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THE SINLESS CHRIST 
 
F. Gutekunst 
 
 George Tybout Purves, D.D., LL.D. 
 
JLhc Presbyterian pulpit 
 
 * 
 
 THE SINLESS CHRIST 
 
 BY 
 
 GEORGE TYBOUT PURVES, D. D., LL.D. 
 
 Late Pastor of the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church, New York, 
 Sometime Professor in Princeton Theological Seminary 
 
 PHILADELPHIA 
 
 PRESBYTERIAN BOARD OF PUBLICATION 
 AND SABBATH-SCHOOL WORK 
 
 1902 
 
Copyright, 1902, by the Trustees of 
 The Presbyterian Board of Publication and Sabbath- 
 School Work. 
 
 Published November, iq02. 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 The sermons contained in this volume cannot 
 fairly be called sermons preached by Dr. Purves. 
 He prepared full notes. In preaching, however, 
 he was absolutely independent of them, and many 
 of the most impressive passages of his discourses 
 had never been written. But, as he closely ad- 
 hered in the pulpit at many points to the lan- 
 guage of the outline written in his study, these 
 discourses will enable the readers who heard him 
 preach on their texts to recall the sermons as 
 he delivered them. 
 
 Those who, like the writer of this Introduction, 
 listened to Dr. Purves regularly as his parish- 
 ioners know that he was an exceptionally great 
 preacher. Underlying his preaching was the 
 Christian "theory of the universe." To this 
 theory he had given and was always giving the 
 careful study and reflection of a large, disci- 
 plined and energetic mind. As he apprehended 
 
vi INTRODUCTION 
 
 it, it was self-consistent, justified by reason and 
 in harmony with his religious experience. It was 
 his strongest, most distinct and most cherished 
 intellectual conviction. 
 
 During his entire professional life he was a 
 close, scientific and enthusiastic student of the 
 Bible, and of the New Testament in particular. 
 He had a brilliant career for eight years as Profes- 
 sor of New Testament Literature and Exegesis in 
 Princeton Theological Seminary. He knew the 
 later Scriptures as few men know them. He 
 received them as the absolutely truthful and in- 
 spired record of God's gracious revelation to sin- 
 ful men, and as the infallible rule of religious 
 faith and life. 
 
 His religious Hfe was sincere and simple. The 
 trait which those near to him would probably call 
 distinguishing and out-standing was his affectionate 
 loyalty to Jesus Christ, his Redeemer, Lord and 
 Friend. 
 
 He was a man of high intellectual tastes and 
 wide and various intellectual interests. He was a 
 cultivated man who loved good and great books. 
 But these tastes, strong as they were, were reso- 
 
INTRODUCTION vii 
 
 lutely subordinated to his sympathy with his 
 fellow-men, his affection for them and his active 
 interest in their spiritual well-being. This affec- 
 tionate interest finely revealed itself in his work- 
 as a Christian pastor. I never knew a better 
 pastor than Dr. Purves was when in Princeton. 
 
 He had a great gift of speech. I have heard 
 him more than once when he was compelled to 
 speak with no time at all for preparation and had 
 to throw himself upon his reserve of culture. 
 At these times he surprised and delighted me 
 by the spontaneous methodizing of his mind, and 
 the clearness and grace of his speech. I never 
 heard him speak when his own emotions and 
 the emotions of his audience were not stirred. 
 He spoke with fervor and energy, which the 
 hearer felt as power. 
 
 To say that these were the gifts, convictions, 
 attainments and method of a man is to call him a 
 great didactic Christian orator. But no catalogue 
 will explain the consummate charm of Dr. Purves 
 as a preacher. The living whole was far greater 
 than the sum of all the parts. We, whom he in- 
 structed and inspired, while we rejoice that some 
 
viii INTRODUCTION 
 
 of his discourses are given to the public, cannot 
 help regretting that many of those who will ob- 
 tain from this volume new strength to do and 
 bear and undergo and overcome, did not enjoy 
 the high privilege which was ours when he 
 opened unto us the Scriptures. 
 
 John DeWitt. 
 Princeton, October 23, 1902. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 I. The Sinless Christ .... 
 
 II. The Crisis of a Soul 
 
 III. Confessing Christ .... 
 
 IV. Samson's Riddle .... 
 
 V. Peter's Shadow, or Unconscious In 
 FLUENCE ..... 
 
 VI. The Way, the Truth, and the Life 
 
 VII. Earthly and Heavenly Lights 
 
 VIII. The Waiting Dead .... 
 
 3 
 
 25 
 47 
 73 
 
 97 
 
 121 
 
 143 
 167 
 
THE SINLESS CHRIST 
 
THE SINLESS CHRIST 
 
 THE SINLESS CHRIST i 
 
 " For such an high priest became us, who is holy, harmless, 
 undefiled, separate from sinners." — Heb. vii. 26, 
 
 Whatever makes the person of Jesus Christ 
 vividly real to our thoughts helps us in our daily 
 lives. Practical Christianity finds a mighty stimu- 
 lus in trusting, contemplating, understanding, and 
 following Him ; for in so doing we learn to live 
 with God and for man. He is the personal center 
 of our religion, the living revelation of truth and 
 life, the magnet by which we are drawn heaven- 
 ward, the One in and by whom salvation becomes 
 an actual possession. Yet thus vividly and 
 truthfully to apprehend Him is not easy. Being 
 invisible. He does not stand so clearly before us as 
 do other objects which address themselves to our 
 senses. The historical distance from us of His 
 
 ' The copyright of this sermon belongs to the Fleming H. 
 Revell Company, New York and Chicago, who courteously permit 
 its use in this volume. 
 
 3 
 
4 THE SINLESS CHRIST 
 
 earthly career is apt to make His figure indistinct. 
 Even our dogmatic conceptions of His person 
 and work sometimes become formal and lifeless, 
 though intended to interpret Him, and though 
 correctly expressing what we should believe about 
 Him. It ought, therefore, to be our effort con- 
 stantly to repaint His figure upon the canvas of 
 our thought, to turn upon Him the hght of ex- 
 perience and research, of comparison and analy- 
 sis, that fresh ideas of His unspeakable glory 
 may daily dawn upon our minds, delight our 
 hearts, and cause us to give Him all the admira- 
 tion and devotion of which we may be capable. 
 Now, in the words of our text, we have briefly 
 described the moral purity of Jesus, the sinless, 
 unspotted excellence of His personal character. 
 The language is very vivid. It shows the pro- 
 found impression which Jesus made on the first 
 generation of disciples — the immediate reflection 
 of the impression made on those who came into 
 direct contact with Him. The words breathe the 
 realism of personal acquaintance. They do not 
 enlarge upon what all knew, but they express 
 very beautifully the sense of ineffable purity and 
 holiness, of infinite moral superiority, which the 
 disciples received from Him whose very presence 
 had revealed a new and heavenly life. He was 
 
THE SINLESS CHRIST 5 
 
 " holy "; and the Greek word is not the common 
 one for a thing set apart for sacred usage, but a 
 word less often employed and indicative of an 
 exquisitely pure and lofty character, one that real- 
 ized and discharged all its obligations. He was 
 *' harmless," i. e., thoroughly good, gentle, benevo- 
 lent, tender-hearted, and true. Out of Him as 
 they remembered Him, no harm ever proceeded. 
 No evil ever issued from act or word of His. 
 Nothing but good came from Him. When we 
 remember how much we influence one another, 
 and how much evil goes forth even from the best 
 of us, to counterbalance not a little of the good 
 we do, we shall appreciate the character of the 
 One of whom it could be said by those who knew 
 Him best, that He was, as He bade them to be, 
 " harmless as a dove." Further, He was " unde- 
 filed " — untainted by the corruption of the world 
 in which He dwelt, unspotted by the passions 
 which left a stain even on apostles. In short, He 
 was " separate from sinners." Some would take 
 these words with those that follow, " made higher 
 than the heavens," and understand them to de- 
 scribe our Lord as now separated at the right 
 hand of God from the world of sinners, even as 
 the high priest in the most holy place was sepa- 
 rated from the multitude for whom He made 
 
6 THE SINLESS CHRIST 
 
 atonement. But I judge it more natural to see in 
 these words another phrase to describe Christ's per- 
 sonal character. He was separated from sinners. 
 The disciples who stood nearest to Him felt that 
 there was a great chasm between His spotless 
 soul and theirs. He was on a plane above them. 
 His motives and purposes were unlike theirs. 
 And this, although in other respects He was so 
 near to them and so truly man. He had laid hold, 
 as this epistle says, on the seed of Abraham. He 
 was touched with the feeling of their infirmities. 
 He was full of sympathy and friendship. He 
 understood them. He took them by the hand. 
 He wept over their griefs and rejoiced in their 
 joys. Yet He was evidently as far above them 
 as the gleaming stars w^ere higher than the water 
 in which their brilliance was reflected. He was 
 the friend of publicans and harlots, and yet He 
 was " separate from sinners." 
 
 Could any language more forcibly express the 
 sense which the disciples had of their Master's 
 sinlessness ? As I have said, the words indicate 
 the realism of personal -acquaintance. They do 
 not speak in the language of the schools. They 
 do not measure Christ's worth by formal stand- 
 ards. They are the outcome of personal adora- 
 tion and unspeakable reverence for One whose 
 
THE SINLESS CHRIST 7 
 
 character and life had been to those who knew 
 Him the disclosure of the absolutely good. 
 
 Now I desire to enable you, if possible, to real- 
 ize afresh the sinlessness of Jesus Christ by sug- 
 gesting certain considerations which ought to 
 make it very clear and very astonishing to our 
 minds. I would exalt your sense of His personal 
 perfection, — unlike that of any other character 
 who ever has appeared in the history of our race, 
 — and I would do it, not by a formal proof of the 
 doctrine, but by setting His life in its surround- 
 ings, with the hope that the same impression may 
 be made on our minds as on those who knew 
 Him first, 
 
 I. Consider, then, that in all the records which 
 we have of the Lord Jesus there is not the slight- 
 est betrayal by Him of the least degree of the 
 consciousness of sin. We have a sufficiently 
 (complete record to justify us in saying that this 
 is a fact. We see Him in most trying hours. We 
 hear Him pray. We listen to His teaching on 
 religious themes. We hear Him reprove others. 
 We catch glimpses of Him in private as well as 
 in public. We know that He spoke often about 
 Himself But in all the life of Christ we never 
 hear any confession of unworthiness or any long- 
 ing after holiness, nor discover any indication what- 
 
8 THE SINLESS CHRIST 
 
 ever that He felt Himself in the least degree 
 touched by sin. 
 
 The significance of this will appear if we recall 
 two other facts, one of experience, the other of 
 history. 
 
 The first is that, as a matter of universal ex- 
 perience, the more spiritual a man becomes the 
 more does he feel himself a sinner and unworthy 
 of fellowship with God. The progress of man's 
 moral life commonly consists in the awakening 
 and sharpening of his conscience. He becomes 
 more keenly aware of moral obligations. He 
 sees them where before he saw them not. He 
 analyzes more thoroughly his motives and clas- 
 sifies more correctly his duties. He becomes 
 more sensitive to the demands made upon his 
 conscience, just as progress in other departments 
 of activity consists in the refinement of our powers 
 and the larger perception of the objects on which 
 they were meant to terminate. This is the law 
 of the moral and spiritual life of man. He is at 
 first a child, and, like a child, takes in only a few 
 facts, feels his obligations in but a few directions. 
 Some men never grow beyond this stage. Though 
 their intellects may be cultured and their bodies 
 strengthened, their moral faculties remain unde- 
 veloped. Then conscience is apt to become a 
 
THE SINLESS CHRIST 9 
 
 mere scourge, driving to unloved duty ; a night- 
 mare, affrighting with threats of torment. I^ut 
 just so far as the spiritual life of man has blos- 
 somed and flowered, so far has his sensitiveness 
 to evil increased, his recognition of it brightened 
 and clarified, his consciousness of its presence in 
 him become more intense, and his longings after 
 freedom from it become stronger. Witness in 
 proof of this the hymns of all religions, and 
 especially the hymns of Christendom. Witness 
 the advance of social morality, taking in, as it has 
 gradually done, matters that were once thought 
 quite indifferent. Read the confessions of the 
 purest men and women who ever have lived. Those 
 that have risen highest have felt themselves the 
 lowest. And this has not been a delusion with 
 them ; they have only seen more clearly. A vil- 
 lainous murderer went to the scaffold saying that 
 he looked on his life as a whole with much satis- 
 faction, and felt that, with the trifling exception 
 of a murder, he had tried to do right by all men. 
 Augustine wrote, " The dwelling of my soul is in 
 ruins ; do Thou restore it. There is that in it which 
 must offend thine eyes ; I confess and know it : 
 but who will cleanse it ?" Such are fair examples. 
 Who of us that tries to love God does not know 
 the same thing from his own experience? As 
 
lo THE SINLESS CHRIST 
 
 Christian life proceeds, as its insight becomes 
 clearer, as its consciousness deepens and is puri- 
 fied, it becomes more and more ready to say with 
 the Scripture, " In my flesh there dwelleth no 
 good thing," and to repeat confessions at which 
 the world sometimes stands amazed. Just in pro- 
 portion as man's moral Hfe advances does he feel 
 that he is not worthy even to gather up the 
 crumbs that fall from the festal table which the 
 grace of God has spread. 
 
 But lo ! the one Person who by act and word 
 gave evidence of the most spiritual life was abso- 
 lutely without this element of mind. He had the 
 clearest insight into moral duties. His words are 
 still recognized as embodying the loftiest ethics. 
 His character is held worthy of universal imita- 
 tion. He loved to pray. He talked with God as 
 though he saw Him. Yet, unlike every other 
 man of spiritual insight who ever lived, he never 
 betrayed any sense of unworthiness or of need of 
 greater holiness. 
 
 This stands out still more remarkably when 
 we associate it with the historical fact that in the 
 Jewish world in which Jesus lived the sense of 
 sin and of general apostasy from God was spe- 
 cially strong among awakened minds. Jesus lived 
 in the age when John cried to all Israel, ** Repent !" 
 
THE SINLESS CHRIST II 
 
 and with prophetic zeal unveiled the monstrous 
 corruption of the church and nation. But John 
 himself very plainly confessed his own unworthi- 
 ness. Speaking of the Messiah, he said, " His shoe's 
 latchet I am not worthy to unloose." So, Hke- 
 wise, those men who followed Jesus were very 
 emphatic in their confessions of sin. Peter cried, 
 " I am a sinful man, O Lord." The centurion 
 said, " I am not worthy that thou shouldest come 
 under my roof." Paul called himself " the chief 
 of sinners." Wherever Christ or his gospel went 
 men were awakened in an eminent degree to the 
 fact of sin, and were led to confess that, even if 
 believers, they were only beginning to aspire to 
 that holiness without which they felt that no 
 man can see the Lord. 
 
 But again, amid this whole movement and as 
 the vital center of it, the Lord Jesus never be- 
 trayed the slightest consciousness of wrong. If 
 He had been the product of the same influences 
 which molded the rest, He would have been the 
 loudest in His confessions. But not an accent of 
 penitence fell from His lips. How does the con- 
 sciousness of sin show itself? With some in fear, 
 causing them to turn away from God and dread to 
 think of Him, much more to pray. With others 
 it assumes the form of bravado, leading them to 
 
12 THE SINLESS CHRIST 
 
 boldly dare the consequences of their misdeeds. 
 These effects, however, are seen in characters 
 which cannot possibly be compared with Christ's. 
 With g-ood men, on the other hand, who have 
 been awakened to a sense of sin, it shows itself 
 in expressions of repentance, in prayers for for- 
 giveness, in longings after holiness, in acknowl- 
 edgment of the unmerited grace of God ; some- 
 times in painful acts of self-denial and asceticism, 
 which are supposed to compensate for transgres- 
 sion or to extinguish the power of evil. But none 
 of these things are discoverable in Jesus. Though 
 He called others to repent, He Himself never 
 expressed repentance. He never asked to be 
 forgiven, though He taught us to ask it. On the 
 contrary, we find Him rejoicing in the assurance 
 of His Father's eternal love, delighting in com- 
 munion with God, and finally openly challenging 
 His enemies on this very point : " Which of you 
 convinceth Me of sin ?" Nor is there any trace 
 of development in His spiritual life, but, from the 
 first and to the last, the utter absence of the con- 
 sciousness of sin appears in Him. The Buddha 
 claimed to reach perfection, but only as the result 
 of a long and painful process of self-purification. 
 Christ appears as free from the sense of sin in the 
 beginning of His career as amid its close. 
 
THE SINLESS CHRIST 13 
 
 Is not this a life which stands alone in all his- 
 tory ? Try to imagine, if it be possible on the 
 ordinary suppositions of human experience, how 
 one could be gifted with such spiritual discern- 
 ment and yet see no flaw in himself, if there was 
 a flaw. How could one teach such high and 
 pure morals without confessing his own short- 
 comings, if he did come short ? How could one 
 dwell so near to the divine Father and never ask 
 to be forgiven sin, which that Father hates, if 
 there was any sin to be forgiven ? I ask you to 
 think of this, not from the standpoint of the deity 
 of Christ in which we believe, but from the stand- 
 point of His humanity. Conceive the impression 
 which He must have made upon those about Him. 
 Realize that He was an actual living person. 
 Then you will appreciate the fact that in all the 
 record of His life there is not a trace of the 
 slightest sense of sin. " If I should say, I know 
 not the Father," said Jesus to the Pharisees, " I 
 should be a liar hke unto you : but I know Him 
 and keep His sayings." '* I do always those 
 things which please Him." Such expressions, 
 imbedded in such a life, form a unique fact in the 
 history of moral teaching. 
 
 2. There are only two ways by which those 
 who doubt these facts can evade the force of the 
 
14 THE SINLESS CHRIST 
 
 evidence. The first is by saying that the record 
 in the gospels is not true, but that the disciples 
 exaggerated the character of their Master, embel- 
 lished His virtues, and forgot His faults. To 
 reply to this objection would lead us too far 
 afield. It involves the whole question of the 
 credibiHty of the Gospels. But I may point out 
 in passing that the Gospels do describe Christ's 
 weakness and weariness, His struggles with temp- 
 tation, and His agony in the garden. They evince 
 no disposition, therefore, to idealize the character 
 of Jesus or to hide His genuine humanity. On 
 the other hand, they do not, except in the pro- 
 logue to the fourth Gospel, bring out the formal 
 doctrine about Him which the apostles themselves 
 believed, nor do they impute to the Master the 
 theological language which later revelations would 
 have justified. They have therefore all the ap- 
 pearance of honest histories. They confirm one 
 another. They are themselves confirmed by the 
 epistles. The very simplicity of their story attests 
 their historical veracity. 
 
 The other way to escape the natural inference 
 from the facts of which we have been speaking is 
 to say that Jesus was under an hallucination, that 
 His enthusiasm made Him blind to His own 
 defects. So Renan writes : " Jesus cannot be 
 
THE SINLESS CHRIST 
 
 15 
 
 judged by the rule of our petty propriety. The 
 admiration of His disciples overwhelmed Him 
 and carried Him away." 
 
 I wish, therefore, to suggest certain other facts 
 which render these objections highly improbable, 
 and which also serve to give a still livelier sense 
 of the real sinlessness of our Lord. 
 
 The first is that it was those who were nearest 
 to Him who have testified to His spotless purity. 
 It is quite easy to make a good impression on the 
 public. It is not so easy to extort from those 
 who live with us a similar tribute unless it be 
 deserved. Many men seem great and good at a 
 distance, but nearer at hand their faults are mani- 
 fest. Now the fact was that in public Jesus was 
 often charged with doing wrong. The Pharisees 
 openly called Him a sinner, because they thought 
 He broke the Sabbath, and a devil because He 
 opposed them, and a blasphemer because He said 
 God was His Father. He did not live such a life 
 as to be called a saint by the established standard 
 of the day. His reputation was not based on 
 conformity to the common ideal. On the con- 
 trary. He was crucified as a malefactor. It was 
 only those who lived with Him who testify to the 
 spotless beauty of His character. They saw Him 
 in private. They watched Him in His most critical 
 
i6 THE SINLESS CHRIST 
 
 hours. They heard His ejaculations. They were 
 His confidential friends. But it was they who 
 from the very first acknowledged, and with greater 
 emphasis as their acquaintance with Him ripened, 
 that He was the Holy One of God. Their testi- 
 mony seems of great worth. Popular applause 
 is easy to win if we conform to the popular ideal, 
 but this testimony was rendered in the face of 
 derision and apparent failure, by those who knew 
 Him best. 
 
 Furthermore, nothing that Jesus ever said or 
 did appears even now to indicate sin in Him. We 
 have grown very wise. Some think that, speak- 
 ing comparatively, we have grown good. Cer- 
 tainly the world has greatly advanced in the 
 knowledge of duty. But it is a fact that we can- 
 not find anything to criticize in Jesus from a moral 
 point of view. All that we can do, whether 
 Christians or not, from theologians to novelists, 
 is to show that our teachings were His. He can 
 still say, " Which of you convinceth Me of sin ?" 
 In this age, for example, we lay great stress on 
 the love of man as the highest form of morality ; 
 on benevolence, unselfishness, on altruism. But 
 all this was taught and practised years ago by 
 Jesus. Or, if we say that morality depends on 
 the motives from which men act, what motives 
 
THE SINLESS CHRIST 17 
 
 can be higher than those which appear in the Hfe 
 of Jesus ? The Sermon on the Mount is the 
 moral code of the ages, and point, if you can, to 
 any principle or precept of that sermon which 
 Jesus did not obey in His life. I need not expand 
 on this; but I beg you to remember that the 
 growing moral sense of nineteen centuries has 
 not convicted Him of any fault of character. 
 
 Still again, remember that He made this im- 
 pression on His friends and gave this evidence 
 in His life, although He was perfectly open to 
 temptation and, in fact, fought it hand to hand. 
 He was not a cold ideal. He was not a statue in 
 marble. Life's battle was tremendously real to 
 Him. He was tempted as we are. He grew 
 also in knowledge and wisdom. Therefore the 
 spotless holiness of His character becomes of 
 treble worth. It appears a living attainment. It 
 was a conquest. It was a thoroughly human qual- 
 ity, and on that account must have impressed the 
 more those who were about Him. We need not 
 stumble over the notion that a sinless person can- 
 not be tempted. If our first parents were tempted 
 and fell, Christ could be tempted without falling. 
 Moreover, the power of temptation consists simply 
 in its offering us something that we desire; and 
 Jesus desired much that He could not have, if he 
 2 
 
l8 THE SINLESS CHRIST 
 
 were to become man's Redeemer. It was His lot 
 to lay aside the enjoyment of Heaven's favor; to 
 fail apparently of winning men to God ; at least 
 to have the Father hide His face from Him. His 
 temptations lay in the desire for those good things 
 which were forbidden Him, and the very intensity 
 of His love of God and man made the tempta- 
 tions stronger. At any rate the testimony is 
 unanimous that He knew temptation's power. 
 The battle in the wilderness of Judea, the agony 
 in the garden of Gethsemane, the remark that 
 fell from His lips, ** I have overcome the world," 
 sufficiently attest it. This very writer of the 
 Epistle to the Hebrews knew it. He says, " He 
 was in all points tempted like as we are, yet with- 
 out sin," " In that He Himself hath suffered 
 being tempted. He is able to succor them that are 
 tempted." The disciples knew Him too well to 
 claim for Him exemption from the common lot. 
 They saw Him harassed and oppressed, and 
 therefore bowed the more reverently before the 
 meekness and gentleness, the purity and love, the 
 unselfishness and the righteousness, which in spite 
 of temptation never failed to manifest themselves 
 in Jesus. This adds immensely to our admiration 
 of His character. He was one of ourselves. 
 The holiness of God may be too far above us for 
 
THE SINLESS CHRIST 
 
 19 
 
 us to comprehend it, but the spotless purity of 
 the tempted Saviour, who will not adore ? 
 
 Now, once more, I add that the Lord Jesus 
 had for His confessed rule of life a principle which 
 naturally made Him realize keenly the presence 
 of sin, even in its least apparent forms. He said, 
 " My meat is to do the will of Him that sent Me "; 
 and through all His life the will of God was His 
 law, and to do that will was His firm resolve. I ask 
 you to note this particularly; for a man's sense 
 of sin depends directly upon his idea of what sin 
 is. Many people think that only crime is sin, and 
 because they have done no crime they feel no 
 sense of sin. Others think sin to be merely self- 
 ishness, and because they are kind and philan- 
 thropic, do not regard themselves as seriously at 
 fault. But th£ Bible teaches that sin is far more 
 than this. It is any want of conformity to the 
 will of God. Man owes to God absolute loyalty 
 of thought and act. The least rupture of that 
 loyalty is sin. The broader and deeper our 
 knowledge of the will of God, the more must we 
 feel that we are sinful. Now my point is, that 
 Jesus was fully aware of this. This was His rule ; 
 by this He judged. And He gives evidence of 
 so broad and deep a knowledge of what God's 
 will is that the rule of His life made Him sensible 
 
20 THE SINLESS CHRIST 
 
 of sin to a degree in comparison with which our 
 best perceptions of it are as twilight to high noon. 
 
