l \ 
 
 I 
 
 LIFE IN 
 CHR-IST 
 
 EDGAR YOUNG MULLINS 
 
 iiiii 
 
 i 
 
tihxavy of Che Cheolocjfcal Seminary 
 
 PRINCETON • NEW JERSEY 
 PRESENTED BY 
 
 The Sst>-te of the 
 Rev, John B, V/iedinger 
 
 BX 6333 .M8 L5 
 
 Mullins, Edgar Young, 1860- 
 
 1928. 
 The life in Christ 
 
■a d 
 
LIFE 
 
 THE 
 
 IN CHRI 
 
 EDGAR YOUNG MULLINS, D.D., LL.D. 
 
 President of the Southern Baptist 
 Theological Seminary, Louisville, Ky. 
 
 Author oj 
 
 "Why is Ckristianiiy True"; "Freedom and Authority in Religion" ; 
 " The Axioms o/ Religion'' ; " Baptist Beliefs" ; "Com- 
 mentary on Ephesians and CoUssians," etc., etc. 
 
 New York 
 
 Chicago 
 
 Toronto 
 
 Fleming H. Revell Company 
 
 London 
 
 AND 
 
 Edinburgh 
 
Copyright, 1917, by 
 FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY 
 
 New York: 158 Fifth Avenue 
 Chicago: 17 North Wabash Ave. 
 Toronto: 25 Richmond Street, W. 
 London: 21 Paternoster Square 
 Edinburgh: 100 Princes Street 
 
PREFACE 
 
 THE sermons contained in this volume have been 
 preached upon many and varied occasions. 
 Many of them have been put into manuscript 
 form from brief or copious notes made when the ser- 
 mons were first preached. This will explain in part the 
 varying length of the sermons. A few of them are 
 reproduced from the manuscript as prepared in the 
 first instance. If the reader should find an occasional 
 repetition of a thought or illustration it will be due to 
 the fact that the sermons were preached upon many 
 occasions and at various places. There are some evi- 
 dences of an increasing demand for sermons in printed 
 form. These are sent forth as a small contribution to 
 the sermonic literature of the day, with the prayer that 
 God will use them for the advancement of truth and 
 righteousness among men. 
 
 3 
 
CHAPTER 
 
 I. 
 
 II. 
 
 III. 
 
 IV. 
 
 V. 
 
 VI. 
 
 VII. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 IX. 
 
 X. 
 
 XI. 
 
 XII. 
 
 XIII. 
 XIV. 
 
 XV. 
 
 XVI. 
 
 XVII. 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 XIX. 
 
 XX. 
 
 XXI. 
 
 XXII. 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Lordship of Christ 7 
 
 Abundant Life 20 
 
 The Resurrection Life op the Be- 
 liever 29 
 
 Christianity and the Law of Service 37 
 
 No Man Liveth to Himself 46 
 
 An Ancient Recipe for a Happy Life 58 
 
 The Fatherhood of God 67 
 
 Freedom, True and False 78 
 
 The Supreme Quality in Human 
 Actions 89 
 
 sonship through sufferings 98 
 
 Christ's Challenge to Manhood. . . iii 
 
 Character Adorning Calling: As 
 
 Seen in the Life of Gen. R. E. Lee 126 
 
 All Things Work Together 136 
 
 The Revival of Morality in Our 
 
 Public Life and its Meaning... 144 
 
 Mob Violence as a Symptom 152 
 
 Christianity as Power 158 
 
 Dedication Sermon 164 
 
 The Redemptive Mission of Jesus 
 Christ 175 
 
 He Came to Himself 194 
 
 Manhood and Childhood Religions. 205 
 The Testimony of Christian Expe- 
 rience 215 
 
 The Glory of Jesus Christ 226 
 
 5 
 
THE LORDSHIP OF CHRIST 
 
 Acts 2 : 36 — "Let all the House of Israel therefore 
 know assuredly, that God hath made him both Lord 
 and Christ, this Jesus whom ye crucified." 
 
 THE experience of the disciples after the resur- 
 rection of Christ resulted in a very remarkable 
 transformation. As we look upon them and 
 listen to their words as recorded in the New Testa- 
 ment, we seem to be witnessing a work of creation. 
 Something new in human history is being called into 
 being, something new in individual experience, and 
 something new in the social order arising out of it. 
 Two things seem to move along in parallel lines in 
 this new creation. First, the lordship of Jesus becomes 
 more and more absolute, and parallel with this the 
 triumphant might of the Christian church appears 
 in growing splendour. The terms and descriptions 
 which they now apply to Jesus show the former, while 
 the conquest of disciples over environment shows the 
 latter. They had during His earthly life called Jesus 
 Messiah and Master and Lord. But these were con- 
 ventional terms in current use which were without 
 the fulness of meaning they acquired later. But now 
 these men begin, in a new and original way, to define, 
 or rather describe the lordship of Jesus. In the pente- 
 costal powers of miracles and tongues and moral 
 energy which fall like a shower of diamonds on the 
 
 7 
 
8 THE LIFE IN CHRIST 
 
 early church, Peter sees the gift of Christ, the risen 
 and ascended Lord. When men turn from their 
 sins in vast numbers, it is because God had exalted 
 Him to give repentance and remission of sins; and 
 when the church comes into existence it is because 
 Christ gave some to be apostles and some prophets and 
 some teachers, on through the entire ministry and or- 
 ganization of the church. John on Patmos beholds 
 Him in relation to the churches, and presents Him as 
 walking among them with eyes like fire and face like 
 the sun and feet like burnished brass. He sees Him 
 in relation to earthly rulers, and He is the prince of 
 the kings of the earth; and in relation to human his- 
 tory, and He is the Alpha and Omega, the beginning 
 and the end. Paul also sees Him in His great relations 
 to the Universe, and He becomes the centre in which 
 God sums up or brings to a head all things, or else He 
 is the golden vessel capacious enough to contain the 
 fulness of the divine. For in Him dwelt all the ful- 
 ness of the Godhead bodily. Thus did they fill out 
 the circle of meaning of the earthly names of Christ. 
 Thus did his Lordship orb itself into the one command- 
 ing fact of life and history. Thus did it become the 
 centre which was strong enough in moral and spiritual 
 gravitation to draw to itself and sustain the whole 
 moral universe and impart to it order and system. 
 
 Such was one aspect of the new creation which took 
 place after the Resurrection. The other aspect was 
 that which answered to this, viz., the triumphant might 
 of disciples themselves. The impression this makes 
 upon us is that somehow these early believers had been 
 seized by an irresistible power. One writer s.ays that 
 they were unconscious of the purpose working in them. 
 All they knew was that an energy was at work, and 
 
THE LORDSHIP OF CHRIST 9 
 
 these were events which manifested that energy. But 
 there was more than this in the events. It was not 
 only a question of cause and manifestation; it was also 
 an instance of means and end. Men are the instru- 
 ments of a new power which seizes them and wields 
 them mightily. They do not at first fully grasp the 
 meaning but it slowly comes to them. It conquers 
 Jerusalem which crucified Jesus, through its tre- 
 mendous moral energy. It seizes a great mind capa- 
 cious enough for a universal gospel in the person of 
 Saul, the persecutor, and through him pours out upon 
 the world a succession of glorious emancipating truths. 
 This power sweeps around the Mediterranean and 
 enters Rome, and finally it conquers Constantine, and 
 the fiery cross which he saw in the heavens becomes the 
 guiding principle of human history. In short, if human 
 history be likened to a game of chess, for the first 
 time, the men are so placed that we begin to discern 
 the meaning of the game. If it be likened to the 
 growth of an organism, we now see first the frame- 
 work of bones emerging in the protoplasmic nucleus. 
 If we liken history to the evolution of a solar system, 
 we now see the central nucleus of the nebula throwing 
 off masses which are to become planets and satellites. 
 
 Now the lordship of Jesus, coupled with this tri- 
 umphant power of His Church, is the peculiar and 
 distinctive truth of the early Christian history, and we 
 cannot understand the lordship apart from the con- 
 quering church nor the conquering church apart from 
 the lordship. I propose in this sermon to define a 
 little more fully what the sources of Christ's lordship 
 are and what the secret of the church's power, or more 
 briefly what is the relationship between the lordship of 
 Christ and the conquest of the world by the church. 
 
10 THE LIFE IN CHRIST 
 
 I. We observe first the ground of Christ's lordship. 
 We note then that He is Lord through divine appoint- 
 ment. "God hath made him both Lord and Christ, 
 this Jesus whom ye crucified." Now this impUes a 
 fitness which grows out of the nature of things. God's 
 appointments are never arbitrary. He is Lord, then, 
 not merely in name but in reality. If His function is 
 that of Lord, His nature is a lordly one. If He has for 
 us the value of God, His nature agrees with that value. 
 You cannot have the effect and repudiate the cause. 
 Alice in Wonderland saw the grin on the cat's face 
 first and then saw the cat gradually fade away, leaving 
 only the grin. This was in Wonderland, however, not 
 in real life. If Christ works in a man repentance and 
 iaith and a regenerated life, if He performs the office 
 of God for men, while remaining simply man, when 
 and where and how did He wrest from God His func- 
 tions and seize the reins of history? We can only 
 tell what things are by what they do. It is impossible 
 then to assert that Christ acts on history as God, but 
 is destitute of the divine, as many moderns assert. 
 You cannot separate function and nature. You do 
 not infer, because gravitation makes water flow down 
 hill that the nature of gravitation tends really to make 
 water flow up hill. 
 
 Christ exercises lordship because He is Lord. He 
 is Lord by God's appointment because He is essentially 
 possessed of a lordly nature. Now, that fitness for 
 lordship has shown itself in several other ways. For 
 one thing, it is seen in Christ's successful affirmation 
 of spiritual values and realities over against a material- 
 istic age. The physical universe dwarfs man. The 
 Psalmist felt that, and the modern world is incom- 
 parably vaster than that of the Psalmist. The earth is 
 
THE LORDSHIP OF CHRIST 11 
 
 a Bethlehem of the Universe, just a tiny village, and 
 man its inhabitant. We must admit that, looked at 
 externally, Shakespeare is insignificant compared with 
 Orion. The Pleiades outshine the church in external 
 splendour. The Milky Way makes all human history 
 look like a tiny path which ants have made through 
 a jungle. And yet, and yet, this is not all. Man is 
 not dwarfed by the Milky Way. He refuses to be 
 cowed by all the vastness around, and he steadfastly 
 declines to be blinded by the dazzling splendours of all 
 the systems. 
 
 Now, why is this? There is but one answer. It 
 is the light Christ has shed upon human character 
 and human value — the worth of the individual, the 
 value of the soul. Man is a lost sheep; the shepherd 
 will not rest until he finds it. Man is a lost coin and 
 God is impoverished because he is lost, and He will, 
 like the woman in the parable, sweep every nook and 
 cranny of the universe in order to find the lost coin. 
 Man is lost through sin and the Father waits for his 
 return in age-long patience. The grave cannot con- 
 quer man. Personality is the supreme thing. Man is 
 the diamond point on the golden pen of the universe. 
 Christ's lordship is seen in His power to exalt personal- 
 ity to the supreme place against a universe even vaster 
 than ours. Only Christ does this. Modern pantheism 
 quenches personality. Unless there is a divine person 
 behind all things, then our human personality is no 
 more than a bubble on the bosom of the stream of time 
 — an iridescent emptiness which gleams a moment in 
 the sunlight and then vanishes forever. 
 
 Again, Christ's Lordship is seen in His steadily in- 
 creasing power to control the moral progress of the 
 race. Men are asserting that the ethics of Jesus have 
 
12 THE LIFE IN CHRIST 
 
 been outgrown, that some of His teachings are anti- 
 quated. There is but one way to deny the finahty of 
 Christ's ethics, and that is by repudiating them alto- 
 gether. Nietzsche frankly does this. Morals are bad 
 for the race, he says. Now, if there be an ethics at all, 
 the ethics of Jesus alone can control. For all ethical 
 thought gravitates back to Him. Men superficially 
 conclude that because you do not find in the New 
 Testament express commands against trusts and boy- 
 cotts, and particulars for all our modern complex life, 
 its ethics, therefore, are outgrown. But the New 
 Testament contains what is far better — the vitalizing 
 principles for the ethics of all ages. The sunlight is 
 as ancient as the universe and as modern as the foliage 
 in your parks and the blossoms in your flower gardens. 
 If you were to break a sunbeam into a thousand frag- 
 ments, you would not find a single heliotrope or honey- 
 suckle. But if you let the sunlight play on the planted 
 seed, you get both. You do not go to the New Testa- 
 ment for the last decision of the Supreme Court or the 
 last Act of Congress, but in many acts of legislation 
 and decisions of the Supreme Court you get the out- 
 ward expression of the moral teachings of Jesus. ' 
 Christ is lord also of the intellectual progress of 
 the race, because His teaching as to God sums up all 
 that philosophy has surmised and more. I cannot out- 
 line even the great thoughts of philosophy, but all of 
 them are seen in Christ's teaching as to God the 
 Father. Christ is the author of modern discontent in 
 all its higher forms simply because He has given the 
 vision of the eternal. Western civilization has been 
 transformed into a stairway. Each epoch is a step 
 upward. Our masterpieces no longer satisfy. We 
 carve out our masterpieces with mallet and chisel from 
 
THE LORDSHIP OF CHRIST 13 
 
 the marble of history, and contemplate each for a time, 
 and then the old discontent arises, and we put it on 
 one side and begin on another. Our masterpieces then 
 become the landmarks of our upward progress, Christ 
 is the fleeing goal of history. 
 
 We observe, then, that the Lordship of Jesus is based 
 on the eternal nature of things, and His church ac- 
 quires power as it appreciates the meaning of this. 
 
 Jesus also controls the spiritual progress of the race. 
 God hath made Him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus 
 whom ye crucified. Please observe where the em- 
 phasis falls: "this Jesus whom ye crucified." The 
 apostle does not say God hath made Him both Lord 
 and Christ, this Jesus who became incarnate, though 
 this was true ; nor this Jesus who preached the Sermon 
 on the Mount, though this was true; nor this Jesus 
 who wrought miracles, although this was an undoubted 
 fact; nor this Jesus who was raised from the dead, 
 though that is implied. He says rather "this Jesus whom 
 ye crucified." The lordship of Jesus is based not pri- 
 marily on what He taught or merely on what He was. 
 It was first of all based on what He did. Not a teach- 
 ing, but an event is the corner stone of His lordship. 
 
 Now His cross is not merely a moral spectacle to 
 exhibit God's love and righteousness. It is rather a 
 transaction which was grounded in some deep neces- 
 sity. Just as a loving father might thrust his hand 
 in the fire to rescue a child who had fallen into it, 
 but would never call his children around and thrust 
 his hand into the flames without cause merely to 
 demonstrate his love, so Jesus did not yield Himself 
 to the cross merely as a spectacle. Hence Christian 
 experience has always looked to His sufferings as the 
 centre of His work for man. 
 
14 THE LIFE IN CHRIST 
 
 The death of Christ, then, was a moral transaction. 
 As His cross was a moral and spiritual transaction 
 with God and not merely a physical death, so His 
 primary service to men is a spiritual transaction in 
 their souls. Men do not reason their way up to Christ 
 and then bow down to His lordship. They always 
 meet Him in moral struggles of some kind or another. 
 His lordship is first of all moral, not intellectual. 
 
 Matthew Arnold says, try all the ways of being 
 good, and you will fail, but try the way of Jesus and 
 you will succeed. Jesus has always met men in their 
 struggles, and His lordship is based on the inevitable- 
 ness and finality of His way of life. Here is a man 
 desiring to cross a mountain who finds a number of 
 paths leading up the mountain side. He tries one and 
 it curves around again to the valley. He tries another, 
 and it ends beneath a perpendicular wall of rock. He 
 tries a third and it carries him to the brow of a preci- 
 pice, a fourth and it leads him into a cavern. Finally 
 he tries another which leads over the mountain. The 
 authority of the one path over the others is that it 
 leads over the mountain and the others do not. This 
 is precisely the function of Jesus Christ in human 
 life. All men alike need this final authority. We 
 boast of our freedom, and we do well ; but authority, 
 lordship, is as fundamental a need as is freedom. We 
 see it in Plato, that marvel of philosophical acumen, 
 who after having explored the limits of human 
 thought, longed for a God or a God-inspired man to 
 lift the veil from his eyes and show him truth. We 
 see it in Job when, tossed by doubt and fear, he longs 
 for a daysman, a voice to speak to God for him and 
 to speak to him for God. We see it in the men of 
 the middle ages, who prayed and hoped that their 
 
THE LORDSHIP OF CHRIST 15 
 
 dead emperor, Frederick Barbarossa, would some day 
 awake from his enchanted sleep in the cavern high 
 up on the mountain side and come again to lead them 
 to victory. We see it in Huxley, who longed for some 
 moral power which might enter his spirit and compel 
 it to think right thoughts and do right things. We 
 see it again in Luther, who waged such a war against 
 human authorities. Now he is in the Wartburg Castle, 
 as prisoner, looking out at night upon the vast ex- 
 panse of heaven with long trailing clouds sailing past, 
 and asking what supports this vast frame and our 
 human lives. Or when in his garden at nightfall a 
 little bird alights on the branch of a tree for the night, 
 and Luther sees and thinks of its frail body outlined 
 against the infinite sky, and from it learns a lesson 
 of trust. Or at another time, at the deathbed of his 
 little daughter Margaret, he is resigned to her going, 
 yet longing, oh! so deeply, to have her stay, yet fol- 
 lowing the little traveller out into the dim regions 
 beyond with awe and wonder and humility, and finding 
 in it all occasion for trust. So in all the deeper forms 
 of human experience. In our temptations we want 
 a stronger hand than our own which can tame the 
 lions of passion in our breasts. In our highest in- 
 tellectual flights, baffled and disappointed, we long for 
 some higher power to rest our weary wings and enable 
 us to penetrate the great beyond. In our sorrows and 
 losses we need a voice which speaks with authority 
 and can comfort us. With this thought in mind, then, 
 we come to consider the authority of Christ in the 
 light of human need and man's assertion of freedom. 
 II. We observe next the method of Christ's lord- 
 ship, or how He exerts His lordship. And here we 
 have a threefold paradox: 
 
16 THE LIFE IN CHRIST 
 
 1. His authoritative revelations of truth are de- 
 signed to become human discoveries of truth. The 
 ascending mind of men is to meet the descending 
 truth of revelation. He' did not impose the doctrine 
 of His supernatural person upon His disciples as a 
 dogma to be subscribed to. His method was to let 
 it dawn upon them until they discovered Him, as it 
 were. He wanted them to have the joy and the re- 
 sultant growth of spiritual discoverers. "Whom do 
 men say that I am?" He said little of the doctrine 
 of His vicarious death in the life on earth, but we 
 do find the doctrine expounded in the epistles. He 
 meant for the disciples to discover its meaning. We 
 shall only gradually discover the inner meaning of 
 some truths of His revelation. Meantime we accept 
 them and go on exploring them. The doctrine of the 
 Trinity will in time prove the real key to the Universe 
 and to all philosophy. The ascending mind will under- 
 stand the revelation. 
 
 2. The second paradox of Christ's authority is that 
 He exerts His authority by making us free. He gives 
 autonomy to all His slaves. What a winged word was 
 that of the Reformation era, "the right of private 
 judgment." When Luther started with this watch- 
 word, all the thrones of the world began to totter. 
 Luther smote the throne of priest and king alike when 
 he asserted man's right to think for himself in reli- 
 gion. Man said he was bringing on chaos and ruin. 
 And so with this new watchword, "the right of private 
 judgment," men subjected every institution to a new 
 test. At length, under their sense of freedom and in 
 their iconoclastic mood, after shattering all the sov- 
 ereignties, they came back to Christ and exercised 
 on Him their "right of private judgment." They lis- 
 
THE LORDSHIP OF CHRIST 17 
 
 tened to His words, and what did they say? "Never 
 man spake as this man." They looked at His moral 
 beauty, and they said, "He is the Chief among ten 
 thousand." They followed His majestic form upward 
 until they saw it losing itself in snowy grandeur in 
 the depths of divine nature, and what did they say? 
 "He was the effulgence of the Father's glory and the 
 image of his substance." Thus in the exercise of 
 their right of private judgment men gazed on Christ 
 and deep down in their inmost souls they formed a 
 new judgment. Then they gathered together again 
 all the shattered fragments of the destroyed sov- 
 ereignties of earth and welded and fused them 
 together, and made of them another throne greater 
 than any the world ever saw, and seated Christ upon 
 it. Then they plaited and v/ove a crown made up of 
 their thanksgiving and praise, their adoration and wor- 
 ship, their loyalty and eternal love, and they put the 
 crown on His brow. That is what the right of private 
 judgment did with Christ. 
 
 What a strange, glorious slavery is the slavery to 
 Christ. It sent men leaping and singing to the stake. 
 He put His iron chain on Edward Caswell, and he 
 sang, "Jesus, the very thought of thee with sweetness 
 fills my breast, but sweeter far thy face to see, and in 
 thy presence rest." He put His chain on Samuel Sten- 
 nett, and he sang "Majestic sweetness sits enthroned 
 upon the Saviour's brow, his head with radiant glories 
 crowned, his lips with grace o'erflow." He bound 
 Richard Watson Gilder with His shackles, and Gilder 
 wrote, "If Jesus is a man, and only a man, I say, of 
 all Mankind I will cleave to him, and cleave to him 
 alway. If Jesus Christ is God, and the only God, I 
 swear I will follow him through heaven and hell, the 
 
18 THE LIFE IN CHRIST 
 
 earth, the sea and the air." Thousands of Christ's 
 slaves sit together in congregations all over the world 
 and sing, "All hail the power of Jesus' name. Let 
 angels prostrate fall. Bring forth the royal diadem, 
 and crown him Lord of all." 
 
 3, The third paradox of Christ's authority is that, 
 having subjected us to Himself, He makes us the 
 medium of His own authority to the world. This is 
 the marvel of it, the sense of subjection leaves us and 
 a sense of authority and power comes over us. We 
 are, as it were, assimilated to Him in His authority. 
 His authority flows through us. 
 
 Now, this is the supreme need of the Kingdom of 
 God, this intensified and deepened sense of Christ's 
 authority in us. The pastor needs it to conquer his 
 environment with spiritual forces. The pastor who 
 leaves one field because it is hard and goes to another 
 because it is easy needs to go back and study the 
 spiritual alphabet. There are no easy fields. All fields 
 are just new combinations of the old elements — the 
 world, the flesh, and the devil. What the pastor needs 
 is a new sense of spiritual authority and power. 
 
 The churches need this sense of Christ's lordship 
 in order to do their great task. We need it for our 
 missionary task. A little boy whose mother had taught 
 him that God knows all things and that He loves all, 
 saw in a missionary book a picture of heathen wor- 
 shippers in India burning a human victim in sacrifice. 
 He looked up and asked, "Mother, does God see this ?" 
 "Yes," was the reply. "Does He care?" "Yes," was 
 the reply. "Why, then, does He not stop it?" Ah, 
 that was the supreme and crucial question, and the 
 missionary enterprise is the only answer to it. God's 
 love Is revealed through Christ, and the love of Christ 
 
THE LORDSHIP OF CHRIST 19 
 
 reaches mankind only as we embody it. He has no 
 hands, or tongue, or feet on earth save ours. 
 
 We need this transferred lordship of Jesus for our 
 social tasks. The whole of the great modern problem 
 can be solved in and through Him alone. The King- 
 dom of God, which is the correlative to the lordship 
 of Jesus, means justice in the economic world and 
 righteousness in political life. It means the destruction 
 of those piratical forms of business which knows no 
 pity and gives no quarter. It means the end of the 
 piteous cries of overworked and pale-faced children 
 in factories. It means the abolition of the disease- 
 breeding tenement and the death-infested sweatshop. 
 It means ultimately the end of war. These are great 
 tasks. But Chesterton is right when he says, "Jesus 
 is a lion-tamer and has been a lion-tamer from the 
 beginning." He did not set out to catch sparrows or 
 subdue rabbits. He Icves the great undertaking, and 
 the chief difficulty has been that His people have been 
 content to think in terms of conventional Christianity, 
 comfortable and smug, without a sense of conquest or 
 ambition for great things. As Ruskin puts it, "They 
 have been content with the religion of the organ and 
 the aisle, the twilight revival and vesper service, gas 
 lighted and gas-inspired Christianity." 
 
 And this brings us back to our starting point with 
 the New Testament Church. The vividness and 
 reality of our sense of the lordship of Jesus will 
 determine the power we possess to transform the 
 world. The Kingdom of God will come when the 
 lordship of Jesus is transferred to His people and 
 they become lordly in moulding and guiding human 
 progress. 
 
II 
 
 ABUNDANT LIFE 
 
 John 10 : 10 — "I came that they may have life and 
 that they may have it abundantly." 
 
 THESE are the words of Jesus Christ to His 
 disciples. He is the source of life to man- 
 kind. Through Him the world was made. 
 All forms of life are His gift. In Him all living 
 things consist, and Jesus is preeminently life to be- 
 lievers. 
 
 First of all, let us find a definition of life. What 
 is life in the spiritual sense? Jesus declares, "This is 
 life eternal that they might know thee, the only true 
 God and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent." 
 
 Perhaps we may do well to consider the scientific 
 definition of life. Science defines life as a correspon- 
 dence between organism and environment. There is 
 a living organism and around it is nature. There is 
 an adjustment between the two. So long as the organ- 
 ism maintains this correspondence with its environ- 
 ment, life goes on. Death comes when the organism 
 fails or the environment fails or when the correspon- 
 dence between organism and environment is broken. 
 The organ may be perfect, but if the necessary envi- 
 ronment is not perfect, the organism dies, as when a 
 
 20 
 
ABUNDANT LIFE 21 
 
 man suffocates when he is deprived of air; or, again, 
 the environment may be perfect but the organism is 
 defective; the organism may be perfect and the envi- 
 ronment may be perfect, but the connection between 
 the two is broken. The scientists are fond of pointing 
 out that if we could find a perfect organism and a per- 
 fect environment and if the connection between the two 
 could be preserved unbroken, we would have endless 
 or eternal life. 
 
 Now the doctrine of Christianity is that Christ gives 
 eternal life. If we retain the definition which we 
 have set forth, this would mean that there is an organ- 
 ism which does not lose its power and there is an 
 environment in which it is placed which does not fail 
 and that there is a vital and enduring connection be- 
 tween the organism and the environment. In other 
 words we may say that the soul regenerated by the 
 grace of God is the spiritual organism. The environ- 
 ment of the regenerated soul is God Himself, and 
 faith is the means of connection between the soul and 
 its environment. Christ mediates to us eternal life 
 through God. He establishes the connection between 
 the soul and the Eternal One and through His grace 
 that connection is maintained and eternal life becomes 
 a fact for us. 
 
 In the second place, we may consider the cost of 
 our life with Christ. The life comes to us freely. 
 As Paul expresses it, "The wages of sin is death, but 
 the free gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ, 
 our Lord." But there was infinite cost to Christ 
 Himself, and we do not find the true measure of that 
 cost until we get to the cross of Christ. The life of 
 Jesus on earth we imitate. The teachings of Christ 
 minister in many ways to our life. The life that dwells 
 
22 THE LIFE IN CHRIST 
 
 in the heavenly Christ is the Hfe which He poured out 
 on the world. This life and this fulness of life He 
 achieved as our Redeemer through His atoning 
 death. The earthly Christ becomes glorified when 
 we consider Him in tl:e light of the heavenly Christ. 
 The risen and glorified Christ passed through the 
 gates of death and by virtue of the gift of His own life, 
 the emptying of Himself, there comes to Him the 
 supreme endowment of life for mankind. 
 
 It is this fact that makes the Cross so impressive. 
 Jesus did not die the death of a martyr merely. It 
 was this, but infinitely more. When in the Garden 
 He lifted the cup of suffering and looked into its 
 depths and recoiled from it and prayed three times 
 that it might pass from Him, and when finally He 
 pressed it to His lips and drained it dry, we are pro- 
 foundly moved to the convict' on that there was a deep 
 and underlying necessity in His death ; and again when 
 on the Cross itself the cry went up from His lips, 
 "My God ! My God ! Why hast Thou forsaken me ?" 
 The truth is borne in upon us that Jesus entered the 
 region and shadow of death in a sense of which we 
 cannot conceive. Some have said that Jesus had little 
 to say about His atonement while on earth and that, 
 therefore. He did not assign it a place of great im- 
 portance. But Jesus came not to talk about but to 
 make the atonement. He was about to render the 
 greatest possible service to mankind and, as is fitting 
 in those about to render such service, there was a be- 
 coming reticence in His words about it. He did fore- 
 tell His death. He did declare that it was supremely 
 necessary. He did declare that through it there was 
 to come remission of sins, but the redeemed have 
 never wearied of the theme and in the writings of 
 
ABUNDANT LIFE 23 
 
 the Apostles we have much space devoted to His death 
 and its meaning. The cost of our hfe, therefore, to 
 Christ, the hfe giver, was more than any words of 
 ours can express. 
 
 Let us note, in the third place, some of the mani- 
 festations of the abundant life which we have in Christ. 
 I name several ways. For one thing, this life mani- 
 fests itself in us by uniting us vitally with Christ. 
 One of Paul's favourite figures is that of the human 
 body with its many members, of which Christ is the 
 head. In one notable passage the Apostle Paul de- 
 clares that his life was ruled by the love of Christ. 
 He says, "The love of Christ constraineth me." He 
 makes the point clear by saying, "We thus judge that 
 if one die for all therefore all died and we which live 
 no longer live unto ourselves but unto him who for 
 our sakes died and rose again." I think the Apostle 
 has in mind here his favourite figure of Christ the head 
 and His people the members of His body. There is 
 a vital union between the two. The member shares 
 the life of the head and the head shares the life of 
 the member. The blood that flows through the head 
 flows through the hand. There is an indissoluble union 
 between the head and the members. I think, there- 
 fore, when the Apostle says "The love of Christ con- 
 straineth me" he does not mean "my love for Christ," 
 for he knew that his love for Christ was too feeble 
 a thing apart from something higher. On the other 
 hand, I do not believe he meant to say "Christ's love 
 for me," although this was certainly included in the 
 higher truth. I think the Apostle rather meant thac 
 because of the vital union between himself, one of 
 the members, and Christ, the head, he could say the 
 divine life which Christ embodied, which dwelt in 
 
24 THE LIFE IN CHRIST 
 
 Christ, dwells in me and constrains me. That divine 
 compassion which was incarnated in the Saviour had 
 become a part of Paul's life. Thus, it was his love 
 to Christ combined with Christ's love for him in that 
 higher principle of divine love which Christ embodied 
 and poured into his own life as an Apostle and as a 
 believer. 
 
 Again, the life which we derive from Christ mani- 
 fests itself by growth and development. In one place 
 Paul says that he counts all things to be loss "that I 
 may know Christ and be found in him, not having a 
 righteousness of mine own but a righteousness which 
 is through faith in the Son of God." Paul uttered 
 these words in his old age, after he had written some 
 of his great epistles. He never wearied of gazing 
 upon the Master. He was never satisfied with his 
 knowledge. Looking upon Christ was like gazing 
 upon the firmament. There were always new beauties 
 and greater depths. The eye and the mind could 
 never take it all in. This is the chief glory of Christ, 
 His fascination for believers. We never fully compass 
 Him. He is the goal which ever flees from us, 
 although He dwells forever in us. We grow weary 
 of things which we master. When we have mastered 
 the contents of a book, it no longer interests us. We 
 put it away on the shelf. When a man is working 
 at an invention and completes it, he turns from that 
 to something else. It is said of Edison that he spent 
 years of devotion to the problem of producing the 
 electric light but that when he had mastered it he 
 would walk around a square to avoid passing one. 
 I do not know whether this is true or not, but in any 
 event, it is true to human nature. We turn away 
 from the thing that we have mastered, but we can 
 
ABUNDANT LIFE 25 
 
 never master Christ. In Him are eternal depths. The 
 danger of the Christian is arrested development. There 
 are stunted Christians who should be growing; little 
 Christians who should be great Christians ; feeble be- 
 lievers who ought to be rugged and strong. There is 
 but one way to achieve that ideal life, and that is by- 
 clinging closely to the living Christ. 
 
 Again, our life in Christ manifests itself by the un- 
 folding of the parts of our nature. No matter how 
 brilliant our intellect, Christ will add lustre to it. No 
 matter what our endowment of affection or genius in 
 any form, Christ will bring forth in us ten-fold more 
 of fruitage than we can ever know without Him. 
 There are many lives which are failing because they 
 have never grasped their own possibilities in and 
 through Jesus Christ. If I were to hold in my hand 
 a flower and I should ask a bee its view of the 
 flower, perhaps it would answer by alighting on it 
 and sucking sweetness from it. The bee's answer is 
 "Life is a storehouse of sweet things." If I should 
 ask a little child its opinion of the flower, it would 
 probably say, "The flower is a plaything." If I 
 should ask a scientific man, perhaps he would tear the 
 flower into bits, analyze it into parts and give me a 
 very learned and formal opinion as to the flower. 
 If I should ask a poet, he might compose a beauti- 
 ful verse about it and say the flower is the source 
 of poetic inspiration. But if I should ask a devout 
 Christian who knows the meaning of life in Jesus 
 Christ, he would tell me that the flower is God's gift 
 and that we do not reach its true meaning until we 
 find in it a token of God's love. There are those 
 who take the bee view of life. They use it for en- 
 joyment. For them life is simply a storehouse of 
 
26 THE LIFE IN CHRIST 
 
 sweet things. They become sensuaHsts, devotees of 
 pleasure. There are others who take the child's view. 
 To them life is a plaything with no great meaning, 
 and so we pass on up through the various concep- 
 tions of life to the highest. Life is God's gift. It 
 is the expression of His love. In it our whole nature 
 realizes itself. 
 
 Little do men and women dream of the unsuspected 
 beauties of character in the depths of their own nature. 
 We come to ourselves, we realize our personality when 
 we accept the life which is in Christ. Miss Helen 
 Gould, who recently married, was loved by all the 
 nation. Why? Because she took the lofty view of 
 life. She had wealth and social position and power 
 and a thousand inducements to a life of pleasure and 
 self indulgence, but she turned away from all of these 
 and devoted herself to the service of others. To her, 
 the best use of wealth and talent and opportunity was 
 in seeking to lift up and serve those about her. I 
 once read an interesting story of a man who was an 
 unbeliever who desired a famous painter to paint a 
 portrait of his wife, who was a Christian. He was 
 especially anxious that the portrait should reproduce 
 a certain expression which he sometimes caught upon 
 the face of his beloved wife, but he could not describe 
 the expression to his wife so that she could reproduce 
 it, since it was unconscious to her; nor could he de- 
 scribe it to the painter in terms sufficiently definite 
 for him to search for it while his subject was sitting 
 before him. The painter was left, therefore, to ex- 
 periment. He sought by various means to bring out 
 the best expression upon her face. He spoke of travel 
 and beautiful architecture, of mountains, of oceans, 
 of poetry, of music, and many other inspiring themes. 
 
ABUNDANT LIFE 27 
 
 He submitted several sketches to the waiting husband, 
 but none of them contained the expression he so much 
 desired. At length, the painter talked to the lady 
 about Jesus Christ and His salvation, about God, the 
 Father, and His love. These subjects called forth a 
 new expression. He painted the portrait and submitted 
 it to the husband, who exclaimed, "There! At last, 
 you have it." This is a parable of life. Only Christ 
 can call forth the most beautiful qualities of character 
 in the facial expression. There are hidden deeps in 
 all of us. Christ alone can explore them. 
 
 The life which we have in Christ manifests itself 
 also in its power to transform other lives. This is 
 the great power which Christ imparts. Some one has 
 said concerning Jesus, "He has shown extraordinary 
 power to transform bad men into good men. He has 
 also shown extraordinary power to transform these 
 good men into agents of redemption." He imparts to 
 men some of His own power. The Christian who lives 
 the true life in Christ is unconsciously transforming 
 his surroundings. The touch of such a man causes 
 the flowers of happiness to spring up in the lives of 
 others. The presence of such a life dispels all shadows 
 of sin and sorrow. The energy of such a life re- 
 enforces many a feeble will. Who would not have 
 the life that is in Christ? 
 
 I cannot close this sermon without pointing out the 
 alternative to the life in Christ. If we refuse that life, 
 we shape our fate. For one thing, we shall die in 
 our sins. Without Christ we shall never know the 
 depths of our own nature. The jewels that are hidden 
 there or which might be produced there will never 
 come to light. Our nature will shrivel. It will grow 
 smaller as life nears the end. It will degenerate. Life 
 
28 THE LIFE IN CHRIST 
 
 abundant is ours for the asking. "Turn unto me and 
 live" is Christ's word to the sinner. Turn unto Me 
 and discover yourselves. Turn unto Me and find sal- 
 vation and find the eternal life that is in God. 
 
Ill 
 
 THE RESURRECTION LIFE OF THE 
 BELIEVER 
 
 Col. 3 : I — "If ye then he risen with Christ, seek 
 the things that are above." 
 
 AS we read the New Testament, we find that 
 there are three stages in the presentation of 
 the idea of the resurrection. First, there is 
 the proclamation of the great fact of the resurrection 
 of Jesus. The early preaching was a preaching of 
 Jesus and the resurrection. This corner stone of 
 Christianity was made very prominent, and in the 
 early chapters of the Book of Acts we find repeated 
 emphasis put upon it. The next stage was the 
 use of the resurrection of Christ as the pledge of 
 Christianity for the resurrection of believers. Our 
 bodies are to be raised because the body of Jesus 
 was raised. The resurrection was the demonstration 
 of the possibility of the resurrection of our bodies, 
 and the New Testament writers, while ascribing it to 
 the power of God, do not seek to explain it further. 
 A workman in the laboratory of the great Faraday 
 knocked a silver vase into a vessel of acid. It was 
 dissolved, and the workman was greatly distressed. 
 Faraday put another kind of acid into the vessel, and 
 the dissolved particles of the silver vase were pre- 
 cipitated in a mass at the bottom of the vessel. This 
 
 29 
 
30 THE LIFE IN CHRIST 
 
 was taken out, and Faraday had it made into a more 
 beautiful vase than the original. God is a great 
 chemist who will gather together the particles and 
 raise again the bodies of the dead in Christ. This 
 does not mean the exact particles of the body that 
 dies, but from the body which dies will come in some 
 way the resurrection body. 
 
 The third stage in the New Testament idea of the 
 resurrection was the declaration by the Apostle Paul 
 that the present spiritual life of the Christian is a 
 resurrection life. We have been spiritually raised 
 from the dead. The quality of the life which we now 
 have is the same in kind as that which we shall have 
 in glory. The difference is one of degree. In the 
 text the Apostle speaks of this resurrection life of the 
 Christian. 
 
 I wish to call attention to a few marks of the 
 resurrection life of the believer. 
 
 I. The resurrection life of the believer in Christ is 
 a hidden life. The Apostle says: "Ye are dead, and 
 your life is hid with Christ in God." This hidden 
 life means that it is a secure life. We are in the 
 hand of Christ, and Christ's hand is held in the great 
 hand of God, the Father, and no one is able to pluck 
 us out of His hand. As a hidden life, it is not easy 
 for the outsider to understand it. The life of the 
 bird that flies through the air is hidden to the fish 
 that swims in the sea. It is a different kind of life, 
 and hence unknown to the living creature in the water. 
 The life of the Christian is a hidden life. The un- 
 believer cannot understand it, because he does not 
 conform to the conditions necessary to an understand- 
 ing of it. The Christian says to the outside world, 
 "Come and see" ; "taste and see that the Lord is good." 
 
THE RESURRECTION LIFE 31 
 
 Sometimes it is objected that this is an unfair test. 
 "Give us open demonstration — clear, convincing and 
 compelling proof that the Christian life is true, and 
 we will believe." This is what is said by non-Chris- 
 tians to Christians. But is it really an unfair test? 
 Religious certainty can only be religiously conditioned, 
 just as in other departments certain conditions are 
 necessary to the kind of certainty required. Mathe- 
 matical certainty is mathematically conditioned. Only 
 the trained mathematician can see the force of a math- 
 ematical demonstration. Artistic judgment and artis- 
 tic certainty are artistically conditioned. No one can 
 give an assured conviction regarding a great painting 
 who has not had his artistic faculties trained. It is 
 not an unfair test in mathematics or art when we say 
 that certainty in these departments must be conditioned 
 mathematically and artistically, and it is not an unfair 
 test when in religion we say that religious certainty 
 is religiously conditioned. The hidden life, however, 
 is open to any one who will approach it under proper 
 conditions. 
 
 2. A second mark of the resurrection life of the 
 believer is that it is an imperfectly manifested life. 
 There is within the Christian more than he can express 
 through his body, through his deeds, words and course 
 of life. No singer is ever satisfied with his song, 
 no player is ever satisfied with his music, no poet is 
 ever satisfied with his poem, and no preacher is ever 
 satisfied with his sermon. There is something greater 
 within struggling for expression than anything which 
 ever finds its way into visible or audible form. Our 
 words are sown in corruption ; they shall be raised in 
 incorruption. Our deeds are sown in our weakness ; 
 they shall be raised in power. Christians groan and 
 
32 THE LIFE IN CHRIST 
 
 travail in this life, not because they are overpowered 
 by something greater than they, but because the life 
 within them finds itself trammelled and hindered in 
 its expression by the material world around it. It 
 doth not yet appear what we shall be when this life 
 which we now live shall be unfolded into its full 
 reality. 
 
 I go to the muddy pond and look at a little shoot 
 pushing up through the mud at the bottom, and I say 
 to it, "Who and what are you?" and it replies, "It 
 doth not yet appear what I shall be." I go back 
 later, and it has grown taller, and I ask the same 
 question, and it replies, "It doth not yet appear what 
 I shall be." I repeat the question many times, with 
 the same answer. But one day the little growing shoot 
 in the darkness and mud of the pond reaches the sur- 
 face, reaches the sun, and bursts open into the beauty 
 of the pond lily, reflecting in its bosom the sun which 
 it has been seeking all the time. Then, for the first 
 time, we see what it was. Even so, the Christian 
 can say at every stage of the present life, "It doth 
 not yet appear what I shall be," but he is reaching 
 upward toward the eternal, and one day he shall attain 
 the complete image of Christ and burst into spiritual 
 glory, and then will be fulfilled the saying, "I shall 
 be satisfied when I awake with His likeness." 
 
 3. Again, the resurrection life of the believer is a 
 gradually realized life. Not only is it hidden and im- 
 perfectly expressed, but it is also a progressive life. 
 We sometimes forget this quality of the spiritual life. 
 We want results quickly. We grow impatient with 
 ourselves. We say we cannot wait for the slow un- 
 folding of character, and yet all spiritual results, all 
 high qualities are developed slowly. They planted 
 
THE RESURRECTION LIFE 33 
 
 dynamite behind a ledge of rock in the Alps and 
 sought to detach it from the mountain side. Time and 
 again they exploded dynamite behind the ledge, but 
 failed to detach it. Afterwards, when the debris had 
 accumulated, an acorn fell into a crevice and sent its 
 tender roots down between the rocks, and in a few 
 years, as the young sapling grew, the ledge of rock 
 was displaced and sent to the abyss below. The acorn 
 succeeded where the dynamite had failed. It was the 
 slow and steady pressure of life. 
 
 I teach students for the ministry. Some of them 
 grow impatient in their preparation, and I have often 
 said to them: When God builds a tree, it takes Him 
 about three generations, but when he builds a squash, 
 it takes Him about three weeks. A man can choose 
 which he will be — a tree or a squash. We misjudge 
 children, we misjudge church members, we misjudge 
 the church itself, when we forget that the Christian 
 life is progressively realized, that it comes slowly. 
 I once saw in Pilgrim Hall at Plymouth, Mass., the 
 restored ribs and keel of an old ship that was dug up 
 from the sands of Cape Cod. They were worm-eaten 
 and mouldy. As I gazed upon them I reflected that 
 when the ship was building, hundreds of years ago, 
 these ribs and this keel were in the same position. 
 Then, however, it was a prophecy of a ship that was 
 to be. When I saw it, it was a reminiscence of a ship 
 that had been. The imperfect Christian is a prophecy, 
 not a reminiscence. The imperfect church is a 
 prophecy of the glorious church that is to be, not a 
 reminiscence. 
 
