THE. FRIENDSHIP OF JESUS ROBERT WELLS VEACH 871. s The Friendship of Jesus BV THE SAME AUTHOR The King and His Kingdom Constructive Studies in the Life of Christ. i2mo, paper .33 l2mo, cloth, 60 " A suggestive and somewhat exhaust- ive study of Christ's life arranged for Bible classes, by Robert Wells Veach. It is excellently arranged for a text- book ; avoids critical questions, and aims to give one a knowledge of the New Testament account. It is not a discussion in any sense, but a capital text-book, each lesson to be mastered in twenty minutes' study." — Service. The Friendship of Jesus The Secret of a Victorious Life Y ROBERT WELLS VEACH, M. A., D.D. Professor of Religious Education and Dean of the Faculty in the Bible Teachers^ Training School, New Tork City. New York Chicago Toronto Fleming H. Revell Company London AND Edinburgh Copyright, 191 1, by FLEMING H, REVELL COMPANY New York: 158 Fifth Avenue Chicago: 125 North Wabash Ave. Toronto: 25 Richmond Street, W. London: 21 Paternoster Square Edinburgh: 100 Princes Street To my dear wife HARRIETT McLJUGHRT VEACH, and to my little dazcghters, ELIZABETH and HARRIETT, this book is affectionately dedicated Foreword THE friendship of Jesus is a royal host alike to shepherds and to kings. It is well-nigh universal in its appeal. It speaks to the young heart in its passionate outgoing after the heroic and the ideal ; to all those lonely and discouraged souls who have not yet discovered then' real glory ; to the sorely tempted, the sin- sick, the deeply sorrowful, and to those who are struggling with doubt. For all such this little book has been written. All true friendship breathes the tenderest and most fragrant sentiment, just as the rose exhales perfume; but, like the rose, it must live by the laws of its own nature. We must be true to the laws of psychology, of ethics, and of God's Spirit if we would share with Jesus His Friendship. I have scarcely mentioned the wonderful friend- ship between Jesus and His three great apostles, Peter, John and Paul. Should this effort find a place in the hearts of those who read it, I will write again about Jesus and some of His friends. May I here express my deep appreciation of the encouragement and faithful criticism of many friends. E. W. V. New York. 7 Contents Prelude — Intimations of the Divine Friendship . 1 1 PART I The Fact of His Friendship I. A Fact of Experience . . . .15 II. Friendship's Seven Sovereign Elements . 24 III. Its Meaning for the Individual and for Society . . .... 36 IV. Its Divine Foreshadowing .... 47 V. An Historical and Scriptural Fact . . 58 PART II The Realization of His Friendship VI. Through the Loneliness of Sin ... 73 VII. Through the Loneliness of Great Ideals AND Their Temptations . . .81 VIII. In the Loneliness of Doubt and the Mys- tery of Nature ..... 93 IX. In the Open Air and the World of Work 102 X. In the Loneliness of Suffering, Sorrow and Death 115 Prelude Intimations of the Divine Friendship ONE summer day a barefoot boy wandered through a woodland wide and wild. He had done ^vrong that day, and all his path was filled with tangled brush and thorns. Lonely was that little lad. It seemed as if nobody loved him and the cruel briars tore his limbs and made them bleed. At last he reached an open place and sat him on a mound where many mosses grew and one wild flower. The moss caressed his feet and the Little flower was kind to him. It was the fair- est flower that he had ever seen. Its stem was tall and slender and its snowy petals were as perfect as a piece of finest lace. It seemed so happy playing mth the wind, and many woodland friends kissed it as they fluttered by. Alone it seemed not lone- some in its mossy bed. Do all the flowers obey and only little boys do wrong ? " Stung by the splendor of a sudden thought," the lad arose and ran unheeding through the tangled thickets till he came upon a peaceful meadow where many cattle stood, knee-deep in buttercups and clover. A brook ran through the field, and at the farther end upon a sunny slope stood home, and there was mother. 11 1 2 Prelude A stream of running water is a royal roadway to a barefoot boy. Compared with wave-washed peb- bles, pearl-imbedded pavements are commonplace. Two dirty, dimpled feet splashed through the water. He caught the minnow's silvery gleam ; the merry brook sang to him and all the while he gathered buttercups with now and then a spray of clover. At last he took the orchard path that wound around the house where mother sat upon the porch and pared the first new apples for a pie. She smiled a welcome and her face seemed fair and finer than his new-found flower. He laid his golden tribute in her lap, whispered something in her ear and love's forgiving kiss lay moist upon his cheek, like a dewdrop on a rose leaf, the perfect gift of heaven to a thirsty heart. That night, they knelt together e'er she tucked him in his little bed and angel hands wove sleep's sweet mystic web about his mind. He dreamed of a mossy mound and one fair flower. Again he waded through the stream until the meadow and the brook became a shining river. He played upon its shore, watched its opalescent hues, and heard deli- cious music. All the while an unseen friend stood by his side and whispered deep secrets to his sleep- ing soul. Then a wondrous light broke over all and morning dawned fresh and sweet and pure. Thus the divine friendship grows up all unknown within the souls of men. PART I The Fact of His Friendship A FACT OF EXPEEIENCE ONCE I had a philosophy of perfect friend- ship. Now I have a perfect Friend. Once I trusted and reasoned about a beautiful theory. Now I trust and reason about a beautiful fact — the friendship of Jesus. How changed my views as each day some new disclosure of His friendship makes its impact upon my per- sonality ! Wonderful mystery of life ! Once in those careless college days a great temp- tation grappled with me. It would have throttled all my aspirations had not an unseen Friend stood by me and made me strong for battle. I did not then know who He was, but I was never after quite the same man. My ideals were just a little higher, my perceptions of truth and beauty were just a lit- tle clearer. My sense of duty grew daily stronger and I found it, ever after, more difficult to be ignoble or impure. There were deep stirrings within me, followed by faint outlines of a finer self. Then began the passionate quest of my soul. During my seminary days, a group of us went, one Sunday evening, to hold a gospel service in a ten-cent lodging house in lower New York. It was bitter cold ; and more than sixty men, mere 15 1 6 The Friendship of Jesus fragments of lost opportunities, were crowded into a hot, close room. The mingled fumes of liquor and tobacco almost strangled us. Bleared faces leered at us from shadowy corners. " Curses from a near-by card table punctuated our first 2)rayer. Oh, it seemed blasphemy to speak His name in such a place ! How could He be there in the midst of a scene so unlovely ! Stepping out from the little group I delivered a ten minute address. It com- plied with all the rules of homiletics save one ; it lacked reality. When I had finished it was as if I had not spoken. Then the sexton of the Sea and Land Mission, who was with us, spoke to the men. He was an old coal miner, who had followed the dark windings of two underworlds. He had found a Frien^ and he was simply telling his fallen brothers about his beautiful new-found friendship. Soon all were listening. A secret, inarticulate longing overspread each eager face. They were drawn to him as steel filings to a mighty magnet. Then it was that the scales fell from my eyes and I saw my Lord face to face. He was there. Kot a sharply defined person, but a tender, brooding presence that filled all the room. It seemed as if we were all being absorbed into one great heart of love. We left the upper room, went down the dark winding stairs and out into the snow-blanketed city. Truly it was clothed with light as with a garment, for He was there. He was not only in church and chapel with chanting choir and swinging censer, for Christ cannot be shut up within stone walls or A Fact of Experience 17 imprisoned in a rubric. With outstretched arms Pie all but touched each weary passerby while that great " choir invisible " chanted " Come unto Me all ye that labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest." Thus there came into my life the Friend divine. All the passionate powers of youth leaped forth to do His biddmg. For the first time I knew the meaning of those words of Paul, " To me to live is Christ, to die is gain." Gladly for such a Friend would I spend and be spent in the service of my fellow men. Years passed and many times the clear conscious- ness of this beautiful friendship of Jesus was lost through doubt or sin or selfish disobedience. Yery often it would recede into the background of my daily life, deeply influencing me, but not so con- sciously present ; for it is impossible long to main- tain so glorious an experience. Yet His friendship is continuous and developing, a great inward reality that slowly purifies and assimilates the lesser soul into its larger and diviner self. So completely does the friendship of Jesus cleanse my conscience, penetrate all my thinking, move through all my motives, and reflect itself in all my judgments, that it may be said, in a very true sense, that Christ is most consciously present with me when I am least conscious of His presence. Small persons are ob- trusive in their efl'orts to dominate the lives of men. Only the great can fully eiface themselves as they seek to control the wills of others by lead- ing them out into a rightful expression of their l8 The Friendship of Jesus freedom. The union of Jesus with His friends is complete. With the years, my friendship with my Lord has ripened into a personal affection that has become the most precious of possessions, for it has filled all my other friendships and has made them both beau- tiful and immortal. We walk and work together, for He is ever with me. Apart from His strong sweet spirit I can be neither brave nor gentle. Yery often we seek a quiet place ; it is a sacred tryst where love meets love with every passion purified. Again, in the wild rush of the busy world where He loves so much to meet with those who toil, we mark off a little circle and talk together. Friendship with Jesus is the true sanctuary of the spirit ; here we touch God breast to breast and live anew in His love. He who enters therein must first rend his heart and not his garments, then will he pass from the turmoil and strife of soul into the holy calm of eternity. Prayer is the sweet fellowship of friend with friend, a mutual self-giving with an inrush of life and love and power from the larger to the lesser soul. Thus God flows into the shallows of our little lives. The hour of prayer is the setting in of the tide. I love to make Him known to those who know Him not. We talk about the Beautiful Life until another lonely heart burns with the glow of a new- found friendship and my own is made the sweeter and the stronger for sharing its joy. A Fact of Experience 19 Sometimes I have grieved Him deeply by my folly and my sin, but He has never left me. He trusts me more than I trust Him and because of this, His friendship is the stronger. He only goes apart a while and His sad and wondrous eyes look me through until my heart is filled with the agony of remorse. But He never chides me and oh, He is so strong and tender ! Never, while memory lasts, shall I ever forget the many times when, in the dark night of blinding passion, I would have slipped over the brink, but He drew me back ; " Far be it from me to glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world hath been crucified unto me, and I unto the world." If by Him I have died unto the earthliness and sensuality of this little world, be it known that He has made me alive to the spiritual meaning of a thousand greater worlds. "Within His fathomless soul I find sweeping circles of truth, of whose existence I can grasp but a mere segment. The abiding friendship of the mind of Christ has been the vitalizing and ennobling force in all the slow and painful evolu- tion of my faith and ideals. With His gracious in- dwelling there has come to me an expansiveness of culture where " latitude widens, longitude length- ens " and the doors of the soul swing wide open to plunging cataracts, and broadening zones, and far-off groups of differently colored men, and the vast dignity of our God. There was a time when my pinched and sordid life could see no beauty in ray Saviour, but now be- 20 The Friendship of Jesus fore His wondrous face my soul stands enraptured. I have often walked in dewy fields when incense- breathing morn with amber beauty shone, but fairer far it is to walk amid those sinless years, whose growing lustre falls like a sunlit mantle over all the fields of time. Fairer is He than the morning, fairer than the noontide, fairer than the purple evening with its fading glory breathed from out the bosom of the boundless sea. The friendship of Jesus is the encompassing fact of Chiistian experience. In the clear presence of His certain knovdedge, doubt fijids its deepest sympathy. Sin-stained lives creep to His feet, bathe them with their tears and rise to purity and power. Within friendship's loving embrace the weary heartache of the world takes refuge, while, on the breast divine, sorrow sobs itself through grief to joy unspeakable. It is He that dwells in that " mystic, sacred shadow of advancing years, transfiguring the countenance wearied by toil with portents of immortality." His friendship is the water of life that wells up perpetually from the unplumbed depths of the soul. " I would not, brethren, have you ignorant, that our fathers did all drink the same spiritual drink : for they drank of a spiritual rock that followed them : and the rock was Christ." " If any man thirst, let him come unto Me and drink. He that belie veth on Me, as the Scripture hath said, out of the depths of his life shall pour torrents of living water. But this spake He of the Spirit which they that be- A Fact of Experience 2 1 lieved on Him were to receive." All our earthly friendships, all our finer sentiments, and all our Chi'istian graces are but the spray of this never- ceasing fountam. " O Christ, He is the Fountain, The deep sweet Well of Love ! The streams on earth I've tasted More deep, I'll drink above : There to an ocean fullness His mercy doth expand, And glory, glory dwelleth In Emmanuel's land." But there is a still more glorious side to this pro- found truth. Oh, daring thought that when my soul shall draw near to that dear Fountain and shall drink its full of Him, He in turn shall drink His full of me ! Isaiah, in his vision of the suffering servant, gives us perhaps the most deeply religious expression of this great truth. With recurrent sobs of joy he sings : " It pleased Jehovah to bruise Him ; He hath put Him to grief : when thou shalt make His soul an offering for sin. He shall see His seed : He shall see of the travail of His soul and shaU be satisfied." Shall I ever be able to offer even so much as one drop to quench the pangs of travail over the sin of a lost world ? And yet the constant making of all our life is but the turning of a cup upon the potter's wheel and " not even while the whirl was worst . . . did I mistake my end, to slake Thy thirst." Each humble act of service is but the holding up of life's chaKced 22 The Friendship of Jesus cup to the lips of Him who is our Saviour and our Friend. " And whosoever shall give to drink unto one of these little ones a cup of cold water only, in the name of a disciple, verily I say unto you he shall in no wise lose his reward." "For I was hungry, and ye gave Me to eat ; I was thirsty, and ye gave Me drink ; I was a stranger, and ye took Me in ; naked, and ye clothed Me ; I was sick, and ye visited Me ; I was in prison, and ye came unto Me. . . . Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of these My brethren, even these least, ye did it unto Me." It is the friendship of God revealed in the person of Jesus Christ for human life that constitutes the heart of all religion. The experience of any one person cannot pretend to exhaust it, much less be absolute authority for any other person. Because of the vast unity of His Spirit, God delights in variety -within the species. Man is as the countless trees that make the forest. The Lord knoweth His own and deals with every soul individually ; so also each weary, aching heart has its own secret bias towards God. There is dignity and majesty in such a thought. It makes the simple great and the great sublime. Oh, man beneath life's crushing load, look up from the sweltering vale where thou dost toil, look up beyond the bending sky that shuts thee in, for thy heavenly Father knoweth thee by name. Through thine own heart of faith shall He whisper to thy wondering soul deep secrets of His everlasting friendship. A Fact of Experience 23 Notwithstanding this intense individuality ap- parent in religious experience, there is, back of it all and through it all, that which is the common possession of the race and to which our inmost con- victions universally respond. " For a Person came, and lived and loved, and did and taught, and died and rose again, and lives on by His Power and His Spirit forever within us and amongst us, so un- speakably rich and yet so simple, so sublime and yet so homely, so divinely above us precisely in being so divinely near, — that His character and teaching require, for an ever fuller yet never com- plete understanding, the varying study, and differ- ent experiments and applications, embodiments and unrolLings of all the races and civilizations, of all the individual and corporate, the simultaneous and successive experiences of the human race to the end of time." The friendship of Jesus organizes that mysterious alchemy that transmutes the will of God into human history. It is that subtle, elusive, inexplainable something that lies back of and baffles all historical analysis, and yet of whose per- sistent presence the heart of man is yearningly conscious. O Christ, Thou purest Spirit of his- tory! wistfully we cry unto Thee; woo us, and wean us, and winnow us until we, too, shall feel the inborn thrill of Thy daring and deathless de- votion to the will of God. II FEIEM)SHIP'S SEVEN SOVEREIGN ELE- MENTS 1 ■^IIE friendship of Jesus is a vast, interior, elemental fact of life. It is universal, therefore sovereign. Stars can sooner evade the law of gravitation than the human con- science escape the moral authority of the Christ, He is both our conscience and our Lord, In His will is perfect friendship. " Ye are My friends if ye do the things which I command you." Jesus is the world's greatest lover. His proffered friend- ship is as the royal wooing of the spring-tide. It lies like an uncreated light over all the heart of man. Persistent rejection of