 Yet He had no sense of personal sin. Though 
 He had the highest possible standard by which to 
 judge, He never felt that the standard condemned 
 Him. Though He was keenly alive to moral dif- 
 ferences, though He stands before us the supreme 
 Teacher of what is right, though He had for His 
 rule of life the highest of all laws. He deliber- 
 ately said, " I have overcome the world "; " I have 
 finished the work which Thou gavest Me to do." 
 
 Fellow-sinners, what a character is this ! It 
 defies all explanations save that of the text. A 
 man, yet a sinless man ! Tempted, but never 
 stained ! Fighting hand to hand with evil, but 
 never wounded by it ! In the world, and yet 
 above it ! Once and only once in human history 
 has this spectacle appeared. 
 
 Permit me, then, in a word, to press upon your 
 minds the practical importance of this truth. 
 
 The moral character of Jesus is a sufficient cre- 
 dential of the truth of His gospel. He has other 
 credentials, but I bring forward this to-day. He 
 is unique. He is truth and righteousness incarnate. 
 Therefore His word must be authoritative ; His 
 teaching concerning God and duty, truth and sal- 
 vation, must be our absolute standard. He guar- 
 
THE SINLESS CHRIST 21 
 
 antees by His personal sinlessness the authority 
 of the message. What He declares to be God's 
 truth we must accept as such. What He declares 
 to be God's will and purpose we must obey and 
 believe. We scarcely need other evidence. At 
 His feet, mind and heart should bow. 
 
 Further, He is worthy to be man's representa- 
 tive before God. Sinless Himself, He is a right- 
 ful priest of humanity. So our text says, " Such 
 an high priest became us." This is what we need. 
 Who but He can venture for us into the most 
 holy place ? Who but He can sprinkle the aton- 
 ing blood ? He is a priest whose right to mediate, 
 history and conscience, as well as God, declare. 
 
 For can we suppose that this sinless life was 
 lived for Himself alone ? He Himself assures us 
 of the contrary. He came into the world, — He 
 did not belono; to it. He had no need to Hve on 
 earth at all. His express declaration is that He 
 came for our redemption. If so, we must cer- 
 tainly behold in His sinless life more even than 
 the perfect example of what our lives should be. 
 It was the necessary preparation for the sacrifice 
 of the cross, and it becomes more than ever pre- 
 cious when we consider that it was part of the 
 redemption price paid for our deliverance. For 
 we are " not redeemed with corruptible things, as 
 
22 THE SINLESS CHRIST 
 
 silver and gold, but with the precious blood of 
 Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without 
 spot." The character which the world itself cannot 
 but admire, and the life which stands forth as the 
 great exception to all other lives, obtain the high- 
 est significance when we also remember that God 
 " hath made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin ; 
 that we might be made the righteousness of God 
 in Him." Well may we adore Him. Well may 
 we imitate and obey Him. But above all else, 
 well may we trust Him ; for He has won the right 
 to redeem us, and is able to save unto the utter- 
 most all those that come unto God by Him. 
 
II 
 
 THE CRISIS OF A SOUL 
 
II 
 
 THE CRISIS OF A SOUL 
 
 " Likewise, I say unto you, there is joy in the presence of the 
 angels of God over one sinner that repenteth." — Luke xv. io. 
 
 What a contrast is this to the estimate of things 
 which prevails on earth ! Crowds of human beings, 
 wild with enthusiasm, toss up their hats and make 
 the air ring with their hurrahs ; but it is for the 
 victoiy of their national arms or the triumph of 
 their political party. Church bells peal out their 
 inspiring strains as if to waken man and nature to 
 gladness and thankfulness ; but it is only for a 
 formal festival or to summon already devout souls 
 to worship God. The faces that we gaze on in 
 the streets do not often indicate much joy at all ; 
 but when they do, it is commonly only the joy of 
 social pleasure or commercial success. The world 
 is for the most part absorbed in admiring itself, or 
 the one part is absorbed in envying the other. 
 Or, if not so bad as that, its joy springs from the 
 discovery it makes, the knowledge it gains, the 
 canvas it paints, and the fortunes it gathers. It is 
 not wholly so, I know. There are some who do 
 
 25 
 
26 THE SINLESS CHRIST 
 
 show the heavenly spirit and rejoice in the prog- 
 ress of reform, the upHfting of the lowly, and the 
 salvation of the lost But alas ! these are a mi- 
 nority. The common judgments of earth are quite 
 different and utterly forget the real values of the 
 things which they applaud. 
 
 But the world of spirits which looks down on 
 this judges by another standard. It smiles in pity 
 at men's love of toys that will soon be broken. 
 It sorrows to see noble powers prostituted to un- 
 worthy ends. The pleasures which most men find 
 only awaken sadness in the angels' hearts. The 
 world seems all awry, given over to delusion, in- 
 sane with its self-love and self-applause. These 
 angelic eyes are eager to see other spectacles, and 
 whenever they behold a prodigal rising from his 
 sins and setting his face toward home, or a proud 
 man bending on his knees before the altar and con- 
 fessing in sincerity the wickedness of his pride, or 
 a sinner of any kind, convicted of his sinfulness, 
 and crying, " God, be merciful to me a sinner," 
 then the song breaks forth from the heavenly 
 hosts, and round the throne of God the angels 
 of His presence chant a new triumph of their 
 Father in the rescue of another human soul. 
 
 This contrast was part of the general reversal 
 of opinion about the worth of things which Jesus 
 
THE CRISIS OF A SOUL 27 
 
 taught to be necessary. He said, " Many that are 
 first shall be last and the last first." " I came not 
 to call the righteous but sinners to repentance." 
 " How hardly shall they that have riches enter into 
 the kingdom of God !" ** Blessed are the poor in 
 spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." 
 These declarations turn the popular ideas upside 
 down. They precisely reverse the common judg- 
 ment. Even the best Christians do not fully share 
 the mind of Christ upon such subjects, and the 
 most of us are following Him a great way off. 
 Especially is it pitiable to see the indifference to 
 moral qualities and the practical unbelief in the 
 danger in which every sinful soul stands. We 
 must needs pity ourselves that we can be so indif- 
 ferent. It may do us good, by helping us to judge 
 ourselves more faithfully and to serve others more 
 wisely, to inquire why there is joy in the presence 
 of the angels of God over one sinner that repent- 
 eth. From what we are elsewhere taught, and 
 from what we may naturally infer, it is possible to 
 give an answer to the question, and it may let 
 some of heaven's light in upon our darkness. 
 
 I. I suggest, therefore, that in the presence of 
 the angels of God there is known the full value of 
 a human soul. We do not reahze the value of a 
 soul, for several reasons. We think more, for ex- 
 
28 THE SINLESS CHRIST 
 
 ample, of institutions than of individuals. We see 
 that certain great corporations (as I may call them) 
 appear to be important for the progress of the race 
 and the well-being of society. The Church is im- 
 portant for the culture of morals ; the school for 
 the discovery of character and the attainment of 
 knowledge ; the State for the protection of prop- 
 erty and the order of society. We make these as 
 of first value and give them our zealous support. 
 What matters it that thousands perish on the field 
 of battle, if the nation be preserved ? It is of 
 more moment, we are apt to think, to advance the 
 cause in which we are interested than to stop in our 
 career to give heed even to the particular persons 
 by whom the cause is to be upheld. Men die, we 
 say, but institutions live. The great ideas, which 
 are embodied in them, must be perpetuated, and if 
 they are, the greatest end has been accomplished. 
 It is natural for us thus to feel and argue. It is 
 true that, relatively to the race, institutions are 
 more important than individuals. It is true that 
 the country is worth preserving even at the cost 
 of a million lives. It is true that, so far as our 
 efforts go, institutions rank above men. But we 
 should be one-sided and one-half blind if we let 
 this truth absorb us. For what is society but the 
 aggregation of individuals ? What are institutions 
 
THE CRISIS OF A SOUL 29 
 
 for but for the particular men and women whom 
 they help? In upholding them we ought to remem- 
 ber that their worth is wholly based on the value 
 of individual souls. They are not ends in them- 
 selves. They will perish with the men that use 
 them. We make great mistakes when we forget 
 the man, in the machine, or the soul in the society. 
 Heaven does not make this blunder. It sees the 
 worth of each, be he the most obscure. The 
 angels know that in the ultimate analysis institu- 
 tions exist for men, not men for institutions. 
 
 Then again, we are apt to think of external 
 dress and circumstance rather than of the internal 
 life which is the reality of a man ; of the fruits 
 and flowers rather than of the root which bears 
 them ; of the gaudy palace rather than of the 
 man who lives therein. We are apt to think rep- 
 utation worth more than character, forgetting that 
 if the two differ, character will pierce through the 
 husk of reputation and make its true form known. 
 We are apt to think more of effects than of causes, 
 forgetting that but for the causes the effect would 
 never have been. We value show above substance, 
 forgetting that without the latter the former will 
 soon die. 
 
 It does not require an angel to see the mistake 
 of all this. Behold the king of Babylon walking 
 
30 THE SINLESS CHRIST 
 
 among his palaces and saying, " Is not this great 
 Babylon, that I have built by the might of my 
 power and for the glory of my majesty ?" — when 
 lo ! the splendid vision vanishes, and the dis- 
 traught brain of the mighty king makes him seem 
 but as a beast of the field. Or behold the man 
 whom Jesus pictures, reclining on his costly couch 
 and saying, " Soul, thou hast much goods laid 
 up for many years ; take thine ease, eat, drink, 
 and be merry," while already the fatal disease 
 is developing within and the solemn fiat comes, 
 " Thy soul shall be required of thee." The wor- 
 ship of externals may well be called by Scripture, 
 madness and folly. They change like the seasons. 
 They vanish as day into night. They are only the 
 dress of human life, the clothes we wear for a lit- 
 tle while, the house in which for a few years the 
 spirit lives. The spirit is the reality. The man is 
 more than his raiment. The character outlasts 
 the reputation, and the soul the body. 
 
 Heaven, I say, is not thus deceived. It sees as 
 in panorama the shifting scenes of human history. 
 It sees the houses of one generation crumbled 
 and others built out of their stones ; the applause 
 of one age dying before the forgetfulness or de- 
 rision of the next ; the forms of human life melt- 
 ing into others like the scenes of a dissolving 
 
THE CRISIS OF A SOUL 31 
 
 picture, while from the ever-changing spectacle 
 human spirits emerge into the light of the other 
 world, bearing with them none of the drapery of 
 earth, but stamped indelibly with qualities of 
 mind and heart which are to belong to them 
 forever. 
 
 We say that in the presence of the angels of 
 God there is known the worth of a human soul ; 
 and with the illusions of earth corrected, two 
 other facts must complete that knowledge. The 
 one is the fact of immortality; the other is the 
 capacity of every soul, as these must appear to 
 them. 
 
 To us the immortality of the soul is a faith ; to 
 them it is a vision and a fact. They have not 
 known death. They do not stand gaping as we 
 do into the darkness of the grave. They realize 
 the immortality of the soul as we cannot do. 
 They see its destiny stretch out into endless 
 ages. By reason of the little span of man's 
 earthly existence we, on the other hand, fail to 
 feel this authority, and because our faith in im- 
 mortality is a faith and not a realization of it, 
 it is hard to feel the lessons which it teaches. 
 It is difficult to believe in the supreme worth of 
 that which perishes from our sight after so short 
 a term of being. MateriaHsm cannot believe in 
 
32 THE SINLESS CHRIST 
 
 the value of single lives. But heaven knows 
 the truth. Angelic spirits know that spirits do 
 not perish. They see that while the physical 
 universe passes away, the souls which God has 
 made He has made to live forever. They see 
 that the future gives no promise of an end to 
 any person. It is not an immortality of man 
 that they see, but of men, each preserving his 
 own for everlasting ages. It is not the immor- 
 tality of spirit that they see, but of spirits. Per- 
 sonality is immortal ; and as they gaze on this 
 crowded world they realize that every human 
 being will continue to exist when the entire frame- 
 work of nature shall have changed its form, and 
 when myriads of millenniums shall have passed 
 by. 
 
 But more, they realize the capacity as well as 
 the immortality of the soul. Immortality with- 
 out capacity would amount to nothing. It would 
 be the immortality of an animal. It is the capac- 
 ity of the soul which makes its immortality so 
 full of significance. The spirits of the better 
 world realize the capacity of the soul from what 
 they themselves possess. A man who has a 
 trained intellect, who has thought much and 
 suffered some, who has known the world by 
 observation and experience, looks at a little 
 
THE CRISIS^OF A SOUL 33 
 
 child with half sorrowful, half envious thought, 
 as he reflects on the child's capacity for what 
 it yet knows nothing of. He wonders to what 
 use these latent powers will be put. He won- 
 ders what bitter sorrows the young, blooming 
 mind will feel ; what marvelous thoughts will rise 
 in that fertile brain ; for his own experience of 
 life has taught him of what the mind of man 
 is capable. 
 
 How much more must they know who enjoy 
 powers that we have not, but which we shall 
 surely have ; and to whom the now dormant 
 or budding capacity of the human soul is seen 
 to contain infinite promises and pledges ! They 
 know the soul's capacity for happiness through 
 the attainment of a perfectly moral life and of 
 the rapture which thrills themselves. They know 
 its capacity for knowledge, of which the glimmer- 
 ings of earthly scene and thought give trivial 
 foregleams. They know, too, its capacity for 
 suffering, and that the bitter trials of earth are 
 a solemn warning to it of what, through greater 
 losses and more bitter effects, it may endure. 
 They know, in short, its capacity for growth 
 that gives it supreme importance. They know 
 that it can rise to God and join with themselves 
 in His happy and glorious service. 
 
 3 
 
34 THE SINLESS CHRIST 
 
 Therefore I say they know the value of a soul. 
 What we imagine, they see. What we try to be- 
 lieve in, they behold as fact. On the soul of man 
 these heavenly watchers and messengers fix their 
 eye, — not on his rank or his wealth, not on his 
 body or his circumstances, but on his soul, his 
 personal inner life, his consciousness, for in that 
 is the germ of his everlasting destiny. 
 
 2. This being so, I suggest further that in the 
 presence of the angels of God there is known the 
 curse which sin brings to any soul under its 
 power. To feel the curse of sin we, unfortunately, 
 have to see it in its most revolting forms. We 
 have to look at the drunkard in the gutter or at 
 the home made desolate by the crimes of one 
 member of the household. Even then we are 
 inclined to half extenuate it. Perhaps we con- 
 sider it simply disease. But the higher we our- 
 selves rise in moral life the more clearly do w^e 
 see its baleful powers, its deep roots, its clinging 
 fetters, its essential character ; until at last we 
 are convinced that the Bible was not wrong in 
 describincr under this name something; which is 
 real and universal among men, and which con- 
 stitutes the fatal source of all man's woes. But 
 in what a light must sin, in even its mildest form, 
 appear in the presence of the angels of God ! 
 
THE CRISIS OF A SOUL 
 
 35 
 
 They know, for example, the mind of God 
 Himself upon the subject and the principle of 
 His government. Matters which to us are ques- 
 tions of revelation are as plain as day to them. 
 They are hke statesmen who know the will of the 
 sovereign and have made a study of govern- 
 ment. They see the whole extent of. the prob- 
 lem which sin presents to the moral government 
 of God. They realize that if He were not to pun- 
 ish it. His empire would fall to pieces. They know 
 the extent of that empire, the necessity of uphold- 
 ing truth and righteousness throughout all the 
 worlds which constitute it, and that the moral 
 Governor of the universe cannot permit rebellion 
 to go unpunished in any of His creatures. We 
 think it does not make much difference, that God 
 can easily overlook such matters, that no great 
 consequence will follow if we do transgress. So 
 we often do in offences against human govern- 
 ment, and perhaps thoughtlessly appeal to the 
 pardoning power to release a criminal. Ikit the 
 magistrate and his advisers know that if law be 
 not enforced it will fall into contempt, and that 
 the integrity of the State rests upon its sanctity. 
 
 So a child will fancy that disobedience to pa- 
 rental law is a matter of small consequence. It 
 may relate to but a trifling affair and the father's 
 
36 THE SINLESS CHRIST 
 
 punishment may appear unduly harsh. But the 
 parent knows that the principle of obedience must 
 be upheld, both for the sake of the offender and 
 for that of the family. If it be despised, the 
 child will go from bad to worse, character will be 
 ruined, and the home wrecked. So, I say, heaven 
 knows the necessity of God's punishing sin. It 
 may weep over the offenders ; it may long to 
 save them ; but it sees clearly that God's govern- 
 ment and God's nature require that sin, in any 
 form, should meet its penalty. 
 
 Moreover, the joy which the angels have in 
 their holy life must make them realize the horrible 
 effects of sin. What loathing a pure mind feels 
 for rank and black impurity ! Let any man of 
 noble character come into close contact with a de- 
 graded, polluted, sin-defiled wretch, and though 
 he may long to save him, he cannot help turning 
 in abhorrence from the spectacle itself. Or, when 
 a man has risen from the mire of shameful deeds 
 and by dint of diligent self mastery and fellowship 
 with Christ has attained a better life, with what 
 disgust will he look back upon the slough in 
 which he once wallowed ! As we rise in charac- 
 ter we see the baseness of that which is below us. 
 As the tastes become refined we shudder that any 
 debasing appetite is possible. Out of the joy of a 
 
THE CRISIS OF A SOUL 37 
 
 pure, sweet and holy, and intelligent mind, we see 
 the wretchedness of ignorance and crime. So 
 must the angels of heaven feel. By the joy which 
 they have in holiness, must they perceive the vile- 
 ness of wrong, the depravity of sin, the misery and 
 sorrow which are the dregs of the sinner's cup. 
 
 Hence, I say, they know the curse of sin. 
 Knowing the value of a soul, they know the 
 awfulness of its position, if it be a sinful soul. 
 Take any poor, degraded, battered specimen of 
 humanity that you see arrested on the street 
 and hurried to the police station; and what will 
 be your feeling i( in it you recognize a member 
 of a well-known, cultured family, who began life 
 with bright hopes and fine abilities, and whose 
 downward course has been the breaking of noble 
 hearts ? Your thoughts will help you to understand 
 the thoughts with which pure spirits of the better 
 world look down on earth. They know the love 
 of God, for they enjoy it themselves and under- 
 stand what grief the sinner causes to his Father. 
 They know the principles of God's government, 
 and understand that even though He love He 
 must punish the rebeUious. They see the deepen- 
 ing degradation of sin, the sinking of the soul into 
 blacker depths. They see eternity waiting to 
 carry out the sentence and to intensify the stain, 
 
38 THE SINLESS CHRIST 
 
 immortality itself threatening to become a curse, 
 and the very capacity of the soul only promising 
 keener misery and unrelieved disgrace. Oh, could 
 we see ourselves as Jesus says the heavenly spirits 
 see us, how abashed we should be at the spectacle, 
 and what a different estimate we too would take 
 of the real reasons for rejoicing which may be 
 found in this imperiled and distraught world ! 
 
 3. But by the considerations which I have sug- 
 gested, we may now enter fully into the Saviour's 
 meaning when he said, '' There is joy in the pres- 
 ence of the angels of God over one sinner that 
 repenteth." For repentance is the crisis of a soul. 
 See what it implies. 
 
 It means that a man has wakened up to a sense 
 of his moral danger. A glimmering of the light 
 in which the angels live has reached his mind. 
 He has roused himself from the lethargy and in- 
 difference in which he has formerly lived. His 
 eyes have been opened. He sees the immorality 
 of sin, the godlessness of it, and by his un- 
 destroyed faith in an almighty God he knows him- 
 self to be in danger. He has been like a man 
 sound asleep in a burning house, dreaming peace- 
 fully of his wealth and his luxurious home, with 
 pleasant visions flitting before his mind, the 
 shadows of the still higher realities which he had 
 
THE CRISIS OF A SOUL 39 
 
 thought himself to possess, and then is wakened 
 roughly and suddenly to discover that his house 
 is on fire, and his life in danger. Discoveries like 
 this come to a man with the authority of a reve- 
 lation. He can hardly tell how or why they come, 
 but come they do, and with their coming all life 
 changes its appearance. The mind wakes up. 
 Old truth takes new power. Formal faiths become 
 intense convictions. Such a discovery is implied 
 in a man's repentance, and if the moral peril of a 
 sinner be real, as Jesus says it is, the first step to 
 safety consists in seeing it. 
 
 Then repentance means that a man, being 
 awakened to his danger, has had a debate within 
 his soul concerning sin and righteousness. He 
 may see his danger and yet not fly from it. 
 Some men take fearful risks. They deliberately 
 do wrong in the face of undeniable consequences. 
 He who repents has done more. He has seriously 
 debated within himself what he should do in 
 view of his discovered danger, and in that debate 
 his soul has stood at the crisis of his existence. 
 I think that to watch a man at such a crisis is 
 more intensely interesting than any scene in any 
 chapter of human history can be. Behold him ! 
 It is an immortal mind grappling with the ques- 
 tion of its moral duty, and, by consequence, of 
 
40 THE SINLESS CHRIST 
 
 its moral character ! But though immortal it 
 is not wholly free. It has long been used to sin. 
 It is fettered by evil habits. Its sight of divine 
 realities is dim. But it is deciding the supreme 
 question of its being. Before it the two parties 
 appear which contest the loyalty of every man. 
 Conscience utters its imperious voice. Desire 
 speaks in soft, luxurious tones. God calls ; sin 
 pleads. Reason is divided. The will hesitates. 
 Arguments rise from the depths of the pit clothed 
 in fair words and specious doubts. Counter- 
 arguments descend from heaven to meet them, 
 and on the debate hangs the question of the 
 eodliness or the continued sinfulness of the soul. 
 Does this not seem to you a thrilling moment, 
 when a soul has resting upon it the responsi- 
 bility of its future and hangs in the balance of 
 its judgment? The mere fact that such an ex- 
 perience is possible proves the soul to be greater 
 than all of nature and in its essence akin to God, 
 and the debate is more momentous than any 
 other, though it be held in the forum of the most 
 obscure life. 
 
 But repentance means still more. It means 
 that the soul has felt not only its danger but 
 also the wickedness of its sin. There is a great 
 difference between the two. No man repents who 
 
THE CRISIS OF A SOUL 41 
 
 merely flies from danger. Repentance means 
 sorrow for having acted as we have ; condemna- 
 tion of our past principles ; regret based not on 
 expediency or fear, but on conscience. But when 
 a man thus condemns sin in himself, he shows 
 a better nature already appearing. The divine 
 Spirit is also working in him. His better self, 
 his immortal conscience, is asserting itself In 
 his self-condemnation he is coming to himself 
 The experience is mortifying. It may be attended 
 with upbraidings for the past and fears for the 
 future. But it is the demonstration of life. It 
 proves him to be not yet lost. In the sorrow for 
 sin because it is sin we see the soul already be- 
 coming renewed and testifying to its divine son- 
 ship. 
 
 Now, finally, repentance means that having 
 been thus awakened to the danger and the 
 wickedness of sin and having debated the ques- 
 tion between God and his enemy, the soul has 
 turned from sin, has condemned itself and its 
 former master, has believed that God for Christ's 
 sake will forgive and receive him, and has humbly 
 turned to Him, again resolved to sin no more. 
 This is the climax of the crisis. Belief must 
 come, belief in God's forgiveness, belief in God's 
 willingness to help it to a better life, belief in 
 
42 THE SINLESS CHRIST 
 
 Christ as God's anointed Saviour for the sinner. 
 The immortal soul turns again toward home. 
 The prodigal rises and says, ** I will go to my 
 Father." The leper falls at His feet, exclaiming, 
 " If Thou wilt, Thou canst make me clean." 
 
 There is joy for angels and men in such a sight. 
 It means that the lost child wants to feel his 
 Father's kiss, that the immortal spirit of man is re- 
 turning from its wanderings, and that another soul 
 is saved. Oh, what are the victories of martial 
 valor compared with such a victory as this ! What 
 are the works of genius compared with this work 
 of grace ! What emancipation can be compared 
 with this emancipation of an immortal soul ! The 
 Father cries, *' Bring forth the best robe, and put 
 it on him ; . . . for this my son . . . was lost, 
 and is found." No wonder Jesus says, " There 
 is joy in the presence of the angels of God over 
 one (aye, over even one) sinner that repenteth," 
 for the crisis of an immortal soul has been turned, 
 and the decision is for God. 
 
 There is scarcely need of any application of 
 this subject, yet I would have you who are Chris- 
 tians learn from it to seek with new zeal and 
 interest the salvation of your fellow-men. Warn 
 them of their peril. Press the debate upon them. 
 Point to them the sinfulness of sin. Do not 
 
liiE CRISIS Ot^ A SOUL 43 
 
 play the role of the prodigal's elder brother, 
 but realize as angels do the value of a soul, the 
 glory of a sinner's repentance. 
 
 I would make a direct appeal to every one 
 who is unreconciled to God. You must repent. 
 You must face the question whether you will 
 belong to God or to sin. You are a sinner in 
 God's sight. You need a new heart, new princi- 
 ples to live by, new hopes of the hereafter. There 
 are blessed spirits waiting your decision. Christ 
 Himself waits for it. On you I cast the responsi- 
 bility of making it. If you have any faith in im- 
 mortality, any sense of what your souls are capa- 
 ble, any conception of the curse and ruin which 
 sin is working in you ; if you have any ear to 
 hear the words of the Son of God, " I came to 
 call sinners to repentance," I pray you, while you 
 may, to heed His summons and ask forgiveness 
 from your God. " If we confess our sins, He is 
 faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to 
 cleanse us from all unrighteousness." 
 