 4. A fourth mark of the resurrection life of the 
 believer is that it has a constant upward tendency. 
 "If ye be risen with Christ, seek the things that are 
 
34 THE LIFE IN CHRIST 
 
 above." The resurrection life directs the gaze heaven- 
 ward, Robert Broviming has a poem entitled, "An 
 Epistle." In it, a young physician travelling in Pales- 
 tine visits Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom Jesus 
 raised from the dead. He observes Lazarus, who had 
 been the other side of death, as he would observe 
 another specimen of any kind, and writes back to his 
 old instructor what he saw. Lazarus, he said, this 
 man who had been dead and was alive, was not influ- 
 enced by ordinary things like other people. He seemed 
 to be following a golden thread which ran across the 
 course of life pursued by other men. The coming of 
 the Roman army did not terrify him as it did others; 
 but an evil look upon the face of a little child telling 
 of the activity of sin within would terrify him. He 
 seemed to bring back from the other life a vision of 
 the eternal. 
 
 I note, in the next place, some practical suggestions 
 as to how the Christian may make the resurrection life 
 real for himself. I would note, first, that it is to be 
 by repeated acts of the will. The Apostle uses lan- 
 guage which is exceedingly practical, in connection 
 with the text. "Put off" the old man; "put on" the 
 new man — these are the phrases which he employs. 
 It is the figure of putting off one garment and putting 
 on another. Put off anger, put off resentment, put off 
 the revengeful spirit, put off impatience, put off the 
 impure thought. Put on forgiveness, put on humility, 
 put on love, put on all the graces of the spirit in 
 each deed, each business transaction, each relationship 
 in life. Do the right thing and the Christian thing. 
 Let the will be girded; let it be directed toward the 
 performance of each duty in turn. ! 
 
 This constant action of the will requires the re- 
 
THE RESURRECTION LIFE 35 
 
 nunclation of forbidden things. We often forget the 
 happiness that comes from renunciation. Many a man 
 is trying to be rich who will never be rich. Many 
 a man is trying to be famous who never will be famous. 
 Many of us make a hard fight to make ourselves look 
 young, when we would do well to renounce the effort 
 and admit that we are growing old. Happiness 
 through renunciation is a great principle of human 
 life. The Christian has learned the secret, and joy 
 fills his cup to the brim when he practises this great 
 principle. 
 
 In addition to this activity of the will and this 
 renunciation of forbidden things, the Christian is also 
 to reckon himself alive unto God. He is not only 
 dead to things that are wrong, but alive to the great 
 things that are eternal. When a man yields himself 
 up to this great ideal, when he counts his life as not 
 belonging to himself but belonging to Christ, there 
 enters into it the resurrection power. We do not fully 
 appreciate the tremendous energy that is ours for 
 Christian living because we do not lay hold of the 
 mighty power that is available for us. 
 
 When Lovey Mary went to Niagara Falls, Mrs. 
 Wiggs said to her : "Bring me a bottle of that Niagara 
 water. I always did want to see what them falls 
 looks like." We smile at Mrs. Wiggs, and yet many 
 a Christian imagines that he has a conception of the 
 resurrection power, the spiritual energy available for 
 him, judging from the little phial of it which he has 
 in his own life. Let him yield himself up completely 
 to his Christian calling, and he discovers a mighty 
 cataract of energy available to his hands. I suppose 
 the Apostle Paul had in mind some such thought 
 of the resurrection power when in one of his Epistles 
 
36 THE LIFE IN CHRIST 
 
 he expressed the desire that he might attain unto 
 resurrection from the dead. He did not doubt that 
 he would be raised from the dead. He knew that his 
 body would be raised up by the power of God, But 
 he was thinking of the glory of the resurrection morn- 
 ing when the light of the eternal should shine upon 
 his character. What he desired was that his moral 
 and spiritual character should harmonize with the 
 glories of that occasion, that he should be equal to it, 
 level with it in attainment. His feeling was somewhat 
 Uke the feeling of a bride preparing for the marriage 
 ceremony. Her fingers tremble as she arranges her 
 hair and her garments. Her heart beats more rapidly. 
 She is full of anxiety, not because she doubts that in 
 a little while she will stand before the altar, not that 
 she doubts that the man she is to marry will take 
 her by the hand. Her tremulousness is due rather to 
 the fact that soon she is to be the observed of all 
 observers. The light of a great occasion is to shine 
 upon her as the centre, and what she desires is that 
 she may be worthy of the occasion, arrayed in such 
 manner as that all will recognize the agreement of 
 her appearance with the splendour of the surroundings. 
 Even so the Apostle thought of the glories of the 
 resurrection life, and he sought daily to live the risen 
 life, as all of us who are followers of the same Master 
 should seek to live that life. 
 
IV 
 
 CHRISTIANITY AND THE LAW OF SERVICE 
 
 Matthew 20 : 28 — "The Son of man came not to 
 he ministered unto, hut to minister." 
 
 IN Christ's teaching the emphasis fell on two chief 
 points in regard to man. The first had to do 
 with his relations to God. It has been remarked 
 that Christ did not classify men educationally, as igno- 
 rant and learned; nor financially, as rich and poor; 
 nor socially, as belonging to lower or higher classes; 
 nor even morally, as good and bad, for the bad could 
 become good if they would. Christ classified men 
 religiously as believers or unbelievers. Thus He 
 emphasized their relations to God. This is the primary 
 thing in human character, faith. 
 
 The other point He emphasized was character as 
 growing out of faith. What kind of life does your 
 faith produce? Character has been defined as salva- 
 tion if you think of it as deliverance from evil; or 
 as redemption if you think of Christ's sufferings to 
 secure it; or as heaven if you think of the inner bless- 
 edness which comes with it. But the best definition 
 of character on its earthly side is service. For service 
 implies a preceding salvation, and it can only be ren- 
 dered in the Christian sense when the redemptive law 
 of Christ operates in us and we are willing to suffer 
 in order to serve. And service brings a foretaste of 
 heaven. 
 
 37 
 
38 THE LIFE IN CHRIST 
 
 Let us give our thoughts to Christ's law of service. 
 I. I call attention first to that law as it appears 
 everywhere in Christ's teachings in the New Testa- 
 ment. The New Testament reverses the ordinary law 
 of human happiness. Dr. Van Dyke says it is a mis- 
 take to suppose that happiness is bounded on the 
 north by poverty, and on the east by obscurity, and 
 on the west by simplicity, and on the south by ser- 
 vitude. This is a total misconception of the geography 
 of happiness. Here is a better description and it is 
 from the New Testament. Happiness is bounded on 
 the north by lack of sympathy, on the east by isola- 
 tion, on the west by self-assertiveness, and on the south 
 by unwillingness to serve. 
 
 The New Testament reverses the ordinary law of 
 human greatness. To be great was measured by the 
 number of slaves or servants a man owned. Christ 
 taught that greatness was measured by the number 
 of fellow-men we can serve. Not the crown or 
 sceptre was the measure of greatness. He that is least, 
 he that is servant of all, shall be greatest, was Christ's 
 word. 
 
 Christ taught that service is the real attitude towards 
 evil. Several attitudes are possible as a man looks 
 out on the evils of the world. He may become a pessi- 
 mist and say it is all hopeless. Or he may become 
 a revolutionist. But, says the New Testament, this 
 is not the way to change the world. Revolution is 
 only a temporary cure for the evils. You put down 
 your Caesar or Nero by revolution, and human nature 
 will reassert itself and a new Csesar or Nero will mount 
 the throne and rule the world. You roll your stone 
 of reform or revolution laboriously and painfully to 
 the top of the hill and the law of gravitation makes 
 
THE LAW OF SERVICE 39 
 
 it slip from your grasp and down it goes to the bot- 
 tom, and all your work is to be done over again. "It 
 was a proof of the matchless greatness of Jesus that 
 He stood three years in the presence of the Roman 
 Empire and never struck it once," says Charles Jef- 
 ferson. His business was to strike the human heart, 
 and by striking the human heart He overturned the 
 Roman Empire. 
 
 If you adopt the method of reform merely, then 
 you will have to have a new reform for every evil. 
 
 No, says Jesus. Service is the Christian law for 
 regenerating the world. In the parable of the talents 
 we learn that use is the law of the Kingdom, and that 
 disuse debars from the Kingdom. In the parable of 
 the rich man and Lazarus we learn that with the needy 
 suffering at our gate we dare not live on in forgetful- 
 ness of his sores and poverty, on pain of being sent 
 to the realm of anguish, which was built as the abode 
 of the selfish. In the parable of the blighting and 
 withering of the barren fig tree, we learn that there is 
 not standing room in God's world for the unfruitful 
 life. 
 
 In that lowly act of Jesus in the upper chamber we 
 have the glorification of service. "Knowing that he 
 came from God," says John, conscious of His pre- 
 incarnate glory; and "knowing that he goeth to God," 
 he adds, conscious of the glory which was to follow, 
 Jesus took a basin of water and napkin and removed 
 the sandals of the disciples and, according to oriental 
 custom, bathed their dusty feet. This lowly act of 
 service was a pearl to be strung on the same string 
 with His pre-mundane and post-mundane glory. It 
 was a pebble set in a frame- work of diamonds. It was 
 as a clod between pillars of gold. It was as a piece 
 
40 THE LIFE IN CHRIST 
 
 of charcoal surrounded by stars. To serve is to ke 
 like God. The text is the climax of the representation : 
 "The Son of man came not to be ministered unto, 
 but to minister." Nothing more can be said than this. 
 No wonder the judgment of men will turn on the 
 point of service. No wonder the New Testament in- 
 sists that God elects men from before the foundation 
 of the world, to service. We talk sometimes of the 
 mysterious side of election, and there is a mysterious 
 side. But one side is not mysterious. We are elected 
 to become the incarnate love of God and purpose of 
 God to redeem. God, in electing us to salvation, says, 
 "I have elected you to be my lips to speak, to be my 
 feet to go on errands, to be my hands to labour, to be 
 my heart to love. I have no redeeming hands save 
 yours, no redeeming feet save yours, no redeeming 
 heart on earth save yours." 
 
 No wonder that judgment is made to hinge on 
 service and that at the last day amid the flaming 
 splendours of the last great assize the gates of Paradise 
 fly open to those who were servants of their brethren. 
 "When I was hungry ye gave me meat, when I was 
 thirsty, ye gave me drink," these were the simple yet 
 marvellously suggestive words of the Judge as He 
 admits His own into the everlasting Kingdom. 
 
 II. Observe in the second place, then, that service 
 is the touchstone of all human endeavour. 
 
 However vast the enterprise it will come to naught 
 unless it conforms to the law of service. However 
 lowly the deed it will not fail of reward if it is a 
 deed of service. The pyramids of Egypt were built 
 by kings to glorify themselves. A hundred thousand 
 men were employed altogether and it took nearly half 
 a century to build the large pyramids. Try to imagine 
 
THE LAW OF SERVICE 41 
 
 the toil and anguish of the slave driven by the master's 
 lash to rear these piles of stone, with square base and 
 triangular sides, four hundred and five hundred feet 
 into the air. And for what? To serve as granaries? 
 No. To serve as astronomical observatories? No. 
 To serve as lighthouses ? No. But to enclose the body 
 of the Egyptian monarch when he died ! What, then, 
 is the judgment of human reason and of God? This, 
 that they serve no adequate purpose. They cannot 
 be linked into the world's civilization in any helpful 
 way. They are monuments not of service, but of 
 human pride. They are useless. They are barren 
 fig trees. 
 
 There is another ancient structure In Athens, known 
 as the Parthenon, erected by the Greeks in the age of 
 Pericles as a temple. It is in every sense a worthy 
 product of Greek architectural genius. Capable judges 
 praise its incomparable beauty and grace and lament 
 that the ravages of time have marred some of its 
 lovely lines. In the British Museum, among Its rarest 
 art treasures, are pieces of statuary taken from this 
 ancient temple. How useful this ancient structure. 
 Formerly it was used for worship, and through the 
 ages has been giving Instruction and Inspiring to higher 
 things In art. The judgment of history on the Par- 
 thenon is that It served a useful end, and man would 
 preserve Its smallest part as long as possible. 
 
 Now these things are a parable. Mankind may be 
 divided Into two classes: Pyramid builders and Par- 
 thenon builders. There are little pyramids and great 
 pyramids; little Parthenons and great Parthenons. 
 But every human being builds one or the other with his 
 life. The Parthenon represents the law of service, 
 the pyramid represents human vanity and ambition. 
 
42 THE LIFE IN CHRIST 
 
 What is your gift from God, your opportunity? I 
 would say build a Parthenon with it. Miss Frances 
 Ridley Havergal had a sweet voice. She resolved to 
 sing nothing but religious songs with it, songs in praise 
 of Christ. This I think was a mistaken and extreme 
 view. For there are many other songs which minister 
 and bless in their own way. But when Miss Havergal 
 penned the prayer : 
 
 "Take my voice and let me sing 
 Ever only of my King," 
 
 she declared in effect that she would cultivate her 
 vocal gifts as a means of service. 
 
 Are you a teacher? Then build a Parthenon with 
 your teaching, not a pyramid. 
 
 Public office is a public trust. Too often politicians 
 and political parties use their opportunity to erect 
 pyramids instead of Parthenons. Have you talent of 
 any kind, wealth, position, influence? Remember that 
 the call made upon you by the Gospel of Christ is 
 that you use it to build a Parthenon. Serve. 
 
 A young man once told Phillips Brooks that he 
 wanted to live a life original and great and asked for 
 his advice. Mr. Brooks wrote on a piece of paper, 
 folded it and handed it to the young man and told 
 him to read it when he reached home. This is the 
 advice he read: "Stand in the moonlight and cast a 
 shadow." To cast a shadow is to do a different thing 
 from others; is to be original, and it is a great thing 
 to be original. The young man felt the rebuke to his 
 pride and returned to Mr. Brooks for further advice, 
 saying he wanted his life to be useful as well as original 
 and great. Again the great preacher wrote on paper 
 
THE LAW OF SERVICE 43 
 
 and handed it to the young man. Returning home he 
 read: "Stand in the sunHght and cast a shadow, and 
 let a tired workman eat his dinner in it." In short, 
 Mr. Brooks desired to impress the great duty: Make 
 your life a Parthenon, not a pyramid. Do something 
 useful to others, be it never so small. 
 
 I apply the same law of service to the universe as 
 a whole. Astronomy has amazed us by its revelations 
 of the vastness of the physical creation, and we agree 
 with the Psalmist in saying, "The heavens declare the 
 glory of God, the firmament showeth his handiwork." 
 But that is not all. The universe is not a pyramid, 
 but a Parthenon. It is not an end, but a means. There 
 is some great use, some wondrous shining goal ahead, 
 which God is going to achieve through this vast and 
 ponderous frame. As there is "one God, one law, 
 one element," so there is "one far-off divine event to 
 which the whole creation moves." 
 
 III. Consider next the cost of service. Christ "gave 
 His life" a ransom for many. All the best things are 
 produced at great cost. No science has calculated 
 fully the heat and pressure required in nature to pro- 
 duce diamonds. Human genius has not yet cast up 
 the cost in sunHght and moisture and electricity and 
 carbon and vital force to produce the lowliest plant. 
 
 If we could trace the processes of nature we would 
 find that "dying to live" is the greatest underlying 
 principle. A natural force or energy passes out of one 
 form, dies to its old self, in order to rise to a new 
 form of existence. The electric light that blazes above 
 you on the street at night is the transformed energy 
 of the coal which heated the furnace of the dynamo. 
 The coal surrendered itself to the flame and rose on 
 stepping-stones of its dead self to higher things. The 
 
44 THE LIFE IN CHRIST 
 
 fern plants, or other vegetable life of a past age gave 
 up its being to become the coal beds of nature. They, 
 too, died "that they might live." The ferns and vege- 
 tation drew their energy from the heat and power 
 of the sunlight of the primitive age which nourished 
 them. The sunlight thus died that it might live again 
 in the ferns. Thus we pass from electric light through 
 coal beds and vegetable life to primitive sunlight. We 
 might apply with some variation of language the very 
 words of the apostle in Philippians in reference to 
 Christ, to the primitive sunshine: "Being in the form 
 of sunshine, it counted it not a thing to be grasped 
 to be on an equality with the sun, but emptied itself, 
 and took the form of the fern plants and coal beds 
 and lay buried for ages in the heart of the earth; 
 wherefore man hath highly exalted it and given it a 
 name above the other forces of nature in causing it 
 to illumine his darkness and dispel his shadows." 
 
 This means that the world is built on the principle 
 of the cross, that real service costs life. If we could 
 begin with the tiniest plant or flower and unlock the 
 secret door and enter the secret path leading back to 
 the secret of its being and the real forces which make 
 it, I think we would find it leading us upward and 
 shining with increasing brightness until at last we 
 would stand before the eternal God and we would 
 discover that the ultimate secret of life, that baffling 
 mystery of science, is God, giving Himself. Back of 
 the sunbeams and raindrops and atmosphere is God, 
 not doling out material little by little to build the 
 flower, not building by proxy, but by personal self- 
 giving. 
 
 We would thus see that all the universe is a place 
 where God is doing what Jesus did in the upper 
 
THE LAW OF SERVICE 45 
 
 chamber when He bathed the dusty feet of the dis- 
 ciples. The sunhght is His towel and the clouds His 
 basin which He carries about to minister to the needs 
 of every living thing. 
 
 All real service costs, Christ seemed to serve with- 
 out cost of energy or effort. His touch healed the 
 leper. His command sent the demons into the swine. 
 Unconscious power passed out of Him to heal the 
 sick and infirm woman. It all seemed spontaneous. 
 It looks like magic. There is no suggestion of cost, 
 or effort, or struggle. 
 
 There was a twofold reason for this. The first 
 was that the whole bent and direction of His life 
 was to serve man and thus God's power reinforced 
 His. He moved on and with the tide of the divine 
 love and desire to heal. The other reason was that 
 the struggle, the agonizing of His life was in the secret 
 place of prayer. The place of agony in His life was 
 not the market place or the public street where He 
 did His great deeds, but in the closet, or on the moun- 
 tain-top where He replenished His supply of divine 
 strength and climbed up the long ascent of prayer 
 to the fountains of eternal refreshment. Let us not 
 forget this and imagine that there was no struggle 
 in Christ's career. He was tempted as we are tempted 
 but without sin. He overcame circumstances by stren- 
 uous endeavour. He breasted the storm by the in- 
 vincible energy of prayer and holy endeavour. But 
 all His higher moral conquests He won that He might 
 bring the wealth and power of His glorious life to 
 the task of serving men and thus glorifying God the 
 Father whose love He came to reveal and express. 
 
NO MAN LIVETH UNTO HIMSELF 
 
 Romans 14 : 7-8 — "For none of us liveth to himself, 
 and none dieth to himself. For ivhether we live, we 
 live unto the Lord; or whether we die, we die unto 
 the Lord: whether we live therefore, or die, we are 
 the Lord's." 
 
 VERY remarkable is the movement of the thought 
 of the apostle Paul. His mind swings back 
 and forth between two great groups of ideas 
 like the swing of a pendulum. He mounts up on steady 
 wing and gives us some glorious vision of the divine, 
 and at once he turns about and asks what it signifies 
 on the human side. Or he is dealing with some very- 
 practical daily duty, and he suddenly bethinks himself, 
 how is this duty to be performed by the weak and 
 faltering hands of man, and this leads him back to 
 the divine side of truth again. Thus his mind swings 
 back and forth between the mystical and the practical, 
 the divine and the human ; thus he binds up religion 
 and morality, faith and conduct, in a bundle of life 
 together. He always feels that conduct breaks down 
 without the religious faith behind it ; and that religious 
 faith is an empty thing without the corresponding 
 practice. 
 
 Take one or two examples. In Romans 5 : 1-2 
 he says: "Being therefore justified by faith, we have 
 
 46 
 
NO MAN LIVETH TO HIMSELF 47 
 
 peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ; 
 through whom also we have had our access by faith 
 into this grace wherein we stand; and we rejoice 
 in hope of the glory of God." 
 
 Thus he takes us by the hand and leads us through 
 the door of faith up into the very presence of God 
 so that Heaven becomes so vivid and real to us that 
 we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. But the 
 light shines back upon this life, and he adds: "And 
 not only so, but we also rejoice in our tribulations; 
 knowing that tribulation worketh patience; and pa- 
 tience, appro vedness ; and appro vedness, hope ; and 
 hope putteth not to shame; because the love of God 
 hath been shed abroad in our hearts through the Holy 
 Spirit which was given us." 
 
 Or take another passage, as in Colossians 3 : 1-4, 
 "If then ye were raised together with Christ, seek 
 the things that are above, where Christ is, seated on 
 the right hand of God. Set your mind on the things 
 that are above, not on the things that are upon the 
 earth. For ye died, and your life is hid with Christ 
 in God. When Christ who is our life shall be mani- 
 fested, then shall ye also with him be manifested in 
 glory." 
 
 Here again he leads us out into the golden light of 
 the risen glory, and lures our imagination away from 
 the earthly up into the heavenly, and yet instantly his 
 practical mind returns, and he begins: "Put to death 
 therefore your members which are upon the earth; 
 fornication, uncleanness, passion, evil desire, and 
 covetousness, which is idolatry ; for which things' sake 
 Cometh the wrath of God upon the sons of disobedi- 
 ence." 
 
 In the text his mind swings from the opposite direc- 
 
48 THE LIFE IN CHRIST 
 
 tion. He is telling the Roman Christians to be con- 
 siderate of one another. He is dealing with a very 
 practical matter. Some could eat meat offered to idols 
 and others could not. He exhorts the stronger Chris- 
 tians to be considerate of the weak, and urges the 
 weaker Christians not to judge those who are stronger 
 and eat without defilement to conscience. Then he 
 feels the need of a strong religious reinforcement of 
 the teaching and utters the words of the text : "None 
 of us liveth to himself, and none dieth to himself. 
 For whether we live, we live unto the Lord ; or whether 
 we die, we die unto the Lord : whether we live, there- 
 fore, or die, we are the Lord's." 
 
 Let us study this teaching a few moments. The 
 unity of our individual life with other lives, and the 
 unity of all our lives with Jesus Christ the Lord. 
 
 We note first the law which binds us together in a 
 common life. We are bound together by a physical 
 unity. We live on the same planet. This physical 
 unity underlies all kinds of unities, commercial, social, 
 political. Somebody was careless in the powder mill 
 recently, and a whole village was wrecked. It is said 
 yellow fever entered the South in the last New Orleans 
 epidemic through the carelessness of a United States 
 quarantine officer and all the nation suffered. A 
 Mohammedan devotee goes to Mecca and drinks from 
 the sacred but very filthy pool and is taken ill on his 
 return home and as a consequence Asiatic cholera 
 begins to stalk across Europe, and all the machinery 
 of many governments begins to move to stamp it out. 
 How dependent we all are upon one another ! Many 
 a night on a sleeper, travelling thirty or forty miles an 
 hour, have I thought of the engineer away forward, 
 and I have been thankful that he was sober and cool 
 
NO MAN LIVETH TO HIMSELF 49 
 
 and conscientious, and have felt like going forward 
 at the end of the journey to thank him, I note that 
 beautiful marvel of mechanical construction, the auto- 
 mobile, as it speeds past me, and I reflect upon its 
 many parts, and their nice adjustments, and the many 
 workmen who combined in its production, and the 
 results if a single part were to give way, and I am 
 amazed at the inter-dependence of the parts of the 
 machine and of buyers and riders on the one side, 
 and workmen on the other. Now the Kingdom of 
 God is to be a perfect moral and spiritual mechanism, 
 when it is completed, and we are the workmen who 
 are fitting the parts together. 
 
 The law which binds us together is in part our 
 common humanity. We have a common hunger and 
 thirst, and common longing for friendship, and sym- 
 pathy and love. We are subject to the same perils 
 and limitations, and all alike destined to a brief earthly 
 life and then departure into the world which lies 
 beyond our human ken. 
 
 "The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power 
 And all that rank or wealth e'er gave, 
 Await alike the inevitable hour 
 
 The path of glory leads but to the grave." 
 
 Again, we are bound together by the fact that we 
 have a common likeness, the image of God. All mem- 
 bers of the human race then are morally and spirit- 
 ually the closest of kin, because they bear the stamp 
 of the divine image. The Old Testament is a wonder- 
 ful book in many ways, but in none more wonderful 
 than its reverence for humanity. No people of an- 
 tiquity save the Jews, and no literature of antiquity 
 
50 THE LIFE IN CHRIST 
 
 save the Old Testament, valued man for this great 
 reason that man is made in God's image. The death 
 penalty was enjoined in the case of murder because 
 the murdered man bore God's image. "For in the 
 image of God, created he him." Commanders and 
 Kings of ancient times used men as tools merely to 
 build pyramids, or win battles and extend dominion ! 
 They were worth their rations as soldiers or brick- 
 layers if they cculd be used, and they were as worth- 
 less as Australian rabbits or the Gypsy moth of New 
 England, only to be exterminated, if they were in the 
 way. But this was not true in the Old Testament 
 view. Isaiah comforts the forlorn exiles in Babylon 
 who thought God had forgotten them, by pointing to 
 the skies at midnight and saying, "He that made the 
 stars and sustains them; He that leads them out and 
 calls them by name as a shepherd his sheep, is not 
 faint or weary, nor has He forgotten you, O weary 
 captives and fainting believers. ... He knows your 
 names and holds your individual destinies in the hollow 
 of His hand." Thus the Hebrew prophet would make 
 them value one another because of God's valuation 
 of each of them. 
 
 It is this image and likeness of God in us which 
 unites us in the higher ranges of our being. From 
 it comes our common heart hunger for God, our sense 
 of the insufficiency of the present life and its satisfac- 
 tions. 
 
 In Jesus especially we observe this recognition of 
 the moral unity of the race. Every day of His life, 
 and practically every act was an illustration of the 
 truth, "No man liveth to himself." He saw, as no 
 one had ever seen, the divine image in man. One 
 day He held a Roman coin in His hand and asked. 
 
NO MAN LIVETH TO HIMSELF 51 
 
 "Whose Image and superscription is this ?" and added, 
 "render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's." But 
 every day He held human souls in His hands and 
 asked, "Whose image and superscription is this ?" and 
 the answer was, "God's," and He was ever saying, 
 "render to God the things that are God's." 
 
 Now Jesus' whole aim was to create a new moral 
 kingdom. The physical unity which binds men together 
 in the same planet, and the social unity which binds 
 them together in the same social order, and the com- 
 mercial unity which brings all the parts of the world 
 together, and the unity of our common humanity, 
 are all conditions for the realization of that higher 
 unity based on our likeness to God, and capacity for 
 God. Slowly He would cement human ties and adjust 
 human relations until earthly society shall reproduce 
 the harmony and rhythm and glory and beauty of 
 the stars in their courses. This is what He means 
 by the prayer, "Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done 
 in earth as it is in heaven." 
 
 But the supreme unifying agency in Paul's mind is 
 the cross of Jesus Christ. He has in all the preceding 
 chapters given his glorious exposition of the cross, 
 and now he is outlining the practical meaning of the 
 cross. Up to chapter 12 is the argument, "All have 
 sinned and come short of the glory of God." That 
 is his first point. The second is, "being justified freely 
 by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ, 
 whom God set forth to be a propitiation for our sins, 
 through faith in His blood." His third point is, "Being 
 therefore justified by faith, let us have peace with 
 God, through our Lord Jesus Christ." And his fourth 
 point is our spiritual freedom. "The law of the spirit 
 of life in Christ Jesus hath made us free from the law 
 
52 THE LIFE IN CHRIST 
 
 of sin and death." And finally he rounds out the 
 thought with his triumphant burst of faith and hope, 
 "Whom he foreknew he also foreordained to be con- 
 formed to the image of his son. And whom he 
 foreordained, them he also called, and whom he 
 called he also justified, and whom he justified he 
 also glorified." Having finished his great argument 
 he begins chapter twelve with this thrilling "There- 
 fore." "I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the 
 mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living 
 sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your 
 reasonable service." Eleven chapters of argument and 
 five chapters of therefores. The therefore of Chris- 
 tianity is the practical side, and all five of these chap- 
 ters are made up of therefores. In fact, all five of 
 these chapters just give us in one form or another the 
 great truth, "No man liveth to himself, and no man 
 dieth to himself." 
 
 Paul is here sitting as a weaver at a loom, weaving 
 human lives together with a new principle, the prin- 
 ciple of the cross, the principle of love. 
 
 It is impossible for us in our Christian civilization 
 to transport ourselves, even in imagination, back into 
 the old world of selfishness and hate and isolation 
 where Greek hated Roman, and Roman hated Greek; 
 where Jew hated Gentile, and Gentile Jew; where 
 barbarian and bondman, and soldier and civilian, and 
 ignorant and learned, and poor and rich were so many 
 names for hostile classes. It is impossible, I say, for 
 us to realize conditions there, and what Paul's words 
 meant when he urged upon Christians that they re- 
 member each other, and adopt as the law of their 
 lives that "No man liveth unto himself." 
 
 I said Paul was a weaver, weaving human lives 
 
NO MAN LIVETH TO HIMSELF 53 
 
 together. The Roman government said he was an 
 anarchist, or in modern phrase a dynamiter, seeking 
 to overthrow the Roman government. Strangely- 
 enough Paul names his Gospel by the very word which 
 moderns have selected for one of the most powerful 
 explosives, dynamite. He calls it the dynamite of 
 God, and really when we think of the iron band of 
 unity which clamped that old Roman world together, 
 and the iron rod of authority which compelled men, 
 and the hate and racial antagonisms which made fierce 
 animals of men, Paul does seem to be a dynamiter. 
 
 Look for a moment at some of the dynamite Paul 
 is putting under that old Roman empire. Here is 
 one piece of it : "For even as we have many members 
 in one body, so we who are many, are one body in 
 Christ, and severally members of one another." Oh, 
 yes, Paul, you are a dangerous man to that old Roman 
 government ! 
 
 Here is another charge of dynamite sent right into 
 the Roman capitol : "Bless them that persecute you, 
 bless and curse not. Rejoice with them that do rejoice 
 and weep with them that weep." Be careful, Paul, 
 the Roman power will resent your words. You are 
 a dangerous man. 
 
 Then think of the awful heresy of this: "If it be 
 possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with 
 all men. Avenge not yourselves, beloved ; for it is 
 written, 'Vengeance belongeth unto me, I will recom- 
 pense, saith the Lord.' " Paul, this is anarchy and 
 sedition. Your head is in danger. The Roman Em- 
 peror and the Roman army will hound you to death 
 for this. What will the soldiers say who love to pil- 
 'age towns and villages? 
 
 But there is more of this dynamite. Listen to this 
 
54 THE LIFE IN CHRIST 
 
 slogan of the revolutionist: "Owe no man anything 
 save to love one another ; for he that loveth his neigh- 
 bour hath fulfilled the law." Be careful, Paul, Rome 
 has a great army and a great navy and they are made 
 to kill. You are a dynamiter of the worst kind, for 
 your words will destroy armies and navies if carried 
 out. 
 
 Not only is Paul giving such revolutionary ideas 
 to his Roman readers, but actually these principles are 
 beginning to work. Men are beginning to live for 
 one another and recognize Paul's teachings. Even the 
 Greek city of Corinth has in it a group who are in- 
 terested in the strangers yonder at Rome. Read the 
 last chapter, the sixteenth, a chapter rarely read and 
 still more rarely preached from ! Yet one of the most 
 remarkable chapters ever written, considering the time, 
 place and circumstances. The literature of the period 
 has nothing to compare with it. It is mainly a list of 
 salutations and personal greetings. Tertius is Paul's 
 amanuensis, and before closing everybody wanted to 
 send greetings to everybody else. Paul sends a long 
 list of personal greetings, and then numerous others 
 ask to be remembered. "Timothy my fellow-worker 
 saluteth 3^ou ; also Lucius and Jason and Sosipater my 
 kinsman." Tertius, the amanuensis, does not want to 
 be left out, so he adds : "I, Tertius, who wrote this 
 epistle, salute you in the Lord." Then comes Gains, 
 Paul's host, and asks to be remembered, and Erastus, 
 the treasurer of the city, and finally a modest man 
 comes up and whispers to Tertius, who calls himself 
 simply Quartus, the brother, and says, "Send my love 
 too." 
 
 Now is not that beautiful? I have sometimes won- 
 dered who Q'uartus was, who comes last in the list 
 
NO MAN LIVETH TO HIMSELF 55 
 
 and simply calls himself brother. He might have been 
 the mayor, or the town clerk, or the chief of police, 
 or the recorder of deeds, or the sexton of the church, 
 or the valet of some wealthy Greek, but whatever 
 else he was he was "the brother." That was the 
 wonder-working word after all, a word capable of 
 putting out all the Roman campfires and overthrowing 
 all the tyrannies of the world. Quartus the brother 
 in sending his little message of greeting and love was 
 thus sending a little thread of fine gold, spun in heaven, 
 across from Corinth to Rome to aid in sewing together 
 the gaping wound of racial hate and antiquity. 
 
 Now, in conclusion, I wish to draw two or three 
 brief lessons. 
 
 (i) First a lesson of gratitude, second a lesson of 
 hope, and third a lesson of responsibility. 
 
 A lesson of gratitude to those of the past who 
 adopted Paul's principles in their lives and from whose 
 lives we have reaped. "No one liveth to himself." 
 I think of the influence that made me, of the father 
 and mother who cared for me, who taught me to pray, 
 who encouraged me to do right, who yearned over me 
 when I went astray, and who left me the heritage of 
 a good name and clean blood, and faith in God. I 
 think of the friends who have inspired me to the high- 
 est things ; the teachers who have lifted the veil and 
 showed me the vision of life ; of the pastors who have 
 stood before me and pointed my life and speech to 
 the gates of the eternal city. I think of Christian 
 civilization and all it has meant to be born here rather 
 than beneath some other sky. I think of the thou- 
 sands of blessed influences, I say, which have meant 
 to me all that is truest and deepest in life, influences 
 proceeding from lives which were lived on Paul's 
 
56 THE LIFE IN CHRIST 
 
 principles; "No man liveth unto himself and none 
 dieth to himself; For whether we live, we live unto 
 the Lord; or whether we die, we die unto the Lord: 
 whether we live, therefore, or die, we are the Lord's," 
 and my heart is stirred within me to the deepest grati- 
 tude to God for those who grasped Paul's ideal and 
 caught the vision. 
 
 (2) And the second lesson I get is a lesson of re- 
 sponsibility. No man can live in the modern world 
 without feeling keenly the pressure and urgency of 
 this principle in our lives. We have seen how it is 
 in the very constitution of society. We cannot escape 
 its action if we would. A man may try to be a cos- 
 mopolitan in his business enterprise and a Robinson 
 Crusoe in his sympathies. But it is impossible to do 
 so without paying a heavy penalty. A man might as 
 well vote that he would henceforth refuse to submit 
 to the law of gravitation and walk off into space from 
 the roof of a tall building in the hope of escaping 
 the consequences of his folly, as to attempt to wall 
 himself in from his fellows in his sympathies and his 
 outlook upon life. There is a law of moral gravita- 
 tion which clutches us tenaciously and subjects us to 
 itself, and it says : "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as 
 thyself," and "All things whatsoever ye would that 
 men should do unto you, do ye also unto them." 
 
 (3) I learn also a lesson of hope. The moral law 
 to which I have just referred may all be summed up 
 in one word. It is the Kingdom of Jesus Christ, which 
 is coming, surely coming over the earth. Men are 
 slowly learning Christ's valuation of humanity and the 
 law of interdependence. Humanity, made in the image 
 of God, is sacred in all its manifestation. The ser- 
 vants in our homes bear the stamp of the divine image 
 
NO MAN LIVETH TO HIMSELF 57 
 
 and we are learning to treat them with consideration 
 and kindness. The negro who was once our slave, 
 we are slowly learning, though far too slowly learning, 
 to regard as Quartus, the brother, hence the schools 
 and plans for their education. We are learning too 
 slowly, indeed, but learning that we have no right 
 to exploit our fellowmen for mere gain, and that we 
 must recognize in each and all the image of God, 
 and in our legislation provide for the protection of 
 eyesight and health. A deep and widespread feeling 
 of indignation that disease has so long ravaged man- 
 kind prevails. Hence, organizations to stamp out 
 tuberculosis, and institutes to discover remedies for 
 diseases of children, a foregleam of the state of things 
 "when there shall be no more pain." Christian people 
 of every name think of the heathen nations, "the 
 low-born, sullen peoples, half demon and half child," 
 as also bearing the stamp of the divine image, and 
 calling out for help ; hence the missionary enterprise. 
 Thus if we gaze upward we may faintly, very faintly 
 discern, far, far away, the outlines of the city of God, 
 which is coming down from heaven to earth with 
 gates of pearl and streets of gold. If we would hasten 
 its coming we need only make vital and effective in 
 our lives Paul's words : 
 
 "For none of us liveth to himself, and none dieth 
 to himself. For whether we live, we live unto the 
 Lord, or whether we die, we die unto the Lord: 
 whether we live, therefore, or die, we are the Lord's." 
 
VI 
 
 AN ANCIENT RECIPE FOR A HAPPY LIFE 
 
 I Peter 3 : 10-12 — "For he that would love life, 
 mid see good days, let him refrain his tongue from 
 evil, and his lips that he speak no guile: And let him 
 turn away from evil and do good; let him seek peace, 
 and pursue it, for the eyes of the Lord are upon the 
 righteous, and his ears unto their supplication: hut the 
 face of the Lord is upon them that do evil." 
 
 I HAVE called this an ancient recipe for a happy 
 life. It is an Old Testament teaching reproduced 
 in a New Testament setting. Its meaning is 
 greatly enlarged and enhanced by the light shed upon 
 it through the revelation in Jesus Christ. The Old 
 Testament in all its parts is best understood through 
 the teachings of the New. It has been said that the 
 teachings in the Old Testament are like writing in 
 invisible ink. The teachings of the New may be com- 
 pared to the acid which is put upon the ink to bring 
 the writing into clearness. Perhaps an even better 
 illustration is that the Old Testament teaching is like 
 the trickling stream of water flowing at the bottom 
 of the deep banks of a tidal river. The river flows 
 down to the sea. Ordinarily, its channel is but par- 
 tially filled with water, but when the tide rolls in 
 from the sea the channel is filled and the river over- 
 flows its banks. The gospel as revealed to us in Jesus 
 Christ is the great tide of divine truth flowing back 
 
 58 
 
A HAPPY LIFE 59 
 
 into the channels of Old Testament teaching and fill- 
 ing them to the brim with meaning and power. 
 
 The text which I have read contains the elements 
 of a happy life. It might be called, indeed, the alphabet 
 of the Christian life, but its truths are stated so simply 
 and so clearly that we may properly call it an ancient 
 recipe for a happy life. 
 
 Let us note now some of the elements that enter 
 into this happy life. Observe first the form of state- 
 ment, "he that would love life." Mark you, it does 
 not say "he that seeks prosperity, or he that would 
 avoid adversity." The text does not mean bright 
 days or dark days, sunshine or shadow. The text 
 does not mean mere existence. It does not mean pov- 
 erty or wealth, sickness or health. It means something 
 deeper, richer, and fuller — life itself. "He that would 
 love life," that rich, full, divine thing which comes 
 out of God Himself, may find it if he will. 
 
 Observe again the next clause in the description, he 
 that would see "good days," We are all familiar 
 with good days and bad days in the ordinary sense 
 of the word. The business man returns home at night 
 and says, "This has been a good day. Business was 
 brisk. Many new orders were received ; some old bills 
 were paid; everything went right." At another time 
 he says, "This has been a bad day; things went all 
 wrong." So also the housekeeper has her good days 
 and her bad days. Days are like oranges. We say 
 of a good orange that it is large and that it is juicy, 
 and that it is sweet and that it is tender. The orange 
 with these qualities has all the good points of an 
 orange. If an orange is little and sour and dry and 
 tough, it possesses none of the qualities of a good 
 orange. 
 
60 THE LIFE IN CHRIST 
 
 Now the text says that our days may be Uke the 
 good orange, that all our days may have the good 
 points. If we have the Christian aim and the Christian 
 spirit and the Christian faith and the Christian obedi- 
 ence, our days will all of them be good days. 
 
 Now, mark you that good days are not to be meas- 
 ured by their outward appearance. Riches do not 
 necessarily make good days, neither does position or 
 power. It is related that at one time the Czar of 
 Russia was afraid for his life and had reduced his 
 diet to the one item of eggs, and these were served 
 in the shell in order to prevent poison. Bye and bye, 
 he discovered that poison could be injected through 
 the shell, and then his happiness faded away. Death 
 lurked even on the dinner plate. Position and power 
 may be coupled with a heavy heart. As the poet has 
 said: 
 
 " 'Tis better to be lowly born, 
 And dwell with humble livers in content. 
 Than to be perched upon a glistening grief 
 And wear a golden sorrow." 
 
 Indeed, it is true that many a throne is a glistening 
 grief and many a crown is a golden sorrow, and Robert 
 Burns was correct in the lines which he has left: 
 
 " 'Tis no in titles nor In rank ; 
 'Tis no in wealth like London bank, 
 To purchase peace and rest, 
 If happiness hae not her seat and centre in the 
 
 breast. 
 We may be rich, or wise, or great. 
 But never can be blest." 
 
A HAPPY LIFE 61 
 
 Now let us take up in detail the list of requirements 
 for a happy life. The first is expressed in the clause, 
 "let him refrain his tongue from evil." Literally, we 
 may say, "let him break back his tongue from evil; 
 let him deal vigorously with his tongue." The tongue, 
 though a little member, boasteth great things. A man 
 who can control his tongue is a man of power. The 
 tongue is mighty for good or ill. It is related that 
 a certain Greek philosopher who expected a guest for 
 dinner told his servant to provide a single dish for 
 the meal, but it was to be the best dish the servant 
 could prepare. When the philosopher and his visitor 
 sat down to the table, there was one item in the menu, 
 namely, a dish of tongue. The servant explained that 
 tongue is the best of all dishes because with it we may 
 bless; with it we may communicate happiness. With 
 the tongue we may dispel the clouds of sorrow, remove 
 despair, cheer the faint-hearted, inspire the discour- 
 aged, and do a hundred other things uplifting to men 
 and women. The philosopher was pleased and told 
 the servant that the next day he should serve a single 
 dish which must be the worst dish he could provide. 
 Again a dish of tongue appeared on the table. The 
 servant explained that tongue was the worst thing in 
 the world because with it we may curse and break 
 human hearts; we may destroy reputations, promote 
 discord and strife, set families, communities, and na- 
 tions at war with each other. And again the philoso- 
 pher commended his servant for wisdom. 
 
 Another injunction in the text, closely akin to that 
 regarding the tongue, is found in the words "and his 
 lips from speaking guile." Guile means deception. 
 The figure is that of a baited hook to catch the unwary 
 and we are urged to turn from deceptive speech. And 
 
62 THE LIFE IN CHRIST 
 
 this is one ingredient in the happy life, the tongue 
 which we hold in subjection. Our words, so long as 
 we keep them in our own possession, are weapons with 
 which we may win victories, but idle words and harm- 
 ful words which we wantonly let fly from our lips 
 may become swords in the hands of our enemy with 
 which he may fight us. 
 
 Observe that the next ingredient in the happy life 
 is the avoidance of evil. In verse eleven we read, 
 "let him turn away from evil." Let him swerve around 
 the evil thing. We have noticed boys in skating. The 
 prudent boy swerves around the thin place in the ice. 
 The reckless boy attempts to skate over it and it is 
 the reckless boy who comes to grief. Happy is the 
 young person or the older person who has formed 
 the habit of swerving around evil. The forms of evil 
 in our modern cities are so many that it is difficult 
 for the young, unless they are on their guard con- 
 stantly, to escpoe. I once saw a picture which repre- 
 sented a bird hovering in the air and beating its wings 
 as if in a frantic effort to escape from some great 
 danger. As I looked I saw at first nothing to hinder 
 the escape of the bird, but presently I noticed that a 
 snake lying coiled on the top of a stone fence had 
 fixed its deadly gaze upon the bird and held it under 
 its fascinating glance. Underneath the picture were 
 the words, "The Sociable Snake." The picture is a 
 parable. There are many places in our modern cities 
 full of evil and with power for evil over those who 
 frequent them. They may be described as sociable 
 snakes, which charm them, fascinate them, grip them 
 in a deadly clutch and lure to destruction. This is 
 a vital element in the happy life, to turn around, to 
 swerve away from evil. 
 