Jesus shifts the axis of our being and brings on the long night-time of the soul. Friendship has seven sovereign elements; they are Truth, Purity, S3rrapathy, Personality, Spirit- uality, Self-giving and Immortality. Of these the first is fundamental to all others. Truth unifies, error disintegrates ; truth constructs, falsehood un- dermines ; truth liberates, sin enslaves. Truth is eternal ; when the foundations of the earth shall be shaken and shall crumble away, Christ will abide, for Christ is the Truth. The basis of friendship 24 Friendship's Seven Sovereign Elements 25 with Jesus is spiritual affinity for Truth. " Faith is not the action of a separate and distinct faculty. It is the fusion of the whole mind in one supreme seizure of truth. . . . Faith finds truth by spkitual affinity." Here is perfect freedom. Jesus remands no felon to his cell, and puts no fetters upon the soul, but vanquishes all enemies by draw- ing them up into His own great and mysterious self. Christ is truth incarnate ; the spirit of Kberty per- sonalized. In the truth of Jesus, art, literature, music, science, and philosophy were reborn. His presence pervades all education and wells up through all culture until the whole takes on a deep religious hue. It is not that " dim religious light " that filters out upon a faltering world through thick cathedral walls, but such a light as breaks o'er hill and dale when morning wakes and one by one the shadows flee untU truth lies like a glorious sunlight upon the minds of men. There can be no friendship without the exchange of noble thoughts. Great thoughts are universal : — clothe them in a dress of simple beauty and you speak to millions yet unborn. You may adorn a lesser local truth in royal robes and strut and sputter ever so grandly, still your words will die with you. The thoughts of Jesus are immortal. He refused to dishonor reason by tearing every truth to tatters. He spoke the whole heart of col- lective man in a way, simple, sublime and enduring. The truths of Jesus will nurture the noblest na- tures. As branches bend beneath the weiirht of 26 The Friendship of Jesus ripening fruit, so bends the language of our Lord beneath the golden apples of His thought : — re- reading, like the process of ripening, not only adds to their weight, but also to their lusciousness. Many of them bend so near the ground that little children can reach them and go away glad in their new-found joy. Think the thoughts of Jesus in the blossom time of life and " all along the trail of the friendly years the heart of happiness will fruit out into the higher friendship." Bacon has said that " no receipt openeth the heart but a true friend, to whom we may impart griefs, joys, fears, hopes, suspicions, counsels and whatsoever lieth upon the heart to oppress it, in a kind of civil shrift or confession." The world would not so uncover its heart to Jesus did it not believe Him to be absolutely true and somehow possessed of the truth of God. Moreover we need a friend who will be sincere with us, lay bare our faults, and show us our finer seK. Alone we are sincere ; together we dissimulate. " Let love be without dissimulation. Abhor that which is evil . cleave to that which is good." Abhor, cleave, these two ; they are the outbreathing and the in- breathing of the soul. Criticism is wanton cruelty when undiscerning and unjust ; from such, every sensitive soul must recoil or be crucified. "When truthful and sympathetic, above all possessmg spiritual insight, criticism is as the touch of the potter on the clay ; we must respond to it or re- main forever ill-formed. Truth is as a mirror in Friendship's Seven Sovereign Elements 27 Tvhich Tve behold the image of our ideal. We are made by faithful friends. Blessed is the man who has many such : yet with no veil upon his face. Purity, as a sovereign element of friendship, is self-evident. A friendship without purity is like a muddy spring; there is no reflection of heaven upon its bosom and no refreshment in its substance. Trust and impurity are mutually exclusive. A friend is one whom we can trust utterly. One breath of impurity will taint a friendship for a life- time ; it beclouds and besmirches all it touches. Purity of motive is to all our virtues what trans- parency is to a window ; without it there can be neither light nor vision. As merchants sell their all and seek the pearl of greatest price so seeks the soul for Thee, Thou pearl of imperishable pui'ity. When most our heart is stained with sin, it seeks Thee most ; when most unknown it seeks Thee still. Oh, Thou pm-e, pure Christ ! we dare not hope to possess Thee, but Thou wilt possess us and through Thee we shall see God. Truth is a pearl, purity is a pearl, friendship is a string of pearls. This is the yoke that our gi^eat Bridegroom would fain fasten upon the neck of His fair Bride. A friendship-love possessing only truth and purity is as an exquisitely chiselled statue of trans- parent marble ; add the element of sympathy, and lo, it comes to life ! A man of austerity chills us to the marrow ; a man of sympathy warms our very bones. Sjrmpathy is an inclusive word. 28 The Friendship of Jesus Tenderness is the sensitive nerve of sympathy ; affection is its pulse. Compassion is sympathy embracing a shepherdless world. Within it all, imbedded like a jewel, lies mercy, that kingly quality of love. A friendship glowing with sym- pathy is as a "fine ruby smitten by the sun." With what tender and forgi\ang sympathy Jesus bends to our weakness and touches the human heart all sore with sin. It is precious beyond words to know that the strong and sinless Son of God has been touched with a feeling for our in- firmities. No less than truth, sympathy is the basic element in that spiritual affinity which makes faith possible. " Faith is sympathy ; it springs from responsiveness to the holy and divine ; unbe- lief is apathy ; it results in the atrophy of the ca- pacity to respond." Truth, Purity, Sympathy ; these are the priestly elements of the soul. Possess these and you become a part of that royal priest- hood of believers in Jesus, who minister daily at the shrine of the world's greatest need. Friendship is neither an abstraction nor merely a thing of flesh and blood. It is both personal and spiritual, A person is more than an individual ; he is an individual plus a divine inbreathing. The personal element belongs rather to the inbreathing than to the fleshly part of our nature and is there- fore spiritual. Some call it "soul," others call it "personality." The mind of man is so made that it is possible for only a few to grasp the deep mean- ing of the Incarnation until they behold God in the Friendship's Seven Sovereign Elements 29 face of Jesus Christ. It is necessary for most of us to keep close to the objective aspects of His life in order to feel the nearness of God with redeeming power. Most of our friendships have their incep- tion in some physical proximity, but it is not until they pass into the purely spiritual that they attain their true dignity and worth. Nowhere is this more true than in the marriage relationship. Those who have had the blessed experience of a long engage- ment with much separation will recall how love, compelled to grow by correspondence, ripened quickly and insensibly from a hot passion into a beautiful spiritual friendship. Then comes the mar- riage day followed by more or less of a disillusion- ment. What is the difficulty? The cynic says that love is a false fancy and marriage a mirage. The sensualist says that the soul has not found its true affinity, which is only another way of saying that it has sold its birthright for a mess of pottage. This is the real difficulty : the two souls thought that when they possessed each other in the flesh, their union would be complete, when as a matter of fact they found that the physical presence was a subtle intrusion which actually prevented the realization of their beautiful spiritual ideal. That which was purely fleshly had to be slowly refined away before the earlier ideal could shine forth in its more mature beauty. This often requires a long struggle mingled with much of heartache and disappoint- ment and calling daily for mutual self-giving. My friend demands my all, else he is not all my friend. 30 The Friendship of Jesus There are three things about the married life that are incomparably beautiful : it affords the best pos- sible opportunity for two lives to be supremely un- selfish, to love little children, and to grow spirit- ually mellow together. Emerson touched the universal conscience at its quick when he said : " We are afraid of making our ties too spiritual, as if so we should lose any genuine love." "We are still childlike and prefer a stick of candy to-day rather than a diamond ring a year hence. Let us be ashamed to " suck a sudden sweetness " rather than await the luscious ripeness of the early and the latter rain. Let your desires be tempered by your ideals and necessities rather than by your fleshly lusts. Live deeply and patiently and you will grow sublimely and sweetly ; as thy roots so shall thy stature be. Friendship depends upon exchange of soul, but never upon mere fleshly presence. The friendship between Jesus and the beloved disciple John was far more spiritual and real in the evening twilight of Ephesus and Patmos than it was that sacred night when John leaned upon his Master's breast. It is both personal and spiritual. The quickening power of the moral precepts of Jesus convince us that they are none other than subtle irradiations of His pure and stainless person. They force us to reflect upon the mystery of His Jbeing and the uniqueness of His presence in our daily lives. The impact of the life of Jesus upon the soul of the race is " as a beam of light from the skies — pure light, Friendship's Seven Sovereign Elements 31 shiniag directly into the visual orb of the mind, a light for all that live, a full transparent day, in which truth bathes the spuit as an element." In a far deeper sense than even the great Bushnell in- tended, " His is not so much a doctrine as a biography, a personal power, a truth all motivity, a love walking the earth in the proximity of a mortal fellowship." Self-giving is the open doorway into the higher friendship. He that entereth not by this door, the same is a thief and a robber. " Friendship is love apart from love's claim or love's craving." Here is where the shadow falls aslant the doorway. " This is pure friendship, without alloy." The spu'it of self -giving is love to the uttermost ; it kindles our hearts towards the souls of men until we glow with the eloquence and the magnetism of the divine en- thusiasm. * ' Then with a rush the intolerable craving Shivers through me like a trumpet call, Oh, to save these, to perish for their saving, Die for their life, be offered for them all." " This is My commandment, that ye love one an- other, even as I have loved you. Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. Ye are My friends, if ye do the things which I command you." Would you have the meaning of self -giving in a single word ? Calvary. Here we bow low and worship. 32 The Friendship of Jesus The sun reveals its true piu^pose in the breath of an obscure violet as well as in the harmonious mov- ing of many worlds. A hundred childi'en of the slums were returning from a visit to the coimtry. Little Rosie, wearing a pair of very old and very large shoes, was the object of a chorus of gibes. The attendant remerpbered that Eosie had had a pair of new shoes, knd she asked what had become of them. " Well," said Kosie, " you see, these shoes ain't mine. They're Katie's. I know they're awful big, but her mother ain't had any work lately, so she couldn't buy her a new pair. She just gave her own shoes to Katie. Katie felt awful bad about it, and cried all the way to the station. The girls all laughed at her. So I just lent her my new ones and took hers. You see, teacher," said Rosie, raising her eyes to the attendant's face, " Katie's my friend." The odor of Gethsemane and the gleam of Calvary are in that little heart. Only a child of the poor can squeeze friendship's attar of roses from a pair of old shoes. It has been well said that the best rose-bush is not the one that has the fewest thorns, but the one that bears the linest roses. So, also, we may say, the best life is not the one that has the fewest enemies, but the one that bears the finest friendships. I believe in the stricter economy and discipline of organized chari- ties ; still the Church needs those who, like Mary, will break their alabaster box and lavish their all upon their Saviour until the odor fills the house. Spontaneity is to charity what perfume is to the Friendship's Seven Sovereign Elements 33 rose. Blessed is the man who lavishes love upon the unlovely and who rejoices to walk a sunny mile along the weary way of the unworthy. We now come to our last sovereign element of friendship — hnmortality. Friendship is fickle, says the cynic. It does not bear testing. Cynicism is no guarantee for spiritual knowledge. The friend- ship of Jesus abides. The cynic may deny it ; the sinner may slight it ; the traitor may betray it ; still the heart of Jesus is ever open towards a wounded world. One of the most beautiful aspects of our Lord's life upon earth was His devoted friendship for the two sisters, Mary and Martha, and their brother Lazarus. We read in John the eleventh chapter that when Lazarus was sick unto death Jesus went to the house of sorrow at the risk of His life. Think of that night in the Garden of Gethsemane when Judas, with the perfidy of his sin hot on his traitorous lips, betrayed his Master with a kiss. Listen to the reply of our Lord: — " Friend, what thou doest do quickly." I^Tot cursed traitor, not despicable weakling, not even Judas, but " friend." It was a voice speaking from out the heart of God's unchanging love. The friendship of Jesus is an abiding friendship. " Once a friend always a friend. To have loved once was never to have loved at all." It is just this changeless char- acter of true friendship that makes its betrayal the most damning accusation that can be brought against any man. He who kills a noble friendship " slays an immortality rather than a life." 34 The Friendship of Jesus It is in the new-formed friendship of Jesus for Saul of Tarsus that we touch the core of the miracle of the divine friendship. That the vision which flooded the soul of this murderously fanatical, yet brilliantly intellectual, man was nothing more or less than the superimposed impact of the spiritual Jesus, no one can seriously doubt. That Paul in- stantly and continuously associated Him with the same great personality who had walked the earth and had been crucified, is beyond question. It was no mere dream. Psychology, history, and religious experience affirm it as a magnificent reality. The personality of Jesus has survived the crisis of death and from His place amidst the changeless and the timeless spheres is now moving upon the hearts of men with a soul-ravishing friendship. Emerson says, " Friendship like immortality is too good to be true." Friendship with Jesus is im- mortality. The deeply personal nature of His friendship, transcending all earthly conditions and limitations, is still the most central and convincing fact in Christian consciousness. That such a per- sonal relation will abide beyond the experience of physical dissolution cannot be seriously questioned by any reasoning soul. If our earthly friendships are allowed to spring forth from and take root in His larger friendship, then they too will abide. This is heaven both now and hereafter. This is joy and comfort unspeakable. These then are the seven sovereign elements in friendship : Truth, Purity, Sympathy, Personality, Friendship's Seven Sovereign Elements 35 Spirituality, Self-giving and Immortality. There may be many other elements, but these are vital. Jesus alone has possessed them in their perfection and that is why He is the most precious of friends. Human friendships, however dear and ennobling, are apt to be exclusive. They are often marred by some flaw. It is only by the slow growth of years that we approximate the perfect. "But Thee, but Thee, O Sovereign Seer of Time, But Thee, O poet's Poet, wisdom's Tongue, But Thee, O man's best Man, O love's best Love, O perfect Life in perfect labour writ, O all men's Comrade, Servant, King, or Priest,— What if or yet, what mole, what flaw, what lapse, What least defect or shadow of defect. What rumor, tattled by an enemy. Of inference loose, what lack of grace, Even in torture's grasp, or sleep's, or death's, — Oh, what amiss may I forgive in Thee, Jesus, good Paragon, Thou Crystal Christ?" Ill ITS MEANING FOR THE INDIVIDUAL AND FOR SOCIETY LOVE is the most personal, hence the most real, fact of life. It is this inner depth of feeling that forms the core of our person- ality. Love responds only to a personal presence, never to an abstraction. A loveless soul is an im- personal soul. So also an unloving and unlovable God is an impersonal God. It is in this region of our soul that the religious impulse takes its rise. It is the personal in God speaking to the personal in man. Religion begins in the mutually respon- sive love between one person and the Supreme Personality. It is the longing for a friend that can fully satisfy. Personality is also will. " His personal will is expressed in our moral constitu- tion." The sense of right and wrong, the fear of the divine disfavor, the concept of duty and obedi- ence ; these as well as affection are elements in the friendship between God and man. Love and will are quite as essential as reason to our religious life. Reason without love is apt to be unresponsive and even irreligious. Love without reason is apt to be superficial and capricious. Reason and love with- 36 Its Meaning for Individual and for Society 37 out will are impotent and purposeless. Keligion is the whole man knowingly and lovingly doing the will of God. The friendship of Jesus is the personality of the Christ coming into consciousness, not only in the life of each man but of the race. Every one loves somebody or something ; all our life is made up of choices ; we cannot live ration- ally and ideally without reactmg properly to the fact in our lives, of God and of our fellow men. " Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second like unto it is this : Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." The result is a new sense of the worth of the individual and of the true meaning and purpose of society. Jesus discovers both a depth and a dignity in the human soul that makes friendship with Him pos- sible. This truth should vitalize the evangelistic note in our modern preaching. The chief business of the minister is still to open the eyes that are blind and not to blind the eyes that are open. Looking into the sinless character of Jesus, we find a revelation of the " altogether unsuspected depth and inexhaustibleness of