Ill 
 
 CONFESSING CHRIST 
 
Ill 
 
 CONFESSING CHRIST 
 
 " Also I say unto you, Whosoever shall confess Me before men, 
 
 him shall the Son of man also confess before the angels of God." 
 — Luke xii. 8. 
 
 We find this expression, or one like it, falling 
 several times from the lips of Jesus of Nazareth, 
 and more particularly as the opposition to Him 
 increased and the critical period of His life drew 
 near. He evidently felt it necessary to draw 
 out by means of public confession the vague, 
 latent faith of such of His followers as might be 
 true disciples. For He was forming the nucleus 
 of His future Church. He did not expect to erect 
 His kingdom while He was in the flesh. He 
 knew that the little company of believers would 
 be the agents by whom He would work His 
 triumph. Hence to commit them fully to His 
 cause was an object of prime importance. It 
 was not enough to go to Him by night, with 
 a half-doubting faith, and say, " We know that 
 Thou art a teacher come from God." Nicodemus 
 must face the Sanhedrin itself and confess his 
 
 47 
 
48 THE SINLESS CHRIST 
 
 faith. It was not enough to follow with the 
 crowd that thronged His journeys through 
 Galilee. It was not enough to question with 
 one's self, " Who is He ?" and " Is not this the 
 Christ ?" or to seek from His beneficent touch 
 healing for the body. All this interest and en- 
 thusiasm would melt before the first heat of 
 persecution like wax before the sun. It would 
 not stand the strain of His absence. It was too 
 selfish, too ignorant, too worldly. There must 
 be gathered a band of public confessors to be 
 taught and consecrated if the cause of Jesus 
 was to advance to the salvation of the world. 
 
 Yet we can appreciate the difficulty of such 
 a public avowal at that time. The Saviour was 
 so different from what tradition and custom 
 had expected in the Christ. The opposition of 
 the chief priests and Pharisees, to whom the 
 nation had been wont to look for religious 
 guidance, was pronounced against Him. His 
 own life, too, seemed shrouded in mystery and 
 leading into darkness. He did not explain all 
 His ideas. To follow Him was like entering on 
 an unknown way. He Himself plainly intimated 
 that it would lead through peril and perhaps 
 to death. There was truly need that He should 
 set over against this requirement of public con- 
 
CONFESSING CHRIST 49 
 
 fession the glowing promise recorded in our 
 text. The Saviour felt this, and hence connected 
 salvation itself with open confession of His 
 name. 
 
 He did not, of course, mean thereby the mere 
 confession of the lips. He did not ask for the 
 huzzahs of the multitude, such as were heard 
 later on when He crossed Olivet in triumph. 
 The confession of Judas was as little a real con- 
 fession as the denial of Peter was a real denial. 
 He meant such a confession as the leper's, when 
 he knelt at His feet, saying, " Lord if Thou 
 wilt Thou canst make me clean " ; such as the 
 woman's, who, in Simon's house, anointed Him 
 with her precious ointment ; such as that of 
 Bartimaeus, the man that was born blind ; such 
 as Peter's — *' Thou art the Christ, the Son of 
 the living God " — to which Jesus answered, 
 " Upon this rock I will build My Church." Such 
 a confession made under such circumstances was 
 ^he very voice of God Himself in the human 
 heart witnessing to His Son, — and of such it 
 was that Jesus said, " Whosoever shall confess 
 Me before men, him shall the Son of man also 
 confess before the angels of God." 
 
 We are presented, therefore, with the duty 
 and privilege of confessing Christ before men. 
 4 
 
50 THE SINLESS CHRIST 
 
 Change of circumstances has not made the duty 
 less urgent nor taken away the promise. Indeed 
 we can hardly say that the circumstances have 
 changed. The world is no less now than then 
 hostile in spirit to the Son of man. The tradi- 
 tions and customs of daily life, and many of the 
 world's most famous men, are as pronounced in 
 opposition to Him as were the Pharisees of old. 
 To follow Jesus still seems often like entering 
 on an unknown and perilous way. Therefore 
 the need of open, positive, avowed, committed, 
 consecrated faith is as great as ever, and we have 
 no hesitation in saying that the words of our text 
 are as truly directed to the men of this day and 
 place as to the half-interested, half-doubting mul- 
 titude to which they were first spoken. 
 
 I. I would hke you to observe with me the 
 object we are required to confess : " Whosoever 
 shall confess Md' So we read wherever the 
 phrase occurs ; and it is a fair example of the de- 
 mands which Jesus always made on His disciples. 
 I need not remind you that the burden of Christ's 
 teaching was about Himself; not, indeed, to ex- 
 plain to His hearers the mystery of His own be- 
 ing, or to show them how He could be both Son 
 of God and Son of man, — that doubtless is a prob- 
 lem which we could not understand even if He 
 
CONFESSING CHRIST 
 
 51 
 
 explained it to us, — but so to work miracles and 
 lay down doctrines, live in obedience to God, 
 and, withal, to drop such expressions about Him- 
 self and His origin and His destiny, that His 
 hearers would feel that the thing which He 
 wanted them to do was simply to believe on Him 
 as the Saviour and obey and serve Him. It is 
 most remarkable how Jesus maintained, through- 
 out, this position. Other men publish systems 
 of truth and ask that we shall follow their dem- 
 onstrations and accept their conclusions. Others 
 still declare themselves advocates and representa- 
 tives of a cause, and ask that we should join 
 with them on the ground of its inherent justice. 
 But Jesus put Himself forward as the object of 
 men's faith. He said, "I am the truth." He said, 
 ** I am the way and the life." By so doing He 
 proclaimed Himself more than a teacher sent 
 from God, more than a Moses or a Joshua sent 
 to lead mankind into the promised land. He 
 said in effect, " I am the promised land. I am 
 the truth itself." The proud French king, tramp- 
 ling under his heel the liberties of his country, 
 exclaimed, " I am the state." Here, without 
 the pride, but with greater dignity, not in the 
 spirit of egotism, but because in this universe 
 all things that are good and true are embodied 
 
52 THE SINLESS CHRIST 
 
 in God, and because man's highest duty is to 
 obey God, Jesus, who was God manifest in the 
 flesh, said, " I am the Hght of the world : he that 
 followeth Me shall not walk in darkness, but shall 
 have the light of life." " This is the condemna- 
 tion, that light is come into the world, and men 
 loved darkness rather than Hght, because their 
 deeds were evil." " Whosoever shall confess Me 
 before men, him shall the Son of man also con- 
 fess before the angels of God." 
 
 But while we can easily recognize this fact in 
 the earthly life of Christ, it is continually forgotten 
 so far as the present duties of this world are con- 
 cerned, and I would like to impress on you again 
 the simple object of true Christian confession. 
 You will see what is meant by reflecting that we 
 are not asked to confess a human creed or a the- 
 ology. It is indeed inevitable that every thinking 
 believer will have more or less of a theology and 
 some kind of a creed. I suppose the opposite 
 would be to presume mental stagnation. It would 
 imply that faith is the destruction of thought, 
 whereas, on the contrary, faith is a new starting 
 point for thought. It raises new questions and it 
 puts us in the right attitude to answer at least some 
 of them. I do not see how an intelligent believer 
 can help having some kind of a theology. His 
 
CONFESSING CHRIST 53 
 
 confidence in Christ will compel him to take cer- 
 tain views of God and of his own soul, which will 
 develop as he thinks and grows, and which will 
 also tend to a more or less definite creed. Hence 
 we should find no fault with the Church for having 
 a theology and for producing creeds. These are 
 but the result of her study of the divine word, 
 the product of the attacks to which she has been 
 exposed and the periods of growth through which 
 she has passed. We believe, moreover, that the 
 Spirit of Christ is with His people, still guiding 
 them into all truth ; and that with the progress of 
 time clearer views of God's revelation have been 
 and may be expected to be enjoyed. 
 
 Yet salvation does not hinge upon this fact. 
 Not all can carry out consequences logically. Not 
 all will draw the same inferences. So the divine 
 Master leads us back to the fountain head and bids 
 us drink of its pure waters. Our faith is funda- 
 mentally and only faith in Him,— and our con- 
 fession is the confession of Him. We simply say 
 with Peter, " Thou art the Christ, the Son of the 
 living God." We say with John, "Behold the 
 Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the 
 world." If we do this sincerely, we have in us the 
 substance of Christianity. If we confess this we 
 draw the line distinctly between belief and unbelief. 
 
54 THE SINLESS CHRIST 
 
 We ought to introduce here a recognition of 
 the fact that we must have definite views about 
 Christ. We cannot beheve Him a mere man — 
 only such views as are consistent with loving Him, 
 not only, but trusting to His present power and 
 authority. We accept righteousness as our law, 
 God as our Father, God's power as our hope, 
 God's revelation as our light. We ought not, 
 indeed, to do this with the idea that nothing else 
 is to be believed, unless indeed we are willing not 
 only to enter the kingdom as children but also to 
 remain "babes in Christ" forever. We are to 
 strive after deeper and wider Christian knowledge. 
 But with that fine perception of the needs of hu- 
 man life which Jesus always showed He presented 
 Himself alone the germ, the foundation, the 
 fountain head of Christianity, and claimed from 
 mankind loyal confession of faith in Him. 
 
 So, on the other hand, we are not asked to pro- 
 fess personal goodness. Here again we should 
 make a similar caution to that which pertains to 
 the matter of belief. For acceptance of Christ is 
 the germ of holiness. It is the turning point of 
 a man's character, from which he ever journeys 
 nearer to his God. The Lord did not by any 
 means intend to hinge salvation on mere belief 
 apart from its effect on the heart. Your faith 
 
CONFESSING CHRIST 
 
 55 
 
 is a moral as well as an intellectual act. It is the 
 foundation of love to God, of likeness to God, of 
 that holiness without which no man shall see the 
 Lord. So it is described by the apostles as fiith 
 which purifies the heart and overcomes the world. 
 Let a man accept and follow Christ and he must 
 be led to God. We utterly repudiate the idea 
 that men will be saved whether they are bad or 
 good, if only they believe, or that it is possible 
 for a conscious hypocrite to find his way through 
 the pearly gates. But from this it does not follow 
 that in confessing Christ we confess our own good- 
 ness. Quite the contrary. We confess our sin- 
 fulness, which needs the atoning blood of the Son 
 of God. We confess our helplessness, which needs 
 the power of Jesus to make us like Himself We 
 confess that we are poor and miserable and blind, 
 that we are sinners by nature and by act, but, 
 resting on His promise, we believe that Christ is 
 able and willing to save all those that come unto 
 God by Him. 
 
 Thus, you see, the confession demanded is 
 neither the assertion of great knowledge nor of 
 great goodness. It neither claims to understand 
 mysteries nor to have reached the goal of charac- 
 ter. It has nothing of the spirit of the Pharisee 
 in it. It does not say, " God, I thank Thee, that I 
 
56 HE SINLESS CHRIST 
 
 am not as other men are." It is the humblest 
 thing in the world, all the humbler as it is more 
 sincere. It is the cry of the publican, " God be 
 merciful to me a sinner." But it fastens itself 
 upon Christ as the Rock of safety, the God-built 
 fortress for imperiled souls, the sacrifice for sin, 
 and then proclaims, " He is my confidence and 
 my hope." 
 
 Let me pause here to emphasize this truth. 
 The Church labors under the continual imputa- 
 tion of the world, that it professes to know more 
 than it does and to be better than it is. Men are 
 held off from its communion by their unwilling- 
 ness to make any profession of character or by 
 the sense of their own ignorance. We are told 
 that the inconsistencies of Christians shame their 
 profession. In one sense they do, but in another 
 they do not. If it be meant that the Christian 
 claims to be above inconsistencies, then certainly 
 the objection is false and vain. I have no wish to 
 excuse the faults of believers. We all are ready to 
 exclaim, " We have strayed from Thy ways like 
 lost sheep." But when we see men smothering 
 their faith, and holding in check their better im- 
 pulses, letting themselves be counted with the 
 world when they ought to be counted with the 
 Church, then, indeed, we feel like reminding them 
 
CONFESSING CHRIST 57 
 
 that they also are required, as the condition of 
 Christ's salvation of them, to confess Him before 
 men. You are asked for no confession of 
 theology, important as a creed may be, and I 
 like to think that our Church, while she is sup- 
 posed to lay much stress on her doctrine, opens 
 in a truly Christlike way her portals to the world, 
 asking not even adherence to her own particular 
 doctrines, but simply asking genuine faith in 
 Jesus Christ. You are asked for no profession 
 of goodness, important as it is to be good, but 
 you are asked to confess Christ as your Lord and 
 Saviour. That is enough to begin with. It puts 
 you on God's side. It puts you on the side of 
 holiness. If it be genuine, it means an utter 
 change of the natural bent of your wills. It 
 means a religious life, based on trust in Jesus as 
 your only and all-sufficient Saviour. 
 
 Here are two candidates. Your suffrage can 
 show your political views. Here are two theories 
 of life. Your adherence to the one or the other 
 shows the moral state of your soul. It is the old 
 choice between Jehovah and Baal ; between God 
 and evil ; between Christ and the world. With 
 marvelous simplicity, and yet with a skill which 
 always anticipated the final judgment, Jesus put 
 Himself forth as the object of our confession, 
 
58 THE SINLESS CHRIST 
 
 knowing well that if a man honestly confesses 
 Him, that man is already on the way to all truth 
 and to all holiness. 
 
 2. So much for the object of this confession ; 
 let me call your attention next to the manner of 
 it. This is given us in the words " before men." 
 In other words, it is to be in public. This is 
 absolutely essential to it. Otherwise it would be 
 no confession at all. This is the difference be- 
 tween faith and confession. The latter is the 
 expression of the former. The very point before 
 us is that we are not to hide the truth away in 
 our hearts nor whisper it under our breath in 
 prayer, are not to cherish one principle in our 
 souls and publish another with our lips. '' No 
 man," said Jesus, " when he hath lighted a candle, 
 putteth it in a secret place, neither under a bushel, 
 but on a candlestick, that they which come in 
 may see the light." He seems to imply by this 
 form of expression that in religious matters men 
 are guilty of just such folly. Not a few lights 
 are burned in secret. " Let your light so shine 
 before men," said Jesus, " that they may see your 
 good works, and glorify your Father which is in 
 heaven." 
 
 But let us ask more particularly, What is the 
 need of this ? Why may we not be like Nico- 
 
CONFESSING CHRIST 59 
 
 demus, a disciple in the dark? Surely it is possi- 
 ble to cherisli religious faith without parading it 
 before one's fellow-men. Is it not a matter 
 solely between the individual soul and God? I 
 think we appreciate the reasons which deter not a 
 few from obeying this direct command of Christ's. 
 It is felt by some that they have much as yet to 
 think and learn about in connection with religion. 
 There are important questions which they have 
 not solved. There are practical problems, too, 
 about which they do not yet feel sure. They ask 
 more time before such a vital step shall be taken. 
 Others, doubtless, are waiting until they are 
 better. I doubt not that in many cases there is 
 the knowledge of some particular habit or secret 
 fault which they are not willing to abandon, and 
 which is the real cause of their delay, though 
 others may be alleged. They would wait till the 
 more sober period of middle life has come, when 
 character will have been settled and when there 
 will be little danger of later regret. I speak of 
 those who in their hearts cherish the belief that 
 they are Christians, and to whom some phase of 
 doctrine, some practical habit, seems too great a 
 barrier for them to cross. It is with them that I 
 plead to-day the duty of confession. 
 
 We plead it, first, for their own sakes. We are 
 
6o THE SINLESS CHRIST 
 
 ready to admit, indeed, that a man may be a 
 Christian though out of the Church. God forbid 
 that we should limit the flow of His grace to any 
 certain channels or that we should ignore the evi- 
 dence of godly lives wherever it may be shown. 
 But we beheve nevertheless that a belief which is 
 held in secret is not likely to benefit the believer 
 as it would do if it were expressed. An idea 
 which you cannot put into words is certainly a 
 very vague and useless one to you. An opinion 
 which you conceal from others is not likely to 
 have its due influence upon you. Especially is 
 this true as to moral and religious ideas, w^hich 
 from their very nature demand the right to govern 
 your conduct and control your life. If you 
 keep them hermetically sealed in the closet of 
 your heart they will not control you. They will 
 not make the man of you that they might make. 
 You cannot expect to enjoy the power and the 
 beauty of the gospel unless you are outspoken in 
 your acceptance of it, and so commit yourself 
 altogether to its keeping. 
 
 Then, having staked your all upon it, you will 
 value it at its true worth. Let a man invest a 
 few dollars quietly in some rather promising en- 
 terprise which is at the same time quite inde- 
 pendent of his proper business, and while he 
 
CONFESSING CHRIST 6i 
 
 may be interested in it to the extent of his in- 
 vestment, he will not care much whether it suc- 
 ceed or fail. But let him invest his whole fortune 
 and his name in the enterprise, and then he will 
 live for it. He will develop all its resources. He 
 will work its whole worth. Let a man, in like 
 manner, be openly and publicly on Christ's side, 
 and he will discover in Christ power and beauty, 
 truth and joy, which he never would have sus- 
 pected if he had merely cherished in his secret 
 thoughts a vague belief You cannot expect to 
 reap a great harvest from a little plot of ground. 
 But we plead the duty of publicly confessing 
 Christ also for the sake of others. You will 
 remember how the Lord said, " He that is not 
 with Me is against Me : and he that gathereth 
 not with Me scattereth." I know that He also 
 said, " He that is not against us is for us," and 
 we recognize the latter truth in the fact that in 
 many ways Christianity is sustained even by forces 
 which do not belong to her, — by the needs of 
 society, by the common respect and sympathy 
 of a large portion of mankind. But the former 
 truth is equally valid and, as Christ intimates, 
 relates chiefly to the personal relation which men 
 sustain to Him. Society will often be for religion, 
 but against Christ, for a system and a code and 
 
62 THE SINLESS CHRIST 
 
 a cultus, but against a personal religious life. 
 This latter is the point before us now, and we see 
 it illustrated by every glance Vv'e take over the 
 community without. For every man, Hke Peter 
 after Pentecost, casts his shadow on the society 
 about him. He exerts influence in proportion to 
 his wealth or reputation. We all live " before 
 men," and we feel it more often than we feel our- 
 selves to live before God. The world is near and 
 tangible. It receives impressions as well as gives 
 them. It counts with quick mathematical ac- 
 curacy the adherents of each cause. And why 
 is it, though society is called Christian, that the 
 current of society is so often away from godli- 
 ness, if not because there are so many who refuse 
 positively to confess and obey their faith ? 
 
 We say then to those who withhold their al- 
 legiance that they are swelling the numbers of 
 the opposing host. Each counts one on the other 
 side. Their children usually draw the inference 
 quickly enough. They are often without the 
 faith as well as the confession. The omission 
 of such a duty is stronger than the hidden faith 
 can be. Actions speak louder than words. No 
 man who refuses to let it be known that he is 
 on Christ's side but must sadly reflect that a 
 world which much needs every help it can 
 
CONFESSING CHRIST 63 
 
 toward God is finding in him, so far as his in- 
 fluence goes, and all the more if he be a correct 
 and honorable man, an excuse for its worse 
 neglect and real unbelief of the only Saviour. 
 
 Then we plead for confession for Christ's sake. 
 I do not see how there can be in a man very- 
 much gratitude for what Jesus has done for him 
 if he be not willing to own and serve his Lord. 
 Certainly Christ does not care for mere honor; 
 and yet we are the worse if we do not render 
 it. One would think that a man would be 
 ashamed of himself to cherish in his heart faith 
 in Jesus and then to reflect that he had not done 
 his part in witness-bearing. The apostles them- 
 selves must have felt humiliated when they saw 
 Jesus crucified and remembered their own de- 
 sertion of Him. It is scarcely possible that the 
 Spirit of Christ has touched at all deeply the 
 soul that is not willing, yea, that is not glad, to 
 declare to the world its faith in Him. 
 
 "Yet," some one will say, "it is possible to do 
 all this without making what is commonly called 
 a profession of religion." Now we admit that the 
 first and all-important way of publicly confessing 
 Christ is by the daily life. Let it not be supposed 
 that in our zeal for the ordinances of religion we 
 forget the greater ordinances of daily life. In fact, 
 
64 THE SINLESS CHRIST 
 
 the duty laid down by Jesus must be thus per- 
 formed or not at all. The real public confession 
 is that which we make before our townsfolk and 
 acquaintances. Our text means confessing Christ 
 in your business. Business ought to be conducted 
 in a religious way, as well as religion in a business 
 way. Many a man knows the temptation not to 
 confess Christ when by dishonesty, or sharpness, 
 or the Hke, he could make money. Would that 
 every Christian business record were what it ought 
 to be ! I fear men do not realize the moral in- 
 fluence of their commercial standing. They might 
 thus bear a testimony to Christ which would ac- 
 tually save immortal souls. 
 
 So, too, our text means confessing Christ in 
 your recreations and in your homes. A true con- 
 fessor will take more pleasure in his confession 
 than in any amusement that the world loves. 
 Religion is not opposed to enjoyment. It is not a 
 thing of tears and sobs or of ascetic life. But 
 they who indulge in all the world's gayety, and 
 w4io at the same time do little or nothing for the 
 world's salvation, surely do not hold out a very 
 bright light, by seeing which men may glorify their 
 Father in the heavens. Christ proclaims work as 
 greater than pleasure, the mind and the soul as 
 greater than the body, spiritual things as worth 
 
CONFESSING CHRIST 65 
 
 more than the joys which now are and to-morrow 
 have faded, and His confessors must testify by their 
 Hves to these truths. They must not count them- 
 selves nor let themselves be counted with the 
 world's people. Hence we say that the daily life 
 is the best public confession of Christ. But if so, 
 then why not add to it confession of Him in and 
 with the Church ? Obviously no man who does 
 thus confess Him in the daily life would hesitate, 
 except in a few very peculiar cases, to confess Him 
 among His people, and every case of such hesita- 
 tion only shows that the excuse by which such 
 hesitation is condoned is a mere excuse. The fact 
 is, however, that a formal avowal of faith in Jesus 
 is necessary in order to complete the testimony of 
 your life. Without that of the life, formal con- 
 fession would be indeed vain ; but without it, the 
 life is apt to fall below the mark. It will seal your 
 life. It will commit you beyond retraction to the 
 service of God, and this is what you need. 
 
 As things now are, your service is worth little. 
 Then it will be worth double what it now is. It 
 will open to you the real joy and power of Chris- 
 tian life, and you will feel that }'ou are in closer 
 sympathy with Him who in the presence of Pilate 
 and the Jews witnessed His good confession. Oh, 
 let us have done with the mistake of thinking that 
 
66 THE SINLESS CHRIST 
 
 we can serve Christ just as well in secret as in 
 public ! We can serve Him perhaps, but not just 
 as well. In the majority of cases we will be 
 guilty of hiding our talent in a napkin and of 
 putting our light under a bushel. The battle 
 between Christ and His foes is too public, the 
 issues are too sharp for secret allegiance. The 
 world's needs are too great, aye, your own peril 
 is too great. Let the world know your faith, 
 and by declaring it, prove that it is more than a 
 mere human opinion, prove it to be rather the 
 Spirit of Jesus witnessing through you to the 
 name and truth of God. 
 
 3. Let us now turn to notice the reward. 
 " Whosoever shall confess Me before men, him 
 shall the Son of man also confess before the 
 angels of God." You will notice the perfect 
 parallel between the duty and the reward. On 
 the one hand, as our confession of Christ is per- 
 sonal, so will be His confession of us. There is 
 no man who honors Christ that Christ will not 
 honor. This is but part of the general truth, that 
 we are to stand before God as individuals. The 
 Bible tells of a personal judgment. " Every one 
 of us shall give account of himself to God." It 
 speaks likewise of a personal protection exercised 
 by God over His people. " I am poor and needy ; 
 
CONFESSING CHRIST 67 
 
 yet the Lord thinketh upon me." The Almighty 
 does not govern us merely by general laws. He 
 has in mind the personal welfare of each child, 
 and in and through the laws His hand touches 
 and guides them. It is the peerless beauty of 
 our religion that it constitutes such a personal 
 relation, so that in every moment of our lives 
 we may say, as Jesus said before His death, 
 " Father, I come to Thee." 
 
 So after this manner will the confessor be con- 
 fessed. Christ said, " I know My sheep, and 
 am known of Mine." The apostle says, " Every 
 man shall have his praise, his own peculiar and 
 appropriate praise of God." Not in a mass, not 
 as a church, but as individuals, will Jesus, our 
 Advocate, acknowledge His own. I think this 
 gives added force to the duty of confessing Him. 
 We should long then to have His mark upon 
 us, and we ought to be willing to wear that mark 
 now. We should be glad then to be distinct 
 from the sinful world ; we ought to be glad to be 
 distinct now. By all the hope we have then of 
 the personal acknowledgment of Jesus, we ought 
 to rejoice now to acknowledge Him by life and 
 word. 
 
