Cibrarp of trhe theological ^eminarp 
 
 PRINCETON • NEW JERSEY 
 
 -»> «fr 
 
 PRESENTED BY 
 
 Herbert E. Pickett, Jr, 
 
 BX 9178 ,D4 D5 1910 
 Dawson, William James, 185 
 
 1928 
 The divine challenge 
 

THE DIVINE CHALLENGE 
 
MARSH** 
 
 THE ^9>m*& 
 
 & 
 
 DIVINE CHALLENGE 
 
 BY THE REV. 
 
 W. J. DAWSON, D. D. 
 
 HODDER & STOUGHTON 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 GEORGE H. DOB AN COMPANY 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1910, BY 
 GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. The Divine Challenge m w w m 13 
 
 II. The Lamp and the Day Star . . r .-i 33 
 
 III. The Sovereignty Of God >; > M ( . 51 
 
 IV. Fulfilment m -., w w w L .„ .., . 69 
 
 V. TlMELESSNESS t .j H M w M w M 89 
 
 VI. God's Poems f . . > w t . M M >. 107 
 
 VII. Elijah's Loneliness . . > . . 123 
 
 VIII. The Greatness Of Man Seen in Hu- 
 man Progress > : . .. w ... t .. 143 
 
 IX. The Exploits of Faith ... M M .. 161 
 
 X. The Changed Form m M M w •■■ 179 
 
 XL Utter Knowledge is Utter Love . 197 
 
 XII. The Personal Factor in Religion . 215 
 
 XIII. The Power of Principle w w w .. 
 
 XIV. Chambers of Imagery m m w >i « 
 XV. The Reproach of the Flower m m 271 
 
THE DIVINE CHALLENGE 
 
THE DIVINE CHALLENGE 
 
 "Believe Me that I am in the Father, and the Father in 
 Me; or else believe Me for the very works' sake." — John xiv. 
 11. 
 
 DO men believe in Christ? Do the young men of 
 this generation believe in Christ? If they do 
 not, is it because they have paid no attention to the 
 subject, and regard it as of slight importance? 
 These are some of the questions suggested by this 
 pregnant saying of Christ, to which I invite your 
 deliberate and reverent attention. 
 
 Now beyond all doubt religion is by far the most 
 important thing in human life. It is not merely a 
 question of supreme interest who we are, what we 
 are, and what is our destiny, but is a matter of su- 
 preme practical importance, since the whole area of 
 human conduct is ruled by man's conception of him- 
 self, his duties, and his destiny. The evidence of 
 this statement is found in universal history. Thus, 
 for example, no state has ever risen to any position 
 of great power and dominion except by the aid of 
 religion, and the great itruggles of mankind can 
 
 13 
 
THE DIVINE CHALLENGE 
 
 almost always be traced to motives in themselves 
 profoundly religious, or the offspring of religion. 
 Perhaps the greatest empire the world has ever 
 known was the Roman, and in the earlier stages of 
 their history the Romans were not less religious than 
 the Israelites. Horace was by no means a religious 
 man, yet he was constrained to admit that Rome 
 could not endure without religious convictions, and 
 he warns his countrymen that all their sorrows spring 
 from forgetfulness of God. Voltaire spoke in pre- 
 cisely the same spirit when he said that if there were 
 no God it would be necessary to invent a God, be- 
 cause without belief in God the fabric of society 
 could not be held together. So far as English do- 
 mestic history is concerned, there has not been a 
 single great struggle on English soil which has not 
 been dominated by religious ideas, and the whole 
 story of the national development expresses the 
 enormous effect of religious ideas on practical con- 
 duct. So then the first thing which we are con- 
 strained to admit is the enormous importance of 
 religion in personal and national life, and this is 
 something which only the grossly ignorant or entirely 
 foolish and thoughtless will think of doubting. 
 
 It was one of the earliest sayings of Jesus Christ 
 that the practical virtue of any system of faith lay in 
 its effect on conduct, " by their fruits ye shall know 
 them." It is this principle which He applies now to 
 Himself and His teaching. He submits Himself to 
 
 14 
 
THE DIVINE CHALLENGE 
 
 the examination of practical men. He is well aware 
 that in the long run even the best and greatest of 
 men must be judged not by anything they have said 
 or taught, but by what they have done. We all 
 admit this principle and we practise it. When we 
 sum up the career of a statesman, we may read his 
 speeches with interest, but the main thing to which 
 we pay attention is the nature of the measures he 
 passed, and the total quality of his impact on the 
 public life. When we read Buddha's teachings of 
 brotherhood, we admit their charm, but we judge 
 their real value by the fact that for four thousand 
 years in India the lives of the rich and the poor 
 have run in parallel lines, and have never once met. 
 A man's ideas and teachings are at all times but the 
 flower of the mind, or of the soul, if you will; the 
 great question is, is there fruit as well as flower, 
 and has the blossom slowly changed into the fruit 
 that is for the healing of the nations? Jesus knows 
 that that question must be asked, and He not merely 
 submits to it, He challenges it. Standing in the sad 
 gloom of the premature end, knowing that His dis- 
 ciples will be tempted to think His life a failure, He 
 now bids them, if they cannot believe in Him for His 
 own sake, at least to believe in Him for His works' 
 sake. Let them measure that work ; let them regard 
 the significance of Christ in history; and then let 
 them judge whether or not He is divine. And that 
 is the challenge of Christ to us also. We see what 
 
 15 
 
THE DIVINE CHALLENGE 
 
 His disciples did not see, we behold the expanding 
 and miraculous phenomenon of Christianity through 
 nearly twenty centuries — the significance of Christ 
 in history, the supremacy that He has won over the 
 souls and minds of men, the effect which belief in 
 Him has had over all who have truly embraced it, 
 and through them, over great tracts of time, wide 
 fields of event, immense domains of thought, morals 
 and conduct — we see this, and ask, " Could a mere 
 man do this ? " Was not this the very God incarnate, 
 God made manifest in Jesus, so that He who has 
 wrought these wonders in the world might truly 
 claim, " I am in the Father, and the Father in me ; 
 I and the Father are one." 
 
 For the sake of clearness in definition we may say, 
 that the works of Christ are manifest in three direc- 
 tions — the mind, the heart, and the conduct of men. 
 His work upon the mind is seen in the intellectual 
 ideals of men; on the heart, in their moral life; on 
 the conduct, in their practical life. Let us put aside 
 if you will, all questions of the person of Christ. Let 
 us assume that all which we know is that many cen- 
 turies ago there appeared in an obscure village of 
 the obscurest country in the world, a young man, 
 who for three years aroused considerable interest 
 among His countrymen. By all accounts He had 
 the genius to be loved, and to be hated; He made 
 friends and He made enemies; He disregarded the 
 prejudices and conventions of society; He taught 
 
 16 
 
THE DIVINE CHALLENGE 
 
 certain rules of life that were new and strange; He 
 fell at last a victim to a jealous ecclesiastic oligarchy, 
 was violently arrested, unjustly condemned, crucified, 
 dead, and buried. His teachings survived Him, and 
 by-and-bye the story of His life, as was perfectly 
 natural, came to be told. These teachings, first im- 
 pregnating the minds of a few humble men, spread 
 with an unprecedented rapidity, and had the most 
 singular and momentous effect upon the world. That 
 is as much as we need to know for the purpose of 
 our argument ; the question is what were those effects, 
 and how do they dispose our minds to think of 
 Christ? 
 
 First, then, I ask you to think of the work of 
 Christ in the realm of the intellect ; and let us further 
 narrow the enquiry to the consideration of the reli- 
 gious ideas with which He impregnated the human 
 mind. 
 
 Now if we go back to the date of Christ's birth, we 
 find preserved for us by the diligence of the historian 
 a vivid and accurate picture of the religious condition 
 of the world. Three nations at once absorb our 
 attention, the Jew, the Greek, and the Roman. All 
 that was wisest in human philosophy and prof oundest 
 in human thought was preserved among these three 
 peoples. It was to these peoples that Christianity 
 especially addressed itself. It was in Jerusalem, 
 Corinth, Ephesus, and Rome that the earliest seed 
 of Christianity was sown. What then was the re- 
 
 17 
 
THE DIVINE CHALLENGE 
 
 ligious condition of these great peoples, what the 
 conclusions of the intellect on religious subjects 
 which the j had reached and accepted? 
 
 The answer may be given in a single sentence; in 
 each case religion had totally broken down. 
 
 For the Jew religion had become narrower and 
 narrower until it was a mere piece of gorgeous and 
 empty ritual. Its theory of the divine government 
 of the universe had become incredible. Amid the 
 millions of men and women in the world who vaguely 
 felt after the secret of virtue, it would appear that 
 God cared only for the Jew. To be a son of 
 Abraham was to have an inalienable claim on heaven, 
 and, according to the Pharisee's view of the case, 
 quite apart from any righteousness of conduct. 
 God was thus merely a tribal God, and the whole 
 universe was administered in the special interest of 
 the Jew. A great religion when it was enunciated 
 on Sinai, a powerful religion when it gripped the 
 mind and conscience of a fugitive race in their early 
 struggles, a true religion when it was sincerely be- 
 lieved ; it had now lost all its saving salt of sincerity, 
 had become a fetish, and ministered less to human 
 virtue than to human impiety, arrogance, and exclu- 
 siveness. 
 
 Among the Greeks also religion had totally broken 
 down. The worship of mere physical beauty was 
 universal, and when Socrates prayed that the Gods 
 would give him " beauty of soul," he was not under- 
 
 18 
 
THE DIVINE CHALLENGE 
 
 stood. The Gods themselves were the incarnation of 
 human vices as well as virtues, for the Greek had 
 his God of cunning, and his God of lying, as well as 
 his Gods of music, chastity, and wisdom. 
 
 And among the Romans the breakdown of religion 
 was even more disastrous, and it took a form ab- 
 solutely appalling. That form was the worship of 
 Caesar as God. When Herod received the worship of 
 the people as a God and not as a man; when Paul 
 spoke of the " man of sin who sitteth in the temple 
 of God shewing himself that he is God," Herod 
 simply emulated the Caesars in claiming divine 
 honours, and Paul directly refers to this impious 
 worship of Caesar. To the reigning Caesar, temples 
 were built, sacrifices were offered, and divine honours 
 were paid. To us such an impiety seems incredible, 
 especially among a people so robust in mind and 
 masculine in temper as the Roman. But there was a 
 reason for it. Faith in any external government of 
 the universe had wholly failed. Madness and corrup- 
 tion had seized upon every class of society. There 
 was neither justice, virtue, nor morality left — all 
 had been dissolved with a dissolving faith in a divine 
 government. Then came Julius Caesar, and, by what 
 is the greatest miracle of secular history, arrested 
 the decay of society, imposed upon it a military 
 despotism which was at least just and powerful, 
 combined its scattered forces, gave Rome a new 
 lease of life, and established once more the supremacy 
 
 19 
 
THE DIVINE CHALLENGE 
 
 of virtue. What wonder that Caesar was soon re- 
 garded as more than mortal man? What wonder 
 that the hope of mankind clung with frantic, and 
 then with adoring passion to this new Saviour of 
 society? Something man must worship, and the 
 Gods being gone, soon man began to worship his 
 fellow man as God. And this was the state of re- 
 ligious thought when Christ came — the Jew wor- 
 shipping before an empty shrine on which the flame 
 of sincerity had died, the Greek delighting in a 
 brutally corrupt mythology, the Roman worshipping 
 Augustus Caesar as the one puissant and active deity 
 in the world. 
 
 And now consider the challenge of this text. This 
 youth, growing up in a tiny Syrian town, where not 
 only the Roman or the Greek but the leaders of His 
 own nation never came, begins to speak certain 
 words about God. The only conception of God left 
 to the Jews is an exclusive tribal deity who cares only 
 for the sons of Abraham ; this youth speaks of the 
 Father in heaven, who has an equal love of all men. 
 The Greek looking with impure eyes into the mys- 
 tery of things invents deities even more corrupt 
 than man ; this youth says, " Blessed are the pure in 
 heart for they shall see God." The Roman, bank- 
 rupt in all faith in any divine power outside the 
 earth, sacrifices to Caesar as the only power he 
 knows ; this youth draws back the veil of the 
 infinite, and reveals the ever-living Judge of quick 
 
 20 
 
THE DIVINE CHALLENGE 
 
 and dead, and says, " There is none good but one, 
 that is God." You would have supposed that any 
 words spoken by one so insignificant would have 
 been wholly lost ; it is natural to suppose so. What 
 is there briefer in its influence than the spoken 
 word ; and this youth never wrote a single sentence, 
 never did what the humblest prophet or philosopher 
 did to perpetuate His message, never took the least 
 precaution to preserve His teaching. Yet that teach- 
 ing spread with miraculous rapidity. He Himself 
 had said that His words were spirit and life, and so 
 it proved. ^^Rispered at first in the lowly places of 
 the earth, spoken presently in the market places, 
 temples and palaces ; prescribed as heresy, hated as 
 blasphemy; these words spread and everywhere they 
 struck the note of a new life. Into the deep black- 
 ness of the pit where society lay and rotted there 
 came a ray of light ; over the sterile waste of hu- 
 man thought there blew the wind of life. At length 
 the hour came when the old was utterly outworn; 
 Rome fell, and great was the fall of it; but in the 
 same instant it was discovered that a new power 
 had taken its place, and Christ filled the throne 
 which Caesar had abdicated. The dust of conflict 
 cleared away, and behold the Cross shone upon the 
 Capitol. The thoughts of Christ about God became 
 the supreme truths on which men based all their 
 hopes and aspirations. The Fatherhood of God — a 
 true sovereignty of intelligence, law, and love — be- 
 
 21 
 
THE DIVINE CHALLENGE 
 
 came the keystone of human thought, and a new 
 world sprang out of the ruins of the old. All that 
 as the fruit of a brief life lived in Galilee, and of 
 certain words spoken among its quiet hills; all that 
 as the work of one who had but three years in which 
 to influence the world, and was rejected by the world 
 with every circumstance of ignominy and shame! 
 Have you considered what it means? Have you 
 given one single thoughtful hour to what is the 
 greatest phenomenon in human history? Can you, 
 with this phenomenon before you, resist the force 
 of the divine appeal, " Believe me, that I am in the 
 Father, and the Father in me; or else believe me for 
 the very works' sake? " 
 
 Let a second picture pass before the mind, and 
 consider the work of Christ upon the human heart. 
 The heart stands for morality ; for the way in which 
 men feel toward one another, and the way in which 
 they treat one another. 
 
 And here three facts may be stated as indicative of 
 the moral condition of the world when Christ entered 
 it. The first is that the ancient world had no con- 
 ception of the rights of human liberty. The great 
 mass of men in the Roman empire were slaves, and 
 when Plato sketched his ideal republic, it never 
 occurred to him that society could exist without 
 slavery. The great edifices of the ancient world 
 which yet remain, on whose spoliated splendour we 
 look with wonder, were all built by slave labour. 
 
THE DIVINE CHALLENGE 
 
 There is no truism in modern philosophy more worn 
 and trite than the dignity of labour, the " perennial 
 nobleness of honest toil," as Carlyle called it ; we 
 sometimes forget that this is an ethic of very modern 
 date. Labour for the Roman was a thing both con- 
 temptible and shameful. Society had but two classes, 
 the free citizen and the slave. An immense gulf 
 separated them; on one side of the gulf, life moved 
 in stateliness and ease, a sensual and sumptuous 
 pageant; on the other, life toiled obscurely in igno- 
 rance and drudgery, knowing no rights, and incapable 
 of striving for them. So again, the ancient world 
 knew nothing of morality in our sense of the term. 
 One of the chief Pauline doctrines is that society is 
 an organism; that it is knit together by a thousand 
 delicate nerves ; that our good actions and our bad 
 involve others in our weal and woe, and that there is 
 no man who liveth to himself. But to the wisest of 
 Pagan philosophers such words meant nothing. 
 Seneca, one of the clearest of ancient thinkers, made 
 no scruple of advising Nero to give the rein to his 
 passions, and it never occurred to the philosopher that 
 the pleasures of Nero involved the misery and dis- 
 honour of his victims. That would be our first 
 thought in considering any question of morality, but 
 it was a thought of which the ancient world had 
 never heard. 
 
 It does not surprise us therefore to find further 
 that the ancient world knew no pity for weakness or 
 
 23 
 
THE DIVINE CHALLENGE 
 
 misfortune. The reign of might, and the right of 
 might were things unquestioned. If a man chose 
 to torture his slave or even slay his child, it was his 
 own affair. To be weak or poor, was not only to be 
 miserable, but deservedly miserable. Life had little 
 value, and of the eighty thousand people who filled 
 the Colosseum, and watched the dying gladiator, 
 " butchered to make a Roman holiday," not one ever 
 thought of pitying him. Nor was even the Jew 
 much better than the Roman in his attitude to mis- 
 fortune and weakness. The blind man doubtless de- 
 served his blindness, or he would not be blind ; suffer- 
 ing was the wrath of heaven ; and the one convincing 
 proof of the favour of God was a visible prosperity ; 
 and thus, put in a slightly different way, for the 
 Jew also, as for the Roman, might was the only 
 right. 
 
 Once more look then at this supreme phenomenon 
 of history, the work of Christ upon the human heart. 
 This youth comes down from the hill-village of 
 Nazareth, moves among all classes of society, and 
 treats them as having equal rights. He announces 
 the golden axiom that as we would that men shall do 
 to us, even so should we do to them, and He practises 
 it. He goes about doing good, healing, comforting, 
 feeding the hungry, visiting the sick, succouring the 
 dying pariahs and wastrels of society ; He earns the 
 splendid reproach that He is the friend of publicans 
 and sinners. He utters parable after parable, the 
 
 24 
 
THE DIVINE CHALLENGE 
 
 aim of which is to teach kindliness and love ; applauds 
 the good Samaritan ; rebukes Dives, pities Lazarus ; 
 pictures the Judgment-seat of God as the solemn 
 tribunal where men are judged for their love of one 
 another, or their lovelessness ; Himself dies forgiving 
 His enemies, and breathing benediction on a thief 
 who perishes with Him. At the time, perhaps, not 
 even His disciples comprehended the significance of 
 these words and actions ; but they were not for- 
 gotten. After a while they emerged into dazzling 
 distinctness, and attracted the attention of the world. 
 Men meditated over them, talked of them one to 
 another, and at last strove to live in the same spirit. 
 A company of men and women arose whose avowed 
 object was to live as this youth lived, and they began 
 to overspread the world. And so the Church of 
 Christ begins — a confederacy of men and women 
 who love Him, love one another, and love all men; 
 the religion of humanity begins ; pity, tenderness, and 
 consideration soften the human heart; slavery dies 
 out, gladiatorial combats cease; wealth is shared, 
 poverty is cheerfully endured, labour becomes honour- 
 able, and the keynote of a new morality is struck, 
 that it is more blessed to give than to receive — to 
 minister than to be ministered unto. All this as the 
 fruit of a single brief life lived long ago in Palestine. 
 All our liberties, rights, humanities, moralities as the 
 direct result of a life that perished on the Cross ! 
 How will you judge that life? What can you make 
 
 25 
 
THE DIVINE CHALLENGE 
 
 of a story so splendid and so nearly incredible? 
 Forget if you please all that theology has to say 
 about this wondrous youth of Nazareth ; regard it 
 as unthinkable if you must ; still the works remain, 
 and the divine challenge reaches us, " Believe me that 
 I am in the Father, and the Father in me: or else 
 believe me for the very works' sake." 
 
 And so you have the last picture of the work of 
 Christ on the practical conduct of men — and here 
 we have no need to confine our thoughts to the 
 ancient world, for the work of Christ is seen all 
 around us in the characteristics of our own time. 
 
 Far away yonder in the Southern seas lies a country 
 that we call Fiji. Sixty years ago it was barbarous 
 and cannibal. To that dark land of blood and the 
 shadow of death Christian Missionaries went. They 
 toiled, they suffered, they died, and some of them 
 were murdered. Others took their places, and these 
 also in their turn suffered and died. They were men 
 of no genius, but they had a story to tell, and they 
 told it. They spoke unceasingly of Christ, of His 
 love, His pity, and His death ; and they themselves 
 lived as those with whom love was the master-word 
 of life. To-day Fiji is Christian. Cannibalism is no 
 more, virtue and truth are loved, brotherhood reigns, 
 and the lips that once drank the blood of the slain, 
 drink the cup of the Communion of Christ the Lord, 
 
 26 
 
THE DIVINE CHALLENGE 
 
 You need not go back to the days of the Roman 
 empire to discover what Christ has done for hu- 
 manity; nothing in the past is more wonderful than 
 this present-day story of Fiji; and Christ says, " If 
 ye believe me not for my words' sake, believe me for 
 Fiji's sake." 
 
 In the history of the world from time to time men 
 arise who exercise a vast redemptive influence upon 
 their times — the Wesleys, the MofFats, the Living- 
 stones. They discard wealth, reject ease, scorn 
 fame; they are found preaching to the brutal mobs 
 who stone them, living among the lowest of the race, 
 loving them, and dying for them. They have left us 
 in no doubt as to the secret of their lives ; they tell 
 us that the love of Christ constrained them. Christ 
 may be to you a dim historic figure, but He was not 
 so to them ; to them He was a real and living Master, 
 whose presence they felt, whose word they obeyed, 
 whose spirit was reincarnated in them; and from 
 their lives the challenge rings, " If ye believe not my 
 words, and find in my Gospel nothing that moves or 
 interests you, then believe me for Wesley's sake, for 
 Moffat's sake, for Livingstone's sake." 
 
 Round about us rise a series of institutions of 
 which the world in former times never so much as 
 dreamed. We have our hospitals, our orphanages, 
 our asylums for every species of human misery. We 
 
 n 
 
THE DIVINE CHALLENGE 
 
 have a vast array of public buildings called churches, 
 and there is not one of them which is not a centre 
 of philanthropic effort to befriend the weak, to help 
 the poor, to succour the sorrowful. There is not a 
 hospital in the land that was not built by the hands 
 of this youth of Nazareth. There is not an asylum 
 for indigence and misery that does not owe itself to 
 Calvary. Abolish Christianity, and in a single gen- 
 eration all would be swept away, for it is by the 
 munificence of Christians, and them alone, that such 
 hospices of mercy exist. We may find the theology 
 of the Churches hard to be understood, and we may 
 have no taste for the casuistries of the theologians; 
 Christ bids us turn from them if we must, and ad- 
 dresses us in other words : " If ye believe not Me 
 for my words' sake, believe me for the sake of the 
 hospital and the orphanage, for the sake of the pity 
 men have learned of Me, and of the love which I 
 have taught them." 
 
 It is a common error to treat Christianity as if it 
 were a disputable philosophy ; it is not a philosophy, 
 it is a practical fact, and a vital force. Do not think 
 that you have done with Christianity when you have 
 found some glaring fault in its professors, or some 
 illogical passage in the statements of its advocates. 
 Christianity is the greatest phenomenon in history, 
 and its proof is its works. If you have paid no at- 
 tention to that phenomenon it is no credit to your 
 
 28 
 
THE DIVINE CHALLENGE 
 
 intelligence. You give eager attention enough to a 
 thousand other things that are of the very slightest 
 importance, to the pleasures of life, to what is called 
 success in life, to the theories of this or that popular 
 teacher, to political or social programmes that will be 
 forgotten in a year — to sport, to amusement, to 
 athletics, to the ephemeral trivialities of a passing 
 literature — but what think ye of Christ ? Have you 
 ever considered that question? Have you ever given 
 one single hour of earnest and continuous thought to 
 the phenomenon of Jesus? Have you ever realised 
 that all you have and are is bound up in that ques- 
 tion? Have you ever realised, in a word, that the 
 question of religion is the one supreme question, and 
 that until man has found the answer to it he disquiets 
 himself in vain, and walketh in a vain show? That 
 is the conclusion I would press home upon you. Go 
 home, and face the question, " What do I think of 
 Christ, what has Christ done for me, what claim has 
 He upon me?" Go out into the world of business 
 to-morrow and remember that it is Christ's world you 
 live in, and that you are not your own, you are 
 bought with a price. Go from this church, and in 
 the quiet of your own heart, clear and insistent above 
 all other questions that agitate you, hear this divine, 
 this cogent, this pathetic challenge, " Believe me that 
 I am in the Father, and the Father in Me; or else 
 Believe Me for the very works' sake." 
 
 29 
 
THE LAMP AND THE DAY STAR 
 
II 
 
 THE LAMP AND THE DAY STAR 
 
 " And we have the word of prophecy made more sure ; where- 
 unto ye do well to take heed, as unto a lamp shining in a dark 
 place, until the day dawn, and the day star arise in your 
 heart."— <2 Peter i. 19. 
 
 NOTHING is more striking from the point of 
 view of psychology than the enormous effect 
 which Jesus had on the minds of His immediate fol- 
 lowers. Even were we disposed to doubt the truth 
 of the historic resurrection of Jesus, we should find 
 it impossible to deny that He rose again in a very 
 real sense in the lives of His apostles. The thoughts 
 they think are His thoughts : the hopes and emotions 
 they feel are His hopes and emotions: and we know 
 that these thoughts, hopes and emotions are totally 
 different from those they once cherished, and are 
 even diametrically opposed to them. When St. Paul 
 says, " I live yet not I but Christ liveth in me," he 
 proclaims this phenomenon — a phenomenon so start- 
 ling and profound that it stands alone in the history 
 of the human mind. Moreover, St. Paul is at pains 
 to tell us that for a considerable period of his life 
 Jesus was nothing to him, and that there was not 
 
THE DIVINE CHALLENGE 
 
 a thought in his heart that was not opposed to Him. 
 And what was true of Paul was true of all the 
 apostles. They each represent a new incarnation of 
 Jesus. In each the soul of Jesus has been re-born : 
 born again in the heart by faith, is the apostle's 
 phrase. Thus we find the whole mind of Peter pen- 
 etrated with the sense of Jesus. The Galilean fish- 
 erman is extinct ; Jesus lives in him the hope of glory. 
 One sublime image is in all his thoughts, colours all 
 his writings, pervades all his emotions — and that is 
 the image of his Lord. Past, present, and future 
 are all focussed in Jesus, and so in this passage when 
 he surveys the history of things past and the course 
 of things to come, he perceives all alike in the light 
 of Him who is the Alpha and Omega, the beginning 
 and the end, and the bright and morning star of Hope 
 and Truth. 
 
 Notice the imagery of this passage. It is very 
 beautiful and poetic — a series of pictures full of 
 significance and charm. You have first a picture of 
 the world and of the human heart, as a dark place: 
 literally a squalid place, and by this term the Greek 
 meant a place without light and without water. It 
 is a region of pain and dissatisfaction: a wilder- 
 ness, a barbarous place, a land of darkness and the 
 shadow of death. But it is not wholly dark: even in 
 this land of gloom men move with lamps, searching 
 for a practicable way that is firm and safe. These 
 men are the prophets, the guides, and shepherds of 
 
 34 
 
THE LAMP AND THE DAY STAR 
 
 humanity. The lamp they carry is a light unto the 
 f ee t — light sufficient for the next step of duty, but 
 it casts no extended ray, and paints the curtain of 
 impenetrable darkness with a glimmering splendour 
 only. Yet it is much to have any light in a pitch- 
 black night, and these light-bearers lead the host of 
 humanity on many a crooked path, as a peasant with 
 a lamp may guide the traveller through the defiles of 
 a mountain range. Perhaps the very image in the 
 mind of Peter is a scene often witnessed by him in 
 the old Galilean days — the shepherd on the hills 
 whose lamp burns all night beside the sleeping flocks ; 
 a lamp of hope in the dark waste and emptiness of 
 night. 
 
 But now he sees another thing also; the dawn 
 begins to break. The shepherd's lamp burns dim, 
 fades to a tiny spark, and is extinguished in the 
 widening light. Over the wide glimmering hills a 
 star hangs, and the heavens grow lucid round it, for 
 it is the morning star. The clouds melt into a veil 
 of gossamer: one by one the lamps are put out, for 
 the long vigil is over, and the day is here. Even 
 so, says Peter, God gave the lamps of prophecy in 
 the world's great night. Through long ages the 
 prophets, those lonely lamp-bearers, lighting the 
 world's advance, did their duty: until at last the 
 morning star of Christ appeared, the day of God 
 broke over Bethlehem and Calvary, and the light of 
 the world had come. 
 
 35 
 
THE DIVINE CHALLENGE 
 
 The Lamp and the Day Star, — Let us take an- 
 other illustration, which lies perhaps within the 
 experience of some of you. Suppose we were set- 
 ting out to climb some lonely Alpine peak, what 
 would be the method of our advance ? The first part 
 of the journey would begin soon after midnight. 
 Those who watched us as we went would see a string 
 of lights moving up the mountain side, and by these 
 glimmering human stars we should find our way 
 through the thick pine forest, up the steep moraine, 
 across the glacier. Above us there would rise a dome 
 of sky dark as velvet, and far away the white ice 
 peaks would stand like ghostly sentinels, each hooded 
 in his snows, silent, dreadful, immutable. But at 
 three or four o'clock, as we gained some wide plateau 
 of snow, a halt would be called. Through the silent 
 air a sigh of life would rise: far away the topmost 
 peak would grow whiter; round us the outlines of 
 ice and rock would emerge into distinctness, and then 
 the guides would extinguish the lamps one by one. 
 Why? Because their use was ended: the summer 
 dawn is near, and already on the peaks the rose of 
 day begins to burn. This is precisely the contrast 
 which is suggested in this poetic phrase of Peter's. 
 Lamps and the morning star — lamps and the sun : 
 for the people that sat in darkness have seen a great 
 light. Uncertainty is exchanged for certainty: the 
 perilous path, half-discerned, for the safe and prac- 
 ticable way: the guesses of Philosophy for the per- 
 
 36 
 
THE LAMP AND THE DAY STAR 
 
 feet day of Truth. The day is come, for Christ 
 has come : put out thy lamp, O shepherd of the hills, 
 and thou, also, solitary climber after truth, for the 
 day star arises in thine heart, and 
 
 Out of the shadow of night 
 The world rolls into light, 
 It is daybreak everywhere. 
 
 The Lamp and the Day Star — each may stand 
 as a symbol of hope — the contrast suggested is a 
 contrast of degree. Human hopes take two forms: 
 the individual and the collective. Something in the 
 human heart makes man hope for himself — bids him 
 know he was not made to die, bids him seek a brighter 
 destiny than that which seems included in, or indicated 
 by, his earthly lot. And from that personal hope 
 he passes naturally to that collective hope which is 
 the spirit of human progress. Unlike every other 
 creature of this earth, man does not take his lot as 
 he finds it. He is continually seeking to modify and 
 improve it. He is always experimenting in the art 
 of living. To-day he is a tent-dweller, to-morrow 
 the builder of cities. He interrogates earth and air, 
 sea and sky, for their secrets : finds them, uses them 
 and shapes them to his own demands. He invents 
 schemes of government, codes of law, maxims of con- 
 duct. Century by century he debates about these 
 things, clears and sifts his thoughts, and extends 
 their range. And in all this he is inspired by a be- 
 
THE DIVINE CHALLENGE 
 
 lief in Society ; he sees it as an organism that grows, 
 and may be helped in its growth, until at last some- 
 thing perfect shall be found, and the desert shall 
 bloom and blossom as the rose. So man has thought 
 and acted from the beginning, because as each man 
 enters the world an angel puts into his hand a lamp, 
 sets him on an upward path, and bids him hope. 
 
 Turn then to the times before Christ, and ask, 
 what about these hopes? What had they done for 
 man, and to what point had he attained? The 
 highest individual hope is found in the Hebrew Scrip- 
 tures. Were all revealed religion finally proclaimed 
 incredible, w T e should still owe a debt to the Jew which 
 is incalculable. For the Jew, taught by his own po- 
 litical experience that from a minute and despised 
 germ of life a great nation might be evolved ; taught 
 by his own spiritual experience that virtue and right- 
 eousness are the sole abiding realities ; taught by his 
 own intellectual experience that truth might be won 
 and kept, and become the living soul of nations — 
 the Jew has accomplished this imperishable, this im- 
 measurable service to humanity — he has bid it hope. 
 Into the darkness and mystery of the world he has 
 penetrated with a bolder step than all his fellows, 
 and he has borne aloft a brighter lamp. But when 
 we begin to measure the circumference of splendour 
 cast by that lamp, we perceive at once that it did 
 not go very far. On some problems w r here light was 
 mo?rt desired, it shed but a feeble and fluctuating ray. 
 
 38 
 
THE LAMP AND THE DAY STAR 
 
 Thus for example the Hebrew Scriptures as a whole 
 say little of personal immortality. If you turn to 
 the words of Hezekiah — one of the wisest and most 
 pious of Jewish kings, when he is suddenly brought 
 face to face with the unknown beyond death — you 
 will find that that unknown holds nothing for him. 
 He clings vehemently to life and gives his reason 
 thus : " The grave cannot praise Thee, death can- 
 not celebrate Thee: they that go down into the pit 
 cannot hope for thy truth." The words of Job, in 
 spite of occasional and brief harp-notes of triumph, 
 ring with the same accent of entire mournf ulness : 
 death is for him the place of darkness, the house 
 of dust where the very stones are darkness, and of 
 which the best that can be said is that there the 
 wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at 
 rest. There is little to choose between such passages 
 as these and that great Assyrian hymn of death, 
 called the Descent of Istar into Hades, which pictures 
 the abode of the dead as 
 
 The house of darkness 
 The house men enter but cannot depart from, 
 The road men go but cannot return, 
 The house from whose dwellers the light is withdrawn 
 The place where dust is their food, their nourishment 
 
 clay. 
 The light they behold not: in darkness they dwell, 
 They are clothed like birds, all fluttering wings, 
 On the door and the gate posts the dust lies thick, 
 
 69 
 
THE DIVINE CHALLENGE 
 
 And so without turning to many a passage in the 
 Psalms and to the dreary words of Solomon, with 
 their unutterable despair, we see that the hopefulness 
 of the Hebrew was far more circumscribed than we 
 supposed. It was a lamp, not the day star, not the 
 day; it lit the path of earthly duty with a perfect 
 light, but it cast barely a ray into the impenetrable 
 darkness of the shadow of death and that which lay 
 beyond it. 
 
 The same thing may be said, though with some 
 modification, about the social hopes of the Hebrew. 
 The lamp burned bright and unextinguished for many 
 an age, for of all things the surest thing to the Jew 
 was that it is righteousness which ennobles a nation. 
 He saw the vision of a perfect society — a society 
 God-governed, God-worshipping — the perfect vehi- 
 cle of the divine will, the concrete expression of the 
 divine mind. But what he also found to be true at 
 every point of his history was that he was not effi- 
 cient to create and maintain such a society. He was 
 like the artist who has the genius to prepare the 
 scheme of a great picture, but has not the power 
 to complete it. Thus we have only to turn to our 
 Gospels to discover that Jewish society as Christ 
 found it was hollow to the core. It was, as He said, 
 in an image at once startling and dreadful, a whited 
 sepulchre, full of dead men's bones and all unclean- 
 ness. Religious and moral progress had come to a 
 standstill. The priesthood was powerful and impos- 
 
 40 
 
THE LAMP AND THE DAY STAR 
 
 ing but corrupt : the leaders of the nation learned in 
 the pedantry of learning, but insincere in belief, im- 
 moral in conduct, and hypocrites in temper and prac- 
 tice. The lamp had shown the way, but had not led 
 men to the height : and as the ages passed it had ever 
 burned dimmer, till the way itself grew indistinct. It 
 was a lamp whose light was dying in the socket — 
 not a day star, not the pure unvanquishable dawn; 
 the light of a lamp upon the vast interminable ice- 
 slopes of human duty. 
 
 And if we pass beyond the Jew to that great Pagan 
 world which surrounded him, we find things im- 
 measurably worse. Both the Greek and the Roman 
 had given up hope of any spiritual destiny beyond 
 death. As for society it had reached its climax — it 
 stood still. Here and there a philosopher still talked 
 nobly of his ideal republic, as Plato did; but none 
 listened, and none cared to listen. For, of this great 
 Pagan world, ruled by the splendid but monotonous 
 Roman order, it was emphatically true that the whole 
 scheme of society seemed fixed and immutable. If 
 change came at all it would be change for the worse : 
 and indeed already much had changed for the worse, 
 for the old simple religious beliefs, the primitive man- 
 liness and virtue of the Roman were as stars extin- 
 guished in the gathering night of a general deprav- 
 ity. If men looked forward it was not with hope; 
 it was to cry 
 
 41 
 
THE DIVINE CHALLENGE 
 
 Here is the moral of all human tales, 
 'Tis but the same rehearsal of the past, 
 First freedom and then glory; when that fails, 
 Wealth, vice, corruption — barbarism at last. 
 
 So far the lamps of human wisdom had led men, 
 but no further, and the place in which it now shone 
 was a dark place indeed, for hope scarcely illumined 
 it at all, and in it the waters of peace and life were 
 not found. 
 
 And now listen to the sublime and inspired speech 
 of Peter: a lamp shining in a dark place, until the 
 day dawn, and the day star arise in your hearts. Do 
 not the words lead us back at once to those green 
 pastures where shepherds watched their flocks by 
 night and suddenly heard a great company of the 
 heavenly host proclaiming peace and good will to 
 man? Is he not thinking of the Star which arose in 
 the East, and stood still over the manger-cradle 
 where the young child lay? Are not these shepherds, 
 and these wise men whose lamps hang extinguished 
 because the glory of the Lord shone around them, 
 types of the world's sages and prophets whose lamps 
 of wisdom paled their ineffectual ray, because at last 
 the day star rises, and the morning breaks? For 
 this and no other was precisely what did happen with 
 the coming of Christ. He came as the Light of the 
 world, bringing with Him all the fresh hope and 
 splendour of the morning. For man the individual, 
 immeasurable hope — the shadow of death gone, and 
 
 42 
 
THE LAMP AND THE DAY STAR 
 
 life and immortality brought to light by the Gospel. 
 For man collectively, that is for society, immeasur- 
 able hope also: the old order changed and giving 
 place to new, and the spirit of progress once more 
 passing over the dark void, and quickening it. Man 
 rises up and sees the peaks of God afar, the immortal 
 summits long hidden in the night, or visible only like 
 vague shadows in the gloom, and presses on to a 
 destiny such as eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor 
 the heart of man conceived. Society long stagnant, 
 fixed and immutable, begins to move also, and the 
 spirit of progress is abroad. The Roman order gives 
 place to a diviner order, the empire of the Cassars 
 to the Kingdom of God, the religion of force and 
 terror to the religion of humanity. It was not only 
 Christ who was born in Bethlehem — the world itself 
 was born anew there. All history ranks itself, not 
 by the caprice of the ecclesiastic, but by force of 
 natural affinity, into that which came before Christ, 
 and that which happened after. The most sceptical 
 of historians must needs admit the classification: 
 whatever happened in Bethlehem, this he knows, that 
 a force was bom there that transformed the world. 
 That force was the Birth of Light; the lamps that 
 lit the night are gone, the prophets' toil and the 
 shepherds' vigil are fulfilled. The Day star has 
 risen, and behind it comes the Day streaming into 
 the dark heart of man, illumining the way of Truth, 
 glittering on the far off pinnacles of the city of God, 
 
 43 
 
THE DIVINE CHALLENGE 
 
 filling even the pathways of the tomb with an im- 
 mortal sunshine — the Day has come, for Christ has 
 come. 
 