human Personality and of this Personality's analogue in God." True friend- ship involves the entire man and enters into all the relations of life. We cannot be a true friend to anybody without becoming a real part of all that they are. The thought that God offers us such a friendship staggers us. Nowhere, outside the Sacred 38 The Friendship of Jesus Scriptures, has it ever found hopeful expression. Pagan thought and religion had reached a stage where they were without hope. Philosophy with- out a great hope would be lil^e a circle without a centre. It is inconceivable. " Religion without a great hope would be like an altar without a fire." It is the very negation of religion. In the words of Matthew Ai'nold : '* On that hard pagan world, disgust And secret loathing fell, Deep weariness and sated lust Made human life a hell." In Jesus we find God entering perfectly into all the humblest relationships of a Galilean peasant. Childhood, the humblest home life, manual labor, honest poverty, the simplest earthly friendships, common joys and sorrows, inarticulate hungers, deep subconscious strivings, "all the universal, elemental faculties and relationships of man as man are entered into and developed, are all hal- lowed in the smallest detail." But more than this, we behold Jesus sharing this perfect friend- ship, this lovely and holy relation to God, with our own unlovely selves. We see this and are no longer wistful but gladsome. And weU we might be glad, my brother, for to be fully conscious of this wonderful friendship of Jesus for the lowly and unlovely of earth is to sense an inner dignity capable of sustaining such a friendship. Thus Its Meaning for Individual and for Society 39 Jesus reveals Himself to men by revealing men to themselves. As He passed by, men fell to the ground smitten with a sense of their own unloveli- ness and arose to find the Christ mirrored in the heretofore undiscovered depths of their own souls. He uncovers sin, sets up ideals, liberates potential possibilities, shifts the centre of being, doubles the powers of creative imitation, increases beyond measure the capacity to assimilate spiritual truth and in an mcredibly short time makes over the entire personality into a new creatui'e. This is both the mystery and the possibility of the divine friendship — Christ in you the hope of glory. The second result from this deeply personal fac- tor in the friendship of Jesus is a growing sense of the organic nature of society " Christ is not one Person. He is to those who know Him, Col- lective Man, who is lived in the love of Him." Modern science tells us that all living forms develop in accordance with a hidden purpose. This is not only true of men but of that grouping of men which we call society. We are dimly but no less certainly sure that we are mox-ing irresistibly towards a hidden goal. With many this goal re- mains undefined. They are forced to let society be sucked forward by the future's vast vacuity. AVith Jesus it is the kingdom of God set up on earth. But it was a kingdom that should be set up in the hearts of men and its basis was a personal friendship with Him. The friendship of Jesus is both the ideal and the dynamic of the new hu- 42 The Friendship of Jesus sunny slopes and in rich soil that the world may rejoice in their perfect bloom. With shame we read these words by Jane Addams, " With all of the efforts made by modern society to nurtm-e and educate the young, how stupid it is to permit the mothers of young childi-en to spend themselves in the coarser work of the world ! It is curiously inconsistent with the emphasis which this generation has placed upon the prolongation of in- fancy that we constantly allow the waste of this most precious material. I cannot recall without indignation a recent experience. I was detained late one evening in an office building by a pro- longed committee meeting of the Board of Educa- tion. As I came out at eleven o'clock I met in the corridor of the fourteenth floor a woman whom I knew on her knees scrubbing the marble tiling. As she straightened up to greet me, she seemed so wet from her feet to her chin that I hastily in- quired the cause. Her reply was that she left home at five o'clock every night and had no oppor- tunity for six hours to nurse her baby. Her moth- er's milk mingled with the very water with which she scrubbed the floors until she should return at midnight, heated and exhausted, to feed her scream- ing child with what remained within her breasts." Here is the Gethsemane of motherhood and the Calvary of childhood. Every great civilization has been judged according to its attitude towards motherhood and childhood. Unless we learn the lesson of the past Ave are doomed. He who fights Its Meaning for Individual and for Society 43 the battle of little cliilcli-en is not very far from the kingdom of God. How miserably slow we are to appreciate the ex- quisite friendship of Jesus for little children ! It is one of the most precious memories of His life here upon earth. Even less have we been able to penetrate to that interior and fundamental place which He gave them in His kingdom. We are so conventionalized, so blase, so sophisticated, so sin- stained, so morally Avarped by selfish motives that we cannot comprehend. Only a childlike heart can feel a rapturous thrill and trust the Saviour utterly. That childhood which has never known the friend- ship of Jesus is a rosebud unkissed by the sun. It has withered at its young heart and will never know a perfect bloom. It has all but died before it began to live. The spu-itual whole lies poten- tially°in any one of its parts. The kingdom of heaven lies wrapped up in every little heart. This is its divine bu-thi-ight ; to sell it for a mess of pottage is a tragedy, to crush it is a crime. First the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear : this is the natural order of development and its vital principle is friendship Avith Jesus. The inner crea- tive impulse of His indwelling should be allowed to express itself in a free and sane self -activity called forth by contact with a healthy en\ironment. There are four aspects of the environment in which this development takes place: the home with its larger social life and play activities, the school, the church, and society (industrial and political). Thus 44 The Friendship of Jesus Christ has sanctified the function of the parent, the teacher, the employer, and the legislator as well as that of the priest and the preacher. This is the Christian's educational creed. Herein lies the con- trol of all those forces which must be utilized in the bringing in of the kingdom. Friendship-love is the all-inclusive principle of religion. Kighteousness and justice are but its ap- plication to human relations. These are the true incense of devotion, and unless they rise from the altar our worship is in vain. "Take thou away from me the noise of thy songs ; for I will not hear the melody of thy viols. But let justice roll down as waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream." Prophecy is the often unwelcome obtrusion of divine truth upon the collective conscience of man. Hear ye the prophets. Self-righteousness is un- righteousness on dress parade : it is self-seeking in disguise. Injustice is the prostitution of economics, the wanton oppression of the weak and the poor in the fair name of commerce. They are mangy things with cruel and uncanny arms entwined — twin brothers of an underworld. In the name of a righteous God above us and a Saviour who died for sheer love of us all, why should they be allowed to herd like swine and feed upon the lovelit hills of Christendom ? Let us drive them, foaming mouthed, into the sea. One of the chief functions of the prophet is to disturb the social order, without which spiritual progress is impossible. He seeks to turn society Its Meaning for Individual and for Society 45 from self-satisfaction in static forms to the inward developing principle of history ; which principle he conceives to be definitely religious. What then is the meaning to future history of this twofold rela- tion of Jesus to the individual and to society ? The single idea of the essential worth of the soul and its justification before God by faith alone, its power to share the divine friendship unhindered and unaided by ecclesiastical dogma ; this single idea contains the germs of even greater social and political revo- lutions and finer types of spirituality than the world has yet seen. When w^e add to this the idea of the kingdom, the thrilling idea that somehow society as one vast brotherhood in fellowship with Jesus can rise into some likeness to His character, we are overwhelmed at the vision which opens be- fore us. Indeed it is not too much to say that the democracy of the future will be the long-looked-for theocracy wherein religion, commerce, and freedom shall be mingled in one inseparable and holy union. Oh, winged days be swift to fly and bring the Lord Christ hence, for He comes, He comes ! And when He shall appear in the glory of His Father with the holy angels, then shall the mountains shake with the dread grandeur of His stepping. Then, what judgments shall be His, what love, what peace shall reign ! No more shall justice slip blindfolded in the ditch, or righteousness be beaten in the fight. No more shall toiling children of the poor be caged in kennels of the godless rich and burned or sweated on the altar of a needless sacrifice. No 46 The Friendship of Jesus more shall greed and hate like shuttles shoot the cords of life, deep dyed in many a brother's blood, to " weave the crimson web of war." *'But oh ! what solemn scenes on Snowden's height, Descending slow their glittering skirts unroll ? Visions of glory, spare my aching sight ! Ye unborn ages, crowd not on my soul ! " IV ITS DIVINE FOEESHADOWmO GKEAT friendships are like great rivers: there are few of them, but they noui'ish civilization and flow towards the sea. They are made up of a thousand lesser streams and in their sweeping currents we behold the mingled loves and aspirations of the multitudes. That na- tion is poor indeed that has not produced at least one great friend of humanity. One can almost say that it has lived in vain. Friendship is essentially religious. We have all felt its tendency to rever- ence and worship. He who enters into its inner sanctuary will ever after find it easier to believe and trust the heavenly Father. Communion with God through Christ is the essence of the higher friend- ship. Faith is its inward grasp, love its outward expression ; reason and righteousness are the very form and image which it takes. Friendship is both creative and reproductive, therefore redemptive. It was not absent when the Spirit brooded over worlds as yet unformed, nor did it languish when nature mated with its Maker and all created life brought forth its kind. ISTeither was it far afield on that fair day when bright-browed reason was inbreathed. It was a day of promise when the 47 48 The Friendship of Jesus parental impulse broke over hill and jungle and love hissed its first faint hallelujahs from the holes and caves of earth, then sang them from the tree tops and the altars. It speaks alike to the reason and to the conscience iis well as to the hopes and the hungers of man. It enters into every daily round of life. Under its subtle touch, fear is trans- formed into reverence, might into morality, pride into dependence, and all the lurking powers of sea and sky and land converge into one supreme per- sonality whose glory fills the earth. Selfishness and greed, cruelty and corruption, pain and sacri- fice, still mingle with the grim and sinister struggle for existence ; but God is kind and the vision of the prophet is yet a beautiful possibility. " And the wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid ; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together ; and a little child shall lead them. They shall not hurt nor des- troy in all My holy mountain ; for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of Jehovah, as the waters cover the sea." It is not alone his animal propen- sities, and the form of his bones and the structure of his nerves that makes man a brother to the brute. Neither is it mentality made keenest in the strife that alone separates him fathoms wide. By one and the selfsame thing they are both bound together and sundered far ; it is their capacity for friendship. The divine friendship is the only certain force in the upward progress of life. "When moral choice supplants instinct and is then broken and set aside, Its Divine Foreshadowing 49 the laws of instinct, which guard the lower orders of life, fail to reassert themselves. Man is left to the caprice of unbridled passion and soon sinks below the level of the brute. The depth to which he sinks is in proportion to the height from which he falls, that is, the extent to which the laws of instinct have been erased by moral and ethical culture. A psychologist of deep insight has made this recent statement regarding a portion of the population of London : "If you could see these bareheaded women, with their hanging hair, their ferocious eyes, their brutal mouths ; if you could see them there, half-dressed, and that in a draggle- tailed slovenliness incomparably horrible; and if you could hear the appalling language loading their hoarse voices, and from their phrases receive into your mind some impression of their modes of thought, you would say that human nature, in the earliest and most barbarous of its evolutionary changes, had never, could never, have been like this ; that these people are moving on in a line of their own, that they have produced something definitely non-human, which is as distinct from humanity as the anthropoid ape, Ruth, or even Mary of Magdala, at the beginning of the line ; two thousand years of progress ; and then these corrupt and mangy things at the end ! This is not to be believed. No ; they do not belong to the advancing line, they have never been human." Let me quote again from an authority on social conditions [^in New York : " A few steps out of JO The Friendship of Jesus Broadway, we came to the vilest dens of infamy. In one room, not more than ten by twelve, we came upon eighteen human beings, men and women, black and white, American and foreign-born, who there ate, slept, and lived. In that room we found a woman of the highest refinement and culture with the faded dress of a courtesan upon her dis- honored body ; a former leader in the Salvation Army, a woman of sweet song, half drunk; a snoring, disgusting negro wench ; an opium-eating, licentious Italian, et al. ! Out of that den had been rescued a descendant of one of the most illustrious men this country ever produced ; and there had been found a daughter of a Brooklyn clergyman who had no knowledge of her whereabouts." Here we pass the border line of the kingdom. Hell is the region of the dehumanized. As we look back over the history of the far past and seek to note its shifting, broken currents of life and progress, we cannot escape the conviction that some hidden current of power entered into Hebrew history and passed over with increased potency into Chris- tianity. It was apart from and above, yet in such constant cooperation with the natural forces of progress that subjectively they appear as one. The individual, or the race that is penetrated by this hidden dynamic, moves rapidly upward. Let them once fall away from it and they just as rapidly be- come dehumanized. When Abram's spirit rose like a star from out the lustful bosom of the East and westward moved Its Divine Foreshadowing 51 at God's command, their deep affinity for righteous- ness was welded strong in friendship's holy fire. Here we meet for the first time the clear strons: current of God's friendship flowing forth to gladden the world. The significant fact to note here is that God had found a friend just as much as had Abra- ham. It was through the spiritual capacity of one man for a high and holy friendship that God entered into the starved life of the world. Their covenant was an inward companionship sealed by mutual trust. God had faith in Abraham and Abraham had faith in God : they loved and obeyed each other. " Abraham believed the promise and it was counted him for righteousness." Here was the germ of the greatest idea that has ever held the mind of man, namely, that history is not under the control of the past or the present, but the future, and that God is present in humanity working towards that distant goal. Great souls will never rest contented until they have laid their most precious possession upon the altar of a noble friend- ship. Is not this the explanation of that strange act of Abraham when he sought to offer his only son Isaac a sacrifice upon Mount Moriah ? Other streams have sprung from this same source but they lacked its inwardness and spirituality ; hence they grew speedily coarse and sensual ; finally they became stagnant and foul. A great and splendid river must have its rise in mountain springs and make its own way to the sea ; confine it to artificial banks and it becomes a canal, while ^2 The Friendship of Jesus only running water keeps pure. The hope of Chris- tianity lies in the purity of its source, its irrepres- sible spirit of liberty, and its missionary zeal. The friendship between God and Abraham forms the genesis of the missionary idea. Its expansive and diffusive power furnishes the missionary dynamic. Church history is past missions ; Home and Foreign Missions are present history, Trumbull beautifully says, " Friendship-love, as a love that is unselfish, uncraving, ever outgoing, and ever ongoing, is in its very nature divine love. It is such a love as God gives, and as man ought to give to God. It is such a love as man should give to his fellow man for God's sake. The closest attainable union of man with God is a union in friendship-love, — such a union as God proffered to His loved friend Abraham, and as is a possibility, through the Friend of friends, to every one who by faith is a child of faithful Abraham." The divine friendship is inexhaustible, there- fore prophetic. Wherever it appears it is but the promise of a deeper self-revelation. As one traces the development of this great idea through the Scriptures, he becomes deeply impressed with the profound inwardness of the Hebrew and Christian religions. They are indeed religions of the Spirit. This inward union of God with His children through the Spirit, this bond of friendship, every- where reposes upon the covenant relationship. The deep spiritual insight of all the Old Testament writers is seen in the fact that they reposed the Its Divine Foreshadowing 53 validity and permanence of the covenant relation, not upon the external form, but upon the character of God as that character is revealed in His re- demptive work in Israel's history and in the heart of man. Thus it is that the covenant relationship remains unbroken even when men fail to keep their part; thus