 Then, on the other hand, as our confession of 
 Christ is public, so will be His confession of us. 
 
63 THE SINLESS CHRIST 
 
 I like to think of some obscure child of God, 
 whose testimony to his Lord the world despised, 
 crowned before angels and men with the appro- 
 bation of the Son of God. The day is coming 
 in which the wretched judgments that are dictated 
 by pride and wealth shall be reversed, and when 
 the honor shall be given to those who have been 
 faithful to the Crucified. We expect not with 
 pride, for it will be no testimony to our righteous- 
 ness, but it will set honor now on Him whom 
 now we serve. It will be the vindication of truth 
 and right. It will be the glory of Christ in the 
 glory of His Church, and the living creatures 
 and the elders above the throne will say *' Amen " 
 when Christ pronounces His confession in testi- 
 mony of its justice and truth. 
 
 There is contained in all this a terrible warn- 
 ing which our Lord goes on to state in the verse 
 which follows. Only those whom Christ con- 
 fesses will enter the everlasting mansions, while 
 whosoever denieth Him before men, him shall 
 the Son of man deny before the angels of God. 
 Thus, confession is salvation, not, let me repeat, 
 the mere confession of the lips or the creed, — for 
 " not every one," said Jesus, " that saith unto Me, 
 Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of 
 heaven ; but he that doeth the will of My Father 
 
CONFESSING CHRIST 69 
 
 which is in heaven," — but the confession of the 
 life and hps, for, ** with the heart man beHe\eth 
 unto righteousness ; and with the mouth confes- 
 sion is made unto salvation." 
 
 Open, avowed, public confession is what Jesus 
 asks. He cannot look with favor on the faith 
 that refuses to acknowledge Him, any more than 
 on the confession which is insincere. He cannot 
 be pleased to see men paltering with the truths 
 of His word, associating with the hosts of His 
 redeemed, but not joining in their toils and pray- 
 ers, hiding what faith and love and hope they 
 have in the darkness of their own souls. With 
 all the added emphasis which comes from a sense 
 of the world's need and of your own need, I speak 
 this message to you to-day. Do not remain, I 
 implore you, in perpetual doubt. Do not remain 
 palsied and half blind. Do not imagine religion 
 to be a sentiment that you can grow in your 
 hothouse, but not expose to the common air. 
 If what you call your religion will not stand such 
 exposure, in truth's name let it die. For your 
 own sakes, for the world's sake, for Christ's sake, 
 if you have faith, dare to say so. I would stand 
 to-day, like Moses in the camp of Israel, and cry, 
 "Who is on the Lord's side ? Let him gird on 
 his armor and take his sword and come forth 
 
70 THE SINLESS CHRIST 
 
 to the battle." Let him show his colors — for 
 the words of our text ring like a clamor to action : 
 " Whosoever shall confess Me before men, him 
 shall the Son of man also confess before the 
 angels of God." 
 
IV 
 
 SAMSON'S RIDDLE 
 
IV 
 
 SAMSON'S RIDDLE 
 
 " And he said unto tbem, Out of the eater came forth meat, and 
 out of the strong came forth sweetness." — Judges xiv. 14. 
 
 It is really quite difficult for us to rouse much 
 admiration for Samson. Looked at from the dis- 
 tance at which we live from him, and from the 
 height of culture to which we have attained, he 
 appears like a mere Jewish Hercules, a gigantic 
 development of muscle without any corresponding 
 powers of mind or character. We do not read of 
 his having done anything which impresses us as 
 either wise or noble. He appears in our eyes a 
 mere manslayer, a rude, coarse, sensual brute, 
 though somewhat witty and courageous, playing 
 his bloody pranks upon the Philistines with the 
 jollity of a sportsman ; joking with them while 
 plotting their destruction ; and combining with his 
 mighty physical strength the most depraved ani- 
 mal passions. The only quality about him that 
 we would call a virtue was his total abstinence, 
 and yet he is continually reminding us that even 
 total abstinence does not make a man a saint. 
 
 73 
 
74 THE SINLESS CHRIST 
 
 It is not strange that many a modern reader of 
 the Bible should stumble over the story of Sam- 
 son and ask how it is possible to believe that such 
 a man was really raised up by God to do such 
 work and live such a life. There is, however, a 
 very simple principle which helps us to meet this 
 difficulty, a principle in accordance with which 
 the whole Bible is constructed. That is, that if 
 God would make a revelation, He must do it in 
 language or other symbols of thought which those 
 to whom the revelation is given can understand. 
 If you wish to explain anything to a child, you do 
 not read him the definition given of it in Webster's 
 Unabridged Dictionary, but you use short and 
 familiar words, and you point him to some specific 
 example, which has come within the Hmited 
 range of his experience, from which he can grasp 
 your idea. Even so, you do not suppose for a 
 moment that the child has fully grasped your 
 thought. All you hope to do is to give him some 
 idea of what you mean which will serve his pur- 
 pose until his mind has grown and he is able to 
 take in the whole truth. In accordance with this 
 recognized principle has God proceeded in the 
 communication of His thought and will to men. 
 
 Any other principle would have made a rev- 
 elation impossible, for it could never have been 
 
SAMSON'S RIDDLE 75 
 
 apprehended. If in the childhood of the world 
 Pie had revealed the finished truths which we may 
 learn from the Bible as a whole, He would have 
 acted as uselessly as a teacher would do who 
 would start little children to learn Euclid before 
 they have mastered the multiplication table, or to 
 read Mill's Logic before they have studied the 
 alphabet. The whole Bible illustrates the way in 
 which little by little the mind of the Hebrews was 
 led forward toward the ideal of truth and char- 
 acter which Jesus finally disclosed. But on the 
 way you must ever expect to find merely move- 
 ment toward the ideal, not its attainment; and you 
 must estimate each particular phase of the history 
 in the light of the specific circumstances in which 
 it appears and the particular purpose it was meant 
 to serve. 
 
 If, then, we apply this principle to the story of 
 Samson, we are to remember the condition of Is- 
 rael when he lived. They were a half-civilized 
 nation of mountaineers, a collection of tribes with- 
 out any central government, scattered along the 
 hills of Palestine. There was but little serious 
 observance of the Mosaic laws and ritual, while 
 at the same time Jehovah was held to be their 
 national Deity and invisible King, and the ark and 
 the priesthood at Shiloh were reminders of the 
 
76 THE SINLESS CHRIST 
 
 God whom their fathers had served centuries be- 
 fore. The times of the Judges in Israel were 
 times of lawlessness and confusion so great that 
 only the establishment of David's monarchy saved 
 the state from destruction and the religion of 
 Moses from oblivion. In particular, the moral 
 life of the Hebrews had sadly deterioriated. Mul- 
 titudes had gone after the gods of the Phihstines 
 and those impure Phoenician deities v/hose worship 
 was an infamy, whose service w^as open sin. The 
 whole nation was corrupted by these associations 
 and, as might be expected, fell a prey to their 
 heathen neighbors. For forty years the Hebrews 
 were subject to the Philistines. The spectacle 
 presented is that of utter weakness, — weakness as 
 a nation, weakness as a religion, weakness as a 
 people, and as individuals. All seemed to be go- 
 ing to destruction, and the reason was that Israel 
 had forsaken God and did not observe His law. 
 
 Now, to make them realize just this one truth, 
 that in God was their strength, does Samson ap- 
 pear to have been raised up. He was consecrated 
 to Jehovah from his birth, and his abstinence from 
 wine and his uncut hair were the signs of his con- 
 secration. God endowed him with supernatural 
 strength so long as he kept his Nazarite vow. In 
 his personal character he shared all the vices and 
 
SAMSON'S RIDDLE ^-j 
 
 follies of his race and age. He was morally weak, 
 just as they were weak. He delighted in adven- 
 ture as a true mountaineer. He frolicked with 
 danger like a genuine barbarian. But he was 
 gigantically strong in body so long as he kept his 
 vow. The country rang with the fame of his ex- 
 ploits. The Philistine oppressors trembled at his 
 coming. What did he make them realize ? Sim- 
 ply this, that God could give strength to those 
 who kept His law. The truth was presented in a 
 way which the rude marauders of both Judaea and 
 Philistia would feel. Had he been a man of lofty 
 spiritual character the lesson would not have been 
 as impressive. Jehovah can give supernatural 
 strength to those who observe His vows. The 
 inference was, Let Israel obey Him, and she too 
 will become strong again. In proportion as her 
 obedience grows will her strength and power 
 grow. If by obedience to the mere vow of the 
 Nazarite Samson was invincible, how invincible, 
 as a nation and as a church, might Israel be- 
 come if obedient to the whole moral law which 
 God had given her. By the happy though un- 
 natural strength of this Nazarite were the Hebrews 
 taught to stand in reverence before Jehovah, and 
 to seek for help again in Him by disobeying whom 
 all their disasters had been brought about. 
 
78 THE SINLESS CHRIST 
 
 For the same reason, no doubt, has the story 
 of Samson been preserved to us. We are not 
 called upon to admire his character. He is no 
 hero for us to imitate. He simply crystallizes, in 
 his titanic figure, the idea of strength through 
 obedience to God, and it is for us to apply this 
 truth with that broader knowledge of what obedi- 
 ence consists in, and the finer ideal of what divine 
 strength really is, which has been taught by one 
 of which Samson, in his rude, fierce way, was to 
 his own age an impressive type. 
 
 Now with this understanding of the significance 
 of the man, I wish to call your attention to the 
 somewhat singular account of the riddle which he 
 proposed to his Philistine companions. It will be 
 found, I think, to have a deeper meaning than even 
 they guessed or Samson intended, or than lies upon 
 the surface of the narrative. The young giant was 
 on his way to Timnath, a Philistine city, in company 
 with his parents, going thither to see the woman 
 whom he desired to make his wife. In the region 
 between Dan and the seacoast wild beasts were 
 plentiful, and it chanced that a young lion sprang 
 from his lair on the travelers. But as if it had 
 been a kid, Samson seized the beast and without a 
 weapon in his hand rent it into pieces. He said 
 nothing of the adventure even to his parents ; but 
 
SAiMSON'S RIDDLE 79 
 
 on the way back he sought the carcass of the Hon 
 and found that a swarm of bees had hived in it, 
 and from the strange storeliouse he took honey 
 for himself and his parents. He seems to have 
 seen in this incident a sort of omen of good for- 
 tune. Probably he said to himself, " As out of 
 this lion honey has been brought forth, so out of 
 the hated Philistines, who would tear Israel to 
 pieces, shall there come by me a sweet blessing to 
 my people." At any rate, when, a short time 
 later, his wedding-feast was being celebrated in 
 Timnath, he proposed, in accordance with the cus- 
 tom in ancient times, this riddle to his Philistine 
 guests and acquaintances. " Out of the eater," 
 said he, " came forth meat, and out of the strong 
 came forth sweetness. If ye can certainly declare 
 it me within the seven days of the feast, and 
 find it out, then I will give you thirty sheets and 
 thirty change of garments." Of course they did 
 not know the answer. At last they forced his 
 bride to coax the answer from him, and on the 
 last day of the wedding-feast they gave him their 
 reply. " What is sweeter than honey ? What is 
 stronger than a lion ?" said they. Samson knew 
 that his wife had been false to him and that the 
 story of his adventure was out. Then with a dar- 
 ing quite as notable as that with which he had 
 
8o THE SINLESS CHRIST 
 
 killed the lion, he hurried to Ashkelon, another 
 Philistine city, and soon returned with the gar- 
 ments of thirty men whom he had slain, with 
 which he redeemed his pledge. 
 
 The story reads at first like mere rude jesting 
 and bloody sport. It is clear, however, that 
 under cover of his riddle Samson meant to in- 
 timate to his foes themselves the defiance that was 
 already burning within him. In the honey from 
 the carcass of the Hon which he had slain he had 
 seen a divine omen of the blessing that was to 
 come even out of the oppressor of Israel, and 
 with the recklessness which was part of his char- 
 acter he intimated vaguely even to the wedding 
 guests what they and their countrymen might 
 expect from him. He was going to tear this 
 Philistine lion in pieces and gather from its slain 
 carcass honey for his people Israel ; and the thirty 
 men, lying dead at Ashkelon, were but the begin- 
 ning of the slaughter which would befall her 
 foes. 
 
 So far the story. But is this all the meaning of 
 Samson's riddle ? Does the whole worth of the 
 story end with the Danite's fierce sport with his 
 enemies ? Is this narrative nothing but the record 
 of a barbarous jest ? Recall what, as I have tried 
 to show, Samson represents. What was he in- 
 
SAMSON'S RIDDLE 8i 
 
 tended to teach his own age ? What is he in- 
 tended to teach us ? This, and this alone : that 
 strength comes through obedience to God. Re- 
 membering that Samson's riddle acquires a deeper 
 significance, deeper, no doubt, than the author of 
 it understood, but a significance which makes it 
 worth our consideration as the incident itself 
 w^ould not be. It seems to me, indeed, to utter 
 what we may call the great riddle of human life, 
 the strangest fact which falls under the observa- 
 tion of men, the enigma which they are continu- 
 ally forced to solve, and the solution of which lies 
 in that truth which in his coarse, emphatic way, 
 Samson represented. Let me show you what I 
 mean. 
 
 The riddle is, '' Out of the eater came forth 
 meat, and out of the strong came forth sweetness." 
 That is to say, out of that which seems to consume 
 and destroy have come forth nourishment and sup- 
 port; out of that which appears oppressive and 
 terrible have come forth benediction and happiness. 
 Is not this strange enough to be called a riddle, 
 and yet is it not the riddle of human life, the fact 
 which on every side confronts us ? 
 
 I might show, for example, that the difficulties 
 which we have to overcome in the pursuit of our 
 most cherished projects are the means of our 
 
 6 
 
82 THE SINLESS CHRIST 
 
 highest growth and greatest usefulness. This is 
 so even in the sphere of common secular life. A 
 man whose pathway is smooth and sunny and 
 strewn with flowers does not usually reach as high 
 a level of character as the one whose way is 
 rough and dark and full of pitfalls. There are more, 
 I honestly believe, who go wrong through having 
 too many so-called blessings than there are who 
 go wrong because life is too hard for them. Very 
 few indeed are they who do not meet lions in the 
 way, to w^hom life is not a struggle, if not with 
 outward obstacles, at least with inward ones ; and 
 when a child of fortune does appear he is very 
 apt to end as a child of misery. But the over- 
 comine of obstacles makes the muscles of the 
 human spirit strong and well developed. Conflict 
 makes good soldiers. Wresting victory from the 
 unwiUing hands of destiny makes the enjoyment 
 of it keener and leaves the victor strong for fresh 
 enterprises. 
 
 Stanley has lately written these words, which 
 are worth noting as coming from the pen of 
 one who has braved the dangers of the African 
 forest and come out a hero. He says, " The bigger 
 the work, the greater the joy in doing it. That 
 whole-hearted striving and wrestling with diffi- 
 culty, the laying hold with firm grip and level 
 
SAMSON'S RIDDLE 83 
 
 head and calm resolution of the monster, and tu< 
 
 'fc) 
 
 ging and toiling and wrestling at it, to-day, to- 
 morrow, and the next, until it is done, — it is the 
 soldier's creed of forward, ever forward ; it is the 
 man's faith that for this task he was born." Such, 
 too, has always been the testimony of those who 
 have accomplished great things in life. Edmund 
 Burke, that philosophic statesman, says, " Diffi- 
 culty is a severe instructor set over us by the 
 supreme ordinance of a parental Guardian who 
 knows us better than we know ourselves, as He 
 loves us better too. He that wrestles with us 
 strengthens our nerves and sharpens our skill ; our 
 antagonist is our helper." 
 
 It has been by hard work, by the bitter experi- 
 ence of failures, by learning the lessons of dis- 
 appointment, by profiting from mistakes, that the 
 strong men of history have become what they 
 were. The thinkers whose words have molded 
 the beliefs of men have wrestled with doubt and 
 grappled with the problems of thought through 
 many a painful hour before they have climbed to 
 the position where they can speak and make men 
 hear. The orators to whose speech multitudes 
 have listened and who have seemed to have at 
 their command every faculty of persuasion and 
 argument have had to blunder and fail a hundred 
 
84 THE SINLESS CHRIST 
 
 times before acquiring their skill. And the men 
 who climb to the zenith of commercial success 
 have had first in many instances to toil, watch, 
 learn, and struggle, till the secret of success was 
 won. We do not hesitate to say that difficulty is 
 man's best friend. It calls out his powers. It sets 
 his wits at work. It disciplines his mind. It 
 steadies his brain. It trains him in self-control. 
 It enables him to shoulder heavy burdens. It 
 feeds him while it seems to consume him, and 
 blesses when it appears to oppose. No man 
 should fear it. It is the common lot ordained by 
 Providence for our highest good, and like Samson's 
 lion, when overcome, it will have honey in its 
 frame. 
 
 If true in ordinary work, this is emphatically 
 true in respect to the attainment of moral char- 
 acter. Those men have the deepest hold on truth 
 who have had to fight for it ; to whom doubt and 
 unbelief have not been passing dreams, but hor- 
 rible realities; and who have discovered, after 
 many a storm and gale, the quiet harbor of faith, 
 where now they float in peace. So temptation 
 has a divine work to do in the strengthening of 
 moral fiber. We are, indeed, taught to pray, 
 " Lead us not into temptation." No man should 
 needlessly covet it. It is not wise to stir up the 
 
SAMSON'S RIDDLE 85 
 
 lions that will be glad of a chance to devour us. 
 Nevertheless, the Bible also says, " Blessed is the 
 man that endureth temptation : for when he is 
 tried, he shall receive the crown of life, which the 
 Lord hath promised to them that love Him." 
 Was not Jesus Himself ordained to pass through 
 temptation? Was it not necessary for the per- 
 fecting of His power to save? Even so does 
 the resisting of it make us all strong. 
 
 Mark you : it is the resisting and conquering 
 it which make us strong, not playing with evil or 
 the reckless inviting of it. But God has placed 
 us in a world where we must fight if we would 
 win ; where the broad way leads to death and the 
 way of life is strait and narrow ; where we must 
 play the part of soldiers if we would not play the 
 part of slaves. Yet He has made this very fact 
 to inure to the benefit of those who strive for the 
 good and the true. The very necessity of watch- 
 fulness forces them to learn how to stay awake. 
 The struggle against evil makes them hate it 
 more, and more completely triumph over it. 
 They come out of the discipline of life with a 
 special strength which is infinitely greater than 
 that with which they began the fray; and their 
 souls have grown by the painful struggle into a 
 vigorous faith and determination and .special 
 
S6 THE SINLESS CHRIST 
 
 knowledge, which may be called, in comparison 
 with others, truly gigantic. 
 
 So too, I might show that the conflicts through 
 which the Church and the truth of God have 
 passed have not been without beneficial conse- 
 quences. Jesus expected the history of his 
 Church to be one long record of conflict. He 
 foretold persecutions, subtle assaults of evil from 
 without and within ; slow growth in the face of 
 hostile surroundings ; and how clear and accurate 
 His forecast w^as has been demonstrated by the 
 facts of nineteen centuries. If ever we are dis- 
 posed to wonder why the progress of Christianity 
 has not been more rapid, let us not fail to remem- 
 ber that He who founded Christianity expected 
 just such a future for it as it has actually had. 
 Yet this long conflict has not been wholly evil, as 
 Israel's experience may serve to show\ The young 
 gospel found itself at the first confronted by the 
 mighty empire of Pagan Rome. For nearly three 
 centuries they grappled in mortal conflict. One 
 or the other of them had to die. It was a tre- 
 mendous enterprise to undermine the constitution 
 of the ancient world ; to disobey the idolatrous 
 mandates of the society about them ; to be true 
 to Christ in an empire whose supreme law was to 
 worship the emperor; to endure the hatred of 
 
SAMSON'S RIDDLE 87 
 
 men, the constant peril of life, and as the conflict 
 tliickcned to die in great numbers for the sake of 
 their Christian faith. But who does not know that 
 the very blood of the martyrs became the seed of 
 the Church ; that persecution only made the faith 
 of Jesus mightier ; that it strengthened the power 
 of the infant Church until at last the persecuted 
 empire laid down its sword and acknowledged 
 that the Galilean had conquered ? It would verily 
 seem, if we may judge of Christian history, that 
 the times of persecution have been often the times 
 of richest spiritual blessing and of greatest pro- 
 portionate benefit to the Church of the Crucified. 
 So also may we find an illustration in the con- 
 flict with intellectual unbelief which likewise has 
 marked the history of the Christian Church. 
 This conflict began with Paul's speech at Athens, 
 and it still continues. Faith has also had to fio-ht 
 
 o 
 
 its way. Old foes take new faces, or are joined 
 by new recruits. If anyone be disposed to hesitate 
 in view of the intellectual unbelief of the modern 
 world, let him reflect that it is as old as Chris- 
 tianity. It, too, has brought forth good. It has 
 forced Christians to show why they believe ; to 
 understand what they believe; to hold their truth 
 with intelligence; to think it over and over again, 
 to correct mistakes. Scientific and philosophical 
 
88 THE SINLESS CHRIST 
 
 lions have never ceased to attack the Samson of 
 whom we speak, but I have not the shadow of a 
 doubt that, though the champion of faith may be 
 clawed and wounded by his adversaries, there will 
 be found at last honey in the lion, and that — which 
 is what we all want — truth will be helped forward 
 by the struggle. I do not think that it is possible 
 to read the story of the progress of Christian 
 thought without seeing that the eater has brought 
 forth meat, and that from the strong has come 
 forth sweetness. 
 
 Once more I might point you to that form of 
 the riddle of life which is found in the universal 
 mission of suffering and sorrow among men. By 
 common admission this is the problem of prob- 
 lems, the riddle that in pain and agony thousands 
 are wrestling with this very hour, the dark enigma 
 of human life. No soul is free from a share in the 
 universal heritage of pain. There is scarcely a 
 single life which has not at some time sounded the 
 depths of darkness, over whom the great waters 
 of anguish have not rolled. The whole creation 
 groaneth and travaileth in pain together. There 
 are times when human life seems unutterably sad, 
 so brief and yet so full of suffering ; so pleasant 
 and yet so crowded with broken hopes and shat- 
 tered longings. Below the noise of trade, the 
 
SAMSON'S RIDDLE 89 
 
 laughter of the children, and the mingled cries of 
 the market-place and the forum, we may hear the 
 solemn undertone that rises in all ages and places 
 from the sorrows of humanity; and who can help 
 asking, " O Lord, how long?" Humanity is 
 always more or less a " man of sorrows," and the 
 longer we live the more are we apt to feel that in 
 and by itself existence is profoundly sad. What 
 the ultimate and complete solution of this enigma 
 of suffering will be we do not pretend to say; yet 
 this at least is clear, that those who have faith in 
 God have found suffering and sorrow doing more 
 than anything else to make them spiritually strong. 
 Their testimony is that they never grasped the 
 reality of life until they did so amid tears ; that 
 they never understood their God or their Saviour 
 till they had learned to mourn ; that they never 
 fully cast down self from its unlawful throne till 
 they had yielded submission in suffering to God ; 
 that they never felt sin so hateful, the world so 
 empty, God so real and heaven so near, as when 
 affliction had come upon them. Every one of us, 
 doubtless, knows something of this experience. 
 We must, if we be at all children of God. Men 
 have found in sorrow a priceless gain to match. 
 They have discovered in the monster that would 
 overwhelm them a faithful friend who has taught 
 
90 THE SINLESS CHRIST 
 
 them most needful lessons. They have attained 
 through the patient bearing of pain, through the 
 humble endurance of trouble, a refinement of char- 
 acter, a sweetness of disposition, a gentle, sympa- 
 thetic tenderness, a quiet but an implicit trust, 
 which has made them seem as beautiful to us as 
 they must be dear to God. As the Christ Himself 
 wrested from His sorrows power to save us, came 
 from Gethsemane and Calvary with the sweetest 
 of all sympathy, the tenderest of all love, the 
 strong Son of God, He has forever cast at least 
 this much light on the dark enigma, and taught us 
 to believe that the eater will bring forth meat, 
 and out of the strong there will come sweetness. 
 Thus in Samson's riddle seems to me to be 
 expressed in a quaint form the riddle of human 
 life ; and in the light of what I remarked, to be 
 the specific truth which Samson was raised up 
 to teach, may we leave the answer that we are 
 to give to the great riddle, as in one or another 
 form it will be presented to and pressed upon 
 us each. You will find, as no doubt you have 
 already found, that nothing you undertake can 
 be accomplished without difficulty, and that the 
 higher the aim you select, the greater, the more 
 subtle, will the obstacles be. You will find that 
 temptation to do wrong will dog your steps, will 
 
SAMSON'S RIDDLE 91 
 
 appear in a hundred forms, will sometimes fairly 
 overwhelm you by its plausible reasonings and 
 its golden offers. If you follow Christ you will 
 find that opposition will meet you and often in 
 ways harder to resist than if it were open perse- 
 cution, and that unbelief will never cease to rail 
 against your faith. Then you need not expect 
 to be exempt from sorrow. Now perhaps life 
 is sunshine, but the clouds and storms will come 
 and you will join the long procession of your 
 suffering fellow-mortals who fear the Christ. 
 