A HAPPY LIFE 63 
 
 But, indeed, the avoidance of evil is the negative 
 side of a happy life. The text then adds "and do 
 good." This is the positive side. Negative goodness 
 is real goodness, but it is not the highest kind of good- 
 ness. It is only when our goodness becomes positive 
 and active that it possesses the highest qualities. There 
 are three kinds of trees, the thorn tree, the fruit- 
 bearing tree, and the tree that has neither thorns nor 
 fruit. The bad man is like the thorn tree and the 
 good man in the sense of text is the fruit tree. The 
 man who stands between the two has neither thorns 
 nor fruit, but will soon begin to bear thorns. Every 
 Christian needs a task. He needs some positive under- 
 taking to hold him to his highest and best. Jesus said, 
 "We must work the works of him that sent me." 
 May it be our motto that we will be workers in the 
 kingdom of God? Let us catch the spirit of the little 
 poem: 
 
 "Time worketh ; let me work too. 
 Time undoeth; oh, let me do. 
 As busy as time, my task I ply 
 Till I rest the rest of eternity. 
 
 "Sin worketh; let me work too. 
 Sin undoeth ; oh, let me do. 
 As busy as sin, my task I ply 
 Till I rest the rest of eternity. 
 
 "Death worketh ; let me work too. 
 Death undoeth ; oh, let me do. 
 As busy as death, my task I ply 
 Till I rest the rest of eternity." 
 
 Note again that as an ingredient in the happy life 
 we must "seek peace and pursue it." Here the word 
 
64 THE LIFE IN CHRIST 
 
 peace is no doubt a comprehensive word. It means 
 peace with God and peace with men. Jesus Christ, 
 who died for our sins, is our peace with God. It is 
 He through whom we come to God. We trust Him 
 and God accepts us; "being justified by faith, we 
 have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ." 
 This is really the corner-stone of the happy life. No 
 life can be fruitful in doing good; no life can avoid 
 evil; no life can control the tongue; no life can see 
 good days and truly love life unless it is a life at 
 peace with God. If we have peace with God, we 
 will cultivate peace with our fellow-man. The world 
 gives back the image we present to it. The peaceful 
 man will find peaceful neighbours. The contentious 
 man will find contentious people around him. An 
 immigrant woman in a Western town who stopped a 
 few hours in camp enquired of another woman who 
 lived in the town what kind of people lived in the 
 next town whither she was bound, whether they were 
 good people, neighbourly people, or cold, distant, and 
 selfish people. In reply, the lady to whom the ques- 
 tion was addressed said, "First I will ask you a ques- 
 tion. What kind of people did you leave where you 
 came from ? Were they good, kind, neighbourly folks, 
 or were they cold, distant, selfish people? You will 
 find the same sort of people where you go that you left 
 behind you." In a real sense, we carry our world 
 within us. We make our environment. Strangers 
 sometimes complain that churches are unresponsive 
 and unsocial to visitors. This may be true of some 
 churches, but it is often true that the visitor is looking 
 for slights and for coldness. Let him bring a warm 
 heart and he will be likely to find a warm heart. 
 The closing part of my text assigns the reason 
 
A HAPPY LIFE 65 
 
 why these ingredients make a happy life. These are 
 the words, "because the eyes of the Lord are on the 
 righteous and his ears are open to their supphcation." 
 This means that God hears our prayers. It means 
 that He has interest in our affairs. It means that in 
 all our undertakings we may invoke His blessings and 
 count upon His favour. We shall fail in our reali- 
 zation of the conditions of a happy life unless we keep 
 close contact with God through prayer. Many are 
 discouraged in prayer because God sometimes seems 
 not to hear. There is but one thing to do when we 
 seek God's blessing upon our undertakings and that is 
 to continue our prayers until an answer comes. He 
 will either give us what we ask or something better. 
 Perseverance in prayer will save us from the sense 
 of defeat and give us a sense of victory. 
 
 Sometimes in their early stages our prayers labour 
 and seem to be in vain. If we persevere, we win the 
 victory. I learned a lesson once from a bird which 
 battled with the storm. It was high in the air. A 
 heavy gale was blowing. The bird spread its wings 
 and launched its flight directly in the teeth of the wind. 
 It was blown backward and downward, but, undis- 
 couraged, it gathered itself together and hurled its 
 little body against the gale only to be beaten down 
 again and again. I said as I gazed, "Little bird, you 
 are too frail for the storm. You will have to fly 
 in the other direction." I was mistaken ; presently the 
 bird taught me a lesson. Instead of flying against the 
 wind, it turned its gaze and flight upward at an angle. 
 It proceeded up and up until it was nearly beyond 
 my sight, and presently it faced in the direction it 
 had been trying to fly and sped forward swift as an 
 arrow, without encountering resistance of any kind. 
 
66 THE LIFE IN CHRIST 
 
 The bird had simply risen above the storm. It had 
 fought its way through the opposing gale. It had 
 found in an upper stratum of air a place of calm 
 and it sped forward on unhindered wings. Even so 
 the child of God may rise to blessed heights of fellow- 
 ship and communion through prayer, battling his way 
 through many a storm, temptation, and trial, but at 
 length triumphing over all opposition. 
 
 Let us adopt for our own this ancient recipe for a 
 happy life and let us make it effective by our constant 
 prayers to the God of love, who never takes His eye 
 from His children. 
 
VII 
 
 THE FATHERHOOD OF GOD 
 
 Matthew 6:<^—"0iir Father." John 14:9—''//^ 
 that hath seen me hath seen the Father." 
 
 SOME one has remarked that there are three 
 stages in the growth of a human soul. The 
 first when it becomes conscious of the world 
 about it. The infant sees this world as a "great buzz- 
 ing, blooming confusion," and understands nothing of 
 it. The next stage is when the soul becomes con- 
 scious of itself as a distinct person and individual 
 separate from others and responsible. The third stage 
 is when it becomes conscious of God. I would add a 
 fourth stage and that is when the soul passes from 
 the idea of God as King and ruler up to the idea of 
 God as Father. This is the supreme moment in the 
 history of any soul. Let us meditate for a time upon 
 this great thought — The Fatherhood of God. We 
 observe : 
 
 (i) The Fatherhood of God is the supreme note 
 in the Revelation which Christ brought to the world. 
 What a radiant and wonderful picture of God's 
 Fatherhood it is that Jesus discloses. God the Father 
 cares for every created thing. He clothes the grass 
 and robes the lily of the field in its beautiful garments. 
 He scatters crumbs to the ravens and stretches out a 
 tender hand when the sparrow falls. He sends the 
 rain on the evil and the just. He forgives us and 
 
 67 
 
68 THE LIFE m CHRIST 
 
 stands with open arms to welcome the returning prodi- 
 gal. He whispers His secrets to the docile, childlike 
 mind and sends the self-sufficient and worldly-wise 
 empty away. He hears our prayers and gives us the 
 Holy Spirit. 
 
 Jesus Christ was the Revealer of the Father to man- 
 kind. As the lines in the solar spectrum tell us the 
 substances which are in the sun nearly a hundred 
 million miles away, so Jesus Christ reveals what is in 
 the invisible God. One great truth which stands out 
 in that revelation is that there is something human in 
 God, for Jesus became man. The incarnation pro- 
 claims the kinship of God and man. 
 
 We as His children reproduce His likeness and men 
 are thus led to glorify Him. When we forgive our 
 enemies we are simply reflecting the beauty of His 
 forgiving love. When we are generous in our gifts 
 to His cause we simply proclaim that our Father has 
 a nature which loves to bestow blessings, which eter- 
 nally imparts. Our good works are the reflection in 
 Us of His holy energy. Our lives are looms in which 
 we weave holy character. God our Father supplies 
 the threads of gold from His own divine nature. If 
 we could but see them, they are coming down steadily, 
 those threads which we weave into the fabric of our 
 lives. The golden thread of patience, the golden 
 thread of gentleness, the golden thread of moral cour- 
 age and of love, coming to us through His fingers and 
 reproducing in us His likeness. As the sunlight is 
 invisible until it has a surface to reflect it, or an object 
 of some kind to concentrate it, so God's Fatherhood 
 requires an object. His own children. As the meadow 
 reflects the sunshine, so does His Fatherhood shine 
 back from us. We reveal God's traits and He illu- 
 
THE FATHERHOOD OF GOD 69 
 
 mines and glorifies our lives. As the sunlight falling 
 on Niagara Falls reveals the water, and as the gleam- 
 ing, leaping, and iridescent waters reveal the sun- 
 shine, so God's Fatherhood reveals what we are and 
 our sonship reveals what God is. All our own higher 
 traits, then, tell of God. We know that He loves the 
 beautiful because we love it so. Who can gaze upon 
 orchids and roses, or pearls and rubies, or evening 
 clouds and midnight skies, and doubt that He loves 
 the beautiful? God the Father, contrary to the view 
 of many, must have a sense of humour. Who can look 
 at the antics of monkeys or the pranks and original 
 ways of children and doubt it? He must often smile 
 when His earthly children under some little flea-bite 
 of loss or pain, sit down in a corner with lugubrious 
 countenance and act as if God the Father were dead. 
 And I think He must often chuckle to Himself with 
 delight as He plans some great and wondrous gift 
 for His loving child, by stealing into the life, and, 
 like the great Santa Glaus that He is, hiding it where 
 you will find it and then slipping out again. Of course 
 He loves with an everlasting love. Christ's whole 
 career, His words and works, His atonement, His 
 resurrection and gift of the Spirit, these are the blaz- 
 ing glory of His love and grace. 
 
 (2) The Fatherhood of God is the Master key to 
 the problems of human existence. The most convinc- 
 ing proof that any great truth is really true lies in 
 this, that it includes in itself many other truths, that 
 you can fit together in a harmonious whole all the other 
 truths under the larger truth. The majestic and bril- 
 liant imagery and movement in Homer's Iliad seem 
 confusing and misleading until the key is found in 
 the effort of the Greeks to recapture Helen from the 
 
70 THE LIFE IN CHRIST 
 
 Trojans, The movements of the parts of a great 
 army seem meaningless until the plan of the general 
 becomes clear. So the world is full of confusion and 
 contradiction until the key to its mysteries is found. 
 Even to-day there are many jangling voices among 
 scientists and philosophers as to the meaning of the 
 world. One speaks of a great first cause and stops 
 there. Another asserts that matter and force are the 
 final facts of the universe. Matthew Arnold would 
 only dare to assert that it is a "power not ourselves 
 that makes for righteousness." None of these things 
 kindle our enthusiasm when viewed alone. It is only 
 as they approximate the idea of Fatherhood that they 
 have power. The idea of a first great cause leaves you 
 cold. The idea of an intelligent first cause kindles 
 a Httle blaze and attracts your attention. When this 
 cause is represented as having a purpose which runs 
 through all history, then it leaps into a little flame 
 at which you warm your hands. When it is asserted 
 that this cause with a purpose running through history 
 takes account of individuals, counts and names the 
 stars in the sky, and counts and names the hairs of 
 our heads, then it becomes an intense blaze of heat 
 and power. When finally this great purposeful indi- 
 vidualizing cause is described as Father, then it sets 
 all the joybells of the heart to ringing and becomes 
 a sun to illuminate and warm and irradiate all of life. 
 Now the great thing Jesus did was to make the idea 
 of God the Father real. As a bird cannot fly in a 
 vacuum, so the soul cannot subsist on an abstract con- 
 ception of God. Jesus took the idea of causation and 
 of intelligence and of force and the other fragments 
 which men had found and mixed them as a painter 
 mixes colours and added His own radiant and gracious 
 
THE FATHERHOOD OF GOD 71 
 
 doctrine of Fatherhood like a colour snatched from the 
 milky way. With these colours He portrayed a new 
 likeness of God instead of the old dim representation. 
 He put warmth into the face, and love into the eyes. 
 He made the face radiant with Fatherhood. 
 
 Now when this view of the divine Being was made 
 current in men's thoughts, they ceased to speculate 
 and went to work. They ceased to ask whence come 
 we and whither go we? Is man immortal, or does 
 he perish like the beasts of the field? They knew 
 that God's child cannot perish because God cannot 
 perish. The mystery of the first cause and the final 
 cause was solved. Christ took the half truths and 
 the false views of men and put them together in one 
 harmonious whole. These were like the parts of 
 some great power plant, some mighty engine, which 
 had been shipped in separate pieces and were lying 
 there waiting for the Master Machinist to put them 
 together. Jesus was that Master, and Fatherhood was 
 the one great comprehensive idea which included all 
 the parts. With it He set in motion the moral ma- 
 chinery of the world. This leads to my next point. 
 
 (3) I remark next that Christ's teaching of Father- 
 hood is the Master key not only to man's intellectual 
 but to his moral difficulties. How to become good 
 one's self, how to make men good, that has always 
 been the supreme task. Various ways have been sug- 
 gested. One says make men good by making them 
 comfortable. Give them good food and clothing and 
 good houses. Save them by mutton chops and Brussels 
 carpets. We know this alone fails. Another says 
 make men good by legislation. But legislation never 
 made anybody good. It only restrains evil. It limits 
 vice and sin, but does not transform the vicious or 
 
72 THE LIFE EST CHRIST 
 
 regenerate the sinner. Legislation can put the cobra 
 in a cage of glass, but it cannot extract its poison, 
 and it will still strike at you behind the glass. Drawing 
 the tiger's teeth does not take away its thirst for 
 blood. 
 
 There is but one way to become good or to make 
 others good and that is to give them a sense of God's 
 Fatherhood through faith in Christ. Human nature 
 requires the highest incentives because it is so high 
 in capabilities. Eternal forces must play on man to 
 make him good. To a man like Haeckel, human nature 
 is a poor, mean thing, but not to those who under- 
 stand it and the forces which make it. Human expe- 
 rience has taught us that nothing less than the im- 
 perial and matchless conception of God's Fatherhood 
 avails to lift man to the highest moral heights. 
 
 See what it does for man. It cures him of care. 
 "In nothing be anxious, but in everything by prayer 
 and supplication make known your requests unto 
 God," is the recipe for care based on Fatherhood. 
 One has analyzed it thus: (i) The bane of Hfe is 
 care, "In nothing be anxious." (2) The cure of care 
 is prayer, "But in everything by prayer and suppli- 
 cation make your requests known." (3) The crown 
 of prayer is peace, "And the peace of God that passeth 
 all understanding shall sentinel your minds and hearts 
 in Christ Jesus." 
 
 God's Fatherhood illuminates suffering. Who has 
 not been bafifled by the mystery of suffering and longed 
 to relieve it? What is the meaning of the age-long 
 agony of the saints? Fatherhood gives the only an- 
 swer, "For I reckon that the sufferings of the present 
 time are not worthy to be compared with the glory 
 which shall be revealed to usward. For the earnest 
 
THE FATHERHOOD OF GOD 73 
 
 expectation of the creation waiteth for the reveaHng 
 of the sons of God ... in hope that the creation 
 itself shall be delivered from the bondage of corrup- 
 tion into the liberty of the children of God." — 
 Rom. 8: i8. 
 
 God perfects His children through suffering. They 
 are as 
 
 "Iron dug from central gloom 
 
 And heated hot with burning fears 
 And dipped in baths of hissing tears 
 
 And battered with the shocks of doom 
 To shape and use." 
 
 God loves us too much to be content with anything 
 but our best moral and spiritual development. Suffer- 
 ing is His method of bringing out the hidden beauties 
 of our souls. 
 
 Fatherhood enlarges desire and expands the spirit 
 of man. It puts wings on the spirit and enables it 
 to soar. Listen to the prayer which God's Fatherhood 
 kindled in the soul of the great Apostle to the Gen- 
 tiles in Ephesians, Chapter three, beginning at verse 14, 
 and you are impressed with the expansiveness of soul 
 which the sense of God's Fatherhood produces. 
 
 God's Fatherhood glorifies work. Work has been 
 regarded as a curse. Men connect it with the first 
 sin and the expulsion from Eden. Jesus took away 
 the stigma from work by showing that work is just 
 the imitation of God. "My Father worketh hitherto, 
 and I work," said Jesus. Work is the law of the 
 child's existence because it is the law of the Father's 
 existence. All nature manifests that energy of God. 
 The restless tides of the sea. the ceaseless movements 
 
74 THE LIFE IN CHRIST 
 
 of the atmosphere, the mighty swing of the planets, 
 the wheeling stars and suns. All these are parts of 
 His workshop where in tireless and sleepless energy 
 He plans and labours for His creatures. In human 
 history He works, enabling His children to achieve 
 moral progress. Each generation takes up the task 
 where its predecessor left it off, and carries it a step 
 nearer towards the one far off divine event to which 
 the whole creation moves. Work, then, is the free and 
 glad imitation of God our Father. 
 
 The Fatherhood of God is, of course, the key to 
 prayer and makes clear its possibility. Men talk of 
 the mechanism of nature as excluding the idea of 
 prayer. But men forget that there is a higher as well 
 as a lower mechanism. One is the mechanism of the 
 machine, the other that of the family. Any beautiful 
 result comes if the adjustments of the forces of nature 
 are properly made. The adjustment of the sun to one 
 kind of seed gives me the climbing vine and beautiful 
 pink blossom I see through my window. In like man- 
 ner the proper adjustment of man, the child, to God, 
 the Father, gives all the lovely effects, among them 
 prayer, which arches the horizon of man like a rain- 
 bow of eternal hope. 
 
 Thus God's Fatherhood is the Master key to life's 
 problems and progress. It includes all the other truths 
 in itself. A recent writer says the piano is the king 
 among musical instruments, because with it you can 
 produce all musical effects. On the piano the skilled 
 player can render anything in music. He can repro- 
 duce the human voice, or the sounds of the orchestra, 
 the shrill notes of the piccolo, the sustained notes of 
 the horns, the majestic accents of the trombones and 
 the low growls of the bass instruments, any sound from 
 
THE FATHERHOOD OF GOD 75 
 
 the gentlest pianissimo to the most beautiful forte, 
 and any emotion from the deepest melancholy to 
 the highest notes of triumph. "He who com- 
 mends the row of white and black keys is ruler of 
 the spirits of music. He has all that music can give 
 within the grasp of his two hands, under his ten 
 fingers." 
 
 Now that is a parable. Among revealed truths 
 God's Fatherhood is the King truth, and he who has 
 learned its full meaning has at his command all moral 
 harmony, all spiritual music. Under its action he 
 unfolds into all moral and spiritual beauty, he repro- 
 duces God's image in a human life. 
 
 Sidney Lanier has written a sonnet in German ad- 
 dressed to Frau Nannette Falck-Auerbach, the mu- 
 sician. As Nannette plays Beethoven's music on the 
 piano the great composer's spirit is drawn from heaven 
 by the wondrous power of the player and the poet sees 
 Beethoven by her side and hears him saying, "Thou 
 art my child. I had no child while on earth. Now 
 God has given thee to me, thou, my child in music, 
 my second life." Thus do we reproduce the works 
 of our Father, thus does our Father come into our 
 life. Thus do men see our good works and glorify 
 Him. 
 
 We consider briefly now how we are to realize 
 Fatherhood. The theory of Fatherhood is of no more 
 value than any lower truth. "A gold piece is worth 
 more than a brass piece, but an imitation gold piece 
 is worth no more than an imitation brass piece." 
 Handel's "Messiah" is more inspiring than a piece of 
 rag-time music ; but the mere notes of the one printed 
 on a page has no more power than the other. "The 
 sun is warmer than an ice-berg, but the picture of the 
 
76 THE LIFE IN CHRIST 
 
 sun is no warmer than the picture of an ice-berg." 
 So Dr. Parkhurst expresses it, and he is correct. 
 
 Above all things we need the note of reality in re- 
 ligion, and especially on the great subject of God's 
 Fatherhood. 
 
 To realize the Fatherhood of God and make it prac- 
 tical, two or three things are necessary. 
 
 First, we accept God as Father through the Revela- 
 tion of Him Christ gave : "He that hath seen me hath 
 seen the Father," Christ declared. He is the efful- 
 gence of the Father's glory and the image of His 
 substance. 
 
 Is God the Father of all men? In reply I would say 
 that the Fatherhood and sonship of the New Testa- 
 ment express a high and spiritual relationship. God 
 indeed is paternal in His yearning and love for all. 
 He wishes that all men might yield obedience to Him. 
 He created men in His own image. Men are consti- 
 tuted in their spirits for sonship. They have capacity 
 for sonship. But it is a great error to efface the line 
 of distinction between the natural and the spiritual 
 here. First the natural, then the spiritual. God is 
 not the spiritual Father of the pitiless murderer. God's 
 fatherly desire towards all does not make the morally 
 vicious His true children. Sonship is not to be con- 
 founded with mere potentiality or capacity for son- 
 ship. To those who received Christ, He gave the 
 authority to become sons of God. Our free choice 
 of Him is the most precious element in our sonship. 
 We are all sons of God, as Paul says, by faith in 
 Jesus Christ. Let us not confuse values. Let us 
 keep the coin of the moral and spiritual realm free 
 from alloy. 
 
 We can only gradually realize the full meaning of 
 
THE FATHERHOOD OF GOD 77 
 
 God's Fatherhood. It is like our realization of human 
 Motherhood. Our own mothers are at first no more 
 than a little patch of colour, a soothing sound and a 
 gentle touch to our infant eyes and ears. Then they 
 become distinct persons who love us, as we see by 
 slow degrees, and if we are loving and discerning 
 and reflect upon it much and live a long time, per- 
 haps before we die we get some faint conception of 
 the wondrous abysmal love and transcendent glory 
 of motherhood. Thus in a far higher sense do we 
 come to know God's Fatherhood. It grows and ex- 
 pands and enlarges to our view as the manifold ex- 
 periences of life teach us. Happy, thrice happy is he 
 who takes God's Fatherhood as the working principal 
 of his entire life and makes it real in conduct. Miser- 
 able, thrice miserable is he who casts away God's 
 Fatherhood and his own privilege of sonship and who 
 chooses in time and eternity to wander as a waif and 
 an orphan through the mazes of sin and selfishness of 
 life and destiny. 
 
VIII 
 
 FREEDOM, TRUE AND FALSE 
 
 John 8:32 and 36 — "Ye shall know the truth, and 
 the truth shall make you free." . . . "If the son there- 
 fore shall make you free, ye shall he free indeed." 
 
 WE say that Christ came to redeem men. He 
 also came to redeem words. He put new 
 meaning into old words. He evangelized 
 them, so to speak. He called them to repentance. 
 He gave them a new heart, regenerated them, justified 
 and adopted them. One of the words which He 
 dealt with thus was the word freedom, the Jew 
 boasted of freedom because he was descended from 
 Abraham. The Roman because of his citizenship. 
 Ordinarily men define liberty as freedom to pursue 
 one's object unmolested. Political liberty is the right 
 to speak and vote and exercise the rights of the citi- 
 zen. Intellectual liberty is freedom to think one's own 
 thoughts and express one's own views. Industrial and 
 commercial liberty is freedom of opportunity in busi- 
 ness. Religious liberty is freedom to worship God 
 according to the dictates of one's conscious, unhin- 
 dered by civil or ecclesiastical authority of any kind. 
 Now Jesus here directs us to the root of all free- 
 dom, something deeper and richer than any of these 
 that I have named. Freedom based on Truth and 
 Freedom imparted through sonship, "If the Son there- 
 fore shall make you free, ye shall be free Indeed." 
 
 78 
 
FREEDOM, TRUE AND FALSE 79 
 
 Truth means adjustment. Freedom through truth 
 means freedom resulting from agreement between the 
 constitution of our natures and the constitution of 
 the universe. Imagine some very potent being holding 
 in his hand a little lump of matter. He knows its 
 nature through and through. He wants to relate it 
 in a certain way to the atmosphere which he also knows 
 through and through. We observe him carefully as 
 he kneads and rolls and moulds and shapes the bit of 
 matter and slowly it is transformed into a pair of 
 wings which he attaches to a wingless creature, en- 
 abling it to fly. This would be true freedom, con- 
 formity of the wings to the air. This is a fancy 
 picture, but it is what God does in constructing a 
 bird's wing. Freedom through truth comes to us in 
 the same way. Our souls are conformed to the uni- 
 verse of reality, and we who were spiritually without 
 wings are enabled to fly. 
 
 Freedom through sonship is acceptance of a relation 
 to God our Father. Behind the universe of truth is 
 a Person. Not Abraham's descent, but royal descent 
 from God makes us free. 
 
 Now, in order to understand this freedom which 
 Christ gives through truth and by means of sonship, 
 we shall look at certain aspects of the great idea of 
 freedom and try to measure it and show how Christ 
 gives ideal freedom. 
 
 (i) First, then, freedom is measured by the prin- 
 ciple of control. We may conceive of three possible 
 principles of human action and control. A man may 
 be undetermined, determined by circumstances, or self- 
 determined. Some seem to live an undetermined, 
 capricious life without purpose or aim. Some are the 
 sport of circumstances. They take the colour of their 
 
80 THE LIFE IN CHRIST 
 
 surroundings. They are caught in the tides about 
 them and carried whithersoever it goes. The whole 
 issue lies here: Are you the potter and the world 
 clay? Or is the world potter and you clay? The 
 world always assumes that you are clay until you 
 prove to it that you are potter. Now, to submit to 
 the world in hopelessness and despair is slavery. To 
 arise and assert yourself against it is rebellion, but 
 not necessarily deliverance. To accept freedom 
 through truth and sonship is to conquer the world. 
 There is lodged in the soul a new energy to conquer 
 sin, and grief, and loss, and pain, and hereditary bias, 
 to conquer circumstances and to overcome the dead 
 weight of this round planet. Some men are deter- 
 mined by circumstances. Others are self-determined. 
 Christ gives self-determination. God matches man- 
 hood against matter, will against force. He launches 
 human personality against earthquake and blizzards, 
 famines and disease, and death and sin, against the 
 whole weight and mass and power of the vast and 
 towering threatening pitiless and grinding universe. 
 
 (2) Freedom is measured by the motive which 
 directs. You can fix a man's place in the scale of 
 being by the elevation or depression of his motive. 
 Freedom is always born of a high motive. A man 
 whose life is governed by a low motive, by resentment 
 or revenge or avarice and greed, locks himself in a 
 dungeon, and shuts out the universe of free and 
 abounding life. 
 
 Now Christ gives freedom by elevating the motive. 
 You may pursue the same object with a new motive 
 and all the world is made anew for you. A friend 
 of mine was telling me of a deer hunt he had recently 
 had. I asked if he got any deer. "Yes," he replied, 
 
FREEDOM, TRUE AND FALSE 81 
 
 "I got two. I will show them to you." He brought 
 me a pencil sketch of two beautiful deer, saying, 
 "Here they are." Then he told me how, rifle in hand, 
 he came upon these beautiful creatures. He saw them 
 through an opening in the underbrush, by a lakeside, 
 and could not resist the impulse to lay down his gun 
 and sketch them. He was an artist. The freedom 
 of the huntsman gave place to the freedom of the 
 artist. Freedom for him did not mean deer to shoot, 
 but deer to look at, admire and sketch. He did not 
 shoot the deer. The pictures satisfied him. Peace 
 hath her victories no less renowned than war. 
 
 The love of occupation is inborn. This explains 
 the destructive habits of the baby. Give him a pair 
 of scissors, an ink bottle, and a hammer — and free- 
 dom, and it requires no gift of prophecy to enable 
 you to foretell what the house will look like when 
 he has rounded out his morning's labours. But take 
 away the instruments of destruction and teach him 
 rather the motive of construction, and you start him 
 on a new career. He will paint pictures or build 
 houses as readily as he will do other things. Now, 
 human history for two thousand years has been 
 Christ's effort to teach men the constructive motive 
 and to put aside the destructive. He has been trying 
 by spiritual influences to wrest from their hands the 
 divisive scissors of national and racial exclusiveness 
 and hate, and the ink bottle of greed and lust, and to 
 take away from them the hammer of war and replace 
 these by the implements of peace, the pen, the plough- 
 share, the pruning-knife, the painter's brush, the print- 
 ing-press and the pulpit. Just in proportion as men 
 have learned the lesson have they become free. 
 
 The instinct for conquest is one of the noblest we 
 
82 THE LIFE IN CHRIST 
 
 have, if directed aright. There are two kinds of war. 
 One is waged to gain territory by slaying men, the 
 other to save human souls by slaying the spiritual foes 
 of the race. One motive creates a Nero on the throne 
 who pitilessly murders men by the thousand, and the 
 other an apostle Paul in a dungeon under his throne 
 who would give his life to redeem the lowliest of his 
 fellowmen. One motive for war produces a Napoleon 
 whose heart was stone, the other a John Knox, who 
 in unselfish longing prayed to God, "Give me Scotland 
 or I die." One war-impulse leads a man to follow 
 the cannon, the drum and the battleship; the other 
 to join the army of the Rider on the white horse 
 in the book of Revelation, who goes forth with 
 a single crown and returns as victor with all the 
 crowns of earth upon his brow. Spiritual conquest 
 gratifies man's inborn love of victory beyond all 
 others. 
 
 Freedom really comes only when the spirit of man 
 finds its true object and is impelled by the higher 
 motive. One man seems to find his object when he 
 sits astride a splendid thoroughbred horse; another 
 when aboard a well-equipped yacht, sailing across the 
 sea; another when in his greenhouse, surrounded by 
 flowers. But none finds his soul's true object like 
 the man who finds Christ. None have such spon- 
 taneity of action, such untrammelled energy and 
 buoyancy as men who have acquired the freedom that 
 Christ the Son gives. Look at Paul. He abounds 
 in images which suggest spontaneity and exuberant 
 joy. See him yonder, when like a mighty swimmer 
 rising above the billows of adversity and difficulty 
 he exclaims, "I can do all things through Christ." 
 Hear him as he spreads the wings of devotion, and in 
 
FREEDOM, TRUE AND FALSE 83 
 
 a splendid flight of mystic passion he shouts, "For 
 me to Hve is Christ, and to die is gain." Observe him 
 as he is caught in the mighty grip of moral enthusiasm 
 and self-conquest, exulting in the joy of battle, 
 "Thanks be to God, who always leads me in victory 
 through Christ." See him again as he is impelled on- 
 ward, the embodiment of flaming love and quenchless 
 hope and deathless ambition, running the Christian 
 race as one who treads on air and exclaiming, "For- 
 getting the things that are behind, I press towards the 
 mark." 
 
 The moral career of Paul reminds one of the flight 
 of some mighty eagle, long confined in a cage, and 
 then released. As first he is uncertain of his new feel- 
 ing of freedom, but at length becoming conscious of 
 it, the heavy eyelids open, he looks about him, his 
 drooping wings he gathers for flight, and then with 
 a scream of joy, he soars away to the clouds. His 
 eagle soul has found its object, God's free air. Jesus 
 Christ is the atmosphere of the soul. In Him the 
 soul finds its true object and freedom. Men become 
 the slaves of Christ because He makes them autono- 
 mous, sets them free. 
 
 (3) Freedom is measured by the scale of develop- 
 ment. A recent writer says we are all dwarfs because 
 only a small portion of our brain area is developed. 
 We might become tenfold greater and wiser if we 
 could develop all our resources. It would seem absurd 
 to speak of a jelly-fish flying through the air and 
 discerning distant objects on the horizon. And yet the 
 living cells in a jelly-fish are like the living cells of the 
 eagle. The eagle, then, is just a highly developed 
 jelly-fish. Men often remain jelly-fishes when they 
 might become eagles of power. 
 
84 THE LIFE IN CHRIST 
 
 We need all round development and not merely that 
 everybody become a specialist. The expert or special- 
 ist is useful, but not the most useful member of so- 
 ciety. It is true the mocking-bird is a specialist in 
 nature, and so is the nightingale and the lark. But 
 so also are the tiger and the hawk. The tiger doubt- 
 less is a connoisseur in detecting the delicate shades 
 of flavour in the blood of his various victims. But 
 he is a most inconvenient and unsocial member of 
 society, especially w^hen you meet him alone and he 
 is hungry. Any good dog is a cultivated and accom- 
 plished gentleman in comparison with him, because he 
 has moved in good society and has an all round de- 
 velopment. What a charming companion a good dog 
 is. He can talk and laugh and play with you as well 
 as sorrow and suffer. 
 
 Now the human soul is endless in its capacity for 
 growth and development. Niagara Falls is still going 
 to waste, says the utilitarian money-maker, because 
 a very small fraction of its power has been applied 
 to machinery. Between us, I am glad of it, but it 
 will serve as an illustration. Our natures are unused 
 Niagaras of power in large part. 
 
 We should seek symmetry of development. Reli- 
 gion inspires and aids in this. Christ came to give 
 freedom through abundant life. Have a healthy body, 
 if possible. Be a good animal. That is Christian. 
 Have a well disciplined will. This is the crown of 
 character and Christ enables us to achieve it. Develop 
 a sensitive conscience and cultivate the intellect. Art, 
 music, painting, philosophy, literature, these are blos- 
 soms on the tree of freedom. Combine all these with 
 a spiritual life, a practical useful life in the church of 
 Christ. 
 
FREEDOM, TRUE AND FALSE 85 
 
 All this is included in freedom. This is what son- 
 ship means. Thus Christ is trying to bring out all 
 the possibilities in our natures. It is said of Chopin 
 that he found the soul of the piano as no other player 
 ever did, and gave it a distinct personality and indi- 
 viduality, so to speak. He discovered all the secrets, 
 learned the hidden power in its strings, and set free 
 all the harmonies of the instrument. After he found 
 the soul of the piano he used it to find the human 
 soul. Thus Christ calls forth all our powers and 
 through us reaches the world. He sets us free and 
 through us sets the world free. 
 
 (4) Freedom is measured by the size of the world 
 in which you move. 
 
 Prof. Newcomb says if one would comprehend the 
 vastness of the physical universe he would lie on his 
 back on a bench or roof on a clear moonless night in 
 autumn. The stupendous arch of the milky way will 
 curve above him. Nearby will be the beautiful con- 
 stellation Lyra, towards which our system is moving. 
 There is the lovely blue star Vega. Southward is 
 Altair, the bright star in Aquila. Westward Arcturus 
 glitters, and eastward Aldebaran. Try to grasp some- 
 what the vast distances, the inconceivable motion, the 
 ordered majestic swing and freedom of these match- 
 less moving worlds, and indeed, as Prof. Newcomb 
 says, there seems "no other way in which the weary 
 mind finds complete rest from earthly anxiety and 
 care." 
 
 Now Christ the eternal Son teaches the soul to lie 
 on its back and drink in the vastness and wonder of 
 the spiritual universe. He sets us free to roam in the 
 utmost depths of the infinite. Eye hath not seen, ear 
 hath not heard, neither hath it entered into the heart 
 
86 THE LIFE IN CHRIST 
 
 of man the good things God hath prepared for them 
 that love Him in that vast universe. 
 
 There is the low narrow way of interpreting the 
 world, and there is the broad free way. You may 
 interpret the world in terms of the senses, as some 
 one has said, and get a universe of colour ; red, black, 
 blue, brown ; and of shape, round, square, long, short ; 
 and of tastes, bitter, sweet, sour. But that is after 
 all a narrow universe. The soul beats its wings against 
 the bars of sense. Or you can interpret the world 
 in terms of intellect and get thought. For thought 
 is stamped all over the universe, in the insect's eye, 
 a bird's wing, and the construction of the solar system. 
 Or you can interpret the universe in terms of heart 
 and get love. For love plays like a dim flame even 
 over the lower animal creation wherein the mother 
 thrush gives her life for her young, or the lioness for 
 her whelps. Or you can interpret the universe in 
 terms of conscience and get righteousness. Written 
 over nature is a law confirming the inward law of 
 right and wrong, teaching the deep lesson: 
 
 "The air for the wing of the sparrow. 
 The bush for the robin and wren, 
 But always the path that is narrow 
 And strait for the children of men." 
 
 Or you can interpret the world in terms of the 
 aesthetic faculty and get beauty. For: 
 
 "Nature beats in perfect tune 
 And round with rhyme her every nunc 
 Whether she work on land or sea. 
 Or hides under-ground her alchemy. 
 
FREEDOM, TRUE AND FALSE 87 
 
 Thou canst not wave thy staff In air, 
 Nor dip thy paddle in the lake, 
 But it carves the bow of beauty there. 
 And the ripples in rhymes the oar forsake." 
 
 Or finally, you can interpret the universe in terms of 
 religion and get God. Thus you rise to the highest 
 view of the world. Thus you find the highest free- 
 dom. Under God's tutelage, whose image you bear, 
 you are taught on this little planet and trained to the 
 most daring flights and eternity alone will suffice to 
 give full play for our redeemed powers. When you 
 get God all the other things come back again In new 
 and glorified form, beauty, thought, colour, shape, and 
 the rest. ''Earth is crammed In heaven." 
 
 The prayer life lifts you to the stars — fellowship 
 with God swings you out into the infinite spaces. 
 Christian work enables you to partake of the rhythm 
 and momentum and wondrous power of the moving 
 worlds. 
 
 Before closing I must briefly indicate that the free- 
 dom which Christ gives through the truth requires 
 a response on our part or It remains merely a name. 
 That response, after faith is ours, and as a result of 
 faith, includes four things: self-discipline, self-denial, 
 self-direction and self -development. 
 
 Self-discipline. Train yourself to think right, and 
 feel right and act right until the law of right is the 
 law of your being. Men talk of the pleasure of self- 
 indulgence. It is far below the joy of self-restraint. 
 The musician is most free when he has acquired such 
 skill In playing the piano that he forgets that he has 
 any fingers. 
 
 Self-denial. This Is the law of the cross and the 
 
88 THE LIFE IN CHRIST 
 
 law of Christ. Self-denial is the law of the universe. 
 Self-denial is the law of the planted seed which drops 
 its dead integument and bursts into flower. Self- 
 denial is the law of proficiency which enables the 
 school-boy to accomplish his tasks and carry off the 
 honours. Self-denial creates the statesman, the soldier 
 and apostle. Self-denial is the law of the divine nature 
 which gave His Son for the world. The way of self- 
 denial is the way of self-realization and to freedom. 
 
 Self-direction. The free man is self-directed, but 
 through an inward law. You cannot force the human 
 will. God cannot force it. Freedom comes of the 
 will directing itself into its own true life. 
 
 Self-development. Stagnation is slavery, not free- 
 dom. Freedom is not movement in space merely, else 
 a rolling stone would be free. Freedom is not action 
 only, but intelligent action, moral action, spiritual 
 action. Freedom is the eternal movement of the soul 
 towards God, through God's redeeming grace in Christ. 
 
IX 
 
 THE SUPREME QUALITY IN HUMAN 
 ACTIONS 
 
 Matthew lo : 42 — "In the name of a disciple." 
 — "In the name of a prophet." 
 
 THERE is one meaning in these two texts. Each 
 text ifxdicates that the value of the act Hes 
 in the motive, "In the name of a prophet," 
 *Tn the name of a disciple." 
 
 I. Observe, first, the manner in which character is 
 indicated by the nature of the act. 
 
 (i) It is a deed and not merely a profession of 
 discipleship. It is right and proper to express religion 
 in the form of a creed. Whoever thinks will desire 
 to define religion for thought, or state its meaning and 
 contents. It is of course right and proper to express 
 religion in worship. Worship is natural and spon- 
 taneous to the devout spirit. And yet in creed and 
 ritual the kernel of genuine religion may be want- 
 ing. On the stage an actor might easily encounter 
 and defeat a stage tiger amid the plaudits of the 
 spectators. But this would not tell of his real courage, 
 or what sort of behaviour he would exhibit if he 
 were to meet a real tiger in a jungle. So religion 
 may be just pantomime, just stage acting. We may 
 bow before the crucifix, or sing of the crucifixion, 
 or preach a crucified Christ purely as pantomime, 
 
 89 
 
90 THE LIFE IN CHRIST 
 
 without having the power of the cross within, us at 
 all. That is' why the scriptures constantly call us 
 back to the realities below the surface. "Pure reli- 
 gion (that is the pure ritual, the real worship) is to 
 visit the fatherless and the widow." "Rend your 
 hearts and not your garments" was the exhortation of 
 an Old Testament prophet. "What doth Jehovah re- 
 quire? Ten thousand rams or rivers of oil? What 
 doth he require of thee but to 'do justly and love 
 mercy and walk humbly with thy God ?' " In the 
 scenes of heaven all is worship, and yet the temple 
 has disappeared, as pictured in the book of Revela- 
 tion. There is no temple needed for formal worship. 
 All has become reality. 
 
 (2) We have here exhibited a Christian motive and 
 not a selfish motive. 
 
 (3) We have deeds described best suited to make 
 the motive clear. Human nature is likely enough to 
 engage in an athletic contest, or social rivalries, or 
 political struggles for the sake of the applause. But 
 no one is likely to give a cup of cold water to the 
 thirsty for the sake of a write-up in the next morning's 
 paper. 
 
 Again we see the motive in receiving a prophet in 
 the name of a prophet. There are two or three pos- 
 sible motives in receiving a prophet. We might receive 
 him because he Is a blood relation. This would not 
 have any especial spiritual value. Or, we might re- 
 ceive him because he could cure our disease. We 
 would thus be valuing him as we would a doctor's 
 prescription. Or we might receive him because he 
 could replenish our meal barrel as in the case of the 
 widow. We would thus value him as we would so 
 much land to produce meal, or so much money to 
 
THE SUPREME QUALITY 91 
 
 buy it. But It Is to receive a prophet, in the name of 
 a prophet, because he is a prophet, that has merit. 
 
 (4) We have a lowly act which includes the greater 
 acts. There is a moral beauty, and even grandeur, 
 in lowly acts which does not appear in those of a 
 more imposing character. It is a happy touch of the 
 author of "Ben Hur" where he permits the curtain 
 which obscures all the early life of Jesus to part for 
 a moment while the young man Jesus at Nazareth 
 steps forth silently to slake the thirst of the Jewish 
 captive whom the Romans are bearing away into bon- 
 dage. The glimpse is imaginary, not historical, but 
 somehow we feel it is true to life and harmonizes 
 perfectly with all we know of Jesus. If, on the con- 
 trary, the author had painted the youth Jesus as per- 
 forming some spectacular miracle or wonder, we 
 should have been shocked. 
 
 We are not to suppose that corresponding value 
 does not attach to greater deeds than giving the cup 
 of water and showing hospitality to a prophet. The 
 fact is the Scriptures reverse the mathematical prin- 
 ciple that the greater includes the less. In moral and 
 spiritual things the less includes the greater. "He 
 that is faithful in that which is least, is faithful also 
 in much." "Thou hast been faithful in few things, 
 I will make thee ruler over many things." The servant 
 who sweeps under the mats when the mistress is out of 
 sight will not be likely to neglect the more important 
 duties. The theory that some men will continue honest 
 so long as they handle hundreds or thousands of other 
 people's money, but would become dishonest if they 
 handled millions, is radically untrue. No man who 
 is honest at all will steal in either case. If it Is 
 really the power of gravitation which causes the leaf 
 
92 THE LIFE IN CHRIST 
 
 to flutter down to the ground from the twig of the 
 tree, it is none the less the power of gravitation which 
 hurls the boulder from the mountain side to the valley 
 below. The mathematician can deduce the law of the 
 sphere if truly seen in the dewdrop as well as in the 
 planet. Mere size is a minor matter if the principle 
 is found. Thus ever in genuine life and in real 
 character, the little stands for the much. A Russian 
 exile on account of his labours for liberty in a land 
 of oppression, arrives in America. He goes to Mt. 
 Vernon and picks up a pebble, and then to George 
 Washington's boyhood home in Virginia and cuts a 
 walking stick from the thicket, and these he keeps 
 as mementoes of the land of freedom and of the great 
 father of American freedom. In a sense these things 
 are a better sign of his love of freedom than some 
 great act might be. Being purely sentimental they 
 reflect his deep passion for liberty in a visible and 
 impressive way. 
 
