BX 5937 .B75 A3 1905
Brent, Charles Henry, 1862
1929.
Adventure for God
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AD\rENTURE FOR GOD
THE BISHOP PADDOCK LECTURES
1904
ADVENTURE FOR GOD
BY
The Rt. Rev. CHARLES H. BRENT
Bishop of the Philippine Islands
NEVER ERST KNEW I OF SO HIGH ADVENTURES
DONE, AND SO MARVELLOUS AND STRANGE
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
91 AND 93 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK
LONDON AND BOMBAY
1907
COPYRIGHT, 1905, BY LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
FIRST EDITION, DECEMBER, 1905
REPRINTED, JANUARY, 1907
D. B. UPDIKE, THE MERRYMOUNT PRESS, BOSTON
TO
MY FRIENDS
MARY BRYANT BRANDEGEE
AND
GEORGE C. AND ADA E. M. THOMAS
WHOSE SYMPATHETIC AND GENEROUS AID
HELPED ME IN
AN ADVENTURE FOR GOD
PREFACE
WHEN I accepted the invitation to deliver the
Paddock lectures I had in mind a subject some-
what different from the one which I finally chose — or,
to speak more accurately, which chose me. My read-
ing and thinking for nearly three years had been oc-
cupied with a consideration of the evolution and char-
acter of national life. Ordinarily a man can speak with
greatest force and sanity on a topic in which he has
been interested, not as a lecture-theme, but as a study
congenial with his tastes and pursued for personal edi-
fication. Accordingly I plunged with enthusiasm into
the preparation of six lectures, to be entitled The In-
carnation and National Life.
Those who were wiser than I in the matter (though
I did not think so at the moment) advised me to se-
lect a less academic line. The missionary opportunity
was suggested as a good subject. But I stubbornly
continued along my original course until within a few
days of the time set for the delivery of the first lec-
ture. The manuscript of the whole series was ready
for final revision, and it seemed as though no alter-
native were left me but to use it, when one of those
viii PREFACE
irresistible but kindly waves of influence which I sup-
pose every one has at one time or another experienced,
swept in and conquered me.
It was irresistible in that I was convinced that the
subject as I had developed it would not fulfil the pur-
pose of the trust committed to me; had I continued
to kick against the pricks the words of the lectures
would have fallen from my lips as dry as chips from a
dead tree. It was kindly in that I was not left naked.
A vision of the course as actually delivered rose be-
fore me with sufficient clearness and inspiration to
give me courage to appeal simply and directly to the
splendid young manhood before me to make large
ventures for God.
I need hardly say that in this precipitate change I
was not plunging into a sphere of thought new to me.
The change was one of form rather than of substance,
for I was able to use a good deal of the material ga-
thered under my earlier inspiration. I abandoned, how-
ever, the academic for the practical, and in doing so
forfeited that direct preparation by means of which a
speaker strives to put his ideas into the best shape for
effective delivery, and gains composure for public ut-
PREFACE ix
terance — unless he is too intense and lays too great
stress on form, in which event he suffers the penalty
of excess, falling into confusion or being distracted by
anxiety.
Indirect preparation for a sermon gives the mate-
rial and balance ; direct preparation is chiefly the pla-
cing of the ci*ude tool on the emery-wheel for its final
polish. Neither may be neglected without serious loss,
but the latter without the former yields an untem-
pered instrument, or, to change the simile, clouds with-
out water. Those who heard these lectures delivered
will readily recall how crude and rough-hewn they
were in form. They were given without manuscript;
but a retentive memory and such notes as I had, have
enabled me to reproduce in the written page the best,
if not all, of that which was originally said, together
with considerable amplification.
I cannot refrain from expressing the gratitude with
which I recall the full attendance and generous hear-
ing accorded me throughout the course. The power
of a public address is in part the contribution of those
who hear it. A sensitive speaker en rapport with his
audience is always lifted above his own level. By in-
X PREFACE
fluences more easily felt than described he discerns
and appropriates the aspirations of his hearers, giv-
ing them back their own, clad in new garments, — a
process which the students of the General Theological
Seminary made it easy for me to employ throughout
the course of my lectures on Adventure Jhr God.