 Thus the riddle of life will be forced upon you 
 and often will it seem insoluble ; and you will be 
 ready to exclaim, *' Why has God doomed me 
 to such a lot ?" But who is the strong man ? 
 Samson was raised up to teach this single truth : 
 strength comes through obedience to God. Let 
 a man devote his mind and heart to God ; let his 
 supreme desire be in all circumstances to obey 
 God, and he will find this answer to the riddle 
 of life, that the very thing which threatens to 
 consume him in reality makes him strong ; that 
 no bitter cup is filled for him to drink which is 
 not sweetened as he drinks it. " Out of the eater 
 came forth meat, and out of the strong came forth 
 sweetness." He will find that life has an infinitely 
 grander end than mere material prosperity or 
 
92 THE SINLESS CHRIST 
 
 personal pleasure ; that life is meant to be the 
 learning of truth, the knowing of God, the attain- 
 ment through these of perfect character. For us 
 men there is no more necessary means of reach- 
 ing the end than the overcoming of obstacles. 
 It is to him that overcometh that Jesus said, *' He 
 shall sit with Me on My throne." 
 
 Make God your Master. Resolve to obey 
 Him at all hazards. Put Him in the supreme 
 place in your faith and conduct, and then go 
 forward fearless in the path of duty, even though 
 your adversary as a roaring lion goeth before 
 you. Meet difficulty, temptation, and trial, you 
 must. If you do not serve God, you must meet 
 them just the same. But if you serve Him you 
 may meet them and triumph over them, may 
 even wrest from them a blessing ; and find in the 
 struggle with them unlooked for good. You will 
 thus solve the riddle of life, and while others are 
 hopelessly entangled you will know the answer. 
 You will be strong with the strength which God 
 supplies. If God is for you, who can be against 
 you ? After the battle of life is over the God 
 you have served will place the crown upon your 
 head, and you will be more than conqueror 
 through Him who loved you. 
 
 O, brothers, many of you, I doubt not, are 
 
SAMSON'S RIDDLE 
 
 93 
 
 sorely tried and heavily burdened, many of you 
 find yourselves confronted with great obstacles, 
 and realize that if life is to be noble it must be a 
 hard fought battle. I pray you, take God with 
 you into the fight. Fight in His name and 
 for Him. Give Him your supreme allegiance. 
 Then you need not fear but that when life is 
 over you will see in the better world that its 
 discipline was the means of your deliverance, that 
 faith did solve, in fact, the strange enigma, and 
 that even what you thought hard and unkind was 
 that from which you drew y our richest benediction. 
 
PETER'S SHADOW, OR UNCON- 
 SCIOUS INFLUENCE 
 
V 
 
 PETER'S SHADOW, OR UNCONSCIOUS INFLUENCE 
 
 " And by the hands of the apostles were many signs and won- 
 ders wrought among the people. . . . Insomuch that they brought 
 forth the sick into the streets, and laid them on beds and couches, 
 that at the least the shadow of Peter passing by might overshadow 
 some of them." — Acts v. 12, 15. 
 
 This scene will not appear incredible if we ob- 
 serve how every epoch in the history of revela- 
 tion was marked at its beginning by a prodigious 
 display of miraculous powers. Thus, for example, 
 the exodus of Israel from Egypt, the journey 
 through the wilderness, and the conquest of 
 Canaan record many such scenes. The ten plagues 
 were God's solemn testimony to both His people 
 and His foes of His mighty power ; and as we 
 follow the march of the sons of Jacob and see 
 the Red Sea divided, manna given from heaven 
 every morning, waters flowing out of the flinty 
 rock, the streams of Jordan standing still, and 
 the walls of Jericho falling down, we realize 
 that not Moses or Joshua, but Jehovah Himself 
 was the leader of Israel. So, too, when the 
 7 97 
 
98 THE SINLESS CHRIST 
 
 kingdom of Ephraim had revolted from its God, 
 and when EHjah and EHsha labored for its refor- 
 mation, another era of miracles was granted. 
 The three years' drought, the fire descending 
 on the sacrifice on Carmel, as well as the return- 
 ing showers, were supernatural answers to Elijah's 
 prayer, and the life of his successor in the pro- 
 phetic office was one long series of miraculous 
 deeds. 
 
 The same features marked, to a greater or less 
 extent, the ministry of other prophets ; but when 
 we come to the greatest prophet of all, and to the 
 beginning of the new Christian era, then with re- 
 doubled energy does the omnipotence of the God 
 in Christ manifest itself Men have doubted and 
 sought to explain away the miracles of Jesus, 
 but if it be once realized that in Him God is in- 
 carnate, the lesser displays of power will appear 
 not strange but natural. If with the exodus the 
 fierce wrath of Jehovah vented itself in ten plagues ; 
 much more, with the incarnation, might the love 
 of the Father utter itself in deeds of supernatural 
 grace. So, beyond all reasonable doubt, Christ's 
 life was glorified by a multitude of miracles. 
 Those recorded of Him in our Gospels are only 
 samples. He trod as God upon earth, though in 
 the lowly likeness of man. Before His coming 
 
PETER'S SHADOW 99 
 
 sickness and death fled away, as thus in confes- 
 sion that He was to be their final conqueror. 
 
 But the personal ministry of Christ on earth 
 was short. It was then followed by that of the 
 Spirit, which is indeed still the ministry of Jesus, 
 but carried on in a different way. But with what 
 reason was its beginning also marked by a pro- 
 fusion of miracles ? As the last and greatest 
 epoch in revelation, we should expect this. The 
 opposite would have been out of analogy with 
 all God's previous methods. There was still 
 need to authenticate these converted fishermen 
 as the apostles of God ; there was even greater 
 need to encourage their own hearts by the tokens 
 of Christ's power and presence ; there was need 
 also to illustrate in the most striking way the 
 doctrines of the new gospel. It is altogether 
 credible, — it is altogether what we should expect 
 to find, — that " many wonders and signs were 
 done by the apostles"; and I think we can 
 imagine nothing more likely to impress the 
 apostle himself and all who saw it with the 
 peace, the fullness, the joyfulness, and the divine 
 source of the gospel of Jesus than this in which, 
 as he walked the streets of Jerusalem, the 
 very shadow of Peter falling on the sick about 
 him healed them all. Peter himself must have 
 
loo THE SINLESS CHRIST 
 
 felt that he was the instrument of a power mighty- 
 enough to change and save the world. 
 
 But while we may thus accept without a doubt 
 the literal truth of this narrative, it suggests an- 
 other truth not miraculous at all and one which 
 may be profitably applied to us all. It is an ex- 
 ample of a man doing good unconsciously ; of in- 
 fluence for good emanating from a man without 
 his directly willing it, simply because he himself 
 is "full of the Holy Ghost and of faith." The 
 shadow of Peter is an illustration of unconscious 
 influence and of the secret by which such influence 
 may be exerted in the right direction ; and I am 
 sure that in a world like this, in which we are 
 so dependent upon each other, no topic ought 
 more strongly to commend itself to our earnest 
 thought. Let me use this incident to illustrate 
 this theme. 
 
 I. First, let me remark upon the fact itself 
 of unconscious influence, and how truly each 
 of us ought to feel that what we are and 
 what we do make for good or ill an impres- 
 sion on our fellow-men. I imagine that we 
 shall best realize the influence which we uncon- 
 sciously exert upon others if we consider the 
 influence which others unconsciously exert upon 
 us. Every man must feel that it is easier for him 
 
PETER'S SHADOW loi 
 
 to assimilate impressions from the world about 
 him than to originate for himself, — that he re- 
 ceives far more than he creates ; and that by 
 far the greater part of what he receives glides 
 in subtly and silently from sources which have 
 no idea of how much they are impressing him. 
 The human mind is very receptive as a rule. 
 It is in many respects the creation of circum- 
 stances, though we would not admit that it is 
 altogether so. It grows in many ways like the 
 plants and flowers of the garden, which draw 
 from the soil beneath, from the air around them, 
 and from the rain which falls upon their leaves 
 the nutriment they need. So does every man, 
 I presume, feel that he draws into him from the 
 society about him, from the various changes of 
 Providence, which are to him like the changes 
 of the seasons, and still more from the moral 
 and intellectual atmosphere about him, do what 
 he may. He must breathe, draw from all of them, 
 I say, influences which he makes in turn his own 
 possession and assimilates into his own mind, 
 until they become part of himself, so that he 
 could not say any longer if they were originally 
 his own, or where he obtained them. Most 
 minds that are at all quick are like sensitive 
 plates on which the world's light plays with its 
 
I02 THE SINLESS CHRIST 
 
 invisible forces, and sketches with its invisible 
 fingers pictures that seldom fade away. Most 
 minds are sponge-like, absorbing the element 
 in which they are placed by Providence. I know 
 there is more in the mind than this power to 
 receive and absorb. There is the power to make 
 these influences one's own, as I have said ; and 
 sometimes the power to apparently originate, — 
 absolutely to begin, — an idea. But we must 
 confess that this latter is seldom done, and that 
 it is more often true that, like these people of 
 Jerusalem, we live under the shadow of other 
 men's lives. 
 
 Take as our first illustration of this the way in 
 which as children w^e used to receive impressions. 
 I suppose no man can look back to his childhood 
 without remembering how some of the strongest 
 motives which he ever felt were produced by 
 events and people and circumstances, the influence 
 of which no one else understood. Some passing 
 word, dropped from the lips of one who forgot it 
 as soon as it was spoken, has hngered in our 
 minds like a mustard-seed and in time became a 
 great tree. Some book we read has given our 
 tastes a bias for life either for good or evil. Some 
 slight deed of kindness which we received has 
 stored up an inexhaustible fund of gratitude in 
 
PETER'S SHADOW 103 
 
 our hearts and made us, in turn, desire to fill our 
 own lives with its same spirit. Some slight word 
 of encouragement in trying circumstances has 
 nerved us afterwards for noble deeds. Go back 
 into the morning of your Hves, and note how much 
 more influence examples had on you than teaching ; 
 how much more you received from persons than 
 from books ; how far it is true that the character 
 which you have since developed w^as molded by 
 trifles, by forgotten passages in the hves of others, 
 by some shadow that came over you from an- 
 other's character. I believe it was Benjamin West 
 who said, " A kiss from my mother made me a 
 painter." If so, the great artist's experience was 
 not peculiar. Did the daughter of Pharaoh think 
 when she took the child Moses into the palace, 
 that the education he would receive was to pre- 
 pare him to set his people free and give laws to all 
 mankind ? Did the young lad David know when 
 he defended his father's flock from the lion and 
 the bear, how God was making him strong in soul 
 and arm so as to deliver and defend his people 
 Israel ? Little, indeed, did they know that they 
 were being trained, and little do we realize how 
 our sensitive minds in childhood and youth ab- 
 sorbed principles that have made or marred our 
 character for time and eternity. 
 
I04 THE SINLESS CHRIST 
 
 Then, too, mark how in adult years, at least in 
 the opening years of manhood and womanhood, 
 we are influenced unconsciously by others. Take, 
 for example, the influence of men of history, — of 
 the characters about whom we have read. The past 
 pours itself like a mighty deluge upon each one 
 of us, and all the more if we have learned to gaze 
 upon its broad tumultuous waters. It is true that 
 we consciously receive fewer influences from 
 books than from experience ; but this statement 
 must be modified so as to admit that we receive 
 vast influence through books, if not from them. 
 They are the means by which we are made ac- 
 quainted with past generations. They are the 
 glasses through which we look at distant ages. 
 They bring these near, put us in contact with 
 them, and open the gates that the torrents may 
 rush in. I need not add that this is unconscious 
 influence. These men have long passed away; 
 their Hves have long since been finished. We can 
 judge them now in all their parts, see where they 
 failed and where they succeeded ; perhaps we can 
 assign the reason for their success or failure. 
 They know not how their influence has lived after 
 them, and the shadow of their names and deeds 
 fallen on posterity. 
 
 It would be easy to collect illustrations of such 
 
PETER'S SHADOW 105 
 
 influence. I have read that when Guido studied 
 the works of Michael Angelo he began " to feel 
 within him the risings of genius," — to feel the fire 
 of his own inspiration kindled from the brilliant 
 light of the great master, — so that he exclaimed, 
 " I too am a painter." I have read how Ignatius 
 Loyola, when suffering from a severe wound re- 
 ceived in battle, began to read The Lives of the 
 Saints as a diversion, and how his own ready soul 
 caught the contagion from the martyrs of the 
 past, until he resolved to surpass their devotion to 
 what he believed to be the holiest of all causes ; 
 and from that resolve the Jesuit order sprang. 
 Bad as we think its influence has been, it was at 
 least born from the influence exerted on its foun- 
 der's mind by his communion with the devotion 
 and sacrifice of those who had long passed away. 
 So examples might be multiplied. The early 
 missionaries who went on heroic errands for God 
 and humanity have done their work not merely by 
 laying the foundations of God's temple in the wil- 
 derness, but also by stimulating others to follow 
 them as builders of it. What have the great 
 statesmen of any nation not done to infuse into 
 the minds of posterity the principles which they 
 obeyed ? The Bible itself also contains many an 
 illustration in the same line. It is easy to see how 
 
io6 THE SINLESS CHRIST 
 
 the characters of Moses and Joshua stirred the 
 Jewish lieart to the end; how Solomon influenced 
 later thought ; how even Christianity was nursed 
 on the influence of her Jewish ancestry, so that 
 not a few faults as well as much that was true and 
 good came to her from the influence of Hebrew 
 saints and of Hebrew history. There is no in- 
 telligent man who does not feel the force of past 
 examples. The ages gone also pour some of their 
 unconscious influence into the life of each one. 
 We have our heroes and our ideals, our favorite 
 scenes and pictures, our models taken from what 
 we have heard or read in the eloquent pages of 
 the past, and more perhaps than we are aware do 
 these stamp themselves in living impressions on 
 our receptive minds. 
 
 Nor is it only the shadow of dead men's lives 
 under which we move. Is it not equally true 
 that people about us influence us more than 
 they know ? Does not everyone who has had 
 any experience of life feel some anxiety at be- 
 holding a younger warrior, in whom he is inter- 
 ested, go out to the long battle ? And why ? He 
 may have now the best principles. He may have 
 professed the most exalted ideas. He may scorn 
 whatever is base and low. But alas, he will be 
 exposed to an influence as subtle as miasma, 
 
PETER'S SHADOW 107 
 
 which may bring on fatal moral disease ! He will 
 see, perhaps, how his employers are not in fact 
 the honorable men they are esteemed to be, and 
 yet how they are successful and their fair names 
 unstained. He will see how strict moral prin- 
 ciples are held not to apply to business trans- 
 actions. He may discover that success is the 
 only god of the street and money its only reward. 
 And slowly the influence of the world, which is all 
 unconscious of his presence, penetrates and spoils 
 him. The world did not mean to ruin his charac- 
 ter, to make him deny his religion, or to do any- 
 thing, good or bad, for him. But he could not 
 resist its unconscious influence, he could not stand 
 against its tide ; and once swimming with the 
 tide, once having his early principles undermined, 
 he may go down all the faster until he is cast 
 out by the now virtuous indignation of the world 
 that has misled him. Who can stop the spread 
 of these waves which widen outward ? Who does 
 not feel himself moved by them ? How many 
 do they not wholly carry away? 
 
 Such is our life. Such are the influences which 
 others bring to bear upon us individually. The 
 same is true of communities and of nations, as 
 might easily be shown. The character of a peo- 
 ple is slowly formed by the accretion of in- 
 
io8 THE SINLESS CHRIST 
 
 fluence, — from antiquity, from other nations, even 
 from soil and climate, — and these are fused into 
 the national character by some force peculiar 
 to itself Revolutions also do not originate sud- 
 denly. They are the result of many years' in- 
 fluence, where the forces have been slowly at 
 work which at length have culminated in a 
 crash. So the world moves, rises and falls, 
 perpetuates the past, transmits to one part the 
 lives and thoughts of another part, no one living 
 unto himself, but all working together for weal 
 or woe. As societies and as individuals we can 
 hardly overstate the effect on us of unconscious 
 influence. We live in the shadow of other men's 
 lives. 
 
 Now in all this we see the reverse of the pic- 
 ture, the converse of my proposition. But the 
 proposition itself needs no further proof What 
 we have judged to be true of others is true also 
 of ourselves, — as we receive we also give; and 
 with what effect? May we reverse the picture 
 and behold the influence which we unconsciously 
 must exert in our turn ? You cannot say that 
 you are too humble and obscure to exert such 
 influence. There is no man, unless he has sunk 
 into the very gutter, that has not some one who 
 looks up to him. There is no one without his 
 
PETER'S SHADOW 
 
 109 
 
 circle of friends, who has not some on whom he 
 makes an impression, even if he be the humblest 
 and the most obscure. 
 
 It is almost too trite a remark to make that 
 nature teaches us the power of little things. The 
 atoms make the world. The beat of the waves 
 wears away in time the hardest rock. So also 
 even the humblest toiler, the workman at his 
 forge or loom, does his part in the great organism 
 of society. The individual soldiers make the 
 regiment. I know that by themselves they could 
 do nothing. They need the guidance and genius 
 of their commanders. But once organized, as 
 we all are in this world, no one dare doubt that 
 he makes some mark on some other immortal 
 soul. He throws some shadow on his fellow- 
 creature's path. 
 
 Truly this is an appalling state of things. It 
 discloses an overwhelming responsibilty which 
 we would not willingly assume. It is a fact from 
 which men shrink back and cry with Cain, " Am 
 I my brother's keeper?" It seems to lay on 
 us the burden of we know not what, — an indefi- 
 nite load of accountability. But it is a fact. It 
 needs no apostle to cast a healing shadow on 
 suffering humanity, and no demon to cast a 
 shadow of ill. We are doing it ourselves, some 
 
no THE SINLESS CHRIST 
 
 of us throwing out such baleful influence on the 
 country that though we utter not a word we are 
 blasting and cursing many souls, and others 
 casting such gentle, pure, and holy influence, 
 that men are glad to put themselves in our way, 
 as they did in Peter's. All the finer is such a 
 life if its healing shadow falls unconsciously and 
 without an effort, out of the fullness of what we 
 are, on this troubled, wearied, sin-sick world. 
 
 2. We are then, on the other hand, led by this 
 scene in Peter's life to what is the one sure secret 
 whereby this unconscious influence may be made 
 a blessing to others. Since we are speaking of 
 what is called unconscious influence, or influence 
 that is incident, indirect, and exerted without the 
 knowledge of the one from whom it flows, it is 
 evident that this usually proceeds from that 
 somewhat indistinct but most certain thing in 
 every man w^iich we call his character. This 
 is implied in the illustrations we have already 
 used. Our influence usually does not flow so 
 much from our professions as from what we 
 actually believe and act upon. If we are con- 
 sistent, and our professions are sincere, then all 
 the greater is their power ; but if we are incon- 
 sistent, and show by our lives that we do not 
 believe what we profess nor act upon it, then 
 
PETER'S SHADOW iii 
 
 the profession is worse than nothing, and the 
 influence proceeds from the character, even 
 though we may seek to hide it. For it does 
 not take long for the world to discover hypoc- 
 risy. Few men can keep up a perfect disguise. 
 The other objects which they are pursuing will 
 break through the deception and reveal it. Thus 
 real life, this thing called character, will have its 
 say and do its work, though the outward reputa- 
 tion be old and strong. No man need flatter 
 himself that he is exerting a good influence by 
 any insincere profession. Time and circumstances 
 will tear off the mask and leave the true features 
 exposed. There is nothing hid that shall not 
 be known and come abroad. You may exclaim 
 that it is unreasonable in the world not to be- 
 lieve your word, but if you know that word to 
 be false, you may be sure that somewhere you 
 have let your secret out. At any rate, uncon- 
 scious influence flows from what we are, from 
 the spirit we actually carry with us day by day, 
 from the aims we really have most in mind, from 
 the thoughts we chiefly love, and which, to a 
 degree that perhaps would surprise us, mold our 
 outward actions in spite of the most watchful 
 care. 
 
 The question, so far as moral influence is con- 
 
112 THE SINLESS CHRIST 
 
 cerned, is this, How should we fortify our char- 
 acters ; what shall they be, so that, when we are 
 off our guard and engaged in the duties of daily 
 life, they may of themselves exert an influence for 
 good upon those about us ? There is just one — 
 one only, secret of such unconscious influence. It 
 is not culture ; it is not refinement ; it is not mo- 
 rality. It is something w^hich Christ alone can 
 give, something with which he had filled to over- 
 flowing this apostle's soul. It is the Holy Spirit. 
 Look, for example, at Peter. But a few days be- 
 fore that scene the Spirit of Pentecost had de- 
 scended on him and his brethren. Before that 
 his shadow produced no such effect as it does 
 now ; but I doubt not that now his very face told 
 that he was a changed man. It was not Peter's 
 eloquence which gave him his influence. It was 
 not his personal traits of mind with which he 
 blessed the multitude, though these traits made 
 him the foremost man in the early Church. But 
 it was that he was filled with the Spirit whom 
 Jesus had promised and now had sent ; a Spirit 
 who had flooded Peter's mind as of old God's 
 glory had filled with light the holy of holies in 
 the temple ; a Spirit that was divine and so able 
 to bless, heal, and comfort, through Peter, the 
 multitude about him. Now, if the Holy Spirit 
 
PETER'S SHADOW 113 
 
 dwell at all in a man, it is in his character, in his 
 heart that He dwells. There He makes His 
 abode; and just in proportion as every heart is 
 filled with this divine Presence, may we be sure 
 that the influence which we unconsciously exert 
 will always be for good, not for evil. 
 
 Yet I would not have you look at this truth in 
 such a way as to imagine that this gift of the 
 Spirit is merely a miraculous, outward endow- 
 ment. There is another way of putting the teach- 
 ing of our text, and that is, that in order to insure 
 an unconscious influence for good in the world, 
 every man must give great heed to his inner, 
 hidden heart life. There are some who actually 
 never seem to think of this. They live on the 
 surface. They are absorbed in things outside of 
 them, and only think at all so far as may be in the 
 line of their business. In that they think hard 
 enough, but they do not like to probe down into 
 their own character. They enjoy too much the 
 pleasures of the senses. They are too much de- 
 lighted with the pursuit of knowledge, it may be. 
 To isolate their own minds, and fix on them the 
 attention which they give to others, would, they 
 feel, soon involve such self-reproach as they do 
 not care to face. So they neglect their own char- 
 acters altogether. Their inner life gives them no 
 
 8 
 
114 THE SINLESS CHRIST 
 
 concern ; they do not stop to consider how much 
 evil their very neglect of character may itself 
 cause. Such men, at any rate, cannot be religious, 
 for this inner life of the soul is the secret of all 
 spiritual and moral power, and he who makes his 
 shadow a healing one must look within. 
 
 Such is the lesson which the Bible teaches in 
 the lives of its saints. See, for example, Elijah. 
 He came and went like a phantom before Ahab 
 and Israel, but a most real prophet of the Al- 
 mighty was he. We think of him daring to up- 
 braid for his crimes a guilty king ; daring even to 
 call down disaster on his land ; above all do we 
 imagine him in that dramatic scene on Mount 
 Carmel when he set off the power of Jehovah in 
 the fire from heaven against the impotence of Baal 
 and his priests. But was he the real Elijah ? By 
 no means. The real man was shown when he 
 bowed in agonizing prayer before God, when he 
 communed with God in the wilderness ; when on 
 Horeb he heard God speak to him in the still, 
 small voice. It was the communion which Elijah 
 had with Jehovah which enabled him to dare the 
 wrath of the king ; it was this which made him 
 the spiritual giant he was, and caused him to 
 glow and burn wherever he went with the influ- 
 ence ^^^hich alone could save his deluded people. 
 
PETER'S SHADOW 115 
 
 Or see David, the poet-king. What was the 
 secret of his influence, — what is the great source 
 of his influence to this day ? Was it that he 
 conquered his enemies ? that he erected a throne ? 
 that he replaced Saul ? These were not the real 
 causes of power even then ; still less are they the 
 causes of his influence now. That lies in his 
 inner rehgious life. It is because David entered 
 so deeply into the fellowship of God, that out 
 of his own heart he sang the strains which find 
 an echo in all Christian hearts to-day, that he 
 lives in our remembrance as one of God's best 
 saints. What have the Psalms not done for 
 the world ? David is dead, but his inner life 
 gives food for millions, healing to the sick and 
 comfort to the sad. As some one has finely writ- 
 ten, ** The Psalter is the sacred book of the 
 world. Cromwell led his men to victory with 
 the 68th Psalm ; Luther strengthened his heart 
 with the vigor of the Psalms. Wallace had his 
 psalter hung before him at his execution and 
 died with his eyes fixed upon it. Polycarp, Hil- 
 debrand, Huss, Melanchthon,gave their last breath 
 to the words of a Psalm. One Psalm alone has 
 engraved itself on the lives of men. The peni- 
 tence of the contrite soul has loved to breathe 
 out its miserere. Thomas Arnold had the 51st 
 
ii6 THE SINLESS CHRIST 
 
 Psalm read to him when dying, and John Rogers 
 recited it as he went to the stake. Jeremy Tay- 
 lor transformed it into a prayer. Lady Jane 
 Grey repeated its cry for mercy as she ascended 
 the scaffold, and Sir Thomas More as he laid 
 his head on the block. Augustine had written 
 on the wall opposite the bed where he lay sick, 
 * The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit,' and 
 Bernard passed on with this same verse upon 
 his lips." 
 