 So also the Christian traveller goes to the Holy 
 Land and brings back a souvenir from Jacob's Well 
 where Jesus sat, wearied, and delivered his memorable 
 sermon to the woman on eternal life. He brings 
 back something made of olive wood from the spot in 
 the garden of Gethsemane where Jesus endured the 
 agony and bloody sweat, and he cherishes this in the 
 true Christian spirit. 
 
 We say this is pure sentiment. But if genuine, it 
 is far more. It may be the expression in a small 
 way of a great passion and life devotion to Jesus 
 Christ. Behind these things will lie a great and high 
 appreciation of Christ. Not Jerusalem and Samaria 
 alone will be sacred to him because Christ was there, 
 but the whole planet will be dear to him, because 
 
THE SUPREME QUALITY 93 
 
 Christ came to it and died for it to redeem it, and 
 longs and yearns for its salvation. All humanity will 
 become sacred because Christ was a member of the 
 race, and love and missionary service will go out, 
 not to the advanced peoples alone, but also to the 
 "lowborn, sullen peoples half demon and half child." 
 
 II. Having noted the lowly act and the character 
 manifested therein, we consider next some truths 
 which follow as conclusions therefrom. 
 
 (i) Note first the unity of the Christian spirit. 
 Giving water in the name of a disciple is to be a 
 disciple. Receiving a prophet in the name of a 
 prophet is in essence the same as being a prophet. 
 The woman of the Old Testament who had a prophet's 
 chamber in her home for God's servant, was herself 
 prophetic in her character. The poor Scotch woman 
 who by hard labour and sacrifice saved $60.00 and 
 gave it to David Livingstone, the missionary and 
 explorer, to provide for him an African body servant, 
 was potentially a Livingstone. And when the body 
 servant thus obtained saved Livingstone's life from the 
 attack of a lion, she had given Livingstone to Africa 
 the remainder of his days. A box of clothing sent to 
 frontier missionaries lifts the donors to the missionary 
 plane, if the gift is in the name of a disciple and 
 is born of appreciation of God's prophets on the 
 frontier. 
 
 We need not be discouraged when we compare our 
 lives with those of the great apostles Paul and Peter 
 and John, or with those of Carey and Judson and 
 Yates and Morrison, provided only their spirit ani- 
 mates us. Potentially we are apostles and missionaries 
 if by our deeds we show appreciation of their work. 
 
 (2) The second conclusion from the text is the unity 
 
94 THE LIFE IN CHRIST 
 
 of the Christian reward. "He that receiveth a prophet, 
 in the name of a prophet, shall receive a prophet's 
 reward." The prophet's reward here is not what the 
 prophet can bestow in return for favours done to him. 
 It is rather the reward God will bestow on the prophet 
 for his prophetic service. 
 
 Here is a very suggestive principle. In a sense it 
 is greater to appreciate greatness than to be great. 
 There may not be great merit in being great. God's 
 gift of a great brain or heart does not imply merit. 
 That comes only through the use we make of them. 
 The three-year-old girl just reported in Germany who 
 is a musical prodigy, playing from memory the great- 
 est classical compositions, is a wonder; but there is 
 scarcely more merit in her genius than there is in 
 the mocking-bird which pours melody from its throat 
 as a fountain sends out a stream of water. You do 
 not think of merit in a rose for its beauty, or in the 
 star for its brilliancy, or a nightingale for its note. 
 Genius and talent are not merit. Merit comes of their 
 use and improvement. Genius and talent are hard to 
 consecrate because they call forth human applause. 
 It is not easy to hear distinctly the inner voice of 
 conscience when the thunder of outward applause 
 is ringing in our ears; or to keep in the mind's eye 
 the recording angel and his faithful pen when our 
 performances are being exploited in flaring headlines 
 in the daily press. Hence it is that the humble and 
 unremembered man whose generous appreciation of 
 the prophet makes him willing to unloose the latchet 
 of his shoe, or hold open the door unrecognized 
 while the other passes through, may thus perform 
 an act of greater moral grandeur than the great man 
 himself. 
 
THE SUPREME QUALITY 95 
 
 To applaud is morally nobler than to be applauded. 
 It is the little and the sour nature, the shrivelled spirit 
 which indulges in petty criticism. When Henry M. 
 Stanley, the great African explorer, at his wedding 
 in Westminster Abbey paused long enough on the way 
 to the altar to lay a wreath of white flowers on the 
 tomb of his great forerunner and predecessor, David 
 Livingstone, he did a nobler act than the slaying of 
 a lion would have been in the jungles of the dark 
 continent. 
 
 The very crown of Christian character is this in- 
 sight and appreciation of moral worth in others, 
 coupled with a struggle to attain it. Character will blos- 
 som fully only thus. Heaven is in great measure simply 
 appreciation of moral values outside of ourselves. 
 John's picture of heaven is a scene of such apprecia- 
 tion. The redeemed host cast their crowns down at 
 the feet of Him thac sitteth on the throne and cry, 
 "Holy, holy, holy," and also they say, "worthy is the 
 lamb that hath been slain to receive glory and do- 
 minion." A man's place in the scale of moral worth 
 is fixed by the homage which he pays to the moral 
 ideal in Jesus Christ. His moral energy and vigour are 
 determined by the power with which the moral law 
 in Christ grips his life. 
 
 But some one asks, "Will the rewards of heaven 
 be the same in all? Is that what you mean by the 
 Christian reward?" Not at all. Because there are 
 some who never rise to an appreciation of the highest 
 and noblest. Their moral outreach Is a limited one. 
 They do not enter the prophet's passion, or the 
 prophet's burden, and the prophet's purpose. They 
 have moral appreciation on the lower levels but not 
 on the higher. Their rewards will be on the level 
 
96 THE LIFE IN CHRIST 
 
 of their appreciations though not even there perhaps 
 absolutely the same with all. 
 
 (3) Observe finally the unity of the moral kingdom 
 in Christ. The supreme merit of the cup of water 
 given in the name of a disciple, and of the service 
 rendered the prophet in the name of a prophet, is that 
 these are but a service rendered to Christ Himself. 
 At the last judgment scene are the most remarkable 
 words in Scripture, "Come ye blessed of my father," 
 etc. Three remarkable things are to be noted about 
 these words. One is the absence of blame. There 
 were sins and failures and shortcomings in the record 
 of every life before The Judge. Yet there is no 
 mention of any of them. There is nothing but 
 generous appreciation of them. It is the detec- 
 tion of moral worth on the part of the Judge, in his 
 people. 
 
 A second remarkable thing is the absence of refer- 
 ence to His own service for them. There is Calvary 
 in the background. There is the agony of the bloody 
 sweat. There is the darkness and the expiation, the 
 cruel nails and the spear and the bitter reproaches 
 of the enemies about the cross, and the sense of aban- 
 donment and orphanhood. There is all that concen- 
 tration of human hate and rage and the infinite worth 
 of His atoning death which enabled these redeemed 
 to stand there in His presence at the judgment scene. 
 Yet we hear no mention of all this. Our appreciation 
 of Christ's death was His desire. 
 
 The third remarkable thing here is His selection of 
 the trivial acts and deeds as criteria of judgment. 
 "Ye gave me meat, drink," etc. No wonder they are 
 surprised at the words, surprised that He speaks not 
 of brilliant and heroic achievements and historic 
 
THE SUPREIVIE QUALITY 97 
 
 events, but only of feeding the hungry and kindred 
 deeds. 
 
 I gather from all this the meaning that by reason 
 of His union and identification with humanity, all 
 humanity is sacred ; and this, that service rendered 
 to the least is service rendered to Him ; and this, that 
 all human conduct w^hether on a great or lowly scale, 
 is rendered sacred by its reference to Him ; and this, 
 that our appreciation of worth in others is but a reflec- 
 tion of His appreciation of worth in others, that amid 
 mines of gold and silver and diamonds and all other 
 forms of wealth, men and women are God's chief 
 asset, and that the service of man is but carrying 
 forward the great and sublime undertaking of God in 
 creating a universe, and who reached the climax of 
 His work only when he said, "Let us make man." 
 
X 
 
 SONSHIP THROUGH SUFFERING, OR THE 
 UNITY OF NATURE AND GRACE 
 
 Romans 8: 19-23 — "For the earnest expectation of 
 the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons 
 of God. 
 
 "For the creature was made subject to vanity, not 
 willingly, hut by reason of him who hath subjected the 
 same in hope. 
 
 "Because the creature itself also shall be delivered 
 from the bondage of corruption into the glorious 
 liberty of the children of God. 
 
 "For we know that the whole creation groaneth and 
 travaileth in pain together until now. 
 
 "And not only they, but ourselves also which have 
 the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan 
 within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the 
 redemption of our body." 
 
 II Corinthians 5 : 4. — "For we that are in this tab- 
 ernacle do groan, being burdened; not that we would 
 be unclothed, but clothed upon, that mortality might 
 be swallowed up of life." 
 
 THE nineteenth verse and the twenty-first verse 
 of this chapter compared with the twenty- 
 third verse, suggest our subject : We wish to 
 compare the teachings of these two parts of Scripture 
 and trace the very striking parallel which they contain. 
 
 98 
 
SONSHIP THROUGH SUFFERINGS 99 
 
 I. Observe first then the unity of nature and grace 
 as here set forth. We are not concerned at the present 
 moment, as we shall be a little later, to dwell on the 
 process of nature and the process of grace. We would 
 emphasize at this stage the one point that nature and 
 grace are in harmony. Paul takes a look at nature and 
 finds that the whole creation is doing a particular 
 thing. Then he takes a look at grace at work in 
 Christians and finds that the same general process is 
 going on. 
 
 God is like a player at a piano, so to speak. With 
 one hand He plays on the human heart and conscience 
 and will. With the other He plays on physical nature. 
 These two are parts of the same great harmony, like 
 one of Beethoven's compositions, the parts are all put 
 together and continued on a principle of unity. Or 
 we may say there is an antiphony between nature and 
 grace, like the separated parts of a great chorus. The 
 leader turns to nature and gives the signal and this 
 part of the chorus responds. Then he turns to grace, 
 the human world, the redemptive process, and this re- 
 sponds. The two are members of the one great chorus 
 of God. 
 
 When Mr. Drummond wrote his book, "Natural 
 Law in the Spiritual World," it was criticized for the 
 attempt to identify the processes of nature and grace. 
 For example, Drummond said that immortality was 
 just the result of the operation of a natural law. If 
 a perfect organism could find a perfect environment 
 and if the organism could have uninterrupted corres- 
 pondence with environment, eternal life would neces- 
 sarily follow: a perfect fish in a perfect sea, and per- 
 fect correspondence, for example. The regenerated soul 
 is the organism, he said, God is the environment, and 
 
100 THE LIFE IN CHRIST 
 
 there is perfect and unbroken correspondence. The 
 result is eternal life. The criticism of Drummond was 
 partly correct. But while there may not be identity 
 between the way nature acts and the way grace acts, 
 there is agreement. There is harmony, and at some 
 points the parallel is very close. 
 
 There is no conflict between science and religion. 
 They simply look at the same object from different 
 points of view. I saw a photograph recently of a 
 handsome Kentucky home which is very familiar to 
 me, yet I failed to recognize it at first. The pictures 
 were taken from the end and gave a view of the port 
 cochere, and not from the front with its fine row of 
 columns. I was more familiar with the columns. Now 
 science looks at nature from the port cochere side, 
 and religion looks at it from the front. They do not 
 contradict but only supplement each other. It is folly, 
 therefore, for any one to set up antagonisms between 
 genuine science and true religion. They cannot claim 
 the beatitude of peace-makers, "Blessed are the peace- 
 makers, for they shall be called the children of God." 
 We should rather enlarge our view to contain both. 
 The world is like a great plant with the human soul 
 as the blossom at the top. Science investigates the 
 roots. Religion deals in the flower. The city of 
 nature which science is building, which is coming 
 up from below, has upon it the silver light of human 
 reason. But it is not in conflict with the city of 
 gold which is coming down from above with the light 
 of revelation upon it. Science delves downward — 
 religion looks up. But if science should dig deep 
 enough she would come out under the same sky. 
 
 The text, it must be owned, emphasizes the agree- 
 ment between nature and grace at a sombre point. 
 
SONSHIP THROUGH SUFFERINGS 101 
 
 Nature groans, and grace groans. "The whole crea- 
 tion groaneth." "We groan." Groaning is a forbid- 
 ding and disagreeable object. One is reminded of 
 what a gentleman said: "A friend of mine the other 
 day paid ten dollars to go to hear Patti sing. But 
 in all my life I never heard of any one paying ten 
 cents to hear another person groan." 
 
 But after all there are two kinds of groaning. There 
 is the groaning of defeat and of loss, and of despair, 
 the groan of the pessimist. But there is also the 
 groaning of desire, of expectation and of hope. In 
 prayer there is the groaning of deep desire. "The 
 spirit himself maketh intercession for us, with groan- 
 ings which cannot be uttered." In the two texts it is 
 the pain and anguish of desire, the yearning for higher, 
 better things that causes the groaning. Some great 
 and wonderful result is foreshadowed, some bright 
 consummation, some wondrous goal. Let us therefore 
 reserve our judgment, for the moment, as to the value 
 of the groaning. 
 
 II. Notice next the reason for the painful process 
 in nature. Nature groans because she is seeking by 
 a process of her own to produce a result above nature. 
 Nature groans because she is discontented with her- 
 self. Nature produces a crystal, we shall say, and I 
 imagine her rejoicing over it. It is a beautiful thing, 
 she says, but I want something higher. So she pro- 
 duces a flower, and she lingers over It, saying it is 
 very good. But again a longing seizes her for some- 
 thing higher still, and she produces a bird, a winged 
 creature. She goes on improving the type and rising 
 higher in the scale of creation. 
 
 Now we are learning that one of nature's great 
 secrets is the principle of pain and death. Without 
 
102 THE LIFE IN CHRIST 
 
 death the world would be crowded with the lower 
 creatures. The higher forms would have no standing 
 room. They tell us that the golden eagle lives just 
 long enough to promote the breed of eagles. They 
 do not live too long lest their increase be beyond the 
 food supply. Nor do they die too soon, lest the race 
 of eagles become weakened and perish. The length 
 of life seems to be determined by the law that nature 
 is bent on producing the best, and strongest and most 
 beautiful type of eagles. Death is necessary. Thus 
 death, an angel in sombre robes and forbidding mien, 
 enters on the fair creation of God. But what does 
 death do? Death unlocks and unbars the gates of 
 destiny and through it enters the angel of life in 
 resplendent robes. 
 
 Now science agrees exactly with revelation in this 
 that the fierce struggle between death and life is going 
 on in creation, and that death is a servant of life. 
 The aim throughout is to produce a being with greater 
 life, and ever greater life. The aim is to produce finally 
 an immortal being, a being which can never die. By 
 the gradual conquest of death, death is slowly driven 
 back. By and by a being — man — arises, who towers 
 high above the animal and plant creation, with the 
 light and glory of immortality upon his brow. In him 
 will be achieved the final conquest of death. 
 
 What kind of a being, then, is this undying crea- 
 ture which stands forth as the crown of nature? We 
 find the answer in Revelation. ' The first chapter of 
 Genesis gives it. In the order of creation the grass 
 came first among living things. Then came the fishes 
 and the fowls and then the beasts, and finally, crown- 
 ing the flight of the stairs of creation, stood man him- 
 self. Now the statement is made that God worked; 
 
SONSHIP THROUGH SUFFERINGS 103 
 
 He laboured six days, and finally He rested. Evidently 
 He was aiming at a definite result. He was en- 
 gaged in producing a deathless being, and one which 
 reflected back His own image. He did not rest until 
 He had created a being whose nature was like a mirror 
 into which God could look and see His own image 
 reflected. All other created things were broken lights 
 of Him. A gleam of Him appeared in the sunlight. 
 Some of His beauty in the varied forms and colours 
 of the world. A little spark of Him in the life of the 
 lower creatures. But only in man does He find His 
 complete image reflected and flashed back as a dew- 
 drop flashes back the image of the sun, or as tall 
 mountains around it are mirrored in the bosom of the 
 lake. "The expectation of the creation waiteth for the 
 revealing of the sons of God." 
 
 Now both texts unite in the great conclusion. God 
 was working and is working in nature and grace to 
 produce a son, a race of sons and daughters, immortal 
 and bearing His own image. 
 
 "For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth 
 for the manifestation of the sons of God. 
 
 "For the creature was made subject to vanity, not 
 willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the 
 same in hope. 
 
 "Because the creature itself also shall be delivered 
 from the bondage of corruption into the glorious lib- 
 erty of the children of God. 
 
 "For we know that the whole creation groaneth and 
 travaileth in pain together until now. 
 
 "And not only they, but ourselves also which have 
 the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan 
 within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the 
 redemption of our body. 
 
104 THE LIFE IN CHRIST 
 
 "For we that are in this tabernacle do groan, being 
 burdened; not for that we would be unclothed, but 
 clothed upon, that mortality might be swallowed up 
 of life." 
 
 Both my texts agree in this that pain and death 
 enter into the method and plan of God, that death 
 ministers to life. 
 
 III. I observe next the reason for the painful 
 process in grace. We have seen that the travail of 
 nature is towards sonship, and that pain and death 
 assist nature in the process. Now when God had 
 crowned His creative work by producing man the im- 
 mortal — sin entered. Man fell and death came as a 
 penalty for transgression. Death took up the sceptre 
 and reigned. 
 
 Shall God's work be destroyed? Shall the end of 
 creation be defeated? No. Grace enters and begins 
 the final conflict with death. But we groan even 
 under grace. Pain and suffering still linger on the 
 scene. 
 
 Now there are two possible reasons for the groaning 
 of the creature. One is that the world about us is 
 too great for us, as when birds and animals suffer 
 and die in winter, or as when earthquakes or volcanoes 
 overwhelm and destroy. But a second possible reason 
 for the groaning of a creature is that we are too great 
 for the world. Now this latter reason applies in the 
 case of man. Man groans in his present environment. 
 I mean especially redeemed man, because the world 
 is too small for his powers. God has set the eternal 
 in our hearts and the temporal and finite do not satisfy. 
 Man's unrest and groaning, his pain and anguish, are 
 the result of the unattained and the unsatisfied in 
 human desire. Man says, and will ever say, "I am a 
 
SONSHIP THROUGH SUFFERINGS 105 
 
 pilgrim, I'm a stranger here, I can tarry but a night." 
 Heaven is my home. I feel the motions of sonship 
 to the eternal God pulsing through my being. I have 
 sorrov^s which heaven alone can heal. I have losses 
 which eternity alone can compensate. I have a nature 
 which reaches up and out to the infinite. It is the 
 dignity of our nature as sons and daughters which 
 brings unrest and groanings. 
 
 This explains why the saint sometimes envies the 
 lower creatures. You remember the Psalmist, in exile 
 and sorrow, thought the sparrow was better off than 
 he. The little sparrow which made its nest unmo- 
 lested and lived out its little life unafraid about the 
 temple in Jerusalem, was to be envied by him whose 
 thirst for the temple was so deep and so unsatisfied. 
 This is a parable of all human life which is spent 
 under the sense of sonship to God. The lower crea- 
 tures probably know nothing of the kind of struggles 
 we have. 
 
 To the squirrel we say in some of our moods: 
 "Happy squirrel. You build your nest in a tree. You 
 gather your store of nuts. You frolic in the sunshine. 
 You tingle with physical health and the keen zest of 
 living. Happy squirrel. You have no conscience 
 which can keep you awake at night, and no imagination 
 to forebode sorrows and loss. You are not perplexed 
 whether or not your soul is immortal. You do not 
 shiver and cower at the prospect of death. Happy 
 squirrel !" 
 
 Perhaps It was this mood which led Shelley to write 
 his matchless Ode to the Skylark, his own sense of 
 the unattained, and the exuberance and bounding joy 
 of the bird's life. 
 
106 THE LIFE IN CHRIST 
 
 "Hail to thee, blithe spirit 
 Bird thou never wert 
 That in heaven or near it 
 Pourest thy full heart, 
 In profuse strains of unpremeditated art. 
 
 "We look before and after 
 And pine for what is not, I 
 
 Our sincerest laughter 
 With some pain is fraught. 
 Our sv^eetest songs are those that tell of saddest 
 thought. 
 
 "In the golden lightning 
 Or the sunken sun 
 O'er which clouds are brightening, 
 Thou dost float and run 
 Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun." 
 
 The reason in each case is clear. Neither the spar- 
 row nor lark nor squirrel has a sense of the unful- 
 filled. None of them grope and fumble at the lock 
 in the mystery of existence. None can say: 
 
 "I seem to hear a heavenly friend 
 And through thick veils to apprehend 
 A labour working to an end." 
 
 All this squares with the conclusion we have reached. 
 In nature and grace God is perfecting sons and daugh- 
 ters. The New Testament weaves its teaching around 
 this idea at every point. "Behold what manner of 
 love the Father hath bestowed upon us that we should 
 be called the sons of God." "For ye have not received 
 the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have re- 
 ceived the spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, 
 
SONSHIP THROUGH SUFFERINGS 107 
 
 Father." "Be ye therefore imitators of God as dear 
 children." "It doth not yet appear what we shall be, 
 but we know that when he shall appear we shall be 
 like him." 
 
 IV. One step remains in our argument to round it 
 out, and that is to show how pain and suffering are 
 used. What can these do to make us sons? The 
 answer is found in that principle which lies at the 
 heart of the Gospel. Sonship comes first of all by 
 faith and is developed by sacrifice and by a particular 
 kind of sacrifice. There are several kinds of sacrifice. 
 
 There is unconscious sacrifice. One crop of weeds 
 will give up their life that another may rise from 
 the enriched soil. One set of forest trees will give 
 place to another. In Denmark this has gone on. The 
 aspen gave place to the birch; and this in turn to the 
 fir ; and this to the oak ; and finally the beech displaced 
 the oak and now reigns in the Danish forests. 
 
 Then, too, there is instinctive sacrifice. The mother 
 bird and mother beast by an instinct of their natures 
 yield up their lives for their young. 
 
 Among men there is much of involuntary sacrifice. 
 Men suffer for the sins of others against their wills. 
 The lives of a score are dashed out in a railroad wreck 
 through the carelessness of a yardman who failed 
 to look after a switch, and so in many other forms 
 of' involuntary sacrifice. 
 
 But the highest of all forms of sacrifice, and that 
 which develops our sonship, is that which is voluntary. 
 This was the kind Jesus practised when He came to 
 earth. "Being in the form of God, he thought it not 
 robbery to be equal with God: But made himself 
 of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a 
 servant, and was made in the likeness of men: And 
 
108 THE LIFE IN CHRIST 
 
 being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, 
 and became obedient unto death, even the death of the 
 cross." 
 
 This is the kind He would reproduce in us. This 
 is the meaning of His words, "If any man would be 
 my disciple, let him deny himself, and take up his 
 cross daily, and follow me." It is the voluntary choice 
 of the cross. And this: "Except a grain of wheat 
 fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but if 
 it die, it bringeth forth much fruit." And this : "Put 
 to death therefore your members." It is the same 
 principle of death, of pain. All men have burdens 
 and tasks, but they are only dignified and glorified into 
 crosses when voluntarily chosen. 
 
 Now the early stages of voluntary sacrifice are often 
 painful. But the later ones are joyous because the 
 principle becomes inwrought in character. Our early 
 service to Christ, how painful ! How it goes against 
 the grain to confess Him, but by and by it gives us joy 
 to make the brave stand for Him even among foes. 
 Our early Christian work is often very irksome, but 
 later it becomes a joy indescribable. Our early giving 
 may pain us, but later the blessedness of it comes. 
 Our early sorrows seem incurable, but finally they are 
 mitigated at least and we know the beatitude, 
 "Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be com- 
 forted." Our doubts, too, how they gall us and make 
 us groan. But after a while we get relief and comfort 
 and can say: 
 
 "I see the wrong that round me lies, 
 I feel the guilt within, 
 I hear the groan and travail cries 
 The world confess its sin. 
 
SONSHIP THROUGH SUFFERINGS 109 
 
 "Yet in the maddening maze of things 
 And tossed by storm and flood, 
 To one fixed stake my spirit cHngs, 
 I know that God is good. 
 
 *T know not where His islands lift 
 Their fronded palms in air. 
 I only know I cannot drift 
 Beyond His love and care." 
 
 But the end of the process is spontaneous sacrifice, 
 spontaneous love, and this is the divine element in 
 character. Sonship matures when sacrifice becomes 
 voluntary. Character ripens when it is painful to be 
 unloving. We become sons when we spontaneously 
 imitate God. Thus we see the uses of the groaning; 
 thus we understand the service of the angel of pain 
 and the angel of death. It is to lead us to the con- 
 quest of death and pain until we know the full mean- 
 ing of the words, "If the Son shall make you free, 
 ye shall be free indeed," and of this, "the liberty of 
 the glory of the sons of God." 
 
 Now God is seeking to train us into appreciation of 
 His method. He desires our cooperation. He yearns 
 over us and desires most of all that we shall respond 
 to Him, and yield ourselves up to Him. He sees all 
 the possibilities of our nature. He is striving to develop 
 them. He would enrich us and enlarge our capacities 
 to their full limit. This He will do without fail if we 
 respond and cooperate in faith and love. 
 
 In conclusion, what do we see as the issue of all? 
 We see that the dark shadows that lie across the face 
 of nature have as their end the making of sons of 
 God, and that the dark shadows which hover over 
 
110 THE LIFE IN CHRIST 
 
 the process of grace have the same end in view. 
 Through pain and sorrow, through the long dark vale 
 of life, with its cruel briars and sharp stones, fares 
 the man whom God is making into a son. But he 
 goes not unattended. Grace holds him by the right 
 hand, and nature by the left. Thus he is led upward 
 out of the shadows as a son to meet God's eternal 
 Son, our elder brother, Christ, whom God sent to re- 
 deem us. And, lo, the redeemed Son looking into the 
 glorified face of the redeeming Son discovers in that 
 face the moral likeness of his own purged and purified 
 nature, and discovers in Christ the author and per- 
 fecter of his own faith. 
 
XI 
 
 CHRIST'S CHALLENGE TO MANHOOD 
 
 {A sermon to young men.) 
 
 Luke 9 : 62 — No man having put his hand to the 
 plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of 
 God." 
 
 1LIKE the homely beauty of the plough as an illus- 
 tration of the heroic life. Elsewhere Jesus sets 
 out the same idea under a military figure. But 
 a part of the military hero's victory belongs to the 
 applauding public, which stimulates him to conquer. 
 There is little in the ploughman's work of itself, how- 
 ever, to inspire heroism. The task is lonely, hard and 
 lowly. For that very reason it is one of the hardest 
 sayings of Jesus. Because it is a hard saying, I bring 
 it to you. I scorn the type of Christianity which 
 thinks to attract young men by setting up an easy goal 
 of endeavour. I would not so insult their manhood. 
 In the other sayings of Christ in this passage He 
 is sifting men by an eternal standard. To the im- 
 petuous and thoughtless and would-be disciple He 
 says, "Foxes have holes, and the birds of heaven nests ; 
 but the son of man hath not where to lay his head." 
 To the reluctant who would go first and bury his 
 dead. He says, "Let the dead bury their dead, but go 
 and publish abroad the kingdom of God." And to 
 this one who wished to pay a farewell visit to his home 
 
 111 
 
112 THE LIFE IN CHRIST 
 
 Jesus says: "No man having put his hand to the 
 plough and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of 
 God." 
 
 In all this Christ is simply putting the unerring 
 finger of boundless wisdom upon the weak spot in 
 human character. He is equating manhood over 
 against the kingdom of God. His words are like a 
 strong wind blowing through a forest, which lays 
 the weak trees level with the earth, but leaves the 
 strong in greater strength, or like a raging flame which 
 destroys all that is inflammable and purifies the rest. 
 
 And yet no teacher ever made achievement so at- 
 tractive, or quickened the human spirit to a keener 
 realization of the joys of triumph. No one ever gave 
 such a tonic to the will, or lured to greater heights. 
 No one ever honoured manhood and the will to live 
 and do by setting it to tasks so worthy. He estimated 
 manhood too highly to be content with anything but 
 a worthy goal and efifort. He loves us too much to 
 be willing that we should set our powers to a task 
 too low. Hence from my text I get this subject, 
 Christ's Challenge to Manhood. 
 
 I. Notice, first, Christ's challenge to the choice of 
 manhood : putting the hand to the plough. 
 
 Now this choice to which Christ throws out the 
 challenge implies three things. One is 
 
 The reality of the divine Kingdom. 
 
 The fitness of which He speaks is a fitness for the 
 Kingdom of God. Does a man accept the fact of a 
 world of spiritual realities? There is one side of the 
 modern spirit which denies that anything is a fact 
 unless you can see it or touch it. It must be a mass 
 of matter in some form to pass muster as belonging 
 to the real world. The ocean with its burden of the 
 
CHRIST'S CHALLENGE TO MANHOOD 113 
 
 world's commerce is a fact. The Simplon tunnel, 
 running fourteen miles through the Alps, connecting 
 the traffic of Italy and Northern Europe ; the Matter- 
 horn, piercing the clouds with sharp point, like a 
 flying shaft of granite, hurled from a subterranean 
 catapult, fourteen thousand feet into the air; the 
 planets, the sun in the heaven yonder ; these are facts, 
 men say, because they are bulky and vast. 
 
 But the choice of the plough of the Kingdom implies 
 belief in a higher set of facts. One of these is con- 
 science, man's sense of right and wrong, obligation, 
 duty, righteousness. Another is brotherhood, man's 
 kinship to all other men; still another is immortality, 
 an endless existence in a future world. These are 
 also facts, realities. Moral conviction is like the 
 Alpine mountain range running through all human 
 experience. The belief in immortality is a cloud- 
 piercing peak which rises like a Matterhorn out of 
 that conviction ; while man's assurance that Death does 
 not end all runs like a tunnel through the barrier on 
 the bounds of life, since Christ came forth a conqueror 
 of death. The fact of God is the universal convic- 
 tion of man, the sun in his spiritual heaven. The 
 choice, of a merely commercial or political career, 
 implies belief in a Kingdom of commercial and 
 political forces, but these in turn rest upon the higher 
 world of moral and spiritual realities. The universe 
 is the Kingdom of God. 
 
 (2) This choice implies also the acceptance by man 
 of a birthright and destiny in this Kingdom. One 
 has well said, "The purpose of God in creation did 
 not appear until the dust stood erect in the form of a 
 man." Man as we know him is the crown of Nature, 
 and Christ is the crown of humanity. God and man 
 
114 THE LIFE IN CHRIST 
 
 meet in Christ, He who was the effulgence of the 
 Father's glory, and the image of His substance, is 
 also the archetype of humanity. His challenge to the 
 choice of the plough is the challenge to the pursuit 
 of this ideal forever. The eternally forward look of 
 him who putteth his hand to the plough means nothing 
 less. 
 
 (3) Christ's challenge to the choice of the plough 
 implies also an appeal to the element of sovereignty 
 in man. The plough must be freely chosen. Others 
 were equally free, but not fit. One went to bury his 
 dead or to bid good-bye to his friends. They were 
 free but not fit. Christ seeks those who are free 
 and fit. 
 
 In a word of wondrous import we read in the Gospel 
 of John : "He that hath received him, hath set his seal 
 to this, that God is true." Now a seal is a King's 
 means of making a document authoritative and final. 
 The individual is a King, a sovereign. This element 
 of sovereignty is the whole Key to man's nature and 
 dignity. It is God's image in us. Everything great 
 which happens to a man comes through his sovereign 
 choice. The value of a thing for any man depends 
 upon his own sovereign choice of it, the moral and 
 spiritual choices especially. Hence everywhere the 
 Scriptures represent salvation, sonship, life, as coming 
 through human choice. These great things cannot be 
 given merely, they must be appropriated. "To as many 
 as received him, to them gave he power (authority) 
 to become the sons of God." One of the most striking 
 of all the instances of the exercise of this freedom 
 of a created will is in the words which, in the Drama 
 of Exile, Mrs. Browning puts into the mouth of Satan 
 when he boasts that he is a part of God's universe 
 
CHRIST'S CHALLENGE TO MANHOOD 115 
 
 and is yet neither God nor His servant. Nothing 
 more fearful than that can well be imagined. By 
 emphasizing the necessity of human choice, I have 
 no thought of calling in question man's need of grace 
 in all his supreme choices. But God's grace shows 
 itself in the human choice of the good. That is its 
 true aim and result. 
 
 Now there are two kinds of doubt which may be 
 in the way of the choice of the plough of Christ. One 
 is active and the other passive doubt. Here again we 
 see how directly Christ's challenge is to manhood. The 
 passive doubter is the one who has surrendered to the 
 material world, who has not the heroism to plunge 
 into the world of spirit and grapple with its stupendous 
 problems. Passive doubt is the doubt of the indolent, 
 the weary, the unaspiring. Active doubt will brook 
 no defeat. It is morally in earnest. It looks stead- 
 fastly and steadily into the universe as a whole. 
 
 We are witnessing a marvellous thing in our day 
 among the doubters. By what seems to be an inevit- 
 able gravitation, or spiritual law, the morally earnest, 
 the active doubters, are gradually ranging themselves 
 around Christ. They may not wholly accept all His 
 claims at first ; but they discover in the plough of His 
 appointment the real call to the career of a true man. 
 The morally earnest and strenuous life Christ inspires 
 above all others. And as criticism cuts and slashes 
 at the records of His earthly life, whether with good 
 or evil intent, His figure is but the more completely 
 liberated, and the beauty and winsomeness of His face 
 attract men with irresistible power. 
 
 And in following Him what do they find? They 
 find that the light grows brighter. The tangle and 
 mystery of existence pass gradually away and they find 
 
116 THE LIFE IN CHRIST 
 
 that only the selfish and the sensual and those chained 
 to the trifling and petty pursuits and aims are the 
 blind. They find that the great aim gives the vision 
 of God; that: 
 
 "Earth is crammed with 
 And every common bush aflame with God, 
 But only they that see it take their shoes off, 
 The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries, 
 And daub their faces more and more from the first 
 simiHtude." 
 
 They find, in short, that if a man use his freedom to 
 follow the impulse to go and bid his friends good- 
 bye and thus miss the greater choice and destiny, he 
 will remain in the shade wland of doubt, while another 
 by grasping with vigour the plough of spiritual destiny 
 enters at once into an enlarged career whence arises 
 no faintest desire to look back. 
 
 II. I notice in the second place Christ's challenge 
 to manhood's task, and that is simply the task of the 
 plough. 
 
 The plough, of course, is a figure, a parable which 
 we must interpret. Evidently it sums up duty and 
 destiny from Christ's point of view. We may sum up 
 the symbolism of the plough briefly. 
 
 The plough certainly stands for the idea of unity 
 of effort and purpose. Now what sort of unity does the 
 plough suggest? The forward look stands for moral 
 idealism, the conviction of that higher Kingdom of 
 which I spoke a few moments ago. The ploughshare 
 that pierces the resisting earth stands for the conditions 
 under which we must labour for the ideal. The plough 
 then represents the task of unifying the spiritual with 
 
CHRIST'S CHALLENGE TO MANHOOD 117 
 
 the natural, of bringing the divine down into the 
 human, the task of the plough is the task of the prac- 
 tical idealist. 
 
 In Raphael's] picture representing the school of 
 Athens, Plato is pointing upward. He is the abstract 
 idealist. In the same picture Aristotle is represented 
 as pointing downward. He is the concrete idealist. 
 Now the plough of the Christian undertaking is the 
 parable of the union of the two, abstract and concrete 
 idealism, and yet in a sense higher than either Aristotle 
 or Plato ever knew. But this unifying task we must 
 consider more in detail. 
 
 It goes, of course, without saying, from the pre- 
 ceding remarks, that man's task is supremely moral. 
 To tunnel mountains and build railroads, to erect fac- 
 tories and build cities — this is not man's chief task, 
 though a noble part of it. Huxley, who cared little 
 for Christianity in the ordinary sense, recognized the 
 necessity and importance, nay, the primacy of the 
 moral interest above all others. How to be good was 
 to him the supreme task of man. He said that if he 
 could make a contract with some beneficent and mighty 
 power which could take his nature every morning and 
 wind it up like a clock, so that he would inevitably 
 think right thoughts and do right things, he would 
 close with the offer at once. Ah, if he could have not 
 only admired Christ's ideal, but have yielded to His 
 authority, he would have found in Him, not a key to 
 wind him up mechanically, but a divine and inspiring 
 personal force to quicken all the powers of his being 
 into new moral energy. The plough then stands for 
 the unity and the steadfastness of moral effort under 
 earthly conditions. 
 
 This suggests another unity involved in man's task. 
 
118 THE LIFE IN CHRIST 
 
 and that is of man's higher and lower natures, his 
 soul and his body under moral law. It is to take all 
 the so-called lower side of normal human life and 
 exalt it to the plane of the highest. The ploughshare 
 runs through the fleshly desires and lusts, it rips up 
 the bestial and the base, and tills it into a fruitful 
 harvest field. In the Cologne Cathedral in Germany 
 hangs a bell which, in and out of season, sounds forth 
 the praises of God. It is made of cannon captured 
 from the French, by the Germans, which in 1870 were 
 trained against the city. So must the lower part of 
 us, the hostile part, be captured and made to serve the 
 spirit's interests. It is no dishonour, but the glory 
 of man to have a strong body. But there is but one 
 task of the body, and Browning gives it. It is this: 
 "How far can my body project my soul along its 
 heavenly way?" We are shut up to one or the other 
 of the two philosophies : Man is either a moral being 
 with manhood to win, or else he is simply a hungry 
 animal, reckless of the lives of others, running up and 
 down the earth to satisfy his appetite. The forward 
 look of the spiritual ploughman means simply this: 
 unite the forces of your nature, put all the parts 
 together and rise to an imperial spiritual manhood in 
 Christ. 
 
 The plough suggests another aspect of our great 
 moral task, viz. : that Christianity is more than a gift. 
 It is also an achievement. There are three forms of 
 righteousness taught in the New Testament. First 
 imputed righteousness, which means that when a man 
 accepts Christ, God forgives him and accepts him. 
 The second is imparted righteousness, which means 
 that by His Spirit God communicates a new moral and 
 spiritual life to man, regeneration. The third is at- 
 
CHRIST'S CHALLENGE TO MANHOOD 119 
 
 tained righteousness. Man must win righteousness 
 by effort, after the other forms of it are given to him. 
 We must work out what God has wrought in us. 
 
 There are two conceptions of the Christian life 
 which I despise. One makes it a melancholy pilgrim- 
 age through a low ground of sorrow; the other in a 
 shallow way treats it as an expenditure of energy in 
 trivialities. One regards life as a funeral procession ; 
 the other as a game of tiddle-de-winks. Not so Jesus, 
 not so Paul. Life is a triumphant battle. Character 
 is a thing to be conquered. We are to climb a ladder 
 of fire to eternal moral heights and up that steep and 
 flaming way none but heroic feet can climb, and yet 
 when on the ladder once, the fiery foothold has no 
 power to scorch and burn, but only to purify. Such 
 climbers Jesus calls. And to-night, young men, I fling 
 out His challenge to you, and I would despise myself, 
 and I would fail in true respect for you if I should 
 make it easy. 
 
 The furrow of the plough of your moral purpose is 
 not merely individual. It is also social, Man by him- 
 self is not a man. You are called to social service. 
 You are a part of the organic social life of your age. 
 The field which you are tilling with your plough of 
 endeavour is for the support of your brothers as well 
 as yourself. Young gentlemen, the politics of your 
 times needs you. Commercial life needs you. Modern 
 business too often melts and coins the golden rule into 
 the golden dollar, and politics too often converts public 
 office and civic righteousness into means for satisfying 
 the hunger of the beast of greed. Education needs 
 you. Never has there been a more splendid opening 
 for the forces of intelligence than to-day. Ideas rule 
 the world as never before. The Christian enterprise 
 
120 THE LIFE IN CHRIST 
 
 needs you. The Christian ministry needs many of 
 you, and that noblest of all the chivalries, the mission- 
 ary enterprise, calls for men. A student volunteer 
 convention was recently held. Thousands of the pick of 
 young manhood and womanhood from every quarter 
 of the land were there. For days they deliberated not 
 over any commercial or military enterprise, not even 
 over football or baseball, though doubtless there were 
 experts in both games present; but over the question 
 how could they extend a helping hand to their brothers 
 and sisters in China and Africa and India, who are 
 less fortunate than they. They heard Christ's chal- 
 lenge and leaped to the plough. 
 
 Now this personal and social task demands courage. 
 President Roosevelt when police commissioner in New 
 York early in his career, rigorously enforced the Sun- 
 day law against saloons, and the Tammany tiger, of 
 course, growled and struck out madly. Tammany 
 called a great meeting, where addresses and denuncia- 
 tions were to be delivered. Roosevelt, the object of 
 all this wrath, was present on the platform. The aver- 
 age civic executive would have been somewhere in hid- 
 ing in these circumstances. But the young police 
 commissioner made the first speech of the meeting, 
 told them that he meant to enforce the law, good or 
 bad, as long as it remained on the statute book. If 
 it was bad, repeal it ; but as for him he was in office 
 to serve the cause of righteousness. As usual, courage 
 and manhood conquered the beast. There are acute 
 judges who think that speech was the first note in 
 Roosevelt's career which indicated his fitness for the 
 White House. 
 
 I long for a return to this energetic, practical Chris- 
 tianty. It will save us from two perils. One is the 
 
CHRIST'S CHALLENGE TO MANHOOD 121 
 
 peril of a barren dogmatism, and the other from the 
 peril of a one-sided mysticism. For one I am a believer 
 in a sane and Biblical doctrine. Christianity cannot 
 be set forth otherwise. Moreover, I am a mystic. I 
 believe in the direct touch of the human soul with 
 God. But I am also aware that in mere mystic star- 
 gazing a man may trample under foot the rights and 
 claims of brotherhood and justice ; and that by means 
 of barren dogma one may construct a coffin and a 
 winding-sheet for all spiritual life. Unless mysticism 
 is a gale of refreshment blowing from heaven to cool 
 the brow of the worker, and unless dogma be made a 
 ploughshare, cutting the furrow of practical endeavour, 
 then both are vain and empty. 
 
 Of course the plough symbolizes a life task under 
 conditions of resistance. The earth is a sluggish 
 medium in which to labour, and there are rocks and 
 roots and difficulties everywhere. But who except 
 the sluggard would have it otherwise? Work is the 
 law of man's being. Achievement is a condition of 
 human happiness. The man who is mentally or 
 physically or morally lazy cannot triumph in Christ's 
 Kingdom — nor, for that matter, in any other Kingdom, 
 
 Yes, resistance is the unfailing condition of a life 
 task that is worth while. Temptations there are all 
 along the way. The temptation, for example, to for- 
 sake the straight way of gaining the world for the 
 crooked way; the temptation to drop the plough han- 
 dles and spend the time resting in the friendly shade 
 of the trees. There is the peril of inherited wealth, 
 that it may make a man a mere parasite In the body 
 politic. There is the temptation that we be overcome 
 by pain and loss and sorrow, or by lust and selfishness. 
 These are stout foes, this is caked and crusted and 
 
122 THE LIFE IN CHRIST 
 
 stubborn soil; but forget not your plough song, no 
 matter how sore the conflict or loneliness. Nobility 
 of character is seen in nothing better than in the 
 steadfast pursuit of a high purpose in spite of sorrow 
 and pain. We do not always know what is at the 
 end of the furrow. There was One who saw a cross 
 there, and darkness and anguish. Yet the vision of 
 the cross did not hinder one deed of kindness. Its 
 bitter cup did not add one note of bitterness to His 
 words, but rendered them only the kindlier. This is 
 the meaning of Browning's weird poem, "Childe Ro- 
 lande to the Dark Tower Came." Across scenes of 
 desolation and death, into the region where the anathe- 
 mas of Nature seemed to brood and blight, the Knight 
 rode dauntlessly on. At length, into the forbidding 
 tower, amid hopelessness and despair, he plunges while 
 his horn sounds an exultant and triumphant note. 
 Deathless tenacity of purpose, ah, this is almost the 
 supreme trait of manhood. 
 
