again, there may be self-absorption in affairs. In 
 the affairs of the household, of business, of professional 
 life, of favorite pursuits and associations ? To be sure, 
 and even in Biblical or ecclesiastic or ministerial af- 
 fairs. " I am profoundly convinced," says Jowett in 
 his Yale Lectures — having in mind a certain difference 
 
46 VISION AND POWER 
 
 he had noted between the British and the American 
 pulpit — " that one of the present perils that beset the 
 ministry of this country is a restless scattering of 
 energies over an amazing multiplicity of interests which 
 leave no margin of time or of strength for receptive 
 and absorbing communion with God." 
 
 The Bible scholar analyzes and compares his texts, 
 consults his authorities, gives his interpretations — and 
 ought to do so. We are all greatly his debtors, for 
 without him we should not even have the Scriptures 
 to read in our own tongue in which we were born. 
 But it is possible that, all the time, he himself may be 
 declining rather than increasing in the knowledge about 
 which his scholarship is most deeply concerned. The 
 ecclesiastic cares little perhaps for learning, but he is 
 taken up with the business of the Church; matters of 
 policy and administration interest him greatly; leader- 
 ship, with its exertion of both authority and influence, 
 is gratifying; but even if he keep himself pure from 
 personal ambition and the use of expedients, either 
 direct or indirect, to secure the honors and emoluments 
 of office, he may be caring less for the Lord's cause 
 now than when he served in obscurity. " When I was 
 in low condition," a Bishop of Rome is reported to 
 have said, " I had a good hope of salvation ; when I 
 was advanced to be a cardinal I greatly doubted it ; but 
 since I have come to the popedom I have no hope at 
 all." The minister in charge of a congregation attends 
 to the duties of his office in the pulpit and elsewhere, 
 thinking out many sermons, dealing as an organizer 
 and a pastor with many people ; and he " cannot bear 
 
THE HOUSETOP 47 
 
 evil men," and is ready to try " them that call them- 
 selves apostles, and they are not." But to be spirited 
 is not to be spiritual; and the Divine message to this 
 caretaker of the Church may be : " Thou hast patience 
 and didst bear for my name's sake, and hast not grown 
 weary. But I have this against thee, that thou didst 
 leave thy first love." 
 
 Whatever the cause, the cure need not be doubt- 
 ful. This will be found in the path of prayer — in the 
 consciousness and practice of the presence of God. 
 Only let his light invade the darkness, and it will 
 heal and restore the soul. Would a man, whatever 
 his sphere or line of life, really " do justly " and " love 
 mercy " ? He must all the while " walk humbly with 
 his God." 
 
 When the Seventy returned to the Master, overjoyed 
 that on their evangelistic tour the demons had been sub- 
 ject unto them in his name, they were graciously re- 
 ceived; but together with the renewal and enlarge- 
 ment of their gift, this word of admonition fell from 
 the lips of Jesus : " Howbeit in this rejoice not, that 
 the spirits are subject unto you; but rejoice that your 
 names are written in heaven." There was danger that 
 in the exercise of gifts they might forget their personal 
 relations to God. The joy of any position or of any 
 notable work in the Church is nothing in comparison 
 with the joy of being in spirit and character a son of 
 God with one's citizenship in heaven. 
 
48 VISION AND POWER 
 
 VI 
 
 Still again, there may be occasional or lingering fee- 
 bleness of faith in the power of prayer. We hardly know 
 whence or why, perhaps, but sometimes a chill of doubt 
 falls upon the soul. The confession, " I believe," is 
 followed by the instant prayer, " Help thou my unbe- 
 lief." How can it be, we are tempted to ask, that flesh 
 and blood should expect to lay hold upon the Infinite 
 and Eternal God ? Whereupon we ought rather to say, 
 Bethink thyself, O thou of little faith, and consider 
 that it is the very greatness of the Infinite and Eternal 
 that brings him so near. Were he less than infinite, 
 we might be here and he there, and no intercommuni- 
 cation possible. But there is no here and there to him. 
 Vast indeed the universe, myriad myriads the number 
 of its inhabitants; but the creating Mind cannot be 
 confused or overtasked with the multitude of his own 
 creations. It is no multitude to him. 
 
 Imagine this earth the only inhabited world, and 
 yourself its only inhabitant. Behold, you are kneeling 
 — one and alone. Would it seem strange in that case 
 for the Maker of you to hear the cry of your heart 
 unto him? But the prayer of numberless other sup- 
 pliants can make no difference in such a matter to 
 the Infinite Personal God. " Thou thoughtest that 
 I was altogether such a one as thyself." 
 
 Then, too, we are not " flesh and blood." Essentially 
 spirits in a world of spirits, we have affinity with the 
 Father of spirits. Yonder within the small space of 
 
THE HOUSETOP 49 
 
 a flat house-roof is an object still smaller, • moving 
 about, speaking or silent, unnoticed, insignificant. It 
 is nothing — only a worm of the dust, only an ant of a- 
 troubled ant-hill " in the gleam of a million million 
 suns." But no ; here is no insignificant object ; this is 
 no mere lump of animated clay. This worm of the 
 dust, this " ant," is capable of an infinite outlook and 
 an eternal destiny. Through the pupil of his eye, a 
 gateway not wider than a pin's head, there enters the 
 whole expanse of the heavens, to touch his brain; and 
 the man within the brain questions the stars, discovers 
 them as worlds, tracks them along their awful path- 
 ways, and measures the speed of their flight. He be- 
 comes an astronomer — reading " the time-table of the 
 universe." What is more and better, he becomes a 
 worshipper. He can respond to the touch of the Eter- 
 nal, he can know the Lord and Ruler of his ovm moral 
 life, he can see the glory of God in the life of Jesus 
 Christ; and his head is bowed in reverent wonder 
 and adoration. He is kneeling. Shall we turn away 
 in doubt that such a being can indeed draw near in 
 prayer to God — or that God may draw near to him 
 in Christ and the Divine Spirit? 
 
 Indeed, prayer itself is not an original utterance, 
 but a response. It is the voice of the soul awakened 
 by the voice of God in the soul. Early in childhood, 
 when the innocent dawn was upon the hills, it was he 
 who called us by his Spirit. When first we truly 
 prayed, it was our listening and speaking to him who 
 is ever speaking to us. Asking is listening. 
 
 Since, then, God has inspired our prayers, it is 
 
50 VISION AND POWER 
 
 surely not too much to trust him to hear them. For in 
 very truth he has inspired them. " The Spirit also 
 helpeth our infirmity; for we know not how to pray 
 as we ought; but the Spirit himself maketh interces- 
 sion for us with groanings which cannot be uttered." 
 The unutterable desires of our hearts toward God are 
 incited within us by his own Spirit, and hence they are 
 his prayers even more truly than they are our own — 
 his " intercession for us " in the sense of being his 
 inspiration in us. 
 
 VII 
 
 It is here that we gain the highest conception of 
 prayer — that, namely, of filial communion with God, 
 Ill-advised is that criticism of the leader in congrega- 
 tional prayer which complains : " Why does he not 
 come to the point ? Why not ask for the things we need, 
 and quit ? " A buyer approaching a salesman may 
 properly enough tell in the fewest possible words what 
 he wants. But should a friend be instructed that he 
 must habitually do so in coming to his friend, or a 
 child in coming to his father? If one whom we love 
 and revere should desire to know at our approach. What 
 do you want ? he would be likely to have for answer, 
 " I want to be with you." This is what friendship 
 means, its supreme joy and most characteristic de- 
 mand — to he with you. And this highest relation of a 
 soul with its fellow soul is a sign of the highest relation 
 of a soul with its eternal Father. Prayer is filial 
 converse with him. From the Upper Room and the 
 Garden of Gethsemane has been borne to the reverently 
 attentive spirit its supreme expression. 
 
THE HOUSETOP 61 
 
 Not that petitions, even requests for material ob- 
 jects, are excluded. On the contrary, they are invited. 
 He whom the Father always heard prayed the prayer 
 of petition and taught his disciples to ask for their 
 daily bread. Moreover, he himself was the hearer of 
 many petitions for bodily renewal; because prayer is 
 an opener of the way for that Spirit of life in Christ 
 of which both soul and body are the temple — " a habi- 
 tation of God in the spirit." Wherefore, " in nothing 
 be anxious, but in everything by prayer and suppli- 
 cation with thanksgiving let your requests be made 
 known unto God." It is the bidding of the Father 
 of spirits that his children should ask him thus for 
 the good gifts they have need of; and all " natural law " 
 is the orderly and regular expression of his will, the 
 continuous witness of his presence and infinite per- 
 sonal power. 
 
 But how much better was it to be with Jesus him- 
 self as disciple and friend than to be healed of any 
 physical malady; and how much better is God him- 
 self than any such gift from his hands. Verily it is 
 a good thing to come before him and offer petitions to 
 him, but in the larger vision of God the soul may 
 humbly and reverently walk with him. With bowed 
 head and praiseful heart the sons of light have learned, 
 from the beginning even until now, that the Almighty 
 Ruler of the universe may also be — oh, wondrous word 
 of grace — the Divine Companion. 
 
 It is more than probable, indeed, that in our per- 
 sonal religious history praying began as petitions. The 
 motive was to get something by asking; and it is a 
 
62 VISION AND POWER 
 
 motive that will abide unto the end. But not alone. 
 There is a holier and closer speech with the God in 
 whom we live, even the prayer of communion. 
 
 " It is true prayer 
 To seek the Giver more than gift, 
 
 God's life to share 
 And love — for this our cry to lift," 
 
 In the truest sense of the word, we do not rest even 
 in the promises of God. We may plead them, indeed, 
 but not as if they were something apart from the 
 Divine nature; not as if he were bound by them like 
 an unwilling ruler or friend. He will ever be mind- 
 ful of his covenant, but it is because his covenant is 
 an expression of himself, the promises a revelation of 
 the Promisor. 
 
 In the case of a man, our fellow, it may sometimes 
 be that the chief claim with which we approach him 
 is, " You have promised." Somehow he committed 
 himself in speech, and though he may repent it, yet 
 we insist that he keep his word. But is it so in 
 the case of a perfect friend ? is it so in the case of a 
 father or mother? Their verbal pledges are for our 
 information only, showing us what to expect and ask 
 for. Without any such committal, they will both hear 
 and anticipate our requests. It is in their heart to 
 do so. In like manner, let God's children know the 
 truth of his being, and they will trust him either with 
 or without a specific word of promise. " They that 
 know Thy name " — that know Him as revealed — " will 
 put their trust in thee." 
 
 Wherefore, Christian prayer is not a petty or a self- 
 
THE HOUSETOP 63 
 
 ish cry. It cannot be such, indeed, since it must needs 
 be offered in a loving as well as a trustful spirit. 
 " Whensoever ye stand praying, forgive, if ye have 
 aught against any one." And that a man should habitu- 
 ally pray for himself and not for others, never for 
 father, mother, child, never for any fellow-man, is to 
 the Christian mind unthinkable. Spontaneously will 
 the prayer of the heart pass into thanksgiving and 
 intercession, rising in doxologies, descending in bene- 
 dictions. It is faith and love, communion with God 
 on high in a spirit of brotherhood toward men on earth 
 — its all-comprehensive word. Our Father. 
 
 It need strike us with no surprise, then, if in prayer 
 an apostle of Jesus should enter more fully into the 
 mind of his Lord, and be prepared, calling nobody 
 common or unclean, to offer the same hope of salvation 
 to all men everywhere. 
 
 "For hearken! God saith, 'Pray! ' 
 And he shall show his plan, 
 And lead us in his shining way 
 That leadeth on to perfect day 
 Each God-surrendered man! " 
 
 Yes, it is through communion with God that " his shin- 
 ing way," near and far, appears. It is from the house- 
 top that the heavenly vision is seen. 
 
Ill 
 
 THE VISION 
 
 And he became hungry and desired to eat. But 
 while they made ready he fell into a trance; and he 
 beholdeth the heaven opened and a certain vessel de- 
 scending, as it were a great sheet, let down by four 
 corners upon the earth, wherein were all manner of 
 four-footed beasts and creeping things of the earth 
 and birds of the heaven. And there came a voice to 
 him, Rise, Peter, kill and eat. But Peter said, Not so. 
 Lord; for I have never eaten anything that is common 
 and unclean. And a voice came unto him again the 
 second time, What God hath cleansed make not thou 
 common. And this was done thrice; and straightway 
 the vessel was received up into heaven. — Acts 10: 10-16. 
 
 WHILE, in the living-rooms below thej were 
 making ready the mid-day meal for their 
 guest, another ministration was at hand for 
 the hunger of his spirit. A great truth, which Peter 
 had already known something of, was now to become 
 in a much closer sense his own. It was set before 
 him, this living bread of truth, through the aid of a 
 vision which he saw in a state of trance. 
 
 !N^ow " trance " and " vision," as here used, are not 
 over-familiar words. The experiences for which they 
 stand, while not restricted to the sphere of religion, 
 are rare. If, not having had such experiences, we 
 care to realize the idea of them, we shall have to 
 
 54 
 
THE VISION 55 
 
 approach them through similar experiences of which 
 we do have some personal knowledge. And it so hap- 
 pens that there are similar experiences which every- 
 body is familiar with. For natural sleep is a mild 
 trance state, a dream is a vision seen in sleep ; and more 
 than a fourth of every human life is lived in the 
 world of sleep and dreams. 
 
 The busy day is over. In the midst of its affairs, 
 heart and brain and hands all astir, the things of 
 sense and of society were intensely real and engaging. 
 There was no thought of withdrawing one's self from 
 them. It was delightful to be conscious of ourselves, 
 aware of the persons about us, sensitive, active, alive. 
 Yet under the shadows of evening there comes a sen- 
 sation directly the opposite of all this. !N"erve and 
 muscle begin to care for nothing now except to be 
 relieved of duty. Their one demand is, " Incite us 
 not to action beyond our time, let us alone, let us 
 rest " — their one note that of the lotus-eaters' song, 
 " There is no joy but calm." The eyelids droop and 
 fall heavily; the senses, sight first and hearing last, 
 refuse to act; voluntary motion ceases; and with an 
 exquisite feeling of submission the body yields itself 
 captive to the matchless witchery of sleep. For none 
 the less welcome in its turn than the good cheer of 
 the sunlight, and none the less needful, is this soft 
 nightly sinking down into the semblance of death 
 
 itself. 
 
 " Oh, solemn mystery 
 That I should be so closely bound 
 With neither terror nor constraint. 
 Without a murmur of complaint, 
 And lose myself upon such ground." 
 
56 VISION AND POWER 
 
 But no sooner does the pall of darkness and silence 
 fall than an inner world of imagination, a picture 
 show of sights and sounds, appears; for to sleep is to 
 dream. For the most part, indeed, it is a picture show 
 of dissolving views out of all true order, with no 
 reasonable relation to the facts of life — the effect alto- 
 gether discordant and illusory. With reason, will, con- 
 science renouncing their supremacy, and imagination, 
 disporting itself as mere fancy, in well-nigh complete 
 control, is there any flow of ideas on this side of 
 insanity, more incoherent, incongruous, fantastic than 
 dreaming ? 
 
 But what of it ? What if the rest-time of the brain be 
 the play-time of the mind? Let the rest and the 
 play continue side by side for a season, inasmuch as 
 they are giving the vital forces an indispensable op- 
 portunity to restore the body's lost strength of yester- 
 day and tone it up for to-morrow. Thus, when waking 
 time dawns, behold, the playground has turned out 
 to be a harvest-field. Concerning a sick friend we 
 are fain to hope that " if he is fallen asleep," whether 
 dreamless or dreaming, " he will recover." * 
 
 II 
 
 The glance of the mind is in certain directions ex- 
 traordinarily keen and penetrative in sleep. A dream 
 may be a nightmare, but on the other hand it may be 
 a revelation. Thus we sometimes become, as Sir 
 Thomas Browne has put it, " somewhat more than our- 
 selves in sleep." Because undoubtedly there are latent 
 
 ♦John 11: 12. 
 
THE VISION 57 
 
 energies of the mind that tend to sleep while we are 
 awake, and to awake when we sleep. Facts which have 
 again and again eluded the waking memory come, with- 
 out being called, when the intruding senses have been 
 warned off. So also the best plan of a discourse, a 
 strain of poetry, or, in the case of a story-teller, the plan 
 of a story, is sometimes dreamt out in sleep. Robert 
 Louis Stevenson tells of having the plot or even whole 
 chapters of stories given in his dreams. They were 
 given him by what he fancifully calls " the brownies " 
 — a truer name than which, if not a more fanciful one, 
 might easily have been chosen. 
 
 A classic instance is that of the composition of Coleridge's 
 " Kubla Khan : or, A Vision in a Dream." In a note appended 
 to the first edition of this poetic fragment, the poet remarks that 
 he consents to its publication " rather as a psychological curiosity 
 than on the ground of any supposed poetic merits," and tells the 
 story of its origin, in part as follows : " The author continued for 
 about three hours in a profound sleep, at least of the external 
 senses, during which time he has the most vivid consciousness 
 that he could not have composed less than from two to three 
 hundred lines; if that indeed can be called composition in which 
 all the images rose up before him as things, with a parallel pro- 
 duction of the correspondent expressions, without any sensation 
 or consciousness of effort. On awaking, he appeared to himself 
 to have a distinct recollection of the whole, and taking his pen, 
 ink, and paper, instantly and eagerly to write down the lines 
 that are here preserved. 
 
 " At this moment he was unfortunately called out by a person 
 on business from Porlock, and detained by him above an hour, 
 and on his return to his room found, to his no small surprise and 
 mortification, that though he still retained some vague and dim 
 recollection of the general purport of the vision, yet with the 
 exception of some eight or ten shattered lines and images, all the 
 rest had passed away like the images on the surface of a stream 
 into which a stone had been cast." 
 
 Similarly, the clue to an elusive problem, the deter- 
 minative idea of a coveted invention, a happy artistic 
 insight, or a sense of exalted self-consciousness, has 
 
58 VISION AND POWER 
 
 in numberless instances risen up of itself in some 
 moment of leisure or of reverie, and has sometimes been 
 the gift of the dreaming mind. 
 
 Such dream experiences, it need hardly be added, 
 are for the most part exceptional and never to be for- 
 gotten. " The writer," says Mr. J. Brierly, " speaks 
 again with some hesitancy, not sure whether on this 
 point he is reporting what is to any extent a common 
 experience. But he can testify with certainty as an 
 individual to occasions, coming at widely separated 
 intervals in the career, when the soul, under the con- 
 ditions of sleep, has become conscious of itself with 
 a power, a freshness as of immortal youth, a felt rela- 
 tion to the illimitable and the eternal, accompanied 
 by a thrilling rapture, as of heaven's central life, to 
 which no waking state can offer a parallel," * 
 
 It seems entirely true that in more ways than one 
 " He giveth to his beloved in sleep." f 
 
 The fact is that both the materials and the spirit of 
 our dreams seem to be drawn from the waking life, and 
 to partake of its character. Allowing for exceptions 
 that must otherwise be accounted for, this is the rule. 
 The good man will be good in both thought and act, 
 whether he wake or sleep, while on the other hand a 
 disordered mind, like a disordered body, will yield 
 evil dreams. Does the dreamer welcome and cherish 
 impure images ? It is a welcome reflected from his 
 waking life. 
 
 'No wonder that the half-crazed patriarch when, 
 
 * " Ourselves and the Universe," pp. 258-59. 
 t Psalm 127 : 2, margin. 
 
THE VISION 69 
 
 vainly seeking some intermission" of suffering, he said, 
 " My couch shall ease my complaint," * soon found 
 himself scared with dreams and terrified with visions. 
 Torture of body and bewildering agony of mind could 
 expect little else. But Job, we observe, has no con- 
 fession to make of having, even in such distracting 
 dreams, been guilty of blasphemy or of any other 
 direct disobedience toward God. For what a man is 
 profoundly principled against doing he will not do, 
 either awake or dreaming. He cannot be made to 
 do it even in a state of hypnosis. 
 
 Think what would probably be the dreams of a 
 man in perfect health of body and soul. Above all, 
 let it never be feared or fancied that to fall asleep 
 is to fall outside the realm of the Divine presence, 
 providence, and instruction. " It is dreadful," says 
 a morally sensitive youth in a Scotch story, " to think 
 o' fa'in asleep without some ane greater an' nearer 
 than the me watchin' ower't." So, one may devoutly 
 ask in evening prayer : 
 
 " And when my thought is all astray, 
 Yet think Thou on in me; 
 That with the newborn innocent day 
 My soul rise fresh and free. 
 
 " Nor let me wander all in vain 
 
 Through dreams that mock and flee; 
 But even in visions of the brain 
 Go wandering toward Thee." 
 
 Ill 
 
 May I commend two not unfamiliar words of Scrip- 
 ture as adapted to enter, with peculiar light and power, 
 
 ♦ Job 7 : 13. 
 
60 VISION AND POWER 
 
 into the self-communing of the devoutly meditative 
 soul ? One is from the pen of a psalmist : 
 
 " Yet the Lord will command his lovingkindness in the day-time, 
 And in the night his song shall be with me, 
 Even a prayer imto the God of my life." 
 
 The other is from the lips of an apostle of Jesus 
 Christ : " He is not far from each of us, for in Him 
 we live and move and have our being." " The God of 
 my life," " In Him we live " — may I say that ? Then 
 let me once for all dismiss the thought that God is a 
 being far away in time or space. He is here, in all the 
 reality of his being, in all the plenitude of his power 
 and grace, this moment. 
 
 Yea, let me reverently confess that the Lord of 
 heaven and earth is the God of every need and every 
 possibility of my nature, of sense and spirit, of the 
 days and the nights, of my dreaming as well as my 
 judging, of imagination as well as reason. His domin- 
 ion embraces the shadow-world which emerges when 
 the eyelids fall, as truly as this outer shadow-world 
 which we are prone to think of as so very real. From 
 no part of my experience, natural or supernatural, 
 might I shut him out, even if I would, at any time 
 from helpless infancy to helpless senility. If he will, 
 then, in the seclusion of sleep and in the imagery of 
 the dream-life, he may speak to the attentive spirit 
 in some effectual sign of his thought or purpose or 
 care. 
 
 It has been so from the beginning. The record of 
 it may be found in both the Hebrew and the Chris- 
 tian Scriptures; and not in them alone. Jacob went 
 
THE VISION 61 
 
 his way, after the dream that had changed the name 
 of Luz into that of Bethel, still uncured, it is true, of 
 his self-seeking spirit, but with a greatly strengthened 
 faith in the purpose and providence of the God of his 
 fathers. When Paul had seen, in a vision of the night, 
 a man of Macedonia standing and beseeching him to 
 come thither, he straightway sought to set sail for the 
 great Continent of the West, concluding that God had 
 called him and his comrades to preach the gospel there 
 also. But may we not believe the same good hand 
 of God to have been in the dream which gave a new 
 direction to the literary lifework of the learned Chris- 
 tian father, Jerome, — in which he seemed to see the 
 form and hear the voice of Christ himself, who said, 
 " Jerome, thou art a follower of Cicero and not of 
 Christ " "i or in that of Monica, the mother of Augus- 
 tine, which gave her the assurance, amid unceasing 
 prayers for her wayward son, that he would yet be 
 found standing by her side in the same rule of Christian 
 faith ? " Whence was this but that thine ears were 
 toward her heart, O Thou Good Omnipotent, who so 
 carest for every one of us as if thou caredst for him 
 only?"* 
 
 Or, coming down to our ovm day, may we not believe, 
 with A. J. Gordon, that the dream in which he seemed to 
 see in his congregation on a certain Sunday morning 
 One whom he afterward learned was the Lord Jesus, 
 though, as he says of it, " only a dream," was " a vision 
 of the deepest reality, verifying the statement often 
 repeated that sometimes we are more awake to God 
 
 •Augustine, "Confessions," Book III. sec. 19. 
 
62 VISION AND POWER 
 
 when we are asleep to the world " ? * Whatever its 
 
 origin or occasion, it certainly marked the beginning 
 
 of the memorably fruitful period of his ministry. It 
 
 made him another man — and his church another 
 
 church. 
 
 " In a dream, in a vision of the night. 
 When deep sleep falleth upon men, 
 In slumberings upon the bed, 
 Then He openeth the ears of men 
 And sealeth their instruction." 
 
 IV 
 
 But it ia time to pass from the nightly experience 
 of sleep to the consideration of an experience much 
 less familiar, yet no greater a mystery. Let us, then, 
 suppose the bodily torpor to be still more profound — 
 the soul retreating still farther from the outposts of 
 sense. Let this experience not arise, like sleep, as 
 a necessary means of physical rest and rehabilitation, 
 regularly recurring, but as an experience wholly need- 
 less for any physical purpose ; and not as the experience 
 of every man, woman, and child on earth, but of one 
 in ten thousand. Such sleep, which sinking deeper 
 and deeper would become death, is a trance. 
 
 The 'New Testament word is ecstasy ( enfftaffi?^ liter- 
 ally, out of a state). In the Gospels it is used only in 
 the sense of " astonishment," " amazement." In The 
 Acts it is used once in this same sense, and three times 
 in the sense of a state of " trance." f 
 
 * " How Christ Came to Church," chap. I. 
 
 t The passages are as follows: Mark 5: 42; 16: 8; Luke 5: 26; 
 Acts 3: 10; 10: 10; 11: 5; 22: 17. For the Apostle Paul's ac- 
 count of a memorable trance, in which he does not use the word 
 itself, see II Corinthians 12: 1-7. 
 
THE VISION 63 
 
 Like sleep, trance is not exclusively a religious phe- 
 nomenon. Nor is it a symptom of some diseased con- 
 dition of the nervous system, or even of nervous in- 
 stability. Moreover, it shows itself in sundry forms 
 and in different degrees of completeness and signifi- 
 cance. 
 
 Shall we look at some of these? To begin with, it 
 might be noted that any such concentration of the 
 mind on a subject of emotional interest as abstracts 
 it from all else, so as to make the thinker practically 
 unobservant of the external world, is the taking of steps 
 in the direction of trance. Sir Oliver Lodge, who 
 would doubtless be quite competent to give personal 
 testimony on the subject if he chose, makes reference 
 to " the rather hazy and absorbed condition which is 
 associated with the quality of mind called genius," and 
 remarks that " when a poet or musician or mathema- 
 tician feels himself inspired, his senses are^ — at least his 
 commonplace and non-relevant attention is — dulled or 
 half asleep." 
 
 Various examples from the history of science, of 
 learning, land of philosophic thought have been re- 
 corded. They are such as that of Sir Isaac IsTewton; 
 that of the younger Scaliger, who, pursuing his studies 
 in Paris at the time of the massacre of St. Bartholo- 
 mew, and as a zealous Protestant in peril of his life, 
 knew nothing of what was going on till the following 
 day; and the still more celebrated example of Socrates, 
 of whom it is reported that, while serving as a sol- 
 dier, he was " seen by the Athenian army to stand for 
 a whole day and a night, until the breaking of the 
 
64 VISION AND POWER 
 
 second morning, motionless, with a fixed gaze," and that 
 thus he was wont to do when deeply absorbed in 
 thought. 
 
 It is in view of these instances and the like that Sir 
 William Hamilton, in his discussion of the power of 
 abstraction and attention, remarks that the successful 
 thinker must " even be able in a certain degree to 
 emancipate himself from the dominion of the body, and 
 live, as it were, a pure intelligence," and that " in some, 
 indeed, the power of abstraction almost degenerated 
 into a habit akin to disease." * IN'o doubt the intel- 
 lectual seer or discoverer will learn what it is to rise 
 out of and above his ordinary self, and even to stand 
 on the threshold of a kind of intellectual ecstasy. 
 
 Similar is the rapture of the musician borne aloft 
 on his inner sense of new and wondrous harmonies 
 of sound. It is related of Sidney Lanier — by the gift 
 of God a lover and maker of music, if ever one was — 
 that there were times when he would seem to lose all 
 outward sensibility under the entrancing power of these 
 musical conceptions. " Apparently unconscious, he 
 would seem to hear the richest music, or again he would 
 awake from a deep trance, alone, on the floor of his 
 room, and the nervous strain would leave him sadly 
 shaken in nerves." f It was the ecstasy of a child 
 of song. 
 
 ISTow, it is matter of common knowledge that the 
 capability of mental concentration differs greatly in 
 different persons. So also and much more does the 
 
 • " Metaphysics," Lect. xiv, p. 180. 
 
 t Charles Forster Smith, " Reminiacencea and Sketches," pp. 
 137-38. 
 
THE VISION 65 
 
 capability of passing into the ecstatic state. Of the 
 blending of these two powers the poet Tennyson was 
 a notable example. By steadily occupying his entire 
 attention with some one simple thing, he could enter 
 at times into a mystical experience in which the outer 
 world and even his own body seemed to him strange 
 and unreal. On the other hand, the consciousness of 
 himself was clarified and intensified to an indescribable 
 degree of perfection. " Not a confused state," he says, 
 " but the clearest of the clear," and yet " utterly be- 
 yond words." The thought of death at such a time 
 seemed " an almost laughable impossibility." Yet his 
 individuality seemed to lose itself in " boundless be- 
 ing." * What ray of truth or mist of error such an 
 ecstasy may have yielded is not here in question, but 
 only the example, in the case of a sincere and mar- 
 vellously gifted mind, of a certain form of ecstatic 
 experience. 
 
 Need we be reminded of the trance phenomena that, 
 here and there, have marked the history of Christianity ? 
 They were not unknown in the Evangelical Kevival of 
 the Eighteenth Century, with its repeated baptisms of 
 fire, and in the earlier stages of the Methodist move- 
 ment in America. Wesley, true to the habit of his 
 mind, made careful observation of them as they oc- 
 curred under his personal ministry, and has left on 
 record some account of his inquiries. Of certain per- 
 sons, for example, with whom he talked concerning 
 trance experiences through which they had passed, ho 
 says : " What they all agreed in was, 1. That when they 
 
 •"Memoir," Vol. I, p. 320. 
 
66 VISION AND POWER 
 
 went away, as they termed it, it was always at the time 
 they were fullest of the love of God; 2. That it came 
 upon them in a moment, without any previous notice, 
 and took away all their senses and strength; 3. That 
 there were some exceptions, but in general from that 
 moment they were in another world, knowing nothing 
 of what was done or said by all that were round about 
 them." * 
 
 In itself, then, a state of trance, like a state of dream- 
 ing, has no moral or religious significance. It is 
 neither good nor bad. But the cause and the experi- 
 ences of this out-of-self state may be full of signifi- 
 cance. 
 
 V 
 
 And now from this little excursion in post-Biblical 
 
 fields, we may turn again to the Scripture history. 
 
 Here, when dreams and visions are spoken of, it is not 
 
 clear, in every instance, whether these were experienced 
 
 in an ordinary sleep or in a trance. It seems plain 
 
 enough, however, that it was in some sort of trance 
 
 state that such visions, for example, were given as that 
 
 of Abraham, when " a deep sleep fell upon Abram, and 
 
 lo, an horror of great darkness fell upon him," f of 
 
 Balaam, " falling down and having his eyes open," J 
 
 of Ezekiel — ^" So the Spirit lifted me up and took me 
 
 away . . . and the hand of the Lord was strong upon 
 
 me " II — or that of the Apostle of the Gentiles when 
 
 he was " caught up even to the third heaven," whether 
 
 in the body or out of the body he could not tell.§ 
 
 * " Journal," Aug. 6, 1759. t Numbers 24: 4. 
 
 t Genesis 15: 12. || Ezekiel 3: 14. 
 
 §11 Corinthians 12:2. 
 
THE VISION 67 
 
 But we are not to suppose that such as these are ex- 
 amples of a usual or a preeminent method of divine 
 revelation to prophets and apostles. This would be to 
 misinterpret them grievously. It was ordinarily in 
 their normal state that the truth was taught to these 
 men of old who " spake from God, being moved by 
 the Holy Spirit." Indeed, the vision and dream are 
 described, even in the early days of Israel, as " dark 
 speeches," in comparison with the clearer and more 
 distinct utterance of the word of Jehovah to her great 
 lawgiver and leader : " If there be a prophet among 
 you, I the Lord will make myself known unto him 
 in a vision. I will speak with him in a dream. My 
 servant Moses is not so ; he is faithful in all my house : 
 with him will I speak mouth to mouth, even mani- 
 festly, and not in dark speeches." * 
 
 Similarly, while there were apostles who knew more 
 or less of the experience of trance and vision, it was 
 not through the teaching of these experiences that, 
 for example, Peter preached on the day of Pente- 
 cost, or Paul at Antioch and Athens, or that the 
 Epistles and Gospels of the New Testament were 
 written. 
 
 Above all, the life of the Prophet of prophets, as 
 we know it, was not marked by revelation in visions 
 and dreams. It was not in sleep or in trance that 
 Jesus saw, as none other has ever seen, the mind and 
 will of Him that sent him. It was immediate knowl- 
 edge. It was by oneness with the Father in the Spirit 
 of all fulness of truth and grace. 
 
 * Numbers 12 : 7, 8. 
 
68 VISION AND POWER 
 
 VI 
 
 But again as to Peter and the early apostolic age. 
 " I was in the city of Joppa praying," he said some 
 time afterward to his brethren in Jerusalem, " and in 
 a trance I saw a vision." * What manner of trance 
 and vision were these ? As to the vision, its form seems 
 to have been taken, as in the case of an ordinary dream, 
 from the bodily state, the mental equipment, and the 
 everyday circumstances of the percipient — reflections 
 of waking experiences. Note some of these conditions. 
 Peter was hungry; and what he saw was a concourse 
 of living creatures of which he was commanded to kill 
 and eat. He had long been familiar with the sight 
 of wind-filled sails on Lake Gennesaret and had no- 
 ticed them, it may be, only a few minutes before on 
 the Mediterranean Sea; and it was some such sheet 
 {o^ovtjy linen cloth, such as sheet or sail) that he saw 
 enclosing the " four-footed beasts and creeping things 
 of the earth and birds of the heaven." His last uplook 
 before falling into trance was unto the open heaven — 
 no ceiling overhead; and it was from heaven that the 
 four-cornered sheet descended to rest upon the earth. 
 He was presumably well acquainted with the number 
 three as the Hebrew symbol of totality or the perfect 
 doing of an act; and it was thrice that the sheet de- 
 scended and the voice bade him kill and eat. He 
 had always punctiliously observed the Levitisal dis- 
 tinction of clean and unclean meats ; and so he declined 
 to violate it now. 
 
 •Acts 11:5. 
 
THE VISION 69 
 
 He declined, indeed, with characteristic bluntness. 
 It seemed to him utterly out of the question to eat 
 the unclean. The very thought of a son of Israel eat- 
 ing swine's flesh, for example — abominable ! And with 
 all boldness he said what he felt: " ]^ot so {^^daf-ica?, 
 by no means), Lord, for I have never eaten anything 
 that is common or unclean." For Peter, observe, was 
 altogether himself in the vision, and spoke as he was 
 wont to do. Never out of character, he appears in 
 trance just as he appears habitually in his waking life. 
 
 So simply and naturally does the imagery of the 
 vision seem to have arisen. 
 
 All this, however, is but a matter of form, an out- 
 side matter, which is valuable only as a means in the 
 way of expression and communication. Form is the 
 sign of a deeper reality; it is the letters of the word. 
 And in this vision of the Clean and the Unclean the 
 spiritual reality, the inner word, is a world-embracing 
 truth of redemption in Jesus Christ. 
 
 VII 
 
 Let us not fail to note the period in the history of 
 the kingdom of God on earth when the vision was 
 given. It was the age of the Christian revelation. 
 !^^^ever before did God speak such a word to men as 
 he spoke in his Son, who was himself the Word made 
 flesh. For " God was in Christ " — the holy God and 
 Father drawing near to sinful men in the at-one-ment 
 of suffering love. And the Spirit of truth, interpreting 
 these facts of redemption, was now making all things 
 new — duty, religion, love, the world, life, death, the 
 
70 VISION AND POWER 
 
 future, all a new creation in Christ. It was indeed 
 the " fulness of the time," the fulfilling and completing 
 in Jesus Christ of the Divine self-revelation mediated 
 through ritual, vision, elect spirits, prophetic word, all 
 along the preceding ages. 
 
 " Because of the tender mercy of our God, 
 Whereby the dayspring from on high shall visit us, 
 To shine upon them that sit in darkness and the shadow of 
 
 death ; 
 To guide our feet into the way of peace." 
 
 That was the historic setting of the vision. And this 
 man on the housetop, who was he? Not only chief of 
 the Apostles of Jesus, but first a prophet — sent forth 
 to preach because of his prophetic vision. A plain 
 working man, but a Christian seer. For he could so 
 understand the Divine Man as to answer him and say : 
 " We have believed and know that thou art the Holy 
 One of God." * 
 
 Nevertheless, under this illumination, followed 
 though it was by the completer illumination of Pente- 
 cost, here at least was a truth which would seem to have 
 been still unclear even to Peter the Preacher: the 
 truth, namely, that the gospel which ihe had been 
 preaching in the Holy City and out in the land of 
 Israel must be proclaimed, as identically the same gos- 
 pel, to those who were not of Israel. Could this be 
 so ? Were sinners of the vast pagan world to be saved 
 by simple faith in Christ, apart from any observance 
 whatever of the divinely prescribed Judaic rites ? Had 
 not Jehovah made an everlasting covenant with Israel ? 
 Did not the Christ himself spend his life and min- 
 
 * John 6 : 67-69. 
 
THE VISION 71 
 
 istrj among " his own " ? Were distinctive age-long 
 laws and sacred institutions to count henceforth for 
 nothing? It is so hard not to feel that the form in 
 which a truth has been clothed, and about which have 
 gathered so many sacred emotions and associations, is 
 somehow as enduring as the truth itself. 
 
 But, on the other hand, there was the apostolic com- 
 mission : " Go ye, therefore, and make disciples of all 
 nations . . . teaching them to observe all things what- 
 soever I commanded you " ; and Jesus had never com- 
 manded as a duty of religion the observance of any 
 Judaic rite. The whole spirit and trend of his teach- 
 ing was in the contrary direction. 
 
 Above all, there was Jesus himself, the Son of Man, 
 the Friend of sinners, uplifted on the cross that he 
 might be drawing all men unto himself. And the new 
 spirit of power which had descended upon the dis- 
 ciples, these men of Galilee, was it not urging them 
 forth beyond the borders of Judea and Galilee, in 
 all directions, to proclaim the remission of sins in 
 One through whom all men alike might have access by 
 the same Spirit unto the Father ? 
 
 It was urging them overseas, even to the distant 
 islands — Cyprus, Rhodes, Crete — and toward unknown 
 lands beyond. In full view of Simon the tanner's house 
 the Mediterranean was flinging its waves against the 
 inhospitable shores of the Hebrews' fatherland. " And 
 for the western border ye shall have the Great Sea." * 
 There were the far-reaching guardian waters which had 
 helped to isolate Israel in the period of her tutelage, 
 
 * Numbers 34: 6, 
 
72 VISION AND POWER 
 
 when her economy must needs be that of seclusion and 
 defence. Let them now become a highway for the out- 
 going ships that should convey the preachers of an 
 aggressive and universal evangel. So the sea itself, 
 overlooked from the housetop, was suggestive of world- 
 wide opportunity and obligation. 
 
 And yet, and yet the misgiving would insistently 
 arise, whether one might not go too fast or too far 
 in this direction ; whether, for example, an uncircum- 
 cised pagan should be baptized and admitted to the 
 homes and the tables of God's ancient people, and side 
 by side with them to the breaking of bread at the 
 table of the Lord. Rather it would seem in almost 
 every instance to have been more than a misgiving. It 
 was a stubborn denial. The ancient religious distinc- 
 tion, it insisted, must be maintained. To break it down 
 would be to open a floodgate to all manner of scepti- 
 cisms and abuses. It would be the destruction of the 
 Church. 
 
 VIII 
 
 ^ow, there may somewhere be persons in our en- 
 lightened day who, by a combination of temperament 
 and education, are so utterly free from anything ap- 
 proaching the tyranny of custom as to find it difficult 
 to sympathize with such minds as those of Simon Peter 
 and his brethren in Israel. But these would be rare 
 spirits indeed; the vast majority of us are confronted 
 by no such difficulty. In this spirit of the over- 
 estimation of age-long distinctions, racial, national, so- 
 cial, ecclesiastical, religious, the fisherman Apostle 
 
THE VISION 73 
 
 appears simply as one of innumerable fellows, East and 
 West, ancient and modern. 
 
 It is the spirit which divided mankind at one time 
 into the two great classes, familiar to all readers of 
 the New Testament, of Greeks and Barbarians. Natu- 
 rally enough, no doubt, the classic Greek, with his 
 unquestioned superiority over all the other peoples in 
 philosophy, art, oratory, and especially in literature 
 and language, was disposed to look down upon the others 
 as having no language at all. Their speech, he said, 
 was a mere hah, bah, or, as he called it, bar, bar; and so 
 he contemptuously named them Bar-bar-ians. It is the 
 spirit of the High Churchman of all generations, who, 
 in the very face of the New Testament, would exclude 
 all other Christians from the Church of God. It is 
 the spirit of all sectarianism, whether the sect be 
 cultured or crude, numerous or obscure, a few years 
 or a few hundred years old. 
 
 Saul of Tarsus bitterly accused his own earlier life 
 of this sin of arrogant bigotry. And the cruelty which 
 it led him to inflict upon others he himself was made 
 to suffer again and again. We remember that the 
 Jewish audience, for illustration, before which he was 
 trying to make his defence from the steps of the castle 
 in Jerusalem, gave a respectful hearing to the story 
 of his conversion and subsequent spiritual experience, 
 till he spoke of being sent to preach to the Gentiles — " I 
 will send thee far hence unto the Gentiles." Unto the 
 Gentiles? That was too much — too shamefully hereti- 
 cal a word to be for one moment tolerated. It trans- 
 formed the " fathers and brethren " of his audience 
 
74 VISION AND POWER 
 
 into desperadoes. It dehumanized them. Electric with 
 rage and indignation, " they threw off their garments," 
 they " cast dust into the air." " Away with such a 
 fellow from the earth," " it is not fit that he should 
 live." 
 
 It is true, we do not certainly know that this burn- 
 ing ritual question of early Judean Christianity was 
 agitating the mind of Cephas on his present evangelistic 
 tour. But one may not unreasonably suppose it to have 
 been so. Lifelong custom and conviction were hard 
 indeed to renounce — born in him through many gen- 
 erations of such a race as he belonged to. Yet the 
 fact of having accepted the hospitality of Simon in 
 Joppa may be taken as a sign that his face was toward 
 the dayspring rather than toward the sunset; for the 
 occupation of a tanner, involving, as it did, contact 
 with the skins of dead animals, was classed by the 
 Jewish people as unclean. 
 
 " I have never," said this son of Jonah, heart and 
 soul a Jew. " ISTot so. Lord ; for / have never eaten 
 anything that is common and unclean." That is what 
 he gave as a reason why he should not eat such food 
 now. It is the voice of conservatism, still heard in 
 every sphere of life and thought. After forty-five years 
 of age the farmer in his field, the mechanic among his 
 tools, the cook in his kitchen, the teacher in his class- 
 room, the preacher in his pulpit, confronted with new 
 knowledge or new aspects of truth or new ways of 
 doing old tasks, or new methods of service, is not un- 
 likely to answer and say, " I have never." 
 
 On the other hand, the spirit of radicalism, either 
 
THE VISION 76 
 
 in thought or in practice, is that of the adventurer, who 
 wearies of the things to which he has become accus- 
 tomed and runs with open arms to embrace the new 
 because of its very newness. 
 
 But life, ever obeying its own law and no other, 
 is ever changing its forms; and true conservatism is 
 not a body of death. It is astir with vital powers. " I 
 was brought up," said William Ewart Gladstone, " to 
 distrust and dislike liberty; I learned to believe in it. 
 That is the key to all my changes." " I have never," 
 John Wesley was ready to say at the first suggestion 
 of an active public life for himself, of admitting Dis- 
 senters to the Lord's Supper, of field preaching, of 
 laymen as preachers, of ordination by presbyters. But 
 with respect to all such ways and methods of Chris- 
 tian service, ere long, despite early education and pres- 
 ent preference, his note was changed to a cheerful and 
 obedient " It is the will of the Lord." 
 
 IX 
 
 There is another word to be noted in Peter's instant 
 refusal to obey the Voice that spoke to him in the 
 vision. " I have never eaten " — what ? " Anything 
 common." And if in the preceding words we catch 
 the tone of religious conservatism, in this even more 
 significant word we hear the speech of religious aris- 
 tocracy. The opposite of common, as this thorough- 
 going Jew used the word, was hallowed, religiously 
 set apart. Flesh of quadrupeds, for example, that 
 chewed the cud and parted the hoof was hallowed flesh 
 — it might be eaten by the sons and daughters of Israel ; 
 
76 VISION AND POWER 
 
 flesh of other quadrupeds was unhallowed, eommon — 
 it might not be eaten by them. 
 
 But this was not the chief matter. The eating of 
 only hallowed meats by Israel, while other peoples ate 
 also the common, or unhallowed, became an occasion of 
 evil as well as good. Through its proper use, it acted 
 indeed as a preventive of contamination by the gross 
 idolatries of neighbouring peoples. But in fact it was 
 overused, which is to say, abused; and through this 
 abuse it wrought contempt of the Gentiles as people 
 whom God had decreed not to accept or care for. Israel 
 only was elect, holy, the spiritual aristocracy of the 
 world and the ages. All other peoples were " com- 
 mon," unhallowed. 
 
 It was the same spirit in which the sons and daugh- 
 ters of Israel themselves have, through long centuries, 
 been dealt with in Christendom. The race to which 
 we owe both the Old and the N'ew Testament, both 
 the prophets and the Apostles, and of whom according 
 to the flesh came our Lord and Saviour himself, has 
 been treated by so-called Christian peoples and people 
 with notorious injustice and contempt. Somewhat simi- 
 larly has this or that church of Christendom been taught 
 by its leaders to look down upon others as ecclesiastically 
 " common " and not to be recognized as churches of 
 Christ at all. It is the anti-Christian spirit of arro- 
 gance and pride, unchanged under all its changing 
 forms, with which both social and ecclesiastical life 
 have been corrupted even until now. 
 
 As concerns Simon Peter there at Joppa, however, 
 thus much at least is certain : He wanted to be a Chris- 
 
THE VISION 77 
 
 tian disciple as in days gone bj. But many had been 
 the questions and answers, habitual the speaking and 
 listening between his Lord and himself in those blessed 
 days ; and might it not somehow be so still ? For he is 
 now a disciple with the added task of active apostleship 
 on his heart. His need is greater than ever. He must 
 know; and the world beyond the veil seems not far 
 off. Oh, that its light might glimmer through the veil ! 
 He will pray for it. He will seek guidance. " I will 
 ask," we imagine him saying, " whether the old bot- 
 tles are intended to hold the new wine of the king- 
 dom." He turns away from all else and draws near 
 to God, even to " the God and Father of our Lord 
 Jesus Christ, who according to his great mercy begat 
 us again unto a living hope by the resurrection of 
 Jesus Christ from the dead." * 
 
 So it came to pass ere long, as we shall see, that the 
 " I have never " of this disciple with the heart as well 
 as the commission of an apostle was changed into a 
 cheerful " Who was I that I could withstand God ? " 
 
 The Apostle Paul spoke no word of deeper spiritual 
 meaning, in his description of the equipment for Chris- 
 tian warfare, than when he said, " with all prayer 
 and supplication praying at all seasons in the Spirit." 
 May we not believe that when his earlier called brother 
 apostle, in his defence before the church in Jerusalem, 
 said, " I was in the city of Joppa praying" it was of 
 such a prayer that he told ? " In the Spirit " he was 
 lifted up, rapt, into a state of devotional exaltation 
 
 • I Peter 1 : 3. 
 
78 VISION AND POWER 
 
 above even the awareness of surrounding objects. Not 
 only did the curtains of the eye shut out the whole 
 image-world of visible things — the housetop, the fruit- 
 ful land, the unresting sea, the silent overbrooding sky 
 in its noontide glory. That is essentially an every- 
 day experience. But the sensorium itself lapsed into 
 a heavy sleep, while the praying soul, insensitive to 
 everything else, became all the more responsive to cer- 
 tain forms of the Spirit's teaching. 
 
 Then, in this ecstatic state, there came an answer 
 not simply or chiefly to the present prayer of his lips, 
 but to the prayer of his whole discipleship with Jesus 
 the Christ. " In a trance I saw a vision." 
 
 What did this answering vision mean ? 
 
IV 
 THE INTERPRETATION^ 
 
 Now while Peter was much perplexed in himself what 
 the vision which he had seen might mean, behold, the 
 men that were sent by Cornelius, having made inquiry 
 for Simon's house, stood before the gate and called and 
 asked whether Simon who was surnamed Peter were 
 lodging there. — Acts 10: 17, 18. 
 
 And Cornelius was waiting for them, having called 
 together his kinsmen and his near friends. — Acts 10: 24. 
 
 Now therefore we are all here present in the sight of 
 God, to hear all things that have been commanded thee 
 of the Lord.— Acts 10: 33. 
 
 THE vision was not self-explanatory. Like any 
 symbol, it called for an interpreter. Indeed, 
 does not practically all our knowledge come to 
 us in some sort of symbolic form ? What is speech, for 
 instance, but the use of certain invented symbols to be 
 interpreted? Chiefly conventional sounds which this 
 or that race of people have somehow through thousands 
 of years agreed upon, they have to be learned afresh 
 by every little child, and translated into the ideas they 
 stand for by the mind which is back of every ear upon 
 which they fall. A good part of our time every day 
 is spent in listening; which means that it is spent 
 in rendering for ourselves the words of our mother 
 tongue, as used more or less accurately by this or that 
 person, not indeed into the words of some foreign 
 tongue, but into their own interfused ideas. 
 
 79 
 
80 VISION AND POWER 
 
 " An easy sort of translating this/' one might re- 
 mark, " that goes on spontaneously in daily conversa- 
 tion between even the humblest minds." To be sure, 
 and yet it is an art so difficult as never to be perfectly 
 learned. Because language is not an instrument to be 
 used with the mathematical exactness of twice two 
 makes four. The soul is too deep and affluent, too re- 
 sourceful, too changeful, to be able, by any conceivable 
 set of words, to communicate its ideas and emotions, 
 with infallible exactness, to even the most discerning 
 fellow-soul. " No rich personality," it has been said, 
 " has ever put itself wholly into speech." Very true ; 
 but neither has any other. It is not only the poet of 
 his age, looking upon the world-old sea breaking at 
 the foot of its crags, who cries — 
 
 " And I would that my tongue could utter 
 The thoughts that arise in me." 
 
 It is everybody's cry. In the poorest personality are 
 depths of meaning which far surpass its own powers of 
 expression or any man's powers of discovery. 
 
 Nevertheless, there is such true communicating done 
 as to bring about that personal self-revelation, one to 
 another, in which the possibility and joy of human 
 society consist. Enough, too, is it not, until the day 
 of those finer forms of converse and self-expression, 
 unpicturable now, with which we hope to be entrusted 
 hereafter ? 
 
 Note, also, that a large part of language is sym- 
 bolic in the stricter sense. That is to say, it is 
 
THE INTERPRETATION 81 
 
 metaphorical ; for a metaphor is a symbolic image. 
 And in this case a double interpretation is necessary: 
 we have to explain to ourselves in the act of listening 
 not only the metaphorical word, but also the image 
 which it awakens in the mind. " Knock, and it shall 
 be opened unto you " : the men who first heard these 
 words knew what they all meant, let us suppose, either 
 taken singly or united in a sentence. But what did 
 the image of the knocking hand and the opening door 
 which, at the utterance of these words, arose in the 
 hearer's mind, what did that image mean? It was for 
 the hearer to interpret. 
 
 As we all know, a marked characteristic of our Lord's 
 way of teaching was his constant and inimitable use 
 of metaphor and parable. He was often misunder- 
 stood, too, even by the innermost circle of his disciples. 
 To Jesus himself all this was painfully apparent even 
 unto the end. " Know ye not this parable ? " " Are 
 ye also even yet without understanding? " " O ye of 
 little faith . . . how is it that ye do not perceive that 
 I spake not to you concerning bread ? " 
 
 Yet it was the perfect way of teaching — " perfection 
 beyond compare," as Tennyson said of the Master's 
 parables. Is it not everywhere shown to be the Divine 
 method ? " It is the glory of God to conceal a thing ; " 
 but the faithful soul, through searching out such " a 
 matter," comes ere long to know it indeed. For a 
 man must needs have the chief part to do in his own 
 education. Knowledge is an acquisition, not a gift. 
 Every truly instructed man is self -instructed. We are 
 to get knowledge, which means to obtain it by effort. 
 
82 VISION AND POWER 
 
 Only thus is it that the mind, thinking, endeavouring, 
 praying, doing, assimilates the bread of truth and is 
 prepared to grow thereby. 
 
 Indolent souls that we are, how we do have to be 
 stung into mental exertion. Creeping on in our own 
 easy way, we should only make our intellectual infancy 
 perpetual. Rejoice and give thanks, ye disciples of 
 the Master, for the stimulating forms as well as the 
 substance of his holy evangel. Give thanks that the 
 Divine library of the Bible invites to its exposition the 
 best thinking, together with the deepest spiritual in- 
 sight, of all who would learn ever more fully the heart 
 and will of God. For it is thus in each single life 
 throughout the successive generations of Bible readers. 
 Each separate learner must read it for himself and 
 really read it. 
 
 n 
 
 The vision in Joppa, then, was a thought-provoking 
 symbol; but not just such a one as those metaphors 
 and parables of Jesus which had so often fallen upon 
 the ears of his disciples. Its peculiarity was that, with- 
 out the present aid of any of the senses, it was made 
 visible and audible to the mind. And facing such 
 a vision, Peter, who was the foremost questioner of the 
 Master in those days when he could speak to him face 
 to face, finds himself a questioner still. 
 
 What could be the revelation embodied in this strange 
 command to kill and eat? — that was the wondering 
 query that rose in his mind. Could the intended les- 
 son be that the Mosaic distinction between the kinds 
 
THE INTERPRETATION 83 
 
 of flesh which might and those which might not be 
 eat€n in Israel was henceforth to be disregarded, that 
 literally both clean and unclean animals might now 
 be eaten by Jew as well as Gentile — this, and nothing 
 more ? Was there no deeper truth ? Or, was it a 
 revelation of religious truth at all ? Might it not 
 have been a meaningless dream, a fantasy that had 
 crept into the mind through an overtasked and sleep- 
 ing brain? On this point, however, Peter seems to 
 have entertained no doubt. He knew the vision to 
 have been given of God, and with some momentous 
 meaning for its percipient. The only question was, 
 What meaning? 
 
 'A master artist may put upon a few feet of canvas 
 the best that he has thought and felt in a lifetime. 
 Your eye is caught by the painting and held with a 
 mild, yet persistent, fascination. There is a great 
 meaning in those wonderful fashionings of form and 
 blendings of colors ; and yet to you it is perhaps a hid- 
 den meaning. To declare that it is otherwise would be 
 sheer affectation. You must think and ponder, enter- 
 ing by sympathy into the creative artist-mind, before 
 the very soul of the picture comes forth at length to 
 greet you like the morning. Somehow thus, we may 
 imagine, did the spiritual truth and purpose of his 
 vision attract the quick responsive spirit of Peter, while 
 he must still do whatever lay in his power to find out 
 more distinctly what that truth and purpose might be. 
 
 Like Moses, who, when in the desert of Horeb ho 
 saw the burning yet unconsumed bush, " looked " and 
 " beheld " and said, " I will turn aside now and see 
 
84 VISION AND POWER 
 
 this great sight, why the bush is not burnt," and was 
 thus prepared to hear the voice of God, who loTieii He 
 " saw that he turned aside to see," called unto him 
 with revealing words of grace — like that first great 
 prophet and preacher of Israel, this first Christian 
 preacher, on the housetop at the seaside, " thought " 
 and was " much perplexed " at what he had seen, and 
 in this interested and reverently inquiring spirit was 
 able to receive the Divine interpretation of his vision. 
 
 "Now, one might believe without extravagance that if 
 Peter had by this time perfectly understood a certain 
 word of his Master, in answer to a request once made 
 by the disciples, he would have had no need of this 
 vision in Joppa. The request, with its imperfectly 
 understood answer, is given in the Gospel according 
 to Mark, which has sometimes been called " Peter's 
 Gospel," because of the strong probability that it 
 was dictated by him to John Mark, his sister's son. At 
 any rate, Peter could never have forgotten such a word 
 of Jesus ; and it was this : " There is nothing without 
 the man that going into him can defile him." 
 
 It is a saying which, like many of the Master's say- 
 ings, was called forth by the occasion. In this case 
 some Pharisees and Scribes had been complaining that 
 the disciples had eaten bread with unwashed — that is, 
 with ceremonially unclean — hands. In the eyes of those 
 who held the tradition of the elders, it was a serious 
 offence. We are told, for example, of one Eabbi Akiba 
 who, while suffering imprisonment under the Roman 
 govermnent, had on a certain occasion an insufficient 
 supply of water brought him. " Give me water for my 
 
THE INTERPRETATION 85 
 
 hands," he said. And on being informed that there 
 was " scarcely water enough to drink," he replied : 
 " What shall I do ? It is better for me to die than 
 to transgress the ordinances of my ancestors." But 
 Jesus answered his disciples' critics with the truth that 
 nothing that can be handled or put into the mouth 
 is of a nature to defile the soul. And to the disciples 
 it was a dark saying ; so they " asked of him the para- 
 ble " — asked its meaning. From Matthew's Gospel we 
 learn that their spokesman on this occasion was Peter 
 — as might have been expected : " Peter answered and 
 said unto him, Declare unto us the parable." Jesus' 
 reply was that no eaten food, however ceremonially 
 unclean, can defile a man, because it does not even 
 come into contact with the man himself, but only with 
 his body. " This he said, making all meats clean " — 
 declaring their cleanness. 
 
 It was a word which left no standing-ground for the 
 tradition of the elders, as to eating bread with " de- 
 filed, that is unwashen, hands." 'Nor did it leave 
 standing-ground for the perpetuation of the t«nporarily 
 needful distinction in the written law between clean 
 and unclean meats. In the mind of the disciples, could 
 they have seen it in the whole breadth of its applica- 
 tion, it would have been a fatal word to all Jewish 
 exclusivism. 
 
 Xot yet, however, had Peter — nor probably any other 
 of the Eleven — grown into the ability to make so broad 
 an application of such a " parable." But, lo, that 
 very parable has now been acted before his inner eye 
 as a vision; and with earnest thought, which is itself 
 
86 VISION AND POWER 
 
 a prayer to the Father of lights, he seeks at once an 
 unveiling of its hidden idea. 
 
 Ill 
 
 " Peter was much perplexed in himself what the 
 vision which he had seen might mean." As on that 
 more memorable day when, looking into the tomb of 
 Jesus and finding it empty, he " departed to his home, 
 wondering at that which was come to pass," so here 
 in the sanctuary which he had found on the housetop 
 in Joppa he was in perplexity as to what might be the 
 meaning of that which had been shown him ; and " he 
 thought on the vision." 
 
 And in such thoughtful, questioning wonder, let it 
 be remarked, this seer of Jesus Christ was showing 
 himself akin to the goodly fellowship of the prophets 
 who went before him. For they, too, knew what it 
 was to be perplexed and to think on a vision. As he 
 himself afterward said of them in his First Epistle, 
 they searched into what the Spirit of Christ that was 
 in them pointed to, " when it testified beforehand the 
 sufferings of Christ and the glories that should follow 
 them." * What is its significance ? was a question of 
 theirs, even as it was of his, concerning the form in 
 which a great truth of redemption was set forth. Com- 
 pare, also, the example of Paul after his vision of 
 the Man of Macedonia. " And when he had seen the 
 vision," says Luke, one of his three travelling compan- 
 ions, " straightway we sought to go forth into Mace- 
 donia, concluding (fit^a^ovte?, gathering the facts to- 
 
 *I Peter 1: 11. 
 
THE INTERPRETATION 87 
 
 gether in our minds and drawing a conclusion from 
 them) that God had called us to preach the gospel unto 
 them." 
 
 This, it might be noted, would not have been the 
 way of a mere enthusiast. Such a percipient would 
 hardly, like Peter and Paul, have thought on the vision 
 and tried even in much perplexity of mind to under- 
 stand its language. He would have yielded himself 
 up to whatever extraordinary impression it might have 
 made upon his sensibilities. A false religious mysti- 
 cism, for example, might have held the trance and 
 vision very dear, but it would not have encouraged the 
 exercise of the reason upon it. The endeavor of a 
 mystic of this type is to do nothing. He would fain 
 quit both thinking and willing. He would become 
 utterly passive. He would use no means either of 
 grace or of knowledge. He would even lose the sense 
 of personality, vainly dreaming that thus the soul may 
 sink away into that union with God which is the per- 
 fection of life and being. Such mediaeval phrases as, 
 " purity of spirit and nudity of mind," " the ineffable 
 ti'anscendence of all knowledge and thought," " we 
 die in God to ourselves and to all separate individu- 
 ality," seem to be fairly typical of the lawless thought 
 of mysticism run mad. 
 
 But is not this too mad and manifest an error to 
 be deserving of notice ? It might indeed seem to 
 be such; but in some of its milder forms traces of 
 it now and then appear at our own doors. I have 
 known a young Christian preacher, my friend and com- 
 rade, bright-minded and sweet-spirited, the pastor of 
 
88 VISION AND POWER 
 
 a congregation, who, to satisfy a mistaken idea of spir- 
 itual perfection, gave up the habit of making prepa- 
 ration for the pulpit. " I used to do it," he said to 
 a friend, " but I have quit that foolishness." Appar- 
 ently he would have given himself up quite passively, 
 without the use of means, without the exercise of judg- 
 ment, reasoning, imagination, any intellectual faculty, 
 either before or in the act of preaching — would fain 
 have given himself up thus as a mouthpiece of the 
 Spirit of God. It wrought weakness and confusion 
 in an effective evangelic ministry. 
 
 But the true Christian mysticism is not so. It may 
 be defined in a word as personal Christian experience, 
 which is the consciousness of Divine life in the soul. 
 Needless to say, the authoritative proof and illustra- 
 tion of it is in the New Testament. Paul testifies 
 concerning it, as when he says, " I live, yet not I, but 
 Christ lives in me," and John, as when he declares: 
 " Hereby we know that we abide in Him and He in 
 us, because he hath given us of his Spirit." Not un- 
 truly has it been described as the " very heart of reli- 
 gion " and the " very soul of all most effective 
 preaching." * 
 
 There have been periods in the history of Christian 
 churches when religion, losing its inner life, degen- 
 erated into a mere confessional orthodoxy and an ob- 
 servance of rites of worship, with more or less of 
 intellectual religious activity and seemliness of out- 
 ward conduct. Then perhaps would be heard the voice 
 of the Christian mystic, as a restorer of paths to dwell 
 
 * Brastow, " The Modern Pulpit," p. 11. 
 
THE INTERPRETATION 89 
 
 in — probably a very plain man, a Luther, a Spener, a 
 Bernard Gilpin, an Otterbein — to win back the people 
 to the truth and spirituality of the gospel. 
 
 But such a voice, unless it were greatly over-strained 
 and spoiled, would not belittle the confession of the 
 Christian faith, or the rites of worship, or the activity 
 of the intellect, or practical ideas and employments. It 
 would quicken all these with a true life from within. 
 It would show them to be not hindrances, but means 
 and manifestations of the life of God in the soul. The 
 mystical an enemy to the rational ? On the contrary, 
 each needs and serves the other, twin imperial powers 
 of the soul. 
 
 With them both, the mystical and the rational, must 
 the Christian preacher be equipped, now as ever in 
 the past. For here in his hands are the records of 
 what evangelists and apostles saw in the kingdom of 
 God. Here, in the language in which they were writ- 
 ten and in his own present-day language, are the books 
 of the vision of God in Jesus. Shall not the man 
 who is distinctively to tell and interpret them to others 
 be himself a student of them ? ]N"ot by courtesy but in 
 some genuine sense of the word shall he not be, with 
 head and heart, a Bible student ? 
 