 What an influence to flow from one book, — 
 and that book in spirit the work of one man ! 
 For though David did not write all the Psalms, 
 he struck the key in which other poets con- 
 tinued. Thus from his inner life, from his life 
 with God, from the devotion of his own soul, 
 he threw over the centuries, unconsciously to 
 himself, a shadow in which tens of thousands 
 have found peace and joy. Because he had the 
 spirit of his greater Son, he became like Christ 
 himself, the shadow of a great rock in a weary 
 land. 
 
 Now, my hearer, do you not think it worth 
 your while to do what you can to cast a healing 
 shadow on the world around you ? Surely the 
 world needs all the help you can render. It is 
 sick and sorrowful, and needs comfort ; sinful, and 
 
PETER'S SHADOW 117 
 
 needs the blessing of all the good examples and 
 the good deeds you can give it. Then be it 
 remembered that what you purposely strive to do 
 for the good of others is not all you might do. 
 Unknown to you your character will tell upon 
 the world, will help or hinder your intentions. 
 From you men may draw encouragement, may 
 be stimulated to labor more cheerfully, suffer 
 more patiently, struggle more bravely, and be- 
 lieve more firmly, or may be disheartened and be 
 led to falter and give up. 
 
 You may move through the world, if you will, 
 like Peter along the streets of Jerusalem, scat- 
 tering on every side joy, hope, and peace. What 
 a life to live ! How thankful we should be that 
 such a life is possible ! But if you are to do 
 this, then must you pay the price. You must 
 surrender your life altogether to Jesus Christ. 
 You must strengthen your faith and love by com- 
 munion with Him. You must be wiUing to sacri- 
 fice whatever He demands, whenever He de- 
 mands it. You must, like Peter, fill your heart 
 with the Holy Spirit received from Christ's hand. 
 Then you need not vex yourself with the ques- 
 tion whether you are doing good or not by your 
 influence, for you will not be able to help doing 
 good, — it will flow out from your words and 
 
ii8 THE SINLESS CHRIST 
 
 deeds, and unknown to you, you will cast a 
 healing shadow over the hearts and lives of 
 others. Men will glorify in you the God whom 
 through you they have come to know as a God 
 of love. 
 
VI 
 
 THE WAY, THE TRUTH, AND 
 THE LIFE 
 
VI 
 
 THE WAY, THE TRUTH, AND THE LIFE 
 
 " Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life." 
 — John xiv. 6. 
 
 The second and third of these predicates 
 explain and define the first. Notice that the first 
 statement, " I am the way," is a figurative one. 
 In it Jesus uses a material object to express a 
 spiritual truth. He spoke in answer to the ques- 
 tion of Thomas, " Lord, we know not whither 
 Thou goest ; and how can we know the way ?" 
 Jesus wanted to teach the disciples that even if 
 they did not know much about heaven and the 
 future, yet they possessed in their relationship to 
 Him the means whereby all that was good and 
 heavenly would be attained by them. He said, 
 " I am the way, ... no man cometh unto the 
 Father, but by Me." Notice that the second 
 and third predicates are not figures at all, but 
 plain and direct statements. They are meant 
 literally. " I am the truth." " I am the life." 
 They were evidently added in order to explain or 
 define the sense in which He said He was the 
 
122 THE SINLESS CHRIST 
 
 way ; and the whole sentence is to be accordingly 
 understood. " I am the way," said Jesus, " be- 
 cause I am the truth and the life." 
 
 Now to be taught the way to God is man's 
 supreme need. We instinctively use the figure, 
 even though we know that it is but a figure. 
 Moral distance is naturally represented by spacial 
 distance. The sinner is pictured not only by 
 Christ but by himself as in a far country : and 
 though God be not far from any of us, man feels 
 after Him, like the blind who have lost their way, 
 if haply he may find Him. To reach God is the 
 confessed goal of human life. To know the way 
 to Him is our chief necessity. So testify the 
 history of all religions that ever have held sway 
 over humanity. So testify the longings and felt 
 needs of every thoughtful heart. Sometimes 
 God is thought of as to be reached at the end of 
 the present life; sometimes, and more correctly, 
 as to be reached at once. But in either case the 
 way to Him is what man needs to know. How 
 is God to be made manifest to our thought and 
 consciousness ? How is the human soul, with its 
 sins and fears, to ascertain God's forgiveness and 
 to be positively reconciled to Him ? How are we 
 to live so as at last to attain the divine presence in 
 the world beyond ? God is necessary for our 
 
THE WAY, THE TRUTH, AND THE LIFE 123 
 
 happiness. Life is unfinished until it be in har- 
 mony with God. Only in God can we be satis- 
 fied and saved. And so the cry of all earnest, 
 awakened souls the world over is for God. Jew 
 and Gentile join in the search. The only ques- 
 tion is, What is the way ? To answer this ques- 
 tion is to solve the supreme problem of human 
 life. 
 
 Jesus Christ claimed to solve the question in a 
 unique manner. He did not say, " I can show 
 you the way to God." He did not come as a 
 wise man or even as a prophet. He said, " I am 
 the way." He evidently meant that He was such 
 a being that by virtue of what He was, access to 
 God had become possible for man, that alone 
 through some personal relationship to Himself 
 could men find God. It was a unique answer to 
 the question, " What is the way ?" Others had 
 pointed out ways of reaching God. None had 
 claimed to be the way. 
 
 It was also a sublime claim which could be 
 made only by one who believed Himself to 
 occupy a position, between men and God, of 
 solitary grandeur and importance. In making it 
 He virtually declared Himself the God-man, the 
 living, personal Mediator between humanity and 
 Deity. He is that or He is nothing, according to 
 
124 THE SINLESS CHRIST 
 
 His own statement ; and if He be that, then He 
 ought to have the supreme place in our allegiance 
 and trust. If then, as I have said, the words 
 truth and life were meant to explain the sense in 
 which He is the way, we must examine the claims 
 expressed by them in order to understand and 
 accept the claim expressed by it. Let us ques- 
 tion them in turn. 
 
 Jesus Christ then said, " I am the truth." We 
 not only have it on the direct authority of 
 one that heard Him say it, but it agrees with 
 many other of His recorded sayings. It is put 
 in a way that is characteristic of Him. He said, 
 " I am the light of the world." " I am the bread 
 of life." " I am the door." " I am the vine." 
 He also used expressions equivalent in meaning 
 to this, though put in other forms. To Pilate He 
 said, " To this end was I born, and for this 
 cause came I into the world, that I should bear 
 witness unto the truth. Everyone that is of 
 the truth heareth My voice." Even in the Ser- 
 mon on the Mount He spoke as one having 
 authority, putting His thought supreme above 
 that of all other men. It is quite credible that 
 He also said, as John reports it, " I am the 
 truth." He also made belief in Himself to be 
 the condition of entering the kingdom of God, 
 
THE WAY, THE TRUTH, AND THE LIFE 125 
 
 which is the kingdom of the truth. Observe 
 carefully His language. He did not say merely 
 that He was true ; that what He taught was 
 right ; that it was worthy of credence. He does 
 not present Himself to us as merely a teacher of 
 the truth. Paul could have said that — yea, any 
 teacher, inspired or uninspired, might reasonably 
 make the claim. If this were all, Jesus would 
 take His place with the long list of wise men to 
 whom the world has listened. He might be a 
 great instructor of the race, greater than Socrates 
 or Solomon ; but He would never deserve to 
 occupy the peculiar place which He does occupy 
 in the faith of the Church, nor would His religion 
 necessarily be the absolute and universal one. 
 There is a great difference between saying, " I am 
 true " and " I am the truth." 
 
 But, on the other hand, He certainly did not 
 mean that He was the only truth or all truth. 
 He was speaking of morals and religion, of the 
 way to God, and the winning of eternal life. He 
 did not say " I am truth," but " I am the truth," 
 the truth paramount. " I am the truth which 
 all men who would find God need to know ; the 
 truth which in the matter of man's salvation is 
 essential ; the truth before which all other truths 
 sink into comparative insignificance. I do not 
 
126 THE SINLESS CHRIST 
 
 merely teach it: but I am it." In so saying, 
 Jesus declared that His existence was the su- 
 preme fact in human history, the knowledge of 
 which was more important than any other kind of 
 knowledge. Only by taking His personality and 
 work into account could men rightly think of 
 God and duty and heaven. That He is ; and what 
 He is, the Christ of God, the revealer of the 
 Father, the Son of God and Son of man, is the 
 truth paramount in the whole sphere of human 
 knowledge and the whole history of human life. 
 It must, I think, be evident that He could have 
 spoken thus only if that idea of His divine-human 
 personality, which apostles taught and the Church 
 has cherished, be true. If He were but a man, 
 He could not have thus spoken, provided at least 
 that He was sane and honest. Some people have 
 stumbled over the fact that Jesus did not expressly 
 and prominently teach His own divinity as the 
 apostles did. They forget that He came to be a 
 man, to thrust His humanity into the foreground, 
 that as man He might be man's Saviour. But He 
 did claim rights and powers which only God can 
 have, so that we are sure the apostles were not 
 mistaken ; and w^hen He here claimed to be the 
 truth. He asserted for Himself a position so su- 
 preme that nothing fully accounts for the claim or 
 
THE WAY, THE TRUTH, AND THE LIFE 127 
 
 justifies it except the doctrine of the Incarnation. 
 But if the Word did become flesh, if the Son of 
 God did become the Son of man, then does the 
 language of the text become perfectly intelligible. 
 Before such a fact no other can be mentioned, 
 none can be so important, none so full of mean- 
 ing. Then could He easily say, *' I am the truth." 
 
 But I would like to persuade you of the right- 
 fulness of Christ's claim not by dogmatic con- 
 siderations so much as by an actual examination 
 of what He appears to be. 
 
 Look, for example, at His character and see 
 if He be not the truth. The wonderful fact about 
 Christ as a moral teacher is that He Himself was 
 all that He taught others to be. In this He stands 
 absolutely alone in the whole list of teachers. 
 Buddha only made an approach to such a claim ; 
 but he professed to reach perfection only after a 
 long life of self-discipline. Jesus Christ was from 
 the beginning the perfect embodiment of His own 
 teaching. True, the Epistle to the Hebrews says 
 that He was made perfect through sufferings ; 
 but by that was evidently meant that He was 
 made perfectly able to save by the things which 
 He suffered. The New Testament represents 
 Jesus as growing in wisdom and knowledge, but 
 it never represents His growth as consisting in 
 
128 THE SINLESS CHRIST 
 
 the removal of sin. On the contrary, it declares 
 Him to have been wholly without sin. 
 
 But whatever the Scriptures may say, the fact 
 is, that as we study His character and life it ap- 
 pears absolutely to agree with His own moral 
 teaching. This was the reason why His teaching 
 had such power. It was not altogether new 
 teaching. Men had long known most of the 
 duties which Jesus announced to them. His great 
 command : " Love the Lord thy God . . . and thy 
 neighbor as thyself," was taken from Moses. It 
 was even well known to the Jews, for a lawyer, 
 you remember, once quoted it to Christ. It is 
 possible to find anticipations of Christ's moral 
 teaching even in heathen writers. Some have im- 
 agined that it is necessary to show that all was 
 new with Christ; but it is neither necessary nor 
 is it true. 
 
 The unique power of Christ's moral teach- 
 ing lies in these facts : First, that it does not 
 include anything which the surest tests that men 
 can apply prove to be erroneous or false, whereas 
 heathen moralists, while uttering great truths, 
 unite them with folly or wrong. Then, secondly, 
 Christ's moral teaching shows the highest sense 
 of proportion between duties and the grouping of 
 them round the fundamental principle, so that 
 
THE WAY, THE TRUTH, AND THE LIP^E 129 
 
 they make the impression of one great thought, 
 and grow out of one great principle, the thought 
 and principle of love. But, thirdly, Christ's unique 
 power as a teacher of morals lies in the fact that 
 He embodied in His own life His whole teaching. 
 Did He teach the love of God and man ? His 
 life expressed just that; for His whole career was 
 nothing but the utterance of love to God and to 
 man. Did He teach the duty of personal, sincere, 
 absolute righteousness ? Did He teach humility 
 and meekness and purity? Did He say, "As 
 ye would that men should do to you, do ye also 
 to them likewise " ? Did He say, '* Love your 
 enemies, bless them that curse you " ? I need not 
 remind you that all this was pictured in His own 
 condition and character for the admiration and 
 imitation of mankind. He could say, " I am the 
 truth." He gives us not a theory of condition nor 
 a treatise on morality, but an actual life, in which 
 all that is good stands forth in real existence. He 
 could say, ** Follow Me ; for all the truth concern- 
 ing what man should be I am." This was the 
 main cause of His moral power. This is its main 
 cause now. This excludes Him from comparison 
 with all other teachers. He was and is in the 
 sphere of moral character all that He taught to 
 be the truth. 
 
 9 
 
I30 THE SINLESS CHRIST 
 
 Then consider, still more particularly, that 
 Christ's teaching about salvation and the way in 
 which we may secure it rests upon and grows 
 out of what He is, so that if you were to take 
 Him away from under it, the whole doctrine 
 would fall in a minute to the ground. This will 
 appear if we look at it from several points of 
 view. 
 
 Christ has told the world of God's love for 
 the sinful. The supreme truth which Christianity 
 proclaims is not that God will punish the impeni- 
 tent. Conscience and the Mosaic law had al- 
 ready proclaimed that, and Christianity simply 
 reaffirms it. Its proper message is that man may 
 be saved from sin and from its consequences. It 
 speaks to a perishing, lost race, telling them that 
 God is like a father waiting for the return of his 
 wandering son ; nay, that He has sent forth an 
 invitation to men to seek again His face and 
 home. He is reconciling the world unto Himself 
 He would have all men to be saved. He desires 
 not the death of the sinner, but rather that he 
 should turn from his sins and live. Whosoever 
 will, let him come and take the water of life 
 freely. Above all the truths which Christianity 
 proclaims, this soars out as the sun above the 
 stars ; it gleams as the diamond among jewels. 
 
THE WAY, THE TRUTH, AND THE LIFE 131 
 
 But how do we know it to be the truth ? Solely 
 because Christ the Son of God came forth from 
 the Father to express in His life and work that 
 love. " God so loved the world, that He g-ave 
 His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth 
 in Him should not perish, but have everlasting 
 life." Christ is this truth. He is the love of 
 God personified, incarnate, made manifest. Take 
 Him away and the darkness returns again, for the 
 love of God becomes once more only a specula- 
 tion or a hope. He could have said, " I am the 
 love of God. I bear it in My being. I express 
 it. I prove it. I represent it, and its reality and 
 its power issue from what I am. I am this 
 truth." 
 
 Then, again, Christ has not only proclaimed 
 God's love, but He has insisted that the object 
 of it is to reconcile men with God, and that 
 salvation consists in nothing less than such real 
 reconciliation. Christ's teaching is based on the 
 recognition of sin as a fact, on guilt as requir- 
 ing atonement, on human life as in rebellion 
 against God. God's love. He said, has provided 
 a way by which the sinner may be reconciled to 
 God. Jesus did not speak of salvation as merely 
 escape from punishment. That is only its nega- 
 tive side. It consists in reunion of heart and life 
 
132 THE SINLESS CHRIST 
 
 with God. Eternal life is to know God. This is 
 to be a personal reconciliation, — a reunion of the 
 individual, not of the race or nation, — with His 
 Father. 
 
 It is a sublime scheme of redemption which 
 Christianity proclaims. It takes into account the 
 whole nature of God, — His holiness and His 
 love, His wisdom and His unchangeableness ; 
 and it shows how these may be satisfied and yet 
 the sinner saved. It takes into account also the 
 whole nature and need of man, — his guilt, requir- 
 ing atonement; his sinfulness, requiring renewal 
 of heart ; his ignorance, requiring revelation ; his 
 fear, requiring promises ; his doubts, requiring ar- 
 gument and patient education ; and shows how 
 all these may be recognized and satisfied, and so 
 the sinner be saved. The keynote of the whole 
 is reconciliation of man with God, and this truth 
 Jesus proclaimed in the plainest way. He called 
 sinners to repent. He said that He was going to 
 lay down His life as a ransom. He insisted that 
 each one must be born again. He sketched the 
 outline of the whole scheme when He said, " I in 
 them, and they in Me, that they may be made 
 perfect in one." This is His teaching. But mark 
 that it all depends on His being what, in the cir- 
 cumstances, He is required to be. He holds the 
 
THE WAY, THE TRUTH, AND THE LIFE 133 
 
 scheme together as a keystone holds the arch. 
 He is this truth concentrated, if I may so speak. 
 He shows us God and man united in His own 
 person. He is the sacrifice by which human 
 guilt may be removed. He is the power by 
 which the new nature is formed in us through the 
 Holy Ghost. He is the pledge of victory by 
 which our fears and doubts are vanquished. He 
 is the theme by knowing which our minds are 
 enlightened. In short, He is the reconciliation of 
 man and God ; and the enjoyment thereof by the 
 race of men will be obtained only as they partake 
 of Him. 
 
 Thus could He say, " I am the truth." He 
 could say so without figure. All Bible doctrine 
 is simply the interpretation of Christ, the expan- 
 sion, so to speak, of His personality and the fruit 
 from His life. All Christian duty is summed up 
 in the imitation of Christ. He is the alpha and 
 omega of God's thought, — the alphabet by which 
 we spell out religion and through which God 
 speaks to us. He is far more than the Founder 
 of Christianity, — He is Christianity, and all that 
 is Christian is an outgrowth from Him. Take 
 Him away, and the whole structure is left with- 
 out certainty, without proof, and without power. 
 Aye, He is the truth. There He stands in 
 
134 THE SINLESS CHRIST 
 
 human history, unrivaled and self-accrediting. As 
 the mists of ignorance are lifted He appears more 
 true than ever. As the mind tries the experiment 
 of other saviors, it turns with new conviction 
 back to Him. As it tests His word, its convic- 
 tions are again confirmed. The storms of con- 
 troversy may sweep away other beliefs, but they 
 die at His feet. He has stood the test of cen- 
 turies, and He is more convincingly true than 
 ever. He is the truth. He guarantees it. He 
 explains it, He embodies it, He makes it, — the 
 truth without which God would be hidden, im- 
 mortality veiled, and salvation a question. Jesus 
 Christ as an historical fact is the truth which 
 beyond all comparison with any other deserves 
 to be called fundamental and supreme. 
 
 But now, observe. He went further. Let us 
 briefly examine the other statement which He 
 joins to this : " I am the life." 
 
 It is to be understood, of course, in the same 
 way as the former. He did not say, " I am the 
 living One," as if He meant to afiirm His own 
 immortahty. That would have been true, but it 
 was clearly not His idea in this place. Nor did 
 He say, " I am life." That also would have been 
 true ; for John writes of the eternal Word, " In 
 Him was life." But Jesus said, " I am the life," 
 
THE WAY, THE TRUTH, AND THE LIFE 135 
 
 the life, that is, of renewed souls, the power which 
 alone can make humanity truly live, the moral 
 and spiritual vital force of the kingdom of heaven. 
 
 It is also evident, I think, that as His claim to 
 be the truth can be fairly explained only by some 
 such idea of His personality as that which the 
 apostles taught, so likewise His claim to be the 
 life can be fairly explained only by some such idea 
 of His spiritual relationship to His people as is 
 taught by the same witnesses. Indeed, in this 
 very chapter it is recorded that He said, " Because 
 I live, ye shall live also." " I am in My Father, 
 and ye in Me, and I in you." Such expressions 
 imply that the believer is united with Christ by 
 some invisible tie, corresponding to the depending 
 of branches on a vine, and of such a nature that 
 His life supports and works through theirs, and 
 His immortality pledges theirs. ** I am," He said, 
 " the life of God's people. They are to abide in 
 Me. I will dwell in them. We two shall have 
 one life. I will live in them and from them shall 
 bring forth the fruits of My power." 
 
 But, as in the former case, I would rather per- 
 suade you of the truth of this claim than discuss 
 its doctrinal meaning. 
 
 That Christ is the life of His own teaching, 
 I have already shown. His person gives power 
 
136 THE SINLESS CHRIST 
 
 to His moral commands — power to His doctrine 
 of salvation. On His being their force depends. 
 But is not this marvelously realized in the case of 
 all who recognize that truth ? Christ is a power 
 which men feel as a quickening touch. Account 
 for it as we may, when once He really obtains 
 hold of a human mind, He makes it live as it 
 never did before. Life and death are opposites, 
 and by thinking how dead to divine things men 
 are by nature, the meaning of new life becomes 
 clear. They do not love God though He is in- 
 finitely beautiful and good. They do not serve 
 others, save in a narrow way, though there is so 
 much need for service. They are indifferent to 
 the claims of many duties. They are absorbed in 
 selfish work and pleasure. They would be glad 
 if there were no God. 
 
 Is not this rightly called death ? It is the de- 
 struction of the best and purest sides of the hu- 
 man being, and the beginning of corruption and 
 moral decay. But is it not the fact that when 
 Christ obtains hold of a man, this death ceases 
 and its opposite begins ? We could point you 
 to cases as significant of His power as when 
 He called Lazarus from the grave or tlie young 
 man of Nain from his bier. Explain the process 
 as we may, the fact of a new life appears. Men 
 
THE WAY, THE TRUTH, AND THE LIFE 137 
 
 strive after new ideals. They are controlled by 
 new motives. They love new objects. They are 
 impelled by new energies. God becomes their 
 Father, righteousness their aim, and service their 
 desire. Thus Christ shows Himself the life of a 
 soul, and by every test of right living which we 
 can apply He proves Himself to be the author 
 of it. 
 
 Still further, He makes life for us in another 
 sense. We often call a thing our life which gives 
 us the most joy and peace. We all know that 
 life is more than drawing breath. Our life consists 
 in the value of the work that we are doing, or in 
 the sweetness of the pleasures that we are tasting ; 
 and I affirm that in this sense also Christ is the 
 life. For in the experience of those over whom 
 He does obtain control, He brings the utmost 
 satisfaction which man knows on earth. Nothing 
 is more disappointing in the end than a selfish, 
 worldly life. Nothing is more satisfying than a 
 Christian life. Christ gives us work to do which 
 is worth doing, and which when it is done does 
 not leave mere fatigue behind. He gives us the 
 object in life which is worth realizing and which 
 does not mock us when we reach it as do most of 
 the objects for which men strive. He gives us a 
 hope which is never disappointed, which always 
 
138 THE SINLESS CHRIST 
 
 has new promises in store when the lesser ones 
 have been enjoyed ; which shines as a star in the 
 darkest night of trouble and breaks like the rising 
 sun upon our dying eyes. He is the life of His 
 people, the eternal spring from which they draw 
 refreshing waters, the perfect satisfaction of their 
 immortal souls. 
 
 Then all this rises to a still more sublime idea. 
 He is the life of His people which was taken for 
 their sake, the life-blood. All this is true because 
 He really lives. We do not know how dependent 
 we are on Him any more than we realize how de- 
 pendent this world is on the sun. He is doing a 
 work for us day by day of which we receive the 
 benefits. He is protecting us from evil. He is 
 maintaining our cause before God. He is govern- 
 ing the world for the sake of His kingdom and its 
 subjects. He is giving us temporal blessing and 
 spiritual help. Thus He is making His truth 
 effective and applying it to our only too reluctant 
 minds. It is not the truth alone which saves, but 
 the Christ who comes to us through the truth ; 
 for He, not it, is the life of them who know and 
 test His power. 
 
 Does it seem to you doubtful that the world is 
 reaching the better life through the influence and 
 power of Christ in it ? Are there not thousands 
 
THE WAY. THE TRUTH. AND THE LIFE 
 
 139 
 
 upon thousands of men and women who seem to 
 you to have found in Him the best character and 
 the best aspirations that it is possible to have on 
 earth ? Do you not see the fruits of righteous- 
 ness and the flowers of holy grace being borne 
 upon this vine ? Is it not a wonder to you that 
 those who deny themselves the most for Him find 
 the most pleasure in His service, and that those 
 who follow Him the most closely are the best and 
 happiest of men ? Surely these are sufficient 
 signs of the still better life which is beginning and 
 which will be made perfect in God's house above. 
 If so, with what perfect truth could Jesus say, 
 *' I am the life." 
 
 Now mark the conclusion and climax. If He 
 be thus the truth and the life, then He is, indeed, 
 the way. Taking this truth, sharing this life, a 
 man is fast journeying toward God. Christ can 
 now truly say, " I am the way." Elsewhere He 
 said, " I am the door: by Me if any man enter in, 
 he shall be saved." To receive Him as the truth, 
 to accept Him as the life, is to enter through the 
 door and to go along the way which leads straight 
 to God. 
 
