tly? SItbrarg of Prtnrrtnn SIljMlngtral ^tmxnut^ PFITH GOD IN THE PFORLD WITH GOD IN THE WORLD 9 ^ttm of Papery BY ,^ CHARLES H. BRENT OF sr. STEPHEN'S CHURCH BosroN NEW YORK LONGMANS, GREEN, & CO. LONDON AND BOMBAY 1899 Copyright y 1899, ^j' Longmans ^ Green, & Co, TO MY FRIENDS JOHN W. WOOD, SILAS McBEE AND JAMES L. HOUGHTELING I pvtfact HARLES DARTVIN says somewhere that " the only object in writing a hook is a proof of earnestness.^'' Whether it is the only obje^y may be a question; it is certainly one obje£i. And the poorest book that ever went to press, merits respeSi, provided that its writer is sincere and speaks from convi£iion. It is this and the sense that " thought is not our own until we impart it " to others, that has encouraged me to write these pages — originally a series of papers prepared for the Saint Andrew's Cross, the organ of a Society for which I am glad to profess publicly a deep admiration and af- fe£iion. Often, more frequently far than is noted, I have borrowed the thought and language of others to express my own mind. I send out this little volume with the hope that, before it meets with the fate of the ephemeral literature to which it belongs, it may help a few here and there to take up life's journey tuith steadier steps and cheerier mien. C. H. B. ContentjS CHAPTERS I. THE UNIVERSAL ART P ^g^ I n. FRIENDSHIP WITH GOD — LOOKING 9 in. FRIENDSHIP WITH GOD — SPEAKING 20 IV. FRIENDSHIP WITH GOD— THE RESPONSE 29 V. THE TESTING OF FRIENDSHIP 4O VL KNITTING BROKEN FRIENDSHIP 5 2 Vn. FRIENDSHIP IN GOD 01 VHL FRIENDSHIP IN GOD — CONTINUED 71 IX. THE CHURCH IN PRAYER 84 X. THE GREAT ACT OF WORSHIP 97 XI. WITNESSES UNTO THE UTTERMOST PART OF THE EARTH I I I Xn. THE INSPIRATION OF RESPONSIBILITY I 2 3 APPENDIX — WHERE GOD DWELLS 135 Ci^apter i T/ie Universal Art T Is produftive of much mischief to try to make people believe that the life of pirayer is easy. In reality there is nothing quite so difficult as strong prayer, nothing so worthy of the attention and the exercise of all the fine parts of a great manhood. On the other hand there is no man who is nqt^equal to the task. So^ splendid has this human nature of ours become through the Incarnation that it can bear any strain and meet any demand that God sees fit to put upon it. Somd duties kre individual and special, and there is ekemptiort from them for the many, but there is iiever any absolution from a duty for which a rtian has d capacity. There is one universal society, the Church, for which all are eligible and with which all are bound to unite ; there is one universal book, the Bible, which all can understand and which it is the duty of all to read ; there is one universal art, prayer, in which all may become well skilled and [ I ] WITH GOD IN THE WORLD to the acquirement of which all must bend their energies. A6live or dormant, the instinft of prayer abides, a faithful tenant, in every soul. The peasants who went to the Incarnate One and said " Lord, teach us to pray," were representative of a whole race, a race which feels stirring v/ithin its breast a capaci- ty for prayer, but whose power to pray falls far short of the desire. The instin6l to pray may be undeveloped, or paralyzed by violence, or it may lie bed-ridden in the soul through long negledl ; but even so, no benumbed faculty is more readily roused to life and nerved to a6lion than that of prayer. The faculty is there ; no one is without it. Whether it expands, and how, is only a question of the will of the person concerned. It is good to be quite honest and frank. Is it not so that the real thing that makes men dumb to- wards God is, in the first instance, at any rate, not intelleftual doubt about the efficacy of prayer but the difficulty of it all — the rebellion of the flesh, the strain upon the attention, the claim upon the time ? Are not the common stumbling-blocks in the way of prayer incidental rather than essential ? Do men give up prayer because they are conscien- tiously convinced that they would do violence to [ 2 ] THE UNIFERSAL ART their noble nature if they were to persist in its ex- ercise ? Nothing can release a man from the duty of praying but the profound conviction that it would be a sin for him to continue to pray. And it might be safely added that any one thus mo- mentarily caught in the toils of pure reason, any one endowed with such a delicate conscience as would lead to this, must eventually turn again with joy to the negle<5led task. Even the great agnostic scientist, Tyndall, who, of course, had a very lim- ited view of what prayer was capable of accom- plishing, and was in a position to perceive only one dim ray of its beauty — its subjective refining in- fluence upon the petitioner — even such an one declares that "prayer in its purer forms hints at disciplines which few of us can negleCt without loss."* How to perfect the talent of prayer — that is the question. Bent upon this errand many wind them- selves in the folds of complicated rules or bathe themselves in the vapour of fascinating theories, all to no purpose. Or, as in the case of most things worth coveting, they cast around for some easy way of attainment, only to experience that where they "looked for crowns to fall," they "find the * On Prayer as a Form of Physical Energy. [ 3 ] WITH GOD IN THE WORLD tug 's to come, — that 's all." Simplicity and cour- age are two virtues indispensable for those who covet to pray well. Especially must they be ready to embrace difficulty and court pain — and that through the long stretch of a life-time. Let no man think that sudden in a ?ninute All is accomplished and the work is done ; — Though with thine earliest dawn thou shouldst begin it Scarce were it ended in thy setting sun. Let it be clearly understood at the outset, then, that though the art of prayer is a universal art it is the most difficult of all. But even so this is not an excuse for discouragement or a justification of spiritual indolence, for a man's best desires are al- ways the index and measure of his possibilities ; and the most difficult duty that a man is capable of doing is the duty that above all he should do. A moment's refleftion must convince us that man cannot teach man to pray, because of what prayer is. Prayer is man's side of converse with God ; it is speech Godward. How passing absurd it would be^ for a third person to presume to instruct either ow^. of two companions how to hold converse withll'is friend ! Were he to venture the impertine' 'e%e would develop in his pupil the curse of ^-- con- [ 4 ] THE UNIVERSAL ART sciousness — that is all. We can learn to converse with men only by conversing ; w^e can learn to pray to God only by praying. Prayer is a universal art, but there is only one Teacher for all, and He never teaches tvi^o persons in exactly the same way. God's friendships are as diverse as the souls with whom He interchanges confidences. These confidences must come from Himself; none else can impart them. There are certain great truths about prayer which may be formulated to good pur- pose — fundamental laws governing all fellowship with God, laws to which all in common must give heed ; but beyond this one may not venture. In the matter of prayer as in all else God reserves to Him- self the exclusive right of imparting His most inti- mate secrets diredlly to each separate soul, having a separate confidence for each according to its capaci- ty, temperament, and all those qualities which dis- tinguish every man from every other man. Though we may have learned the fundamental principles of prayer from devout friends and teach- > rs, whatever we really know of prayer we have ] earned by praying. Even the mother, at whose \ 1' e the earliest phrases of prayer were lisped out, at • : best only led us gently into the presence of God. is not too much to say that the Church [ 5 ] WITH GOD IN THE WORLD herself cannot do more than put the soul very near God and leave it there, trusting that something w^ill come of it. The rest must proceed in dire6l course from the lips of the Most High Himself. So delicate and subtle is the correspondence be- tween the soul and God, so "intensely personal" a thing is prayer* that we are often seriously hin- dered rather than helped by the blundering but well-intended efforts of those who would guide us to better devotion. Even to put a manual of private prayers into the hands of some persons who have not been accustomed to reach God through a book might be sufficient to mar the spontaneity of their approach to Him and check the intimate relations with Him which have hitherto always obtained. Because it suits one person's tempera- ment to call in the aid of a manual it by no means follows that everyone else should be presented with a copy of the book. Indeed happy are those souls who have always been able to speak with a rever- ent yet free familiarity with God, having nothing to aid save the vision of His face ; and the final aim of every good manual is to emancipate the soul into the joyousness of a spontaneity which is wholly devoid of blighting self-consciousness. * Maturin. [ 6 ] THE UNIVERSAL ART It ought to be further added that every one who regularly uses set forms of prayer should habitually incorporate into his devotions at least some words of his own which, however poor and few, yet are fresh and new from his heart. Of course what has been said about forms of prayer applies exclusively to private devotions. When the great corporate life of the Church speaks in worship it must be with one clear voice unmixed with the idiosyn- crasies of the individual and summing up the