 Lamps and the Morning Star. — Such a contrast 
 further teaches us how we should regard the ancient 
 religions of the world. There was a time not far 
 removed when Christian men refused to hear a good 
 word for any other religion than Christianity because 
 they imagined that it was necessary to minify and 
 even defame every other system of religious thought 
 in order to magnify Christianity. That was not the 
 spirit of Christ : He came not to destroy but to fulfil 
 all the broken hints of truth and goodness in all the 
 long course of human thought and conduct. These 
 ancient religions were the lamps lit by the human 
 soul in a dark place. Light is always light, and the 
 feeblest light is really lit at the sun, which is the 
 source of all light. And a spark of the true light 
 shone in the soul of Confucius when five hundred 
 years before Christ, he formulated his golden rule, 
 " What you do not wish done to yourself, do not do 
 to others." It shone in Zoroaster, it shone in Socra- 
 tes, it shone conspicuously in Buddha. All honour 
 to the lamp bearers of humanity, by whatever name 
 they were called. All honour to the men of spiritual 
 genius, who in every age held aloft the torch of 
 truth, and, dying, passed it on, so that the world 
 should not stumble and wholly fall in the dense gloom 
 of ignorance and folly. But they were lamp bearers 
 
 44 
 
THE LAMP AND THE DAY STAR 
 
 only. They illumined one little section of human 
 thought — one brief step upon the way ; when the 
 Day comes all is illumined. And as the day literally 
 fulfils the broken gleams of starry fire that pierced 
 the night, so Christ fulfils all that Confucius and 
 Buddha taught, all that Socrates and Zoroaster 
 hoped. The lamp is quenched because the morning 
 grows. And when we take Christ to the great na- 
 tions of the East, it is not in a spirit of contempt 
 for the only religion they know ; it is rather with 
 thankfulness to God that they have any religion, and 
 that God hath not left Himself without a witness in 
 their hearts ; and when we preach Christ under the 
 shadow of Chinese pagodas and Indian temples, it 
 is only that we may change the lamps of Confucius 
 and Buddha for the brightness of the morning star; 
 for Christ is the desire of all nations, and these great 
 creators of religious thought in a hundred nations 
 kept vigil till He appeared, were His unconscious 
 light bearers, and were as those who watched for 
 the coming of the morning, even of the perfect day 
 of Him who is the Light of life. 
 
 Lamps and the Morning Star, — Perhaps some of 
 you will say, But after all is not this exquisite story 
 of the birth of Jesus mere legend; may it not also 
 be pure myth? Let us concede that it is both myth 
 and legend if you will, as Mr. Grant Allen contends 
 in his latest and most serious contribution to litera- 
 ture, but even then, there are two indisputable and 
 
 45 
 
THE DIVINE CHALLENGE 
 
 obstinate truths to be resolved; one is that something 
 happened, and that that something changed the 
 world; the other is that mere myths do not change 
 the world. It is this very accusation of the mythical 
 character of Christianity which Peter answers in his 
 Epistle, when he says he has not followed cunningly 
 devised fables, for he was an eye witness of the 
 majesty of Christ and had had every opportunity 
 which the most incredulous could desire of learning 
 the truth at the fountain head. And again, he him- 
 self, a changed man, moving among changed men, 
 with a Christian church growing up around him 
 which is already beginning to profoundly influence 
 the Roman empire, is a witness that something hap- 
 pened and is happening. Jesus for him was no myth, 
 he had sat with Him at the last supper, he had seen 
 Him die upon the cross. His birth was no legend; 
 he had known those who had watched His childhood, 
 and had pondered in their hearts the story of Beth- 
 lehem. It was not a myth which was finding its way 
 into every corner of the empire and had its converts 
 in Caesar's household also; it was rather the light of 
 a great reality, a supreme revelation. He stood 
 amid the dying lamps of the ancient world, as one 
 may stand in a great city when the night departs, 
 and he saw the Day grow round him. He could not 
 be mistaken : and if he could, we cannot ; for from 
 the moment that the star rested over Bethlehem, the 
 
 46 
 
THE LAMP AND THE DAY STAR 
 
 whole world has grown brighter. And to that world 
 that was, that dark hard world where 
 
 Weariness and sated lust 
 Made human life a hell, 
 
 — that midnight world, with its faint and scattered 
 lamps of truth, we are not likely to go back, even 
 upon the invitation of Mr. Grant Allen. We have 
 seen the Day: let those prefer the night who will. 
 We have exchanged the lamp for the morning star — 
 we are not likely to repent our choice. Light of 
 Hope and Light of Truth, still grow brighter, is our 
 cry: Thy Kingdom come: and to those who see it 
 not, those who are blind amid the blaze of noon, those 
 who still grope at the altars of a dead paganism, and 
 stumble on the tombs of a long-buried philosophy, 
 we can but utter the great apostolic appeal, " Awake, 
 thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ 
 shall give thee light." 
 
 And so the words of Peter take us back to Beth- 
 lehem. Dark lies the Jewish plain, dark rise the 
 Syrian hills, hushed lie the pastures and the sheep; 
 and on these hills, invisible, stand men of majestic 
 presence, the great spirits of the past — Moses, Sam- 
 uel, David, Isaiah, and that Elijah who was a burn- 
 ing and a shining light — they stand and wait. 
 " Watchman what of the night ? " But no voice 
 answers from the sleeping pastures, and the world 
 
 47 
 
THE DIVINE CHALLENGE 
 
 lies dumb. "Watchman what of the night? Our 
 lamps go out, and something tells us that our long 
 vigil is nearly done." But none replies : the heavens 
 are very still, and up the road to the little town of 
 Bethlehem, climb two weary pilgrims for whom there 
 is no room in the inn. " Watchman what of the 
 night? " And now behold the fugitives have reached 
 their humble shelter, and a child's voice floats out 
 upon the frosty air, and a whisper runs across the 
 world — " The night is departing." Lonely watch- 
 ers, majestic prophets of the truth, depart ye also to 
 your rest — the world is safe, for God hath entered 
 it. He enters it in the garb of a little child. He 
 enters it — and light enters with Him : for suddenly 
 a great glory floods the earth, and a multitude of the 
 heavenly host sing 
 
 Glory to God in the highest 
 
 And on earth peace, good will among men. 
 
 So is Christ born in Bethlehem of Judea, and from 
 land to land there flies the news, " The night is gone, 
 the long expected Day has come." 
 
 48 
 
THE SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD 
 
Ill 
 
 THE SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD 
 
 " When He giveth quietness who then can make trouble, and 
 when He hideth His face who then can behold Him ? " — Job. 
 xxxiv. 29. 
 
 THE Book of Job deals in dramatic form with 
 the most solemn of all problems, the Mystery 
 of Human suffering. It is tb- greatest dramatic 
 poem in the world, and in all the centuries which 
 have elapsed since its production, human thought 
 never soared higher, nor plumbed deeper into the 
 mystery of things. It does not pretend wholly to 
 solve the problem of suffering, but it advances five 
 theories, 1 each one of which is eagerly debated, and 
 all of which are finally swallowed up in the glory of 
 the Divine intervention. The first theory is that 
 suffering is the test of saintship, and that by the 
 endurance of suffering, human nature arrives at 
 saintship — a theory which Job himself favours, 
 when he finally says, " He knoweth the way that I 
 take; when He hath tried me, I shall come forth as 
 gold." The second theory is: that all suffering is 
 
 i The analysis is borrowed from Professor Moulton's mas- 
 terly introduction on the Book of Job. 
 
 51 
 
THE DIVINE CHALLENGE 
 
 in some way a judgment upon sin, a theory which 
 Job indignantly repudiates, because he is unable to 
 accuse himself of any wrong-doing, which could 
 justly merit punishment so monstrous. A third the- 
 ory is that suffering is sent to call men to repentance, 
 and is thus a mercy since by repentance man may 
 avert total destruction — a theory to which Job 
 shows himself entirely indifferent. A fourth theory 
 is that the whole universe is full of mystery, and the 
 mystery of evil is not greater than the mystery of 
 good — a theory hinted at in this passage of the 
 drama, " God hides His face, who then can behold 
 Him " : i. e., who can pretend to read the reasons why 
 God performs any act whatever? A fifth theory is 
 that the right attitude toward mystery is entire faith, 
 and that mystery is thus necessary to the growth of 
 faith, and is as the dews of Eden that keep the 
 garden of the soul fresh — a theory which finds 
 ample illustration in the way in which Job endures 
 his trial. Thus the thoughts of men circle round 
 the problem of suffering, and the ages have not 
 changed these thoughts. Job is still afflicted in a 
 thousand homes: Job's comforters still appear in a 
 thousand schemes of philosophy and religion: and 
 the endless drama still enacts itself on a stage where 
 mournful trumpets blow, and tears fall, and the som- 
 bre pageant of sorrow unfolds itself before those 
 who are the witnesses of pain to-day, and may be its 
 victims to-morrow. 
 
 52 
 
THE SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD 
 
 But you will observe that toward one point all 
 these conflicting theories converge, and that is the 
 truth of the absolute sovereignty of God. The one 
 thing that is doubted by no one in the drama, is that 
 God reigns. The Potter may or may not act un- 
 justly by His clay, but none can deny His right. If 
 it be God's will to afflict Job, who shall say Him nay? 
 This is of course one of the oldest, as it is one of 
 the saddest, thoughts in the world. You catch its 
 echo in some of the more despairing utterances of the 
 Hebrew prophets, and particularly in Jeremiah's 
 great parable of the Potter and the Wheel. You 
 have it distinctly stated in the poetry of the Persian 
 Omar, who flourished in the first quarter of our 
 Twelfth century — when he cries that we are all 
 
 But helpless Pieces of the game He plays, 
 Upon this chequer-board of nights and days: 
 Hither and thither moves, and checks and slays, 
 And one by one back in the closet lays. 
 
 You have it stated afresh with infinite bitterness in 
 the concluding words of Hardy's " Tess " — " Jus- 
 tice was done: and the President of the Immortals 
 had ended His sport with Tess." And Hardy him- 
 self in using the phrase sends us back to the old 
 Greek dramatists, all of whom felt a terror of the 
 Gods, and felt themselves impotent before their wrath 
 and their injustice. The absolute sovereignty of 
 God, the indeterminable power of the Creator over 
 
 53 
 
THE DIVINE CHALLENGE 
 
 His creatures, His perfect right to do as He will 
 with man, regardless either of the merit or demerit 
 of the individual — this is, as I have said, one of 
 the oldest as it is one of the saddest thoughts of the 
 world, and has filled the human heart with terror and 
 misgiving. 
 
 But you will observe at once that this thought is 
 very far from producing in Elihu either sadness or 
 incurable despair. Elihu is the youngest of the 
 speakers in the drama, and he speaks with all the 
 confidence of youth, with all its optimism, with all 
 its sense of having obtained a new knowledge denied 
 to the elders. How far his wisdom surpassed theirs 
 it is not for us now to discuss, but it will be seen at 
 once that he uses this tremendous truth of the ab- 
 solute sovereignty of God in a new way, and draws 
 from it not the lessons of despair but of hope. It 
 affects him in two ways. He first states the absolute 
 apportionment of good in men's lives — " When He 
 giveth quietness, who then can make trouble ? " 
 Whatever we may or may not know of God, we do 
 know that He gives good gifts to men — that He gives 
 some good gift to every man, and from that we may 
 argue that in the main His government of the world 
 is not cruel or unjust. The second thing he states is 
 the concealment of the Highest Good, which is the 
 vision of God, the perfect knowledge of His ways — 
 " When God hideth His face, who then can behold 
 Him?" In all lives, and even in those which we 
 
 54 
 
THE SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD 
 
 may variously call the happiest or the most fortunate, 
 there is something hidden, something withdrawn, a 
 door of mystery which no key of earth can unlock. 
 There is the hidden face of God, hidden from us, as 
 it was from His own Son, when He cried in the lonely 
 darkness of the cross, Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani. 
 There are things that happen to us for which no 
 explanation is vouchsafed, and for which none seems 
 possible. In the journey of life we all find ourselves 
 at some time or other confronted by the Sphinx of 
 the desert, the inscrutable face with sightless eyes 
 that stare right on, and the lips that utter nothing, 
 and we hear the wind of the desert, and the prophets 
 of the wind, who cry 
 
 Hushed in the infinite dark at the end ye shall be 
 Restless feverish souls that travail and yearn; 
 Lo, we have lifted the Veil — there is nothing to see ; 
 Lo, we have looked on the Scroll — there was nothing 
 to learn. 
 
 Elihu does not accept this despairing verdict, but he 
 does argue that no perfect solution of the universe 
 is possible, that mystery is necessary in the education 
 of man, and that man was never meant to know, at 
 least while upon the earth, the full explanation of 
 God's ways, which are past finding out. And this 
 leads him to a third thought which is implied rather 
 than expressed, viz., the wisdom and joy of a com- 
 plete surrender to God. " What is man that thou 
 
 55 
 
THE DIVINE CHALLENGE 
 
 takest account of him," said the Hebrew Psalmist — 
 for God does take account of man, and man is there- 
 fore safe with God. " I can look on terrible things 
 with a steadier eye," says one of our modern proph- 
 ets, " knowing as I do, that the world is not left to 
 itself, but has a King who is its Redeemer." And to 
 this truth Job himself assents when he says, " Though 
 he slay me, yet will I trust in him " ; he had then 
 " reached his climax," he had found the quietness 
 which God gives in the midst of trouble, and, while 
 he dwelt in that refuge, no arrows of outrageous 
 fortune had power to wound him. So then we see 
 that the indisputable sovereignty of God is capable 
 of being stated in a way very different from that 
 of Omar, or Euripides, or Thomas Hardy. It makes 
 not for despair, but for the peace that passeth all 
 understanding. It lifts man out of the transient, and 
 gives him safe anchorage in the eternal. It makes 
 him say with one of the great and true poets of our 
 time — 
 
 It fortifies my soul to know 
 That tho' I perish, Truth is so: 
 That howso'er I stray or range, 
 Whate'er I do, Thou dost not change, 
 I steadier step when I recall, 
 That, if I slip, Thou dost not fall. 
 
 In all lives there is the hidden thing which is signified 
 in the darkened face of God, in all lives also there 
 may be the divine quietness of faith ; and it is on the 
 
 56 
 
THE SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD 
 
 truth of the Divine sovereignty that man bases all 
 his faith, and enduring to the end is saved. 
 
 And now let us turn from the statement and dis- 
 cussion of these thoughts, which we all feel to be 
 abstract and difficult, to the illustrations of them 
 which we find in general human experience. The 
 value of an abstract thought is its practical effect on 
 human conduct. What effect on human conduct has 
 this sublime thought of the sovereignty of God had : 
 for of all philosophies as of all lives Christ's word 
 holds true — " By their fruits ye shall know them." 
 
 Turn, for example, to the life of St. Paul. That 
 life touched on agony of vicissitude which few lives 
 have known, and a mere recital of its sorrows might 
 appal the bravest. It knew hunger, thirst, and 
 weariness, the alienation of friends, and the most 
 murderous hatred of enemies; the loss of all things, 
 and of the things that noble men value most, not 
 goods and wealth, but honour, esteem, and respect: 
 it knew physical suffering so intense that Paul spoke 
 of himself as in deaths oft and dying daily : it knew 
 a contempt from men so complete, that he says he 
 had become as the off scouring of all things: it knew 
 at last a violent death by martyrdom. The suffer- 
 ings of Job, great as they were, are not comparable 
 with the sufferings of Paul. And Paul knew also the 
 withdrawn face of God, the denied prayer, the 
 neglected appeal, the thorn in the flesh which caused 
 him incurable and immitigable torture to his life's 
 
 57 
 
THE DIVINE CHALLENGE 
 
 end. Yet you will find that the dominant note of 
 Paul's life is triumph. He not merely does not com- 
 plain of his sufferings, but he rejoices in them. His 
 letters are not a tragic drama like the Book of Job: 
 they are as the music of trumpets pealing round the 
 dark dome of life, a sound of " harping symphonies 
 and sevenfold hallelujahs!" And as you search his 
 writings for the secret, you find it in the eighth chap- 
 ter of his Epistle to the Romans — " Whom he did 
 predestinate, them he also called : and whom he called, 
 them he also justified: and whom he justified, them 
 he also glorified. What shall we then say to these 
 things ? If God be for us, who can be against us ? " 
 
 There you have the secret; the belief in the ab- 
 solute sovereignty of God, the sense of the pre-de- 
 termined, and the consequent knowledge that nothing 
 can happen to him for which God has not a reason, 
 and a wise reason. He is God-inebriated, God-filled: 
 lifted beyond the earth on wings of ecstasy : " sure 
 of God as he is sure of life," and in a loftier language 
 constantly repeats the saying of Elihu — " When 
 God giveth quietness, who then can make trouble? 
 if God be for us, who can be against us ? " 
 
 A man may of course retort, and no doubt the 
 question is already on our lips, but how can a man 
 know that God is with him? The answer is that 
 man may be with God, by a complete surrender to 
 the will of God. " I hope God will be on our side," 
 was a remark made to Abraham Lincoln, in the dark 
 
 58 
 
THE SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD 
 
 days when America was torn by fratricidal strife. 
 
 " Sir," said Lincoln, " I have never yet asked my- 
 self whether God was on my side or not, but I tell 
 you what, Sir, I am determined to be on God's side." 
 And if any man asks me what is effectual calling, 
 I say that you have the answer in that pregnant 
 speech of Lincoln's. A man is on God's side who is 
 on the side of truth, and righteousness, and virtue: 
 for something in the bosom of the humblest man 
 tells him that these things are dear to God. He is 
 effectually called when he sets his soul on these 
 things, and turns his face toward God's Zion. And 
 those who are called, and obey the call, God shall 
 justify: and those whom He justifies, He shall 
 glorify. They who are upon God's side of truth, 
 right, and virtue, alone have the right to say that 
 God is for them. They alone grasp the secret of 
 the Divine Sovereignty. And since all men can be 
 upon God's side, if they will, all men may know the 
 security and triumph of a peace which lifts them far 
 above all the vicissitudes of earthly life, and teaches 
 them to say out of the sacred silence of the sanctified 
 and surrendered heart, " When God giveth quietness, 
 who then shall make trouble? " 
 
 Turn again to history. It is not surprising that 
 more and more the thoughts of cultured Englishmen 
 are turned toward the great Puritan movement, for 
 it gives us the key to all that is most vital and endur- 
 ing in national character. But the more that move- 
 
 59 
 
THE DIVINE CHALLENGE 
 
 ment is studied the clearer does it become that its 
 political force was really incidental — its real force 
 was religious. One need not recall the speeches of 
 Cromwell, the despatches of Blake, the psalms sung 
 upon the battlefield — these are things familiar to 
 us: but they all illustrate one truth, the sense of the 
 sovereignty of God which made the Puritan what he 
 was. Those who see the Puritan only on the battle- 
 field and in the council chamber see but one part of 
 him: there is yet a nobler part portrayed in his re- 
 ligious experiences. It is no more than bare truth 
 that Macaulay states of Puritanism when he says, 
 " One overpowering sentiment had subjugated to 
 itself pity and hatred, ambition and fear. Death had 
 lost its terror and pleasure its charms. They had 
 their smiles and their tears, their raptures and sor- 
 rows, but not for the things of this world. The 
 intensity of their feelings on one subject made them 
 tranquil on every other." On what subject we ask? 
 On this tremendous subject of the sovereignty of 
 God. If they cared little for kings, it was because 
 they were devoted to the King of Kings and Lord of 
 Lords: if they despised priests, it was because they 
 knew themselves priests unto God by the mystery of 
 a divine call, and a truer ordination. They also 
 knew the mystery of the hidden face of God — and 
 of that let the tears of Fleetwood, and the cries of 
 Cromwell bear witness. They knew calamity: but 
 they also knew how to triumph over it. John Milton 
 
 60 
 
THE SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD 
 
 knew the worst calamity that can happen to the man 
 of letters — the total loss of sight ; but he uttered no 
 petulant complaint, and he might well have written 
 the noble lines which a modern poet has put into his 
 mouth ; — 
 
 I have naught to fear, 
 This darkness is the shadow of Thy wing ; 
 Beneath it I am almost sacred: here 
 
 Can come no evil thing. 
 
 And John Milton would have said, not by way of 
 accusation, but in vindication of the ways of God 
 with man, " Hath not the Potter power over the clay 
 to do with it as He will? " The sense of the Divine 
 sovereignty did not depress him: it inspired him. 
 And it was the same with all the Puritans. The one 
 subject on which their feelings were intense was the 
 relation in which they stood to God: once sure of 
 that, once convinced that God reigned and that they 
 were called to be His children, His servants, and the 
 sheep of His pasture — they were tranquil on every 
 other subject, and could say, " When God giveth 
 quietness, who then can make trouble? " 
 
 Or turn to modern biography, and recall the 
 spiritual struggles of Carlyle, and the great emanci- 
 pation which he won for himself, and for multitudes 
 who through his words have been made wise unto 
 salvation. He himself has told us how he won that 
 emancipation ; " God over all, God through all, and 
 
 61 
 
THE DIVINE CHALLENGE 
 
 God in us all " was the sum and substance of his Gos- 
 pel. It is expressed again and again in all his works. 
 When he rides by night past the old churchyard 
 where the dead he loved were buried, an infinite peace 
 comes upon him in the sense that God is over all. 
 When the book on which he based all his hopes is 
 burned, he speaks of the calamity as the chastise- 
 ment of his invisible schoolmaster, and says, " What 
 can I sorrowing do but obey — obey and think it the 
 best ! " When he writes his magnificent description 
 of the night before the battle of Dunbar the same 
 note makes itself heard — " The hoarse sea moans 
 bodeful, swinging low and heavy against these whin- 
 stone baj-s: the sea and the tempest are abroad, and 
 all else asleep but we — and there is One that rides 
 upon the wings of the wind." The Divine Sov- 
 ereignty once more : the steadfast sense that the world 
 is rightly governed, that what we call histories and 
 events is but God working — this was the strength of 
 Carlyle's soul, it was upon this he based his life, and 
 it is this conviction that has given him an influence 
 on the best minds of the world, such as no other man 
 since the days of the Hebrew prophets has wielded. 
 
 Or turn to modern imaginative literature. Much 
 of it is mere coloured froth: some of it glitters with 
 the iridescent hues of decay: but here and there a 
 book emerges which is what a good book should be, 
 " The precious life blood of a master spirit." Take 
 up the Window in Thrums, for example, and turn 
 
 62 
 
THE SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD 
 
 to the pathetic sketch called Dead this Twenty 
 Years. It is merely the account of a child who died 
 by accident twenty years before, and the mother's 
 thoughts about it all, and her grief. And this is 
 what she says, " Thou God seest me," she exclaims. 
 " Just when I came to ' Thou God seest me,' I let the 
 book lie in my lap, for aince a body's sure o' that 
 they're sure o' all: for I ken He was lookin' down 
 when the cart gaed ower Joey, and He wanted to 
 tak' my laddie to Himsel." And there is no other 
 word said, or that can be said. To be sure that God 
 reigns is to be sure of every thing, and when God 
 giveth quietness, who then shall make trouble? 
 
 And so then we see that the one thought in which 
 man can find comfort and repose in the day of sorrow, 
 in the hour of unforeseen calamity, in the total wreck 
 of human happiness, is this thought of the sov- 
 ereignty of God. No doubt it is a thought that has 
 been much misunderstood, abused, and misapplied: 
 but the wisest and greatest of men have known how 
 to use it and to stay their souls upon it. It is mis- 
 understood when a man says of calamities which seem 
 inexplicable, " They are good because they are the will 
 of God." This is after all but another form of 
 stoicism, and is not far removed from the sullen sub- 
 mission of the old pagan philosophers to a hierarchy 
 of deities, whose government was caprice, whose will 
 was tyranny, and whose ways were inscrutable. But 
 it is rightly apprehended when a man says, " It is 
 
 63 
 
THE DIVINE CHALLENGE 
 
 God's will because it is good: because in some way 
 unknown to me God seeks to discipline me, and be- 
 cause God is incapable of willing evil." When a man 
 learns to say this he attains to the Divine quiet: 
 peace descends upon him as a dew : alone, he is not 
 alone ; forsaken he is not forgotten ; persecuted he is 
 not destroyed, cast down he is not in despair; for 
 over the sea of life by him uncharted, and along 
 the ways of the sea to him unknown, there falls the 
 voice of the Heavenly Steersman, who cries " AIVs 
 well" You and I have to face a life which is full of 
 vicissitude. We know well enough that sorrows 
 come upon us unexpectedly, and when we march 
 most confidently to our Promised Land, we may find 
 that our most tragic battle is yet to be fought. We 
 cannot forget such things, and in our poor dumb, 
 human way we often wonder how we shall meet such 
 hours. Be sure of it mere human fortitude will not 
 serve us then. Be sure of it stoicism will fail us, and 
 no philosophic reconciliation to the inevitable will 
 heal the wound that bleeds within. But one remedy 
 for the troubled soul of man was never known to fail. 
 Man can say, " God reigns — let God's will be done." 
 He can realise that he is in the grasp of a mightier 
 Power, who is not unloving, and that he is fulfilling a 
 plan long predetermined. At every step of the way 
 to his Calvary or his ascension, he may say as Jesus 
 said, " The Son of man goeth, as it is written of him." 
 Written where? In the inscrutable counsels of God 
 
 64 
 
THE SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD 
 
 to whom every life is known in its completeness 
 before its first breath is drawn. You cannot read 
 those counsels : " When God hideth His face, who 
 then shall behold Him?" But you may know that 
 He reigns, and reigns in wisdom, righteousness, and 
 love, and then you will so far triumph as to say, 
 " All is in God's hands, my trouble and my joy alike, 
 and when He giveth quietness, who shall make 
 trouble? " 
 
 And finally, the Book of Job declares the mystery 
 of sorrow as solved in the mystery of Heaven. The 
 Prologue gives us the key to the whole drama, when 
 it shows Job's case as debated in heaven, and 
 thoroughly understood there: the last act of the 
 drama is the Divine intervention. A whirlwind once 
 more blows, but not now to destroy, for God Himself 
 rides upon its wings, and a Voice out of the whirl- 
 wind cries, " Whatsoever is under the whole heaven 
 is mine." And again He cries, " Who is this that 
 darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge?" 
 
 And at last Job replies, " I lay my hand upon my 
 mouth. I have heard by the hearing of the ear : but 
 now mine eye seeth thee." And behold the whirl- 
 wind passes and there is peace. Peace in the heavens 
 that are as a sapphire for clearness, peace on the 
 earth where the evening breeze begins to blow, and 
 peace within the soul of Job. The dream of Heaven 
 has come to him, with its promise of the very vision 
 of God, its perfect knowledge, its solution of all 
 
 65 
 
THE DIVINE CHALLENGE 
 
 earthly mystery ; and because he is now sure of the 
 Beneficent Sovereignty of God, he is able to believe 
 that " there will come another era, when it shall be 
 light, and man will awake from his lofty dreams to 
 find his dream still there, and that nothing has gone 
 save his sleep." O most dread and mighty Sovereign 
 of the Earth and the Heavens, Thou who art the 
 First and Last, the Beginning and the End, from 
 whom nothing is hid, be it ours to serve Thee in 
 humility, faithfulness, and truth, and so in the hour 
 of trouble Thou shalt hide us in Thy pavilion, and 
 when the dream of life is past, behold we shall awake 
 in Thy image, and be satisfied. 
 
 66 
 
FULFILMENT 
 
IV 
 
 FULFILMENT 
 
 "That it might be fulfilled."— Matt. ii. 23. 
 
 THREE times in the course of eight verses do 
 we come upon this phrase: it chimes upon the 
 ear like the sound of a persistent bell. These eight 
 verses narrate things which in themselves seem tragic 
 and disastrous, and to which men would give the name 
 of accident : but the Divine Word for them is That it 
 might be fulfilled. They narrate the hurried and 
 perilous flight into Egypt — the slaughter of the in- 
 nocents, the return to Nazareth — each an incident 
 wholly unforeseen, and surcharged with bitterness or 
 sadness. Consider the pathetic picture of these 
 anxious fugitives, with the Child of miracle upon 
 their bosoms, driven out of Judaea by a great fear, 
 flying for their lives upon an unknown path, until 
 at last they see with tired eyes the Nile, the land of 
 strange pyramids and vast temples, built ages be- 
 fore by the toiling slaves who were their ancestors; 
 and does not that read like a tragic accident? Hear 
 the voice of weeping and lamentation in Rama — 
 must it not have seemed to many a mother who sat 
 
 69 
 
THE DIVINE CHALLENGE 
 
 with a mangled babe upon her lap, that God was 
 far away and forgetful of her sorrows? Consider 
 the fugitives as they return, driven by the exigency 
 of bread to dwell in a little town notorious for the 
 godlessness and worthlessness of its inhabitants — 
 and can Joseph and Mary discern, think you, any 
 wise or beneficent end in such a fate? Yet each of 
 these incidents was a link in a chain which bound 
 eternity to time ; it was a master-stroke of destiny ; it 
 was the result of predetermined and inevitable pur- 
 pose; it all happened That it might be fulfilled. 
 God was never nearer the world than in the hour when 
 the cry of the bereaved mothers rose in Rama ; never 
 more surely at work in the shaping of human events 
 than when these insignificant fugitives paused beside 
 the Nile, or entered footsore and disheartened into 
 Nazareth. Even the craft and wickedness of Herod 
 yielded its quota to the establishment of prophecy, 
 and without meaning or imagining it, Herod was 
 obeying the prophets, and acting upon the compul- 
 sion of a Divine Providence. Is there, indeed, any- 
 thing that happens in the world, any crime, or folly, 
 or error of man's, that can be truly called accidental, 
 an interruption or breaking away from the Divine 
 order? Is not the very wickedness of man a contri- 
 bution to the triumph of goodness, and like the 
 wickedness of Herod, something that happens for 
 the fulfilment of a larger scheme of goodness? 
 Now, here are three incidents in history: one, a 
 70 
 
FULFILMENT 
 
 piece of painful human vicissitude — the second, a 
 piece of horrible wickedness — the third, the sad 
 irony of trouble which poverty is compelled to know, 
 and each is set before us in no way accidental, but 
 so far the reverse of accidental, that it is the un- 
 mistakable revelation of a Divine force working in 
 the world. Perhaps the first thing we need to do 
 is to understand our terms. Manifestly what is 
 meant is not that Christ was carried into Egypt 
 because Hosea predicted it; or that the children 
 are slain because Jeremiah spoke of lamentation and 
 great weeping in Rama: or that the infant grew 
 up in Nazareth because the prophets spoke of a 
 Divine Deliverer who should come out of Nazareth. 
 To read the saying in this spirit would be to accuse 
 Mary and Joseph of deliberate collusion, with an 
 attempt to act a part, which is manifestly absurd; 
 or which is little better, to suggest that things were 
 bound to fall out as they did, simply because a 
 Hebrew prophet had obscurely hinted at some such 
 event. No: the truth lies in the reverse direction; 
 the thing happened not because it was prophesied: 
 but it was prophesied because it had to happen. 
 For what is prophecy? It is two things, forth- 
 telling and foretelling. The prophets were mainly 
 forthtellers, and the great burden of their work 
 was the exposition of great moral and spiritual 
 truths. But ever and again, in some condition of 
 spiritual ecstasy, they saw the clouds clear from the 
 
 71 
 
THE DIVINE CHALLENGE 
 
 sky of the future, and caught momentary glimpses of 
 the far-off dawn of a new time. They saw as men 
 see in dreams, places, cities and countries, strangely 
 vivid and real, and yet built of luminous mist and 
 shadows only; they felt the incommunicable thrill 
 of great events, linking themselves to such places, 
 and heard the movements of the men and women 
 who should inhabit them — and then they became 
 foretellers. They had only a limited comprehension 
 of their own words. They were unable to attach 
 any quite definite meaning to them. They spoke 
 as men speak in dreams, with vagueness and yet 
 with a thrilling accent of truth. Those who heard 
 them speak treasured their words, for they instinc- 
 tively felt that there was a mystic meaning in them 
 which some day would be made clear. Hosea had 
 no actual vision of Christ in Egypt, Jeremiah no 
 vivid and exact prevision of what it was that would 
 make Kama a place of mourning; but each spoke 
 in such a way, that when centuries afterwards cer- 
 tain things happened, men said, and said truly — 
 " Behold the prophets said these things." Neither 
 they, nor any since them, have understood what 
 they really meant: but we know. To-day is this 
 Scripture fulfilled ; but it is fulfilled, not in arbitrary 
 obedience to the word of a prophet, but the prophet 
 spoke in obedience to a Divine instinct, he and we 
 being both alike witnesses to the Divine order which 
 rules the world. It is thus and thus alone that 
 
 72 
 
FULFILMENT 
 
 prophecy can become rational, intelligible, and a real 
 communication of God made through the souls and 
 minds of men. 
 
 But some one will very naturally say, " It is not so 
 much with the nature of prophecy that we are con- 
 cerned, as with the moral, personal, and theological 
 questions involved in these statements. Take the 
 personal question for example. Here is an obscure 
 Jewish family driven into exile by the tyranny of 
 Herod many centuries ago. Probably such a thing 
 often happened in the days of Herod, who appears 
 to have been one of the worst of rulers. But are we 
 to believe that the actions of these men and women 
 were of such consequence to the Supreme power, 
 that it was well-known centuries before what they 
 would do, and that what they did was done under 
 the direct though unrecognised compulsion of the 
 Almighty ? " And to that question I reply, why not ? 
 Are we conscious of no compulsions of Providence? 
 Are we not warned by our instincts in our dealings 
 with one another, in our choice of the path we tread, 
 in the sum of those small and large decisions which 
 make up our destiny? Has no voice ever said to 
 us, " this is the way — walk ye in it " ; and has no 
 voice told us that some other way our pride or 
 ignorance would have chosen, was the way of peril 
 or of death? And if we pass from the study of our 
 own life to the lives of those who have bulked large 
 before the world, who have done great things among 
 
 73 
 
THE DIVINE CHALLENGE 
 
 their fellow men, and whose every stage of develop- 
 ment and action is a matter of public scrutiny and 
 general interest — is there any biography that does 
 not teach the doctrine of divine compulsion as 
 one of the best verified facts of life? Socrates may 
 call it the voice of his daemon, Knox may call it the 
 voice of God, by Abraham Lincoln it is heard in 
 dreams, by Luther in the whispers of the air; but is 
 there any man who has ever attained to greatness 
 as thinker or actor, who has not confessed that he 
 has been the creature of mysterious compulsions, 
 with a consciousness of moving in predetermined 
 ways? And are not such confessions of a piece Avith 
 the similar confessions of writers of the greatest 
 genius, such as Milton and George Eliot, who have 
 plainly stated that their very genius seemed not so 
 much a thing of themselves, as the impartation to 
 the mind of a message from the outside, by a species 
 of Divine compulsion on the thought? That it might 
 be fulfilled — the saying touches all lives. It is the 
 confession alike of our glory and our impotence, and 
 we have only to look within ourselves to find ample 
 vindication of its truth. 
 
 But again it will be said, " That is not all ; what 
 about the moral question which is involved? One 
 of the events in this chapter is a wanton and 
 bloody massacre. It is, as you have said, a piece of 
 horrible wickedness. It would no doubt be too ab- 
 surd to suppose that it happened merely to give 
 
 74 
 
FULFILMENT 
 
 coherence and sense to a saying of Jeremiah; but is 
 it possible to suppose that it happened at all by the 
 permission of God? Does God recognise evil as a 
 weapon for the carrying out of His designs, and can 
 evil be recognised as a servant in the triumph of 
 goodness?" And again I say, why not? For which 
 is better, to think of evil as outside God's control 
 or within it? Which is the more pious act of 
 thought, to regard wickedness as something God 
 cannot restrain, or as something perpetually defeated 
 in its ultimate aims by the compulsion God puts upon 
 it? And here again, does not the actual spectacle 
 of life and history teach us something? This mas- 
 sacre in Rama was small and unnoticeable compared 
 with the immolation of the Piedmontese, the slaughter 
 of the Vaudois, and the barbarities of the Spaniards 
 in the Netherlands, to say nothing of the martyr- 
 doms of the early Christians. There have been 
 times in human history, not so far away, when not 
 a village or a district, but whole provinces and em- 
 pires have wailed for their dead, and every house has 
 been a house of mourning. There have been such 
 wrongs wrought in outrage and spoliation that cen- 
 turies have not been sufficient to wash out the stain 
 of blood, or roll back the shadow that has fallen 
 on a land. And in relation to such periods one of 
 two statements is true: either God had abdicated 
 the government of the world in these lurid reigns 
 of blood, or God permitted them for a higher pur- 
 
 75 
 
THE DIVINE CHALLENGE 
 
 pose; and the one statement ends in atheism as the 
 other leads to faith and piety. But, as a matter 
 of fact no competent historian has ever made the 
 first statement. There can be no doubt that the 
 surest possible weapon for the propagation of a 
 religion is martyrdom. Such faith in Christ as 
 Europe possesses to-day, such liberty of thought and 
 reverence for truth, is the direct fruit of the days 
 when the price of liberty was torture, and the crown 
 of truth was death. For the final verdict on all such 
 events — a verdict which cannot be delivered until 
 ages have passed and historical perspectives have 
 grown clear — is that in the long run truth only lives, 
 and the wickedness of the wicked is compelled into 
 the service of goodness and of truth. Herod does 
 his work, but even he, in the very doing of his work, 
 is fulfilling prophecy. The wailing in Rama is but 
 the discordant tuning of the instruments in that 
 divine orchestra which is presently to fill the world 
 with an enduring music of love and hope. Wait till 
 the discord dies away — then you will find its fulfil- 
 ment in the larger music of eternity, which shall roll 
 across the world, rousing it from its sleep, and cre- 
 ating a new soul under the very ribs of death. 
 
 But again it will be said — " What about ftie theo- 
 logical question ? " In what does this differ from 
 the doctrines of necessity and fatalism? Does it not 
 lead directly to that saddest confession of the saddest 
 poet of our time — 
 
 76 
 
FULFILMENT 
 
 If one is born a certain day on earth, 
 All times and seasons tended to that birth, 
 Not all the world could change or hinder it: 
 I find no hint throughout the universe, 
 Of good or ill, of blessing or of curse, 
 I find alone necessity supreme. 
 