 " I shall never forget," says Phillips Brooks, in his 
 " Lectures on Preaching," " my first experience of a 
 divinity school. I had come from a college where men 
 studied hard but said nothing about faith. I had never 
 been at a prayer-meeting in my life. The first place 
 I was taken to at the seminary was the prayer-meeting ; 
 and never shall I lose the impression of the devout- 
 
90 VISION AND POWER 
 
 ness with which those men prayed and exhorted one 
 another. Their whole souls seemed exalted and their 
 natures were on fire. I sat bewildered and ashamed, 
 and went away depressed. On the next day I met some 
 of those same men at a Greek recitation. It would be 
 little to say of some of the devoutest of them that they 
 had not learnt their lessons. Their whole way showed 
 that they never learnt their lessons; that they had not 
 got hold of the first principles of hard, faithful, con- 
 scientious study." What spiritual powers are those 
 which the Maker of intellect and spirit would have us 
 exercise to the neglect or contempt of the powers of 
 thought? Kinship there is none between spiritual 
 activity and mental laziness. 
 
 In truth, to look upon any power of our being with 
 contempt or suspicion, as if it were an evil thing, is 
 to profane the handiwork and gift of Almighty God. 
 Our reason, it is a higher expression of the Eternal Rea- 
 son than are the heavens in all their splendour. Our 
 will, its goal of perfection is not to be lost in God, 
 but to have holy fellowship with him. 
 
 Jesu8, confirm my heart's desire 
 To work and speak and think for thee. 
 
 Still let me guard the holy fire 
 And still stir up thy gift in me." 
 
 That is Christian mysticism. 
 
 IV 
 
 ^Now we have seen reason for an opinion as to what 
 Peter, thinking on the vision, would have done if 
 
THE INTERPRETATION 91 
 
 the Master had been there in the flesh. He would have 
 asked him what the vision meant. Was not this, in 
 fact, the habit of the whole company of disciples in 
 those sacred vanished days when they talked with him 
 face to face ? " And his disciples asked him what this 
 parable might be; " " And they were astonished exceed- 
 ingly, saying unto him, Then who can be saved ? " 
 " Peter and James and John and Andrew asked him 
 privately. Tell us, when shall these things be ? " 
 
 Even in his discourse in the upper room on the even- 
 ing of his betrayal, Jesus was interrupted (if that be 
 the proper word) by repeated questioning. " Lord, who 
 is it ? " asked John — at Peter's request. " Lord, 
 whither goest thou ? " asked Peter. " Lord, we know 
 not whither thou goest, and how can we know the way ? " 
 asked Thomas. " Lord, what is come to pass, that thou 
 wilt manifest thyself unto us and not unto the world ? " 
 asked Judas the brother of James. And it was in this 
 very discourse that Jesus called them " friends." He 
 wished them to ask explanations of him as a friend 
 might ask of a revered and beloved friend — as a bond- 
 servant, a slave, was not permitted to do. Their Lord, 
 Teacher, Friend, would win his disciples to the habit of 
 prayer. 
 
 Had opportunity been given, therefore, this quick- 
 speaking brother, just now awakened out of a trance 
 in which he had so strangely been bidden to eat the 
 clean and the unclean alike, would doubtless have asked 
 the Master's explanation. And the answer, if we may 
 reverently venture to guess, would have been a pro- 
 gressive answer — first, enough for the disciple's pres- 
 
92 VISION AND POWER 
 
 ent guidance, afterward a fuller revelation of the 
 truth. 
 
 Such was the answer, certainly, to the impetuous 
 prayer of this same questioner in the upper room at 
 the Lord's Supper. When Jesus, we remember, girded 
 with a towel and bearing a bason of water in his 
 hand, like one that serves, was washing the disciples' 
 feet, Peter, as it came to be his turn, was quick 
 with protest and interrogation. " Dost thou wash my 
 feet ? " Jesus calmly assured him that an explanation 
 would be given in due season : " What I do thou know- 
 est not now, but thou shalt understand hereafter." How 
 soon thereafter? First of all, in a few minutes. For 
 when the Lord, having finished his ininistration as a 
 servant-host to the disciples whom he loved, sat down 
 among them once more, he said : " Ye call me Teacher 
 and Lord [it was of their own mind and will they did 
 it], and ye say well, for such I am. If I, then, the 
 Lord and the Teacher, have washed your feet, ye also 
 ought to wash one another's feet. For I have given you 
 an example, that ye should do as I have done to you." 
 
 With this explanation they were somewhat able to 
 understand what their Master had done unto them. 
 They saw that, in a manner most marvellous, he had 
 taught them the lesson of ministering love. But this 
 was not the whole answer. For when, through the 
 teaching of the unseen Spirit of truth, light was thrown 
 back from the Cross and Resurrection upon all the 
 antecedent acts of Jesus, greater than ever appeared the 
 unfolding mystery of the Divine love, as set forth in 
 all that the Son of God had done at that last supper 
 
THE INTERPRETATION 93 
 
 with those whom he had chosen as its witnesses. Think 
 what it must have meant then to remember and say: 
 " It was in very truth the Highest, God manifest in 
 the flesh, who, in love that would not let us go, took, 
 even toward such as we, the household servant's place." 
 
 So it was a progressive revelation of himself in one- 
 ness with the Father, and of the new commandment 
 of love and service (" as I have done to you ") that 
 lay enshrined in Jesus' word of promise, " Thou shalt 
 understand hereafter." 
 
 Similar was the explanation of the symbolic vision 
 in Joppa whose meaning Peter was thoughtfully and 
 prayerfully asking for. First of all, it was given in 
 a very little while. For in the midst of Peter's pon- 
 dering and perplexity an answer is hastening on. Fuller 
 answers will follow later, but well fitted to the present 
 need is the answer even now at hand. Downstairs at 
 the gate, men are heard inquiring for a certain Simon 
 Peter — Gentile inquirers. Peter, alone on the house- 
 top, may not have heard them ; but a voice within, the 
 voice of the Spirit, bade him go down and meet the 
 callers and go confidently with them. They were three 
 men, two of them servants of Cornelius the Roman 
 captain at Caesarea, and the third a devout soldier be- 
 longing to his retinue; and they bore from him an 
 urgent inspired request that Peter would come to him 
 with " words." 
 
 This, then, cannot but be the interpretation of the 
 vision — so the perplexed apostle thought — namely, that 
 God had cleansed the Gentiles, had declared that they 
 were no longer to be treated as ceremonially unclean. 
 
94 VISION AND POWER 
 
 Being a preacher of the gospel, he must go to them 
 even in their houses, when opportunity offers, and with 
 such words as may be given him to speak. Is he not 
 already a guest in the house of the Levitically unclean 
 Simon? So he makes bold to do the un-Jewish act 
 of lodging these three Gentile messengers overnight; 
 and so again he will even fare forth to-morrow with 
 them toward the home of a non-proselyted Roman sol- 
 dier. He was in a fair way to learn, through obedi- 
 ence to the Spirit of truth, that great law of life which 
 he should afterward write down for the Christian broth- 
 erhood — " Honour all men." * 
 
 As both Joppa and Csesarea were coast towns, ship^ 
 ping ports for foreign commerce, it might not unrea- 
 sonably have been guessed that in both of them the 
 foreign — ^which is to say, the Gentile — population would 
 predominate. This was not true, however, of Joppa. 
 That little city, though it had not wholly escaped the 
 contamination of heathenism, was decidedly Jewish. 
 It was the seaport of Jerusalem — as indeed it is still — 
 and shared in Jerusalem's intense spirit of patriotism. 
 
 But Csesarea, about thirty or forty miles to the 
 north, was more of a Gentile city than any other along 
 the whole coast line of Palestine. It was not an old 
 city, but had been built under the Roman rule — built by 
 Herod the Great, and named by him after his master, 
 Augustus Caesar. It was the residence of the Roman 
 governor of Judea — of Pontius Pilate, for instance, at 
 
 *I Peter 2: 17. 
 
THE INTERPRETATION 95 
 
 the time of the crucifixion. The institutions and ideas 
 of the Gr£eco-Roman civilization — theatre, amphithea- 
 tre, temple, altars, idolatrous worship — prevailed. Jews 
 were there, of course, but even they, in the synagogue 
 worship, read their Scriptures in the Greek language. 
 
 Peter might easily, therefore, have felt himself at 
 home in Joppa and a stranger in C^sarea Palestina. 
 Nevertheless, northward through the plain of Sharon 
 to Caesarea he is now journeying. And it is on a mis- 
 sion to those whom at one time in his life — ^before 
 Jesus of Nazareth had found him, let us hope — he 
 would no doubt have spoken of with hasty contempt 
 as " Gentile dogs." Yes, this Hebrew of the Hebrews 
 is now on his way to Csesarea, on his way with " words " 
 to the home of a Gentile. For a great barrier-breaking 
 word has been spoken to him from on high — " Unto me 
 God hath shown that I should not call any man common 
 or unclean." 
 
 Here began the Christianity of the nations. And 
 certainly no more fitting person could have been its 
 witness-bearer than the foremost of the Twelve who 
 had followed the Lord Jesus. " Brethren," said he to 
 the council in Jerusalem, " ye know that a good while 
 ago God made choice among you that by my mouth the 
 Gentiles should hear the word of the gospel, and be- 
 lieve." " God made choice among you." It was a 
 Divine election. 
 
 Nor can a more fitting place be imagined for this 
 new beginning of the gospel than the city which was 
 virtually the Roman capital of Palestine. We recall 
 that David chose his capital at Jerusalem, Jeroboam 
 
96 VISION AND POWER 
 
 his at Shechem, and Omri his at the city of Samaria, 
 all inland cities, which well represented the national 
 idea of security and defence. For Israel was not to 
 be aggressive. On the other hand, the national idea 
 of Rome almost from the beginning had been dis- 
 tinctly that of aggression. Rome was to be a colossal 
 world-power. And this idea was equally well repre- 
 sented in her subject territory of Palestine by the 
 capital city of Csesarea at the seaside; for here was a 
 harbor for her ships, keeping military and mercantile 
 communication open with the imperial City; and from 
 here she could most effectually bear rule over an ever- 
 turbulent people. 
 
 But the hour has now struck that calls the New Israel 
 to take the aggressive. With a programme and a pur- 
 pose compared with which that of the mightiest of 
 world-powers dwindles into meanness, she must go 
 forth to conquer the Roman people and all other peo- 
 ples, with the word of the truth of the gospel. And 
 what we see in Csesarea i^ the opening of her many- 
 centuried campaign at the representative seat of the 
 pagan power in the land of her birth. 
 
 VI 
 
 Now Cornelius, though not a proselyte to Judaism, 
 was a worshipper of God. Moreover, there is no doubt 
 that, like many another Gentile of the time, he was 
 indebted to Judaism for his religious faith. Not of 
 course that the Jews then residing in Greek and Roman 
 cities were, in any positive sense, missionaries of 
 monotheism. They seem to have had little or no sense 
 
THE INTERPRETATION 97 
 
 of such a mission. They were more nearly the spir- 
 itual kin of Jonah than of Isaiah. Yet, whether or 
 not these Jews of the Dispersion felt themselves en- 
 trusted with the truth of God for others' sake, there in 
 the Gentile cities stood their synagogues, which were 
 houses of teaching ; and Gentiles were not forbidden to 
 enter. Paul, for example, in his missionary tours, 
 found both Jews and Greeks in the synagogues — in that 
 of Iconium, in that of Athens, and in that of Thessa- 
 lonica where " devout Greeks a great multitude " be- 
 lieved his word. 
 
 Accordingly, it is easy to imagine Cornelius — say, in 
 young manhood — dissatisfied with the paganism in 
 which he had been brought up, finding his way to such 
 a house of worship and instruction, taking an incon- 
 spicuous seat, listening to the reading of the Law and 
 the Prophets. Why should he not come and come 
 again to hear these Scriptures? For where had he 
 ever heard anything comparable thereto? They ap- 
 pealed to his reason and met the hunger of his heart. 
 Away went the mythologies and the barren philosophies, 
 now that he had found the one true and personal God. 
 
 By submitting to the Jewish rites Cornelius might 
 have become a member of the synagogue, a proselyte, 
 and enjoyed all its privileges. These, however, he 
 does not seem to have asked for. But he was a seeker 
 of God; and in the holy oracles of Judaism he found 
 him whom he sought, and became, Roman soldier and 
 captain of a rude soldiery as he was, " a devout man, 
 and one that feared God with all his house, who gave 
 much alms to the people, and prayed to God alway." 
 
98 VISION AND POWER 
 
 Prayed for what? Tor more light; because it is 
 he who has that wants, and to him, having and want- 
 ing, it shall be given more abundantly. Divers good 
 gifts this devout soldier prayed for, no doubt; but 
 we have evidence that the perfect boon of a larger 
 knowledge of God was the chief of them. This he 
 desired most of all. For when in vision the angel of 
 God bade him send to Joppa for Simon Peter, who 
 was to bring him a message of the Divine self- 
 revelation in Jesus, the word was, " Cornelius, thy 
 prayer is heard/* This, then, was his prayer, con- 
 scious, unconscious, but deepest and most real of all 
 the hungering of his spirit — to know God as He had 
 been made known in Jesus and to have his family, 
 '' all his house," sharers with him in such spiritual 
 vision. 
 
 In fact, Cornelius and the others had already known 
 something of the good news of Jesus Christ that had 
 been published in Galilee and throughout Judea. 
 " That saying ye yourselves know," Peter reminded 
 them, when he had come and begun to speak to Cor- 
 nelius' household and friends. From Philip the evan- 
 gelist, then, who lived in Caesarea,* or from some other 
 source, this earnest and devout soul, while on garri- 
 son duty in the city, had heard reports of the words, 
 the deeds, the cross of Jesus. But what could it all 
 mean? Who was this crucified prophet of Galilee? 
 What greatest word had he spoken? What new reve- 
 lation of God, if any, had he brought? And what 
 truth might be contained in that mystic word which 
 
 *Act9 21: 8, 9. 
 
THE INTERPRETATION 99 
 
 had been reported about peace by Jesus Christ? Be 
 glad and thankful, Cornelius, truth-lover and servant 
 of the living God, for " thy prayer is heard." 
 
 And now the apostle, with the six brethren whom he 
 had brought from Joppa as witnesses of what might 
 occur, was standing in the house of the centurion, and 
 asking why he had been sent for. Cornelius related 
 the story of his vision, and concluded with the pro- 
 posal : " Now therefore we are all here present in the 
 sight of God, to hear all things that have been com- 
 manded thee of the Lord." Then the apostle " opened 
 his mouth and said "— — 
 
 VII 
 
 But let us linger here a moment. We are reminded 
 of the word spoken some years before in Peter's pres- 
 ence (as we have good reason to believe) near the lake- 
 side in Galilee, concerning a brother soldier of Cor- 
 nelius — and of the same rank — ^the centurion stationed 
 at Capernaum, who had built the Jews their synagogue 
 in that city. Jesus marvelled at this Gentile soldier's 
 faith — " Only say the word, and my servant shall be 
 healed " — which he had not found the equal of even 
 in Israel. Then, as if looking forth, from the heights 
 of prophetic vision, unto the far-off horizons of the 
 world and far down the highways of the great oncom- 
 ing future, he declared : " 1 say unto you that many 
 shall come from the east and the west, and shall sit 
 down with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the king- 
 dom of heaven." Has that prophetic word just now 
 come back to Simon Peter, with the illuminating touch 
 
100 VISION AND POWER 
 
 of the Spirit, here in this Roman household by the 
 Mediterranean Sea ? Or that later word, uttered a few 
 days before the crucifixion, when it was told Jesus 
 that certain Greeks who had come to the passover feast 
 were desirous of seeing him, and Jesus answered and 
 said, " The hour is come that the Son of man should 
 be glorified. . . . And I, if I be lifted up from the 
 earth, will draw all men unto myself " — was that word 
 of prophecy brought just now to this disciple's remem- 
 brance? It may have been so. At all events, here are 
 Gentiles from the West, a centurion in the Italian 
 cohort of the Roman army of occupation, with his house- 
 hold, kinsmen, and friends, coming into the kingdom 
 of God. 
 
 The apostle then opened his mouth and said : " Of a 
 truth I perceive [or, I am perceiving'] that God is no 
 respecter of persons, but in every nation he that feareth 
 him and worketh righteousness is acceptable to him." 
 The larger light is indeed shining on " what the vision 
 which he had seen might mean." For he now sees 
 not only that he did well to make a journey of forty 
 miles to enter into the house of a praying Gentile, but 
 also that this man is verily acceptable to God, and more- 
 over stands in a universal representative relation — that 
 in every nation men like him are acceptable to God. 
 Here is the interpretation of the common declared to 
 be clean, given in a human and spiritual outlook, world- 
 wide. " I am perceiving " — what ? Seekers of God, 
 many or few, Jethros and Jobs and Melehizedeks and 
 Wise Men of the East, among all peoples — men of 
 Egypt, Arabia, Asia, Macedonia, Achaia, Italy, Spain, 
 
THE INTERPRETATION 101 
 
 China, the isles of the sea — sons of light, obedient to 
 what of the highest truth they know, faithful to walk 
 in the fear of God and in righteousness of life, and 
 finding acceptance with him, 
 
 " I have never eaten anything that is common " — 
 have never associated on equal terms with non-Jewish 
 people. Such had been this Galilean Jew's rule of life 
 until two or three days ago. But he is coming now to 
 testify : " Unto me hath God showed that I should not 
 call any man common." Which is to say that the 
 people whom the Jew had been turning away from 
 as " common " were his own brothers, and equally pre- 
 cious with himself to God. He is coming to see that 
 Jesus of ]^azareth is " Lord of all/' 
 
 Thus the ISTew Testament, as it is written, portion 
 by portion, out of the spiritual experience and life of 
 that day of Divine revelation, bears concurrent and 
 unbroken testimony to the universality of the Christian 
 Congregation, in which the only height of distinction 
 is that of humble and loving service in the name of 
 the Son of Man. In this light of Christ every human 
 personality, even the crudest and the worst, is sacred. 
 
 Common? Such a descriptive term (hoivo?) was to 
 be lost, as men learned of Christ, in the higher word 
 (^HOivGovia) com-munion, com-munication, fellow-ship, 
 brother-hood. 
 
 The common faith,* the common salvation,! the com- 
 mon life-sharing in the gospel,$ the sacredness of the 
 soul II — are these poor and mean ideas? The one Lord 
 
 ♦Titus 1:4. J Acts 2:42; Philemon 1:5. 
 
 t Jude 3. II Acta 10:28. 
 
102 VISION AND POWER 
 
 Jesus Christ, could anybody dream of thinking of him 
 more worthily as the Saviour of a nation or a class, 
 than as the Elder Brother of us all, who tasted death 
 for every man? 
 
 VIII 
 
 Yet there be some who are ready to ask : " If, then, 
 those who in non-Christian lands fear God and live 
 righteously according to such light and leading as 
 they have are acceptable to him, why should we trou- 
 ble ourselves to send them the gospel at all ? " Oh, 
 narrow and blinding conception of the grace and truth 
 that have come by Jesus Christ. To suggest that the 
 Christian gospel is not to be preached everywhere is 
 to imply that it has no fulness of meaning anywhere. 
 It is to make the offer of salvation in Christ selective, 
 local, provincial, sectional, racial, whereas it is human 
 and spiritual and universal. It is to say, on the one 
 hand, to those who amid idolatrous fellows and sur- 
 roundings are feeling after the living God if haply 
 they may find him, " Your prayer is not to be heard." 
 It is to deny, on the other hand, those who, content with 
 their darkness, are making no effort to throw off the 
 cruel oppression of pagan superstition, it is to deny 
 them that heaven-sent evangel through which they, too, 
 may be awakened to seek the heavenly Father and 
 welcome the good tidings of peace by Jesus Christ. 
 In a word, not only to those who wish it, but to all who 
 need it the gospel of the Son of Man is due. 
 
 Accordingly, when this disciple whom the Lord is 
 making a missionary stands before his inquiring little 
 
THE INTERPRETATION 103 
 
 Gentile congregation, to speak words whereby they 
 shall be saved, he does not conclude with the idea 
 of the fear of God and the working of righteousness. 
 But beginning with that he goes on to preach unto 
 them Jesus. 
 
 This is that which, nay, rather this is He whom, the 
 whole world needs — even Jesus. " I came that they 
 may have life, and that they may have it abundantly." 
 To what people, therefore, near or far, shall his Church 
 hesitate to go, in obedience to his command, with the 
 words of this life ? 
 
 But there are other visions, as personal as that of 
 Simon Peter, and some, we may believe, as trul;y Divine. 
 It is time we should think somewhat on them. 
 
VISIONS AND VISION 
 
 I was in the city of Joppa praying, and in a trance I 
 Baw a vision. — Acts 11: 5. 
 
 •Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of 
 persons; but in every nation he that feareth him and 
 worketh righteousness is acceptable to him. — Acts 10: 
 34, 35. 
 
 NO small profit may be gathered from the story 
 of Peter's vision, if it shall set us thinking on 
 visions of our own. Ours, it is true, are not 
 in the least likely to be given in a trance. Only in 
 exceptional instances has a state of ecstatic self- 
 consciousness been the medium of the Spirit's teaching. 
 Peter's vision from the housetop was one such instance ; 
 but the visions which he had already seen with his 
 eyes and heard with his ears, in daily companionship 
 with the Word made flesh, were more than he could 
 number. And although we, unlike this elect witness- 
 bearer, have not enjoyed the singular privilege to know 
 Christ after the flesh, our visions of the unseen and 
 the eternal have also been very many. 
 
 Not that we have always " thought on the vision " 
 or been " much perplexed " to perceive its Divine 
 meaning. Too often doubtless we have seen and heard 
 with the senses only, or at best with the intellect. 
 
 104 
 
VISIONS AND VISION 105 
 
 " Blessed are your eyes," said tbe Master to his dis- 
 ciples, " for they see, and your ears, for they hear." 
 But it was to these same disciples that he also said: 
 " Having eyes, see ye not ? and having ears, hear ye 
 not ? " The senses or even the intellections may be 
 quick enough, while spiritual discernment lies fast 
 asleep. 
 
 Along this same line of insensibility to the spir- 
 itual truth which God is ever offering us may arise 
 an eager longing for some ecstatic vision. I have known 
 more than one earnest Christian to cherish for years 
 the hope of such an experience. For at least once in a 
 lifetime they would fain be rapt out of themselves. 
 Have they not heard or read of those that were? If 
 some day, while kneeling in prayer, they might be so 
 thrilled and uplifted by the revealing Spirit as to 
 become insensible to the body and all earthly surround- 
 ings — ^that is the experience of the celestial truth and 
 glory which they are craving. That, they feel, would 
 once for all make them sure of God and of their 
 acceptance with him. All in vain. For meantime in 
 God's world, in their own lives, in their own spirits, 
 the same truth and glory are continually set forth ; and 
 the form of the revelation is regular, orderly, familiar. 
 But partly perhaps on this very account it goes un- 
 noticed and uninterpreted. 
 
 " Lord, show us the Father," said Philip, " and it 
 sufficeth us." " Have I been so long time with you, and 
 dost thou not know me, Philip ? " Day by day, month 
 after month, the Father had been walking and talking 
 with these men, in the person of Jesus his Son. Blessed 
 
106 VISION AND POWER 
 
 were the eyes of Philip and the others, for they saw. 
 But did they see? 
 
 Poor indeed was the undiscerned or misinterpreted 
 outward vision, even though its subject was the Man 
 of Galilee and of Calvary. 
 
 So, the Christian prayer is for the perpetual inner 
 light rather than for the extraordinary manifestation, 
 for vision rather than visions. " I have often prayed 
 my God," said Martin Luther, " that I might not see 
 any vision or miracle, nor be informed in dreams, since 
 I have enough to learn in his word." We, if not called 
 upon to pray against such experiences, are certainly 
 nowhere bidden to pray for them. " The fruit of the 
 Spirit is " — ecstasy, vision, miracle ? " Pure religion 
 and undefiled before our God and Father is this " — a 
 state of ecstasy, vision, miraculous achievement? 
 " And hereby we know that we know Him, if " — ^we 
 have felt ecstasy, seen visions, wrought miracles ? Such 
 is not the New Testament answer.* 
 
 n 
 
 But it is time that we should try to mark with some 
 distinctness three or four different meanings of the 
 word we have been using so freely. True, it is sel- 
 dom altogether agreeable, to either writer or reader, 
 to stop and define one's terms. But though it be some- 
 what grievous, nevertheless it is safe. First of all, then, 
 there is a difference to be noted between " a vision " 
 (or, in the plural form, " visions ") and " vision." 
 
 What is a vision? The name may be given, as 
 
 • Galatiana 5 : 22 ; James 1 : 27 ; John 2 : 3. 
 
VISIONS AND VISION 107 
 
 already indicated, to a scene made up perhaps of a 
 number of objects and events, like what appears to the 
 mind in a dream, only with the senses sunk into a 
 deeper state of torpor — a trance scene. Such was 
 Peter's experience. " I was in a trance and saw a 
 vision." 
 
 But in the more familiar use of it the name is given 
 to any imaginative mental picture of the future — say, 
 such an ideal as one's hoped-for home, or achievements, 
 or associations — as when we speak of the " day-dreams 
 of youth." These, it is true, may be mere dreams or 
 vagaries; but in many cases they are genuine ideals 
 without which the world would be poor indeed. 
 
 The daughter in the home where she has been loved 
 and cared for with a love that gives and asks nothing 
 again dreams of a far more beautiful home, in a fu- 
 ture all radiant with love and joy. The busy trades- 
 man in the midst of his years is planning for a com- 
 petence on which he may retire for the fuller enjoy- 
 ment of what remains to him of this life's short journey. 
 Even in the case of the faithful and happy burden- 
 bearers in the noblest walks of life, there may be 
 comfort in forecasting a time when the tasks will be 
 less exacting and the days more tranquil and free. 
 " Ah," wrote Joseph Parker, " when I am in the thick 
 of it, what a help my rose-covered cottage is to me." 
 It is true, no such restful cottage home ever fell to 
 the lot of the great London preacher — and it was well, 
 no doubt ; yet he felt the " help " of the heart's sweet 
 picture of it amid the strenuous labors of his life. Thus 
 the Bright Land is for most of us a morning or a 
 
108 VISION AND POWER 
 
 noonday land, while for a few it is the land of the 
 setting sun ; but we all have seen it at times just a little 
 ahead — in vision. It beckons us on — " something that 
 keeps calling, calling," as Lieutenant Peary said of 
 the voice that would not let him rest from his perilous 
 exploration in the far North-land — and forbids our 
 abiding with full satisfaction in any present condition. 
 
 Even the imaginative child is wont to fancy a time 
 which is all play-time, in a wonder-world of beautiful 
 sights and sounds. 
 
 " ' Where are you running so fast, so fast? 
 Now answer, my little boys three.' 
 ' We are going to live where they have no school, 
 In the Land of the Gingerbread Tree.' " 
 
 Truer and finer than any of these is the vision of 
 personal goodness which arises, as the moral nature 
 unfolds under the touch of the Spirit of truth. Often 
 it is suggested by such goodness lived in the life of 
 some one we know. " That's the kind of man I believe 
 in," says the responsive youth — for adolescence is the 
 chosen period of visions and ideals ; " I should like to 
 be like him." " Unto a full-grown man, unto the meas- 
 ure of the stature of the fulness of Christ : " that was 
 Paul's vision of personal goodness after he had seen 
 the man Christ Jesus. 
 
 Nor should we overlook the fact that our vision of 
 the future need not be simply personal. It may be 
 social, it may be universal. Morally speaking, indeed, 
 it must be so. Spiritual vision is necessarily social and 
 universal — its Christian prayer, " Thy will be done, as 
 in heaven so on earth." 
 
VISIONS AND VISION 109 
 
 To come now to something visible to the bodily eye, 
 the word " vision " may mean some impressive scene 
 in the natural world — say, the gathering of a harvest, 
 a wood of budding or of leafless trees, a city by night, 
 the star-strewn sky, a deserted farm, a restless multi- 
 tude of people; or even a single person, one sweet and 
 noble face abiding in the memory to waken formative 
 ideas of goodness and truth. " I owe you a great debt, 
 a debt far larger than ever I can pay," was said by 
 a stranger on his introduction to a lady whom he had 
 once chanced to see in a street car, and the look of 
 peace and joy on whose face had scattered a sense of 
 disheartenment which had been beclouding his mind. 
 A glad and peaceful soul in a face — shall we hesitate 
 to call that a vision? 
 
 And still again, some one else's vision of an out- 
 ward scene or object may be reproduced in our minds 
 by means of descriptive words, perhaps from the tongue 
 or pen of an original witness. It may be written in 
 the book we are reading. Above all, it may be written 
 in the Gospels of the I^ew Testament. 
 
 In such senses as these, then, we may speak of hav- 
 ing a vision. It may be a trance scene; it may be an 
 ideal, either personal or general, of the future; it 
 may be a natural scene; it may be a reproduction of 
 some natural scene by descriptive words. 
 
 Ill 
 
 And now, what is vision ? Its best synonym, perhaps, 
 is " insight." It is depth and breadth of view, fore- 
 cast, intellectual or moral illumination, the sense of 
 
110 VISION AND POWER 
 
 the universal in the particular or of the eternal in 
 the transient. With respect to visions, it is interpre- 
 tation. What do my visions mean ? what is their deep- 
 est and largest significance? I must interpret them; 
 and this interpretation is vision. 
 
 It is in some such use of the word, for example, 
 that we remark concerning this or that man that he 
 is " a man of vision." Or, on the contrary, it may be 
 remarked, " He lacks vision." The man may have 
 his visions, but his knowledge of them is at best super- 
 ficial. He does not penetrate to the heart of them. 
 He does not adequately interpret. His sight is with- 
 out insight. He is not a seer. 
 
 In looking upon a natural scene, for example, what 
 the eye takes in is very little of itself. It is only 
 colors, " a clever wash of bright and dark, of green, 
 yellow, red, and blue." The eye of the deer or the 
 swallow or the dog takes in that. The ideas and senti- 
 ments which it yields, being interpreted, these are the 
 inner scene and greater reality. 
 
 What do you see, then, in looking, let us say, upon 
 the star-strewn sky? It depends on who you are and 
 what is your mood at the time. What did a Hebrew 
 psalmist see ? " The work of Thy fingers," " which 
 Thou hast ordained," " what is man that Thou art 
 mindful of him ? " " Thou hast made him but little 
 lower than God " — the unapproachable greatness of 
 God, and the greatness of man, whom, notwithstanding 
 his physical littleness and frailty, God has made his 
 viceroy on earth, that is what appeared to the inner 
 eye of the divinely taught psalmist. That was vision. 
 
VISIONS AND VISION 111 
 
 IV 
 
 Alone in prayer on Simon the tanner's house, Simon 
 Peter "fell into a trance, and he beholdeth (Beaopei, 
 is a spectator of) the heaven opened " and a descending 
 sheet filled with forms of animal life. Then, after it 
 had been given him to interpret that which he had 
 seen, there was a much greater experience to relate : " Of 
 a truth I perceive ( HaraXafxftavopLai^ I lay hold of with 
 my mind) that God is no respecter of persons, but in 
 every nation he that feareth him and worketh right- 
 eousness is acceptable to him." That spiritual insight 
 and outlook; the discernment of the universal good- 
 will of the living God, valuing men not according 
 to their external circumstances of race or ecclesiasti- 
 cism ; the religious aristocracy of Israel doomed to van- 
 ish before the spiritual aristocracy of man: that was 
 vision. 
 
 For an illustration from object-lessons in the teach- 
 ing of Jesus, recall the incident of the child in the 
 midst of the disciples. As they were questioning 
 among themselves as to which should be greater than 
 the others in the kingdom of heaven, " he called to him 
 a little child and set him in the midst of them." It 
 was in Capernaum, the city of Simon Peter, and 
 therefore not improbably in his house. Only a child 
 that chanced to be near ? Yes — ^though, if one might so 
 guess, a wee son or daughter of that singularly hon- 
 oured fisherman's household — only that lovely thought 
 of God, childhood, looking forth from the face of some 
 
lia VISION AND POWER 
 
 one little child. The Divine idea realized once in 
 the child Jesus, and present potentially in every 
 other. 
 
 " Unto us a child is born " — the Christ-child, who 
 was to become, in a truer sense than it was given the 
 ancient prophet to see, the Lord of life. Saviour and 
 King of men. In him the world is learning, though all 
 too slowly, the reverence due to childhood — in his life 
 and explicitly in his word of teaching. To the eyes of 
 sense, indeed, the infancy of a human soul may seem 
 like a commonplace affair, but Jesus' word to the sin- 
 cere yet sense-bound disciples, on this and other occa- 
 sions, showed something of its infinite spiritual beauty 
 and significance : " Except ye turn and become as little 
 children, ye shall in no wise enter into the kingdom 
 of heaven ; " " Of such is the kingdom of God ; " " And 
 whoso shall receive one such little child in my name 
 receiveth me." 
 
 All unconsciously to themselves, how much do our 
 children teach us. 
 
 I have heard General Clinton B. Eisk tell the story 
 of his conversion. He had been a prayerless man. One 
 evening it fell to him, in the mother's absence, to hear 
 their little daughter repeat her evening prayer. Kneel- 
 ing at his knees, she prayed as a child may, and among 
 others for him. Then, as he put her to rest, she asked, 
 looking into his face with the simple-hearted earnest- 
 ness of childhood, " Papa, do you pray ? " Nothing 
 had ever so touched him. A prayerless father of a 
 guileless, praying child. He tried to dismiss the un- 
 welcome thought, but in vain. He took up a book 
 
VISIONS AND VISION 113 
 
 to read, but laid it down and walked out beneath the 
 stars, the night wind in his face, that he might shake 
 ofr the spell that had somehow bound him, and so come 
 to himself. But the pure, sweet voice persisted, repeat- 
 ing the words, " Do you pray ? " The vision refused 
 to fade from his mind — that veritable vision of one of 
 God's innocent young angels, standing white-robed be- 
 fore him, and making known in reverent love, more 
 wisely than she knew, the one eternal Father of them 
 both. It brought the strong man to his knees, and he 
 did indeed come to himself, which was to come into 
 a great and beneficent Christian life. 
 
 It was a noteworthy experience. But there is an- 
 other in which very many of us may share. I mean 
 that it is by the hand of a little child that the father 
 and mother may be led into the clearer light of the 
 eternal fatherhood. For what does it disclose — this 
 new, strange type of sacrificial love which the baby's 
 coming inspires in the parent's heart ? Whence could 
 it arise but out of the heart of the Father in heaven? 
 Therefore, his giving is also a self-giving, his love a 
 sacrificial love. Thus we come to understand as never 
 before such a word of Jesus as the parable of the 
 Prodigal Son. Look up from a parent's love to its 
 Source, and behold in vision the father-heart of God. 
 
 It may also befall that the depth of one's love is re- 
 vealed only by the pang of grief at the loss of its 
 object. 
 
 " Fold the hands across the breast 
 So, as when he knelt to pray, 
 Leave him to his dreamless restj 
 Baby died to-day." 
 
114 VISION AND POWER 
 
 Then, in the anguish of wounded parental love, one 
 begins to learn more really the love of the heavenly 
 Father to his children, and his will that none of them 
 perish. 
 
 A simple little child a vision? Yes, a vision of the 
 Highest. 
 
 For an illustration from Peter's own earlier history, 
 let us turn again to the Gospels and read the narrative 
 of an event that took place before his bodily eyes and 
 at once disclosed something of its meaning to his mind 
 and heart. The scene was on the shore of Lake Gen- 
 nesaret. The time was before this fisherman had com- 
 mitted himself to discipleship with Jesus. See the 
 multitude pressing upon the new and wonderful Prophet 
 to hear the Word of God. Entering into one of two 
 boats, which was Simon's, Jesus asked him to with- 
 draw a little from the land. There he taught the peo- 
 ple; and when he had left speaking he said to Simon: 
 " Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a 
 draught." " Master, we toiled all night, but at thy 
 word I will let down the nets." And the ingather- 
 ing of fishes was so great that the boats began to 
 sink. 
 
 "What could it all mean ? The vast congregation of 
 wonder-stricken people hanging attentive upon the 
 speech of Jesus, the tranquil and authoritative com- 
 mand of nature and of man, the superhuman wisdom, 
 grace, and goodness — like a sudden flame from some 
 unseen fire it lit up the soul of Simon, and he fell down 
 
VISIONS AND VISION 115 
 
 at Jesus' feet, crying out : " Depart from me, for I am 
 a sinful man, O Lord." He had beheld a sign, cumu- 
 lative in its awful yet glorious power, of the presence 
 of the Eternal. Who was he, with all his faults and 
 sins upon him, to stand in such a presence? He had 
 never been so self-revealed before. Down on his knees 
 he prays to be spared this contact with the insufferable 
 light of Divine holiness and pow^er. It was a flash of 
 spiritual vision. May it not have been the vision that 
 determined him at that very time to leave all at the 
 Master's word and follow him — follow the Holy One 
 of whose presence and leadership he felt so painfully 
 unworthy? !Nor do we wonder that long afterward 
 he should write to certain of his fellow-disciples of 
 Jesus : " Like as He who called you is holy, be ye also 
 holy in all manner of living ; " * and, " If ye call on 
 God as Father who without respect of persons judgeth 
 according to each man's work, pass the time of your 
 sojourning in fear." f 
 
 The world was then in its first Christian century. 
 It is now in its twentieth. Changes innumerable have 
 occurred. The believers in Jesus of I*^azareth have not 
 become an extinct sect. On the contrary, they have 
 increased unto multiplied millions. But do they still 
 have visitations from the Most High in visions and 
 in the interpretation thereof? As truly as ever in the 
 beginning. Among the numberless changes there has 
 been none in spiritual truth, none in the everlasting 
 Christ, none in the heart and will of his Father and 
 ours. 
 
 * I Peter 1 : 15. 
 1 1 Peter 1 : 17. 
 
110 VISION AND POWER 
 
 Year by year the procession of Christian pilgrims is 
 passing through the coast town of Joppa and by the 
 lakeside in Galilee, but they see not the face of Jesus 
 of l^azareth as did Simon Peter in his day. Hence 
 they have no such personal witness to oifer as had 
 Peter's fellow-disciple John, who, in old age, the last 
 survivor of the twelve that had once lived with Jesus, 
 began his letter to all the Christians whom he might 
 reach, with the great informal greeting : " That which 
 was from the beginning, that which we have heard, 
 which we have seen with our eyes, that which we be- 
 held, and our hands have handled, concerning the word 
 of life . . . that which we have seen and heard de- 
 clare we unto you." Yet through John's word we all 
 may know Jesus. In our far-away land and with two 
 millenniums intervening between the days of his flesh 
 and our own appointed days, we may make acquaintance 
 with him and walk with him in paths of love and duty, 
 day by day. 
 
 With what manner of face and figure did Jesus ap- 
 pear? ]^o word concerning it has been transmitted 
 to us. It may be better not to know. But we may know 
 him, as truly as did his earliest called disciples. Por 
 John, writing to those who had never seen the face 
 of the Lord as they had seen the faces of their kindred 
 and friends about them, declares as his purpose in this 
 very letter : " That ye also might have fellowship with 
 us, yea, and our fellowship is with the Father and with 
 his Son Jesus Christ." And Peter in his first letter 
 has written concerning this same Eternal Word made 
 flesh : " Whom not having seen ye love ; in whom. 
 
VISIONS AND VISION 117 
 
 though now ye see him not, yet believing, ye rejoice 
 greatly." * 
 
 Through the testimony of such personal eye-witnesses, 
 then, we too have our vision of the Man of Galilee. 
 And through the interpretation by the Spirit of his 
 mind and person and teaching and sacrificial life and 
 death and life triumphant over death, and of his atoning 
 love which passes knowledge, we too, not having seen, 
 may love and greatly rejoice. 
 
 VI 
 
 I am writing on New Year's Day. What is likely 
 at such a time to be one's re-vision of the Old Year? 
 A routine of daily affairs, business successes or fail- 
 ures, meetings and partings, domestic joys, journeyings 
 here and there, humdrum, seasons of storm and strain, 
 perhaps a sorrow that has left its ineffaceable scar on 
 the soul ; and withal the whole succession of scenes and 
 events melting like a cloud into the irrevocable past. 
 And what the pre-vision of the year just now knocking 
 at the door? About the same as the retrospect of its 
 immediate predecessor, with probably the added hope 
 of some larger achievement and the recognition of the 
 possibility that the cycle of the New Year may be 
 broken at any time by the hand of death. 
 
 But if that be all, alas for our eyes, for they see 
 not, and our ears, for they are deadly dull of hearing. 
 It is not all. It is not worthy to be compared with 
 the great reality. To the spiritual mind both the de- 
 parting and the coming year are sacred with the 
 
 • I Peter 1 : 8. 
 
118 VISION AND POWER 
 
 presence of the ever-living God. Both are not only 
 nominally but really " years of grace." Every one of 
 the seven hundred and thirty days of them is a day of 
 God. Law and order and providence, a Divine educa- 
 tion of the soul, truth and love, unceasing gracious min- 
 istries, unceasing opportunities of Christian service — ' 
 that is what the loyal child of God sees in the suc- 
 cessive cycles of this fleeting, troubled, and joyous life. 
 
 Even to eyes like ours, so poorly able to make out 
 the Divine handwriting, " last year " spells Providence 
 and " this year " Opportunity. Oh, the glory of it ! 
 the ineffable gladness of a single year of life in the 
 name of him who in oneness with the will of his 
 Father loved us and gave himself up for us ! 
 
 Are we growing old? The days drawing nigh in 
 which it may be declared that, from the viewpoint of 
 physical comforts, " Thou shalt say, I have no pleasure 
 in them " ? 
 
 " Gone, they tell me, is youth, 
 Gone is the strength of my life; 
 Nothing remains but decline, 
 Nothing but age and decay. 
 
 " Not so : I am God's little child, 
 Only beginning to live. 
 Coming the days of my prime, 
 Coming the strength of my life, 
 Coming the vision of God, 
 Coming my bloom and my power." 
 
 Heaven-wide is the difference between that knowl- 
 edge which is by the senses and that which is by the 
 intuitions and judgments of an inner life of the Spirit. 
 The two contrasted views appear in the Scriptures, as 
 also in everyday observation and experience. Put the 
 
VISIONS AND VISION 119 
 
 non-spiritual view of life, as chiefly set forth, let us 
 say, in Ecclesiastes, side by side with what this same 
 time-life is to the faithful soul, as interpreted by the 
 psalmists : 
 
 " One generation goeth and " How precious is thy loving- 
 
 another generation cometh ; and kindness, O God. And the chil- 
 the earth abideth for ever. . . . dren of men take refuge under 
 All things are full of weariness, the shadow of thy wings. They 
 man cannot utter it; the eye is shall be abundantly satisfied 
 not satisfied with seeing, nor with the fatness of thy house; 
 the ear filled with hearing." — and thou shalt make them 
 Ecclesiastes 1:4, 8. drink of the river of thy 
 
 pleasures. For with thee is the 
 fountain of life: in thy light 
 shall we see light." — Psaxm 
 36: 7-9. 
 
 Which of these two is a picture of that " which is life 
 indeed " ? 
 
 It has been a good many years since I read Mark 
 Guy Pearce's racy little book, " Mister Horn and His 
 Friends " ; but one of its pictured experiences is still 
 rememberable. Mister Horn was a laboring man, with 
 a specialty. His specialty was giving to the Church for 
 the conversion of the world. He believed that a man 
 ought to plan for giving, as for getting. Acting on this 
 principle, he determined to live one year on what he 
 had already saved, and give the whole year's earnings 
 to the building of a new chapel in his neighborhood. 
 He always insisted that this was the very happiest year 
 of his life. ISTever, he said, had he felt so much like 
 being one of those who in the heavenly glory rest not 
 day nor night from the service of their King. " I used 
 to think that they up in their glory and I down in my 
 well [which he was digging, a good part of the time] 
 
120 VISION AND POWER 
 
 were both doing the same thing, for all that we were 
 such a long way off; we were both working for the 
 same Lord and we both wanted to do as much as ever 
 we could. That was a happy year." 
 
 From the bottom of his well Mister Horn could see the 
 pure light of the stars in the daytime ; but neither that 
 nor the sunset glory in which he walked to his humble 
 home when the day's work had ended was to be ac- 
 counted of in comparison with his vision of the glory 
 of giving one's self in Christian service. Drudgery was 
 it, to be digging a well ? What Mister Horn saw in it 
 was what we believe Jesus saw in his carpenter work 
 in Nazareth. To him it was nothing less than the sweet 
 and holy will of God. 
 
 As truly, then, as men have been gifted with a power 
 of eyesight, enabling them to see that which is visi- 
 ble, so truly have they been gifted with a power of 
 inner vision, enabling them to see the invisible. Every 
 day, in fact, they see incomparably more without their 
 eyes than with them. 
 
 But let no one ask how it is done. Both the eyesight 
 and the inner vision are simple and sublime facts of 
 the soul, utterly beyond human comprehension. It is 
 also true that while this inner vision may be intel- 
 lectual, as that, for example, of the mathematician, the 
 scientist, the historian, the philosopher, or aesthetic, as 
 that of the artist, or personal, as that of any one 
 who forms an ideal for the direction and regulation 
 of his own life, it may also be distinctly spiritual. 
 
VISIONS AND VISION 121 
 
 VII 
 
 Now, it is spiritual vision with which our attention 
 is occupied in the present study. Let us therefore note, 
 as briefly as possible, the two principal powers which 
 it may be said to include. 
 
 The first is the power of spiritual discernment. 
 Which means the soul in the act of perceiving spiritual 
 facts and values. 
 
 Such perception is possible to man as man. It is 
 a capacity of the soul. There is a moral nature that 
 recognizes righteousness as actually as the social nature 
 recognizes society, or the sesthetic nature, beauty. 
 There is a pressure of moral obligation upon the con- 
 science as real as the pressure of the atmosphere on 
 the flesh — and often more sensibly felt. There is One 
 who is nearest to that which is highest in ourselves. 
 There are fellow-men to whom our innermost relations 
 are moral relations, our innermost obligations moral 
 obligations. There are ideas, hints, glimpses, foretok- 
 enings, of that which is best in life, what ought to be, 
 the supreme good. There is an ever-rising discontent 
 with attainments and doings. What does Aristotle 
 mean when, speaking of the energy and blessedness 
 of Deity, he declares that " that which is most nearly 
 allied to this must be the happiest," and speaks of a 
 man's living " not so far forth as he is a man, but 
 as there is in him something divine " ? " Although it 
 be small in size," he says, " yet in power and value it 
 is far more excellent than all." In some form or 
 
123 VISION AND POWER 
 
 other.it makes itself known to all men in moments of 
 contemplation, this sense of something higher, of some- 
 thing Divine, the haunting sense of an Infinite 
 Perfection. 
 
 For the most part, however, men are slow of heart 
 to understand such spiritual facts and values. They 
 need the fuller light of the revelation of God in Jesus 
 Christ. To have the mind of Christ, the spirit of the 
 kingdom of heaven, this is to know indeed. 
 
 What mean such words as " sin," " repentance," 
 '" faith," " sonship to God," " the kingdom of heaven," 
 " the love of Christ," " the Christianizing of the 
 world" ? There are those who are fain to speak of 
 stealing as " swiping," of fighting as " scrapping," of 
 lying as " romancing " — in a word, of sin in any or 
 all of its forms as no deeply personal and serious mat- 
 ter, but rather as an ignorance or a misfortune or, at 
 worst, a fault. To such minds it would seem that re- 
 pentance can mean little more than a feeling of regret, 
 followed perhaps by a certain prudent or decent change 
 of conduct. And shall we go on to say that faith 
 to them will probably mean the acceptance of a doctrine, 
 sonship to God the natural and inevitable relation of 
 a soul to Him by whom it was made, the kingdom of 
 heaven the organized Church, the love of Christ little 
 more than a theological formula, and the Christiani- 
 zation of the world a doubtful sectarian undertak- 
 ing? 
 
 But unless the evangelic reading of the New Testa- 
 ment be a deplorable misreading, sin is the breaking of 
 a moral being's relation to the holy heavenly Father, 
 
VISIONS AND VISION 123 
 
 grieving his Spirit, bringing guilt upon the conscience, 
 issuing in spiritual death, and to be put awaj only by 
 the sacrificial love of God in Jesus Christ ; repentance, 
 the turning, in contrition of heart, with full persua- 
 sion of the will, from all sin unto the forgiving God; 
 faith, the opening of the whole heart to the Saviour; 
 sonship, the filial likeness in spirit and character to 
 God our Father; the love of Christ, the deepest and 
 greatest fact ever embodied in human flesh ; the Chris- 
 tianization of the world, sharing with all men every- 
 where the personal and saving knowledge of God as 
 revealed in Jesus. 
 
 Here, then, is the sphere of those things of the 
 Spirit which, according to the very nature of them, 
 must be " spiritually discerned." " We want to know 
 with our brains," says Grenfell, the heroic missionary- 
 physician of Labrador, " we want to distrust the moni- 
 tor in our hearts. But both faith and experience are 
 needed to make knowledge." As well might one ex- 
 pect to understand friendship or beauty or parental 
 affection by an act of pure intellect, as by such an act 
 to understand spiritual experiences and realities. They 
 are known only through the life of God in the soul. 
 " We received not the spirit of the world but the spirit 
 which is of God, that we might know the things that 
 are freely given to us by God." " He that lacketb these 
 things " — such as " faith," " temperance," " godliness," 
 " love of the brethren," " love " — " is blind, seeing only 
 what is near." * " Every one that loveth . . . know- 
 eth God ... for God is love." 
 
 * II Peter 1 : 9. 
 
IM VISION AND POWER 
 
 VIII 
 
 The other power is spiritual imagination. Which 
 means the soul in the act of holding up and picturing 
 to itself spiritual facts and values. 
 
 Need one be reminded that the power to imagine is 
 always astir, from infancy to old age, whether we wake 
 or sleep? It takes a hand in all mental activities. 
 iWithout it, there could he no proper perception of 
 the external world; for it is only a part, often a very 
 small part, of the surface of objects that we see or 
 touch at any one time. Imagination, which has been 
 aptly called a second sight, supplies the rest. 
 
 It is a constructive power. It gathers and builds. It 
 gives form and colour to thought so as to make it image- 
 like and realizable. It fits ideas together, under laws 
 of reason or of beauty, into some new and larger unity. 
 Thus it is that the mechanical engineer mentally or- 
 ganizes his steam-engine or flings his suspension-bridge 
 across the river for thunderous freight trains to pass 
 over in safety; that the musician, like deaf Beethoven 
 imagining sounds, constructs his anthem or his ora- 
 torio; that the speaker knits together his discourse; 
 that the poet (a maker, the Greeks called him), with 
 his preeminent originative and constructive genius, 
 makes his poem. 
 
 Great works, these; nevertheless, there is something 
 of this creative power given of God to us all. That 
 is to say, every one may be and is a maker of personal 
 ideals. Yet more, he may be a maker of moral ideals. 
 And without some commanding vision of moral good — 
 
VISIONS AND VISION 125 
 
 of that which ought to he as distinct from the existing 
 fact — the moral, which is the only true, life is impos- 
 sible. " Where there is no [such] vision the people 
 cast off restraint." 
 
 I knew a young man of rare intellectual endow- 
 ments who declared his proposal to taste every species 
 of sensuous pleasure. In his outlook that was life 
 indeed — sensuous pleasure the supreme good. One need 
 not be told what manner of man he was and became. 
 To lead such a life is not to live. Whether the physical 
 gratifications which make it up be coarse or " refined," 
 those of a Caliban or those of a " gentleman," it is 
 worse than a brute existence. It poisons and degrades 
 the soul. 
 
 Nor can I believe a life so lacking in purity and no- 
 bleness to be a common youthful ideal. But what of 
 the commercial ideal a few years later in life? To 
 dream and plan and labour and order one's life from 
 youth onward for the attainment of wealth, and thus 
 become a partaker at the altar of Mammon, where the 
 heart's lifelong idolatrous devotion is paid — this appar- 
 ently is not an uncommon conception of the best that 
 life has to offer. And it is only another fateful abuse 
 of the priceless power to create ideals — a deliberate 
 living for money at the sacrifice of the soul. It is to 
 be what Christiana and her company saw in the Inter- 
 preter's House — " a man who could look no way but 
 downwards." Just above. One offered him a celestial 
 crown. Alas ! in vain. He saw " no way but down- 
 wards." 
 
 Equally notable is the good ideal's power for good. 
 
126 VISION AND POWER 
 
 " I had perceived bj experience," said William Tyn- 
 dale, " how that it was impossible to establish the lay 
 people in any truth, except the Scripture were plainly 
 laid before their eyes in their mother tongue." But 
 it was in the early part of the sixteenth century, and 
 there was no printed English Bible in all the land. 
 Then it was that Tyndale had his vision. He foresaw 
 such a Bible in the churches and homes of the people — 
 even in the hands of " a boy that driveth the plough." 
 And to the realization of that vision the gifted and 
 learned young linguist devoted his life. In poverty and 
 exile and imprisonment, through all difficulty, danger, 
 and disheartenment, he kept on, steadily toiling year 
 after year, till the enemies of the truth led him forth 
 to die. But while they were burning his body to 
 ashes, his New Testament was passing into circulation 
 among his countrymen, sure enough " in their mother 
 tongue." By the grace of God he made his life's dream 
 a fact ; and every one of the millions of English Bible 
 readers, from then till now, has become the splendid 
 dreamer's debtor. 
 
 " Where is So-and-so now ? " I was asked by a man 
 working with a hoe for his daily wage. " Why, he is 
 in charge of our largest church in Washington City — 
 one of our most useful preachers, hundreds have been 
 converted under his ministry." " Well," remarked my 
 friend in reply, " I went to school with that boy, and 
 he always said he was going to be something like that. 
 The other fellows used to make fun of him for it; 
 and now of all the boys that went to that school, he 
 is the only one that is doing anything more than — than 
 
VISIONS AND VISION 127 
 
 just what I am doing now." So there it is, I could not 
 but ponder; twenty boys sitting side by side on the 
 benches of a country schoolhouse; nineteen of them 
 perhaps supremely interested in the visible and the 
 present, or in a future projected on the same plane; 
 but one with the pre-vision of a higher life, which to 
 him seemed the happiest and the best and to which 
 he believed himself divinely called. That determined 
 his course of conduct even from childhood. The light 
 of that inspiring moral ideal shone upon his path: he 
 followed, and attained. 
 
 Such as these, and side by side with them God-given 
 dreams of love and home, are the great dreams of 
 youth. 
 
 It is not meant, of course, that those only who are 
 to occupy some conspicuous position need to form an 
 ideal of their particular life and work in the world. 
 All alike may do so, if they will. All alike ought 
 to practise such forecast of head and heart. 
 
 And now if it be asked what is that vision of the 
 future which every one, no matter what his place or 
 occupation, should make his own, there can be but 
 one answer to the question. It is the Christian ideal; 
 and this is, to do with a filial heart the will of the 
 Father in heaven. A life of sonship to the Lord of 
 heaven and earth — think of it. ISTothing greater can 
 be imagined; yet nothing less is worthy of the su- 
 preme human purpose and endeavour. 
 
 "Teach me to do Thy will. 
 For Thou art my God; 
 Thy Spirit is good, 
 Lead me in the land of uprightness." 
 
128 VISION AND POWER 
 
 And it is simply declaring the same truth under the 
 fulness of the Divine self-revelation, to say that the 
 Christian ideal is Christliness of mind and character. 
 For the will of the Father was ever the one law of life 
 to Jesus his Son. 
 
 This for each man individually, and equally the 
 ideal for the community, society, mankind. A Chris- 
 tianized social order and an evangelized world — never 
 perhaps so distinctly as at the present time has this 
 been the prophetic vision of the Christian man. 
 
 " ' Dreamers of Dreams ' ! We take the taunt with gladness, 
 Knowing that God, beyond the years you see, 
 Hath wrought the dreams that count with you for madness. 
 Into the substance of the life to be." 
 
 And the meaning of this evangelization, this Christiani- 
 zation, this bringing in of the kingdom of God, the 
 unveiled mystery of it all is that men shall learn and 
 do the will of that God who has made this earth the 
 abode of a rational and moral world. 
 
 IX 
 
 Such, meagrely illustrated, is spiritual vision in its 
 two interblended powers of discernment and imagi- 
 nation. 
 
 Call it, if you will, another name for a certain activ- 
 ity of faith. 'Not for the faith of assent or of trust, 
 but for the faith of realization — as when it is written 
 that " we look not at the things which are seen but at 
 the things which are not seen," or that Moses, man of 
 vision in darkest days, " endured as seeing Him who 
 is invisible." 
 
VISIONS AND VISION 129 
 
 Out of such a realization of spiritual facts and forces 
 has arisen the power of many a spoken word. For both 
 in action and in speech the men of vision are the men 
 of power. 
 
 An old friend wrote to Wesley, after hearing him 
 preach at Epworth : " Your presence creates an awe, 
 as if you were an inhabitant of another world." And 
 in a very true sense that is indeed what Wesley was. 
 He lived in the habitual and vivid consciousness of 
 " another world." The kingdom of heaven was more 
 real to him than the United Kingdom of Great Britain 
 and Ireland, loyal citizen though he was of both realms. 
 It was in spiritual conviction and vision of the facts 
 of God in Christ, the soul with its possibilities and 
 perils, sin, redemption, a holy and loving life, eternal 
 judgment, that his busy days were spent. His message, 
 therefore, smote men's consciences and touched their 
 hearts as that of a messenger from the immediate pres- 
 ence of God. Similarly it has been said of President 
 Finney, one of the greatest of evangelists, that " he 
 looked and spoke and acted like a man who was han- 
 dling the invisible and impalpable realities of the 
 eternal world, there in the living presence of his con- 
 gregation," The effect was often overpowering. Strong 
 men were brought to their knees under the pressure 
 of that ever-present holy will of God, whose reality they 
 had never so felt before. 
 
 But it has well been asked, When the prophets have 
 no vision, how shall they have any word to speak ? 
 
VI 
 
 VISION OF KATUKE 
 
 Wherein were all manner of fourfooted beasts and 
 creeping things of the earth and birds of the heaven. — 
 Acts 10: 12. 
 
 What God hath cleansed make thou not common. — 
 Acts 10: 15. 
 
 THE materials of Peter's vision came from the 
 natural world. They were various forms of sen- 
 tient life that throng earth and air, walking 
 things, creeping things, flying things, strangely grouped 
 together. IsTor did they appear as an accidental and 
 meaningless crowd, but rather as a divinely ordered 
 scene whose meaning must be learned. 
 
 So also does the natural world itself appear to who- 
 soever will rightly regard it. To the outward eyes, in- 
 deed, which are only a mirror of surfaces, it shows no 
 more than physical appearances; but to the eyes of 
 the spiritual understanding it would fain disclose, por- 
 tion by portion, an inner truth and teaching. 
 
 It is George Herbert, I believe, who says that the 
 most important step which a man takes in his natural 
 life is his first step out of doors. This most important 
 step is taken in infancy, to be sure, and may not enable 
 him, even with the full and wondering eyes of the 
 infant, to see very far. Nevertheless, it is the step 
 
 180 
 
VISION OF NATURE 131 
 
 which may be said to introduce the young adventurer 
 to the world of nature ; and that is " the vision splen- 
 did " which may attend his steps unto the end of life's 
 journey. 
 
 Meanwhile, however, daily familiarity with it will 
 probably hinder him from seeing its lovely mysteries 
 as he might. Were a person who had been born and 
 brought up inside a windowless room — say, in a dun- 
 geon of the Middle Ages — permitted on a bright day in 
 June to spend a morning out of doors in some luxuriant 
 land, and then at midnight bidden to look upward as 
 long as he would to the starry heights of heaven, no 
 tongue could express his sense of the wonderfulness of 
 the world. Could any agnostic interdict prevent the 
 question from arising in his heart, Whence came it all 
 and what does it mean ? 
 
 We may know something of what it meant to Jesus. 
 He was the Son of Man. He lived not to dream away 
 life in a devout solitude, but as Seeker and Saviour 
 of the lost. In the awful conflict with sin for which 
 he came into the world he laid down his life, slain 
 by human hands, in the conquering love of atonement, 
 with the prayer on his lips : " Father, forgive them, 
 for they know not what they do." " As Thou walkedst," 
 said a saintly mystic, " a man amongst men." He was 
 a friend in their homes, sitting at their tables, going 
 in and out. He gathered great multitudes about him. 
 He gathered a household of disciples very closely about 
 him as their teacher and revered companion. Yet we 
 do not think of Jesus as living an indoor life. Heading 
 the Gospels, we see him oftenest in the open air. 
 
132 VISION AND POWER 
 
 He walked through the fields, sat by the well, sailed 
 on the lake, journeyed on foot here and there through 
 the land, went up into a mountain for prayer and 
 for the transfiguration glory. He spoke in his teaching 
 of natural objects, great and small — the earth, the sky, 
 the sun, the rain, the wind, the rocks, the seeds, the 
 plants, the wheat, the fig-tree, the vineyard, the thistle, 
 the running water, the birds of the air, the lilies of 
 the field. " And every day He was teaching in the 
 temple; and every night he went out and lodged in 
 the mount that is called the mount of Olives : " 
 
 " So through the world the footpath way he trod, 
 Breathing the air of heaven in every breath; 
 And in the evening sacrifice of death 
 Beneath the open sky he gave his soul to God." 
 
 What was it that Jesus said concerning the God of 
 nature ? " Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing ? 
 and not one of them shall fall on the ground without 
 your Father/' The birds are God's birds — our Fa- 
 ther's birds. Therefore, as we, in our little measure 
 shall share in the vision of Jesus, the heavenly Father 
 will to us also be the God of nature, one God, the true, 
 the ever-living, the ever-present, whose will is holy 
 law and whose heart is redeeming love. 
 
 The very nature of nature is the presence and pur- 
 pose in it of the God and Father of Jesus Christ. This 
 and nothing less is 
 
 "The glory pushing in the blade of grass, 
 That hidden soul that makes the flowers grow." 
 
 And the response of nature, heard by the sympathetic 
 ear, is a song of praise to that ever-living Creator. 
 
VISION OF NATURE 133 
 
 " Among the birds "—wrote Martin Luther at the close 
 of a letter to his friend Melanchthon from the lonely 
 Wartburg—" singing sweetly in the branches, and 
 praising God day and night with all their might." ^ 
 
 Call nothing in nature, not even its " creeping things 
 of the earth," common and unclean. Have we ever 
 cherished so narrow and superficial an idea ? Let the 
 biologist teach us a better. To him the weed which 
 the gardener tears up by the roots to throw away is no 
 less interesting, rather more, than the showiest culti- 
 vated plant. To him even the slimy swamp or the 
 stagnant pool is by no means common or repellent, but 
 a wonder-realm of order, beauty, law, manifold forms 
 of marvellous life. Let the pure-minded artist show 
 us, above and all about him, the glorious creations 
 of the Supreme Artist from whom his own sense of the 
 beautiful derives — 
 
 " The beauty and the wonder and the power. 
 The shapes of things, their colours, lights, and shades. 
 Changes, surprises — and God made it all. 
 —For what?" 
 
 Henceforth may it be truly declared that the whole 
 creation is, in our eyes, "what God has cleansed." 
 " And God saw everything that he had made, and be- 
 hold, it was very good." " AU thy works give thanks 
 unto thee, O Lord." 
 
 Not content with what the unaided eye can see, men 
 have invented means to supplement its power, and 
 have thus found their way into a world otherwise quite 
 
134. VISION AND POWER 
 
 beyond their knowledge. It is nearer to us, this re- 
 cently discovered world, than the ground upon which 
 we tread; it is inside every breath of air we inhale, 
 and every drop of blood in our veins ; it is close above, 
 beneath, around, and within us all the time. All- 
 encompassing seas of water and air, occupied by 
 innumerable hosts of plants and animals — 800,000,- 
 000,000 of them able, we are told, to live together within 
 the space of a cubic foot with as much room for their 
 growth and movements as the trees of the forest or 
 the fish of the sea. 
 
 Nor is it a separate and distinct world from that 
 which everybody sees. The two are one, they consti- 
 tute a vital unity. Think of the millions of white 
 blood corpuscles coursing through one's veins, fight- 
 ing and destroying the multitudinous disease germs that 
 intrude from without. And through this realm of the 
 infinitely little — of yeast-plants, diatoms, bacteria, 
 amebas, and what not — there enter into our own per- 
 sonal life health and sickness, the strength to labour 
 and the weakness of death. 
 