as- pirations of the best. But of this later. I The world just now is sadly in need of better ser- vice, but before this can be rendered there must be better prayer. A low standard of prayer means a low standard of charafter and a low standard of service. Those alone labour effedively among men who impetuously fling themselves upward towards God. In view of this it is a comfort to feel that no earnest man, whatever be the stage of his spiritual development, can be satisfied with his present at- tainments in his life of prayer. Fortunately for us, here as well as in other departments of life the ideal is always pressing itself upon our notice and making the adual blush with shame for what it is. And it is just because this is so that there is hope of better things. The ideal.beckons as well as [7 ] ' v^ IVITH GOD IN THE WORLD condemns. What if long steeps of toil, strewn with the stones of difficulty, lie in between 1 God's home is far up on the hills, and nowhere is He so easily- found as in a difficulty. As has been said, prayer is quite the most difficult task a man can undertake ; but it has this gracious compensation that in no other duty does God lend such direft, face-to-face help. Man may speak wise words about prayer ; the Church may bid to prayer ; but God alone can unfold to souls the delicate secrets of prayer. The best help is for the hardest duty — the help that comes straight from the Lord. [ 8 ] O^apter ii Friendship with God — Looking JES, prayer is speech Godward, and worship is man's whole life of friend- ship with God, the flowing out, as it were, of all that tide of emotion and service which is love's best speech. It is by think- ing, then, of the nature of fellowship between man and man, which is the most beautiful thing in the world excepting only fellowship with God, that we can get substantial help in developing the life of prayer. Consider the Christian fellowship of two noble charafters. It is "the greatest love and the greatest usefulness, and the most open communi- cation, and the noblest sufferings, and the most ex- emplar faithfulness, and the severest truth and the heartiest counsel, and the greatest union of minds," — Jeremy Taylor stops here only because he has exhausted his stock of sublime phrases — " of which brave men and women are capable."* Friendship is a full, steady stream, not intermit- * Works: Vol. i. 72. [ 9 ] WITH GOD IN THE WORLD tent or spasmodic. It is not something which lasts only when each looks into the other's eyes; for "distance sometimes endears friendship, and ab- sence sweeteneth it." It moves and expands the life even when the mind is busied with matters prosaic and vexatious, even when there is no in- ward contemplation of the features or chara6ter of the absent friend. And yet, although friendship does not consist in face-to-face communication one with another, it is in this that it takes its rise, it is by this that it is fed. Fellowship is not the same as friendship, but there can be no friendship without fellowship. That is to say, there must be certain definite, formal adls, a6ls not made once for all, but repeated as often as opportunity is given ; such form the cradle and nursery of friendship. In them- selves they are not much — a grasp of the hand, a smile, a simple gift, a conventional salutation, a fa- miliar talk about familiar things — but they intro- duce soul to soul, and through them each gives to the other his deepest self. Friendship between man and man is no vague, in- tangible thing whose only reality is its name. Much less can one think thus of friendship with God. Friendship with God is the friendship of friend- ships. While it lives on strong and true even when [ 10 ] FRIENDSHIP WITH GOD — Looking we are not in conscious fellowship with Him, mo- ments of conscious realization and contemplation of His person, chara6ler and presence are as essen- tial to friendship with Him as food is necessary for the sustenance of life. There must be times of prayer and occasions of definite, formal approach to Him, the more the better, provided they be healthy and free. It is not an arbitrary enadment that declares morning, noonday and evening to be the moments of time when the soul of man should with peculiar intensity lift up its gaze unto the hills.* One recognizes immediately the inherent fitness of having conscious fellowship with God at the opening, in the middle and at the close of day. In the morning, — because man's powers are then replete with life, his will nerved to a6l, his eye clear to see ; never is he so well able to gain a vi- sion of God, whether in the solitude of his room or in the quiet of the Church at an early Eucha- rist,^as in the first hours of a new day. At noon, — because the soul like the body needs a mid-day rest ; the dust of adivity and the distraftions of business will have dimmed the morning vision be- fore the day is full gone, and it is good to refresh the nature by again, if it be only for a brief mo- *Ps.l'V: 17. [ II ] WITH GOD IN THE WORLD ment, looking straight up into the face of the Most High. At night, — for the evening shadows find God's servant with soiled soul and drooping aspira- tions in sore need of that cleansing and cheer which the sight of God imparts. And the life of prayer works in a circle. The de- votions of the morning give tone to those which come at noon and night, while the night prayers in turn determine the quality of the morrow's. Men usually wake in the temper of mind in which they went to sleep. It is all-important to gain a clear vision of God as the last conscious a6l before going to rest. The founder of French socialism was awakened every morning by a valet who said : "Remember, Monsieur le Comte, that you have great things to do." But it is not men who aspire only or chiefly in the morning that achieve great things, but rather those who aspire at night. What is of nature in the morning is of grace at night. The vision that comes easily at the beginning of the unused stretch of a new day is harder to see when disappointment and failure have clouded the eye of hope ; but it means more. The men who attain the highlands of the spiritual life never " sleep with the wings of aspiration furled." Of course God is always with us, always looking [ 12 ] FRIENDSHIP WITH GOD — Looking at us with searching yet loving scrutiny. It would be impossible for us to be more completely in His presence than we are; for in Him "we live, and move, and have our being." But for the most part our lives are spent without much conscious recog- nition of the faft. He will be no more present at the last day when we stand before His throne than He is now. The only difference will be that then we I j shall see Him as He sees us ; we shall be so wholly ' absorbed by that consciousness that there will be room for no other consideration as, God grant, there will be no other desire. But before that moment comes men must pra6lise looking into His face by faith so that it will not be unfamiliar as the face of a stranger when the last veil is swept aside. Among men contemplation of another's personal- ity is the requisite preliminary of fellowship with him. Fellowship can begin only when there is a mutual recognition each of his fellow's presence. Personality is the most powerful magnet the world knows ; and the finer the personality the more readily will ail one's best impulses be set in motion and attrafted to it. How vain then is it to attempt to speak to God before the consciousness of His living, loving presence has caught the attention [ 13 ] WITH GOD IN THE WORLD and absorbed the mind — or at any rate until we have done our best to see Him, attentive, sympa- thetic, v^^ith His gaze fixed upon us. Power to pray is proportionate to the vividness of our conscious- ness of His presence and personality. When a man is talking to a companion his mind is occupied with the sense of the presence of an attentive, sym- pathetic personality rather than with the thought of the precise words he is going to use. His fellow a6ls as a magnet to extract his thoughts. An ora- tor makes his finest appeal when he is least con- scious of himself and most conscious of his audi- ence. Just so then is it with speech Godward. The moment a man is assured that God's personality is present and that His ear is opened earthward, speech heavenward is a power and a joy, and only then. Many make prayer a fine intelledlual exer- cise or a training school for the attention — this and nothing more. They strain their utmost, and doubtless they succeed well, to understand each sentence uttered and to speak it intelligently. Their minds are on what they are saying rather than on the Person to Whom they are saying it. They reap about the same benefit as they would if they recited attentively a scene from Shakespeare. "I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills." The vi- [ 14 ] FRIENDSHIP WITH GOD — Looking sion of God unseals the lips of man. Herein lies strength for conflid: with the common enemy of the praying world known as wandering thoughts. Personality will enchain attention when the most interesting intelle6lual, moral and spiritual con- cerns will fail to attraft. If the eye is fixed on God thought may roam where it will without ir- reverence, for every thought is then converted into a prayer. Some have found it a useful thing when their minds have wandered off from devotion and been snared by some good but irrelevant consider- ation, not to cast away the offending thought as the eyes are again lifted to the Divine Face, but to take it captive, carry it into the presence of God