Manila, P. I.
September 5, 1905
CONTENTS
I. THE VISION
II. THE APPEAL
III. THE RESPONSE
IV. THE QUEST
V. THE EQUIPMENT
VI. THE GOAL
PAGE
1
31
57
83
115
139
LECTURE I
THE VISION
And anon as he nms asleep, him bejel a vision, that there came
to him two birds, the ofie as ivhite as a swan, and the other
was marvellous black, but it was not so gj'eat as the other, but
i?i the likeness of a raven. Then the white bird came to him,
and said, An thou wouldstgive me meat and serve me, I should
give thee all the riches of the ivorld, and I shall make thee as
fair and as white as I am. So the white bird depaj-ted, and then
came the black bird to him, and said. An thou wilt serve me
to-morrow, and have me in no despite, though I be black, for
wit thou well that more availeth my blackness, than the other s
whiteness. . .for ye be Jesu Christ's knights, therefore ye
ought to be defenders of holy Church. And by the black bird
might ye uiiderstaiid the holy Church, which saith I am black,
but he is fair. ^
I
1 WOULD direct my appeal in these lectures to the
imagination rather than to the intellect, by which
I mean that my ambition is to reach your logical fa-
culty, as well as all that goes to make up your soul or
self, by way of the imagination. Life is a romance from
first to last if you will allow it to be. The mere utili-
tarian, with all his practical ability and scom of the
intangible, is as apt to leave behind him a trail of de-
solation as to render beneficent service to his fellows.
The damage done, on the other hand, by the imprac-
1 Quotations introducing chapters are taken from Le Morte d' Ar-
thur.
2 ADVENTURE FOR GOD
tical idealist is just as grievous, though of a different
order. He does so little that the waste which marks his
path is covered thick with unplucked weeds that choke
such grain as he may have sowed. But the child of
Christian romance whets his power to do with his power
to see. He desires above all else to live an effective life,
that is to say, to leave a permanent mark for good on
society.
^ Efficiency does not consist either in cold knowledge
or bald skill. At its helm stands motive; aloft, trim-
ming its sails, are sympathy, sentiment and purpose.
The poetic side of our nature — every one has it more
or less — is the main link that binds humanity to the
unseen universe and Him who presides over things visi-
ble and invisible. By means of it our lower self mounts
as on a ladder into the region of the stars, where alone
we can learn life in its true proportions and the large
value of the common deeds of the common day.
Perhaps the earliest requisite of an effective life is a
vision. The record of human experience compels the
assertion. Often enough a richly endowed character will
loaf halfway down life's journey doing worse than no-
thing, or else will diligently use his gifts to others"*
hurt. Suddenly an unseen hand touches his eyes and he
awakes to responsibility. He has had a vision. Dreams
give place to action, weeds to flowei*s.
It was concurrently with Abraham's vision and the
THE VISION 3
outcome of it that, at the age of seventy-five, he be-
gan that hfe of marvellous adventure that left him at
its close a towering character imperishably enthroned
among the world's heroes. Saul of Tarsus was an angel
of destruction before he was enlightened by the hea-
venly vision, which compelled him to turn about in his
tracks and become the foremost leader in Christian
theology and ethics for all time. Even Jesus had to have
His vision before He could enter upon His public min-
istry. In its power thirty years of obscurity burst into
three years of splendour so great as to dazzle the sun's
rays. Confucius, Zoroaster, Gautama, each had a cog-
nate experience.
But the need of a heavenly vision belongs not solely
to religious characters, but to manhood as such. How-
ever we may undertake to explain it, or even if we offer
no interpretation whatever, it stands as a necessary ele-
ment in the effective life, sometimes taking the form of
moral insight, as in the case of a man like John Stuart
Mill; sometimes breaking into a tide of sympathetic
service, as when Francis of Assisi lived and loved ; or
again rising into fervent patriotism in a Cavour and a
Lincoln, into poetry, as in a Dante and a Shakespeare.