 "How great are thy works, O Lord! 
 Thy thoughts are very de*p." 
 
 Or, the observer may look toward heaven and tell 
 the stars, as God bade Abram do — " if thou be able 
 to tell them." He may note a nebulous appearance 
 somewhere in the sky — say in the constellation of Orion. 
 Supposing him to be an astronomer, he will turn his 
 camera toward such a nebula ; for the camera can catch 
 what the most powerfully aided eye without it must 
 fail to discover. After a little while the image of a 
 
VISION OF NATURE 135 
 
 star will be imprinted upon the sensitive plate of 
 the camera; then another, another, another, a profusion 
 of enormous worlds, photographed as distinct and per- 
 fect stars. 
 
 How far off are such innumerable astronomic worlds ? 
 Let us remember, were a ray of light to go travelling 
 round the earth, it would make as many as seven such 
 circuits in a second. Very well; the astronomer will 
 tell us that the rays of light which pencilled these pic- 
 tures which he has to show left their own worlds on 
 their journey to his camera thousands of years ago — 
 " and the worlds sweep on profuse as spray from the 
 hidden ocean of creative power." Any serious attempt 
 to lay hold in imagination upon such dizzy movements 
 and distances, with such numberless worlds at home 
 in them, would be the height of folly. But the barest 
 glimpse of the facts may well bring the astounded 
 thinker to his knees not only with the ancient doxology, 
 " The heavens declare the glory of God," but also 
 with the accompanying prayer to be cleared from " hid- 
 den faults " and kept back " from presumptuous sins." 
 
 Paul and Barnabas, on their missionary tour, pro- 
 claimed to the people of Lystra the good tidings of " the 
 living God, who made the heaven and the earth and 
 the sea and all that in them is." And further they 
 declared that God had " not left himself without wit- 
 ness " even in the idolatrous nations of the world. 
 Wherein, then, had he borne witness of himself from 
 the very beginning to these Lystrans and other pagan 
 peoples? Even as he is doing everywhere this good 
 hour, in the vision and the gifts of nature. 
 
136 VISION AND POWER 
 
 III 
 
 Verily God is here ceaselessly self-revealed ; for that 
 which is created, be it inconceivably small or incon- 
 ceivably great, be it near or far, be it one or myriad 
 myriads, will bear witness for its Maker. The gift must 
 needs tell of the giver. And as to the laws and forces 
 of nature, what are they all but the ever-present expres- 
 sions of the ever-present Eternal wisdom and will ? 
 Alas for the mind that cannot see in nature, through 
 and through, the supernatural. The perpetual causality 
 and purpose must be found in rational creative Will. 
 The Psalmist of Israel, the Apostle of the Gentiles, 
 and the philosophic poet of the nineteenth century are 
 here at one — 
 
 " For here is the finger of God, a flash of the will that can, 
 Existent behind all laws, that made them, and lo, they are." 
 
 So the two apostles at Lystra went on to say: " And 
 yet He left not himself without witness, in that he did 
 good, and gave you from heaven rains and fruitful sea- 
 sons, filling your hearts with food and gladness." Na- 
 ture of her own power could no more send down rain 
 from the clouds of heaven and propel the whirling earth 
 in her orbit so as to produce the fruitful seasons, than 
 you and I could do it for ourselves. In fact, such an 
 expression as " nature of her own power " is but an 
 empty phrase. Only a person can be a cause — first 
 of all, the Divine and Infinite Person, then such cre- 
 ated beings as man, to whom he has imparted a cer- 
 tain measure of freedom and creative energy. It is 
 
VISION OF NATURE 137 
 
 the living God who ministers through nature every 
 drop of rain — " sendeth rain on the just and the un- 
 just " — and every grain of wheat or rice or maize — 
 " giveth it a body even as it pleased him, and to each 
 seed a body of its own " — it is he who ministers it to 
 humankind, filling their hearts with the gladness of 
 food and of life. With the gladness of physical food 
 that becomes a very part of our physical selves — enter- 
 ing into our bodies to feed the vital flame, climbing up 
 to become eyes for seeing and a brain to think with. 
 
 This we may call the utility of nature. But the same 
 natural world has another aspect, quite distinct from 
 its utility, that calls for a moment's consideration. Let 
 the fruit of a tree stand for the idea of utility ; the blos- 
 soms may equally illustrate the twin idea of beauty. 
 One is unquestionably as outstanding and incontrover- 
 tible a fact as the other. 
 
 IV 
 
 And is it not possible to discern the deeper meaning 
 of both beauty and utility? Science will explain, in 
 an instance here and there, how it may be that things 
 come to be beautiful. Bees and other insects which, 
 for example, have been shown beyond a doubt to have 
 something to do with the propagation of flowers, may 
 at the same time have something to do with their col- 
 ouring — though " what worlds away " from showing 
 how all the beauty gladdening the earth and glorify- 
 ing the heavens came to be. 
 
 But it is the purpose, not the process or the mechan- 
 ism, toward which our inquiry is directed. Why, then. 
 
138 VISION AND POWER 
 
 should there be such a thing as beauty? Unlike cer- 
 tain fruits, it is manifestly not a thing to be eaten, 
 " Can you get pretty flowers in your town ? " It was 
 asked me by an untaught German girl in a plain and 
 lonely mountain home. " Well, they are very nice," 
 remarked her mother ; " but they don't put anything 
 on the table." 'No, not anything to eat; and if we 
 were made to live by bread alone, beauty might well be 
 slighted as an intruder. Nor can we weave it into 
 wearing apparel or build it into a roof overhead. More- 
 over, it is a subtle, mystic, indefinable thing. Still, 
 must there not be some satisfactory reason why it has 
 been created — the why of the loveliness of the flower as 
 well as of the nutritiveness of the fruit ? Science has 
 no answer. Only a theistic explanation is possible. 
 And the unschooled country girl was far enough from 
 blameworthiness in wanting flowers as well as bread 
 to feed upon. " If you have two loaves," says a Chinese 
 proverb, " sell one and buy a lily." 
 
 But shall we not give the hungry bread rather than 
 lilies? To be sure; but preferably let us give them 
 both. It is reported by a mission school in a city 
 slum that " the sending of a flower in the name of 
 Christ, more even than the offer of bread, opened to 
 the Christian teacher homes where little children had 
 been born to want and were educated to sin." 
 
 At all events, it is certain that man is a being who 
 responds to both fruit and flower, both utility and 
 beauty. Not some peculiarly cultured individual, but 
 man as such is a lover of the beautiful. 
 
 The father of English poetry — man of affairs and 
 
VISION OF NATURE 139 
 
 action, soldier, courtier, ambassador, diplomat, though 
 he was — tells us how that " when comen is the May " 
 he is up early in the morning, walking in the meadow, 
 and gets down on his knees to see the daisy, " that is 
 of all flowers the flower," unclose to the light, " upon 
 the small and soft and swete gras," and how that — 
 
 " The blissful sight softeneth all my sorrow." 
 
 But one might say that what the daisied meadow was 
 to Chaucer in his island of the West, such are the cherry 
 blossoms of Japan to whole populations in that island 
 of the East. ISTot an artist or two, but the whole vil- 
 lage or countryside may be seen laying business aside, 
 making whatever pecuniary sacrifice may be necessary, 
 and year after year going forth from their homes, in 
 some instances for many miles, to enjoy the simple sight 
 of trees that bear no fruit, but are splendid in clouds 
 of pink-and-white bloom. I have heard a missionary 
 from Japan tell of a journey he was making in which 
 the jinrikisha man, without the knowledge of his pas- 
 senger, took a most circuitous route, going miles out 
 of his way, in order to see certain blossoming cherry- 
 trees as he trotted toilsomely by. Hard probably be- 
 yond anything that we are familiar with was that 
 man's struggle for bread ; yet would he also toil for 
 beauty. Poet of the West, coolie of the East, thej 
 were of one and the same aesthetic nature — in this, as 
 in other respects, brother men. 
 
 Great Britain and the United States did well to 
 interpose for the protection of the waters of the Niagara 
 against any further exploiting for mechanical purposes. 
 
140 VISION AND POWER 
 
 For while the right to use the useful, though claimed 
 by only a few, is to be regarded, the whole world must 
 be protected in its desire and right to see the glory 
 of the Thunder of Water. 
 
 But the question recurs as to the Divine purpose 
 of beauty. Is the experience of it an end in itself — 
 a mere matter of refined enjoyment giving no vision 
 of anything higher? There are those no doubt who so 
 regard it. And even the finest sense of the beautiful 
 in nature may coexist with an unspiritual mind. But 
 if there be the spiritual mind, the sense of the beau- 
 tiful will have its own true revelation to make of an 
 unseen glory. Adding as it does to the gladness and 
 well-being of life, it is as true a sign as are the rain 
 and the fruitful seasons that God is good. Indeed, is 
 it not a hint and a prelude of something yet to be 
 revealed, of something in the faith and hope of which 
 the heart leaps up in joy, of something lovely and glori- 
 ous in the nature of him who has given the vision of 
 beauty as so universal an experience of his human 
 children ? 
 
 It is reported of Bernard of Clairvaux that, when 
 asked, after having travelled all day by the Lake of 
 Geneva, what he thought of the Lake scenery, he re- 
 plied by asking, " What lake ? " It reminds one of 
 the remark concerning John Calvin, that he " could 
 live for years by the Lake of Geneva without noting 
 its exquisite blue, or alluding in all his writings to 
 the white summit lifting itself into the sky beyond." 
 An explanation might have been found, no doubt, in 
 the great monk's relentless asceticism and the great 
 
VISION OF NATURE 141 
 
 theologian's exclusive devotion, even from his youth, 
 to the intellectual and moral aspects of religious truth. 
 What sense of the beautiful they were born with suf- 
 fered through lack of use. Yet we dare believe they 
 would both have been happier men and better theo- 
 logians, if in the glorious beauty of Alpine lake and 
 mountain they had heard the speech of the same God 
 who spoke from Sinai and Calvary and is ever speak- 
 ing in the reason and conscience and spiritual yearn- 
 ings of man. For not only Holy Scripture but " the 
 whole world is full of His glory." 
 
 Now it could not but be that men, being such as they 
 are, would in all circumstances, even under the dis- 
 abling conditions of the least developed life, have gained 
 some awareness of a Presence in nature, a Presence of 
 power or beneficence or awfulness or beauty, that the 
 outward eye could not see. It seemed to look forth 
 from the face of things, but was not their very own. 
 'Not of them, it was in them and somehow looking 
 through them. " In the pauses of work," said a busy 
 and thoughtful man, " when a glance through my win- 
 dow reminds me of nature's silent, steady power, or 
 in the evening when I have a moment to look out into 
 the measureless star-filled spaces, I have the most real 
 sense of God." 
 
 Thus in part may the universality of religion be 
 explained. Take as an example the earliest faith, so 
 far as can be ascertained, of our Indo-European ances- 
 tors in Middle Asia. Their name for God was the 
 
142 VISION AND POWER 
 
 word Sky (Dyaus). For what vision so impressive 
 had ever greeted their eyes as the overarching heavens 
 — so soft and tender, so terrible, so majestic, so varied 
 in its appearances while remaining ever essentially the 
 same ? The black clouds might arise and the storm 
 threaten widespread destruction, but the thunder would 
 cease, the storm-clouds pass, and the sky was still there. 
 The darkness of night might gather, but through the 
 darkness the sky looked forth with its stars in still 
 greater grandeur. The people in their nomadic life 
 might lead their flocks far up on the mountains for 
 the summer and down again in the autumn upon the 
 plains ; but they never did leave the sky behind them. 
 They might migrate to new pastures many leagues 
 away; but there in their distant home the same sky 
 shone above them, strong and unapproachable as ever. 
 So they stood beneath the ever-encompassing dome of 
 heaven, radiant, far, and fathomless — " the groves " do 
 not seem to have been " God's first temples " — and un- 
 der that symbol worshipped the Invisible. Or perhaps 
 they identified him somehow with the sky, making it 
 an idol — we do not certainly know. 
 
 But we do know that theirs was a less corrupt form 
 of religious faith than that which prevailed, say, in 
 the Grseco-Roman world in the time of Barnabas and 
 Paul. The Lystrans believed in various gods of im- 
 perfect and sinful nature like themselves — in Jupiter, 
 father of gods and men, and in Mercury, his swift- 
 footed messenger ; and the priest of Jupiter, who served 
 at a temple just outside the city, made preparation to 
 offer sacrifice to Barnabas and Paul, taking them for 
 
VISION OF NATURE 143 
 
 Jupiter and Mercury come down to earth in the form 
 of men. 
 
 Shall we say, then, that the generations of mankind 
 w^ere untrue to their best knowledge of the Divine? 
 They were thus untrue. God had made them all " of 
 one " and had provided for their personal and political 
 maintenance, " that they should seek after him, if haply 
 they might find him." And so they did; but through 
 the sinfulness of the heart darkness came upon them, 
 and consequently even " knowing God, they glorified 
 him not as God, neither were thankful." " To the 
 eye that can see, to the heart that is not paralyzed," 
 says Frederick W. Eobertson, " God is here. . . . But 
 what men do is this : They put the dull quicksilver of 
 their own selfishness behind the glass, and so it be- 
 comes not the transparent medium through which God 
 shines, but the dead opaque which reflects back them- 
 selves." So did ancient Greeks, notwithstanding their 
 fine mentality, in their way; and so do present-day 
 Americans, notwithstanding their intelligence, in theirs. 
 
 But it is not so with the men of spiritual vision. 
 They have not put their own opaque selfishness back 
 of the glass, and thus received only a reflected and 
 idolatrous image of themselves. Something of the light 
 of God shines through upon them, and they do glorify 
 him as God. They do give thanks for this or that 
 gift — the rain from heaven, the fruitful season — ^but 
 chiefly for the Infinite Giver himself. Because there 
 has come upon them, through inward renewal by the 
 Holy Spirit, the blessedness of the pure in heart — 
 '' they shall see God." And as to their own relation 
 
144. VISION AND POWER 
 
 to the God of the natural world, it is enough for them 
 to have learned that one word of Jesus concerning them- 
 selves and the birds of the air, " Your Heavenly Father 
 feedeth them." 
 
 It is not as if they believed in a limited, or a localized, 
 or an absentee Deity. Such is not the Christian vision 
 of God. It is not as if he had opened his hand on 
 some creative day in the far-distant past, for that day 
 alone — opened and closed it once for all. Did he say in 
 the beginning. Let there be light? He said it this 
 morning. Did he set forth the order and beauty of the 
 world in the beginning? He is making the outgoings 
 of the morning and the evening to rejoice to-day. Did 
 he once in the history of the earth, perhaps millions 
 of years ago, give life to the lifeless, introducing a new 
 and higher order of existences and of history? He 
 is just as truly the Fountain of life this passing mo- 
 ment. " Thou sendest forth thy Spirit; they are 
 created." 
 
 Here, therefore, in all men's outward eyes and ears, 
 is revelation, speech — day and night in their sublime 
 procession down through the ages bearing witness con- 
 tinually. Not in conventional or articulate language. 
 In this sense, " there is no speech nor language," " their 
 voice is not heard." Form and colour and movement, 
 light and sound, these are nature's language ; and the in- 
 terpretation is for the sensitive and reverent thinking 
 mind. 
 
 VI 
 
 Shall we try to look further or more minutely into 
 this vast vision of the sense-world with which our lives 
 
VISION OF NATURE 145 
 
 are so closely intertwined? If so, we shall feel its 
 mystery no less than we have learned its utility or 
 seen its beauty. A revelation of the Eternal Reason, 
 undoubtedly; but who will tell its whole varied 
 meaning ? 
 
 True, we know that such questions are unanswerable; 
 for the questioner had as well ask, Who will explain 
 the universe? Nevertheless, we cannot but look at 
 times with still wondering sight, with still questioning 
 spirit, upon the ever-present outspread mystery of earth 
 and sky in its incessant appeal to the understanding, 
 the imagination, the heart. Passing through the rooms 
 of an old homestead in which successive households 
 have for generation after generation gathered, and abode 
 together, and parted, one is fain to imagine, Were 
 these time-stained walls endowed with speech, what life- 
 stories might they tell. But what vastly greater secrets 
 are hidden in any far-away star or wayside tree or 
 flower in the crannied rock — or in the rock itself. 
 There is so much to which the inner ear would eagerly 
 listen, if any, even an infinitesimal, object in nature 
 could and would tell its story. In certain moods one 
 feels that the silence must somehow be broken; and 
 some day perhaps it will. 
 
 Meantime enquiring minds are bent on finding out 
 what they can ; and this, too, they may well believe to 
 be in accordance with the will of God. Let them en- 
 quire. The Master has spoken in one of his parables 
 of a man who should cast seed on the earth, " and the 
 seed should spring up and grow, he Tcnoweth not how." 
 Let the sower, then, ask the scientist. In vain. The 
 
146 VISION AND POWER 
 
 mystery of life and growth is as inscrutable to the one 
 as to the other, to the man who spends his life in the 
 laboratory as to the man holding the plough. And it 
 is the most knowing and thoughtful that are most tan- 
 talized or stricken dumb with wonder by the near 
 Unknown — 
 
 , " that true world within the world we see, 
 
 Whereof our world is but the bounding shore." 
 
 Unto what far heights of thought is this new-old 
 " world we see," with its myriad fellow visible worlds, 
 winning our minds: through the story of the heavens 
 unto illimitable space, through the story of the rocks 
 unto illimitable time, through the story of unceasing 
 motion unto illimitable energy ; and " brooding im- 
 penetrable over all, an infinitude of mystery." 
 
 ITot, however, that all research is vain. Have we 
 not noted some of the great things which the genius 
 of observation and experiment has discovered ? Adding 
 to our unaided powers sundry instruments of discern- 
 ment, it is still, with skilful and penetrative thought, 
 making discoveries which give intimation, suggestion, 
 of greater wonders beyond this world-shore. Have we 
 ceased, through familiarity, to feel the marvel of 
 telephonic speech? Imagine a speaker with a voice so 
 loud and distinct as to be audible all the way from 
 the city of New York to San Francisco. It would 
 require five hours for his words to traverse the inter- 
 vening distance. Five hours after speaking in the 
 one place he would be heard in the other. But any 
 one of us could now speak into a telephone in New 
 York and be heard in San Francisco instantly — that is 
 
VISION OF NATURE 147 
 
 to say, in about one-sixtieth of a second. Geographic 
 distance is practically annihilated — thought, news, will- 
 power, joy, grief, one person's mental state which may 
 change another's to the most momentous issues, trans- 
 mitted over three thousand miles in less than the twin- 
 kling of an eye. It seems the speech of spirit to 
 spirit, with but the slightest dependence upon material 
 mediums or organs of flesh and blood. 
 
 Our patient explorer, penetrating with his search- 
 light into the thick darkness, may be able also to bring 
 some report, tentative at least, about the material ele- 
 ments themselves; while the scientific imagination pic- 
 tures every atom of matter, even in the granite rock or 
 the bar of Bessemer steel, as swiftly vibrating among its 
 fellow-atoms, never going wrong and never at rest. 
 In fact, strange as it may appear, matter is even spoken 
 of as, in the last analysis, simply force. 
 
 The atoms, they tell us, seem to be made up of elec- 
 trons, thousands of electrons perhaps to a single atom. 
 Accordingly, the atoms manifest themselves as electric 
 force. " But these electrons " — so I asked a friend who 
 had devoted his whole life from boyhood to the study 
 and teaching of chemical science — " must there not be 
 a certain thread or core of substance about which the 
 electricity gathers or flows ? " The modest answer was, 
 " We do not know." But there is a truth here dis- 
 closed which it would be gratuitously modest not to 
 believe and declare. For all these minute and orderly 
 researches into the hidden facts of nature unite with 
 common observation of the useful and the beautiful 
 to show that the power from which all things in earth 
 
14d VISION AND POWER 
 
 and sky proceed is power directed by mind. Otherwise 
 it would be folly to make it a subject of study, for the 
 very good reason that there would be nothing in it 
 to understand. Only the product of intelligence can be 
 intelligible. It is not a jargon, but a language which 
 the lover of natural knowledge is trying so laboriously 
 and faithfully to read. How could he ever hope to 
 read it, if it were not a language? It is a system 
 of thought. Who did the thinking ? Yes, a system of 
 localized thought; and it requires the best thought of 
 the best thinkers to trace out a little portion of it 
 through successive generations. Could any one less 
 than a thinker have put it in ? 
 
 By what name ineffable, then, shall the Creative 
 Thinker be called ? The supreme revelation of his heart 
 and moral will has been given in Jesus his Son : " When 
 ye pray say, Father, Hallowed be thy name." 
 
 vn 
 
 How rich also is nature in symbols of the spiritual. 
 True, Jesus saw a fitting figure of the kingdom of 
 heaven in the outward human world — in domestic and 
 social relations, in trade and industry, in financial 
 transactions, in houses built on the rock and on the sand, 
 in proprietorship and stewardship, in children's games, 
 in grown men's riches and poverty. But he found it 
 also in the world of nature. " From the fig-tree," he 
 says, " learn her parable." The fig-tree, then, is a 
 symbol. She has her parable to tell of truths or events 
 in a higher sphere. So likewise do the other trees. So 
 does the light of day without which they would all 
 
VISION OF NATURE 149 
 
 perish. " It is God that said, Light shall shine out 
 of darkness, who shined in our hearts " — God's light 
 without a figure and foretoken of his light within. So 
 is the whole visible creation a parable. " Our natural 
 is matched ever with the supernatural," so that what 
 we call " nature " is symbolic, typical, of the spiritual 
 sphere. 
 
 Follow a mathematical demonstration at the black- 
 board. The demonstrator is dealing with mathematical 
 truths, which are pure intellectual conceptions. Nev- 
 ertheless, you will see him draw a line, straight or 
 curved, then another and another — perhaps a whole 
 complicated diagram. Now, is that geometric figure, 
 white on a black surface, of the nature of mathematical 
 truths? No more than it is of the nature of hope or 
 love. And yet it is a constructed symbol of a certain 
 group of such truths, and helps us no little to under- 
 stand them and to communicate them to other minds. 
 So with natural symbols and the truths of the spirit 
 which they are fitted to illustrate. 
 
 Nor need any one shut his ears to the words of God 
 in nature in order that he may listen more intently 
 to the greater words of God in the Scriptures and the 
 soul. The truth is one, the witnesses concur, '^ He 
 who while he walks abroad repeating the law to him- 
 self," said a Jewish scribe, " interrupts himself and 
 exclaims, ' How fair is this tree ' ... to him it is 
 accounted by the Scriptures as if he were forfeiting his 
 life." I should greatly prefer the teaching of a psalm- 
 ist of Israel, when he sings of " the cedars of Lebanon " 
 which Jehovah " has planted," and of the earth as 
 
160 VISION AND POWER 
 
 " full " of his " riches." I should prefer the answer 
 of the flowers to a poet-scribe of to-day : 
 
 " They said, to every flower He made 
 God's thought was root and stem — 
 Perhaps said what the lilies said 
 When Jesus looked at them." 
 
 We know at least that to Jesus the lilies were a sacra- 
 ment — a visible sign and pledge of God's gracious care. 
 And we know also that he opened his mouth in para- 
 bles and likened the kingdom of heaven to the Cre- 
 ator's handiwork in earth and sea and sky. 
 
 Furthermore, the symbol may have a deeper than its 
 mere symbolic meaning. It may be a sign, an assur- 
 ance, a proof. A familiar instance would be the grass 
 and flowers of the field. These have in all ages been 
 the chosen symbol of human mortality. " All flesh is 
 grass." " He cometh forth like a flower and is cut 
 down." But does not the grass contain a more spiritual 
 and significant meaning than that of mortality? It 
 contains the very opposite truth — that, namely, of im- 
 mortality. Because it is the Divine provision for the 
 flocks and herds of the pasturage; and we know that 
 he who cares for them will " much more " care for 
 us. " He causeth the grass to grow for the cattle." 
 Much more, then, will the God of nature, our Heavenly 
 Father, provide for the needs of his children — the need 
 of bread, the higher needs of knowledge, beauty, friend- 
 ship, and love, and highest of all, incommensurably 
 greater than any other, the need of that communion with 
 himself in which is spiritual and eternal life. 
 
VISION OF NATURE 151 
 
 We are not surprised at the story told of Galileo, that 
 when questioned, during his imprisonment for heresy, 
 concerning his faith in a Supreme Being, he remarked, 
 pointing to a simple straw on the prison floor : " From 
 the structure of that little tube alone would I infer 
 with certainty the existence of a wise Creator." The 
 grass of the earth, with stem and blade and bloom, is 
 indeed an exquisite living contrivance. Every eye that 
 looks upon it is pleased, every reverent mind that 
 studies it is stricken with wonder and admiration. But 
 it is not accounted of God too good for his cattle on a 
 thousand hills, since they are so made as to need it 
 and to hunger for its enjoyment, l^or will he account 
 any gift, even the gift of eternal life through Jesus 
 Christ our Lord, too good for a need and a hunger which 
 his own Spirit has created in the hearts of his children. 
 
 Such is the voice of reason and conscience. Such 
 is the instinct of the heart. Such is the teaching of 
 Jesus. And even the short-lived grass at our feet, chosen 
 emblem of mortality, offers, alike to ordered thought 
 and spiritual vision, its proper proof of eternal life. 
 
VII 
 VISION OF MAN 
 
 And a voice came again unto him the second time, 
 What God has cleansed make not thou common. — Acts 
 10: 15. 
 
 And when they heard these things they held their peace 
 and glorified God, saying, Then to the Gentiles also hath 
 God granted repentance unto life. — Acts 11: 18. 
 
 WHILE the materials of Peter's vision were 
 drawn from the world of physical nature, 
 its meaning related it far more closely to 
 the world of human nature. For the manifold animal 
 life which appeared so prominently in.it meant, being 
 interpreted, the various races and conditions of men. 
 It was for their sakes and not for the sake of beast or 
 bird or creeping thing that the Voice forbade this Judaic 
 apostle to call that common or unclean which God had 
 pronounced clean. 
 
 We have caught a glimpse of the perpetually unfold- 
 ing greatness of nature. Earth is indeed crammed with 
 life and fruitfulness, with marvels and treasures; and 
 this upper region of light and air in which our earthly 
 days are spent is equally full of things exceeding pre- 
 cious. Beauty and utility, side by side or interwoven, 
 with ever-attendant mystery, are everywhere. More and 
 more are they gaining human recognition. By observa- 
 tion and industry, by that patient common sense which 
 
 152 
 
VISION OF MAN 153 
 
 has been called science^ or by that fine mystic insight 
 of imagination called poetry, men have ever been com- 
 ing to their own in this kingdom of nature. 
 
 And the truth hereby suggested is the supremacy 
 of man. For the knower must be acknowledged greater 
 than the unknowing object of his thought — even though 
 that object should be ten thousand solar systems. So, 
 a larger and still a larger meaning has been found in 
 the inspired doxology — 
 
 " Thou madest him to have dominion over the wrorks of Thy hands." 
 
 May neither the student nor the lover of nature ever 
 forget that by as much as the works of God in the 
 natural creation are seen to be great and wonderful, 
 by so much must the seeing soul appear greater and 
 more wonderful. 
 
 Of recent years the vision which any civilized man 
 may have of his fellows has been notably enlarged. 
 Through opening gateways of knowledge, speech, self- 
 interest, and brotherhood, strange peoples have been 
 passing to and fro and becoming acquaintances. By 
 reason of ever-multiplying travels, literature, commer- 
 cial relations, through not waiting for the swiftest mail 
 but writing and speaking at a distance, through the 
 world-wide diffusion of ideas on all subjects of human 
 interest, through a growing spirit of humanity — in all 
 such ways the world of man has been disclosed in an 
 unprecedented manner to the individual imagination. 
 Well may it be said that " no other century has ever 
 
154 VISION AND POWER 
 
 heard the heart-beat of humanity so distinctly as ours 
 hears it." 
 
 And as much as ever, much more than ever, this hu- 
 man world is seen to be a unity. The imaginative child 
 making his first visit to a distant part of the country 
 is likely to meet vpith disappointment at finding things 
 not 80 new and strange as he had been led to ex- 
 pect. In his dreamful little brain he had pictured all 
 things — trees, streams, houses, skies, people — as looking 
 decidedly different from what he had been accustomed 
 to ; but now he finds the new to be very much the same 
 as the old. A somewhat similar disillusionment awaits 
 the inexperienced mind in making acquaintance with 
 people of other lands. Our antipodal neighbours — I 
 have occasion to talk with some of them from day to 
 day — on acquaintance remind us very much of our- 
 selves. The story of the " inscrutable East " may be 
 told, as it has been said of some others, in very few 
 words: There is none. What a commentary has been 
 written by our modern world on that word of Paul in 
 ancient Athens, that God " made of one every nation 
 of men." To be sure, everybody is inscrutable, if by 
 such a term we mean not perfectly knowable either to 
 his neighbour or to himself — but no one people. East 
 or West, any more than another. " Of one " human- 
 ness God has made them all. 
 
 But how does a man come by the knowledge of his 
 fellows? We cannot see one another. True, the man 
 who would deny the existence of other persons besides 
 himself might well be regarded as superlatively frivo- 
 lous, or, if serious in his egoism, as insane. But it would 
 
VISION OF MAN 155 
 
 not be because he had ever, except of course in a figura- 
 tive sense, seen any of them. The face that we are 
 so glad to look upon is not our friend. Alas if it were. 
 It is only a bit of featured and coloured surface — a 
 symbol, to be sure wondrously expressive, but nothing 
 more. Take out of it that which thinks and loves and 
 wills, and there is nothing left to speak to or hold com- 
 munion with. Yet that soul, that thinking, loving, will- 
 ing self, is as invisible as a passing angel. 
 
 " I have not seen thee, though mine eyes 
 Hold now the image of thy face; 
 In vain, through form, I strive to trace 
 The soul I love: that deeper lies." 
 
 Neither can we reach forth a hand and touch it. It is 
 absolutely secure from either caress or blow. 
 
 All along through life we find that, in our eating 
 and drinking, our breathing, our sitting still or mov- 
 ing about, our seeing and hearing, we have a place in 
 a visible order of nature, and are subject to its laws. 
 All along through life we find it equally true that in 
 reason and conscience and will and personality and spir- 
 itual vision, we have a place in an invisible moral order, 
 and that our truest life is realized only in obedience 
 to its laws of righteousness and love. 
 
 Listen for a moment even to a pagan philosopher- — 
 Epictetus : " Betray secrets ? " " Indeed, I will not, for 
 that rests in my own hands." " Then I will put you 
 in chains." " My good sir, what are you talking about ? 
 Put me in chains? No, no; you may put my leg in 
 chains, but not even Zeus himself can master my 
 will." 
 
156 VISION AND POWER 
 
 Or, if you please, hear Justin Martyr, an ardent stu- 
 dent of philosophy who became a Christian, in his 
 Apology to Antoninus Pius, the Roman emperor : " For 
 us [Christians], we reckon that no evil can be done us, 
 unless we be convicted as evildoers or be proved to 
 be wicked men; and you, you can kill but you cannot 
 hurt us." So, the headsman's axe, under whose stroke 
 Justin in old age yielded up his body for Christ's sake, 
 did not " hurt " him at all. Wherefore it is no idle 
 boast for one to say. Nobody can injure me except 
 myself. 
 
 But this soul, this self, invulnerable, invisible, and 
 far more real than its bodily form, can communicate 
 with other souls at will, showing that it is and that it 
 is a person. It can declare itself by certain signs 
 which it puts forth. These we see or touch or hear, 
 and through the interpretation of them we know that 
 our friend is standing before us — that other persons 
 coexist with us. It is mediate knowledge. 
 
 But we do have immediate knowledge of ourselves. 
 Here are no such signs to be interpreted. It is a mat- 
 ter of self-consciousness, simple, direct, indefinable. 
 Hence, proverbially difficult as it is to heed the ancient 
 maxim, " Know thyself," a person may be expected to 
 know himself better than he knows other persons. Not 
 that he can be any surer practically that he is than that 
 they are, but it is his own fault if he does not know 
 more truly what he is than what they are. " No man 
 knoweth the things of a man save the spirit of man 
 which is in him." In fact, it is only through knowl- 
 edge of our own powers and experiences that we can 
 
VISION OF MAN 157 
 
 interpret the signs of like powers and experiences in 
 other persons. 
 
 II 
 
 What, then, is man? how shall we regard one an- 
 olher? The question is suited to evoke a multitude of 
 answers. All of them, too, may be true enough from 
 the standpoint of the answerers, yet most of them sadly 
 superficial and incomplete. 
 
 In general, it may be said that the self-seeker, so 
 far as he interests himself in people at all, sees them 
 as the prey of his own unhallowed desires, while the 
 lover of his race recognizes them as companions, 
 friends, brothers. 
 
 More specifically, the spirit or motive, whatever it 
 may be, with which a man regards his fellow-men neces- 
 sarily affects the vision of them which he gains and 
 the course of action toward them which he pursues. 
 The scheming politician, for example, sees men as 
 voters; the crafty salesman, as buyers; the military 
 leader, as a fighting machine. And they deal with 
 them, in each case, accordingly. Or, again, in a com- 
 passionate mood one sees only the sufferings of hu- 
 manity ; when optimistic, only their joys ; in a moment 
 of keen appreciation of the shortness of human life, 
 only their mortality — as Xerxes, according to the an- 
 cient story, looking upon his vast invading army, was 
 suddenly moved to tears at the thought : " A hundred 
 years, and not one of all this mighty host will be 
 alive." 
 
 Or, if for individuals we substitute great bodies of 
 
168 VISION AND POWER 
 
 people, and ask how the nations of the world regard 
 one another, the answer will be contained in such 
 like and unlike words as War, Subjugation, Commer- 
 cialism, Diplomacy, Humanity, Arbitration, Peace. 
 
 But there is a deeper insight. It is the recognition 
 of that in a man's nature which makes him a free 
 and accountable intelligence toward God, and not sim- 
 ply a fellow-creature but a brother toward the whole 
 world of mankind. Without a recognition of this 
 moral life, man as man is not really known. An eagle 
 can walk; but to think habitually of him as simply 
 a walking animal would be to pay this king of birds 
 a very inadequate honour. Take no note of those 
 broader relations which he sustains to earth and sky 
 through his matchless powers of vision and of flight, 
 and you rob him of his high preeminence. It is his eyes 
 and his wings, not his feet, that make him an eagle. 
 And what is it that makes man man ? It is his power 
 of spiritual vision, deep and far, and of correspondent 
 daily action. It is his capacity to know God and to 
 serve his fellows in God's name. 
 
 And such vision is to be gained, first of all, through 
 self-knowledge. For the unity of the human race is 
 a unity in spiritual and not simply in physical or intel- 
 lectual or emotional quality. To know one, therefore, 
 is to know all; and that one with whom such knowl- 
 edge must needs begin is, in every case, not the neigh- 
 bour, nor the other man whoever he may be, but one's 
 self. What am I? 
 
VISION OF MAN 159 
 
 in 
 
 We come to the truest knowledge of ourselves through 
 the knowledge of Another — through self -judgment in 
 the light of Christ. 
 
 When Simeon, the aged seer, worshipping in the 
 temple, saw, in the person of the child Jesus, the Christ 
 whose coming had been so long awaited by the faith- 
 ful, he said : " Behold, this child is set for the falling 
 and rising up of many in Israel, and for a sign which 
 is spoken against . . . that thoughts out of many hearts 
 may be revealed." Jesus, therefore, was to be a re- 
 vealer of men, first to themselves — then, indeed, to 
 others. In the light of the truth shining forth from 
 his life of stainless and unfailing love, they should 
 fall down at the realization of their sinfulness and 
 should rise again in the peace of forgiveness and im- 
 mortal hope. 
 
 There is no better example than this of Peter the 
 fisherman in process of training as a seer of Chris- 
 tianity. How he fell beneath a sense of sin and shame ! 
 " I am a sinful man, O Lord." " And the Lord turned 
 and looked upon Peter. And Peter remembered the 
 word of the Lord. . . . And he went out and wept 
 bitterly." But how he rose up again in the strength 
 of that love which healed his backsliding ! " Lovest 
 thou me? And he said unto him. Lord, thou knowest 
 all things; thou knowest that I love thee. Jesus saith 
 unto him. Feed my sheep." " And do thou, when 
 once thou hast turned again, stablish thy brethren." 
 
160 VISION AND POWER 
 
 In the presence of Jesus the listening heart will make 
 full confession of itself. Jesus will break it up, that 
 he may form it anew. 
 
 " O Life of Jesus — the unseen 
 
 Which found such glorious show — 
 Deeper than death and more serene! 
 How poor am I! how low! " 
 
 'Now, while the sunlight does a great deal more for 
 the earth than to illumine it so that things may be 
 seen as they are, yet this simple bidding away of the 
 darkness means very much. In like manner, while 
 Jesus, the Light of the world, would fain do a great 
 deal more for a man than to show him the facts of 
 his spiritual self, yet this revelation is of inestimable 
 value. 
 
 Indeed, was not the Eternal Word, even before the 
 incarnation in Jesus, the true light of men — " the light 
 that lighteth every man " ? " He is the Word " — so 
 Justin, philosopher and Christian martyr, did not hesi- 
 tate to say — '^ of whom every race of men were par- 
 takers ; and those who lived reasonably {fxsra Xoyov) 
 are Christians, even though they have been thought 
 atheists." * 
 
 IV 
 
 !N"ow, let us suppose that a man either of the Orient 
 or of the Occident, anywhere on earth, with this light 
 of God shining into his darkness, should bid it wel- 
 come. Not wilfully blinding his own eyes, let him, on 
 the contrary, will to believe and do the truth. What 
 would be such a man's inward vision? What would 
 he learn about himself and the moral order in which 
 
 * I Apology, xlvii. 
 
VISION OF MAN 161 
 
 he is living his life? The answer is not a matter of 
 conjecture, but of experience abundantly testified to. 
 
 For one thing, he would perceive a distinction be- 
 tween right and wrong, the " Thou shalt " and the 
 ^' Thou shalt not " of duty. He would know, as it has 
 been expressed, " There is something in me that de- 
 mands something of me." He would feel the authority 
 of that law which, as Cicero has told us, was not thought 
 out by human ingenuity or created by " a mere decree 
 of the people," but is " a certain eternal principle en- 
 joining or forbidding all things in wisdom." * Thus 
 would he be included in the outlook of the Apostle to 
 the Gentiles, who says : " By manifestation of the truth 
 commending ourselves to every mart's conscience in the 
 sight of God." 
 
 At the same time such a man would be sensible of 
 having done wrong instead of right — of having been 
 cruel or unjust or disobedient or profane — and would 
 feel a consequent sense of guilt and moral disapproval ; 
 and there would be an inner conflict — when he would 
 do good, evil being present with him. 
 
 He would also be conscious that he was not suffi- 
 cient unto himself, and would stretch forth hands of 
 prayer, seeking help where he hoped it might be found 
 — like the African chief, Sekomi, praying Livingstone, 
 " I wish you would change my heart, give me medicine 
 to change it, for it is proud and angry always " — seek- 
 ing God, if haply he " might feel after him, and find " 
 the ever-near, though unseen, Helper. 
 
 And together with it all, he would become aware of a 
 
 * De Legibus ii, 4. 
 
162 VISION AND POWER 
 
 certain possible moral goodness and spiritual satisfac- 
 tion, an ideal of character and conduct. 
 
 Of such a soul, then, these would be, as more or less 
 distinctly felt, the most momentous facts in personal 
 experience. And now it is to such a one, thus proved 
 capable of spiritual illumination, that the Eternal Word, 
 once made flesh and dwelling among men, is offered in 
 the gospel. 
 
 Does any one ask as to the need that the Word should 
 have come in the flesh, and should come again and 
 abide through the gospel and the power of the Spirit? 
 It would be to ask why, since God had already done 
 a great work for the world, he should do another and 
 a greater — why the dawn should be followed by the 
 morning. It would be to ask why Cornelius and his 
 household, who already feared God and did righteous- 
 ness, could not have got on well enough without the 
 gospel of the Heavenly Father and the Elder Brother. 
 " I have not written unto you," says the Apostle John, 
 " because ye know not the truth, but because ye know 
 it." They had made a good beginning; he would lead 
 them on, because they were ready for it, in the truth 
 of the Infinite Love. 
 
 It was the Master's way. It is the way of God in 
 all perfecting of the soul. Childhood, for illustration, 
 is a beautiful thing in itself, with a grace and winsome- 
 ness all its own; but no one enquires doubtfully why 
 it should be followed in due season by youth, early 
 manhood or womanhood, and maturity. Spiritually, 
 likewise, the ultimate aim is not childhood. It is the 
 making of a man. 
 
VISION OF MAN 163 
 
 Furthermore, for the realization of this aim the pres- 
 ence and friendship of men who themselves have the 
 life of the Spirit is demanded. It is not good that 
 one should be left wholly to one's own endeavours after 
 a holy life. On the contrary, it would be disastrous. 
 We need to see the true and good personalized in our 
 fellow-men. Not a little are we all dependent upon pro- 
 phetic spirits whose enlightenment is greater than ours 
 to clarify our own spiritual vision. Do we need others 
 to enlighten us intellectually, notwithstanding the fact 
 that we as well as they are rational beings ? Then, why 
 not also spiritually? 
 
 But, on the other hand, it must be remembered that 
 they too, even the saintliest of them, are not sinless. 
 At best these good Christian men and women are broken 
 lights of the Divine righteousness; and what we need 
 is the Sun. We need to see the morally right and the 
 spiritually true in one who is himself morally right 
 and spiritually true without defect or stain. Such a 
 one would be the absolutely trustworthy Guide of the 
 conscience and Master of the spirit. To know him 
 would be to know both what we actually are and what 
 we ought to be. To enter into fellowship with him 
 would be to become indeed sons of the light. In this 
 fellowship a soul might grow unto perfected spiritual 
 manhood. 
 
 Yet more, yea, most of all, it is in this Righteous 
 One that God himself enters with mightiest power into 
 the human heart, responding to its cry, fulfilling its 
 
164. VISION AND POWER 
 
 desire for a grace that brings salvation, and making 
 atonement in suffering love for the sin of the world. 
 " Because Christ also suffered for sins once, the right- 
 eous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to 
 God." " Giving thanks unto the Father . . . who de- 
 livered us out of the power of darkness and translated 
 us into the kingdom of the Son of his love, in whom 
 we have our redemption, the forgiveness of our sins." 
 To this supreme end came he into the world, and 
 to this end is he abiding in it evermore. Is there a 
 single soul of the millions on earth that needs such 
 Light and Salvation ? If one, then all. 
 
 I have an intelligent young Christian friend from 
 Korea who was brought up a Buddhist. A few days 
 ago he told me something of what his spiritual ex- 
 perience was before he had heard anything of Chris- 
 tianity. He had some perception of right and wrong, 
 some sense of sin, failure, and insufficiency. He had 
 an unrealized ideal of personal character and conduct, 
 and would think of it as embodied in the great teacher, 
 Confucius. He had a longing for Divine power in 
 his efforts after a better life, which prompted him some- 
 times to continue in attendance for several days at a 
 Buddhist temple, and it seemed to him not wholly in 
 vain. Such, as nearly as I can reproduce it in few 
 words, was his story. " When you heard the gospel," 
 I asked, " did it seem like something which you had 
 nothing to do with, something foreign to your need 
 and experiences, to which therefore you could make 
 no response ? " His prompt and eager reply was, " Ko, 
 no " — it approved itself as the fulfilment of those needs 
 
VISION OF MAN 165 
 
 and experiences. That was his word, " the fulfilment." 
 From Buddha and Confucius to Jesus Christ — here was 
 indeed both redemption and fulfilment. Christianity to 
 him was an answer to spiritual longing, a homeland 
 of the spirit. 
 
 So was it long ago in Israel with those who were 
 of the truth. When the Christ, the faithful and true 
 Witness, came among them setting forth the kingdom 
 of God, they heard his voice and found the fulfilment 
 of their law in him. In like manner, Clement of Alex- 
 andria and other Greek fathers spoke of philosophy as 
 a prtparation for the gospel — " being, as it is, a 
 stepping-stone to the philosophy which is according to 
 Christ." * So is it to-day in every nation, when unto 
 those who will to fear God and work righteousness is 
 set forth that same kingdom of God and his righteous- 
 ness. " What therefore ye worship in ignorance," said 
 the Apostle of the Gentiles, " this I set forth unto you." 
 And the result, even in x\thens ? " Certain men clave 
 unto him and believed ; among whom also was Dionysius 
 the Areopagite and a woman named Damaris and others 
 with them." 
 
 Here, therefore, is to be found the way toward the 
 deepest spiritual knowledge of one's self — and thus of 
 man. It is through sharing in the mind of Jesus. No 
 other man ever saw the evil and the condemning power 
 of sin as He who did no sin. It stood revealed in his 
 presence, " for he knew what was in man." No other 
 soul ever felt the pain and sting of it as did the sin- 
 less soul of the Redeemer. He forewarned them that 
 
 * Strom. VI, 8. 
 
166 VISION AND POWER 
 
 heard him that it cannot be forgiven except on condi- 
 tion of a forgiving spirit toward an offending fellow- 
 man; and that, although it be held as dear as a right 
 eye or a right hand, it must be utterly cast out on pain 
 of perdition. So he appears among men, the Searcher 
 and the Revealer of the heart. " For from within, out 
 of the heart of men [out of the man himself Ji evil 
 thoughts proceed, fornications, thefts, murders, adulter- 
 ies, covetings, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil 
 eye, railing, pride, foolishness; all these evil things 
 proceed from within, and defile the man " — what a 
 vision to him who was of too pure eyes to bear the 
 sight of sin, and yet must bear it in holy sacrificial 
 love. 
 
 Jesus read the record of the heart. More than that, 
 he saw the potential in the actual. He discerned the 
 man that might be, that was divinely intended to be, 
 in the man that was. He saw the man within the man 
 whom the demons of falsehood, lust, and cruelty were 
 striving to make their own. 
 
 VI 
 
 Such was the vision of the Lord of love, which it is 
 his good pleasure to share with all them who, however 
 their minds have hitherto been darkened, are now will- 
 ing to see. 
 
 It is shared and shown, as a matter of fact, by many 
 a wise and loving soul in the present-day world. It 
 was shown by David Livingstone in the heart of Africa. 
 Gladly did the great explorer lay down his life for 
 the Christianization of the primitive black folk in whom 
 
VISION OF MAN 167 
 
 he saw the possibility of becoming God's own children 
 walking obediently in the light of Christ. It is shown 
 by men and women of like missionary spirit in our 
 own American communities. In them the mind of the 
 Master is still among us, discerning the filial possi- 
 bilities of the soul toward the God of its life. 
 
 An evening or two ago I chanced to learn that Mrs. 
 Maud Ballington Booth had come to town in the inter- 
 est of her lifework as the " little mother " of prison- 
 ers. In an address in one of the churches of the city, 
 she told that for fifteen years she had ministered within 
 prison walls, and went on to say: 
 
 "A wonderful revelation has come to me in my work. When 
 I went into it I believed two great truths — first in the redeem- 
 ability of human nature — that there is some chord in every 
 heart that will respond to the music of heaven. . . . And then, 
 friends, I believed in power divine — the power that could go to 
 the very abyss of hell and draw men up to the very threshold of 
 heaven, a power that could change the darkness of the night into 
 the glory of the day. And these things I have come to know 
 more firmly during the fifteen years I have laboured within the 
 walls. . . . 
 
 " To me the audiences I address Sunday after Sunday are not 
 just crowds of convicts, murderers, thieves, burglars, but they 
 are just a crowd of human hearts. ... I believe it is our right 
 in the name of Christ to shut the door to the past. We should 
 not ask what this man has been, what he has done, but rather 
 what can he be and what can he do." 
 
 The Salvationist's word, though received sympa- 
 thetically, attracted no wide attention in the city. Why 
 should it have done so? It dealt with nothing strange 
 or unheard-of. It was only the story of a miracle — 
 a miracle of grace. It was only a noble-minded woman 
 telling of what possibilities of sinful souls she had come 
 to see, with increasing conviction, as a pupil and fol- 
 lower of Jesus Christ. 
 
168 VISION AND POWER 
 
 vn 
 
 The question, then, may bear repetition, What is 
 man? The materialist would say, as a recent philo- 
 sophic writer has phrased it : " He is merely the high- 
 est of animals, having essentially the same history and 
 destiny as they — birth, hunger, labour, weariness, death 
 . . . simply an incident in the condensation of dis- 
 persed matter, or the cooling of a fiery gas." 
 
 The Buddhist would say: A migrating soul, now in 
 a human and now in an animal body, the victim of 
 desires to be extirpated rather than gratified or con- 
 trolled, his individual existence an evil, no God in 
 heaven or earth to help him in his struggle for self- 
 sanctification, the final goal of his endeavour the sinking 
 of personal being in Nirvana — the uneasy self annihi- 
 lated as a candle-flame snuffed out. 
 
 A new type of teachers and leaders has recently 
 arisen who would say: Man is a fighting animal. He 
 is to gain his ends by skilful and unrelenting force. 
 His prototype is the beast of prey. Selfishness is his 
 supreme motive. Sympathy is weakness, humility ab- 
 jectness. To practise self-sacrifice is to renounce one's 
 life — loss only. " Self-assertion at all costs." " Let the 
 weak find their place — at the bottom." And it is this 
 human animal's wisdom to hunt in packs like the wolf. 
 War is normal and necessary. Peace means decadence. 
 The clan or the nation is to move out, whenever its 
 interests seem to demand it, upon other peoples, and 
 bring them into subjection — to crush them utterly, if 
 
VISION OF MAN 169 
 
 they continue to resist. For them to plead their rights 
 would be for the fawn to plead its rights under the paw 
 of the tiger. They have no rights before the stronger 
 power. " Right is respected so far only as it is com- 
 patible with advantage ! Might is right." Man, either 
 as an individual or as a community, is the highest form 
 of the fighting animal. 
 
 The agnostic's answer would be conspicuously brief: 
 A conflux of appearances of whose origin, destiny, or 
 inner nature I have no knowledge. 
 
 The Christian, on the contrary, confessing his faith, 
 declares that man is a child of the Eternal Reason, 
 Love, and Will, a son of God. In his nature there is 
 a capacity for the assimilation of spiritual truth. 
 Touched, quickened, called by the Spirit of God, he 
 may answer, if he will, " Here am I." His lifeword 
 is not quiescence, nor is it self-assertion, but fulfilment. 
 Sin, it is awfully true, paralyzes his spiritual powers. 
 But it is not for us to say concerning any brother man, 
 " He is irretrievably lost to all that is good." Rather 
 let us endeavour to touch " the chord in every heart," 
 free or behind prison bars, "that will respond to the 
 music of heaven." And the redeemed man may ever 
 go on unto purity, personality, and power. 
 
 Ancient Jerusalem was an unholy city. " Ah, sin- 
 ful nation," said her great resident prophet in the vision 
 which he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem, " a 
 people laden with iniquity, a seed of evildoers, children 
 that deal corruptly, they have forsaken Jehovah, they 
 have despised the Holy One of Israel." But Isaiah 
 had also seen a vision of the Thrice Holy as the sender 
 
170 VISION AND POWER 
 
 of willing messengers to the sin-laden people, and had 
 answered, "Send me." A messenger of judgment? 
 Verily, of judgment to those who persistently refused 
 to obey : " I will not hear ; your hands are full of blood ; 
 wash you, make you clean." But a messenger of for- 
 giveness and cleansing to those who would forsake their 
 evil ways : " Come now, and let us reason together, 
 saith Jehovah: though your sins be as scarlet, they 
 shall be white as snow." 
 
 In the same city, some hundreds of years after Isaiah 
 had finished his work and entered into rest, the Church 
 of Israel's teachers and leaders, with a shouting mob 
 of their followers, crucified the Prophet of prophets, 
 its own divinely sent Christ. Yet it was this very 
 city that, according to the instructions of this same 
 Prophet and Christ, should first hear the message that 
 " repentance and remission of sins should be preached in 
 his name unto all the nations." "Beginning from 
 Jerusalem." 
 
 Thus, then, in its two most signal instances — that 
 of Isaiah and that of the Apostles — under the Old Cove- 
 nant and the ISTew, appears the home missionary work 
 of the Church of God. 
 
 But the rest of the evangelistic field, in the bidding 
 of the Eisen Christ, was " unto the uttermost part 
 of the earth." Truly the largest possible field. But 
 let the Christian, if he dare, imagine it smaller. Where 
 shall any line of delimitation be drawn ? 
 
 Might such a line exclude, for example, the white 
 race, or at least the English-speaking people? If not, 
 why any other people? 
 
VISION OF MAN 171 
 
 vni 
 
 Civilization is ever tending toward universalism. 
 Even without a distinct purpose or a common pro- 
 gramme, the stronger peoples are steadily communi- 
 cating their ideas and institutions to all others. And 
 herein are they unconsciously working together with 
 God. In all diffusion of knowledge and truth, in 
 every beneficent movement (whether it be benevolent 
 or not), they are contributing, wittingly or unwittingly, 
 to an unceasing Divine purpose. Indeed, shall not 
 each people come, from the East, from the West, with 
 its own contribution thereto? The foretokened end is 
 the universal cooperation and enrichment of the race — 
 the commonwealth of the world. For which consum- 
 mation it is both Scriptural and scientific to hope. 
 
 There is, for example, the promise and foretokening 
 of industrial oneness. Discoveries, inventions, business 
 enterprises, multiplied improvements in the production 
 of all that the three prime necessaries of food, cloth- 
 ing, and shelter represent, are occupying the world; 
 and the best shall have dominion. So with civil gov- 
 ernment. Because as moral personality develops, des- 
 potism and lawlessness become intolerable; and here, 
 too, the best ideas and forms of government shall have 
 dominion. So notably with knowledge. Whoso would 
 bind it with chains, or restrict it to private or pro- 
 fessional or provincial boundaries, is spending his la- 
 bour for nought. As well might he bid the sunlight 
 beware how it persists in completing its circuit of the 
 
172 VISION AND POWER 
 
 earth. The knowledge of one people shall be the knowl- 
 edge of all peoples; the truth shall prevail, the best 
 shall have dominion. Must there be a colossal excep- 
 tion, then, in that which looks toward the best of all in 
 the life of man — toward religious faith and practice? 
 Shall industry and government and knowledge, with 
 unmistakable step, be making for the oneness of the 
 race, and religion, the one greatest thing in life, have 
 no prevision of such a goal ? Have the kingdoms of 
 industry, of government, of knowledge inherited a law 
 of progress toward universal prevalence, while the king- 
 dom of righteousness knows no such promise of a 
 triumphant future ? On the contrary, this kingdom of 
 God is also ever coming; and His will shall be done. 
 
 It is one of the dicta of present-day science that 
 " everywhere nature is throbbing with suppressed 
 magnificence." If so splendid a figure be simple truth 
 with respect to the material creation, in what terms 
 may we speak of the interpreting and purposeful soul ? 
 Who shall foretell its growth and greatness or show 
 the glory of its Divine redemption ? " For the earnest 
 expectation of the creation waiteth for the revealing 
 of the sons of God." 
 
 Man as Intelligence, lower orders of life and of 
 the unliving yielding themselves more and more to his 
 service, has gained possession of the earth. Man as 
 Moral Will is doing the same. It is, therefore, no 
 strange or abnormal word, unillumined by the light 
 of God in human history, that the Master has put upon 
 his disciples' lips, in bidding them pray, " Thy king- 
 dom come." 
 
VISION OF MAN 173 
 
 Moreover, it is a prophetic word of which the Lord 
 Christ himself is the great assurance — the same as the 
 prophets which were before him spoke, according to 
 the wisdom given in vision unto them. On the point 
 of his departure "to receive for himself a kingdom 
 and to return," when the Eleven asked him about it, 
 did he not declare to them that they in the power of 
 the Spirit should be his witnessing messengers unto 
 all the world ? It was in accordance with that ancient 
 word of Jehovah : "I will give thee . . . the utter- 
 most parts of the earth for thy possession." 
 
 Will give them to whom? To Jehovah's Son and 
 Representative. To the Sovereign of the soul. To him 
 who came to fulfil the law and the prophets of the 
 ancient Church of God. To him who is the fulfiller of 
 the prophetic voices in the deeps of the human heart — 
 even of that word which is "not in heaven," nor "be- 
 yond the sea," but " very nigh unto thee, in thy mouth 
 and in thy heart that thou mayest do it." To him of 
 whom it is written : " He will not fail nor be dis- 
 couraged till he have set justice in the earth." 
 
 Turn we, then, to the vision of Jesus. 
 
vni 
 
 VISIOIT OF JESUS 
 
 And I heard also a Voice saying unto me . . . — Acts 
 11:7. 
 
 Who went about doing good and healing all that 
 were oppressed of the devil; for God was with him. 
 And we are witnesses of all things which he did both 
 in the country of the Jews and in Jerusalem; whom 
 also they slew, hanging him on a tree. Him God 
 raised up the third day, and gave him to be made mani- 
 fest, not to all the people but unto witnesses that were 
 chosen before of God, even to us who ate and drank with 
 him after he rose from the dead. — Acts 10: 38-41. 
 
 IN the truest sense, that which appeared to Simon 
 Peter in the ecstasy that came upon him was a vision 
 of Jesus. It was an expression of Jesus' mind. 
 It was vocal with his truth and purpose. The voice 
 which forhade the making of that common which God 
 has cleansed was the voice of him who had declared 
 in the days of his flesh that the food which a man 
 eats cannot defile him — " making all meats clean." * 
 
 And the incomparable vision of spiritual truth, even 
 of the very God of truth, was given in the life of 
 Jesus. It is that in which all others find their fulfil- 
 ment and interpretation. The Apostle of the Gen- 
 tiles called it by an appropriate name, as he told of 
 that memorable noonday when the arresting light of 
 it flashed upon him from on high : " Wherefore, O King 
 
 • Mark 7 : 18, 19. 
 
 174 
 
VISION OF JESUS 176 
 
 Agrippa, I was not disobedient unto the heavenly vi- 
 sion" — unto the voice which spoke out of the glory 
 of that light and said : " I am Jesus, whom thou perse- 
 cutest." But with still larger measure of meaning may 
 we call the life of Jesus, as lived visibly and most 
 humanly among men, the heavenly vision for the Chris- 
 tian ages. Jesus in his own Person is the supreme 
 Divine revelation. " Neither doth any know the Fa- 
 ther save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son willeth 
 to reveal him." 
 
 Not a private or special revealing — an apocalypse like 
 that to the conscientious yet " exceeding mad " young 
 Pharisee outside the gates of Damascus or that to the 
 Christian seer on Patmos — Jesus' revealing of the Fa- 
 ther is a purely spiritual gift, the same for all. It 
 is suited to enter into the Sunday-school lesson of the 
 four-year-old child, and it has infinite significance for 
 the maturest spiritual mind. 
 
 Now, such was the vision which Simon Peter and his 
 fellow-disciples saw with their bodily eyes. And as an 
 eye-witness he told of it, as well as of the trance scene 
 in Joppa, to Cornelius — this vision of " Jesus of Naza- 
 reth, how God anointed him with the Holy Spirit and 
 with power; who went about doing good, and healing 
 all that were oppressed of the devil; for God was 
 with him." 
 
 It was a sight, as the Master himself reminded his 
 disciples, such as the highest men in Israel, prophets, 
 kings, righteous men, had indeed desired, but never 
 
176 VISION AND POWER 
 
 seen. Blessed above all men who had gone before were 
 these twelve men who abode with Jesus. Not, however, 
 let us remember, because of the outward vision in itself, 
 but because of what it meant, being interpreted. 
 
 All the while, even unto the end, Jesus of Nazareth 
 was to most of those who saw him the unrecognized 
 Christ. " The gravest charge," it has been said, " which 
 can be laid at the door of the learned Pharisees of that 
 day is that the most significant events in the history 
 of the world were taking place before their eyes and 
 they did not see it." In Jesus' Galilean ministry 
 " even his own brethren did not believe on him." They 
 were probably chief among the " friends " who came at 
 one time to protect him against what they regarded as 
 hurtful zeal in teaching and healing. Apparently they 
 would have had him come home and abide there again 
 at work with the carpenter's hammer and saw. So they 
 came to lay hold upon him and bring him back to him- 
 self ; " for they said. He is beside himself." * On 
 Calvary the soldiers who had nailed him to the cross 
 could sit down and cast lots for the seamless tunic he 
 had worn. " In the midst of you standeth One whom 
 ye know not." 
 
 The Twelve, even the most receptive and enlightened 
 spirits of them all, had but little vision of Jesus till 
 the Spirit of truth interpreted to them his daily words 
 and deeds, his person, his cross and resurrection. What 
 is said of one particular occasion in his life might doubt- 
 less be said of many others — namely, that " these things 
 understood not his disciples at the first," but afterward, 
 
 * Mark 3 : 21, 22. 
 
VISION OF JESUS 177 
 
 " when Jesus was glorified," then they had better knowl- 
 edge of them. 
 
 At one period of their lives, certainly, they supposed 
 themselves to be believing on him with a truer knowl- 
 edge and faith than they really had. When, for exam- 
 ple, he asked the two sons of Zebedee, " Are ye able 
 to drink the cup that I drink? or to be baptized with 
 the baptism that I am baptized with ? " they answered, 
 apparently without the least hesitation, " We are able." 
 Alas for their knowledge at that time of the " cup " and 
 the " baptism " that were awaiting the Redeemer of the 
 world. On their last evening with him, indeed, the 
 disciples seemed to feel that now at the end of the 
 days they did understand him and believe in him very 
 truly: " Lo, now," they said, " speakest thou plainly. 
 . . . Now we know that thou knowest all things. . . . 
 By this we believe that thou earnest forth from God." 
 But Jesus answering said to them : " Do ye now believe ? 
 Behold, the hour cometh, yea, is come that ye shall be 
 scattered, every man to his own, and shall leave me 
 alone." What could have been their knowledge of 
 Jesus, when in time of peril they were ready to turn 
 their backs upon him ? 
 
 We remember the smallness of Peter's Christian 
 knowledge as so painfully shown soon after the Great 
 Confession. " Be it far from thee. Lord : this shall 
 never be unto thee." What should never be unto their 
 Lord? The cross, the culminating act of redemptive 
 grace, the sacrifice of atonement. Peter knew not then 
 the mystery of suffering sacrificial love. 
 
 But he rightly saw it ere long. Because, loyal at 
 
178 VISION AND POWER 
 
 heart and a learner, he kept, though not without occa- 
 sional stumbling, the path of discipleship, which is 
 the way of preparation for more perfect knowledge and 
 larger service. Accordingly we shall hear him pro- 
 claiming to his fellow-Hebrews in Jerusalem the saviour- 
 hood of the crucified Jesus; and here in the house of 
 Cornelius he declares : " To him bear all the prophets 
 witness, that through his name every one that be- 
 lieveth on him shall receive remission of sins." Still 
 later he will write it down in his Eirst Epistle General : 
 " Who his own self bare our sins in his own body upon 
 the tree, that we, having died unto sins, might live 
 unto righteousness." For Peter to know Christ now 
 was to know the power of that resurrection and the 
 fellowship of those sufferings in which he had once so 
 impetuously refused to believe. 
 
 In the light of so transforming a vision, it must have 
 seemed a strange and unreal day when he could have 
 taken his Lord aside and rebuked him with the protesta- 
 tion, " This shall not be unto thee." Spiritually that 
 was already a far-off time. 
 
 n 
 
 These disciples and friends of Jesus, then, whom he 
 had called to be continually with him, had heard and 
 seen what it behoved all the world to know ; and it was 
 through them that the world was to learn these same 
 great facts. Such was the mind of the Master; and 
 hence the name witnesses by which he called them. " Ye 
 shall be my witnesses . . . unto the uttermost part of 
 the earth." Accordingly we find Peter declaring in 
 
VISION OF JESUS 179 
 
 the house of Cornelius, " And we are witnesses of all 
 things which He did both in the country of the Jews 
 and in Jerusalem " — as indeed he had already declared 
 to Jewish people of all lands on the day of Pentecost : 
 " This Jesus hath God raised up, whereof we all are 
 witnesses." And on into old age the last surviving 
 disciple is writing: " That which we have heard, which 
 we have seen with our eyes, that which we beheld, and 
 our hands handled, concerning the Word of Life . . . 
 and the life was manifested, and we have seen, and 
 bear witness, and declare unto you the life, the eternal 
 life, which was with the Father, and was manifested 
 unto us." 
 