and weave it into a prayer before putting it aside and resuming the original topic. This is to lead cap- tivity captive. It is hard for those to see God's face who confine their contemplation of spiritual things to moments of formal devotion, who, while occupied with ma- terial things, do not explore what is beneath and beyond the visible, who do not strive to discern the moral and religious aspeft of every phase of life. On the other hand the vision of God becomes increasingly clear to such as look not at the things which are seen but at the things which are not [ >5 ] WITH GOD IN THE WORLD seen. These may be exceedingly pra6lical people, people ever active in the commonplace duties of life, but their wont is to cast everything into the upward sweep of the Ascension of Jesus and every- thing is seen by them with the glow of heaven upon it. Of course they pray well. After all "the sin of inattention" does not begin at the time of formal approach to God. It only makes itself peculiarly manifest then. If a person lives listlessly and does not put his full force into the ordinary duties of his life where the aids to attention are plenty, how can he expedl to com- mand his mind at those times when it is called upon to make a supreme adt of attentiveness and see Him Who is invisible ? A good man of our day * said of himself : " My greatest help in life has been the blessed habit of intensity. I go at what I am about as if there was nothing else in the world for the time being." Here then are two obvious, simple and rational principles upon obedience to which hinges the ability to make one's own the growing vision of God — the habit of spiritualizing the commonplace and the habit of attention in work. Whoever equips himself with them has made the best possible pre- * Charles Kingsley, [ i6 ] FRIENDSHIP WITH GOD — Looking paration for approach to God. It is an indiredl way of getting at things, it is true ; but often the method that is most indired is the most direft. It is cer- tainly so in this case. Of course in considering the subjedl of God's Be- ing one cannot wholly avoid the difficult question of personality. It would be aside from our purpose, however, to discuss the matter philosophically. For all praftical purposes there is ample and secure foot- ing near at hand. When by faith we look toward God, it is not toward an immovable but beautiful statue we turn, not to an abstra6l quality or a ten- dency that makes for righteousness, but to One Who looks with responsive gaze. Who notes our desires. Who heeds our words. Who lives. Who loves. Who ads. It is a horrible and deadening travesty of the truth to conceive of God as a great, impassive Being, seated on a throne of majesty, drinking in all the life and worship that flow from the service of His myriad creatures. Himself re- ceiving all and giving none. Though probably no one believes this as a matter of theory, when men look for God in the practice of prayer too often it is such a God they find. And many can say with Augustine as they review moments of fruitless de- votional effort m the past : " My error was my [ 17 ] WITH GOD IN THE WORLD God." * The truth is that though a great tide of energy moves ceaselessly toward God, it is but the shadow of what comes from Him. Indeed He is the Source of the life which flows inward toward Him as much as of that which flows outward from Him. He is undying energy, with unerring pur- pose, moving swiftly and noiselessly among men, striving to burn eternal life into their lame, stained, meagre souls. He is the Father that goes out to meet the returning profligate, the Shepherd that follows the track of the wandering sheep. Man has never yet had to wait for Him. He has always been as close to man as man would let Him come. His hands have never ceased to beat upon the bars of man's self-will to force an entrance into starved human nature. All this must be in man's concep- tion of God as he approaches Him. What above all gives to God that which enables man to see Him is the Incarnation. In the God- head is a familiar figure — the figure of Man. It was this that absorbed the attention of the dying Stephen. The Son of Man standing on God's right hand, was the vision that enthralled him as the stones battered out his life. And it is this same * For thou 'wert not thyself y but a mere phantom, and my error -tvas my God. Confessions. Bk. iv. 7. [ 18 ] FRIENDSHIP WITH GOD — Looking vision that makes the unseen world a reahty to men now. Humanity is there at its centre, the pledge of sympathy, the promise of victory. Not by a flight of imagination but by the exercise of insight we can look and see the sympathetic face of the Son of Man, who is also the Son of God ; and with the sight fellowship with God becomes possible, the string of the tongue is loosed and we are ready to pray. [ 19 ] Ci^aptet Hi Friendship with God — Speaking UITE a sufficient guide as to how God should be addressed is afforded by the Lord's Prayer. It was given by the Master in response to the ear- nest request of His disciples for instru6lion in prayer. Brief, compaft and complete, it is as it were the Christian seed-prayer. Once let it be planted in the heart of a Church or the soul of a child of God and it will grow into the glowing devotion of wondrous colle6ls and rich liturgies. Indeed there is no Christian prayer worth anything which does not owe its whole merit to the Lord's Prayer ; and the noblest liturgy of the Church is but the expansion and application of the same. . iLfiT j-0.£i ; Hence it is the touchstone of all prayer. By it the « t^ -"-■-. y Christian's mode of address to God is finally ap- ' proved or condemned. How important is it, then, that a man should know the Lord's Prayer! — know it, not merely as a formula, but as the embodiment of the vital prin- [ 20 ] FRIENDSHIP WITH GOD — Speaking ciples of converse with God. The process of yore must be repeated by the disciples of to-day. Like their predecessors of Galilee they must approach the unchangeable One and prefer the old entreaty : "Lord, teach us to pray." Nothing short of this will suffice. Then if they listen they will receive the familiar measures of the "Our Father" as a new and personal gift fresh and living from the lips of Jesus. It is good sometimes to " wait still upon God" between the sentences, and let the Holy Spirit apply each several petition to one's own spe- cial case and to all those interests which concern one's life — in sooth, translate it into the terms of our own day and generation. It is thus that the com- pressed richness of the Lord's Prayer is unfolded. The Lord's Prayer is one of those most precious of things known as common property. But a common possession to be worth anything to anybody must be related by every one of the multitude who claim a share in it, each to his own personality. Before common property can fully justify its claim to be common, it must become in a sense private by a process of implicit appropriation or the part of the individuals concerned. So while the Lord's Prayer ideally belongs to every child of God as the com- mon heritage of prayer, it adually belongs only to [ 21 ] WITH GOD IN THE WORLD those who have recognized and used it as a personal, though not exclusive, gift from its Author. Not the least important characteristic of the Lord's Prayer is its simplicity in thought and expression. Surely it is not v^ithout significance that as it stands in the English tongue it is the purest piece of Saxon in literature, a monument of clearness and sim- plicity. God neither speaks or desires to be spoken to in grandiloquent language which belongs to the courts of earthly kings. The difficulty that so many persons find in praying without the aid of some form of devotion is largely due to the impression that the language needed for address to God is not such as an ordinary mortal can frame. There are four leading principles, the first of which contra- dicts this misconception, that stand out in bold prominence in the Lord's Prayer, and tell us what all speech Godward should be. § I . Prayer must be familiar yet reverent. We are taught to address God as our Father. What a host of intimate confidences this single word calls up ! There is no familiarity so close as that between child and father, no sympathy so sensitive. When Scripture declares that Enoch walked with God, whatever else it means beyond, it means at least that Enoch was able to hold familiar converse [ 22 ] FRIENDSHIP WITH GOD — Speaking with God in prayer. Those who knew him could find no better way of describing his relationship with God than by drawing the picture of the fa- miliar companionship of two intimate friends. Or again, when Abraham is termed the friend of God it implies, as well as much beside, that he knew how to speak familiarly yet acceptably to God. All this was long ago, before man's full relation to God was made known. The coming of the Son of God as the Son of Man makes what was really deep seem shallow, so mighty was the change that was wrought. It is not merely as an ordinary friend that the Christian may speak to God, but as a son. Filial relations are the highest type of friendship. But familiarity must be chastened by reverence, a quality strangely lacking in our national character. It would seem as though in the boldness of our search for independence reverence had been largely forfeited. The Father addressed is in heaven. That is He is where holiness prevails to the utter exclu- sion of sin. So while we may tell out the whole mind it must be done with regard for the moral character of God and His eternal and infinite at- tributes ; with the familiarity, not of equals, but of lowly souls addressing sympathetic greatness and holiness. To dwell exclusively on either one [ 23 ] WITH GOD IN THE WORLD of these two considerations, God's Fatherhood or His infinite charafter, will result, on the one hand, in familiarity without reverence ; or, on the other, in reverence without familiarity. Familiarity with- out the discipline of reverence is desecrating im- pertinence, and reverence without the warmth of familiarity is chilling formalism. § 2. Prayer should be comprehensive yet definite. In the Lord's Prayer each petition gathers into its grasp whole groups of desires, and all the petitions taken together give shelter under their hospitable shadow to every need and every aspiration that belong to human life. Great gifts are asked for — " Thy King- dom come. Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven." In such requests we even claim things for God as well 2.% from Him. The dignity of each several petition is marked. We are taught to ex- pe6l royal gifts from our royal Father, gifts worthy of members of that royal family, the children of the Incarnation. The efFeft of the persistent use of these comprehensive petitions has filtered right through human experience and taught man to expeft great things in all departments of life, in science, in in- vention, in literature. Man's best desires have be- come a true measure of his possibilities. The prayer that is shaped after the great model [ 24 ] FRIENDSHIP WITH GOD — Speaking must not be timid or faltering, but bold and aspir- ing. It is a great mistake for one to be satisfied with praying for, say, purity instead of "Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven." That is to ask for the crumb from the rich man's table when the rich man is beseeching you to sit by his side and share all that he has. Let us pray for purity by all means, though not as if it were a flower that grew in a bed all by itself. We can get one Christian grace only by aiming at all. No less marked than the comprehension is the de- finiteness of the petitions of the Lord's Prayer. Each is as clear cut as a crystal. There is no mis- taking its meaning. Like the articles of the Creed they are all too simple to be vague, and they carry their meaning on their face. It is a common fault in prayer to be content with a certain comprehen- sion that abjures definiteness. If the latter without the former can at the best make a charafter of but small stature, the former without the latter can make no character at all. Take the one matter of penitence. The mere admission of sinfulness, as in the prayer of the publican, is but the first moan of penitence. A riper penitence rises from the vague to the definite in declaring the sins, and not only the sinfulness, for which God's mercy is implored. [ 25 ] WITH GOD IN THE WORLD True comprehension implies detailed knowledge and minute accuracy. § 3. Prayer should be social rather than individual in spirit. Our Father ; forgive us. The "our" and the "us" warn men never to think of themselves as units, or of religion as a private transaftion between God and the individual. God regards each as a part of, and never 2i^d.rt from, the whole race, at the same time cherishing each part as though it were the whole. Consequently petitions for others ought to keep even pace with those for ourselves. A mo- ment's reflection shows how true philosophically the social form of prayer is. So closely is the web of human life woven that what touches one touches two at least, unless a man be a hermit, when he is as good as dead. Even supposing one were to pray for a spiritual gift for himself alone and receive it, it would at once become the property of others in some measure at any rate. It is an inflexible law that the righteousness or the evil, as the case may be, which dwells in a man, becomes forthwith the righteousness or the evil of the society to which he belongs. It is only common sense then to pray "give us" and "forgive us" rather than "give me" and "forgive me." Of course, this does not mean that "I" and "me" [ 26 ] FRIENDSHIP WITH GOD — Speaking should never occur in our private prayers. They must do so. But I am to love my neighbour as my- self on my knees as vi^ell as in society. My neigh- bour is my other or second self to v^hich I owe an equal duty of prayer w^ith myself. To link "their" or "his" with "mine" on equal terms is really to say " our " ; to ask for others separately what I have already claimed for myself is to be social rather than individual in prayer. It would follow, then, that intercessory prayer is not a work of extraordinary merit but a necessary element of devotion. It is the simple recognition in worship of the fundamental law of human life that no man lives or dies alone. But intercession rises to sublime heights when it claims the privilege and the power for each child of God to gather up in his arms the whole family to which he belongs, and carry it with its multifold needs and its glori- ous possibilities into the presence of the common Father for blessing and prote6lion. It is grand to feel that the Christian can lift, by the power of prayer, a myriad as easily as one, that he can hold in his grasp the whole Church as firmly as a single parish, and can bring down showers of blessing on an entire race as readily as the few drops needed for his own little plot. [ 27 ] WITH GOD IN THE WORLD §4. Prayer must maintain proper proportions. Spirit- ual needs are paramount, material are secondary. Out of seven petitions six bear upon the invisible foundations of life and the remaining one alone is concerned, direftly at any rate, with things mate- rial. It is further remarkable that the latter is as modest as the former are bold. The soul needs the whole of God's eternal Kingdom where the body requires but bread for the day. The Lord's Prayer does not teach asceticism, but it certainly con- demns luxury, and implies that the physical na- ture requires a minimum rather than a maximum of attention and care. With the vision of God above and the Christian seed-prayer well planted in the soul, man can dare to hope that his speech Godward will not waste itself in hollow echoes, but will travel straight up to the throne of Grace and bring a speedy an- swer. [ 28 ] Cl)apter fb Friendship with God — The Response |R0BABLY the greatest result of the life of prayer is an unconscious but steady growth into the knowledge of the mind of God and into conform- ity with His will ; for after all prayer is not so much the means whereby God's will is bent to man's desires as it is that whereby man's will is bent to God's desires. While Jesus readily re- sponded to the requests and inquiries of His disci- ples His great gift to them was Himself, His per- sonality. He called His apostles that they "should be with Him." The all-important thing is not to live apart from God, but as far as possible to be consciously with Him. It must needs be that those who look much into His face will become like Him. Man reflefts in himself his environment, es- pecially if he surrenders himself unreservedly to its influence. In the case of God, " in Whom we live and move and have our being," the influence is not passive, but aftive in impressing its character [ 29 ] WITH GOD IN THE WORLD upon us. It is not as the white of the land of snow which coats its animals with its own colour ; it is a Person. The complete vision of Christ will mean the complete transformation of man — "We shall be like Him ; for we shall see Him as He is." If there were no other conceivable result from prayer than just this, it would even so be wonderful. Cer- tainly that which we treasure most in companion- ship with an earthly friend is not his counsel or service ; it is the touch of his soul upon our own ; it is the embrace of his whole being that wraps itself about our whole being. One may say then that the real end of prayer is not so much to get this or that single desire granted, as to put human life into full and joyful conformity with the will of God. This thought, beautiful and true as it is, would be too intangible and too great a tax upon faith, un- less man had some more or less definite and im- mediate recognition of his heavenward appeals. The Old Testament is a standing witness to God's consideration for human limitations and weakness. He sometimes gave man less than the best because of the latter's inability to receive the best, though He always gave as much as could be received, un- til at last He gave His Son. Now it is in this same [ 30 ] FRIENDSHIP WITH GOD— The Response way that He deals with His children of to-day. At first the lesser gifts are sought for and given, but as spiritual life ripens what man craves most for and what God is most eager to grant is that the Father's will may be wholly worked out in His child. Trust so grows that there can be no such thing as disappointment regarding the way God treats our petitions. Not Thy gifts I seek, O Lord; Not Thy gifts but Thee. Whmt were all Thy boundless store Without Thyself? What less or more ? Not Thy gifts but Thee. This frame of mind, however, belongs to the to- morrow of most lives. For the present the lesser gifts are the best we are equal to. And it cannot be too often or too strongly said that God has di- rect answers to prayer for every soul that appeals to Him. But many fail to recognize the answer when it comes because of inattention. If God is to be heard when He speaks we must give heed. It is no less a duty to "wait still upon God" than it is to address Him in prayer. A one-sided con- versation is not a conversation at all. Conversation requires an interchange of thought. He who is one [ 31 J 7 WITH GOD IN THE WORLD moment the speaker must the next become the listener, intent upon the words of his companion. The expeftation of an answer to prayer is laid down as a condition of there being one. § I. Oftentimes God's answer is in the shape of an aftion rather than a voice. When we entreat a friend to do something for us, speedy compliance is a sufficient response to the request. If we are cer- tain of the person addressed no verbal assurance is required. The chara6ler of our friend is the guar- antee that the petition will be heeded. When, therefore, God is petitioned to do, we must look for an aftion rather than listen for a voice. There are some requests the answer to which re- turns with the speed of a flash of light, as, for in- stance, when we ask God to give us some Christian grace or disposition of heart. The giving comes with the asking.