 In other and quite plain words, could Herod help 
 what he did? And can the bad man who, by mar- 
 tyring the innocent, unconsciously but really works 
 out the ultimate victory of the good — can he help 
 playing the part he plays? Assuredly he can, for 
 men are not mere puppets and blind mechanisms in 
 the hand of God. A man who enters an express 
 train is not responsible for its motion, but he is 
 responsible for entering it. Once within it he must 
 submit to its compulsion, and it is possible enough 
 that it may carry him to some unintended bourne ; 
 but it was by his act, and his alone that he entered 
 it. No: this is not fatalism, it is a very different 
 thing; it is the statement of the real control of God 
 over the world. Men act for one end, and God 
 guides their action to quite another; men set their 
 course, as the sailor does, and duly steer by it; but 
 in every ocean there are tides and currents, winds 
 and eddies that imperceptibly draw or drift the ship 
 out of the exact course marked upon the map of 
 man. We are undoubtedly free agents, and yet 
 there is a law of gravitation which we obey every 
 moment of our lives although we know nothing about 
 
 77 
 
THE DIVINE CHALLENGE 
 
 it. And that then is the first and great point on 
 which we fix our thoughts. It is not the veracity of 
 the prophets that is being proved, it is the real 
 sovereignty of God. It is not the correspondence 
 between a sa} 7 ing of Jeremiah and the wickedness 
 of Herod that is of interest, it is the fact of the 
 real control of God over all human events. That 
 which stands out large and luminous is the truth 
 that compulsions of Providence touch every life ; 
 that we have relations to infinite forces of which we 
 take small account; that our acts, which seem so 
 intimately our own, are controlled and guided by a 
 secret hand of which we are but dimly conscious ; 
 that God reigns over good and evil alike — unresting, 
 unhasting, immutable — thwarted by no accident, 
 deflected from His sovereign purposes by no revolt 
 of man's — God reigns — and when the book of time 
 is closed its final word will be — That it might be 
 fulfilled. 
 
 But now, in the second place, let the mind dwell 
 upon the word fulfilled, for in it is contained the 
 mystery of hope of the Advent. What is fulfilment ? 
 The fruit is the fulfilment of the bloom, the meridian 
 day is the fulfilment of the dawn. What we mean by 
 the word as it is applied to Christ is, that there was 
 something foreshadowed, and in Him that something 
 was revealed ; that on the lip of time there was a 
 whisper and a suggestion, of which Christ was the 
 uttered word ; in the fulness of time " the Word 
 
 78 
 
FULFIL MENT 
 
 became flesh and dwelt among us." How then, and 
 in what way was Christ a fulfilment of foreshadowed 
 things ? 
 
 We find the answer in two directions: the first of 
 which is that His person and His life fulfilled cer- 
 tain conditions long predicted. Let the minds of 
 all who have the most casual knowledge of Scrip- 
 ture, range for a moment over the long series of 
 predictions which by common consent have been ap- 
 plied to Jesus of Nazareth. They cover a vast 
 period of time, and were uttered by a great variety 
 of speakers. They are at once vague and definite. 
 They become most precise in the mouth of Isaiah, 
 who speaks of the lowly birth, the healing ministry, 
 the sorrowful tragedy, the rejection, betrayal, and 
 burial of One who is to bear the stripes wherewith 
 we are healed, and to triumph by the force of virtue, 
 meekness and love. Places and persons are named — 
 " He is the Root of David," and His birthplace is 
 Bethlehem. He is to prove something more than a 
 local patriot : " He is the Desire of all Nations." 
 His reign is to be widespread and everlasting : " He 
 shall have the heathen for His heritage, and the utter- 
 most parts of the earth for His possession." Through 
 hundreds of years of Jewish history, this sublime 
 figure was adumbrated to the Jewish mind. It is not 
 pretended that either before or after Christ any other 
 man fulfilled these conditions; and the proof of this 
 statement is that the Jews still pray for the coming of 
 
 79 
 
THE DIVINE CHALLENGE 
 
 Him of whom Isaiah spoke. But in Jesus of Naza- 
 reth all these minute and manifold conditions were 
 accurately fulfilled. Men did recognise in Him the 
 long promised Messiah. He Himself, in the calm 
 survey of His own career after His resurrection, asked 
 whether the predicted Christ ought not to have 
 suffered the things He suffered, and to have entered 
 into His glory? I ask for nothing more than a 
 rational and unbiassed consideration of these facts. 
 Did these predictions mean anything or nothing? 
 If they were true foreshadowings, who else is there 
 who has in the least degree fulfilled these condi- 
 tions? Where else in history is there any figure in 
 whom all these predictions converge with such aston- 
 ishing and perfect accuracy? I confess that for me 
 there is nothing in human history so miraculous 
 as this story, and the proof of its effect upon the 
 human mind is that all the most cultured, enlightened, 
 and civilized nations of the world have accepted 
 Christianity and found in Jesus of Nazareth the long 
 predicted and Divine Redeemer. 
 
 It was one of the beautiful and pathetic beliefs of 
 the old Norsemen, quoted by Mr. Balfour in his 
 Foundation of Belief, that when a man died his spirit 
 survived him, and haunted as a ghost for a long time 
 the scenes of his earthly life. " At first," says he, 
 " vivid and almost lifelike, it slowly waned and faded, 
 until at length it vanished, leaving behind it no 
 trace or memory of its spectral presence among the 
 
 80 
 
FULFILMENT 
 
 throngs of living men." Let us reverse the legend, 
 and then apply it to this subject. For long ages the 
 faint adumbration of a divine deliverer haunted the 
 minds of men. At first dim and spectral, the vision 
 grew upon the minds of men, becoming with each 
 age more definite and perfect. It fortified and in- 
 vigorated the failing heart of the world with a new 
 hope. Others besides Balaam learned to say, " I 
 shall see Him but not now; I shall behold Him but 
 not nigh. There shall come a Star out of Jacob, and 
 a Sceptre shall rise out of Israel." Before the mind 
 of a Plato as well as an Isaiah, this slowly growing 
 vision passes, and each foresees the advent of some 
 perfectly just One, by whom the world should be 
 saved. Out of the films and spectral profundities 
 of the future this face grew into clearness — this 
 figure emerged into distinctness — until at last the 
 spiritual and ghostly put on a human form, and 
 God became flesh and dwelt among us. The dream 
 was ended — the reality had come. Hope had ful- 
 filled itself — faith was to begin. The vision was no 
 more a vision ; the palpable Redeemer spoke indeed 
 " with man's voice by the marvellous sea," and stood 
 before men with a human brow — and all this hap- 
 pened — That it might be fulfilled. 
 
 But the element of fulfilment is still more 
 strikingly seen in the teaching of Christ. No one 
 will venture to deny that long before the birth of 
 Christ many pious and noble ideals of religion pos- 
 
 81 
 
THE DIVINE CHALLENGE 
 
 sessed the world, and not among the Jews alone. 
 All that is meant by chastity, courage and fortitude, 
 honour and duty and loyalty to truth, the subjuga- 
 tion of personal aims to public ideals, and a corre- 
 sponding reverence for and service of the state, ex- 
 isted among the earlier Romans ; and when we would 
 learn and enforce these lessons to-day we can still find 
 no nobler books than the literature with which Rome 
 has furnished us. Nor can we forget that centuries 
 before Christ a great religious revival had occurred 
 in India, the main ethics of which were the mastery 
 of the flesh, the complete sacrifice of the individual 
 to the service of his fellows, and a noble passion to 
 communicate the truths wherein spiritual freedom 
 were found to all who would listen, irrespective of 
 condition, state, or country. The very watchword of 
 Rome was duty: the watchword of Buddha was still 
 nobler — it was " delivered yourself, deliver others ; 
 and saved, make haste to save." It would be an un- 
 grateful blasphemy against the Giver of all good and 
 perfect gifts to deny or forget these things. But 
 the more narrowly you examine the ancient religions 
 of Rome and India, the more obvious is their lack of 
 a true central element. They were not revelations of 
 God : they could exist without God. With the Roman, 
 morality was wholly divorced from piety — he went 
 to the philosopher for his morals, and the priest for 
 his religion. In Buddhism God did not appear; it 
 was a religion of men toward men — the sublimest 
 
 82 
 
FULFILMENT 
 
 effort of pure altruism ever made by the unaided 
 genius of man. But the greatest of all questions was 
 overlooked — the problem of God received no solu- 
 tion. Was God magnanimous or merciful? Was it 
 possible to love Him, or only to fear Him as an unex- 
 plained terror? That question was never answered 
 perfectly till Christ came. But He answered it, and 
 with His reply the world has been content. He ful- 
 filled all of truth that was foreshadowed in the re- 
 ligions of Rome and India. He supplied the omitted, 
 the neglected, element. He revealed the Father. At 
 last the dumb lips of Time uttered more than a 
 suggestive whisper — they spoke the living Word — 
 and " we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only 
 begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth." 
 " I came," He said, " not to destroy but to fulfil " and 
 with Him the gray dawn of truth passed into that 
 perfect light which was the life of men — and all 
 this happened that the sovereign will of God might 
 be fulfilled. 
 
 And so then I come back to the great and vital 
 truth of the real sovereignty of God over the world, 
 with which we started. 
 
 Among many Oriental legends which gather round 
 the temple of Solomon is one that has a touch of 
 vivid significance — it is that Solomon died during 
 the building of the Temple, but that his body re- 
 mained leaning on a staff, and overlooking the work- 
 men as though it were alive. Picture it, this gray 
 
THE DIVINE CHALLENGE 
 
 and awful figure, forever rigid and immutable, there 
 between the pinnacles of the Temple, with the first 
 ray of morn, and there with the last star at night — 
 spectral, terrible, lonely — toward which the trembling 
 workmen turned fearful glances when the cloud low- 
 ered, or the light failed or the moon silvered all the 
 earth with ghostly splendour! Picture the dead king, 
 feared by the living workmen, who shrink from that 
 dead eye which death himself cannot wholly close ! 
 It is a ghastly fancy, but not more ghastly than the 
 thoughts men have had of God. For multitudes of 
 men around us, God is but a dead Solomon ; He has 
 neither life, nor breath, nor motion. He is awful 
 enough to impose some restraint upon the thought, 
 but is as impotent as the dead King to impose restraint 
 upon the conduct of men. He is but the dead figure- 
 head of a forsaken universe. O my brethren, it is to 
 deliver us from this most paralysing of all thoughts, 
 that the incarnation took place. The birth of Christ 
 is God's proof to us that He lives, that He rules, that 
 He loves us. Until we believe with all our hearts 
 in the real and vital sovereignty of God over this 
 world of seeming turmoil and disorder, God is but 
 a name to us, and religion but a habit of transmitted 
 formalism. Look once more upon the whole scene 
 — this fitting together of prediction and event — ■ 
 this overruling of evil for the work of infinite good, 
 and learn that God reigns, and all these things hap- 
 pened that His will might be fulfilled. 
 
 84 
 
FULFILMENT 
 
 And lastly, this truth of the real sovereignty of 
 God I know not how to grasp, except as it is revealed 
 to me in Jesus Christ. I can grasp the idea of a 
 religion such as Rome knew; a certain Divinity in 
 the State which demands my reverence, and con- 
 strains my duty. I can grasp the idea of a hu- 
 manly altruistic religion such as Buddha taught, and 
 the supreme need there is that I should love my 
 fellow man better than myself if I am to justify 
 my uses of existence. But I know not where to 
 look for the revelation of a God to whom I can 
 pray, whom I can adore and love, except in Jesus 
 Christ. Some supreme Person in the universe I may 
 suspect, but he may be dead as the dead king upon 
 the roof of the unfinished temple for all I know. 
 At the present hour perhaps this question of the real 
 sovereignty of God may seem to have but a remote 
 relation to your life. It may seem at best an 
 abstruse and academic question. But the hour will 
 surely come — in death if not earlier — when the 
 supreme agony of your soul will sum itself up in the 
 crv — does God live? Does God care anything for 
 me? Am I anybody to God? God's reply to that 
 deepest cry of humanity is Bethlehem. Immanuel 
 
 God with us — is the message of hope which the 
 
 Church has gone on proclaiming for centuries — 
 God with us in our pain, in our humiliations, in 
 our lowest deeps of suffering, in our uttermost lone- 
 liness of death — God with us in our living and our 
 
 S5 
 
THE DIVINE CHALLENGE 
 
 dying — and we, by the grace of Christ's redemp- 
 tion with God for evermore, in the unknown fe- 
 licity of eternal life. To know this is to know all 
 that can be known of spiritual truth, to live by it 
 is to realise all that can be realised of inward peace, 
 for henceforth we can say, " God has been with 
 us in the cradle and the grave — God has been for us 
 in our extremity and distress — and if God be for us, 
 who can be against us? " 
 
 86 
 
TIMELESSNESS 
 
TIMELESSNESS 
 
 " One day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thou- 
 sand years as one day." — 2 Peter iii. 8. 
 
 THIS passage affirms Timelessness as one of the 
 attributes of God. The end and beginning 
 are as one with Him. Space and period are non- 
 existent. You can discover the beginning and the 
 end of a line : but not of the circle ; for the circle 
 ends where it begins and begins where it ends. Per- 
 haps this was the animating idea of Ezekiel in his 
 strange imagery of the ever-revolving wheel full of 
 eyes ; he saw in the circle of the wheel the type of 
 the unendingness of God. 
 
 Now to creatures finite and limited as we are, such 
 thoughts and conceptions put an almost intolerable 
 stress upon the mind. For, at first sight, it would 
 appear, that Time is the ruling principle of the world. 
 Seconds, minutes, days, months, years, centuries, 
 epochs — it is by such measurements we take account 
 of things. They are the milestones on the road of 
 our existence. Our very life beats itself out by a 
 pulse that registers its movements. The very sun 
 
 89 
 
THE DIVINE CHALLENGE 
 
 moves in the harness of Time and obeys a punctual 
 law. What then are we to make of that great open- 
 ing clause of the prayer of Moses, the man of God, 
 " Lord Thou hast been our dwelling place in all gen- 
 erations: from everlasting to everlasting, Thou art 
 God? " Or, what of that strange paradox of the 
 Psalmist — " In Thy book all my members were writ- 
 ten, which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet 
 there were none of them ? " 
 
 Consider what these things imply : that we were 
 nourished in the bosom of God's Everlasting before 
 we knew the limits of Time: that in Him we were, 
 when as yet we were not: that our substance existed 
 in Him before it existed at all — as we understand 
 existence. Well may we feel the stress put upon 
 our thought as intolerable — but is not the one clear 
 thing this, that for us also Time has no real existence, 
 and a thousand years are as one day? 
 
 In such sayings human thought seems to overleap 
 its own limits, and why? Let two facts, which are 
 common to man, afford us the explanation. The first 
 fact is, that to us the idea of anything without limit is 
 terrible. It is this which lends an aspect of awfulness 
 to the sea — it seems an unbounded immensity. We 
 are easy in our minds when the shore is in sight, or 
 not far away : but who has not been oppressed with a 
 sense of something dreadful and lonely when he has 
 sailed over its central depths, and reflected that those 
 depths are from three to six miles, so that the highest 
 
 90 
 
TIMELESSNESS 
 
 mountain of the earth if dropped into the ocean would 
 be utterly covered and forgotten as though it were a 
 pebble thrown by the hand of a child upon the shore? 
 The same thing affects us, but with increased inten- 
 sity, when we gaze into a telescope, and see not only 
 stars but tremendous chasms of space where no star 
 shines, unlighted voids, the sites as it were of worlds 
 either not yet created, or long since ruined and dis- 
 persed like such cities as Nineveh or Babylon. For 
 the sky has its waste places, its infinitudes, and they 
 are appalling. Looking into the depths of the heav- 
 ens " there is a size," it has been said, " at which dig- 
 nity begins: further on there is a size at which 
 grandeur begins: further on there is a size at which 
 awfulness begins: further on a size at which ghast- 
 liness begins." The imaginative powers confronted 
 with such a spectacle simply bury themselves in the 
 depths of a great horror. But whence this sense of 
 horror? It is the horror of the illimitable. And it 
 is even so we feel about God, when once we have 
 grasped the idea of the illimitableness of God. From 
 everlasting to everlasting Thou art God — it fright- 
 ens us. With God a thousand years as one day — 
 we shrink from the awfulness of the thought and 
 say, How dreadful is this place! How natural is 
 idolatry in the light of such a thought! How much 
 easier to make an image of that which is unthinkable, 
 and worship that — the plain, the tangible, the lim- 
 ited symbol of the illimitable. Was it not because 
 
 91 
 
THE DIVINE CHALLENGE 
 
 idolatry is the natural act of man in the face of the 
 illimitable that God put into the forefront of all 
 His commandments to man this — Thou shalt not 
 make a graven image nor bow down to it — I am 
 that I am — and Me the eternal Present and Near, 
 only shalt thou worship? 
 
 Again, when once we have put a limit to things our 
 minds are at ease. It is something to know the boun- 
 daries, and depths of the ocean — at all events it is 
 less terrible to us than to the Argonauts, and the 
 early voyagers and discoverers, who were the first to 
 break into the silent sea. The horror is gone when 
 we know the limit. It is the same with astronomy. 
 We may take its enormous figures — and tell ourselves 
 that the light moves at the rate of twelve million 
 miles a minute : that the sun and all the solar system 
 is rushing onward to a certain point in the constella- 
 tion of Hercules at the rate of thirty-three million 
 miles a year ; and that it will reach that fixed ter- 
 minus in a little less than two million years. Such 
 figures are almost unthinkable — nevertheless they do 
 not alarm us. And why? Because they are figures 
 — because they put a limit on things. After a while 
 it becomes as easy to say thirty-three millions, as one, 
 two, three. The rest is merely a matter of multipli- 
 cation, and we find peace of mind in our arithmetic. 
 But from everlasting to everlasting — the timeless, 
 the boundless, the illimitable — it is that which ap- 
 pals and frightens us. One day as a thousand years 
 
TIMELESSNE 
 
 — it seems as if the centre of gravity in all our 
 thought were lost — and we are dumb not only with 
 perplexity, but with a nameless awe. 
 
 Here then is the first practical truth on which we 
 may lean. You ask of God a task nearly unthinkable 
 
 — that He shall number the hairs on the head of 
 every human creature, and that no multitudinous 
 sparrow shall fall to the ground without His knowl- 
 edge. You ask really far more than that even ; that 
 not the least creature in all His worlds shall be beyond 
 His cognisance and care. For who can doubt that 
 the innumerous stars we see above us are inhabited? 
 It would be a strange thing indeed if among all these 
 rushing worlds only one, and that the least, had 
 inhabitants. And it would be still more inconceiv- 
 able that if they are inhabited, God cares only for the 
 people of the earth, and neither knows nor cares for 
 anything beyond this one troubled star. In other 
 words, if the very hairs on the heads of men are num- 
 bered, it is a necessity of thought that no less can be 
 said or imagined of the peoples of a million stars, the 
 distant light alone of which is known to us. How 
 can such a task be accomplished? Only by One who 
 is timeless, boundless, illimitable. He might do it — 
 no other. For if there be a limit anywhere with God 
 the whole thought breaks down — I may be outside 
 that limit as truly as the humblest creature of the 
 furthest star, and for all I know I am without it. If 
 God can overlook a world how much easier to overlook 
 
 93 
 
THE DIVINE CHALLENGE 
 
 me ! So then, the one foothold and certainty of faith 
 is in this illimitability of God, and we express not 
 only our own faith, but the faith of all the worlds, 
 when we say, " From everlasting to everlasting — 
 Thou art God ! " This is indeed the creed of the 
 universe, rehearsing which the sons of God shout for 
 joy, and the morning stars sing together. 
 
 But let us turn to another phase of the thought. 
 We have admitted that all our thoughts and concep- 
 tions are governed by the sense of Time: yet do we 
 not find that Timelessness also enters into our own 
 life? There are occasions in all human life, when 
 that strong apocalyptic angel who stands upon the 
 sea and upon the earth — upon the intangible and the 
 tangible, the fluid and the fixed — lifts his hand to 
 heaven, and swears by Him that liveth for ever and 
 ever, that Time shall be no more. What occasions are 
 these? Have we ever known them? Let us name 
 and examine two only. 
 
 First, imagination is Timeless. In the flash of an 
 instant, and the least conceivable fraction of an in- 
 stant, I am with Adam in Eden, I see the waters of 
 the flood, I experience all of the thrill and passion of 
 
 Old, unhappy, far-off things, 
 And battles long ago. 
 
 Light may travel swiftly; but I can outspeed the 
 light. I may talk of centuries — but they are mere 
 forms and conveniences of speech — they mean noth- 
 
 94 
 
TIMELESSNESS 
 
 ing. The scholar lives not in the university of Ox- 
 ford — he lives with Homer in old Greece: the his- 
 torian of the Roman Empire lives not at Lausanne 
 but under the shadow of the Coliseum. Men saw 
 Gibbon writing in that old garden at Lausanne but 
 it was only his corporeal frame they saw — his mind 
 was far away. For the historian, life has no tenses 
 — the imagination has destroyed them. Here, at 
 least, it becomes literally true for all of us that a 
 thousand years are as one day — and that while Time 
 may regulate our clocks, it cannot put the least 
 hindrance on our spirits, or on the life of our minds. 
 In the same way it is true that emotion is Timeless. 
 " It seems but yesterday," says the old man as he talks 
 of his early life : and it is but yesterday, for Time is 
 to him in such a solemn moment of reminiscence, as 
 though it were not. " The pain is as keen to-day as 
 it ever was," says the mourner: undoubtedly, for 
 Time has no jurisdiction over sorrow. It is many 
 years since the mother or the child died: but have 
 years done anything to make the loss less real? Do 
 we not still wake in the night and see it all, feel it all 
 again: the pang of heart with which we read the 
 tragic telegram, the hasty journey, the agony of im- 
 patience, the trembling hand upon the door, the 
 whispered word, the pale face upon the pillow, the 
 dim light, the eyes that met ours in an ineffable 
 yearning — the very smell of sickness, and the merest 
 trifles of the room, such as the watch ticking beside 
 
 95 
 
THE DIVINE CHALLENGE 
 
 the bed, and the text of Scripture on the wall? What 
 has Time to do with such poignant experiences as 
 these? Absolutely nothing. We have passed into 
 the limitless. If we live beyond the earth, we think 
 these things will still live in us. And of this we are 
 sure, that for those who have passed beyond the earth 
 love still lives, and Time and Space are powerless to 
 destroy it. Does not every true lover, for whom love 
 is of the soul, feel and acquiesce in the solemn pathos 
 and faith of the dying Pompilia's speech in Brown- 
 ing's, "Ring and the Book ": 
 
 In heaven we have the real and true, and sure, 
 
 'Tis there they neither marry nor are given 
 
 In marriage but are as the angels: right, 
 
 O how right that is, how like Jesus Christ 
 
 To say that ! . . . 
 
 Be as the angels rather, who, apart, 
 
 Know themselves into one, are found at length 
 
 Married, but marry never, no, nor give 
 
 In marriage. 
 
 So, let him wait, God's instant men call years. 
 
 " God's instant men call years " — that which was, and 
 is and will be — and is not that also saying that with 
 God a thousand years are as one day ; and with us too, 
 when we feel ourselves to be not perishable bodies, 
 but imperishable and immortal spirits? Time does 
 not breathe indeed on the fadeless bloom of this world 
 of the emotions — and it is the angel of love, of death- 
 
 96 
 
TIMELESSNESS 
 
 less tenderness and passion who swears by Him who 
 liveth for ever, that Time shall be no more. 
 
 What is it then that we ascertain by the contempla- 
 tion of such a fact as this ? It is that Time regulates 
 our outer life but it has no power over our mind. It 
 is that whether we recognise it or not there is an 
 immortal part in us, even as the wise writer of Ec- 
 clesiastes said, " also God hath set eternity in the 
 heart of man." It is that beyond all other things we 
 see that love knows nothing of Time — for the love 
 we had for the dead mother or the child we still have 
 — not a pang is lost, not a kiss forgotten : years have 
 altered nothing, for " love is not love that alteration 
 knows." Now see then how things fit in with this 
 truth. What is God? God is love, is the sublime 
 reply. What is love? Love is an emotion without 
 limit ; it knows neither past nor future ; it is an eter- 
 nal Now. 
 
 Do we complain of our insignificance, our distance 
 from God, and the impossibility of God knowing any- 
 thing of us ? Time, distance, space, nearness, f arness, 
 have no existence with God. They have no existence 
 with love. The whole breadth of the world may yawn 
 between us and the one human creature we love best : 
 but it has no effect on our love. Infinite vastness 
 may intrude itself between us and God: it has no 
 effect upon His love. In that eternal Now of the 
 divine love all men are included : nay all creatures are 
 included too: for the saying of Christ is not only 
 
 97 
 
THE DIVINE CHALLENGE 
 
 that the very hairs of our head are all numbered, but 
 that not a sparrow falls to the ground — its tiny 
 song stilled, its infinitesimal spark of life extinguished 
 — without the Father. 
 
 There are many expressions in the Bible which 
 seem to us entirely inscrutable. Thus, when Jesus 
 pronounces the blessing of the faithful servants, He 
 says, " Inherit the Kingdom prepared for you from 
 the foundation of the world" In His great sacra- 
 mental prayer our Lord prays that His disciples may 
 know the love wherewith God loved Him before the 
 foundation of the world, St. Paul speaks of those 
 who were chosen in God before the foundation of the 
 world; and St. John speaks of the Lamb who was 
 slain from the foundation of the world. What can 
 these words mean? Is not this an even more perplex- 
 ing paradox than the Psalmist's when he speaks of his 
 members being fashioned when as yet there were none 
 of them? How can men be loved before they exist, 
 and Christ be slain before He is born? The answer 
 once more is that God is the I Am — the eternal pres- 
 ent tense — the Alpha and Omega, the beginning 
 and the end. There is no to be with God — all is. 
 Past and present run together, and are annihilated 
 in Him. The Cross was from eternity, the love from 
 eternity, and the Lamb is not slain at some period of 
 Time that we can name, but from the foundation of 
 the world. In the eternal day of the Most High 
 there is neither dawn nor night — it is one sacred 
 
 98 
 
TIMELESSNESS 
 
 high eternal noon, and a thousand years are but as 
 one day. 
 
 But this is not all. Think yet again: do we not 
 discover in such expressions the hint of some real 
 correspondence of nature between man and God? 
 To be known, chosen, and loved before the foundation 
 of the world must mean, if it mean anything, that 
 there is something in us that existed before the foun- 
 dation of the world, and will out-last it. For the 
 Psalmist speaks only of his physical frame, his mem- 
 bers as written in the book of God before they were 
 fashioned: what was it God loved in him then in the 
 day when he was not so far as his earthly part was 
 concerned? Manifestly the soul. And there at last 
 we reach the clue which threads the mystery : we were 
 all souls before we were bodies, and we shall still be 
 souls, when our bodies have returned to dust. And 
 for the soul Time does not exist, nor space, nor near- 
 ness, nor f arness : and the love of God to man is the 
 immortal embracing the immortal, that which always 
 was, communing with that which always was and is: 
 the Timeless locked in eternal fellowship with the 
 Timeless. " Thou art from everlasting to everlast- 
 ing — we shall not die " — cried the Hebrew prophet : 
 no, because we also live and move in the everlasting 
 Now of the Highest. O, man, living for nothing 
 beyond the day, seeing all things as bounded by the 
 mean horizon of Time, hear this: thou wert before 
 the foundation of the world, and thou wilt be when 
 
 99 
 
THE DIVINE CHALLENGE 
 
 the world has passed away ! There is no such thing 
 as the horizon — we know well enough that it is a 
 mere optical delusion. That blue rim and edge of 
 the world you think you see is no rim — it is the 
 abyss. Travel toward it — you cannot reach it ; try 
 to touch it — it is not. A mirage, an hallucination 
 only — that is all it is : and Time itself is even such 
 an hallucination. Our life knows abysses but no 
 horizons : our troubled years are but a moment in the 
 everlasting Being: and for us also a thousand years 
 are as one day. 
 
 I admit that language toils in vain to express these 
 things: that they are philosophical truths which al- 
 most exceed comprehension: and if they were only 
 philosophical truths I would not occupy my time or 
 yours in the effort to expound them. Even now some 
 of you may be saying, Why not preach something 
 quite plain and practical, which has a clear and 
 cogent bearing on the daily life of a tired business 
 man? But these are not merely philosophical truths 
 — pray can you tell me of any truth that has so 
 searching, cogent, and practical a bearing on the 
 daily life of the tired man of business as this truth 
 which assures him that he has a soul? For that is 
 just what such a man is most apt to forget. Time 
 governs all his thoughts — Time is money — Time 
 seems a very real horizon imprisoning his energies, 
 and he is apt to become the merest slave and drudge 
 of Time. Who then needs so much to be told that 
 
 100 
 
TIMELESSNESS 
 
 the horizon is not real, that for the soul there is 
 no such thing as Time, and that he has a soul 
 fashioned after the image of God, and loved by God 
 before the foundation of the world? Does it not 
 alter all things to believe that? Can a man who be- 
 lieves it drudge his life out to make money, without 
 a single higher purpose: can he be prayerless, unde- 
 vout, unthinking, grudging to God one poor hour of 
 worship in a week and attending public worship more 
 from habit than from instinct? And besides, have 
 we not already seen that this tremendous thought of 
 man's personal relation to God is the most powerful 
 of all thoughts in shaping character : that it has con- 
 vulsed and regenerated nations : that it has imposed on 
 man a sense of responsibility which has had more to 
 do with the shaping of civilisation than anything 
 else : that it has produced literatures, launched armies, 
 given stability to human government, and again and 
 again, bred the hero of liberty and martyr of truth? 
 We cannot ignore such facts. Tell a man Time is 
 all he has, and dust all he is : and he will behave as the 
 beasts that perish, and even worse than they. Tell 
 him that he is the true child of the Eternal, and all 
 life is altered to him. The horizon of Time has 
 vanished, the heaven is opened to him, and all his life 
 will be lived as in the sight of Him, whose he is, and 
 whom he serves. 
 
 " And, Lo, I am with you always even to the end 
 of the world," says Christ in His sublime farewell 
 
 101 
 
THE DIVINE CHALLENGE 
 
 to His disciples. Once more see how all things fit in 
 with these truths. For Christ thus proclaims Hwi^ 
 self from everlasting to everlasting. In this world 
 to which He came for a season, He also moved within 
 the horizon of Time — and He spake of His hour — 
 " My hour is not jet come " : once beyond it He had 
 reached the realm of the Timeless — no hours — no 
 periods — it is / Am — and it is always. I have al- 
 ready said that there are states of feeling which we 
 all know, and which are outside the jurisdiction of 
 Time. Jesus Himself has provided us with one sacred 
 form of service, the very essence and meaning of 
 which is that it takes us quite outside the limits of 
 Time. At the table of the Lord we pass into Time- 
 lessness by the force of faith and love. Our emotion 
 annihilates the years and centuries, and we go back 
 in the flash of an instant to that guest-chamber where 
 the Redeemer sits, and says : " Do this in remem- 
 brance of Me." Our faith does more: we feel the 
 living embrace, we hear the living voice of Him who 
 is alive for evermore, and we know Him with us in 
 the breaking of bread. He who was slain before the 
 foundation of the world loves us who existed, in the 
 purpose of God, before the foundation of the world. 
 Not only the horizon of Time, but the horizon of 
 sense also has melted away — and there is a Real 
 Presence indeed, and " Spirit with spirit can meet, 
 Closer is He than breathing, and nearer than hands 
 and feet." Child of Time and earth, draw near, and 
 
 102 
 
TIMELESSNESS 
 
 know thyself for what thou art — the child of God, 
 loved from the foundation of the world with an ever- 
 lasting love. Know thy Saviour for what He is — 
 slain for thee, and with thee in the undying life of 
 the Spirit, always, to the end of the world. Know 
 the Spirit of God the Comforter as thine : the breath 
 of the Eternal perpetually breathed into thy spirit, 
 and renewing it. And, knowing all this, join in the 
 great Antiphon of faith and praise — love and adora- 
 tion: 
 
 Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the 
 Holy Ghost. As it was in the beginning, is now and 
 ever shall be, world without end. Amen. 
 
 103 
 
GOD'S POEMS 
 
VI 
 GOD'S POEMS 
 
 "For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto 
 good works, which God hath before ordained that we should 
 walk in them."— Eph. ii. 10. 
 
 THE contention of Paul in this passage is that 
 men and women are not the sole architects of 
 their own characters — the Supreme Architect who 
 works upon them is God. We are saved by grace 
 — by a long series of Divine interpositions, by 
 Heavenly compulsions and impulsions, by the energies 
 of a ceaseless Hand that works upon us and brings 
 out the Heavenly design, and completes the Divine 
 symmetry. Is there any one of us who has not made 
 that discovery? Are there not moments when the 
 most self-reliant of us is made to feel that he is in 
 the hand of God, that all our purposes in life and 
 really noble efforts after completeness of character 
 are touched with a humbling inefficiency — that, in 
 fact, anything of goodness in us is not a rare plant 
 that we have brought to birth, but the flower of a 
 rare seed that an unseen hand has sown in us, and 
 nurtured? It is easy, of course, to turn such a 
 thought into folly. Human nature is, unfortunately, 
 
 107 
 
THE DIVINE CHALLENGE 
 
 so constituted that very few minds are capable of 
 seeing both sides of a truth. Thus it happens that 
 those who cling most to the consoling thought of 
 a gospel of pure grace often neglect the equally bind- 
 ing gospel of a ceaseless struggle after goodness. 
 And again, the good people who build up a life of 
 flawless honour, integrity, and virtue, often find, 
 because they have not learned to need it, a gospel 
 of grace incomprehensible. Yet both are true, just 
 as it is true that a ship depends for its movement 
 equally on the men who work the pulleys and the 
 wind that fills the sails. So we work out our own 
 salvation; but we wait the Divine wind, that blows 
 as it listeth, and we move to no heavenly shores till 
 the wind comes out of the waste heaven, and God 
 touches us. For it is by grace, by a Divine inter- 
 ference, that we are saved; nor is there salvation 
 possible without it. 
 
 I do not often dwell upon this mystic side of re- 
 ligion, because, as I conceive the spirit of modern 
 life, few of us are able to bear it. We are tempted 
 by so many tendencies of modern life to indifference 
 in religion that our natural spiritual indolence would 
 only be increased tenfold by the doctrine that salva- 
 tion is all achieved for us. In the age of monas- 
 ticism, when men and women were seeking to work 
 out their salvation by endless acts of penance, charity, 
 self-renunciation, and ritual obedience, it was a great 
 spiritual discovery to tell men they were saved not 
 
 108 
 
GOD'S POEMS 
 
 of themselves, but by the overwhelming interposition 
 of God. Such a truth, as it was uttered by Luther, 
 marked the hour of daybreak in Europe; as it was 
 uttered later on by Wesley, resulted in the resurgence 
 of all the deep springs of spiritual life which had 
 been sealed for many generations in England. It 
 was this supreme truth that converted both Luther 
 and Wesley, and the one rose from Pilate's staircase 
 in Rome with the dawn upon his brow, as a man 
 enfranchised of a new world: the other in Aldersgate 
 Street in half-an-hour cast the husk of twenty years 
 of ritualism, and emerged into unbounded spiritual 
 liberty. For us also to grasp this truth is life. Yet 
 so ill-balanced and frail of judgment are we that 
 there is only too much peril of wresting such a truth 
 to our destruction. Rather for us the most nec- 
 essary truth to-day is that goodness can only be 
 found by effort, that the Kingdom of Heaven suf- 
 fereth violence, that God will not save us by any 
 spiritual necromancy, that if we are not prepared 
 to be as earnest over religion as we are over our 
 worldly affairs, there is no religion and no salvation 
 for us. When men are seeking to be saved by a 
 wrong method, yet are in deadly and consuming 
 earnest over it, as men were when they left all to go 
 on painful pilgrimages to the shrines of saints, it 
 is time to say, " Poor soul, look up. You will never 
 save yourself; but Christ saves you, and all out of 
 free grace." But when men take no count of re- 
 
 109 
 
THE DIVINE CHALLENGE 
 
 ligion, beyond giving it two or three indolent hours 
 on the Sunday: when they care far more for a rise 
 in stocks or a turn in the market than for Heaven 
 or Hell, it would be folly to foster their indifference 
 by saying, " You need do nothing to be saved ; you 
 are saved by grace." And it would be untrue to 
 say it. There is much that we must do before we 
 can hear the voice which assures us that there is a 
 gospel of grace that makes good our deficiencies and 
 does for us what we could not do for ourselves. It 
 is only when we have fulfilled the gospel of works 
 that we have any right to comfort ourselves with the 
 gospel of grace, for it is only then that we can re- 
 ceive it without injury, and rest in God for final 
 salvation because we are co-workers with God in 
 achieving our redemption. 
 
 But the beauty and suggestiveness of this passage 
 lies in the use of a single word which is altogether 
 inadequately rendered in our version. Translators 
 and scholars are seldom men of imagination, and 
 when a fine word is given them, as is the case here, 
 they usually fail to use it — fail for lack of imag- 
 ination. We are His workmanship, His handicraft: 
 it is a good enough word, but is not Paul's word. 
 Paul's word is we are His Poems. Now what is a 
 poem? It is the finest flower of the finest mind. It 
 is only once or twice in a century that Nature is able 
 to pro'duce the mind which has such a happy equi- 
 poise of faculty that its expression is poetry. It is 
 
 110 
 
GOD'S POEMS 
 
 only now and again that even a great poet produces 
 a true poem, which enters into the mind and memory 
 of the world. Biographers of Wordsworth have 
 marked the exact period when his genius reached its 
 height, and after that the glory came only at inter- 
 vals, and the real poems were rare. And because a 
 true poem is so rare a thing, it has always been ap- 
 praised as the highest form of literature. Many 
 great books come — and go, but a true poem is as 
 fresh after long centuries as when it was first written. 
 " Poesy never waxeth old," and knows no decay. It 
 knows no decay because it is permeated with the spirit 
 of beauty: because it is the enduring monument of 
 a combination of fine gifts, whose final result is a 
 thing of beauty and a joy for ever. That is what 
 a poem is, and St. Paul says that we are the expres- 
 sion of the mind of God, as the In Memoriarn is the 
 expression of the full mind and heart of Tennyson: 
 We are God's Poems, 
 
 But this very comparison opens another depth of 
 thought. Suppose Paul had said — We are God's 
 histories. That would have been equally true, for 
 God has written Himself upon the tablets of empire 
 and the fields of battle where human history is made. 
 But there is this difference between a poem and a 
 history : the one is the personal expression of a man's 
 soul; the other is simply the work of a man's mind. 
 The historian is not required to express himself; on 
 the contrary, he is required to leave himself out of 
 
 111 
 
THE DIVINE CHALLENGE 
 
 the question, that he may write his history with an 
 unbiassed vision. But the poem depends entirely upon 
 the poet for its creation. It is the unveiling of the 
 deepest and most intimate secrecies of his heart. 
 His own image is projected over every page, and 
 it is the poignant personal element in poetry that 
 makes it so beautiful, and gives it its enduring 
 charm. Men, then, are God's Poems. The intima- 
 cies of God's heart are expressed in man : God's high- 
 est thoughts, God's deepest emotions. The prayer 
 of Moses was that the beauty of God might rest upon 
 him ; when a man is finished at last in the likeness 
 of Christ, God's sense of beauty is satisfied in him, 
 God's art has found its finest expression and the 
 beauty of God does rest upon him. The true Chris- 
 tian is God's Poem in a world of prose; God's beauty 
 in a world of gloom: God's fine and finished art, in 
 a world where men forget beauty, and are careless 
 of moral symmetry and spiritual grace. 
 
 There are two directions in which we catch some 
 glimpse of these truths : we can readily believe that 
 little children are God's Poems, and that in the life 
 which completes itself in moral unity, there is a touch 
 of Divine poetry. Childhood is itself the poetry of 
 life, and many a man whose soul has been thrilled 
 with the charm of little children, has said with Long- 
 fellow : — 
 
 You are better than all the ballads 
 That ever were sung or said, 
 112 
 
GOD'S POEMS 
 
 For you are the living poems 
 And all the rest are dead. 
 