When Maeterlinck says, "Let us rejoice. . . in re-
gions higher than the little truths that our eyes can
seize," he is inviting men to make use of their latent
or undeveloped capacity to see visions. It is not neces-
4 ADVENTURE FOR GOD
sary to say that I am not using the word vision in any
narrow sense, or restricting it to the ecstatic revela-
tions which characterize mysticism. I am thinking of
every form of idealism which is capable of fastening
upon and controlling life for its enduring welfare. I
would include in the same high company the vision of
the ideal state which drives its happy victim to insti-
tute a campaign against the oppression of the poor or
corruption in politics, and the vision of Christ vouch-
safed a S. Anthony of Padua; the vision of duty which
nerves an unselfish arm to do unrecognized deeds of
kindness in the confined spaces of a cramped existence,
and the vision of a S. Paul who beats the bounds of
the earth in his adventure for God. The modern task
is not to draw extraordinary phenomena down to the
level of the ordinary, but to lift up the ordinary into
the high sphere of the extraordinary.
The story ^ of the young man who entered upon his
career wedded to his conception of what an architect's
life should be is a recognition of the existence to-day
of visions among men; and of their power, too. He lost
his hold and descended into the depths, but the vision
of his youth was truer to him than he to it. At the
moment of his shame it plucked him out of the abyss
and reinstated him in his manhood.
Is it a small thing that a man of our day who has
1 Tlte Common Lot, by Robert Herrick.
THE VISION 5
pledged his powers to purity in the realm of art should
decline — after a struggle as when Jesus was tempted
— an offer to make him wealthy if he would lend his
gifts for a while to that which in his judgement was
unworthy of art ? His vision saved him from sordidness
and made his temptation an opportunity for reconse-
cration to his ideal.
Or again do we not feel that it is divinely imparted
perception and courage that enable a man to set his
face against the undisciplined strenuousness and the
ignoble lust for accumulation which are characteristic
of modern American life ? By a deliberate act he "stops
making money," and, considering the joyous claims of
family life to be paramount, he plans his occupation
so as to give a lion's share of his time to companion-
ship with his wife and children.
Happily it is not difficult to pick out many such
richly illumined pages as these, which are given as
samples from the volume of contemporary experience.
They contribute colour and form to society, and make
us exclaim with Browning's Pippa —
God's in His heaven —
All's right with the world!
Now if men of w ork-a-day type cannot hope to do
their best without a vision, how deeply true it must be
with those who have embraced the greatest of pro-
6 ADVENTURE FOR GOD
fessions, — the ministry! I do not hesitate to call the
ministry a profession. A profession is a means of self-
expression, and the truly aspiring and ambitious seek
a profession to this end. It is not sought merely from
a sense of fitness, from taste, or from obligation, but
from a distinct feeling of vocation. Thus, and only
thus, does a profession become an instiTiment of force.
The ministry is not only the highest profession, but
it is the type and ensample to be exhibited before our
fellows as the ideal to which all other modes of self-
expression must be made to conform. To have this
constantly in view will be in itself a new incentive to
bring it to its purest perfection and highest possibili-
ties. It is the ministry, not in the sense of being the
sole ministry, but the representative one. There is
nothing narrow or circumscribed in the life of a min-
ister of God. Indeed, if it is viewed in its true char-
acter, it is impossible to conceive of a more tremendous
or a more vitalizing vocation.
We clergy — let us face the fact — are called upon
to exhibit in our profession the highest proficiency in
practical matters. It may seem at first sight to be a
mistake to insist that the secret of achieving success
in this respect lies in the purity of our vision. But let
us look into the subject. A profession, least of all that
for which you are preparing, can never be an end in
itself; unless it is considered in relation to some great
THE VISION 7
purpose, it will fail to be an opening for self-expres-
sion. It may be a means of making money, of acquir-
ing fame, of self-gratification ; but to be a divine organ,
to sound forth the deep notes of self-fulfilment, it must
be tuned to the unseen and the infinite by the con-
stant pressure of profound motive. Obviously it is in-
sufficient that a man's main motive should be his pro-
fession. To accept as an end what God intended to
be a means is to prepare life for arrested development.
For a while the joy of working may prove a sufficient
impulse to stir some of the finer qualities of the soul ;
but with the advance of life, and after contact with
the darker problems of our human environment, it
will lapse into a condition analagous to a shell de-
spoiled of its kernel. Unless a profession — no matter
whether it be that which is distinctively religious, or
that which we ordinarily call secular — is filled to the
brim with a vision, it has neither dignity, permanence
nor effectiveness.