* A man may not be strong enough to retain the gift, but it a&ually becomes his before he rises from his knees. The rationalist will objeft to this, that such an answer to prayer is nothing more than the subje6live eflFe(5l of a given attitude of mind. Grante.d ; but that makes it none the less the direft work of God. Secondary or scientific causes exhibit to the observer the method by which * St. Mark xi: 24. [ 32 ] ^ FRIENDSHIP WITH GOD— The Response God fulfils His purposes. The stone falls to the ground according to the law of gravitation, but God is behind the law controlling it. The distin- ' guishing feature of the Jewish mode of thought ^y ^--^ was the way in which it related all things to God's x- immediate aftivity. The Old Testament is the I / book of God's immanence. The present attitude ■' of mind leads men to rest in all causes short of God, and even to forget the need of a Cause of causes. An earnest student of nature remarked upon leaving her microscope : " I have found a uni- verse worthy of God." She at least felt that a rev- elation of secondary causes was, at the same time, a new revelation of the God of causes. If it could be proved that all answers to prayer came according to the working of natural law, it would not eliminate God from the process, or have 1 f XA^ any sort of bearing upon the efficacy of prayer. All we know of God's method of work demonstrates His love of law ; and it would be no surprise, but rather what we should expe6l, to find that all the ^ unseen stretches of life are equally within the do- main of His law and order.* § 2. But when occasion requires, the reply to speech Godward comes in the shape of a voice. In one sense * Cf. Liddon, Advent in St. PauVsy p. zz. [ 33 ] WITH GOD IN THE WORLD God is always speaking ; He is never still. Just aain. prayer it is not we who momentarily catch His at- tention but He ours, so when we fail to hear fTTs voice it is not because He is not speaking so much as that we are not listening. We may hear sounds, as a language with which we are not conversant, but be unable to interpret. Or perhaps we are in the position of one who sits in the summer even- ing when nature is instinft with music, — the chirp- ing of inse6t life, the whispering wind, the good- night call of the birds, — deaf to the many voices, whereas a companion has ears for nothing else but what those voices say. The cause of the former's deafness is that his attention is wholly absorbed by other interests. We must recognize that all things are in God and that God is in all things, and we must learn to be very attentive, in order to hear God speaking in His ordinary tone without any special accent. Power to do this comes slowly and as the result of not separating prayer from the rest of life. A man must not stop listening any more than praying when he rises from his knees. No one questions the need of times of formal address to God, but few admit in any pra6lical way the need of quiet waiting upon God, gazing into His face, feeling for His hand, listening for His voice. '' I [ 34 ] FRIENDSHIP WITH GOD— The Response will hearken what the Lord God will say concern- ing me." God has special confidences for each soul. Indeed, it would seem as though the deepest truths came only in moments of profound devotional si- lence and contemplation. The written Word of God has special messages for the individual as well as a large general message for the entire Christian body. The devotional use of Holy Scripture is the means by which the soul reaches some of the most precious manifestations of God's will. By devotional use is meant such a study as has for its ultimate purpose an a6l of wor- ship, or of conscious fellowship with Him. The Bible reveals not merely what God was, but what He is. Finding from its pages how He loved, we know how He loves ; learning how He dealt with or spoke to men, we perceive how He deals with and speaks to us. But our instrudtion in things divine must come to us from a Person rather than a book, though through a book perhaps. If we ap- proach the Bible as we would approach Bacon or Milton, merely as a colle6lion of the wise thoughts and aftions of the dead, it will never sway the life to any large extent. Holy Scripture is separated from all other literature by the fad: that it contains abso- lute spiritual truth and because its Author, as a liv- [ 35 ] WITH GOD IN THE WORLD ing Person, always stands behind it. Those who listen will hear the Holy Spirit saying to them, in diredl application, the same things that lie on the open pages as the record of what was once said to men of old. Meditation or the devotional use of Scripture renders conscience, that organ of the soul by which God's voice is received by man, increas- ingly sensitive. The Old Testament days were full of men who could say " Thus saith the Lord," with the same assurance that they could report the speech of a comrade. Doubtless God had many ways of speaking to the prophets, but whatever these ways were and however special and singular, they were based originally on those by means of which He addresses all men in common. As a re- sult of the Incarnation "all the Lord's people are prophets" and the Lord has "put His Spirit upon them ; " and they, too, ought to be able to say , "Thus saith the Lord." §3. A third way in which God makes His will known to man is by His silences, silences which are always eloquent. As experience has taught us, silence can convey a message just as readily as speech sometimes, or even more readily. The si- lence of the Easter tomb was the first voice that told of the Resurrection. The loved disciple read [ 36 ] FRIENDSHIP WITH GOD-The Response the message of the orderly silence of the place where the Lord had lain ; "he saw and believed." Silence has expression and accent telling of sym- pathy, rebuke, anger, grief, as occasion may re- quire. The silence of Jesus before the importunate appeal of the woman of Canaan, was full of sym- pathy and encouraged her faith to rise to sublime heights. Whereas His silence before the accusa- tions of His enemies during His trial was so elo- quent as to establish His innocence even in the eyes of a Pontius Pilate. And \( God is silent now at times when we long for some sign from Him, it is because by means of silence He can best make known to us His mind. His silence may mean that our request is so foreign to His will, that it may not be heeded without hurt to the petitioner. Or, on the other hand. He may be luring on our faith and inciting it to a more ambitious flight. Or, again, it may be that His silence is His way of tellmg us that the answer to our query or peti- tion lies in ourselves. God never tells man what man can find out for himself, as He never does what man can do for himself. The result of giving a person what he should earn is pauperism. As God will do, nay, can do, only what will enrich human nature, it would be a contradidion of Himself to [ Z7 J WITH GOD IN THE WORLD answer what we can find out for ourselves, or give what we can gain by our own efforts. Love lies within God's silences as their explanation.* The mother refuses to answer her child's questions be- cause the child by a little observation and thought can itself get at the truth, and truth won by strug- gle is the only truth that we really possess. If God is silent when we ask for new knowledge of His Person and His love, may it not be that it is be- cause we are substituting books about the Bible for an earnest study of the Bible itself, which con- tains a full answer to our prayer ? Or if, when day after day we have prayed for the conversion of a relative, no response comes, may it not be that we have never put ourselves at the disposal of God to be the instrument for working out what is at once our desire and His purpose ? At any rate, what- ever be the explanation of a silence in this or that special instance, God is never silent excepting when silence speaks more clearly than a voice. So the sure response comes to speech Godward in \ fj !« * / suppose that a constant vision of God nj^uld be an injury \\-S^ 0^ '^'^ " to almost all men^ — that there are periods nxjhen e^ven utter '-■ ^kJ^JSf'^^''^'' ' scepticism is the sign of God'' s mercy ^ and the necessary condi- *^ tion of moral restoration. — R. H. Mutton y Theological Essays , p. J. [ 38 ] FRIENDSHIP WITH GOD-The Response an adion, or a voice, or a speaking silence. The persevering, faithful, attentive soul will never fail to discern God's ansv^^er to prayer, nor be disap- pointed m the quality of that answer when it comes. God is more ready to hear than we to pray, and it is His wont to give more than either we desire or deserve.