 If God indeed looks down on earth and smiles, chil- 
 dren are His smiles ; if He indeed is a Poet, these 
 are His Poems. And so, also, when we see the rare 
 spectacle of a life that from first to last is governed 
 by high thoughts, moves on a high level, is held to- 
 gether by a noble unity of design and effort, we can 
 see that this life is like a gleam of noble poetry on 
 the dull page of life. Look then at these things, 
 and you will understand Paul's words — We are 
 God's Poems. Christianity gives back to life its 
 first fresh childlikeness, and says we must be as little 
 children; it gives the fine unity of the noblest aim to 
 the life that obeys its mandate. Christ works out 
 by His indwelling the image of true beauty in us, 
 so that, at the last, we move through the throngs of 
 men with a light that never was on sea or land upon 
 us, a charm akin to the exquisite and indefinable 
 charm of poetry, for in truth we have become God's 
 Poems, and are the thought of God interpreted in 
 human forms. 
 
 But not only in the child, and in the life that 
 manifests a real and noble unity, do we gather the 
 suggestion of this passage; have we not also seen 
 the concrete examples of what is meant in men and 
 women we have known? When Carlyle describes 
 Elizabeth Fry standing fair as a lily, in pure woman- 
 liness, amid the abominable sights of old Newgate; 
 
 113 
 
THE DIVINE CHALLENGE 
 
 or Longfellow describes Florence Nightingale moving 
 with her lamp among the wounded at Scutari — 
 
 And slow, as in a dream of bliss 
 The speechless sufferer turns to kiss 
 Her shadow, as it falls 
 Along the darkening walls — 
 
 what is the effect on the mind? It is the effect 
 of poetry. We feel touched, purged, exalted: we 
 know that these women were in truth God's Poems. 
 And there are men and women in the world still who 
 touch the soul by the same Divine magic. We feel 
 better for having seen them ; the air is sweetened when 
 they come; the mind finds joy in them, and the 
 heart is rested. When a man like this enters the home 
 of sorrow, the sunshine comes in with him ; when such 
 a woman enters a room full of vain, worldly, and 
 frivolous people, the range of thought is instantly 
 raised, and the whole atmosphere of the room is 
 purged and freshened. God's poetry has interrupted 
 for a time the prose of life. We have felt as though 
 a shining presence had been with us, and our poor 
 sordid pleasure-seeking life has felt strangely mean 
 to us. That is precisely the effect of poetry, it lifts 
 us into a higher world ; that also is the effect of the 
 man or woman in whom Christ dwells — they make 
 the poetry of life and move through the world to the 
 sound of far-off music, that floats in wind-borne 
 harmonies into the hearts of the least sensitive. 
 
 114 
 
GOD'S POEMS 
 
 There is no more difficulty in recognising these living 
 poems than there is in feeling the difference between 
 poetry and prose. Jesus Christ was God's great and 
 perfect Poem, and He sets the standard of perfec- 
 tion ; and as we are like Him, so do we reach a higher 
 image and become the Poems of God. 
 
 And so we touch a yet deeper truth — the God 
 who wrought the perfect Poem of Jesus Christ is 
 still creating and finishing His Poems — not copies, 
 mark you ; not mere echoes, but new Poems — com- 
 plete and individual, though all conforming to the 
 type of beauty Christ has given us. The usual, be- 
 cause the easiest, way of preaching Christ is to preach 
 Him as an example, and to tell men to copy Him. 
 It is right as far as it goes, but it does not go far 
 enough. We need to copy Christ, to compare our 
 conduct with His, to measure our motive by His 
 ideal; and even John Stuart Mill said there was no 
 finer law of conduct than to ask how Christ would 
 have acted and spoken in any difficult set of circum- 
 stances which we may encounter. But does the man 
 who copies Raphael become a Raphael? Does the 
 man who moulds his music on the Tennysonian melody 
 become a Tennyson? Where in art or letters do we 
 find the copyist ever treated with respect? By what 
 is art or poetry richer for the laborious copies of 
 Raphael or Rubens, or the slavish echoes of Eliza- 
 bethan or Tennysonian poetry, which have filled the 
 reams of unsold books, or acres of unmarketable can- 
 
 115 
 
THE DIVINE CHALLENGE 
 
 vas? And neither is it the end of Christianity to 
 fill the world with weak copies of Christ. The phon- 
 ograph can retain the inflections of the human voice, 
 and reproduce them, but after all it is not the human 
 voice. To hear Bryan speak or Nordica sing is a 
 very different thing from hearing the thin reduplica- 
 tion and echo of their voices through the phonograph. 
 It may be claimed that the echo is exact ; that inflec- 
 tion by inflection, it utters the very words that elo- 
 quent or lyric lips have uttered; but one word from 
 the living lip is worth all that the phonograph can 
 ever give us. No ; Christianity aims at nothing less 
 than to make us new and living Christs in this world 
 of the twentieth century, spreading the same influence, 
 living in the same temper, ready to suffer and die 
 in the same spirit as Jesus did centuries ago in Pales- 
 tine. It claims not to make copies but creations. 
 It claims not to stamp new patterns on old cloth, 
 but to make all things new. It does not merely 
 change a man, it transforms him into a new image. 
 It produces not slavish echoes of the great poetry 
 of Christ, but Poems — men and women in whom 
 again God utters Himself, and expresses His infinite 
 Art. 
 
 Let us then gather up the practical lessons of the 
 thought. 
 
 And the first is that such a magnificent conception 
 of what a man may be should be at once a restraint 
 
 116 
 
GOD'S POEMS 
 
 and impulse to us. Who can think meanly of life 
 or of himself with such a phrase ringing in his mind? 
 And the commonest temptation of life, especially in 
 great cities, is not to think too highly of ourselves 
 but too meanly. We are likelier to perish by 
 despondence than by pride, by self-contempt than 
 vanity. We are daily tempted by the very multitu- 
 dinousness of life to think poorly of our own oppor- 
 tunities, to tell ourselves that great ideals are not 
 possible for such as we are, that the heights are out 
 of reach, that for us the poetry of life is a closed 
 book, a denied and forfeited delight. And when men 
 think thus, what wonder is it that they act poorly? 
 What marvel that they permit the growth of narrow- 
 ness and poor-spiritedness in themselves, that they 
 learn to do mean things and tread in sordid ways, 
 that they cease to care anything for the dignity of 
 life, and in mind and morals become slovenly and 
 careless, till last of all they fall out of the range 
 of the wisest and best voices, and hear them no more, 
 nor regret their loss? It is in such hours we need 
 to remind ourselves of the dignity of life, and that 
 man was at first, and still may be, God's Poem. We 
 all know how Carlyle vituperated at what he called 
 Darwin's " gorilla damnifications of humanity," and 
 ethically he was right. Man does not need to be told 
 of the depth from which he has sprung, but of the 
 height to which he may reach. He needs to hear less 
 of the descent of man and more of the ascent of 
 
 117 
 
THE DIVINE CHALLENGE 
 
 man through Jesus Christ. When you are tempted 
 to let your ideals of youth slip out of sight, to give 
 up the pursuit of excellence and turn from the dif- 
 ficult path that leads to life, to take a poor mean- 
 spirited view of life and live in accordance with it, 
 here then is your sovereign remedy; look to Christ 
 and see what He was, how He lived, what He is to 
 the world to-day, and remember that you, too, may 
 be a Poem of God, created in Christ Jesus unto good 
 works. 
 
 To do this will also help you to think well of all 
 men. There are many men in the world who are illeg- 
 ible poems — illegible to us who can see no element 
 of God's poetry in them, yet not one of them is 
 utterly without the faint outlines of God's intention 
 visible in him. To us the early Saxon poetry is 
 practically unintelligible; but when a scholar takes 
 it up, and fits piece to piece, and finds the sequence 
 of thought and rhythm, it becomes at once noble 
 poetry, the force and fulness of which all can feel. 
 Let us think of our brother man in the same spirit. 
 Nay, more, let us think of the world itself as a 
 Poem that is still being written, and which will at 
 the last be worthy of the art of God. Hope for our- 
 selves ; Hope for our brother man ; Hope for the 
 world ; that is the true Christian spirit. Believe that 
 God's will is being done; that He is still working in 
 the world; that He must conquer; that every day 
 
 118 
 
GOD'S POEMS 
 
 is really bringing us nearer to the new earth wherein 
 dwelleth righteousness. 
 
 More than once in those long nights I spent on 
 the Atlantic, I went on deck when all was still, and 
 felt how insignificant a thing was man, in all that 
 lonely immensity of sea and sky. There was no 
 sound save the cry of the wind among the spars, the 
 throb of the great engines, the sound of the many 
 waters rushing round the vessel's keel. I felt the 
 mystery of life ; I was conscious of " the whisper and 
 moan and wonder and diapason of the sea." And 
 then out of the stillness there came a voice, clear and 
 ringing — the voice of the man on the look-out cry- 
 ing to the night, " All's well, and the lights burn 
 bright ! All's well, and the lights burn bright ! " 
 How did I know all was well? What knew I of the 
 forces that were bridled in the mysterious throbbing 
 heart of those unceasing engines, of the peril that 
 glared on me in the breaking wave, or lay hidden 
 in the dark cloud that lay along the horizon? I 
 knew nothing; but the voice went sounding on over 
 the sea : "All's well, and the lights burn bright ! " 
 And the wind carried it away across the waters, and 
 it palpitated round the world, and it went up soaring 
 and trembling, in ever fainter reverberations, among 
 the stars. So I stand for a little while amid great 
 forces of which I know little ; but I am not alone 
 in the empty night. The world moves on to some 
 appointed goal, though by what paths I know not; 
 
 119 
 
THE DIVINE CHALLENGE 
 
 it has its Steersman, and it will arrive. And, amid 
 the loneliness and mystery, the peril and uncertainty, 
 I have learned to hear a Voice that cries, " All's 
 well ! " and tells me why all is well ; it is the Voice of 
 Christ saying, " Lo, I am with you always, even to 
 the end of the world." God has not left His world. 
 He is working out His supreme Art in it every day, 
 and if we be true Christians we are God's Poems 
 wrought in Christ Jesus unto good works. 
 
 120 
 
ELIJAH'S LONELINESS 
 
VII 
 
 ELIJAH'S LONELINESS 
 
 "And he said, I have been very jealous for the Lord God of 
 hosts: for the children of Israel have forsaken thy covenant, 
 thrown down thine altars, and slain thy prophets with the 
 sword; and I, even I only, am left; and they seek my life to 
 take it away." — I Kings xix. 10. 
 
 IN the lives of all great men there come hours 
 of spiritual crisis, which are often inexplicable 
 in their origin and tragic in their results. Brave 
 men are swept away by sudden tides of cowardice, 
 heroic men know the ignominy of fear and the agony 
 of despondence. No character is built upon quite 
 simple lines: often it is the coherence of antagonistic 
 tendencies — as we see in John, who was the apostle 
 of love and yet is the very type of intolerance; of 
 Peter, who is the bravest of the brave, and yet was 
 thrice a coward and a liar. We are all conscious, 
 if we take any care to observe ourselves, of sudden 
 lowerings of spiritual temperature, of nameless move- 
 ments in our own hearts, out of which, as out of the 
 stirring of a wind, comes a gray cloud that spreads 
 itself over the firmament of life. It is such an hour 
 in the life of Elijah. The passion and excitement 
 
 123 
 
THE DIVINE CHALLENGE 
 
 of the great scene on Carmel have passed away. The 
 re-action is upon him. He is fugitive and foodless, 
 and the faintness of despair spreads itself through 
 his heart. He magnifies his own sensations till every 
 detail stands out in gigantic emphasis: he is alone 
 on the side of right, and the whole world is leagued 
 against him. Do not we in the same manner, in our 
 hours of despondence, set out all our feelings, our 
 failures, our broken ambitions in the same gigantic 
 array, till we persuade ourselves that none have drunk 
 as bitter cups as we, none have been so hardly used, 
 so little valued, so unjustly scorned! We even per- 
 suade ourselves that death is sweet, and with a bitter 
 daring we call on the last hour to come and put an 
 end to us. The keynote of such a condition is an 
 exaggerated egoism : it is only in such hours of hurt 
 vanity, and wounded pride, that we cry — " O Lord, 
 take away my life, for I am not better than my 
 fathers." 
 
 But if we look a little closer we shall see that there 
 is something more than hurt egoism here, and some- 
 thing deeper. What is this sorrow that weighs so 
 heavily on so great a heart as Elijah's, that he calls 
 for the angel of the last hour to give him ease? It 
 is the sorrow of an overwhelming loneliness, it is such 
 a loneliness as Shelley has pictured in immortal verse : 
 
 Alas, I have nor hope, nor health, 
 Nor peace within, nor calm around, 
 Nor that content surpassing wealth, 
 1U 
 
ELIJAH'S LONELINESS 
 
 The sage in meditation found, 
 
 And walked with inward glory crowned. 
 
 Nor fame, nor power, nor love, nor leisure, 
 
 Others I see whom these surround, 
 
 Smiling they live, and call life pleasure, 
 
 To me that cup has been dealt in another measure ; 
 
 I could lie down like a tired child, 
 
 And weep away the life of care, 
 
 Which I have borne, and yet must bear. 
 
 It is the sense that no one sympathises with our deep- 
 est thoughts, that our ideals are not the ideals of the 
 world, that our best actions are misconstrued, our 
 best gifts fail equally of recognition and reward. 
 Life is not dealt in this measure to others — this is 
 the bitterness of it. Ahab and Jezebel and the care- 
 less and sensual crowd who gather in the flower- 
 decked temples of Baal find a joy in life which is 
 denied to you. Thousands of people pass you in 
 the street who find restfulness even in the dulness of 
 their lives, because they have no aims beyond the 
 satisfaction of the meanest desires. You would fain 
 do great things for the world, and you can do noth- 
 ing. You follow the gleam of a vision others do not 
 see; or hear of, only to deride. You do not even 
 gain the vision yourself — it is but a troublous 
 glimpse, as of a star swimming for an instant into 
 a little lake of blue between heavy clouds. What is 
 the use of trying? O Lord, take away my life, for 
 I am not better than my fathers ! Every man who 
 
 125 
 
THE DIVINE CHALLENGE 
 
 aspires after high things feels thus: if we have not 
 felt it, it is because we have never known such aspi- 
 ration. 
 
 Loneliness is the commonest of all human miseries, 
 and if we are to understand this phase of Elijah's 
 life, and the cure of it, let us begin by admitting this 
 fact. In the plainest sense of the word we are lonely, 
 and cannot be otherwise. Those who know and love 
 us best know not half the reasons why we sigh or 
 smile. Men and women may live together in what 
 seems the closest intimacy for years, and yet keep 
 within their hearts reserved and barriered chambers 
 to which neither has the key. Children may grow up 
 in a home, and yet be utterly alien in the deeper 
 things of the spirit. Our life may be spent among 
 crowds, and yet the vast silence which encloses the 
 heart may never once be broken. For many of us 
 the effort to explain ourselves is impossible ; when we 
 would fain speak a fatal reticence seals our lips, and 
 the golden hour passes and never comes again. For 
 others among us the golden hour never strikes. As 
 life passes out of that season when confidences are 
 most easily exchanged, we are more and more driven 
 back upon ourselves. It pains us to see the ease 
 with which others seem to find an apparent unity of 
 life, because for us it seems always out of reach. 
 Have we not all felt how true this is ? Do I, who am 
 your friend and minister, know your lives — your 
 real inward lives — in any but the most superficial 
 
 126 
 
ELIJAH'S LONELINESS 
 
 way? Do you know mine? Is not every word of 
 comfort or counsel uttered from the pulpit a bow 
 drawn at a venture, for who can tell where is the 
 heart to whom it appeals ? Like ships at sea we meet 
 and pass and exchange greeting — and then sail out 
 again upon the lonely waters — nor can all the ships 
 upon the sea ever make those waters other than a 
 far-stretched loneliness. Far away we sail, meeting 
 for a moment, and then dipping downward toward 
 opposite horizons, and unplumbed seas roll between 
 us. This is one of the conditions of life — keenly 
 felt by some, less keenly by others — but in some 
 degree even by the most thoughtless, and perhaps 
 most keenly by those of whom we suspect it least. 
 
 Now with Elijah this loneliness has two forms: it 
 is the loneliness of being misunderstood — and equally 
 of misunderstanding. He has the consciousness of 
 having acted rightly, nobly, heroically — and of 
 having failed. He knows himself to possess the only 
 true clue of life. Far from the false and fevered 
 life of courts and cities, he has nourished his soul in 
 strenuous simplicity of thought and righteousness of 
 conduct. He would fain have all Israel in corre- 
 spondence with his ideal. He is absolutely sure that 
 the one path of national happiness is that to which 
 he points, and he cannot understand that what is so 
 obvious to him, should be so incomprehensible to 
 others. Every man who aims at the reform of so- 
 ciety has to endure this bitterness. The youth who 
 
 127 
 
THE DIVINE CHALLENGE 
 
 tries to live a life of chivalry and purity in the office : 
 the merchant who cares more for honour than for 
 gain: the statesman who is determined to steer a 
 straight course in opposition to the casuistries of 
 party interest: the social reformer who has mastered 
 the right principles of social betterment, and is de- 
 termined to apply them — all feel this pain of being 
 misunderstood. It amazes and hurts them beyond 
 measure to find that the world not merely does not 
 believe in their ideals, but believes still less in their 
 own purity of aim. The higher they climb the deeper 
 is the loneliness which encompasses them, and it is 
 with a shock that they discover that few or none 
 follow them, till at the foot of some last inaccessible 
 summit, on which a desolate and unanswering serenity 
 dwells, they fall and cry — " Lord, take away my 
 life ; what am I better than my fathers ? " 
 
 But this loneliness is equally the loneliness of mis- 
 understanding. Elijah completely underrates his own 
 work and influence. He says that he alone serves 
 the Lord — it is not true. There are seven thousand 
 quiet and unknown souls who serve Him too, and who 
 have not bowed to Baal. The influence of a man like 
 Elijah travels in the atmosphere. His words are 
 flashed by a sudden spiritual telepathy upon a thou- 
 sand ears, of which he knows nothing. You can 
 count heads, you can tabulate numbers, but you can- 
 not reckon influences. The lifting of a hand, the 
 breathing of a word, reports itself on waves of im- 
 
 128 
 
ELIJAH'S LONELINESS 
 
 perceptible vibration to the furthest stars, and can 
 a moral influence like Elijah's fail to touch men? 
 Here and there a man says to the speaker of a truth, 
 or the writer of a book, Sir, you have blessed me: 
 but how many have received the same message and 
 the same blessing and said nothing? Is it not true 
 that the men who have seemed to fail have often been 
 the only men in a generation who have really suc- 
 ceeded? John Keats, dying young, poor, and derided 
 in Rome, thought that he had failed, and said his 
 name was written in water : we know that it was writ- 
 ten in adamant, and that he ranks with the immortals. 
 Robertson of Brighton, dying in the prime of man- 
 hood, after a relatively obscure and bitterly mis- 
 understood ministry, seemed to have failed: we know 
 to-day that his sermons have touched the very springs 
 of modern life, and have affected the teaching of the 
 pulpit as perhaps no others ever have. Years after 
 the death of Robertson, a Brighton tradesman said 
 that whenever he was tempted to any underhand trick 
 or lying compromise in business, he went into the 
 little room behind his shop, and looked at Robertson's 
 portrait and then felt he could not do it. Can any 
 man be said to have failed who can produce this feel- 
 ing in another man? The fact is, truth and good- 
 ness never fail, and there is more truth and goodness 
 in the world than we suppose. The best influences 
 of a good man's life are never known to him: if 
 they were he could not say, " I, even I only, am left 
 
 129 
 
THE DIVINE CHALLENGE 
 
 a prophet of the Lord," for his ears would be filled 
 with the march music of that innumerable army who 
 throughout the world fear God and work righteous- 
 ness, and are his faithful comrades and eternal broth- 
 ers in arms. 
 
 i 
 
 Elijah was presently to learn this lesson, but be- 
 fore he learned it he was to pass through a great 
 experience. At this point all that we see is this 
 gaunt and tragic figure in the desert — the strong 
 man weak, the hero unmanned, lonely with so vast 
 a loneliness that his mouth is full of reproach, his 
 heart of bitterness. What was that experience? In 
 what way did he discover the cure of loneliness? 
 God calls him forth to look upon a great and ter- 
 rible sight, and through the symbols of that vision 
 we may find our way to the cure, as Elijah did. Now 
 the essence of this vision is that it is a series of pro- 
 posed cures for loneliness, each of which fails, until 
 we reach the last. 
 
 First of all, freedom is suggested as a cure for 
 loneliness. As Elijah stands in the mouth of the 
 cave, and looks out, a great and strong wind rises 
 and rends the mountains: and this we may take as 
 the symbol of freedom. The mighty wind that beats 
 over land and sea breathes the very spirit of liberty. 
 It calls to the lonely man, and says, " Come, share 
 the liberty of my life: travel forth with me: go out 
 on your world-wandering with me: and in the thrill 
 of speed and movement all loneliness of soul will be 
 
 130 
 
ELIJAH'S LONELINESS 
 
 charmed away." That cry rings through all the 
 movements of our time. Men who are lonely because 
 they cannot find God, because truth eludes them, be- 
 cause impracticable ideals torture them, are told to 
 claim the freedom of the earth, and leave a diseased 
 society to heal itself. 
 
 The days are dark and cold, and the skies are gray 
 
 and old, 
 And the twice-breathed air blows damp : 
 You have heard the beat of the off-shore wind, 
 And the thresh of the deep sea rain, 
 You have heard the song, how long, how long, 
 Put out on the trail again. 
 
 And who that is not wholly deadened in heart does 
 not sometimes thrill to the appeal? Why toil for a 
 society that does not seek to understand you, and will 
 not love you? Life is short, and the joy of life is 
 shorter than life. In a few years the stiffness and 
 rigidity of age will creep over thought and impulse, 
 and the days will come when we say we have no 
 pleasure in them. So the wind thunders by, and calls 
 to the lonely man, and it is as though all the trumpets 
 of liberty blew, and the hard task drops from the 
 hands at the sound, and the man in the cave's mouth 
 stretches forward, as though he would beat out his 
 way into that primeval freedom where there is no 
 quest of truth, no burden of duty, no torturing ideals 
 — but one thought arrests him — God is not in the 
 
 131 
 
THE DIVINE CHALLENGE 
 
 wind. Liberty without God, what cure is there in 
 that for the soul of man? No, let the wind thunder 
 past, until at last it dies away, far off in the hollows 
 of the night — there is no cure here — for God is not 
 in the wind. 
 
 This truth is clear and manifest enough, if we 
 think of it, but how slow we are to learn it. For 
 does it not all lie in this, that we cannot fly from 
 ourselves? Merlin, as he wanders in the enchanted 
 forest of the Arthurian legend, is free — in a sense, 
 indeed: but in no real sense. And why? Because 
 " he is crushed and haunted, and vexed for ever by 
 dim, unappeasable shadows of doom — whispers of 
 the inexpiable, the irretrievable, the gone, the lost, 
 the harvest passed, the summer ended ! " In other 
 words, he is haunted by himself. No man ever yet 
 found anything but sorrow in flying from a duty. 
 Emigration is no cure for heartache. We have to 
 live with ourselves, whatever stars shine over us, and 
 the man who lives with a dishonoured self, lives with 
 misery. No: such revolt as this is no gain. The 
 man in the cave's mouth may well draw his mantle 
 over his head and turn away, for God is not in the 
 wind. 
 
 And after the wind there came an earthquake — 
 of what is this the symbol? May it not stand for 
 that violence of action, that whirl of things, which 
 always attracts the lonely man and promises to cure 
 his grief? The kingdoms of the earth are always 
 
 132 
 
ELIJAH'S LONELINESS 
 
 being shaken, social edifices are falling, shocks and 
 changes are running through the nations, and amid 
 the confusion there is an endless opportunity for 
 ambition. The earthquake is even now shaking the 
 throne of Ahab, and why should not a man of 
 Elijah's force and courage seize that throne? The 
 shaking of the old kingdoms always gives a chance 
 to the ambitious man: it is the opportunity of Na- 
 poleon, and on the ruins of the earthquake which 
 overwhelmed Europe, he builds his power. And for 
 us, in lesser measure, the same vision is set. We can 
 give up troublesome ideals and live for self. Amid 
 the crash of other people's fortunes we can seize the 
 chance to make our own. We need not even be 
 sordid or meanly ambitious: we may find our lure in 
 the power that comes to ability, amid the shif tings 
 and uncertainties of society. Again the man in the 
 cave's mouth looks out, and sees the shock run along 
 the hills and shatter them, and feels the vast vibration 
 like a wave beneath his feet, that lifts him onward 
 and outward to a great career of power, of pride, 
 of fame, but once more the thought arrests him — 
 God is not in the earthquake. Such a life might fill 
 the heart with noise; never with peace. It might 
 drown thought, it could not uplift it. It might 
 drive loneliness away in its merely superficial forms, 
 but it would leave the heart emptier, lonelier, more 
 isolated than ever. The seismic wave subsides be- 
 neath his feet, and once more he draws his mantle 
 
 133 
 
THE DIVINE CHALLENGE 
 
 over his brows, and says, No. Here also is no cure 
 — God is not in the earthquake. 
 
 And after the earthquake came a -fire: the storm 
 followed, and the live lightning leapt from crag to 
 crag, and the whole body of the heavens became 
 a mass of flame and splendour. It was the spec- 
 tacle of the greatness and grandeur of Nature. 
 Who is Elijah, who and what is any man in the 
 presence of that elemental majesty? How small 
 and vain all our poor earthly contentions seem 
 when the silence of the stars, the diapason of the 
 thunder, the rush of the tempest fills our imagi- 
 nation! We ask our little questions but there is 
 no reply; there is even the suspicion of ghostly 
 laughter in that hollow whisper of the night, of 
 contempt in that tremendous voice of the thunder. 
 In that vast battle of the heavens, man and all his 
 petty armaments are overwhelmed; Ahab and Elijah 
 are forgotten, Baal and Jezebel are words without 
 significance. And this also we have felt, and to 
 the man of grieved and lonely heart, Nature is 
 proposed to-day, as she has always been, as the 
 great mother who alone can heal us. Yet when 
 have we ever found it so? To the finer sense there 
 is indeed a species of communion with Nature, but 
 it is loneliness answering loneliness not healing it. 
 Wordsworth, more than any other man, sought that 
 communion and found it, but even with him the 
 cure was only partial, but he tells us — * 
 
 134 
 
ELIJAH'S LONELINESS 
 
 Me, this unchartered freedom tires, 
 I feel the weight of chance desires. 
 
 Byron sought it, when he fled from the devastating 
 passions of London to the icy stillness of the Alps, 
 but of him it is said — 
 
 No hush fell on him, where the might 
 Of snow-capped peaks in solitude 
 Taught greater souls serenity: 
 Ah, vain his flight who flees from good. 
 Until man from himself can fly 
 What ease comes to him in his flight? 
 
 If indeed Nature can cure the lonely heart, why 
 was not Elijah cured, for in the desert he was alone 
 with Nature in its wildest forms of beauty and deso- 
 lation? Yet can we not fancy this man once more 
 bending forth from the cave's mouth, thrilled and 
 dazzled by the splendour of the storm, thinking 
 within himself that here in this cave he may find 
 a rest — that here he can dwell content and secure 
 in the lap of Nature, and share her calm, and 
 rejoice in her terrors, and leave Ahab and all the 
 vain world forevermore alone? But again the 
 thought arrests him — God is not in the storm. No, 
 man wants something more than beauty and mag- 
 nificence to fill his heart. He needs duties, love, 
 truth — the certainty and the manifestation of God ; 
 and the heavens burn in yet more blinding splendour, 
 
 135 
 
THE DIVINE CHALLENGE 
 
 and the thunder rolls in yet nearer magnificence — 
 but God is not m the fire! 
 
 And then at last a thing strange and wonderful 
 happened — the wind, the earthquake, the thunder 
 all pass, and a thrilling silence fills the desert. 
 Earth and sky are hushed into deepest calm, ex- 
 hausted by the passage of so much terror and 
 confusion, and there is no sound save the faint breath- 
 ing of the man in the cave's mouth, who still gazes 
 into the void. And after the fire came a still, small 
 voice — and at that voice the soul of the man 
 thrilled, for it was the voice of God. " What doest 
 thou here, Elijah? " It was the voice of rebuke, and 
 of just rebuke. It is not here that loneliness can be 
 cured — God is the one cure for the lonely heart. 
 Liberty, ambition, beauty, take them all — for all are 
 worthless. God made man for Himself, and for man 
 there is no rest till he finds rest in God. So said St. 
 Augustine many centuries ago ; and, in our own day, 
 has not Thomas Carlyle, who like Elijah sought com- 
 fort in the wind, and the earthquake, and the fire, also 
 told us in his last letters, that the longer he lived, 
 the more his heart went out to the truth of that say- 
 ing he learned as a boy in the Scotch Catechism — 
 " What is the chief duty of man ? It is to know 
 God and to enjoy Him forever." A voice — it is 
 only one who lives who can speak — and Nature is 
 dead and dumb. A still voice — it comes from the 
 calm of eternity and breathes tranquillity through 
 
 136 
 
ELIJAH'S LONELINESS 
 
 the soul. A small voice — no thunder this, but a 
 voice demanding silence in the soul — the hearing 
 ear, the attentive heart — 
 
 So through the thunder comes a human voice 
 Saying, O heart I made, a heart beats here, 
 Face, my hands fashioned, see it in myself, 
 Thou hast no power, nor may conceive of mine, 
 But love I gave thee, with myself to love, 
 And thou must love me who have died for thee ! 
 
 And at that voice Elijah goes forth from the cave, 
 and his heart is healed — for who can be lonely when 
 God talks with him, or call himself forsaken when 
 God consoles him? 
 
 I speak especially to lonely men and women, to 
 those who cannot speak their deepest thoughts, or 
 have none to whom they dare confide them; to those 
 on whom the loneliness of great cities themselves 
 weighs like a cloud, or those who know the loneli- 
 ness of the house where death has been, or where 
 poverty abides — and I point you to the one cure. 
 Who can be lonely if Christ indeed be in the world, 
 a spiritual comforter forevermore? Who can be un- 
 comraded when the hospitable heart of God stands 
 open to him? " I am alone, yet not alone," said 
 Christ, for He dwelt in God and God in Him. Nor 
 are these mere echoes of vague and transcendental 
 truths. Upon the lips of the sick, of the life-long 
 martyrs who know the pain without the palm, of the 
 
 137 
 
THE DIVINE CHALLENGE 
 
 men and women who lie through long hours in soli- 
 tary rooms, with their life slowly draining from 
 them, how often have I heard the words — " Alone, 
 ah ! yes sir — but never lonely — for Christ is with 
 me all the time ! " How often have I seen upon the 
 faces of the aged and the dying that quiet light, as 
 though they saw a glory I could not perceive, and 
 heard a voice inaudible to me. We also may find 
 that joy of theirs, for we may hear the still, small 
 voice. Lonely life must always be for many of us, 
 and to others of us whose lives are crowded now, 
 lonely hours come later, when the buoyancy of im- 
 pulse and the power of executing purpose ebbs, 
 when the house is empty and the children we have 
 loved and toiled for are scattered through the earth ; 
 and for all of us there must needs come that last 
 loneliness of death. But even then there is a voice 
 that says, " I am with you alway," and it has been 
 in the power of myriads of men and women to reply 
 in that solemn hour, " Yea will I not fear." This 
 is our hope, in God. This is our source of strength, 
 that we live unto God, and not unto man. This 
 is our final peace and satisfaction, that he who lives 
 in God shares a fellowship with the eternal, which 
 conquers the monotonies and depressions of time, 
 and finds its fruition in the life that lasts when all 
 earthly things have passed away. O tired and lonely 
 heart, turn away from all vain dreams of cure in 
 change of earthly state ; bow thyself in the deep 
 
 138 
 
ELIJAH'S LONELINESS 
 
 hush of this hour of prayer, and you shall hear the 
 still, Divine voice which says, " My peace I give unto 
 you, not as the world gives, give I unto you. Be of 
 good cheer, I have overcome the world." 
 
 139 
 
THE GREATNESS OF MEN SEEN IN 
 HUMAN PROGRESS 
 
VIII 
 
 THE GREATNESS OF MEN SEEN IN 
 HUMAN PROGRESS 
 
 "We have not wrought any deliverance in the earth; neither 
 have the inhabitants of the world fallen."— Isaiah xxvi. 18. 
 
 THIS passage may be taken as a pathetic and 
 half ironical statement of the futility of human 
 life. It is equivalent to saying " we expected to do 
 great things with our life, and we have not done 
 them," and this is a lamentable but common con- 
 fession among men. Few men accomplish the dream 
 of their youth, and in proportion as these dreams are 
 high and vast, the probability of accomplishment be- 
 comes more and more remote. It is a catholic ex- 
 perience in life to discover that as we grow older 
 hope takes a more sober hue, and ambitions moderate 
 themselves; the conquest that once seemed so easy 
 appears more and more difficult; the prize that 
 seemed within our grasp eludes us, and recedes 
 further from us with each narrowing period of life. 
 Beyond all this, there are sudden checks which hap- 
 pen in prosperous careers ; inexplicable misfortunes, 
 reverses, and defeats ; strange, and as it seems to us, 
 
 143 
 
THE DIVINE CHALLENGE 
 
 unjust operations of blind circumstance, which sud- 
 denly deprive us of the triumph whinh we have had 
 every reason to anticipate. All men know something 
 of these experiences before they are done with life, 
 and they are the bitterest experiences that man can 
 know. Some take them with cynical indifference, 
 some with philosophic acquiescence in the strange 
 ways of destiny, some with vociferous complaint ; but 
 behind all our moods there exists a poignant sense of 
 the futility of life, a sense of the uselessness and 
 even the irony of high purposes in a world like this. 
 It is this feeling that finds its expression in the say- 
 ing of this ancient Hebrew poet — " We have not 
 wrought any deliverance in the earth." 
 
 But a moment's thought will show you that much 
 more than this lies behind this saying. It is in reality 
 not the exposition of the humiliation of man, but of 
 his undying greatness. For why should man expect 
 to work any deliverance in the earth? For whom is 
 that deliverance to be wrought? Whence comes the 
 instinct which prompts the aim of such deliverance? 
 What other creature is there capable of such an aspi- 
 ration? We know of none. So far as we can see, 
 man alone knows the torture of such a thought, and 
 man alone is capable of that combined and corporate 
 activity, which suggests to him the great hope ex- 
 pressed in the word deliverance. And this fact about 
 man has been noted and commented upon from the 
 very first. Three great allegories stand in the back- 
 
 144 
 
THE GREATNESS OF MEN 
 
 ground of all human thought, each one of which helps 
 to express man's sense of his own importance in the 
 universe. The Eden-story of Genesis represents man 
 as becoming as the gods, by his knowledge of good 
 and evil; that is to say by his pcver of moral choice, 
 which makes his life an undying struggle in pursuit of 
 moral aims. The Greek story of man stealing the fire 
 of the gods, is but a variation of the same allegory — 
 the sublime statement of man's power to scale the 
 heavens. And again, the story of Prometheus chained 
 to the rock, eternally agonised, but eternally un- 
 conquered by his agony, is the allegory of man's 
 power to resist and overcome the direst hostility of 
 fate and circumstance. Combine these thoughts into 
 one truth, and you have this result: that man feels 
 himself placed upon the earth as the agent of divine 
 purposes that go beyond himself. He feels himself 
 ordained and predestined to work out some deliverance 
 for himself and others — intellectual, moral, spir- 
 itual, and social deliverance ; and his true life lies in 
 this, and nothing else. " No one is unhappy at not 
 being a King except a dethroned King," says Pascal, 
 or we may add, who feels himself to be capable of 
 Kingship ; and no one mourns that he has wrought no 
 deliverance in the earth, except a creature who re- 
 alizes that it was his duty, his privilege, and the very 
 mission of his life to accomplish such a deliverance. 
 Thus, then, so far from being a melancholy statement 
 of the futility of human life, this passage is the very 
 
 145 
 
THE DIVINE CHALLENGE 
 
 opposite: it is the statement of the greatness of man 
 as seen in human progress. 
 
 First of all, let us look at this statement of the 
 greatness of man. It is manifest that if it be true, 
 it is the most important of all statements, because it 
 is capable of the most far-reaching consequences on 
 human character and destiny. Conceive to yourself 
 two children born into the world, one of whom is told 
 from his birth that he is a creature of no importance : 
 the other of whom is daily stimulated and encouraged 
 by the great records of human achievement, and is 
 told to emulate them. Conceive further two condi- 
 tions of society, in one of which it is impressed on 
 men that human existence is a malady and a misfor- 
 tune, in the other of which, the glory, the joy, and 
 the triumph of living are constantly expressed. Con- 
 ceive yet again, two religions: the one teaching the 
 utter misery of existence, the other teaching that 
 man is but a little lower than the angels, and the ex- 
 press and permanent image of the unseen God who 
 rules the universe. No one needs to be told what the 
 effect these differing conceptions will be upon the 
 human mind. There are families which through long 
 centuries have bred heroic and chivalrous men and 
 women, because self-reverence, honour and heroism 
 were traditions in them. There are countries that 
 have nourished great races because from father to son 
 through many generations great and dignified ideals 
 of religion and moral responsibility have been handed 
 
 146 
 
THE GREATNESS OF MEN 
 
 down untarnished. But the Bayard of perfect cour- 
 tesy and chivalry rarely comes to growth in the 
 foul slums of great cities where everything ex- 
 presses the meanness of existence: the great deeds 
 of human progress are never found among nations 
 governed by pessimistic ideals of philosophy and re- 
 ligion. So then we see that what a man becomes 
 depends largely on the estimate he forms of himself. 
 The sense of human greatness makes men great: 
 the sense of human littleness lessens them, and at 
 last not only dwarfs but distorts and deforms them. 
 He who preaches the total and unalleviated depravity 
 of human nature not merely utters a psychological 
 absurdity, but perpetrates a crime upon society, and 
 an outrage on the cause of morals. And such a 
 dogma receives no support from the religion of the 
 Bible, which above all things states the dignity of 
 man, his greatness, and his possibilities of growing 
 greatness, likening him to God whose offspring he is, 
 and bidding him be perfect even as the Father in 
 heaven is perfect. The Bible may be right or wrong 
 in such magnificent assertions — that is not in dis- 
 cussion with us for the moment — but no one can 
 doubt that it does state from first to last, in matchless 
 splendour of phrase and with unqualified boldness of 
 language, the truth that man is great; and only a 
 creature conscious of his greatness could utter the 
 sublime lament that he had wrought no deliverance in 
 the earth. 
 
 147 
 
THE DIVINE CHALLENGE 
 
 But is the Bible mistaken in these assertions, and 
 is this passage after all but another example of that 
 exalted egotism of which man has always been ab- 
 surdly capable? 
 