 So they kept telling and interpreting their vision 
 of Jesus. Moreover, many received their testimony 
 and passed it on to others ; and by such means the life- 
 bearing evangel made its way among the people of 
 that generation and the generation following. 
 
 Now this word of Jesus' witnesses has found written 
 form and is read far and wide in the world to-day. 
 What language or dialect is without it? The Gospels 
 are ours, and in them we too may see Jesus — following 
 and learning, step by step, if we will, in the very light 
 of life. The experience of the first-called disciples which 
 set them apart in blessedness from even prophets who 
 desired in vain to see the day of the Christ did not 
 set them apart in the same way from us who should 
 come after them. For through them the heavenly vision 
 has been mediated across the intervening centuries even 
 to our own time. 
 
 Suppose it had been given us to see for ourselves 
 
180 VISION AND POWER 
 
 the eye-witnesses — Peter, John, Thomas, Matthew, and 
 the rest — and listen to the personal testimony from their 
 lips. Had some of us fallen in, for example, with the 
 little company of brethren from Joppa who went with 
 Peter on his two days' journey to Csesarea, we might 
 have heard many things about the Master that would 
 have filled our hearts with wonder and gladness. Or, 
 had we talked, as Polycarp, the pastor of the church 
 in Smyrna, did, with John, the venerable and beloved, 
 we should doubtless have had many an eager question 
 to ask. Or even had we known Papias, that " ancient 
 man " who made it a point, whenever he met with 
 any one who had been a follower of the first disciples 
 of the Lord, " to enquire what were the declarations of 
 the elders," we should have received with a glad and 
 grateful heart whatever he might have to relate. But 
 have not Peter and John and the rest told us enough, 
 and is not the word of their testimony in all our 
 churches and homes? 
 
 There are those, it is true, who find occasion of stum- 
 bling in these Gospels. Jesus himself was to many in 
 his own day a stone of stumbling. They could not ac- 
 cept his appearance and manner of life as befitting one 
 for whom was made the unexampled claim of sinless 
 sonship to God. They were unable to see the Divine 
 in the natural and familiar. They could not harmonize 
 the simple greatness of Jesus of ISTazareth with their 
 poor grandiose ideas of what Messiah should be. They 
 were looking upward, perhaps, for some blazing por- 
 tent out of the heavens. As if to be dazzled were to 
 be instructed! 
 
VISION OF JESUS 181 
 
 There was no halo about the Master's head such as 
 painters have been pleased to depict. One with men in 
 the common things of life, by no preternatural sign 
 was he distinguished from them. " The Son of Man 
 came eating and drinking." When they coarsely de- 
 rided him, no flash of Heaven's indignation struck them 
 blind or dumb. Could this be the Christ, the Son of 
 the Eternal ? They would not believe it. " Whom mak- 
 est thou thyself ? " angrily they asked, and took up stones 
 to stone him withal. They would put to death the 
 Divine Man moving so humanly among them. 
 
 Moreover, the word of such a teacher made great 
 demands upon life. It searched even unto the secret 
 springs of action. When he spoke, it was men's con- 
 sciences that woke to condemn them and their inner- 
 most spirits that heard the call to a life of self-denying 
 love. " And upon this many of his disciples went back 
 and walked no more with him." Over the very Stone 
 which God had elected for them to build their lives 
 upon they are stumbling and falling. 
 
 Somewhat in like manner, then, may men fail to see 
 the true glory of Jesus in the written Gospels. They 
 would fain ask that the story of his life should be 
 set apart in its mode of composition and its literary 
 form from all other writings. The Spirit of inspiration, 
 they think, should secure an ideal historic and con- 
 structive perfection. 
 
 But we do not find it so. Not until twenty-five years 
 or more after the death of Jesus do these writings ap- 
 pear. They embody the evangelic tradition, oral and 
 apostolic. They are memoirs rather than biographies — 
 
182 VISION AND POWER 
 
 " memoirs of Christ and his Apostles," Justin Martyr 
 calls them. The order of events is not in every case 
 the same in them all. Their reports of the words and 
 acts of Jesus are more or less variant. They reach our 
 hands to-day through transcriptions and translations. 
 But all this only means that it is by the way of the 
 human that the Gospels convey the divine. The form 
 in which they come before us, with its unmistakable 
 marks of simplicity and sincerity, is the work of men's 
 minds and hands, yet by the Spirit, under the provi- 
 dence, and in the purpose of God; while the recorded 
 facts stand alone in their significance on the page of 
 human history. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Does any Christian fear lest the progress of his- 
 torical criticism may rob the Church of her Christ? 
 Let him give such fears to the wind. They are vain 
 for sundry reasons, and even were there no other, for 
 the reason that there is no way of accounting for the 
 personality of Jesus except on the ground of its his- 
 toricity. " In the end of the day," says Dr. Johnston- 
 Ross, " the unity of the Central Figure in these stories 
 will point to the unity of the One Mind that inspired 
 them, and the conception of the Universal Divine Man 
 which they enshrine will bear to candid eyes the seal 
 of its own Divine origin." Who could have imagined 
 Him? Not the Evangelists, not the Apostles, none of 
 his contemporaries, no mythographer, no painter or 
 poet or thinker of humankind. To depict the tran- 
 scendent character of Jesus, as it comes out in clear, 
 
VISION OF JESUS 183 
 
 artless, self-consistent portraiture from the four writers 
 of the New Testament Gospels, is far beyond the power 
 of either the single or the collective imagination. Such 
 a character, such a person, must be historic, and if 
 historic, Divine. 
 
 IV 
 
 This, then, is a most fitting answer of the Christian 
 Church to any seeker of Him whose name she bears — 
 or, what means the same thing, to any seeker of spir- 
 itual truth. Let her put into his hands the Scrip- 
 tures of the New Testament — the fourfold Memoir of 
 Jesus and its apostolic interpretation. There was a 
 time when the entire property of a Christian congre- 
 gation consisted of little or nothing more than the four 
 Gospels. A priceless treasure then, they have never 
 been less precious — thanks be to God for their cus- 
 todians and transmitters — than in those early years of 
 Christianity; and everybody may have them now as a 
 personal possession. 
 
 What James said to the council in Jerusalem con- 
 cerning the Mosaic law may be much more fully said 
 of the Gospels. From generations of old in every city, 
 James reminded his brethren, the law had been " read 
 in the synagogues every Sabbath." The Gospels also 
 have been read. Sabbath by Sabbath, from generations 
 of old in our Christian " synagogues." But they are 
 in our homes as well, in our hands every day, if we will 
 have it so; and that which they offer is the vision of 
 God in Jesus — the Heavenly Father speaking to us in 
 Him who was " the very image of his substance." Did 
 
184. VISION AND POWER 
 
 not Jesus himself declare to the people, " He that be- 
 holdeth me beholdeth Him that sent me " ? Did he not 
 say to the disciples, on the evening before his death, 
 " If ye had known me, ye would have known my Fa- 
 ther also " ? 
 
 So that Peter might well write to the Christian be- 
 lievers of the Dispersion concerning Christ as mani- 
 fested at the end of the times for their sakes : " Who 
 through him are believers in God." Through Christ to 
 God — such is the way of that knowledge in which is 
 eternal life. 
 
 This knowledge, then, may come from the written 
 word of the gospel, if so be that the word is truly read. 
 But it has been the plaint of many a sincere seeker of 
 truth, with whom, while the spirit is willing, the flesh 
 is weak, 
 
 " I read the Bible with my eyes 
 But hardly with my brain; 
 Should this the meaning recognize, 
 My heart yet reads in vain." 
 
 Surely if it is ever due that we should read not with 
 eyes only, nor with brain only, but with an uplifted 
 heart and a consecrated will, we owe it to Holy Scrip- 
 ture — the Gospels and all the rest — to read it thus. Let 
 us give heed to Jesus' own question, " How readest 
 thou ? " Is it in this spirit ? Then indeed may we 
 hope to see Jesus in spiritual vision that will make 
 his Father and our Father, his God and our God, the 
 most vital and formative experience of our lives. 
 
 Thus also may we have some word of interpretation 
 for listening souls in the congregation. 
 
VISION OF JESUS 185 
 
 " Who through Him are believers in God." What 
 are some of the truths to be seen in this revelation of 
 the Divine in Jesus? 
 
 It may be seen how God regards our everyday life. 
 Does he know it in every situation, circumstance, and 
 event, and really care for it all ? It is made up of such 
 a multitude of little things. Much of it seems perhaps 
 to be commonplace and poor. Here in this flesh and 
 blood, this organized dust, in the daily humdrum of one 
 obscure human existence out of a thousand million 
 others, 
 
 " I wonder if He really shares 
 In all my little human cares, 
 
 This mighty King of kings; 
 If He who guides each blazing star 
 Through realms of boundless space afar, 
 Without confusion, noise, or jar, 
 
 Stoops to these petty things." 
 
 Jesus makes answer in his word concerning the lilies 
 in the unfenced fields of Palestine. To be sure, their 
 garments of blue and purple light are woven for them 
 — or rather for us — by means of the sun which rises 
 at its appointed time, day after day, to shine upon 
 them. But these numberless little garments of glory 
 are really from the Source of the sun — " He maketh 
 his sun to rise." It is God's sun ; he makes it rise and 
 shine. And there is not the simplest wild flower climb- 
 ing up for a few days of exquisite life in the sun- 
 light but is a handiwork of God and his gift to whoso- 
 ever is able to receive it. 
 
186 VISION AND POWER 
 
 Thus does the Master, in accord with the prophetic 
 witness of the Old Testament that there is One who is 
 acquainted with all our ways and hears every word 
 upon our tongues, and in accord with the theistic in- 
 sight that the Almighty Creator of the universe is 
 equally the God of the atoms and of the worlds — ^thus 
 does the Master of life bid us open our eyes upon the 
 perpetual world-wide picture of God's care for each 
 and all of his human children. " Consider the lilies. 
 . . . But if God so clothe the grass of the field, which 
 to-day is and to-morrow is cast into the oven, shall 
 he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith ? " 
 
 It was not only in his teaching, however, that our 
 Lord gave expression to God's caretaking. It was also 
 and chiefly in his own personal life. That is to say, 
 Jesus cared for people individually, and in so doing 
 gave a life-picture of the Divine care. For it was what 
 he saw the Father doing that he himself habitually 
 did. " Verily, verily I say unto you, the Son can do 
 nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father doing ; 
 for what things soever he doeth, these the Son also 
 doeth in like manner." 
 
 There was no aloofness in Jesus' attitude toward 
 the souls — ^men, women, children — gathered about him. 
 On the contrary, he entered with sympathy and help 
 into life as it was to them. Had he not himself lived 
 from childhood in a village home and wrought with 
 his hands for daily bread till he went forth to preach 
 the kingdom of God ? And thereafter did he not 
 know what it was to be hungry and athirst and tired, 
 and to have no certain dwelling-place ? He sat at peo- 
 
VISION OF JESUS 187 
 
 pie's tables and called them by their names — ^Mary, 
 Martha, Simon, Philip, Zaccheus, and others. He said 
 that any one who received a little child in his name 
 received him. Dying, he commended his mother to 
 the filial kindness of John. Even after he had risen 
 from the dead, " he was known of them " — of two un- 
 named disciples at Emmaus — " in the breaking of 
 the bread." 
 
 All the while it was the will of his Father for which 
 Jesus supremely cared. Accordingly, we hear him 
 counsel the unburdening of the heart of anxiety about 
 earthly things and the seeking of the kingdom of God 
 and his righteousness as the supreme good. 
 
 And the significance of it all, from our present point 
 of view, is in that one word, " He that hath seen me 
 hath seen the Father." Did Jesus care for the things 
 of common life ? Then the Father in heaven cares. 
 
 " So, to our mortal eyes subdued, 
 Flesh-veiled but not concealed. 
 We know in Thee the fatherhood 
 And heart of God revealed." 
 
 We cannot wonder, then, if Simon Peter, in whose 
 life Jesus abode as he did, to humble and to honour 
 him, to serve and save and govern him, should have 
 gained a heartfelt appreciation of the truth of God's 
 own caretaking. For he did gain it, and write it down 
 in his shepherding of others : " Humble yourselves 
 therefore under the mighty hand of God, that he may 
 exalt you in due time; casting all your anxiety upon 
 him, because he careth for you." * Indeed, of what 
 
 *I Peter 5: 6, 7. 
 
188 VISION AND POWER 
 
 word from this apostle's pen might one not truly say, 
 Learned in the school of Jesus ? 
 
 VI 
 
 It is also evident that the vision of God in Jesus is a 
 vision of the Divine healing compassion in the inevitable 
 sorrow and suffering of life. 
 
 But that V7hich far outweighs both the everyday cir- 
 cumstances and the great sorrows of one's life is the 
 moral relation to God. Sin, the awful possibility of 
 moral freedom, has become a fact. It has risen up in 
 our hearts ; it has defiled our consciences ; it has spread 
 through our lives, separating between God and our- 
 selves so that we cannot look upon his face in peace. 
 For " if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves 
 and the truth is not in us." What can be done about it ? 
 Has any messenger from heaven appeared to tell the 
 Divine attitude toward one who, like ourselves, is a 
 sinner ? 
 
 It needs only to ask what was the attitude of Jesus ; 
 and this, we know, was that of unsparing condemna- 
 tion. He detected sin under all its disguises. He 
 showed the guilt of the secret sinful motive, altogether 
 apart from any embodiment in outward act. He saw 
 and declared, as neither lawgiver nor prophet before 
 him had declared, the exceeding sinfulness of sin and its 
 inevitable penalty here and hereafter. 
 
 Indeed, the law as set forth by Jesus was not less, 
 but greater in condemnation than as set forth even 
 by the psalmists and prophets of the Old Covenant. 
 It shows sin to be a violation in heart and deed of 
 
VISION OF JESUS 189 
 
 the Infinite Love — " an offence so awful in its guilt 
 as to involve the passion of God and the death of his 
 Son." And goodness, holiness, is obedience from the 
 heart to that violated law of love. 
 
 Who, then, can stand before the face of the Heavenly- 
 Father and pray, " I would be heard for my goodness' 
 sake, O Lord " ? Tell me that I must honour my par- 
 ents and keep holy the Sabbath day and must not lie 
 or steal or covet, and I am condemned; but tell me 
 that I must love God with mj whole heart and my fel- 
 lows as myself, and I am, oh, how much more deeply 
 condemned. In the presence of this law of love shining 
 forth from the words of Jesus, verily every mouth is 
 stopped and the whole world stands guilty before God. 
 
 Still further, that which Jesus taught he lived. So, 
 the holy love of which he was lawgiver and prophet 
 was to him not as to others an ideal, but an actual and 
 perpetual realization. He was the Law because he 
 was the incarnate Love of God. Thus it was in the 
 light of his life that men's lives were judged. " Our 
 secret sins in the light of Thy countenance : " that was 
 the light, that the presence, in which Moses, the man 
 of God, saw even his secret sins. 'No Greek or Roman 
 idolater could use such language; but this man could 
 use it, because there had been given him a vision of the 
 Most Holy. And that is the vision which, in the ful- 
 ness of its revealing and convicting power, has been 
 brought nigh to us all in Jesus. 
 
 It was through the life of the Son of God, therefore, 
 that he whom in prayer he called " Holy Father " and 
 whom a prophet had called the " high and lofty One that 
 
190 VISION AND POWER 
 
 inhabiteth eternity, whose name is Holy," was shown 
 to be near, even in human personality, to the believ- 
 ing heart. 
 
 But there is another side of this truth to be seen in 
 Jesus. As holy love, and that alone, most effectively 
 reveals and condemns sin, so the same holy love, and 
 that alone, can save the sinner. " He was manifested 
 to take away sins; and in him is no sin." Here, 
 therefore, in the unity of eternal truth are both the law 
 and the gospel of God. The law is Christ — " in him is 
 no sin " ; the gospel is Christ — " he was manifested to 
 take away sins." The sinner cannot save his fellow- 
 sinner — cannot lift him above himself. But the Holy 
 One of God may lift him up to himself and in the holi- 
 ness of redeeming love may cleanse him from all sin. 
 
 VII 
 
 What more can be sought or declared? Before the 
 unveiled mystery of redemption in Jesus Christ we 
 bow the head, and lift up the heart in grateful joy. 
 It is the eternal truth of Divine sacrificial love. Hid- 
 den from former generations and ages, it was revealed 
 in him. " Who was foreknown indeed," says the 
 Apostle who once could not receive such a word even 
 from the lips of the Master himself, " before the foun- 
 dation of the world, but was manifested at the end 
 of the times for your sake, who through him are be- 
 lievers in God, who raised him from the dead and gave 
 him glory, so that your faith and hope might be in 
 God." * 
 
 * I Peter 1 : 20, 21. 
 
VISION OF JESUS 191 
 
 " Hid from all ages and generations," the revelation 
 of God's eternal purpose in Christ was nevertheless pre- 
 pared for and predicted. It was prepared for by the 
 age-long teaching and discipline of the Church of God. 
 It was predicted, as Peter proclaimed in the temple, 
 " by the mouth of His holy prophets which have been 
 since the world began." "^ 
 
 But not by these alone. It was foreshadowed by 
 world-wide symbols, ere ever a prophet of the kingdom 
 of God had spoken. Wherever a simple flower, bloom- 
 ing in beauty, put forth utmost effort, even at the cost 
 of its life, to ripen the seeds which should enshrine 
 the life of flowers to bloom when its own little day 
 should have ended, there was a predictive word, spelled 
 out in lowly yet lovely letters, of the giving of life 
 for the sake of other lives. " For reproduction alone," 
 says Henry Drummond, " the flower is created ; when 
 the process is over it returns to the dust. This miracle 
 of beauty is a miracle of Love." 
 
 And as we ascend in the scale of creation there 
 appears a succession of such signs, more and more 
 significant. 
 
 It is true, the animal kingdom is a scene of per- 
 petual and pitiless self-seeking at the expense of the 
 lives of others. Each is endeavouring to sustain his 
 own life, not simply careless of others, but in a myriad 
 instances feeding directly upon them. Therefore, is it 
 a world of unceasing struggle and of mingled joy and 
 pain — as a despondent spirit complained, " a world of 
 plunder and prey." 
 
 •Acts 3: 21. 
 
192 VISION AND POWER 
 
 But this is far from being the whole picture. Side 
 by side with the instinct of self-preservation appears 
 the mysterious power of instinctive self-sacrificing love. 
 A mother dove drops from her nest in the low-branched 
 tree and flutters in apparent disablement, broken- 
 winged, almost under the feet of the passer-by. What 
 could have induced a happy winged creature thus need- 
 lessly to expose her life, except a feeling of devotion 
 to the helpless nestlings committed to her care? It is 
 a scene to touch any thoughtful mind with a sense 
 of awe, as if in the mystic presence of a Divine truth 
 foretokening its revelation in the moral sphere. And 
 the very existence of all the higher orders of ani- 
 mated nature is conditioned, like that of the gentle dove, 
 upon the twin principles of self-preservation and uncal- 
 culating parental affection. Yes, upon the latter as truly 
 as upon the former — conditioned upon care for others as 
 truly as upon self-care. 
 
 In the human world these same two cooperant forces 
 appear in various familiar forms, instinctive and moral, 
 as self-love and love to others. And of the two the 
 greater and diviner is love to others. How it ennobles 
 the spirit of the mother, the friend, the patriot, the 
 philanthropist ! "Without it where shall we find the 
 true nobility of spirit? Without it we who are re- 
 joicing in life to-day could never have been. Without 
 it one cannot so much as imagine the existence of a 
 human world. " Seekest thou great things for thy- 
 self ? " Seek the greatest of all, which is simply love. 
 
 All of which is a parable, and the interpretation 
 thereof is the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. Our 
 
VISION OF JESUS 193 
 
 world is indeed a world of suffering and sacrifice whose 
 whole meaning even the most illumined spirit is not 
 prophet enough to tell. But we do know that it is 
 through suffering and sacrifice that love, greatest of 
 all things that can enter into the life of man, is made 
 perfect in power and achievement. And when on Cal- 
 vary the Sinless One, hated, scorned, put to agony 
 and shame, gave himself up for this world of sinners, 
 sacrificial love told its meaning — told what place it 
 holds in the mind and purpose of the Eternal. 
 
 Blessed, indeed, is the man to whom is given the 
 opportunity to tell and interpret to the world, in liv- 
 ing words, this vision of innermost spiritual truth. 
 
IX 
 THE OPPORTUNITY 
 
 Peter went up upon the housetop to pray, about the 
 sixth hour. — Acts 10: 9. 
 
 The Spirit said unto him, Behold three men seek 
 thee. But arise and get thee down and go with them, 
 nothing doubting; for I have sent them. — Acts 10: 19, 20. 
 
 And on the morrow he arose and went forth with 
 them, and certain of the brethren from Joppa accom- 
 panied him. And on the morrow they entered into 
 Caesarea. — Acts 10 : 23, 24. 
 
 Who was I, that I could withstand God? — Acts 11 : 17. 
 
 THE vision of the Clean and the Unclean had 
 a practical import. As with the devoted Mary 
 of Magdala, not permitted to linger with the 
 Risen One, but sent forthwith as a bearer of his mes- 
 sage, so with the Apostle Peter on the housetop, think- 
 ing and wondering. Very soon he must go down from 
 that sacred solitude, and then forty miles away, to tell 
 the truth of Jesus which he was now learning. His 
 ecstatic experience was not simply a thing to be enjoyed 
 or wondered at. The heart of it was an evangel to be 
 proclaimed. 
 
 Indeed, is not this true of whatever knowledge is 
 gained at any time by the truth-lover? It is not for 
 him alone. Its value is universal. All truth is for 
 all men, according as they have ears to hear it and 
 conscience to use it aright^ — none of it the exclusive 
 privilege of a certain educated circle or student body 
 
 194 
 
THE OPPORTUNITY 195 
 
 or priestly caste. Hence the scholar owes a special 
 debt to society. He has more to give than others, and 
 must give proportionally. " If the readiness is there, it 
 is acceptable according as a man hath/' " What you 
 know you owe." 
 
 Peter's vision, then, was intended to equip him for 
 larger service. It was for others' sake, that they might 
 become sharers with him of the Good News in Christ. 
 And behold, the Giver of the vision has already pro- 
 vided an opportunity for the communication of its 
 content to a prepared soul — even now are the men 
 from Csesarea downstairs, calling at the gate. For 
 to Cornelius, a devout man who " prayed to God 
 alway," there had also appeared a vision, in which it 
 was bidden him send men to Joppa for a man named 
 Simon Peter, who would tell him what he ought to 
 do. Thus the two lines of providential training and 
 guidance, one from Rome and the other from Jerusa- 
 lem, are converging at Csesarea; and the word of eter- 
 nal life in Christ is about to be sowed in a heart made 
 good ground for its reception. 
 
 It may serve as an example of what is taking place 
 continually in the world about us. There is noth- 
 ing more common in human observation and experience 
 than such converging lines. There is nothing taken 
 apparently more as a matter of course than the oppor- 
 tunities, occurring and recurring, of getting good for 
 ourselves and doing good to others. 
 
 Not indeed that these everyday occurrences are usu- 
 
196 VISION AND POWER 
 
 ally through the intervention of unprecedented visions 
 or affecting signs. Far from it. But such a sign may 
 awaken in the percipient's mind a dormant sense of 
 the Divine presence, providence, and control ; and this 
 providential presence and control, we need have no 
 doubt, is all about us continuously and everywhere. 
 How otherwise could there be a dependent world-life 
 at all ? From one direction God in nature is, through 
 long ages, preparing the soil; from another direction 
 God in humanity is preparing the sower; and at the 
 appointed time, lo, the sower is seen going forth to 
 sow — shortly afterward, a harvest. It is true literally 
 and it is true as a parable of the kingdom of heaven. 
 There is the prepared hearer and the prepared teacher 
 and the hand of God bringing them together. 
 
 Have you met with this account of a sermon in the 
 history of Christian preaching? — 
 
 " I sometimes think that I might have been in darkness and 
 despair until now, had it not been for the goodness of God in 
 sending a snowstorm, one Sunday morning, while I was going to 
 a certain place of worship. When I could go no further I 
 turned down a side street and came to a little Primitive Methodist 
 Chapel. In that chapel there may have been a dozen or fifteen 
 persons. ... At last a very thin-looking man, a shoemaker or 
 tailor or something of that sort, went up into the pulpit to 
 preach. . . . The text was, ' Look unto Me and be ye saved, all 
 the ends of the earth.' . . . The preacher began thus: *My 
 friends, this is a very simple text indeed. It says, * Look.' Now 
 lookin' don't take a great deal of pains. It ain't liftin' your foot 
 or your finger; it is just "Look." Well, a man needn't go to 
 college to learn to look. You may be the biggest fool on earth 
 and yet you can look.' . . . Then lifting up his hands he shouted, 
 as only a Primitive Methodist can shout, 'Young man, look to 
 Jesus Christ. Look! Look! Look! You have nothing to do but 
 look and live.' I saw at once the way of salvation. . . . There 
 and then the cloud was gone, the darkness had rolled away and 
 that moment I saw the sun; and I could have risen that in- 
 stant, and sung, with the most enthusiastic of them, of the precious 
 blood of Christ and the simple faith which looks alone to him." 
 
THE OPPORTUNITY 197 
 
 The name of the preacher no one knows; the name 
 of the young man was Charles Haddon Spurgeon. Have 
 we no better word in which to describe the relation of 
 that Sunday snowstorm to that historic conversion than 
 the word " accidental " ? 
 
 Nor is it an exceeding strange experience for the 
 Christian preacher to be impressed with a real sense 
 of the Divine providence and guidance in the oppor- 
 tunities of his personal ministry. I remember to have 
 had it in mind during a certain week to preach, on 
 the next Sunday, from the petition, " Lead us not into 
 temptation." It was difficult, however, to decide. 
 There was reason to believe that to many persons in my 
 congregation this petition of their daily Christian 
 prayer was practically meaningless. What a good thing 
 it might be to make it luminous and real to them. 
 But it was a difficult theme, and I distrusted my ability 
 to set it forth effectively. Then, almost at the point 
 of deciding in favour of another, I turned back to my 
 first choice. On the next Sunday a devout Christian 
 woman, the wife of a retired minister, came to me after 
 service and said : " I wanted you to preach on that 
 very text to-day, and was about to write a request that 
 you would. But I talked with my husband about it 
 and he said that perhaps I had better not. Then I 
 made it a subject of prayer and asked the Lord that 
 you might do so." She believed that the Lord had 
 heard her prayer and granted her request — had sent her 
 the interpretative word which she had felt the need of 
 and had asked for. 
 
 Simply a coincidence ? Some would certainly say 
 
1»8 VISION AND POWER 
 
 so. " Supposing that both the good woman and yourself 
 have given an accurate and uncoloured statement of 
 the facts, it was a mere coincidence after all." Possibly 
 it was — if one could get a satisfactory idea of what the 
 phrase " a mere coincidence," in such a world as ours, 
 really means. But if God in his providence is ever 
 near them that trust him, and if God by his Spirit 
 abides ever in their hearts, awakening prayer, impart- 
 ing grace, teaching wisdom, who will undertake to say 
 how much or how little of that wondrous providence 
 and of that Spirit's guidance appears in the converging 
 lines of any two Christian lives ? 
 
 " It chanced — eternal God that chance did guide." 
 
 May we never be numbered with the generation of 
 them that are ever seeking a sign; or that conceive 
 of providence as favoritism; or that do not distin- 
 guish between the specific request and the real prayer. 
 May we never fail to realize that the Ruler of both 
 the physical and the spiritual realm is the author of 
 order and not of confusion or of caprice, and that his 
 ways and thoughts are higher than ours even as the 
 heavens are higher than the earth. But let us also 
 unite in confession of faith with those who believe the 
 God of law and love, in his providence and by his 
 Spirit, to be as truly present in the hearts and lives 
 of his children as ever in the earliest day of the world 
 or in the spring-time of Christianity. 
 
 " And it shall come to pass that before they call I 
 will answer, and while they are yet speaking I will 
 hear." 
 
THE OPPORTUNITY 199 
 
 n 
 
 It is, however, Tvith the constantly occurring rather 
 than with the exceptionally marked opportunities that 
 we are chiefly concerned. And these everyday oppor- 
 tunities are numerous indeed. N^umberless the open 
 doors to willing doers of good. For God means good 
 for us all, one toward another, in the whole economy 
 of the world. 
 
 He means it, rest assured, by one's daily work. Think 
 not that we should be better off without this regularly 
 recurring task. More probably we should suffer serious 
 moral loss. " A whole lifetime of idleness, amusement, 
 and dissatisfaction with life," was Count Tolstoi's de- 
 scription of the circle of the envied children of leisure 
 in which he had been born. Thanks be unto God for 
 his great and beneficent ordinance of labour. 
 
 Various circumstances, indeed, that seem least fa- 
 vourable, or even antagonistic, in the course of any 
 common day, may be offering a needful discipline to 
 the spiritual powers. " He exercises me," said Epicte- 
 tus of a reviler, " in patience, in moderation, in meek- 
 ness. ... Is my neighbour a bad one? He is so to 
 himself, but a good one to me. He exercises my good 
 temper, my moderation." " Count it all joy," says the 
 New Testament, " when ye fall into manifold tempta- 
 tions [or, trials^, knowing that the proving of your 
 faith worketh patience. And let patience have its per- 
 fect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, lacking 
 in nothing." 
 
200 VISION AND POWER 
 
 ^Nor is the opportunity of service to others any less 
 an ever-present feature of human life. In the home, 
 where life begins, it is exemplified not only in the 
 obvious case of what the parent may do for the child, 
 but also in what the child may do for the parent. It is 
 an invariable attendant of all human relationships. 
 When God made man so that he could not live his 
 life alone, he made him so that he should perpetually 
 be a neighbour to his neighbour, a brother to his brother, 
 a servant and benefactor to his fellow. Talk not of 
 narrow circumstances, limited spheres, meagre oppor- 
 tunities. Complain not that the commonplaces of life 
 so greatly outnumber its sublimities and its crises. Hu- 
 man personalities all about us are open to the touch 
 of our own. " Quivering with possibilities, eloquent 
 with invitations " this moment, is the human world in 
 which we live. Let but the man arise, living the life 
 of the Spirit, at any time, anywhere, and opportunity 
 for some Christly service will be there to greet him. 
 
 A farmer had a seedling pear-tree whose fruit was 
 worthless. A near neighbour asked permission to graft 
 it. The farmer, though indifferent and probably scep- 
 tical as to the results, granted the request. The scion 
 " took." Tor more than half a century the transformed 
 tree has borne abundant harvests, and it is bearing 
 still. Hundreds upon hundreds of men, women, and 
 children have found health and enjoyment in its deli- 
 cious fruit — some of them from childhood to old age. 
 So much for the fruitage in human comfort of a single 
 thoughtful neighbourly act. Who would not like to 
 have been the doer of it? 
 
THE OPPORTUNITY 201 
 
 But suppose that one might engraft some word of 
 truth in a neighbour's soul, whose years shall not be 
 half a hundred, but shall never fail. And this, too, is 
 more than possible to whosoever has the wisdom to do 
 it and the neighbourly heart to recognize his oppor- 
 tunity. 
 
 One's very last hour on earth may bring no less 
 an opportunity than any that have gone before. " Now 
 this He spake " — Jesus spake concerning Simon Peter 
 — " signifying by what manner of death he should 
 glorify OodJ" 
 
 " So he died for his faith. That is fine — 
 More than most of us do. 
 But say, can you add to that line. 
 That he lived for it too?" 
 
 We can. This man lived for it; and true enough, that 
 was better than simply to die for it. Nevertheless, what 
 a shining testimony was that when he stretched forth 
 his hands to be bound by those who were putting him 
 to death as a witness for his Lord. The surrendered 
 lives of heroic souls, how it has wrought in all lands 
 and in all ages for the kingdom of God. " If any more 
 are burned, bum them in cellars," it was said to the 
 persecutors of the Scotch Covenanters — so effectively 
 did the death of the martyr advertise his faith among 
 the people. 
 
 We of to-day are not incurring the least risk of being 
 burned by the enemies of our faith. Nevertheless, it 
 is quite possible that we may pass out of this life, even 
 as we may pass through it, so as to glorify God. For, 
 under the most ordinary circumstances, death may be 
 
202 VISION AND POWER 
 
 met, not with a slavish yielding to inevitable necessity, 
 but in the spirit of such free and trustful acquiescence 
 in the will of the Heavenly Father as to make it a 
 singularly serviceful Christian witness. To die well is 
 to do good. Death may be the crowning opportunity 
 of life. 
 
 in 
 
 Moreover, men are adapted — it is a sweet and awful 
 thought — to co-working with God. They may work 
 together with him in gaining good for themselves. Put 
 these two words of apostolic teaching side by side : " Ye 
 are God's building " — God is forming your spiritual 
 character ; " Building up yourselves on your most holy 
 faith " — forming your own spiritual character. 
 
 Of the oldest of us, as of the youngest, it is mani- 
 festly true that as yet we are only in the making. Let 
 us, therefore, be patient toward the incompleteness of 
 our neighbour. Let us also not misjudge his Maker 
 and ours ; for it is the end that proves the work. " When 
 that which is perfect is come, that which is in part shall 
 be done away." But we are still imperfect, inhabiting 
 a world of the imperfect, and in passing judgment upon 
 the plan and work of the Maker, in case of that which 
 is still in the making, we show ourselves as judges to 
 be very imperfect indeed. Sometimes it is said in con- 
 gregational prayer, " when Thou art done with us on 
 earth." And we may devoutly give thanks to the 
 Maker of us that he is not yet done with us on earth, 
 and for the hope that he will not be done with us in 
 the life immortal. 
 
THE OPPORTUNITY 203 
 
 "Do with us what thou wilt, all-glorious Heart! 
 Thou God of them that are not yet, but grow! 
 We trust thee for the thing we shall be yet; 
 We too are ill content with what we are." 
 
 I had a house in building. Returning to inspect it 
 after a somewhat lengthy absence, I was displeased. 
 There were features of the half-finished structure that 
 seemed an affront to both good taste and good judg- 
 ment. " Why did you have this and that so ? " I asked. 
 " Wait till it is finished," replied the builder ; " that 
 is what I always tell them, Wait till it is finished." 
 And sure enough when the house was completed the 
 apparent fault proved to be a most attractive feature; 
 and I could not but rejoice that the unexpected plan- 
 ning had been done by a higher architectural wisdom 
 than mine. Since which time I have seen it written 
 in a book, that " criticism of unfinished architecture 
 is proverbially false." But infinitely higher than any 
 of ours is the wisdom of the Eternal Architect of the 
 unfinished soul and the unfinished world. 
 
 Moreover, the Maker means, let us ever bear it in 
 mind, that we shall have a part in our own making. 
 Ten thousand things will he do with no cooperation of 
 ours, but in the building of character we are God's 
 fellow-workers. Otherwise " the liberty of the glory 
 of the children of God " would be impossible. Awak- 
 ened and interpenetrated by his gracious power, there 
 must be our o^vn choice, our own effort, our own dili- 
 gence. And for this there is given an hourly oppor- 
 tunity. 
 
 Then as to one's work for the world. Imagine the 
 
204. VISION AND POWER 
 
 world coming this hour from the hand of its Maker 
 "without the free cooperating hand of man. How would 
 it appear? IS"© civilization, no Bible, no Church, no 
 letters, no civil government, no handicraft, no dwelling- 
 houses, no grain-fields, no human life. Is it not the 
 will of God that these things — life, civilization, litera- 
 ture, Christianity — should be? 
 
 Take, for instance, our relation to material substances 
 and forces. Would the Maker of the ground have it 
 cultivated to increase of fruitfulness and made the 
 habitat of happy households ? Would he have fruit- 
 trees planted and grafted, wells dug, roads constructed, 
 bridges builded, ships sent forth upon the great waters ? 
 Would he have deserts incited through irrigation to 
 blossom into beauty, or to yield up their stores of food 
 and drink through removal of the no longer needed 
 " spiny armour " of their native plants ? Would he 
 have typhoid fever, diphtheria, the " white plague," 
 traced to their microscopic hiding-places and confronted 
 with the forces of prevention and cure? Would he 
 have flames of fire come forth at command as our 
 familiar household servants? Would he have the all- 
 encompassing air a whispering gallery in which souls 
 may intercommunicate across a thousand miles of track- 
 less seas ? Would he have the Roentgen ray discovered, 
 and employed in the cure of physical ills ? To come to 
 every one's daily life, would he have the air we breathe 
 moulded into music and articulate speech ? Then must 
 man, dweller in the dust though he is, constantly co- 
 operate with him of whom Jesus said, " My Father 
 worketh hitherto." 
 
THE OPPORTUNITY 205 
 
 It might have been the will of God, so one may imag- 
 ine, to sustain the life of his human children wholly, 
 as he has done partly, by the immediacy of " nature " 
 to their bodily wants — to give them food and raiment 
 as he gives them light and air. But such is not his 
 chosen method. Count, if you can, the number of 
 hands through which the bread of this morning was laid 
 upon your table. Yet, in the truest sense, it was from 
 One Hand through innumerable others. Of just such 
 things has a prophet of old declared : " This also cometh 
 forth from Jehovah of hosts, who is wonderful in coun- 
 sel and excellent in wisdom." * So, then, the oppor- 
 tunity offered the farmer, the miller, the baker, the 
 housewife, is God's own chosen and ordained oppor- 
 tunity as the giver of our daily bread. 
 
 Hard work for human brains and hands, is it, and 
 age-long, time-long, all this striving after the goods of 
 life for ourselves and our fellows ? Grievous oftentimes 
 to the flesh, no doubt; but seen from the Divine side, 
 joyous and uplifting to the spirit. " Praising we plough 
 and singing we sow," wrote Clement of Alexandria for 
 the Christians of his day. And what other spirit, pray, 
 is suitable to the man who realizes that the work of his 
 hands is not common or unclean, but contrariwise a bit 
 of God's work in the world ? His work itself becomes 
 a song. It is done in the power of the heavenly vision 
 that lifts drudgery into glory. 
 
 It is well also to bear in mind that only in the way 
 of active effort to gain his objects of desire, the good 
 and the useful, can man become man. Without it we 
 
 •Isaiah 28:24-29 (margin, effectual toorking). 
 
206 VISION AND POWER 
 
 should be idlers, weaklings, savages. ISTo exertioB, no 
 growth. No struggle, no strength. No striving toward 
 a great conscious aim of personal achievement, no at- 
 tainment of the great unconscious aim of personal 
 development. 
 
 IV 
 
 Especially notable is this fact of opportunity in the 
 life of the Christian preacher. Has he seen in Jesus 
 the vision of God ? Then the truth which it is given 
 him to minister is a veritable word of life. It is that 
 which of all things it most concerns sinful souls to 
 hear. And surely if it is given any one, it is given him 
 to tell it. He is recognized distinctively as a guide of 
 souls, a " light of them that are in darkness." To him 
 was Cornelius bidden to apply for instruction — the par- 
 ticular preacher in this case being one of those who 
 had been with Jesus and had been sent forth by him. 
 " Now therefore we are all here present in the sight 
 of God, to hear all things that have been commanded 
 thee of the Lord." Thus an audience will gather about 
 the preacher for the very reason, even if there be no 
 other, that he is supposed to speak the word of God. 
 
 Not that the preacher's audiences are likely to be 
 wholly composed of such recipient souls. Many of his 
 hearers will show a different mind. They will be living 
 for the enjoyment, gross or refined, which can be got out 
 of the world, and not for the service they can render. 
 It is an anti-Christian, a pagan, philosophy of life. 
 They must be won by speech, persuasive and command- 
 ing, to look upon life in the light of Christ. 
 
THE OPPORTUNITY 207 
 
 But more and more the preacher's audience will be- 
 come a congregation — not an occasional assembly of 
 hearers, but a gathered flock, regularly waiting upon his 
 ministrations. 
 
 "This is my opportunity; 
 I stand, Lord, 'twixt these and Thee: 
 Grant me Thy light that I may know 
 How best the seeds of truth to sow. 
 
 " The weary man, the little child. 
 The vigorous youth, the mother mild. 
 Lift up their eyes and wait for me: 
 What shall I say to them for Thee?" 
 
 To the preacher-pastor, also, as to no other man, the 
 homes of the people, from the lowliest to the palatial, 
 are opened. He will be honoured for his office' sake and 
 esteemed highly in love for his work's sake. Cornelius, 
 the Roman captain, fell down before the fisherman 
 apostle to do him homage. 
 
 And not only is the preacher's word a ministry to 
 the highest interests of the soul, but it is a concen- 
 tiated and a continual ministry. He does not need to 
 spend his strength in the earning of a livelihood. On 
 the contrary, all his time and energy may be devoted 
 directly to the saving of his brother men and the build- 
 ing of the kingdom of God on earth. 
 
 I noticed in a newspaper this morning that a church 
 on the Congo is reported to have made an arrangement 
 for nine out of every ten men to unite for the support 
 of the tenth, in order that he may give his whole time 
 to preaching the gospel. So there would seem to be 
 an illustrative fact from even the heart of Africa — 
 an example of the large and honoured place which the 
 
208 VISION AND POWER 
 
 Church of Christ is disposed to provide for him who 
 would " continue steadfastly in prayer and in the min- 
 istry of the word." To him verily the door of oppor- 
 tunity is flung wide open. 
 
 Not, however, that opportunity is always found to 
 be an easy door to enter. The word (oh-portus) does in- 
 deed mean " at the port " ; and it is a great word in 
 the vocabulary of life. But it does not imply that all 
 difficulty and danger are here left behind. Such an 
 idea would be a capital mistake. To reach the port is 
 indeed to get off the barren waters and on the fruitful 
 land; but the toiler of the sea is not the only toiler. 
 Even the peace-loving farmer must overcome many diffi- 
 culties and wage warfare with many enemies before he 
 gathers his wheat into the granary. Opportunity means, 
 among other things, labour and conflict. A new coun- 
 try may offer an inviting prospect to the well-qualified 
 settler, but only at the price of a pioneer's peculiar self- 
 denials, discouragements, and efforts. The same coun- 
 try may offer a similar prospect to the preacher who 
 would have the joy of laying the foundation of churches 
 that will live to bless the land through coming genera- 
 tions; but let him not be surprised when the similar 
 offer meets him with a demand for a corresponding 
 price. 
 
 " A great door and effectual is opened unto me," says 
 the Apostle of the Gentiles, writing from Ephesus, " and 
 there are many adversaries." So, because of the open 
 door and despite the adversaries, there the evangelist- 
 
THE OPPORTUNITY 209 
 
 pastor remained, labouring both publicly and from house 
 to house, for the space of three years — his longest pas- 
 torate ; " so that all they who dwelt in Asia heard the 
 word of the Lord, both Jews and Greeks." A church 
 was gathered and an inspired epistle written it which 
 is in the Church Universal to-day. And what else ? 
 " I fought with beasts at Ephesus." 
 
 So too at Philippi, where the church which he and 
 his fellow-itinerants had founded was ever after the 
 joy of the great apostle's heart. " Come over into 
 Macedonia and help us : " " And the multitude rose up 
 together against them; and the magistrates rent their 
 garments off them, and commanded to beat them with 
 rods." 
 
 As then, so now. About every open door of the gospel 
 in pagan or in Christian cities of the twentieth cen- 
 tury, the same first-century foes, the same unbelief, 
 sensuality, worldliness, self-interest, superstition — old 
 foes with new faces — are ready to gather. 
 
 As for the Apostle Peter, it was not long till the 
 adversaries rose up against him for entering the open 
 door in Csesarea. In this case they were some of his 
 own brethren, the Hebrew Christians in Jerusalem. 
 For they contended with him, face to face, for enter- 
 ing the house and sitting at the table of a Gentile. 
 Peter made a satisfactory defence, " expounded the 
 matter unto them in order," so that they held their peace 
 and glorified God. But there is a note of warning in 
 the fact that on a subsequent occasion Peter was drawn 
 back by the same type of adversaries into reactionary 
 behaviour. It was in Antioch, at that time the center 
 
210 VISION AND POWER 
 
 of Gentile Christianity, where, under the influence of 
 certain ultra-conservative brethren from the less enlight- 
 ened yet loved and respected mother church, he with- 
 drew for a while at least from such social intercourse 
 as eating at the same table with the Gentile Christians 
 — the old-time vacillating temper once more emergent. 
 For then as now was the heavenly treasure borne in 
 earthen vessels ; and not even of a chief of the Apostles, 
 whether Paul or Peter, was " the excellency of the 
 power " ; but of God only. 
 
 Who is habitually spoken of as having a wider or 
 more open field for evangelism, at least within the last 
 three centuries, than John Wesley ? Think of his jour- 
 neyings to and fro among the neglected and unevan- 
 gelized millions of the poor in his native England. 
 Think of the assistants he won, the literature he pub- 
 lished, the organization he developed. Nevertheless, 
 whose pathway of unsurpassed success was more note- 
 worthy for disappointments and failures, or more 
 thickly infested with all manner of opponents? An 
 open door, many adversaries. 
 
 In any event, the obligation abides to share the 
 knowledge of evangelic truth with others. And the 
 obligation is measured by the opportunity. " As we 
 have opportunity, let us work that which is good toward 
 all men." As we have it, not as we see it; for the 
 opportunity may be present, easily within reach, and 
 through inattentiveness unrecognized by us. " Say not 
 ye. There are yet four months and then cometh the 
 harvest. Behold, I say unto you, Lift up your eyes 
 and look on the fields, that they are white already unto 
 
THE OPPORTUNITY 211 
 
 harvest." May we have the will to see in order that 
 we may lay hold of the ever-present opportunity. Fi- 
 delity is clear-sighted. Here, therefore, appears the 
 greatness of the Christian preacher's obligation; for, 
 as already noted, the field offered to him in which to 
 sow the good seed — or to gather the ripening grain — is 
 extraordinarily great and effectual. " Thou canst, then 
 thou must." For what is duty? Nothing less, what- 
 ever more it may be, than " the harmony of will with 
 opportunity." 
 
 Nor is such opportunity to be greeted with a sense 
 of obligation alone. More and more, as the inner 
 life deepens, will the sense of duty be interfused with 
 a spirit of freedom and gladness. Thus not only " I 
 must," but also " I may," shall be followed by " There- 
 fore I will." The fact of one's obedience being dutiful 
 does not prevent its being free. Conscience may be 
 growing more penetrative and luminous, and love at 
 the same time more discerning and masterful. To do 
 the will of our Father in heaven — is it not being felt, 
 as the years hasten by, less as a task and more as the 
 sweet and wholesome food of the spirit? 
 
ENLARGEMENT OF OPPORTUNITY 
 
 Ye yourselves know how it is an unlawful thing for 
 a man that is a Jew to join himself or come unto one 
 of another nation; and yet unto me hath God showed 
 that I should not call any man common or unclean. — 
 Acts 10:28. 
 
 " 1' CAME," said Peter to Cornelius, " without 
 I gainsaying (avavTipi^Too?, not speaking against 
 it)" Had he been unwilling to go, there is 
 good reason to believe that he would have spoken against 
 it — being temperamentally the man he was. He went 
 freely, and thereby added to the effectiveness of his 
 personal bearing and his message. 
 
 Is there conscious constraint on the soul of the 
 preacher? What is it? What is the inner word that 
 wins him and impels him and will not let him live 
 at his ease? Happy is he if it be no selfish ambition 
 but that Christian zeal, that sacrificial enthusiasm, 
 which is the aggressiveness of Christian love. Let him 
 attend faithfully to his round of daily duties, like the 
 typewriter at his machine or the bookkeeper at his desk. 
 This cannot be blamelessly neglected. But if this be 
 all, there is but half a preparation for the opportunities 
 of his ministry. The apostle of Jesus is not to be a 
 
 212 
 
ENLARGEMENT OF OPPORTUNITY 213 
 
 numberer of strokes, so much work for so much pay, 
 like the workman who drops his uplifted hammer at the 
 first sound of the quitting bell. 
 
 It is so in any great and effectual preaching, whether 
 evangelistic or pastoral. There must be eagerness, de- 
 votion, heart of love and tongue of flame. Perhaps no 
 more striking example can be cited than that of the 
 early Methodist circuit riders. They went forth, along 
 make-believe roads or Indian trails, across the swollen 
 streams, into town or settlement or lone cabin, in the 
 spirit of the Messianic psalm: 
 
 "I delight to do thy will, my God; 
 Yea, thy law is within my heart. 
 I have proclaimed glad tidings of righteousness in the assembly," 
 
 They found occasions to preach or made them. It was 
 not a new method — not distinctively American or Wes- 
 leyan. " Preach the word," wrote Paul in his fare- 
 well charge to his " child " Timothy ; " be instant 
 in season, out of season." Wliich might be ren- 
 dered, " whether the time be opportune or inoppor- 
 tune." 
 
 When Freeborn Garretson, a devout and sweet-spirited 
 practical mystic, was sent out by Coke and Asbury, 
 " like an arrow, from north to south," — as Dr. Coke de- 
 scribed it — to send messengers, in his turn, to the right 
 and left and call together all the preachers to the unex- 
 pected task of organizing the Methodist Episcopal Church, 
 he recorded in his journal concerning this suddenly im- 
 posed duty : " I set out for Virginia and Carolina, and 
 a tedious journey I had. My dear Master enabled me 
 to ride about 1,200 miles in six weeks [it was in the 
 
214 VISION AND POWER 
 
 months of N^ovember and December], and preach going 
 and coming constantly," The " arrow " seems to have 
 turned aside freely for evangelism's sake, without for- 
 saking its prescribed course or failing to reach the 
 mark. It was a sign of the apostolic spirit and an 
 augury of success. For many a congregation was gath- 
 ered and many a soul saved by such free out-of-season 
 urgency of convicting and evangelic speech. 
 
 n 
 
 The Christian preacher may very well go forth " with- 
 out gainsaying," if he have some true vision not only 
 of his task but also of his opportunity. And now, this 
 vision of opportunity, how great may he expect it to 
 appear ? Manifestly as great as the world of spiritual 
 need to which he may minister. Need is the giver 
 of opportunity. " When there comes a despondent 
 brother " — thus have I heard a wise and gentle master 
 speak — " and paints the present age, with its mammon- 
 worship and worldliness and mad race for pleasure and 
 reckless commission of crime, when he comes deploring 
 the dearth of spirituality in the Church and the unbe- 
 lief outside, I say to him. Go on, paint the picture never 
 so dark, but do you not see that what you are painting 
 is a door, that all the while you are painting the great 
 and effectual door of Christian opportunity ? " Who is 
 this that calls himself a prophet of God and has no 
 heart to speak because of the largeness of the demand 
 for prophetic speech? What sort of apostle is it that 
 abides indoors because the field of his gospel is so wide 
 and the soil thereof so stubborn ? The greater the need 
 
ENLARGEMENT OF OPPORTUNITY 215 
 
 the greater the opportunity for the messages of the 
 Spirit through the lips of the living man. 
 
 As to the opportunities of Simon Peter, there was 
 Pentecost, with its unprecedented baptism of fire within 
 and its multitude of wondering hearers " from every 
 nation under heaven " without — the birthday of the 
 Church of Jesus Christ. We may pass it by, in this 
 connection, as incomparable. But here at Caesarea, in 
 a private house, with a congregation made up of the 
 household and near-by friends, we may recognize an- 
 other opportunity of world-wide significance. No won- 
 der that so large a space comparatively should have 
 been given it in the book of Acts. For the question 
 of the admission of Gentile believers into the Church 
 of God without the Jewish initiatory rite was settled 
 at Caesarea with the sign and seal of the Spirit of 
 truth. And this was indeed a world-question. 
 
 Think also what might have been expected from Cor- 
 nelius the Christian, as a captain in the Italian cohort 
 (enlisted in Italy) of the Roman army of occupation, 
 and from his household and friends. Such witnesses 
 as Roman soldiers, women, and slaves would ere long 
 appear, in their respective spheres, from the land of 
 Israel to the islands of the West. Indeed, what an 
 irrefutable procession of witnesses, ever to multiply its 
 numbers and so to pass down the coming ages, might 
 be starting, under Peter's spoken testimony and the 
 power of the Holy Spirit, there in the Roman barracks 
 at Caesarea. 
 
 That Peter himself realized the full significance of 
 this visit to a Gentile soldier's home may well be 
 
216 VISION AND POWER 
 
 doubted. What great leader in the world's work does 
 realize the full significance of his acts and undertak- 
 ings ? What lowliest Christian worker in our own time, 
 or in any other, knows how great the end may be ? Cer- 
 tainly if any of us should be inclined to covet such 
 an opportunity in life as that of this chief Apostle, 
 it might pertinently be suggested to him that he open his 
 eyes upon the world-wide opportunity which he stands 
 facing here and now. Let him awake to the realiza- 
 tion that his own age is preeminently an age of oppor- 
 tunity. Have we not seen that it is given to the least 
 of us to touch the moral life of the world to finer issues, 
 both at our own doors and in the regions far beyond ? 
 At our own doors ? It might be said that the whole 
 world is now becoming an open door to us all. 
 
 A far larger and at the same time a far smaller world 
 is ours than that which our fathers knew. It has been 
 expanded, in that we have come to know so much more 
 about its territory and its peoples. It has been con- 
 tracted, in that the interchange, both of things and 
 ideas, products of the fields and factories and products 
 of the mind, has become so facile and so constant. A 
 gift from the hands at the present moment holding 
 this volume may, at the giver's option, fall into a hand 
 at the distance either of an arm's length or of six thou- 
 sand miles. The letter you write may be mailed for 
 five or perhaps two cents either to the nearest village 
 or to the antipodes. It has come to be almost a matter 
 of course with many of us to have business or social 
 or church relations with people at their homes a thou- 
 sand miles away. Since, under present methods of 
 
ENLARGEMENT OF OPPORTUNITY 217 
 
 communication, the world has become our neighbour- 
 hood, 
 
 "What is half o' the world between?" 
 
 Ill 
 
 When there comes to the soul of a young Christian 
 a vision of the moral and spiritual needs of his own 
 land, he is ready to say, " Here in the homeland I must 
 invest my life." When there comes to him a vision of 
 any one of the great causes that are here calling so 
 loudly for leaders and helpers, — ^the cause of the young 
 people, of the poor and backward classes, of civic right- 
 eousness, of temperance and the destruction of the liquor 
 traffic, of whatever is included under the title of Home 
 Missions — he would fain respond, " To this one cause 
 shall my whole life be devoted." He could wish not 
 only " a thousand tongues to sing " the Redeemer's 
 praise, but a thousand lives to devote to some one par- 
 ticular service in the Redeemer's cause. 
 
 As to our homeland, whose name has been called a 
 synonym of opportunity, we are constrained to ask, 
 What does God in history mean by America? Our 
 teachers of history are able to show how this or that 
 nation, notwithstanding its many failures and crimes, 
 has made some one most conspicuous contribution to 
 the welfare of the world. May we suppose that Amer- 
 ica will ever have such a contribution to offer ? 
 
 Some have answered that it is her providential mis- 
 sion to exemplify, as this has never yet been done, 
 the splendid ideal of human brotherhood. It may be 
 so. At any rate, it would seem that here is America's 
 
218 VISION AND POWER 
 
 most noteworthy opportunity. A nation of immigrants, 
 scores of millions on the way to become hundreds of 
 millions of various races gathered and mingling to- 
 gether under democratic ideas and forms of govern- 
 ment, 
 
 " Tongues melt in hers, hereditary foemen 
 
 Forget their sword and slogan, kith and clan; 
 'Twas glory once to be a Roman, 
 
 She makes it glory now to be a man." 
 
 A country of enormous undeveloped resources, men 
 increasingly valued for what they are rather than for 
 whence they came, a greater inheritance than any other 
 nation from the past and yet without the embarrassment 
 of age-long traditions, the wide diffusion of intelli- 
 gence, free churches awaking more fully to the prac- 
 tical acknowledgment of their social and civil obliga- 
 tions, " a rapidly decreasing death rate of bigotry," 
 the gospel of the Son of Man preached everywhere — 
 these are some of the promiseful features of the United 
 States of America. Do they not promise that more and 
 more our people shall respect each other's humanity, 
 legislate for the common good, render social service, 
 administer industrial justice, love as brethren? 
 
 Not only so. According to its Maker's idea, the 
 world may be and ought to be a fraternity of nations. 
 Hitherto, however, the fact has been far different. The 
 stronger instead of helping the weaker have exploited 
 and oppressed them. Of Christian as of pagan nations, 
 this has been too true. But in recent history there have 
 been signs of better things. In certain notable in- 
 stances, at least, America has shown herself a friend 
 in need to other peoples. A true American, says a 
 
ENLARGEMENT OF OPPORTUNITY 219 
 
 recent Jewish immigrant, Mary Antin, is " one who ac- 
 knowledges all mankind as his brothers and tries to 
 give them a fair chance." Certainly nothing less than 
 the realization of such an ideal can satisfy the demands 
 of human brotherhood. And what if the United States 
 of America should both be called and prove faithful 
 to a moral leadership in promoting the federation of 
 the states of the world ? 
 
 If it is to be so, there must needs be, first of all, 
 for America herself men of light and leadership. There 
 must be spiritual vision. 
 
 What made the little nation of Israel such a one 
 as God could use as he did for the highest welfare 
 of the world? It may be truly answered in familiar 
 language, " Moses and the prophets." Egypt, out of 
 which the tribes were led that they might become a 
 nation, was a land of groveling superstitions and low 
 ideals; and Israel was in slavery to these as well as 
 to the Pharaoh himself. But Moses was not. Here was 
 a leader with the vision of God and of a people who 
 should accept the will of God as the law of their national 
 life, a kingdom of priests, a holy nation, a church. Now 
 and for centuries they were prone to low-minded idola- 
 try. At the very foot of Sinai they were dancing unto 
 Jehovah round a golden calf. But their great and 
 inspired leader and the succession of prophets that came 
 after him declared, passionately yet patiently, the real- 
 ity, the presence, the holiness of God and his purpose 
 for them, and through them for the other nations. This 
 was their salvation. This was their equipment for serv- 
 ice. This was the means whereby, notwithstanding the 
 
220 VISION AND POWER 
 
 tremendous obstacles in the way, it became possible, 
 at the very beginning of their national history, that 
 there should go forth from them a light to lighten the 
 peoples of earth unto the end of time. 
 
 And " the prophets," who were they ? Men who saw 
 with singular brightness of vision what a people should 
 be, because they saw what God is and what he means 
 the individual soul to be. They had understanding of 
 judgment, of righteousness, of loving-kindness — its 
 transcendent excellence and its effects. They saw from 
 the highest height of prevision the Christ and the effu- 
 sion of the Spirit upon all flesh. At times they felt 
 the thrill of the foreordained Cross, even of that Divine 
 suffering love in which the Christ was to take unto 
 himself the bitter griefs of his people and bear the 
 iniquities of them all. Not the priests, nor the kings, 
 nor the hundreds of thousands of people, but their in- 
 spired leaders dreamt the dream and saw the vision ; and 
 the others might, if like-minded, share it with them. 
 
 They saw the Christ, with the government of the 
 world on his shoulders, as the Prince of Peace. Did the 
 times foreshow it ? or, did some Eastern sage some- 
 how drop the suggestive word into their ear? Quite 
 the opposite. That was far enough from a day of peace 
 in which they prophesied. War was universally ac- 
 cepted as the natural condition of man. Nation against 
 nation, people against people — nothing else was known 
 or expected. But even in that day there were seers of 
 Israel, taught of God as no other religious teachers on 
 earth, to whom it was given to depict a new and Divine 
 order of national life. In an age of the unchallenged 
 
ENLARGEMENT OF OPPORTUNITY 221 
 
 sword, it was given them to foresee the reign of peace 
 not only within their own elect little land, but between 
 nation and nation, the world over. 
 
 From Isaiah and from Micah there has come down 
 even to our time the record of it : " And He will judge 
 between the nations and will decide concerning many 
 peoples; and they shall beat their swords into plough- 
 shares and their spears into pruning-hooks ; nations shall 
 not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn 
 war any more." 
 
 But what does America, two and a half thousand 
 years thereafter, care for such a vision? Is she not 
 increasing rather than disarming her armies? What 
 does any nation care? Have not men been recently 
 shedding their brothers' blood in warfare as freely as 
 ever ? What does Christendom care ? Instead of lift- 
 ing off her peoples the already depressive burden of 
 armament, has she not been enormously increasing it, 
 to fling her vast armies now into the deadliest war of 
 the whole world's history. Embattled millions of 
 " Christian " Europe, on land and sea, with engines 
 of destruction that laugh to scorn the weapons of the 
 forefathers, in the death-grip of relentless fratricidal 
 strife — is this a time for prophets of world-wide peace ? 
 It is such a time. Our lot has indeed been cast in a 
 day of unprecedented war. But it is also true that 
 the Hebrew prophets' vision of universal peace is be- 
 lieved to-day as by no preceding generation. The im- 
 perative of that heavenly vision is coming to be felt. It 
 is a day of unprecedented appreciation of international 
 peace. War must cease, international disputes must be 
 
222 VISION AND POWER 
 
 settled, like personal disputes, by righteous judgment 
 and not by the shedding of the disputants' blood; let 
 truth and not force, righteousness and not wholesale 
 slaughter, arbitration and not the crushing of the weaker 
 by the stronger nation, pronounce judgment: such is 
 the voice of the seers of the present movement for 
 world-wide peace. 
 
 They have told us the vision they have seen : " A 
 world-order held together, not by the threat of bristling 
 fortresses or cannon loaded to belch forth destruction, 
 but by the strong bonds of mutual good-will, an order 
 in which savage and backward peoples or cruel and 
 avaricious tyrants are restrained from murder and 
 rapine by a police force representing not the mailed 
 hand of any single nation, but the conscience and right- 
 eous judgment of world-federation." And it is fitting 
 that on their splendid Peace Palace at The Hague should 
 be inscribed that word of the Lord by the mouth of 
 his ancient prophets : " They shall beat their swords into 
 ploughshares and their spears into pruning-hooks." It 
 foretells the doom of war. 
 
 For the reign of the warmakers is not to be per- 
 petuated. The recurrent madness and wickedness will 
 spend itself ; it will turn again to their overthrow. Men 
 will look upon the multiplied fields of human slaughter 
 with more enlightened vision and more condemnatory 
 judgment. Out of the horror of blood and tears shall 
 come, under the reign of the living and loving God, 
 the peacemakers' day, who shall be called the children 
 of God. Instead of organized carnage, world-peace alli- 
 ances and organizations. Instead of the heroism enkin- 
 
ENLARGEMENT OF OPPORTUNITY 223 
 
 died by war, the higher moral heroism of devotion to 
 the higher life of the world. " There is a new king- 
 dom," says Edward A. Steiner, confessing his faith 
 in the coming unity of mankind, " a new kingdom 
 within the old. It cannot be destroyed. It has a new 
 language — the language of the spirit; it has a new 
 patriotism — wider than nation and race. It is now 
 emerging out of this new baptism of blood. We can 
 all hasten its coming by letting it come into our hearts." 
 May not the Master's own word find even here a partial 
 fulfilment ? — " Upon the earth distress of nations, with 
 perplexity. . . . And when these things begin to come 
 to pass, then look up and lift up your heads ; for your 
 redemption draweth nigh." 
 
 As for America, may the God of all peoples merci- 
 fully give her for moral leadership men whose love for 
 their country shall be illumined with the vision of his 
 own idea of a nation and his own eternal purpose of 
 righteous brotherhood. 
 
 For if the fraternity of nations shall be in any large 
 sense America's achievement, it will be in the most real 
 sense an achievement of Christ and the gospel. " He 
 will judge between the nations." And as matter of fact 
 the clear-sighted Christian preacher and teacher, illus- 
 trating in his life the truth on his lips, is in the fore- 
 front of the personal forces making for this and for 
 every form of helpful human fraternity. 
 
 If, on the contrary, one should be reminded that in 
 the Church as it exists among us, denominationally 
 divided, unbrotherly rivalry is sometimes more in evi- 
 dence than brotherly cooperation, the answer is that by 
 
224» VISION AND POWER 
 
 the grace of God the movement in the churches is now 
 toward oneness of emphasis in teaching and fraternity 
 in conduct. It has been said that " while the force 
 of Christianity has been separating itself into forces, 
 the forces of evil have been uniting into a combined 
 force/' But whatever of truth there may have been in 
 such an indictment, the churches are now moving to- 
 ward a unification of their forces in the name of the 
 one Lord Jesus Christ. Their rivalries put to shame, 
 they will be vitally federated for the gigantic task be- 
 fore them; and to be an organizer and leader in that 
 militant host is the vocation and opportunity of the 
 Christian preacher of America to-day. 
 