 Success is not so much an event in a man's life as 
 a trait of character. I heard the other day of a man 
 who almost succeeded in everything; but really failed 
 in everything. He fled from each set of circumstances 
 to another less refractory. He permitted circum- 
 stances to conquer his will until he discovered with 
 dismay that every set of circumstances is about as 
 refractory as every other. Failure thus became a trait 
 of character, not an incident of endeavour. Likewise 
 success may become a trait of character. Indeed, the 
 whole significance of the plough is will against cir- 
 cumstance, manhood against matter, personality 
 against the universe. The world assumes that you are 
 clay and that it is potter until you demonstrate that 
 you are potter and the world is clay. 
 
CHRIST'S CHALLENGE TO MANHOOD 123 
 
 It was always so. He who falters and loses heart 
 under the pressure of the forces of evil lacks imagina- 
 tion. I like the painter who made a picture repre- 
 senting Hope sitting as a harper. The surroundings 
 were a scene of ruin and desolation, all that was fair 
 had passed. The strings of the harp were all broken 
 except one. Yet over this one string Hope sat ab- 
 sorbed in its sweet sound, determined thus to shut 
 out and become dead to the reign of ruin around. 
 
 This, however, is not the situation to-day. The 
 harp of Hope has many strings. One is philosophy. 
 Materialism is dead among speculative thinkers, in 
 very large measure. Haeckel is a voice crying in a 
 wilderness to his idealistic and spiritualistic philosoph- 
 ical contemporaries without a repentant sinner to bap- 
 tize in the name of his Monistic Messiah, Matter. 
 
 Science also adds a string to the harp of Hope. 
 She does not dogmatize as formerly about things be- 
 yond her realm. She has already tunnelled through 
 Nature, up close beneath the gates of the eternal city. 
 The world of science has no meaning without God. 
 The city of Nature coming up from below is now seen 
 to be but a suburb of the city of God coming down 
 from above. 
 
 There are other strings to the harp of Hope in the 
 social and religious forces of the times. A sense of 
 right and justice is once more conquering its way into 
 our thinking. There are still heroes in public and 
 political life who spurn the muck-rake and the pig- 
 sty of greed and graft. The human spirit is still capa- 
 ble of moral indignation against wrong. There yet 
 remain prophets in the land, men of ardent spirits 
 who are stung into action by the touch of evil. 
 
 Now I assert that with these forces at work he 
 
124 THE LIFE IN CHRIST 
 
 that putteth his hand to the plough has much to hearten 
 and encourage him. No land is given over to sordid- 
 ness with these forces actively at work. They pro- 
 claim eloquently that God has put His hand to the 
 plough, and that harnessed to the plough of our human 
 endeavour are the colossal energies of the universe. 
 The tides and the stars are on our side, and the angels 
 of the divine decrees protect the harvest field of our 
 effort from the ravages of man and beast and wind 
 and weather. 
 
 HI. We come to our third topic : The plough is the 
 challenge to manhood's eternal forward look. "He 
 who putteth his hand to the plough and looketh back 
 is not fit." The echo of the eternal is in these words. 
 Christ is here appealing to the love of the eternal in 
 the human spirit. Man never completes his tasks. It 
 is his peculiarity that he is never content. He sees 
 a vision in the marble. He executes it as best he may, 
 and then destroys his work and begins again. 
 
 The power of recovery is a fine test of character. 
 Chicago with its fire ; Charleston with its earthquake ; 
 Galveston with its flood ; Baltimore with its conflagra- 
 tion, and San Francisco with its earthquake and fire — 
 all these calamities looked at on one side seem to 
 demonstrate the futility of all human endeavour. 
 Properly understood they are God's challenge to man. 
 The manhood of tenderness and love that responds 
 to the need and sends swift aid; the manhood and 
 womanhood of endurance that survives with good 
 cheer the awful cataclysm ; the manhood of faith that 
 believes in spite of appearances ; and the manhood of 
 strength that recovers poise and purpose and builds 
 again. 
 
 The eternally forward look. Yes, this is the human 
 
CHRIST'S CHALLENGE TO MANHOOD 125 
 
 look, this is man's destiny. Man's task was never 
 done, and thank God it never will be done. Man 
 despises what he has conquered, and that is why Christ 
 is his eternal goal. He can never be transcended. 
 
 The ploughshare pierces through time into eternity, 
 and the widening horizon of man's destiny will con- 
 front him for ever. Jesus the goal will eternally lead 
 the way to new fields. "I go to prepare a place for 
 you," is eternally true of Him. And this means that 
 heaven will be a place for work as well as earth. 
 Only the earthly loafer desires that heaven shall be a 
 loafing place. 
 
 All this of course implies the greatness of God and 
 His universe and the expansive capacity of man. There 
 has been much speculation as to where heaven is. Is 
 it to be this planet? Or a distant star or constellation? 
 Perhaps both views are correct and the universe will 
 be our sphere. The freedom of the universe will be 
 ours, it may be, and the questions raised by our science 
 and our philosophy in time will find progressive solu- 
 tion in eternity. This little planet is simply God's 
 training ground for us, an eagle's nest on a brow of 
 one of the cliffs of eternity, where we, the young 
 eagles, are for a time secure, and whence we launch 
 and try our wings. Our eagle nature demands to 
 range and soar; our eagle eye makes bold to look 
 away into the sun itself for inspiration, and dares to 
 make the plunge through boundless space. 
 
 This is Christ's challenge to the human spirit. His 
 appeal to manhood. In the light of His challenge to 
 the eternally forward look, the blindness and folly 
 and sin of limiting the vision to time and space, to a 
 mere earthly career become apparent. 
 
XII 
 
 CHARACTER ADORNING CALLING AS SEEN 
 IN THE LIFE OF GEN. R. E. LEE 
 
 Ephesians 4: i — "Walk worthy of your calling." 
 Romans i : 7 — "Called to be saints." 
 
 THIS the birthday of R. E. Lee, one of the 
 greatest, noblest and purest of Americans, I 
 follow Scripture example in using the high 
 character of a saintly man to impress the truths of 
 the Gospel. 
 
 Lee's character appeals to men of the North as 
 well as the South, just as Southerners have come to 
 admire and love the character of Abraham Lincoln. 
 I am sorry for the moral blindness of any Southerner 
 who cannot see virtue or excellence in the great men 
 of the North, and I am equally sorry for the blindness 
 of any Northerner who can see no beauty, no virtue 
 in the heroes of the Confederacy. To ask the question 
 whether Lee's statue is worthy of a place by the side 
 of the great leaders of the North is, to me, like asking 
 whether Arcturus is worthy of a place in the same 
 firmament with Aldebaran, whether Orion brings re- 
 proach to the Pleiades, and whether the North Star is 
 tarnished because in the same heavens glows the South- 
 ern Cross. 
 
 The two texts suggest the relations between char- 
 acter and calling. These should match each other. 
 Character is the voice that sings the song; calling is 
 
 126 
 
CHARACTER ADORNING CALLING 127 
 
 the accompaniment on the instrument. Every man 
 should learn to combine the two in a beautiful har- 
 mony. Christ came to teach men a song, and to set 
 men a task. It is when you learn to sing with your 
 hand and work with your song that you successfully 
 unite the two. 
 
 The following things are necessary in order that 
 calling may match character and character adorn call- 
 ing These things I am about to name were fulfilled 
 in the life of Abraham, and David, of Peter, of John 
 and Paul, of Alfred the Great, George Washington, 
 and R. E. Lee. I state these qualities in the form of 
 practical admonitions for ourselves. 
 
 (i) Fall into God's plan for you. As a picture 
 fits a frame, as a bird fits its nest, as a swan fits the 
 lake on which it swims, or as the lake its bed, or a 
 planet slips along its appointed orbit, so the greatly 
 successful life fits into God's plan for it. It is vain 
 to resist God. Obedience is the first law of our being. 
 Lee was a great example of obedience to God's law for 
 his life. No man obeys perfectly. Lee was not per- 
 fect. But in its great outline and onward sweep his 
 career obeyed a divine impulse. 
 
 (2) Believe with all your heart that you can fulfil 
 your calling and also please God. It is a fatal mistake 
 to imagine that religion and practical life are incom- 
 patible. A young man said to me, "No man can sell 
 dry goods and also be a Christian." He was mis- 
 taken. Every human life can obey two laws, the law 
 of earthly duty and of obedience to God. The mag- 
 netic needle obeys the law of the ship. For when 
 the ship changes its course, the needle turns on its 
 axis. Otherwise it would be useless. But the needle 
 also obeys the law of the electric current. For in 
 
128 THE LIFE IN CHRIST 
 
 all its turning on its pivot, it keeps pointing steadily 
 to the pole. Without this also it would be useless. 
 The earth rotates on its axis. Otherwise one hemis- 
 phere would freeze and the other perish of heat. But 
 the earth also revolves around the sun, else it would 
 soon be dashed to destruction in its wanderings 
 through space. Lee's career rotated and revolved. It 
 swung on its axis and served men. It pointed ever 
 to the pole of duty. Prayer was real to him as bread. 
 Faith was as vital a process as breathing. 
 
 (3) Accept the conditions of your life with cheer- 
 fulness. This is the meaning of the "yoke" of Christ ; 
 "Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me," is His 
 command. It was a master stroke of character for 
 Lee to rise above the wreck of his fortunes into the 
 serenity and triumph of his last days. But his trained 
 and disciplined spirit was equal to the task. 
 
 (4) Do with your might what your hands find to 
 do. This was a conspicuous trait in Lee. "This one 
 thing I do," was the law of his activity, whether as 
 young soldier in Mexico, or as Commander of the 
 Confederate forces, or as president of Washington 
 College. Every ounce of his being went to every great 
 task. He knew no half-hearted service. "A whole 
 man to one thing at a time," was his ideal of service. 
 
 (5) Adorn your calling by Christian character. 
 This is the summary of Lee's life. A man can use call- 
 ing to degrade character, or use character to glorify 
 calling. A man's calling is like a ladder. On it he 
 can climb down or up. By our calling we should get 
 on in the world, but by our character we should get 
 above the world. We should get on, but certainly we 
 should get up. 
 
 Lee's character was not stained by contact with 
 
CHARACTER ADORNING CALLING 129 
 
 corruption. There is a certain white flower which 
 grows in the shaft of the coal mine. It is covered 
 with an enamel which enables it to shed the coal dust 
 which constantly falls upon it, itself remaining white 
 and clean. Lee's character had such an enamel. The 
 inspiration of his life was from above, not below. 
 The impulses to action were from within, not without. 
 The ideal of his life was future, and not past. "He 
 looked up and not down; out and not in; forward 
 and not backward, and it was the law of his life to 
 lend a hand." 
 
 Every man is called to be a saint. A saint is not 
 a glorified being in heaven, nor a bloodless anchorite 
 living on a dry crust in a cavern, nor an official wear- 
 ing ecclesiastical robes, A saint is a man set apart 
 to duty, consecrated to God and right, grappling with 
 his foes, doing his work, enduring hardship, climbing 
 the rugged hill of manhood with the eye fixed on an 
 eternal goal. 
 
 We may now glance at a few traits of Lee's char- 
 acter with which he adorned his calling. I am not 
 dealing with Lee as a soldier, but as a man and a 
 Christian. His courage I need not dwell upon. His 
 magnanimity is beyond all question. His lofty idealism 
 breathes through all his letters, in his hours of sor- 
 row, in his conduct in private life, and in his military 
 papers. A few things I name more in detail. 
 
 The first is his self-restraint. It appears in the quiet 
 poise and balance always manifest in his bearing; 
 in the absence of false pride or the spirit of boasting 
 in the hour of victory; in his special orders to the 
 soldiers on the famous Gettysburg march against law- 
 lessness and destruction of property in the enemy's 
 country, when he might have retaliated on the Penn- 
 
130 THE LIFE IN CHRIST 
 
 S34vanians for ravages committed by some Northern 
 armies in the South. It is seen in the absence of 
 bitterness and the sweetness of his spirit in defeat ; 
 in the counsel which he gave at the surrender, urging 
 all Southerners to accept the tragic issue of the war 
 in the spirit of obedience to the decree of Providence ; 
 and in his counsel against guerrilla warfare, which 
 might have been continued indefinitely by the South- 
 ern soldiers. It is seen in the quiet self-respect and 
 dignity which marked his conduct throughout the 
 period after the war, when, denied the privilege of 
 citizenship, he remained a prisoner of war on parole 
 until his death. This lofty soul seemed to be gazing 
 forever upon some fixed star out of the sight of or- 
 dinary men whose rays were so bright and steadfast 
 and whose position in the sky was so fixed and un- 
 changeable that he was brought under its mystic power 
 and made to share its steadfastness and partake of its 
 beauty. 
 
 I name also his tenderness. When, in the midst 
 of the busy activities of war, surrounded by officers 
 awaiting orders, while the air about them is being 
 punctured with the enemy's bullets, he is seen to leave 
 the place where he was standing and tenderly lift an 
 unfledged sparrow from the ground, back into the 
 nest whence it had fallen, we are made to feel that 
 he had caught the spirit of Him of whom it was said: 
 "Not a sparrow falleth without your father in heaven." 
 
 When again, as president of Washington College, 
 upon a great occasion, he is seated on a platform along 
 with other dignitaries of various kinds, and orators 
 are addressing a great assembly — when, I say, under 
 these circumstances we see a little lad, unconscious of 
 time and place, and bold in the confidence of love. 
 
CHARACTER ADORNING CALLING 131 
 
 go to the platform and climb up into Lee's lap and 
 lay his head on his knee and fall asleep without let 
 or hindrance from the master of ceremonies, and really 
 at the cost of some discomfort on his part, we are 
 convinced that he knows the secret tenderness and 
 love of Him who said, "Suffer the little children to 
 come unto me, and forbid them not, for of such is 
 the kingdom of heaven." 
 
 A student boasted that the president could not make 
 him cry as he did the other fellows who were called 
 in for admonition for neglect of duty. But he soon 
 returned blubbering like a child, saying, "He made 
 me ashamed of myself when he told me of my mother 
 and her love and sacrifice for me, and I could not 
 stand it." 
 
 He had a tender heart. H he ever committed serious 
 errors as a general it is likely that they were due to 
 his tender regard for subordinates in command who 
 were slow to obey orders. 
 
 "When nature was shaping him, clay was not granted 
 For making so full-sized a man as she wanted. 
 So to fill out her model a little she spared 
 From some finer grained stuff for a woman prepared, 
 And she could not have hit a more excellent plan 
 For making him fully and perfectly man." 
 
 The one word writ large in letters of fire all over 
 his life was the great word — duty. The passion to 
 do the right thing and not the wrong thing is what 
 made him great. "In all the universe there is nothing 
 great but man, and in man there is nothing great but 
 mind," is a memorable saying. But the greatest thing 
 in mind is conscience. Lee had an inviolable con- 
 science. The sense of duty swayed his being in sov- 
 
132 THE LIFE IN CHRIST 
 
 ereign power. As a young man in the Mexican war 
 we see him drudging at maps and plans of battle at 
 times when other young officers were enjoying them- 
 selves, and refusing to join them until his task was 
 done — from a sense of duty. He deplored the Civil 
 War and said if he owned all the slaves he would set 
 them free in order to avoid the conflict, and then 
 buckled on the sword and went to war — from a sense 
 of duty. He refused to give countenance to a plan 
 to promote his own son to a post for which he was 
 unfit — from a sense of duty. From a sense of duty 
 he turned a deaf ear to overtures to become governor 
 of Virginia, asserting his lack of confidence in "mili- 
 tary statesmen" as well as "political generals." From 
 a sense of duty, at the end of the war, he bowed to 
 God's will and became a valiant moral hero in pro- 
 moting peace, as he had been a military hero in pro- 
 moting war. From a sense of duty he accepted 
 the presidency of a College on a pitiably small 
 salary when offers of positions paying from ten 
 thousand to fifty thousand dollars per annum were 
 open to him. 
 
 This splendid idealism is none too common in pub- 
 lic life to-day. Of course there are many men who are 
 swayed by great ideals, unpurchasable, uncompromis- 
 ing men. But there are also too many who are quick to 
 seize the main chance, who lean to the side of self 
 when in doubt. Happy is the man who, like Lee, had 
 few moral struggles because his moral ideals were so 
 clean and whose will was so strong. Happy is the 
 man who is quick to see and quick to shun the wrong 
 and equally quick to see and do the right. 
 
 This man's unselfishness reads almost like a ro- 
 mance in an age when greed and grasping are so com- 
 
CHARACTER ADORNING CALLING 133 
 
 mon. Think of it, an English estate was offered him 
 and an income of fifteen thousand dollars per year. 
 Pride would forbid acceptance of this, of course. But 
 ten thousand dollars a year was offered for the use 
 of his name by an Insurance Company. He indig- 
 nantly inquired if they thought his name and influence 
 could be bought at any price. He declined fifty thou- 
 sand dollars per year when offered him to become the 
 head of a business concern. 
 
 Hon. B. H. Hill of Georgia was not wrong when 
 he said in an address: "When the future historian 
 comes to survey the character of Lee, he will find it 
 rising like a huge mountain above the undulating 
 plain of humanity, and he will have to lift his eyes 
 towards heaven to catch its summit. He possessed 
 every virtue of the great commander without treach- 
 ery ; a private citizen without wrong ; a neighbour with- 
 out reproach; a Christian without hypocrisy; a man 
 without guile. He was a Caesar without his ambition ; 
 a Frederick without his tyranny; a Napoleon without 
 his selfishness, and a Washington without his reward. 
 He was obedient to authority as a servant and loyal 
 in authority as a true King. He was gentle as a 
 woman in life ; modest and pure as a virgin in thought ; 
 watchful as a Roman vestal in duty ; submissive to law 
 as Socrates, and grand in battle as Achilles." (Life 
 of Lee by J. W. Jones, p. 396.) 
 
 When we look at the grand old man at the close 
 of the war and in his last years, there is something 
 infinitely pathetic in his figure. It is set against the 
 background of a ruined South which stretches away 
 from the Potomac to the Gulf, blackened by the cin- 
 ders of extinct homes and cities, and presenting every- 
 where a scene of desolation and of death. Yet when 
 
134 THE LIFE IN CHRIST 
 
 we look again there is something unspeakably grand 
 in that figure. His last years are not like those of a 
 defeated man; but like those of a victor. Moral 
 triumph sits upon his brow and moral grandeur shines 
 at every point. He rides in a golden chariot whose 
 name is duty. Its wheels are truth and righteousness. 
 The steeds which draw it are love to God and love 
 to man. The weapons of his warfare are faith and 
 integrity. He is driving, ever driving with his face 
 towards the sunrise. The light of the eternal dawn is 
 upon his brow. When the chariot wheels stopped, and 
 the warrior laid down his lance and folded his hands 
 in death, no doubt angels were waiting and bore him 
 to the presence chamber of the King on high whom 
 he had loved and served so well. 
 
 Trust God and do right is the supreme lesson of 
 Lee's life. The secret of victory in our life as a whole, 
 whatever be the defeats along the way, is to be found 
 in taking God into our lives and making it our supreme 
 calling to serve Him. Thus we shall conquer every 
 foe, including the last enemy, death. 
 
 "Ere we do our heavenly best, a God must mingle in 
 the game, 
 
 There may be those about us whom we neither know 
 nor name, 
 
 Felt within us as ourselves, the powers of good, the 
 powers of ill, 
 
 Strewing balm or shedding poison in the fountains of 
 the will. 
 
 Follow light and do the right, for man can half con- 
 trol his doom. 
 
 Till you see the deathless angel seated in the vacant 
 tomb." 
 
CHARACTER ADORNING CALLING 135 
 
 In Newton Centre, Massachusetts, in the tower of 
 the church of which I was once pastor, is a beautiful 
 chime of bells. The Sabbath mornings are so quiet 
 its sweet notes can be heard everywhere as they ring 
 in the worship with "Nearer my God to thee," or 
 other familiar tune. Often I have caught myself, and 
 others likewise, joining unconsciously and in an under- 
 tone, humming or singing "Nearer my God to thee" 
 with the chime. Lee's life was such a chime, a har- 
 mony, a benediction, drawing men nearer to his God. 
 When he died it was the ceasing of a silver chime, 
 but its echoes will not die until human influence ceases 
 to be a quality upon earth. 
 
XIII 
 
 ALL THINGS WORK TOGETHER 
 
 Romans 8 : 28 — "All things work together for good 
 to them that love God, to them who are called accord- 
 ing to his purpose." 
 
 THIS text is at the same time one of the most 
 difficult to accept, one of the most astonishing, 
 one of the most comforting and glorious in 
 the Bible. It is too great to be unfolded in the time 
 allotted to a sermon. It requires a lifetime to begin 
 to grasp its meaning. We may only touch upon a few 
 of its many phases. The text really analyzes itself, 
 and falls into natural divisions. I, with many others 
 who have employed it as a text, will let it divide itself. 
 
 I. Let us sum up its meaning then in a number of 
 general statements. 
 
 First, the universe is active, "All things work." 
 
 Second, the universe is active with a purpose, "All 
 things work together." They co-operate towards a 
 common end. 
 
 Third, the universe is moral, "All things work 
 together for good." 
 
 Fourth, the universe is religious, a God is behind 
 the movement. "All things work together for good 
 to them that love God." 
 
 Fifth, the effect of the action of the universe upon 
 us is determined by our attitude towards God, whether 
 we love Him or not. 
 
 136 
 
ALL THINGS WORK TOGETHER 137 
 
 Now let us go back over some of these statements 
 and enlarge them a little. 
 
 The universe is active. "All things work." The 
 smallest things work. The atoms work. They join 
 hands with each other to form plants and crystals and 
 rocks and planets. The grain of sand works ; it binds 
 its neighbours to it by the attractive power of gravita- 
 tion. It coheres within by inherent force. Its mass 
 and weight, minute as it is, affects the centre of gravity 
 of the earth on which it rests. The dewdrop works. 
 It condenses out the moisture of the atmosphere and 
 evaporates again; but meantime it has whispered a 
 message of life to the struggling plant and poured 
 resurrection power into dying vegetation. 
 
 All things work. There is no sound of hammer or 
 saw, there is no clatter of machinery anywhere, but 
 in our forests in these spring days millions of tons of 
 matter are being lifted up through the roots into trees 
 and flowers. 
 
 Electricity works in the clouds to produce rain and 
 purify the atmosphere. It works in the magnetic cur- 
 rent around the earth as shown by the magnetic needle. 
 It works in the growth of plants and in human bodies. 
 
 Sunlight works. It comes ninety million miles for 
 the purpose. It imparts its energy to every living 
 thing. It pours like a flood into your gardens and 
 fields. It broods over the planted seed like a mother 
 bird brooding over her nest and warming her eggs 
 into life. It paints your roses and geraniums, and 
 gilds with glory your evening clouds. 
 
 The great things also work, suns and satellites and 
 planets. They slip, they glide along their orbits a 
 million miles a day. They rotate with inconceivable 
 rapidity on their axes and in their wondrous, com- 
 
138 THE LIFE IN CHRIST 
 
 plex, interlaced and intertwined orbits and movements, 
 they are spread through the universe everywhere. 
 
 No doubt it was because Jesus saw this marvellous 
 vision of energy and power that He so fully appreci- 
 ated the activity of His Father when He said, "My 
 father worketh hitherto, and I work." No wonder some 
 observers of nature incline to the view that all things 
 are just concentrated forms of energy. No wonder 
 Jesus said, regarding His earthly life, "We must work 
 the works of him that sent me, while it is day. The 
 night Cometh when no man can work." Each of us 
 may well say the day of life is short. We must do 
 our work faithfully and well. 
 
 "Time worketh, let me work too, 
 Time undoeth, O let me do. 
 As busy as Time, my task I'd ply 
 Till I rest the rest of eternity." 
 
 Now the difficulty which confronts us is not so 
 much to believe that all things work. This is evident 
 in large measure to our senses. It is difficult for us 
 to understand how all things work together, when 
 we see the clash and conflict of life, and the power 
 of sin in the world. It is hard for us to see how all 
 things work together for good, and when we think 
 of our own pain and sorrow and struggle and disap- 
 pointment, our temptations and our losses and our 
 sins, it is not easy for us to accept the view that all 
 things work together for our good. 
 
 II. The source of our confusion. Our confusion 
 arises chiefly from false assumptions regarding life. 
 Our difficulties nearly all grow out of fallacies re- 
 garding ourselves or God. Let us observe a few of 
 those fallacies. 
 
ALL THINGS WORK TOGETHER 139 
 
 First, we may assume falsely that things are work- 
 ing for good only when they are working for our 
 comfort and earthly happiness. This is the chief fal- 
 lacy in most lives that are perplexed and baffled by 
 their earthly circumstances. 
 
 A mediaeval legend tells of a hermit and angel in 
 human form travelling together. The angel had told 
 the hermit the secret of his exalted rank and nature. 
 Having been hospitably entertained in a humble home, 
 the angel arose and strangled the infant son of the 
 parents in the home. The hermit thought this must 
 be a devil and not an angel. Entertained the next 
 night, the angel stole a superb golden cup from which 
 the host drank wine. Crossing a bridge, the angel 
 asked a pilgrim the way to the next town, and pushed 
 him into the river to drown. The next night the angel 
 was sent to the pig-sty to sleep and gave the golden 
 goblet the next morning to the rude host. 
 
 "Get thee gone," said the hermit, "thou art no angel. 
 Thou requitest good with evil, and evil with good." 
 
 "Listen, short-sighted mortal," said the angel. 
 "The infant had made the father covetous, and would 
 have resulted in the loss of his soul. The owner of 
 the goblet was fast becoming debauched by excesses 
 and he will mend his ways. The pilgrim was about 
 to commit mortal sin. As for the wretch who drove 
 God's children from his door, the bauble will please 
 him for a time, but he will burn in hell." 
 
 This, of course, is a mere legend, but in it is em- 
 bedded a great truth. Many of the mysteries of life 
 would be solved, if we could catch the ear of the 
 angel, or rather, leaving the figure of speech, if we 
 could know the end which God is bringing to pass 
 for us. 
 
140 THE LIFE IN CHRIST 
 
 We may falsely assume that trouble is merely a con- 
 sumer and destroyer in our lives. But this is not the 
 true view. Sorrow and trouble may be a reaping of 
 what we have sown, but it may be a sowing of what 
 we shall reap. Tribulation is a producer, not a con- 
 sumer in our spiritual lives, if we have faith, if we 
 love God. "Tribulation worketh patience; and pa- 
 tience experience; and experience, hope: And hope 
 maketh not ashamed ; because the love of God is shed 
 abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given 
 unto us." 
 
 "He that goeth forth with weeping, 
 Bearing precious seed in love, 
 Never tiring, never sleeping, 
 Findeth mercy from above. 
 
 "Sow thy seed, be never weary. 
 Let no fears thy soul annoy; 
 Be the prospect ne'er so dreary. 
 Thou shalt reap the fruits of joy." 
 
 We may falsely assume that God cannot over-rule 
 sin and Satan and make them execute His purposes. 
 In the old cotton gin of the South a horse was hitched 
 to a long pole which was fixed at the other end in 
 a heavy upright revolving beam, and by walking round 
 and round in a circle the horse was made to turn 
 the gin overhead and separate the lint from the seed 
 of the cotton. The horse was all unconscious of what 
 he did. Even so sin and Satan may work for the 
 saints of God. Their efforts through God's over- 
 ruling providence may become means for advancing 
 our welfare. 
 
 We may falsely assume that pain and death are only 
 
ALL THINGS WORK TOGETHER 141 
 
 evils. Here again we need to remember how God 
 converts these into purifying agencies if they are 
 received in faith. 
 
 We may assume that our Hves are isolated from 
 others whereas they are interlaced at every point with 
 the human lives about us. Much of our pain and sor- 
 row are vicarious. We suffer because of others and 
 with others. We cannot shut our eyes to human suf- 
 fering so long as we live in this world. We cannot 
 close our ears to the cry of distress. Great chivalrous 
 movements are in progress in which we must take 
 part, or else the universe is against us and not for us. 
 I do not refer to money-making enterprises, but to 
 great movements to enlighten and make better, move- 
 ments to regenerate and redeem. These represent the 
 Key to history. These indicate the direction of God's 
 march. The man and woman who reads these signs 
 of the times, and who join in this new chivalry, are 
 the ones for whom "All things work together for 
 good." We cannot, except at our peril, lead a selfish, 
 isolated life. 
 
 Again, we may falsely assume a limited time plat- 
 form for the development of our characters, while 
 God is working on an eternal platform. God has 
 planned our destinies on a scale which will admit of the 
 play of eternal forces and eternal opportunity for it. 
 
 The thought of mankind is slowly coming to this 
 Bible view of the world. History, and political science, 
 and physical science, and all the other phases of human 
 thought converge upon this great clue to the world's 
 meaning. Consider for a moment how this great 
 truth of a divine purpose of good towards men has 
 made progress in human thought. 
 
 In politics men have passed from the idea of gov- 
 
142 THE LIFE IN CHRIST 
 
 ernment for the sole benefit of the governor, to the 
 higher idea of government for the benefit of the 
 governed. 
 
 We have passed from the idea of the world as the 
 centre around v^hich the universe revolves, to the 
 grander idea of the earth as a tiny mite in space, re- 
 volving around the sun, and the sun revolving around 
 some other centre, and so on out into magnitudes 
 beyond the power of human imagination to grasp or 
 conceive. 
 
 We have passed from the idea of man as the play- 
 thing of kings and commanders, to be slaughtered or 
 enslaved according to his whim; to the sublime con- 
 ception of man as infinitely precious in God's sight; 
 and from the idea of one nation as the chosen people 
 and special favourites of heaven, to the glorious truth 
 that all men are dear to His heart. 
 
 We have passed from the idea of the world of 
 nature as a place where the pitiless and ruthless power 
 of law and force and energy sweeps human beings 
 to destruction, where there is no eye to pity and no 
 arm to save; to the grander conception of the world 
 as our Father's house in which love presides and "not 
 a sparrow falleth without Him." 
 
 We are passing from the idea that this life is merely 
 a place for acquiring food and clothing and houses 
 and lands and the enjoyment of a few brief years on 
 earth, up to the nobler view that this world is but a 
 vestibule to an endless life. 
 
 We are passing from the false view that life here 
 Is just an opportunity to acquire fame or honour or 
 wealth, to the grander view that life with all it yields 
 of joy, or woe, Is just our chance of learning love, 
 that love hath been, and Is, and shall be. 
 
ALL THINGS WORK TOGETHER 143 
 
 We are passing upward from the view that the 
 survival of the fittest is the meaning of the world, to 
 the conception that that meaning is the redemption of 
 the unfit; that true greatness is in serving, not in 
 being served; that the true aristocracy is not that of 
 title, or learning, or official position, or wealth, but of 
 character. 
 
 We are passing from the idea that the poor and the 
 wretched and the destitute and suffering are just a 
 hindrance and stumbling block to our ease and com- 
 fort, up to the nobler, grander idea that they furnish 
 us our best opportunity of learning love and of achiev- 
 ing character. 
 
 Thus we are learning through the revelations of 
 science and philosophy and sociology, and through all 
 human experience, that the inspired words of Paul 
 are true. We are seeing that all nature and all history 
 and all grace, as well, are against the unloving and 
 selfish, against those who seek their own, against the 
 sinful. All things work together to crush and destroy 
 the man whose attitude is against the benevolent pur- 
 pose of the great onward movement of God. But all 
 voices join in a chorus of confirmation to the other 
 truth that the universe is for us if we love, nature is 
 for us, grace is for us, history is for us, that "All 
 things work together for good to them that love God." 
 
XIV 
 
 THE REVIVAL OF MORALITY IN OUR 
 PUBLIC LIFE, AND ITS MEANING 
 
 Deut. i6: 18-19 — "Judges and officers shalt thou 
 make thee in all thy gates . . . and they shall judge 
 the people with just judgment." 
 
 THE text supplies the basic principle of Jewish 
 civilization. It supplies the corner stone of 
 true American civilization, viz., civic and 
 economic justice. 
 
 Two facts of far-reaching significance are manifest 
 to any one who has carefully observed American pub- 
 lic life during the last few years. One fact is the 
 reassertion of great moral principles in the conduct 
 of public affairs and the new momentum acquired by 
 moral movements. 
 
 It is nothing less than a moral revival on a broad 
 scale, which is full of deep meaning. The other fact 
 referred to is the rise, along with the revival of right- 
 eousness, of a new type of leader. Once more men 
 in public life are appealing to the higher things in 
 their constituencies. The new leader is not less am- 
 bitious than the old, but more scrupulous. He is not 
 less skilful and adroit, but more select in the choice 
 of means. 
 
 144 
 
THE REVIVAL OF MORALITY 145 
 
 Now, these men and these movements are symptoms 
 of underlying causes. Behind them are a great set 
 of ideals, moral principles which are coming into play. 
 These I will next indicate. 
 
 First, then, this moral movement means a revival 
 from the morality of private to the morality of public 
 life. One distinction is passing out of human thought, 
 I hope, forever, and that is that a man can claim to 
 be moral because in his private life he is a good man, 
 while in public life he is an unscrupulous villain. 
 Another distinction is passing away forever, and that 
 is that a leader in public opinion or teacher of morals 
 can confine his deliverances to private conduct while 
 winking at unrighteousness in public life. A great 
 preacher of the gospel who was faithful to his duty 
 in instructing his congregation in the moral principles 
 of political action received a good little book from a 
 very simple-minded devout person. On the book were 
 written these curious words: "There are no politics 
 in heaven; there is where your life should be; sad, 
 sad, that it is otherwise." 
 
 "Now," said the preacher, "that was very kindly 
 meant, but can you imagine anything more absurd? 
 You might as well write to the chief physician in one 
 of our hospitals and say to him, 'There are no hos- 
 pitals in heaven ; there is where your heart should be ; 
 sad, sad, that it is otherwise.' Or to the president of 
 a great railroad, 'There are no railways in heaven; 
 there is where your heart should be; sad, sad, that 
 it is otherwise.' I should not wonder if the good 
 Christian person who sent me this admonition some- 
 times gathers poor people together and gives them 
 tea and good little books; and I might write to her 
 and say, 'There are no tea meetings and good little 
 
146 THE LIFE IN CHRIST 
 
 books in heaven ; there is where your heart should be ; 
 sad, sad, that it should be otherwise.' " 
 
 The good lady was right in her assertions about 
 heaven. There are no politics in heaven, it is true. 
 There are also no crap games in heaven, and no graft- 
 ers in heaven, and no saloons in heaven. There is no 
 evil in heaven. The reason is that somebody did some 
 hard work to suppress evil on earth. 
 
 It is, in the second place, a revival from the morality 
 of expediency to the morality of principle. The man 
 of expedients without moral principle asks but one 
 question: How can I gain my object? Success at any 
 cost is the law of his being. Success is the only God 
 he worships. The man of moral principle asks : How 
 can I gain my object and retain my character? One 
 conceives of life as a shipwreck and every man grasp- 
 ing for what is in reach, a plank, a spar, or oar float- 
 ing past. The other conceives life as a voyage in a 
 sound ship guided by compass and stars. One floats 
 on the eddies and currents; the other steers a pre- 
 arranged course. One is impelled by a sense of danger^ 
 or greed for gain, the other by the law of right. One 
 lands wherever the tides cast him ; the other keeps the 
 prow pointing to the haven of the eternal city of God. 
 
 American life has been too much a scramble for 
 the prizes of our physical wealth. We have gold inines 
 and copper mines and oil fields and cane fields and 
 timber lands and fisheries and many other forms of 
 national wealth. Our national tree has been laden 
 with these rich prizes, and we have been like boys 
 devising all sorts of means to bring them down — clubs 
 and long poles and climbing irons — anything to get 
 the fruit down regardless of the injury to the tree, 
 and to other people in many cases. 
 
THE REVIVAL OF MORALITY 147 
 
 It is a revival from the morality of rights to 
 the morality of duties. This is a vital distinction 
 often ignored in our modern life. We are coming to 
 recognize it and apply it. It is the Christian law of 
 conduct. I recognize the morality of rights. We 
 must often contend for rights. But there is a higher 
 level of morals. The morality of rights is a v^restling 
 match. The morality of duties is a friendly confer- 
 ence. The morality of rights develops cunning and a 
 certain kind of endurance. The morality of duties 
 develops generosity, nobility, manhood. The morality 
 of duties would put an end to strikes and boycotts. 
 
 It is a revival from the morality of property to the 
 morality of persons. Property is sacred and should be 
 protected. Civilization aims to safeguard property. 
 But our civilization is slowly learning that a man is 
 more than a sheep, that human life is above material 
 things in value. Our legislation has too long neglected 
 the interest of persons in its overweening regard for 
 property, with the result that human rights are often 
 ruthlessly sacrificed. This principle now coming to the 
 front in our civilization means that the safety of the 
 railway employe and passengers is of greater moment 
 than dividends for stockholders in railroads secured 
 through neglect of that safety. It means that the 
 physical well-being of people who drink milk is to be 
 considered above the profits of the dairyman who 
 insists on keeping tubercular cows or the butcher who 
 sells diseased meat. It means that the welfare of 
 little children whose lives are being crushed by con- 
 finement and hard work in great factories is to be 
 considered before the gains of those who employ them. 
 
 This principle means that the welfare of our boys 
 and the peace of our homes and our city are of far 
 
148 THE LIFE IN CHRIST 
 
 greater importance than the profits of saloon keepers 
 who violate the law by keeping open on Sundays. 
 
 In the next place, it is a revival from the morality 
 of brute survival to the morality of brotherhood. A 
 few years ago the survival of the fittest was proclaimed 
 as the one law of human progress in the evolutionary 
 sense. Some English writers opposed public educa- 
 tion because thus the state pampered and coddled 
 the weak who should be made to struggle and per- 
 mitted to die and get out of the way. A brilliant 
 German writer named Nietzsche has put this into a 
 philosophy. His hero is the Overman. He is the 
 survival of the survival of the fittest. Fitness means 
 power. Fitness means cruelty. The Overman is simply a 
 giant. He knows no pity. Modesty, gentleness, pa- 
 tience, forbearance, love — these are the weak and ef- 
 feminate virtues which Christianity has taught the 
 world. 
 
 Christianity comes to the follower of Nietzsche and 
 speaks another word — a word at once as soft as the 
 dew and as radiant as the glory of the stars ; a word 
 which has magic power to sheathe the sword of 
 slaughter and hush the guns of war ; a word capable 
 of unfurling the white banner of peace to the ends 
 of the earth ; a word as yet but slowly adopted in the 
 world's vocabulary, but sure to conquer its place and 
 give its rich and beautiful hues to all human lan- 
 guage and to irradiate all human experience. It is 
 the magic word, brotherhood. 
 
 Now, beyond a question our modern life has de- 
 veloped a type of Overman who has won enormous 
 power over his fellows. It is a menace to all that 
 is best in our civilization, except when as power it 
 feels its responsibility. We need not be surprised 
 
THE REVIVAL OF MORALITY 149 
 
 that men fear the result. We are reminded of the 
 story of Sindbad the Sailor. In one of his marvellous 
 voyages Sindbad came to an island where there was 
 a giant tall as a palm tree, who had only one eye in 
 the centre of his forehead, whose ears were like the 
 ears of an elephant, and whose mouth was as deep 
 as that of a horse. This giant took up the sailors 
 from the shipwrecked vessel one by one and inspected 
 them as you might inspect so many partridges. He 
 selected the fattest one for supper. When he became 
 hungry again he ate another sailor. Sindbad himself 
 escaped, because he was so lean. "Now," says the 
 evolutionist of Nietzsche's school, "Look upon this 
 giant and admire !" But the socialist exclaims : "Look 
 upon this giant and beware 1" 
 
 Here, then, we have the fundamental issue in mod- 
 ern civilization. How can we convert the sinister 
 forces into benevolent forces? How can we instil 
 the ideals of stewardship into men who grasp the high 
 places of earth, in business and in politics? How 
 can we convert the giant into the big brother ? 
 
 The programme of Christianity is both religious and 
 moral. It puts man right with God, and then it aims 
 to put man right with his fellowmen. It seeks to 
 impart the new heart first. Then it seeks to make 
 the new heart a social force. Men have waited too 
 long to recognize the tremendous ethical demands of 
 Christianity. It is a religion of moral strenuosity of 
 the highest type. The moral foundations of Christ's 
 Kingdom are clearly seen in the Mosaic and in other 
 Old Testament teachings. 
 
 Modern Christians need to catch the ancient vision 
 once again, that grand ideal which has burned in 
 prophet hearts through the ages. It was the entranc- 
 
150 THE LIFE IN CHRIST 
 
 ing vision proclaimed by Jesus Himself and which 
 absorbed His thought and energy. That kingdom was 
 the inspiration of the Apostle to the Gentiles who lived 
 with the vision ever in his thoughts and who died with 
 the prophecy on his lips that it was coming, surely 
 coming. In his rocky prison John on Patmos looked 
 across the stormy sea around him and beheld in beau- 
 tiful symbol this Kingdom coming down from heaven 
 to earth. To his imagination and faith it took a most 
 beautiful form: a city whose builder and maker was 
 God. A strange city it was, not rising from deep 
 foundations on earth upwards towards the sky, but 
 a city descending from the sky to earth. It was a city 
 so fair and beautiful that it took all the costly things 
 of earth to symbolize it. 
 
 This vision of the heavenly city seems a remote 
 thing to modern Christians. Sometimes we fail to 
 read the intensely practical message it conveys. It is 
 the great closing exhortation and command of Scrip- 
 ture to strenuous moral endeavour. It is as a trumpet 
 call to every man in the great battle for righteousness. 
 
 The practical question for each of us is how we 
 shall perform our part in the great battle. Each indi- 
 vidual and each generation must answer that question. 
 Human history is like a brilliant game of chess played 
 by successive players. Each generation takes up the 
 game where its predecessor left it off. The game be- 
 comes more complex and interesting at each stage. 
 Thus the purpose of God who presides over the game 
 in all its stages is wrought out. Our generation has 
 had to confront the complex and difficult problems of 
 readjustment of human relations in a thousand ways. 
 Literally It is true that old things have passed away, 
 all things have become new In our Industrial life! 
 
THE REVIVAL OF MORALITY 151 
 
 The principles of the Gospel are unchanging. The 
 moral universals remain the same through the ages. 
 But if they are to win acceptance among men it is 
 necessary that Christians live for them and if need be 
 die for them. 
 
XV 
 
 MOB VIOLENCE AS A SYMPTOM* 
 
 Acts 19 : 40 — "For we are in danger to be called 
 in question for this day's uproar, there being no cause 
 whereby we may give account of this concourse." 
 
 THE love of one's city, state or country implies 
 hatred of the evils which do them harm. 
 Indignation against the evil corresponds 
 exactly with the intensity of the love. As you cannot 
 have an "up" without implying a "down," a yes with- 
 out a no, so you cannot have love without hate of 
 the opposite of the object loved. True patriotism de- 
 mands condemnation of that which injures Kentucky. 
 Christian duty compels outspokenness in pulpit, press, 
 and by the individual. 
 
 I wish to consider the recent mob merely as an 
 incident in connection with the general prevalence of 
 mob rule all over the country. In Nevada there has 
 been almost a state of civil war ; in Atlanta a year ago 
 a terrible uprising occurred and the negro suffered; 
 in Indiana the same thing has taken place in one 
 form or another repeatedly. The mob is becoming 
 chronic in American life. 
 
 What is a mob? It is a headless human milliped. 
 It is a beast with a thousand legs, having the ferocity 
 and blindness and cruelty and greed and passion of 
 
 * Preached after an outbreak of mob violence in Kentucky. 
 