it is that the living relationship to God becomes a thing wholly apart from temple feast and ceremony, and becomes a thing of faith, righteousness, justice, mercy, hope and love. Each bitter experience with sin, as well as each evidence of a loving Providence viewed in the light of his- tory, enlarges and illmninates the prophet's idea of God. Moses looked deep into the character of Jehovah and discovered His absolute holiness. But he also knew Him as the home of the spirit. Their rela- tionship was one of mutual indwelling. Because of this the whole moral law was made to rest upon the character of a holy and merciful God who sought the love and obedience of His people. Moses was above all else the servant of God and because of this " Jehovah spake unto Moses face to face as man speaketh unto his friend." Friendship rests upon a love that goes out in whole-souled obedience. In speaking of Ilosea, Davidson says, " However Hosea came by his ideas, whether in the course of his domestic trials he discovered in his own heart a love which could not let its object go, however degraded she might become, and rose by inspiration to the intuition that such was God's 54 The Friendship of Jesus love, — however this be he has the idea of a love which is stronger than a custom or law, or even than moral repugnance, a love which nothing can overcome. And this is God's love to Israel." "The primal love of Jehovah to Israel fills the foreground of each writer's discourse, and all human relationships . . . are rooted in this." When God would narrow the Messianic hope to a single line descending from Abraham He chose as the beginning of that line a man and a woman capable of fine friendships. The world will never tire of reading those touching words spoken by Euth to Naomi : ' ' Entreat me not to leave thee, And to return from following after thee ; For whither thou goest, I will go ; And where thou lodgest, I will lodge ; Thy people shall be my people, And thy God my God ; Where thou diest will I die, And there will I be buried : The Lord do so to me, and more also, If aught but death part thee and me." Only the impelling power of a true friendship could have induced this beautiful young Moabitess to leave the voluptuous ease of her own land for the stern morality of Israel's God, the care of an aged outcast, and a home in the midst of an ancient enemy. We must never forget that Ruth was not only the friend of ISTaomi but also of Kaomi's God. George Its Divine Foreshadowing 55 Matheson would fasten our attention upon the kindness of Boaz as the central fact in this beauti- ful idyl. It was the marriage of Jew and Gentile conceived in sacred friendship. From this union sprang the line of David and through him the Christ. "When God would develop David and make him worthy of a kingly trust He gave him a noble friend. Jonathan was a princely soul and heir, by blood descent, to the kingdom. David was a rustic, ruddy lad, heir to the throne by divine anointing. Each was conscious of his right. Rivals, they looked into each other's faces, and were friends. They could not be otherwise, for noble natures are to friendship born as water seeks its level. Friend- ship is the royal purple of real kings ; it enters into our being as dye into the fabric : we are known by the color which we wear. The memory of that blessed friendship lingered about the soul of David like a halo of glory. He found in the deep response of his own noble soul to such a friendship a clue to the i*eal character of his divine Friend. Thus there crept into his songs a strong sure note of tender mercies and redeeming love, vibrant with a hidden undertone of Messianic hope. Then a wonderful thing happened. One evening as David pondered deeply on the meaning of the divine redemption, God whispered to him the startling truth that from his loins should spring the Christ, the Friend of friends. In Isaiah we rind that the entire Messianic hope 56 The Friendship of Jesus takes its starting point from the Davidic covenant. Its strength is derived from an exalted conception of the transcendently spiritual nature of God Who is ever moving towards His wayward people with tenderness and S3niipathy ; and from a vision of the ideal Israel who was to be the servant of His re- demptive will. Gradually the ideal is narrowed and concentrated upon a single individual who emerges as the suffering Servant of Jehovah. His sinless life, His solitary sacrifice, His deep conscious- ness that all His ignominy and shame, His passion and travail of soul was but the will of the Father and would bring peace and wholeness to the people, so perfectly foreshadows the life and death of Jesus that the mind of man has forever associated them as prophetic adumbration and fulfillment. If the dominant note in Abraham's friendship with God was fellowship through faith and obedi- ence, that of Moses was righteousness through faith and obedience. If David sang of the tender mercies of God bending to the cry of a broken and contrite heart, Isaiah beheld afar, God as a solitary figure treading the wine-press alone, and led as a lamb to the slaughter in order that He might heed that cry and find the sheep that was lost. Thus from the dim foreshadowings of the past, God's abiding friend- ship for man has grown into a mighty river of love. Patriarch and lawgiver, prophet and priest, king and people have mingled their countless experiences, their glorious victories and appalling defeats, their bitter sins and crushing sorrows, their deep needs Its Divine Foreshadowing 57 and soul hungers, their hopes, their aspirations and their longing visions, until the whole emerges in the crowning personality of the Christ. In the friend- ship of Jesus, God and man meet, forever after to be companions of the common way. V AN HISTORICAL AND SCRIPTUEAL FACT REALITY is to religion what oxygen is to the atmosphere. Only the vital is real ; " that is most which is inmost." When God, through the mystery of the Incarnation, veiled Deity in human flesh He did not mean that we should rest content with the rapturous beauty of the outward form. True, we need the historic Christ to save us from a false subjectivism but we also need the great inward reality of His person to save us from a vague culture of the soul. It is the highest test of a great life that it demands of each succeeding age a satisfactory explanation of itself. Surely the present age will not rest content with the explanation that Christianity is merely a " great spiritual drama evolved out of the inner conscious- ness of the early Church ; a purely fictitious creation embodying only certain deep insights of the human soul." On the other hand, as we turn to the life and words of our Lord, the question at once arises, "Was Jesus content that the men whom He drew around Him should know Him only as a dear but earthly friend ; or did He seek to lead them into some interior relation to Him that would lift their conception of His friendship above the limitations 58 An Historical and Scriptural Fact 59 of the fleshly and ground it in the eternal and timeless Spirit ? When Jesus moved amongst the lowly of this earth with such a tenderness of com- passion and complete identification of social and religious interests that He won for Himself, even from His enemies, His dearest name, " Friend of publicans and sinners " did He aim to satisfy only their human needs or did He mean that His friend- ship for them should also cleanse and purify and save? At the opening of our Lord's public ministry, all four of the Gospels present the rugged but com- manding personality of John the Baptist. As I have elsewhere said, he was stern, prophetic, un- compromising, yet full of pathos ; great with a splendid sense of power, yet humble as a child ; — simple but sublime. Many elements entered into the making of his character. Beside the rich inherit- ance of childhood, there was a fine mingling of mountain peaks and desert wastes, of shining rivers and prophetic voices. His passion for righteous- ness, his clear-cut denunciation of sin, his peculiar power to penetrate beneath the shams and hypocri- sies of his day, together with his prophetic an- nouncement of the coming of his Lord bid fair to enthrone him in the religious life and thought of his day. There is one utterance of John common in substance to all four Evangelists. " I indeed baptize you in water unto repentance ; but He that Cometh after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to bear : He shall baptize you in the 6o The Friendship of Jesus Holy Spirit and in fire." Later on, when the rela- tion between John and Jesus had ripened into a beautiful friendship and the popularity of John seemed about to suffer a total eclipse because of the growing influence and attractiveness of his greater Friend, we find him saying, " He that hath the bride is the bridegroom : but the friend of the bridegroom that standeth and heareth him, rejoiceth greatly be- cause of the bridegroom's voice : this my joy there- fore is made full. He must increase but I must decrease." If the mark of a true friendship is joy over the triumph of a friend then this was a great friendship ; but when that triumph means your own decrease then it is the greatest of all friendships. John saw clearly that the mission of Jesus was deeply moral and spiritual. He also perceived that the only way to enter in and share that life was through complete self-effacement. Take that utterance of Jesus recorded so many times by Matthew, Mark, and Luke : " If any man would come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me. For whosoever would save his life shall lose it ; and whosoever shall lose his life for My sake and the gospel's shall save it. For what doth it profit a man, to gain the whole world, and forfeit his life ? For what should a man give in exchange for his life ? For whoso- ever shall be ashamed of Me and of My words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of man also shall be ashamed of him, when He cometh in the glory of His Father with the holy angels. An Historical and Scriptural Fact 6l And He said unto them, Verily I say unto you, there are some here of them that stand by, who shall in no wise taste of death, till they see the kingdom of God come with power " (Mark viii. 34- ix. 1). Friendship with Jesus is assimilation into the great spiritual realities that lie back of His earthly life. The obedience demanded by Jesus is, as Gould well says, " to be voluntary and unen- forced, and His own road to kingship is through repudiation and death. This absolute self-efface- ment is, moreover, the principle of the kingdom and required of all its members." Complete self-efface- ment is open identification of our life with Christ's life and a mutual cooperation in the building up of His kingdom. This calls for no cringing, spineless, self-abnegation but for a magnificent and continu- ous self-assertion of all that is pure, noble, coura- geous, and self-sacrificing in our manhood. " Con- secration is not amputation" but big, glorious growth. He who will not soar at the very thought of such a Christ must either shed his feathers or " keep his wing'd affections dipt with crime." To be ashamed of Jesus is to betray the intrinsic nobility of one's better self. To gain life is to apparently give up that which men most seek to obtain. It was a source of un- ending amazement and sorrow to Jesus that men should so fail to sense the inward reality of this fundamental mystical paradox. It was this failure that caused the rich young ruler to turn away sor- rowful and so miss the offered friendship of the 62 The Friendship of Jesus Son of God Who so loved him. Friendship with Jesus demands a magnificent but sane contempt for wealth. Man is as great as his affections. God shuns the narrow heart but takes up His abode in the ample bosom of a princely poverty. " For ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, that ye through His poverty might become rich." These words of Professor James are well worth pondering : " The mystery that he who feeds on death that feeds on men possesses life and meets best the secret demands of the universe, is the truth of which asceticism has been the faithful champion. The folly of the cross, so inexplicable by the intellect, has yet its indestructible vital meaning. Naturalistic optimism is mere syllabub and flattery and sponge- cake in comparison. . . . What we now need to discover in the social realm is the moral equivalent of war : something heroic that will speak to men as universally as war does, and yet will be as com- patible with their spiritual selves as war has proved itself to be incompatible. . . . When one sees the way in which wealth-getting enters as an ideal into the very bone and marrow of our generation, one wonders whether voluntarily accepted poverty may not be ' the transformation of military cour- age.' . . . We have grown literally afraid to be poor. We despise any one who elects to be poor in order to simplify and save his inner life. It is certain that the prevalent fear of poverty among An Historical and Scriptural Fact 63 the educated classes is the worst moral disease from which our civilization suffers." Over against this picture of our present-day life place St, Matthew's splendid siunmary of our Lord's Galilean ministry. " From that time began Jesus to preach, and to say, Repent ye ; for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. And walking by the Sea of Galilee, He saw two brethren, Simon who is called Peter, and An- drew his brother, casting a net into the sea ; for they were fishers. And He saith unto them, Come ye after Me, and I will make you fishers of men. And they straightway left the nets, and followed Him. And going on from thence. He saw two other brethren, James the son of Zebedee, and John his brother, in the boat with Zebedee their father, mending their nets ; and He called them. And they straightway left the boat and their father, and followed Him. And Jesus went about in all Gali- lee, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing all manner of disease and all manner of sickness among the people." Friendship with Jesus is membership in His kingdom. The way into the kingdom is through the cleansed life, the surrendered mil, and the caU to service. See those splendid young men leaving their nets to follow the Christ. No falter- ing trust or doubt, no paltry excuse, no feeble fumbling of a great purpose, but straightwa)'' they left their nets. Into His life they went through forgiveness and obedience ; out from His life they passed to a career of social service such as the 64 The Friendship of Jesus world has never seen. They were to teach; for education is to the kingdom what steel girdere are to a buildmg. They were to preach ; lifting, high above the confusion and the din, lofty ideals and standards of value — duty, truth, justice, mercy, holiness and love. They were to heal all manner of disease ; physical disease, moral disease, disease of the body politic, disease of the soul ; disease due to heredity and environment. They were to heal by prevention as well as by rescue ; fight the bat- tles of the weak, the outcast, the poor, the op- pressed. In short they were to participate in the entire recreation of the socially unfit by throwing themselves athwart the old processes of elimination. Elimination of the unfit to survive by spiritual re- creation, by rooting ethical and moral advancement in a religion of the Spirit. Here was a program of social reconstruction, so radical, so far-reaching, so daring that it has ever since staggered and chal- lenged the human mind to fully conceive its unfold ing possibilities. Perhaps I have given too much space to the development of this more active and heroic aspect of the friendship of Jesus, but I could not help it. Even now, as I write, I feel the iron creeping into my blood ; and my heart burns as I catch visions of the splendid opportunities open to the young man- hood and womanhood of the world when once they enter into this blessed friendship of our Lord and Christ. Irresistibly I am drawn to those noble words of Stanley : " I was shocked to hear, on get- An Historical and Scriptural Fact 65 ting ashore, of the death of Livingstone at Ilala. Dear Livingstone ! another sacrifice to Africa I His mission must not be allowed to cease ; others must go forward and till the gap. ' Close up, boys ! close up ! Death must find us everywhere.' May I be selected to succeed him in opening up Africa to the shining light of Christianity ! May Living- stone's God be with me, as He was with Living- stone in all his loneliness. May God direct me as He wills. I can only vow to be obedient, and not to slacken." The real inwardness of Christ's friendship is set forth in the fifth chapter of St. Matthew. It is impossible to read the Beatitudes without catching the sound of a hidden harmony that tells of the soul's approach to the great heart of God. Leaving the overt act, Jesus penetrates to the motives and attitudes that control our lives ; here He finds the broken law. Starting with the common ethical idea that a man should love his neighbor and hate his enemy, he finds the root of all ethics in sonship with the Father, and from this deep subsoil grows a love that touches every spring of human action, includes even our enemies, and bears at last the fruit of perfect character. Closely allied to this group of sayings are those luminous and beautiful w^ords recorded by St. Mat- thew and partly by St. Luke : " All things have been delivered unto Me of My Father : and no one knoweth the Son, save the Father ; neither doth any know the Father, save the Son, and he to 66 The Friendship of Jesus whomsoever the Son willeth to reveal Him. Come unto Me all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you, and learn of Me ; for I am meek and lowly in heart : and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For My yoke is easy, and My burden is light." This deeply mystical passage leads us into the heart of all things. The Father reveals Himself through His Son. He who sees the unseen and makes other men to see what he sees through the medium of his own character, that man is godlike. This is the highest form of revelation, for it is divine revelation and self-revelation combined. " He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father." Whomsoever Jesus admits into His friendship enters into and shares with Him the life of God. Here we learn the Father's will and rejoice ; for the meek shall in- herit the earth. Here we feel His strength and our burdens grow light ; for rest reposes upon the glad sense of power. Here we share His love and the galling friction of the yoke is gone ; for love is the oil of the soul. Here we live anew in His holiness and the guilt of sin takes wings ; for the holy heart of God is infinite peace. All the yearnings of all the ages are here voiced as by a single corporate soul. There is in these words a tenderness, an ap- pealing sympathy, and a hidden reality that makes the lives of men to move about them like stars in their orbits. They open outwardly to all the com- mon experiences of life, and inwardly to all the deep mysteries of God ; they are instinct with a An Historical and Scriptural Fact 67 song that human ears can hear ; yet filled with the hidden harmonies of the higher friendship. This evening, as the sun sank behind the hills, it flung a flame of crimson glory far across the sky. Caught up by the tumultuous rolling of the clouds, it seemed like the folds of a blood-red flag stream- ing in the night'-winds of heaven. At noon, the sun vras glorious, like unto burnished gold; to- night it sank in a sea of blood and now all is dark about us. But we know that it will rise again, and did we not know this, our lives would be filled with freezing fears. Jesus and His disciples were in the upper room in Jerusalem. Judas had gone and it was night. Without, in the streets, the fretful crowd surged to and fro half conscious of some impending crisis. Within, Jesus looked into the troubled faces of those most dear to Him. They, too, had sensed some deep sorrow close at hand. His disciples were very precious to Him and with great desire our Lord desired to eat the Passover with them be- fore He suffered. At the close of the meal He took a piece of bread and a cup of wine, and over these simple, common elements He uttered strange words which only deepened their bewilderment. He spoke of going away where they could not then go, of His broken body and shed blood, of death on the cruel and shameful cross. The disciples could not then understand. They only felt the nearness of unutterable loss. They had beheld Him in the noontide of His glory and had loved Him devotedly. 