 IV 
 
 Meanwhile there comes the call to the unevangelized 
 peoples. Let any man read the history of the Chris- 
 tian Church and then, if he can, point out the period 
 or the circumstances in which such a call was more 
 instant or such an opportunity more inviting than at 
 the present hour. Changes of surpassing religious sig- 
 nificance in pagan nations have been taking place under 
 our very eyes, others are imminent, still others will 
 follow. In the first century of Christianity the West had 
 to a considerable extent outgrown its religions; in the 
 twentieth century the same is true of the East. In the 
 first century the vast extension of the Roman empire 
 facilitated the spread of the gospel ; in the twentieth 
 century the " open door " of the nations does the same 
 more freely and securely. Think, for instance, of the 
 oldest and largest of the nations, one-fifth of the whole 
 
ENLARGEMENT OF OPPORTUNITY 225 
 
 world's population, arising out of the slumbrous ex- 
 clusivism of the ages as the Republic of China, and 
 welcoming Christian physicians, teachers, and evange- 
 lists to the towns and schools and homes of its four 
 hundred million people. Looking backward no longer 
 for her golden age, she would feel after it if haply 
 she may find it in the ideals of Christian civilization. 
 The thoughts of the hearts of those multitudinous chil- 
 dren of the East are in solution. They are vigorously 
 taking form. Shall it be in the moulds of Christian 
 or non-Christian or anti-Christian ideas ? 
 
 But whether at home or abroad, the mission of the 
 preacher, let it ever be borne in mind, is neither more 
 nor less than to make Christians. By whatever means 
 or methods, directly or indirectly, it is this that he must 
 do. Was it not the Master's way, and that of his first 
 sent-ones ? Must not the souls for which the rightful 
 Lord of all gave his life receive his kingdom one by 
 one? Said Alexander MacLaren, on the occasion of 
 the presentation of his portrait to the city of Manches- 
 ter : " My work, whatever yours may be, is, and has 
 been for thirty-eight years, and I hope will be for a 
 little while longer yet, to preach Jesus Christ as the 
 King of England and the Lord of all communities, and 
 the Saviour and friend of the individual soul." Lord of 
 the community. Saviour of the soul — such is the Christ 
 of the Christian pulpit. 
 
 The Church is indeed to redeem institutions, to 
 purify politics, to save society, to make a new world. 
 This must she do in England, America, China, every 
 land beneath the sky. But why, unless it be to create 
 
226 VISION AND POWER 
 
 souls anew in the image of God and enrich their lives 
 with truth and love? And this is first of all an indi- 
 vidual work. Society itself is for the individual — apart 
 from whom it cannot exist even in imagination — and not 
 the individual for society. The preacher with his gospel 
 approaches each soul as distinctly and personally as 
 if there were no third soul on earth; and the outcome 
 of such an opportunity is not simply or chiefly in time, 
 but unto the endless ages. 
 
 Therefore, to be a preacher for the times is to lift 
 men to the heights where they shall see for themselves 
 the vision of eternal facts and values. 
 
XI 
 POWEK THROUGH EVANGELIC TRUTH 
 
 That saying ye yourselves know which was published 
 throughout all Judea, beginning from Galilee, after the 
 baptism which John preached; even Jesus of Nazareth. 
 —Acts 10:37, 38. , . x u 
 
 Him God raised up the third day and gave him to be 
 manifest, not to all the people, but unto witnesses that 
 were chosen before of God, even to us, who ate and 
 drank with him after he rose from the dead. And he 
 charged us to preai:h unto the people and to testify that 
 this is he who is ordained of God to be the Judge of 
 the living and the dead. To him bear all the prophets 
 witness, that through his name every one that believeth 
 on him shall receive remission of sins. — Acts 10 : 40-43. 
 
 Send to Joppa and fetch Simon, whose surname is 
 Peter, who shall speak unto thee words whereby thou 
 Shalt be saved, thou and all thy house.— Acts 11 : 13, 14. 
 
 UNDER the growing light of his vision of world- 
 wide redemption, Peter told the " words " with 
 which he had been entrusted — and not in vain. 
 There was a good congregation, gathered by Cornelius — 
 "having called together his kinsmen and his near 
 friends," " many come together." And under the spoken 
 gospel there fell upon them the power of the Holy Spirit, 
 so that they spoke with tongues and magnified God. 
 
 Well might the unsympathetic brethren in Jerusalem, 
 after Peter had recited the occurrence to them, feel con- 
 strained to acknowledge, " Then to the Gentiles also hath 
 God granted repentance unto life." The baptism of 
 the Spirit, the turning from sin unto the mercy of 
 God in Christ, the repentance that opens the way into 
 
 227 
 
228 VISION AND POWER 
 
 eternal life — have not the like signs in all ages marked 
 the word of preaching as a word of power ? 
 
 Was spiritual power an accompaniment, then, of spir- 
 itual vision? It would seem so. In fact, the two 
 Divine gifts are close akin. Of this, more as we go on. 
 
 One need hardly be reminded here of the ultimate 
 Source of all power, physical, governmental, spiritual, 
 in heaven and on earth. Whether the word be used in 
 the sense of authority or of energy, " there is no power but 
 of God." " Who maketh grass to grow upon the moun- 
 tains." " Thou [Pilate the governor] wouldest have 
 no power against me, except it were given thee from 
 above." " Create in me a clean heart, O God." 
 
 But there are two means or mediums through which 
 the Divine power is commonly brought to bear upon 
 the soul. They are both implied in the familiar phrase, 
 '"' a preacher of the gospel " ; for one of the two is trufh 
 (the gospel) and the other is personality (the preacher). 
 Let us take note of them in this and the following 
 chapter. 
 
 In a broad sense of the term, truth may be defined, 
 I suppose, as -facts and their meaning. To illustrate. 
 We see the sun rise, making the day, and having com- 
 pleted his prescribed course, descend out of sight, 
 leaving the world in darkness. We notice also a regular 
 variation in the solar movements throughout the year, 
 from the shortest course of the winter to the longest 
 of the summer, and back again. What does this simple 
 and majestic process mean ? The eagle from his cloud- 
 
EVANGELIC TRUTH 829 
 
 less cliff sees it more distinctly perhaps than any of us, 
 and to him it has no meaning — and he no telescope. 
 But certain gifted and energetic minds have thought 
 their way not only to the telescope, but with its aid 
 through the visible fact to its causes and its various 
 cosmic relations. And listening to their interpreta- 
 tions, we learn that the rising and setting sun is sig- 
 nificant of the diurnal revolution of the earth, our own 
 flight of over a million and a half miles a day round 
 the sun, the attraction of gravitation — in a word, of 
 the hitherto undreamt-of glory of the heavens. 
 
 True, one may decline to accept this teaching. Many 
 contemporaries of Copernicus, Martin Luther for exam- 
 ple, rejected it — though, had they been born in the 
 twentieth century instead of the fifteenth, the case would 
 doubtless have been different. But those who do accept 
 it, which to-day means all the enlightened world, find 
 here, in the fact and its meaning, a splendid body of 
 astronomic truth. 
 
 Take an illustration from a very different sphere — 
 from the inner world of mind. You feel a certain 
 sense of moral compulsion — " I ought." It has been 
 named " conscience." Its voice may antagonize other 
 voices, without or within, or may accord with them; 
 but in either case it is quite distinct from them. iNTot 
 the voice of self-interest — " It is profitable " ; nor of 
 taste — " It is beautiful " ; nor of utility — " It is use- 
 ful " ; nor of physical compulsion — " I have to " ; it is 
 the voice of moral obligation — " I am obligated, it is 
 due/' 
 
 Such is the simple and sublime moral fact, the vision 
 
230 VISION AND POWER 
 
 of duty. And being interpreted, it is seen to signify that 
 man belongs to a moral order. Which is to say that 
 he has power of choice, that he is a person, that he 
 is under moral government. It tells of freedom and 
 responsibility — the daily miracle of self-determination 
 amid contrary influences. It draws aside the veil of 
 an invisible realm and brotherhood of souls; it bears 
 witness of God. Thus by the fact of conscience and 
 its interpretation, the eyes of the soul are opened to 
 the reality and greatness of the moral universe. 
 
 Or, here is a historian. He knows the heart of man. 
 He can trace the course of the human world through 
 generations and millenniums — how the earth was peo- 
 pled, the migration of tribes,' the rise and fall of nations, 
 the old order giving place to the new, each subsequent 
 age lying germed in that which went before, and thus 
 the present significant and predictive of the future. 
 IsTot, of course, that he sees the whole world-wide and 
 age-long movement. But in the little that he does see 
 he can read off something of the wavering march of 
 humanity, in its freedom of will, with its intellectual 
 achievements, under its awfulness of sin and suffer- 
 ing, toward the goal of its earthly history. And be- 
 yond question this grand conception of historical truth 
 was reached through a close, sympathetic view and 
 review of the human facts. 
 
 Or again, the philosopher may be summoned as a 
 witness. He is interested in the perception of ulti- 
 mate truth. To him nothing else seems so great and 
 worthy. Your physical order and human history, upon 
 what do they all rest as their deepest reason? what is 
 
EVANGELIC TRUTH 231 
 
 reality? That is the question he is ever asking. Nor 
 does it go without an answer. Philosophy is an inter- 
 pretation as truly as science or history. And its method 
 is essentially the same. It is the things and events of 
 the outer world, as made known through the senses, 
 together with the acts and experiences of the soul itself, 
 as made known simply through consciousness, that sug- 
 gest and make possible of apprehension the underlying 
 principles of truth. Such truths are indeed seen in- 
 tuitively by the reason, but they are suggested and 
 demanded by the body of attentively considered inner 
 and outer facts. 
 
 So, speaking generally, while on the one hand " facts 
 without ideas are meaningless," on the other " ideas 
 without facts " are empty. The two taken together con- 
 stitute truth. 
 
 And now the same thing may be said specifically with 
 respect to evangelic truth. The gospel is a succession 
 of facts and their interpretation. For just as God 
 " made known his ways unto Moses, his doings unto 
 the children of Israel," that they might be stirred up 
 to consider, and to enter thus into a knowledge of him- 
 self, so has he made knovm his ways and his doings 
 in Jesus. Lo, here is Christianity — a revelation, the 
 supreme Divine revelation, in human history. It is not 
 given in nature or in mind; it is given in Jesus of 
 Nazareth, the Son of Man. To know him, not simply 
 according to the flesh, but as revealed by the Spirit, 
 is to see the kingdom of God. It is to know, as far 
 as it has been given men on earth to know, " what God 
 and man is." 
 
233 VISION AND POWER 
 
 Evangelic truth, then, is the interpreted fact of a 
 Person — the fact of Jesus of Nazareth and the inter- 
 pretation thereof. Tell who he was, show what he did, 
 set forth its meaning, and you have declared the gospel 
 of Christianity. 
 
 II 
 
 This, therefore, as might have been expected, was 
 Peter's evangel to the Caesareans. He calls it the word 
 which God " sent unto the children of Israel " — unto 
 them, first of all — and announces that that word, or 
 " saying," was concerning Jesus of Nazareth. He told 
 about Jesus — his doing good, his healing of them that 
 were oppressed of the devil, his death on the cross, 
 his resurrection and reappearance before chosen wit- 
 nesses, his charge to the Apostles that they go forth as 
 witness-bearers and preach him. 
 
 Also, together with the recital of facts, the preacher 
 gave words of interpretation. Jesus, he said, was 
 anointed of God with the Holy Spirit and with power ; 
 he is the fulfiller of the prophetic Scriptures, the judge 
 of man, the Lord of all, the Saviour through whose 
 '" name every one that believeth on him shall receive 
 remission of sins." 
 
 Such was the early apostolic gospel — as illustrated 
 by its first preacher. There were announced certain his- 
 toric facts and what they mean. There was repeated, 
 over and over again, one great inclusive Fact and its 
 interpretation. That is the truth as truth is in Jesus. 
 It so appears, beyond a doubt, in all the preaching that 
 is narrated or mentioned in the New Testament. 
 
EVANGELIC TRUTH 
 
 Paul, who had never seen the face of Jesus in the 
 flesh, knew no other gospel for Jew or Gentile but the 
 interpreted facts of the Cross and the Resurrection. 
 " For I delivered unto you, first of all, that which also 
 I received: that Christ died for our sins according to 
 the Scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he hath 
 been raised on the third day according to the Scrip- 
 tures." " I determined not to know anything among 
 you save Jesus Christ and him crucified." To the men 
 of Athens he preached " Jesus and the resurrection." 
 
 So throughout the teaching of the New Testament 
 itself: in the Gospels, particularly in the first three, 
 chiefly the facts, in the following books chiefly the 
 interpretation. The vital tie that binds these twenty- 
 seven little books together into the priceless volume 
 we hold in our hands to-day is their common reflec- 
 tion of the life of the once incarnate and now glorified 
 Son of God. Take as an example Peter's own further 
 exposition as given in his First Epistle. For what is 
 this whole writing to his brethren of the Dispersion, 
 from its opening doxology, " Blessed be the God and 
 Father of our Lord Jesus Christ," to the closing bene- 
 diction, " Peace be unto you all that are in Christ," 
 but a setting forth of the significance of Jesus Christ 
 in the beliefs, the experiences, the spirit, the daily con- 
 duct of Christian believers ? 
 
 The historic and the spiritual reality of Jesus — no 
 other truth is at once so human and so Divine. To 
 make a life-study of the Divine Man, as set forth in 
 the pages of the 'Ne'w Testament, as transcendent in 
 influence upon the Christian ages, as sharing with the 
 
234 VISION AND POWER 
 
 individual soul that trusts him the knowledge and love 
 of God unto eternal life — to know him and at the same 
 time to make him known through living speech to who- 
 soever will hear, such is the vocation of the Christian 
 preacher. Nor is there any other truth that the people 
 of the present age and of all other ages so need to know, 
 and to believe with heart and life, as this truth of the 
 Universal Man, the Master and Saviour and Sovereign 
 of the soul. 
 
 " The word which he sent unto the children of Israel 
 . . . even Jesus of Nazareth." " Unto " them but for 
 mankind. It was a word for Csesarea, for Rome, for 
 all the world; it was the word for all the world. So 
 Jesus himself taught. So his first confessing disciple 
 was learning. So his disciples are learning still — and 
 should have learned sooner and more obediently. 
 
 That word which is Jesus Christ, ought it not to 
 have been borne ere now, by those who have received 
 it, to every kindred and people on earth ? " You are 
 angry," said a negro fellow-traveller to Dan Crawford, 
 at the end of a fifteen miles' trek in the tall grass of 
 Central Africa. " Why do you say so ? " " Because 
 you are silent," was the reply. " Tell me more about 
 it." " In our language," answered the black man, " we 
 say that if a man is silent he is angry. This is why 
 we know that God is angry — because he is silent." 
 " God is silent." The intrepid Christian missionary 
 was cut to the heart. He opened his pocket Testament 
 and read to the man the first verse of the Epistle to 
 the Hebrews. Much more, he went to work at translat- 
 ing the New Testament into the language of his Central 
 
EVANGELIC TRUTH 235 
 
 African brother, and at building school-houses in which 
 the people might be taught to read the word which God 
 had spoken in Jesus Christ nearly two thousand years 
 before. 
 
 God was not silent. But the messengers to whom 
 he had committed his Good News had been slow to 
 tell it, as he had bidden them, unto the ends of the 
 earth. 
 
 Ill 
 
 " People need this evangel indeed, but do they wish 
 it? does the heart of man naturally desire evangelic 
 truth ? " It is a pertinent question, and may fitly be 
 considered as part of the larger question, whether men 
 have an instinctive desire to know any order of facts 
 and their meaning. May man as man be characterized 
 as a lover of truth? But concerning this larger ques- 
 tion there is hardly room for doubt. 
 
 Ask the school-houses, the teachers, the ceaseless flood 
 of books and periodicals, the scientific laboratories, the 
 world-wide and continuous questioning of the Unknown. 
 All these tell the story of the mind's hunger for knowl- 
 edge as truly as the harvest-fields and orchards and 
 mill-wheels and bake-ovens and three meals a day tell 
 the story of the body's hunger for bread. 
 
 Ask those truth-enamoured " wizards of the spade," 
 the archaeologists. See them in their isolation, at work 
 decade after decade in the long-buried cities under the 
 sands of the East. Hear their word concerning pre- 
 historic man as an artificer, an artist, a knower, a 
 thinker. Ask the devotee of scholarship or science or 
 
286 VISION AND POWER 
 
 philosophy, who is more than willing to spend his days 
 in lonely unrequited toil for the joy of finding fact 
 and truth — standing " at the extreme of the known and 
 wrestling with nature for more of her unknown." 
 
 Little Rene Descartes, because of his eagerness in 
 asking questions and his aptness to learn, was called, 
 in the eighth year of his age, the Young Philosopher. 
 When a young man he formed the resolution " that he 
 would make the search after truth the business of his 
 life." And now for three hundred years Descartes has 
 been named by common consent the father of modem 
 philosophy. Is such a mind unhuman, abnormal, a sport 
 of nature ? On the contrary, is it not altogether human 
 and normal, only an extraordinary example of that in- 
 stinct to know which is common to us all? Look for 
 answer into the wondering eyes of any little child. 
 
 Or, read the story of the first sin : " And when the 
 woman saw . . . that the tree was to be desired to 
 make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof and did 
 eat." Or, simply look within and find there the in- 
 stinct to know asserting itself among the primal impulses 
 that make us men. 
 
 One had as well ask whether there be a universal 
 motive to look and see as to ask whether there be a 
 universal motive to enquire and know. 
 
 If, on the other hand, we should be reminded of 
 how many people seem fairly well contented with igno- 
 rance, of the child's proverbial dislike of the school- 
 room, of the difficulty in inducing people really to 
 think, of the predominance of the novel over all other 
 forms of popular literature, of the readiness with which 
 
EVANGELIC TRUTH 237 
 
 all sorts of fancies and fictions are caught up as if 
 they were true and worth while, would it follow that 
 one must disbelieve in the innate love of knowledge 
 and truth? No more than that because of prevalent 
 thriftlessness and waste, one must disbelieve in the 
 love of property; or that because of cruelty, lust, un- 
 kindness, and war, one must disbelieve in the social 
 instinct; or that because of suicides and the everyday 
 recklessness of health, one must disbelieve in the love 
 of life. 
 
 It is not a question as to whether the hunger of the 
 soul for facts and their meaning has an unhindered 
 development — no weakness, no perversions, no antag- 
 onisms. It is a question as to the simple existence of 
 such a hunger. And to this question the only answer 
 is that man is a being of insatiable curiosity. 
 
 All this being admitted, one might suppose that man 
 would be especially inclined to welcome any religious 
 knowledge that might be offered him. For certainly 
 his higher nature would need to have but little develop- 
 ment to make him feel that such knowledge is the most 
 interesting and significant of all. The tantalizing mys- 
 teries of birth, death, the supernatural, who shall re- 
 solve them? The indefinable inward answer to the 
 call of the Infinite, what does it mean ? The Power or 
 the powers above, what is their will concerning me ? 
 For, such Power or powers, says the heart of man every- 
 where, there must be, attracting even when they appal. 
 What, then, is their will, and how shall I relate myself 
 to them? 
 
 We might expect some satisfying answer to such 
 
238 VISION AND POWER 
 
 questions to be universally sought after. And, as a 
 matter of fact, so it has been. The proof is in the 
 religious history of the world. 
 
 IV 
 
 Souls do want to know about things Divine and eter- 
 nal, and their o"\vn personal relations thereto. " As 
 imperatively as a man's lungs call for air his human 
 calls for a Divine." Let the preacher come, therefore, 
 proclaiming the substance of the Christian message — 
 the facts of redemption, the kingdom of God, the reve- 
 lation of the Eternal Father in Jesus — and we should 
 expect him to get a hearing. Is not this message truly 
 called an evangel, " good tidings of the kingdom of 
 God " ? Yes, indeed ; and it has been so welcomed 
 from the beginning until now. 
 
 But not universally. For here again about the " open 
 door " are " many adversaries." Did not Jesus an- 
 nounce in the synagogue of Nazareth, concerning 
 Isaiah's prophecy of " the acceptable year of the Lord," 
 the Year of God's Jubilee, that the prophecy had come 
 true then and there — " This day hath this Scripture been 
 fulfilled in your ears " ? Did not his hearers bear him 
 witness and wonder " at the words of grace that pro- 
 ceeded out of his mouth " ? And yet it was this very 
 synagogue that rose up in wrath against him and would 
 even have cast him down to death. 
 
 Minister this gospel of the grace of God, in its na- 
 tive simplicity and truth, to any community beneath 
 the sky, and you may confidently expect the response 
 of listening souls. But let not your faith fail if many 
 
EVANGELIC TRUTH S39 
 
 should seem to have no ears to hear. For people are 
 not simply human; they are sinners. The pressure of 
 the outside world with its pleasures and its business 
 may benumb their spiritual senses. The soul may be 
 enfleshed. It may be withering under the blight of 
 worldliness. It may be consumed with selfish schemes 
 and ambitions. The power to hear the word of God 
 may be atrophied through neglect or beaten down by 
 abuse. And to all these forces of moral evil the word 
 of Christian preaching is utterly oppugnant. It would 
 destroy the prevalent and destructive sins of the soul 
 and enthrone the living Christ as Lord. It must make 
 its way against them. Hence resistance and conflict. 
 
 Accordingly the word of God is compared in the 
 Xew Testament to both seed and a sword. The two 
 things are very unlike. A seed is informed with a 
 spirit and law of life. It grows, impelled by a vital 
 power within. And such is the gospel, that " seed " 
 which " is the word of God," in the soul — creative of 
 spiritual life, growth, fruitfulness. A sword, on the 
 other hand, is unliving and destructive. It has nothing 
 but death to give. It strikes down and destroys. But 
 such is the gospel in another mode of its action in 
 the soul — " the sword of the Spirit, which is the word 
 of God." It is destructive of evil. It is " sharper than 
 any two-edged sword " against not indeed the human 
 but the sinful self. It would strike down " every high 
 thing that is exalted against the knowledge of God." 
 
 " Lord, shall we smite with the sword ? " Yes, un- 
 sparingly, with the sword of truth by the power of the 
 Spirit in the hand of inexorable love. 
 
240 VISION AND POWER 
 
 Here we touch the heart of our topic: namely, the 
 distinctive power of evangelic truth in the soul. For 
 it is this truth that does somehow show itself to be, 
 as no other has ever done, a word of power. As no 
 other it appears as both sword and seed, slaying the 
 evil, producing the good. 
 
 How can these things be ? Evidently there are some 
 kinds of truth that do not affect one's moral and spir- 
 itual character at all. Directly at least they lead to 
 no moral act and make no change in the attitude of 
 the will. They give rise to no moral motives. To know, 
 for example, any proposition of plane geometry is not 
 adapted to make the knower either a better man or 
 a worse; and the same thing is true of pure mathe- 
 matics generally, from the simplest to the most abstruse 
 of its demonstrations. It does not so energize in the 
 mind as to make the liar truthful, or the vindictive 
 sweet-spirited, or the miserable blessed. 
 
 In like manner, one might spend a lifetime in the 
 various and interesting fields opened up by natural 
 science, without coming upon any group of facts or 
 truths that are likely, by direct action, to stimulate the 
 will and guide the conscience, or to renew the heart, 
 or to create the spirit of the sacrificial life. So with 
 mechanics, so with much of the teaching of the schools. 
 So for the most part with the knowledge of trades and 
 professions. 
 
 Powerful beyond all appreciation is the mechanical 
 
EVANGEIJC TRUTH 241 
 
 and other inventive knowledge that has made our mate- 
 rial civilization. A great English economist has asserted 
 that one new idea, such as Bessemer's process of pro- 
 ducing steel, " adds as much to England's productive 
 power as the labour of a hundred thousand men." How 
 much muscular energy would you set over against Cyrus 
 Hall McCormick's idea of cutting wheat, or the idea of 
 the present-day printing-press? Think of the enor- 
 mous effects produced in the life of the world by the 
 realized truths of the great discoverers and inventors. 
 Eor the steam-engine, the ocean cable, the telephone, 
 and chloroform and vaccination and the antitoxins and 
 the beneficent wonders of recent surgery and the thou- 
 sand machines and instruments and crafts and remedies 
 that are so ceaselessly ministering to the human welfare 
 of our time — what are they all but knowledge, truths, 
 ideas, moulding for themselves material bodies? The 
 sphere of all such ideas, however, is limited, and it is 
 not the highest. They do not touch the moral and spir- 
 itual. They are makers of machines and medicines, for 
 which the whole world is their debtor; but they are 
 not makers of character. They do not effect the new 
 birth of the soul. 
 
 But with certain other kinds of knowledge the case 
 is distinctly different. It is different, for instance, 
 with the knowledge of one's fellow-men and one's self 
 as gained, let us say, through history and biography. 
 That does exert a recognizable influence upon the moral 
 nature. It is not a matter of the intellect only. It 
 brings the sympathetic reader into such contact with 
 the mind and character of his fellows of the past and 
 
242 VISION AND POWER 
 
 the present as tends to make him like them. For here 
 are human personalities to warn or inspire, to lead or 
 mislead. Here are personal ideals urging with mystic 
 voices, Follow me. Here are morally dynamic ideas. 
 One rises from the sympathetic reading of a great 
 biography with a distinct influence upon one's spirit 
 to live a higher life — or, it may be, a lower. 
 
 Why, for example, did Plutarch write those " Lives " 
 which have been read with interest even unto our own 
 day? He himself tells us in one of them that it was 
 because " the beauty of goodness has an attractive power, 
 it kindles in us at once an active principle, it forms 
 our manners and influences our desires, not only when 
 represented in a living example, but even in a historical 
 description." " For this reason," he says, " we chose 
 to proceed in writing the lives of great men." 
 
 There is another word to be said about mathematical 
 or scientific knowledge and the like. Let the mathe- 
 matician ask, " Whose thoughts are these, whose im- 
 mutable truths of number and space, a few of which 
 I have been able to follow, and along the lines of which 
 the material universe seems to be built ? " and so let 
 him gain a vision of the Eternal Reason, the Creative 
 Thinker. Or, similarly, let the chemist or physicist or 
 astronomer pass from proximate, or unreal, causes to 
 the Divine Artificer, the one Real Cause. Let him recog- 
 nize the Will back of the orderly and upward move- 
 ment going on through unnumbered centuries. Thus 
 these men of science cross over into philosophy, theism, 
 theology. And here they also come into contact with 
 truth that has power upon the heart and conscience. 
 
EVANGELIC TRUTH 243 
 
 For the knowledge of God as the theist knows him makes 
 appeal to the spirit of awe, of reverence, of worship, 
 of obedience. It is such a heavenly vision as puts a 
 certain moral pressure upon the seer. For He who 
 speaks in it is the God who has already been speaking 
 in the conscience. 
 
 If, then, it is truth concerning our fellows, ourselves, 
 and God, truth of humanity and of Deity, that comes 
 home to heart and conscience, and tends thus to work 
 moraf changes in the life, what shall be said of the 
 Christian gospel? Here is the weightiest of all truth 
 concerning our fellow-men, ourselves, and God. What 
 might we suppose it to be as an influence upon the 
 heart and will of them that receive it? It must be 
 and is what the New Testament declares it to be, the 
 power of God unto salvation. " Send to Joppa and 
 fetch Simon, whose surname is Peter, who shall speak 
 unto thee words whereby thou shalt be saved, thou 
 and all thy house." It is the word of judgment and of 
 pardon. It is the word of life through death, even of 
 life eternal through the death of the sinful self — " I 
 live, and yet no longer I, but Christ liveth in me." It 
 is formative of the mind of Christ in the recipient soul. 
 To preach it effectually is to offer a Divine-human 
 answer to the prayer. Thy kingdom come. As it fell 
 from his own lips Jesus himself declared : " The words 
 that I have spoken unto you are spirit and are life." 
 
 VI 
 
 Is Jesus, then, the author of the Good News of God ? 
 He is even more truly, as already suggested, this Good 
 
244 VISION AND POWER 
 
 IN'ews itself. It is all personalized in him, the Divine 
 Sacrifice for the sin of the world. At his cross we 
 find God as Saviour. Peter had already been bearing 
 witness of him in Israel, and now comes to declare 
 to his Gentile congregation in Csesarea that " to him 
 bear all the prophets witness that through his name 
 every one that believeth on him shall receive remis- 
 sion of sins." " To wit, that God was in Christ, recon- 
 ciling the world unto himself, not reckoning unto them 
 their trespasses, and having committed unto us the 
 word of reconciliation." " Thou shalt call his name 
 Jesus; for it is he that shall save his people from 
 their sins." Which ISTame is the reconciling word com- 
 mitted, now as in the beginning, to the preachers of 
 the New Covenant. 
 
 In him, therefore, as the Divine Sacrifice, is the 
 supreme manifestation of the heart and will of God. 
 It may seem to us almost a matter of course that men 
 should think of God and have communion with him 
 in the Christian way — as the Father of an infinite 
 majesty and of a holy and tender sacrificial love. But 
 in point of fact it is far from being a matter of course. 
 Such filial faith and knowledge of God was not the 
 faith and experience even of Israel before our Lord's 
 day. On the contrary, it is a result of the one 
 life of perfect sonship which has been lived in the 
 flesh — ^the Life whose completion and deepest mean- 
 ing was that suffering love in which the fatherhood of 
 God is most effectually revealed. 
 
 " To us," says the Apostle Paul, contrasting Chris- 
 tianity and paganism, " there is one God, the Father." 
 
EVANGELIC TRUTH 245 
 
 And the origin of this distinctive Christian doctrine of 
 Deity is contained in the additional confession of faith, 
 " and one Lord, Jesus Christ." * Our knowledge of 
 God as Father is due to the revelation of the Divine 
 fatherhood in the Divine Sacrifice. 
 
 It is in him, moreover, that our own sonship to the 
 Father in heaven may be realized. " As many as re- 
 ceived him, to them gave he the right to become children 
 of God, even to them that believe on his name." Here 
 a new type of personal goodness came into human 
 experience. 'Not that the morally good in the Word 
 made flesh and in them that received him was absolutely 
 different from that which the Spirit of God had breathed 
 already into human hearts in Israel and elsewhere. We 
 may think of it more truly as the fulfilment of what 
 had thus been realized. We hear its note in the new 
 commandment, which was — that we love one another? 
 That was the old commandment. The new command- 
 ment was given under a higher ideal and with an 
 added power of realization : '' even as I have loved you, 
 that ye also love one another." This new commandment 
 is in fulfilment of the Divine purpose that we should 
 " be conformed to the image of his Son." It is the 
 meekness and gentleness of Christ. It is the simplicity 
 that was in him. It is the vitally unified tenderness, 
 strength, aelf-poise, sympathy, entire devotion to the 
 will of God, and utter self-sacrifice for the salvation of 
 men, that was illustrated in the cloudless light of the 
 life of Jesus. That is Christian law. Christian moral- 
 ity. Christian character. Have you made acquaint- 
 
 *I Corinthians 8:6. 
 
246 VISION AND POWER 
 
 ance with a personal example of it? Then may you 
 truly say, " I know a man in Christ." 
 
 Here, then, is the heart of the Christian message — 
 it is the Christ himself. Here is the evangel of truth 
 concerning God and man — it is the One who could say, 
 '• I am the Truth." Whom we preach. 
 
 Will it sufl&ce? Any quest for a larger, or a more 
 personal, or a more solemn and inspiring, or a more 
 practical and effective truth, must be utterly vain. No 
 other " tidings of peace," no other " word," is com- 
 mensurate with this " good tidings of peace by Jesus 
 Christ." No moral philosophy, from the earliest to 
 the latest written, has shown any such motive power. 
 No page of history or biography, nor any philosophy of 
 theism, forceful as these may be upon receptive minds, 
 and certainly not Buddhism, nor Islam, nor the no- 
 faith of agnosticism, is to be accounted of, in compari- 
 son with this.word, in regenerative power. It is creative 
 of the new man, the new life, the new age of righteous- 
 ness and brotherhood. " Salvation in sanctification of 
 the Spirit and belief of the truth." 
 
 And what it has already done, with what it is now 
 doing, is predictive of its future effects. " Of His 
 own will He brought us forth by the word of truth, that 
 we should be a kind of first-fruits of his creatures." The 
 first-fruits of that living and life-giving word now, the 
 " harvest of the world " ripening in its season. 
 
 VII 
 
 Nor need we suppose there is any peculiarity in the 
 manner in which this evangelic truth acts upon the 
 
EVANGELIC TRUTH 247 
 
 soul. We do it no honour by making of its influence a 
 gratuitous mystery. Let no one vaguely say to him- 
 self : " Somehow, without any reference to the laws 
 of the mind, this gospel, just so it is spoken to men, will 
 act in a way that no other truth acts, and thus, we know 
 not how, will bring them salvation," It acts in its 
 sphere, so far as we know, just as other forms of per- 
 suasive truth act in theirs. That is to say, it touches 
 motives and thus incites the will to choice and action. 
 The preacher is not a rhapsodist, but a persuader. 
 Men are not saved by magic. They are taught ; they 
 are convinced ; they are persuaded ; and opening 
 their hearts to Christ, they are saved — all under 
 the quickening power of the Spirit of the living 
 God. 
 
 But these Christward motives, what are they? what 
 are the incentives to action that urge a man toward 
 repentance unto life and self-committal to the Lord 
 Jesus Christ ? or that press him on through the whole 
 course of a Christian life ? First of all, let the preacher 
 look into his own experience for an answer. For he 
 may be quite sure that the motives that have been influ- 
 ential with him are suited in like manner to touch and 
 move the wills of many others. Then, preaching to 
 himself, as every preacher must, he will at the same 
 time be preaching to his fellows. 
 
 But if he should also make enquiry of other Chris- 
 tians, he would doubtless obtain through this ques- 
 tionaire some such as the following answers : " The fear 
 of punishment," " the desire for happiness," " the de- 
 sire for freedom from condemnation," " a sense of un- 
 
248 VISION AND POWER 
 
 rest with a longing for abiding peace and satisfaction," 
 ^' a sense of incompleteness together with an aspira- 
 tion to become all that a man ought to be," " a feeling 
 of obligation to set a Christian example before other 
 people," " an attraction toward the Christian life as 
 that which every one ought to live," " a realized need of 
 Divine help," " a spirit of love and loyalty toward 
 Christ," " the ideal of doing the will of the Father 
 in heaven as the one true law of life," " the blessedness 
 of a life of service to one's fellow-men in Christ's 
 name." 
 
 Now, two or more of these motives may actuate the 
 same person at the same time ; for in no great and im- 
 portant undertaking are men likely to act under the 
 influence of one motive alone. Again, it may be that 
 in this or that hearer none of them is actively present. 
 They have not asserted themselves. They may be lying 
 dormant. They may exist only in the way of capacity — 
 potentially, not actually. Nevertheless, let the appeal 
 to them be made. Call upon men, with the holy gospel 
 of God, to repent. Urge them to yield their wills to 
 the Lord Jesus Christ. Claim them in the Master's 
 name for a life of love and service. And the poten- 
 tial motive may be stirred into actual and resultful 
 life. 
 
 Such, then, is evangelic truth in its action upon the 
 soul. 
 
 Would any man fain speak so great a word worthily ? 
 The conditions are manifest. First and last and al- 
 ways, let him be and become what he speaks. By faith. 
 
EVANGELIC TRUTH 249 
 
 experience, practice, let him make the evangel of Jesus 
 his very own — truth interfused with personality. 
 
 Indeed, he cannot even know this evangel of Jesus, 
 his one message to men, without thus making it his 
 own. For Jesus, evangel, as we have seen, is in its 
 highest expression Jesus himself; and to know him 
 is not a matter of the hearing of the ear or of simple 
 intellectual perception, but most truly of the heart 
 and will. It is a knowledge which comes through one- 
 ness with its object. Only a living man can know 
 what life is. Only a spiritually quickened man can 
 know " Christ, who is our life." There must be the 
 Christian mind, the Christian purpose, the forming 
 Christian character. 
 
 Let us, then, give heed to the suggestion of power 
 through the personality of the preacher. 
 
xn 
 
 POWER THEOUGH THE PEESONALITY OF 
 THE PREACHER 
 
 And we are witnesses of all things which he did. — 
 Acts 10: 39. 
 
 And when it came to pass that Peter entered, Cornelius 
 met him and fell down at his feet and worshipped him. 
 But Peter raised him up, saying. Stand up, I myself 
 also am a man. — Acts 10:25, 26. 
 
 And Peter opened his mouth and said . . . — Acts 
 10:34, 
 
 IT is shown in the Third Epistle of John — that of 
 " the Elder unto Gains the beloved " — how men may- 
 be " fellow-workers with the truth " — namely, by 
 welcoming to their homes the witness-bearers of Christ. 
 But there is another way, which is open to all men, 
 whether it be their privilege to practise the gracious 
 rites of Christian hospitality or not, and that is by 
 showing forth the truth in their own personal lives. 
 This would make them, in a larger sense than that of 
 the Elder to Gains his host, fellow-workers with the 
 truth; because it would be truth and personality inter- 
 blending and working harmoniously together toward the 
 same great end. 
 
 Not " arms and the man," nor " tools and the man," 
 but truth and the man is the heroic story of the New 
 Testament and the Church of Christ. So, the preacher 
 
 250 
 
PERSONALITY OF THE PREACHER 251 
 
 himself — his spirit, convictions, voice, conduct, char- 
 acter, inner and outer life — as well as the truth of 
 which he is the bearer, becomes a means of conveying 
 spiritual power to other souls. He intermixes with his 
 message. Humanizing the truth, he helps human souls 
 to take hold of it. Like the rain of heaven, which 
 dissolves the substances of the soil in such a way that 
 they can be taken up by the rootlets of the growing 
 plant, so the Christian personality of the preacher en- 
 ters as a solvent into his word of preaching, to make 
 it the more readily available to the hearer. 
 
 Might not Cornelius have been told in vision the 
 words whereby he and his household should be saved, 
 without any human intermediary ? ISTo doubt ; but it is 
 also true that such words might come with added eifect- 
 iveness from the lips of a fellow-man. The personality 
 of the messenger would count for something. 
 
 Eor something? In the case before us, it might be 
 expected to count for a great deal. Because Simon 
 Peter's was no small or feeble personality, but sympa- 
 thetic, enthusiastic, sincere, that of a warm-hearted and 
 hopeful believer in Jesus. Was he not the foremost 
 of the Twelve? Is there not evidence that he exerted 
 personal influence over the others, so that they were 
 inclined to do as he did? When he averred, with his 
 accustomed explosive vitality, that the face of death 
 itself should not gain from him a denial of his Mas- 
 ter, " likewise also said all the disciples." When, hav- 
 ing been outrun by his brother disciple John to the 
 tomb of Jesus, he came and made bold to enter in, 
 " then entered in therefore the other disciple also, who 
 
262 VISION AND POWER 
 
 came first to the tomb." When, some days thereafter, 
 in company with several of his brethren, he said, " I 
 go' a-fishing," they said, " We also come with thee " ; and 
 forth they fared together, he and therefore they, to 
 toil all night on the lake. And unhappily, on the other 
 hand, when in Antioch he withdrew from social inter- 
 course with the Gentile Christians, the rest of the Jews 
 did the same, " so that even Barnabas was carried 
 away with their dissimulation." 
 
 Here, then, came a preacher whose personality was 
 by no means a negligible quantity. To say the least, 
 he would show no signs of effeminacy. Not yet per- 
 fected, his spirit was nevertheless that of a genuine 
 big brother, energetic, buoyant, stimulating — a man to 
 win a following. 
 
 Let no pulpit be justly blamable with a lack of manli- 
 ness. Sympathetic it must ever be ; mawkish or insipid, 
 never. Gentleness becomes a man — " the Lord's serv- 
 ant must not strive but be gentle toward all, apt to 
 teach, forbearing " — but not softness. Tenderness be- 
 comes him, but not effusiveness. If there be a place 
 anywhere for soft talk, let no one imagine he has found 
 it in the Christian pulpit. Not in the hymn, nor in the 
 prayer, nor in the sermon is it called for. Think of 
 a soft-talking prophet or apostle — even though, like 
 Hosea or Paul, his very heart be breaking with sacri- 
 ficial love. 
 
 Por young hearers as well as older, for women as well 
 as men, for the whole many-minded congregation, for 
 city and for country, there is needed, with all friend- 
 liness of fellow-feeling, the virile message and mes- 
 
PERSONALITY OF THE PREACHER 253 
 
 senger. Because the effeminate is no more the feminine 
 than is the blustering the masterful, or the childish the 
 childlike. 
 
 Nor can we imagine the bearing of Simon Peter as 
 that of the mere pulpiteer, or that of the self-seeking 
 professional orator, the ecclesiastic spellbinder; and 
 beyond all question it was not that of the pulpit ex- 
 quisite. He wore no mask, he took no actor's part; 
 it was his plain and proper self that spoke. His action 
 was uncalculating. His sentences were heart-beats. 
 And as even an Arab proverb reminds us, while " the 
 neck is bent by the sword, heart is bent only by heart." 
 
 Something more. He was a man transformed by 
 the power of a great conviction. In Jesus of ITazareth 
 he had found the Christ — " We have believed and know 
 that thou art the Holy One of God." He had seen that 
 Holy One alive from the dead; and it had made him 
 a new man — illumined through new vision, effective 
 with new power. 
 
 When, therefore, this spiritually virile brother man 
 came promptly in compliance with the Roman captain's 
 request, would not let him pay homage at his feet, 
 went into the house talking with him, declared his 
 faith that in every nation he that feared God and 
 wrought righteousness was acceptable to God — -when 
 this prophet of fire and force, with conviction in the 
 tones of his voice and the light of vision in his eyes, 
 bore personal testimony to the facts of the life, death, 
 and resurrection of Jesus, we may well believe that 
 together with the truth of Christ there wrought the 
 personality of the preacher. 
 
254j vision and POWER 
 
 n 
 
 Greatest and most real of all known facts is this fact 
 of personality. We are conscious of it in ourselves. 
 At the same time we know by indubitable signs its 
 presence in others. Let the mother and father go on 
 caring for their child. Through all the years of in- 
 fancy and of adolescence, let them freely expend upon 
 him whatever treasures of wisdom and love they may 
 have at command. For the purposed outcome of their 
 nurture, teaching, and discipline, the result of their 
 self-denials and self-sacrifice, is a product valuable be- 
 yond all estimation. They can make no better contri- 
 bution to the world, none more potent, than to train 
 and send forth a true and strong personality. 
 
 Is it not, indeed, the product for which God him- 
 self has planned and wrought from the beginning of 
 our planet's history? What else has the creation been 
 ever looking forward to, predicting, preparing for? 
 " Into whatever region of thought we stray," says Jona- 
 than Brierly, " whether theology, history, literature, or 
 art, we find the universe spelling out one word as its 
 final meaning. It exists for persons." 
 
 Men may not ponder this crowning fact of person- 
 ality as they might; yet it is none the less the very 
 sun of their life-system, the center round which all 
 their interests revolve. It is that which chiefly influ- 
 ences them in others and by which they, in their turn, 
 chiefly influence others. Because it is not simply 
 what human beings say or do, but what they are. It 
 
PERSONALITY OF THE PREACHER 255 
 
 is not a look or word or act, but the living source 
 of all such forces, a subtle and ceaseless personal 
 power. 
 
 That deeply penetrative impact of soul upon soul 
 which is commonly called the power of example might 
 be described with equal truth as the contagion of per- 
 sonality. The child " catches " rude or gentle man- 
 ners, refined or coarse language, true or false ideas 
 and ideals, from his companions, in a manner quite 
 analogous to that of catching from them contagious 
 bodily states. 
 
 The invisible character-germs are in the moral atmos- 
 phere of the home, the school, the playground, the neigh- 
 bourhood, the church. They spread increasingly from 
 soul to soul. Otherwise, why should we care what com- 
 pany those whom we love, especially if they be little 
 children or adolescents, are keeping? And why should 
 it have become proverbial that a man is known by the 
 company he keeps ? It is not only because he will seek 
 association with those of the same tastes and character 
 with himself, but also because the association itself 
 will tend to make him of the same tastes and character 
 with them. 
 
 And that man is yet to be born who is naturally proof 
 against the touch of other personalities upon his own. 
 In fact, there is no one who wishes to be proof against 
 it — none but instinctively craves it for himself. The 
 social nature demands it, even as the physical nature 
 demands bread. 
 
 True, individuals may be seen here and there in the 
 crowded street who possess extraordinary personal re- 
 
256 VISION AND POWER 
 
 sources. They can spend much time enjojahly and 
 profitably, alone. But where shall we find one who 
 would live his whole life alone, or who, if he stop to 
 think at all, does not know himself to be incalculably 
 indebted for the good he enjoys to his contact with 
 others ? 
 
 It is not only that the small need the great, the child 
 the man, the poor the well-to-do, the illiterate the well 
 informed, the people the preacher. But in every case 
 the reverse is likewise true. Even a little child taken 
 into the life of a lonely man may change the whole 
 face of the world to that man's eyes. 
 
 Both in intellect and character the Apostle Paul was 
 certainly one of the very greatest of the sons of men. 
 His converts and other fellow-Christians were not, as 
 a class, such as would naturally be attractive to him. 
 Most of them were ignorant, some were slaves, some 
 had lived lives of coarse immorality or perhaps of crime. 
 But they had been renewed in spirit by the grace of 
 God and in a weak and stumbling way were endeavour- 
 ing now to live their life in Christ. And how much they 
 meant to the gifted and cultured apostle! Writing to 
 the Philippians, he says, " Brethren beloved, my joy 
 and crown " ; to the Thessalonians, " But we, brethren, 
 being bereaved of you for a short season, in presence not 
 in heart, endeavoured the more exceedingly to see your 
 face with great desire " ; to the Eomans, whom he had 
 never yet visited, " That I with you may be comforted 
 in you, each of us by the other's faith, both yours and 
 mine." Independent, was he ? Yes, in the sense of hav- 
 ing great resources within himself; but emphatically 
 
PERSONALITY OF THE PREACHER 257 
 
 not, in the sense of indifference toward mutual life- 
 sharing with others. 
 
 The Master of life himself wanted those whom he 
 had begun to call " friends " to be near him even in 
 Gethsemane. " Sit ye here, while I pray." If their 
 poor and unenlightened sympathy could minister any 
 comfort or strength to the Master when " amazed 
 and sore troubled," with the brimming cup of sacrificial 
 suffering at his lips, how much more may the least of 
 us all, through the simple heart-beat of sympathy, be- 
 come a strength-giver even to the strongest. 
 
 ni 
 
 And now specifically as to the cooperant force of 
 personality in the teaching and preaching of God's word. 
 Take Israel of old as an example. In what form of 
 literature did the Spirit and providence of God give 
 them the holy Book which, through generation after 
 generation, made them what they became for the fulfil- 
 ment of the Divine purpose? Predominantly it was 
 history; and this Old Testament history is biography. 
 The God-breathed truth was made luminous and real 
 to them through a great succession of human lives. 
 
 If, for illustration, in a cloister of Herod's temple, 
 you could have had opportunity to talk with some such 
 spiritual Jewish minds as, let us say, Simeon and Anna, 
 and had asked how it came to pass that they and their 
 people got so strong a hold of the doctrine of the one 
 true and living God, what would have been their answer ? 
 We should be quite justified in imagining them as nam- 
 ing Abraham, the pioneer of the monotheistic faith, who 
 
25d VISION AND POWER 
 
 left his father's house in a land of idolatry at the call 
 of Grod, and taught his faith to his children after him — 
 " We are the children of Abraham." Or they would 
 have spoken of the prophets' splendid idealism, their 
 vision of righteousness and passion for its realization 
 in Israel; of the consequent prophetic denunciation of 
 the foul idolatries that were corrupting the land; of 
 such an experience as that of Isaiah the son of Amoz in 
 the temple, the antiphony of the seraphim, " Holy, holy, 
 holy is Jehovah of hosts, the whole earth is full of his 
 glory," and the half-despairing " Woe is me ! " that 
 broke from the young prophet's heart — " We are the 
 children of the prophets." If you had asked them about 
 the laws which distinguished their people from all other 
 peoples, they would have said : " Yes, the laws of Moses, 
 none purer and greater than he, from the mouth of God 
 he received them on Sinai and delivered them unto our 
 fathers — no prophet has yet arisen like unto him." Had 
 you asked about the hope of Messiah, waiting expectantly 
 as they were for that " consolation of Israel," they would 
 have spoken of Isaiah, Micah, and other prophets 
 through whom God had spoken to their fathers con- 
 cerning the Man who should come to reign in glory, and 
 of the promise: "Behold, I will send you Elijah the 
 prophet before the great and terrible day of the Lord 
 come." 
 
 In a word, it was about their great and good men, 
 as representatives of the word of God, that the faith 
 of the people gathered. It was not by an abstract truth 
 or a legal code, but by inspired personalities, that the 
 abiding enthusiasm of Israel was kindled. It was 
 
PERSONALITY OF THE PREACHER 259 
 
 Divine truth " entangled in events " and possessing 
 the lips and lives of personal teachers, that mediated 
 to the people the power of their redeeming God. 
 
 " We seek with word and thought 
 To open the eyes of the blind: 
 But the word avails us naught 
 To make the world to our mind, 
 Until we have learned God's plan 
 And sent truth forth in a man," 
 
 Who was Jesus ? Truth incarnate. " The Word " — 
 the Eternal Word uttering the Eternal Reason — " was 
 made flesh and dwelt among us." " The Life was the 
 light of men." " In Whom are all the treasures of 
 wisdom and knowledge hidden." Men are saved not 
 by a writing or a ritual or a discipline, not by a truth 
 or a legal code, but by a Person. 
 
 And despite the opposing power of sin, the re- 
 sponse, whether in the first century or in our own, to 
 the personality of Jesus has been utterly incompar- 
 able. 
 
 For all the truths of eternal righteousness and love 
 which Jesus taught, he himself, first of all and always, 
 lived. And he would have us like"\vise, in our meas- 
 ure, translate these same truths into terms of person- 
 ality. Whether spoken in the form of precepts or other- 
 wise, they are life-truths, and therefore to be lived. 
 They must be turned into goodness by Jesus' messen- 
 gers, as by all his disciples everywhere. " Your Heav- 
 enly Father," " One is your teacher and all ye are 
 brethren," " He that humbleth himself shall be exalted," 
 " It is enough that the servant should be as his master," 
 " There is nothing covered that shall not be revealed," 
 
260 VISION AND POWER 
 
 " A man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the 
 things which he possesseth " — are not such words as 
 these truths to be done? Indeed, does not the Teacher 
 himself speak thus of them, as when in the conclusion 
 of the Sermon on the Mount he says : " Every one there- 
 fore who heareth these sayings of mine and doeth them." 
 To do them in Jesus' sense of the word is to do them 
 from the heart, which is to live them. 
 
 IV 
 
 Indeed, it was on truth and personality — truth as 
 embodied in personality, personality as embodying truth 
 — that Jesus founded his church. " Thou art the Christ, 
 the Son of the living God." " Thou art Peter, and upon 
 this rock I will build my Church." On truth? Wot 
 on truth apart from a person. On a person, then ? Not 
 on a person apart from truth. But on a truth- 
 possessed, truth-living, truth-confessing man. Of the 
 Congregation of those who confess his name through- 
 out the world and the ages, figuratively spoken of by 
 Jesus as a building of which he himself is the Builder, 
 of this great Ecclesia he calls the first witnessing disci- 
 ple the first, or foundation, stone. Of this same vast 
 Temple for the indwelling of the Divine Spirit, Peter 
 himself has said — did he have that great word at 
 Csesarea Philippi in mind? — using a figure in which 
 God is the builder and Christ the " chief corner-stone, 
 elect, precious," Christians, " as living stones, are built 
 up a spiritual house " ; * and in the metaphor of the 
 Apostle of the Gentiles, they " are built upon the foun- 
 
 *I Peter 2:5, 6. 
 
PERSONALITY OF THE PREACHER 261 
 
 dation of the Apostles and prophets " of the !N"ew Testa- 
 ment, " Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner- 
 stone." 
 
 Of what, then, is the Church of God in these Chris- 
 tian ages — that which we call the Christian Church — 
 constituted ? Of the creative personality of Christ and 
 the reborn personalities of his first witnesses and their 
 successors. 
 
 As might have been expected, therefore, all along 
 the history of the Christian pulpit appears, together 
 with the evangelic truth, the personal force of the 
 preacher. It may be a winning or a convincing or an 
 imperative force; in any case it is his. Note the ex- 
 amples of it in the pulpits of to-day — and of yesterday. 
 Note the need of it where one might least suppose it 
 would be called for — say, in the wilds of Central 
 Africa : " Thus you see us confronted," says Dan 
 Crawford, " with a painful and even awful aspect of 
 this winning of first-generation Africans for Christ — I 
 mean the innocent way they take you for walking and 
 talking Bibles." Note the beginnings of it in the 
 preaching of the apostolic age. It appears not only 
 in the Apostle Peter, but more notably in the later 
 called apostle who could say to his Christian converts 
 in Thessalonica : " We were well pleased to impart unto 
 you not the gospel of God only, but also our own souls, 
 because ye were become very dear to us," Truth in 
 alliance with love, truth-giving in the spirit of self- 
 giving, the impartation of their own lives, their " own 
 souls," together with the gospel of God — that was the 
 ministry of Paul and his companions to the congrega- 
 
262 VISION AND POWER 
 
 tion they tad gathered in the European city of Thessa- 
 lonica. 
 
 Or, as one of the less conspicuous characters, take 
 Barnabas the apostolic exhorter — Joseph, who was sur- 
 named by the Apostles Barnabas (" the Son of Exhorta- 
 tion "). " He was a good man." The word ( vaya^oi) 
 is evidently used in its sense of Tcind, generous, benevo- 
 lent. For wherever Barnabas appears in the story of 
 The Acts it is in the way of some generous or friendly 
 or self-effacing conduct * — a kind-hearted, helpful 
 brother. Hence we are not surprised that he should be 
 called by the brethren of the council in Jerusalem " be- 
 loved," or that with a glad heart he should minister 
 to the young Christians at Antioch, or that it should 
 be recorded of his ministry of exhortation in that city : 
 " And much people was added unto the Lord." 
 
 " For he was a good " — preacher ? Something 
 greater — " a good man." When the life of the preacher 
 shows that unconscious Christian goodness which will 
 make friends for himself, it will at the same time be 
 making friends for the truth he represents and the 
 Master he serves. So will it vitally help him " add much 
 people " unto the Lord. 
 
 Now, it is quite possible, in fact a common experi- 
 ence, to be impressed more or less with the personal 
 power of some person whom we have never even seen. 
 Suppose him to be an author, making himself as well 
 as his ideas felt in his writings. In the written words, 
 
 ♦Acts 4: 36, 37; 9: 27; 11: 22, 23, 25; 15: 37, 39. 
 
PERSONALITY OF THE PREACHER 263 
 
 it may be, the reader hears as it were the accents of 
 a voice, feels the heart-throb of a masterly and gracious 
 brother man. Of the New Testament writers, for in- 
 stance, how strongly does the Apostle Paul strike home, 
 even across continents and centuries, not only with his 
 great revealed truths, but also with a personality to 
 which these same truths were the very bread of life — 
 the great-minded, tender-hearted, courteous, mystical, 
 practical, consecrated soul of the man. 
 
 So with this or that writer whose words have entered 
 deeply into one's inner life. Why is not the book 
 sufficient ? Why care for the author ? We do care. 
 He has influenced our thinking, our spirit, our life. 
 (We have felt the thrill of his personal power — a spir- 
 itual contact. He is greater than his written words. 
 He is self-diffused through his book. We visit the 
 house which was his home. " This," says the attendant, 
 " is the room in which the book was written ; " and we 
 enter reverently, for — 
 
 " What's hallowed ground? 
 'Tis where the birth 
 Of sacred thoughts 
 
 Thrilled souls of worth." 
 
 But more penetrating and humanizing is the power 
 of personality expressing itself not with pen and ink, 
 but in a living face and in living speech. There are 
 faces which one instinctively trusts — or hesitates to 
 trust. " Isn't it lovely ? " said to me a Sister of Char- 
 ity, showing a likeness of the uncommonly ill-favoured 
 face of the founder of her order. It was Vincent's 
 benignant soul at which she was looking. No fineness 
 
264 VISION AND POWER 
 
 of features can make a soulless face impressive, nor 
 can any plainness make a soulful face other than fine 
 and fair. " If you are not beautiful at seventeen," 
 said their teacher to a school of young women, " it is 
 not your fault, but if you are not beautiful at seventy 
 it will be your fault." Here, as everywhere, it is the 
 personality that tells. 
 
 Have you known a man whose mere presence seemed 
 to lower the moral or religious temperature of the com- 
 pany he entered ? You have known another of whom 
 it was true, as some one has said, that " when he is 
 present doubts die away and certainty increases, the 
 unseen world is nearer, and spiritual powers are 
 active." 
 
 It is reported of Richard Whately and John Henry 
 l^ewman that, in the common room of Oxford Univer- 
 sity, their comrades required Whately to prove what he 
 said, with a clear process of reasoning, but were in- 
 clined to accept Newman's affirmations without asking 
 for proofs. While trusting Whately's logic, they trusted 
 Newman himself. It does not follow, of course, that 
 Whately was untrustworthy either in intellect or in 
 character; for exactly the opposite is true. Newman 
 himself acknowledged a great intellectual indebtedness 
 to his clear-minded logical friend. He says of him: 
 " While I was still awkward and timid, he took me by 
 the hand and acted the part to me of a gentle and 
 encouraging instructor. He emphatically opened my 
 mind and taught me to think and use my reason." But 
 Newman, even in this early stage of his career, was 
 exerting an altogether exceptional personal influence 
 
PERSONALITY OF THE PREACHER 265 
 
 upon other minds. And it was not chiefly due to his 
 intellectual endowments, but rather to the manifest 
 sincerity, the intensity of religious devotedness, the 
 restrained passionate earnestness of the man. It was 
 this extraordinary moral intentness back of his intel- 
 lectual and literary activity that made Newman, de- 
 spite his reactionary and erroneous beliefs, so notable 
 an ecclesiastic power in the England of his day. 
 
 Now it is such a power of sincerity, conviction, 
 moral earnestness that is to be used to the utmost in 
 the Christian pulpit. A young woman perplexed in 
 faith who went, through curiosity, to hear Dwight L. 
 Moody preach, said on coming away : " I like him, he 
 just makes you believe." It was not the knowledge or 
 the reasoning but the moral intentness and intensity 
 of the preacher that made for even the intellectual 
 assurance of his doubting hearer. 
 
 A great conviction, is it not a prime essential of per- 
 suasive power? Even the errorist or the fanatic has 
 often illustrated its effectiveness. Much more may the 
 man of wisdom and truth. 
 
 If a man believe not, his time for speech has not 
 yet come. Let him think and live. Especially let 
 him live. And he may well keep silence for a time 
 with men, talking the more with God. " You cannot 
 change human nature," " It's a long time till the mil- 
 lennium : " such phrases may be credited with a meas- 
 ure of prudential truth, but their chief noteworthiness 
 is their deadening lack of the larger spiritual vision 
 and the deeper moral earnestness. " There will be 
 a Black Bottom while the world stands," I heard a 
 
266 VISION AND POWER 
 
 preacher declare from the pulpit. It was a certain city 
 slum of which he was speaking. There were those 
 in the community who were trying to cleanse and re- 
 store it. Why should he publish his doubts ? A prophet 
 without vision, what had he to tell or what power of 
 telling ? 
 
 But conviction will transmute weakness into strength. 
 It will make the timid heroic, the common man extraor- 
 dinary. Let a speaker hold and possess the truth. It 
 is well. But rather let the truth hold and possess him. 
 Let it have sway in his soul and speech, and it will 
 find doors of entrance into other souls for which a 
 mere rigorous logic might grope in vain. 
 
 Nor is it only intensity of conviction and purpose 
 that is powerful in a speaker's impression upon other 
 minds. The power of joyousness, hopefulness, courage, 
 sympathy, might also be illustrated with examples 
 innumerable. And it is all these qualities that the 
 indwelling Christ would create — wholeness, perfectness, 
 not a caricature but a likeness of Christianity. " This 
 grace also " was Paul's word to the Corinthians. " As 
 ye abound in everything, in faith and utterance and 
 knowledge and in all earnestness, and in your love to 
 us, see that ye abound in this grace [of Christian liber- 
 ality] also." Yes, the word of salvation into the life 
 of filial devotion to the Heavenly Father is always a 
 " this grace also " — " that the man of God may be com- 
 plete, furnished completely unto every good work." 
 
 Briefly, it is a Christian, in all the sweet and majestic 
 fulness of that great word, whose speech is mightiest 
 in the man behind the message. 
 
PERSONALITY OF THE PREACHER 267 
 
 VI 
 
 Paul, it is true, has said that in his day, while there 
 were those who preached Christ " of good will," there 
 were also some who preached Christ " not sincerely," 
 but " even of envy and strife," " of faction." " What 
 then ? " he asks ; and his unexpected answer — ^what is 
 it ? We recall that he had already said in writing to 
 the Corinthians with reference to himself and the earlier 
 apostles, who had been taught and trained by the Mas- 
 ter, that the same gospel had been preached with saving 
 effect by him and by them, one and all. It was not a 
 question of which one preached it. " Whether then it be 
 I or they, so we preach and so ye believed." * But 
 here in writing to the Philippians he makes a much 
 broader assertion : " What then ? Only that in every 
 way, whether in pretence or truth, Christ is proclaimed, 
 and therein I rejoice, yea, and will rejoice." f He 
 would be glad and rejoice that the life-bearing facts of 
 redemption in Christ should be proclaimed to a world 
 that had not heard the good tidings, even if it should 
 be from a factious or a selfish motive. The gospel, 
 even though hindered by an evil spirit in the preacher, 
 may still have power to save. Some light may shine 
 through a cloudy window, and some souls may be con- 
 verted under the appeals of a vain or money-loving or 
 otherwise self-seeking evangelist. But how much surer, 
 deeper, greater the appeal when made in such a spirit 
 of nobility and sacrificial love as that of the great- 
 
 * I Corinthians 15: 11. 
 t Philippians 1: 15-18. 
 
268 VISION AND POWER 
 
 hearted apostle himself. Besides, "what case could 
 be more miserable," as Chrysostom asks, " than a teach- 
 er's when it saves his disciples to give no heed to his 
 life?" 
 
 So, the apostle, before closing this same epi-tle, short 
 as it is, in which he has expressed his joy that Christ 
 is preached even though it be " of faction," exhorts 
 the Philippian Christians to do nothing " through fac- 
 tion or through vainglory." On the contrary, he would 
 have those who are " holding forth the word of life " 
 to be good-spirited and blameless, " children of God 
 without blemish." * 
 
 Listen also to his reminder in the introduction to 
 First Thessalonians : " Our gospel came not unto you 
 in word only but also in power, and in the Holy Spirit, 
 and in much assurance; even as ye know what man- 
 ner of men we showed ourselves toward you for 
 your sake. And ye became imitators of us and of the 
 Lord." 
 
 It is plain enough, then, how these people of Thes- 
 salonica — the same to whom Paul wrote, " we were 
 well pleased to impart unto you . . . our own souls " — 
 were led to Christ. It was hy Divine power, " in the 
 Holy Spirit," through the preaching of evangelic truth, 
 " our gospel," But something else. Together with 
 the gospel there wrought the personality of the three 
 men, Paul, Silvanus, and Timothy, who preached it. 
 " Even as ye know what manner of men we showed 
 ourselves toward you for your sake. And ye be- 
 came imitators of us and of the Lord." Thus they 
 •Philippians 2: 15, 16. 
 
PERSONALITY OF THE PREACHER 269 
 
 were saved — made imitators of the Lord — by means of 
 the gospel as set forth from the lips and in the lives of 
 its preachers. 
 