 152 
 
MOB VIOLENCE AS A SYMPTOM 153 
 
 the beast without the conscience and the reason of the 
 man. There are several kinds of mobs. There is the 
 hoodlum mob, where the lawless element simply assert 
 their lawlessness, and there is the vindictive striker 
 mob, where labour struggling for its rights forgets 
 itself and destroys life or property, and there is the 
 respectable citizen mob, where the so-called best ele- 
 ments of the community take the law in their own 
 hands and set aside courts and juries. The last named 
 is the worst of all forms of the mob. It marks a 
 new stage in the development of the mob, and this 
 is the kind of mob Kentucky has recently witnessed. 
 Let us consider the mob violence as a symptom : 
 I. Of both a lack of confidence and of over-con- 
 fidence in American institutions. From lack of con- 
 fidence, men say, "we have been wronged, the courts 
 cannot be trusted to right our wrong," or "a crime 
 has been committed, courts cannot be trusted ; we will 
 right our own wrong." It is a lack of confidence thus. 
 But the members of these mobs would deny probably 
 that they were lacking in confidence in American in- 
 stitutions. Really they have an overweening confi- 
 dence in those institutions. They think that our po- 
 litical fabric can endure any kind of a strain, and 
 become reckless in their violence. This is the peculiar 
 temptation of Americans — over-confidence in their 
 institutions. The American temptation is not the 
 temptation of Christ in the wilderness, when Satan 
 wanted Him to turn the stones into bread, for we 
 have bread and to spare, whereas Christ was hungry. 
 Nor is it the temptation of the mountain top, when 
 Satan oflFered Him the kingdoms of the world, for 
 we are filled with glory and power. Our temptation 
 is rather that of the pinnacle of the temple, when 
 
154 THE LIFE IN CHRIST 
 
 Satan urged Christ to cast Himself down, trusting 
 the promise that God would give His angels charge 
 and bear Him up in their hands, lest He dash His foot 
 against a stone. 
 
 But we have no mortgage on Providence. The 
 biblical promise is to those who do justly and love 
 mercy and walk humbly before their God, not to 
 those who love injustice and do violence and forget 
 God. The Biblical teaching is that degenerate govern- 
 ment is doomed. When we fall from our high estate, 
 God's Providence smites. In the dream of the king, 
 the image had a head of gold, a breast of silver, 
 thighs of brass, legs of iron, and feet of mingled 
 iron and clay, and a stone came out of the mountains, 
 fell on the image, and ground it to pieces. The iron 
 and clay of the feet stood for the degenerate national 
 life. The mob spirit is the clay in our American life 
 and is our chief peril to-day. 
 
 2. In the second place, the mob is a symptom of the 
 collapse of the moral and civic ideal in the interest 
 of the commercial. I refer now especially to our 
 recent Kentucky mob. Here it was not indignation 
 against a negro who had committed an unnameable 
 crime ; it was a mob destroying property because their 
 profits were threatened. It was an attempt to adjust 
 commercial relations through violence. Essentially, 
 this mob spirit means money profits against law and 
 order; it means the tobacco business against consti- 
 tutional liberty. It means an attempt to take the silver 
 lining from the cloud of our destiny in order to put 
 a silver lining in our pockets. It means the golden 
 dollar against the golden rule. I do not sit in judg- 
 ment on the merits of the controversy between the 
 trust and the tobacco raisers, or on the merits of the 
 
MOB VIOLENCE AS A SYMPTOM 155 
 
 case in any uprising of the mob. I point out merely 
 the significance of the mob. If we are so money mad 
 that our civic fabric is to be sacrificed to the passion 
 for gain, then it is the beginning of the end with us, 
 unless restraints can be imposed and our people 
 brought back to their senses. 
 
 3. The mob is a symptom of a reversion to an earlier 
 stage of human society. Man has passed from bar- 
 barism, through the military period, to the pastoral 
 when he kept his flocks, and then to the agricultural 
 when he tilled the soil as his chief occupation, and 
 then he passed into the industrial and democratic era. 
 The mob is a lapse to the military basis of society. 
 The mob is a declaration of war. It is a return to the 
 beast kingdoms, symbolized by the leopard and the 
 bear and the lion and the goat in the vision of the 
 prophet Daniel, the kingdom which was to give place 
 to the human kingdom, where the Son of Man "held 
 a fretful world in awe" and universal law prevailed. 
 
 Are we ready to repudiate the Anglo-Saxon ideals? 
 The glory of the Anglo-Saxon race has been first its 
 love of liberty, second its respect for the rights of 
 others, third its respect for the dignity of courts and 
 legislatures and its belief in the competency of man 
 in all the spheres of human activity. De Tocqueville 
 says this principle of the competency of man in all 
 spheres is the fundamental American principle. 
 Americans believe in the competency of the individual 
 in the home, in the church, in the state, and every- 
 where to regulate his own affairs. The citizen mob 
 is the proclamation to the world of the loss of faith 
 in this doctrine of the competency of man to regulate 
 his own affairs. 
 
 The citizen mob is a tremendous plea for socialism. 
 
156 THE LIFE IN CHRIST 
 
 The socialist who wishes to confiscate all the Instru- 
 ments of production to the public use will clap his 
 hands with delight. The recent mob has preached a 
 tremendous socialistic sermon. It has proclaimed that 
 the competitive system is a failure, that there is no 
 way to regulate the tobacco trust by the instruments 
 of government, that peaceful adjustment of differences 
 is no longer possible. Of course, the members of the 
 recent citizen mob would not admit all this, but it is 
 implicit in all they did. They are proclaiming by their 
 conduct the exact doctrine which the socialist is 
 preaching from the housetops. 
 
 In conclusion, a few words as to our duty. I sin- 
 cerely trust that the government at Frankfort will 
 take vigorous hold of the situation, and we believe 
 it will do so, whatever may be the steps necessary. 
 There are several duties, however, which are incum- 
 bent upon every citizen. One of them is outspoken- 
 ness against mob violence. The tendency is too marked 
 to condone and excuse such violence on the plea that 
 the grievance is great. No grievance is ever great 
 enough to justify the overthrow of law and order, 
 for law and order is the most precious jewel in our 
 civilization. It is our civilization. And another duty 
 is courage ; courage in the courts, courage on the part 
 of witnesses, courage on the part of juries, and es- 
 pecially courage In the citizenship at large to support 
 the administrators of the law. Bad courts, bad juries, 
 bad officers, and bad politics, after all, are just 
 thermometers which tell the state of things among the 
 people. They are effects, the causes He back of them. 
 A third remark that needs to be made as to our duty 
 is that we are called upon to apply our Christianity. 
 Theories of righteousness are good. Theories of sal- 
 
MOB VIOLENCE AS A SYMPTOM 157 
 
 vation are good. Doctrines are necessary. The teach- 
 ings of the Bible are absolutely indispensable. But 
 so long as they remain theories, so long as they remain 
 mere doctrines, they amount to little. There is a 
 tremendous call to the pulpit and to the press, to the 
 teacher and the parent, and to every man and woman 
 who is in a position to shape and mould public sen- 
 timent, to engage in a campaign of practical effort 
 to apply the principles of righteousness to civic life. 
 The real cure for mob violence is the slow but sure 
 method of leavening the minds of the people with 
 higher ideals of life and duty. Meantime, the direct 
 and correct method is the enforcement of the law at 
 every point. To this inflence every citizen should lend 
 his aid and his support. 
 
XVI 
 
 CHRISTIANITY AS POWER 
 
 Acts 1 : 8 — "Ye shall receive power." 
 Phil. 4: 13 — "I can do all things." 
 
 THERE is a vital distinction between men which 
 may be described thus: One man is a voice, 
 another man an echo. John the Baptist said 
 of himself, I am a voice. He meant by that that 
 God spoke directly through him; that he was not a 
 mere echo of what others had said. This is also 
 true of Christianity. It may be a voice or it may be 
 an echo. Much of the current Christianity is an echo, 
 and sometimes an echo of an echo. What we need 
 and what we wish is the original Christianity of power. 
 And that is the subject of my sermon — Christianity 
 as power. I invite attention to three aspects of Chris- 
 tianity as power. 
 
 I. I call attention, first, to the perversions of Chris- 
 tianity as power. And under this head I wish to 
 call attention: 
 
 I. To the sacramental perversion. Early Chris- 
 tianity was soon corrupted from the original by 
 priestly and sacramental elements that entered into It. 
 There was the old human longing for a human priest 
 to come between the soul and God, and there was a 
 longing for the magical efficacy of sacraments, and 
 early Christianity yielded to this temptation, and the 
 real presence of Christ ceased to be a fact In the 
 realm of spirit, and was thought to be a fact in the 
 
 158 
 
CHRISTIANITY AS POWER 159 
 
 realm of matter — Christ in the bread and wine. Now, 
 this sacramental Christianity has a certain kind of 
 power — ^power to control the superstitious, power to 
 restrain, perhaps, the lawless, the power to quench 
 individuality ; but it has not the power to free the soul 
 and send it along its spiritual career. 
 
 2. Secondly, notice the sesthetical perversion of 
 Christianity. This is the perversion through liturgy, 
 ritual, and beauty of form and ceremony in worship. 
 I do not mean that beautiful forms and ceremonies 
 are necessarily hurtful or un-Christian. What I mean 
 to say is that Christianity has often lost its power in 
 the beautiful form. The ideal of Christianity is not 
 primarily beauty, but righteousness; not sesthetics, 
 but power. The question of ritual, then, is not fun- 
 damental in Christianity. But it is of vital impor- 
 tance whether you conceive your Christianity as 
 aesthetic culture or moral energy. Ritual cannot cure 
 sin. It is beautiful, like the Venus de Milo in the 
 Louvre in Paris, but it is handless and armless, and 
 as a spiritual force by itself it is as helpless as was 
 this same Venus when Heine, the German poet, tem- 
 pest-tossed and distressed in spirit, stood before it 
 and held out his hands in entreaty and begged the 
 Venus to help him. 
 
 3. In the third place, notice the intellectual per- 
 version of Christianity. Jesus said in His word in the 
 first chapter of Acts: *Tt is not for you to know, 
 but ye shall receive power." The attempt to make 
 Christianity an intellectual culture has often perverted 
 it. This perversion is an attempt to reconcile Chris- 
 tianity with every new form of intellectual culture 
 carried to the point of emptying Christianity of its 
 distinguishing elements. Many human thinkers have 
 
160 THE LIFE IN CHRIST 
 
 been kings in Zion — men like Plato, Aristotle, Darwin, 
 Hegel, Ritschl — dominating the thoughts of men, and 
 leading them captive to a humanly devised system of 
 culture or thought. But this is a perversion of Chris- 
 tianity. While Christianity harmonizes with every ele- 
 ment of truth in all systems, and while it is proper to 
 seek these harmonies, it is always fatal to economize 
 Christianity and trim it to make it fit these human 
 systems. 
 
 II. I ask attention, in the second place, to the ad- 
 justments of Christianity as power. We have noted 
 some of the perversions. I now wish to remark that 
 no Christianity can have power which does not main- 
 tain the Biblical adjustments which are the conditions 
 of its power. 
 
 I, The first adjustment is to its source, the Spirit 
 of God. Christianity is a spiritual religion. It means 
 power from without, but it means power within man's 
 spirit through God's Spirit. Christianity means en- 
 listed power ; not a power evolved from human nature, 
 but power given from above. Indeed, in this respect 
 it is like all the forms of power. When a man eats 
 bread, or drinks water, or inhales the atmosphere, he is 
 simply forming an alliance with the physical universe, 
 with the cosmos, and drawing its power into his life. 
 Likewise, when he obtains spiritual power, it is from 
 the spiritual cosmos. The divine order is laid hold of. 
 
 As a power thus coming from without, there are 
 several important truths connected with it. It comes 
 to us. As a person it speaks to us, communicates ideas, 
 energy. We can grasp it. Past failures and discour- 
 agements do not count, for they only mean that we 
 have been matching our own power against obstacles. 
 Our own weaknesses and infirmities do not count, 
 
CHRISTIANITY AS POWER 161 
 
 because the power which we have is from without, 
 is independent of us, and can use us for its ends. 
 Hence, we should cultivate this power assiduously, 
 patiently, continuously. 
 
 2. A second adjustment of Christianity as power is 
 to its instrument, truth. Christianity owes much of 
 its power to the fact that it employs truth to accomplish 
 its results. The fulness of power came in early 
 Christianity when the fulness of truth came. Pente- 
 cost followed closely upon the ascension of Christ. 
 When the facts of redemption were completed, the 
 interpreter of the facts came. Jesus Christ is like 
 the sun. The Holy Spirit is like the sun-glass which 
 concentrates and intensifies the rays which fall from 
 Him upon the human heart. The danger of mysti- 
 cism is that it will break away from truth, and the dan- 
 ger of intellectual study of Christianity is that it will 
 lack in the mystic element. It is the union of spiritual 
 power with truth which gives the largest results. 
 
 3. In the third place, note the adjustment of Chris- 
 tianity to its agent, personality. The power of the 
 Gospel is a personal power. When Jean Val Jean 
 was arrested for stealing the candlesticks from the 
 Bishop and carried back to the home of the Bishop, 
 in the great novel of Hugo, you will recall that the 
 Bishop told the officers that he had given the candle- 
 sticks to the man; whereupon Jean Val Jean went 
 out, having been released by the officers, into a great 
 struggle with God, the result of which was his con- 
 version. In thinking over his struggle, he recalled 
 that it was not, after all, a struggle with God so much 
 directly, as a struggle with God through the Bishop. 
 The face of the Bishop haunted him in all his inner 
 struggle. It was God in the kindness of the Bishop 
 
162 THE LIFE IN CHRIST 
 
 that won him. So God reaches men through other 
 men. The meaning of grace is that it takes the form 
 of personal Hfe, personal character, personal consecra- 
 tion. All the great descriptions of grace in the New 
 Testament find their expression thus in personal 
 action. Our personalities are the dynamos of divine 
 power in the world. 
 
 4. The fourth adjustment of Christianity as power 
 is to its end, world conquest. Christianity is by its 
 nature expansive. Any force or principle which is 
 inherently expansive in its nature must have play and 
 freedom, or else it fails of its end and loses power. 
 Christianity is such a principle. It cannot be con- 
 fined without injury to itself. It demands growth, 
 progress, expansion; and any form of Christianity 
 which does not contemplate such growth is destined 
 to wane in power. New Testament teaching on this 
 subject exhibits clearly its nature in this regard. The 
 promise of power in the New Testament is coupled 
 with world conquest. "All power it given unto me," 
 said Jesus, and then commanded, "Go ye into all the 
 world." Witnessing in power is coupled with a world 
 field — Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the uttermost 
 parts of the earth. The peril of the power of Chris- 
 tianity was that it might be contracted into a Jewish 
 sect. A house-top vision was needed to illuminate 
 the mind of Peter on this subject. The enemies of 
 the power of Christianity were the Judaizers. The 
 apostle of power was the great Apostle to the Gen- 
 tiles, whose gospel rang out with a clear note of 
 universal invitation to mankind. 
 
 TIL In the third place, I invite attention to the 
 appropriation of Christianity as power. To appro- 
 priate Christianity as power is to have faith in Jesus 
 
CHRISTIANITY AS POWER 163 
 
 Christ. It is to appropriate Him. Christianity is the 
 rehgion of a person ; a person is the centre. Moham- 
 medanism is the rehgion of a book. A personal object 
 of devotion such as Jesus Christ is unknown to 
 Mohammedanism. All the great efforts to attain 
 power in Christian history have been efforts to relate 
 the life of the believer to Christ, the effort to maintain 
 union with Him. The effort of John Wesley, and of 
 Finney, and of the Keswick people, with their seven 
 points in the life of consecration — all these are efforts 
 toward one and the same thing, finding the way to 
 Christ and the way to maintain union with Him. 
 
 After all, our problem is a problem in spiritual 
 mechanics. It is the problem of overcoming resist- 
 ance at one point by power at another point. It is 
 maintaining the spiritual life at such a high level 
 that the carnal and the worldly influences cannot over- 
 come us. We must change the proportions of the 
 spiritual and the carnal in our lives. Some one has 
 said that a water-bottle might float like a feather in 
 Uranus, and that a man might jump ten feet in the 
 air at the equator in Neptune, all because the propor- 
 tions of natural forces are changed, modified. 
 
 Let us resolve together that we will maintain this 
 contact with Christ; that we will trust, not a book, 
 not a method, not a creed, but Christ. We will not 
 let the clatter of the machinery of organization, the 
 pursuit of earthly gain, or the chill of unbelief dampen 
 our faith, but that we will maintain steadfastly the 
 spiritual life to the end. And we shall find that con- 
 tact with Him means power — power for personal ser- 
 vice, power for missionary endeavour, power in our 
 churches, and boards and conventions, power in social 
 and business life, power everywhere. 
 
XVII 
 
 DEDICATION SERMON 
 Haggai 2 : 9. "In this place mill I give peace.'* 
 
 THE background presents a picturesque situation. 
 A remnant of the captive nation has returned 
 from Babylon. Before them at Jerusalem lay 
 the ruins of the first Temple built by Solomon, the 
 glories of which long since had perished under the 
 vandal hands of the conquerors. The returned exiles 
 first devote themselves to efforts to improve their ma- 
 terial conditions and are engrossed in the task, forget- 
 ful of the house of God. Then appears among them 
 the tall and impressive and aged form of the prophet 
 Haggai, who calls the people to the task of rebuilding 
 the Temple. His appeal is a striking one, which is 
 found in its chief points in Chapter i, verses 4 to 11. 
 
 These verses, taken in connection with my text, give 
 us the function of the church in human life. For 
 the house of worship stands for the people and the 
 worship and the spiritual life which is carried on 
 within it. I observe the two- fold function of the 
 church in human society : First, the temporal, and sec- 
 ond, the spiritual. 
 
 I. The Temporal Function of the Church. 
 
 What does the church signify for man's temporal 
 life? It stands with its quiet and unostentatious minis- 
 tries in the spiritual life, but what has it to do with 
 worldly and temporal affairs ? Can there be any rela- 
 
 164 
 
DEDICATION SERMON 165 
 
 tion between the church and the vital forces in the 
 soil which give life and fruitfulness to the planted 
 grain? This old prophet says "Ye have sown much 
 and bring in little," because of the neglect of the house 
 of God. Can the church affect economic questions and 
 have anything to do with poverty or riches? The 
 prophet says: "Ye eat but have not enough; ye drink 
 but ye are not filled with drink," because ye neglect 
 the house of God. Does the church affect the stability 
 of savings banks in any way? Haggai says, "he that 
 earneth wages that he may save it putteth it in a 
 bag with holes," because they lived in ceiled houses 
 when God's house lay waste. Is there any connection 
 between the church and the physical universe? Has 
 the church any alliance with the sea and the sun and 
 the clouds? Has it an orbit of its own in the vast 
 system of forces, like that of a planet, which affects 
 all the parts of the system? Listen again to the words 
 of the old prophet: "Therefore, i. e. because ye neg- 
 lect the house of God, for your sakes the heaven is 
 stayed from dew, and the earth is stayed from her 
 fruit. And I called for a drought upon the land and 
 upon the mountains and upon the grain, and upon the 
 new wine and upon the oil, and upon that which the 
 ground bringeth forth, and upon men, and upon cat- 
 tle, and upon all the labour of the hands." (ch. i, 
 vss, lO-II.) 
 
 The hand that made the universe made the church 
 and set it in the midst of the vast system of things. 
 It is the keystone in the arch of human life which binds 
 all the parts together and prevents their utter col- 
 lapse. One of the most pathetic things in the reading 
 of history is the fate of great empires and civilizations, 
 and in them all we look in vain for any force or agency 
 
166 THE LIFE IN CHRIST 
 
 or influence which did or could do the work of the 
 Christian church. They were massive arches reared 
 by human wisdom, but without the keystone which 
 holds them together. The Babylonian civilization and 
 that of Greece and Rome were unfinished arches which 
 fell under the blow of the tempests of time, because 
 there was no church to serve as keystone and make 
 them stable. 
 
 It is no wonder then that modern nations of the 
 West which have known the power of the church re- 
 gard it as possessing the highest economic as well as 
 spiritual value. No wonder the police force of London 
 reported that vice and crime decrease in the slums of 
 London in proportion as the forces of Christianity 
 triumph. No wonder the English officers in Burmah 
 reported that Christian towns and villages were like 
 moral and spiritual oases in the desert of the surround- 
 ing heathenism in the early days of missionary effort. 
 No wonder that the blue books of the nations appraise 
 each foreign missionary to a heathen country as being 
 worth fifty thousand dollars per year to commerce, for 
 a missionary is the leader of a procession. Behind 
 him, in lengthening file, walk the carpenter and the 
 blacksmith, the architect, the farmer, the banker, the 
 merchant, the doctor and school teacher, the lawyer, 
 the statesman, the scholar. The missionary waves 
 the wand and new civilizations spring into being, as if 
 by magic, around the little churches which he founds. 
 No wonder Mr. Bryce, in his "American Common- 
 wealth," comments with praise upon the significant fact 
 that in our westward development all the new common- 
 wealths accepted as an axiom the principle of the 
 non-taxation of churches and church property, on the 
 ground that the church makes a contribution of the 
 
DEDICATION SERMON 167 
 
 highest possible value to the common life and gives 
 far more than an adequate return for all it receives 
 in exemption. 
 
 And yet, it spite of the manifold temporal blessings 
 which the church bestows upon the community, there 
 are a large number of people who enjoy these blessings, 
 and who yet pass it by, who never enter its doors, or 
 give one cent to its support, or speak one word in its 
 praise. They are unconscious, perhaps, whence these 
 blessings come. The church rises, with its spiritual 
 influences, like a mighty, invisible tree, with massive 
 and wide-spreading branches on which the fruit ripens 
 and falls every day in the year. Thousands there are 
 who, like children beneath the mighty tree, gather the 
 fruit and eat it with never a thought of the tree itself 
 or the cost in time, and money, and labour, and prayer, 
 and spiritual struggle, to those who keep the tree alive 
 and make it fruitful. 
 
 And yet it is true that while on the one hand there 
 are those who take the temporal benefits which the 
 Church of Christ bestows without any appreciation or 
 recognition of the source, yet on the other, those who 
 support the church and give their lives for her usually 
 do it without any direct reference to the temporal 
 benefits at all. Their chief appreciation is on other 
 grounds. In another mood and for different ends they 
 sing 
 
 "I love thy church, O God, 
 
 Her walls before thee stand. 
 Dear as the apple of thine eye 
 
 And graven on thy hands." 
 
 II. And this leads me to my second point, which is 
 the spiritual function of the church. 
 
168 THE LIFE IN CHRIST 
 
 "In this place will I give peace, saith the Lord 
 Jehovah of hosts." In these words we have the 
 secret of human devotion to the church and the secret 
 spring of its mighty influence over human life. Man's 
 deepest need is union and fellowship with God. One 
 has said "the purpose of God in creation did not ap- 
 pear until the dust stood erect in the form of a man.'* 
 But the meaning of man did not appear until his like- 
 ness to God appeared in man and the tragedy of history 
 is the hunger of sinful man for the God whom he lost. 
 The deepest need of man is reconciliation with God, 
 reconciliation in all its forms. We need to be recon- 
 ciled with God in the sense of cheerful and obedient 
 acceptance of our lot in life, our poverty or sorrow or 
 limitations and hindrances ; in the sweet assurance that 
 all is well in any condition so long as we have Him. We 
 need reconciliation with God in the sense of cheerful 
 surrender of what is beyond our reach in our desire 
 or ambition. We need reconciliation to God in the 
 sense of a firm confidence that our lifework is accord- 
 ing to His will, in order that we may be inspired to do 
 our best in all our undertakings. Above all, and deep- 
 est of all, we need fellowship with God in the for- 
 giveness of our sins, which leads to peace with all men 
 and a heart without bitterness towards any upon earth. 
 
 Now the church is the institutional form of God's 
 answer to man's craving, the Gospel of Christ being 
 the central and only message the church brings. There 
 are two statements I make at this point which I believe 
 can be defended against all who would contest them. 
 The first is that no matter what road of human ex- 
 perience a man travels, ultimately he will find that his 
 supreme need is peace with God. The other statement 
 is that no matter what be the form of that need or the 
 
DEDICATION SERMON 169 
 
 experience out of which it grows, the church contains 
 the blessing to supply it. Plato the philosopher, the 
 ablest man intellectually of ancient times, travelled the 
 road of thought and what was his conclusion? "We 
 must wait until some God, or God-inspired man shall 
 come and lift the veil from our eyes?" He needed 
 intellectual peace with God, and the Christ who is the 
 centre of the life of the church is the exact counter- 
 part of his thought. Job travelled the road of sorrow 
 and loss and disaster. Wave on wave of ruin smote his 
 life and left him poor and friendless and helpless, and 
 in the great deep of his suffering his longing was for 
 one who could lay one hand on God and one on him- 
 self. He needed peace with God. The Hindoo devotee 
 whom the missionary saw prostrating himself in great 
 distress, and who told the missionary of his wanderings 
 from shrine to shrine and from one sacred place to 
 another, of having surrendered all his wealth in the 
 vain effort to find inward peace, and who promptly 
 accepted Christ the Mediator when presented to him, 
 and found what he had so long sought, simply needed 
 peace with God. 
 
 Now we may observe how the church brings its 
 spiritual benefits to men. 
 
 Let me say here that I am not advocating the idea 
 of salvation through the church. Salvation is by the 
 grace of God through faith in Jesus Christ anywhere 
 on earth, in the inner chamber, or on the mountain's 
 top, in the thick of the battle of life, or the quiet of 
 the cloister. But I do mean that the church is the only 
 organization on earth which stands for the highest 
 spiritual interests. There are political organizations 
 and various benevolent organizations. These may be 
 good in their places and for their ends, but none can 
 
170 THE LIFE IN CHRIST 
 
 take the place of the church. The utmost that science 
 can do forever comes short of the spiritual redemption 
 man needs. In his new "Locksley Hall," written sixty 
 years after the first one, Tennyson laments the failure 
 of science to minister to man's deepest and highest 
 needs. He says, indicating modern tendencies : 
 
 "Pluck the mighty from their seat, but set no meek 
 
 ones in their place 
 Pillory wisdom in your markets, pelt your offal in her 
 
 face. 
 
 "Tumble nature heels o'er head, and yelling with the 
 
 yelling street 
 Set the feet above the brain, and swear the brain is in 
 
 the feet. 
 
 "Bring the old dark ages back without the faith, with- 
 out the hope 
 
 Break the State, the Church, the Throne, and roll 
 their ruins down the slope." 
 
 Now I do not say there is no religion without the 
 church, but I do say that religion never becomes ef- 
 fective as a force in human society without the church. 
 Electricity may be diffused through space and even 
 run along a wire, but you cannot get a message with- 
 out the instrument in the office which localizes it. The 
 Church is the instrument which localizes the religious 
 power. Divine beauty lies hidden in the moisture and 
 the sunlight, but the glories of the rainbow do not ap- 
 pear until the sunlight falls on the floating moisture 
 at the proper angle. The church is the moisture ad- 
 justed by the Divine hand to the beams of His own 
 
DEDICATION SERMON 171 
 
 grace wherein unto angels and principalities and 
 powers is made known the manifold wisdom of God. 
 
 I note a few of the ways in which the church ful- 
 fils its spiritual mission and ministers peace to men. 
 
 (i) The first is by the vision it aflfords of divine 
 things. In the West there is high up on the mountain 
 side a narrow rift in the wall of solid rock, a mere 
 crack or slit, through which, after a vigorous climb, 
 one may look out into the Yosemite Valley upon a 
 vision like that of Paradise. The church is such a 
 rift in the blank wall of life where we come on the 
 Sabbath day to gaze upon the infinite. We carry the 
 vision with us back to our drudgery of daily toil and 
 through the week we are inspired by it. 
 
 (2) The church fulfils her ministry to our spirits 
 by the fellowships which she creates. 
 
 It is not strange that the aged and infirm, that the 
 invalid and shut-in so longs for the worship of the 
 house of God. For in it and through it have come the 
 sweetest and most sacred fellowships outside our own 
 homes, and the church casts a halo back even over the 
 home. This fellowship of the saints in the household 
 of God is associated with our deepest experiences. 
 How many of us have found the words of the text 
 to be true ? The man who has wandered from the path 
 of duty and the world grows cold and empty and a deep 
 heart-hunger arises in him, and he returns to the fel- 
 lowship of the church, and as he leaves the house 
 of God his heart echoes the words, "In this place will 
 I give peace, saith the Lord of hosts." The man who 
 is harrassed and burdened, who knows not what is 
 duty or how he shall act in some great emergency, 
 finds his way into the courts of the Lord and the peace 
 of God which passeth all understanding, steals into 
 
172 THE LIFE IN CHRIST 
 
 his heart and he goes forth in lyric ecstasy of soul, 
 singing to himself the words, "In this place will I give 
 peace, saith the Lord of hosts." The heart that has 
 lately stood over an open grave and has known the 
 heart-break of death and darkness in the home, to 
 whom "the touch of the vanished hand and the sound 
 of a voice that is still" are as poignant memories and 
 incurable wounds, comes once again into the circle of 
 Christian fellowship and hears the voice of sympathy, 
 and is once more still to listen to the words from the 
 sacred desk about the resurrection and the life and the 
 tender pity of the Lord, and is swept aloft by sacred 
 song as in a divine tempest of compassion, and as if 
 by some divine magic the healing comes and the heart 
 is made tranquil with the peace which the world can- 
 not give and cannot take away, and it too lisps in 
 humility and joy the words of the text, "In this place 
 will I give peace, saith the Lord of Hosts." 
 
 (3) The church fulfils its mission by supplying 
 power as well as vision and fellowship. 
 
 The place of any object in the scale of being and 
 its value are largely determined by the forces and in- 
 fluences required to sustain it. You measure thus the 
 gulf between the organic and the inorganic. The peb- 
 bles require the action of a few of the mighty forces 
 of the universe to sustain it, while the tiniest flower 
 calls for the action of the mighty ocean to give it 
 moisture, of the power of gravitation to give it shape 
 and form, and the sunlight must needs travel ninety 
 million miles to paint its petals. Higher still is man 
 in the scale of being. He requires all that the flower 
 does and in addition the energy of the spiritual uni- 
 verse. This is the meaning of Christ and the Gospel, 
 "We all with unveiled faces beholding as in a mirror 
 
DEDICATION SERMON 173 
 
 the glory of the Lord are transfigured into the same 
 image from glory unto glory," Man can unfold into 
 his highest possibilities and fulfil his destiny only as 
 divine forces play through his soul. When Jesus says 
 "ye are of more value than many sparrows," He is 
 not saying that sparrows are worthless, but only that 
 relatively man is unspeakably more valuable. When He 
 askS; "What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole 
 world and lose his soul?" He does not mean to dis- 
 parage the world, but only to show how much greater 
 relatively is man than the world. When Paul speaks 
 of our groaning in this tabernacle of the body and in 
 our earthly environment, he does not mean that we are 
 weaklings and helpless puppets amid the play of colos- 
 sal forces of the cosmos which are greater than we. 
 He means rather that we feel within ourselves the play 
 of forces vaster than anything around us, energies 
 which shall enable us to break asunder the physical 
 husk, like a divine chrysalis, when we shall spread our 
 wings in a glory which shall dim the firmament. Now 
 the church is the sphere in which and through which 
 these divine forces play. In her atmosphere and fel- 
 lowship, through her ministry and ordinances and wor- 
 ship, men find themselves acted upon by God Himself. 
 Now it requires sympathy and appreciation and an 
 attitude of faith and susceptibility to obtain any of 
 these things from the church. There are two sides to 
 her life, the outer and the inner. From without she 
 presents not an ideal spectacle. Only those who get 
 the inside view can know the meaning of what I say. 
 Susceptibility, responsiveness, a spirit alive to spiritual 
 realities, and docile under divine influences — these 
 alone come into the true meaning of Christ and of His 
 church. One, a child, stands before an upright ob- 
 
174 THE LIFE IN CHRIST 
 
 ject in Italy yonder and sees in it merely a hard piece 
 of stone which in some strange way has assumed hu- 
 man shape. Another, a man, sees in it the wondrous 
 vision of Michelangelo, who transmuted it from 
 being crude marble into his masterpiece, Moses, The 
 difference is one of susceptibility. One hears a suc- 
 cession of noises made by a group of men sawing on 
 something they hold in their hands, with horse-hair 
 strung between the ends of a stick, and wonders why 
 they waste their energy for naught. Another hears in 
 those sounds the harmonies of a mighty symphony 
 lifting the soul to the stars. The difference is one of 
 susceptibility. One sees in man a physical organism 
 made up of so much oxygen and carbon and phos- 
 phorus which has no meaning beyond that of the 
 beast that perishes. Another sees in him a spirit deli- 
 cately strung through the physical organism, like the 
 strings of a lyre to be played upon by the breath of 
 almighty God and destined to endure when the "world 
 is old and the stars grow cold and the books of the 
 judgment day unfold." 
 
 One sees in the church a mere outward 'organization 
 with no special significance for the world beyond any 
 other organization. Another sees in it the action of 
 divine forces of fellowship, of brotherhood, of love, 
 sees in it the prophecy of the end of war and the reign 
 of justice upon earth, sees in it the ideal of a coming 
 Kingdom of God when His will shall be done on earth 
 as in heaven, and if he enters her fellowship he will 
 learn that the kingdom of God is the kingdom of love. 
 
XVIII 
 
 THE REDEMPTIVE MISSION OF JESUS 
 
 CHRIST 
 
 Luke, 19: 10 — "The Son of Man came to seek and 
 to save that zvhich was lost." 
 
 DR. LYMAN ABBOTT is reported as having 
 said a few years ago that he would be glad 
 if the word salvation could be blotted out of 
 the list of great words in our Christian speech. Per- 
 haps he was not inveighing so much against the use 
 as against the abuse of the word. For the removal of 
 that great word would be the removal of the Keystone 
 from the arch. It would be to ring the tree of life with 
 the keen edge of the axe, and to leave it to wither and 
 die. If we take this word and keep it properly related 
 to Jesus Christ and His purpose, it can bring no evil, 
 but only good. It does not mean a mere fiat righteous- 
 ness, or artificial deliverance ; but lies at the very heart 
 of the moral energy of a redemptive Gospel. 
 I. Christ came to reveal salvation to us. 
 If one were to ask what is the most distinguishing 
 mark of the Christian religion, the answer would have 
 to be this : it reveals God's initiative in salvation. While 
 other rehgions represent man as seeking after God, 
 this represents God as seeking man. In those religions 
 man, sin-blinded and perverted in nature, seeks out all 
 kinds of gods to worship ; in this, God, in the person 
 of His Son, breaks the long silence of the ages and 
 speaks ; bursts like a sunrise upon the astonished gaze 
 
 175 
 
176 THE LIFE IN CHRIST 
 
 of man, reveals himself as a God of holy love with a 
 boundless compassion for men. 
 
 Observe now the power of the contrast between God 
 and humanity in this revealing impulse embodied in 
 the career of Jesus. Man was engaged in a seeking 
 and saving enterprise, but how unspeakably below that 
 of God. Individual man, seeking and saving wealth, 
 or reputation or power. The Jews even with their 
 favoured position as the depositaries of God's earlier 
 revelation, were seeking and saving the letter of the 
 law, while its spirit was dead. The philosophers 
 were seeking and saving their various rival theories 
 of the universe. The nations were seeking and saving 
 political power and influence. Human hearts lay 
 crushed and bleeding everywhere. Human life, de- 
 spised and rejected, the weak and wayward, and blind 
 and helpless sat in the region and shadow of death and 
 gazed pitifully out into the bleakness of the moral and 
 spiritual night, without God and without hope, when 
 suddenly, like the clear note of a silver trumpet, 
 sweeter than that ever sounded by archangel and re- 
 sounding through the corridors of the soul of the 
 despised and outcast publican Zaccheus, and thrilling 
 it as no human souls were ever thrilled before, came 
 the words, "The Son of Man came to seek and to save 
 that which was lost." 
 
 The contrast with man's mental achievements was 
 equally striking. The best efforts of human reason 
 in that age of the world had attained this view. There 
 is a God somewhere, we know not where. But he is 
 outside the machinery of this world, which moves on 
 its ruthless way. Man is but a fly or a frog or other 
 insignificant creature who may be caught in the 
 machinery and crushed. 
 
THE REDEMPTIVE MISSION 177 
 
 Even to-day some of the most brilliant writers grope 
 their way out to the limits of the universe as they see 
 it, and declare that there is no love or pity in it. It is, 
 they declare, a scene of ruthless conflict ; a struggle for 
 life; a fierce conflict for supremacy. No quarter is 
 given, none received. Nature everywhere is "red in 
 tooth and claw with ravin'." Cruelty, cruelty, cruelty 
 is written all over the face of nature. As for man, 
 says one of these writers, the whole race is doomed. 
 Nature bears us on in a chain of inviolable law of 
 cause and effect. We are on an express train one of 
 whose rails is natural law, and the other matter. This 
 train is drawn by an engine whose motive power is 
 kinetic or some other form of natural energy. We 
 are rushing along this track at an incredibly rapid 
 rate, through a moonless and starless night towards a 
 bottomless abyss into which we will surely plunge at 
 the end. 
 
 Another writer shrinking in horror from such a pic- 
 ture, clutches wildly at some straw of hope, and says 
 we must believe that somewhere there is a power, 
 though what it is we can only surmise. We are like 
 lost travellers. A blinding snowstorm is all about us, 
 and we shiver in the piercing blast. We must go for- 
 ward yet we know not where to go. If we go to the 
 right we may fall into a yawning chasm from which 
 there is no deliverance. If to the left who knows but 
 that we shall wander further from safety and rest? 
 Yet if we stand still, we are doomed. We can only 
 plunge forward and trust that somehow we will ar- 
 rive at a warm fireside and food and shelter. 
 
 How pitiable the intellectual failure of man as thus 
 disclosed! How wondrous and joyous the revelation 
 of God in Christ as a contrast! 
 
178 THE LIFE IN CHRIST 
 
 Even religiously man's effort seems as unavailing. 
 Buddhism is at once the most perfect and the most 
 beautiful and the saddest of all the human attempts to 
 find God. Buddha was a winsome character, who felt 
 the pressure of the misery and pain, the awful burden 
 of human existence. His one remedy for all was to 
 extinguish desire. Quench desire, all desire. Millions 
 of years, in many forms of existence and spheres of 
 being may be required. But this is the only road to 
 peace. Suffering, expiation for past wrong-doing will 
 hound a man through the wastes of existence, will 
 lash him with a whip of scorpions until at length he 
 will expire like a candle, or be reabsorbed in the in- 
 finite like a bottle of water broken in the ocean. Sad 
 indeed is the wail of Buddha. His religion, which is 
 to-day the religion of millions upon millions in India, is 
 one of the emptiest ever offered to the human spirit, 
 so far as real comfort is concerned. It knows the sting 
 of the human conscience, but no balm to relieve it. It 
 knows darkness and limitation of human ignorance, 
 but it has found no rift in the enveloping clouds. It 
 knows human weakness, but has caught not even a 
 glimpse of a little finger, much less of an arm mighty 
 to save. Strangest of all, and beyond all other ethnic 
 religions, it has caught a glimpse of the far away moral 
 perfection shining like a dim whiteness beyond the 
 stars, but never yet has it dreamed of a way to at- 
 tain it. 
 
 To the puzzled intellect and to the broken heart of 
 man there comes a voice. To the weary pessimist, and 
 to the desperate wayfarer in the storm, afraid of the 
 wilderness and perishing with the cold, and most of 
 all to the moral struggler, the conscience-stricken, who 
 with hopeless hand clings to a lurid spectral faith in 
 
THE REDEMPTIVE MISSION 179 
 
 the extinction of life and desire — to all these comes the 
 voice : It says the iron chain of law is not the deepest 
 fact. Personality is above law, controls law. For the 
 Son of Man came, broke into the on-going world from 
 above. It says the apparent cruelty of nature is not 
 the final fact. Love is the heart of the universe. For 
 the Son of Man came to seek and to save. It says ex- 
 tinction of desire is not man's destiny, but the purifica- 
 tion and transformation of desire and a blissful immor- 
 tality with God. It speaks across the gulf and says to 
 all sorrowing and downcast and earnest souls : "O 
 heart of man, a heart beats here ; in the eternal bosom 
 are pity and grace, for the Son of Man came to seek 
 and to save that which was lost." 
 
 For observe how that love revealed in the coming of 
 the Son of Man is elaborated and illumined for us in 
 the three parables of the lost coin, the lost sheep and 
 the lost son. I think those interpreters are correct who 
 see progress and unity in these parables. Each parable, 
 as is true of all parables indeed, is like an artist's pic- 
 ture in which the light is concentrated on the central 
 figure, while the remainder of the group lies in shadow. 
 Each parable teaches a single great truth. 
 
 The lost coin, which the woman with lighted candle 
 sought until she found, teaches that man has value 
 in God's sight ; that God feels himself impoverished if 
 man is lost. He who holdeth the wealth of the world 
 in His hands has unceasing pain and sorrow in His 
 heart over lost men. This is a coin which He fain 
 would recover for himself. But the lost coin cannot 
 fully illustrate man's lost condition, because it is a 
 senseless thing. It has no power of choice, no intelli- 
 gence, no moral nature. 
 
 Another parable, therefore, develops the idea for 
 
180 THE LIFE IN CHRIST 
 
 us. The lost sheep did not fall from its owner's hands 
 and roll away under the bed or cupboard. It was 
 tempted away. It was heedless and thoughtless and 
 wandered off from the fold. Thus does the sinner 
 wander. Often he was almost as thoughtless and heed- 
 less in it as the sheep. Perhaps in childhood, but dimly 
 perceiving the wrongness of the conduct, he fell into 
 temptation until away from safety in the wilderness 
 of sin. But after the lost sheep goes the seeking shep- 
 herd into the depths of the wilderness. 
 
 But the last parable shows the cause of man's lost 
 condition. The prodigal deliberately chose to wander 
 away. Besides he must deliberately choose to return. 
 The sheep would never choose to come back to the 
 fold. But the prodigal, melted by the memory of the 
 father's heart and home, lashed by the sense of sin and 
 shame, resolves, and acts upon his resolves, and the 
 parable shows the boundless love of the father who 
 waits and yearns for the wanderer. 
 
 This, then, is the drama of redemption set forth in 
 parables : God's impoverishment in the lost coin ; God's 
 patient and persevering quest for the lost sheep ; God's 
 boundless welcome to the wilful wanderer in the lost 
 son. This is the revelation of salvation brought to us 
 by the Son of Man. 
 
 II. In the next place, Christ came to effect salvation 
 for us. 
 
 Now man's lost condition made necessary a great 
 transaction, and included in my text must be the idea 
 not merely of a revealed, but also of an achieved salva- 
 tion. Now I will not take up the doctrine of sin in 
 any of its various speculative conceptions. There is 
 the literary and aesthetic conception which thinks of it 
 as a disagreeable hindrance to the smooth on-going 
 
THE REDEMPTIVE MISSION 181 
 
 of the social machinery; and the scientific conception 
 that regards it as merely a stage in man's upward prog- 
 ress ; and there is the theological conception which con- 
 nects it with heredity. But experience in the light of 
 the New Testament revelation is the best practical 
 guide, and that is that man is hopelessly lost without 
 Christ. It is man's lost condition which made the 
 whole enterprise of redemption necessary. 
 
 This fact helps us understand the apparent excess of 
 divine attention bestowed upon man who is so insignif- 
 icant in himself and inhabits so tiny a speck of a planet 
 in the boundless universe of God. It is due, not to the 
 value of this as compared with other worlds, but to its 
 condition, lost. That is the key to it all. Admit if you 
 will, that this world is the least of worlds, that it is 
 just a little Bethlehem of the Universe, an out-of-the- 
 way hamlet, while the great metropolis lies yonder in 
 the Milky Way; or to employ the figure of the parable, 
 that man is the smallest coin in all the divine treasury, 
 a mere copper piece ; or admitting, if you insist upon it, 
 that man is the least of God's intelligent beings, that in 
 other worlds there are beings by the side of whom man 
 is but a pigmy in stature, — yet when this is all said, 
 there remains one vastly important thing unsaid, and 
 that is that man the pigmy was a lost pigmy, and that 
 although he was the least of the coins in the divine 
 treasury, yet he was a lost coin, and that lost coin bore 
 the image and superscription of God Himself, and that 
 though this earth was but a little Bethlehem, a hamlet 
 on the boundless shores of space, yet it was a hamlet 
 which sin had invaded, a spot where sorrow sat, and 
 pain and misery and despair brooded and where the 
 cry of the weary and the wandering went ever up to 
 the great Father-heart of God. That is the great fact 
 
182 THE LIFE IN CHRIST 
 
 which exahed this world into an interest and impor- 
 tance for God beyond any other. Over against this we 
 place the fact of God's native impulse to bless, His 
 inherent and inborn longing to communicate of His 
 own ineffable joy, to give "beauty for ashes, the oil of 
 joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit 
 of heaviness," and we no longer wonder that the great 
 redemptive enterprise filled His being with that over- 
 flowing and exuberant purpose and love that resulted 
 in the incarnation of His Son. 
 