68 The Friendship of Jesus Now they watched the dearest friend that earth has ever known like the great and glorious sun, going down into a sea of blood and they knew not that He would rise again. To be sure Jesus had told them that He would but they had not under- stood. As a consequence, "sorrow filled their hearts, and as frightened children clutch a mother's skirts, so with a painful instinct they held that Friend and Teacher whose presence and love had grown to be their whole life. They were troubled too deeply to reason well upon the purpose and way of His going; they only longed not to lose Him, and clung to Him with a suffocating pre- monition." Long into the night Jesus talked to them ; but John, alone, seemed to have been impressionable. In later years it all came back to him, suffused with the glow of a precious, spiritual presence. The words spoken by our Saviour that memorable night were meant to unfold the meaning of the sacred sacrament which He had instituted. Back of it and breathing out through it is the presence of the risen Christ who makes possible a mutual indwell- ing, a sacred friendship far more deeply interfused with the life of God than was possible with His physical presence. This is the deepest self-revela- tion of Jesus. He uses three ideas to express Him- self : the ever-present comforter, the true vine, and a self-sacrificing friendship. " If I go not away the Paraclete will not come." " Thus," says President Stryker, " does Christ affirm An Historical and Scriptural Fact 69 Himself the connection between the outmost and the inmost, the God above and the God within the soul, and lays His hand upon both." " God shows His love, both in the course of time and in the progress of each recovered heart, in three consecu- tive and completing manifestations. They are climatic : Creation, Incarnation, Inspiration. The universe about and above, the animate body with and before us, the deep soul within, — these are the vessels of revelation, affirming His power. His per- sonality, and His unseen presence. Reason, sense, and intuition answer Him, — Maker, Kinsman and Companion, — and in all, the Lord and lover." PART II The Realization of His Friendship Yl THEOUGH THE LONELINESS OF SIN A LIFE without a noble friendship is a harp untuned. Selfishness and sin are the fin- gers of discord. Inharmonious murmur- ing marks their very touch. The friendship of Jesus is the hidden harmony that dispels discord. Touched by the master fingers of the Christ, the long-discordant soul, like some neglected lyre, leaps and gives to rapture all its trembling strings. Oh, Thou Invisible Companion of choice spirits and brave souls, breathe Thyself tlirough us ! Impart to us Thy secret, oh, our Friend, then will we make love our daily liturgy and all our lives will speak their humble lines like the mystic music of some noble poem. The friendship of Jesus is a divinely created necessity. We see this in the very structure of the soul. Our deeper feelings are the source of both our social inclusiveness and our individuality, or aloneness. Of the two the latter is the more inward and personal. Man is therefore a social being made to live alone. We are all made the same, yet no two are alike. Individuality is inner isola- tion. Solitude is the price of personality. Loneli- ness is the unavoidable fact of life. " You can know what I know and you can will what I will 73 74 The Friendship of Jesus but you cannot by any possibility feel what I feel ; this is subjectivity, this peculiar and unapproach- able isolation of one consciousness from another." We must not confuse aloneness with aloofness. Aloofness is cold, exclusive, unresponsive, unsympa- thetic, selfish. It is individuality without soul and without the power to communicate itself. Alone- ness is just the opposite. It is the basic factor in the social instinct. It is the potent element in the everlasting craving for friendship. It is the spirit- ual within us rising into conscious being through contact with other persons. Our loneliness con- sists in the inability of human friendships to meet our deepest needs and to call us forth to our highest and our finest self-realization. While it is impos- sible for a man to be alone it is impossible for him not to be alone. It is out of the depth of our finer feelings that all true friendship springs. At the same time it is in the depth of our finer feelings that we discover the sacredness and inviolability of our truer and diviner selves. The very forces of our nature, which compel us to sociability and community of life, say to us imperatively — " thus far and no farther." Yet this inner part of our life, which is left alone because of the limitations of human friendship, is even more in need of a friend ; for it is here we live and aspire, think and theorize, are tempted and sin, suffer and sorrow, despair and hope, believe and rejoice, love and endure. And this is just why God has so shut the world out. Here He would Through the Loneliness of Sin 75 have us for Himself. "We would not have it other- wise. " There is within every life a Holy of Holies over the threshold of which no human feet can pass." Only the divine Friend can enter here, and the wonderful thing about His entrance is that it never brings with it the slightest shadow of intrusion save when sin has barred the door. God is a person and not a mere individual. For that reason He can enter where individuals cannot go ; and, unless He does enter into and fill our Holy of Holies, all our human friendships will bear the stamp of the earthly and the sensuous. Friendship with Jesus is the highest relation into which any human being can enter. "When the limitations of human friendship would leave us lonely Jesus enters into a larger companionship. This is true even when sin separates us from God and our loneliness is unutterable and complete. The loneliness of the soul takes one of several forms. There is the loneliness of sin which we bring upon ourselves. There is also the loneliness of pain and of sorrow, of high ideals and of subtle temptations, of doubt and of death. These are im- posed upon us by the nature of our life and are the conditions of a richer fellowship with God. The loneliness of sin is unbearable. God is shut out and man is shut in alone with his sin. As the wood when leaves are shed, As the niglit wlien sleep has fled, As the heart when joy is dead, I am alone, alone." 76 The Friendship of Jesus Loneliness is the only lyric of a lost world. Friend- ship is the silent song of a redeemed humanity. Sin like a siren lures the soul to shores of un- utterable solitude. Chiist, with friendship's more than Orphean sweetness, guides the sailor, home- ward bound, o'er hidden shoal and storm-swept sea. Sin adulterates aifection, saps the springs of joy, perverts and palsies the will, negatives thought, falsifies truth, betrays conscience, beclouds the spiritual vision and desecrates the inner shrine of the Spirit. Sin is cruel, weak, selfish, and cowardly. It is most cowardly when most it seems courageous. Such is " the courage and the cowardice of sin," It is big with promises, only to delude and deride, to mock and to mutilate, the cherished hope of the soul. Sin separates and insulates: nature hides her face in shame and all earth's dearest friend- ships undergo a subtle estrangement. How much more is this true between the sinner and God 1 The sense of shame, the feeling of lost confidence, the moral certainty of guilt, have broken the bond of fellowship with nature, with nature's God, and with one's fellow men. Man becomes a lone wanderer upon the face of the world. The more he seeks society, the lonelier he becomes. The world seems against him. His very soul becomes divided against itself. It is more than he can bear. Such was the sin of Cain. " And Cain said unto Jehovah, My punishment is greater than I can bear. Behold Thou hast driven me out this day from the face of the ground ; and from Thy face Through the Loneliness of Sin 77 shall I be hid: and I shall be a fugitive and a wanderer in the earth : and it will come to pass that whosoever findeth me will slay me." It is the common experience of men. Alone ! Alone ! with sin haunting the stricken conscience like a shadowy- spectre. In such a state a man will pass from despair through melancholia to suicide, or he will be driven to desperation, defiance and damnation. There is but one way of escape and that is through friendship with Christ to God. There are two experiences where this crushing sense of loneliness because of sin is complete. "We meet with them in our own prayer-Ufe and in the experience of Christ on the cross. Prayer is the language of the divine friendship. It finds com- plete expression only in the presence of unbroken confidence. Let sin have its way ever so little and instantly there springs up an invisible barrier be- tween the soul and God. Sin kills the spirit of prayer and strangles its every utterance. Words are a mere mockery and form a falsehood, — that our soul knoweth quite well. God has been shut out. We are alone with our sin. Ourselves we dare not forgive. We are dumb before our Maker. Our loneliness is complete. We fall to the ground. We are crushed. We utter a smothered penitent cry. It is the stifled sob of a broken and a contrite heart. We turn instinctively, wistfully, beseech- ingly, to Calvary. We need a friend, a divine Friend, a Friend who knows the worst, who sees the trail of the serpent over our once pure lives and ^8 The Friendship of Jesus loves us still. That Friend is ever near at hand and fully understands and fully satisfies. Jesus fully understands because He has sounded the same experience. He fully satisfies because His fair sweet Spirit has never known the stairi and the shame of sin. Surely this is the meaning of that mysterious cry from the cross — "My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me ? " For one brief moment He took upon Himself the sin of the world and bore its penalty of unspeakable isolation. Alone, when the ribald mockery of men rang in His ears and grief-stricken friends were helpless. Alone, when nature, with her deepest laws violated, veiled her face with dense darkness. Alone, when the silence of heaven remained unbroken. Hu- manity, nature, and God, all were shut out from His life. He stood in the presence of awful, unut- terable negation, which is the logic of sin. His cry was the cry of the Psalmist, the inevitable cry of a lost world. It cost Him His life, and "greater love hath no man than 'this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." Then it was that He who knew no sin, having stood with a lost world on the black brink of infinite isolation, turned and led the lonely heart of himianity back into a holy friend- ship with God. The power of Jesus to so enter into this the prof oundest experience of the race must ever remain the mystery and the potency of the divine friendship, the divine redemption. Once and for all the Saviour of men has paid the awful price, broken the power of sin, and opened Through the Lonehness of Sin 79 up the way back to God. We are drawn to our uplifted and risen Lord as irresistibly as the steel to the magnet. Union with Chiist is separation from sin ; it is life out of a living death. So rich, so inexhaustible is the atoning work of Jesus that no one can pretend adequately to define it for every other man. Each sin-stained, contrite soul must draw near and know its peace and learn for himself its glorious power. To remain away from the holy heart of Jesus because your sin is deep is to commit the deepest sin of all. Sin dies m the continued presence of a pure life ; the loneliness of sin is just the sin of allowing one's self to be alone. One long, earnest look into the face of the Chi'ist will kill the love of sin completely. " O loose me, seest thou not my Bridegroom's face That draws me to Hira'? For His feet my kiss, My hair, my tears He craves to-day : — and oh ! What words can tell what other day and place Shall see me clasp those blood-stained feet of His ? He needs me — calls me — loves me — let me go ! " St. Paul has an even more beautiful picture of Jesus in mind when he ^^^'ites in Second Corin- thians. It is the image of the Christ-face formed by the Holy Spirit in the chambers of each man's soul. " But we all with unveiled face beholding as in a mirror, the glory of the Lord, are transformed into the same image from glory to glory even as from the Lord the Spirit." Oh ! Avith what strong, tender love and sympathetic insight Jesus has 8o The Friendship of Jesus drawn near to the broken, lonely, sin-stained hearts of men and women in all ages. He is more real and present with us to-day than He was when He made friends of sinful Mary and John and Peter and Judas. Yes, He is with us now and the loneli- ness of sin is just the sin of allowing ourselves to be alone. VII THEOUGH THE LONELINESS OF GEEAT IDEALS AND THEIR TEMPTATIONS MAN is inwrought with the ideal as the moimtains are veined with gold. To discover it, to refine it, to stamp it with the divine insignia and make it pass current in so- ciety, this is the great task of life. What is this ideal but the deeply rooted feeling that within our- selves there lies both the possibility of, and the re- sponsibility for, attaining the best. Our ideal is therefore bound up with the free expression of a personal will. Modern science, in its search for truth, has found the universe to be ethical to the core. It has also looked into history and has be- held there the manifold evidence of a supreme and good wdll working towards an ideal society within the free state. Looking into man it finds the same great purpose struggling into being. Weigh well these words of Huxley, quoted by President Faunce : " Science teaches, in the clearest and strongest manner, the Christian doctrine of entire surrender to the will of God." What does this mean for the young man and woman of to-day ? It means two things : First, that the finest self is gained only through social 81 82 The Friendship of Jesus contact and that, therefore, the ideal best is achieved only in an ideal society ; again, it means that the whole constitution of the universe is pledged to the final attainment of this ideal. But this is njot all. " The roots of individuality go as deep as the deepest being." Our will, with its passion for the best, drives us into religion — a su- preme, personal and creative will energizing all nature and expressing itself through history and especially through the personality of the Incarnate Christ. This is the greatness, the glory, and the promise of the Christian ideal. Christianity has given the world an ideal of per- fect society. I^ot only does the kingdom of God include the Church now and hereafter, but also a free moral state pledged to the exalted freedom of the individual, the Fatherhood of God, and the Brother- hood of Man. The Church has not kept up with its ideal. Indeed, it cannot. Vision must always out- run attainment. Every clear act of achievement by which we approach our ideal enlarges by so much that ideal which we seek to approach. A young man's ideal is first of all an ideal self, a supreme moral character. But ideal character is developed only in an ideal society. This ideal society found its perfect revelation and guarantee in the Incarnate Christ. A young man's ideal there- fore must be as big as the purpose of the universe, which is also God's purpose, or the ideal Christ. But how does Christ include the ideal both of the individual and of society ? Jesus taught the world Through the Loneliness of Great Ideals 83 that a man attained his highest self-realization only by imparting that self to others. The ideal state is that society where each individual gains his freest possible development by generous self-dona- tion. This law of our being is called the law of sacrifice. It is in reality the law of ideal self- realization. It is Avrought deep into the structure of the universe and is of the very nature of God. To its final triumph as the supreme law of life all is pledged. Christ, Who is the expression of the crea- tive will and purpose of God, has sealed that pledge on Calvary. Friendship with Jesus means just this : that Christ, through the power of the cross and the in- dwelling Spirit, is ever seeking to realize His high- est ideal self through each individual life. Thus Pie becomes not only our perfect ideal but also the spiritual dynamic for its attainment. But it means even more than this. It means that we enter into and share His friendship by seeking to realize His ideal, which has now become our ideal, through the giving of ourselves to others. Our ideal is no longer a mystic, elusive shadow of another world, but something intensely spiritual, which our eyes can see, our hands handle, our reason accept, our heart possess and our will achieve. He who throws himself with passion into the building up of an ideal state begins the realization of the supreme ideal. And the glory of it all is that he can do this conscious that a good God, an ethical universe, and human history, working through the living, 84 The Friendship of Jesus expanding personality of the Christ are pledged irrevocably to his success. Let a young man or woman