 The life the ally of the lips, is a universally acknowl- 
 edged principle of eloquence. And it holds good in 
 the case of wise and thoughtful as well as of emotional 
 hearers. " Greeks seek after wisdom," wrote the 
 Apostle of the Gentiles. They were quick-witted, keenly 
 inquisitive. Philosophy naturally made its home among 
 them. One might fancy, accordingly, that the element 
 of personal character in the speaker would count for 
 very little with such a people. Did it, then? On 
 the contrary, it was their own great Aristotle that said : 
 " Your power over your hearers will depend upon what 
 your hearers think of you." And of Pericles, with his 
 extraordinary practice of the arts of oratory, it was 
 said that " these alone were not sufficient, but the orator 
 was a man of probity and unblemished reputation," and 
 that he did not humour the people but led them, and 
 " was able on the strength of his character to control 
 them even at the risk of their displeasure." Great is 
 rhetoric, compact of mental laws, servant of persuasive 
 power. Make yourself master of it. But the greater 
 weight of your utterance will be due not to your mas- 
 tery of language, but to the mastery of your own lower 
 self and to the spirit of goodness and truth that breathes 
 through your life and speaks in your speech. 
 
 I^or is this a disparagement of evangelic truth, as 
 if it did not possess a perfect claim in itself, but had 
 to be bolstered up by some mere personal human power. 
 It does not mean that. The meaning is that, while the 
 
270 VISION AND POWER 
 
 Holy Spirit may reach men through simple Christian 
 truth, it may reach them more freely through the hu- 
 manized truth of Christian personality. 
 
 "A student came to me in college, having spent three 
 or four years already as a preacher, to talk over a 
 certain mental perplexity which had been troubling 
 him. In fact, the desire to find relief from this per- 
 plexity was one of the motives which had influenced 
 him to quit preaching for a time and seek fuller light 
 in a course of study. " I found," he said, " that when 
 I was in good spirit and preached an animated sermon, 
 the people responded in a corresponding manner, and 
 when I was dull and inanimate so were they. Thus 
 it all seemed to be a matter of human feeling rather 
 than of divine power." 
 
 The answer is not difiicult. If the preacher's " good 
 spirit " was simply that of bodily animation or that 
 of the natural excitement which often attends public 
 speech, or that of a mere emotionalism, there is no 
 reason to believe that the corresponding effect upon 
 the congregation was that of Divine regenerative power. 
 But if, on the contrary, the " good spirit " was one 
 of moral earnestness, of joy in the truth and in the 
 well-being of souls, if it were what the Apostle Paul 
 calls a " spirit of wisdom " and a " spirit of power 
 and love," the " spirit of life in Christ Jesus " — in 
 a word, if it were the pulsations of the preacher's own 
 Christian personality stirring the hearts of the congre- 
 gation, there is no reason to doubt that therewith might 
 come the veritable power of God unto salvation. Shall 
 spiritual truth have less power for being fused into 
 
PERSONALITY OF THE PREACHER 271 
 
 personality? Shall we forget that the Spirit of God 
 has a human way into the human heart ? 
 
 Suppose the preacher to attain such a preparation to 
 preach as was required of the prophet by the river 
 Chebar. Eat the book, said a voice of one that spoke 
 to him. A roll, a book, written on both sides with 
 Jehovah's message to Israel, to hand it over to the 
 people was not enough. To proclaim its contents as 
 a herald was not enough. To explain it as a scribe 
 was not enough. Message and messenger must become 
 one. Let it be true of him as it was said of Adam 
 Clarke, the Bible commentator and early Wesleyan 
 Methodist preacher, that his hearers were made sensible 
 that " he and his subject were one, that his being was 
 possessed of it, that they might cut off his right arm, 
 but that nothing could separate him and his faith." 
 " Eat this roll and go speak unto the house of Israel." 
 As daily bread taken into the body's life, so let the 
 truth of God pervade and vitalize the soul. Eat this 
 bread of heaven. " ^Nourished in the words of the 
 faith." " Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly 
 in all wisdom." Suppose this to be our Christian 
 prophet's method, both general and particular, of pre- 
 paring to preach. Who will show him a better ? 
 
 VII 
 
 Kow it may be safely assumed that the reader of 
 these pages is a friend of the Christian pulpit. So also 
 is the writer, a lifelong lover of it. But I will venture 
 to say that it is not because of any partial prejudgment 
 of preaching, as compared with other forms of public 
 
272 VISION AND POWER 
 
 speaking, that reader and writer believe the demand 
 for a suitable personality on the part of the preacher 
 to be preeminently great. We do believe it. We be- 
 lieve that if any one who stands regularly before an 
 audience needs to be able to say, not only as Peter 
 did to the cripple at the Gate Beautiful, " What I have, 
 that give I thee," but even, " What I am, that give I 
 thee," the proclaimer of evangelic truth is that man. He 
 needs, moreover, that his what I am should be of the 
 worthiest and best. But this is no partial or biased 
 opinion. There are reasons for it. One special reason 
 is that the demands which the preacher makes in his 
 gospel upon them that hear him are the most exacting 
 that are ever heard from any speaker's lips. Absolute 
 abandonment of the sovereignty of self for the sover- 
 eignty of Christ, absolute devotion to the will of the 
 Father in heaven as the law of life — that is this pub- 
 lic speaker's demand. 
 
 It may, for instance, cost the obedient hearer the 
 making of restitution for goods taken from his neigh- 
 bour through fraudulent transactions. It may cost him 
 the giving up of the business on which his livelihood 
 depends, or of this and that feature of his business. 
 *' Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the 
 poor, and if I have wrongfully exacted aught of any 
 man, I restore fourfold " — that was the repentance of 
 Zaccheus as be stood before the heavenly Guest who 
 had brought to his house the word of salvation. " Buy, 
 sell, get, gain, enjoy — these words he knew. But ' re- 
 store ' and ' give ' almost stuck in his throat " — never- 
 theless, he spoke them out distinctly from his heart. 
 
PERSONALITY OF THE PREACHER 273 
 
 And the same spirit and principles of action are the 
 repentance demanded by the word of Christ's salvation 
 from any other dishonest and selfish man. 
 
 All perfectly reasonable, undoubtedly; no more than 
 men ought to do and acknowledge, to be sure. But this 
 tremendous ought, is it a light or easy matter? 'No 
 other life-task to which one may be called means or 
 requires so much. 
 
 Yet this great life of Christian discipleship — this 
 coming after Christ as well as to him — is no impos- 
 sible dream. By the grace of God it has been made 
 actual, far and wfde, in human lives. Surely it needs 
 to be actualized in the life of him who is ever urging 
 the experience and practice of it upon others. Would 
 he speak of such a discipleship with power? It may 
 be done through the cooperation of speech and life. 
 
 Verily we do constantly speak of great matters, we 
 preachers of the gospel. We dare to proclaim the will 
 of God, the fact of Christ, the kingdom of heaven on 
 earth, the way of life and of death. We must ; noth- 
 ing less is our mission. And we may expect such 
 truths to be effective unto great results — if, indeed, at 
 the same time we be living them. 
 
 When John Bunyan, a prisoner for conscience' sake, 
 was offered his liberty on condition that he would ab- 
 stain from preaching, and replied to the magistrate, " If 
 you let me out to-day, I should preach to-morrow," his 
 sweetness of spirit seems not for a moment to have 
 failed. The great dreamer was equally great in the 
 doing of his dream. Why should he not, when re- 
 leased from the " den " in which he had been so long 
 
274 VISION AND POWER 
 
 shut up, teach, if he felt moved to do so, the duty of 
 an unconquerable will conjoined with a genial and lov- 
 ing heart in the Christian life? 
 
 Last Sunday morning the preacher to whom I was 
 listening told of a ministerial brother whom he had 
 recently visited and found writing a sermon, to be 
 preached from a chair in his pulpit, on the theme, 
 "How to Meet Trouble." This brother, a typical 
 north-of -Ireland man, had been notably able-bodied and 
 happy-hearted. But grievous trouble had befallen him. 
 The hand of death had been laid upon his wife, and 
 then upon his little daughter, an only child — his home 
 destroyed. Shortly afterward, in a railroad accident, 
 one of his hands and both his lower limbs were severed 
 from the body. And now, propped up in bed, in con- 
 stant physical pain, he was writing down with the hand 
 that had been left him a message of comfort and 
 strength to troubled hearts in his congregation. No 
 word of complaint, no bitterness, no mock heroics, 
 sorrowful yet always rejoicing, the peace of Christ 
 ruling in his heart. " Old man," said the visiting 
 brother, "you are the sermon." So he was. Well 
 might it have been said of him as it was said of Edward 
 Irving in the days of his power, that he lived his ser- 
 mon and preached his life. And with both inspiration 
 and authority might he teach to others the truth of 
 faith and joy which he was all the while illustrating in 
 his own Christlike personality. 
 
PERSONALITY OF THE PREACHER 276 
 
 VIII 
 
 Let us make no mistake. There is such a thing as 
 the intrusion rather than the simple energizing pres- 
 ence of the preacher in the sermon. He may have much 
 to say, habitually perhaps, about his own remarkable 
 experiences, good deeds, bright sayings, successes, 
 achievements. He may be too habitually aware of his 
 own doings and indirectly far too commendatory of 
 himself. A secret thing of the heart, it will in- 
 evitably disclose itself, sometimes in such excessive self- 
 references, sometimes in self-importance of manner. 
 And is not this the personality of the preacher in his 
 preaching? Alas, it is even so. It is an evil element 
 of his personality. It is not self-devotion but self- 
 exaltation. Far from attracting, it repels. For it is 
 not putting one's self into the sermon so as to preach 
 Christ, but putting Christ into the sermon so as to 
 preach one's self. 
 
 The disciple who has turned from his selfish ambi- 
 tions, tearing off the veil with which he would have 
 hidden them from his own eyes, and become childlike 
 in spirit, he shall be great in the service of the king- 
 dom of God. Those who " gird themselves with humil- 
 ity," they are prepared most effectively to " serve one 
 another." * "I shall measure your words," says George 
 Matheson, " not by their size but by your size." It is 
 the unconscious goodness of the preacher, not the good- 
 ness or greatness which he talks about, that reaches 
 
 * I Peter 5: 5. 
 
27e VISION AND POWER 
 
 the heart — having itself no other human source or 
 destination or home. Said a good woman : " It is to 
 me an amazing experience that there are people who 
 are influenced by what I say, not because I say it well, 
 but because it is I that say it." But her very inability 
 to explain the fact suggested its explanation. She was 
 good without obtrusive self-consciousness. Her word 
 was influential because back of it was the force of an 
 influential life, the power of a true and unpretentious 
 womanhood. 
 
 As a thoroughly eloquent speaker would be at the 
 time quite unaware of his eloquence, so a thoroughly 
 noble soul will never be caught doting upon his noble- 
 ness. It is one of Fairbairn's penetrative words : '' The 
 goodness that knows itself to be good is but the inward 
 side of the spirit that outwardly thanks God that it is 
 not as other men." The Christian note, then, is not 
 boasting — " it is excluded " — either crude or refined, 
 but aspiration and faith ; not self-praise, direct or indi- 
 rect, but truth in love. 
 
 Let us, therefore, one and all, before delivering any 
 word to others, take this word of preaching to our- 
 selves : " Be ye transformed by the renewing of your 
 mind, that ye may prove what is the good and ac- 
 ceptable and perfect will of God." " Be ye transformed 
 {fiEra}jiopq)ovfiai) " — it is the same word that is used 
 by both Matthew and Mark for the Transfiguration of 
 Jesus " on the holy mount." Be ye transfigured in 
 mind, spirit, character, so as to become like him who 
 was ever perfectly proving God's own perfect will. For 
 
PERSONALITY OF THE PREACHER 277 
 
 this is our transfiguration, made possible through him. 
 And it will be as a flame shining even through the flesh 
 and hallowing the whole outward life. Said Enoch 
 Mather Marvin, a child of eight years, praying in his 
 backwoods home, where a Christian mother lived in his 
 daily presence the truth of Jesus' love : " O God, give 
 me that which makes my mother so beautiful and so 
 good." When, years afterward, in joumeyings far 
 and wide, he stood up to preach the faith which he 
 had learned first through his mother's gracious per- 
 sonality, there shone oftentimes from his own plain, 
 pale face the inner beauty of goodness and truth for 
 which in the simplicity of childhood he had prayed. 
 
 Give us. Lord, that purity of purpose, that inward 
 truth of righteousness, that all-pervasive love, which 
 will make us, unconsciously to ourselves, light-bearers 
 to others, holding forth the word of life. 
 
XIII 
 POWER OF THE INDWELLING SPIRIT 
 
 And while Peter thought on the vision the Spirit said 
 unto him . . . — Acts 10: 19. 
 
 Now therefore we are all here present in the sight 
 of God . . .—Acts 10:33. 
 
 How God anointed Him with the Holy Spirit and 
 with power . . . — Acts 10:38. 
 
 While Peter yet spake these words the Holy Spirit fell 
 on all them that heard the word. — Acts 10:44. 
 
 ONE might say that Peter's sermon at Csesarea 
 was never concluded — at least by the preacher. 
 It might naturally have ended with a recital of 
 the great consummation of Pentecost, that coming again 
 of Christ in the power of the Spirit. But it reached 
 a still greater conclusion. It ended in a recurrence 
 of the signs, visible and audible, of Pentecost itself. 
 For while the preacher was telling, with intermingled 
 interpretation, the story of him in whose name is of- 
 fered remission of sins, those who heard the word began 
 to speak with tongues, magnifying God. 
 
 Peter called to mind the words of the Master : " John 
 indeed baptized with water but ye shall be baptized with 
 the Holy Spirit." This promise, then, was for others 
 than the original Apostles, for others than Jewish be- 
 lievers. It was fulfilled at Pentecost, but here was 
 another and in one sense a larger fulfilment — in " the 
 Pentecost of the Gentiles." Not unnaturally the breth- 
 
 278 
 
POWER OF THE INDWELLING SPIRIT 279 
 
 ren who had come with the apostle from Joppa were 
 amazed. They had never dreamt of seeing the gift 
 of the Spirit poured out on Gentiles also. Yet it was 
 the signs of just such a baptism that here in the house 
 of Cornelius they were witnessing. 
 
 Now, in this culminating event of his first ministry 
 to Gentiles, the assurance to the apostle that he had 
 been interpreting his vision aright was made doubly 
 sure. Any possible lingering doubt of it must have 
 been shamed away. God had given of his Spirit to 
 these aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, just 
 as he had done to the Apostles themselves and to others 
 who held a birthright in that sacred commonwealth. 
 What further proof of his equal good-will in Jesus 
 Christ to the outside peoples could be asked? 
 
 "Even as on us: " that was Peter's apologetic word 
 to his adverse critics at the meeting soon afterward 
 in Jerusalem — " the Holy Spirit fell on them, even as 
 on us at the beginning." Ought he to have refused to 
 believe in the evident significance of that which with 
 his own eyes and ears he then perceived? It would 
 have been, he said, to " withstand God." 
 
 But what meaning has such an event for our own 
 time — and for all time? We have already been re- 
 minded that, while the preaching of the gospel is at- 
 tended by the power of truth and of personality, the 
 heart and source of its power is in the strictest sense 
 Divine. No matter what may be the form of the spoken 
 words or who may be the speaker, the saving power, 
 
280 VISION AND POWER 
 
 though it may be in them, is not of them. " The word 
 of the cross ... is the power of Ood." The gospel is 
 " the power of God unto salvation." If men with godly 
 sorrow turn away from their sins, whence came it ? If 
 they are inwardly renewed in righteousness, their lives 
 lifted to a higher spiritual plane, whence came it? If 
 God's love to them is so shed abroad in their hearts 
 as to make his will more and more regnant in their 
 wills, is it the outcome of a simple effort or determina- 
 tion of their own ? One had as well ask to whom men 
 pray for salvation, or to whom the praise of their salva- 
 tion is instinctively offered. 
 
 There is but one answer to all such questions. 
 
 Nor may we assert that it is only by means of the gospel 
 and its personal witness-bearers that the Spirit of God 
 can reach the human heart. On the contrary, the Spirit 
 is always and everywhere present. He is in the lives 
 of men who have never heard the gospel. He is in 
 their inner life, to give the sense of sin and need, to 
 excite spiritual yearnings, to strengthen the will for 
 doing such truth as is known. Was not this the case 
 of Cornelius? But there is also a preparation for 
 the gospel in men who, unlike Cornelius, have never 
 heard the name of the God of Israel. " It means," 
 says the author of " The Indwelling Spirit," " that a 
 missionary, not only in India but in Patagonia, not 
 only among Buddhists but among Fijians, orders his 
 speech as to those in whom God the Holy Spirit has 
 already been at work, and that there is and can be 
 no man of whom that is not true." 
 
 Ask the missionaries themselves for illustrative ex- 
 
POWER OF THE INDWELLING SPIRIT 281 
 
 amples. They will tell of a prepared Cornelius and 
 his family, here and there. Said an awakened pagan in 
 the Far East, when, in reading the copy of the four 
 Gospels that had fallen into his hands, he had touched 
 the heart of the Gospel of John : " It must be true, it 
 is true, for it is just what I have been longing for and 
 searching for." What unseen Power had been leading 
 him hitherto ? Augustine of Hippo could have told us : 
 " For He did not make them and so depart, but they 
 are of him and in him. See there he is, where truth is 
 loved. He is in the very heart, yet hath the heart strayed 
 from him." * Dan Crawford has told us, when, out of 
 twenty-two years of free missionary labour in the Dark 
 Continent, he testifies : " God is his own pioneer, and 
 in the heart of Africa, black, ' heathen ' Africa, he has 
 preceded us." Ask this Central African how he knows 
 that there is a God, and he replies : " How do I know 
 that my goats passed along the wet, muddy road this 
 morning, if not by the deep imprints left in the mud ? " 
 He believed in some wondrous and mighty God. 
 
 But it is only where the truth " as truth is in Jesus " 
 is known that the way is prepared for the fuller enlight- 
 ening and sanctifying work of the Spirit. It is not of 
 conviction under the darkness of unbroken paganism, 
 but of conviction under the gospel, that Jesus speaks, 
 when he says that the Spirit, " when he is come," will 
 convict of sin. Compare this Christian conviction, in 
 clearness, depth, and power, with the sense of sin where 
 Christ is not known. It would be to compare the sun- 
 shine with the twinkling light of far-away stars. 
 
 * Confessions," iv, 18. 
 
283 VISION AND POWER 
 
 II 
 
 Does it seem strange that the power of our salvation 
 should rest in a person? For that it does rest in a 
 Person there can be no doubt. If a man be freed from 
 the slavery to his lower self, it is because of the power 
 in him of the almighty Personal Presence. If a Chris- 
 tian preacher's ministry be an effective ministry of 
 deliverance to the slaves of sin, it is because of the abid- 
 ing in it of that same almighty Personal Presence. 
 Take this truth out of either the Hebrew or the Chris- 
 tian Scriptures, and there is nothing of supreme value 
 left. 
 
 When Jehovah sends Moses forth to the humanly im- 
 possible task of establishing his kingdom in Israel, the 
 word is, " I will be with thee." When Christ sends 
 forth his Church to establish his kingdom in all the 
 world, the word of assurance is the same, " Lo, I am 
 with you always." The power by which men, through 
 whatever mediation it may reach them, are personally 
 saved and equipped for service is the personal touch, 
 the life-imparting presence, of God himself. 
 
 Indeed, it would seem that we can form no other 
 idea of power — or cause, which is the same thing — than 
 that of personality. All power is personal power. Shall 
 we think of this for a little while? Out here in the 
 world of nature are two great facts: namely, physical 
 objects and power (or, as it is usually called in this 
 connection, force). We know physical objects by the 
 senses. One has but to open one's eyes and see them, 
 
POWER OF THE INDWELLING SPIRIT 283 
 
 or reach forth one's hand and touch them. And we 
 know force, or cause, or power — how? Certainly not 
 by the senses. It cannot be seen or touched. It has 
 no shape or size or colour. It would utterly elude the 
 keenest microscopic observation. But when, as is the 
 case continually, we see a physical object moving from 
 place to place or in any way changing its form, there 
 arises in our minds not only an idea of motion or change, 
 but the very different idea of force, cause, power. We 
 say. Something makes it move. Whence does such an 
 idea come? The only reasonable way to account for 
 it is that it is given by our consciousness of ourselves 
 and our own doings. That is to say, it is given by 
 one's experience of force, cause, power, in one's own 
 person. 
 
 To take the simplest sort of illustration, we are con- 
 scious, say, of the not unfamiliar experience of choos- 
 ing to throw a stone. Then follows an experience 
 which has been named effort, exertion, the putting forth 
 of will-power in a certain direction. Nobody can de- 
 scribe it, though everybody knows it. Following this 
 experience, forth flies the stone from the hand. Thus 
 by personal consciousness of what, taking place in our- 
 selves, is the cause of certain external events, we spon- 
 taneously come by the idea of force, cause, power. Then 
 we apply this idea to the motions and changes, with 
 which we have nothing to do, that are continually going 
 on in the natural world. 
 
 There is no reason to believe that without this con- 
 sciousness of will-power, we should ever have any such 
 idea as that of power. There would be no personal 
 
^84 VISION AND POWER 
 
 experience to give it birth. In a word, if, in the last 
 analysis, power as we know it in ourselves is will, we 
 may reasonably believe that power as we see the signs 
 of it outside ourselves is also will — is the creative will 
 of him after whose likeness we are made. As Mar- 
 tineau has tersely put it : " Since we have to assume 
 causality for all things, and the only causality we 
 know is that of living mind, that type has no legitimate 
 competitor." * 
 
 Such a conclusion is a child of the reason; and in 
 manifest harmony with it is the Biblical teaching. For 
 the Scripture, as we have seen, speaks of the presence 
 of God's personal creative and renewing power in nature 
 from the beginning, through all seasons and centuries. 
 
 Tens of thousands of young men are ordained to the 
 Christian ministry with the use of a prayer taken from 
 that noble mediaeval hymn, Veni, Creator Spiritus, 
 which begins with a reference to the brooding of the 
 Spirit of God, as told in the second verse of the Bible, 
 upon a formless and empty earth — 
 
 " Creator Spirit, by whose aid 
 The earth's foundations first were laid." 
 
 Let it remind the newly set-apart minister of the Church 
 that the Eternal Power to whom he must ever look 
 for the new birth of souls under his ministry was in 
 the world of nature at the beginning as the ultimate 
 cause and giver of order, beauty, and life — the God of 
 nature and of the human soul, then and now and always. 
 
 " The Spirit of God hath made me, 
 And the breath of the Almighty giveth me life." 
 
 * " Materialism, Theology and Religion," p. 39. 
 
POWER OF THE INDWELLING SPIRIT 285 
 
 But the Scriptures speak of the Spirit of God chiefly 
 not as God in nature, but as God in man, and of his 
 work as that of spiritual illumination and renewal — 
 in the New Testament, indeed, exclusively so. God 
 in nature renews the face of the earth, that it may 
 bring forth its proper fruits of seed for the sower and 
 bread for the eater; God in man renews the innermost 
 springs of conduct, that they may bring forth fruits 
 of faith and hope and love, which are the fruits of 
 the Spirit. And here the name of this almighty Spirit, 
 when a descriptive word is added, is the '' Holy Spirit." 
 It tells that he is the Spirit of holiness, and that his 
 work in the human heart is a work of cleansing and 
 perfecting. " It is written. Ye shall be holy, for I am 
 holy." * Which seems both an imperative and a prom- 
 ise of the Father. 
 
 And no promise could more completely fit the need 
 of the soul. " Follow after . . . the sanctification," 
 says the letter to the Hebrews, " without which no man 
 shall see the Lord." How, then, shall we follow after 
 and attain unto this sanctification, this holiness, this 
 likeness to the Lord, which shall make us meet to see 
 him as he is in glory ? By contact and communion with 
 him who is holy. Which is to say, by yielding our- 
 selves up to possession by the indwelling Holy Spirit. 
 
 Ill 
 
 So, therefore, the visible environment of man is, as 
 Dr. A. M. Fairbairn has reminded us, twofold, namely, 
 nature, which is intelligible, and human society, which 
 
 •I Peter 1:16. 
 
286 VISION AND POWER 
 
 is rational and moral ; and " the invisible Environment, 
 the common background of both, is the Spirit whose 
 thought has been aiming in each and through each at 
 ever fuller and more adequate expression." 
 
 Not for a moment, however, are we to suppose that 
 that almighty Spirit is with the human soul just as 
 with the rocks and waters and trees and with " all 
 manner of four-footed beasts and creeping things of the 
 earth and fowls of the heaven " ; or, for that matter, that 
 he is with the human soul just as with the human 
 body. No; there is a difference heaven-wide. The 
 Spirit of God brooded upon " the face of the waters " 
 in the beginning and broods over the whole earth even 
 now, according to his ways — the " laws " of nature — 
 with a world of things, which cannot come into spiritual 
 sympathy and communion with him. He broods over 
 the soul, according to his ways — the " laws " of spirit 
 — with a world of persons, who can and may come into 
 spiritual sympathy and communion with him. 
 
 The farmer makes his farm. But for him it would 
 not be. He diligently protects it from injury. He cuts 
 down a wood, clears out the underbrush, ploughs, and 
 sows, and gathers the harvest into the barn that he has 
 builded. He pastures his cows and drives his team. 
 But in one of his buildings our farmer has made him- 
 self a home, and lives there with his family. And 
 he gives himself to them — in just the same way as to 
 the" farm outside ? Very far from it. He is, - to be 
 sure, present to his little outside world, but present 
 to the dwellers in his little inside world with a different 
 sort of nearness. These partake of his own higher 
 
POWER OF THE INDWELLING SPIRIT 287 
 
 nature, and so can understand him, sympathize with 
 his plans and purposes, enter into fellowship with him. 
 He likes his farm, he loves his family. It is a pic- 
 ture of God in his world of nature and of souls. 
 
 " In Him we live and move and have our being " 
 in the natural life: this is what philosophy would call 
 the Divine immanence. " In Him we live and move 
 and have our being " in the spiritual life : this " Diviner 
 immanence," as Bishop T. J. McConnell, in his fine 
 little book with that title, has termed it, is what Chris- 
 tianity would call the perpetual presence and power of 
 the Holy Spirit. 
 
 Therefore, let no one either fear or hope that the 
 presence and working of the Spirit will break down 
 the moral freedom of the soul. He instructs, he per- 
 suades, he is grieved, he strives; he does not maim 
 or destroy. It cannot be otherwise than that God 
 shall have respect to the personality which he has 
 created, the moral freedom which he has breathed 
 into the soul. It is shown to be so in almost the very 
 first story of human sin, where Jehovah is heard say- 
 ing to Cain : " Why art thou wroth ? and why is thy 
 countenance fallen ? If thou doest well, shalt thou not 
 be accepted ? and if thou doest not well, sin coucheth at 
 the door." — God reasoning with even a bad-hearted 
 man. Divine power rests upon us not as upon the 
 subhuman creation, the " trees of the Lord," the cattle 
 on a thousand hills, which are his, but as upon moral 
 intelligences. He would have us freely to choose his 
 service; they cannot. He would hold converse with 
 us ; they could neither speak to him nor hear his voice. 
 
288 VISION AND POWER 
 
 True, there is much going on at every moment, in 
 both body and soul, altogether apart from any choice 
 of ours. Aptly has it been said : " The heart is a la- 
 bourer to whom we pay no wages, with whom we hold 
 no conversation, who gets his orders elsewhere, who 
 elects to work, and at the end to cease to work, with- 
 out any say of ours in the matter." Put a finger on 
 your wrist and count the heart-beats — say, seventy a 
 minute, 100,800 a day — and still the untiring heart 
 beats on for seventy years, quite independent of your 
 will. 
 
 " No rest that throbbing slave can ask, 
 Forever quivering o'er his task." 
 
 But these quivering hearts are no slaves of ours, if by 
 such a word we mean that they are doing their appointed 
 task under our direction and control. Indeed, what 
 direction and control have we of the vastly larger part 
 of the ongoings of life within us? What power have 
 we to turn food into flesh ? Where is the child of genius 
 that can either create or prevent such continual experi- 
 ences as sensation, ideas, emotions? What will-power 
 of ours is enabling us to pass, instant by instant, from 
 this or that vibration of the brain into a state of con- 
 sciousness — which acknowledges no kinship whatever to 
 a state of vibration. 
 
 Then, too, heredity, bringing much that is good, also 
 lays various disabling burdens upon us. The genera- 
 tion of to-day, inheriting, as it does, bodily health and 
 moral capacity from its forbears through immemorial 
 ages — incalculable its debt to them — has likewise fallen 
 heir to their depravities of body and of spirit. 
 
POWER OF THE INDWELLING SPIRIT 289 
 
 Nevertheless, here we stand, living our life this hour 
 as persons, which is to say, morally free. The doors 
 of knowledge and of feeling may be opened from with- 
 out as well as from within — by others' hands as well 
 as by our own. But the door of will can be opened from 
 within only — by our own hands or not at all. The signs 
 of it are unquestionable. Upon the assumption of it, 
 the whole social and moral life of the world is lived. 
 Whether it be acknowledged in so many words or not, 
 everybody demonstrates it practically — like that son of 
 common sense in the days of old who, when a certain 
 philosopher proved unanswerably that such a thing as 
 motion is impossible, showed the opposite by simply 
 rising up and walking. 
 
 How much is it, then, that God has given us to 
 determine by his grace for ourselves? It is, chiefly, 
 something in comparison with which all other things 
 are as vanity and nothing. He has given us our moral 
 conduct to determine; which means our character; 
 which means our personal greatness or littleness, blessed- 
 ness or misery, salvation or condemnation. 
 
 " The sweet persuasion of His voice 
 Respects thy sanctity of will; 
 He giveth day: thou hast thy choice 
 To walk in darkness still." 
 
 Present with man in his freedom, then, is the Spirit 
 of truth. Not to overbear and destroy, he is here to 
 enlighten the understanding, to purify the affections, 
 to empower the will. Not to hinder the action of 
 the God-given powers, he is here to correct their aber- 
 rations, and to work together with them. " Whereupon 
 
290 VISION AND POWER 
 
 I labour also, striving according to His working which 
 worketh in me mightily." 
 
 IV 
 
 With respect to this Divine indwelling, however, 
 there is One who stands quite alone in the history of 
 our race. In the sinless Son of God the Spirit could 
 abide continuously and in the infinitude of truth and 
 grace. It was indicated at his baptism when " he saw 
 the heavens rent asunder and the Spirit as a dove 
 descending upon him, and a voice came out of the 
 heavens. Thou art my beloved Son, in thee I am well 
 pleased," and at the unapproachable height of his sacri- 
 ficial suffering and service, when " through the eternal 
 Spirit " he " offered himself without blemish unto 
 God." 
 
 Hence the Apostle Paul speaks of the Spirit of God 
 as the Spirit of Christ. " Ye are not in the flesh but 
 in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwelleth 
 in you. But if any man have not the Spirit of Christ 
 he is none of his." " Now the Lord [Christ] is the 
 Spirit." 
 
 Moreover, through Christ — ^through his life, his grace 
 and truth, his sacrificial love, through himself — this 
 same Spirit may be given to the receptive soul. On the 
 evening of the first Lord's day, " when the doors were 
 shut where the disciples were," the risen Lord appeared 
 in the midst of them, and said : " Peace be unto you : 
 as the Father hath sent me, even so send I you." 
 Then, with his own breath as an accompanying symbol, 
 he said to them, " Receive ye the Holy Spirit." Also, 
 
POWER OF THE INDWELLING SPIRIT 291 
 
 on the day of Pentecost Peter declared that the won- 
 drous power of the Spirit over which the multitude 
 were marvelling was an effusion from the living and 
 glorified Christ : " Being therefore by the right hand 
 of God exalted, and having received of the Father the 
 promise of the Holy Spirit, He hath shed forth this 
 which ye see and hear." 
 
 Indeed, did not Jesus himself foretell such an event ? 
 Did he not promise the disciples, in the Upper Room, 
 that after his withdrawal from the sphere of their 
 senses, he would really be nearer to them than before ? 
 He would be not only with them but in them. For 
 the Spirit, guiding them into all spiritual truth, would 
 interpret him to them, explain him, reveal him to them 
 — " He shall take of mine and shall declare it unto 
 you," " He shall glorify me." Thus, in the Spirit he 
 would indeed come to them, and abide in them ever- 
 more. 
 
 'Note, then, the epoch-making significance of the Pen- 
 tecostal baptism of the Spirit. It was " no detached 
 wonder." It meant, to be sure, that Jesus' first wit- 
 nesses must be spiritually qualified for their mission; 
 but in connection with that, it had a much larger mean- 
 ing. It meant that the new and foreseen era of the 
 Spirit's truth and power had come. For now that 
 Christ, Revealer and Redeemer, had lived his life among 
 men, had laid it down in atoning sacrifice and taken it 
 again in glory, the Eternal Spirit, who had been in 
 the world of nature and of men from the beginning, 
 could for the first time interpret and apply to the be- 
 lieving heart the accomplished facts of redemption. He 
 
292 VISION AND POWER 
 
 could interpret and apply the sacrificial life and death 
 of Jesus. Impossible before, it could now be done. 
 What Jesus was, what his words, his acts, his cross, and 
 resurrection meant, could now be made known by the 
 Spirit of truth. Thus could be imparted a deeper 
 knowledge, a larger life, a more Christlike mind, than 
 was possible before God was revealed in the Son of 
 his love. 
 
 Is not this, then, what is meant by the fulness, the 
 plenary baptism, of the Spirit, which was not given till 
 Jesus was glorified ? 
 
 Such is the significance of Pentecost; and we are in 
 no danger of estimating it too highly. It may be truly 
 called " the consummation of our Lord's life on earth." 
 It marks with its tongues of fire the fulness of spiritual 
 vision and power in Christ — its fulness and its per- 
 petuity. Wonderful were the days of the Son of Man, 
 all alone in their perfect expression of the heart of 
 God — in speech, deed, spirit, suffering and conquering 
 love for us men and our salvation. Will they ever 
 return? Not they themselves; but their fulfilment is 
 now, and is coming evermore. For the Spirit's inter- 
 pretation of the Risen Lord, renewal of the heart in 
 his likeness, guidance into all the truth — this Divine 
 administration is not for one generation only but for 
 this whole world-age. 
 
 Christianity, then, is the religion — shall we say, of 
 Jesus Christ ? Yes, but of Jesus Christ as interpreted, 
 
POWER OF THE INDWELLING SPIRIT 293 
 
 revealed, made intimately near the believing and obe- 
 dient soul by the Spirit, 
 
 N"ow, therefore, it is in this age of the redemption 
 and education of man, affluent as it is in gracious gifts 
 and opportunities, that the preacher of our own time 
 goes forth to the ministry whereunto he is called. How 
 may we conceive of the secret of his power ? In the 
 opening paragraph of the Epistle to " the elect who 
 are sojourners of the Dispersion," Peter answers the 
 question. Speaking of the sufferings of Christ and 
 the glories that followed, he says : " Which now have 
 been announced to you through them that preach the 
 gospel unto you by [or, w] the Holy Spirit sent forth 
 from heaven." Here, then, is the " mystery," the un- 
 veiled secret, of pulpit power — " preached the gospel 
 unto you hy the Holy Spirit sent forth from heaven." 
 
 Surely if ever a man was prepared to teach such 
 a truth, it was Simon Peter, this first Christian preacher. 
 For if ever a man had reason to know it in personal 
 experience, it was he. Imagine him preaching the 
 gospel before Pentecost ! But the ascending Saviour 
 had said : " Ye shall receive power when the Holy 
 Spirit is come upon you." And when, in less than 
 two weeks, the promise was fulfilled, see this same 
 disciple of Jesus, " filled with the Holy Spirit," de- 
 claring to the faithless house of Israel : " God hath 
 made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom ye 
 crucified." The people, cut to the heart, are crying, 
 " What shall we do ? " and there are added to the one 
 little Christian congregation about three thousand souls. 
 Well might such a preacher write of " them that 
 
294j vision and POWER 
 
 preached the gospel unto you hy the Holy Spirit/* And 
 well might the book of Acts have been called in the 
 early Church " the Gospel of the Holy Spirit." 
 
 VI 
 
 Shall we meditate upon the way of the Spirit in the 
 preaching of the gospel? Let us at least ask why it 
 is that he should reach the heart with his heavenly 
 power through evangelic truth and the preacher's 
 personality. 
 
 First, Why through evangelic truth? Here again 
 Peter answers our question. For when he reminds his 
 readers that the facts of redemption, the sufferings and 
 the glory of Christ, were " announced " to them by the 
 preachers of the gospel, it is suggested that these facts 
 of redemption were not a creation of the preacher him- 
 self. He was only their announcer. They were Divine 
 facts ; they were the truth of Christ ; they were words 
 of the Eternal Word who was in the beginning with 
 God and who was God. " If any man speaketh," says 
 oursame Apostle, "speaking as it were oracles of God."''*" 
 Is it any wonder that such a message as that should 
 be illumined and enforced by the Holy Spirit in Chris- 
 tian preaching? It is the veritable instrument of his 
 power — the seed of Divine truth, the sword of the 
 Spirit. 
 
 VII 
 
 Secondly, why should the Spirit reach the heart 
 through the preacher's personality ? Here we have only 
 
 *I Peter, 4:11. 
 
POWER OF THE INDWELLING SPIRIT 295 
 
 to bear in mind what this personality is. It is that of 
 " a man in Christ." It is that of a man through whom 
 Christ would utter himself to men. It is the evangel 
 of Jesus embodied in a person, shining forth in an 
 individual life, and thus making appeal through a man 
 to his fellow-men. 
 
 Think of a preacher in the act of highest self- 
 expression in the pulpit, his mind saturated with a 
 sacred theme, his heart uplifted to the Source of spir- 
 itual power and at the same time drawn close in 
 sympathy to the souls of men. What a joy it is now 
 to preach! There is a freedom and rapture of utter- 
 ance, as if his words were spoken through him by 
 Another. Mastered by a great conviction, he was never 
 so free. Conscious of weakness, he is girded with 
 strength. Losing himself, he is most truly at him- 
 self. Speaking for Christ, self-committed to him, with 
 the inward prayer, " That thou mayest be glorified," 
 he speaks with his own voice indeed, but not by his 
 own unaided effort. Very tenderly he speaks, with a 
 word in season to him that is weary, but boldly withal, 
 as he ought to speak. 
 
 And the people respond, perhaps with one mind and 
 heart, as to a man inwardly possessed and swayed by 
 the God-given message falling from his lips. 
 
 Shall not this humanized truth, then, be a medium 
 of the Holy Spirit to the sin-smitten soul ? " By the 
 manifestation of the truth commending ourselves"' — 
 the truth as embodied in ourselves — " to every man's 
 conscience in the sight of God." 
 
296 VISION AND POWER 
 
 vni 
 
 I trust that we may see truly. But it is certain that 
 even the most illumined New Testament prophets knew 
 and prophesied only in part. Thanks be unto God 
 for the assurance of a fuller revelation when that which 
 is perfect shall have come. Meantime the doer of 
 the Heavenly Father's will shall have light enough to 
 walk and work by. Nor is it an idle benediction when 
 the apostolic minister blesses the people, praying that 
 they may have " the communion of the Holy Spirit." 
 
 " Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said unto 
 them " * (unto the assembled Sanhedrin) — and no won- 
 der that his words were with power even upon the 
 hardened minds of his unbelieving judges. " For it 
 is not ye that speak," said the Master, " but the Spirit 
 of your Father that speaketh in you." Think of such 
 a possibility in one's own life. " Filled with the Holy 
 Spirit : " it is the supreme equipment for the min- 
 istry of preaching to any audience anywhere. 
 
 But just how that Spirit of the living God touches, 
 quickens, inspires the spirit of man, who would ask 
 to know ? One had as well aspire to discover how that 
 same Spirit brought out of the primitive waste of 
 waters the earth which is our happy and fruitful home 
 this day. Frederick Robertson, describing the birth 
 of a great human friendship, speaks of a time " when, 
 as it were, moving about in the darkness and loneli- 
 ness of existence, we suddenly come into contact with 
 
 *Act3 4:8-13. 
 
POWER OF THE INDWELLING SPIRIT 297 
 
 something, and we find that spirit has touched spirit." 
 Through the mediation of some physical sign, a beam- 
 ing eye, a voice, a hand-grasp, one human spirit has 
 touched another, and there may result " the mystic 
 blending of two souls in one." Shall not the Eternal 
 Spirit have power to touch the spirit which he has made, 
 to hear its voice and to renew its life? 
 
 Remember, no thinker, nor any mind of any order, 
 can tell the genesis of his thoughts. Out of a vast 
 Unknown they enter, under certain physical circum- 
 stances, into the little but wonderful sphere of his 
 present consciousness; and that is about all that he 
 can tell. 
 
 Men speak of the world's rare geniuses as being 
 original; but there is none of these gifted spirits that 
 can describe the origination of his ideas. How did the 
 mind get hold of them ? whence came they ? out of 
 what depths did they arise ? " In the stillness of 
 meditation thought bursts into flame " — true enough, 
 but what is this thought-burst ? More than one writer 
 doubtless has been ready to say as did Thackeray con- 
 cerning his own best thoughts : " I have no idea where 
 it all comes from ; I am often astounded myself to read 
 it after I have got it down on paper." 
 
 We are told that Haydn, musical genius and devout 
 Christian, declared concerning the chorus in his ora- 
 torio of the Creation : " ISTot from me but from above it 
 all came." It was in such a spirit, indeed, that the 
 whole of this greatest of the great composer's oratorios 
 seems to have been wrought out. " I fell on my knees 
 daily," he says, " and prayed earnestly to God that 
 
2&8 VISION AND POWER 
 
 he would grant me strength to carry out the work, and 
 to praise him worthily." It suggests the faith and 
 humility of the forerunner of Jesus : " A man can 
 receive nothing except it have been given him from 
 heaven." It is the Christian's faith with respect to 
 that spiritual mind which is the highest and best in 
 his own inner life — 
 
 " And every virtue we possess, 
 And every victory won, 
 And every thought of holiness 
 Are Thine alone." 
 
 The true and holy thought, the spiritual insight, the 
 Christward aspiration, are they ours? They are ours, 
 the speech of our own souls, but through God's own 
 speech in the soul. They are his; they are ours; and 
 we have no power to separate in our thinking between 
 what is human in them and what is Divine. 
 
 Take as a most suggestive example one of the Apostle 
 Paul's inspired utterances on the witness of the Spirit : 
 " Because ye are sons, God sent forth the Spirit of his 
 Son into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father." But how 
 is this ? One might say : " I thought it was the Chris- 
 tian himself who had the filial feeling toward God and 
 cried to him. Father." What, then, can the meaning 
 be when we are told that it is the Holy Spirit, the 
 Spirit of the Son of God, who cries to him, " Father " ? 
 Is this voice of sonship both the Spirit's voice and 
 our own? It is so indeed, both his and ours. It is 
 ours because we have it, and his because he inspires 
 it. For it did not originate with us. It is an in- 
 breathing of the Spirit. It is by him that the filial 
 
POWER OF THE INDWELLING SPIRIT 299 
 
 voice toward God is awakened in us, and hence the 
 apostle speaks of it as the Spirit's own voice — the Spirit 
 of God's Son in our hearts crying " Father." 
 
 " Draw if thou canst the mystic line 
 Severing rightly His from thine, 
 Which is human, which Divine." 
 
 IX 
 
 There is nothing that lies nearer to many a Chris- 
 tian pastor's heart than a genuine revival in his con- 
 gregation. On what conditions may the desire of his 
 heart be realized? Volumes, replete with the teach- 
 ings of Scripture and of modern experience, and vibrant 
 with stirring appeals, have been written on the subject. 
 Meetings are to be held — and how best conducted ? 
 Much personal work with individuals is to be done — 
 zealously, tactfully. There must be plans, expedients, 
 methods. But amid it all the wise pastor and the 
 evangelistic Church will ever have in mind that 
 Divine method through which revival power is always 
 available. It is no recently discovered method, but 
 as old as the Church itself, and as familiar, at least 
 to the ears of a Christian congregation, as the apostolic 
 benediction. We know quite well that it is no other 
 than " the communion of the Holy Spirit." 
 
 And into this life-giving communion, not some select 
 class but all who will may enter. Observe, it is not 
 a matter of human wish or expectation, which may or 
 may not be fulfilled, but of God's word, his will, his 
 law. There is a " law of sin and death," which is 
 this : " If ye live after the flesh, ye shall die." There is 
 
300 VISION AND POWER 
 
 also " a law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus," and 
 it is this : " If by the Spirit ye mortify the deeds of 
 the body, ye shall live.' For here is the kingdom of 
 the Heavenly Father with whom is no blind force, on 
 the one hand, nor any variableness and uncertainty, on 
 the other. All is personal and all is sure. The law 
 is holy and inexorable love. 
 
 A church, therefore, on its knees, repentant, trust- 
 ing, making supplication according to the will of God — 
 entering thus into the communion of the Spirit — must 
 be recipient of spiritual power. It must be quick- 
 ened unto newness of life. 
 
 And such a revival will not be something apart from 
 the regular life and work of the church, but an intensi- 
 fication of that life in preacher and people. " So the 
 church . . . walking in the fear of the Lord and in 
 the comfort of the Holy Spirit, was multiplied/' 
 
 Thou ever-present Spirit, may we not turn here and 
 there in search of thee. Create within us the willing 
 mind, the responsive heart. May we let go every evil 
 thing, the idol, the bad temper, the bad practice, that 
 would hinder thy abiding in our inmost self. So 
 shall we have thee, even thee thyself, thou Light of 
 light, for our teacher, and be clad from thee with the 
 garment of power. 
 
XIV 
 EFFECTS OF POWER 
 
 For they heard them speak with tongues and magnify 
 God.— Acts 10:46. 
 
 And he commanded them to be baptized in the name 
 of Jesus Christ. Then prayed they him to tarry certain 
 days. — Acts 10: 48. 
 
 Then to the Gentiles also hath God granted repent- 
 ance unto life. — Acts 11: 18. 
 
 THE Christian preacher's desire and prayer to 
 God is that he may have an effective ministry — 
 a ministry of effects. 
 True, he is not to grow impatient or disheartened at 
 the delay of visible effects. It becomes him, like any 
 shepherd of souls in any age, to consent that this min- 
 istry to the innermost life shall prove to be a work of 
 faith and a patience of hope. Let Adoniram Judson, 
 to take a classic instance, labour for years in heathen 
 Burmah with almost no success. Let him be imprisoned 
 and bound with fetters, in excruciating pain, under 
 cruel keepers. He may still have the heart to reply, 
 with the sublime simplicity that is in Christ, when asked 
 what in his judgment are the missionary prospects, 
 " As bright as the promises of God." Out upon whin- 
 ing and gloom! 
 
 " Be strong ! 
 It matters not how deep intrenched the wrong, 
 How hard the battle goes, the day how long; 
 Faint not, fight on ! To-morrow comes the song." 
 
 301 
 
302 VISION AND POWER 
 
 Even though the " to-morrow " with its triumphant 
 song should be theirs who shall come after us and not 
 our very own, what of 'that? To-day with its battle is 
 the principal thing; and this is ours, graciously given 
 of God. Six or seven years did Robert Morrison, the 
 pioneer evangelic missionary in China, wait for his 
 first Christian convert. Last summer, on the other 
 hand, a Young Men's Christian Association secretary, 
 George Sherwood Eddy, held meetings there for stu- 
 dents, business men, women, boys, and others, out of 
 which came thousands of enquirers for the knowledge 
 of Christ and Christianity. Was it Eddy's achieve- 
 ment, or Morrison's of a hundred years before, or was 
 it the Lord's achievement through the succession of his 
 faithful representatives in that ancient and wonderful 
 non-Christian land? And whose is this to-morrow, 
 awaiting still greater yet to come, with its victors' song 
 of joy and praise ? Together shall the earlier and the 
 later workers and warriors of Christ rejoice. 
 
 Nevertheless, the bravest and most faithful soul is 
 still " human." Oftentimes his burden is heavy. He 
 craves approval and is pained by apparent lack of suc- 
 cess. He wants to see Christian converts, changed 
 lives, the growth of souls, multiplied Christian work- 
 ers, under his ministry. 
 
 Needless to say, it was so with such a one as " Paul, 
 an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God." " I 
 am perplexed about you," we see him writing to his 
 churches in Galatia. He had given himself to them 
 without stint as minister and friend. They had begun 
 well, " begun in the Spirit " ; but now with their ob- 
 
EFFECTS OF POWER 303 
 
 servance of " days and months and seasons and years " 
 — trusting an outworn ritual for salvation — ^they seemed 
 to have fallen away from the saving evangel of Christ. 
 " I am perplexed about you." Worse than that, he 
 wrote, " I am afraid of you, lest by any means I have 
 bestowed labour upon you in vain." 
 
 On the other hand, how eagerly did the strong-hearted 
 apostle welcome the comfort and strength that came 
 to him and his fellow-workers from the fruits of their 
 ministry. " For now we live [life is for us life in- 
 deed] if ye stand fast in the Lord." 
 
 Essential Christianity has been described as " right 
 relations between man and God and man and man, to- 
 gether with the power to create them." These, at least, 
 are two notes of the religion of Jesus that make it 
 incomparable among the religions of the world. But 
 this or that Christian preacher may be in doubt whether, 
 as a matter of fact, these right relations are being 
 created under his particular ministrations. Hear him 
 in the solitude of his study, this bearer of the last and 
 best word of God to the world, meditatively asking. Is 
 this great evangel which I have undertaken to preach 
 truly enlightening the people, and, together with the 
 wisdom it gives them, is there a Divine creative power 
 really relating them to God as his children and to men 
 as their brothers in Christ? 
 
 But the answer to such a questioning cannot be 
 thought out in the preacher's study. It must be seen 
 and heard in the human life about him — in the congre- 
 
304 VISION AND POWER 
 
 gation to which he ministers and the community in 
 which he lives. Seen and heard ; for though the answer 
 relates to the things of the spirit, it is given in sensible 
 signs. 
 
 When a playmate of my childhood was told that a 
 boy friend of his had been converted, he asked, " How 
 will John look ? " A trivial incident, unworthy of 
 note except as illustrating the instinctive expectation 
 that a person shall seem what he is. Let him show 
 his colours. Let him look like himself. My inquisitive 
 playmate, one may be sure, did not discover any such 
 preternatural change in his familiar friend as he had 
 seemed to expect. Yet the heart of his enquiry was 
 the too little pondered truth that every man, whether 
 he wills to do it or not, is continually pronouncing 
 judgment, in the presence of other people, upon him- 
 self. His spirit will speak in the tones of his voice. 
 His habit of thought and speech will write itself upon 
 his face. " Wouldn't you like to be a Christian ? " said 
 a man of forbidding countenance to the author of " The 
 Song of the Shirt." " No," was the witty poet's too 
 caustic reply, " not if it makes me feel as you look." 
 How would a perfect Christian be likely to appear? 
 
 Attaching no fanciful or undue importance to mere 
 facial expression, we may still speak quite soberly of 
 the soul in a face. Every man's soul is in his face, 
 but not always or in all persons equally evident. It is 
 there at times, glowing or glowering, in quite extraor- 
 dinary self-revealment. It might have been seen on 
 the first recorded day of human hate : " And Cain was 
 very wroth and his countenance fell : " it was seen on the 
 
EFFECTS OF POWER 305 
 
 first recorded day of Christian martyrdom : " And all 
 that sat in the council, fastening their eyes on him, 
 saw his face as it had been the face of an angel." 
 
 Verily it is good to look upon a habitually joy- 
 illumined face. " When he rose from his knees," said 
 a friend of the worshipper, " I saw for the first time 
 the significance of Pentecost. The weariness had gone. 
 The dark care-lines were wiped out. The face was all 
 aglow with a renewed flame." " He was so cheerful," 
 says Dr. W. T. Grenfell of a converted Labrador ruffian 
 who had developed through his faith in Christ a ruling 
 passion to save his fellows, — " he was so cheerful and 
 so uniformly optimistic that his very face became trans- 
 parent with happiness." Have we not known something 
 of this — 
 
 " Of those clear souls whose shining face 
 Made beauty whensoe'er they came, 
 Hearts full of tenderest love and grace. 
 For truth and right a glorious flame?" 
 
 It is especially good to recognize such changes of 
 countenance as show the passing of the cloud of doubt 
 or despondency, under the light of faith and hope and 
 love. One such instance I gratefully remember. A 
 woman of mature life, in a rural Christian home, had 
 never been able to claim for herself with a satisfying 
 trust the forgiving love of God. The lack of such 
 assurance had clouded her life. Despondency had be- 
 come her habitual expression. She was invited to at- 
 tend a meeting to be held in the neighbourhood. " I 
 would go, if I thought it worth while," was the reply. 
 She did not think it worth while, but nevertheless went. 
 
306 VISION AND POWER 
 
 That evening, kneeling at a rude bench in a meeting- 
 house where she had knelt, apparently in vain, more 
 than once before, she found the Saviour and — ^was 
 transfigured. She looked indeed another soul. !N"ot 
 only that evening but through the following days and 
 months — so far as I could learn, ever afterward — the 
 light of peace and joy rested on her face. Every one 
 remarked the change, no one seemed to doubt its reality. 
 It was at the beginning of my ministry, fifty-one years 
 ago; and the only apology for recording it here is the 
 encouragement of that daily visible " sign " of Divine 
 power in even a preacher's first crude endeavour to 
 minister the gospel of the Light of the world, whom 
 if any man follow he shall have the very " light of 
 life." 
 
 II 
 
 But it is the inner eifects of the Spirit's power rather 
 than their outward signs that are chiefly to engage 
 our attention. These, as already suggested, are spir- 
 itual states. They are experiences, conscious disposi- 
 tions, deepening into habits, and thus becoming holy 
 character. And the form of their manifestation is not 
 distinctively, as we well know, in one's appearance, 
 but in the whole course of one's conduct. Appearing 
 thus in the daily life, they bear witness to the truth 
 of God's own life of holy love in the soul. 
 
 "Note the teaching of a familiar precept in our Lord's 
 sermon on the Mount : " Even so," — namely, as a lamp 
 on a lamp-stand — " let your light shine before men ; 
 that they may see your good works, and glorify " — 
 
EFFECTS OF POWER 307 
 
 not you, the doer of the good works. Not that others 
 may give you glory. But why not ? Is it not, as Jesus 
 said, " your light " ? Should you not be praised for the 
 light of truth and goodness that may shine out in " your 
 good works " ? Ay, in a sense ; but in the deeper and 
 Divine sense, No. That light of truth and goodness is 
 kindled by the Spirit of God ; it is given of God, and 
 will be recognized by others as such. That they may 
 "glorify your Father who is in heaven." 
 
 It is the same truth of Christian conduct — learned 
 from these very words of Jesus ? — to which Peter would 
 have his Jewish brethren give heed : " Having your 
 behaviour seemly among the Gentiles, that . . . they 
 may by your good works which they behold glorify God 
 in the day of visitation." * Happy the man to whom 
 it should be said, as a man on the road once said to 
 Francis of Assisi : " There are many who know you 
 and praise God for you." Instinctively will the faith- 
 ful heart make answer, as Francis did, " God be 
 praised." 
 
 It is the indwelling Spirit of God whose effects are 
 visible in the good works and seemly behaviour of his 
 children. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Now, there were some such effects immediately ap- 
 parent in the congregation at Csesarea. One was praise- 
 fulness: " They heard them speak with tongues, and 
 magnify God." Another was confession: unoffended 
 by the shame of the cross, they were baptized " in the 
 
 *I Peter 2:12. 
 
308 VISION AND POWER 
 
 name of Jesus Christ." Still another was the desire 
 for Christian teaching and fellowship: " Then prayed 
 they him to tarry certain days." Accordingly we hear 
 the church in Jerusalem giving glory to God that these 
 Gentiles had received the gift of " repentance unto life," 
 and Peter, in the council held subsequently, speaking 
 of the '' cleansing " of " their hearts by faith." 
 
 AU which is another mark of universality in the 
 religion of Jesus. There was not to be on© type of 
 religious experience and character for Jerusalem and 
 another for Csesarea, one for the foremost apostle of 
 Jesus and another for a captain of the Roman army. 
 No caste. E^o exclusivism. Peter had already, on the 
 day of Pentecost, preaching to " Jews, devout men of 
 every nation under heaven," declared, " Ye shall re- 
 ceive the gift of the Holy Spirit." It was no peculiar 
 treasure of the Apostles and other disciples who had 
 just received it. The promise which it fulfilled was " to 
 all that are afar off, even as many as the Lord our God 
 should call unto him." 
 
 Thus the new effusion of the Spirit's power that is 
 to attend the utterance of God's word is to attend it 
 everywhere. Greater than prophets of Israel saw and 
 heard, even when kings cried out in confession of sin 
 before them, greater than the Seventy sent out by 
 Jesus saw and heard, though they returned exultant 
 with the report, " Even the demons are subject unto 
 us in thy name," greater than any prophet or evan- 
 gelist ever knew before the day when the things 
 that are Jesus Christ's could be shown by the Spirit to 
 the believing heart, are the effects of spiritual power 
 
EFFECTS OF POWER 309 
 
 which may attend the ministry of the evangelic preacher 
 to-day. 
 
 IV 
 
 "Will we suffer just here a word of caution ? Do not 
 expect too much of that which is at best imperfect — 
 even of a regenerate soul. The moral standard, be it 
 remembered, according to which we habitually judge 
 a Christian, is the highest possible; and to say, or 
 silently to act upon the assumption, that a man must 
 be a perfect Christian or not a Christian at all, " filled 
 with the Spirit " or else not under the power of the 
 Spirit at all, would be going far astray. 
 
 " Having become his disciples, let us live according 
 to Christianity," wrote Ignatius of Antioch in one of 
 his letters to the churches. It was a difficult life 
 to live, a terribly tested life, in the pagan surround- 
 ings of Ignatius and the brethren to whom he was 
 writing in the first half of the second century — on his 
 way at this very time to the lions of the Colosseum. 
 It is a difficult and severely tested life to live in the 
 pagan surroundings of the few Christians here and 
 there in such a country, let us say, as China in the 
 first half of the twentieth century. Hundreds of 
 Chinese Christians were called a few years ago to 
 witness for their faith with their life-blood. But will 
 any one anywhere who has been endeavouring to live 
 this highest and holiest life, to " live according to 
 Christianity," to " walk by the Spirit," describe it as 
 a broad and easy way ? " It does not take much of a 
 man," some one has said, " to be a Christian, but it 
 
310 VISION AND POWER 
 
 takes all there is of him all the time." Even the power 
 of the Spirit, without which no step can be taken in 
 this way of life, can make a man a Christian only 
 with his consent and daily cooperation. 
 
 Hence the need of enlightened and sympathetic judg- 
 ment as to the reality of spiritual life in any par- 
 ticular case. 
 
 To be somewhat more specific. Here is an old man 
 brought to Christ. Sadly enough, it is a rare occur- 
 rence; but happily not impossible or unprecedented. 
 It has taken place, let us suppose, under your own 
 ministry. What have you, then? A soul that had 
 grown old in sin. His moral habit, formed and fixed 
 through a long succession of years, was that of in- 
 difference, neglect, profaneness, resistance to the Holy 
 Spirit ; and the result, an almost hopeless insensibility. 
 Yet not altogether hopeless, as his conversion has 
 proved. 
 
 May we reasonably expect that some genuine effects 
 of spiritual power will appear in such a man? Un- 
 doubtedly; and we need to recognize and encourage 
 whatever signs of the new life, breaking through the 
 old encrusted insensibility, may spring up and grow. 
 But, on the other hand, that we shall see the fruits of 
 the Spirit in all their varied beauty and perfection 
 is extremely improbable. 
 
 And here, at the other extreme of our allotted length 
 of years, is a little child not yet in what we should 
 call the age of discretion and responsibility. How 
 soon may the Holy Spirit touch the child-soul with his 
 renewing and formative life ? Surely at the very dawn 
 
EFFECTS OF POWER 311 
 
 of moral consciousness. Let us trust that Spirit of life 
 to do it. Let us be co-workers with him. 
 
 Let the father and mother know that their own 
 teaching and personality are a chosen means of the 
 Spirit in the spiritual nurture of the child that has been 
 given into their arms by the Father in heaven. And 
 let the minister of him who said, " To such belongeth 
 the kingdom of God," know that the most fruitful field 
 of his ministry is childhood and youth. Let him be 
 glad to yield his own teaching and personality, day by 
 day, to cooperation with the Spirit in opening the heart 
 of the young, from infancy on, toward the Master 
 and Saviour. Is he prone to undervalue this priceless 
 opportunity and the consequent obligation? Horace 
 Bushnell said that he thought of nothing in his min- 
 istry with so little respect as of his omissions here. 
 " With more regret/' he said, " and so little respect." 
 In which touching confession that noble Christian 
 thinker and preacher by no means stands alone. 
 
 But here again the wisdom of a true spiritual dis- 
 crimination is needed. The Christian child's life will 
 indeed express something of the grace of God's renew- 
 ing love in the heart, but it will be only an incipient 
 expression, such as is possible to childhood. The at- 
 tempt to force it into forms natural to adult religious 
 experience would be a deed of violence. And to deny 
 its genuineness because of its incipiency would be 
 worse. 
 
312 VISION AND POWER 
 
 That which should be ever expected under the word 
 of preaching, without reference to the age of its hear- 
 ers, is the new birth of the soul. 
 
 Are we willing to look at this new birth for a few 
 moments from the viewpoint of personal experience? 
 Remember, first of all, that every one is governed 
 by some supreme motive or allied group of motives; 
 and it is this governing motive that, in each case, de- 
 termines the character. Whatsoever motive governs 
 any man's moral conduct, that is what that man really 
 is. That is what he has made and is making of him- 
 self. Governed is he by appetite ? by the desire for 
 property? by the craving for esteem? by natural affec- 
 tion? These and the like are all proper and good in 
 their place. They have not been given us to war 
 against the soul. They are not enemies but, in their 
 proper activities, helpers of the true human life. They 
 are necessary to the making of the man. They are 
 the push of nature, God-given, toward the different 
 external goods that are necessary to personal life and 
 upbuilding. But they do perpetually lead the soul into 
 sin by transgressing their Divinely prescribed limits — 
 healthful desire corrupting itself into gluttony, covet- 
 ousness, revenge, selfish ambition, lust. Thus, the will, 
 yielding to unholy passion, becomes self-will, which is 
 antagonism to the good and holy will of God. 
 
 But let the motive now be enthroned which has the 
 right to rule. Let the usurpers of the seat of govern- 
 
EFFECTS OF POWER 313 
 
 ment in the kingdom of the soul be put down. There 
 will be a radical inner change. The man will be 
 made over, reconstructed, according to the creative and 
 redemptive idea of humanity. And need I remind you 
 that this motive, reigning by Divine right, is filial 
 love to God and fraternal love to mankind ? Or, what 
 is in effect the same thing, it is the spirit of obe- 
 dience to the will of the Heavenly Father as the supreme 
 law of life. 
 
 It is when this motive is enthroned that the man 
 is said, in the language of the New Testament, to be 
 regenerated. He now lives a right life. He lives 
 indeed, for he is reborn. He is God's child, God's 
 man. And this reconstruction, this birth from above, 
 this impartation of the highest life, is indeed through 
 the faith of the recipient, but it is by the Divine energy 
 in the soul. " By grace ye have been saved, through 
 faith." 
 
 Here is the secret of peace; for here is the cure of 
 the divided self. Let that which has the Divine right, 
 even holy love, bear rule. Let Christ be master — " he 
 is Lord of all." So, and only so, wiU there come into 
 realization the true unity of personal life, the harmony 
 of powers in which is spiritual health and peace. 
 
 VI 
 
 Not, however, that this lawful kingdom of the soul 
 becomes forthwith a veritable kingdom of heaven. On 
 the contrary, dethroned motives may be expected to 
 strive again for the ascendency, and will have to be sub- 
 dued as before. They must not be dealt with softly. 
 
314 VISION AND POWER 
 
 Be a stem and uncompromising master of your lower 
 nature. No " needless softness or self-indulgence." The 
 body's duty, like the soldier's duty, is to obey. " I 
 buffet my body and bring it into bondage " — into that 
 bondage to moral law which is the man's truest free- 
 dom. " For God gave us not a spirit of fearfulness, 
 but of power and love and discipline {OGocppoviafxoiy 
 soundness of mind, moderation, self-control)." 
 