 There are certainly three directions in which the 
 least competent observer may discover reasons to 
 doubt this assertion of the greatness of man. Com- 
 pare man with physical nature, for example, and at 
 first sight it is the insignificance and not the greatness 
 of man that is apparent. But it is only at first sight. 
 Mountains are great, but man can pierce them : seas 
 are great, but man can traverse them: the storm- 
 cloud is great, but man can pluck from its bosom the 
 winged fire on which thoughts travel round the world. 
 The whole thing is a fallacy, and the key to the 
 fallacy is that magnitude is not greatness. What is 
 mere bulk in comparison with thought and conscious- 
 ness? What is the utmost majesty of matter in 
 comparison with the magnificence of that spirit which 
 gives to a man wisdom and understanding? We feel 
 the Alps that tower above the St. Gothard to be great, 
 but it is only in tK'e sense of magnitude ; when we see 
 the engine man has fashioned slowly climbing up the 
 mountain side, impelled by a mere handful of fire 
 within its iron entrails; when we see it vanish in the 
 bowels of the earth, and presently come forth again, 
 having threaded with resistless energy and in complete 
 triumph and security, the very roots of the everlast- 
 ing hills — then w T e feel that we are in the presence of 
 
 143 
 
THE GREATNESS OF MEN 
 
 quite another sort of greatness — a greatness not of 
 magnitude but of power. And as a matter of plainest 
 fact the physical universe has no greatness except as 
 it exists in the human mind. Pascal put the truth 
 long since when he said, " If the universe were to fall 
 and crush me, I should be greater than the universe, 
 for I should be conscious of defeat, and it would be 
 unconscious of victory." It is easy enough I grant 
 to feel our insignificance as compared with nature, 
 but the feeling is irrational, and quite illusory. Do 
 not be misled by what poets have to say on such a 
 theme. Do not mistake their expression of a natural 
 emotion for the statement of a fact. God is great, 
 and man is great, but elsewhere there is no greatness 
 — and it is the authentic miracle and dignity of man 
 as a creature truly God-like that we most need to 
 learn if we are to live in such a way as to work out 
 any deliverance upon the earth. 
 
 We may find reason to doubt the greatness of man, 
 again, when we compare the total action of man with 
 his aspiration. The aspiration is magnificent, but 
 what of its fruit? Who attains a tenth part of that 
 which he desires to attain : with whom is the efficiency 
 of the accomplished action equal to the impulse that 
 wrought it? Yes: but that very aspiration itself is a 
 sort of greatness. To will great things is only less 
 great than to accomplish them. The triumph of the 
 individual man lies not only in that which he does, 
 but in the great schemes and hopes which he desired to 
 
 149 
 
THE DIVINE CHALLENGE 
 
 perfect, and which he bequeaths to the race, as the 
 leaven of moral energy which shall work to its ful- 
 filment long after he is dead. 
 
 And, in the third place, the greatness of man ap- 
 pears an empty phrase, when we compare man with 
 himself. Think of the ineffectual lives that are lived 
 upon the earth. Think of the lives distinguished by 
 no lofty ideals, and abounding in every mean variety 
 of motive. Think of the useless or noxious lives that 
 spoil society: the hosts of men who never know a 
 higher impulse than self-interest: the youths who 
 spend the freshness of their manhood in idle sport 
 and empty pleasure: the women who have no view 
 of things outside the cloistered walls of decent do- 
 mesticity — the people, for whom such terms as so- 
 ciety, the commonwealth, the community, the nation, 
 the world, have not the least significance, and for 
 whom this passage is in consequence the merest 
 tinkling of a cymbal, and a meaningless exuberance 
 of rhetoric. But it is precisely at this point that 
 the higher message of the text discloses itself. Let 
 the individual be what he will, there is a general 
 movement in society which makes for progress. You 
 may not seek to work out any deliverance in the 
 earth, but there are those who do so seek. A ceaseless 
 impulse runs through men, coming we know not 
 whither, and it impels them forward, ever forward. 
 In spite of human apathy laws do get mended, reforms 
 are accomplished, programmes once discredited trans- 
 
 150 
 
THE GREATNESS OF MEN 
 
 form themselves to facts. Some stand aloof, some 
 are swept onward by the tide : but the tide never ebbs. 
 Some smile in ignorant scorn, as doubtless the Swiss 
 peasants did, when the first company of Engineers 
 attacked the frowning bastions of the St. Gothard: 
 but the day comes when the engine climbs the heights, 
 and the iron rails bind two separated lands together; 
 and then the dullest know that something has hap- 
 pened by which the whole world reaps benefit. You 
 may not see the greatness of man as he stands against 
 the immutable magnificence of nature: you may not 
 see it in the individual or in yourself, but you do see 
 it in human progress, and he who has once seen that 
 vision will not be content to die until he has contrib- 
 uted his mite of energy to the sum of " things for- 
 ever working," and has helped to work some 
 deliverance in the earth. 
 
 And now let us go a little further and ask what is 
 Progress? Progress is not wealth, though it is a 
 common assumption that when you have proved a 
 nation to be richer by the passage of the years you 
 have proved that it has progressed. Progress is not 
 personal success in life, though for multitudes that 
 is the only meaning which the word conveys. There 
 is such a thing, as Carlyle ironically reminded us, 
 as progress downward. No: we must seek a higher 
 and completer definition of the word — and we find 
 it in this passage — Progress is deliverance. When 
 a nation is delivered from ignorance by the universal 
 
 151 
 
THE DIVINE CHALLENGE 
 
 establishment of free or cheap education — that is 
 progress. When a nation is delivered from the 
 tyranny of Kings, and the worse tyranny of landed 
 and hereditary oligarchies — that is progress. When 
 children are delivered from the pressure of inhuman 
 factory laws : when fair wages and wise consideration 
 bind masters and men together in honourable inter- 
 course and self-respecting friendship: when churches 
 are delivered from their theological animosities and 
 arrogant assumptions, and are united in common 
 effort for the common good; when men of all ranks 
 have a common reverence for just ideals of govern- 
 ment, and none are for a party and all are for the 
 state : when virtue thrives, and vice is everywhere dis- 
 credited, and the causes that produce vice are every- 
 where diminished by social service, wise statesmanship, 
 and loyal love of good — that is progress. And 
 every age presents some special opportunity of 
 progress. Luther, Cromwell, Wesley, Lincoln — 
 each is a name that tells its own tale of progress. 
 Resolve progress into its elements, and what is it 
 then but this: a long series of deliverances by which 
 society grows freer, purer, and stronger: battles that 
 begin obscurely in the convictions of single men, 
 and end by becoming vast campaigns conducted by 
 entire nations : struggles to attain, at first on the part 
 of the enlightened few, but later on communicating 
 their passion and their fervour to multitudes ; deliver- 
 ance upon deliverance, and each a stepping stone by 
 
 152 
 
THE GREATNESS OF MEN 
 
 which the world advances to its golden age. Yes: 
 that is progress : that and nothing else. To live thus 
 is indeed to prove that man can be great. Progress 
 thus interpreted is indeed a Divine thing — the wit- 
 ness of God's government as of man's greatness. 
 And to the man who once feels the fervour of this 
 vision no disaster can be so great, no lamentation 
 so poignant, as to be forced into confession as he 
 leaves the world behind him, "Alas, I have mis- 
 interpreted the meaning of life, I have spent my 
 money for that which is not bread, I have bartered 
 my life for that which satisfieth not, I have wrought 
 no deliverance in the earth ! " 
 
 And of all certain things this is perhaps the most 
 certain: that ideals such as these have most fascina- 
 tion for us when we are young, most power to move 
 us, and are most likely to become permanent forces 
 in our life. We believe in man then : we believe in the 
 regeneration of society, and the promise of a golden 
 age. You will find that in almost every case of a 
 brave spirit struggling for the redemption of society 
 from some form of deadly intellectual error, of po- 
 litical injustice or religious bondage, the struggle 
 began early, in the days of youth. Later on belief 
 in man becomes more difficult, and our sense of the 
 obstacles to human progress is apt to become over- 
 whelming. And therefore I say that this subject is 
 of incomparable and paramount importance to youth. 
 Do you really desire to work out any deliverance upon 
 
 153 
 
THE DIVINE CHALLENGE 
 
 the earth? Have you felt the passion of the ideal? 
 Do you hear the trumpet of the great campaign call- 
 ing, and hear it with an eager heart? Choose ye, 
 this day then, whom ye will serve, God or mammon. 
 Remember now thy Creator, and the purpose for 
 which thou wert created, in the days of thy youth. 
 Set your hand to the plough of progress while its 
 strength is yet undiminished, before the days come 
 when desire shall fail. The day of diminished physi- 
 cal strength comes to all, but the day of diminished 
 spiritual power need never come. For those who 
 take life in a great spirit, for those who live for great 
 purposes, that day never does come: they go from 
 strength to strength: they advance from nebulous 
 enthusiasm to settled hope: and from their lips the 
 melancholy cry is never wrung — We have not 
 wrought any deliverance on the earth. 
 
 And to this one other thing may be added, that the 
 deliverance of man can only come by man. It would 
 have been easy for the Creator so to have created man 
 that at a glance and without effort he might have 
 read the secret of the stars, and the solution of the 
 baffling problems written in the great stone book of 
 Nature. But that was not God's will: and we our- 
 selves can see some reason for it. We see that the 
 mind of man has been indefinitely developed by its 
 pursuit of science, and that had the difficulties been 
 less, the gain to intellectual growth would have been 
 less also. And in the same way God does not solve 
 
 154 
 
THE GREATNESS OF MEN 
 
 for us by some miraculous interference the moral and 
 social problems of the earth. We have to work out 
 the earth's deliverance, and in doing so we work out 
 our redemption. We have to do it: you and I: the 
 least as well as the greatest of us. We can and do, 
 each of us, help or hinder the cause of human prog- 
 ress. We all know how coral reefs are built. 
 We know that every tiny cell in the growing reef is a 
 tiny life that exhausts itself in fulfilling the mystic 
 architecture of the reef, and when at last the com- 
 pleted reef rises from the blue abyss of water, and 
 becomes an island on which the palm trees spring, and 
 men find a habitation and a home, it is the aggregate 
 effort of myriads upon myriads of minute creatures 
 that triumphs there. So progress is the aggregation 
 of multitudinous human effort. Every life lived 
 rightly, every struggle of the individual after right- 
 eousness and justice, every humble effort of the 
 humblest man or woman to make the world a better 
 world, is a contribution to the scheme of things which 
 the Master Architect has designed as the crown of 
 human existence; and so it comes to pass that the 
 humblest man may know before he dies that he has 
 helped to* work out some Divine deliverance on the 
 earth. 
 
 And so two lives stand clear before us, and two 
 endings to life, each of which is possible to each of us. 
 There is the life of the man delivered from himself: 
 from inordinate ambition, vain pleasure, self-ease, and 
 
 155 
 
THE DIVINE CHALLENGE 
 
 sensual hope: the life that gives itself a ransom for 
 many, and dedicates itself to the great crusades of 
 moral progress, and this is the Christian life. Such 
 a man knows well what the lines mean — 
 
 He only lives the world's life 
 Who hath renounced his own. 
 
 He knows also what the saying means — 
 
 Renounce joy for thy fellow's sake 
 That's a joy beyond joy. 
 
 And the end of such a life is triumph. All that he 
 desired is not accomplished: but enough is done to 
 assure him that right is triumphing, and that truth 
 prevails : and so his final word is heroic — it is the 
 farewell of the happy warrior — " I have fought the 
 good fight, I have finished my course with joy." 
 
 The other life begins and ends within itself. It 
 contributes nothing to the public good, perhaps it 
 hinders it. It is indifferent to all the struggles of the 
 race: it scorns the enthusiasm of great men: it rises 
 up to eat, it lies down to sleep — it sees the troops of 
 freedom march to battle, it hears far off the trumpets 
 blow, but it sits enchanted in its web of sloth, in its 
 grossness of ignoble ease, and hearing it hears not, 
 and seeing it does not understand. If at last it does 
 see itself aright, it wakes only to discover the chances 
 of a manful life for ever lost, and to bewail itself in 
 the melancholy cry, " I have wrought no deliverance 
 
 156 
 
THE GREATNESS OF MEN 
 
 in the earth." Those two lives in all their issues 
 stand before each of us, and it is for us to choose 
 which life shall be ours. Up, up, thou eager heart of 
 youth, and hear the voice that calls thee! Up thou 
 idle one and work while it is called to-day, before the 
 night cometh when thou canst not work ! The torn 
 flag of freedom floats upon the gale: the chivalry of 
 Christ sweeps on to the endless Armageddon: your 
 land, your motherland is calling you to help her. A 
 thousand schemes of progress are yet unfulfilled, a 
 thousand hopes stand disinherited, a thousand thou- 
 sand voices of the poor and the oppressed call for 
 the coming of the champion and deliverer. Up, and 
 follow the captain of salvation ; deliver the oppressed, 
 bind up the broken-hearted, bring liberty to the cap- 
 tive; and know this, that they that "be wise shall 
 shine as the brightness of the firmament, and they 
 that turn many to righteousness as the stars for ever 
 and ever." 
 
 1ST 
 
THE EXPLOITS OF FAITH 
 
IX 
 THE EXPLOITS OF FAITH 
 
 " But the people that do know their God shall be strong, and 
 do exploits." — Dan. xi. 32. 
 
 MANY things about the Book of Daniel are 
 difficult and disputed, but one thing is toler- 
 ably clear, and this gives us the clue to the book — 
 it was undoubtedly written for the encouragement 
 of Jewish patriotism. No nation was ever so in- 
 tensely patriotic as the Jewish, because none had so 
 powerful an historic sense. The greatest hymns of 
 the nation were glowing recapitulations of national 
 history — the promise to Abraham, the deliverance 
 from Egypt, the long story of the wilderness and the 
 promised land. The most solemn acts of public wor- 
 ship were vitally connected with national history, 
 and when the Jew of to-day, standing an alien in the 
 strange world of London, begins a discourse upon the 
 Feast of Tabernacles, as I once heard for myself, with 
 the sentence — " Three thousand five hundred years 
 ago to-day " — he strikes the chord of patriotism that 
 survives all the change of empire and civilization, and 
 the vicissitudes of time. But Jewish patriotism dif- 
 
 161 
 
THE DIVINE CHALLENGE 
 
 fers from every other form of patriotism in the fact 
 that it is dominated completely by the sense of God. 
 It recognises not only its own part in history, but 
 God working through all events His indisputable and 
 sovereign will. It reads past, present, and future, 
 not in the light of the human only, but of the 
 Divine. And thus Daniel expresses all that is 
 noblest in this patriotism, when he links God 
 with, or rather enthrones God in the centre of all 
 Jewish heroism, by saying " The people that know 
 God shall be strong, and do exploits." 
 
 In all human history it would be hard to find any 
 figure so pathetic and sublime as the Jew. He has 
 been the prey of all nations and their master, their 
 spoil and their spoliator. He has been flung down 
 into an unutterable depth of infamy, but the infamy 
 has constantly recoiled upon his persecutors. His 
 lot has been made bitter by every species of wrong, 
 cruelty, and inhumanity, but he has survived them, 
 and like the great disowned Prophet of his nation has 
 been constantly crucified, only to rise again upon the 
 third day. In the utmost darkness he has found a 
 light to guide him, and amid the most terrible of 
 deprivations a hope to console and support him. He 
 stands amid new nations and civilizations to-day, him- 
 self unchanged — the wonder and the enigma of the 
 world. He has survived the Roman and the Greek, 
 and in turn he may survive the Teuton and the 
 Anglo-Saxon. If we can fancy any human creature 
 
 162 
 
THE EXPLOITS OF FAITH 
 
 standing on the ruins of Westminster bridge and sur- 
 veying the desolation that was once called London, it 
 will not be Lord Macaulay's mythical New Zealander 
 — it will be a Jew. In the presence of this strange 
 race all the people of modern Europe are but children 
 just out of school; for the Jew had a literature and 
 a philosophy, when our forefathers were barbarians 
 and worshipped blocks of wood and stone. And as 
 one surveys that literature and philosophy ; as one 
 endeavours to arrive at the secret hidden in all this 
 long, chequered, pathetic and sublime history, one 
 fact continually emerges: the greatest periods of the 
 nation coincide with the periods when the sense of 
 religion was strongest among the people: the most 
 terrible downfalls and dispersions with the loss of 
 that religious sense. It is not merely a philosophic 
 truth, therefore, which is stated in this passage, it is 
 an historic fact, for the Jew has been strong and 
 done exploits because he has known his God. 
 
 The theme which this passage suggests then is the 
 certainty of God as the secret of noble human achieve- 
 ment. Let me, in the first place, make three pre- 
 liminary observations. The first is that the total 
 effect of modern science has been to make the existence 
 of God an absolute necessity of human reason. Fifty 
 years ago such a result was not anticipated, and at a 
 much more recent date it was generally assumed that 
 the final effect of science would be the destruction of 
 religion. But as the great conjectures and discov- 
 
 163 
 
THE DIVINE CHALLENGE 
 
 eries of science have followed one another in their 
 startling sequences, it has more and more been felt 
 that the last step of science leaves us kneeling before 
 the altar which is dedicated to the unknown God. 
 Science has told us much about the functions of life, 
 and the infinitely delicate and w T onderful contrivances 
 by which these functions are discharged, but it has 
 failed utterly to tell us what life is and to explain its 
 origin. It has explained the brain, but it has not 
 told us how poetry, imagination, and thought come 
 into existence. It has gone through the house of 
 life, unlocking every door, but before one door w T hich 
 conceals what religious men call the chamber of the 
 soul it has paused, confessing inadequacy and defeat. 
 It has traversed every road of space, only to find 
 itself finally face to face with the inscrutable and 
 mysterious Power that inhabits eternity, and fills 
 all things. Natural Law — yes, it has codified that 
 with marvellous skill and patience, but it has also 
 been forced to confess some Intelligence which is at 
 once the controller and inventor of natural law. And 
 this all true men of science have long ago admitted. 
 Materialism has had its day, and its power is already 
 gone. The intelligent man can no longer content 
 himself within limits so narrow and confined. He 
 would never have tried to do so, if he had more 
 closely observed the spirit of his masters, for Darwin 
 himself adopts as a motto for his famous " Origin of 
 Species " the saying of Bishop Butler, that the only 
 
 164 
 
THE EXPLOITS OF FAITH 
 
 " distinct meaning of the word natural is stated, 
 fixed, and settled: and that it as much requires an 
 intelligent agent to effect anything statedly, fixedly, 
 regularly — that is naturally — as to effect it for 
 once only- — or supernaturally." And that, I need 
 not tell you, is the confession of science that without 
 God the universe is inexplicable. 
 
 The second observation I make is that the morality 
 of man is a guarantee of the moral nature of God. 
 Granted a Creator, it is a thing incredible that the 
 creature should be greater than the Creator, for the 
 river cannot rise higher than its source. Suppose 
 that at the beginning of the Ten Commandments there 
 were no preface, declaring that " God spake all these 
 words and said": suppose that man had evolved 
 entirely out of his own conscience the commandments 
 not to kill, not to steal, not to covet, not to worship 
 graven images and so forth ; even then you would not 
 be rid of God. For if man is the creature, and some- 
 where there exists a Creator, it follows, does it not, 
 that the creature cannot reach a height of moral 
 thought impossible to the Creator? If man feels 
 that lying, adultery, and murder are wrong, we may 
 be sure of it that there is some final and supreme 
 authority which also judges these things as wrong. 
 Thus the strongest witness to a moral God lies in the 
 moral nature of man. Man has a right to say as 
 John Stuart Mill said, " I will call no Being good, 
 who is not what I mean when I apply that epithet to 
 
 165 
 
THE DIVINE CHALLENGE 
 
 my fellow creatures, and if such a Being can sentence 
 me to Hell for not so calling him, to Hell I will go." 
 That is what man says as he stands before the silent 
 altars of the invisible: he says there what he has said 
 before the meaner tribunals of earth, " Here I take 
 my stand, I can do no other." Whatever is moral in 
 man exists in an infinite perfection in God: whatever 
 is lovely, in a higher loveliness : whatever is pure in a 
 loftier purity, and thus a man knows God by his 
 knowledge of himself. 
 
 The third observation is, that the ultimate meaning 
 and the very essence of Christianity, is the revelation 
 it gives us of man's capacity for God. It does this 
 not so much by the statement of a philosophic truth 
 as by a practical and living illustration — the Per- 
 son of Jesus Christ. It shows us a man, and says 
 that if God lived upon this earth, His life would be 
 precisely what the life of this man was. It shows us 
 this man under every variety of circumstance: poor, 
 despised, rejected: praised, flattered, hated: coming 
 into awful collision with evil, not only in the delib- 
 erate conflict of the desert, but in the city, and in the 
 daily conduct of life: following truth to His own 
 destruction, loving His fellow men as no creature ever 
 loved, consoled under every difficulty by the certainty 
 of an invisible world of spirit more real and enduring 
 ±han the actual world of the senses, going finally to 
 His martyrdom with a sense of triumph — and it 
 says, " Thus God would have done, had God been 
 
 166 
 
THE EXPLOITS OF FAITH 
 
 man " : and again, " This was God, so revealed that 
 all men may know Him": and yet again, "Even 
 thus God may live in every man." The capacity for 
 G 0( j _ the power of the human soul to receive God 
 into itself, the power of the humblest man to live 
 as God would have lived, had God lived this life — 
 that is the supreme revelation of Christianity, and 
 those that thus know God shall be strong and do 
 exploits. 
 
 And now let us turn once more to this suggestive 
 saying. If these things are true, then they are the 
 greatest of all truths. It may occur to some of you 
 to complain that this theme is purely academic, and 
 to ask what relation has abstract truth to human ac- 
 tion? That is the question which is answered in this 
 text. We all dwell in two worlds — the world of 
 thought, and the world of conduct. No man dwells 
 exclusively in either the one or the other. The 
 thinker is not only a thinker, the doer is not only a 
 doer. Both are engaged in one supreme occupation, 
 which is the conduct of life, and life cannot be con- 
 ducted except upon some acknowledged principles. 
 In other words, you must have wise and right 
 thoughts, if you are to live a wise and right life. It 
 is the merest folly to say " It does not much matter 
 what I think if I act rightly," because action is 
 thought in motion, and what a man thinks he will 
 inevitably do and be. And this is the plain meaning 
 of this saying; what it amounts to is that the se- 
 
 167 
 
THE DIVINE CHALLENGE 
 
 cret of all national life, all individual life, and all 
 human heroism is found in religion — or in other 
 words, is what nations and men think about God. 
 
 The secret of all national life lies in national re- 
 ligion — take that proposition first. Let me endeav- 
 our to put it not as an abstract truth, but by way of 
 concrete fact. Suppose a man should leave the shores 
 of England and go upon a pilgrimage to explore the 
 unknown regions of the East. The first land that he 
 would see would be the shores of Spain, and the rock 
 of Gibraltar, and there at once the problems of na- 
 tional religion would salute him. He would look 
 through the history of Spain, and he would discover 
 that all the great episodes of its history were dom- 
 inated by some religious idea. He would remember 
 the reign of the Moors and their expulsion, the his- 
 tory of the Spanish Jews and their downfall, the 
 Armada and its fate, and he would need no one to 
 tell him that the greatest periods of Spanish history 
 precisely coincided with the periods when the wit- 
 ness of God was strongest in the nation. He would 
 touch upon the shores of Italy, and he would remem- 
 ber how a Jewish fugitive named Paul had landed 
 there nineteen centuries ago, had preached his Gos- 
 pel, and how that Gospel had spread, till the whole 
 face of the world was altered by it. He would touch 
 at Egypt, and there he would see the memorials of 
 a splendid and mysterious religion, a religion that 
 had its symbols of the Trinity, of incarnation and 
 
 168 
 
THE EXPLOITS OF FAITH 
 
 redemption, of resurrection and immortal life, thou- 
 sands of years before Christ was born in Bethlehem. 
 He would sail onward down the Red Sea, and all the 
 history of Israel would unfold its panorama to the 
 mental eye; he would come to India, and a thousand 
 stately temples would witness to the sense of religion 
 which has dominated the three hundred millions of 
 that land of wonders through the long centuries. 
 Thus the thought of God would pursue him to what- 
 ever land he went, and he would be unable to escape 
 it. At many points these various systems of religion 
 would differ, but he would see that men acted as if 
 each were true, and that each was the offspring of 
 the sense of God in man. He would find that re- 
 ligious ideas and hopes had entwined themselves with 
 the laws, the customs, and the literature of these 
 lands, and as he surveyed the customs of these diverse 
 lands and peoples he would discover that the greatest 
 movements in each national life had been religious 
 movements. He would return to England and the 
 same lesson would meet him in his own history. He 
 would read of Lollards, Reformers, Covenanters, 
 Puritans ; he would read a thousand stories of heroic 
 struggle out of which the strong tree of modern 
 civilisation and liberty drew its strength; he would 
 see vast political issues constantly springing out of 
 the triumph of religious ideas. And everywhere one 
 lesson — the people who knew their God were strong 
 and did exploits, and in proportion to the power of 
 
 169 
 
THE DIVINE CHALLENGE 
 
 religion over the national mind, was the greatness 
 of the nation, and the height to which it attained in 
 the scale of nations. 
 
 Again : The Secret of the intellectual life of men 
 reveals the same lesson. For modern men some half 
 a dozen names stand supreme as recording the great- 
 est height to which intellect has attained. When we 
 have mentioned Newton, Bacon, Shakespeare, Milton, 
 Dante, Goethe, we have counted the brightest stars 
 in the firmament of intellect. Turn to their teach- 
 ings, and you will find at once that the keynote of 
 each life was faith in God. Erase God from the 
 writings of Shakespeare, Milton, or Dante, and they 
 crumble into utter incoherence. Ask Bacon and 
 Newton on what their whole philosophy is based, and 
 they will answer without an instant's hesitation, " On 
 God, the Primal cause, the Primal morality, the 
 Primal goodness: the Light of lights, the Lord of 
 lords, the King of kings ! " Turn to Goethe, the 
 most pagan of moderns, and you will hear him telling 
 you in his old age that he trusts that he shall never 
 be so weak as to lose his conviction in personal im- 
 mortality. And if you come to modern times, the 
 lesson is the same. All that we call poetry springs 
 from man's conscious sense of God. The human 
 mind can soar in one direction only, and that is up- 
 ward. Could either Tennyson or Browning have 
 been the great poets and teachers they were, had they 
 not been permeated by the sense of God? Could even 
 
 170 
 
THE EXP LOITS OF FAITH 
 
 a Matthew Arnold have written as he did if there 
 had not been under all his intellectual negations a 
 solid substructure of inherited religious conviction? 
 No : the history of the human mind is one long and 
 invariable testimony to this truth, that the men who 
 know their God, these are they that are strong and 
 accomplish the magnificent exploits of genius. 
 
 Again : turn to the story of human heroism as it is 
 written in the record both of men and nations, and it 
 is not possible to mistake the enormous influence of 
 religious belief on human conduct. Where is your 
 hero who has not found the sanction of his heroism, 
 and its vital impulse, in the sense of his relation to 
 God? The fact is that atheism withers the heart, 
 and is destructive of all those large and generous 
 passions that make the hero. From the day when 
 Stephen looked with dying eyes in the blue depths of 
 the Syrian sky, and saw the heavens opened, and 
 Jesus standing at the right hand of God — from 
 that day and long before it — man has always en- 
 couraged himself in the great sacrificial exploits of 
 heroism by the conviction that they are a duty which 
 he owes to God as well as to man : and owes to man 
 simply because he recognises his responsibility to 
 God. We may say what we like about atheism but 
 we cannot reason away the fact that it belittles human 
 nature, and destroys its capacity for heroism. It 
 means something — it means far more than we sup- 
 pose __ that a Socrates finds the secret of courage 
 
 171 
 
THE DIVINE CHALLENGE 
 
 in the sense that he obeys a divine intuition which he 
 calls his " daemon," that a Joan of Arc hears " The 
 voices " calling her to the thorny way of martyrdom 
 — that a Nelson dies thanking God for his great 
 opportunity of doing his duty. Teach a man that 
 there is a higher voice than man's which he is capable 
 of obeying — that he is surrounded by an unseen 
 cloud of spirit witnesses, that heaven applauds him, 
 that heaven stretches forth a starry crown for him, 
 and that his dying may be but the birth-throe of a 
 larger life — teach him that, and he can be a Hero. 
 Teach a nation that, and a nation can be heroic. 
 Then you have the sublime constancy of Vaudois 
 peasants under every species of torture, and you 
 have the revolt of the Netherlands which breathes into 
 a little harried nation such a spirit of indomitable 
 courage that it can oppose, and finally defeat, the 
 malice of the greatest military power in Europe. 
 They were strong, these Vaudois martyrs, these 
 Piedmontese peasants, these plain Dutch burghers — 
 they were strong and did exploits because they knew 
 their God. They committed their souls to God in 
 flame, and feared not what man could do unto them. 
 They were conscious of invisible hosts that marched 
 with them, and of an invisible Captain whose word 
 like a trumpet stirred their hearts. They could die, 
 but could not lie, they could be tortured and not 
 accept the traitor's infamous deliverance. And from 
 first to last in the long and splendid record of human 
 
 172 
 
THE EXPLOITS OF FAITH 
 
 heroism the story is the same ; the heroic exploits of 
 the world are the exploits of faith, and the greatness 
 of man has always been nourished by the sense of a 
 Power beyond and above the world, whose he was, and 
 whom he served. 
 
 Nor need we turn only to departed history for the 
 illustration of such experiences as these. Show me 
 the greatest exploits of modern life, the most memor- 
 able episodes of human action, in which man is seen 
 at his sublimest and his noblest. Where are these to 
 be found in such gray days as ours, do you ask? 
 The story of the Salvation Army is one, the life of 
 Livingstone another, the daily history of missionaries 
 in heathen lands and city slums, a third. Taken only 
 as romance there is nothing in modern history more 
 wonderful than the story of General Booth, no 
 figure that moves upon a higher plane of heroism 
 than Livingstone, as he passes into the abyss of the 
 Dark Continent holding aloft his simple lamp of 
 truth, no stories that display a loftier courage than 
 the stories of modern missionaries — those daring ad- 
 venturers of the Soul, who in a hundred lands have 
 held not their lives dear unto them for the testimony 
 of Jesus. Jesus — they never saw Him, but they 
 have known His presence : they have heard His word, 
 they have found God in Him, and this was the vic- 
 tory that overcame the world, even their faith. 
 Jesus — He died nineteen hundred years ago in the 
 flesh — yet is He alive for evermore, and they have 
 
 173 
 
THE DIVINE CHALLENGE 
 
 known Him in the rapture of a fellowship that lifted 
 them far above either the scorn or the fear of man. 
 And so they did exploits, so they are doing them 
 every day — men and women like ourselves who walk 
 these dingy roads of life with crowns upon their 
 heads, marching to the rhythm of a loftier music 
 than the world supplies — they are strong and do 
 exploits because they know their God. 
 
 It may perhaps be said, that great lives are not 
 within the reach of most of us, and that, therefore, 
 it is vain thus to speak as though the exceptional 
 in human conduct could ever be the rule of the nor- 
 mal. But the value of great lives is that they set 
 the measure of what all lives should aspire to be, and, 
 therefore, we cannot speak too much of them. And, 
 moreover, all greatness is relative, and the faith of 
 Livingstone will make the life of any man noble, even 
 though that life knows no sublime adventure, but 
 is lived from first to last in complete obscurity, in 
 humblest drudgery, and in conditions where it never 
 can attract the eye of any single sympathetic or 
 generous spectator. Or, again, it may be said, that 
 such spiritual experiences as these — the experiences 
 that make men great — do not happen to the common 
 or the average man. Ah, but the common man also 
 has his experiences — his high moments when God 
 seems real and near to him, and will you remember 
 that your " highest moments are your truest mo- 
 ments." Or it may be said, again, that to know God 
 
 174 
 
THE EXPLOITS OF FAITH 
 
 is a thing so difficult to man, so rare, so exceptional, 
 and demands such a special temperament, that the 
 ordinary man cannot attain to such convictions, and 
 can only say in sadness, " Such knowledge is too won- 
 derful for me, I cannot attain unto it." But 
 we can all of us learn something of the Person of 
 Christ — and religion is not the attainment of a great 
 philosophic truth, but a love for Christ which makes 
 us His disciples. God is truly revealed to us in 
 Christ, and when we try to live just as Christ lived, 
 then we live as God Himself has lived upon the earth, 
 and multitudes of quite humble people have found 
 that possible in every age by love and faith, and by 
 the Gift and Power of the Holy Spirit. And so you, 
 young man going into the city every day, you who 
 have no wide sphere of influence, and earn your bread 
 in some unknown bye-walk of this great crowded life 
 around us — you can claim this text, and its promise 
 is for you. You can practice what Jeremy Taylor 
 called the great essential of holy living — "The 
 practice of the presence of God." You can live as 
 seeing Him who is invisible, and your whole life will 
 put on a new dignity, and know a new and gracious 
 peace for that vision. You will be strong and work 
 exploits, living a life worth living, and that shall be 
 memorable, if you will but open your heart to the 
 knowledge of God, and live as ever in your great 
 Taskmaster's eye. And amidst much that is mean in 
 life, much that is sordid, much that is commonplace, 
 
 175 
 
THE DIVINE CHALLENGE 
 
 you will live a life that is far from mean, or sordid, 
 or commonplace, for 3 r ou will learn to say with Russell 
 Lowell in his great hymn of faith — 
 
 God of our fathers, Thou who wast, 
 
 Art, and shall be — 
 We who believe Life's bases rest, 
 Beyond the probe of chemic test, 
 Still, like our fathers, feel Thee near. 
 
 I do not grudge you the pleasures of youth: I do 
 not suppose that you can each attain to philosophic 
 insight and sobriety of thought: I do not imagine 
 that it is within the compass of each of you to be 
 what the greatest of men have been: but you can 
 know your God, you can live in the steady sense of 
 God's presence, and he who does this, be his mind 
 never so limited in its range, and his life never so 
 narrow in its opportunities, shall be strong, and shall 
 do exploits. 
 
 176 
 
THE CHANGED FORM, THE ONE CHRIST 
 
THE CHANGED FORM, THE ONE CHRIST 
 
 " After that He appeared in another form unto two of them, 
 as they walked, and went into the country." — Mark xvi. 12. 
 
 THIS is the bare record of one of the appear- 
 ances of Christ to the disciples, fully told for 
 us in the story of the journey to Emmaus which 
 occurs in the last chapter of St. Luke's Gospel. 
 That story is familiar to all of us. Two disciples, 
 appalled by all that has occurred in Jerusalem, set 
 out in the eventide for Emmaus convinced that the 
 whole propaganda of Christianity is at an end, pre- 
 pared to renounce its hopes and to take up once more 
 the dreary tasks of a commonplace and unillumined 
 life. As they walk and are sad they are overtaken 
 by a stranger who talks with them in friendliest in- 
 tercourse, accepts their hospitality, and is finally 
 known to them as Jesus in the breaking of bread. 
 Among the various incidents of the Resurrection this 
 stands alone, if one may say so. Christ nowhere 
 appears so simply human as in this episode of Em- 
 maus. He is the friend and comrade: He wears no 
 aspect of awe or majesty: He speaks no words that 
 
 179 
 
THE DIVINE CHALLENGE 
 
 thrill the heart with a terror of the supernatural — 
 only warm loving human words, which cause the 
 hearts of these forlorn men to burn with passionate 
 affection. This is made strikingly manifest in one 
 circumstance: the women who see Him at the sepul- 
 chre are afraid, the disciples in the upper chamber, 
 seeing a form of unearthly majesty outlined on the 
 air, are terrified, and suppose that they have seen a 
 spirit. But here there is simple gladness and no fear. 
 Christ has appeared to them in another form — not 
 as the supernatural, but the natural Jesus: not as 
 the mysterious conqueror of the grave, but as the 
 Human Friend and Leader. 
 
 The arresting thought of this passage lies in the 
 phrase " another form." Does it not suggest that 
 men see Christ with different eyes, and that Chris- 
 tianity itself appears to men in differing forms? 
 Does it not suggest that religion allows full play for 
 the varied idiosyncrasy of men, and that we must 
 not expect every man to discern religious truth pre- 
 cisely as we ourselves discern it? And in this large 
 allowance for the individual point of* view, do we not 
 find something thoroughly consonant with the known 
 order of the world, and ought we not to learn a les- 
 son in charity which we all need to learn? This is 
 the theme which grows out of the text, and it is 
 one eminently worth our careful and humble investi- 
 gation. 
 
 I say, in the first place, that there is something in 
 180 
 
THE CHANGED FORM 
 
 this suggestion which is in thorough consonance with 
 the known order of the world. Thus, for example, 
 it is the plainest of all known facts, that no two men 
 ever see any feature of the physical universe about 
 us with quite identic vision. Two men look upon a 
 sunset or a wide and distant view, but each sees the 
 splendid pageant differently, and the kind of emo- 
 tion which each feels manifests a wide, and possibly 
 an irreconcilable, variation. Two men look upon a 
 flower: but if the one man be Wordsworth, he sees 
 in it thoughts that lie too deep for tears : and if the 
 other man be a Peter Bell, 
 
 In vain thro' every changeful year 
 Does nature lead hiin as before: 
 A primrose by the river's brim 
 A yellow primrose is to him, 
 And it is nothing more. 
 
 Two poets write of Nature : but where one sees law, 
 the other sees love, and while for one the message of 
 Nature is sombre and majestic immutability, for the 
 other it is a kind of noble sympathy. Two artists 
 go out to paint the same scene, but each sees some- 
 thing in it not manifest to the other, and when each 
 has completed his picture you will find as wide a 
 difference in the two pictures as you find in the two 
 men. These are illustrations so simple and common- 
 place that they are familiar to the least observant, 
 and they go to prove that we all see with different 
 eyes. 
 
 181 
 
THE DIVINE CHALLENGE 
 
 Again, love always sees with different eyes. For 
 the true lover there is something in the beloved that 
 none but he can see — a beauty real to him, but per- 
 haps wholly hidden from any one else, a grace and 
 charm which thrill his heart but do not appeal so 
 fully to another. This is one of the facts of human 
 life, at once beautiful, pathetic, and astonishing. 
 Few men marry beauty, but all think they do: they 
 see an ideal image which to them is real, and years 
 pass, and gray hairs come, and the bloom of youth 
 perishes, but, where love is true and constant, all 
 this havoc is not so much as noticed, and the old man 
 beholds in the helpmeet of his life, not the worn and 
 wasted form the world sees, but the wife of his youth, 
 the bride that linked her hand with his before the 
 altar. And in the same way, what woman is there 
 who does not see a loveliness in her child which no 
 one else sees? It is not always that a child is beauti- 
 ful, but to the mother the plainest child is never less 
 than beautiful: and often and often, my heart has 
 been moved with the wonder and the sacredness of 
 motherhood, when I have seen some woman follow- 
 ing every movement of a quite unattractive child with 
 wistful and adoring eyes, as though the child were 
 the very image of a perfect beauty. How do we 
 account for these things? Simply thus: these human 
 creatures have appeared to those who love them in 
 another form, and love has transfigured and trans- 
 formed them. 
 