* * Colkafor Tivelfth Sunday after Trinity. [ 39 ] €})apttv b 'T/ie Testing of Friendship jF course, friendship with God must be tried. Not only can true friendship stand any strain to which it may be put, but it even needs to be thus tested in order to be sohdly set. It is like the knot that becomes more fixed and firm at each new pull of the cord. The faith and afFedlion which will cling to a friend when all the forces of dis- union seem combined to bring about a separation, are so tempered by the experience involved as to defy every conceivable enemy, and to discover new depths of love and service in the fellowship that has been thus put to the test. To enter upon just why this should be, is not to the purpose. It is a fa6t and law of the life of fellowship between man and man, and man and God. The force that threatens to break up the connexion between God and man, but by means of which that union may be consummated, is temptation. § I. Temptation is always an opportunity. — There [ 40 ] THE TESTING OF FRIENDSHIP are two kinds of testing — that which proves a thing to discover whether it is what it professes to be, and that which aims to bring out latent pos- sibilities in the thing tested. With the former there goes a sort of lurking suspicion that all may not be right, as when a bit of metal is tried by acid, or a big gun is proved by an excessive charge. When a test of this kind is over the thing that is tried is just what it was before, neither more nor less. No new quality is in the gift of the test. With the lat- ter, on the other hand, the result is different, as when the silver "from the earth is tried, and puri- fied seven times in the fire." The quartz goes into the furnace and a stream of unalloyed metal flows out ; or to seek still another illustration, — the pro- cess by which steel is tempered. Here new quali- ties are given by means of the testing ; to the silver, purity, and to the steel, hardness and elasticity. To this second form of testing belongs the element of trust rather than that of suspicion. The material is so good, that the workman has no doubt about its coming through the fire purer and more valu- able than ever. It is this kind of testing which the friends of God must undergo, the kind of testing which affords friends the very opportunity they need to become [ 41 ] WITH GOD IN THE WORLD better friends. It is not too much to say that man being what he is, there is no conceivable means excepting temptation, which would give to him just those elements which are necessary for his progress toward God. Jesus was "in all points tempted like as we are," primarily that His man- hood might reach its full measure, and this entailed such sympathy with the race as ensues upon a com- mon experience. Atonement means a unity with God which has been achieved, not by a divine fiat, but by a choice of the human will that has repelled the last attack of God's greatest enemy. It is always so that in scanning the harsh features of a refining process, the happy result of the pro- cess is blurred and forgotten. Temptation is surely an assault to be withstood, but at the same time it is an opportunity to be seized. Viewed in this Hght life becomes inspiring, not in spite but because of its struggles, and we are able to greet the unseen with a cheer, counting it unmixed joy when we fall into the many temptations which, varied in form, dog our steps from the cradle to the grave. The soldier who is called to the front is stimu- lated, not depressed ; the officer who is bidden by his general to a post of great responsibility, and so of hardship and peril, is thrilled with the joy of his [ 42 ] THE TESTING OF FRIENDSHIP task. An opportunity has been given him to prove himself vi^orthy of great trust, which can be done only at the cost of great trouble. This is a true pifture of temptation. And the re- sult of it all is a nature invigorated and refined, a charader made capable of close friendship vv^ith God, to say nothing of the unmeasured joy that is the attendant of nobility of soul and stalwart Christian manhood. §2. The majesty of confix with temptation, One is often depressed by the seemingly inglorious char- after of our temptations. They are so mean, petty and commonplace. If they had in them something to rouse m the heart that love of romance, that is a saving element in human nature, one could fight better. Now temptation has this very element. But spiritual eyes are needed to discern the glory of the commonplace, the romance of the inglorious. God has been trying with divine patience to convince men of this from the very beginning. The story of the first temptation of the first human beings, in its poetic dress points to the romance of life's struggle. Jacob's wrestling bout with the mysteri- ous being by the river's brink, is a view of the underside of any struggle against temptation, as God sees it, when the tempted one fights to win. [ 43 1 WITH GOD IN THE WORLD Above all in the narrative of the temptation of Jesus in the v^^ilderness, is the majesty of confli6t with evil made plain. It is a record vi^hich exceeds in dramatic splendour the story of "Faust," or the realism of " Pilgrim's Progress." And in it we ar- rive at the paradoxical truth that the temptations of Jesus were just as commonplace as ours, and that ours are just as glorious as His, — His, of course, having a completeness which none others could have, for the most complete temptation is the temptation of the most complete. Looking beneath the surface of the story, we find ourselves face to face with the well-known tempta- tions of the world, the flesh, and the devil. Wrapped in contemplation upon what His Divine sonship involved. He was driven into solitude, and tempted, as He worked out His life's plan, to substitute evil independence for good dependence, then to flee to the opposite extreme and substitute evil depend- ence for good independence, and finally to dis- regard the means in His zeal for a righteous end. These temptations are as common as humanity and as uninspiring as night. Could one have stood by when Jesus was struggling with them, doubt- less nothing more would have been seen than is visible to-day when some man in loneliness, with [ 44 ] THE TESTING OF FRIENDSHIP his eyes lifted toward the hills, wins the mastery over himself and his unseen tempters. Yes, the Master's temptations were just as commonplace as ours. Why, then, this fine dressing up of the com- monplace ? Because, when in after days Jesus told His companions of His confli6l and victory. He saw with the illumination of retrospe^ what at the moment of the struggle He could not see, the glory of it all. The story is not a fi6lion of the imagination. It is a true picture of what occurred, a revelation of the splendour that lies at the founda- tion of every spiritual contest, a record of literal truth not perceived at the time, but clear to the vision after all was over. "After all was over" — the mean and common- place incidents of to-day, form the raw material out of which is woven the romance of to-morrow. The ugliest fafts make the choicest romance after they have been tempered in the crucible of time. Ask a soldier how much romance there was when the fight was hot. The sublime in battle is visible only from the vantage ground of vi6lory. Often when the life of some humble and aiflifted child of God comes to a close, we see what was hidden from our eyes during his days on earth — the hero- ism of his career. At first we esteem him " stricken, [ 45 ] WITH GOD IN THE WORLD smitten of God, and afflifted." Afterward we ad- mire the grandeur and largeness of the life that once seemed so narrow and lame. Before death the charadter of the affliftion claims our attention ; afterward the chara6ler of the afflifted ; now the ugly fa6t and then the glory ; " first that which is natural and afterward that which is spiritual." Con- sequently there are two methods of recording hu- man history — bare fa6l, concrete, grim, common- place ; its romance, abstra6t, majestic and just as real. We need both kinds of description — Geth- semane with its agony and gouts of blood, and the wilderness with its dramatic imagery. Neither one is more real than the other. If the wilderness had its grim side, Gethsemane had its romantic side. The ideal is realized, when the real is idealized. Grant the truth of this — and who will gainsay it ? — and it follows that while the temptations of Jesus were as commonplace as ours, ours are as glorious as His. S. Paul saw it all quite plainly, when in radiant language he rolled out to his Ephesian friends that superb call to battle. "Be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against [ 46 ] THE TESTING OF FRIENDSHIP the principalities, against the powers, against the world-rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places." There is nothing in the whole of Scripture that makes life seem more splendid and glowing, and yet the oc- casion is one of extreme peril and hardship — the moment of temptation. It is not so that the scien- tific charafter of our age, with its darting electri- city and whirring wheels, forbids romance to lift its head. Glory of the highest type will live as long as dauntless human souls aspire to God, let the world be as matter of faft or as evil as it chooses. The only thing that can dim glory is the domination of sin in man. § 3. So much for the splendid opportunity which temptation affords. How to meet it is what the story of the life of the Son of Man makes