 Now this regulation of the lower motives and the 
 perpetual strengthening of the reign of moral love 
 is called in the New Testament by several significant 
 names. It is edification ; it is growth in faith or knowl- 
 edge or love ; it is perfecting holiness ; it is living and 
 walking in the Spirit. 
 
 Here, then, in the Christian growth and activities of 
 his congregation, as well as in the new birth of the 
 soul, the preacher's heart may be gladdened by the 
 signs of spiritual power. These, under a pastoral and 
 evangelic as contradistinguished from an evangelistic 
 ministration of the gospel. 
 
 A work of evangelism we are surely called to do, 
 but just as surely a work of teaching and discipline. 
 It is a peculiarly significant fact that the foremost evan- 
 gelist of the eighteenth century was the founder of 
 Kingswood School, the organizer of the first Tract So- 
 ciety, and the writer or editor of about two hundred 
 books, and that the foremost evangelist of the last gen- 
 eration made it so large a part of his work to establish 
 and direct his Bible Institute and his schools at North- 
 field and Mt. Hermon. " Teaching them " — it is a part 
 of the Great Commission itself. 
 
EFFECTS OF POWER 315 
 
 Think of the texts and Scripture lessons in the New 
 Testament for a pastoral pulpit. Or, imagine, if you 
 can, courses of sermons on the Four Gospels and the 
 Epistles in which there was not set forth a large body 
 of teaching and admonition to Christian believers. To 
 preach the New Testament is to preach diligently to 
 the Church. 
 
 " He that prophesieth," says the great evangelizing 
 and teaching apostle in his instructions to the young 
 Christians of Corinth, " speaketh unto men edification 
 and exhortation and consolation." The Christian 
 prophet, therefore, is not simply a preacher before 
 whom the secrets of a man's sinful heart will, for the 
 first time perhaps, be " made manifest, and so he will 
 fall down on his face and worship God." He is also 
 an upbuilder of the converted soul in the knowledge 
 of Christ. 
 
 And the upbuilder must needs be a comforter, with 
 a ministry of healing — speaking unto men " consola- 
 tion." Great is the need of it. For in all our congre- 
 gations are the faint-hearted, the troubled, the sorrow- 
 ing — souls in prison, souls in pain. I do not speak 
 of the effusively sentimental or the amiably selfish, 
 who would impose their burdens upon others. These 
 call for a somewhat different treatment. I am think- 
 ing of the Little-faiths, the real sufferers in body and 
 mind, the broken in spirit. " He is the only min- 
 ister," said one of these, naming an occasional preacher 
 in the pulpit of her church, " who offers me any 
 comfort." 
 
 Would you be thought of as a friend? do people 
 
316 VISION AND POWER 
 
 honour you with the title " brother " ? "A friend 
 loveth at all times and a brother is born for adversity." 
 Would you learn the loving tactf ulness of a wise-hearted 
 minister of Jesus? Study the Epistle to Philemon. 
 Would you be a daily and lifelong pupil of the Spirit ? 
 Here is a part of the spiritual art which he would 
 teach : " The Lord God hath given me the tongue of 
 them that are taught, that I should know how to sustain 
 with words him that is weary." 
 
 It was one of the distinguishing notes in the min- 
 istry of the Son of Man: 
 
 " The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, 
 Because he anointed me to preach good tidings to the poor . . . 
 To set at liberty them that are bruised." 
 
 " Daughter, thy faith hath made thee whole ; go in 
 peace." " Let not your heart be troubled, neither let 
 it be afraid." Blessed indeed is that servant of the 
 Master upon whom rests, in some measure as upon 
 the Master himself, the power to give light to them 
 that sit in the shadow of death and to heal the broken- 
 hearted. 
 
 Moreover, we may learn from the Master that to 
 comfort is to make strong. That, indeed, was the 
 original sense of the word — not to condole but to 
 strengthen. When, for example, it was written some 
 hundreds of years ago in the Invitation to the Lord's 
 Table, " Take this holy sacrament to your comfort," 
 the meaning was, " to your strengthening " ; and such 
 h the word's best meaning still. " As one whom his 
 mother comforteth, so will I comfort you." How, then, 
 does a mother comfort the hurt child? Sympatheti- 
 
EFFECTS OF POWER 317 
 
 cally ? To be sure ; but if she be wise, not by engaging 
 his attention with the sickness or the wound that has 
 befallen him, but by calling it off to pleasant and en- 
 couraging thoughts. This lessens the pain, which the 
 other method would have increased, and tends to healing 
 and health. 
 
 Rest assured the case is the same with him who would 
 fain minister to the burdened or sorrowing soul. There 
 is a better way to help such a one to bear his burdens 
 than to talk to him about them. Probably he is dwelling 
 too much upon them already, which certainly makes 
 them harder to bear. Listen to the story of grief, pa- 
 tient and gentle pastor, sympathetically, but be ready 
 to give an inspiring and not a depressive sympathy. 
 Call off the mind from disease to the power of renewal, 
 from sadness to hope, from evil to good, from man to 
 God. 
 
 To be not a mere condoler but an uplifter, to encour- 
 age (which means to give courage), that is to be a com- 
 forter indeed. " The Lord God has given me the tongue 
 of them that are taught, that I should know how to 
 sustain with words him that is weary." Weariness is 
 weakness. The Divinely taught comforter is a sus- 
 tainer, a courage-giver, a strength-giver to the faint 
 heart and feeble will. 
 
 VII 
 
 Now, the various concordant experiences and states 
 in which the regenerate life expresses itself are de- 
 pcribed in a metaphor of the Apostle Paul as " fruits 
 of the Spirit." He contrasts them with works of the 
 
318 VISION AND POWER 
 
 flesh, which, he says, are " manifest." But the fruits 
 of the Spirit — such as peace, joy, self-control, love — 
 are likewise manifest. They appear not only in the 
 consciousness of their possessor, but to others also ; and 
 they cannot be hid. 
 
 In our day ten thousand witnesses, of all varieties 
 of temperament and from all manner of circumstances 
 and situations, might be summoned to tell what they 
 know of these gracious experiences in their everyday 
 life. 
 
 Is it a question of peace ? "A while ago," says 
 Grenfell of Labrador, " I spent some twenty-four hours 
 floating on the great Atlantic Ocean, on a small pan 
 of ice, on to which I had crawled out of the freezing 
 water. No picture was formed on my retina of a single 
 living soul. However, I slept peacefully through a 
 large part of the night, in the absolute conviction of 
 an unseen Presence, and of something better before 
 me, even if it should be behind the sun which rose 
 in the morning gloriously from behind the boundless 
 horizon." 
 
 Do we enquire concerning joy ? " When fifteen years 
 old," says Frances Ridley Havergal, whose soulful 
 hymns we so often sing, " I committed my soul to the 
 Saviour, and earth and heaven seemed brighter from 
 that moment." 
 
 Do we ask for courage and self-control ? " To at- 
 tempt speaking was vain," wrote Wesley in his Journal 
 concerning the riotous mob of Wednesbury ; " for the 
 noise on every side was like the roaring of the sea. 
 So they dragged me along till we came to the town, 
 
EFFECTS OF POWER 319 
 
 where seeing the door of a large house open, I attempted 
 to go in; but a man catching me by the hair, pulled 
 me back into the middle of the mob. ... I continued 
 speaking all the time to those within hearing, feeling 
 no pain or weariness. . . . From the beginning to the 
 end I found the same presence of mind as if I had been 
 sitting in my own study." 
 
 Would we hear of sacrificial love ? " If I am per- 
 mxitted," replied Reginald Heber, when expostulated 
 with on his decision to go as a missionary bishop to 
 India, " to rescue one miserable Brahmin from his 
 wretched superstition, I shall think myself amply re- 
 warded for the sacrifice." 
 
 Peace, joy, self-control, love — these are fruits of 
 that Spirit whose fulness of grace the Christian be- 
 liever, according to the word of Jesus, may receive. 
 
 And the greatest of these is love. It must needs be 
 so, if love is the eternally ordained governing motive of 
 the kingdom within. 
 
 It is noteworthy, too, that in Paul's naming of fruits 
 of the Spirit, love is given first — " love, joy, peace, long- 
 suffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, 
 self-control." On the other hand, in his naming of 
 the three great elements of spiritual experience and 
 character, which he contrasts with " gifts," love is last 
 — " And now abideth faith, hope, love." Also, in the 
 Second Epistle of Peter this latter order has been 
 chosen — faith, virtue, knowledge, self-control, patience, 
 godliness, brotherly kindness, love.* Again, Paul bids 
 " God's elect " to whom he is writing to clothe them- 
 
 * II Peter 1 : 5-7. 
 
320 VISION AND POWER 
 
 selves with compassion, kindness, lowliness, meekness, 
 long-suffering, forbearance, forgiveness, " and above all 
 these things, love, which is the bond of perfectness." 
 In each case, however, the meaning would seem to be 
 the same. Love is first, as that law of the spirit of 
 life in Christ of which the whole of spiritual char- 
 acter is an expression. And it is simply declaring 
 the same truth to say that love is last, as that in which 
 the whole of spiritual character is summed up and 
 included. 
 
 But why amplify illustration or proof? The con- 
 clusive word was spoken — and to its truth our best 
 knowledge of human life and character bears witness 
 — by the Master himself, when he named the first and 
 great commandment and a second like unto it. " On 
 these two commandments the whole law hangeth, and 
 the prophets." In a word, the all-inclusive effect of 
 the indwelling Spirit's power, in preacher and people, 
 is that state of heart, soul, strength, mind, which 
 Jesus has called love to God, and that care for our 
 neighbour which, Jesus says, must move on the same 
 plane as care for ourselves. And for the preacher of 
 Jesus' word to see evidences of that effect under his 
 ministrations, is to be thankful and satisfied. 
 
 VIII 
 
 He would fain see it, however, not only in the life 
 of this or that individual but dominant in the Church, 
 And that it may become so, he must needs be a prophet 
 of righteousness. Let him preach to men — to them, not 
 at them — as the Hebrew prophets did, as the Master 
 
EFFECTS OF POWER 321 
 
 did, in the language of their own age and concerning 
 the sins of their own lives. Let him preach to the 
 times, but out of the timeless — eternal truth to the 
 short-lived men of the day. 
 
 There may be some in the congregation who will not 
 bear it. As in Jerusalem under Isaiah's preaching, 
 they will " say to the seers, See not." For in the 
 cushioned pew as elsewhere are sins of fleshly indul- 
 gence, of lying, of fraudulent business practices, of 
 worldliness, of impurity, of profane language and 
 conduct; and these instinctively complain, perhaps in 
 attempted self-justification, under the white light of 
 truth. Shall God's prophet shut his eyes, that he may 
 not " see," and keep silent, that he may not offend ? 
 Silence speaks consent. 
 
 Courteous, gentle, loving, not " marring the work 
 of grace with his own ungraciousness," but fearless and 
 faithful must be the spokesman for the enthronement 
 of Christ in the Christian congregation. 
 
 Indeed, the completer ideal and the unwearying en- 
 deavour will be to make of the community itself a 
 kingdom of righteousness and brotherhood. For the 
 Christ of the Church is Jesus of Nazareth. He is 
 Lord of labour and the workshop, of the marriage- 
 feast and the home, of little children, of city and 
 country, of nature as well as man, of the body as well 
 as the soul, of the crowd as -v. ell as the individual. 
 '' And upon this came his disciples ; and they mar- 
 velled that he was speaking with a woman " — one soli- 
 tary soul, one sinful woman, who had come to fill her 
 pitcher with living water at Jacob's well. " And when 
 
322 VISION AND POWER 
 
 He drew nigh he saw the city and wept over it, saying, 
 
 Jerusalem, Jerusalem, that killeth the prophets and 
 stoneth them that are sent unto her ! how often would 
 
 1 have gathered thy children together, even as a hen 
 gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would 
 not ! " — a sinful city which he would fain have saved 
 from the foreseen storm of sorrow and devastation. 
 
 A self-centred church, keeping to itself, on the de- 
 fensive, unwilling to use and to lose its life for the 
 gospel's sake, practically indifferent to the physical, 
 social, and moral welfare of the world about it, may 
 fairly represent the earlier monastic idea of Chris- 
 tianity ; but it does not represent the Christianity which 
 the preaching of Peter would introduce into the great 
 Gentile world, when he offered to the Caesareans, as 
 Leader and Saviour: " Jesus Christ (he is Lord of all) 
 . . . even Jesus of Nazareth . . . who went about do- 
 ing good, and healing all that were oppressed with the 
 devil." " And we are witnesses of all things which 
 he did both in the country of the Jews and in Jerusa- 
 lem." A church that would follow the " Lord of all " 
 must go about " doing good." It must be an apostolic 
 church, which is to say, a church of the sent-forth. 
 
 Spiritual power is very wide-reaching in its effects. 
 It makes for the well-being of the whole man. It quick- 
 ens heart and conscience to promote healthful condi- 
 tions of living, decent and seemly homes, sanitation, 
 prevention of drunkenness, cure of disease, destruction 
 of the agencies of vice, good schools, good government, 
 obedience to law, just and beneficent industrial condi- 
 tions, veracity in trade, the overthrow of the modern 
 
EFFECTS OF POWER 323 
 
 Moloch of greed that is still feeding upon the lives of 
 little children. 
 
 In diligently striving for these things in her Lord's 
 name, a church is showing herself not worldly but un- 
 worldly, not spiritually indifferent but faithful toward 
 the reign of Christ on earth. Surely the God who, 
 sending forth his Spirit, renews the face of the earth, 
 would have his people cooperate with him in renewing 
 by that same Spirit both the face and the heart of the 
 human world. 
 
 " I expect," says the author of " The Tongue of 
 Fire," " to see cities swept from end to end, their 
 manners elevated, their commerce purified, their poli- 
 tics Christianized, their criminal population reformed, 
 their poor made to feel that they dwell among brethren 
 — righteousness in the streets, peace in the homes, an 
 altar at every fireside — because I believe in the Holy 
 Ghost." 
 
XV 
 CERTAIN SIGNS OF POWER 
 
 For they heard them speak with tongues and magnify 
 God.— Acts 10:46. 
 
 " f I ^HEY heard them speak with tongues." Here 
 I was an extraordinary outflow of power. To 
 Peter and the brethren from Joppa it showed, 
 as indubitably as unexpectedly, that " on the Gentiles 
 also was poured out the gift of the Holy Spirit." What 
 does it mean for us? 
 
 In apostolic language it is described not as one of 
 the " fruits of the Spirit," but as a " spiritual gift 
 {Xocpi(3}^oc)" Something of its nature may be learned 
 from Paul's instructions, in the fourteenth chapter of 
 Eirst Corinthians, concerning its use and abuse. It is 
 there referred to as an ecstatic utterance of prayer or 
 praise — so here, in Peter's congregation, " They heard 
 them speak with tongues and magnify God" — unin- 
 telligible, for the most part or wholly, both to speaker 
 and hearer. Accordingly it did not serve as a means 
 of edification to the Christian people, but as a sign to 
 the unbelieving. 
 
 There were some Christians, however, who had the 
 gift of interpreting this rapt spiritual utterance. If 
 such a one were present, let him interpret. If, on 
 the contrary, there were no interpreter present, then 
 
 324 
 
CERTAIN SIGNS OF POWER 325 
 
 it were better — at least in the Corinthian church, to 
 which the apostle is writing — not to speak aloud " in 
 a tongue." " Let him speak to himself and to God." 
 For the congregational law of love was : " Let all things 
 be done unto edifying." 
 
 In this apostolic teaching, then, three things are note- 
 worthy: (1) The gift of tongues is recognized, together 
 with other spiritual gifts, as a sign of the Spirit's 
 power; (2) Of the several spiritual gifts, prophesying 
 i? distinguished as more to be desired, because of its 
 greater usefulness, than " speaking in a tongue " ; 
 (3) Above all spiritual gifts — incommensurable with 
 them, shall we not say? — is commended that supreme 
 grace of character, holy love. The whole truth is com- 
 pacted into a single verse : " Follow after love ; yet 
 desire earnestly spiritual gifts, but rather that ye may 
 prophesy." 
 
 Here is indeed a large and luminous word. Delivered 
 by the great apostolic interpreter of Christianity, who 
 declared that as for himself he would rather speak in 
 the congregation five words with his understanding, that 
 be might instruct others, " than ten thousand words 
 in a tongue," it is applicable yet. True, the gift of 
 tongues as a significant form of rapturous speech has 
 ceased ; but not that which it signified. For the same 
 spiritual power as of old is expressing itself still, not 
 only in the manifold fruits of the Spirit — which is 
 the chief thing — but also in sundry impressive 
 " signs." 
 
326 VISION AND POWER 
 
 That is to say, there do still occur remarkable emo- 
 tional experiences and outward manifestations in the 
 Christian life. The evangelic preacher is likely to 
 welcome them as occurring under his ministry. It 
 will give him joy to speak the word of truth with such 
 " signs following." But he will also, as a faithful dis- 
 ciple in the school of Christ, learn, as Paul did, to esti- 
 mate them at their true value in comparison with one 
 another and in relation to the crowning virtue of Chris- 
 tian love. 
 
 To illustrate. Suppose the preacher, while faith- 
 fully delivering his message, should see one of his 
 hearers suddenly fall down and call upon God for 
 mercy. And in that same hour the prayer of contri- 
 tion is changed into a song of praise. This would 
 seem to be some such scene as that which took place 
 in the Corinthian church, when, under the spoken word 
 of God from the lips of this or that spiritually gifted 
 believer, an " unbelieving and unlearned " man would 
 have the secrets of his heart made manifest — " and so 
 he will fall down on his face and worship God, declar- 
 ing that God is among you indeed." Might not that 
 be accepted — the modern as well as the ancient marvel 
 — as an extraordinary sign of Divine power ? 
 
 There have been many events of this order in ^e 
 history of modern Christianity, They are familiar, or 
 may easily become so, to every one interested in the 
 subject. Under some word of pungent pulpit speech, 
 men have trembled from head to foot, or cried 
 aloud, or fallen prostrate and lain for a time as one 
 dead. 
 
CERTAIN SIGNS OF POWER 327 
 
 " While I was earnestly inviting all sinners to ' enter into 
 the holiest ' by this ' new and living way,' many of those that 
 heard began to call upon God with strong cries and tears. Some 
 sunk down, and there remained no strength in them; others 
 exceedingly trembled and quaked; some were torn with a kind 
 of convulsive motion in every part of their bodies, and that 
 BO violently that often four or five persons could not hold one of 
 them."— Wesley, " Journal," June 15, 1739. 
 
 Such occurrences have been most frequent in time of 
 extraordinary religious revival. They seem to have 
 taken place in most instances through the thought of 
 sin and retribution and of redemption by the cross of 
 Christ, brought home with strong conviction and vivid 
 realism to the imagination, conscience, and heart of 
 the hearer. In the English and the American Wes- 
 leyan Revival and in that of New England under the 
 leadership of Jonathan Edwards and George White- 
 field, they were such as to attract wide attention, both 
 sympathetic and critical. 
 
 " Wesley could never reach any conclusive opinion of their 
 character, though he instituted, at Newcastle, a sort of scientific 
 investigation of their causes and symptoms. . . . Richard Wat- 
 son has expressed the general sentiment of Methodists concern- 
 ing them, that though they are evidently physical, arising from 
 some occult nervous susceptibility, peculiar perhaps to certain 
 constitutions, they do not prove that an extraordinary work of 
 God is not at the same time going on in the hearts of persons so 
 affected." — Stevens, " History of the Methodist Episcopal Church," 
 Vol. I., pp. 382-83. 
 
 Similar phenomena attended the Revival which pre- 
 vailed 80 mightily in Kentucky and elsewhere — the 
 " Scotch-Irish Revival," it has been called — at the 
 opening of the nineteenth century. 
 
 Peter Cartwright, the famous backwoods preacher, 
 was converted at one of the meetings in connection 
 with this remarkable evangelistic movement, and in 
 
828 VISION AND POWER 
 
 his biography, an intensely interesting narrative, gives 
 the testimony, together with the estimate, of an enthusi- 
 astic but clever and sharp-sighted eye-witness, as to some 
 of its physical phenomena. 
 
 It will be noted that he regards that extraordinary 
 convulsive exercise, the " jerk?," when spontaneous and 
 irresistible, as a sign of Divine power and judgment, 
 but as also in some cases a morbid contagion; and that 
 he found the best remedy for it to be prayer : 
 
 " I have seen more than a hundred sinners fall like dead men 
 under one powerful sermon, and I have seen and heard more than 
 five hundred Christians all shouting aloud the high praises of 
 God at once. . . . 
 
 " Just in the midst of our controversies on the subject of the 
 powerful exercises among the people under preaching, a new 
 exercise broke out among us called the jerks, which was over- 
 whelming in its effects upon the bodies and minds of the people. 
 No matter whether they were saints or sinners, they would be 
 taken under a warm song or sermon and seized with a con- 
 vulsive jerking all over, which they could not by any possibility 
 avoid; and the more they resisted the more they jerked. If they 
 would not strive against it, and pray in good earnest, the jerk- 
 ing would usually abate. ... 
 
 *' There is no doubt in my mind that, with weak-minded, igno- 
 rant, and superstitious persons, there was a great deal of sym- 
 pathetic feeling with many that claimed to be under the influ- 
 ence of this jerking exercise; and yet with many it was per- 
 fectly involuntary. It was on all occasions my practice to 
 recommend fervent prayer as a remedy, and it almost always 
 proved an effectual antidote. — "Autobiography," pp. 45-51. 
 
 Many a neighbourhood revival, also, and many a 
 regular ministration of the gospel have been attended 
 with emotional and physical signs of the same general 
 character. 
 
 II 
 
 The professional psychologist, who of recent years 
 has been making something of a study in the hitherto 
 
CERTAIN SIGNS OF POWER 329 
 
 neglected field of religious psychology, is ready with 
 an explanation of these phenomena, and has a valid 
 claim to our attention. Not that he comes with any 
 significant new discovery in this field ; for there is none. 
 But it is well that he should bring all his knowledge 
 and thought to bear upon the great conscious facts of 
 religion. It is well that he should endeavour to show 
 their mental order and law. And it is well that he 
 should make it plain, as he is doing, that the physical 
 effects here in question are caused proximately by sud- 
 den and powerful excitation of the nerve centres, and 
 should cite instances of similar effects of high-wrought 
 emotional experiences under other than evangelic 
 influences. 
 
 Here, too, we have to bear in mind that the same 
 intensity of excitement will not express itself in the 
 same outbreak of emotion, visible or audible, in all 
 persons. Far otherwise. For example, in the case 
 of the highly suggestible and the nervously unstable, 
 there may be great physical demonstration, where in 
 the case of the thoughtful and self-controlled nothing 
 of the kind will occur. Similarly, even the same per- 
 son is more easily affrighted and more easily moved 
 to tears or laughter or excited speech in one state of the 
 nerves than in another. 
 
 " The psychological key to the problem is that concentrated 
 attention, accompanied by strong religious emotion, produces a 
 powerful impression upon the nervous system, the result being an 
 agitation of nerves throughout the body, the effects of which 
 differ according to the constitution of the subject. In one, relief 
 is found in floods of tears; in another, in hysterical laughter; 
 in a third, by unconsciousness; in a fourth, by a partial loss of 
 muscular action; in yet another, complete catalepsy may be pro- 
 duced . . . while some temperaments can bear religious or any 
 
330 VISION AND POWER 
 
 other kind of emotion without outward excitement and without 
 indication, except an unusual calmness." — Dr. J. M. Buckley, 
 "The Methodists," p. 218. 
 
 But concerning all such outward excitements — " men- 
 tal and motor automatisms," our psychologist would 
 call them — ^there remains, of course, a more important 
 question of cause. What produces the emotional ex- 
 perience? Is it a sudden access of fear or grief or 
 joy excited in one's simply human relations — say, by 
 some news received, some event experienced, some per- 
 son seen ? Then the outcry or the bodily prostration 
 bears witness to the power in one's life of such news, 
 such event, such person. It is the case, let us suppose, 
 of a long-lost son appearing unlooked for to greet his 
 mother in the old home — I recently read the newspaper 
 report of a mother in such circumstances falling dead 
 in the arms of her returned son. If, however, the 
 source of the overpowering emotion be some truth of 
 Christianity sharply applied to conscience and heart 
 in Christian preaching, then even violent bodily ef- 
 fects will bear witness, in their humble sphere, to the 
 power of the gospel. And their testimony at times may 
 be peculiarly arresting and suggestive. 
 
 Ill 
 
 But there has always been danger that such bodily 
 reactions under religious appeal may be misinterpreted 
 and overvalued. They are not to be coveted as proofs 
 of the preacher's Divine vocation. Otherwhere must he 
 look for seals to his ministry. 
 
 Let extraordinary emotional effects, then, be regarded 
 
CERTAIN SIGNS OF POWER 331 
 
 as incidental concomitants of the new birth of the soul, 
 and not even that, unless they be followed by the fruits 
 of the Spirit in life and conduct. Because the fact of 
 their occurrence in religious meetings does not of itself 
 prove them to be spiritually genuine. 
 
 " I told them [a * society ' to which he was preaching] they 
 were not to judge of the spirit whereby any one spoke, either 
 by appearances or by common report or by their own inward 
 feelings; no, nor by any dreams, visions, or revelations, sup- 
 posed to be made to their souls; any more than by their tears 
 or any involuntary eflfects wrought upon their bodies. I warned 
 them, all these were of a doubtful, disputable nature; they might 
 be of God and they might not; and were therefore not simply 
 to be relied on (any more than simply to be condemned) but to 
 be tried by a further rule, to be brought to the only certain test, 
 the Law and the Testimony." — Wesley, " Journal," June 22, 
 1739. 
 
 t 
 
 For one thing, these physical effects may be caught, 
 under superemotional excitement, as a contagion. 
 
 The wildest excitement I have ever witnessed, in time 
 of peace or of war, was caused by a single piercing and 
 pitiful cry in a crowded church. A panic-stricken con- 
 course of people leaping to their feet from a posture 
 of prayer, hurrying here and there, faces white with 
 terror, rushing with shrieks toward unfastened doors 
 in hope of escape — no controlling power except that 
 of mortal fear; and of all the distracted actors in the 
 scene it is probable that only the first one knew what 
 dreadful thing had happened. Hers was first-hand 
 terror; all the rest was involuntary and uncontrollable 
 imitation. It was in war-time. A religious revival 
 was in progress. The congregation were keyed up to 
 a high but silent nervous tension. During prayer two 
 or three soldiers had quietly entered the church and 
 
332 VISION AND POWER 
 
 arrested an alleged informer in the employ of the enemy. 
 And the bitter cry of the unhappy man's sister, who 
 all at once saw and understood, did the rest. In like 
 manner has religious excitement been enkindled, in this 
 or that form and to a greater or less extent, in certain 
 susceptive souls, through mere sympathy with the out- 
 breaking excitement of others — and especially in that 
 psychological whirlpool, a crowd. 
 
 " It is also a law that the perception of the effects of emo- 
 tion and proximity to those who are under the power thereof 
 will produce upon many effects similar to those manifested 
 before them, so that they will weep when others weep, even 
 though in no way related to the cause of grief. Thus great 
 panics arise and mental and moral epidemics. . . . Thus armies 
 have been stampeded before forces which they could have over- 
 thrown without difficulty, had they made a stand." — Dr. J. M. 
 Buckley, "The Methodists," pp. 218-19. 
 
 Or, such demonstrations may be honestly practised 
 by untaught souls who are striving thus to fling them- 
 selves by means of some vaguely conceived mental or 
 physical struggle into the kingdom of God. 
 
 Or again, Christian converts may be led to strain 
 their religious experience so as to make it conform 
 to an accepted type — insensibly to strain it, as Jona- 
 than Edwards has said in his " Treatise on the Reli- 
 gious Affections," " so as to bring it to an exact con- 
 formity to the scheme already established in their 
 minds." 
 
 Especially may such damaging results ensue when 
 the untaught soul of the preacher is making appeal to 
 the fitful nerves of his audience rather than to their 
 reason or conscience or spirit or will. 
 
 Grievous has been the abuse of the emotional nature, 
 
CERTAIN SIGNS OF POWER 333 
 
 and correspondingly grievous the resulting spiritual 
 injury, at many a religious meeting — even at many a 
 one which in spirit and intention has been true to 
 Christ and the soul's salvation. I remember once ex- 
 pressing surprise at the success that seemed to attend 
 a certain preacher in his revival meetings. He had 
 told me that if he should seriously undertake to study 
 continuously for the space of half an hour, he believed 
 it would drive him wild. He remarked that very often 
 he selected his text after entering the pulpit. " Well," 
 replied the friend to whom I was speaking, " I under- 
 stand it. I was once appointed to preach, during a 
 Conference, to the negroes. I did the best I could, 
 but there was no special expression of interest in the 
 congregation. I asked this brother, who was sitting in 
 the pulpit with me, to close the services. He rose and 
 read a hymn in his ordinary tone of voice. Then, lay- 
 ing the hymn-book down, all at once he clapped his 
 hands, stamped with his foot, and shouted ' Halle- 
 lujah ! ' Without another word, instantly, the congre- 
 gation was kindled into a very flame of excitement." 
 The method of our physically fervid brother was not 
 essentially different from that of certain revivalists 
 before Anglo-Saxon congregations. It was only some- 
 what simpler and cruder. 
 
 In all which cases the physician of souls is exciting 
 a fever in whose factitious strength the patient may 
 rise up and walk a little way, while the disease itself 
 remains untouched and becomes even more difficult 
 to cure. 
 
 Religious excitement that is caused by the reception 
 
834 VISION AND POWER 
 
 of truth and followed by a Christian life — or by a 
 better Christian life, as the case may be — is to be wel- 
 comed; and no other. Any excitement that claims 
 to have worth must submit itself to the practical test. 
 What is its value for life? What good conduct does 
 it produce ? It is the Divine test under which we must 
 all be judged : " Who will render to every man accord- 
 ing to his works." 
 
 IV 
 
 Let us linger a moment longer on this phase of our 
 subject. The fact that individual members of an ex- 
 cited crowd will do what no one of them would have 
 attempted alone is familiar enough. It accounts for 
 the wild excesses of the mob. But essentially the same 
 thing is true under great waves of excitement in more 
 intelligent and orderly assemblages. This and that 
 person will promise their votes or money or lives to a 
 cause which, on the subsidence of the emotional agi- 
 tation, they show themselves quite unwilling to serve. 
 
 It would be hard to find more thoughtful or better 
 ordered meetings of young people than those of the 
 Student Volunteer Movement of our day. At the most 
 recent of these conventions, as on previous occasions, 
 the missionary enthusiasm was widespread and intense, 
 but no one was asked to enroll himself on the spot 
 as a volunteer. The cause of world-wide evangelism 
 was powerfully presented ; much information was given ; 
 much persuasion was oifered ; missionary literature was 
 put into the young people's hands ; and they were urged 
 to think and pray and yield their wills wholly to the 
 
CERTAIN SIGNS OF POWER 335 
 
 will of God, and after due consideration to decide, each 
 for himself, the great question of their lifework. This, 
 because their leaders had learned that only thus could 
 the best results be reached. 
 
 Are we to conclude, then, that there is no good 
 in the unifying thrill of religious excitement in a con- 
 gregation, and that no one ought to act under its in- 
 fluence? Not at all. That would be too much like 
 saying that one ought not to act under the influence 
 of sympathy and imitation. For it is this influence 
 that moves a person to do as those about him, whether 
 they be few or many, are doing; and in either case 
 such action may be entirely good and true. 
 
 There are men and women, for example, so absorbed 
 in worldliness or so blankly indifferent to spiritual 
 realities that the contagion of religious excitement is 
 needed to jostle them out of the sense of security in sin, 
 and make them attentive, for a little while at least, to 
 some word of truth and salvation. Let them be brought 
 under such excitement. It is well; it may prove to 
 be their salvation. 
 
 But let not the preacher, in his craving for imme- 
 diate and visible results, refuse to discriminate be- 
 tween the use and the abuse of that intensified spirit 
 of sympathy and imitation which he and his audience 
 are uniting to awaken. 
 
 V 
 
 Passing now from this phase of our subject, let us 
 take note of certain other experiences at the time of 
 conversion. I mean those which, without expressing 
 
336 VISION AND POWER 
 
 themselves in any marked outward demonstration, do 
 bear witness within the soul itself to its newness of 
 life in Christ. There is a spiritual peace and joy. 
 There is a sense of nearness to God and of rest in him. 
 " I can trust him/' says the soul ; " I feel that he hears 
 my prayer." The kingdom of heaven is come. " The 
 old things are passed away; behold, they are become 
 new." 
 
 As we have already noted, the convert's face may 
 be changed with his change of heart. ISTot only so ; but 
 the scenes of the outer world may look to him brighter 
 and more beautiful than ever before. " I went to the 
 door," said a plain working-woman, in her account of 
 such an experience, " thanking God, and was amazed 
 at the changed look of everything around. I said, 
 ' Where have my eyes been that I never saw the beauty 
 of it before ? ' " 
 
 " It was during my second autumn as a scarecrow [a small 
 boy employed to keep crows off the corn-fields]," says Alexander 
 Irvine, " that I had an experience that changed the current of 
 my life. It was on a Monday, and during the entire day I 
 kept humming over and over two lines of a hymn I had heard 
 in the Sunday-school. Nothing ever happened to me that 
 remains quite so vividly in my minu ai that experience. 
 
 " I was sitting on the fence at the close of day, a very happy 
 day. I must have been moved by the colour of the sky, or by 
 the emotion produced by the lines of the hymn. It may have been 
 both. But as I sat on the fence and watched the sun set over the 
 trees, an emotion swept over me and the tears began to flow. 
 My body seemed to change as by the pouring into it of some 
 strange, life-giving fluid. I wanted to shout, to scream aloud; 
 but instantly I went rapidly over the hill into the woods, 
 dropped on my knees, and began to pray. 
 
 " It was getting dark, but the woods were filled with light. 
 Perhaps it was the light of my vision or the light of my mind — I 
 know not. But when I came back into the open I felt as though 
 I were walking on air. . . . 
 
 " Many a night I had been kept awake by the gnawing pangs 
 of hunger, but this night I was kept awake for a different rea- 
 
CERTAIN SIGNS OF POWER 337 
 
 son. It was an indescribable ecstasy, a new-born joy. As I 
 lay there with my head about a foot from the thatched roof, 
 I hummed over and over the two lines of the hymn, sometimes 
 breaking the continuity in giving way to tears. . . . 
 
 " Everything looked beautiful. The world was full of joy. I 
 was perfectly sure the birds were sharing it, for they sang that 
 morning as I had never heard them sing before. . . . 
 
 " As I passed through the barnyard I came in contact with 
 some of the men, and their questions led me to believe that 
 some of the experience remained on my face." — " From the Bottom 
 Up," pp. 11, 12. 
 
 " On my way home that night," said a convert in 
 one of the meetings of my own early ministry, " the 
 ledge of rocks which I had to pass seemed all aglow 
 with light." That surely was such a light as came not 
 from the sun nor from the moon and stars, but from 
 the soul. 
 
 ^or is it a surprising story. To doubt such testi- 
 mony would show but scant knowledge of the human 
 heart, with its unceasing witness in the face and its 
 vision of surrounding objects. Let some great natural 
 good, the greatest that can be imagined, a boon that 
 one could hardly have dared hope for, come suddenly 
 into one's life. Would there be no brightness of joy, 
 both in his face for others to see and in the whole out- 
 side world for his own eyes to look upon? Quite 
 reasonably, then, may we believe all this and more 
 besides of a soul that has come to know for the first 
 time as his very own the love and fatherhood of God 
 in Jesus Christ. " Out of darkness into His marvel- 
 lous light." * It is as if it might be a partial and 
 personal fulfilment of the ancient prophetic word, 
 " There shall be new heavens and a new earth." 
 
 *I Peter 2:9. 
 
338 VISION AND POWER 
 
 Now sucli an emotional uplift has a distinct and 
 permanent value. It is good to rejoice in the Lord 
 always. It is also good, in a special sense, to have 
 a definitely glad and assuring experience at the out- 
 set of one's Christian life. It is something to look 
 back upon all along the journey with grateful joy. 
 On every remembrance of it one may thank God and 
 take courage. In time of mental perplexity and con- 
 flict, of multiplying difficulties, of clouded vision, it 
 is well to be able to recall a first great day of God 
 and to say : " Then was I full of gladness in the light 
 of His countenance." Blessed the memory of such a 
 birthday of the soul. 
 
 Perhaps no more remarkable example of ecstatic 
 experience at the time of the new birth has ever been 
 recorded than that of Charles G. Finney. A young 
 man, alone in his law office, he had been earnestly pray- 
 ing day after day for personal salvation. Then, in 
 his own words: 
 
 " Without any expectation of it, without ever having the 
 thought in my mind that there was any such thing for me, 
 without any recollection that I had ever heard the thing mentioned 
 by any person in the world, the Holy Spirit descended upon me 
 in a manner that seemed to go through me, body and soul. I 
 could feel the impression, like a wave of electricity, going 
 through and through me. Indeed, it seemed to come in waves 
 and waves of liquid love; for I could not express it in any other 
 way. It seemed like the very breath of God. I can recollect dis- 
 tinctly that it seemed to fan me, like immense wings. No 
 words can express the wonderful love tPaat was shed abroad in my 
 heart. I wept aloud with joy and love. ... I said, ' Lord, I 
 can bear no more.' " — " Autobiography," pp. 20-25. 
 
 At once he began to preach. " I soon sallied forth 
 from the office," he says, " to converse with those whom 
 I should meet about their souls. I had the impression, 
 
CERTAIN SIGNS OF POWER 339 
 
 which has never left my mind, that God wanted me 
 to preach the gospel, and that I must begin imme- 
 diately. I somehow seemed to know it." And thus 
 began the ministry of the most notable revivalist of 
 the first half of the nineteenth century. Who shall 
 say that the rapture of love and joy which marked its 
 beginning was not an element of permanent power in 
 that evangelistic ministry? 
 
 Needless to say, such an ecstasy is exceeding rare. 
 Nor is there anything either in the New Testament or 
 in the course of Christian experience, from the begin- 
 ning until now, to excite the expectation that it will 
 ever be otherwise. Indeed, no form of instantaneous 
 and exulting assurance is one of the ordinary signs of 
 conversion. 
 
 One might find illustrative analogies in other spheres 
 of life and experience. Here, for instance, all about us, 
 is a world of sentiment and imagination, astir with 
 beautiful and inspiring images, ideals, and suggestions, 
 to which the poets — may their goodly tribe increase — 
 would fain open our eyes. Does the glory of that vi- 
 sion appear so distinctly as to set apart the first occa- 
 sion of it from all others, before and after? Some- 
 times it does. I have heard a professor of English 
 literature tell of the very day on which such a vision 
 came to him, of the particular little poem — Tenny- 
 son's " Ulysses " — through which it came, of the col- 
 lege campus over which he went walking and repeat- 
 ing aloud the magic words. He spoke of it as a 
 genuine mental rebirth. But that great teacher was far 
 enough from telling his pupils that, unless the love 
 
340 VISION AND POWER 
 
 of poetry should come to them in just the same man- 
 ner, thej never could be sure that it had come at all. 
 Let the appointed teacher of Christianity be equally 
 wise and true in his teaching. 
 
 Or, take the case of some particular truth of reli- 
 gion laying hold of the soul with all its hitherto unfelt 
 power, as in the twinkling of an eye. Dr. R. W. 
 Dale tells of such an instance in his own life. He 
 had been a preacher and teacher of Christ, scholarly, 
 deep-thinking, thoroughly in earnest, from youth to 
 middle age or beyond, when the unprecedented experi- 
 ence came. " He was writing an Easter sermon, and 
 when half-way through the thought of the living Christ 
 broke in upon him as it had never done before. To 
 use his own words : " ' Christ is alive,' I said to my- 
 self. ' Alive ! Can that really be true — fliving as 
 really as I myself am ? ' I got up and walked about 
 repeating : ' Christ is living ! Christ is living ! ' At 
 first it seemed strange and hardly true, but at last 
 it came upon me as a burst of sudden glory. ... It 
 was to me a new discovery. I thought all along I had 
 believed it; but not until that moment did I feel sure 
 of it. I then said : ' My people shall know it ; I shall 
 preach about it again and again until they believe 
 it as I do now.' " * So he did preach it from that time 
 on, and also, under the inspiration of it, wrote his 
 illuminative book, " The Living Christ and the Four 
 Gospels." 
 
 Is this, then, the typical form for the realization 
 
 •"Biography of R. W. Dale of Birmingham." By his son. 
 Pp. 642-43. 
 
CERTAIN SIGNS OF POWER 341 
 
 of a great Christian doctrine? We know that it is 
 not, and may know equally well that it is not the 
 typical form for the realization of the converting grace 
 of God. 
 
 VI 
 
 It should also be noted that an extraordinary emo- 
 tional experience at conversion is not unattended with 
 its own peculiar dangers. One of these is the danger 
 of resting in the memory of a past spiritual attainment. 
 For life maintains itself only in ceaseless movement. 
 The voice of a living and healthful soul must ever be: 
 " Come, let us sing a new song unto the Lord." 'No 
 possible nearness to God ten" years or ten days ago 
 implies the same nearness now. And while all this 
 may be readily admitted as the merest commonplace 
 of Christian teaching, there may nevertheless intrude 
 and linger the half-acknowledged feeling that a thrill- 
 ing conversion, at some designated time and place in 
 the past, does somehow show a man to be a child of 
 God here and now. 
 
 There is also the danger of making the rapturous 
 or instantly sun-bright conversion a test for all con- 
 versions. This would be to confuse the occasional with 
 the universal, the incidental with the essential. It 
 would be to accept a particular, perhaps a denomi- 
 national, tradition as a substitute for the teaching of 
 the ISTew Testament and the enlightened Christian con- 
 sciousness. Especially in the teacher of religion must 
 it prove to be a most lamentable error. Theoretically 
 
342 VISION AND POWER 
 
 wrong, it may become practically worse than mis- 
 chievous. 
 
 Imagine two persons who, with equal genuineness 
 of repentance and faith, set out side by side in the 
 way of salvation. One rises up suddenly into a joy- 
 ous sense of spiritual liberty and assurance. He will 
 ever after remember the precious occasion, and will 
 testify : " Whatever befall, I shall always believe that 
 then and there the love of God was shed abroad in 
 my heart." The other has no such day of days to 
 celebrate. Through the coming years, in the same com- 
 munity and congregation, these two persons live the 
 Christian life. Is it likely that their most spiritually 
 minded fellows, the best interpreters of the things of 
 the Spirit, will find the former of the two showing 
 stronger evidences of the truth and grace of God in 
 the heart, of love to Christ, of sonship to the Heavenly 
 Father, than the latter ? It is quite as likely that just 
 the opposite will be the fact. 
 
 Let us enquire, then, what it is that makes the dif- 
 ference in these two types of conversion ? The religious 
 teaching under which the two persons were brought 
 up may have something to do with it. The circum- 
 stances attending the two conversions may help explain 
 it. The expectation or non-expectation of a distinct 
 and strongly marked emotional crisis at conversion may 
 need to be taken into the account. But careful ob- 
 servation will in all probability show the chief cause 
 to be found in a certain innate difference in the two 
 persons themselves. It may be found in a difference 
 of temperament. 
 
CERTAIN SIGNS OF POWER 343 
 
 Such a conclusion has been confirmed by the spe- 
 cific psychological study of the subject. That is to 
 say, in a large majority of the cases examined those 
 persons who at conversion passed through a strongly 
 marked emotional crisis have been shown to be per- 
 sons in whom sensibility was predominant. It is not 
 meant, of course, that they were lacking in either in- 
 tellect or will-power, but that the more marked char- 
 acteristic was sensibility. Temperamentally they 
 would be classed, to use the technical terms, as either 
 " sanguine " or " melancholic " — chiefly as included in 
 the former class. In brief, a soul that is impression- 
 able, impulsive, confident, hopeful (" sanguine "—for 
 example, Simon the son of Jonas), or that is liable to be 
 mastered by great depth of feeling (" melancholic " — 
 for example, John the son of Zebedee), in his experi- 
 ence and practice of the natural life, will be likely to 
 have his experience and practice of religion corre- 
 spondingly affected by this same temperamental emo- 
 tiveness. Indeed, why should any one think or wish 
 it otherwise? 
 
 " The ultimate test of religious values," as Professor 
 George A. Coe has happily said, " is nothing psycho- 
 logical, nothing definable in terms of the how it hap- 
 pens, but sometEing ethical, definable only in terms of 
 the what is attained of loving trust toward God and 
 brotherly kindness toward men." 
 
 To ascribe an exaggerated significance, therefore, to 
 the emotional test of conversion, or of religious experi- 
 ence and character in general, must work only con- 
 fusion and harm. It calls away the attention not only 
 
344 VISION AND POWER 
 
 from reason, but also from conscience and will and 
 conduct. Thus emotion itself is spoiled, being emptied 
 of its true meaning and content. And the religion 
 of Jesus, which is truly thoughtful, conscientious, 
 strengthful, practical, emotional, degenerates into an 
 emotionalism. 
 
 VII 
 
 Now, here is the danger of opening a door for some 
 of God's most faithful children into darkness and 
 misery. Setting up the emotional standard, we declare 
 to those who have been disappointed in their hope of 
 a thrilling conscious transition at conversion that, no 
 matter what else they may have experienced, and no 
 matter what they may believe or become or do, they 
 cannot be so well assured as some others that they have 
 been truly converted to God. 
 
 Take one of these, for example, as representative 
 of very many others, and learn his inner history. He 
 would be at peace with God. He pours out the de- 
 sires of his heart in persevering prayer. Turning away 
 from a sinful life, he is willing, so far as consciousness 
 testifies, to give up every evil temper and habit and 
 to submit himself wholly to the Divine will. He trusts, 
 he reaches forth his hand to the Saviour's cross. And 
 he has been told that, these conditions complied with, 
 his heart will forthwith be surcharged with a heavenly 
 joy and his lips made vocal with the Saviour's praise. 
 But it is not so: there is no result which he can con- 
 scientiously describe in such language. 
 
 With the psalmist he could say, " The troubles of 
 
CERTAIN SIGNS OF POWER 345 
 
 my heart are enlarged " ; but he does not say it, being 
 constitutionally reticent and silent about the inner life. 
 He goes to church, however, and hears the preacher 
 assert from the pulpit, " A man must know by the 
 inward voice of the Spirit that he is a child of God " — 
 and straightway asks himself, " Have I indubitably 
 heard that voice ? " Turning for a word in season 
 to the poet-prophets of the hymnal, he reads: 
 
 " No tongue can express 
 The sweet comfort and peace 
 Of a soul in its earliest love" — 
 
 and bitterly confesses, " It is not mine." Taking up 
 a religious newspaper, he sees an account (as I chanced 
 to do yesterday) of a lovely Christian character who, 
 speaking of his conversion in mature manhood, said, 
 " I had never heard the birds sing before " ; but to 
 him the songs of the birds are about the same as they 
 have ever been. He reads of John Henry ISTewman's 
 assertion that he was as sure of having been con- 
 verted on a certain day in his early life as that he had 
 " hands and feet " — and feels that he would give the 
 world for a certainty like that. There falls into his 
 hands Charles H. Spurgeon's description, as given in 
 his " Autobiography," of the effect of converting grace 
 upon his emotions : " The sun hath risen every morn- 
 ing, but on that eventful morn he had the light of seven 
 days. As the days of heaven upon earth, as the years 
 of immortality, as the ages of glory, as the bliss of 
 heaven, so were the hours of that thrice happy day. 
 Rapture Divine and ecstasy inexpressible filled my 
 soul." And the rapturous words are not wings to his 
 
346 VISION AND POWER 
 
 soul, but a weight to drag him down. He attends a 
 meeting for prayer and testimony, and hears some 
 brother tell, " I can no more doubt that God for Christ's 
 sake forgave my sins on that day than I can doubt that 
 I asked him to do it " — and the unhealed wound is 
 made to bleed afresh. 
 
 The outcome may be that such a soul will be led ere 
 long into a truer knowledge of Christian experience, 
 a happier obedience, a more trustful and undoubting 
 spirit of sonship toward his God and Father. Or, he 
 may come to regard his case as for some inscrutable 
 reason hopeless, unfitting him for church membership, 
 and so may depart sorrowfully from " the Way." Or 
 again, he may faithfully pursue the path of consistent 
 and useful Christian conduct, but under a shadow that 
 is never wholly lifted from his life. It is a spiritual 
 tragedy. May God pity so mistaught a soul — and his 
 well-intentioned teachers, who have not been " rightly 
 dividing the word of truth." 
 
 There is no lack of actual examples. An unusually 
 interesting one is that of the beloved Christian giver 
 and worker, John S. Huyler, of New York City, as 
 related by his pastor, Dr. Charles L. Goodell. When a 
 young man he knelt beside his mother and others at the 
 chancel of her church, in a Watch Night service, seek- 
 ing the forgiveness of sins. " He had expected," we 
 are told, " a conversion after the manner of St. Paul's. 
 But it did not come that way. At the close of the 
 service he felt still more profoundly that he had reached 
 the turning-point in his life, and prayed that he might 
 have power over temptation, and that God would lead 
 
CERTAIN SIGNS OF POWER 347 
 
 him to a clearer understanding of his will concerning 
 him. ... It always gave him delight when men testi- 
 fied with definiteness to a certain place and a certain 
 hour, and celebrated the anniversary of that kind of 
 religious experience. It may strengthen some other 
 heart to know that he often experienced times of reli- 
 gious depression when he would say to me, ' I sometimes 
 wonder whether I have been really converted.' But 
 the mood would soon pass, and he would speak with 
 great assurance of the mercy of God which had been 
 exercised so blessedly in his behalf." * 
 
 If among the millions of the great city there was 
 a man whose heart seemed to overflow with love to 
 God and mankind, all who knew him would probably 
 have said, " Here is such a man." It was his joy 
 to do good. It was a special joy to help bring to 
 Christ some hopeless and abandoned soul; for he 
 seemed to despair of nobody. With thought and sym- 
 pathetic personal attention, and with gifts of hundreds 
 of thousands of dollars, he was ever ministering to the 
 varied forms of human suffering and need. And yet 
 because at the turning-point of life he was not some- 
 how lifted into an ecstasy, or, after the manner of 
 Saul of Tarsus, " unable to see for the glory of that 
 light," the doubt would persistently recur, " I wonder 
 if I was ever really converted." 
 
 Thus may the application of the emotional test of 
 the Spirit's power in the soul work disheartenment 
 to those who fail to meet its requirements. It puts 
 them outside a certain comparatively small select circle 
 
 * " Followers of the Gleam," pp. 51, 52. 
 
848 VISION AND POWER 
 
 which they feel, however delusively, to be well-nigh 
 necessary and yet impossible for them to enter. 
 
 May I give another example? The most prominent 
 man in a certain rather isolated community was con- 
 verted in a sudden whirl of excitement. He had been 
 very worldly. A camp-meeting was in progress on his 
 land; and he was present, not attending the services, 
 but absorbed in secular business. Standing one even- 
 ing inside the circle of tents, his ear was gained by 
 the voice of a young preacher fervently exhorting from 
 the stand. " Something all at once came over me " — 
 so he himself told me the occurrence — " and I rushed 
 into the congregation, made my way through the crowd 
 to the ' altar,' fell backwards, and cried, ' Almighty 
 God, have mercy upon me ' ; and the next thing I knew 
 I was rejoicing, with all the brethren round me, and 
 praising God." An unpromising sort of conversion, 
 one might suppose; yet, I think, nobody doubted its 
 genuineness. Because from that good hour the man's 
 life was changed. The habit of profanity, for exam- 
 ple, which had grossly marred his everyday speech, was 
 broken off immediately. I remember his saying that 
 he had never thereafter felt the inclination to utter 
 an oath. He became a lover of good people and of 
 the cause of God and showed his faith by his works. 
 There was too much newness in his course of conduct 
 for it not to have come from newness of heart. 
 
 But the story I started to tell is this. In that same 
 neighbourhood was a down-hearted man who, though 
 seemingly religious, remained persistently out of the 
 Church. His life was upright and pure, he regularly 
 
CERTAIN SIGNS OF POWER 349 
 
 attended the church services, and would come forward 
 in revivals of religion as a penitent, but was ever under 
 a spiritual cloud and would make no confession of his 
 faith in Christ. I talked with him at his home. He 
 said, " I want to be converted like W. G." — the brother 
 whose extraordinary conversion I just now related. In 
 the course of the conversation I asked : '' Suppose you 
 have a painful sense of sinfulness and condemnation. 
 You come to God and pray in the Saviour's name that 
 your sins may be forgiven. And there rises in your 
 heart a sense of nearness to God; the condemnation 
 is gone and there is peace; you can trust him; there 
 is an assurance that he accepts you and hears your 
 prayer. Would not that satisfy you ? " His answer 
 was, " iNTo, I want to be converted like W. G." He 
 could command no other. And such, as long as I knew 
 him, was the answer of his life as well as his lips. 
 
 An extreme case, was it? Perhaps so; but at any 
 rate a true and significant one. Significant, because 
 temperamentally the two men were wholly unlike. The 
 first was rapid in all his mental processes, vivacious, 
 notably emotional. You could hardly have thought 
 of him as really deliberating on any subject. All was 
 stir, movement, quickness of speech, often bustle and 
 noise; and unhappily, though a man of kind and gen- 
 erous spirit, he could break forth into violent fits of 
 ill-temper. The other was quiet, critical of himself, 
 slow, phlegmatic. And yet the test of a satisfactory 
 change of heart which he had been led to adopt in- 
 cluded some such emotional storm as that of his an- 
 tipodal brother. 
 
350 VISION AND POWER 
 
 Much more suggestive of the Master's teaching is 
 the ancient prayer : " I have but one miracle to ask 
 of thee, O Lord ; it is that Thou wilt make me a good 
 man." 
 
 Can one be a Christian, then, without the excita- 
 tion of feeling? Impossible; and just as truly one 
 cannot be a patriot or a philanthropist or a friend 
 or a human being in any relation of life without it. 
 But what are the feelings that are indispensable to 
 Christian experience and character ? They must be not 
 only feelings that prompt to action — which is to say, 
 motives — but such motives as self-love, sense of duty, 
 love to others, love to God. 'No true religion without 
 these; and they cannot be too deeply stirred. It is in 
 and through these that there arises the new life, the 
 new man. Emotions — which is to say, feelings that 
 do not prompt to action — are good and inevitable ; mo- 
 tives, essential. Which of the two classes of feel- 
 ings, the emotions or the motives, are directly con- 
 cerned with obedience, Jesus' own test of discipleship ? 
 It is assuredly the motives. '' If a man love me, he 
 will keep my word." And of like import is the word 
 of the beloved disciple : " He that saith, I know Him, 
 and keepeth not his commandments, is a liar, and the 
 truth is not in him." 
 
 The founder of a mission to some cannibal tribe 
 in Central Africa makes an appeal — I heard one yes- 
 terday — for missionary volunteers. " It is a needy 
 and a promising field," he says, " but attended with 
 peculiar danger. He who goes there may be called 
 at any time ta lay down his life- under the blight 
 
CERTAIN SIGNS OF POWER 351 
 
 of tropical disease or the hand of savage violence." 
 Central Africa, cannibal tribes, tropical disease — what 
 does it mean? It is an appeal to the heroic — to that 
 Christian heroism demanded in any age or land by 
 witness-bearing unto death. Would you ask the young 
 Christian who responds to such an appeal — 
 
 " Take my life and let it be 
 Consecrated, Lord, to thee" — 
 
 that he give some more emotional and demonstrative 
 proof of love to his Lord? 
 
 VIII 
 
 That which is chiefly on my heart in these observa- 
 tions is the children of the Church. They are just 
 beginning to think and reason for themselves. They 
 must be taught, guided, disciplined, in morals and 
 religion. 
 
 "Send to Joppa," said the angel in the vision of 
 Cornelius, " and fetch Simon, whose surname is Peter; 
 who shall speak unto thee words whereby thou shalt 
 be saved " — and he added, " thou and all thy house." 
 Christianity, as in its earlier form under the Law 
 and the Prophets, was to be a family religion. The 
 whole household were to share in the same grace of 
 salvation. " Suffer the little children and forbid them 
 not to come unto me." " Children, obey your parents 
 in the Lord." " Provoke not your children to wrath, 
 but nurture them in the chastening and admonition of 
 the Lord." 
 
 What, then, shall be our directive idea of the new 
 
352 VISION AND POWER 
 
 birth and the Christian life in childhood? That the 
 child is regenerated through baptism in infancy, and 
 after a few years, with no other preparation than in- 
 struction in the catechism, must be received into full 
 membership in the Church? Surely not. Is it, then, 
 that the child cannot be regenerated until he shall have 
 reached the period of a certain distinct development 
 of reason and conscience — say, from ten to fourteen 
 years of age — and that he must at this time experience 
 a sharp spiritual crisis which he shall recognize as 
 the new birth of the soul? Just as little have we 
 thus learned Christ. 
 
 It would seem to be often forgot that the child, 
 personality in the bud, man in the making, has a 
 moral and religious nature, as well as a rational or 
 a social. At the outset, it is true, his rational or social 
 nature is simply a capacity. He is not actually ra- 
 tional or social, but impulsive, self-seeking, governed 
 by instinct, bent upon the gratification of the senses 
 and the imagination. Ere long, however, under right 
 nurture, both reason and sociality will appear in action. 
 Similarly, at the outset, the child's moral and religious 
 nature is simply a capacity. He is not actually moral 
 or religious. But ere long, under right nurture, he may 
 become so. How ? By the saving grace of the Father 
 who is in heaven; by the power of his Holy Spirit 
 in the heart. May the little child, then, be verily 
 born again? He may be, not ten years nor one year 
 hence, but now. To mature years, to adolescence, to 
 childhood, the word is the same : " Behold, now is the 
 day of salvation." 
 
CERTAIN SIGNS OF POWER 353 
 
 But the Christian soul, yielding thus from his earli- 
 est years to the light and life of the indwelling Spirit, 
 is not in the least likely to recognize some one ex- 
 perience, standing apart from all others, as the crisis 
 and consciousness of conversion. Shall his brethren, 
 therefore, express or entertain a doubt as to such a 
 man's personal salvation? It is said that the Moravi- 
 ans had misgivings of this sort concerning their great 
 friend. Count Zinzendorf, the resuscitator of their 
 Ancient Church, because he insisted that he could 
 not recollect a time — oh, blessed inability — when he did 
 not love the Saviour. True, his whole life was in 
 evidence of the truth of his own oft-quoted words: 
 " I have one passion only ; it is He, it is He." Yet, 
 inasmuch as he could not recall the day on which, in 
 early childhood, the love of the Saviour entered his 
 heart, his Moravian brethren seemed troubled with 
 doubts as to whether it was there at all. But we have 
 no need to follow them into such cruel darkness. 
 
 Or, shall the lifelong Christian have similar doubts 
 concerning himself? Richard Baxter was at one time 
 troubled with such questionings until he saw that edu- 
 cation, as well as preaching, is a means of grace — " and 
 that it was the great mercy of God to begin with me so 
 soon, and to prevent such sins as might have been my 
 shame and sorrow while I lived." 
 
 Education a means of grace ? How can any one re- 
 gard it otherwise, if it be the impartation of Scripture 
 truth ? " From a babe," wrote Paul to Timothy, " thou 
 hast known the sacred writings which are able to make 
 thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in 
 
364 VISION AND POWER 
 
 Christ Jesus." Surely here was a means of grace, 
 and just as surely without a pulpit or a succession 
 of homiletic discourses. 
 
 Would you ask the Christian child at what par- 
 ticular hour and place he first gave his heart in the 
 response of obedient love to the Saviour? Why not 
 ask a similar question as to his first distinct experi- 
 ence of love and obedience to his mother, or his first 
 distinct sense of right and wrong, or his first serious 
 thought of God? That a childlike child should name 
 a particular time and place in response to any such 
 questioning is possible — and extremely improbable. 
 " From a babe thou hast known." 
 
 !N"or is it meant hereby, as already suggested, that 
 a child simply grows or is educated into religion. It 
 is meant that he is as truly born of the word and the 
 Spirit of God as any Christian convert of twenty or 
 fifty years of age. 
 
 I have said that it is well to be able to look back 
 upon one great day of God in which the soul for the 
 first time was made distinctly glad in the light of his 
 love. I say it again, but would add with equal em- 
 phasis, that it is better to receive the dawning light 
 of God upon the soul in childhood and to have it shine 
 continually brighter through youth and old age unto 
 the glory yet to be revealed. This, not the other, 
 is the Christian ideal. 
 
XVI 
 THE WAY OF POWER 
 
 Peter went up upon the housetop to pray, about the 
 sixth hoar. — Acts 10: 9. 
 
 The Spirit said unto him, Behold, three men seek thee. 
 But arise and get thee down, and go with them, noth- 
 ing doubting; for I have sent them. — Acts 10: 19, 20. 
 
 And on the morrow he arose and went forth with 
 them, and certain of the brethren from Joppa accom- 
 panied him. And on the morrow they entered into 
 Csesarea.— Acts 10:23, 24. 
 
 Who was I, that I could withstand God?— Acts 11 : 17. 
 
 IT is expected of the Christian minister that he 
 shall be reputable, well-informed, and religious. 
 The ecclesiastic name of " clergyman " by which 
 he is sometimes called conveys an idea of professional 
 dignity and social respectability; and a certain routine 
 of duty is required of him, especially on the first day 
 of the week. But if he have taken the New Testa- 
 ment to heart, he will be quite unable to find his 
 true life in any or all of these things. They do not 
 satisfy his conscience. He would follow a vocation 
 rather than a profession; he would be named by the 
 Kew Testament name of minister or pastor or preacher 
 rather than by any ecclesiastic title ; and above all, in 
 his speech and his preaching he would have the voice 
 of the Spirit of God to be heard always. 
 
 A Christian gentleman, never a clown, in spirit and 
 conduct, he would be much more than that. ^' A 
 
 355 
 
356 VISION AND POWER 
 
 prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all 
 the people " — that is his ideal. ]S[o professional pro- 
 priety or ambition, but a passionate love for the cause 
 of Christ, for the souls of men, for the rule of right- 
 eousness, must dominate the order of his life. Such 
 a confession as that of Paul to the Ephesian elders — 
 " I hold not my life of any account, as dear unto 
 myself, so that I may accomplish my course and the 
 ministry which I received from the Lord Jesus, to 
 testify the gospel of the grace of God " — falls upon 
 his ear not as a far-away sound of some foreign tongue, 
 but as the real voice of a kindred soul. Consciously 
 unworthy of this high companionship, he is nevertheless 
 a brother to that master spirit in the Church of God. 
 " I will die on the streets," said a daring and devoted 
 pastor-evangelist of the present generation, at the be- 
 ginning of a peculiarly difficult pastorate, " I will die 
 on the streets before there shall be a failure of that 
 great work in New York City." They were impas- 
 sioned, but not idle or boastful, words. " The work 
 of the ministry," I have heard a marvellous preacher 
 declare, " is not work at all, it is a consuming vital 
 passion." 
 
 IsTow it is inevitable to ask how the aspiration of such 
 a man's heart may be fulfilled. 
 
 We have already been dwelling upon the thought 
 of the mediation of the Holy Spirit's power to human 
 souls through evangelic truth and through the person- 
 ality of the preacher. But just what are the condi- 
 
THE WAY OF POWER 357 
 
 tions on which this power may be expected to attend 
 the preacher's personality? In what way of life will 
 it be realized? That is our present thought. 
 
 For one thing, the power of the Spirit will as- 
 suredly not be found in the imitation of its outward 
 signs. The fact that it expresses itself at times in 
 loudness of voice or extraordinary emotional fervour 
 does not mean that an imitated or mechanically adopted 
 loudness and fervency will somehow infuse it into pul- 
 pit speech. The fact that it may find expression at 
 times in pathos or fluency of utterance does not mean 
 that we can put it on as a garment by affecting such 
 pathos or fluency. The fact that it lifts the heart 
 to God at times in individual and outspoken praise does 
 not mean that to utter hallelujahs with the idea of 
 stirring the hearts of the congregation into spiritual 
 excitement will avail for the purpose. 
 
 The loudness, or fervour, or pathos, or fluency, or 
 hallelujah is at best not a source but a sign; and unless 
 it ring true from the heart, it is never a sign of spir- 
 itual power. Contrariwise, it shows ignorance or mis- 
 takenness or emotionalism, or even, it may be, hypoc- 
 risy. Whether in the pulpit or elsewhere, an imitated 
 sign is not witness-bearing, but acting in religion. 
 