 182 
 
HE CHANGED FORM 
 
 Take another fact which brings us still nearer to 
 our theme. The great object of all the greatest art 
 of this world has been the person of Jesus Christ: 
 but as you go through some great gallery filled with 
 examples of Old Masters how astonishing is the diver- 
 gence of interpretation which you find! The Christ 
 of Michael Angelo, the Christ of Fra Angelico — a 
 whole world of thought separates the two. For one 
 painter the dominant image of Christ is an image of 
 agony and shame, to him the Cross is the overwhelm- 
 ing and awful thing, and do what he will he cannot 
 tear himself from the contemplation of that sublime 
 majesty of woe, that speechless sorrow and expiring 
 meekness. But to another painter the vital fact 
 about Jesus is not His death but His perfect life 
 with men : and so you have pictures of Christ asleep 
 beneath the palm trees of Egypt, Christ in the tem- 
 ple with the money changers, Christ in the trium- 
 phant magnanimity of His dealings with sinful men 
 and women. Michael Angelo sees Christ as the 
 awful Judge of quick and dead: Fra Angelico as the 
 dear human presence, moving among men in simple 
 friendliness, and " feeding the faint divine in human 
 hearts." Which was right? you say. It is not a 
 question of right or wrong — each was right because 
 each saw something that was true — each saw some- 
 thing that the other did not see — and Christ ap- 
 peared to each in a different form. 
 
 It is but a step further to the perception of an- 
 186 
 
THE DIVINE CHALLENGE 
 
 other truth, that in the whole history of Christ and 
 His Church there has always been this divergence 
 of view and interpretation, and this wide allowance 
 for human idiosyncrasy. Take, for example, 
 Christ's revelation of Himself in His earthly life. 
 He speaks as an ascetic when He says that the life 
 is more than meat: He acts with the most genial 
 acceptance of the uses of life when He is the friend 
 of publicans and sinners, and eats with them. He 
 speaks as one for whom all the outward aspects of 
 the world are meaningless when He talks of the King- 
 dom of God as within men: and again He speaks as 
 one vividly awake to the significance of human 
 events when He talks of the signs of the times, and 
 declares the things that make for the peace of na- 
 tions. He speaks as a non-combatant when He dis- 
 claims the use of the sword, and in yet another 
 passage He proclaims that He comes to bring not 
 peace, but a sword among men. He is at one mo- 
 ment the Good Shepherd, and the Lover of Souls: 
 and at another the Judge, before whose face the 
 wicked shall be burned up as tares of the field. He 
 makes no effort to reconcile these varying aspects of 
 Himself and His message. He does not create, and 
 does not seek to create, a uniform impression on the 
 minds of men. His words can be the severest of all 
 words, and they can be the sweetest : to the hypocrite 
 He is a sword, to the humble a sanctuary. And what 
 does it all mean but this — that Christ recognised 
 
 184 
 
THE CHANGED FORM 
 
 the infinite variations of human temperament, and 
 He appeared in a different form to individual men, 
 according to their power of apprehension, and their 
 need of truth? And if this be true, it is equally true 
 and indisputable, that the apostles, who were en- 
 trusted with the great task of interpreting Christ to 
 the world, each saw Christ in a different form. It 
 was natural that Paul, trained from childhood in 
 Rabbinical lore, and a Pharisee of the Pharisees, 
 should see Christ chiefly in His relation to ancient 
 Jewish types and ceremonies, and should interpret 
 all things in the light of His supreme and atoning 
 sacrifice. But it was equally natural to John that 
 he should shed upon the story of Christ the light of 
 a sublime mysticism, and that James should see it in 
 the light of practical duties. Nor did the apostles 
 themselves profess any perfect coincidence of view. 
 Peter boldly speaks of certain things in Paul's teach- 
 ing which are hard to be understood, which the un- 
 learned and ungodly wrest or dislocate out of right 
 relation, to their own destruction. It is not too 
 much to say that divergence of interpretation began 
 with the first moment of the organised church, and 
 through all ages these divergencies have gone on. 
 Think of the endless growth of sects and churches — 
 of Christianity as it was variously discerned by the 
 Crusader, the Monk, and the Puritan: of the Chris- 
 tian of the Catacombs with his one simple and ex- 
 quisite conception of the Shepherd with the lamb on 
 
 185 
 
THE DIVINE CHALLENGE 
 
 His shoulder, and the Christian of the mediaeval ages, 
 with his awful vision of Jesus as the King of Glory 
 to whom approach was only possible through the 
 softer virtues and gentle supplications of the Virgin 
 Mother: think of religion as it is conceived in turn 
 by Luther, Bunyan, and Wesley — by the High 
 Churchman, the Quaker, and the Methodist: reflect 
 not merely on the divergence of view involved in 
 these conceptions of truth, but on the intense hostili- 
 ties which they have provoked, the bitter feuds, the 
 actual battles and cruel martyrdoms — and what 
 have you to say to it all? There is but one thing 
 that ought to be said — it is that Christ appeared 
 to all these men in a different form. Each saw what 
 he was capable of seeing, and each saw something 
 that was vitally and therefore eternally true. 
 
 You will notice further that all the troubles of the 
 Church have arisen from the attempt to enforce unity 
 and identity of view. How significant is this simple 
 statement of the Evangelist ; " He appeared in an- 
 other form unto two of them: and they went and told 
 it unto the residue: neither believed they them." No : 
 they were willing enough to believe that their own 
 revelation of Jesus was authentic — that the Jesus 
 seen in the upper room, and the garden was real — 
 but this pilgrim Jesus, talking with these two men 
 on the road to Emmaus — this forsooth could only 
 be hallucination. What they had seen and felt was 
 true: what others had seen and felt was not credible: 
 
 186 
 
THE CHANGED FORM 
 
 so early do we find an illustration of the saying that 
 orthodoxy is my doxy, and heterodoxy is everybody 
 else's doxy. And this spirit, a spirit really of in- 
 tolerant egoism and vanity, has been at work among 
 men ever since ; and it has caused more mischief, more 
 disruption, more strife and clamour than any other 
 score of causes you could name. It is a thing per- 
 fectly right and even noble in a man that he should 
 say — " This is true, I pledge my life upon it ! " but 
 no man has the right to say " This only is true," 
 because he ought to remember that something else 
 may be true which it is not given him to discern. 
 But the tendency of human nature is always to ex- 
 alt a partial truth into the whole truth, and to label 
 as falsehood any form of truth that does not com- 
 mend or reveal itself to us. You can scarcely have 
 a more pertinent illustration of this intolerance than 
 in the case of Luther, who is eager to tear the whole 
 Epistle of St. James out of the New Testament, be- 
 cause he is incapable of seeing how it shapes with the 
 vital truth that man is saved not by works, but by 
 grace and faith: and yet Luther himself was a great 
 heretic, who had insisted upon his right of private 
 interpretation of truth against the whole force of 
 the Roman Church, and had asserted that Christ had 
 appeared to him in another form, and that his own 
 vision of Christ was to be respected and allowed. 
 But the case is by no means unusual. You will con- 
 stantly find that the man who claims liberty of judg- 
 
 187 
 
THE DIVINE CHALLENGE 
 
 ment for himself is not prepared to extend that 
 liberty to others. You will find that the man who in 
 his youth is a heretic, contrives to elevate his heresy 
 into orthodoxy by the time the period of middle life 
 is reached, and that he who fought hard for tolerance 
 in his manhood has become as intolerant as the worst 
 inquisitor of Rome by the time old age is reached. 
 If Luther was capable of recognising truth, surely 
 St. James was not less capable, and had an even 
 better opportunity : but no : this is the whole truth, 
 says Luther, and he will not allow that Jesus had 
 appeared to St. James in another form. In no other 
 domain than theology do men dare to claim this ar- 
 rogant right of infallibility. In politics, in science, 
 in medicine, all thoughtful men are willing to admit 
 that there is something to be said for the views of 
 their antagonists. They recognise the falsehood of 
 extremes, and the uncertainties of knowledge teach 
 them diffidence and humility. But in theology, 
 which is the most subtle and difficult of all sciences, 
 depending less on intellectual deductions than in- 
 dividual intuition and experience — here, and here 
 alone, men dare to speak with the accent of arrogant 
 infallibility. And they do more : they are determined 
 to force their views upon everybody. They will 
 allow nothing for human idiosyncrasy. They libel, 
 deride, defame, and excommunicate all who will not 
 agree with them. They carry their creed upon the 
 sword point, and are prepared to plunge whole na- 
 
 188 
 
THE CHANGED FORM 
 
 tions into bloody war for the interpretation of a 
 text, or even a phrase. In a word all that is most 
 disgraceful in ecclesiastical history, all that has di- 
 vided the Church and has dyed the garments of truth 
 with the martyr's blood, may be traced to this one 
 cause: men will not believe that Christ appears to 
 their brothers in another form, and will not accept 
 as truth, any statement of truth that differs from 
 their own. Neither believed they them: it is the sad- 
 dest sentence in the whole history of Christianity. 
 
 But from these general statements let us pass 
 finally to those particular lessons which we all need 
 to learn. 
 
 The first is that the revelation of Christ to the 
 individual soul will always vary with the individual. 
 The greatest miracle in all the world is the miracle of 
 human individuality: that in a hundred million of 
 men and women you will not find two exactly alike: 
 two, who see things from precisely the same angle of 
 vision ; two, who know entire identity of thought and 
 feeling. It is so that God has chosen to make His 
 children; each man a world in himself, each with 
 subtle variations of character and temperament, that 
 distinguish him from all other human creatures. 
 And thus it happens, that just as no two men see the 
 world of nature as quite the same, so religion takes 
 its own form for each. There is no one of us for 
 whom all the doctrines of Christianity are equally 
 important. There are moral and intellectual condi- 
 
 189 
 
THE DIVINE CHALLENGE 
 
 tions which give sharpness and cogency to certain 
 truths, and which invest some truths with a reality 
 which we do not feel in relation to others. The fear 
 of God is for one man the dominant note of all re- 
 ligion ■ — the love of God for another : and there are 
 changes of experience in ourselves which make one 
 truth the whole truth to us in youth, and quite an- 
 other truth the master-star that rules our maturer 
 years. Christ appears to us in many forms — and 
 if we compare our thoughts about Christ to-day with 
 those fainter and more obscure perceptions that we 
 had twenty years ago, we can mark a very wide 
 change of view. And if we ourselves know variations 
 of view, it is no cause for astonishment that other 
 men see Christianity in quite a different light from 
 ourselves. The one divine light has come to us and 
 them, but it streams through a differing medium — 
 yet it is the same light of life. The same Christ has 
 appeared to the scholar in the upper room of learn- 
 ing, and to the humble disciple on the road of 
 sorrow, but the revelation has been tempered to the 
 need of each. Those also are disciples who do not 
 see what we see: those also are Christians who are 
 not of this fold. There are many voices of truth, 
 but none without significance: there are many rev- 
 elations of Christ to men, but He appears in a differ- 
 ing form. 
 
 The second lesson is that we should learn not to 
 despise a revelation of truth which we ourselves do 
 
 190 
 
THE CHANGED FORM 
 
 not need or comprehend. Think, for example, of the 
 great multitude of souls who are numbered in the 
 Roman Catholic communion. To us it may be that 
 many of the predominant dogmas of the Roman 
 Catholic faith are quite unintelligible or even pro- 
 fane. They mean nothing to us, and we cannot 
 fancy ourselves, under any transformation or com- 
 pulsion of circumstance accepting them. But it is 
 certain that they mean much to these multitudes of 
 souls. It is equally certain that there must be some 
 element of vital truth behind them all, or they had 
 never fastened themselves so firmly on the human 
 mind and conscience through so many ages. We are 
 prepared to admit that to the truly pious Catholic, 
 Christ has appeared in another form ; but the charity 
 we practise we also claim. We demand that we shall 
 not be called heretics by those whom we are prepared 
 to call Christians. And in regard to the High 
 Churchman we say the same thing. His view of 
 truth is not ours: but we gladly admit that there is 
 truth in his view and that Christ has appeared to him 
 in another form. We give up nothing of our own 
 convictions in such an admission: we ask him to give 
 up none of his: but we do claim that we also have 
 received our revelation of Christ, and that we also are 
 His Church. 
 
 Think again of the nobler forms of pagan piety 
 still extant in the world, and remember the exceeding 
 breadth of the inspired statement that Christ is the 
 
 191 
 
THE DIVINE CHALLENGE 
 
 light of every man who cometh into the world. The 
 narrow-minded Christian is puzzled when he finds so 
 much in the life of Buddha which closely resembles 
 the life of Jesus. He is still more puzzled when he 
 hears of natural religion among the heathen, of 
 virtue, temperance, chastity, self-sacrifice, of rev- 
 erence for sacred things, of sincere and ardent effort 
 to live in the light of the highest known duty. But 
 St. Paul found no difficulty in the presence of such 
 facts. He admitted the existence of natural religion. 
 And both in the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles 
 we have notable examples of noble-minded pagans 
 who fasted, prayed, and gave alms, who cultivated 
 the spiritual life by such means as lay in their power, 
 and achieved a very high standard of character. 
 What can we say to these things but this — that 
 Christ appeared to them in another form? For 
 where the Spirit of Jesus is, there is the revelation 
 of Jesus — and the light that lighteth every man who 
 cometh into this world is capable of streaming even 
 through a pagan creed, of shining in the face of 
 Buddha, of manifesting itself to sincere and honest 
 souls everywhere: and without such a truth to sus- 
 tain us it would be impossible to look upon the world 
 at all, save with utter horror and despair. 
 
 And think of the many forms of religion in our 
 own midst. So far as ecclesiastical forms go they 
 are irreconcilable. Nay, more than that, we should 
 lose by their complete fusion, for organic unity is 
 
 192 
 
THE CHANGED FORM 
 
 not desirable, even were it possible. It is not desira- 
 ble simply because men have, and must needs have, 
 inherent differences from one another. Because we 
 do see truth from different angles of vision, we must 
 needs have a great variety of Christian organisations 
 to express these different visions of truth. When 
 Christ prayed that His flock might be one, it was 
 not organic but spiritual unity that He desired. 
 And that spiritual unity is attained when men do see 
 the authentic vision of Christ — the Church is one 
 simply by virtue of loyalty and love to Christ — and 
 it matters nothing at all, except by way of consola- 
 tion and encouragement, that each Christian organ- 
 isation sees the Saviour in a different form. 
 
 But this let us all know, that we must see Christ 
 or die in our sins. Until we see Him we are lost — 
 lost as those men were lost, who had nothing left to 
 live for, no hope in earth or heaven, no care for any- 
 thing but to hasten back to the old sensual earthly 
 life, which they had left at the call of Christ. To 
 be carnally minded is death : to be spiritually minded 
 is life and peace — and they were turning their backs 
 on life, they were going back to the ways of death. 
 And to them the Risen Life spoke: the Christ once 
 more became manifest. What matter how He came, 
 and in what form — the thing was, He did come, and 
 they saw and believed. And for us let there be no 
 further talk of forms — let us rather fix our whole 
 mind on this one truth, we must believe or die. How 
 
 193 
 
THE DIVINE CHALLENGE 
 
 Christ shall show Himself to you I care not : in what 
 form of Christian organisation you are likeliest to 
 find the authentic vision of Christ, I will not even 
 discuss — go where you will, worship as you like, 
 join any church that seems most to meet your needs 
 ■ — but be content with nothing less than this, the 
 actual revelation of Christ as Saviour, Atonement, 
 Redeemer, to your own soul — for we must see Christ 
 or perish, we must believe or die. 
 
 194 
 
UTTER KNOWLEDGE IS UTTER LOVE 
 
XI 
 
 UTTER KNOWLEDGE IS UTTER LOVE 
 
 ts For He knew what was in man!" — John ii. 25. 
 "Jesus knew from the beginning who they were that be- 
 lieved not, and who should betray Him." — John vi. 64. 
 
 THUS the Evangelist speaks of his Master, and 
 it is a statement often repeated. Alone, of all 
 those who have taught and led humanity, Christ had 
 a comprehensive and adequate knowledge of men. 
 He made no mistakes; before His luminous search- 
 ing gaze the secrets of all hearts were revealed. He 
 was betrayed, knowing that He was betrayed ; cruci- 
 fied, foreseeing His crucifixion. Nothing in the final 
 tragedy surprised Him; He had long before re- 
 hearsed every predetermined detail of His agony. 
 And nothing in the last days of Christ is so singu- 
 lar and striking as this calm profound discernment. 
 But it is really of a piece with all His life, for in all 
 His dealings with the world, in the midst of a thou- 
 sand plots and conspiracies, traps, ambushes, hypocri- 
 sies, flatteries disguising hatred, and adulation 
 covering scorn, He was never deceived as to the 
 motives and springs of human conduct — " He knew 
 what was in man." 
 
 197 
 
THE DIVINE CHALLENGE 
 
 Now the point which interests us most in such a 
 statement is this: how did Christ act under this ter- 
 rible burden of knowledge? For our first instinctive 
 thought is that such knowledge can only be regarded 
 as a crushing burden. Who would care to know 
 the intimate secrets of the lives that most closely 
 touch his own, and would be willing that his own 
 heart should be exposed in all its nakedness even 
 to the most sympathetic eye? We all of us walk 
 through the world more or less tricked out in dis- 
 guises, and we are content that it should be so. It 
 is not cynicism, but a profound distrust and almost 
 fear of human nature which makes us anxious not 
 to pry too deeply into the lives of others, for who 
 knows what we might find there? Would our friend 
 be still our friend if his whole heart were laid bare 
 to us? Would love survive the absolute revelation 
 of all that has made up the texture of a life? All 
 the meannesses, sins, follies, lusts, vanities, errors, 
 which from time to time have stained the heart? Has 
 it not often happened that some man or woman has 
 been driven by a sudden impulse into the confession 
 of some secret vice or weakness to a friend, only to 
 discover too late that the confession rang the death- 
 knell of friendship? And it was not that the friend 
 behaved badly either; he meant to behave well, he 
 tried to do so ; but inevitably there was an altered 
 estimate, and life was never the same again. These 
 are the facts of experience that make us think that 
 
 198 
 
UTTER KNOWLEDGE IS UTTER LOVE 
 
 adequate, complete, absolute knowledge of another 
 would be a terrible thing, that for our own peace half- 
 knowledge is better, that only in very rare instances 
 where the soul is perfectly lucid and the temper di- 
 vinely generous and unselfish, can it be good for us 
 to know all that may be known about another. Ob- 
 serve then ; Christ did know all about men ; knew 
 them to their last fibre ; knew them to the last coil of 
 being; knew them to the innermost secrecies of ex- 
 perience; yet He reverenced human nature, and all 
 His relations with men and women were characterised 
 of three great notes : Charity, Sympathy, and Hope. 
 Adequate knowledge of men taught Christ Char- 
 ity toward them ; think of that a moment. Take, 
 for example, the relations of Christ with His dis- 
 ciples. He knew what w T as in such men as Peter and 
 Judas. Peter did not know himself, but his Lord 
 knew him thoroughly. Very early in their intimacy 
 Christ had gauged aright the vanity, pride, and moral 
 weakness of Peter; yet never did Jesus love Peter 
 more than in that moment when He looked upon him 
 with that look which broke the recreant disciple's 
 heart. He knew what was in Judas; yet not once 
 in the three years' ministry is there a harsh word 
 against Judas ; and when the final word is spoken 
 which dismisses Judas from the discipleship it is not 
 harsh, but ineffably tender, solemn, dignified, the re- 
 luctant verdict of outraged love that still loves. And 
 so with all the disciples ; there was enough of error 
 
 199 
 
THE DIVINE CHALLENGE 
 
 and stupidity, of dull intractable lowness of thought 
 and ideal, to hurt and offend Jesus grievously, yet 
 He loved these men with a love stronger than death. 
 How do we explain this constancy of love? The ex- 
 planation is simple. Christ saw their virtues as well 
 as their vices, their qualities as well as their defects ; 
 He saw not an aspect of a man, but the whole man 
 as he was, and the large and candid vision produced 
 the large and noble charity of His regard. 
 
 Here then is adequate knowledge inspiring not con- 
 tempt but charity, and is not the lesson obvious? 
 The longer I live the more clearly do I see that the 
 harsh, contemptuous, uncharitable verdicts which we 
 so often pass upon our fellow-creatures are almost 
 always caused by inadequate knowledge. There 
 is probably not a single person of our acquaint- 
 ance who is not a good deal better than we suppose 
 him, as we should readily discover if we knew him 
 better. But alas, for us and him; we cannot 
 restrain our tongues when we speak of him; we 
 love to mock his peculiarities and his defects; 
 we tell this and that caustic story at his expense ; we 
 know some spiteful little anecdote about his habits 
 or his temper ; so we ridicule, or avoid, or defame, or 
 misapprehend, or neglect a man who may have many 
 concealed qualities of character far finer and rarer 
 than any we ourselves can boast. Some people seem 
 to have a positive genius for discovering the worst 
 side of worthy men ; they scent a fault a mile off, 
 
 200 
 
UTTER KNOWLEDGE IS UTTER LOVE 
 
 and do not perceive a virtue when it is beneath their 
 nose. There are faults enough, no doubt, in human 
 nature, but is it a worthy thing or a kind thing to 
 make it jour chief business to discover and catalogue 
 them? Nay, is it a just thing? Have we not all 
 known moments of compunction when we have found 
 that we have wholly misjudged some fellow-creature 
 through a purposed ignorance? Suddenly we have 
 come upon the tragic facts of his domestic life, some 
 secret calamity nobly concealed through years, some 
 burden heroically borne, some grief endured in self- 
 respecting reticence, and then we have been ashamed 
 of our careless jesting. The man we thought mean 
 has had others depending on him of whom we have 
 never heard; the man we thought rough in temper, 
 has gone through seas of sorrow which would have 
 overwhelmed a man less masterful. O, believe me, 
 of all the forces most fatal to human brotherhood, 
 there is none that works such evil as the gibing 
 tongue, the spiteful narrow temper that fixes itself 
 like a leech on the faults of others, the mean cynical 
 habit of judging everyone, not by the best in them, 
 but by the worst; and clearly of all tempers none 
 can be more utterly un-Christlike. For Christ 
 who knew all that was in man, never failed in charity 
 to man ; He who saw man most completely, loved man 
 most perfectly. And so I repeat that the way to a 
 larger charity towards others is better knowledge 
 of them, You would not like others to judge you by 
 
 201 
 
THE DIVINE CHALLENGE 
 
 your faults alone; judge not lest ye be judged. 
 You would claim that if you have certain faults, 
 at least you also possess some virtues ; what you be- 
 lieve of yourself learn to believe of others too. I 
 have had to do in public life with many men whom 
 I have loved, with some who did not attract me, with 
 a few whom I have disliked; but I profess that I 
 never yet met the man who had not some quality in 
 him which deserved esteem, and often enough I have 
 learned to love the man whom I began by disliking, 
 because I have come to know him better with the lapse 
 of time. The one sovereign remedy for an unchari- 
 table temper is wider knowledge of humanity; for 
 He who loved and honoured mankind most was He 
 who knew the most about men, the Saviour who know- 
 ing the worst, was never blind to the best, and ever 
 judged men by their best rather than their worst. 
 
 Jesus knew not only imperfect people but evil peo- 
 ple; He knew what was in them, and what He knew 
 taught Him Sympathy for them. Think for a mo- 
 ment of Christ's treatment of that detested and for- 
 lorn class of the Jewish community known as harlots 
 and publicans. There was no question about the 
 facts of their lives, they were notorious and infamous. 
 The life of the one was then what it is now, a gilded 
 shame, a smiling misery, a tragic fact, but all the 
 same a fact not named, tacitly connived at, even ex- 
 cused, but never pitied. The life of the publican was 
 equally notorious ; he was hated as the agent of a ty- 
 
 202 
 
UTTER KNOWLEDGE IS UTTER LOVE 
 
 ranny, and he was treated universally as an outcast. 
 If a Pharisee had been asked to express his opinion of 
 these people, we can imagine what he would have 
 said. He would have considered them not worth a 
 thought ; they were wholly bad, the mere offal of hu- 
 manity. Civilisation has its sewers, and sewers have 
 their rats ; they were the sewer-creatures of humanity, 
 possibly answering some purpose in the universal 
 scheme, but no more worth consideration than the 
 sewer-rat. That was the Pharisee's view, that is still 
 the way in which people of respectable virtues think 
 of these miserables of humanity. Everyone knows 
 that such creatures exist, but it is convenient to 
 forget their existence. As for treating them as hu- 
 man, as having qualities not wholly despicable, as 
 being amenable to any generous or pious impulses, 
 that is absurd! Here is the bright street where the 
 children of virtue walk clothed in shining raiment; 
 below is the sewer and the rats, and it is nothing 
 less than an insult to name the two in the same 
 breath. 
 
 How did Jesus think about the matter? Why, 
 with a daring originality which we have wholly failed 
 to comprehend, even though we have read His words 
 a thousand times. Notice one thing only which He 
 says; He says that these were the very people who 
 received Him most gladly, and showed themselves 
 most sympathetic to His spirit and His message. 
 If you will make careful note of the sort of sins 
 
THE DIVINE CHALLENGE 
 
 which Christ most vehemently denounced, you will 
 discover that He had much less to say about the sin 
 of the pubhcan and the outcast, than the sin of 
 the Pharisee. And what was the chief sin of the 
 Pharisee? It was contempt of humanity, a con- 
 tempt which led him into every detestable variety 
 of rancour, spite, and malice. To hate your brother 
 or sister, to see no good in them, to treat them as 
 incapable of good, to spurn them, to loathe them, 
 to trample them under the feet of your own swollen 
 spiritual pride, that was the sin of all sins to Jesus. 
 He knew what was in man, and because He knew, 
 He discerned in these despised people, qualities which 
 were not despicable; veins of pure gold running 
 through the clay; fountains of pity under the crust 
 of debasement; generous and noble tempers, strug- 
 gling through the opposition of much that was ig- 
 noble in life and habit, and He sympathised with 
 them because He could comprehend them. 
 
 Jesus knew Human Nature as a whole, and the 
 result of His knowledge was Faith in man. 
 
 " Faith in man " ; it is a phrase very easy to utter, 
 but it represents a temper very difficult to achieve and 
 maintain. Think of the ignorance, stupidity, and 
 ingratitude of man; his indifference to the labours 
 of the wise and the sacrifices of the heroic; his ina- 
 bility or reluctance to follow truth with ardour or 
 persistence; his carnal propensities, his perpetual 
 sacrifice of the spiritual to the material, and his 
 
 204 
 
UTTER KNOWLEDGE IS UTTER LOVE 
 
 consequent contempt and even hatred of those who 
 disturb his base apathy with the vision of spiritual 
 progress or attainment ; think not only of the follies 
 of the ignorant, and the crimes of the stupid, but 
 of the weaknesses and follies of the good themselves ; 
 and who does not feel a certain hopelessness fall upon 
 him like a cloud, when he endeavours to look into 
 the long vista of the future of humanity? How 
 rarely is it that the historian, who has traced the 
 vacillations of the human will, through the blunders 
 and disasters of centuries, comes to his last page 
 with unabated hope? How rarely is it that statesmen 
 are hopeful men; how much oftener do they fall 
 into acrid cynicism, and flout and jeer the nation 
 they would lead, rather than hearten and encourage 
 it? How often do even leaders in religious and 
 moral progress lose heart, tacitly admitting that the 
 evil of the world is too great for them, and that the 
 folly of man is incurable. Everyone knows the 
 French proverb, so often quoted by John Morley, 
 that he who would work for his fellow-men should 
 see as little as possible of them, and that proverb 
 is the very essence of disappointed altruism. What 
 it expresses really is, that while it is a duty to work 
 for others, yet man is a poor creature, and hardly 
 worth the trouble you take over him. You may do 
 some little good by your toil, but never what you 
 hoped, designed, or expected, for human stupidity 
 will prove invincible in the long run. Faith in man 
 
 205 
 
THE DIVINE CHALLENGE 
 
 — no, it is a rare temper even in religious leaders ; 
 possible to the young perhaps, but increasingly diffi- 
 cult to the old, and in any case a temper not easy 
 to maintain through a lifetime even by the most 
 ardent of men. 
 
 Turn once more to the story of Jesus, and you 
 find that He did maintain this temper of faith in 
 man. He was despised and rejected of men, yet 
 He had faith in man. He knew more than any other 
 has ever known of the baseness of the human heart, 
 yet He had faith in the perfectibility of man. His 
 story is a story of infinite injustice, betrayal, and 
 treachery; the noblest of the sons of men, yet is He 
 treated as the basest; the wisest, He becomes the 
 scorn of the foolish; the most magnanimous, yet is 
 He the sport of the meanest; surely if anything 
 could shake one's faith in humanity it would be such 
 a tragedy as this 1 But Jesus died full of hope 
 for men; and it is exquisitely characteristic of Him 
 that His last act was to gladden the soul of the dying 
 robber who hung beside Him on the Cross. How 
 did Jesus maintain this temper? It was the result 
 of His perfect knowledge of humanity. He knew 
 what was in man, and He knew that there was enough 
 of good and of the desire of good even in the basest 
 to encourage hopefulness. And if you and I have 
 grown contemptuous of men, is it not because we 
 have ceased to know them, ceased to put ourselves 
 in close contact with them? Ah, what so easy as to 
 
 206 
 
UTTER KNOWLEDGE IS UTTER LOVE 
 
 live one's life apart, to pay no attention to the 
 wonderful spectacle of human nature as a whole, 
 and so slowly to absorb that miasma of cynicism, 
 which is the inevitable punishment of a selfish mode 
 of thought, and an isolated mode of life? You will 
 always find that those who have most faith in man 
 are those who come into closest contact with man 
 at his worst. I have never yet met a City Missionary 
 or a Salvation Army Captain, or even a prison-visitor, 
 whose eyes did not light up with faith in man, as he 
 related some story of pity among the. degraded, or 
 kindness between the destitute. If you have lost 
 faith in human nature, and want to recover it, the 
 best suggestion that I can make is : Go down to some 
 mission among the poor or the depraved, armed with 
 kindness, and there amidst the dust and ashes of a 
 half -ruined humanity, you will discover so much of 
 goodness and greatness still left, that you will have 
 no doubt about the inherent greatness of human na- 
 ture. You know something of the outside of these 
 men — their rags, their dirt, their physical debase- 
 ment; learn to know what is in them, and you will 
 find in the lowest, something to reverence and respect. 
 And at least be sure of this; faith in God is quite 
 impossible without faith in man. It was not for 
 nothing that Christ put duty to our neighbour, the 
 cup of cold water given to a child, the food to the 
 hungry, the clothes to the naked, in the forefront of 
 all piety; we cannot be in a right relation to God 
 
 207 
 
THE DIVINE CHALLENGE 
 
 unless we are in right relation to our brother man, 
 for if we love not our brother whom we have seen, 
 how can we love God whom we have not seen ? 
 
 " Thou knowest all things, thou knowest that I 
 love thee," said Simon Peter, and so the last sug- 
 gestion may be the Consolations of this theme. Do 
 you recall what were the bitterest moments of child- 
 hood? They were moments when the heart rankled 
 with the sense of injustice, and what caused that 
 sense of injustice? The conviction that we were not 
 comprehended, that there was a side of our conduct 
 that we could not explain, that our real motives 
 were very different from our apparent motives. Peter 
 knew all that this meant, but the perfect knowledge 
 that Christ had of him was his consolation. " To 
 know all is to forgive all," is one of those ancient 
 proverbs which man has had to learn through his 
 own agony. It is imperfect knowledge we fear 
 most, for that means imperfect understanding. But 
 where knowledge is perfect we have much less to 
 fear, for He who knows the worst of us, knows 
 equally the best. " Thou knowest all things, thou 
 knowest that I love thee." 
 
 Most men, in reviewing their lives, have a feeling 
 that if everything were fully known, if the nature 
 of their temptations were understood, and the whole 
 struggle of their existence, if they were judged with 
 a comprehending sympathy, which gave credit for 
 the best in them, as well as blame for the worst, things 
 
 208 
 
UTTER KNOWLEDGE IS UTTER LOVE 
 
 might not go so ill with them after all. The errors in 
 a human court of justice are always the errors of im- 
 perfect knowledge. Some poor creature is pilloried 
 for judgment, and it is all a question of evidence, 
 rarely of motive, never of tempiation. Nor in the 
 human court of justice is there any room for moral 
 discernment. Morally, the blow struck in anger, 
 which causes death, is much less reprehensible than the 
 cool and calculated roguery which wrecks a hundred 
 homes, and escapes with a few months' imprisonment. 
 But human judgment takes no count of what is in the 
 man ; if it did there is many a man arraigned for mur- 
 der who would be lightly punished, and many a man 
 arraigned for a lifetime of cruel devastating fraud 
 who would be hanged. Such is human justice, but 
 God's justice is wholly different. He who tries us 
 at the last assize will know what is in us, will know 
 us intimately, absolutely, and so we do not fear. 
 So at least David argued in that wonderful 139th 
 Psalm; the God who knows his downsitting and his 
 uprising, and all his thoughts, will show him more 
 mercy than one who only judged him from the out- 
 side, and partially. Once more we see that perfect 
 knowledge makes not for despair but faith. " If I 
 am to be judged rightly, let me be judged by one 
 who knows all about me," is what we all say; he 
 who knows all will treat us more justly, more kindly 
 than he who knows only a little, and that not the 
 best about us. To such a judgment we can resign 
 
 209 
 
THE DIVINE CHALLENGE 
 
 ourselves with confidence ; we can meet our Lord with- 
 out fear, knowing that if we are punished, it will be 
 punishment in which we ourselves shall acquiesce, be- 
 ing confidently assured that the Judge of all the earth 
 will do right. 
 
 To say this perhaps sounds arrogance, but it is 
 not; it is rather the sweet calm faith of the little 
 child who is not afraid to meet his father. " My 
 father will understand me," says the child ; " he 
 knows me in all my motives, he comprehends my 
 temperament, he will make no errors." " Utter 
 knowledge is but utter love/ 9 says Tennyson, and 
 it is a profound truth. If Christ who knew the worst 
 of men found in the worst something that was worthy, 
 something that was loveable, may we not humbly 
 trust that in the great day of judgment He who 
 knows us utterly will also love us utterly? May 
 we not turn aside from the evil dreams of harsh 
 theology, from the mis judgments and misapprehen- 
 sions of men, to the faithful Creator and Father of 
 our spirits, saying with confidence, " Into Thy hands, 
 I commit my spirit " ? And when we are called to 
 stand, as we so often are, by the death-bed of those 
 who have manifested no very vigorous spiritual in- 
 stincts, who go out into the unknown with no definite 
 profession of faith, but taking with them a record 
 of human faithfulness, and love, and generosity, 
 marred, no doubt, by many errors, may we not then 
 find consolation in the thought that He who knows 
 
 210 
 
UTTER KNOWLEDGE IS UTTER LOVE 
 
 what is in man will deal with these imperfect children 
 far more wisely and tenderly than we can do ? " Utter 
 knowledge is but utter love," and 
 
 " The love of God is broader 
 
 Than the measures of man's mind, 
 And the heart of the Eternal 
 Is most wonderfully kind." 
 
 Because God knows what is in man He loves man 
 with an everlasting love. Because God is Light, God 
 is Love, and there we rest, persuaded that what we 
 have committed to Him, He will keep against the 
 eternal day, and that neither death nor life can part 
 us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our 
 Lord. 
 
 211 1 
 
THE PERSONAL FACTOR IN RELIGION 
 
XII 
 
 THE PERSONAL FACTOR IN RELIGION 
 
 "For My sake and the Gospel's." — Mark viii. 35. 
 
 WHEN you speak of Christianity you are not 
 speaking of a philosophic creed, or an or- 
 ganised system of thought, but of a form of passion, 
 uniting Christ with individuals. Judaism is a com- 
 posite creed, the work of many hands ; Christianity is 
 Christ. The apostolic life of Paul had its source 
 in one thing, and one alone, personal loyalty to a 
 Master. The same thing may be said of all the 
 great saints and heroes of Christianity through the 
 ages; of men as far apart in type as Xavier and 
 Wesley, as Francis of Assisi and Chalmers of New 
 Guinea — they speak a common language when they 
 speak of Christ. They are not disciples in the sense 
 in which a student is the disciple of a master; their 
 whole life is lived in and through Christ, they are 
 knit closer to Him than to any earthly friend or 
 lover; their lives are lived, their sufferings are en- 
 dured, their victories achieved, for Christ's sake. 
 
 For Christ's sake: the phrase is so familiar to us 
 that its freshness is exhausted. We have said it 
 
 215 
 
THE DIVINE CHALLENGE 
 
 so often in hymns and worship that it has ceased 
 to convey any definite meaning to our minds. "Never- 
 theless it is one of the most striking phrases in the 
 vocabulary of human thought. It records a revolu- 
 tion in men's ideas of religion. It simplifies Chris- 
 tianity, so that the humblest, and least subtle of mind, 
 can understand it. It is the secret of Christ's hold 
 upon the human race. 
 
 Think of these two things to begin with : — 
 First, that this phrase " For My sake " constitutes 
 a motive for action which is quite peculiar to Chris- 
 tianity. No other great religious teacher has ever 
 told the world to do right for his sake ; but for right's 
 sake and truth's sake. Neither Buddha nor Mo- 
 hammed ever made the reception of the truths they 
 taught contingent upon personal loyalty to them- 
 selves ; they regarded their doctrine as potent enough 
 to demand belief apart from all personal emotions. 
 Neither did Paul, even when pleading with his con- 
 verts with an almost womanly tenderness of feeling, 
 ever beg them to pursue any given line of conduct 
 for his sake ; the most he dared to say was that he in 
 Christ's stead besought them to be reconciled to God. 
 Alone, among all known religions, Christianity cen- 
 tres in a person, makes its chief motive love to a per- 
 son, and counts even the proper apprehension of 
 truth as of less importance than warm and loyal 
 passion to that person. The keynote of Christianity 
 
 216 
 
PERSONAL FACTOR IN RELIGION 
 
 is thus loyalty to Christ, and its two great watch- 
 words are, "Lovest thou Me? " " FoUow Me" 
 
 A second outstanding characteristic of Christianity 
 is, that pure and lofty as it is in point of ethics, yet 
 those ethics would be relatively unimpressive without 
 the character and story of Christ Himself. His pre- 
 cepts are exquisite, but they gain all their real force 
 from His own life. Others have told us to love our 
 enemies, but it is only when we stand at the Cross and 
 hear Him blessing a thief, and praying for His 
 murderers that we comprehend what He meant. 
 Others have taught us pity for the sinful, but the 
 true scope of such a precept is only felt when we 
 see Him eating and drinking with sinners, deliberately 
 seeking their company, and saying to a guilt-laden 
 woman, " Neither do I condemn thee, go in peace." 
 And as it is with His precepts so it is with His 
 doctrines. The benignant fatherhood of God becomes 
 intelligible when we mark the perfect benignity of 
 Christ's own character; and His great doctrine of 
 immortality and life eternal passes from speculation 
 into fact when we stand beside His own empty sepul- 
 chre. Thus we may say that had Christ only given 
 us what the man of genius gives us, the fine fruit 
 of His mind, His teachings would have had little 
 or no power to move the world, and none whatever to 
 create a revolution in human thought. It is the 
 
 217 
 
THE DIVINE CHALLENGE 
 
 spectacle of His own life and example that has fas- 
 cinated the mind of men ; and He Himself was well 
 aware that the true and moving revelation He brought 
 the world, was not so much what He taught, as what 
 He was. In the phrase " For my sake " He makes 
 love to Himself the one supreme and abiding motive 
 of all Christian life, duty, and service. 
 