What has been neatly termed "respectable ineffi-\
ciency" among the clergy is more often due to poverty
of inner experience than lack of technical training. I
can conceive of no more ^\Tetched fate than for a young
man to find himself in the ministry, solemnly com-
missioned to give a vision to others without ever hav-
ing had one himself; charged with the duty of spirit-
ualizing the commonplace activities of his fellows
8 ADVENTURE FOR GOD
without ever having spiritualized his own. He may be
an intellectual genius, a theologian and an admin-
istrator, but he is bound to be a failure. The chief
function of the ministry is to reveal to men a vision
— this at least on the prophetic side. We must unveil
Christ and Christ's purposes. They alone can give a
vision who have a vision ; Elisha made the young man
see the horses and chariots of fire because he himself
saw them. And those who have this task to do — they
who wdth the consciousness of vocation and richness
of inner experience, moral and spiritual, embrace the
ministry — have as their sure fate, whatever woes and
trials may assemble to check them, the gladdest and
freest, the most influential and beneficent life that the
world knows.
It is all very well, it may be argued, to insist on the
need of a vision, but can one be summoned at will ?
In answer I would say that we must expect it as a
normal part of life, as the bird expects its feathers,
as the chrysalis its wings. " Inspirableness, or the fa-
culty of inspiration, is the supreme faculty of man.''^
None have this gift in a higher degree than the young;
and among the young, none in greater measure than
they who stand on the threshold or within the gates
of the highest profession. The young men see visions
— have insight as the heritage of their youth; the
1 BushneU.
THE VISION 9
old men dream dreams — have the power to extract
philosophy from the experience of their own and
other history.
II
Apostolic effectiveness is the symbol of ministerial
effectiveness, and it is not difficult to trace it to its
source. The view that the Apostles had of God's pur-
poses so thrilled and conquered them that accom-
plishment became more nearly commensurate with
purpose, efficiency with the ideal, than ever before. The
breadth and depth of adventure for God were un-
folded before their eyes. In the activities of human
affairs a man must be deep and thorough before he is
broad; in motive and inner vision breadth precedes
depth. Human consciousness should always transcend
the immediate task in hand, for the actual processes
of energy need to be related not only to the activi-
ties of others, but to an ideal, undone, whole. So it
was that God laid before the disciples in the infancy
of their Christian career the entire reach of Apostolic
influence. Go ye therefore^ and make disciples of all the
nations} Ye shall he my witnesses both in Jerusalem,
and in all Judaea and Samaria, and unto the uttermost
part of the earth}
This vision took a twofold form, coming as a com
1 ;Sf. Matt, xxviii, 19. 2 j^cts i, 8.
10 ADVENTURE FOR GOD
mission and as a promise. The injunction was the
Lord's last, or at any rate His last important, utter-
ance to man, according to the evangelical biography.
Now His commands are always only the imperative
form of human aspiration, and when He gives them
it is as much to fire His followers with a sense of
privilege and opportunity as to impose upon them a
duty. Butler, in one of those inspired passages which
are fomid once and again in his writings, pictures "a
kingdom or society of men perfectly virtuous for a
succession of many ages;" in which "public determi-
nations would really be the result of the united wis-
dom of the community; and they would faithfully be
executed by the united strength of it.^^i In other words
he makes law or commandment merely a formal ex-
pression of public desire. All Christ's commandments
are just that. They are the intuitive formulation of the
inner life of the ideal man addressed to a manhood
destined to become ideal. As the true preacher, he wins
men by revealing to them the law of their own lives.
He knows humanity as we do not know it, and to a
character that is attuned to His law, even though it
be of a low grade of intelligence. His last dictum is
as sweet to the soul as honey to the lips. Of course
there are moments when the lower elements in our
composition writhe under the exactions which the
1 Butler's Analogy, I, iii, 29.
THE VISION 11
higher nature thus inspired lays upon it; but that is
of no importance, for growing pains are necessary to
growth.