 Nor will this crowning gift of Jesus' messengers be 
 found as an accompaniment of positions of prominence 
 or authority in the Church. Sometimes it is seen in 
 such positions ; sometimes it does not appear. It bears 
 no vital relation to ecclesiastic honours. A man may 
 be richly endued with it in the comparative obscurity 
 of his early ministry. His speech, whatever vigour 
 
358 VISION AND POWER 
 
 of thought or grace of language it may lack, is attested 
 by the signs that follow as the very power of God 
 unto salvation — apostolic " signs, and wonders, and 
 mighty works." Men wonder at his success perhaps 
 and ask, How do you account for such effects ? Called 
 somewhat later to fill a more conspicuous office, he 
 accepts it with joy and trembling. He would not have 
 dared to choose it for himself. And the power with 
 which he was furnished at the beginning abides in the 
 larger field, as in the little corner where his glorious 
 ministry began. It abides, and is given more abun- 
 dantly. 
 
 On the other hand, there was danger of losing it. 
 He might have grown weary of obscurity and fallen 
 out of love with much of his work. He might have 
 hugged the idea of " laudable ambition " and sought 
 for himself the higher seat. He might have been 
 perverted by the illusions of a self-centred church life. 
 He might have been so occupied with administrative 
 affairs as to be removed both in spirit and in fact from 
 personal contact with individual souls, and thus have 
 suffered spiritual impoverishment. He might have 
 yielded to the temptation to suppress a truth which he 
 should have proclaimed, or to use official position for 
 personal or partisan ends. He is not now living in 
 daily communion with the Source of power, as in the 
 earlier and happier days. And the result is inevitable: 
 the true glory no longer appears in his ministry. 
 The soul-winning and soul-building gift is gone; 
 and its departure may cost him humiliation and 
 tears. 
 
THE WAY OF POWER 359 
 
 "He thinks of the days when first with fear 
 And faltering lips he stood 
 To speak in the sacred place the Word 
 To the waiting multitude." 
 
 There are no " faltering lips " now. He stands before 
 the people confidently, and his reputation is that of 
 an able preacher. He is not infrequently said to have 
 delivered " a great sermon." But is it only a roseate 
 dream that many a time there thrilled through the 
 cruder sermon, spoken " in weakness and in fear and 
 in much trembling," a spirit of life that is somehow 
 lacking in his more conspicuous pulpit of to-day? 
 Alas, it is no idealizing dream, but a witnessing fact; 
 and his soul may well be cast down within him. 
 
 Or, worse, it may be a case of unconscious spir- 
 itual declension. " But he wist not that the Lord 
 was departed from him." " Yea, gray hairs are here 
 and there upon him, and he knoweth it not." 
 
 II 
 
 Turning now to the more positive view, it may be 
 remarked that, vision and power being so near akin, 
 we are prepared to find the conditions of their at- 
 tainment to be the same. One cannot say. On these 
 terms a soul may receive the baptism of light, and 
 on those the baptism of might. On the contrary, the 
 way of vision is itself the way of power. 
 
 Pentecost is the incomparable example. The Mas- 
 ter had said : " When the Comforter is come, whom 
 I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit 
 of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, he shall 
 bear witness of me." Accordingly, fifty days there- 
 
360 VISION AND POWER 
 
 after the disciples were shown by this testifying Spirit 
 the truth of their Lord as never before — which was 
 the promised enlargement of vision. But it had also 
 been promised : " Ye shall receive power when the 
 Holy Spirit is come upon you." So, they all spake 
 this truth of Christ " as the Spirit gave them utter- 
 ance," and the same day there were added to their 
 number three thousand souls — behold, the promised 
 investiture of power. 
 
 The power, then, followed immediately upon the 
 vision. The knowledge littered itself in Divinely con- 
 vincing and persuasive speech; and the same Spirit 
 under the same conditions was equally the giver of 
 the one and the other. Both light and heat, both 
 knowledge and its communication, both a revelation 
 and a dynamic, both vision and power, were in the 
 Pentecostal flame. 
 
 So, likewise, here in Csesarea. " While Peter yet 
 spake these words " — what words ? The truth of 
 Christ, as that truth was shown him by the Spirit 
 of revelation at Pentecost, and again in the vision from 
 the housetop — while he was speaking " these words the 
 Holy Spirit fell on all them that heard the word." 
 
 And now the positive answer as to the condition on 
 which this great twofold charism of the Spirit of truth 
 and power may be realized by the Christian preacher 
 — or by any other Christian man or woman — may be 
 given very briefly. The condition is, the spirit of filial 
 love and service to the Heavenly Father. To live a 
 life of such communion with God is increasingly to 
 learn his will, to see the things of his kingdom, to 
 
THE WAY OF POWER 361 
 
 do his work in the world, to speak his word with 
 power and in the Holy Spirit and in much assurance. 
 
 The spirit of filial love and service to the Heavenly 
 Father — that is indeed a large answer to our ques- 
 tion. It may be broken up into several; for it con- 
 tains all the gracious qualities that enter into the 
 making of a child of God. Recall the Scripture forms 
 of expression in which some of these qualities of heart 
 and spirit are named as conditions of spiritual illu- 
 mination and power. Thus we may ask, Would a 
 man have the vision of God ? and the answer from the 
 lips of the Master himself will be, that it is given to 
 " the pure in heart." * Would he have Divine guid- 
 ance in the conduct of life ? " The meek will He 
 teach his way." f Would he make alliance with In- 
 finite Power ? " All things are possible to him that 
 believeth." t Would he have the kingdom of heaven, 
 which is " not in word but in power," as his pos- 
 session? Let him be "poor in spirit." || Would he 
 have his darkness scattered and his diseases healed by 
 the abiding presence of the God of love and forgive- 
 ness? He must renounce all unwillingness to for- 
 give his brother who has trespassed against him. For 
 " he that hateth his brother is in the darkness, and 
 walketh in the darkness, and knoweth not whither 
 he goeth, because the darkness hath blinded his eyes." § 
 Let him forgive his brother; let him try by truth and 
 kindness to win him to a better mind; and the light 
 of the knowledge of the Divine forgiveness will arise 
 
 • Matthew 5:8. J Mark 9 : 23. 
 
 t Psalms 25:9. || Matt. 5: 3. 
 
 §1 John 2: 11. 
 
362 VISION AND POWER 
 
 in his own heart — that light of love and of life. " For 
 if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly 
 Father will also forgive you." * " If we love one 
 another, God abideth in us." f Would he have the gift 
 of the Holy Spirit, in heart and life, from the Heav- 
 enly Father ? Let him remember Jesus' " how much 
 more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit 
 to them that ask him." J Would he know the word 
 of Jesus in personal experience as the veritable word 
 of the Father ? " If any man willeth to do His will, 
 he shall know of the teaching, whether it is of God 
 or whether I speak of myself." || Would the preacher 
 know the joy of a fruitful ministry ? " Stephen, a 
 man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit . . . full of 
 grace and power, wrought great wonders and signs 
 among the people." § 
 
 Here, on the one hand, are such conditions as purity 
 of heart, a sense of personal insujQSciency, faith. Chris- 
 tian forgiveness and love, prayer, obedience; and, on 
 the other hand, such results as the vision of God, the 
 Spirit's guidance, alliance with almighty power, the 
 kingdom of heaven within, the abiding Divine pres- 
 ence, the personal assurance of the truth, a ministry 
 of " great wonders and signs among the people." The 
 conditions any soul by the grace of God may comply 
 with ; the results are beyond all human appraisement. 
 
 And the conditions are all included in one — spiritual 
 sonship to God ; the results also are one — spiritual 
 vision and power. 
 
 *Matt. 6: 14. J Luke 11: 13. 
 
 tl John 4: 12. || John 7: 17. 
 
 § Acts 6 : 5-8. 
 
THE WAY OF POWER 363 
 
 ni 
 
 ITote especially two of these conditions as illus- 
 trated in the early apostolic example immediately 
 before us. One is prayer. For Peter had already 
 learned the lesson of Pentecost : " These all with one 
 accord continued steadfastly in prayer, with the women 
 and Mary the mother of Jesus and with his brethren." 
 Praying for the fulfilment of their Lord's promise? 
 It would seem so — asking for that which he had sim- 
 ply bidden them wait for. He had said that they 
 should not depart from Jerusalem, but should " wait 
 for the promise of the Father," the baptism of the 
 Spirit. They seem to have known enough of the mind 
 of their Master, however, to have been assured as to 
 what manner of waiting this must be. They might 
 have learned it, indeed, from one of the goodly com- 
 pany of prophetic spirits that had gone before them: 
 
 " I toaited patiently for the Lord, 
 And he inclined unto me and heard my cry." 
 
 At Pentecost were many prayers, social, fraternal, 
 uniting as the prayer of one man, " all together in one 
 place." Peter's prayer at Joppa, on the contrary, 
 was a coming to God in retirement — all-aloue prayer. 
 But the essential matter, whether in association with 
 others or by one's self, is to wait not indolently, but 
 " patiently " and with a " cry." Both the patience and 
 the cry are the appeal of a soul in earnest at the 
 throne of grace. 
 
364. VISION AND POWER 
 
 Is such an appeal vain? To say so would be to dis- 
 miss the whole Christian revelation from our lives as 
 a delusive dream. It would be to say that either the 
 Eternal Mind in whom we have our being does not 
 know our personal thoughts, needs, and questionings, 
 or that there can be no living contact of our spirits 
 with the Spirit of God. It would be to say that the 
 highest finds its source in the lowest, that the beating 
 heart in the human breast came into existence out of 
 the impersonal and the unloving — that there is no 
 answering heart of life and love in him that made it. 
 
 No; the hindrances to prayer need never be sought 
 in a self-absorbed almighty being ensphered beyond the 
 stars, for there is no such being. The difiiculty is on 
 the human side, not on the Divine. It is in our spir- 
 itual ignorance, our poverty of trustfulness, our fee- 
 bleness of will, our lack of love. It is not in the Divine 
 will by whose ever-present power all things and all 
 persons exist. It is not in the Father of our Lord 
 Jesus Christ. 
 
 Accordingly, as we saw at the outset of our studies, 
 God is beforehand with us in our prayer. He is in- 
 spiring it. A few days ago I heard for the first time 
 the dumb speak to their teacher. They could not hear 
 her voice, nor even their own. But they had learned 
 to read the motions of her lips and by corresponding 
 motions to mould their own breath into the appro- 
 priate audible words. They spoke. It was a fine 
 achievement, and the listening audience applauded. 
 But the greater applause was due not to the pupils, but 
 to the teacher. There was the grace and the good-will 
 
THE WAY OF POWER 365 
 
 — in the teacher. There was the splendid human love 
 that stooped in patient wisdom to help bear the burden 
 of the disabled — in the teacher and the institution 
 which she represented. 
 
 Similar is it with our God himself, through the 
 inspiration of whose good Spirit all such labour of 
 love is wrought. He makes the spiritually dumb to 
 speak. The grace and good-will are in him, not in 
 them. In numberless ways he wakens the sense of 
 their need; he teaches them to pray; he brings them 
 into acquaintance and converse with himself. And is 
 not this the Divine preparation to preach ? " For 
 neither," says Augustine in his " Confessions," " do I 
 utter anything right unto men which Thou hast not 
 before heard from me; nor dost Thou hear any such 
 thing from me which Thou hast not first said unto 
 me." 
 
 Frances Ridley Havergal, to whom it was given 
 to touch so many hearts with a more constraining 
 sense of the Redeemer's love, once wrote to a friend 
 something of the attitude of mind in which her hymns 
 were composed : " Writing is praying with me," she 
 said, " for I never seem to write even a verse by my- 
 self, and feel like a little child writing." It was in- 
 deed the childlike, which is the receptive, spirit. Up- 
 looking, asking, trusting, receptive, the soul becomes 
 a means of quickening power, through song or sermon 
 or the use of any good gift, to other souls. The Chris- 
 tian messenger who can say " with me preaching is 
 praying" will be heard to speak the word of 
 Christ even as our lamented Christian hymnist wrote 
 
366 VISION AND POWER 
 
 her spiritual songs, in the Holy Spirit and in 
 power. 
 
 Let us yield ourselves to that ever-near, ever- 
 brooding Spirit of grace and supplications. But mar- 
 vel not if the yielding itself may be done only through 
 some mighty effort of prayer. For to yield is not 
 merely to be passive. It may mean the breaking down 
 of barriers. It may mean a hard fight against evil. 
 Because all dominance and all intrusion of the lower 
 self must be renounced — all wilfulness, sensuality, un- 
 forgivingness, self-indulgence, vainglory. To yield to 
 the Spirit is to resist evil. 
 
 Has this been done already? So far, very good. 
 Divinely good; yet the renunciation needs to be re- 
 peated. The returning enemy must be met and over- 
 thrown. But let not our hearts be troubled or afraid, 
 for the prayer will have its answer. It must have 
 its answer; because it is the alliance of our human 
 weakness with God's own almightiness. " What will 
 prayer do for you ? " asked his fellow-tribesmen of a 
 Christian convert. " All that God can do for you," 
 was the well-instructed reply. 
 
 From such waiting upon God, the soul will arise 
 peaceful and strong. It will go forth clothed with 
 an energy not its own, masterful with men through 
 the strengthening Christ within. " And He hath said 
 unto me. My grace is sufficient for thee ; for My power 
 is made perfect in [conscious human] weakness." 
 
 It also needs to be borne in mind that this pre- 
 vailing prayer is the voice of an obedient heart. It 
 is vitally related to a willingness to do the will of 
 
THE WAY OF POWER 367 
 
 God. We think of the spirit of prayer as a spirit 
 of desire, aspiration, docility, faith, unworldliness, per- 
 severance; and so it is. But it is also a spirit of 
 obedience. 
 
 " I came to this meeting," says some faint-hearted 
 Christian, " with no other purpose than to get a bless- 
 ing." But if the blessing sought be distinctly, as seems 
 often the case, some excitement of the emotional na- 
 ture, there is a more Christian purpose and prayer. 
 " To get a blessing ? " Then, why not ask for strength 
 of soul in the path of duty? Why not ask for the 
 grace of righteousness? Why not ask for some work 
 to do for the Master and a spirit of service in which 
 to do it? That would be a most Christian prayer, 
 and its answer would be a " blessing " indeed. 
 
 Such was the prayer of Saul of Tarsus in his first 
 vision of Jesus : " What shall I do. Lord ? " It was 
 that he might have knowledge not of what the Lord 
 would do for him, but of what he himself should 
 do. May we not say that here is heard the very prayer 
 of Saul's lifetime and the secret of his power in the 
 gospel ? Even before his acknowledgment of Jesus as 
 the Christ, with all the spiritual illumination and 
 renewing grace which this conversion brought into 
 his life, Saul was seeking to know and do the will 
 of the God of his fathers. " I have lived before God 
 in all good conscience until this day." " I verily 
 thought with myself that I ought to do many things 
 contrary to the name of Jesus of I^azareth." And now 
 it was an utterly different course of life which the 
 word of the Lord Jesus bade him follow. It meant 
 
368 VISION AND POWER 
 
 sacrifice and service unto the uttermost for the cause 
 which hitherto he had been bent upon destroying. It 
 meant unceasing pioneer labours for Christ at the 
 cost of comfort, esteem, liberty, and life. " I will 
 send thee far hence unto the Gentiles." Yet this 
 chosen missionary of the cross faltered not, but unto 
 the very last step of the pathway lived out his first 
 great prayer. " I was not disobedient unto the heav- 
 enly vision." 
 
 IV 
 
 So we are ready to note that the other condition is 
 obedience. And here again appears a trait of Peter's 
 natural temperament and spiritual character. A doer 
 rather than a drifter or a dreamer, capable of warm 
 and quick devotion, he seems to have been prompt to 
 obey the voice of his Lord. " Peter went down to 
 the men." " And on the morrow he arose and went 
 with them." " Who was I, that I could withstand 
 God?" 
 
 When Jeremiah was bidden to go forth as a prophet 
 to proud and contemptuous Israel, he tried to beg off: 
 " Ah, Lord Jehovah, behold, I know not how to speak ; 
 for I am a child." When Jonah was sent as a preacher 
 of repentance and forgiveness to a Gentile community, 
 he disobeyed outright and went otherwhere. But when 
 this out-and-out Jewish apostle was bidden by the 
 Spirit to go preach to a Gentile congregation the very 
 gospel that he had hitherto been preaching to his breth- 
 ren of Israel, he took not counsel of personal prefer- 
 ence or prejudice and provincialism, but straightway 
 
THE WAY OF POWER 369 
 
 went. At the same town of Joppa from which we 
 have seen Jonah, in full sail, going anywhere rather 
 than across the land toward his recent appointment 
 to preach at Gentile Nineveh, this son of a later Jonah 
 took the highway to Gentile Csesarea. And the result? 
 The light of a larger knowledge shone into his soul — 
 " Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of 
 persons, but in every nation he that feareth him and 
 worketh righteousness is acceptable to him " ; and the 
 urgency of a mightier power attended his speech, for 
 " While Peter yet spake these words, the Holy Spirit 
 fell on all them [Gentiles] that heard the word." 
 
 But what was true of the journey from Joppa to 
 Caesarea at that particular time is true of all time and 
 everywhere. In the journey of life the way of obedi- 
 ence — not as outward conformity or in selfish fear, 
 but from the innermost heart — is the way of vision 
 and of power. 
 
 There is a world-wide parable of this truth in our 
 relation to the physical forces. For physical power 
 will yield itself to our needs and serve us untiringly 
 on condition of our obeying its laws ; and on no other. 
 
 Does any one wish to be endued with bodily health 
 and strength? Let him eat, breathe, sleep, work, rest, 
 according to the laws of God in his body, and the 
 wished-for health and strength comes upon him. Or, 
 being diseased, would he be healed ? There is a wide- 
 spread fancy that this may be done by magic. But 
 there is no magic in medicine. l!^either the ground 
 tigers' teeth of the Chinese doctor nor the mysterious 
 characters of the Western physician's prescription pos- 
 
370 VISION AND POWER 
 
 sess a particle of healing virtue — unless, indeed, it be 
 due to the patient's imagination. From the days of 
 Hippocrates till now no physician has ever cured a 
 disease except through the body's own vital force; 
 and the one condition on which this power of life will 
 do its curative work is that the body be brought, either 
 through medicine or in some other way, into obedience 
 to physiological law. " I never said," remarks Dr. 
 O. W. Holmes, " I will cure, or can cure, or would 
 or could cure, or had cured any disease." Curo, he 
 reminds us, means I take care of — " and in that sense, 
 if you mean nothing more, it is properly employed." 
 As a catch-phrase in the ward of a hospital has tersely 
 put it, " Man tends, God mends." 
 
 Or, does any one, standing with closed eyes, wish 
 to have a picture of surrounding objects arise in his 
 mind? Let him lift his eyelids, and the astounding 
 marvel of vision is accomplished. Does he wish to 
 read after dark? There is at hand the greatest abun- 
 dance of potential light-force which only requires per- 
 haps that he touch a certain button in the room and, lo, 
 the light lies upon the page of his book. 
 
 It has become a trite observation that the world's 
 work in our modern age is increasingly done, not by 
 human muscle nor yet by brute muscle, but by the 
 responsive cooperant forces of nature. First known, 
 then obeyed, they are at our service. Even the arm 
 of a child may clothe itself with their power. Every 
 bodily act, indeed, is a utilizing, through obedience, 
 of the vast stored-up energies of nature; and there 
 is no other way to live our life on earth. Nature can- 
 
THE WAY OF POWER 371 
 
 not be " conquered," as Francis Bacon observed long 
 ago, " except by obedience." 
 
 And now the great spiritual forces of the world, 
 are they also accessible to such as we? More than 
 accessible, they are in God himself, who is " the In- 
 finitely Near." Our relation to them is a relation to 
 him — a personal relation and incalculably more vital 
 than any other. Every moment of our lives is spent 
 under the immediate touch and government of the 
 moral will of God, which is the law of the kingdom of 
 the spirit. Here is the law which is voiced by con- 
 science, and which is supremely set forth in terms of 
 human life by Jesus the Son of God. To disobey it 
 is enfeeblement and death, to obey is spiritual em- 
 powering. In God himself is the power — inexhaustible 
 reserves of strength instantly available to every obe- 
 dient soul. 
 
 Act in harmony with the will of God as declared 
 in the physical world, and you lay hold upon illimitable 
 physical power. Act in harmony with the will of God 
 as declared by the word and the Spirit of Christ in 
 the spiritual world — for in both these realms is our 
 life lived simultaneously — and just as certainly you 
 lay hold upon infinite spiritual power. " In propor- 
 tion," says Campbell Morgan, " as we are careless 
 of the laws of the life of the Spirit, the experience 
 fades and the power recedes. In proportion as we 
 obey, the experience grows and the power increases." 
 As in nature so in grace, harmony is life, health, 
 attainment. 
 
372 VISION AND POWER 
 
 " But are we not here," some one may ask, " in a 
 kingdom of freedom rather than of law ? " In a king- 
 dom of freedom, assuredly, but why should it be added 
 " rather than of law " ? The idea of law does in- 
 deed exclude that of arbitrariness or caprice, but not 
 that of moral freedom. It is so in the case of human 
 personalities, and how much more of the Divine. The 
 Infinite and Eternal Personality is alike the God of 
 all grace and of all law and order, of all rightness 
 and certainty and peace. In him is not Yea and Nay, 
 but Yea and Amen, evermore. 
 
 This, too, is a truth learned in the school of Christ 
 and taught with both tongue and pen by our first 
 Christian preacher. " The Holy Spirit," we hear him 
 saying, as he stands before the judgment-seat of Israel, 
 " whom God hath given to them that obey him." * To 
 the obedient soul the Gift of all gifts. 
 
 And to his fellow-Christians Peter writes : " Seeing 
 ye have purified your souls in your obedience to the 
 truth unto unfeigned love of the brethren." How is 
 this? They had purified their souls — ^he does not say 
 from what but unto what. He leaves it to be under- 
 stood that the purification was from selfishness, which 
 is the core of sin; and it was unto a new and sincere 
 love, which is the heart of all spiritual truth and 
 persuasive power. They had purified their souls " unto 
 unfeigned love of the brethren " — without which to 
 
 *Act3 5:32. 
 
THE WAY OF POWER 373 
 
 speak even with the tongues of men and of angels 
 would be ineffective. And this most illumined and 
 effective life of love was realized through their " obe- 
 dience to the truth." * 
 
 May the preacher idle away his time, neglect his 
 duty, indulge his love of ease — 
 
 " Do as all men ever would, 
 Own no man master but their mood " — 
 
 during the week, and then, as the hour for preaching 
 approaches, reach up and grasp the mantle of power 
 through some emotional exercise or paroxysm of peti- 
 tional prayer? It would be to practise a pagan super- 
 stition rather than any word of Jesus. " Give me also 
 this power," said Simon the Sorcerer, offering money 
 to Simon Peter, " that on whomsoever I lay my hands 
 he may receive the Holy Spirit." We have learned 
 that this " gift of God " cannot be bought with money. 
 Let us as little expect to get it through any other 
 un-Divine method. It will not suffer itself to be 
 brought into use, like the Pharisee's phylacteries, to be 
 seen of men. It does not come in answer to the call 
 of the church bells. It cannot be put on and off with 
 clerical vestments. 
 
 Let us indeed " reach up and grasp the mantle of 
 power," but not that it may be worn an hour in the 
 morning and another in the evening on the first day 
 of the week. It must be for all day long and for 
 all the days of all the weeks. 
 
 What think you ? When we are bidden, " Put ye on 
 {iv8v6aa'^&, clothe yourselves with as a garment) the 
 
 * I Peter 1 : 22. 
 
a74 VISION AND POWER 
 
 Lord Jesus Christ," is it a preaching-robe that the 
 apostle has in mind ? He is not writing to preachers ; 
 and, if he were, we are sure that he would not be 
 recommending such a garment for the pulpit only. It 
 is for the whole of life. It is for every life. There 
 may be a spiritually minded farmer, sowing his seed 
 and gathering his harvests, or bearing the loss of them, 
 with a genuine Christian motive ; and, alas, there may 
 be a secular preacher, in the ministry " for a piece 
 of bread " or delivering his sermons as a performance 
 to be applauded rather than as a living message of the 
 Christ within. 
 
 But for any soul to come into contact with Christ, 
 to have the mind that was in him, to reproduce his 
 life, to " put on the Lord Jesus Christ," is to be 
 clothed with all possible power from on high. And 
 it may be ours, to abide upon us, in Jesus' way only — 
 through the daily harmonizing of our wills, in sacri- 
 fice and service, with the will of the Almighty 
 Father. 
 
 Very marked, therefore, is the 'New Testament em- 
 phasis on Christian obedience. Greater is its revela- 
 tion of law, as well as of faith and love, than is that 
 of Moses and the prophets. All through its successive 
 pages Jesus is called Lord, and the mind which was 
 in him is given as the authoritative rule of life. " God 
 hath made him," said Peter at Pentecost, " both Lord 
 and Christ, this Jesus whom ye crucified " ; and again, 
 " Sanctify in your hearts Christ as Lord." * " We 
 preach not ourselves," says the Apostle to the Gentiles, 
 
 •I Peter 3:15. 
 
THE WAY OF POWER 375 
 
 '^ we preach not ourselves [as Lord] but Christ Jesus 
 as Lord ; " and again, " If thou shalt confess with thy 
 mouth Jesus as Lord." And it is all in the spirit of 
 the Master's own teaching of his sovereignty of the 
 soul and the universal obligation to keep his command- 
 ments. Was not a part of the charge to the Eleven 
 in the Great Commission itself, " Teaching them 
 to observe all things whatsoever I commanded 
 you"? 
 
 " Whatsoever I commanded you : " it is the word 
 for a great imperative whole expressing itself in many 
 differing yet harmonious precepts. The Master, as we 
 often truly say, laid down principles rather than rules. 
 And as to principles, he saw them all in one, in the 
 law of love to God and our neighbour. IN^evertheless, 
 he did continually particularize. He applied the great 
 supreme Law to this and that matter of heart and con- 
 duct : " whatsoever I commanded you." 
 
 Let it remind us that there is no such thing as 
 obedience in general. Obedience, to be sure, is a 
 spirit rather than an act ; but it is a spirit, not a mere 
 idea, and as such has no way to express itself except 
 in particular acts. In something conspicuous, epochal, 
 decisive of one's whole subsequent career? In that 
 when the rare occasion arises, but ordinarily in the 
 thousand and one grandly simple cases of the incon- 
 spicuous everyday life. 
 
 VI 
 
 It is early morning, and the Christian disciple, going 
 forth into the unknown day, says to himself : " By the 
 
376 VISION AND POWER 
 
 grace of God I will this day do whatever the Master 
 bids." An impure or unkind thought drifts into his 
 mind: to dally with the intruder would be to disobey. 
 He is tempted to lie, in order to avoid adverse criti- 
 cism or to gain some pecuniary advantage: he must 
 tell the truth. The cruel or irreverent word rushes 
 to his lips: he must speak kindly, reverently, l^ext 
 door is some one in want or sorrow, or in sin: he 
 must be neighbour to him. A spirit of ease and self- 
 indulgence comes upon him: he must shake himself 
 free from its meshes and do his daily task. Be it 
 pleasant, be it difficult, be it a joy, be it painful, he 
 would make his life a free-will offering of obedience 
 to his Lord. 
 
 But will he not have to pray? Aye, let any one 
 endeavour thus, not in creed but in conduct, to " call 
 Jesus Lord," and he will find that he cannot do it 
 except " by the Holy Spirit." So he will pray indeed. 
 He will ask with the cry of the heart for the needful 
 Divine help. And the result of the successive days of 
 such prayerful endeavour? He will become toward 
 God more and more a child of the Spirit, and toward 
 man a chosen vessel of truth and power. 
 
 " If therefore thine eye be single " — not if we have 
 read so many books, or asked so many questions, or 
 listened for so many years to the speech of the wise, 
 or attained to so much familiarity with Christian doc- 
 trine — but " if thine eye be single " — if our wills be 
 simply intent upon doing the will of our Father in 
 heaven^" thy whole body shall be full of light " — thy 
 whole nature shall be illumined with the innermost 
 
THE WAY OF POWER 377 
 
 truth of righteousness. " The simplest woman," it has 
 been said, " who tries not to judge her neighbour, or 
 not to be anxious for the morrow, will better know 
 what is best to know than the best-read bishop with- 
 out that one simple outgoing of his highest nature in 
 the effort to do the will of Him who thus spoke." It 
 is the doer of Jesus' commandments who becomes a 
 seer in the kingdom of heaven. There is a story of 
 the great painter and engraver, Rembrandt, that when 
 a pupil of his was prone to ask about many things, 
 he said : " Try to put well in practice what you already 
 know; in so doing you will in due time discover the 
 hidden things which you now enquire about." Simi- 
 larly in the school of Christ mere asking is not suffi- 
 cient for advancement in knowledge. Voluntarily to 
 be doing what we are bidden is to learn, to see, to 
 know. 
 
 Is Jesus, then, the one Master? He is such because 
 of his own faultless and complete obedience to the Fa- 
 ther's will — Master of man because Servant of God. 
 " That signs and wonders may be done by thy holy 
 Servant Jesus," prayed the congregated disciples in 
 Jerusalem. 
 
 Even from childhood it was his word : " Knew ye 
 not that I must he in my Father's house (Gr. in the 
 things of my Father) ? " ISTot, indeed, that Jesus lived 
 under the moral law as an external restraint. The 
 law was within, it was written on his heart, it was 
 of his own choice and purpose and nature. It was 
 the law of the spirit of filial love and joy; the obedi- 
 
378 VISION AND POWER 
 
 ence, the service of perfect sonship. And the same 
 is the Christian ideal. 
 
 Here, then, is the secret of the power of Jesus him- 
 self. It is his absolute oneness with the will of God. 
 " For God was with him," said Peter at Caesarea. And 
 has not he himself told us so ? " He that sent me 
 is with me; He hath not left me alone." Then, also, 
 he tells us why. " For I do always the things that 
 are pleasing to him." Nothing less, nothing other, is 
 the truth of the cross and the throne. Becoming obe- 
 dient even unto " the death of the cross," the Son of 
 God received from the Father the Name of supreme 
 sovereignty and power, so that " every tongue should 
 confess that Jesus Christ is Lord." All " to the glory 
 of God the Father." 
 
 From the Master himself, therefore, may the disci- 
 ple learn that obedience to the word, " Take up thy 
 cross and follow me," is the path which leads to the 
 throne of power. 
 
XVII 
 THE CONFESSION 
 
 Then answered Peter, Can any man forbid the water, 
 that these should not be baptized, who have received the 
 Holy Spirit as well as we? And he commanded them 
 to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. Then 
 prayed they him to tarry certain days. — Acts 10 : 47, 48. 
 
 WITH the closing incident in this story of 
 early apostolic preaching, our study shall 
 also find an end. 
 While the witnesses from Joppa were amazed at 
 the bestowal of spiritual gifts upon a Gentile congre- 
 gation, Peter, not content with the indulgence of a 
 mere emotion, saw something to be done. The unprece- 
 dented event suggested to him the proposal of an equally 
 unprecedented religious observance. So, characteris- 
 tically, he spoke out and said : " Can any man forbid 
 the water, that these should not be baptized who have 
 received the Holy Spirit as well as we ? " Since the 
 reality of the outpoured Spirit had been experienced, 
 why should it be thought sacrilegious to confer its sac- 
 ramental sign? And he commanded it to be done — 
 at the hands, we may believe, of the six witnessing 
 brethren. 
 
 I 
 
 But how is it that in Christianity there should ever 
 have been such a command? why this outward ordi- 
 nance of baptism in the religion of the Spirit? 
 
 379 
 
380 VISION AND POWER 
 
 ISTearlj three hundred years ago there appeared in 
 England a notably devout unschooled mystic, with a 
 spoken message that found thousands of responsive 
 hearers. It found them and drew them together in 
 a society which has existed, here and there, unto the 
 present time. The preacher was George Fox, the first 
 of the Friends, and the message was that of the en- 
 lightening and life-giving presence of the Holy Spirit 
 in the human heart. 
 
 It was a teaching as old, in fact, as the ]N"ew Testa- 
 ment, but it came to many with the force of a fresh 
 revelation in the England of the seventeenth century. 
 It made the Divine presence a conscious reality. 
 It bade every man realize the immediate guidance of 
 the Spirit of truth in his own heart and conscience. 
 Walk by the inner light, it urged, for that will show 
 the way of salvation; and through obedience the light 
 increases, while through refusal to obey, it is dimmed 
 and darkened. " Christians," writes the chief theo- 
 logian of Quakerism, Robert Barclay, " are now to be 
 led inwardly and immediately by the Spirit of Grod 
 even in the same manner, though it befall not many 
 to be led in the same measure, as the saints of old." 
 
 Now, it was a great truth upon which the early 
 Friends thus laid the emphasis of their religious faith. 
 But just here was their lack, to wit, in the withholding 
 of emphasis, or even acceptance, from certain other 
 truths of the human soul and the Christian revela- 
 tion. They magnified the inward work of grace, but 
 saw too little worth in its outward means. 
 
 Inasmuch, for example, as a man is called into 
 
THE CONFESSION 381 
 
 the ministry of the gospel by the voice of the Spirit 
 in his own heart, and must speak under the impulse 
 of the Spirit, they would have no instituted pulpit 
 or pastorate and no preparation of sermons or other 
 addresses — as if the Spirit could not speak to men 
 through such means. Inasmuch as the essence of the 
 Lord's Supper is spiritual communion with Christ — 
 " I will come in to him and will sup with him and 
 he with me " — they would have no memorial bread 
 and wine. Inasmuch as the real baptism is that of 
 the Spirit, they would have no baptism with water. 
 
 They declared these ordinances to have been in- 
 tended only for the special circumstances of the apos- 
 tolic age, and pointed to the baneful superstitions that 
 soon afterward began to gather about them. Any pre- 
 scribed form, even the singing of a hymn, they said, 
 was unsuited to the dispensation of the Spirit. Be- 
 sides, they were prone to listen for the voice of the 
 Spirit too exclusively in the feelings, to the neglect 
 of judgment and reason. 
 
 This was their testimony: what were its fruits? 
 Beautiful characters were developed, gentle and heroic 
 lives were lived, noble philanthropic work was done. 
 But in the effort to bear witness against all religious 
 forms, both Christian evangelism and spiritual nur- 
 ture were greatly embarrassed, while poor and in- 
 effective forms were persistently practised. Thus it 
 came to pass that the day of the Friends' missionary 
 zeal was comparatively brief; and the day of their 
 declining, or at least unprogressive, activity has lin- 
 gered until now. 
 
382 VISION AND POWER 
 
 While, therefore, on the one hand, we may learn 
 from the life and labours of the early Friends the 
 vital power of their essential message, on the other 
 hand we may be reminded, by their subsequent weak- 
 ness as a Christian society, of the right use as con- 
 trasted with both the depreciation and the overuse 
 of the outward means of grace. 
 
 Truly, without the Spirit's light and power, our 
 ministration of the word of truth will be in vain. 
 Truly, Christianity is the religion of the Spirit. Truly, 
 he of whom the Father said, " This is my Son, my 
 chosen, hear ye him," who taught much and brought 
 religion to men as an abundant inner life, instituted 
 very little. Nevertheless, Jesus would adapt his min- 
 istrations to man as he is. His gospel, therefore, is not 
 only a gift to the religious feelings, to common sense, 
 to spiritual intuition, but also, as Horace Bushnell 
 has said, " a gift to the imagination." He used many 
 parables and object-lessons in illustration of the truth. 
 He gathered his disciples about him at the Last Sup- 
 per, and said, " This do in remembrance of me." 
 Though declaring to the Apostles, " John indeed bap- 
 tized with water, but ye shall be baptized with the 
 Holy Spirit not many days hence," yet he gave appro- 
 bation to that water-baptism — had he not even sought 
 it for himself? — and bade these chosen Apostles bap- 
 tize disciples into the name of the Triune God. 
 
 Man is distinctively intellectual and religious rather 
 than physical. Yet would it be vain that any man 
 should say, " I am intellectual, and therefore in no 
 need of schools or libraries or laboratories or pen and 
 
THE CONFESSION 383 
 
 ink " ; and equally vain would it be for any man 
 to say, " I am religious, and therefore in no need of 
 churches or Scriptures or any outward sign of inward 
 and spiritual grace." 
 
 Did not he who gave us the inward give also the 
 outward ? Does not the outward furnish means of dis- 
 cipline and development for the soul, and of intercom- 
 munication between soul and soul ? To use such means 
 is not to abuse them. 
 
 The New Testament is not the Christ. 
 
 "Beyond the sacred page ' 
 
 I seek thee. Lord, 
 My spirit pants for thee, 
 O living Word." 
 
 But this !N'ew Testament, seen with the eyes, handled 
 with the hands, is a means through which we may find 
 the Christ. It has no power to give eternal life, but 
 it contains " the witness, that God gave us eternal 
 life, and this life is in his Son." Similarly with the 
 Christian congregation and its outward ordinances. To 
 seek spiritual life in them would be idolatry; to seek 
 it through them is wisdom and truth. 
 
 If, therefore, it be asked. How is it that in Chris- 
 tianity, which is distinctively the religion of the Spirit, 
 there need be any such ordinance as baptism? it may 
 be answered: Because the world of human souls has 
 not yet ceased to need the service of external signs. 
 Baptism is one of these needful signs. It is a sign of 
 the renewal of the heart by the Spirit of God, and of 
 the renewed heart's allegiance to the Lord Jesus Christ. 
 Hence it becomes the rite of initiation into the Christian 
 
384 VISION AND POWER 
 
 brotherhood and the Divinely prescribed form of the 
 confession of Christ before the world. 
 
 II 
 
 This baptism in Csesarea was the more significant 
 because of the day and the circumstances in which 
 it occurred. It was a day of pentecostal blessing. 
 jWhile the Gentile congregation, with ears to hear, were 
 gladly receiving from an eye-witness and apostle of 
 Jesus Christ the Good News of God, the Holy Spirit 
 fell upon them with power and filled their lips with 
 ecstatic praise. One might have supposed that this, 
 which was the culmination, would also prove to be 
 the close of the meeting. Let the little company dis- 
 perse at once to their homes or to whatever customary 
 duties awaited them — new men and women in a new 
 world, singing the new praise of God. But it was not 
 so. The apostle would have them first make a dis- 
 tinct confession of Christ in Christian baptism. He 
 would receive these " strangers," at whatever risk to 
 their outward peace, into the New Israel, in which 
 there should be neither Jew nor Gentile, but Christian 
 believers only. Did they believe on Jesus as the Christ ? 
 Let them declare it here and now by baptism in his 
 name. Let them declare it, whatever the consequences 
 of such an avowal. 
 
 " Upon this rock I will build my Church " — ^upon 
 the rock of the confessing disciple. And of such is 
 the Master Architect building it still. " A disciple of 
 Jesus but secretly " — how could and how can such 
 a man form any part of such a Church ? He must be- 
 
THE CONFESSION 385 
 
 come, like these Caesarean converts, a confessing dis- 
 ciple — like them and their preacher. 
 
 For one thing, baptism as confession of Christ would 
 commit the young Christian, in the sight of his fellow- 
 men, to the new " Way " ; and the reaction of self- 
 committal is increase of strength. Attach a badge 
 to your person, as a sign of membership in some con- 
 fraternity or of adherence to some cause, and it will 
 tend, like the soldier's uniform or the flag under which 
 he serves, to strengthen those personal principles and 
 ideals which it represents. Similarly baptism, intro- 
 ducing to church membership, is a badge which 
 tends to strengthen that sense of Christian dis- 
 ci pleship to which, at the same time, it gives expres- 
 sion. Says the spirit of loyalty, Be true to your 
 colours. 
 
 !N^or will the instructed Christian refuse to make 
 confession of his faith. " If I am ever converted," said 
 a man in the course of a conversation we were having 
 on the subject, " nobody shall know it." Ah, my friend, 
 how little were you aware of what you were speaking 
 or whereof you affirmed. As if the faith of the Lord 
 Jesus Christ were a treasure to be hid securely away, 
 like some valuable certificate in a safety-box — until, 
 perchance, it might be needed for admission into the 
 Celestial City. 
 
 Then, too, the confession of Christ, making the dis- 
 ciple a member of a visible and organized brother- 
 hood, meets the social need of his nature with a type 
 of friendship peculiarly its own. "" As I have loved 
 you, that ye also love one another." Peter knew the 
 
386 VISION AND POWER 
 
 sweetness and worth of this new-horn love and helpful- 
 ness in Christ, when he wrote : " Above all things being 
 fervent in your love among yourselves, for love cov- 
 ereth a multitude of sins; using hospitality one to 
 another without murmuring; according as each has 
 received a gift, ministering it among yourselves, as 
 good stewards of the manifold grace of God." * And 
 it was into this new visible order of mutual love and 
 service that the Apostle of the Jews would introduce 
 his newly found Gentile friends. 
 
 Ill 
 
 "Not, however, that Christian confession is simply 
 or chiefly a self-regarding act. It expresses a far 
 greater purpose than to be good to one's self. It is 
 for others' sake, even all others'. It is for the propa- 
 gation of the gospel, the extension of the Church, the 
 bringing in of the kingdom of God. 
 
 What is the patriot citizen's motive in enlisting for 
 a war of defence, if it be not love, even love at the 
 risk of life itself, to his country? What is a true- 
 hearted man's motive in joining any society of civic 
 or moral reform — a temperance league, for example — 
 if it be not an unselfish concern for the welfare of 
 others ? And will a man be baptized into the Church 
 of God, our Lord's one great Missionary Society, the 
 institutional representative of the kingdom of love, 
 with any less beneficent a motive? 
 
 Here, then, is not a command of some blind priest 
 or some dogmatic council from without, but a law of 
 
 *I Peter 4:8-11. 
 
THE CONFESSION 387 
 
 the inner life. It is love, complying with a condition 
 of the largest service. It is the emancipated soul en- 
 tering the one training-school for service to all man- 
 kind. It is the impulse of a heart in which the high- 
 est life has begun to get possession. It is spiritual 
 spontaneity. 
 
 " The earth bringeth forth fruit of herself ; first the 
 blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear." 
 " Bringeth forth fruit of herself; " it is of her very 
 nature, under the quickening power of sunshine and 
 rain, to raise up the implanted seed into foliage and 
 fruit. So too, spiritually. It is of the nature of the 
 human heart, under the quickening power of the Holy 
 Spirit, to raise up the implanted seed of God's word 
 into all the progressive fruitage of a helpful Christian 
 life. To share with others his faith and hope is one 
 of the first desires of a soul born from above. Hence 
 he must confess the Christ of that faith and hope before 
 men. Perfectly natural to the new creation in Christ 
 was the request which the converted Ethiopian offered 
 out of his own heart to Philip the Evangelist : " What 
 doth hinder me to be baptized ? " 
 
 IV 
 
 True, there are those who make it a point to ap- 
 plaud the name of Christ — in a socialistic meeting, 
 for example — and at the same time to pour contempt 
 upon his Church. One would fain ask where these, 
 our unsympathetic brothers, get their knowledge of 
 the Name which they profess to revere. It cannot be 
 from the New Testament; for very different from 
 
388 VISION AND POWER 
 
 theirs in such a matter is the mind of Christ as there 
 portrayed. 
 
 We may be told, indeed, that it was an ecclesiastic 
 court that pronounced Jesus of Nazareth worthy of 
 death and had him sent to the cross. But we also 
 remember that that ecclesiastic court was not the Con- 
 gregation of Israel. The Sanhedrin was not the 
 Church. " They took counsel together that they might 
 take Jesus by subtilty and kill him. But they said. Not 
 during the feast, lest a tumult arise among the peo- 
 ple." So they laid hands upon him by night for a 
 hurried mock trial and conviction, to avoid opposition 
 on the part of the people — the people assembled in 
 Jerusalem for the Passover feast. And these rather 
 than any ecclesiastic court were the Congregation of 
 Israel, the Church of their day. 
 
 Moreover, that Church was indeed greatly lacking 
 in the spirit of humanity and in many respects sadly 
 imperfect; and yet, all the way from Bethlehem to 
 Calvary, Jesus was included in its membership. He 
 submitted to its rites,* attended upon its ordinances,! 
 spoke no word against its institutions,^ drove the dese- 
 craters out of its temple. || To accept him as leader, 
 therefore, is to be a member, a lover, and a reformer 
 of the Church of God in our lifetime, as he was in the 
 days of his flesh. 
 
 Por here it stands, " the house of God, which is the 
 Church of the living God," even in our community 
 this day. Imperfect? Necessarily imperfect, if you 
 
 •Luke 2:21, 41-43. :{: Matt. 23 : 2. 
 
 fLuke 22:15; 4:16. || John 2:15. 
 
THE CONFESSION 389 
 
 or I be included in its membership. Denomination- 
 ally divided ? Even so, and not without sectarian 
 strife and vainglory. Sin-stained ? Confessedly very 
 far from perfect purity and righteousness — as it was 
 in Jesus' day, and in the apostolic age, and at the 
 Protestant Reformation. l!^evertheless here it stands, 
 in the forefront of the world's higher life, the repre- 
 sentative of all that is greatest and best. 
 
 Think of its spiritual standards and ideals. It 
 testifies continually of the things of the spirit. It 
 puts the IN'ew Testament, written by its own prophets 
 and teachers, the inspired teaching of God's self- 
 revelation in Jesus, into the hands of all the people, that 
 each may learn for himself the way of life. It pro- 
 claims with living and prophetic voice the redemption 
 that is in the Son of God, even the forgiveness of sins, 
 according to the riches of his grace. It favours and 
 fosters a life of holy love, embodied in many manifest 
 examples which illustrate the Master's own word : " Lo, 
 the kingdom of God is within (or, in the midst of) 
 you." It leads or cooperates in undertakings for civic 
 betterment and moral reform, and receives the uncon- 
 scious endorsement of being instinctively expected to 
 do so even by those who show scant sympathy with 
 its spiritual beliefs. It is incomparably the greatest 
 of all the forces on earth that make for the brother- 
 hood of man. It sends forth its messengers, anear 
 and afar, to teach the Christian gospel, with all that 
 such a message means of spiritual salvation and its 
 great by-products of physical, social, and political wel- 
 fare. Which mission these sons and daughters of the 
 
390 VISION AND POWER 
 
 cross are cheerfully fulfilling, in the name of the Son 
 of Man, to-day. 
 
 The baptism of Cornelius was the baptism of a 
 Roman and a soldier, but it meant a call to a higher 
 type of heroism than that of arms, and the same is 
 true of Christian baptism in our own age — or indeed 
 in any other. It means the yielding of the will in 
 obedience to Jesus Christ as Lord. And this means 
 to witness for him against worldliness and falsehood 
 in all their fashionable forms, against unhallowed 
 speech and fleshly indulgence, against all manner of 
 vice and greed; to make no compromise with moral 
 evil, however plausible its plea or insinuating its de- 
 fenders; and not to count our life dear unto our- 
 selves, so that we may serve his cause at home or 
 abroad. 
 
 Hence it is the heroic to which the appeal of the 
 Church must ever be made. " Let us hear what kind 
 of persons these Christians invite," said Celsus, a Greek 
 philosopher of the second century, in his satirical book 
 against the Christians. " Every one, they say, who 
 is a sinner, who is devoid of understanding, who is 
 a child . . . him will the kingdom of God receive." 
 So they did, and so must any church of Christ do, in 
 any year of our Lord. But out of the ignorant it would 
 fain make the wise-hearted and out of the slavish the 
 heroic. Receiving the youngest, the feeblest, the most 
 timid, it would transform them into men and women 
 that are strong and of an excellent spirit and unafraid. 
 Por the warfare into which they are called is that 
 beside which all the strife and struggle of warring 
 
THE CONFESSION 391 
 
 nations, present or historic, pale into insignificance. 
 It is the true world-war. Its antagonists are the pow- 
 ers of spiritual darkness and death. Its law is the 
 cross. Its kingdom of peace will be won with the 
 sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. 
 
 What, then, is the brotherhood denoted by Christian 
 baptism? ISTo human invention or ecclesiasticism, no 
 child of an age or a race, it sees kingdoms and civili- 
 zations flourish and decline, but lives unshaken through 
 them all, a mightier beneficent power in this than 
 in any preceding century. It is the Congregation of 
 the Eternal Christ. The gates of Hades have not 
 prevailed against it. The peoples of the world will 
 gather beneath its banners and crown its Lord the 
 Lord of all. Oh, the honour and the attendant oppor- 
 tunity of— standing among the rulers in its courts 
 or the chief ministers at its altars? Not that; but 
 of simple admission into its fellowship, that we may 
 have some share, even the least, in its glorious war- 
 fare and work. 
 
 Shall we think of the Church under another New 
 Testament figure? Like the individual Christian 
 preacher, though in a larger sense, the local Chris- 
 tian congregation is a light-bearer, which is to say, 
 a truth-bearer. " The seven candlesticks are seven 
 churches." The word of their Apostle-pastor to the 
 church in Philippi, "among whom ye are seen as 
 lights [shining personalities] in the world," is equally 
 true individually and collectively. This light of truth 
 
392 VISION AND POWER 
 
 shines the brighter for its transmission from one 
 to another within the congregation. For each is 
 to give of his own sense and vision of truth to his 
 brethren. 
 
 And not the least, in receiving as well as in giving, 
 in learning as well as in teaching, will be the appointed 
 pastor and teacher of all. His prayer for himself and 
 his people alike will be that of Paul and Timothy for 
 the heresy-threatened congregation at Colossse : " That 
 ye may be filled with the knowledge of His will in 
 all spiritual wisdom and understanding," " increasing 
 in the knowledge of God." 
 
 All this for one another, and equally for still others ; 
 for their human neighbours, one and all. " Among 
 whom [the outside community in pagan Philippi] ye 
 are seen as lights in the world/' 
 
 But again as in the case of the individual Christian 
 preacher so with the congregation, to be a truth-bearer 
 is to be at the same time a bearer of power. It must 
 needs be so. " Lights in the world, holding forth the 
 word of life." In the faithful congregation, this power 
 of spiritual life will, through mutual sympathy and 
 service, through organization, through united prayer, 
 be both diffused and intensified. 
 
 Whosoever has known a happy and spiritually high- 
 toned Christian home — fatherhood, motherhood, broth- 
 erhood, sisterhood — will testify to its saving influence 
 upon the young people who go forth from it. Many 
 a one has it kept from childhood in the ways of right- 
 eousness, many a one has the abiding memory of it 
 called back from the " far country." Such a power 
 
THE CONFESSION 393 
 
 also is the watch-care and companionship of the house 
 of (Jod — fatherhood, motherhood, brotherhood, sister- 
 hood in the Spirit. 
 
 A church, therefore, in its true idea, is a union 
 of Divine life-forces through the touch of man upon 
 man. " Through love be servants one to another." 
 " Build each other up, even as also ye do." " Bear 
 ye one another's burdens, and so fulfil the IsiW of 
 Christ." " We ought to lay down our lives for the 
 brethren." " O come, let us worship and bow down " 
 — together let us come to the Springs of strength. 
 Your desire to draw near to God will quicken mine. 
 Your prayer will remind me of my own innermost 
 needs. Your praisefulness will kindle some flame of 
 devotion in my own heart. Through association there 
 will be spiritual reinforcement. 
 
 Here, too, the pulpit is the beneficiary of the pew. 
 Few indeed must be the congregations that are with- 
 out some ministry of power to their own chief min- 
 ister. There will be inspiring hearers to help him 
 preach. There will be humble and unselfish lives to 
 put to shame his vanity and self -worship. There will 
 be appreciation shown him that will nerve his spirit 
 to more faithful service. There will be kindnesses 
 done him that will purify his heart with the awak- 
 ened response of grateful love. There will be shad- 
 owed homes, broken family circles, couches of pain 
 from which he will come away with the prayer : " Oh, 
 that I may have grace in the day of trial thus to 
 suffer and be strong." 
 
 There will be much to try his patience and much 
 
394. VISION AND POWER 
 
 to threaten his ideals and many a burden to bear, 
 which things may prove in the end to be " friendlier 
 than the smiling days." 
 
 Freely therefore let him give, even as he has freely 
 received, through the lives of his fellow-disciples, from 
 the Infinite Love. 
 
 " Then prayed they him to tarry certain days." 
 Novices in the Christian life, they felt the need of 
 their evangelist's further teaching and personal in- 
 fluence. They needed him as friend and pastor. 
 
 This further invitation, be sure, was not despised by 
 such an evangelist. Did it not mean another opening 
 door? 
 
 On the shore of Lake Gennesaret, Jesus, at the time 
 of his calling Simon Peter to discipleship, had foretold 
 for him a ministry of evangelism : " Fear not ; hence- 
 forth thou shalt catch men." On the same lake shore, 
 Jesus, having finished on earth the work which the 
 Father had given him to do and passed through death 
 into the glory of resurrection, prescribed for this same 
 Apostle, with equal distinctness, a ministry of pas- 
 toral care : " Feed my lambs," " Tend my sheep." The 
 same two forms of Christian ministry have continued 
 unto this day; for the unsaved world is still every- 
 where present and the gathered congregation of be- 
 lievers is ever in need of instruction, encouragement, 
 admonition, upbuilding, while the constraining love 
 of Christ abides as the motive of this twofold minis- 
 tration of his gospel. Hence the evangelist-pastor. 
 
THE CONFESSION S»5 
 
 All the while there is the larger vision and the multi- 
 plying power. For the Church is inter-congregational. 
 It is a spiritual commonwealth. Soul answers soul 
 across the continents and the seas. The word of life 
 which is preached and lived in the local community may 
 be borne afar, and bear abundant fruit even where 
 Christ had not been named. Only the Eye to which 
 nothing is hid can trace its course or reckon its contri- 
 bution to the building of the unseen City of God. 
 
 PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 
 
HOMILETICS AND CHURCH WORK 
 
 CHARLES SILVESTER HORNE Yale Lectures on 
 
 ■ Preachins 
 
 The Romance of Preaching 
 
 With an Introduction by Charles R. Brown, D.D., 
 Dean of Yale Divinity School, and a Biographical 
 Sketch by H. A. Bridgman, Editor of The Congre- 
 gahonahst. With Portrait. i2mo, cloth, net $1.25. 
 
 'Trom the days when Henry Ward Beecher gave the first 
 series of lectures on the Lyman Beecher Foundation in Yale 
 University . . the task of inspiring young ministers to 
 
 nobler effort in their high calling, has been well performed. 
 But among all the lecturers few have ever so gripped the 
 divmity students, the larger audience of pastors in active 
 service, as did Silvester Home. The intellectual distinction 
 which marked his utterances, the fine literary form in which 
 they were phrased, the moral passion which gave to their 
 delivery that energy which belongs to words which are 'spirit 
 and life,' together with the rare spiritual insight displayed 
 all combined to make notable the service rendered by Mr. 
 Home to Yale University." — Charles R. Brown, D.D., Dean 
 of Yale Divinity School. 
 
 The last message of a leader of men. 
 
 BISHOP THOMAS B. NEELY^ 
 
 The Minister in the Itinerant System 
 
 i2mo, doth, net $1.00. 
 
 "Bishop Neely discusses frankly the fact that large num- 
 bers of strong men eagerly accept official service, leaving the 
 intinerant pastorate. He states the system itself briefly, but 
 the burden of the book is a full discussion of the bearing of 
 it all on the minister himself. It was to be presumed of 
 course that a Methodist bishop would conclude that 'the sys- 
 tem should be maintained' and even that 'the appointing 
 power should be untrammelled'; but it is none the less in- 
 teresting to follow the argument. We do not know any other 
 book which states the whole case with such eminent fair- 
 ness." — The Continent. 
 
 EDMUND S. LORENZ, B. D. 
 
 Practical Church Music 
 
 A Discussion of Purpose, Methods and Plans. New 
 Popular Bdifion. i2mo, cloth, net $1.00. 
 
 "Mr. Lorenz has had thirty years' active experience with 
 both the theoretical and practical sides of church music in 
 all its forms. This is one of the most practical books on the 
 subject of church music we have ever read. Every page is 
 suggestive and every suggestion is eminently practical. The 
 book closes with a worthy appendix dealing with musical and 
 hymnological books worth owning, choice church music for 
 choir and solo use, and suggestive outlines and subjects for 
 song sermons and song services." — Advance. 
 
PRACTICAL RELIGION-CHURCH HISTORY 
 
 HAROLD BEGBIE a uthor of ' ' Twice- Bom Men' ' 
 
 The Proof of God 
 
 A Dialogue With Two Letters. i2mo, cloth, net 75c. 
 
 The author of "Twice-Born Men" here enters a new field 
 of thought. It is a most effective book — one that will be 
 read and passed on to others. His method of meeting the 
 agnostic and the skeptic is admirable. Here is philosophy- 
 presented in conversational form, pointed and convincing. 
 
 WILLIAM J. LHAMON, P.P. Dean of Bible School, Drury 
 -^^—^^——^———^^^^^—— College, Spritigfield, Mo. 
 
 The Character Christ— Fact or Fiction? 
 
 i2mo, cloth, net $1.00. 
 
 A study of the Christian Gospels, prepared and presented 
 •with a view to enforcing the claims of the historical Christ. 
 Attention is directed to the literary presentation of the char- 
 acter Christ. 
 
 C. L. PRAWBRIPGE 
 
 Common Objections to Christianity 
 
 Library of Historic Theology. 8vo, cloth, net $1.50. 
 An ably compiled volume dealing with almost every cur- 
 rent objection to Christianity. The author writes with a 
 pretty full knowledge of these objections, having, as Secre- 
 tary of the Christian Evidence Society, lectured in the Lon- 
 don Parks and held his own against all sorts of questioners. 
 
 CHARLES J. SHEBBEARE Rector of Swerford, 
 
 '^^-^—^^—^^^^^——^-^— Oxon, England 
 
 Religion in an Age of Doubt 
 
 Library of Historic Theology. 8vo, cloth, net $1.50. 
 To this great problem Mr. Shebbeare addresses himself, 
 claiming that with the old faith and the added insight of a 
 new teaching, believers may lay the foundations of a devo- 
 tional system, which furnishes a rational ground for a robust 
 faith. 
 
 JV. J. SPARROW SIMPSON, P.P. 
 
 The Catholic Conception of the Church 
 
 Library of Historic Theology. 8vo, cloth, net $1.50. 
 
 Dr. Simpson's book supplies the information and assists in 
 forming a right judgment: What Christ taught and did; 
 what St. Paul and the Early Fathers conceived to be the 
 functions of the Church; the idea of the Church in the Courr 
 oil of Trent, are among the matters ably discussed. 
 
 JOHN B. RUST, P.P. 
 
 Modernism and the Reformation 
 
 i2mo, cloth, net $1.50. 
 
 The arm of this able treatise is to defend the Protestant 
 Reformed faith, as against the liberalizing movement within 
 the Roman Church known as Modernism. The essential 
 principles of Protestanism are set forth in detail with an 
 exhaustive review of the trend and methods of Modernism. 
 
SERMONS— LECTURES— ADDRESSES 
 
 JAMES L. GORDON, P.P. 
 
 All's Love Yet All's Law 
 
 i2mo, cloth, net $1.25. 
 
 "Discloses the secret of Dr. Gordon's eloquence — fresh, 
 and intimate presentations of truth which always keep close 
 to reality. Dr. Gordon also seems to have the world's litera- 
 ture at his command. A few of the titles will give an idea 
 of the scope of his preaching. 'The Law of Truth: The 
 Science of Universal Relationships'; 'The L,aw of Inspiration: 
 The Vitalizing Power of Truth'; 'The Law of Vibration'; 
 'The Law of Beauty: The Spiritualizing Power of Thought'; 
 The Soul's Guarantee of Immortality." — Christian Work. 
 BISHOP tRANCIS J. McCONNELL Cole Lectures 
 
 Personal Christianity 
 
 Instruments and Ends in the Kingdom of God. 
 l2mo, cloth, net $1.25. 
 
 The latest volume of the famous "Cole Lectures" delivered 
 at Vanderbilt University. The subjects are: I. The Per- 
 sonal in Christianity. 11. The Instrumental in Christianity. 
 
 III. The Mastery of World- Views. IV. The Invigoration 
 of Morality. V. The Control of Social Advance. VI. 
 "Every Kindred, and People, and Tongue." 
 
 NEWELL DWIGHT HILLIS, P.P. 
 
 Lectures and Orations by Henry Ward 
 Beecher 
 
 Collected by Newell Dwight Hillis. i2mo, net $1.20. 
 
 It is fitting that one who is noted for the grace, finish and 
 eloquence of his own addresses should choose those of his 
 predecessor which he deems worthy to be preserved in a 
 bound volume as the most desirable, the most characteristic 
 and the most dynamic utterances of America's greatest pulpit 
 orator. 
 
 IV. L. WATKINSON, P.P. 
 
 The Moral Paradoxes of St. Paul 
 
 i2mo, cloth, net $i.oo. 
 
 "These sermons are marked, even to greater degree than 
 is usual with their talented preacher, by clearness, force and 
 illustrative aptness. He penetrates unerringly to the heart 
 of Paul's paradoxical settings forth of great truths, and il- 
 lumines them with pointed comment and telling illustration. 
 The sermons while thoroughly practical are garbed in strik- 
 ing and eloquent sentences, terse, nervous, attention-com- 
 pelling." — Christian World. 
 
 LEN G. BROUGHTON, P.P. 
 
 The Prodigal and Others 
 
 i2mo, cloth, net $i.oo. 
 
 "The discourses are vital, bright, interesting and helpful. 
 It makes a preacher feel like preaching once more on this 
 exhaustless parable, and will prove helpful to all young people 
 — and older ones, too. Dr. Broughton does not hesitate to 
 make his utterances striking and entertaining by the intro- 
 duction of numerous appropriate and homely stories and illus- 
 trations. He reaches the heart." — Review and Expositor. 
 
ESSAYS AND STUDIES 
 
 JOSEP H FORT NEWTON Author of *' The Eternal 
 
 —^———^————^ Christ," "David Swing" 
 
 What Have the Saints to Teach Us? 
 
 A Message from the Church of the Past to the 
 Church of To-day. i2mo, cloth, net 50c. 
 
 "Of that profounder life of faith and prayer and vision 
 which issues in deeds of daring excellence, the Pilgrims of 
 the Mystic Way are the leaders and guides; and there is 
 much in our time which invites their leadership." — Preface. 
 
 JOHN BALCOM SHAW, P.P. 
 
 The Angel in the Sun 
 
 Glimpses of the Light Eternal. Cloth, net $1.00. 
 
 Dr. Shaw has prepared a series of spirited addresses 
 marked throughout by sincerity and fine feeling, and free 
 of all philosophical surmise, or theological cavil. "The Angel 
 In The Sun" is a refreshing and enheartening book; the 
 cheery word of a man of unswerving faith to his compan- 
 ions by the way. 
 
 PHILIP MAURO 
 
 Looking for the Saviour 
 
 i2mo, cloth, net 35c. ; paper, 20c. 
 
 The first part of this little volume is devoted to an exami- 
 nation of the chief reasons that have been advanced in sup- 
 port of the post-tribulation view of the Rapture of the Saints. 
 The second part contains some affirmative teaching relating 
 to the general subject of the Lord's return. 
 
 PROF. LEE R. SCARBOROUGH 
 
 Recruits for World Conquers 
 
 i2mo, cloth, net 75c. 
 
 "Here is a soul-stirring message, presenting the call and the 
 need and the response we should make. The author is deeply 
 spiritual, wise, earnest and conservative in presenting his ap- 
 peal. — IVord and Way. 
 
 PRINCIPAL ALEXANPER WHYTE, P. P. 
 
 Thirteen Appreciations 
 
 i2mo, cloth, net $1.50. 
 
 Appreciations of Santa Teresa, Jacob Boehme, Bishop An- 
 drews, Samuel Rutherford, Thomas Shepard, Thomas Good- 
 win, Sir Thomas Browne, William Law, James Fraser of 
 Brea, Bishop Butler, Cardinal Newman, William Guthrie and 
 John Wesley, go to the making of Dr. Whyte's new book, a 
 work of high authority, revealing on every page the man who 
 wrote it. 
 

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