 Now let me try to amplify and explain what these 
 statements mean. Men are continually seeking, with 
 insatiable curiosity, to understand what Christianity 
 is, and what it really means to be a Christian. Books 
 are written on it, sermons preached, lectures delivered 
 in universities and seats of culture, and so extraordi- 
 nary is the interest excited by this theme, that full 
 as the world is with books about Christianity, every 
 year adds a new library to Christian literature; and 
 often as the theme has been discussed, no Sabbath 
 dawns, when millions of men and women are not 
 gathered together for a fresh discussion of the 
 theme. Is it possible to compress all this mass of 
 thought into some brief, clear, axiomatic form? 
 Can I give to any man who asks the plain question 
 " What is it to be a Christian ? " a plain answer, an 
 answer clear, convincing, and decisive? I think I 
 can. To be a Christian is to be brought into such 
 personal relation with Christ that henceforth the 
 soul is obedient to His authority, and all truth is 
 seen through Christ, and the whole life is lived, in 
 
 218 
 
PERSONAL FACTOR IN RELIGION 
 
 all its acts and tempers, for Christ's sake. It is not 
 a question of creed, dogmas, proofs, and evidences, 
 but of personal relationship to Christ, and personal 
 loyalty to Him. The personal factor is the con- 
 trolling factor in the whole problem. Christianity 
 is nothing more or less than the story of the human 
 soul in its personal relationship to Christ; that is 
 the centre, from which that wide line of circumference 
 is drawn which includes literatures, philosophies, his- 
 tories, and the long struggle of causes and nations. 
 
 Think, for example, of the Personal Factor in 
 Christ's own Earthly Ministry. 
 
 The narrative of the earliest acts of that ministry 
 is contained in the first chapter of St. John's Gospel, 
 and it concerns itself with a group of five men in 
 their personal relationship to Christ. 
 
 Christ appears full of grace and truth before the 
 startled and delighted eyes of John the Baptist, of 
 Andrew, of Peter, of Philip and Nathaniel, and ex- 
 cept in the case of Nathaniel not a word is spoken 
 in exposition of Christ's claims or authority. 
 Neither is there a single word spoken to either of 
 the five men on any one of those distinctive doctrines 
 which were to compose Christ's gospel. That gospel 
 lies, as yet, folded in the silence of Christ's heart. 
 No one of these men can by any possibility suspect 
 what the outlines of that Gospel are to be. Yet 
 what happens? Christ no sooner appears than their 
 hearts cleave to Him. John hails Him as the Lamb 
 
 219 
 
THE DIVINE CHALLENGE 
 
 of God; Andrew and Peter leave their fishing nets 
 instantly when He says " Follow Me " ; Philip makes 
 haste to claim for Christ a Messiahship of which He 
 Himself has said nothing, and Nathaniel exclaims, 
 " Thou art the Son of God, Thou art the King of 
 Israel." Not a word spoken by Christ, not a dogma 
 nor a doctrine defined, not a word as to what kind of 
 service it is to which He pledges these men, yet they 
 follow Him instinctively, and why? Because they 
 feel that Christ is the Gospel. Nothing He can say 
 to them can affect them so much as what He is. 
 They love Him as only noble souls can love; with a 
 passion that forgets and extinguishes self; with a 
 swift and beautiful loyalty ; and thus the love of 
 Christ constrains them henceforth to live only in 
 the presence of Christ and for His sake. 
 
 Try and recall for a moment the scenes of Christ's 
 active ministry, and you will find that there is one 
 characteristic which runs through all — His ministry 
 is constantly addressed to individuals. There are ser- 
 mons on the Mount and beside the Lake ; great public 
 utterances such as you might expect from a religious 
 reformer; but always something else, personal con- 
 tact with individuals. Great multitudes followed 
 Him in admiration, but His converts, the men and 
 women who are to spread His doctrine and form the 
 nucleus of His Church, are the results of His personal 
 touch on individual lives. Mary Magdalene is won 
 not by sermons on the Mount, but by the gracious 
 
 %20 
 
PERSONAL FACTOR IN RELIGION 
 
 tender touch of Christ, which delivered her disordered 
 mind from the cloud of madness, her haunted soul 
 from the spectres of despair. The woman who is a 
 sinner is drawn to Christ, not by the publication of 
 His doctrines, which would have moved her not at all ; 
 but by the reverence and awe and penitent love He 
 awoke in her by His mere presence, and this moved 
 her to the depths. It is the same all through the 
 ministry of Christ, from first to last; with Nicode- 
 mus, with His disciples, with the dying thief; it is 
 always Christ Himself, not the things He says, that 
 overwhelms the soul ; it is the power of Llis own per- 
 sonality acting on the souls of men, that draws them 
 to Himself and changes the current of their lives. 
 
 Notice also that in His ministry among men, 
 Christ constantly uses the language of the affections. 
 In the whole life of Christ, and in His whole ministry, 
 what do you find the most distinctive thing, the 
 unique thing, its feature, its characteristic? I find 
 that it is the place He gives to love. It is of the 
 love of God He speaks when He names God; it is 
 loving-kindness in humble men He praises — the hun- 
 gry fed, the sick comforted, the prisoner visited, the 
 cup of cold water given to a child; these are the 
 superlative acts of life by which character is revealed, 
 by which eternal destinies are determined. It is the 
 power of love in the heart of woman which He dis- 
 tinguishes as woman's divinest gift. He defends 
 Mary from the attack of Judas, because her ex- 
 
 221 
 
THE DIVINE CHALLENGE 
 
 travagance is the beautiful extravagance of love; 
 He forgives a woman, whose sins are many, because 
 she loves much. And it is the language of the af- 
 fections which He uses when He pleads with His 
 followers, " Will ye also go away ? " — when He says 
 to Peter " Lovest thou me ? " — and when He makes 
 Himself the universal object of all love by saying, 
 " Inasmuch as men do kindnesses to those who are 
 poor as He was poor, and hungry and thirsty, and in 
 need, as He was in need, they do it unto Him." 
 
 " For love He wrought, 
 Who sowed with springing bloom our mortal graves. 
 Only with hatred and its ills He fought, 
 Claiming for seraphs those who toiled as slaves. 
 For love He wrought. Be faith or clear or dim, 
 He waits in love for all who follow Him." 
 
 For my sake. Is it not the most intimate lan- 
 guage of the affections that Christ uses here? " For 
 my sake ": the very phrase is sanctified by all the 
 mystery and sweetness of human love. " For my 
 sake ": it is the appeal of the dying mother to her 
 child, of parted lovers between whom oceans are about 
 to roll, of martyred patriots, surrendering their mem- 
 ory and their cause to their disciples. No man has 
 begun to live in any true or noble sense until he has 
 begun to live for the sake of others. That is the 
 supreme and simple truth of Christianity. Men must 
 be lifted out of self-love, and they can only achieve 
 
PERSONAL FACTOR IN RELIGION 
 
 that deliverance through love for another. There- 
 fore Christ speaks as a lover, and all that He can 
 do for the souls of men is done when men love Him, 
 and begin to live for His sake. This is the unique 
 achievement of Christ. He is loved as no other was 
 ever loved. This is what excited the wonder of Na- 
 poleon when he said, " Cassar, Charlemagne and I 
 have founded empires on force; they have perished; 
 Jesus Christ founded an empire on love, and at this 
 hour millions would die for Him." Here is the 
 personal factor in Christianity, which so colours and 
 controls everything, that all else is unimportant. 
 Christ makes His appeal, " Live for my sake," and 
 men through all the ages answer, " For me to live is 
 Christ, to die is gain." 
 
 Pass from the ministry of Christ, to that ministry 
 which by common consent is next to Christ's the most 
 wonderful in human history, the ministry of Paul. 
 What do you find here that is extraordinary? Once 
 more the personal factor, the personal relation be- 
 tween Paul and Jesus, colouring every thought of the 
 apostle and governing all his life. 
 
 Paul had a very wide theology, and some of you 
 may say, a very difficult and abtruse theology, 
 ranging through many subtleties of the intellect, 
 and penetrating the profoundest secrets of time and 
 eternity. True, but you will find that wide as Paul's 
 theology was, he had a very narrow and simple creed. 
 He believed not more than two or three things, but 
 
 223 
 
THE DIVINE CHALLENGE 
 
 he believed them intensely. The mission of his life 
 was to go on repeating these two or three things till 
 they were impressed upon the consciousness of man- 
 kind. Before the Jewish Sanhedrin and Roman gov- 
 ernors, in the conclave of the Apostles, and in the 
 presence of the sceptical philosophers of Athens; in 
 his familiar correspondence with his friends ; in his 
 controversial treatises, in his conversation with ac- 
 quaintances made in travel, with soldiers who had 
 charge of him, and officers of the empire sent to in- 
 vestigate his case, he continually affirms the two or 
 three things that made the creed on which his life 
 was built. What were these things? That he had 
 seen Christ in the spirit, and had heard the voice of 
 Christ, which he had never heard in the flesh. That 
 he knew Christ was risen from the dead, for he had 
 felt the power of His resurrection. That his own 
 life was changed in every fibre, and that he was con- 
 verted, by the contact of Christ with his own soul. 
 There is Paul's creed, the reality of contact with 
 Christ. How little the teachings of Christ, consid- 
 ered only as teachings, counted with Paul, you may 
 judge by the strange fact that he does not quote a 
 single parable of Christ's, or refer to a single inci- 
 dent of the Galilean ministry, nor contribute any- 
 thing whatever to our knowledge of His earthly life. 
 Why was this? Because Paul's relation to Christ 
 was not in the least like the ordinary relations of the 
 scholar to the intellectual master, the scholar who 
 
 224 
 
PERSONAL FACTOR IN RELIGION 
 
 expounds his master's philosophy, or re-defines his 
 teaching. No, it is not the tradition of Christ's 
 earthly life that shapes the life of Paul, it is daily, 
 hourly contact with Christ. He has been lifted out 
 of himself by a wave of love that has brought him 
 to the bosom of Christ. He has found the love and 
 life of Christ flowing into his own life and trans- 
 figuring it. He not only believes what Christ has 
 said in beatitude and parable, he knows Whom he has 
 believed. And that is conversion — contact with 
 Christ. It is not belief in something Christ has 
 taught or done; it is surrender to Christ. It is the 
 giving of the heart to Christ — that old evangelistic 
 phrase which no change of thought can render ob- 
 solete — an act performed in the realm of the affec- 
 tions, a surrender to love, so that henceforth you live, 
 not for self but for Christ, and for His sake. 
 
 That old evangelistic theology had many phrases 
 which were truer than we think, and as I grow older 
 I begin to realise how true they are. It spoke of 
 coming to Jesus. It spoke of appropriating faith. 
 It taught men to sing — 
 
 " I the chief of sinners am, 
 But Jesus died for me/' 
 
 thus connecting my sin, done but yesterday, with the 
 death of Jesus, suffered centuries ago upon the Tree. 
 There is not one of these phrases that is not true, 
 
 225 
 
THE DIVINE CHALLENGE 
 
 when you remember that the source of Christianity 
 is personal contact with Christ. You do appropriate 
 all the grace of Christ to yourself when you let your 
 heart go out to Him in love. You do make His 
 death a death for you, when you feel that He is not 
 only the world's Saviour, but your Saviour. The 
 Christ whom Paul knew, not by discussions about 
 His person, or memories of His teachings, but by 
 personal contact, spirit with spirit, soul to soul, in 
 the rapture of love and self -surrender, may be known 
 to you by the same means. Try the method, and 
 see if it be not true. Let your heart choose Christ 
 at this moment, and see if the answering love of 
 Christ does not thrill you through and through. 
 Centuries do not alter the fact of this experience; 
 still Christ says " Love me, live for my sake," and 
 still men rise from their knees to sing in a flood of 
 happy tears — 
 
 " 'Tis done, the great transaction's done. 
 I am my Lord's, and He is mine, 
 He called me and I followed on, 
 
 Charmed to confess the Voice Divine." 
 
 And then lastly I want you to realise the truth 
 to which I have already referred, that in knowing 
 Christ by personal contact, you for the first time know 
 what His doctrine really means. Living for Christ's 
 sake, you begin to see all life in and through Christ. 
 This truth is admirably put by a man who cannot be 
 
 226 
 
PERSONAL FACTOR IN RELIGION 
 
 counted a friend of Christianity, Mr. Grant Allen, 
 in his " Evolution of the Idea of God," when he says 
 that it was not the doctrine of a Resurrection that 
 converted Western Europe, but the fact that the 
 Apostles of Christ said, " We tell you a tale of a 
 real life, and recent: we present you with a specimen 
 of actual resurrection." What can convince me of 
 the Resurrection of Christ? Nothing but vital con- 
 tact with Christ, when I am trying to live in the daily 
 love of Christ, and for His sake. And thus living 
 for Christ's sake all life is seen through Christ. I 
 measure my daily duty by His spirit of duty, I 
 interpret my disciplines by His Cross, I see my grave 
 in the light of His illumined sepulchre. Living for 
 Christ's sake, I more and more perceive that His 
 life outlines mine, that which He knew of the Divine 
 presence I may know, His way of thinking is my way, 
 and His final victory over death will be my victory 
 too. 
 
 Everyone knows something of the beautiful and 
 wonderful work of the Solar spectrum. Upon the 
 spectrum are reproduced various lines, which until 
 1860 were a puzzle to the astronomer. Then a 
 discovery was made which cast a new light upon the 
 universe, for it was found that these lines stood for 
 certain elements in the sun, which exists also on the 
 earth. Think of it, upon this tiny film, the sun, 
 millions of miles as it is away, writes the record of its 
 nature, and behold that nature is composed of the 
 
 227 
 
THE DIVINE CHALLENGE 
 
 same elements as this little earth. Even so Christ 
 mirrors Himself upon the believing heart. He is far 
 away, in the realms of risen life, yet His life cor- 
 responds with ours. What were truths and duties, 
 disciplines and victories for Him, are the same for 
 us, and all our life lies explained in His, all our life 
 is illumined l>y the light of His most perfect life. 
 The moment contact is established with Christ we see 
 our life through Christ's life, and our life shines 
 glorious in the light of His. 
 
 The personal factor in religion ; practically for you 
 and me no other factor counts. A thousand poets 
 have written on love, but you will learn more of love in 
 the kiss of a little child, in the pressure of a kind 
 hand, in the soft glance of loyal and tender eyes, 
 than you will in reading all the exquisite and all the 
 true things written about love since the world began. 
 It is so with Christ. Christianity is meaningless to 
 you till you feel the contact of the soul with Christ : 
 
 The love of Jesus, what it is, 
 None but His loved ones know. 
 
 In one of the greatest spiritual confessions of our 
 generation, " The Story of an African Varm" Olive 
 Schreiner pours out her heart in this exceeding bitter 
 cry. 
 
 " Why am I alone, so hard, so cold? It is eating 
 my soul to the core, self, self, self! I cannot bear 
 this life! I cannot breathe! I cannot live! Will 
 
 228 
 
PERSONAL FACTOR IN RELIGION 
 
 nothing free me from myself? I want something 
 great and pure to lift me to itself." 
 
 Christ is the answer to that cry. Love for Him 
 is the great and pure passion that lifts us out of 
 self. All that bitter loneliness which tortured the 
 soul of the brilliant writer, would have passed away 
 forever, had she known how to kneel at the Cross 
 of Christ. To give the heart to Christ, to surrender 
 the whole soul to Him, to come to Jesus, to live for 
 Christ's sake — once more I say the old Evangelistic 
 phrases ring true, they rest upon the experience of 
 millions, and may be true to you also, if you will act 
 upon them. " Come unto Me, and I will give you 
 rest," — rest in deliverance from self, rest in sur- 
 render to God — so Christ speaks still, so He speaks 
 to you, all ye who are weary and heavy-laden, and 
 may God give you grace to find the peace and joy 
 of the life surrendered to your Saviour, and hence- 
 forth lived in His service,, and for His sake. 
 
THE POWER OF PRINCIPLE 
 
XIII 
 
 THE POWER OF PRINCIPLE 
 
 " How then can I do this great wickedness, and sin against 
 God." — Gen. xxxix. 9. 
 
 THOSE who write and speak especially to youth 
 have often drawn up interesting categories of 
 its qualities and characteristics — its energy, sin- 
 cerity, buoyancy, unbounded aspiration, and so forth ; 
 they have not so often observed that youth is pecu- 
 liarly the period of temptation. The man who has 
 attained to middle age, if he be not altogether a fool, 
 has usually attained to some degree of sober wisdom, 
 but sobriety is not among the gifts of youth. Rather 
 youth is the period of inebriation, of excess, of ex- 
 travagance, when nothing is seen in its real outlines, 
 or apprehended in its true nature. The first full 
 draught of life which a man drinks is not only ex- 
 hilarating — it is intoxicating. It is bliss to be alive ; 
 all the world shines transfigured through a golden 
 mist, and is as a mirage in which the very pits of 
 Sodom are magically made to take the outline of the 
 Delectable Mountains themselves. It is small wonder 
 that in this general ferment and tumult of the na- 
 ture, youth should find itself allured by a thousand 
 
 233 
 
THE DIVINE CHALLENGE 
 
 temptations. To taste, to see, to handle, to know 
 what life is; to experience the things of which men 
 have written and talked ; to drink the cup of pleasure 
 to the dregs; to enjoy, before the evil days come 
 when the tired and satiated heart says, " I have no 
 pleasure in them " ; to plunge deep into the stinging 
 tide of all human experience — all this appeals irre- 
 sistibly to the frank paganism of youth. And thus 
 it is that youth, in its first delirium of living often 
 rushes straight towards ruin, and before it has had 
 time to count the cost, knows itself bankrupt of those 
 qualities which give life its true serenity and triumph. 
 Now that which is true of all youth, was no doubt 
 true of Joseph. In that far-gone period when he 
 lived, moral restraint was much weaker than it is 
 to-day, and the mere pagan joy of life proportion- 
 ately stronger. Consider what it meant for such a 
 youth to be suddenly introduced to the corrupting and 
 luxurious life of Egypt. From the simple patri- 
 archal life of the plains he was violently separated by 
 a series of bitter vicissitudes. He was a peasant of 
 genius, suddenly made a citizen of a complex civili- 
 sation ; and such an instance as that of Robert Burns 
 may serve to remind us of the grave perils of the 
 position. If he had ever sighed for a larger life 
 than that of the agriculturist and cattle breeder, 
 now he had it. If he had ever felt his veins athirst 
 for the pleasures of life, now that thirst might be 
 easily gratified. He was among a people who loved 
 
 234 
 
THE POWER OF PRINCIPLE 
 
 pleasure, and who knew little of sin. The standards 
 by which they measured life were wholly different 
 from those to which he had been accustomed. Prob- 
 ably there was not one among his acquaintances who 
 would not have laughed at his scruples, and have 
 jeeringly told him to do in Egypt as Egypt did. 
 If you would discover the place in which life is most 
 corrupt, morals most easy, the desires of the flesh 
 least restrained, you would go first to the precincts 
 of a Court where luxury, idleness, and the sense of 
 being freed from the ordinary social restrictions 
 are nearly always found, and it was in such an at- 
 mosphere Joseph lived. The peasant of genius in 
 the house of Potiphar — conceive the situation. How 
 easy to snatch at forbidden pleasures, which not one 
 of his acquaintances would have resisted or would 
 have even thought it politic to. resist. But Joseph 
 did resist, and as the sequel showed his whole future 
 life and the existence of his people, depended on his 
 resistance. Of course he did not know that; no 
 man is able to foresee that he is making history. 
 But one thing he did know — he knew what right and 
 wrong were, and he knew that he was accountable 
 to God for all his actions. His first instinctive words 
 are, " How can I do this great wickedness, and sin 
 against God? " And when we come to weigh these 
 words, and measure the whole situation, what we 
 see is this : that the whole secret of Joseph's triumph 
 was that he was a youth of principle. That was 
 
 235 
 
THE DIVINE CHALLENGE 
 
 what saved him in the trying hour; that is what 
 can alone save us in the moments of great tempta- 
 tion — he had principles and he was faithful to them. 
 
 First of all, What then is Principle? Is it some- 
 thing elemental, fundamental, which is taken for 
 granted in all reasoning, and thus becomes a standard 
 of thought or conduct. In every science you have 
 principles, and until these are accepted science can 
 teach you nothing. In every art you have princi- 
 ples, and until you have mastered these, accepted 
 these, and throned them as unalterable, no knowl- 
 edge of art is possible. Euclid gives you the prin- 
 ciples of mathematics before he proposes the problem, 
 for it is by the application of the principles that the 
 problems are to be solved. You may have plenty 
 of aspiration for art or science, but the first ele- 
 ment of progress is not aspiration, but obedience. 
 So in the affairs of the soul, there are fundamental 
 and axiomatic things which we must admit before 
 we can give any right shape to conduct; for re- 
 ligion is not primarily an aspiration, but a sub- 
 mission or an obedience. Joseph had a sure grasp 
 on two principles; that he was accountable to God 
 for his actions, and that certain actions were wicked ; 
 and in the most tremendous hour of moral crisis 
 which he knew he was saved by these principles. 
 
 We sometimes say of a man, " He is an unprin- 
 cipled man"; what is it we mean? We mean that 
 he is unscrupulous. There is hardly a more damn- 
 
 236 
 
THE POWER OF PRINCIPLE 
 
 ing epithet that can be applied to a human creature. 
 Such a man proves himself in every relation of life 
 utterly untrustworthy and unreliable. If he be a 
 business man there is no knavery which he will not 
 practise on occasion ; if he sign an agreement to-day 
 he will set to work to-morrow to repudiate it, or 
 make it nugatory ; if you trust him, he betrays you ; 
 if you confide your interests to him he will sacrifice 
 them the moment self-interest interferes ; and not 
 because he deliberately means to be a knave or a 
 thief but simply because there is no fundamental 
 honesty about him, which gives a governing principle 
 to conduct. If he be a workman, he works only 
 when the master's eye is upon him; he puts honest 
 work only where it can be seen, and goes home 
 whistling from his knavish work, utterly careless of 
 the fact that he has built a house or laid a drain in 
 such a way that the lives of men and women must 
 be sacrificed to his purposed incompetency. If he 
 be a politician he learns to lie so glibly that he 
 hardly knows when he lies; he uses any weapon that 
 comes to his hand without a thought of its nature; 
 he drifts into wars which a moment of firm thought 
 might have prevented, and in the long run he does 
 his country more lasting damage than could be 
 wrought by the wildest anarchist, or the most revolu- 
 tionary of honest demagogues. And when you come 
 to the social aspects of life, the wrongs wrought by 
 lack of principle are even more agonising though 
 
 237 
 
THE DIVINE CHALLENGE 
 
 perhaps more circumscribed in their effects. George 
 Eliot has sketched us such a man with inimitable 
 skill in the Tito Melema of her great novel, " Ro- 
 mola." She takes pains to show us that Tito was 
 not, in the ordinary sense of the term, a bad man. 
 He has many engaging and quite fascinating qualities. 
 He is brilliant, joyous, refined, fond of giving 
 pleasure to others, and eager to make himself friendly 
 and serviceable. But in his heart he has no prin- 
 ciple, no love of virtue, no respect for duty. The 
 moment his personal interests are menaced he turns 
 to adamant. To save himself he will sacrifice any- 
 one; at the root of all his gaiety and fascinating 
 manners, there is an utterly unscrupulous self-in- 
 terest. He is no libertine, but he will ruthlessly 
 wreck the life of the little blue-eyed contadina who 
 pleases him with her child-like ways. He is not a 
 brute ; yet he will cast off his benefactor — with real 
 regret — the moment his presence becomes inconven- 
 ient. He does not wish to betray or injure any- 
 one; he would much rather not do it; but he has no 
 real principle of honour or of virtue to deter him 
 from the course that seems pleasant or expedient. 
 And so the man goes through life wrecking the peace 
 of all who know him, and finally is wrecked himself 
 — and why? For want of principle. Had he but 
 known how to say, " This is wickedness and sin 
 against God " — had he learned to set his daily con- 
 duct in the light of God's purity, and said, " How 
 
THE POWER OF PRINCIPLE 
 
 can I sin against God? " all would have been differ- 
 ent, and both for himself and others infinite sorrow 
 and infinite tragedy might have been averted. 
 
 We see, then, what Principle means; it means a 
 moral and spiritual standard which is sincerely ac- 
 cepted and rigidly obeyed. It gives us a power of 
 moral discrimination, and enables us to say, " This 
 may be a pleasure, but it is also wickedness." It 
 gives us an awe-struck sense of responsibility to the 
 unseen God, and enables us to say, " How can I 
 sin against God? " And it becomes clear at once 
 that such a principle working in a man's heart, such 
 a moral standard obediently accepted, must necessarily 
 alter and exalt the whole nature of a man's conduct. 
 The business man knows then that the eye of God is 
 on his ledger, and the workman makes his work good 
 because he would feel himself dishonoured if he did 
 not. The statesman in hours of difficulty consoles 
 himself that certain things are inevitably and eternally 
 right ; that it is better to fail in the right than to suc- 
 ceed in the wrong; and that while expediency is 
 man's wisdom, righteousness is God's. The ordinary 
 man in all the social tests of life is lifted beyond the 
 reach of temptations which offer momentary pleasures 
 and advantages, because he sees life in a nobler per- 
 spective and has learned the inner joy of a virtue that 
 is unstained, and an integrity which is uncorrupted. 
 To such men right and wrong are no sounding 
 phrases, they are the only abiding realities. Eternity 
 
 239 
 
THE DIVINE CHALLENGE 
 
 and the thought of eternal things, becomes to them 
 at once inspiration, restraint, and impulse. And so 
 when they are suddenly brought face to face with 
 some great temptation ; when the Venus-vision of 
 the flesh flashes on their startled eyes, when the sweet 
 corrupt odours of forbidden pleasure assail their 
 senses, when the snare is spread for the feet, and the 
 bait held at their lips — they have a power by which 
 they conquer, they have a spell before which the 
 Venus-vision melts into thin air — they are able to 
 fall back upon their sense of right, their sen^e of 
 God, and to say, " How can I do this wickedness, 
 and sin against God? " And they cannot do it; they 
 simply can not; because a higher power holds them 
 in its grasp, and a nobler vision gives them instant 
 mastery over the base and the corrupting vision. 
 
 So much, perhaps, we accept and acknowledge; 
 but now notice another thing, viz. : That it is only 
 by moral principle that men conquer in such hours 
 as these. It is as impossible to acquire sudden virtue 
 as sudden heroism. Behind every human act there 
 lies a history, and the act is the fruit of the history. 
 Grapes do not grow upon thorns, nor figs on thistles, 
 said Jesus — by which He meant that character rules 
 conduct. Men do not always remember this. They 
 suppose that if a great temptation came to them they 
 would find some sort of magical power to resist it. 
 But a man never finds in his heart the flower he has 
 not planted there ; he never finds the grape upon the 
 
 240 
 
THE POWER OF PRINCIPLE 
 
 thorn, or the fig upon the thistle. All principle 
 means a slow accretion of will, thought and convic- 
 tion; the gradual emergence from the fermenting 
 chaos of a man's nature of the solid and impregnable 
 elements on which he can build tind rest; and in the 
 great crises of temptation it is only by force of 
 principle that we can be saved. 
 
 We see how true this is when we remember that 
 all great temptations are sudden. On that memor- 
 able day when Joseph faced the great temptation of 
 his life, he faced it without warning. There was 
 not a hint in that fair Egyptian dawn that anything 
 tragic was about to happen. No fellow-servant or 
 officer of the household had breathed a word to put 
 him on his guard. He rose as he had done on a 
 hundred other mornings; rejoicing in his strength, 
 full of the gladness of life, warmed and nerved by 
 ambitious dreams, already seeing his life successful; 
 he rose, and prayed to the God of Israel, and went 
 about his duties in a quiet glow of health and energy. 
 If he had known what was about to happen he might 
 have braced himself for the hour, and have called 
 up all the resources of his prudence and his will. 
 But life gives very few of us the chance of invent- 
 ing a deliberate strategy against a coming battle. 
 We are taken unawares ; we must fight as we stand. 
 The days of destiny come, but they cast no shadow 
 before. A man goes out in the morning to the city 
 utterly ignorant that before night the great battle 
 
 241 
 
THE DIVINE CHALLENGE 
 
 of his life will be fought. He goes out honest — 
 he may come back a thief; he goes out virtuous 
 — he may come back with a stain upon him that all 
 his after life may not obliterate. The subtle antag- 
 onist with whom we have to deal gives us no time 
 for preparation ; he delights in surprises ; the bolt 
 falls out of the blue sky, the arrow flies through 
 the clearest noon. Is it not plain then that to be 
 prepared at all for temptation, we must be always 
 prepared? And how are we to be prepared but by 
 that daily, hourly attitude of mind which makes 
 virtue dear to us and God real? And what does this 
 mean but that it is principle alone that can save us 
 in the sudden shock? If Joseph had had to begin to 
 be religious on that fateful morning, nothing could 
 have saved him ; it was because he was religious, be- 
 cause he had lived his young life in stainless virtue, 
 that he had resources to fall back on now, and stood 
 fast in the evil day. 
 
 There is perhaps nothing in life more tragic than 
 these sudden and overwhelming moral defeats which 
 happen to men. It is no exaggeration to say that 
 often enough a moment decides a destiny. A man 
 rises without the least purpose of wrong-doing in 
 his thoughts ; he has lived in prudent virtue all his 
 days; yet by nightfall he has done that which makes 
 him loathe himself. We who look upon the amazing, 
 the tragic spectacle, cannot understand it. We hear 
 the growing whisper that couples his name with in- 
 
 242 
 
THE POWER OF PRINCIPLE 
 
 f amy, and we say, " It is impossible, it is incredible ! " 
 But usually there is no mystery in it at all; if we 
 had known the man better we should not be incredu- 
 lous. And when we do get at the real facts of the 
 case all mystery disappears. We find then that 
 there has been a long process of sapping and under- 
 mining before the crash came; that the man never 
 really had a love of virtue or a detestation of vice; 
 that he had been accustomed to read books which 
 peopled his mind with corrupting images; that he 
 had played with fire in his thoughts a thousand times ; 
 that his virtue was a part of his clothes, not a thing 
 inherent in himself; that his religion was at best 
 an aesthetic emotion: that, in fact, he had not a 
 single, clearly defined principle which he could call 
 his own. A building will stand a long time after it 
 is undermined ; so a man may stand a long time with- 
 out any solid foundation of principle. But some 
 day the undermined house falls all at once, and great 
 is the fall of it — and this is, in brief, the usual 
 history of those tragic downfalls, those sudden and 
 total collapses of character and reputation, which to 
 the outsider seem so incredible and amazing. 
 
 I say that men do not realise this fact, and it is 
 because they do not, that they court defeat upon the 
 battlefield of life. Thus, perhaps, some one says, 
 " But surely prudence would be sufficient to save a 
 man in such a crisis," and it is by no means uncom- 
 mon to find men arguing that morality is really only 
 
 243 
 
THE DIVINE CHALLENGE 
 
 a code of prudence after all. No doubt it is true 
 that a man in his sane mind can readily perceive that 
 certain sins are highly imprudent; no doubt also 
 morality finds a certain sanction in prudence. But 
 if virtue be nothing more than a glorified instinct 
 of prudence, it will be of small avail when the in- 
 flamed blood of youth surges through the brain. 
 Besides, the sin may appear so secret and so incapa- 
 ble of discovery that prudence may have nothing to 
 say against it; and in any case the man who trusts 
 to prudence only, will find himself arguing with the 
 tempter, which is always the first step in submitting 
 to the temptation. No ! merely prudential consider- 
 ations, however plain, are not strong enough to save 
 us ; and are especially inapplicable to youth, whose 
 temper is usually at the furthest possible remove 
 from prudence. Or, again, a man may say, " A 
 spirit of true culture will preserve men from suc- 
 cumbing to such gross temptations as this of 
 Joseph's." Will it? Alas, there is no delusion more 
 absurd, and none so absolutely contradicted by the 
 facts of life. No doubt culture is of great use in 
 human discipline ; it redeems the mind from empti- 
 ness, it surrounds it with a zone of intellectual in- 
 terests, it creates a certain fastidiousness of taste 
 which is offended by a temptation that is wholly gross 
 and vulgar. But what if the temptation be neither 
 gross nor vulgar? What if Venus wears the gar- 
 ments of the Angel of Light? And what of the men 
 
 244 
 
THE POWER OF PRINCIPLE 
 
 who in every age have joined culture of the mind 
 with corruption of morals, fine manners with in- 
 famous vices, the thoughts of the Philosopher with 
 the acts and habits of the Satyr? 
 
 Only a week or two ago, I heard of the case of 
 a man, well-born, well-bred, highly educated, and on 
 the brink of marriage, who in a single week drank 
 himself to death in circumstances of unspeakable in- 
 famy. This man was a scholar, with a cultivated 
 taste for the best forms of literature; he read his 
 Greek Testament day by day, and when his books 
 were examined after his death they consisted mainly 
 of books on religion, curiously mixed with the filth- 
 iest of French novels. Exactly what happened to 
 send him to his tragic end with such rapidity no one 
 will ever know ; but it was clear that a sudden temp- 
 tation had overwhelmed him, and that neither the 
 fastidious taste of the gentleman nor the culture of 
 the scholar had had the least power to restrain him 
 from plunging into the abyss. And when I think 
 of the Greek Testament and the scrofulous French 
 novel lying side by side in that man's library, I see 
 another thing, that mere religiosity has as little 
 power to save men from gross sin as culture. Do not 
 suppose that because you go to church you are any 
 the less likely to be overwhelmed in the evil hour. 
 Do not imagine because you take a certain intellectual 
 interest in religion, you are safe from the fiery darts 
 of the wicked one. Joseph might have been the 
 
 245 
 
THE DIVINE CHALLENGE 
 
 most cultured man in Egypt and the most interested 
 student of her religion, but neither of these things 
 would have saved him from a seduction so potent, 
 so terrible, and so unexpectedly thrust upon him. 
 No ! once more I say, principle, and principle alone 
 can save you in such hours as these. You must have 
 something fundamental on which you can fall back 
 — a belief, a conviction, a habit of thought ; and 
 this Joseph had. He knew the thing was wicked — 
 that was enough; he knew that God would see what 
 he did, and he dared not sin under the very eye of 
 God. " How can I do this great wickedness, and 
 sin against God?" he cried, and what neither pru- 
 dence nor culture could have done for him, religious 
 principle did. 
 
 There is yet one final train of thought suggested 
 by this episode in the life of Joseph. There can be 
 no doubt it was part of the discipline he endured in 
 achieving that final greatness of character which made 
 him one of the most memorable men in human history. 
 The superficial man will probably say, " Why are 
 such temptations permitted in a world where God is 
 supposed to rule? If God wishes me to be pure, 
 why doesn't He keep me pure? " Simply because 
 you are a man, not a puppet, and because purity 
 cannot truly be said to exist without the conquest 
 of impurity, as light cannot be said to exist without 
 darkness. We have all seen a boy sail a kite. The 
 kite soars against the wind, and the tighter the string 
 
 246 
 
THE POWER OF PRINCIPLE 
 
 is held the harder the kite tugs at it, and the higher 
 it soars. So it is with us; we can hardly be said 
 to possess virtue till we find ourselves in active oppo- 
 sition with something that is not virtue. When the 
 kite sails with a loose string it drops, because there 
 is not enough opposition to keep it afloat; and when 
 men have no odds against them in life, nothing to 
 draw out their vital force of opposition, they also 
 soon trail along the ground. This is the meaning 
 of temptation ; it is discipline. We do not enter the 
 world ready-made ; we are engaged in the making of 
 ourselves, and in the process, temptation must needs 
 play a tremendous part. To blame temptation, 
 therefore, is merely childish and foolish, for what 
 great life has ever yet been lived that did not grapple 
 with the ghostly adversary, and win its greatness out 
 of wrong resisted, evil overcome? And if we do not 
 yet realise this, if we weakly blame circumstances 
 instead of ourselves for our misdoings, let this great 
 saying of St. Bernard's bring correction and invig- 
 oration to our minds. " Nothing can work me dam- 
 age, except myself. The harm that I sustain I carry 
 about in me ; and never am a real sufferer but by my 
 own fault." 
 
 And so the last truth which emerges from this 
 story is that character is fate, to quote a well-known 
 aphorism of Novalis. There is nothing fortuitous in 
 such battles as this which Joseph fought ; they are 
 determined solely by character. What are we? 
 
 247 
 
THE DIVINE CHALLENGE 
 
 What equipment do we bring to the struggle? We 
 may not be tempted precisely as Joseph was, but no 
 man passes through life without his terrible hours of 
 testing and temptation. And again I remind you 
 that such hours come suddenly. We have no time 
 to debate then, how we shall meet them ; they are 
 upon us before we know it. If the secrets of all 
 hearts in this congregation were revealed; if we 
 dared to speak of the things which we ourselves have 
 known; how many of us could bear witness to these 
 sudden temptations which break on the soul like the 
 black squall upon a summer sea; and how many of 
 us would shudder at the thought of how nearly we 
 made shipwreck of life? Brethren, what saved us 
 then, and what alone had power to save us? Simply 
 this ; the power of principle. It may be that we had 
 absolutely nothing else on which we could rely. 
 Perhaps the great temptation overtook us in a time 
 when the intellectual difficulties of religion had 
 proved too great for us, and all the old theologies 
 in which we had been bred, had melted away. But 
 we had something left — a stubborn conviction that 
 nothing could make wickedness other than wicked, 
 that God remained as the real witness and judge of 
 our life, demanding truth in the inward parts, and 
 we could say as F. W. Robertson said, " After find- 
 ing littleness where I expected nobleness, and impur- 
 ity where I thought there was spotlessness, again and 
 again I despaired of the reality of goodness. But 
 
THE POWER OF PRINCIPLE 
 
 in all that struggle the bewilderment never told upon 
 my conduct. Moral goodness and moral beauty are 
 realities — they are no dream ; and they are not mere 
 utilitarian conveniences." And to say that is a great 
 thing; yet a thing we all may say. It is a weapon 
 which is invincible, a spell before which the most 
 alluring vision of evil melts away. Brother, cleave 
 to that ; be sure that whatever changes, right and 
 wrong change not ; that though creeds may take a 
 thousand forms, these have but one; and in your 
 darkest, weakest, most tragic hour, learn to look up 
 and say : — 
 
 So near is glory to the dust, 
 
 So nigh is God to man. 
 When duty whispers low — Thou must, 
 
 The youth replies — I can. 
 
 How can I do this great wickedness, and sin 
 against God? 
 
 %m 
 
CHAMBERS OF IMAGERY 
 
XIV 
 CHAMBERS OF IMAGERY 
 
 " What the ancients of the house of Israel do in the dark, 
 everyone in the chambers of his imagery." — Ezekiel viii. 12. 
 
 THE chambers of imagery — a striking, sug- 
 gestive phrase. It refers primarily to the 
 practise of idolatry among the Israelites. 
 
 There were painted chambers, on whose walls all 
 kinds of creatures associated with idolatry were de- 
 picted — 
 
 The shape of beasts and creeping things, 
 The body that availeth not. 
 