 Are you in this way ? In Christ you are safe. 
 If not, will you not enter it ? There is no other 
 way. You need atonement, and His blood alone 
 
HO THE SINLESS CHRIST 
 
 cleanses from all sin. You need divine love, and 
 He is that love. You need instruction, and He is 
 the truth. You need power, and He is the life. 
 Imagine a man lost in a forest, — baffled, afraid, in 
 danger, lost, — finding a man, a woodsman. Could 
 the latter not say, " I am the way " ? Following 
 his guidance, depending on his knowledge, trust- 
 ing his word, the lost man finds his deliv^erance. 
 So, I may say, amid the confusion of this world, 
 ignorant and lost are we, and unto us Christ 
 comes, saying, " I am the way," and following His 
 guidance, depending on His knowledge, trusting 
 His word, we shall escape and be delivered. 
 What I have said to prove that He is the truth 
 and the life, ought to convince all that He is the 
 way. I point you to Him. I invite you to Him. 
 He that foUoweth this way shall not walk in dark- 
 ness, but shall have the light of life. 
 
VII 
 EARTHLY AND HEAVENLY LIGHTS 
 
1 
 
 i 
 
VII 
 
 EARTHLY AND HEAVENLY LIGHTS 
 
 *' And the city had no need of the sun, neither of the moon, 
 to shine in it : for the glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb 
 is the light thereof. — Rev. xxi, 23. 
 
 *' And they need no candle, neither light of the sun ; for the 
 Lord God giveth them light." — Rev. xxii. 5. 
 
 St. John's description of the new Jerusalem, 
 which in vision he beheld coming down from God, 
 prepared as a bride adorned for her husband, is 
 often regarded as a description of heaven. It is 
 so, but only because it is much more. It is a de- 
 scription of the ideal state of the Church, the 
 realization of her life in her best form, the sym- 
 bolical picture of that which she is to be and 
 toward which she is continually to strive. This 
 ideal state will no doubt be fully attained only 
 when that final condition of things arrives to which 
 we give preeminently the name of heaven. If we 
 reserve that term for the great consummation 
 which lies beyond the resurrection and the judg- 
 ment, for that new heaven and earth in which will 
 dwell righteousness, for that distant age and place 
 
 143 
 
144 THE SINLESS CHRIST 
 
 of which we know neither the time nor the loca- 
 tion, but to w^hich as to an indisputable reality we 
 are pointed, both by our own hopes of immortaHty 
 and yet more plainly by the Christian Scriptures ; 
 if, I say, we confine the term heaven to this final 
 happy state of human existence, we may be con- 
 fident that then and there first will the ideal of 
 Christian life be attained by the myriads of the 
 redeemed. 
 
 But while we thus look forward we should not 
 forget that the ultimate result will be the out- 
 growth of those spiritual forces which are even now 
 acting upon and in us. Heaven will be the prod- 
 uct of the better life which by God's grace has 
 already begun. It will not be established by any 
 reversal of the laws under which we now are, but 
 by their triumph. It will be the fruit of the seed 
 planted here. It will be the glorious issue of the 
 gospel which we now believe. It is an ideal, hov- 
 ering as it were over our present faulty and strug- 
 gling lives, an ideal toward which we are to strive, 
 the spirit of which we are as much as possible to 
 realize, and an ideal which by our faith in God and 
 Christ we may be certain will not vanish as we 
 approach it, but will be finally and forever estab- 
 lished. 
 
 This view of the matter is important. It makes 
 
EARTHLY AND HEAVENLY LIGHTS 145 
 
 us see that what the Bible says about heaven is 
 not in the least disconnected with our present 
 duty. It is a practical doctrine when thus viewed. 
 It is not a mere dream of minds weary with pres- 
 ent toil and care, not a mere refuge for souls dis- 
 heartened by the daily battle of life, not a mere 
 compensation for present losses, not, as we so often 
 wrongly make it, a contrast with that we now 
 possess. It is a promise for those who toil, that 
 they shall not be unrewarded, an assurance of the 
 worth of that which now is in Christian experience 
 of the grandeur of that in which it will issue. 
 
 The farmer should not dreami of an abundant 
 harvest while he idles away his time and lets his 
 fields go to waste. His dream of harvest ought to 
 drive him to the plow and to incessant care for 
 the delicate, springing grain. The citizen must not 
 dream of an old age of fame and wealth and 
 leisure, if he takes his leisure in youth and does 
 not bend his energies to the hard toil which pres- 
 ent opportunity offers him. This dream has no 
 possibility of being realized unless he now works 
 and lays the foundations of the future by industry 
 of hand, culture of brain, and refinement of heart. 
 So our Christian dreams of heaven are to be kept 
 in contact with our earthly life. In very scanty 
 measure have they been given us at all in the 
 10 
 
146 THE SINLESS CHRIST 
 
 pages of the Bible, and then manifestly with the 
 purpose of impeUing us to a right use of our 
 present lives and of the agencies which Christ has 
 established on earth for the service of God and 
 man. 
 
 So you will observe that John's description of 
 the holy city consists to a considerable degree 
 of negations. " There shall be no more death, 
 neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be 
 any more pain." " I saw," he says, " no temple 
 therein." "There shall be no more curse." "There 
 shall be no night there." But these negations of 
 evil are reported as the result of the possession 
 of positive good w^hich by its unobstructed energy 
 has driven the evil away. God has made all 
 things new, and therefore the former things are 
 passed away. The Lord God Almighty and the 
 Lamb are the temple of it, and therefore he saw 
 no temple therein. The throne of God and of 
 the Lamb shall be in it and His servants shall 
 serve Him, and therefore there shall be no more 
 curse. The glory of God did lighten it and the 
 Lamb is the light thereof, and therefore there 
 shall be no night there ; and they need no candle, 
 neither light of the sun. 
 
 In other words, the fullness of life, knowledge, 
 and enjoyment has destroyed every trace of death, 
 
EARTHLY AND HEAVENLY LIGHTS 147 
 
 ignorance, and sorrow. The mingled good and 
 evil which we now meet exists no more. The 
 clouds no more obscure the sun. Disease no 
 more attacks the vital powers. The exuberant 
 vitality of the redeemed souls has shaken off 
 the possibility of evil, and round the Hfe of God 
 in man a new world has formed, one irradiated by 
 the truth, beatified by the love, purified by the 
 Spirit, rejoicing in the presence of God and the 
 Lamb. All this triumph of good over evil is the 
 splendid fruitage of the seed which was sown in 
 tears and nourished through the conflicts of time 
 by the Christ and His people. 
 
 Now I venture to call your attention to one 
 item of the apostle's description which contains 
 a specially valuable suggestion, under its figura- 
 tive form, concerning both our present duty and 
 future hopes. Amid the glories of ideal pictures, 
 John observes the absence of any need of light- 
 giving bodies, because all is illuminated by the 
 brilliant outshining of God and the Lamb. It 
 needs no argument to prove that his language 
 is figurative and symbolical. Light is in Scrip- 
 ture the commonest emblem of knowledge, par- 
 ticularly of moral and spiritual knowledge, and 
 God as the source of this is called by tliis same 
 appellation, — Light itself There would seem 
 
148 THE SINLESS CHRIST 
 
 then to be little room for doubt as to the mean- 
 ing of this feature of the inspired and inspiring 
 vision. He means to say that the imperfect, par- 
 tial, temporary lights by which we now live are 
 to be made needless by the supreme manifesta- 
 tion of Himself which God through Christ will 
 make. Let me try to unfold the ideas which 
 seem to be contained in this pictured thought. 
 First, there is the implication that the lights 
 by which we now live are in a sense imperfect. 
 They are small and chiefly dull ; they are meant 
 to serve a temporary purpose. As I have said, 
 the language is the language of symbol and 
 figure. What John meant to say may perhaps 
 be most clearly seen if we use as an illustra- 
 tion of the text the verse which precedes it. 
 " I saw," John there says, " no temple there- 
 in." We can understand what that meant to 
 a Christian Jew. The temple was the supreme 
 symbol of the Jewish faith. It was the place 
 where God dwelt among His people. Its rites 
 illustrated the way in which God was to be ap- 
 proached by man. It was the concrete expres- 
 sion of the old dispensation. It was the em- 
 bodiment of revelation so far as that had then 
 been made. Consequently, for him to see no 
 temple in the new Jerusalem was as much as 
 
EARTHLY AND HEAVENLY LIGHTS 149 
 
 to say that the old means of teaching, the old ex- 
 pressions of the truth, have passed away. He 
 now says that God and the Lamb are the temple 
 of it. The type has been fulfilled and so has 
 ceased to be needed ; the reality which it fore- 
 shadowed has been reached. The ideal has so 
 far been attained and the temporary structure 
 and the temporary rites which prepared for that 
 ideal have done their work and passed away. 
 In like manner does he speak in our text ; only 
 now his view is broader. All the lights by which 
 men now live are but preparations for a better, 
 Man's whole life on earth is to the grander 
 future what the Hebrew dispensation was to 
 the Christian age. We are still in the region 
 of types, though of a greater and less evident 
 kind than those of Moses, and while the lights 
 we live by are as the sun to a candle when com- 
 pared with what is past, they are but as candles 
 themselves when compared with what is to 
 come. 
 
 Thus, reason is one of the lights we now live 
 by; and yet it is not hard to show that reason 
 is but a candle-power illuminating dimly to us 
 the spiritual world. Some men profess to make 
 reason the sole guide of belief and life, but it 
 does not require much agility in logic to show 
 
I50 
 
 THE SINLESS CHRIST 
 
 that on the deepest questions which harass human 
 thought reason has httle or nothing to say. I do 
 not mean for one moment to disparage the use 
 of reason even in religion, but simply to suggest 
 that its power and its authority are limited. By 
 reason is meant the intelligence with which we 
 are endowed, the power of observation and re- 
 flection which distinguish man from the brute. 
 These are not to be disparaged save when they 
 claim for themselves a power which can be shown 
 not to belong to them. But certainly reason 
 can form conclusions only upon the basis of 
 evidence which has been presented to it. It can 
 scan and meditate upon the external world and 
 draw its conclusions as to the forces which are 
 operating there, as to its past history, so far as 
 records of this remain, and as to its present 
 use. It can examine the mind likewise and 
 draw its conclusions concerning the constitution 
 of the mind and its relation to external things. 
 Reason can study the experience of the past and 
 infer therefrom what is probably the wisest course 
 for men to follow now. It can reflect and specu- 
 late and draw its inference concerning both things 
 seen and things unseen. But it can act only on 
 the evidence presented it. If there be any sphere 
 of which it has had no experience it can tell us 
 
EARTHLY AND HEAVENLY LIGHTS 151 
 
 nothing. Even when it can tell us something, 
 there is much that it cannot understand. 
 
 Moreover, it is a very delicate instrument of 
 knowledge, easily thrown out of order. Let one 
 trifling element of a problem be unobserved, and 
 the conclusions of reason are valueless. Let 
 prejudice or personal preference influence it and 
 it follows instead of leading the will, so that while 
 reason is one of the two or three noblest prerog- 
 atives of man, and while every intelligent person 
 is responsible for the use he makes of it, he is 
 a bold advocate indeed who does not admit that 
 it is a partial and imperfect light to hve by. 
 What certain answer can it make about the char- 
 acter of God or His will concerning the future, 
 or the means of man's salvation ? This, in fact, 
 is substantially the conclusion to which even 
 unbelief has come itself, for after centuries of 
 conflict, and after the world has seen gigantic 
 webs of speculation spun by the alleged reason 
 of mankind, the result has been, professed ag- 
 nosticism. This seems to me a considerable 
 gain : for it at least confesses that on skeptical 
 principles we can know nothing of the deeper 
 problems which never cease to press upon the 
 human mind. 
 
 So, too, conscience is one of the lights we live 
 
152 THE SINLESS CHRIST 
 
 by, which again can be shown to be but a partial 
 and imperfect guide. Conscience throws a hght 
 which reason, apart from it, does not throw ; 
 namely, it reveals to us that there is a difference 
 between right and wrong, and that every man is 
 under supreme obligation to do what is right. It 
 is scarcely credible that this should be if there 
 were not a moral Lawgiver over the world, and 
 hence conscience, like the moon, may be said to 
 reflect a light from a source higher than itself 
 Yet conscience is but a partial light. It too only 
 acts on evidence presented to us, tells us that of 
 two courses, perhaps, one is right and the other 
 wrong, but it does not tell us of itself all that is 
 right or all that we ought to do. Moreover it is 
 easily blinded, easily bewildered, sometimes like a 
 bad compass pointing in the wrong direction. It 
 has inspired and justified deeds of horrible cruelty 
 and tyranny. It may be so dull of ear as scarcely 
 to hear the demand made on it for a decision. It 
 may mistake forms for realities. It needs itself to 
 be enlightened and quickened in order even to do 
 its own proper work. 
 
 Now I add that even revelation is but a partial 
 and in one sense an imperfect light. The Bible 
 does not pretend to give us all the truth, not even 
 all the truth about God. It does not attempt to 
 
EARTHLY AND HEAVENLY LIGHTS 153 
 
 solve all the weighty questions which inquiring 
 minds are anxious to put to it. Nothing is more 
 noteworthy than its reserve and its silence when 
 taken in connection with its claims and its teach- 
 ings. No one judges it aright who does not keep 
 in mind the limitations which it puts upon itself. 
 Even the apostle Paul wrote, " Now we see in a 
 mirror darkly, . . . now I know in part." The 
 Bible throws its light preeminently upon the one 
 great question of man's redemption from sin. 
 Here it is like the sun, and the light it throws is 
 clear and beautiful. In this it reveals what reason 
 could not have discovered, namely, redemption ; 
 what conscience would never have made certain, 
 namely, forgiveness. But as the sun does not 
 illuminate the vast universe beyond our system, 
 so the Bible was not meant to cast its light on the 
 entire universe of spirits. True, by its aid we 
 may obtain glimpses that otherwise would be 
 closed to us, suggestions that serve at least to 
 warn us against opposing theories. But its light 
 falls upon the Christ. It is written, as John said 
 his gospel was, that we might believe on the name 
 of the only begotten Son of God. Brilliant is its 
 light when compared with what we would have 
 without it, but it is so manifestly adapted to be 
 man's present guide in practical duty that it is in 
 
154 THE SINLESS CHRIST 
 
 no wise derogatory to its claims to say that it is 
 not and does not pretend to be a complete dis- 
 closure of truth to the human mind even about 
 God. 
 
 Such are examples of the lights which shine 
 here. I do not say the apostle meant them, but 
 they exhibit his idea. 
 
 Now the practical importance of these facts is 
 sometimes very great. They bear in two direc- 
 tions. On the one hand, they warn us against 
 being unduly distressed because these lights, and 
 particularly the Bible, do not tell us all we want 
 to know. Why will men find fault with the truth 
 which has been made known because more is not 
 made known? Because they have an exaggerated 
 idea of what is possible under present circum- 
 stances, because they impute to the Bible, in par- 
 ticular, claims which it does not make. When 
 you are given a guide book you do not expect it 
 to be an encyclopedia. When you are given a 
 compass you do not expect it to be a telescope. 
 There are many things in relation to God and to 
 ourselves about which we have as yet no means 
 of information, and he who for that reason quar- 
 rels with what we may know, acts on a princi- 
 ple according to which he would not think of 
 acting in any other sphere of life. For, on the 
 
EARTHLY AND HEAVENLY LIGHTS 155 
 
 other hand, the lisrht we have is real Horht, even 
 though it do not illuminate all things. The can- 
 dle does giv^e some light even though it be not 
 sunlight. Reason is trustworthy so far as it goes 
 and when acting fairly. Conscience is an au- 
 thority the commands of which we are bound to 
 obey, though we must try to educate it. Above 
 all, the Bible is true. The Christ whom it dis- 
 closes is real. The life to which it points is the 
 best. The knowledge of God which it gives is 
 real knowledge. If a man can obtain fifty per 
 cent of a bad debt he would better take it than 
 take nothing ; and the truths of reason, conscience, 
 and revelation are not to be despised because 
 they are not all we want to have. They are the 
 lights we have to live by. We may trust so 
 far as they shine, and that man does not seem 
 to be a wise one who refuses to make the most 
 of what he does possess. 
 
 All this, however, belongs to the negative 
 aspect of the text. Let us now turn to the posi- 
 tive. If it be true that the lights we now live 
 by are partial and imperfect, it is also true that 
 a brighter light, yea, the brightest of all lights, 
 is to take their place to the eye of the Christian 
 believer. The ideal day is pictured by the apos- 
 tle. It is a day without a sun. It is a day with- 
 
156 THE SINLESS CHRIST 
 
 out ending. It is a day of cloudless brilliance. 
 These, as I have said, are emblematical expres- 
 sions, pointing to the gloriously complete knowl- 
 edge into which the believer is moving. He is 
 ever advancing into the light. He sails eastward 
 tow^ard an ever-rising sun. With his entrance 
 into the kingdom the light first broke upon his 
 mind, and with his journey upward it grows in 
 brightness, until at last he shall no longer know 
 in part, but know as he is known. So John repre- 
 sents the fullness of Christian illumination in his 
 picture of the holy city which has no need of 
 the sun, neither of the moon to shine in it, for 
 the glory of God lightens it, and the Lamb is 
 the light thereof If now we translate this lan- 
 guage into common prose, what are we to under- 
 stand as the apostle's idea of the brighter light 
 by which the lights we now live by are to be 
 made unnecessary? 
 
 He evidently means first to represent by it 
 the consequence of perfect fellowship of the soul 
 of man with God. He pictures a life in which 
 the thought is in absolute sympathy with God's 
 mind, the heart in absolute accord with God's 
 character, the will in absolute harmony with God's 
 purposes. It is the life of those who in every 
 part of their being have been reconciled to God, 
 
 I 
 
EARTHLY AND HEAVENLY LIGHTS 157 
 
 not merely forgiven, but restored, and who dwell 
 with Him not only in the sense of being citizens 
 of His holy city, but in the deeper sense of being 
 in personal communion with Him. This picture 
 is but the symbolical representation of the per- 
 fection of that life which he claimed to be even 
 now the portion of Christ's people when he said 
 in* his first epistle, " Our fellowship is with the 
 Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ." Now 
 we know that, even in secular affairs, when a man 
 habituates himself to the study of any particular 
 subject he attains an expert knowledge of it so 
 that he is able to derive information from it which 
 others never could derive, so that he sees at a 
 glance the bearing on it of new facts and is able 
 in turn to test alleged facts by it. We know 
 likewise that through long and intimate associ- 
 ation two friends may come to know each other's 
 mind, almost to read each other's thoughts, to 
 become, so to speak, merged in each other's life, 
 till in a true sense they are no longer two, but one. 
 Every earnest Christian knows that something 
 of the same sort takes place between himself and 
 God. As he studies the Scriptures, as he habituates 
 himself to prayer, as he learns more and more 
 to think of God and to obey Him, as he medi- 
 tates upon God's revealed character and will, he 
 
158 THE SINLESS CHRIST 
 
 obtains a knowledge of Him which is far more 
 profound than intellectual knowledge, the knowl- 
 edge which is born of sympathy, love, and coopera- 
 tion. Thus Paul prayed that he might know 
 Christ. Thus Christ said, " This is hfe eternal, 
 that they might know Thee the only true God, 
 and Jesus Christ, whom Thou hast sent." Even 
 in this world we may find those in whose hearts 
 God has been so manifestly revealed that we in- 
 stinctively feel that they can lead us nearer to 
 Him than any other channel can. It is the per- 
 fection of this experimental knowledge which I 
 suppose the apostle to picture to us in the life of 
 the new Jerusalem. There God will be intimately 
 known. No doubt will be possible. No fear 
 will ever cloud the consciousness of His presence. 
 No rebellion will ever call for the strings of con- 
 science to drive us back to duty. Love will be 
 unfettered. God's love will be a perpetual sun- 
 light answered in our love by a perpetual song 
 of praise. The redeemed will know Him ; and 
 the helps to knowledge which before they used 
 will be made needless by the personal fellowship 
 and the increased appreciation of His fatherhood 
 which, through the growth of their Christian 
 lives, they should attain. 
 
 Now notice still more particularly the apos- 
 
EARTHLY AND HEAVENLY LIGHTS 159 
 
 tie's language : " The glory of God did lighten 
 it." Men have often imagined that the height 
 of heavenly bliss will consist in what they have 
 called the beatific vision, by which they mean 
 that in some way to the purified spirits of the 
 just the Infinite One, of whom it is said that 
 He dwelleth in the light that no man can approach 
 unto, will be to their minds, as it were, visibly 
 made manifest. I do not know whether this idea 
 is true or false. But this is clear, that when the 
 spirits of just men are made perfect, and when 
 the soul is in every quality of its being reconciled 
 to God, His excellence will appear transcendently 
 real and supremely beautiful. This is His glory. 
 His glory is a term used to express God's re- 
 vealed excellence. We see it now in the wisdom 
 made manifest even by nature, in the power shown 
 by the creation and support of the universe, in 
 the goodness of Providence, in the holiness of 
 His moral law, in the righteousness of His deal- 
 ing, and, finally, and most supremely, in the love 
 of His redemption. To a beheving mind this 
 glory already appears, and I call you to witness, 
 fellow-Christians, if as we advance in our spiritual 
 life the glory of God has not become more beau- 
 tiful, more real, more sublime, until it has become 
 unspeakable. 
 
i6o THE SINLESS CHRIST 
 
 But I dare appeal to the experienced knowledge 
 of the universal Church, expressed in hymn and 
 prayer and meditation, that the beauty and maj- 
 esty, the greatness and the infinite goodness of 
 God are truths which fill the mind with light, 
 which quiet every dark inquiry, and shed profound 
 peace upon the restless, needy soul of man. This 
 light is to burn with greater and greater bright- 
 ness until it shines in its full splendor in the soul 
 of the redeemed. 
 
 Now to this he adds, " The Lamb is the 
 light thereof." This crowns the picture. This 
 unifies the description : for it tells us that the 
 Redeemer will be forever and forever the medium 
 by which God and man shall be made one. Evi- 
 dently the Christian will never outgrow Christ. 
 If he enters into the most intimate fellowship with 
 God so as immediately to know Him, it will still 
 be God in Christ that he will know. If the glory 
 of God appear to him in supreme splendor it still 
 will shine in the face and through the kindred 
 glory of Jesus Christ. In Christ there dwelleth 
 all the fullness of the Godhead. He is and will 
 ever be the revealer of God to man. It will al- 
 ways be true that he that hath seen Him hath seen 
 the Father. Already the believer begins to see 
 Christ's glory. Through Christ his fellowship on 
 
EARTHLY AND HEAVENLY LIGHTS i6i 
 
 earth with God is established. Through Christ 
 
 the Hght breaks in upon his darkened mind. Unto 
 
 all eternity God will become nearer because Christ 
 
 does, God will become clearer and more beautiful 
 
 as revealed in Christ, and the fullness of divine 
 
 life and truth which is in Jesus will be the medium 
 
 whereby the lights we now live by are eclipsed in 
 
 the light of that love which Christ has revealed 
 
 on Calvary, but with all eternity will never cease, 
 
 and which all the ages will never cease to adore. 
 
 I say the Christian will never outgrow Christ, but 
 
 Christ will always be to him the way, the truth, 
 
 and the life, the light not only of this world but 
 
 also of heaven. 
 
 Such, according to my understanding of his 
 
 words, was John's idea of the perfect light. He 
 
 presents it as the ideal of the Christian's life, and 
 
 what a worthy conception it creates of that blessed 
 
 estate which awaits us beyond the grave ! Does 
 
 not this really tell us more about heaven than any 
 
 literal description could do of the place where 
 
 heaven is or of the way in which we shall there 
 
 be employed ? Do not all the fancies which the 
 
 mind has ever devised seem poor in comparison 
 
 with these broad, yet clear outlines of perfect 
 
 spiritual life ? These give us the moral realities 
 
 of heaven, the principles on which life will there 
 u 
 
i62 THE SINLESS CHRIST 
 
 be passed, the principles which it is important for 
 us most to keep in mind if we would be meet for 
 the inheritance of the saints in light. " To dwell 
 with God, to feel His love, is the full heaven en- 
 joyed above," and to every man who has begun to 
 feel, that light within the mind is more important 
 than light to the eyes. To every man who has 
 begun to feel, that true life is a matter of the soul, 
 not of the body, and God is the light and life of 
 the soul ; to all such will the apostle's description 
 appear the very highest idea of heaven which can 
 possibly be conceived. 
 
 But, you will now see, as I observed in the 
 beginning, that the description of this ideal state 
 touches very closely on our life now, so that 
 heaven appears as only the attainment of that for 
 which we all need to strive. This fellowship with 
 God, this perception of His glory, this life with 
 Christ, are begun on earth. Hence a new value is 
 given to these very lights which are said to be 
 eclipsed in a greater. I have said they are par- 
 tial. They are not perfect. But now I add that 
 by the use we make of them are we to prepare 
 for what is better. The light of reason is often 
 faltering and dim, but we are to use it now, and 
 when joined with faith it will train our power and 
 measurably direct our lives. Man will never cease 
 
EARTHLY AND HEAVENLY LIGHTS 163 
 
 to be a reasoning being, and only in the perfect 
 light of Christian experience reason will find its 
 noblest opportunity. As an independent light it 
 is insufficient, but in conjunction with the Spirit of 
 wisdom it will realize its true worth. So con- 
 science is to be enlightened and obeyed, and, 
 above all, the Scriptures are to be used and 
 trusted, fed upon and followed. 
 