Hard on the heels of the command comes a pro-
phecy, Ye shall be my witnesses . . . unto the uttermost
part of the earth. A prophecy is a promise, so by an-
ticipation the disciples learn that the ideal is to be
realized and that they are not merely to be adven-
turers, but efficient adventurers.
Pursued to its ultimate principle the missionary com-
mission and prophecy may be discerned to be an as-
surance that the Christian Gospel is self-propagating.
Plant the truth and it is bound to spread, because of
the inherent forces that control it. In this it but fol-
lows the course of nature wherein lies as one of its
most easily distinguishable features the law of self-
propagation. If self-preservation is the first, expan-
sion is the second law of existence throughout the uni-
verse.
There is no instance of an Apostle being driven
abroad under the compulsion of a bald command.
Each one went as a lover to his betrothed on his ap-
pointed errand. It was all instinctive and natural.
They were equally controlled by the common vision,
but they had severally personal visions which drew
them whither they were needed. In the first days of
Christianity there is an absence of the calculating
12 ADVENTURE FOR GOD
spirit. Most of the Apostles died outside of Palestine,
though human logic would have forbidden them to
leave the country until it had been Christianized. The
calculating instinct is death to faith, and had the
Apostles allowed it to control their motives and ac-
tions they would have said: "The need in Jerusalem
is so profound, our responsibilities to people of our
own blood so obvious, that we must live up to the
principle that charity begins at home. After we have
won the people of Jerusalem, of Judea and of the
Holy Land in general, then it will be time enough to
go abroad; but our problems, political, moral and re-
ligious, are so unsolved here in this one spot that it
is manifestly absurd to bend our shoulders to a new
load.'"* For aught we know discussions bringing out
this thought may have taken place, but if so they
made such a faint impression that there is no record
of them.
Antioch, a young missionary Church, did not hesi-
tate to contribute S. Paul, whose aid it must have
sadly needed, so that he might make his bold venture
among the nations. Stephen, the proto-martyr, lost
his life because he insisted on being missionary in the
broadest sense.
When we read the history as it has come to us of
the earliest beginnings of the Church, it is a little dif-
ficult to understand how it was, with all the concise
THE VISION 13
instruction which Christians had received from Christ's
own lips, that they should have been even as slow as
they were in launching out into the deep. But we
must remember, in the first place, that we have in
our hands, so to speak, an expurgated and condensed
Gospel. What was of prime value had to be separated
from that which was of lesser importance. This end
was reached by a process of spiritual selection, the
disciples learning perspective only by experience. In
one sense the story of Jesus Christ is the least com-
plete history in literature; in another, and in the best
sense, it is so perfect that had we a less abridged and
a more prolix record we would be poorer instead of
richer. With that incomparable delicacy of touch which
is found everywhere in Christ's dealing with men, and
with that reverence for the human character which
made Him far more hesitant in the imposition of com-
mandments than any other leader of men, He has
given us the opportunity of faith, — and what is com-
parable with it! Having spoken words that were in
tune with human appetites and human aspirations.
He was content to bide His time and to wait for the
flowering season of the seed that He had sown. His-
tory justifies both principle and method. The Church
has never suffered through her zeal for expansion, and
she never responds to mere mandatory decrees or false
stimulation. Experience soon showed that Christian
14 ADVENTURE FOR GOD
vitality is best preserved and developed by imparting
it through an ever widening series of concentric cir-
cles, — Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, the world.
At first it would have been disastrous to have al-
lowed any intense local or national expression of or-
ganic Christianity. Breadth had to come before depth.
The controlling spirit had to be that which made
for universal brotherhood and transcended the artifi-
cial fences of custom and tradition, race and colour.
S. Paul's fight with Judaistic Christianity was not
against the right of the chosen people to have a form
of Christianity coloured by their past and moulded
along the lines of their temperamental peculiarities.
It was their claim to force their interpretation upon
the world and to admit the Gentiles into the Church
only through a Jewish gate, that called forth his de-
claration of the Catholicity of Christianity in letter
after letter. In the ideal which the Roman Empire
had set for itself lay the hope of Christianity. Its prin-
ciple was imperial rather than national : it stood for
political brotherhood, as the Church stood for ab-
solute brotherhood. By the evangelization of Rome
Christianity was saved from becoming a conglomera-
tion of societies with diflfering, if not antagonistic,
Scriptures and polity. Catholic Christianity must pre-
cede National Christianity, and in the early centuries
Rome was a true guardian of the national churches,
THE VISION 15
guiding and restraining them during the period of
their minority.