 Then too, if men object that the Divine One should 
 empty Himself to become man, that it implies imper- 
 fection in God, that He should take human form, 
 and especially that it implies imperfection that He 
 should suffer, (and I believe that He did suffer) — then 
 the reply comes clear and distinct that, leaving out the 
 theoretical and speculative suggestions involved here, 
 the truth lies in the other direction, viz. : in this, if in- 
 carnation and suffering were necessary to man's re- 
 demption, if man was lost and incarnation and atone- 
 ment were necessary, and God were incapable of these, 
 then He was incapable of taking care of His own. It 
 would imply that sin had created a situation with 
 which He could not cope. It would imply that man 
 had fallen into a gulf of woe too deep for the divine 
 arm to reach him, and this would be the greatest of 
 imperfections. It would imply a conflict between the 
 impulse of love which wished to save, and the impulse 
 of power which was not equal to the task. So that 
 the capacity to empty himself and become incarnate, 
 the capacity to suffer and atone, is thetmark of infinite 
 moral perfection in God. So that when we read, "that 
 being in the form of God, He counted it not a thing to 
 be grasped to be on an equality with God, but emptied 
 
THE REDEMPTIVE MISSION 183 
 
 Himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in 
 the Hkeness of men; and being found in fashion as 
 a man, He humbled Himself, becoming obedient even 
 unto death, yea, the death of the cross," we are not 
 to shrink in incredulity from something which seems 
 to us unworthy of the Divine One, but rather should 
 we bow in adoration as we see unrolled before us, as 
 upon the scroll of revelation, in this descent, humilia- 
 tion and ascent of Christ, the unfolding of the eternal 
 riches, the glory and power of the divine nature itself, 
 the throwing open of the doors of the immeasurable 
 treasure-house of the divine love. 
 
 After all, what was the meaning of that self-empty- 
 ing in order to save the lost? Was it that He actually 
 put off divinity ? No. That limitation must be viewed 
 in the light of the great fact that man was made in 
 God's image, that human personality and divine per- 
 sonality are alike, one is as the sun and the other as the 
 reflection of the sun in the dew-drop. He could not 
 take the form of a worm or a lion and save worms 
 or lions, because they are not made in His own image, 
 but He could become man and not cease to be God, just 
 as man can become divine and not cease to be man. 
 
 Then, too. His limitation was limitation for a special 
 purpose, redemption. His aim was to concentrate His 
 divine energies, not to lay them off, divest Himself 
 of them. The perfection of human thought and knowl- 
 edge is when a man concentrates perfectly, ceases 
 mental activity in diverse directions in order to accom- 
 plish a result in one direction. The great merchant 
 with a dozen factories or department stores has the 
 knowledge of them all at his fingers' ends — every 
 detail of every department of a vast and complicated 
 business. But one day his eight-year-old and only 
 
184 THE LIFE IN CHRIST 
 
 son is run over by a passing vehicle. The merchant 
 drops all else and hastens to the bedside, and a great 
 anguish and a great love and yearning seizes him as 
 he watches the tides of blood unchecked, flowing 
 from the wounds of his child, and a great purpose 
 masters him. Factories and stores are now forgotten, 
 money making no longer interests him. Away back 
 in the recesses of his being that knowledge and that 
 energy retire, and he is possessed by sympathy and 
 yearning and love for the little lad whom he may 
 lose. He empties himself of all else. He lays aside 
 the career of the merchant. The form of a captain 
 of industry, of a prince of commerce, he lays aside — 
 and all his skill and wealth and time and thought are 
 poured out around the little life to save it. This is 
 his self -emptying. All this knowledge and commercial 
 skill will surge back when the little life is safe and 
 the physician says he will recover. Until then, that 
 other life was as if it was not to him. 
 
 Such was the self-emptying of Jesus. The incar- 
 nation was the self-emptying of the divine pity, of 
 redemptive power and grace. He sat by the bedside, 
 His hand on the fevered pulse of humanity, forgetful 
 of the heavenly glory, with all that former splendour 
 somewhere back in the depths of His being, until the 
 patient was better. 
 
 Now what did Christ effect for us in His atoning 
 death? His seeking and saving work cannot be con- 
 sidered fully without regard to this question. 
 
 One remarkable fact about this matter strikes the 
 reader of the Gospels, and that is the reserve of Jesus 
 on the cost of atonement. He will die, He will give 
 His life a ransom for many, so much He expressly 
 declares. But He says little of the darkness and 
 
THE REDEMPTIVE MISSION 185 
 
 agony, the loneliness and desolation. Why this reti- 
 cence, this reserve, this silence? I think it was a 
 wondrous mark of His grace and delicacy. He will 
 not obtrude upon the lost, what it cost Him to redeem 
 them. He will leave them, under the guidance of His 
 Spirit, to discover this for themselves. 
 
 Every one feels the fitness of this way of bearing, 
 of enduring, and not talking about it. When the 
 German prince visited America, New York City gave 
 him a banquet. The daily papers talked much of its 
 cost. Why, they said, we gave him a most magnificent 
 banquet. It cost a hundred thousand dollars. A quiet 
 old lady somewhere was reported as saying, "That 
 is very indelicate. It is not for us to boast of what 
 our banquet cost us to entertain our guest. Let him 
 tell of that." In his story, "The Virginian," Owen 
 Wister makes his splendid Virginian cowboy criticize 
 the poet Browning. The young lady had read to him 
 the poem describing the heroic act of a young soldier 
 of Napoleon in battle in which he is mortally wounded. 
 Returning with a message to the general and deliver- 
 ing it. Napoleon exclaims, "You're wounded." "Nay, 
 sire, not wounded but killed," the poet represents the 
 soldier as replying. The view of the cowboy was 
 that that was a false note. "If that fellow had the grit 
 to do that deed, he would have had the grit to have 
 died without talking about it." 
 
 At any rate, as one has said, "Heroes are not their 
 own heralds." Christ was to have other apostles and 
 witnesses. Hence we are not surprised that there is 
 little in the Gospels on the subject. Accordingly we 
 find in the epistles that the cost is much dwelt upon 
 by Paul and John and Peter. What, then, did these 
 men find, the men of inspired faith in the death of 
 
186 THE LIFE IN CHRIST 
 
 Christ for our redemption? A very brief reply is all 
 we can give. 
 
 For one thing they saw in Christ's death more than 
 a moral spectacle to move men to repentance. It was 
 that, but a deep necessity lay behind it. Some deny 
 this necessity and assert that the cross is simply a 
 moral exhibition, an endurance of suffering as a proof 
 of love, set forth as a means of breaking the human 
 heart and leading men to return to God. But this 
 "impressionist" view of the atonement is not a com- 
 plete account of it. It was a deeper thing than that. 
 Imagine, if you can, a man saying to his wayward 
 children, "Now, my children, I am going to make an 
 exhibition of my love to you by burning my hand to 
 a crisp in the fire." Or a shepherd saying, "Now I 
 will make a journey through the wilderness and the 
 night, through briars and quagmires, not to rescue a 
 lost sheep, but to convince my sheep that I love them." 
 You cannot imagine a sane shepherd or father so act- 
 ing. Neither can we imagine Christ or God so acting. 
 
 The cross stands for more than that. The cross em- 
 bodies two impulses or qualities in God, one the self- 
 imparting, the other the self -preserving impulse. It 
 is God's nature to be holy. He must defend Himself 
 against unholy rebellion. This is the self-preserving 
 impulse. It is God's nature to give, to bless, to save. 
 This is the self-imparting impulse. Christ's death 
 united the two. God does not love us because Christ 
 died for us. Christ died for us because God loves us. 
 Christ died to make man holy ; but first of all He died 
 because God is holy. One has well said, "God is love 
 and law is the way He loves us ; God is law and love 
 is the way He rules us." 
 
 We usually say love Is the sinner's hope, and holi- 
 
THE REDEMPTIVE MISSION 187 
 
 ness is the sinner's fear. Tliis is true. But the reverse 
 is also true. Love is the sinner's fear because love 
 exacts, demands, will not be content with anything 
 but ideal perfection in the loved one. The loved one 
 must reflect the image of the divine lover like a mirror 
 without a flaw. Hence love seeks out every defect, 
 labours with infinite patience to perfect every detail 
 of character. God's holiness, again, is the sinner's 
 hope. For God's holiness cannot endure the presence 
 of sin which brings misery and eternal ruin to the 
 sinner. 
 
 This, then, was the great transaction of Calvary, 
 the union in a perfect act of suffering and obedience, 
 of the two supreme ethical demands of God's nature 
 and man's lost estate. This explains the Gethsemane 
 cup which He raised to His lips and looking into it 
 twice, shrank in horror from its bitterness. This ex- 
 plains the cry of desolation on the cross itself: 
 
 "Yea once Immanuel's orphaned cry 
 The Universe hath shaken, 
 It went up single, echoless. 
 My God, I am forsaken! 
 
 "It went up from the holy's lips 
 Amid His lost creation. 
 That of the lost no son should use 
 Those words of desolation." 
 
 HI. Christ came, we observe next, to be salvation 
 in us. No one understands all that Is meant by the 
 seeking and saving of Christ who does not take the 
 full Biblical view. Salvation is a past thing, the life 
 and death of Jesus. Salvation is a future thing, resur- 
 
188 THE LIFE IN CHRIST 
 
 rection and glorification ; but salvation is also a present 
 thing, the victorious and living Christ within us. 
 
 A new grasp of this truth is the most urgent need 
 of Christians to-day. The reality, the vitality, the 
 energy of a present and a living Christ in the soul. 
 A power from without and above coming into our 
 lives and reversing them. But we cannot suppress or 
 conquer the power of sin within us or without us. 
 Within us we feel its sting in conscience, and con- 
 science masters us and will not be silenced. By my 
 will I can control my physical nature, command my 
 bodily actions. By my will I can control, in a measure, 
 my feelings, my emotional nature; by my will I can 
 control my mental nature ; I can compel attention upon 
 a given subject. But by my will I cannot control my 
 moral nature. Conscience will not yield to my will, 
 I need a master. 
 
 Nor can I control sin without me. As one has said, 
 sin is not merely infirmity, nor a mistake, nor a step 
 upwards, it is a power in reversed action. As a sailor 
 knows the resistance of the adverse wind and tide, 
 as the tunnel builder knows the resistance of the 
 granite in the heart of the mountain ; as the mountain 
 climber knows the resistance of gravitation, so I know 
 and feel the power of sin resisting me and overcoming 
 me. This is what I find sin to be as a law of nature. 
 I need an inward and an outward deliverer. 
 
 Yet there are men who tell me I am to be deliv- 
 ered, not by a personal Redeemer energizing my will, 
 but by law. When I throw a handful of rusty pens, 
 and a handful of tiny bits of blotting paper out of 
 my window, the wind and gravitation determine the 
 place where both will rest. The pens will fall straight 
 down; the paper will be carried away to its place. 
 
THE REDEMPTIVE MISSION 189 
 
 Law, fixed and immutable, determines all. I am held 
 in its clutches as in a vise ! So I am told. 
 
 There is a law of grace as well as a law of nature. 
 There is a law of the spirit as well as of the flesh. 
 There is a law of personal action exerted in a realm 
 of personal beings, as well as a law of physical action 
 exerted in a closed system of physical forces. This 
 personal action is also grace. It is Christ within you, 
 the wisdom of God and the power of God. It is 
 Christ within you the hope of glory. 
 
 Drummond compares the living Christ to the daily 
 manna of the Israelites in their wilderness wander- 
 ings, and the dying Christ to the brazen serpent. Now 
 one great mistake of men has been in putting the ser- 
 pent for the manna and the manna for the serpent. 
 The two theologies have done this. The new puts 
 the manna in the place of the serpent, and the old 
 the serpent over the manna. The brazen serpent 
 cured the bite of the real serpent, but could not sus- 
 tain the life of the healed one. The cross redeemed 
 from the curse of the law, but the living, energizing 
 Christ in the soul alone gives triumph over all our 
 foes. We are not to look at the cross alone then for 
 the exhibition of grace ; but to the whole career of the 
 transformed man's life. 
 
 IV. Now I come to my last point, which is, that 
 Christ not only came to reveal salvation to us, and 
 to effect salvation for us, and to be salvation in us. 
 He came also to achieve salvation through us. 
 
 There is one infallible proof that that salvation 
 has been revealed to, effected for and in us, and that 
 is that it now operates through us. The one evidence 
 above all others that we are Christ's is the reproduc- 
 tion in us of His redemptive passion. A modern 
 
190 THE LIFE IN CHRIST 
 
 writer represents a character In a certain story as 
 having a vision of the creation by himself of the 
 world. Power is given to his will to call a world 
 into being. His fingers are endowed with skill to 
 mould it into symmetry and beauty. It is peopled by 
 his creative power with beings fair and glorious to 
 look upon, and spotless it rolls away from his hands 
 into a splendid career. Thus he is permitted to know 
 the creator's love of his own handiwork. But then 
 the spoiler comes. The blight and shadow fall upon 
 that world and it wanders in sin and woe; and now 
 he knows the creator's indignation against the spoiler. 
 His sympathy with His suffering creatures, and His 
 irresistible redemptive impulse. 
 
 Now Christ's redemption fails of its object unless 
 it reproduces in us His own and God's redemptive 
 passion. This is the highest thing in God, the most 
 glorious. It comes only through experience of the 
 redemption that is in Christ. Some things we learn 
 concerning God in other ways. His pity for our 
 foolish and childish ways, His great patience with us 
 we learn from our own human fatherhood. Mr. 
 Patmore's little poem brings this out, as Dr. Forsyth 
 has pointed out. "He had punished his little son and 
 put him to bed, his mother, who was patient, being 
 dead." Sore himself, he went to see the child, and 
 found him asleep with all the queer and trivial con- 
 tents of a little boy's pocket Set out beside him to 
 comfort him. 
 
 "So when that night I prayed 
 To God, I wept, and said: 
 Ah ! when at last we lie with tranced breath, 
 Not vexing Thee In death, 
 
THE REDEMPTIVE MISSION 191 
 
 And Thou rememberest of what toys 
 
 We made our joys, 
 
 How weakly understood 
 
 Thy great commanded good — 
 
 Then, Fatherly not less 
 
 Than I whom Thou hast moulded from its clay 
 
 Thou'lt leave Thy wrath and say, 
 
 I will be sorry for their childishness." 
 
 Thus does earthly experience of fatherhood teach 
 us some things. But when Christ's redemption be- 
 comes ours by experience, we enter into a greater 
 deep of fatherhood and sonship, and that is not how 
 fatherhood is pitiful and kind toward foolish and 
 ignorant children merely, but how divine fatherhood 
 and sonship unite in a mighty purpose full of passion 
 and sacrifice to redeem — a passion which does not 
 spend itself until the sins of the world have in some 
 strange, mysterious way become our own burden and 
 the salvation of men our aim. 
 
 But at once when that saving love has become ours 
 and we understand, it masters us and we share in 
 God's creative, redemptive, paternal passion towards 
 the lost world. With Him we feel impoverished when 
 the coin is lost, and we leave the ninety and nine in 
 the fold to go after the wanderer, and join in the glad 
 celebration when the prodigal returns. To us money 
 becomes glorified because it becomes a means of ex- 
 pressing and of exerting this redemptive passion. 
 Talent and time and the whole earthly career are 
 transfigured because they are opportunities to carry 
 on the sublime enterprise. With Paul we exclaim, not 
 as in the translation, "This one thing I do," but rather 
 in his laconic and intense brevity — "but one thing" — 
 
192 THE LIFE IN CHRIST 
 
 meaning there is but one thing to do, to think, to plan, 
 to execute. One thing fills the horizon of my life and 
 experience. This is his meaning. 
 
 I suppose this is why the message of redemption 
 is confined to the human subjects of it — that nothing 
 except an experience of it can create an energy ade- 
 quate to accomplish redemption in others, and because 
 our own redemption is completed in our redemptive 
 service. 
 
 It is often said, you know, that angels are not per- 
 mitted to carry on this redemptive enterprise. But 
 if you study the book of Revelation carefully you dis- 
 cover that they have much to do with it. Yet their 
 service is limited and imperfect and must ever be 
 finished and made complete by the redeemed them- 
 selves. In the eighth chapter, for example, angels 
 ofifer incense before the altar out of a golden censer. 
 But the incense is without effect unless mingled with 
 the prayers of the saints. In chapters fifteen and six- 
 teen angels have the seven plagues and pour out the 
 seven bowls of wrath, and in one place (chapter lo) 
 an angel, arrayed in a cloud with a rainbow about 
 his head, descends to earth and stands with one foot 
 on sea and one on land, holding a book in his hand. 
 "Now," you say, "an angel will surely preach." But 
 no. He hands the book to John the prophet, the re- 
 deemed sinner who eats it, experiences it, and then 
 prophesies to many nations. 
 
 But there is one place where even more closely 
 still an angel seems to come to this great task (chap- 
 ter 14:6). An angel is seen flying in mid-heaven, of 
 whom it is declared that he has the eternal good tid- 
 ings to proclaim unto them that dwell upon the earth. 
 And now at last with bated breath and rapt attention 
 
THE REDEMPTIVE MISSION 193 
 
 you listen for an angelic sermon. But again we are 
 doomed to disappointment. For not one word of the 
 redemption that is in Christ Jesus do we hear but 
 this : "Fear God and give him glory : for the hour of 
 his judgment is come; and worship him that made 
 heaven and earth and the sea and the fountains of 
 waters." 
 
 Thus we never hear angelic announcement of the 
 great secret of the Son of Man, His redemptive love, 
 and I suppose the reason is that : 
 
 "None of the angels ever knew 
 How deep were the waters crossed, 
 Nor how dark was the night 
 The Lord passed through 
 Ere He found the sheep that was lost." 
 
 We the redeemed sinners do not and cannot know 
 fully all the meaning of his sacrifice. And yet we do 
 know in part with a genuine knowledge the meaning 
 of redemption. And it is because we know that He 
 has committed to us the great task of witnessing to 
 His redeeming love. 
 
XIX 
 
 HE CAME TO HIMSELF 
 Luke 15: 17 — "He came to himself." 
 
 WHEN the prodigal said, "Father, give me the 
 portion of goods that falleth to me," and 
 left home to enjoy his inheritance, he fol- 
 lowed "his bent." He yielded to an impulse within 
 which urged him to indulge himself. He followed his 
 bent. But by and by he spent all and came into dire 
 want and distress. He was willing to eat the food 
 of swine. Then he said, "I will arise and go to my 
 father." Again he followed his bent in a deeper, truer 
 sense. It was then he came to himself. Men who 
 have studied the human mind scientifically have given 
 us a phrase like that I have used. They speak not 
 of a man's "bent" in the ordinary popular sense. They 
 speak rather of the curve of his character or of in- 
 dividuality. When you look at a human life in its 
 general outline or tendency, you discover its curve. 
 Is the man predominantly ambitious? Or is he mag- 
 nanimous? Is he covetous and grasping? The curve 
 is the main line or tendency. Now when you can get 
 down to the bottom of a human life and find out its 
 deepest tendency, you find the real man. 
 
 Oliver Wendell Holmes has said that when John 
 and James are engaged in a conversation, there are 
 really six people present, John as John thinks of him- 
 self, John as James thinks of him, and John as he 
 
 194 
 
HE CAME TO HIMSELF 195 
 
 really is. In like manner, there are three Jameses. 
 No man's deeper nature comes to the light until he 
 finds himself in a religious way. 
 
 Now the text says the prodigal after long wander- 
 ing "came to himself." The real meaning of the state- 
 ment is that he discovered himself to be what he had 
 not before suspected. From this we may learn a great 
 lesson applicable to us all. 
 
 Observe first, then, that for a man to come to him- 
 self is self-discovery, is to find the deepest law of his 
 being. What was it the prodigal found in finding 
 himself? He found this: that the make of his own 
 soul agreed with the make of the universe. The 
 universe may be likened to a series of concentric rain- 
 bows. The outside rainbow, vast and comprehensive, 
 embracing all the others, is God. Marvellously rich in 
 power, wisdom, love, righteousness, and truth, the 
 wondrous colours in the rainbow of His nature shine 
 out to eyes which can see them. Inside this rainbow of 
 the divine nature itself is the smaller rainbow of His 
 creation, the physical universe. The same qualities 
 and attributes are seen, more dimly, but nevertheless 
 the same, in creation as in God. The invisible things 
 of God, since the foundation of the world are clearly 
 seen in the world about, even His eternal power and 
 Godhead. So Paul declares. Now inside the rainbow 
 of creation is yet a smaller bow reproducing again the 
 same colours, man himself. Man's true nature repro- 
 duces the seven colours in God's nature. Love in man 
 answers to love in God ; will answers to will ; right- 
 eousness answers to righteousness ; power answers to 
 power. So in all the manifoldness of God's man's 
 nature; they are not the same in degree, but they are 
 the same in kind. 
 
196 THE LIFE IN CHRIST 
 
 Now when the prodigal came to himself, he dis- 
 covered that his own nature was made on the same 
 principle that the universe is made upon. He dis- 
 covered that the curve of his nature was the same 
 as the curve of God's nature and that in choosing a 
 self-indulgent, wayward, wasteful life he was trying 
 to reverse the curve of his nature. He found that 
 he was made to be a Son and not a prodigal, and 
 that as a consequence to try to live a prodigal while 
 made to be a son was misery and ruin. A life of sin 
 and a life of sonship are contradictory ideas. The 
 great and wondrous truth about God is that He is 
 Father. This is the richest and most brilliant colour 
 in the rainbow of His nature. The great and wondrous 
 truth about the prodigal was that he was made to be 
 a son. The filial in him was the brilhant colour answer- 
 ing to the paternal in God. This was his discovery 
 when he came to himself. He said, "I will arise and 
 go to my father." 
 
 All prodigals violate this great truth, that their souls 
 are constituted as God is constituted. They always 
 come to the swine and husks. Until they reassert 
 their own natures, they find loss and sorrow. An in- 
 cident will illustrate the point. A church member, a 
 beautiful singer and earnest Christian, apparently, fell 
 into a great sin. He tried to take his own life in his 
 despair. As his pastor, I urged repentance and con- 
 fession. He indignantly refused and said hard things 
 about his brethren. He said there was a devil in him 
 and he was afraid he could never cast him out. But 
 some one knew there was also an angel there. I ap- 
 pealed to his sense of sonship to God and portrayed 
 as best I could the nobility of confession and repent- 
 ance. He seemed to be moved by my words, and on 
 
HE CAME TO HIMSELF 197 
 
 the next Sabbath night he was in his place in the choir. 
 He sang a solo in the solemn hush of that evening 
 hour, and the entire congregation recognized the song 
 as his confession and return. It was a song so simple, 
 so pointed, and sung with such a pathos and power 
 that none could mistake its meaning. It was the 
 familiar song: 
 
 "The mistakes of my life have been many, 
 The sins of my heart have been more. 
 But when the dear Saviour shall bid me come in 
 I will enter the open door." 
 
 Here again was one letting the filial in his own 
 nature answer to the paternal in God. It was a prodi- 
 gal recognizing the curve and colours in the rainbow 
 of his being as the same as those in God's, and pro- 
 claiming the great truth that no soul can ignore its 
 own make ; no soul can reverse the curve of its being 
 and remain happy. 
 
 In his poem, Paracelsus, Robert Browning teaches 
 this great truth. You remember how Paracelsus sets 
 out in life to discover the great secret and win the 
 great prize. He is swayed by ambition for power. 
 He compares himself, about to take the plunge into 
 life, to a pearl-diver. There are two supreme moments 
 in the experience of the pearl-diver; one, when a 
 pauper he stands ready to plunge into the sea; the 
 other, when a prince he rises with his pearl. At the 
 end of the poem he comes forth a disappointed man, 
 and he gives the reason for it. It was the love of 
 power. He says : 
 
 "I failed: I gazed on power till I grew blind. 
 Power; I could not take my eyes from that: 
 
198 THE LIFE IN CHRIST 
 
 That only I thought should be preserved, increased 
 At any risk, displayed, struck out at once — 
 The sign and note and character of man." 
 
 But power is not the only colour in the rainbow of 
 the universe. Power does not satisfy unless joined 
 with love. Again he says: 
 
 "I learned my own deep error; love's undoing 
 Taught me the worth of love in man's estate, 
 And what proportion love should hold with power 
 In his right constitution; love preceding 
 Power, and with much power, always much more love, 
 And earnest for new power to set love free." 
 
 Ah, there the rainbow colours flash out. Power to 
 set love free, that is the use of power. This is the 
 use of wealth, and health and place and influence, 
 education and genius. Power to set love free. This 
 the prodigal found who sought only power. This the 
 prodigal found who sought only self-indulgence. All 
 God's power is power used to set love free and we, 
 as Sons, should copy Him. The Gospel is declared 
 to be power. But it is power to set love free ; power 
 is used to manifest love. This is the curve of the 
 universe and the curve of man's nature. 
 
 A boy attended a beautiful exhibition representing 
 some great historical events in the form of tableux. 
 He fell asleep before the performance began and did 
 not wake until it was over. Next morning he spoke 
 with enthusiasm of the show. Inquiry developed the 
 fact that he had reference to the pictures on the drop 
 curtain which he saw before he went to sleep and 
 after he was awakened. He slept before the curtain 
 
HE CAME TO HIMSELF 199 
 
 was foiled up and until after it was rolled down. He 
 had never laid eyes on the real performance. All 
 who waste their substance in riotous living have that 
 experience. They think they see the meaning of life. 
 They never once behold life's real meaning. They 
 destroy themselves by an illusion. 
 
 There is the intellectual prodigal who wanders 
 from God in his theory of the universe. He goes 
 away from the Father in thought. What a strange 
 mistake is made by the materialist! He is an intel- 
 lectual prodigal. If he would look within at his own 
 personality, he would find the real explanation of the 
 world. Instead, he chooses the clod. He says there 
 is nothing greater nor better than a clod, except per- 
 haps all the clods of the world rolled In one. Nature 
 is simply a big clod. There is a little life here and 
 there, it is true, a blossom here, a bird there, a man 
 yonder. But the blossom will fade and the bird lose 
 its song, and man lose his intelligence. All will cease 
 except the clod part of our nature. H you make of 
 nature a series of concentric rainbows and the smaller 
 ones reproduce the curve and seven colours of the 
 outside one, says the materialist, then you must get 
 your outer rainbow from the clod, with its matter, 
 force and motion. Man is a breathing clod ; the planet 
 on which we live is a rotating clod, and the sun is a 
 flaming clod, and all the vast assemblage of worlds 
 in space are simply clods In motion. 
 
 Now this method of explaining the world is very 
 uncalled for and illogical. Why select the clod, the 
 lowest and poorest thing we know anything about, 
 and reconstruct nature out of that? Why not take 
 the human spirit, with Its longing and conviction of 
 immortality, with its Intelligence and will and moral 
 
200 THE LIFE IN CHRIST 
 
 nature, its personality as the starting point. This 
 would lead directly to the Father. In choosing the 
 clod instead of man as the key to the world, he adopts 
 a strange course. You offer him a weed and flower 
 and he chooses the weed. You offer him a pebble and 
 a ruby and he selects the pebble. You offer him brass 
 and gold and he chooses brass. You hold out to him 
 a cinder and a lamp and he says, "I prefer the cinder." 
 You point him to a pathway leading upward and shin- 
 ing with a light supernal as it passes beyond the stars 
 to the Father's house and at the same time a blind 
 alley leading nowhere and he chooses the blind alley. 
 
 No wonder materialism is waning. Prof. Haeckel 
 is almost the sole survivor of that philosophy among 
 prominent men. And he is like the 
 
 "Boy that stood on the burning deck 
 Whence all but he had fled, 
 The flames that lit the battle wreck 
 Shone round him o'er the dead." 
 
 Materialism is the attempt to feed the soul on dirt. 
 It empties the world of all hope. It is the mother 
 of despair. With it as our guide, we feel as the 
 Ancient Mariner felt: 
 
 "Alone, alone, all, all alone, 
 Alone on a wide, wide sea. 
 And never a Saint took pity on 
 My soul in agony. 
 
 "The many men so beautiful, 
 And they all dead did lie. 
 And a thousand, thousand, slimy things 
 Lived on and so did I. 
 
HE CAME TO HIMSELF 201 
 
 "I looked to heaven and tried to pray, 
 But or ever a prayer had gusht, 
 A wicked whisper came and made 
 My heart as dry as dust." 
 
 Now, we do not read nature aright when we stop 
 Avith the clod. Behind the curtain of matter shines 
 the form of God our Father. The prophet whom 
 God called into the mountain heard first a wind, and 
 then felt an earthquake, and after the earthquake a 
 fire. But God was in none of these. After the fire 
 came a still small voice, which was God's voice. 
 (I Kings 19 : II.) It was something human answering 
 to the human in us. It was God the Father answer- 
 ing to the voice of the son within us. It was the rain- 
 bow of the divine nature flashing out in response to 
 the colours in our human nature. And, oh, how that 
 voice sounds everywhere in the world since Christ 
 revealed to us the Father. 
 
 But, after all, the chief cause which interferes with 
 men coming to themselves is a moral one. Sin has 
 given a bias to our natures. 
 
 What is sin? Many definitions have been given. 
 Sin is privation or negation, one says. Sin is an in- 
 firmity due to a fleshly nature, says another. Sin is 
 a step in man's development, says another, and so on. 
 But one of the best definitions of sin is that it is a 
 power in reversed action. It is as when you stick a 
 splinter in your flesh and all the nerve power and 
 vitality in the blood, instead of working for your 
 health, now works for disease and inflammation and 
 pain. The vital power of your body working against 
 you. It is nature in reverse action. Or we may say, 
 sin is a failure to come to one's self, and to discover 
 
202 THE LIFE IN CHRIST 
 
 the agreement between the make of the soul and the 
 make of the universe, that the colours of the inner 
 rainbow of man's nature and the colours of the inner 
 rainbow of God's nature are the same. 
 
 "Judas went and hanged himself" is the brief record 
 of the end of the betrayer of Christ. It was the 
 most logical act a man could perform on the Judas 
 theory of life, that he could ignore the make of his 
 soul. Suicide is supreme folly, yet it is the logical 
 result of supreme folly which preceded. Sin hurls 
 a man full tilt, not like Don Quixote, against a wind- 
 mill, but against the stars in their courses. No man 
 can safely fight the stars. The suicide ignores the 
 make of the universe. He takes the wrong path to 
 come to himself and fails. He is crushed by a power 
 he cannot resist. 
 
 Buddhism as a religion is simply a gradual method 
 of committing soul suicide. It has its distinct theory 
 of the make of the soul, how it is built. All misery 
 comes from desire, says Buddhism, from love of wife, 
 child, father, mother, of wealth, fame, power, from 
 the love of life. The eyes are burning with desire, 
 the mouth is burning, the nose is burning, the ears 
 are burning, the whole body and soul are burning 
 with unsatisfied desire. These desires never can be 
 satisfied, says Buddha. Therefore, extirpate desire; 
 root up love. Destroy hunger and aspiration. Quench 
 the flame of desire. Nirvana, oblivion, self destruc- 
 tion is man's only hope. 
 
 Now the prodigal up to the moment he came to him- 
 self had just this experience, but instead of going on 
 the Buddhist way to suicide, he took Christ's way to 
 the Father and found himself. He did not extinguish, 
 but changed the direction of desire. He discovered 
 
HE CAME TO HIMSELF 203 
 
 the secret of the world. He found the Father await- 
 ing him with ring and robe and feast. He came to 
 himself, to his own, to the riches of the Son of an 
 eternal Father. 
 
 Man's power to respond to God is his most distin- 
 guishing mark. Certain sea animals, like the porpoise, 
 rise to the surface now and then and it may be gaze 
 upward when the stars are shining brightly, at the 
 firmament. But astronomers they can never become, 
 because they have no imagination or mathematical 
 faculty. Man, on the contrary, coming up out of the 
 sea of his self-indulgent life, beholds the glories of 
 God's spiritual heaven and of his Fatherhood and has 
 power given him to respond to the revelation. His 
 soul leaps up to the infinite because it is made in the 
 image of the infinite. 
 
 Before closing, I must indicate briefly that Jesus 
 Christ is the great teacher, leader, and Saviour, en- 
 abling men to come to themselves. To follow him is 
 to find the Father. "No man hath seen God at any 
 time, the only begotten son hath declared him." "He 
 that hath seen me hath seen the father." "Take my 
 yoke upon you and learn of me." The bow of Christ's 
 yoke is easy to wear; it is a seven-coloured rainbow 
 of hope made of the qualities and attributes of God 
 Himself, God's love, God's power, God's wisdom, 
 God's truth. Those colours appear in the beatitudes, 
 Christ's recipe for blessedness. Blessed are they that 
 mourn ; merciful ; hunger and thirst for righteousness ; 
 peacemakers, etc. 
 
 "But," says someone, "will not the universe right 
 itself of itself and get rid of all sin, and thus In right- 
 ing itself, will it not right us too? Will not the warp 
 and twist In the universe come out through the lapse 
 
204 THE LIFE IN CHRIST 
 
 of time?" Perhaps so in physical nature. But the 
 warp and twist of our wills will not come out unless 
 we by God's grace untwist them, Man's nature was 
 made free. Freedom is one of the colours of the 
 rainbow answering to God's freedom. This freedom 
 warns us that we may permanently choose to remain 
 out of adjustment to God and the universe. Our 
 light may go out. Sin may send us down to eternal 
 despair. Astronomy teaches that, while some of the 
 heavenly bodies are flaming suns, others are cinders 
 whose light went out ages ago. A human life may 
 become a flaming sun or it may become a cinder. Its 
 own free choice will determine. Man must repent. 
 He must arise and return to God if he would know 
 the meaning of life and destiny. 
 
XX 
 
 MANHOOD AND CHILDHOOD RELIGIONS 
 
 Hebrews 4: 16 — "Let us draw near with boldness 
 unto the throne of grace." 
 
 THIS text contains one of the most distinctive 
 teachings of Christianity and touches the heart 
 of rehgion. It asserts man's direct relation- 
 ship to God. I invite attention to three phases of this 
 truth. 
 
 I. The severity of the ordeal which it imposes upon 
 man. That ordeal is the direct vision of God. Notice 
 here the contrast with the accepted and current modes 
 of dealing with God. When the words were spoken 
 the religions of the day practised the indirect method 
 of approaching God. 
 
 The heathen nations could not conceive a religion 
 without a human priest, a holy man who could stand 
 between the flaming splendour of the divine being 
 and the trembling soul. Here is no recognition of any 
 priest save Jesus — the great, invisible, ascended and 
 glorified high priest, who was thus lifted up to the 
 level of the divine, and invested with something of 
 the awfulness of Jehovah Himself. Even among the 
 Jews the shekinah glory of Jehovah was concealed 
 behind the veil of the temple above the mercy seat, 
 whither no one might intrude save the high priest once 
 
 205 
 
206 THE LIFE IN CHRIST 
 
 a year; yet the awful responsibility of the high priest 
 is here put upon the humblest believer, who is told 
 to enter into the most holy place. 
 
 The Jew cherished such a reverence for the divine 
 name that he substituted another word for the name 
 of God lest he be guilty of blasphemy in uttering 
 that name, and yet we are here urged, not to take the 
 name of God upon lips indeed, but to enter into the 
 flaming splendours of the divine presence itself. 
 
 Occasionally in the prophets we find an ideal de- 
 scription of God as an everlasting fire, as a consuming 
 flame. "Who shall dwell in the everlasting burnings ; 
 who shall abide in the eternal fire ?" Isaiah asks, mean- 
 ing thereby, not hell, but the divine nature itself. Then 
 the answer comes from him : It is only the ideal holy 
 man who can endure that fire; "He that lifteth not 
 up his hands to vanity, that walketh uprightly," a man 
 of the highest moral worth. Yet in this New Testa- 
 ment revelation we find the writer assuming that every 
 believer may do this thing. Each of us is told to 
 walk in the burning fiery furnace of the divine 
 presence. 
 
 It was a most natural gravitation of human nature 
 back to priesthood and sacraments in the early cen- 
 turies of Christianity. Men felt that human hands 
 polluted by sin and frail as the brittle clay of which 
 they were made could not endure to go directly into 
 the divine presence and receive from the hands of 
 the eternal Himself the gift of grace. Hence they 
 turned the simple ordinances of Christianity into sac- 
 raments, and said grace comes through the waters 
 of baptism and the bread and wine of the supper. 
 The ladder of spiritual worship rose to dizzy heights 
 and its rounds were rounds of fire, and the timid spirit 
 
MANHOOD, CHILDHOOD RELIGIONS 207 
 
 of man shrank back, baffled and terrified at the task 
 of dimbing it. 
 
 II. Notice in the second place the perfection of the 
 medium of access to God. We may understand this 
 shrinking of the human soul from God ; it is the sense 
 of sin and guilt that causes it. But the New Testament 
 has forever removed that barrier. The preceding 
 verses tell of our high priest who is touched with a 
 feeling of our infirmities, who intercedes for us. 
 
 There is a passage in the Epistle of John which 
 shows the writer's insight into the human heart. "If 
 we walk in the light as he is in the light we have 
 fellowship one with another," John says. Yes, we 
 say, but who shall walk in that light? Think of it, 
 the ineffable light and glory of the divine nature. In 
 those white rays every sin shines out, even the least. 
 The least shortcoming or evil becomes a burden of 
 guilt grievous to be borne. But, anticipating this 
 shrinking of the soul, John adds, "And the blood of 
 Jesus Christ, his son, cleanseth us from all sin." Ah, 
 that is the secret of our approach. While we walk 
 in the ineffable light, the- blood of Christ whitens us 
 to correspond to it. So that, in spite of man's sense 
 of unworthiness, he is invited to aproach God, to come 
 boldly to the throne of grace. 
 
 III. Observe in the third place, then, not only the 
 severity of the ordeal, and the efficacy of the medium 
 of approach, but also the glory of the privilege and 
 duty. It is the glory of Christianity that It calls for 
 direct approach of man to God. This religion of the 
 direct approach to God assumes the possibility of fel- 
 lowship between man and God, that we are made in 
 God's Image. Any religion which shall do the best 
 things for man must have in it the elements of the 
 
208 THE LIFE IN CHRIST 
 
 infinite, because there is an infinite element in us. 
 It must have in it also the element of the finite, 
 because we live amid finite things. We must bring 
 the infinite down into the finite and lift the finite 
 up into the infinite. The true religion grants the 
 greatest boon and imposes the highest responsibility 
 — freedom. It sets the greatest task and constrains 
 to the greatest calling — world conquest. It points to 
 the loftiest heights and supplies the loftiest inspiration 
 — God. 
 
 There are three tests to any religion. First, it must 
 not keep a man a minor; second, it must not repress 
 any element of his nature ; third, it must not limit the 
 development of his unfolding nature in any direction. 
 In other words, it must first make him a man ; second, 
 it must give symmetry to his manhood; third, it must 
 allow full play for all his powers. 
 
 You may divide all religions into two kinds: those 
 which keep us minors and those which make us men — 
 manhood religions and childhood religions. 
 
 The one great manhood religion has all the great 
 elements in it. 
 
 You may have a religion without mystery, but that 
 would imply that you have no power of insight into 
 the meaning of things. Only a childhood astronomy 
 is content with the view that the stars are "lightning 
 bugs." 
 
 You may have a religion without danger, but that 
 implies that you have no courage. It assumes that 
 you are a coward. All men may not be brave, but 
 nobody would like to be painted grovelling at his 
 enemy's feet. 
 
 You may have a religion without the necessity for 
 endurance, but that implies that your muscles are 
 
MANHOOD, CHILDHOOD RELIGIONS 209 
 
 flabby, or that you are an invalid, and that there is 
 no element of the heroic in us. 
 
 You may have a religion of sight, which can pene- 
 trate no deeper than external forms, but that implies 
 that you have no capacity for inner vision, no power 
 to gaze upon the unseen; and all of us revolt at the 
 imputation that when a man and a horse stand side 
 by side on a landscape the man can see no deeper 
 into its meaning than the horse. 
 
 When the Scripture says : "Eye hath not seen, nor 
 ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man 
 the things which God hath prepared for them that 
 love him," it clearly means that God's way of making 
 Himself known to us is spiritual. The senses do not 
 reveal God to us. The eyesight may assist the spirit, 
 indeed, but there must be more than eyesight. I may 
 gaze upon the soft radiance and all the wonder of 
 the stars on a clear summer night, and thus I may be 
 lifted into spiritual fellowship with God, so that my 
 spirit beholds what the physical eye never saw. But 
 I should remember that astronomers have been known 
 whose calling required them to live amid the glories 
 of that stellar world and who were yet never believers 
 in God. 
 
 So also the grandest music may do it, but then 
 again it may not. "Ear hath not heard it." Wondrous 
 as is the passion of the great singer, the rolling notes 
 of the organ, and the thrilling power of the orchestra, 
 this thing of which I speak is higher — "Ear hath not 
 heard it." "Heard melodies are sweet, but those un- 
 heard are sweeter." 
 
 Or you may divide religions into voice religions and 
 echo religions. There are echo religions and hearsay 
 religions in plenty in the world, but what men want 
 
210 THE LIFE IN CHRIST 
 
 and need is a voice religion — a living voice speaking 
 to the soul. One comes to you with a creed and 
 says, "This is what God said to men once, and you 
 are to believe it because God said it. A human pen 
 wrote it, but It is true," I say. Yes, this all may be 
 true, and I might subscribe to what you say God 
 said, but after all, this would be but an echo of God's 
 voice. The objection to a creed is not that it Is untrue 
 necessarily, but that it is an echo. I want to hear 
 the voice itself. Or the priest may bring you the 
 sacrament and say, "This bread and wine which you 
 see is the body and blood of Christ, and It will give 
 you life." Again I say, This is an echo. The Scrip- 
 tures declare that eye hath not seen the vision of God. 
 When I come to the Scriptures, I recognize the voice. 
 The others only echo; this sets my heart-strings all 
 athrill. When I come to God in prayer, I find the 
 same result : the throne of grace becomes real, and its 
 power enters my life. 
 
 The chief objection to the Mohammedan rule of so 
 many prayers a day as the complete discharge of 
 religious duty is that it belittles man. It goes on the 
 view that our spirits can be easily satisfied, that there 
 are no abysses of desire and yearning, no hunger and 
 thirst for the eternal, no great deeps in our nature 
 which rise beyond the earthly. A religion of forms 
 and ceremonies and observances and nothing else can 
 never prepare a man for the great crises of life. 
 Mohammedanism fails to see man's lofty contempt for 
 the husks and his passionate yearning for reality. It 
 understands not man's eternal dissatisfaction in reli- 
 gion with the trivial and superficial. 
 
 There are great temptations which come upon us 
 when every temporal thing fails us. Every one of us 
 
MANHOOD, CHILDHOOD RELIGIONS 211 
 
 has his wilderness experience, when the tempter is 
 there trying to lead him astray, attacking us at our 
 weakest point and when helpers are far away, and 
 urging us with great plausibility to use our powers 
 for low ends, tempting us to transfer stones into bread 
 to satisfy our hunger. In such an hour every one of 
 us koows that it is eternal truth that man shall not 
 live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth 
 out of the mouth of God. It is in such an hour that we 
 want, above all things, the privilege of direct approach 
 to the eternal. 
 
 There are moments — yea, days and weeks and 
 sometimes years of suffering and sorrow when our 
 losses or our pains stun us and paralyze us. At such 
 times men may reason with us, but the voice of reason 
 grates on the spirit like a clanging discord and but 
 deepens our gloom. The voice of the human com- 
 forter, even, loses its power, and priestly words sound 
 like a mockery. In such an hour our supreme need 
 is contact with the eternal. The power which made 
 the universe is the only power which can sustain, and 
 the wisdom which holds all human affairs in the hol- 
 low of its hand is the only wisdom which can then 
 be trusted. The throne of grace is then our last resort. 
 We listen and yearn for the clear notes of the voice 
 of God saying, 'T love thee, I love thee; pass under 
 the rod." 
 