yield unreservedly to this great fact and the heavens will open and a voice will say, " This is My beloved Son, hear ye Him." It is at this thrilling moment in every young Uf e, when the magic spell of the vision and the voice is upon him, that the Spirit drives him into the wilder- ness, there to fight his battle alone, against the forces of temptation. If you would know the lone- liness of life apart from sin, and the keen and subtle power of temptation, set yourself resolutely towards the attainment of a noble ideal. Why should we be thus tempted ? Temptation is to the soul what resistance in the air is to the bird. We cannot rise into the spiritual and away from the material without making use of that from which we wish to escape. The primary meaning of temptation is to test, to try, to develop. Our character is drawn out and made strong and efficient only through testing. " Count it all joy, my brethren, when ye fall into manifold temptations ; knowing that the proving of your faith worketh patience." Every temptation is an opportunity to win a victory for one's finer self, to come into fuller fellowship with the life of God. Tempta- tion that seeks to drag the soul down into sin is the same power as above invested with an evil purpose. God does not do it, He cannot. Either it must come from within ourselves or from some one outside of us. There is no power in temptation Through the Loneliness of Great Ideals 85 apart from personality. The mind has a subtle power to invest every such testing with a wrong motive. Then it becomes evil and if we harbor it in our lives ever so little it is sure to conceive and bring forth sin. Let the power of evil association or suggestion become once established and we lose by so much the power of resistance. But if we resist the evil association at once, then all the power of the temptation passes over into our lives and becomes a means of spiritual development. Temptation is to our ideals what fire is to civilization ; it will make us mighty or consume us utterly. Vested with a divine motive it makes for the unfolding of personality, the realization of the Christian ideal. Poisoned by an unholy desire, it seeks, by snake-like devices, to dethrone personality and lead the human will captive, to obscure the spiritual in our ideals by obtruding the sensual, to prostitute their holy function, to doubt their divine efficacy, to forsake them for the golden glitter of the world. Is it not plain? The divine investi- ture is the secret of a strong and victorious life. Just as we saw that the creative and energizing will of a good God, as seen in human history and in an ethical universe, is pledged to the attainment of the Christian ideal, so also, we see that these same forces are pledged to a final triumph over all temptation. The proof of the first is Calvary, that of the second is a sinless Christ. Surely this is the meaning of those fine words of St. Paul, " There hath no temptation taken you but such as is com- 86 The Friendship of Jesus mon to man ; but God is faithful Who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able, but will, with the temptation, make the way of escape, that ye may be able to bear it." The experience of our Lord, in His great tempta- tion, embodies all that we have thus far been say- ing. No sooner had Jesus openly consecrated Him- self to the Messianic ideal which surged through His young soul, than the Spirit drove Him into the wilderness, there to battle alone with the most in- clusive of temptations. " And He was with the wild beasts and the angels ministered unto Him." Two titanic powers contended that time in the soul of Jesus. Friends may advise and encourage, but every young life must fight alone. He only can decide to remain true to his ideals, to forsake them, or to use them for a less exalted mission. The lat- ter form of the temptation is, to a young life, by far the more subtle. The temptation of Jesus was generic and in- clusive. In it we find the germ of almost every temptation that would assault our present-day ideals. It took three forms. Following the order of St. Luke, its first is this : " If Thou art the Son of God, command this stone that it become bread." And Jesus answered unto him, " It is written, man shall not live by bread alone." Here we have the temptation to use the forces, pledged by the voice from heaven, for the gratification of physical appe- tites. The power of this temptation lies in the fact that hunger is a natural and necessary appetite. Through the LoneUness of Great Ideals 87 Ii must be supplied if we would live. But change its character and you see its tragic implication. To-day we have some teachers of scientific sociology who say the sexual passion is an instinct necessaiy to the propagation of the race ; unless it is exer- cised it will lose its function. A certain amount of promiscuous indulgence is necessary to the develop- ment of robust manhood and womanhood. It is a natural instinct and its moderate indulgence, out- side of wedlock, cannot be a sin. How far will such damning logic project a young man towards the attainment of his ideal ? Man cannot live by the physical alone. Another subtle form of this temptation is to lose sight of the spiritual goal of the ideal because the pathway to its attainment leads through the fields of daily toil and common- place ministry. How can I use God's power, pledged to the growth of an ideal society, in the humble task of meeting the physical needs of life, of seeing that the poor get their rights and enough to eat, without compromising the spiritual nature of the ideal ? That is the question we must per- petually ask ourselves. Jesus was committed to an ideal kingdom which should embrace the world. The temptation to substitute a temporal for a spiritual power is ever with us. This was the second form which our Lord's temptation took. The only road to the at- tainment of an ideal spiritual society is along the pathway of sacrifice and self-effacement. Against this doctrine the pomp of pride, the lust for fame, 88 The Friendship of Jesus and the vain worship of the world, hurl their bat- talions ; but they also use submarines. The Chris- tian ideal, they say, is spiritual, the state is secular ; they have nothing in common. You are a fine fel- low with magnificent powers ; compromise your ideal, make it practical, look out for yoursel:^ en- ter politics by way of the machine and you will have glory and honor. Temptation is most subtle when it appeals to vanity. Yanity is a disease like unto cataract that grows a filmy veil over the eyes. He who has been blinded by vanity must submit to spiritual surgery if he would again look into the heavenlies. How can I bring my spiritual ideal into practical politics without ruling the worship of God out of my life ? This is the question to be perpetually asked, else God and the ideal De- mocracy will give way to the old idea of a world empire with its suppression of the individual and consequent exaltation of lust, greed, and graft. "We have been saying that God is pledged to the realization of the Christian ideal and hence to a final triumph over every temptation that would seek to dethrone that ideal. The third temptation of Jesus was simply an insinuating challenge. Try it and see. God has promised, give Him a chance to prove Himself. Many a young life has thrown itself passionately and confidently into the realiza- tion of his ideal only to meet with bitter defeat. He has flung his hopes from the pinnacle of life's ambition only to have them dashed to pieces at the feet of a jeering crowd. What is the trouble? Through the Loneliness of Great Ideals 89 The world says, win your ideal by saving yourself and sharing the glory. God says, win your ideal by giving yourself and let the future generations share in the glory. How subtle is the temptation to invert the ideal, to go down to seeming defeat and then to doubt God. It is one of the glories of youth that its ideals are fused with a dauntless hope. It is only as the slow years advance and the toil and sacrifice multi- ply and the end of one's endeavor draws near, that the temptation to doubt God's loyalty and power grips the soul like a vise. The loneliest hour of a man's life, apart from the loneliness of sin, is when he beholds his ideal in the hour of its crucifixion. This is the hour of Gethsemane, the agony and the bloody sweat. Shall I compromise my ideal, doubt God and forsake it utterly or shall I follow it through death's eclipse to an eternal shining ? Every man must answer this question in the midnight loneliness of his own soul. Human friends can come no nearer to him than the three disciples came to Jesus that night in the garden of Gethsemane. In the temptation of Jesus we see how completely He has entered into and shared that profound ex- perience through which every young life must pass who would realize his best ideal. From the lips of Jesus Himself we have the pledge that, without any breaking doAvn of our own free choice and will- power, He will enter by His spirit into our lives and help us to a like achievement. '' For in that 90 The Friendship of Jesus He Himself hath suffered, being tempted, He is able also to succor them that are tempted." "With sympathy and forgiving love He helps us reshape our shattered ideals, restore the broken integrity of our higher life, and pass from shame and seem- ing defeat to find victory. This is the power and the preciousness of His enduring friendship. He is so Avise and valiant, so gentle and generous, so good and great, so very near to each one of us precisely in being so far above us, that to mistrust or disobey Him is to doubt our own best selves and the love of a good God. Friendship with Jesus means the final realization of our ideal and victory over all temptation. It makes the soul heroic. " Heroism is the brilliant triumph of the soul over the flesh — that is to say over fear : fear of poverty, of suffering, of calumny, of sickness, of isolation and of death. There is no serious piety without heroism. Heroism is the dazzling and glorious concentration of courage." There is one thing about the coming of Christ into the soul which every young life should know. Jesus does not seek to eradicate the elemental in- stincts and passions of our nature, but rather does He seek to develop and transfigure them. Nowhere is this more true than with the two most primary emotions of fear and love. He only is brave who has known the power of fear and the passion of love. It is a pitiful spectacle to behold the world cringing and cowering under the dread poAver of fear. Yet to eradicate fear rather than to transfigure it would Through the Loneliness of Great Ideals 91 be as fatal a mistake as it would be to uproot rather than to upbuild love. Fear is the sensitive nerve of the soul and lives by love. We would not know the fear of death except we felt the love of life. We never really know the fear of sin until we know the love of a pui-e Christ. I have no fear of hell. I fear no loss of heaven ; but to offend my God and live under the condemning consciousness that I am incapable of friendship with a holy Christ, of this I am afraid. Only a perfect love casteth out fear ; and that by transfiguration of the moral na- ture. " Watch and pray that ye enter not into tempta- tion." That is, that ye fail not to attain your ideal. To watch is to prepare beforehand, by right habits of living, sound thinking, generous self-giving and spiritual culture. To watch is to discern the real nature of the temptation and insist upon calling it by its right name ; to form mental images of the good and pure until by their beauty they lure us, and to form like mental hnages of the unholy and impure until by their ugliness they repel us. To watch is to be alert to the presence alike of the good and the evil; to keep the soul sensitive, to throw open the portals instantly to every sugges- tion of the good, and to bar them fast, and just as instantly, against every suggestion of evil. Let sin but cross the drawbridge and you vu-tually sur- render the citadel of your soul. To pray is to lift up daily a grateful and reverent soul to the divine presence all about you ; to let the spirit of 92 The Friendship of Jesus Jesus move unhindered thi'ough every motive and action ; to talk with God and let God talk with you ; to so merge your will in the divine will, that, without any surrender of your individuality and freedom, torrents of living power will flow out through the open channels of your life to gladden and uplift the world. He who yields his moral nature, through watchfulness and prayer, to the transfiguring power of the friendship of Jesus, will banish all loneliness from the soul, overcome all temptation, and enthrone forever the ideal. VIII IN THE LONELINESS OF DOUBT AND THE MYSTEEY OF NATUEB HONEST doubts are the growing pains of a nobler faith. Every question of the soul is big with future revelation. Patience is to religion what research is to science. I rejoice in these words of the great Pasteur, " Despising as I do that vulgar scepticism which would erect doubt into a system, I honor that militant scepticism which makes doubt the basis of a method whose motto is * more light.' " A single doubt is a flimsy basis upon which to build a philosophy of life. Men have reached then- idea of God through the accumulated experience of millenniums. Theories may change but facts and principles remain. The breaking down of the nebular hypothesis would not dismiss the universe nor set aside the law of gravitation. The change from a static to a dynamic and developing theory of creation has changed our view-point and enlarged our horizon but it has not dismissed God nor changed the essential nature and demands of the soul. Honest think- ing taxes every atom of our being, but self-de- ception is the easiest thing in the world. To substitute dazzling desires for plain duties, and to dismiss the splendid realities of the soul for lack 93 94 The Friendship of Jesus of adequate explanation is to encourage the growth of a vapid scepticism. But to practice our duties until we love them and to dare to act upon the great realities of life until we prove them ; to chal- lenge our doubts as well as our beliefs ; to study unceasingly and wait patiently for the unfolding of a wider and a deeper knowledge of facts ; to love lavishly and cherish the ideals of Christ and above all to invite, with sweet humility, the aid of the in- finite mind ; this is moral and intellectual honesty of the highest order, this is the antidote for unbelief. Every young life in passing through that strange readjustment to dawning manhood and womanhood undergoes at least four very profound experiences : they are a passion for service, a craving for friends, a deep sense of the mystery of nature and of our place in the universe, and a desire to spend long periods in solitude in an effort to solve one's problems. Many voices now call from out the vast new world without and from the infinite deeps within. It is here that much of our doubt takes its rise. We are bewildered, and immature, and im- patient and have not yet learned how to throw the spectres of the mind by strong affection's sturdy power. As one studies closely the character of Jesus he is not surprised to find these same four aspects of life in His earthly career. He had a con- suming passion to serve and to love ; He yearned for the affection and devotion of men ; He had a growing sense that He was somehow identical with, and shared the love of, that great mysterious " un- In the Loneliness of Doubt 95 known " and " unknowable " who lies everywhere back of the universe and who wells up through human consciousness. To Jesus, God was the lov- ing, righteous Father and our Lord delighted in those hours of solitude when He could lay all His problems at His Father's feet and learn anew the divine will. Deep as w^as the mystery and the passion, doubts never seem to have troubled the Saviour of men. For Him all truth and all experi- ence were unified in that one endearing word, Abba, Father. His was a simple, childlike faith ; He loved God passionately and He knew that God loved Him, and across that love no shadow ever fell. This is why Jesus is now so able to draw near and help every young life struggling with doubts. We are much alone in our doubts because we feel that those about us neither understand nor sympathize Avith us and so we struggle on by our- selves. Unfortunately this is often true but never so with our Lord. Never think for one instant that He, who is the Truth, does not sympathize with those who are struggling after truth. The all- encompassing personality of the Christ compre- hends both the meaning of the universe and the mystery of conscious existence. His endearing friendship for the childlike, wistful souls of men clothes with warm, red blood what would other- wise be a vast abstraction lost in the ponderous w^hirl of worlds. One summer evening I was making a careful study of the fourteenth and fifteenth chapters of 96 The Friendship of Jesus the Gospel by St. John. No one can long study these wonderful chapters without feeling himself very close to the great heart of all things. "We were in our summer camp and for several days the wondrous beauty of nature had deeply impressed me. The Sabbath preceding I had listened to a sermon on the place of Christ in the cosmos. It had disturbed me and set me thinking. Here were three lines of thought, mutually supplementary, and now converging for crystallization in my mind. Night had closed in upon us. Even canvas was insujfferable. Our nature instincts were dominant and, nomad-like, each one had carried his cot into the recess of some silent shadow. To the droning of a thousand katydids we lay down and from sheer excess of joy fell asleep. Midnight saw a pair of eyes wide open, gazing deep into the dark- ness. It seemed as though some one had called. There was no fear, no excitement, no deep stirring of the emotions. Overhead, a mother bird re- arranged her nestling brood. Save for the soft breathing of a near-by cornfield all was silent. But it was such a strange silence, not of oppressive vacuity but a silence instinct with sound. I have never been able to give it adequate expression until I came across these lines by William Watson only a few days ago : " In the heavens a silence that seems not mere privation of sound, But a thing with form and body, a thing to be touched and weighed ! In the Loneliness of Doubt 97 Yet I know that I dwell in the midst of the roar of the cosmic wheel, In the hot collision of Forces and clangor of bound- less Strife, 'Mid the sound of the speed of the worlds, the rush- iug worlds, and the peal Of the thunder of Life." More than an hour passed. Then the moon arose. A flood of mellow light diffused itself beneath the trees. There stood those splendid beeches rearing their solid trunks like marble columns. Through innumerable interstices gleamed the stars. It was all plain now. The Lord was in His