 There were pictures, too, of pagan deities, and all 
 the voluptuous life of paganism — 
 
 Shapes on either wall, 
 Sea-coloured from some rare blue shell 
 At many a Tyrian interval, 
 Horsemen on horses, girdled well, 
 Delicate and desirable. 
 
 And in these secret chambers of imagery the heart 
 of even the ancients of Israel grew corrupt. The 
 Mosaic law practically forbade art, when it forbade 
 
 353 
 
THE DIVINE CHALLENGE 
 
 the likeness being made of any living creature; and 
 the Mosaic law still maintains this restriction, so that 
 art among the Mohammedan races is confined to grace- 
 ful intricate lines and arabesques ; geometrical designs, 
 but never the human form. It is hard for us to 
 understand this restriction, but it is explained by the 
 nature of the Oriental mind. Voluptuousness is one 
 of the distinct characteristics of the Oriental, and 
 among such races art soon becomes the servant of 
 voluptuousness. The chamber of imagery was the 
 picture gallery of a prostituted art; and from these 
 chambers streamed forth the corruption of the nation. 
 These ancient idolatries have long since passed 
 away, and the ancients of Israel no longer worship 
 toward the East, uttering the name of Baal ; and the 
 women of Israel no longer weep for the Adonis of 
 Greek Mythology, under another name, whose story 
 was used to breed and inflame all the degenerate de- 
 sires of the human heart. The ancient idolatries 
 pass, but the spirit of idolatry is not so easily de- 
 stroyed, and we still have our chambers of imagery. 
 Our chamber of imagery is not built with hands, it 
 is within ourselves. It is painted with no colours of 
 human art ; our thoughts are the artists, and our 
 fancies are the things they paint. There is an inner 
 life which we all live, so closely hidden from the 
 world, that those who know us best, little suspect 
 its nature and character. There is a secret chamber 
 of the mind, the chamber of our imagination, where 
 
CHAMBERS OF IMAGERY 
 
 we live a life, to which the world holds no clue. Our 
 real life is the life of our thought, our hope, our 
 desire. And our thoughts are forever painting for 
 us pictures which allure and delight us, which per- 
 haps disgrace and debase us. In the mind of the 
 saint hang sacred pictures, pictures of sacrifice, de- 
 votion, and heroic death ; in the mind of the avaricious 
 man, pictures of senseless opulence; in the mind of 
 the profligate, pictures of extravagant and evil 
 pleasures ; in the mind of the ambitious man, pictures 
 of immense triumph, world-wide coronation, endless 
 power. From infancy to old age we dwell with these 
 visions. Punished or neglected of the world, we re- 
 tire into our chambers of imagery, and solace our- 
 selves with the sweet delusion of our dreams. The 
 dream-picture that thus glimmers perpetually on the 
 walls of the imagination may be a seduction to our 
 worse selves ; it may be an impulse to our best selves ; 
 so that we may say, 
 
 All my days I'll go the softlier, sadlier 
 For that dream's sake. 
 
 But, whatever the nature of our dream-pictures, this 
 is true of all of them, they rule us. Our imagination 
 is the most potent element in our lives. It is in the 
 chamber of imagery that our real life is lived, for 
 what we desire, that we seek ; what we covet, that we 
 pursue ; what we think, that we are. 
 
 The first thing I ask you to observe then, is that 
 255 
 
THE DIVINE CHALLENGE 
 
 we are the custodians of this inner and secret life, as 
 well as of the outer and open life. 
 
 That we are the custodians of the outer life we all 
 admit, and hence the great stress which the world 
 lays on what is called behaviour. We know perfectly 
 well that it is to our interest to exercise a sedulous 
 care over the outward life. Hence, if we have any 
 desire to succeed in life — and who has not this de- 
 sire ? — we cultivate the mind, we cultivate the grace 
 of good manners, we cultivate the body that it may 
 be efficient for its duties ; so that externally, at least, 
 we may become persons acceptable to our fellow- 
 creatures. And there, you will observe, all that the 
 world has to teach us about the custody of ourselves, 
 stops. Among the great races of antiquity, bodily 
 symmetry and beauty were the chief things; and to 
 achieve physical perfection was to attain the ultimate 
 reward of public praise. Among the ruling classes 
 of the eighteenth century to be a man of honour was 
 a sufficient passport to society, and honour in this 
 case meant nothing more than a sufficient code of 
 good behaviour. Among large classes of our fellow 
 men to-day we find that to fulfil a certain social code 
 is the one thing in demand; but all scrutiny of 
 private morals is discouraged, and regarded as an 
 unjust inquisition. Thus the inner life is generally 
 ignored, and we are taught to ignore it. What did 
 the Greek care for the private life of the athlete who 
 won the applause of the populace by his physical 
 
 256 
 
CHAMBERS OF IMAGERY 
 
 beauty? What did the eighteenth century society 
 care for the secret follies of its statesmen and its 
 leaders, so long as they paid their betting debts, their 
 debts of honour as they were called, and obeyed the 
 lax conventions of superficial propriety? What 
 does the world care still for the private life of the 
 society queen, who charms men by her beauty, of the 
 actress who pleases them by her art, or the man of 
 genius who delights them with his gifts ? And if you 
 ask how it is that we come to reason thus, is it not 
 because we have never grasped the truth that we are 
 the custodians of an inner life, as well as an outward ? 
 We are responsible not only for our behaviour but 
 for our souls. We have entrusted to us not only our 
 body, not only the kind of man which is seen and 
 judged by the physical eye, but an inner self, our 
 thoughts, our emotions, our desires, our imagination. 
 When we have regulated our conduct to society by 
 the strictest code the world can give us, we have done 
 but a very little thing ; the great thing remaining to 
 be done is to regulate our inner life before God, and 
 to make that chamber of imagery where all our secret 
 life is lived, a temple and a shrine. 
 
 Let me try to put the matter even more plainly. 
 What is it I mean when I say that we have the cus- 
 tody over an inner life, as well as an outer? I mean 
 that we have to determine what we think, as well as 
 what we do, that we are responsible for the nature 
 of our imaginations as well as of our acts. 
 
 257 
 
THE DIVINE CHALLENGE 
 
 That touches us more nearly, because very many 
 of us assume that we have no control over our imag- 
 inative life. The pictures in the chamber of imagery 
 paint themselves, we do not paint them. Visions of 
 evil, infinitely seductive, float into the mind, we know 
 not whence or how. We think that we have no re- 
 sponsibility for them, no more responsibility than 
 the fertile earth has for the wind-blown thistle seed 
 which may fall upon it, and because we think thus 
 we make no effort to resist impure visions, or restrain 
 evil ones. And so it happens that men whose out- 
 ward lives are virtuous, often indulge themselves in 
 evil visions, without so much as suspecting that they 
 sin in doing it. Nay, more; they compensate them- 
 selves for the strictness of their outward virtue, by 
 the riot of their secret thought. They turn to the 
 chamber of imagery with an unconfessed delight, 
 they abandon themselves to the seduction of thoughts 
 they would not dare to utter, they act out in the 
 theatre of the mind, dramas which would horrify them 
 if they were transposed to the theatre of conduct. 
 And if you question them on such things, they will 
 say at once, " It surely matters little what I think, 
 so long as my thought does not become an act. 
 And under any circumstance I cannot control my 
 thought, my fancy, and my imagination — these act 
 for themselves independently of my will or my 
 desire." 
 
 The answer to such arguments is threefold. First, 
 258 
 
CHAMBERS OF IMAGERY 
 
 we have to remember that our imagination is extra- 
 ordinarily sensitive, it is the most sensitive part of 
 our nature, and therefore it is the point where sin 
 attacks us first. There is a little instrument known 
 to science as the radiometer. It is a tiny weather- 
 cock with a silver side to it; and so sensitive is it to 
 light, that when the slightest beam of light impinges 
 upon it, even though it is but the light of a candle 
 many yards away, it begins slowly to revolve. In 
 the same way the imagination is exquisitely sensitive, 
 and that which stirs the imagination stirs the whole 
 man. Set the imagination revolving, and its move- 
 ment is at once communicated to the whole life. 
 
 Again, we have to recollect that debasement of any 
 kind begins in debasement of imagination. We 
 all remember how a great painter said that he never 
 dared to look upon a bad picture, because for days 
 afterwards it influenced him so powerfully that he 
 could not paint well. He was deflected from true art 
 by the mere memory of bad art, his draughtsmanship 
 and colour suffered instantly, even by the recollection 
 of an art which was inferior. Can it be a light 
 thing, then,- if we fill our chamber of imagery with 
 bad pictures? Does not conduct instantly shape 
 itself in correspondence with the imagination? Is 
 not the thing we think in our private hours the com- 
 pelling curve along which our public acts are bound 
 to move? 
 
 And then we must remember, too, that the wisest 
 259 
 
THE DIVINE CHALLENGE 
 
 men have always recognised the danger of unre- 
 strained imagination, and have claimed and exercised 
 power to restrain it. If there be any virtue, think 
 of these things, the things that are pure, lovely, and 
 of good report, says St. Paul. You can think on 
 them ; it is a matter of will ; and you can refuse to 
 think on impure and unlovely things — that also is 
 a matter of will. The door of the imagination does 
 not stand wide open to all comers; and you, who 
 would at once close the door of your home against 
 the intrusion of the rabble, have you no power to 
 close the door of the mind against the rabble thoughts 
 that defile it? You have that power; you may be 
 master of your thoughts if you will, even as you are 
 master of your speech, and master of your habits; 
 and against all the poor sophistry which assumes the 
 inability of the imagination to defend itself, which 
 claims that the pictures on the walls paint themselves, 
 which disclaims responsibility for them, and treats 
 them as of small account, stand those facts of life to 
 which all wise men bear witness, that we can help what 
 we think, and that it is of the highest moment that 
 we should watch our thoughts, since what we think 
 we are. " Let no man say when he is tempted, I am 
 tempted of God; for God cannot be tempted with evil, 
 neither tempteth He any man, but every man is 
 tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust and 
 enticed." Consider that saying of St. James and 
 then you will see that it is neither God nor Satan who 
 
 260 
 
CHAMBERS OF IMAGERY 
 
 paints the picture on the wall; we are the artists and 
 the audience, we are the tempter and the tempted, we 
 are the sinners and the victims. 
 
 Chambers of imagery. How ought we to think of 
 our imaginations? Let us turn to Scripture for a 
 moment that we may understand how we ought to 
 think of our imaginations. There are many things 
 in the Bible on which we may hold divergent views, 
 but there is one thing on which we can scarcely dis- 
 agree — the essential truth of the estimate of human 
 nature which the Bible gives us. The Bible alone 
 of all great books in the world does not flatter man. 
 Some of you will perhaps recollect how Browning 
 deals with this truth in one of his most striking 
 poems. He pictures to us a woman who hid under 
 the smile of a saint, a sordid vice which was not dis- 
 covered till she was dead. And then he goes on to 
 say that here is an illustration of all that Christianity 
 has to say about original sin. It is the fashion, he 
 says, of modern teachers to flatter men ; to take rose- 
 water views of life; to proclaim how radically good 
 man is ; but not so Christianity, she 
 
 launched point-blank her dart, 
 At the head of a lie ; taught original sin, 
 The corruption of man's heart. 
 
 And when the Bible speaks of man's heart it means 
 his imagination. The accusation God makes against 
 man is, that " every imagination of the thoughts of 
 
 261 
 
THE DIVINE CHALLENGE 
 
 his heart is only evil continually." It is in the cham- 
 ber of imagery that all the corruption of human life 
 begins. 
 
 Take the decalogue. There are ten commandments, 
 eight of which have to do with outward conduct. 
 Then comes the tenth, the last, the consummating 
 commandment, the top of this great staircase of 
 morality, and what is the tenth commandment? Thou 
 shalt not covet — something that grows in the mind 
 and the imagination. You may remove at a stroke 
 three commandments that precede it: they are un- 
 necessary if the tenth be kept, for without the picture 
 of things we covet which inflame the imagination, who 
 would kill or steal or commit adultery? " Covetous- 
 ness, which is idolatry," says the Apostle, and is not 
 the definition accurate ? And is it not in the chambers 
 of imagery that we accustom ourselves to these visions 
 which translate themselves on some apt opportunity 
 into murder, theft, and adultery, into false witness 
 which smooths the path of our ambition, into the 
 dishonour shown to parents who are a hindrance to 
 our pride, or the contempt of the Sabbath that we 
 may squeeze a little more work or a little more pleasure 
 out of our days : into that making of graven images, 
 before which we bow down at last and worship, even 
 as the ancients of Israel bowed down before the painted 
 figures on the wall? Thou shalt not covet — it is the 
 sum of all the commandments, and coveting is not an 
 
 262 
 
CHAMBERS OF IMAGERY 
 
 act ; it is a temper, it is a process of the imagination, 
 it is a thing so secret to ourselves that none but our- 
 selves know that it exists. 
 
 Take, again, that most striking parable of Christ's, 
 the Empty House, which is surely the House of the 
 Mind and Imagination. Behold the house swept and 
 garnished, for by a violent effort the man has stopped 
 the riot of his thoughts, he has closed the drama, he 
 has driven the actors out into the darkness. Here 
 at least is the hint of man's power over his inner life, 
 a hint that has been acted on by multitudes of men 
 who have sought to scourge themselves into purity, 
 to reduce the mind into emptiness rather than allow it 
 licence, to break up the whole mechanism of life in a 
 desperate effort to resist the temptations of life. But 
 then follows something infinitely more subtle ; Christ 
 says you cannot keep the house of the Imagination 
 empty. It is not enough to draw the disfiguring 
 brush over the painted wall; the eye resents mere 
 blankness. There are other pictures that must be 
 painted there, there is a noble drama that must be 
 enacted if you would forget the ignoble, for evil is 
 only overcome with good. This is what the man of 
 the parable forgets, and so the expelled actors, finding 
 the house empty, come back, re-inforced and clamor- 
 ous by exile, and the last state of that man is worse 
 than the first. Look at that parable, and do you not 
 at once see that it is a mental state which it describes ? 
 
 263 
 
THE DIVINE CHALLENGE 
 
 Do you not feel that Christ means it to be a solemn 
 lesson on the use and perversion of the imagination 
 in mankind ? 
 
 Or turn once more to that fearful picture, not less 
 fearful than true, of the absolute unspeakable cor- 
 ruption of pagan life which Paul gives us in his 
 Epistle to the Romans, and then take note of what 
 he describes to be the root of this corruption. " They 
 became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish 
 hearts were darkened." Those who have written of 
 those abominations of pagan life which find a record 
 in such frescoes as one may still see at Pompeii, have 
 usually spoken as if these things were the fruit of 
 moral decay ; Paul would have called them not the 
 fruit, but the seed, not the effect, but the cause. 
 The corruption of imagination preceded the corrup- 
 tion of life, and art has recorded that corrupt imag- 
 ination for us. And so it has always been ; so it will 
 ever be ; it is that which proceedeth out of a man's 
 heart that defileth him. And hence all redemption 
 begins with the redemption of thought ; all purification 
 with purity of mind, and it is in the chamber of 
 imagery that those forces are begotten that redeem 
 the soul, even as it is there also that the forces are 
 begotten which destroy it. 
 
 And now let me put to you this one question : What 
 is it that goes on in your Chamber of Imagery? I 
 need not point out the bearing of all that I have said 
 on a young man's life, because we know well, that if 
 
 264 
 
CHAMBERS OF IMAGERY 
 
 ever the imagination is strong in us, it is in the days 
 of youth. In that painted chamber of your mind, 
 in that dim-lit theatre of your thought, the acts of 
 all your future life rehearse themselves. Have you 
 taken any serious notice of what goes on within you? 
 Have you treated this incessant drama of your fancy 
 merely as a pastime? Have you taken any pains to 
 direct or curb this drama, to feed the mind with right 
 thoughts, to supply this restless artist, w T hich we call 
 the Imagination, with right materials and right 
 models, so that the picture on the wall shall be one 
 you will not be ashamed for all the world to see, in 
 the day when the secrets of all hearts are revealed? 
 Do you, for instance, exercise any circumspection in 
 your talk? There is a kind of talk, all too common 
 among youths, which poisons the imagination ; do you 
 indulge yourself in this talk? Or do you take any 
 serious care in the selection of the books you read? 
 There are books also which defile the mind, and which 
 may fill it with ineffaceable pictures which are so 
 many incentives to evil ; do you read them, not in the 
 dispassionate way a critic might read them, but by 
 preference and with greediness ? And there are forms 
 of art, also, which are a prostitution of art, even as 
 in the ancient days of paganism; and do you seek 
 these, passing by all that is great and noble, all that 
 is uplifting, that the lust of the eye may satiate itself 
 upon things unworthy and even base? These are 
 plain questions ; believe me they go to the very heart 
 
 265 
 
THE DIVINE CHALLENGE 
 
 of life. Yet we are for the most part careless of 
 them ; and so long as our life is decent we trouble 
 ourselves little or not at all over the nature of our 
 thoughts, forgetting this most solemn truth that our 
 thoughts are but our acts rehearsed. 
 
 The chamber of imagery; could I indeed look into 
 it, I should know all that there is to be known about 
 you. We say sometimes that we may judge a man 
 by his books, or by the company he keeps; we may 
 judge him yet more accurately by the chamber of 
 imagery in which he loves to dwell. When I saw the 
 newly-opened apartments of the Borgias in the Vati- 
 can at Rome, I seemed to see in those walls covered 
 with gay and brilliant and voluptuous frescoes, all 
 the history of the Borgias. When I stood, later, in 
 the bare and quiet cell of Savonarola in Florence, I 
 also read the secret of the man. In the one the 
 voluptuous, in the other the austere; in the one the 
 vain shows of life, in the other the serenity of eternity ; 
 the one a banqueting house, the other a shrine. Each 
 has left his record on the wall, and he who knows 
 least of history feels the difference. He knows that 
 Christ never trod within that splendid chamber of the 
 profligate Pope, but that often Christ stood in that 
 narrow cell, where Savonarola wept, and prayed, and 
 toiled for the redemption of the city he loved so well. 
 
 And so, I ask you, what are the pictures on the 
 walls, what is the chamber of your imagery — a place 
 of infamy or a shrine ? 
 
 266 
 
CHAMBERS OF IMAGERY 
 
 I would plead with you for the religious culture 
 of the imagination. I would implore you to treat 
 your imagination seriously and reverently. I would 
 ask you to notice in literature, if nowhere else, and 
 there chiefly because the example is most readily per- 
 ceived, the evil wrought by impure imagination, and 
 the good wrought by the sanctified imagination, that 
 you may learn how large a part imagination plays 
 in influencing character. And then, I would ask you 
 to enter your chamber of imagery, and ascertain what 
 are the pictures on. the walls. It may be that with 
 some of you they are corrupt; with others they are 
 merely vain and foolish pictures, which are incapable 
 of inspiring any lofty deed or noble thought. O, that 
 I could replace them with other pictures ! O, that it 
 were in my power to fill your imagination with those 
 immortal pictures from which the lives of men have 
 received their noblest impulse and direction, these 
 many centuries ! For I would fain paint there a pic- 
 ture of the joyous innocence of Christ, that looking 
 on it you might know how blessed is the man who is 
 pure in heart. I would paint the picture of Jesus 
 in His helpfulness towards mankind; with the little 
 children in His arms, and the Magdalen at His feet, 
 that you might know how happy is the life that is 
 spent in doing good. And I would paint Him as He 
 dies, young, ardent, beloved, yet willing to be sacri- 
 ficed, that you might know what Divine triumph there 
 is in the life that gives itself for others. And then 
 
 267 
 
THE DIVINE CHALLENGE 
 
 over all these pictures I would paint a scroll, on which 
 these words should shine in starry clearness, " Behold, 
 I have given you an example; let the mind that was 
 in Christ Jesus be in you." These are pictures which 
 never fade, and in them the best life of the world has 
 been nourished for nearly two thousand years. These 
 are the pictures that make the chamber of imagery a 
 temple and a shrine; and from such a shrine there 
 flows not the influence that corrupts but redeems, there 
 issues forth the life that is wise and lofty, pure and 
 noble, and which has that divinest of all beauties, the 
 beauty of Holiness. 
 
 268 
 
THE REPROACH OF THE FLOWER 
 
XV 
 THE REPROACH OF THE FLOWER 
 
 A FLOWER SERMON 
 
 "And is not the life more than meat?"— St. Matt. vi. 25. 
 "And ye have therefore received Jesus Christ, the Lord, so 
 walk ye in Him, rooted and built up in Him."— Col. ii. 6, 7. 
 
 WHAT is the clearest thought, the most vivid 
 impression that comes to us when we gather 
 in such a service as this? Here there are around me 
 the flowers of the earth, these delicate, fragile puri- 
 ties and fragrances of the fields and gardens, each 
 fashioned in exquisite art, each contributing elements 
 of delight to the senses, each, as it were, a poem in 
 colour, a symphony in grace. Is not the clearest im- 
 pression this, that here we have the manifestations of 
 a- life, a life apparently quite different in essence and 
 quality from life as it exists among men ? Man's life 
 is often a thing of sorrow and of labour; it is diffi- 
 cult, it is perplexed, it is threatened; but here is a 
 kind of life that seems to be simple and instinctive. 
 Man, with infinite toil, builds up for himself a beauti- 
 ful edifice of life : the flower, in silence and in the con- 
 cord of all its parts and qualities, comes easily to its 
 
 271 
 
THE DIVINE CHALLENGE 
 
 perfection. " The lily toils not nor spins," says 
 Jesus ; yet it is arrayed in a glory which Solomon, in 
 all his splendour and with all his seeking, never knew. 
 A life, that is what we are confronted with, and a life 
 different from our own. Side by side with our vexed 
 human life, there is going on at this moment, through- 
 out the wide world, a sweeter and a more gracious 
 kind of life, of which we rarely think. Men may be 
 counted, but who shall take a census of the flowers? 
 Year by year the innumerable army of the flowers, 
 beneath the banner of the sunlight, comes marching 
 up over field and pasture, to possess the earth ; a living 
 army, called forth by the breath of the Almighty. 
 Think of that vast invasion, picture to yourself the 
 delicate strength of this living host, and then you will 
 come to some sense of the Divine mystery of life 
 itself; and that is what Jesus would have you think 
 when He turns from the contemplation of the flowers 
 of the field, and says to this weary, anxious congrega- 
 tion gathered at His feet, " Is not the life, that life 
 you are looking at, more than meat? " 
 
 Read with care this familiar and gracious passage 
 of the Sermon on the Mount, and I think you will see 
 at once that this is Christ's thought, and you will 
 see how He applies it. Christ sees the life of man, 
 and what impresses Him most in the life of man, is 
 its distraction, its disquietude, its misguidance. 
 Christ sees the life of nature, and what impresses Him 
 most in the life of nature, is its serenity, its efficiency, 
 
 272 
 
REPROACH OF THE FLOWER 
 
 the sureness of its development. The flower has, or 
 seems to have, the happiness that man has not ; it ful- 
 fils its true nature, which man seldom does. The lilies 
 of the field are man's reproach. For, while man 
 tramples over the whole earth with the lust of wealth 
 or the lust of war in his heart, spoiling all he touches 
 and spoiling himself in the process, the flower simply 
 grows in obedience to Divine laws, written in its own 
 nature. And the beauty of God rests upon the flowers 
 of the field, while ugliness and distortion mark the 
 path of man. What then is wrong with man ? Who 
 is at fault that man, with all his infinite variety of 
 powers, should stand ashamed before the humblest 
 flower? The fault lies in man, and with man, because 
 he has forgotten that the life is more than meat, he 
 is more concerned over externals than internals, he 
 acts as if his creed were that it is more important to 
 get a living than to live, he seeks not to be something, 
 but to get something. And it is from that cardinal 
 error that Christ would redeem us by the healing spec- 
 tacle of Nature. Nature works with but one object 
 — the perfection of all her creatures. Her great con- 
 cern is with the life, the adequate development of all 
 the possibilities of life in each. Let man learn this 
 lesson for himself, and then he will be on the way to 
 be perfect, " even as the Father in Heaven is perfect." 
 Let him root and ground himself in the thoughts of 
 Jesus, and the world will again become the paradise 
 and the very garden of God. But until man does this 
 
THE DIVINE CHALLENGE 
 
 the flower will be his reproach ; he will stand ashamed 
 before it, because the flower is for him the type of a 
 perfect life which he, with all his seeking, does not 
 find. 
 
 The reproach of the fLoxoer — that then seems to me 
 to be Christ's suggestion to us. Christ comes to us 
 with the lilies of the field in His hand, and says, 
 " Look at these, and then look upon your own soiled 
 imperfect life ; come into the green places of the earth 
 and rest with Me awhile that ye may learn of Me 
 whom poets and prophets call the Lily of the Valley, 
 the Rose of Sharon." There is a kind of life of which 
 the flower is the living parable, asking from the 
 world only the simplest things, becoming beautiful 
 not for the sake of praise but for the satisfaction 
 of laws written in its own nature, content to add a 
 little brightness to the world and to cheer the hearts 
 of men. The life of the flower — look at it and, 
 when you look, ask whether the flower is not a re- 
 proach to you. 
 
 The reproach of the flower. First of all, we may 
 say that the reproach of the flower is the reproach 
 of simplicity. Why does Christ bid us look upon 
 the flowers? Have they any spiritual lessons to im- 
 part? Yes, they have the great lesson, and surely 
 it is a spiritual lesson, of simplicity. Who is there 
 of us who has not at some time or other felt 
 this revelation of the beautiful simplicity that is in 
 nature, when in summer days we have turned away 
 
REPROACH OF THE FLOWER 
 
 from the city for a little time, and have sought the 
 ancient haunts of peace where Nature is? Do you 
 recall your reflections? If you recall them, did they 
 not run somewhat in this channel? Did you not find 
 yourself thinking in your own mind, " How poor and 
 vain and vexed and trivial does that life seem that I 
 I have been living, compared with this life where 
 I know * the silence that is in the starry sky, the 
 sleep that is among the lonely hills? ' How keenly 
 do I feel that in all this stress and rush of city life, 
 I may have followed but a vain dream, and disquieted 
 myself in vain. Here is the old sweet life of Nature 
 going on in such perfect quietness, and I am so full 
 of disquietude and of anxiety." And then there 
 came to you the thought that in the midst of this 
 busy life of yours, perhaps you had really not lived at 
 all. You had denied yourself " leisure to grow wise 
 and shelter to grow ripe," The bank account had 
 grown, it may be, but somehow you felt the soul 
 had not thrived, and there came to you the revelation 
 of simplicity; there came to you the thought that 
 possibly, after all, your character would have been 
 serener, your heart would have known more of the 
 living pulse of joy, if you had lived a simple and a 
 quiet life close to the heart of Nature. That was 
 when the flower reproached you, that was when you 
 felt the reproach of the flower, and as you passed 
 through the fields every daisy seemed to turn its eye 
 up to you and rebuke you with the distraction, the 
 
 275 
 
THE DIVINE CHALLENGE 
 
 lack of simplicity, the lack of content that was in 
 your life. 
 
 " The life is more than meat," says Christ. What 
 life? The word which Christ uses means "soul," 
 for you recollect that upon another occasion Christ 
 uses the same phrase when He says, " What shall 
 it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose 
 his own life, or his own soul? " Why are you not 
 able to live a simple life? Let me say in parenthesis, 
 by the phrase " simple life " I do not mean a life 
 necessarily lived in the hamlet, or on the hill side, 
 or in the lonely valley. Simple lives may be lived 
 anywhere. But why is it we cannot live simple lives? 
 It is because we do not believe in the soul enough. 
 You do not feel God's life within you. If you did, 
 you would care for no other life. Christ saw in His 
 day a vast society, a vast civilisation, devoting all 
 its energies to the creation of pleasures for the body, 
 and He gave the true reason for it all. He said, in 
 effect, that the Gentile nations had lost faith in the 
 soul, and He stated plainly that material luxury, the 
 growth of luxury, is the sole beatitude of Paganism. 
 Where there is no genuine faith in the soul, no sense 
 of God's life in us, then there is bound to follow the 
 materialisation of society. But a revived faith in 
 the soul always brings with it simplification of life. 
 We are all ready to discuss the simple life to-day 
 because we are all of us only too conscious of many 
 elements of weariness in the complicated life we live, 
 
 276 
 
REPROACH OF THE FLOWER 
 
 but let us be sure of this, it is nothing but a spiritual 
 revival that will make the simple life possible to us. 
 We must find anew the God of the lilies before we 
 are able to live in the quiet places where the lilies 
 grow. And, if you think for a moment what the 
 past history of our race has to teach, you will see 
 how true that reflection is, for you will see that 
 simplification of life has always followed the new 
 birth of spirituality. The moment Buddha grasps 
 the great truth that he is an emanation from God, 
 that God is all, and in all, he can leave the palace 
 and be a cheerful beggar by the wayside. The ma- 
 terial has perished because the spiritual is born. In 
 the same way St. Paul says that he knows " how to 
 be abased and how to abound." Fulness and poverty 
 are alike nothing to him, because his soul is lost in 
 God. And it was so with Wordsworth. From the 
 moment when the great thought of the mysticism 
 of Nature possessed him, he preferred poverty with 
 the vision of Nature to wealth without it. These 
 men are different, their ideals, their methods and 
 speech are different, but they are united in a real 
 unity of experience. From the hour when the high- 
 est things possess them the spell of the lower things is 
 broken. And as it was with these men so it has 
 always been throughout the long history of the ages. 
 It was so with the early Christians ; the birth of the 
 soul in them, delivered them from the yoke of material- 
 ism and the care for material luxury. It was so with 
 
THE DIVINE CHALLENGE 
 
 the Puritans ; living ever as in their Taskmaster's eye, 
 they were indifferent to the praises of the world. And 
 it must be so with us if ever we are to get that note of 
 simplification struck again. But the simplification 
 of society, lives of higher thinking, lives of plainer 
 living, lives of purer feeling, will have to come 
 through the rebirth of spiritual instinct and spir- 
 itual desires. 
 
 My brethren, are we rooted and grounded then in 
 the simplicity of Christ? We can only become so 
 by being rooted in the spirituality of Christ. We 
 look back to that sacred idyll of Christ's Galilean 
 ministry, and we think, possibly, how glorious and 
 sweet it would have been to have walked with Him 
 there by the lake's side and in the field of the lilies, 
 listening to His talk, Who spake as never man spake 
 of the things of Nature; but have you not noticed 
 that those who were His companions in these scenes 
 were all of them quite unworldly people; they were 
 people who had given up all because they thought 
 it worth while to give up all for the sake of the 
 Divine comradeship? And it is so still. Simplifi- 
 cation of life is found in increased spirituality of 
 thought. The root of Christ's life was in God, and, 
 if we are rooted in Christ as Christ was rooted in 
 God, then there may come to us the possibility of 
 that quiet, simple, contented life that Jesus Himself 
 lived in the fields of Galilee. 
 
 The reproach of the flower — it is again the re- 
 278 
 
REPROACH OF THE FLOWER 
 
 proach of faithfulness. " Faithfulness," we say : 
 " pray what has faithfulness to do with the flower 
 of the field? " Christ evidently thought it had some- 
 thing to do -with it, for you will notice that He closes 
 this talk about the flowers of the field with the sad 
 apostrophe, " O ye of little faith ! " Suppose for 
 a moment one could attribute consciousness to these 
 flowers, and that we could question them about the 
 nature of their life, what sort of answer would they 
 give? Might not the flower be imagined as replying 
 to us thus : " I am but a tiny thing under the wide 
 firmament with its great sun and its mystery of 
 glittering stars, yet I know that I am not forgotten. 
 Dews and sunbeams and rain and wind all come to 
 me, each in its appointed season. Little as I am, 
 I am God's partner in weaving the pageantry of 
 summer. I do my little part in a humble place but 
 I know that God has dealings with me. There is a 
 kind of faith in me, faith that God will care for me, 
 faith that God cares for my beauty and my perfec- 
 tion, and so I am faithfully doing the exact thing 
 God has given me to do, and waiting that God may 
 do for me the thing I cannot do for myself." That 
 is the confession of the flower. Is it our confession? 
 How rare is such a confession on human lips ! 
 How few of us do really feel God's partnership in 
 our little life! Throughout all Nature there lies 
 this deep abiding law of faithfulness, the quiet 
 fulfilment of the Divine plan, the meek acqui- 
 
 279 
 
THE DIVINE CHALLENGE 
 
 escence in the Divine will, the whole creation 
 resting on its God and waiting patiently for 
 Him. But in man there is little of this faithful- 
 ness. And so the flower reproaches us. And He 
 Who speaks of flowers, and Whose life was one 
 beautiful unfolding of meekness and faith, reproaches 
 us in saying : " 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 ! " Rooted in Christ — are we rooted in the 
 steadfast faith and patience of Christ? For among 
 all those great qualities which the life of Christ 
 reveals to men, first of all stands His faithfulness. 
 He never once murmured at His lot, even when it 
 was hardest; He never scorned the place appointed 
 for Him, even when it was lowliest. Most wonderful 
 of all things in that wondrous life is the composure 
 of Christ's mind, His serene trust in God. He felt 
 the partnership with God in His life, with a complete- 
 ness that no other ever realised. " I and the Father 
 are One." Nothing could separate Him from God, 
 not even the great dereliction of the Cross. And to 
 be rooted in Christ is to have the same spirit of entire 
 faithfulness, producing entire humility and com- 
 posure and the peaceful unfolding of the soul into 
 a beauty which is for God's eye alone, as it is wrought 
 alone by the grace and the spirit of God. 
 
 The reproach of the -flower — it is, once more, the 
 280 
 
REPROACH OF THE FLOWER 
 
 reproach of beauty. If there is one thing in which 
 all agree when we gaze at flowers, it is this — we feel 
 the charm of their beauty. But, if we come to an- 
 alyse beauty, what is beauty but another word for 
 completeness? Why is the flower beautiful? Be- 
 cause it is complete. You could not better it, with 
 all your thinking, though you thought for a lifetime ; 
 you could not add to the lily of the field, or even to 
 the daisy, a single element that would be an added 
 grace. It is complete. A friend of mine last week 
 was good enough to send me some exquisite specimens 
 of the bee-orchid with their marvellous mimicry of 
 life, and as I looked upon that mimicry of life I felt 
 the wonder of it, I felt that these flowers were flower- 
 miracles ; but yesterday I cut a common garden rose 
 — and but a poor one at that — and looked into its 
 beautiful convolutions for a moment before the petals 
 fell, and the thought came to me that after all that 
 was quite as marvellous as the bee-orchid, and quite 
 as beautiful. For wherever there is completeness 
 there is beauty. The design of God is so uniformly 
 beautiful that we have only to obey the design to 
 attain beauty, and it is only when we disregard the 
 design of God that we arrive at ugliness. Show 
 me completeness anywhere, in the daisy, in the rose, 
 in the child, in the human mind, in the development of 
 a human life, and you show me beauty. And there 
 is no beauty where there is not completeness. But 
 
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THE DIVINE CHALLENGE 
 
 of all beautiful things in this world, a complete hu- 
 man life is the most beautiful. I mentioned in a re- 
 cent address an article which had struck me in one 
 of the art magazines, an article describing Claydon 
 House in Buckinghamshire. The house is one of 
 the houses beautiful of England. Pages were taken 
 up with descriptions of its carvings, its pictures, its 
 staircases, the marvels of its wrought iron and ex- 
 quisite marqueterie, and so forth; and then at the 
 very end of the article it was mentioned that there 
 was a little plain room upstairs that had no art 
 adornment whatever, but it was in that room Florence 
 Nightingale dwelt. And on the walls were no historic 
 pictures, but only crude scenes in the Crimean War. 
 Only that. Ah ! but I felt that that room was the 
 true shrine of the whole place. There a soul had 
 lived, there a spiritual life had gone on, and that 
 was the glory of the house. It gave a beauty to it. 
 You can get no beauty in human life except through 
 the beautiful soul. Houses are poor things until 
 love comes into them and makes them homes, and the 
 house of life is a poor thing until the spirit of God 
 takes possession of the inner shrine and makes the 
 life complete. Would you live a beautiful life? 
 Let it be a complete life, and what this completion is 
 the great Apostle tells you — Rooted in Christ, 
 grounded in Christ, established in Christ — and here 
 is the final phrase, "complete in Him" That life 
 
 282 
 
REPROA CH OF THE FLOWER 
 
 alone I count a beautiful life which is a complete life, 
 and for the true completion of our life we must be 
 rooted in Christ, and grow in His grace, that we 
 may attain to His image. 
 
 The reproach of beauty. As our eyes rest on 
 these exquisite and perfected works of Nature's art, 
 do we feel the reproach of beauty, do we feel how 
 unbeautif ul our lives often are, how little of grace and 
 perfume there is in them, how thwarted and impov- 
 erished and deflected from God's design they are? 
 Why ? The reason with many of us — and I speak 
 now to those who call themselves Christians — the 
 reason is that we are rooted upon Christ, rather 
 than rooted in Christ; we are parasites. The ivy 
 clings to the oak, but it is easily separable from it, 
 because it has no part in the root and in the life of 
 the oak ; so some of us are clinging to the surfaces 
 of Christianity, to its outward forms and functions, 
 but our root has never yet struck deep into the life 
 of Christ. The roots of your life, the fibres in which 
 the vital sap runs, what of these? You and I can an- 
 swer that question best for ourselves. For some of us, 
 it may be, that the real root of our life is in pride 
 and vanity; for others it is in worldliness and 
 pleasure ; for others it is in secret sins and in the cor- 
 rupt and evil will. And there can be no beauty in 
 such a life, there will blossom no perfect flower from 
 such a root. Look to the roots of your life then, 
 
THE DIVINE CHALLENGE 
 
 for that is the final message of the flowers. All that 
 is of beauty in the flowers has its source is some- 
 thing that is out of sight. So the beautiful life 
 is a life whose root is hid with Christ in God. Of 
 all the world's great needs to-day, there is no need so 
 great as a more pure and perfect life among Chris- 
 tians. It is the poor and dwarfed blossom of moral 
 beauty that we find in the lives that are called Chris- 
 tian that is the great hindrance to Christianity. 
 Remember, creeds and professions have very little 
 weight with men now-a-days — less than they ever 
 had. It is lives that count, and to-day, as in the 
 early days of Christianity, it is the spectacle of 
 lives, manifestly beautiful in ideals and conduct, in 
 spirit and temper, that set men thinking, and pres- 
 ently set them seeking for the secret of Jesus. How 
 are we to live such lives? Only by being rooted in 
 Christ, rooted in His faith, rooted in His character, 
 His thoughts, His deeds, His spirit and temper. He 
 calls us, He entreats us to share His most secret life, 
 telling us that He is the Vine and we are the branches. 
 And so let us join in prayer to the Vine of God, that 
 He may take our lives into His own, we rooted in Him 
 and He in us for evermore. 
 
 Deep strike Thy root, O Heavenly Vine, 
 
 Within our earthly sod, 
 Most beautiful, yet most divine, 
 
 The Flower of man and God. 
 284 
 
REPR OACH OF THE FLOWER 
 
 Rooted, grounded, stablished, complete in Christ — 
 that is the life beautiful that we each may live, and 
 this is also " life eternal to know the only true God 
 and Jesus Christ whom He hath sent." 
 
 THE B*JD 
 
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