 There is yet another kind of experience which shows 
 tis this need. George Eliot remarks that she is sorry 
 for the man or woman whose life has in It no lofty 
 heights from which one may have a sense of falling, 
 no pinnacles of experience and Insight, of joy and 
 peace, to which we may look back for Inspiration. 
 
 There come times in our lives when we see life 
 
212 THE LIFE IN CHRIST 
 
 as a whole and grasp its meaning ; moments when we 
 realize how sinful sin really is, how descipable selfish- 
 ness really is, how perishable earthly values, how vain 
 are human ambitions, and how empty is human pride. 
 At such times we see the winsomeness of purity and 
 the beauty of holiness, the irresistible fascination and 
 power of love and service. At such times the heights 
 of moral attainment tower in snowy grandeur above 
 us, losing themselves in the white splendours of God's 
 throne. And yet, although so high and steep, they 
 seem infinitely to be desired. Here again we need, 
 above all things, the sense of God's presence. We 
 need to feel the pulsing reality of His love and power 
 in our hearts. With that energy in us, there comes 
 to us a strange sense of power and assurance of at- 
 tainment in spite of our frailties and sins. At such 
 times there is no feeling of self- righteousness, no plum- 
 ing of ourselves on our moral merit. Indeed, there 
 is a sense of ill-desert and unworthiness. But in spite 
 of this, the spirit of the strong climber enters us, the 
 glow of conquest comes over us and faith seizes the 
 victory by anticipation. All of this is born of the 
 sense of an infinite pressure upon our life from above 
 and below. There is a power, irresistible but gracious, 
 which moves and sways us and buoys us up. We are 
 as crested wavelets rolling inward toward the shore 
 under the impulse of the ocean's resistless tide. We 
 are as men buoyed In an infinite sea of atmosphere, 
 and glorified as we float in a boundless flood of sun- 
 light. 
 
 I have spoken of the supreme moments and the 
 great sorrows which reveal to us the reality and give 
 direct contact with God. But, after all, these but 
 make clear what is true every day. Believe me, the 
 
MANHOOD, CHILDHOOD RELIGIONS 213 
 
 hardest thing we have to do is to perform our daily 
 tasks in the spirit of the Master, to keep our spirit 
 sweet amid the rivalries and competitions of the 
 world, to keep our patience steadfast as the nagging 
 and irritating circumstances of life sting us and as 
 the long-drawn battle seems to go against us ; to keep 
 our faith clear when clouds gather and to keep love's 
 fires glowing and warm when envy, ingratitude and 
 hate pour cold water on the flame, to keep hope for- 
 ever springing in our breast — Ah, me, this is our task. 
 This is the great task, and we need the play of eternal 
 forces upon our lives to enable us to perform them. 
 I have spoken of those types of Christianity which 
 shut men off from God and put priests and sacraments 
 between the soul and its Maker, and I have said they 
 assume that we are to remain spiritually children 
 always. But what of the man who himself ignores 
 the throne of grace and the reality of the divine in 
 human life? Such a life is strangely contradictory. 
 Without the element of prayer and faith a human life 
 assumes that all the grand and significant elements in 
 life are absent. It assumes that there are no mysteries 
 to perplex, that human reason is equal to all its prob- 
 lems, and even philosophy laughs at such a view as 
 this. It assumes that there are no great dangers to 
 be avoided, or at least that no help is needed in the 
 midst of the blind and bewildering play of the ponder- 
 ous machinery of life, and that human hands can con- 
 trol all those forces. It assumes that there are no great 
 temptations which man may not overcome in his own 
 strength, that there are no sorrows or losses that re- 
 quire anything more than ordinary human foresight 
 and skill and endurance, that there are no heights which 
 men may not climb without help from above. Such a life 
 
214 THE LIFE IN CHRIST 
 
 takes for granted the incredible view that a man can 
 find his way safely across a wide-stretching quagmire, 
 which he never crossed before, by picking his way at 
 midnight without a lantern ; that he can climb the dan- 
 gerous alpine heights of temptation, with beetling 
 crags and yawning chasms, without a guide, and that 
 he can cross the storm- tossed sea of life in a frail 
 craft of his own making, and defy wind and wave and 
 tide. Ah, me! who can measure the audacity and 
 the temerity of the life which has no throne of grace 
 in it, no union and fellowship with God. 
 
 I am glad it does not say. Let us come to the throne 
 of gold, for that would mean only that God is an un- 
 changeable God, omnipotent it might be and a dwelling 
 place of wondrous values, the dwelling place of om- 
 nipotence and unchangeableness, and yet these very 
 qualities might shut him off from helping men. 
 
 I am glad it does not say, Let us come to the throne 
 of light, for that light might be so brilliant that it 
 would dazzle and blind me. I am glad it says, Let 
 us come boldly to a throne of grace, that we may 
 find mercy and obtain help for a time of need. That 
 means everything we can imagine that is fair and 
 sweet in God. It makes of Him the beautiful and 
 tender, and forbearing and forgiving and compassion- 
 ate God. It means that His exaltation above us does 
 not hinder His bending down over us in love. It 
 means that His infinite wisdom and power do not keep 
 him sitting in cold isolation on the circle of the heavens, 
 but permits him also to dwell in the meek and lowly 
 heart. 
 
XXI 
 
 THE TESTIMONY OF CHRISTIAN 
 EXPERIENCE 
 
 John 9 : 25 — "One thing I know, that whereas I was 
 Mind now I see." 
 
 THESE words record the conversion of a man 
 who had an experience of Christ's power. 
 It had taken so deep a hold upon him that 
 nothing could shake him from his conviction. 
 
 It is not my purpose to develop this text in a direct 
 way, but rather to use it as an introduction to the 
 general subject of Christian experience. My purpose 
 is to show how Christian experience gives us testimony 
 to the power of the gospel, which cannot be overcome. 
 
 Human experience is the one datum of all phil- 
 osophy, and all science. The experience of the indi- 
 vidual and of the race is the grist which is poured 
 into all the scientific and philosophic mills. Hence, 
 Christian experience as a distinct form of human ex- 
 perience ought to receive more attention than it has 
 ever received before. 
 
 Prof. Bowne has emphasized the fact that whatever 
 your philosophy, your experience is the same. You 
 may call things by any names you will and it will 
 not affect facts or experience. Christian Science says 
 that all is mind, that a cobblestone, for example, is 
 simply an idea and not a real piece of matter. We 
 will suppose that some one hurls it and it strikes your 
 
 215 
 
216 THE LIFE IN CHRIST 
 
 head and sends you off for relief. Then you have 
 an experience in the realm of the ideal. You have 
 an ideal stone striking an ideal head and raising an 
 ideal bump, and producing an ideal dizziness and 
 pain, and requiring the application of an ideal liniment, 
 which produces an ideal cure and affords you an ideal 
 satisfaction and peace of mind. But all this does 
 not in the slightest degree alter the experience itself. 
 And if you are going to rear a philosophic system on 
 the principle derived from sudden contact of cobble- 
 stones with human craniums, you will be compelled 
 to take this concrete human experience to begin with. 
 Denying that a stone is matter does not in the slightest 
 degree change its effect upon your physical organism 
 when it strikes you. 
 
 Science and philosophy are beginning to recognize 
 the evidential value of Christian experience, though 
 they are very slow about it and very reluctant about 
 it, even yet, apparently because it is not as obvious 
 to the senses as the facts of the physical world. The 
 world has laughed long at Brother John Jasper, who 
 contended that the "sun do move" around the earth 
 because he saw it on one side of his house in the 
 morning and on the other side at night. But we know 
 there is a system and set of motions in the back- 
 ground more comprehensive and wonderful than the 
 rising and setting sun alone can explain. Now, to 
 refuse to accept the testimony of Christian experience 
 because it lies in a realm behind sense-experience is 
 to adopt the John Jasper attitude towards truth. 
 Science and philosophy have both been guilty of this 
 to a greater or less extent. They have been pursuing 
 the Ptolemaic system of truth with Brother Jasper 
 instead of the Copernican with modern astronomy. 
 
CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE 217 
 
 Nobody now doubts the existence of radium, and 
 yet, as one says, it has been "bombarding" the Uni- 
 verse aeons and under the very nose of science, and 
 yet it was only discovered yesterday and already 
 threatens to revolutionize science. Religious experi- 
 ence is the radium of the spiritual universe, which, 
 needs only discovery to revolutionize any man's 
 thought as to life and destiny. 
 
 Now Christian experience, the experience of regen- 
 eration and conversion, of moral transformation 
 through Christian agencies, has evidential value in 
 several directions. 
 
 I. It is the supplemental link to complete philosophy. 
 Philosophy is man reaching up towards God. Chris- 
 tian experience is God reaching down to man. Phil- 
 osophy seems always on the point of discovering the 
 secret of the universe, but it never succeeds it doing 
 it. We thought a while ago that idealism had come 
 to the Kingdom to save us from materialistic science, 
 and it did good service. But idealism has become so 
 abstract and impersonal that it cannot be distinguished 
 from Naturalism. Oh, yes, these two philosophies are 
 still debating and disputing, but their differences are 
 chiefly imaginary. The dispute reminds one of the 
 reply of the unlearned American who had travelled 
 abroad. He was saying he had visited the Matterhorn 
 and the Jungfrau, and Lake Geneva and Lake Leman. 
 "But," a friend interposed, "Lake Geneva and Lake 
 Leman are synonymous." "O, I know that, but Lake 
 Geneva is a great deal more synonymous than Lake 
 Leman," he replied. Idealism in its abstract form is 
 perhaps just a little more "synonymous" than Natural- 
 ism, that is all. 
 
 Now why is it that philosophy seems to expend so 
 
218 THE LIFE IN CHRIST 
 
 much labour for naught? To me it is clear that the 
 reason why it seems to labour so long without satis- 
 factory results is that it refuses to consider all human 
 experience, including the religious. It splits experi- 
 ence up into little bits and hunts among the bits for 
 some single abstract principle, which will explain all 
 the rest. It is very much as if one were going 
 to attempt to explain the ocean and all its contents, 
 its variety and marvellous abundance of life and, 
 instead of searching its depths, should take a single 
 fish and scale off from the fish a single scale and, on 
 that scale as a foundation, build up his theory of the 
 ocean and its contents. How accurate do you suppose 
 his account would be? And yet, this is analogous to 
 what philosophers have done. Spinoza scaled off from 
 the world of experience and being the idea of sub- 
 stance and built a pantheistic system on that scale. 
 Hegel scaled off the conception of reason, or the idea, 
 and reared a vast idealistic system on that. Scho- 
 penhauer scaled off the conception of will and reared 
 his pessimistic system of philosophy on that. Haeckel 
 has scaled off the conception of matter and builds his 
 materialistic system on that. Another takes motion 
 or energy or force, and so on, I had almost said ad 
 infinitum. 
 
 The result of this process is that the philosophers 
 get clear away from human life and experience. They 
 fix their gaze on the photograph of the photograph 
 of a photograph, a dim and faraway image of reality, 
 and become absorbed in excessive star-gazing, meta- 
 physical cliff-climbing and transcendental soap bubble 
 blowing. They are like the Indian juggler who hung 
 his ladder on thin air without its touching the ground 
 below, sprang upon it, climbed out of sight, pulled 
 
CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE 219 
 
 the ladder after him, and disappeared in the 
 clouds. 
 
 All this ought not to discredit philosophy, but teach 
 it a lesson. Men fail to find the secrets of the world 
 until God and God's dealings with men are considered. 
 Dr. Ashmore tells us of some men on a raft floating 
 down the Mississippi River who stopped for supper 
 one night, and then floated on, but returned after 
 awhile to the same place, or a similar one. They did 
 this several times until they discovered that they were 
 caught in an eddy of vast dimensions and were being 
 swept in a circle repeatedly back again to the starting 
 point. So has philosophy moved in a circle with way- 
 stations along the route, but never able to escape from 
 the circular movement of human thought. There is 
 one way for philosophy to escape from its situation 
 and find the current on the bosom of the river of 
 thought, which will carry it on to its destination. That 
 current is religious experience, wherein man's upward 
 soaring thought is met by God's descending revelation 
 and love. When this current of thought is once 
 reached, a new day will dawn for philosophy and ere 
 long the philosopher will see the gleam on the gates 
 of pearl and the sparkle of the jasper walls of the 
 city of God, whither they would find the way. 
 
 Christian experience takes all the abstractions of 
 philosophy and recombines them and gives us the con- 
 ception of the Fatherhood of God. The one sub- 
 stance of Monism comes back as the one person behind 
 the world. The one idea of Hegel comes back as 
 the thought and plan of eternal love. The one energy 
 of those who glorify force and change comes back 
 as the beneficent will of the Holy and loving Father. 
 The plan and progress of nature and the moral ongoing 
 
220 THE LIFE IN CHRIST 
 
 of the world comes back as the infinite and eternal 
 design of the Holy and Loving. Thus, when in our 
 hearts we can say, and know what we mean when we 
 say it, the word "Abba," Father, we hold in our hands 
 the clue to all the philosophies, which remain in a 
 state of unstable equilibrium until we find this key. 
 All philosophy is thus summed up, as in the words 
 of Dr. Fairbairn: "God is the Father, everlasting in 
 His love. Love was the end for which He made 
 the world, for which He made every human soul. 
 His glory is to diffuse happiness, to fill up the silent 
 places of the universe with voices that speak out of 
 glad hearts. Because He made man for love He 
 cannot bear man to be lost. Rather than see the loss, 
 He will suffer sacrifice. In the place we call hell love 
 as really is as in the place we call heaven, though in 
 the one place it is the complacency of pleasure in the 
 holy and the happy which seems like the brightness 
 of everlasting sunshine or the glad music of waves 
 that break in perennial laughter, but in the other it 
 is the compassion or pity for the bad and the miser- 
 able which seems like a face shaded with everlast- 
 ing regret, or the muffled weeping of a sorrow too deep 
 to be heard. That grand thought of a God who is 
 eternal Father, all the more regal and sovereign that 
 He is absolutely Father, can never fail to touch the 
 heart of the man who understands it, be he savage or 
 sage." And we may add, cannot fail to become the 
 generalization large enough to include all the data of 
 life and history of science and philosophy. 
 
 H. In the second place Christian experience sheds 
 light on all the unique claims of Christianity. 
 
 Prof. James, you know, and other scientific ob- 
 servers concede that religious experience is a witness 
 
CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE 221 
 
 to the supernatural; only he refuses to admit that 
 Christ is the author of it, and does not concede the 
 other unique Christian claims. The attempt is to 
 find a common denominator, so to speak, between 
 Christianity and other religions and show that all are 
 essentially alike and that the distinctive Christian ideas 
 are overbeliefs. But these men have not thought 
 through the problem of Christian experience, in par- 
 ticular they are shy of facing the actual claim of 
 Christ and His relation to it all. 
 
 Christ's place in Christian experience is the supreme 
 matter. All other Christian claims go with this. 
 
 Now the spiritually regenerated and morally trans- 
 formed man proves the deity of Christ, proves His 
 presence in religious experience for the following 
 reasons : 
 
 First of all, because no man has moral resources 
 to transform himself. The law of moral gravitation in 
 a man's life no more reverses itself suddenly than the 
 law of physical gravitation. When apples begin to fall 
 towards the clouds and Niagara Falls becomes a 
 Niagara leap upwards, then we may look for men to 
 be suddenly changed from murderers into saints. You 
 cannot juggle the immoral elements of a sinner's 
 nature into the moral elements of a saint, any more 
 than you can combine the acid of an unripe lemon and 
 an unripe apple and unripe grape fruit and get the 
 taste of caramel. You cannot combine moral shadows 
 by any sort of manipulation and produce moral sun- 
 shine. 
 
 The morally transformed life proves the deity of 
 Christ also, because when the sinner turns to Christ 
 he gets the response. Christ invites him and he re- 
 sponds. He calls and Christ answers. He calls to 
 
222 THE LIFE IN CHRIST 
 
 Mohammed and Mohammed does not come ; he calls 
 to Confucius and Confucius does not come. He calls 
 to Buddha and Buddha does not come. He calls to 
 Christ and Christ comes. The whole process is as 
 simple as that. In his outward life a new force begins 
 to work a new design, a new labour working to an end. 
 But especially within is there Another, one with whom 
 there is fellowship, to whom he becomes passionately 
 devoted, whose presence is happiness and whose ab- 
 sence is sorrow, who can sing with full meaning, 
 "How tedious and tasteless the hours, when Jesus no 
 longer I see." Thus, Christ acts upon the soul in 
 experience as God, and manifests all the power of God. 
 
 Such a life proves Christ's claim again because in- 
 tellectual difficulties die in the light of this experience. 
 The mysteries are not all solved. But the difficulties 
 cease to be relevant. Miracles do not trouble him 
 now, because he has a sample of the miracle working 
 power in his own soul. Hume's argument that miracles 
 cannot be true because contrary to experience is ex- 
 actly reversed and he says miracles are true because 
 they accord precisely with my experience. 
 
 He cannot explain ultimately why the morning-glory 
 opens under sunlight and closes under darkness any 
 more than he could before. Nor can he explain life 
 and spirit. He has what is better than explanation 
 of life, life itself. 
 
 In particular, he has moral reinforcement. This Is 
 the final test of any religion. What can it do with a 
 bad man? None of them can compete with Christ in 
 this respect. Look at Peter, and Saul of Tarsus, and 
 Augustine, and John Bunyan, and George Muller, and 
 S. H. Hadley, and thousands of others. A sense of 
 moral power comes with Christian experience. The 
 
CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE 223 
 
 moral heights Hft themselves up to the very heavens, 
 but they no longer seem impossible. The spirit of a 
 strong runner enters a man, the spirit and sense of 
 conquest. And the moral transformation follows. 
 There is not a grace or virtue which Christ cannot 
 and has not produced in human character, not all at 
 the same time or in the same person, but all have 
 been produced. 
 
 In this way Christ becomes final for the man, final 
 for his reason, final for his conscience, final for his 
 will, final for his intellect, and most of all final for his 
 faith, his hope, his love, his aspiration. Nothing higher 
 can be conceived. 
 
 He now understands why the creeds of Christen- 
 dom all have Christ as their centre. He becomes a 
 judge and critic of other religious systems than the 
 Christian, discerning that their unworkableness is due 
 to their lack of Christ. He understands the perennial 
 and remarkable power of the Scriptures over the 
 human heart as Christ's power. Ten thousand other 
 witnesses around him and a long line of them run- 
 ning back to Christ confirm him in his experience and 
 thus create a spiritual community, the parts of which 
 mutually support each other. 
 
 Of course, this experience is convincing to the man 
 who has it and should be to the outside observer. To 
 the latter is presented a new spiritual cosmos, a great 
 system with laws and forces analogous to the physical 
 cosmos. There are not here planets revolving around 
 the Sun, but there are here redeemed souls by the 
 million revolving around a Saviour. There is not a 
 law of physical gravitation acting between bodies 
 directly as the mass and inversely as the square of the 
 distance, but there is a Kingdom of persons whose 
 
224 THE LIFE IN CHRIST 
 
 law of gravitation is love. There is not a physical 
 law of the transformation of energy pervading this 
 spiritual cosmos, but there is the law of the transfigu- 
 ration of character, according to which "we all with 
 unveiled face beholding as in a mirror the glory of 
 the Lord are transfigured into the same image from 
 glory unto glory." 
 
 Christ is the only key to this experience. Mr. 
 James, seeking to discredit a certain kind of reasoning 
 from design, says, if you throw a handful of beans on 
 a table, you can, by manipulating the beans, make any 
 sort of figure your design may wish to produce, and 
 so with arguments from design in nature, he says. 
 But he fails to state that the reverse is true. You 
 can manipulate the beans so as to destroy a figure 
 or design already present. Christ is the figure seen in 
 religious experience, in Christian history, in the creeds 
 of Christendom, in the Bible. You cannot get rid 
 of that figure save by manipulating the beans with a 
 destructive purpose. 
 
 III. In the third place. Christian experience trans- 
 fers the whole problem of Christian evidence to the 
 sphere of practical life. 
 
 In this phase of it Christianity has a point of con- 
 tact with the new philosophy of pragmation. The 
 pragmatic philosophy says the ultimate question for 
 every man is, "What shall I do to be saved?" and 
 that the ultimate task of philosophy is not to solve 
 the insoluble riddles of the Universe, but to save men 
 from pessimism. Now Pessimism, says the pragmatlst, 
 is just one of the two possible modes of reacting upon 
 or interpreting the total experience of life. The opti- 
 mist sees grounds for hope; the pessimist does not. 
 The boy who was asked while fishing how many fish 
 
CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE 225 
 
 he had caught exemplifies the optimist. UnwilHng to 
 confess failure, he replied, "When I catch the one I 
 am after and two more, I'll have three." As an in- 
 terpreter of experience, he was an adept and would 
 endure the most searching tests of the pragmatic phil- 
 osophy; it was an instance of a purpose to "create 
 reality." 
 
 Now the Christian method throughout is the prac- 
 tical method of answering the question, what must I 
 do to be saved? Its answer is in Christian experi- 
 ence. It says to every man, "You can test the reality 
 and power of Christ practically." It says to every 
 man, you have a "seeing spot" in your soul which 
 will recognize Christ if you submit to Him, just as 
 psychology tells us we all have a blind spot and that 
 if focussed right we cannot see a black mark on a 
 white card with our eyes open, and the card in front 
 of us. Christianity does not say, "Renounce reason," 
 but only waive your speculative difficulties in the in- 
 terest of your moral welfare. 
 
 The Gospel is practical in its methods. The man 
 born blind did not have to accept any theory of 
 Christ, God, or the Universe, neither Monism, nor 
 idealism, nor any special form of theism. One thing 
 only was required, said Christ, "Let me anoint your 
 eyes with clay and you go wash in the pool of Siloam." 
 This he did. His faith worked. It grew by exercise. 
 They plied him with questions and he said, "A man 
 named Jesus healed me." He rose from faith to faith 
 under the guidance and inspiration of Christ until he 
 worshipped Him, and this is the experience of all who 
 put their trust in Him. Of this experience is born 
 the invincible conviction: "One thing I know that 
 whereas I was blind now I see." 
 
XXII 
 
 THE GLORY OF JESUS CHRIST* 
 John 1 : 14 — "We beheld his glory." 
 
 SOME years ago a painter who admired the moral 
 beauty of Christ's character, but who refused 
 to acknowledge that He was divine, resolved 
 to paint Christ's portrait from the evangelical records. 
 For weeks he read these simple Gospels and opened 
 his soul to every suggestion of beauty and moral im- 
 pulse, permitting himself to be moved and swayed by 
 all the grandeur and radiance of that matchless life, 
 knowing that only thus could he catch and reproduce 
 on canvas the face he would portray. But in this 
 process of sympathetic study of Jesus, his unbelief 
 slowly passed away. First one doubt and then another 
 was consumed, burned up, so to speak, In the flaming 
 splendour of that marvellous life and ere long the 
 painter bowed before Christ in adoration and worship. 
 Like a man who has gazed into a holy mystery, he 
 came forth among his friends, a look of wonder and 
 of praise upon his face, and exclaimed, "I beheld His 
 glory." 
 
 Men are denying to-day that Christ is divine. They 
 are seeking to undermine that faith which has healed 
 broken hearts, and has destroyed the power of sin, 
 
 * Reprinted from Modern Sermons by World Scholars. 
 Copyrighted, Funk & Wagnalls. 
 
 226 
 
THE GLORY OF JESUS CHRIST 227 
 
 and comforted the dying for two thousand years. 
 It is well that we ask and answer the question, was 
 He what He claimed to be, the divine Son of God 
 and Saviour of the world? My answer must needs 
 be brief and imperfect; for the subject is a vast one 
 and many volumes have been written upon it. 
 
 In evidence then of the divinity of Christ, I invite 
 your attention to the threefold glory of Jesus which 
 we have beheld. 
 
 I. First, then, we behold His glory in the New 
 Testament records. 
 
 If a meteoric stone should fall upon the calm bosom 
 of the sea, the energy of its impact might be measured 
 by the diameter of the circling waves which it would 
 set in motion, when those waves had reached their 
 limit. So the claims of Jesus may be tested by the 
 role He enacted while on earth, and by the effects 
 which He produced. Let us study, then, the circling 
 waves of His power in a series of relationships sus- 
 tained by Him. 
 
 Note first His relation to sin. He was Himself 
 sinless. His inner life was a flawless mirror of stain- 
 less purity reflecting the image of God. He has chal- 
 lenged criticism for two thousand years to discover 
 a flaw in His character. "Which of you convicteth 
 me of sin?" remains as He spoke it, the unanswered 
 challenge of divine holiness. As has been said. He 
 is the sun on which all the telescopes of time have 
 failed to find a spot. 
 
 He was not only sinless. He forgave sin in others. 
 Well did His enemies accuse Him of blasphemy when 
 He pronounced the words to the paralytic, "Son, thy 
 sins are forgiven thee," unless indeed and in truth He 
 was God. For God alone can forgive sins. 
 
228 THE LIFE IN CHRIST 
 
 He transformed sinners. As a sunbeam falls on 
 a mud puddle and draws up a drop of water into the 
 clouds, distils it and purifies it of all foulness and 
 sends it back as a snowflake, even so could He lift up 
 the stained life of a Magdalen and make it white as 
 snow. 
 
 He shed His blood for the remission of sins and 
 He declared that remission of sins should be preached 
 in His name to the end of time. 
 
 But sin is a violation of law and this relation of 
 sin raises another question, that of His relation to 
 law. And so we find Him claiming to be lawgiver. 
 "He that heareth these sayings of mine and doeth 
 them," "Ye have heard it said, but I say unto you," 
 are forms of speech familiar on His lips. 
 
 But law suggests a Kingdom and a sceptre and a 
 throne. So we find that He is King of a new Kingdom 
 among men. He claims that His Kingdom shall en- 
 dure forever and He shall reign in righteousness. 
 
 But a Kingdom set up on earth implies control of 
 Providential events. For how shall such a Kingdom 
 survive through the ages unless the ruler can control 
 the course of history ? Read the 24tli and 25th chap- 
 ters of Matthew and see how calmly He anticipates 
 the course of history, of earthquakes, and wars and 
 famines and pestilences. Yet He says he that en- 
 dureth to the end shall be saved, and that He Him- 
 self shall come again at the consummation. 
 
 Providence, again, is but part of a vaster system 
 of Nature. And we find that He is Lord of Nature. 
 He spoke to the water and it blushed into wine; He 
 spoke to the barren fig-tree and it withered from the 
 roots upward; He spoke to the loaves and fishes and 
 they were multiplied and fed the thousands ; He spoke 
 
THE GLORY OF JESUS CHRIST 229 
 
 to the tempest and it was hushed into silence. Nature 
 was His servant. He was its Master. 
 
 Towards man He asserts the subHmest claims. He 
 is the object of human faith; for Him all human ties 
 must be severed, if need be; for Him death is to be 
 welcomed. He extends His arms and invites the race 
 to come to Him for peace; "Come unto me all ye 
 that labour and are heavy laden and I will give you 
 rest." 
 
 How sublime is this role enacted by the Nazarene ! 
 And to crown it all He claims equality with God. 
 "Before Abraham was, I am," "I and my Father are 
 one." Well has it been said, either Jesus was God, 
 or a bad man. For He claimed to be God. 
 
 And how simple the picture in the Gospels, how con- 
 sistent; how transparent and clear the story! His 
 words about God are like the spontaneous warblings 
 of some strange and wonderful bird. His deeds of 
 power. His miracles of grace, are as sparks emitted 
 by some great fire. Yet how unaffected He is in it all. 
 There is never any attempt at dramatic effect. In the 
 moments of His greatest majesty He is as quiet and 
 as unassuming as the shining of a soft, beaming star. 
 Homer's gods are represented as shaking the heavens 
 by their least act. The poet produces his effects by 
 physical disturbances when his gods stir. Jove gives 
 an affirmative answer to a petitioner and this is 
 Homer's description of it: 
 
 "He spoke and awful bends his sable brows. 
 Shakes his ambrosial curls and gives the nod. 
 The stamp of fate and sanction of a god 
 High heaven with trembling the dread signal took 
 And all Olympus to the centre shook." 
 
230 THE LIFE IN CHRIST 
 
 Contrast this with the quiet majesty and moral 
 grandeur of Jesus stilHng the tempest as He rises 
 from His slumber and says to the rolling billows and 
 raging winds, "Peace, be still." Sometimes He unites 
 in a single act the perfectly human and the perfectly 
 divine in His nature. Humility nestles up by the side 
 of majesty. Grandeur is adorned by lowliness and 
 extremes meet in perfect harmony. He is worn out 
 with toil and asleep on the boat, like any other; and 
 in an instant stills a tempest. He stands weeping 
 at the grave of Lazarus, like any other broken-hearted 
 friend, and at once hurls the voice of command into 
 the tomb and raises the dead to life. He allows Him- 
 self to be led away captive by His foes, but restores 
 the severed ear of the High Priest's servant, and says 
 to the impetuous disciple, "Knowest thou not that I 
 could call to my side twelve legions of angels?" He 
 allows Himself to be nailed to the cross and to be 
 laid away in the tomb, and then in undaunted might 
 quietly opens His eyes and lays aside the grave clothes, 
 rises from the dead and ascends to the Father. 
 
 Surely we have beheld His glory in these pages, 
 and any man will repeat the painter's experience who 
 allows Christ's image as there portrayed, to have room 
 in his mind and heart. I have read the tragedies of 
 Shakespeare, and awe and horror have fallen upon 
 my spirit at their close ; I have gazed upon the Sistine 
 Madonna, that masterpiece of the artistic genius of 
 Raphael, and a sense of beauty has mastered me; I 
 have been swung on shipboard by the mighty rhythmic 
 force of the ocean, and a sense of its power has filled 
 me ; I have gazed on a clear night at the dazzling splen- 
 dour of the Milky Way, and adoration and humility 
 have combined to sway my soul with emotion; I have 
 
THE GLORY OF JESUS CHRIST 231 
 
 stood on the Corner Grat and, surrounded by cloud- 
 piercing sentinels of snow-clad Alpine peaks keeping 
 guard like tall archangels over diminutive man below, 
 and wonder and awe have oppressed me. But the 
 image of Jesus Christ as it towers in solitary grandeur 
 before me in the New Testament surpasses them all. 
 He inspires me with greater awe than Shakespeare, 
 and greater majesty than ocean or Alps. He is more 
 splendid than the Milky Way, and not afar from me 
 as it is, but near me. And if a human writer in- 
 vented his picture as recorded in Matthew, then a 
 Calilean peasant wears the literary crown of the ages, 
 and the genius of Raphael and Michelangelo pale 
 into insignificance by the side of His. Nay, as Rous- 
 seau says, it would take a Jesus to forge a Jesus. 
 We beheld His glory! We beheld His glory! 
 
 II. We beheld His glory in History. The marvel 
 of the ages is the rock of ages. The supremacy of 
 Christ as compared with other teachers in all our 
 civilization of the West is as the supremacy of the 
 giant oak in the midst of a forest of saplings, or as 
 the supremacy of the sun as compared with the planets 
 in our solar system. 
 
 Dr. Fairbairn says men have attempted in recent 
 years to get rid of Christ in two ways. One is by 
 critical analysis. They have taken the knife of criti- 
 cism and with it have cut and slashed at the Gospel 
 records until one of them has said that there are but 
 six or seven authentic sayings of Jesus in the entire 
 New Testament. The other way is by logical analysis. 
 They have tried to show that the decisions of the 
 early Christian councils declaring Jesus to be God are 
 unreasonable and absurd. But when they have com- 
 pleted tbeir destructive work, and done their worst, 
 
232 THE LIFE E^ CHRIST 
 
 there stands Christ towering above the troubled sea 
 of human speculation and doubt like a great and lofty 
 rock at whose solid base the angry waves foam out 
 their rage and dash themselves in vain. There stands 
 Jesus in the firmament of human hope, like a star of 
 the first magnitude, above the multitudes of hungering 
 and sorrowing and sinning humanity, growing larger 
 and brighter and more splendid with each generation, 
 until to-day all over the earth the nations are in com- 
 motion as they gaze upward and point with the trem- 
 bling finger of yearning and hope to Him as the lode- 
 star of their lives. 
 
 Look for a moment at His achievements in history. 
 See Him as He moves westward, in the person of 
 the Apostle to the Gentiles. He kindles a flame of 
 faith in the islands of the Mediterranean. He plants 
 His banner at Antioch. He sweeps through Lystria 
 and Derbe, and Asia Minor begins to prostrate herself 
 before Him. He plants His foot in Ephesus and Diana 
 begins to totter from her throne. Restless He crosses 
 the Hellespont and at Philippi, amid the quakings of 
 the earth, He wins trophies. In Athens, amid classic 
 surroundings of Acropolis and Parthenon and chiselled 
 beauties of Phidias and the glories of Praxiteles, His 
 voice is heard calling men to repentance. At length 
 in Rome itself He grapples with the world power. His 
 crown flashes in moral beauty by the side of the 
 Caesars, His throne rises, mystic, silent and invisible, 
 but mighty in its movements as the silent stars in the 
 bending heavens. When the empire is broken up and 
 barbarians come in hosts sweeping like a conflagration 
 over that ancient empire, He lays His hand on their 
 untamed spirits. Clovis is converted. The Goths are 
 evangelized. The Franks and Gauls and Scandina- 
 
THE GLORY OF JESUS CHRIST 233 
 
 vians come bending to Him ; England owns His sway ; 
 America, through Cavalier and Puritan and Pilgrim, 
 is founded, and when the feet of these men touch our 
 shores the "sounding isles of the dim woods rang with 
 the anthems of the free," and in praise of the 
 Nazarene. 
 
 A humble prophet of Nazareth has done all this. 
 He has done it by the use of a single principle, indeed 
 by means of one despised virtue, self-denial. The 
 cross is the Keystone in the arch of His power. It 
 is a true saying that as chemistry is organized around 
 the principle of affinity; as political economy is based 
 on the single idea of value; as astronomy owes its 
 origin and progress to the one law of gravitation, 
 so Christ founded His religion on the one idea em- 
 bodied in the cross, dying to live. 
 
 See, then, how He dominates the world, not indeed 
 perfectly yet, but with increasing power. Look at the 
 great creeds of Christendom, the Lutheran, the Cal- 
 vinistic, the Westminster, the Philadelphia, and New 
 Hampshire Confessions of Faith. He is the centre 
 of them all. If you should go through the forest with 
 an axe and cut a ring around the great trees, all of 
 them would die. To take Christ's name from these 
 great creeds would be to do the same for them. They 
 would wither, their leaves lose their life and colour, 
 their sap cease to flow. They would perish. 
 
 The church is His monument. She has had a long 
 and checkered career, sometimes persecuted and driven 
 into the wilderness ; sometimes unworthy of her high 
 calling, but even to-day she is the fairest among ten 
 thousand institutions, and the chief glory of this 
 earth. 
 
 The Lord's Supper, beautiful, impressive memorial 
 
234 THE LIFE IN CHRIST 
 
 of His death, so simple that any child can understand 
 it, yet so profound in its suggestions of divine love 
 that no philosopher has ever fathomed its mystery to 
 its depths — monument of quenchless love and gentle 
 solicitude on His part, and expressive of tender Love 
 on the part of the disciples, it stretches back through 
 eighteen centuries to Calvary, filled with the aroma of 
 His presence at every step of the way and shining 
 to the eye of faith through the ages, like a chain of 
 roses bedewed with tears of saints, and woven by the 
 hands of angels. 
 
 He dominates the greatest art of the world. Go 
 yonder to the Art galleries of Europe. Gaze upon 
 those yards upon yards and furlongs upon furlongs, 
 and miles upon miles of flaming canvas, the very crown 
 and blossom of human genius, and what do you see? 
 His figure. His mother's figure, His brethren's figures. 
 His disciples. His enemies. They portray Him as a 
 babe in Bethlehem, with the light bursting from His 
 infant form ; as a boy in the temple ; as teacher, as 
 cleanser of temple ; as healer ; being raised on the 
 cross ; being crucified ; descending ; ascending to glory ; 
 judging the world. As I stand there gazing, I interro- 
 gate those great Masters, and from their graves I seem 
 to hear the answer from Murillo and Rubens and 
 Raphael and the rest, "It was He," they say, "who 
 touched my brush with celestial fire ; His hands 
 mingled the colours, and His spirit inspired mine to 
 its great achievements." 
 
 So, too, as I listen to the great Masters of music, 
 to Handel and Haydn and Beethoven, as the billows 
 of harmony roll in upon me and catch me up and 
 sweep me on, as the sublime strains of the "Messiah" 
 take my spirit captive and chain me to the flaming 
 
THE GLORY OF JESUS CHRIST 235 
 
 chariot of triumphant melody, I seem to hear the 
 Master of composition say: "It was His breath 
 through my soul which first fanned the flame of har- 
 mony ; His hands fiirst smote the chords of my being 
 until they thrilled with the very echoes of heaven." 
 
 What shall I say more? He is in our modern life 
 everywhere; in our political economy seeking justice 
 in all industrial conditions ; in our politics, seeking 
 to purge it of greed and graft; in our social life; in 
 our literature, shedding a moral radiance over it; in 
 modern missions. He is not yet conqueror, but He 
 presides over the struggle. 
 
 "Careless seems the great avenger, 
 History's pages but record 
 One death grapple in the darkness 
 'Twixt false systems and the Word. 
 
 "Truth forever on the scafifold, 
 Wrong forever on the throne, 
 But that scaffold sways the future, 
 And behind the dim unknown 
 Standeth Christ within the shadow 
 Keeping watch above His own." 
 
 in. In the third place we have beheld His glory 
 in the realm of Christian Experience. 
 
 His glory shines on the pages of the New Testa- 
 ment. It rises to a new brilliancy as He marches 
 triumphantly through history. But for the individual 
 believer that glory attains to its noon-day splendour 
 in the experience of his own heart. 
 
 Christianity adopts the scientific method of demon- 
 stration, viz. : the method of experiment. Christian 
 
236 THE LIFE IN CHRIST 
 
 experience means Christian experiment. Make a trial 
 of Christ, and He will prove to you that He is real, 
 a living Christ doing a divine w^ork in the soul. 
 
 We have all seen the triumph of Christ in debased 
 lives, men and women plucked as brands from the 
 burning. They tell us, you know, that a diamond and 
 a piece of charcoal are essentially the same thing, or 
 at least that diamonds were made of charcoal, that in 
 her own mysterious workshop. Nature accomplishes 
 this wonder. That is interesting, but it would be far 
 more interesting if my scientific friend could tell me 
 how / can transform charcoals into diamonds. Now 
 this is the glory of Christ. He does just that. Jerry 
 McAuley was a charcoal and Christ changed him into 
 a diamond. S. H. Hadley, the bum, the drunkard and 
 reprobate, was a black piece of charcoal, and so was 
 George Muller of England, who began life as a burglar. 
 Christ touched their lives and made them spiritual 
 jewels fit to adorn His own crown of glory. 
 
 Now Christ predicted that He would do just that. 
 He said that men would believe on Him ; that prayer 
 in His name would open the gates of Paradise; that 
 a cup of water given in His name would have eternal 
 reward. What a magic name it is to-day in its power 
 to renew human lives! According to the old story, 
 George Washington, while a boy, went into his father's 
 garden one morning in Spring and found to his wonder 
 and delight that his name was growing in a garden 
 bed, spelled out by the plants. His father, of course, 
 had planned the surprise for George. But suppose 
 the father had foretold that hundreds of years later 
 his name, Washington, would be spelled out by grow- 
 ing plants in other garden beds, and suppose the 
 prophecy had come true, then we would conclude that 
 
THE GLORY OF JESUS CHRIST 237 
 
 he was in league with the Cosmos, that he had super- 
 natural power. Now Jesus has done a more wondrous 
 thing. He predicted that His name would be written 
 in human hearts to the end of time, and that that name 
 in the garden of the soul would keep it clean from 
 weeds and briars, and to-day tens of thousands of men 
 and women are witnesses to His power. 
 
 Experiment, I say, not in the vainly curious fashion, 
 but in the high aim of moral purpose, is the true test 
 of Christ. Try Him thus, and He will give the proof 
 of His power. The school children will recall the 
 way the books prove that we have a blind spot. Hold 
 a white piece of cardboard, with black marks on it, 
 before the eyes and move it up and down and back 
 and forth until it reaches a given point and the black 
 marks will vanish. Try this and prove it. Now, 
 Christianity says turn the soul towards Christ in all 
 sincerity and suddenly it will appear that you have 
 not a blind but a seeing spot. You will behold His 
 glory. A young woman scientist, who was a sceptic, 
 denied Christ's resurrection. The pastor in the neigh- 
 bourhood told her to give up speculation and try ex- 
 periment, offer herself to Christ. She returned soon 
 with radiant face, exclaiming, "I cannot yet prove by 
 argument that Christ arose from the dead, but I know 
 He is alive, for He has come to me and manifested 
 Himself to me." She beheld His glory in the holy 
 place of experience. 
 
 Here then is the ground of our confidence. First 
 we believe, because, as Professor James says, we will 
 to believe, or because the Bible tells us to believe, or 
 because some friend witnesses to us of Christ's power. 
 But at length we believe because of what He does in 
 us and for us. That is the reason why destructive 
 
238 THE LIFE IN CHRIST 
 
 criticism cannot fundamentally shake our confidence 
 in the Bible. In it we find reflected our own experi- 
 ence. If I look into a mirror which changes or dis- 
 torts my face, I know it is an untrue mirror; but if it 
 gives me back my image truly, I know the mirror is 
 true. Such a mirror is the Bible. It reflects truly 
 my spiritual image. 
 
 Blind Bartimaeus of Jericho was healed by Jesus, 
 and Dr. Dale has suggested that conceivably his faith 
 at first was based on the healing of the man born 
 blind in Jerusalem, of which he had heard. Imagine 
 a doubter seeking to destroy his faith by calling in 
 question the story of the man in Jerusalem who was 
 healed. "The story looks suspicious," says the sceptic. 
 "Why did Jesus put clay on the man's eyes and send 
 him off to wash in a pool? There must have been 
 fraud somewhere." What answer would Bartimaeus 
 have given to such a doubter ? He would have pointed 
 to his own eyes. He would have declared, as the other 
 declared, "Whereas I was blind, now I see." I see 
 the fair forms of nature and they all tell me I am no 
 longer blind, the daisies that blossom at my feet — 
 they tell as I gaze at their beauty that I am no longer 
 blind; the white blossoms on the trees, the bloom on 
 the grapes, and the hues of the pomegranate ; the blue 
 haze on yonder mountain, the fiery splendour of yon- 
 der evening cloud, and at night those burning stars 
 above — these all are my witnesses — the faces of my 
 friends which I now see, of my brothers and sisters, 
 and the dear face of my mother — these all are my 
 witnesses — all this beautiful wondrous earth of God's, 
 fashioned by His fingers, they proclaim my testimony. 
 Yes, yes, I believe, not because of what Jesus did to 
 some one else, but because of what He has done to 
 
THE GLORY OF JESUS CHRIST 239 
 
 me, that He is the divine Son of God. I have beheld 
 His glory with the eyes to which He unlocked the 
 gates of light, and bade me enter. 
 
 This, then, is the witness of experience and every 
 believer knows what it is in some measure. I went 
 to Him in my bondage and sin and He broke off the 
 shackles and set me free; I went to Him in doubt 
 and perplexity and the light of day fell on my darkened 
 path ; in the lonely night of sorrow when friends and 
 helpers failed me, He came into my life and bound 
 up my broken heart. In doubt and despair and dread 
 of the future, He gives me life and hope. We have 
 seen His glory, then, on the pages of the New Testa- 
 ment record. It has flashed before us through eighteen 
 centuries of history, as the rider on the white horse 
 went forth conquering and to conquer. That glory 
 has also shone within us, and we see it in the lives 
 of others. We have seen it as it breaks forth in the 
 faces of the dying, who in His name greet death with 
 a triumphant shout, and we seem to catch it in the 
 notes of the redeemed host above who sing His praises 
 and who proclaim that they owe their victory to Him, 
 and shall spend eternity in telling it. 
 
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