mani- fest. {a) It is noticeable that neither by precept nor ex- ample are we encouraged to pray for the removal of temptation. Once, it is true, Jesus expressed it as His desire that a cup of pain might pass from Him, but He conditioned His prayer — "not My will, but Thine, be done." God did not remove the cup, but what was better still He gave Him strength to drink it. A prayer of S. Paul's was treated in [ 47 ] WITH GOD IN THE WORLD tation to hell, but much more is it an opportunity— to reach heaven. At the moment of temptation sin and righteousness are both very near the Christian ; but of the tw^o the latter is the nearer. Walk in the spirit and you put yourself in such a position as to be unable to fulfil the lusts of the flesh. Meet the negation of sin vi^ith the affirmation of righteousness. When Satan challenges you to wrestle with him, turn about and wrestle with God for a blessing. [c) There is no reason to be afraid of temptation, that is to say if it is not a temptation into which we have entered unnecessarily, but one that is con- sequent upon the fulfilment of duty. God does not allow us to be tempted beyond our powers. But this is not all. Our fearlessness should show itself in our attitude. We must meet our temptations face to the foe. The temptations of Jesus never struck Him from behind but always smote Him in the face. There is only one kind of temptation which we are advised to run from, and that is the temptation to fleshly lust. Evasion is for the most part a sign of defeat, not of vidlory. The man who would gain freedom in temptation must be One who never turned his back, but marched breast for- ward, [ so ] rUE TESTING OF FRIENDSHIP With this thought we leave the subjedl of temp- tation, that strange mystery which proves man and makes him less unworthy of friendship with God, which is at once an opportunity and a snare, glori- ous and commonplace. [ 51 ] Ci^apter if Knitting Broken Friendship UT the best of us do not always rise to the opportunity which temptation presents. A gust comes for which we are not prepared, and we are swept off our feet. And the earliest penalty of sin visits the transgressor simultaneously with its commit- tal — that depressing sense of loneliness and separa- tion from God that has been the bitter experience \of every one, and that is so graphically represented in the story of the first a6l of disobedience. Every one who does wrong, by the deed of wrong itself, hides himself from God just as Adam and Eve did. Sin is ailing apart from God, a withdrawing of our allegiance from Him, an ignoring of His voice, a snapping of the bonds of friendship. When this unhappy experience occurs what are we to do to have the breach between ourselves and God filled up and fellowship with Him re-estab- lished ? It would seem natural to answer that as soon as we perceive that we have fallen we should [ 52 ] KNITTING BROKEN FRIENDSHIP pick ourselves up and go on our way without fur- ther thought about the dead past. It is out of our reach ; it cannot be recalled, and to dwell upon it is disastrous. A man who has exercised a wide influence over English thought declared sin to be "not a monster to be mused on, but an impotence to be got rid of. All thinking about it, beyond what is indis- pensable for the final effort to get rid of it, is waste of energy and waste of time. We then enter that element of morbid and subjective brooding in which so many have perished. This sense of sin, however, it is also possible to have not strongly enough to beget the firm effort to get rid of it." * Probably of the two dangers mentioned by Mat- thew Arnold, the latter is the greater in these days in which an "amiable opposition" to sin as merely a pardonable flaw in human nature is so widely taught. Whatever risk there may be in looking sin squarely in the face, and however difficult we find it to strike the mean between morbid brooding and a total dis- regard for the past, there never yet was a man who achieved the royal dignity of Christian charafter without a painful and thoroughgoing grappling * MattheiJo Arnold^ St. Paul and Protestantism. [ 53 ] WITH GOD IN THE WORLD with his former self. Men may strive to forget the past by weaving about themselves a web of absorb- ing interests. But a day of reckoning must come, as it came to Adam and Eve in "the cool of the day," as it came to Jacob as he wrestled for better things that night by the plunging stream, as it came to S. Peter when he went out and sowed the seed of a chastened charadler in scalding tears. Were relief from the haunting memory of badness the only thing to be considered, a calm, fearless scrutinizing of sins committed is the one cure. The way to forget sin is to remember it before God — yes, even to the deliberate raking over the ashes of the days that are gone lest some fault should j escape observation. A sense of sinfulness is the earli- I est indication of awakening holiness. It seems as though the common idea concerning the repent- ance of the Publican in the story of the Publican and Pharisee, as told by the Master, were short of the truth. Surely there is no ground for think- ing that Christ commends the penitence of the Publican, who expressed his sorrow by saying "God be merciful to me, a sinner," as being ideal. Far from it. Poor and weak and young as was this appeal, it was infinitely more valuable in the sight of God and efficacious than the finely phrased self- [ 54 ] KNITTING BROKEN FRIENDSHIP laudation of the Pharisee. Penitence rises from a sense of sinfulness to a recognition of sins. It is not hard to perceive why this must be. The past strikes its roots into the present, and until in some true sense the past has been undone it is bound to poison the motives and deeds of to-day. Of course v^^hen a thing is done it is done. No amount of effort can undo it in the sense of oblit- erating it from history. But it is not only possible but necessary that in intention it should be undone and that so far as can be its evil consequences checked. With the aid of the imagination and the will the life that has been lived apart from God may be lived over again with Him. This in His sight is to undo it, for the motive is the deed, and intention is the most powerful of realities. But this is not all. It is a law of life governing all fellowship that transparent frankness is the only atmosphere in which friendship can exist. A wrong committed ought to be followed by full admission of the deed. And it is further noticeable that this admission is not dependent upon whether or not tlie person wronged is conscious of the wrong. Prudence demands, though not nearly so widely as is commonly supposed, that under certain con- ditions a sin against society should not be publicly [ 55 ] WITH GOD IN THE WORLD confessed or even made known to the person chiefly concerned. But where this happens the penitent should feel silence as a weighty penance, and long for a day when he can throw open his life so that he will be seen to be just what he is. We are only what we are in the sight of God. It is a grief to many a holy man that because of his secret sins he is better thought of than he deserves ; and he will hail the day when all that is hidden will be un- covered and made known, so that with the last veil torn from his character he will be able to join unreservedly in free and humble fellowship with all men. No Christian man has any more v/arrant for try- ing to "dissemble or cloak" his sins before his fellow-men than he has for trying to do the same thing before God. To rejoice when we see others attributing to us qualities which we do not possess, or to congratulate ourselves when we escape de- tedion — or at least when we think we do, for as often as not men see our faults when we think they do not — upon the committal of some sin, is to deepen that line of deceit that furrows most chara6lers. There is no social quality quite so splen- did as transparency. It is said by one * well quali- * H. Scott Holland. [ 56 ] KNITTING BROKEN FRIENDSHIP fied to speak of Mr. Gladstone that "the man in him leapt forward to express itself with transpar- ent simplicity. If he were subtle he showed at once why he wanted to be subtle. And in spite of every- thing that could be said about his intellectual sub- tlety, it remains that to the very last the dominant note of his charafter was simplicity — the simpli- city of a child ; with the child's naive self-disclo- sure, the child's immediate response to a situation, without cloak or disguise." Now it is just this simple, childlike transpareney that the Christian must cultivate in every respect. When it so happens to a man that he may not tell his wrong-doing to the person immediately wronged, then let him go to some spiritual friend, or to his pastor, who stands as the representative of Christian society, as well as the ambassador of Christ, and share with him his grief. The exception referred to above — where an open confession would result in social injury — does not at all alter the fa6l that perfeft frankness alone makes fellowship possible. More often than not when one friend tells another of some piece of petty meanness by which friendship has been marred, the injured party already knows all about it. The confession is not made to give information, but to [ 57 ] WITH GOD IN THE WORLD open up the soul that has sinned so that the pro- cess of healthy social life may be free to work again. It is not wholly explicable, but it is a law which TOverns human intercourse. o Precisely in the same way this law works in the life of fellowship with God. He knows more