holy temple and all the earth was keeping silence before Him. God had awakened a living soul to join the silent worshippers; for all the obeisance of worlds in- numerable cannot equal one humble votary at the shi'ine of pure Spirit. It was nature's sacramental hour. She was laying upon the altar her sacrifice of a perfect obedience and receiving in return the gift of a new day's life. An unutterable hunger took possession of me, a hunger created by the very presence of God but which that presence as revealed in an impersonal nature could not satisf}''. Yearningly my inmost being reached out to possess the Infinite who was so manifestly all about me. There was only the response of a calm majesty. All that my soul could feel was the immaterial reverberation of a vast Omnipotence and this is not religion. It does not satisf^^ Instinctively the inarticulate cry arose to ray lips — Does He know 98 The Friendship of Jesus me ? Am I really His ? Does He care for me in joy or pain, in life or death, in days of faith and nights of doubt, in sorrow and in sin ? Am I a mere transient aspect of natural phenomena in a world where might makes right and evil and pain ride rough-shod over tender sensibilities ? Is my personality a mere emanation, a " fleeting fortui- tous formation," to be taken back and swallowed up in the abyss whence it sprang ? Or does love and a beneficent will as well as mind and creative force reside at the heart of all things ? " O God," I cried, " I believe in the indestructibility of matter and the conservation of energy and the divine in the cosmic process. I believe that nature is the outward phenomena that garbs Thy living presence in forms of wondrous beauty. I believe that con- sciousness cannot be explained by brain activity alone but by some deeper unity that lies at the basis of both mind and matter and whose ' law of action must respect human personality and its ideals.'" But is this all we can believe ? Are we shut up to this : " To follow knowledge like a sinking star Beyond the utmost bound of human thought, To sail beyond the sunset and the baths Of all the western stars until we die. It may be that the gulfs will wash us down ; It may be we shall touch the happy isles" ? Where is that blessed fellowship that all our deepest, inmost yearnings crave ? Where is that In the Loneliness of Doubt 99 intimate and holy friendship that all our human hungers reveal like a rainbow of promise across the sky of hope? Art Thou lost in Thy myriad worlds ? Must heaven and home and love vanish into boundless ether, a dear, wistful dream of the childhood of the race ? Must the strong, warm, tender personality of Jesus melt into a misty ethical ideal and grow dimmer with the receding of the centuries ? Within that vast beyond which lies about us like a never ebbing sea, shall we know Thee and be with those we love ? It must be so else Creation stultifies what it creates. Life without love were a living death. To live and yet not to live ; that is the sad uncertainty of the soul. It was at this juncture that the third line of my previous day's thinking joined the main current of my mind. Clear, strong, abundant, the living waters of Scripture flowed into the muddy turbu- lent current of my thought. Xever has my soul made such a supreme appropriation of the Word of God. It was not so much intellectual insight as simple, childlike, personal appropriation. There was no psychic phenomenon that I could observe and yet my Lord seemed close beside me speaking anew those old, old words : " Let not your heart be troubled : believe in God, believe also in Me. In My Father's house are many mansions ; if it were not so I would have told you." Yes, I was Thomas and Philip and Judas (not Iscariot) in all their spiritual obtuseness and sorrowful uncertainty and loo The Friendship of Jesus deep heart hunger. I asked my Lord their ques- tions and back came the answers. " I am the way and the truth and the life. . . . He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father . . . and I will pray the Father, and He shall give you another Comforter, that He may be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth : whom the world cannot re- ceive. ... If any man love Me he will keep My word : and My Father will love him, and we will come unto him and make our abode with him. . . . I am the vine, ye are the branches : He that abideth in Me and I in him, the same beareth much fruit : for apart from Me ye can do nothing." " True, Lord," I ventured, " as all nature this night bears witness, but it is all so mystical, so seemingly intangible. Like unto what is this inner, spiritual relationship and how can I abide in Thee ? " " This is My commandment, that ye love one another, even as I have loved you. Greater love hath no man than this that a man lay down his life for his friends. Ye are My friends, if ye do the things which I command you. No longer do I call you servants ; for the servant knoweth not what his Lord doeth : but I have called you friends ; for all things that I heard from My Father I have made known unto you." ..." Lo, now speakest Thou plainly and speakest no dark saying. . . . By this we believe that Thou camest forth from God." So I who once could see but perfect power and perfect law and perfect mind in perfect nature writ can now behold a perfect love. All four In the Loneliness of Doubt • loi are blended into one supreme personality, so in- deliuably personal and present that I can ever hear a voice which calls me by mine own familiar name. The man who remains true to the fact of his own deepest self ; and who beholds in his heart a love that will not let its object go, will rise by in- tuition to the truth that such is the nature of God. He wiU find that the revelation of the heavenly Father in the person of Jesus Christ speaks to his soul with increasing satisfaction, and that all his doubts are but the necessary adjustment of the new to that which is vital and imperishable in the old. IX IN THE OPEN AIR AND THE WOELD OF WORK THE fields and the workshops are the true monasteries of the soul. Nature symbols forth its Maker ; and every humble task well done is a revelation of the character of God. Within cloistered mountain walls, and amid the stern struggles of social life, prophet, king and priest beheld the beatific vision and heard the voice that gave to the world the Book divine. Every great seer of the Bible was a lover of nature and trained in youth to follow some lowly trade. With his shepherd's crook in his hand Moses looked into a little hillside bush and heard a voice that has changed the face of human history. It has thun- dered down through the ages and will continue to thimder until the shackles of sin and political sla- very fall from the wrists of all men. Who would not be a humble shepherd and tend sheep in the back hills of Arabia, if he could hear that voice ? All I have I would sell and journey thither, foot- sore and weary, for the priceless privilege. Yet every parent is a shepherd and every policeman a keeper of the sheep ; while Mrs. Browning would tell us that earth is crammed with heaven and every 102 In the Open Air and World of Work 1 03 bash aflame with God. David was a shepherd be- fore he was a king. It was then that the green pastures, the still waters, the dark valley about him, and the glorious firmament above him, spoke to his soul of the good and holy God within. His was *' A sense sublime Of something far more deeply interfused Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, And the round ocean and the living air, And the blue sky and in the mind of man ; A motion and a spirit that impels All thinking things, all objects of all thoughts, And rolls through all things." It is an mspiring and comforting thought to those who toil unknown and uncared for in the congested centres of our great cities, that, for eighteen years, our Lord helped His mother to support a large family by toiling in a little carpenter shop located in the heart of a squalid city. It was a community whose lack of culture and beauty made it a byword and a joke in the learned and priestly precincts of Jerusalem. There is a bond of sympathy and fellowship between Jesus and the sons and daugh- ters who toil unnoticed and alone that is wonder- fully tender and precious. The sermon to the college graduating class, of which I was a member, was developed from those words of Jesus, "My Father worketh even until now, and I work." I have forgotten all but two things : a deep sense of the dignity of work because of its intimate and vital relation to the life of God and the following 104 The Friendship of Jesus quaint lines so expressive of that feeling. I have read and pondered their simple meaning many- times ; " ' Isn't this Joseph's son ? ' Aye, it is He, * Joseph the carpenter ' — same trade as me ! I thought as I'd find it, I knew it was here, But my sight's getting queer. " I don't know right where as His shed might ha' stood, But often, as I've been a-planing my wood, I've took off my hat just with thinking of He At the same work as me. ** He warn't that set up that He couldn't stoop down And work in the country for folks in the town, And I'll warrant He felt a bit pride like I've done At a good job begun. ** The parson he knows that I'll not make too free, But on Sundays I feel as pleased as can be When I wears my clean smock and sets in a pew And has thoughts not a few. *' I think of as how not the parson hissen. As is teacher and father and shepherd of men, Not he knows as much of the Lord in that shed Where He earned His own bread. " And when I goes home to my missus, says she, * Are you wanting your key 1 ' For she knows my queer ways and my love for the shed (We've been forty years wed). In the Open Air and World of Work 105 " So I comes right away by myseu with the Book, And I turns the old pages aud has a good look For the text as I've fouud as tells me as He Were the same trade with me. " Why don't I mark iti Ah, many says so ! But I thiuk I'd as lief, with your leave, let it go. It do seem that nice when I fall on it sudden. Unexpected you know." But what of the evening hours when the day's work was done ? It is no false fancy to feel that Jesus very often climbed the hills back of Nazareth and looked out into the great world about Him, with simple joy and deep insight. Close by were the struggling, toiling, sin-sick and neglected masses of Nazareth, Cana, and Capernaum. About Him the blue waters of Galilee and the grain fields of Esdraelon. Out and beyond, like silent sentinels of the centuries, stood the mountains of Hermon, Ephraim, and Carmel. But youth lives beyond the hills that shut it in and there stood Moriah and Nebo, Horeb and Sinai. It is difficult to determine which made the deepest and most permanent im- pression upon the growing mind of Jesus ; nature, history, or the commonplace work of life. He used them all in His teaching with a wondrous wealth of meaning. A little mustard seed taught the wide-spread and inclusive ministry of the kingdom ; the wheat and the tares, its goodness and its per- version. The thorn tells us all too plainly of pierc- ing sorrows and choking cares. The blowing of the wind explained the coming and the going of io6 The Friendship of Jesus the Holy Spirit. The thunder and the lightning were the voice of God and the swift judgments of His coming. By the rushing torrents of the river and the silent and continuous life of the vine, Jesus sought to make men understand the power and the beauty of His spirit in their lives. In like manner He uncovered the rich spiritual meaning of the common household and business duties. The woman hiding leaven in the measure of meal taught the GospeFs transforming power in the lives of men. The carpenter laying his foundation emphasized the deep and abiding necessity of obedience to the will of God. The fisherman on the sea led natu- rally to the supreme task of winning men to a holy life. The sower going forth to sow uncovered the various types of spiritual receptivity. The woman sweeping her house for a lost coin, the shepherd seeking his lost sheep, and the young boy breaking home-ties and wandering off into the world only to return sore-spent and sin-sick to his father's house, were all so many ways of telling the world that the humble men and women who toil and sorrow, love and forgive, here on this earth are not simply figures of speech, but real foregleams of that divine love that is ever going forth to seek and to save. With deep intuition, our Lord comprehended the meaning of nature and the minds of men. He seems to have had the growing sense that He was, in some real way, one with them all, and so they in turn came to make up a large part of His con- In the Open Air and World of Work 107 sciousness. Most of His time was spent in the open air and in the midst of the commonplace. Xatm-e and humanity recognized Him as their own. Jesus Tvas a product of the salted and unsalted seas. The Chiist of the flesh was but a manifesta- tion in time of the infinitely larger Christ Who in- dwells all things. " This man smells not of books, a green And lusty show He bears ; As one whose foot hath wandering been Where vitalizing airs Sweep the far purpled hills. His God He cabins not in creeds ; But feels Him where the fir tree nods, And where the south wind speeds O'er blossomy fields. In waves and winds For gospel text He looks ; And in the hearts of men He finds What no man found in books." As the Son of man travelled up and down the land, there was not a miserable or humble life in all the country who did not know that He was their friend. The lame, the leper, the sick and the social outcast ; the strong man of affairs and the little child play- ing at its mother's knee, they never once doubted His friendship. They listened to His gracious words, felt the spell of His wondrous presence, be- held His power over man and nature and somehow realized that in Jesus and His endearing friendship humanity had come to its own. Few men and women have been able to free lo8 The Friendship of Jesus themselves from care and anxieties. They have been unwilling to live contentedly with their pos- sessions and seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness. Multitudes of people soon grow weary of patient and heroic service when it ceases to lure them with the glitter of gold. The con- suming haste for wealth together with the morbid fear of poverty has dissipated the spu-itual energies of our young manhood and womanhood. They are unlike those heroes of old who, by faith, were will- ing to endure untold privations and hardship, as see- ing Him who is invisible ; to toil on patiently and die joyfully, the promise unfulfilled. As a con- sequence they have failed to learn one of the deepest truths our Lord taught from nature. They have failed to realize one of the sweetest and most com- forting aspects of the friendship of Jesus. Instead they have grown peevish, fretful, care-worn, and anxious. Anxiety is the cutworm of culture ; it forever severs those roots which nourish the quiet growth of the soul. Each generation may have its special sin but anxiety is the heir of all the ages. It has followed in the wake of civilization as Edom hung upon the skirts of Israel. Whither shall I seek the simple trust of " Those sinless years breathed be- neath the Syrian blue " ? Wealth says, it is not in me ; and Knowledge says, it is not with me. Pride and pleasure pursue it pitifully and vanity seeks it in vain. . The birds and the flowers know the way thereof. In the Open Air and World of Work 109 *' No man cau serve two masters : for either he will hate the one, and love the other ; or else he will hold to one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon. '* Therefore I say unto you. Be not anxious for your life, what ye shall eat^ or what ye shall drink ; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than the food, and the body than the raiment ? ** Behold the birds of the heaven : that they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns ; and your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not of much more value than they! '' And which of you by being anxious can add one cubit unto the measure of his life ? "■ And why are ye anxious concerning raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow ; they toil not, neither do they spin : yet I say unto you, that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. '* But, if God doth so clothe the grass of the field, which to-day is, and to-morrow is cast into the oven, shall He not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith 1 " Be not therefore anxious, saying. What shall we eat 1 or, What shall we drink ? or. Where- withal shall we be clothed ? " For after all these things do the Gentiles seek ; for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things. " But seek ye first His kingdom and His right- eousness ; and all these things shall be added unto you." Our feverish spirits never grow weary of these gracious words of Jesus. They are redolent with 1 1 o The Friendship of Jesus the breath of many meadows and vibrant with the song of many birds. In the morning they are an inspiration and a joy ; in the burning heat of the day they are a cool shade and a living spring ; in the evening they are a quiet sanctuary for the soul. He who lives much in the open air with those whom he loves ; who breathes deeply of the generous life of the wind and the sun ; who knows the secrets of the birds and the flowers, how they live ; who has learned the faithful round of daily work, and who keeps his heart pure and trusts God for food and raiment ; who would rather die poor than gain a cent dishonestly, and who loves wealth only for the good he may do his fellow men ; who has made a little garden in the corner of his own soul where he may grow beautiful thoughts, and listen to the songs of the spirit and cultivate daily the friendship of Jesus ; in short, he who seeks first the kingdom of God and His righteousness — that man has learned the cure for care. Ever since these words of our Lord fell upon the anxious ear of man, the birds and the flowers have had an almost sacramental meaning to all lovers of nature. Many are the weary men and women who have trudged along the dusty roadway of life dead to its wayside ministries. I have passed through many conservatories and have stared open- mouthed at banks of bewildering glory. I have stood before mammoth cages and have seen the gorgeous plumage gathered from all corners of the earth ; but I confess that, down deep in my heart I In the Open Air and World of Work 1 1 1 love my native heath and its common wayside birds and flowers the best. " The meanest flowers that blow do give Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears." The birds and the flowers are God's wayside ministries to gladden and make grateful the heart of the world. May I too sit by the dusty road of life and be a friend to man ! There was a time when, to my dull eyes and ears, all nature had but one confused sight and sound. 