Had England been left to the mercy of the local
British Church and not caught in the grand sweep of
that which Roman Christianity stood for, it would
have fared ill with her. S. Augustine's dealings with
the Welsh bishops may not have been conducted with
gentleness, but the times were not ripe for indepen-
dence in custom, which the sturdy Britons demanded,
and, if they could have but realized it, they needed
to be under the tutelage of Rome for a season. In order
that the local conception might ultimately live and
thrive, it was essential that for the moment the im-
perial conception should swamp the local.
For a similar reason it is good that Japan has been,
and yet is, in her church life a dependency of Western
Christendom. With her intense national feeling it is
conceivable that breadth of vision might be forfeited
if her leading strings were cut too soon and she were
set free to found an autonomous ecclesiastical esta-
blishment. The principle is one that can never be set
aside, — breadth in the Christian ideal precedes depth.
Ill
In one respect at any rate the Church of Rome has
always remained loyal to her early vision, and is the
most aspiring missionary church in the world. She has
16 ADVENTURE FOR GOD
never abated her purpose to touch the uttermost part
of the earth with truth as she understands it. The
traveller can hardly find a country on the face of the
globe where her priests have not reared their altars.
We may not ti-ust her system, beHeve in her theo-
logy, or admire her methods ; but she commands, and
we must give her, our respect as being true to the
missionary trust in its widest reaches. You remember
Macaulay's glowing eulogy of Rome's greatness : ^
"The Papacy remains, not in decay, not a mere an-
tique, but full of life and youthful vigour. The Catholic
Church is still sending forth to the farthest ends of
the world missionaries as zealous as those who landed
in Kent with Augustine, and still confronting hostile
kings with the same spirit with which she confronted
Attila. The number of her children is greater than in
any former age. Her acquisitions in the New World
have more than compensated her for what she has
lost in the Old. Her spiritual ascendency extends over
the vast countries which lie between the plains of the
Missouri and Cape Horn, — countries which, a century
hence, may not improbably contain a population as
large as that which now inhabits Europe. The mem-
bers of her communion are certainly not few^er than
a hundred and fifty millions ; and it will be difficult to
show that all the other Christian sects united amount
^Essays: Von Ranke (1840).
THE VISION 17
to a hundred and twenty millions. Nor do we see any
sign which indicates that the term of her long domi-
nion is approaching. She saw the commencements of
all the governments and of all the ecclesiastical es-
tablishments that now exist in the world; and we feel
no assurance that she is not destined to see the end
of them all. She was great and respected before the
Saxon had set foot on Britain, before the Frank had
passed the Rhine, when Grecian eloquence still flour-
ished in Antioch, when idols were still worshipped in
the temple of Mecca. And she may still exist in un-
diminished vigour when some traveller from New Zea-
land shall, in the midst of a vast solitude, take his
stand on a broken arch of London Bridge to sketch
the ruins of S. Paul's."
But all explanations of the wonderful vitality of
Roman Catholicism to which this quotation points —
superior zeal, close unity, highly developed organiza-
tion, splendid polity — are incomplete unless mission-
ary spirit is included. This is at once the product and
the cause of her abundant life. Her mission is to the
world, a consciousness that she never relinquishes for
a moment of time. The church that rivals her in this
feature of her character cannot fail to rival her in
vitality. On the other hand, the unventuresome so-
ciety, be its lineage never so high, its doctrine never
so pure, its morals never so blameless, is doomed to
18 ADVENTURE FOR GOD
a weak pulse and a languishing existence in propor-
tion as it obscures or mutilates the missionary vision.
Protestantism was too engrossed in the development
of national churches during its infancy to give much
heed to larger interests. But wherever a Protestant
organization has exliibited missionary enterprise the
inevitable result may be traced in its home life. Metho-
dism has had increasing breadth of vision from its
beginning, and it took its origin in missionary zeal.