about our sins than we can tell Him. But by telling them over, their occasion, their guilt, before Him, the soul is new-born into His love, and the warmth of His compassion melts the emotions. This is a first requisite in genuine personal religion — frankness before God ; and frankness among men is second only to it. In requiring perfe6l openness of life from men God asks only what He gives. He is Light. There is no knowledge of His Person which man is capa- ble of grasping which He does not offer. He tears open His bosom and reveals the most sacred depths of His being. He asks man to do likewise that fel- lowship may follow. So far we have considered what man should do when, whether for a moment or for years, he has walked apart from God. He must review the past and in intention live it over again with God, turn- ing his back upon everything that is amiss. But this alone is incomplete. The heart must receive [ 58 ] KNITTING BROKEN FRIENDSHIP some sort of assurance that the work of penitence is acceptable in God's sight. There is no thirst of the soul so consuming as the desire for pardon. A sense of its bestowal is the starting point of all goodness. It comes bringing with it, if not the freshness of innocence, yet a glow of inspiration that nerves feeble hands for hard tasks, a fire of hope that lights anew the old high ideal so that it stands before the eye in clear relief, beckoning us to make it our own. To be able to look into God's face and know with the knowledge of faith that there is nothing between the soul and Him is to experience the fullest peace the soul can know. Whatever else pardon may be, it is above all things admission into full fellowship with God. It is not a release from certain penalties which the natural course of sin entails, though it brings with it power and wisdom to endure and to use penalties so that they become means by which lost virtues are re- stored and the whole charafter reinvigorated. The sense of fellowship comes out with singular force when for the first time the pardoned soul leaps out from under a weight of sin. The joy of prayer, the fearless approach to God, the contemplation of His personal love — all this testifies to what pardon is. The absolution of the dying robber on Calvary [ 59 ] WITH GOD IN THE WORLD was not merely an admission into Christ's privi- leges, but a call to His fellowship and a speedy call at that — " To-day shalt thou be with Me in Para- dise." The first awakening of the soul to a sense of par- don makes this very vivid. But somehow as time goes on and repeated falls on the upward climb discourage the soul, the difficulty of grasping God's pardon seems to increase. Confession is made and sorrow is felt, but God's face seems hidden behind a cloud. Then is it comforting to remember that all clouds are earthborn. The trouble is that we reflect our own impatience and discouragement up into the life of God. Because we chafe under our almost imperceptible progress we imagine God does the same. His first absolutions were full and generous, but how can these later ones be so ? Surely they must be grudgingly bestowed. So we argue, and the latest forgiving message of God, a message as strong and full as the first, falls upon listless ears. The absolution that comes to the penitent after the seventy-times-seven repetitions of a sin is all that the first one was. Absolution is never less than absolution. It always admits to fellowship so com- plete that it could not be closer. [ 60 ] Cliapter bit Friendship in God RIENDSHIP is not only with God but also in God. Fellowship with God has for its corollary fellowship with man in God. And the latter in the greatness of its dignity and privilege is second only to the former. The religion of Christ does not al- low of one without the other. The Church, which is the divinely ordered means by which man is ad- mitted into and sustained in his fellowship with God, is also the ideal society of men. God never considers men apart from, but always as a part of, a great social order — a social order that is not a concourse of independent units, but a body instinct with life, a society which is not an organization but an organism. The description of our relation- ship to one another is couched in the same terms that tell of our relationship to Christ — "members one of another," "members of Christ." It is God's will that the Church should be cotermi- nous with society, and that the unity of life thus [ 6i ] JVITH GOD IN THE WORLD produced should make the "communion of saints" a reality on earth and not a mere theory. Past years have seen much earnest straining to gain a truer con- ception of God, that fellowship with and love for Him might be according to His will. All this theo- logical effort will be lost, unless it is followed up by a no less strenuous effort to make the brother- hood of man a fa6l. The Master gave a new com- mandment of love, a commandment new not in essence but rather in intensity and comprehension. After the injunction to love God comes the equally unequivocal injunction to love man — " Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." That is to say, per- sonality whether in ourselves or in others is to re- ceive the highest reverence and consideration, and that without any partiality. Humanity being full of diversity, this commandment requires a most thorough and intelligent study of society and its elements. Heresies concerning God have been and are destru6live of unity ; but heresies concerning man are produ6live of almost equal mischief. If the first part of the commandment of love calls us to a study of theology, the second demands a study of sociology — an old science under a new name. It is worth while noting that the Apostle who earned the name of "the Divine," or as we would [ 62 ] FRIENDSHIP IN GOD say "the Theologian," by reason of his familiar acquaintance with the deep things of God, was the same who felt that the appeal most worth ur- ging with the scant breath of extreme old age was, that men should love one another ; and he repeats this simple phrase until the world wonders — " My little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue, but in deed and in truth." But it must never be forgotten that human fellow- ship and friendship must under the best of condi- tions be se6lional and shallow, and under the worst, disastrous, unless it be "in Christ," that is, in God. The true ideal of human fellowship is realized only thus. And it is such a unity as would be the out- come of fellowship in Christ, for which the Mas- ter prayed at the last. Ecclesiastical unity does not necessarily produce unity of life, though the latter must include the former in some true sense. Chris- tian unity has a twofold basis, the love of God and the love of man. This differentiation in the com- mandment of love, is of Christ's own making, and cannot be ignored by His followers. In considering the ideal human fellowship it is vital to remember that the spiritual, here as elsewhere, is built upon the natural, the spiritual entering into, interpreting and developing the natural. And when [ 63 ] WITH GOD IN THE WORLD the word "natural" is used, that which is purely accidental and artificial in life is not meant, but that which is fundamental and belongs to the very- constitution of humanity. For instance, trade rela- tions and conventional institutions of whatever kind are evanescent. To use them for a foundation is to build on sand. An eternal fabric cannot gain coherence from a creation of man's whim or genius. Indeed the institutions of commerce as well as all official intercourse, can be constructed with effec- tiveness, not to say justice, only when built upon the recognition of the dignity of humanity and the sacredness of personality, with equality of consid- eration for each. And herein lies the solution of the whole social problem in all its ramifications. The fundamental relationship of life is such as springs out of that common humanity, which, in the last analysis, is a man's only absolute posses- sion, be he prince or pauper, wise or ignorant. And this humanity of ours is a precious possession, not always perhaps for what it has adtually become, but for what it is in process of becoming, or, it may be, only because of those latent possibilities which the Incarnation has declared to be contained in that which is born of woman. Once armed with this thought, Kant's valuable negative advice never [ 64 ] FRIENDSHIP IN GOD to treat humanity as a thing* but always as a per- son, never as a means merely but always as an end, is in order. It is one of the evils springing out of an intercourse that is so largely official, that on all sides men are valued and thought of, only or chiefly on the side of economic efficiency. That is to say, they are treated with only that amount of consideration which is due a machine. A simple illustration will suffice. The mistress of a household on comine down stairs one morning v^as greeted by her maid, who was dusting in the hall, with a " Good morn- ing," and, "Do you know, Mrs. Z , that I have been with you five years to-day ? " " Have you ? " was the response, " You have left some dust on that chair." The mistress boasted doubtless that she had "reminded her servant of her place." No further comment is needed. The maid thought her- self to be a person, but was reminded that she was a thing. Again, if the baker is thought of as a mere con- venience for baking bread, all demands he may make beyond those which will enable him to pro- * That is called a thing to njohich no enjent can be imputed as an adion. Hence e