'Now I never look upon a modest little flower all wet with dew without bemg over- whelmed with the thought of how very close earth is to heaven. God's gentle mercies fall nightly on the parched soul; but only the up- turned chalice receives the benediction. *' Drop Thy still dews of quietness, Till all our strivings cease ; Take from our souls the strain and stress, And let our ordered lives confess The beauty of Thy peace." The passionate outpouring of the nightmgale, the lyrical melody of the lark, the flute-like thrill of the thrush, the ecstatic sweetness of the song sparrow, the royal, robust chirp of the robin— these and countless other voices now fill the fields and woods with God's sublime symphony. There has always been something about the 1 1 2 The Friendship of Jesus beauty of the flowers and the singing of the birds that is deeply suggestive of immortality. Art so profuse and so unpremeditated must spring from the fountains of an everlasting joy ; faint echo of that grand, glad ecstasy when sin shall be no more. Oh ! I know that He who clothes the flowers and feeds the birds will clothe and feed me, too, until, some day, I shall stand in His presence, robed as they were never robed, and with a song in my heart which they can never sing. The way through nature to nature's God is through the friendship of Jesus. Ever since this rich disclosure of truth, the world about me has put on a new meaning. As Professor Buckham has well said, " This personalizing of environment alters the face of the earth and invests even the landscape, woods, mountains, valleys, with fresh meaning and charm. Who would journey to the dune save for Bobbie Burns, or to Stratford save for Shakespeare, or to Exmoor save for John Ridd ? Who can go to the English lake country without feeling the personal spell of Wordsworth, or to the White Mountains without rejoicing in Whittier, or to the Sierras without thanking God for John Muir ? Still more transfiguring are the associa- tions of familiar places with the personality of friends whose spirits seem to pervade and beautify every rock and tree and flower. Thus do we see and walk and live in the light of the personal." Tennyson has enshrined this truth in words of im- perishable beauty : In the Open Air and World of Work 1 13 ** Sweet human hand and lips and eye, Dear heavenly friend, thou canst not die. Thy voice is on the rolling air ; I hear thee where the waters run ; Thou standest in the rising sun And in the setting thou art fair. " Strange friend, past, present, and to be ; Loved deeplier, darklier understood ; Behold, I dream a dream of good. And mingle all the world with thee." Deeper, more transfiguring and soul-satisfying is this truth when we think of the whole world of nature about us as so many forms of beauty and power that symbol forth the ever-present Christ. All those elusive, fleeting aspects of sky and sea and land that weave their mystic spell about us ravish our souls with their more than earthly beauty all but speak to us and then are gone for- ever. What are they but passing expressions of an inward invisible personality ? The whispering winds, the song of the brook, the myriad music of the birds, the laughter of little children, as well as the " roar of the cosmic wheel and the sound of the speed of the rushing worlds " ; are they not the voice of Him who spake to the storm-tossed billows of Galilee, " Peace, be still " ? When once we come to see Christ in nature, then every village becomes a Bethlehem, every infant in its crib a child of God, every hillside a Mount of Beatitudes and all the world's work and sacrifice the scarlet thread of 1 14 The Friendship of Jesus vicarious Calvary woven into the warp and the woof of the universe. But there is one inexorable law in all this which we must not overlook. We can never know the real friendship of Jesus in nature and in the com- mon work of life until we have first known that friendship in the secret depths of our own souls. " Ye are My friends if ye do the things which I com- mand you." " The laws of friendship," says Emer- son, " are great, austere, and eternal, of one web with the laws of nature and of morals." Thus the friendship of Jesus becomes beautifully embodied in these lines : *' O friend, my bosom said Through thee alone the sky is arched, Through thee the rose is red ; All things through thee take nobler form, And look beyond the earth. The mill round of our fate appears A sun path in thy worth. Me too, thy nobleness has taught To master my despair ; The fountains of my hidden life Are through thy friendship fair." IN THE LONELINESS OF SUFFERING, SORROW AND DEATH SUFFEKING is sensitiveness to the divine presence. Our sorrow is God's sorrow. Death is the final beating of the wings against the bars. He suffers and sorrows most who loves most. The pathway of every life leads through the dark valley ; but the fires of the divine friendship burn brightest in the night-time of the soul. The Christian's death is God's best answer to the prayer for more of life. Let us think of these three aspects of human ex- perience under the one word, pain. The mystery of pain is the mystery of personality and of alone- ness. Pain and pleasure lie at the basis of con- scious life. The first cry of a little babe when its sensitive body comes into touch with the air is its first step towards becoming a personal being. "When a child first feels pain over wrong-doing, the crude beginnings of the sense of moral obliga- tion have been awakened. In the pain and shame of sin we apprehend God. " There is," says Pro- fessor Buckham, " no greater testimony to the priority and persistence of personality than the pain which attends the pressure of the ideal upon the human soul. It is a pain which is felt but slightly 115 1 16 The Friendship of Jesus in the lower stages of human development, but it deepens and intensifies as the race develops until it becomes a fire that purges humanity of its gross- ness and impels it to its noblest achievement." There is no pain like unto the pain of imperfection. It would eat out our very life did we not know that the perf ectness of Christ can be made ours ; that, through His friendship, we can slowly but surely rise into something of His likeness. There is nothing that brings more pleasure into our lives than pure love. Yet, " Love is the mother of pain as well as of joy and the two lie very close to one another upon her bosom. "When one who is loved scorns the sacredness of moral law or is dull to a great moral issue, it cuts the love as if the de- fect were his own. He who loves deeply must often walk with bleeding feet the way of the cross." The capacity for pain and pleasure is the soul's richest endowment. It is hard to believe this. We want the pleasure but we do not want the pain. Why will not pleasure do just as much for the enlargement and enrichment of life without being mingled with pain as it will with it ? So men have tried to get away from pain. Some people have tried to escape both pain and pleasure and sorrow by either ignoring or denying or by so dulling the sensibilities as to be unconscious of their presence. Followed out to its logical conclusion, this meant the denial both of their own personal persistence after death and also of the existence of a personal God. The result was no God, no friend, no great In the Loneliness of Suffering 1 1 7 fellowship, no home for the soul ; all that was left was Pantheism, and absorption, and annihilation. This could not help but react upon the mind by creating a dreary pessimism, a hopeless, shrunken and immoral soul-life. In the grip of this attitude towards pain, India has lived for more than two thousand years. There is another group of men who tried to escape the fact of pain by the cultivation of pleasure. They were called the Epicureans. "The test of pleasure," according to Epicurus, " is the removal and absorption of all that gives pain ; it implies freedom from pain of body and from trouble of mind. Its aim is the happiness of the individual. But its selfishness is tempered by friendship. We cannot live pleasantly without living wisely and nobly and righteously." The aim was commend- able but they failed to see that pain is the tap root of morality. In the hands of less noble minds the whole conception of life degenerated into selfish enjoyment, lust, and cruelty. Hope and love fled their Lives and joy died of gluttony. All those tender and enduring sentiments that have made life precious blossomed only to perish with the blight of materialism. Another group of men, called the Stoics, took just the opposite attitude from that taken by the Epicurean. " "When you enter the school of the philosopher," says Epictetus, " ye enter the school of a surgeon ; and as ye are not whole when ye come in, ye cannot leave it with a smile but with J 18 The Friendship of Jesus pain." "With true nobiUty and with an all but Semitic passion for righteousness, the Stoic set his will to face the inevitable. He would not flinch, he would not whine, he would not find fault. But his religion ended in Pantheism, l^o loving, tender Father entered into and shared his aching pain. The human heart craved the divine sympathy too deeply to long maintain this attitude in the presence of the richer and warmer teachings of Christianity. "When Jesus came amongst men He taught just as practical and noble an attitude towards life as the Stoic but far more deeply religious and soul-satisfy- ing. I am going to quote here a passage that has been an inspiration to me. I have never read any- thing outside of the Bible that has satisfied my mind like these words. They are taken from " The Mystical Element of Religion," by Baron Friedrich von Hiigel : "In Jesus for the first and last time, we find an insight so unique, a personality so strong and supreme, as to teach us, once for all, the true attitude towards suffering. " Not one of the philosophers or systems before Him but effectually escaped falling either into pessi- mism, seeing the end of life, as trouble or weariness, and seeking to escape from it into some aloofness or some Nirvana ; or into optimism, ignorance or ex- plaining away that suffering and trial which, as our first experience and as our last, surround us on every side. But with Him, and alone with Him and those who still learn and live from and by Him, there is a miion of the clearest, keenest sense of all the In the Loneliness of Suffering 119 mysterious depth and breadth and length and height of human sadness, suffering and sin, and in spite of this and through this and at the end of this a note of conquest and of triumphant joy. " And here, as elsewhere in Christianity, this is achieved not by some artificial, facile juxtaposition, but the soul is allowed to sob itself out ; and all of this its pain gets fully faced and willed, gets taken up into the conscious life. Suffering thus becomes the highest form of action, a divinely potent means of satisfaction, recovery, and enlargement for the soul — the soul with its mysteriously great conscious- ness of pettiness and sin, and its immense capacity for joy in self -donation." The old world has tried every other way and has found them all sadly lacking both in comfort and in powder to uplift. Christianity teaches the clear recognition both of the fact and of the value of pain as well as pleasure to enlarge and spiritualize the soul. Instead of trying to elude or explain away or stolidly withstand pain and sorrow, " the soul is allowed to sob itself out." Oh, blessed thought, " Jesus does not chide us for our tears ; He weeps with us." " In all our affliction He was afflicted and the angel of His presence saved us." The mystery of pain is the mystery of an enlarged, en- riched, and deeply spiritual personality. Of all the pure and holy saints who have reflected the pres- ence of God in their lives, not one has ever ap- proached those exceedingly sensitive souls who have borne the brunt of the world's pain. 120 The Friendship of Jesus But our thought must take another step. This discipline of pain enlarging and enriching our per- sonality here on this earth is also the guarantee of the soul's personal existence beyond this world. It is the fountain source of our imperishable hope in immortality. It opens also to us the conscious presence in our lives of a loving, personal God, suffering with us. Thus we rise through pain, through suffering, sorrow and death, into the fullest possible realization of the divine friendship without which immortality is a dreary " orphanage." In the light of all that we have been saying, will you now read with me two passages of Scripture ? The first is the eighth chapter of Romans. Note especially the far, fine sweep of these words : " For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed to us-ward. For the ear- nest expectation of the creation waiteth for the re- vealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to vanity, not of its own will, but by reason of Him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself also shall be dehvered from the bondage of corruption into the liberty of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain to- gether until now. And not only so but ourselves also, which have the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for our adoption, to wit : the redemption of our body. . . . "What then shall we say to these things ? In the Loneliness of Suffering 121 If God is for us, who is against us? He that spared not His own Son but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not also with Him freely give us all things ? . . . Who shall separate us from the love of Christ ? Shall tribulation, or anguish, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword ? . . . Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him that loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. " The whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain." God's universe is but the expression of His sentient life giving birth to an ideal humanity. We are a part of this universe of God, and so share consciously in that pain, but we shall also share in the joy. " He that spared not His own Son." God has not left us to abstract thought alone for our explanation of this mysterious side of our life. In His own Son He has gathered up all the pain of the world. He too suffered and sorrowed and died just as we suffer and die. He was perfected through suffering. He was alone, oh, so frightfully alone, yet He was not alone, for He was ever con- scious that the Father was with Him. It is so hard for us to feel that God is with us sharing our pain ; and the reason is, that in it all we are so intensely alone. We stand by the bed- 122 The Friendship of Jesus side of suffering or dying friends and feel our utter helplessness to enter into and share with them their experience. Because of this we are tempted to feel in spite of ourselves that God does not, indeed can- not be with us. We are forsaken and our dear one goes out into the vast, dark beyond all alone, and we are overwhelmed at the thought of it. Notv it was just to reveal God's presence with us in all this loneliness of the soul that He sent His cwti dear Son to suffer and die with us and for us. This brings us to the next passage of Scripture which I want you to read. It is the eleventh chapter of John. Of all the friends outside of the inner circle of His apostles I think Jesus must have loved Mary and Martha and Lazarus best. It was in their little home in Bethany that His soul partook so often of the ministries of friendship. When sorrow came to that home, Jesus went to them at the risk of His life. His keen, sensitive soul felt the loneliness of those about Him and the Son of God burst into tears. The heavenly Father was sharing with His children their loneliness and pain. It was also upon this occasion that Jesus gave to the world those luminous and precious words that have been the refuge and the inspiration and the hope of Christians ever since. " I am the resurrection and the life : he that beheveth on Me, though he die yet shall he live ; and whosoever liveth and beheV' eth on Me shaU never die." All the loneliness of the soul is here swept away and in its place there In the Loneliness of Suffering 123 is a wonderful life-giving presence, a deep and en- during friendship. Sui'ely the Christian's death is God's best answer to the prayer for more of life. In addition will you now read again those won- derful chaptei*s of John the foui'teenth to the seventeenth inclusive ? Especialh'^ will you dwell thoughtfully upon these verses, John xvi. 20-22 : " Yerily, verily, I say unto you, that ye shall weep and lament, but the world shall rejoice; and ye shall be sorrowful, but your sorrow shall be turned into joy. A woman when she is in travail hath sorrow, because her hour is come : but as soon as she is delivered of the child, she remembereth no more the anguish, for joy that a man is born into the world. And ye now therefore have sorrow : but I will see you again, and your heart shall re- joice, and your joy no man taketh from you." As one reads these chapters, he becomes conscious that their sweet and inspiring import is just this : Jesus was talking to a little group of sorrowing friends telling them in words that cannot be mis- understood that, in His heavenly friendship, all earthly friendships shaU endure. Over on that other shore they shall look into His and into each other's faces and shall hear again the dear familiar voices. Death shall be no more; neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain any more. God Himself shall be with them and shall, with His own dear hand, wipe away all tears from their eyes. This splendid and comforting truth Jesus offers to troubled, aching hearts as the explanation 124 ^^^ Friendship of Jesus and the compensation for all pain. Suffering is sensitiveness to the divine presence. He suffers and sorrows most who loves most. Death is the final beating of the wings against the bars. To gather up all the heartache and the woe of the world into a life of sympathy and service; to rise through suffering, sorrow, and death into an enlarged and enriched personality capable of an enduring fellow- ship with God ; to be forever with and to be for- ever worthy of those we love ; this is to know the joy of the friendship of Jesus and the mystery of pain. DEVOTIONAL A Comfortable Fzdth "Heavenly Harmonies.* L Net, $1.00. MALCOLM JAMES McLEOO Under Dr. McLeod's gfifted band the most commonplace religious tnitB glitters with new fire. Few men have equalled his gift of expression and illustration. He argues by picture and convinces with his array of facts. The central theme of this volume is the Christian's assurance of heart in the midst of life and why he has it and the kind of Christian a man ought to be with this gospel to believe in. The Full Blessing of Pentecost— The One Thing Needful Net, 7SC. 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