 These are the hghts for us to liv^e by now. As 
 we use them, the light of God Himself will break 
 upon us. We are not to stumble at the fact that 
 they do not give us all the knowledge we want, 
 but are to use them so that they may lead our 
 minds upward and onward. Thus heaven is to 
 begin on earth. He who beheld the vision of it 
 turns in effect to tell us, ** Use well, use diligently 
 the light that has been given you. Walk in the 
 light. Obey Christ. Fill your minds with the 
 truth that has been revealed, for these are the 
 lights now made for us to live by, and while the 
 future light will far surpass them, it will do so 
 only for those who use them now and use them 
 well." 
 
 Ah ! we dream of heaven, but we do not realize 
 that it must begin on earth. The traveler at night 
 must follow the light which his guide holds, know- 
 ing that though it do not illumine the heavens, it 
 
i64 THE SINLESS CHRIST 
 
 at least shows him the way, and that when night 
 is past the sun will rise and the heaven be illu- 
 mined. So he who follows the light of truth, 
 which the Christ of the Bible holds in His hand, 
 will tread the narrow way in safety here, and when 
 the day dawns all the light he wants will be his. 
 He will see it breaking, see it brightening, until at 
 last he shall see it in all its heavenly splendor, 
 when he shall need no candle, neither light of the 
 sun, for the Lord God shall give him light that 
 will never pass away. 
 
VIII 
 THE WAITING DEAD 
 
VIII 
 
 THE WAITING DEAD 
 
 " And when the days of his mourning were past, Joseph spake 
 unto the house of Pharaoh, saying. If now I have found grace in 
 your eyes, speak, I pray you, in the ears of Pharaoh, saying, My 
 father made me swear, saying, Lo, I die : in my grave which I 
 have digged for me in the land of Canaan, there shalt thou bury 
 me. . . . And Joseph said unto his brethren, I die : and God will 
 surely visit you, and bring you out of this land unto the land 
 which he sware to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. And Joseph 
 took an oath of the children of Israel, saying, God will surely 
 visit you, and ye shall carry up my bones from hence," — Gen. 1. 
 4, 5. 24, 25. 
 
 Genesis closes with the account of the burial 
 of two of its most illustrious characters, and we 
 are impressed with the fact that men, whose an- 
 cestors had been called from a distant land to 
 Canaan and who had there lived quiet and com- 
 paratively humble lives, were laid to rest amid the 
 mourning and with all the honors of the court 
 of Egypt. It seems to have been a splendid car- 
 avan which bore to the old tomb in Machpelah 
 the remains of Jacob. He was escorted not by 
 his sons alone, but by the chariots and horsemen 
 
 167 
 
i68 THE SINLESS CHRIST 
 
 of Pharaoh. It was the burial of a prince. Gen- 
 tile and Hebrew united to do reverence to the 
 father of Joseph. The Egyptian court went into 
 mourning. So large was the escort, so royal were 
 the signs of grief, that the inhabitants of Canaan 
 were moved by the spectacle to exclaim, " This is 
 a grievous mourning to the Egyptians." 
 
 When, many years later, Joseph in turn died, he 
 was carried, doubtless, to his sepulcher with even 
 greater pomp. If Jacob were worthy of such a 
 funeral at the hands of Egypt, how much more 
 was Joseph — the savior of their land! Joseph, 
 indeed, was buried in Egypt. Jacob had lived 
 there but a few years, and it was natural that his 
 remains should be returned to the old home. 
 But Joseph was identified with Egypt. Accord- 
 ing to the rites of Egyptian society was he laid to 
 rest, followed by the gratitude and honor of both 
 his kinsmen and the people and dynasty whom he 
 had served so well. This first book of the Bible 
 thus dismisses from its pages the sacred house- 
 hold of Abraham by laying upon the tombs of 
 Jacob and Joseph the honorable tributes of 
 heathen and believer alike. 
 
 You will note, however, that both these men 
 died with their thoughts fixed on the return of 
 Israel to Canaan, and with hopes built on the 
 
THE WAITING DEAD 169 
 
 promises made to Abraham. Joseph expressed 
 his faith in words. Though to be himself buried 
 in Egypt, he exacted an oath from his brethren, 
 to be handed down to the time of the exodus, that 
 they should carry his bones with them to the 
 promised land. Not in Egypt would he rest, but 
 in the land of promise, as though in his future 
 tomb he would be able to share in the future 
 glories of his people. Jacob expressed the same 
 thing by his request for an immediate burial in 
 Canaan. Canaan, not Egypt, was the home of 
 Israel. There the promises of God were to be 
 fulfilled ; and it was the wish of Jacob to rest with 
 Abraham and Isaac, in the hope, perhaps, that 
 together they might rise to share in the joy of 
 coming blessing. 
 
 These men died, therefore, in hope — Canaan 
 was their home. Canaan was to be the possession 
 of their children. Canaan was to witness the 
 kingdom of the future, the glory of Israel, the 
 advent of the promised Prince of peace. To them 
 death, therefore, was but a season of waiting. 
 They do not seem to have considered it as cutting 
 them off from the traditional hopes of their race. 
 Jacob in Machpelah, Joseph embalmed in Egypt, 
 were but waiting for the time to come in the prog- 
 ress of events when in some way with their de- 
 
I70 THE SINLESS CHRIST 
 
 scendants they should partake in the possession 
 of the promised land. 
 
 The burial of the patriarchs, therefore, suggests 
 the thought of the waiting dead, of the dead as 
 waiting for something to happen whereby their 
 own joys would be made complete. Thus the 
 men of old times were gathered to their fathers, 
 and thus we also lay our believing friends to rest. 
 While the Bible sheds but little light upon the 
 world beyond the grave, while it refuses to answer 
 many questions that trembling voices raise, this 
 representation of the dead as waiting is found in 
 the New as well as in the Old Testament, and is 
 meant to have practical influence upon us who are 
 still alive. For what, for whom do they wait? 
 And how? 
 
 The answer is, first, that they are waiting for 
 the living. In what sense they thus wait is made 
 evident by the expressed hopes of the patriarchs. 
 As I have said, these men died thinking less, so 
 far as is recorded, of their own happiness imme- 
 diately after death and more of the blessing 
 which one day was to come to their descendants. 
 They do not seem to have thought that they 
 would be by death excluded from it. They had 
 themselves laid to rest, therefore, in the promised 
 land. Therefore it was that Abraham bought 
 
THE WAITING DEAD 171 
 
 Machpelah from the sons of Heth. Therefore it 
 was that Isaac and Jacob were laid in the same 
 rocky sepulcher. Therefore Joseph gave com- 
 mandment concerning his bones. They were 
 looking to the future, not so much to the world 
 beyond death itself as to the world which was to 
 come on earth, to the fulfillment on earth of the 
 promises to Abraham. They seem to have 
 thought of death mainly as a resting with the 
 fathers who were already dead until their children 
 should have inherited the land and received the 
 glory, and through the promised seed, the 
 Shiloh, have become a blessing to all people. 
 
 Emphatically, therefore, these dead were wait- 
 ing for the living. 
 
 Now it may be well just at this point to recall 
 the few items of information concerning the state 
 of the dead immediately after death which may 
 be gleaned with tolerable certainty from the 
 Scriptures. As I have said, the Scriptures reveal 
 little more than a few general truths. What we 
 may learn from them is rather in the way of cor- 
 recting error than of disclosing possible informa- 
 tion. To the old patriarchs the grave was even 
 darker than it is to us. Little by little, however, 
 light shone into it with the progress of revela- 
 tion, until by Christ's resurrection life and immor- 
 
172 THE SINLESS CHRIST 
 
 tality have been brought to Hght ; and though 
 the grave be still in the twilight, though the 
 forms there be shadowy, we may see enough to 
 give us great joy and to add new force to the 
 doctrine before us of the dead as waiting for the 
 living. 
 
 Thus we may be certain that the dead are not 
 unconscious. We say they are asleep, but w^e 
 only mean that they seem to be. Their souls are 
 not asleep. There is no break in the continuity 
 of their life. The very phrase used in the Old 
 Testament, that they have been gathered unto 
 their fathers, would seem to imply this, for we 
 hardly suppose it to mean merely that their 
 bodies have been laid in the ancestral tomb. 
 Twice the phrase is used when this was certainly 
 not the case. At any rate, the revelations of 
 later Scriptures made this perfectly certain. Who 
 were those visitors from the other world whom 
 the disciples saw talking w^ith Christ on the 
 Mount of Transfiguration ? They were Moses 
 and Elijah, w^ho years before had passed into the 
 other world, and who there were evidently inter- 
 ested in the progress of events on earth, since 
 they came to commune with the Christ for whom 
 on earth they had looked. What was Paul's 
 view of death, as he viewed the possibility of it 
 
THE WAITING DEAD 173 
 
 for himself? It was " to depart, and to be with 
 Christ ; which is far better." That impHes a con- 
 scious hfe immediately after death, so that we are 
 not surprised to read in the Apocalypse of visions 
 of the saints in glory or that at the end Jesus 
 will return with ten thousands of His saints. 
 The dead, therefore, are not unconscious; when 
 we say that they are waiting we mean it literally, 
 — they are expecting and looking forward to the 
 object of their hope. 
 
 Then, again, we may be certain that the state 
 of the dead is not one of probation. This was 
 the idea of the wise man when he wrote, " What- 
 soever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy 
 might; for there is no work, nor device, nor 
 knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither 
 thou goest." This is beyond doubt the reason 
 why the Scriptures declare so emphatically that 
 this life is a probation — " Now is the accepted 
 time ; now is the day of salvation." " It is ap- 
 pointed unto men," we read, *' once to die, but 
 after this the judgment"; and at the latter men 
 are to be judged for the deeds done in the body. 
 
 I know that the idea of a probation after death 
 is now a favorite one, but it is held in the face of 
 the whole drift of revelation. I think it alto- 
 gether more Scriptural to abide by the view that 
 
174 THE SINLESS CHRIST 
 
 at death destiny is fixed ; the children of God go 
 to their place and the children of the Wicked 
 One to theirs. This does not mean, however, that 
 the reunion of the one or the misery of the other 
 is complete. On the contrary, they are waiting, 
 as we shall see. Only we may be sure that the 
 believing dead, — for it is of these we are speak- 
 ing, — do not wait in any uncertainty. Their lot 
 is fixed. They rest in hope. They wait in peace. 
 They are not passing through any more proba- 
 tion. All that is ended. Their struggles, their 
 battles, are over. They rest from their labors. 
 They are in Abraham's bosom. They are in the 
 arms of Christ. 
 
 Now it almost necessarily follows from what 
 has been said that the state of believers after 
 death is one of complete happiness and entire 
 holiness. It is just here that we lack much 
 information that tearful eyes have sought to dis- 
 cover. But we recall again the words of the 
 apostle, " To depart, and to be with Christ," and 
 we are sure that to be with Christ is to be happy, 
 that it is to be also holy, — for who could be in 
 His presence in glory without being purified? 
 That it is to possess more knowledge and power 
 and joy than now we can well conceive. How 
 could they rest from labors if not holy, when the 
 
THE WAITING DEAD 175 
 
 greatest object of their labors is to attain holi- 
 ness ? 
 
 But what the external conditions of existence 
 are in this intermediate state we know not, and I 
 have no wish to speculate. By what organs the 
 soul shall take part in the life of that dim world 
 we can only guess. That there, too, as on earth, 
 there will be a process of growth and spiritual 
 development in behevers, we may fairly suppose, 
 while admitting their sinlessness. That the ab- 
 sence of earth and flesh, and the presence of 
 Christ and the glorified will give free play to the 
 spiritual life of the soul, and will at once banish 
 sin as well as temptation, sorrow as well as care, 
 we seem to have reason to believe. Then are the 
 spirits of just men made perfect, and the believer 
 in Jesus may be laid to rest in the confidence that 
 he has already entered into the joy of his Lord, 
 has already tasted the sweets of his Saviour's 
 presence, has already been blessed by entering 
 into the life of the family of God. 
 
 Yet it is none the less true that the dead are 
 waiting, and waiting for the living, — not rest- 
 lessly, not unhappily, but eagerly and with vivid 
 anticipation, we may suppose. Nor do I mean 
 merely that they are waiting for the living to join 
 them in the other world. No doubt this also is 
 
176 THE SINLESS CHRIST 
 
 true. They carry with them the remembrance of 
 those they loved on earth, and doubtless will be 
 glad to welcome them when in God's time they 
 too are summoned hence. They w^ait, I doubt 
 not, to see the harvest gathered from the seeds of 
 love and truth which they sowed in the hearts of 
 others, to see the fulfillment of the prayers perhaps 
 whose answer they were not permitted to see on 
 earth. They wait for the living, and if it be pos- 
 sible, they gladly join in the anthems of praise 
 which give fresh glory to Christ as one and 
 another of His people take their places in the 
 happy throng. 
 
 But this is not the main sense in which they are 
 said to be waiting for the living. This is not the 
 sense in which we have spoken of Jacob and 
 Joseph as waiting for their children. These pa- 
 triarchs died in the hope, as I have said, of Israel's 
 return to Canaan, of Israel's glory in the promised 
 land, in the hope of the fulfillment on earth to 
 Israel of all the promises of God. The great 
 truth, therefore, is that the dead are waiting for 
 the living to work out and establish, under God, 
 the promised kingdom of Christ. What was it 
 that Moses and Elijah were most interested in, if 
 we may judge from their words at the Transfigura- 
 tion ? Wc read that they spoke of the decease 
 
THE WAITING DEAD 177 
 
 which Jesus was about to accomplish at Jerusa- 
 lem. Ah ! they had been waiting in the other 
 world for the coming of the Christ, for the prom- 
 ised glory to dawn on Israel in the flesh, for the 
 great sacrifice for human sin to be offered. Did 
 not Jesus say, "Abraham rejoiced to see My day : 
 and he saw it," — saw it doubtless from above, — 
 " and was glad " ? 
 
 Then do you not remember how Paul com- 
 forted the Thessalonian Christians by assuring 
 them that those who had fallen asleep in Christ 
 should rise first and share with the hving in the 
 future kingdom ? He too, it is evident, thought 
 of the dead as waiting for the providence of God 
 and the toil of the Church to work out in the liv- 
 ing world the appointed day of victory. So, finally, 
 John makes us hear the souls of the martyrs cry- 
 ing unto God, " How long, O Lord, holy and true, 
 dost Thou not judge and avenge our blood on 
 them that dwell on the earth " ? We are told that 
 white robes were given unto every one of them ; 
 and it was said unto them that they should rest 
 yet for a little season, until their fellow servants 
 also and their brethren, that should be killed as 
 they were, should be fulfilled. That is but a pic- 
 ture, made fearful by the lurid lights of the Apoc- 
 alypse, of the Church above waiting for the mis- 
 12 
 
178 THE SINLESS CHRIST 
 
 sion of the Church on earth to be carried out. 
 This, then, is the great idea which was in the 
 mind of the patriarchs when they died : In death 
 they were to wait for the hving to fulfill the work 
 of God for the generations following, to hasten on 
 the consummation, waiting for the wheels of 
 Providence to revolve, for the kingdom of the 
 Christ to come ; waiting for the living to receive 
 the fulfillment of the promise in the faith of which 
 they died. So thought the writer of the Epistle 
 to the Hebrews, for he concludes his familiar 
 catalogue of Hebrew believers with these words, 
 " These all, having obtained a good report through 
 faith, received not the promise: God having pro- 
 vided some better thing for us, that they " — 
 mark you — " that they without us should not be 
 made perfect." The dead are waiting for the 
 living to carry out the work of God. 
 
 Now this may put the facts before us in a some- 
 what unusual Hght, yet it is strange that we do 
 not think of it oftener, so evidently is this the 
 teaching of the Bible. We think of the dead as 
 only waiting for us to go to them. Or we speak 
 as if they had now lost interest in this world, as 
 if they had laid all thought of earth aside with 
 the tabernacles that they have left, as if they were 
 now absorbed in the things of heaven and had 
 
THE WAITING DEAD 179 
 
 forgotten the sphere in which the best of God's 
 redemption of man is being wrought out. But 
 how impossible would this be ! On the contrary, 
 they are waiting more eagerly than we for the 
 coming kingdom. Their supreme thought is of 
 the fulfillment of the promises to Christ. We im- 
 agine that their lesson to us would be, " Prepare 
 to die," but not so, — they would say, " Work 
 while it is called to-day. Prepare to live. Double 
 your energy, double your devotion, stop frittering 
 away hfe in mere pleasure or gain, wait and work, 
 as we worked and now wait, for the coming king- 
 dom. Hasten by all that is in you the day of the 
 Saviour's advent ! " 
 
 Therefore I say that the thought of the sainted 
 dead ought to be a grand inspiration to noble, 
 active Christian living. How do you think they 
 would live if they could again put on the armor 
 or again handle the plow ? Would they waste 
 hfe in play ? Would they doubt or falter ? Ah, 
 this is the message to us of the waiting dead ! 
 "Seeing we also are compassed about with so 
 great a cloud of w^itnesses, ... let us run with 
 patience the race that is set before us." Paul 
 would gladly have departed to be with Christ, — 
 but he added, for me to remain is more needful for 
 you. That is the true spirit, — there is work to be 
 
i8o THE SINLESS CHRIST 
 
 done. There is God's great plan on earth to be 
 carried out. There is Christ to be enthroned. 
 There is redemption to be made complete. There 
 is the promised land, not far away, but here in this 
 world to be attained. 
 
 The sainted dead are waiting for us to help on 
 this result, and if they can watch us here below, 
 nothing, we may be sure, will give them so much 
 joy as to behold us doing what we can to hasten 
 the kingdom of Christ on earth. Sometimes men 
 talk with reverence and affection of their departed 
 loved ones and say they hope to join them in the 
 better world ; yet, forsooth, they continue to live 
 under the influence of passion and pride, and ab- 
 sorbed in mere secular toil, as if this world and 
 death had nothing to do with each other save 
 that the former is the prelude of the latter, 
 whereas always the opposite is true, — that world 
 is a prelude to what this is to be. This world as 
 it now is must become changed. Christ's king- 
 dom must come in its fullness, and for this, I say, 
 the dead are waiting — and waiting for us who are 
 living to finish the work which they began. 
 
 Now, why do they wait for this ? Are we to 
 suppose that, when Jacob and Joseph were so 
 anxious to have burial in Canaan, they had no 
 thought of personally sharing with their posterity 
 
THE WAITING DEAD l8i 
 
 in the blessings of the future? Was it mere 
 sentiment which made them wish to find graves 
 in the sacred soil ? Was it because they thus 
 sought to secure a place in the remembrance of 
 their children ? We cannot believe it. It seems 
 clear that these patriarchs expected to enjoy the 
 blessing also, that they expected to come from 
 Machpelah some day and enjoy the promised 
 land. So explicit had the Lord's word been to 
 Abraham : " Seest thou this land ? To thee will 
 I give it and to thy seed." But it was not given 
 to Abraham in this life; and so, I suppose, the 
 patriarchs expected to come forth from the other 
 world and partake in the glory of the kingdom 
 which the promised Christ would establish. 
 
 This does not mean the restoration of Jews. 
 This then adds something to our doctrine of the 
 waiting dead. They are waiting for the living to 
 fulfill the appointed work, and this because they 
 are waiting in the expectation of taking part 
 themselves in the kingdom of the future. What ! 
 you say, have not the sainted dead already ob- 
 tained their reward ? Are we to think of their 
 bliss as incomplete ? Are we not to console our- 
 selves by the reflection that our loss is their gain ; 
 and that already they have entered into rest? 
 Certainly we are ; and I have already shown 
 
1 82 THE SINLESS CHRIST 
 
 some of the revelations made to us concerning 
 their state. In the presence of Christ they do 
 enjoy rest and peace. Their race is over. Their 
 probation is finished. Their salvation is fixed. 
 Lazarus in Abraham's bosom has indeed gained 
 much after the life in which he sat as a beggar at 
 the rich man's gate, and so likewise every dead 
 believer is safe and free and happy. But at the 
 same time there is now an intermediate state. 
 There is far more awaiting them. They have not 
 yet obtained the full reward ; not yet entered into 
 the full glory; not yet tasted the complete hap- 
 piness of the world to come. It is not to detract 
 from their present happiness that we thus speak, 
 but rather to unroll before our thoughts the vision 
 of still greater blessedness which awaits them. 
 For they are waiting for the time when at the 
 appointed signal they shall take their resurrected 
 bodies, — shall join the descending Christ, — shall 
 inhabit the city of God which John saw descend- 
 ing out of heaven; and then shall enter upon the 
 everlasting state in which God's redemption of the 
 world is to issue. 
 
 I want you to observe the place which the 
 resurrection of the dead occupies in this plan 
 of the Almighty. We think of it as an isolated 
 event, — as a peculiar thing, — as something which 
 
THE WAITING DEAD 183 
 
 we may scarcely believe even on the credit of 
 revelation. But if you will think of the resurrec- 
 tion as part of the great change which is to come 
 over all this world in order to fit it for the future 
 kingdom of Christ, it will appear less incredible 
 because no longer isolated. There is to be, we 
 are told, a new heaven and a new earth in which 
 shall dwell righteousness. Society is to be re- 
 organized under the dominion of the living Spirit 
 of the reigning Christ. A new history is to be 
 begun. The old is to pass away forever, — what 
 are to be the enjoyments and employments of hu- 
 manity then we do not know. But that we are 
 warranted in expecting not merely an individual 
 immortality but an immortality of society — of 
 humanity — and that in this reorganized, redeemed 
 race, men are to find their full opportunities for 
 divine living of every kind, is a fact, I think, be- 
 yond reasonable question. The resurrection is to 
 be the reclothing of human spirits for this new 
 world and new life. As they have borne the 
 image of the earthly, they shall also bear the 
 image of the heavenly. And as in the state be- 
 yond the grave they have been made like Christ 
 in soul, so, moreover, in the world beyond the 
 judgment and the second advent, shall they be 
 made like also unto His glorious body, according 
 
i84 THE SINLESS CHRIST 
 
 to the power — and as part of the exercise of the 
 power — whereby He is able (and is destined) to 
 subdue all things unto Himself! We say, there- 
 fore, that the dead are waiting. The patriarchs 
 on earth sought the city with foundations, the 
 patriarchs in heaven are still waiting for it ; and 
 the patriarchs died in the hope that they too 
 should share the promised inheritance, — and they 
 shall, and we shall, and all the believing hosts 
 shall, — for this corruptible shall put on incor- 
 ruption, and this mortal shall put on immortality. 
 Then shall be brought to pass the saying that 
 is written, " Death is swallowed up in victory." 
 I was impressed recently with a sentence which 
 Frederick D. Maurice wrote in a letter to a friend 
 soon after the burial of a beloved sister. Speak- 
 ing of the burial service, he calls it " a glorious 
 duty, for the more I think of the way in w^hich 
 the children of Israel asserted their right to the 
 possession of Canaan, merely by burying their 
 dead in it, and consider the exactness of the type 
 in all particulars, — the more do I feel that every- 
 body put into this earth is a new declaration that 
 Christ is coming to claim the earth for His 
 Church." That is true ! They are waiting for the 
 signal to return ! They are waiting to take their 
 places in the new world, to enter through the 
 
THE WAITING DEAD 185 
 
 gates into the city where the nations of them that 
 are saved shall walk in the light of Christ ; where 
 there shall be no more curse ; where they shall 
 see His face and His name shall be in their fore- 
 heads ; where the Lord God shall give them light, 
 and they shall reign forever and ever. 
 
 Thus, then, Genesis closes with this suggestion 
 of the waiting dead, and when the great patriarchs 
 have been laid in their sepulchers, the history pro- 
 ceeds with the long record of their children's fal- 
 tering progress toward the attainment of the 
 hopes in which Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph, 
 died ; and slowly the movement went forward till 
 the Shiloh came, and now more grandly is it mov- 
 ing onward toward the second coming. We, my 
 hearers, are the spiritual children of Abraham, 
 and ours too is the patriarch's faith and hope. 
 Therefore the multitude of the waiting dead 
 should urge us on. As I have said, they cry to 
 us not that we should come to them, but that we 
 should, so to speak, hasten the time of their com- 
 ing to us, — that we should live and work and 
 hasten the glad end, — do what we can to make 
 the new world in which they are to share with us. 
 As you think of the cloud of witnesses, run your 
 race ! Doubtless you have loved ones there — 
 sainted friends. " There are the good and blest, 
 
i86 THE SINLESS CHRIST 
 
 those I love most and best." You are apt to think 
 that your reverence for them should lead you 
 merely to keep their memory green. But not so. 
 Let the thought of them as waiting lead you rather 
 to work and live more noble, more Christlike lives. 
 This is the wish of the waiting dead. Should not 
 the soldier, at sight of his dead comrade, turn 
 more fiercely to the battle to win the cause for 
 which his comrade died? Has not the grave of 
 Livingstone in the heart of Africa quickened thou- 
 sands of hearts to carry out the great missionary 
 work ? And when we think of those who believed 
 and died not having received the promises, what 
 shall we infer if not that we are more zealously to 
 follow the road in following which they fell ? 
 O living men, heed, I pray you, the message of 
 the dead ! They being dead, still speak. Live 
 true Christian, active, toiling lives. Press toward 
 the promised inheritance, that with Abraham, 
 Isaac, and Jacob, with others whom we need not 
 name, you should see in full glory the kingdom 
 of God.