No one can question its vitality. The reflex effect on
the Presbyterians of Canada from the heroic faith of
Mackay in Formosa, and on the Baptists in Amer-
ica from the dauntless spirit of Adoniram Judson in
Burma, is a historic fact, further illustrative of the
vitalizing influence far and near of adventure for God.
The prospects of Japanese Christianity form an in-
teresting subject for speculation. In its organized form
to-day it is at best but a feeble thing relative to its
possibilities; but it gives indications of the true spirit.
Just as Jerusalem sent forth its Apostolic wealth for
the benefit of the world, just as the mission Church of
Syrian Antioch made a gift to Asia Minor and to Rome
of S. Paul, so less than half a century after the plant-
ing of Christianity in Japan, one portion of the Ja-
panese Church sends its representatives to its new pos-
session of Formosa. The poor and pathetic surround-
ings of the mission in Tai-ho-ku rise before me. The
THE VISION 19
small and meagrely furnished chapel in the narrow
Chinese street; the eager, yellow faces of those gathered
for worship; the earnest missionary and his devoted
wife — all speak in eloquent terms of the expansive
power of the Christian life. The Spirit of God, stirring
in the hearts of Christians at home, left them restless
until their representatives had gone with their prayers
and small but consecrated gifts to carry the Church's
truths to the "beautiful isle." Need I say that a church
that early makes adventure of faith like this has a fu-
ture — its vitality is insured to it.
The Anglican communion after the Reformation
was strangely remiss in realizing its missionary respon-
sibility. At the beginning of the eighteenth century
"there were not a score of clergymen of the English
Church ministering out of this country [England];
nor was nonconformity more fully represented."^ Her
first foreign mission was founded in 1701. There was
not even a bishop for English-speaking people out-
side of England in a British colony until as late as
1787, when one was consecrated for Nova Scotia, and
six years later, another for Quebec.
The Englishman is not missionary by temperament,
so that it is all the more to the credit of his Church
that in two centuries she has developed world-wide
missions. But the beginnings were different from those,
1 Tucker's English Church in Other Lands, p. 19.
20 ADVENTURE FOR GOD
for example, of Spain. The Spanish colonized to Chris-
tianize, the English to trade. Bacon's judgement is sadly
true. "It cannot be affirmed, if one speak ingenuously,
that it was the propagation of the Christian faith that
was the adamant of that discovery, entry, and plan-
tation, but gold and silver and temporal profit and
glory; so that what was first in God's providence was
but second in man's appetite and intention." When at
length the Church of England began to move she had
not her eyes on the uttermost part of the earth. She
merely followed along the line of commerce and colo-
nization.i Fear was expressed even in this connection
lest trade should suffer from the introduction of Chris-
tianity into India. These facts are worthy of mention
only by way of contrast with that zeal, generosity and
faith which to-day places the Church of England
among the foremost missionary churches of Christen-
dom. It is worthy of note that her vitality at home
1 I cannot agree with Dr. Walpole {Vital Eelif/ion, pp. 138 fF.),
where he advocates on prudential grounds the restriction of
Anglican missions to Anglican colonies. (1) The plea of economy-
is insufficient, for England is well able to afford abundant sup-
port for all the missions she has and more. The trouble is not
that too much, but too little is expected of her. (2) The indige-
nous rehgion of a country seems to me to be always an adequate
preparation and foundation for Christianity in its essence, though
not, perhaps, for the Anglican conception and embodiment of
the Church. Frequently, however, the early missionaries can do
nothing more than a sort of John Baptist work for a generation,
which has been the case in parts of India under the British flag.
THE VISION 21
has risen coterminously with her growing poHcy of
spiritual expansion.
Viewed from one angle missionary adventure is not
self-sacrifice for the good of others, but a phase of
self-protection. Unexpansive rehgion is dying reli-
gion. Nor am I doing an injustice to the Old Catholic
movement in Europe when I express the fear that its
death knell will shortly be sounded if it continues to
abide in a self-centred life.^ Especially is it true of
the Jansenists in Holland. The Church there holds
itself aloof in a spirit of aristocratic exclusiveness. Up
to the present her leaders have been so cautious re-
garding their interpretation of CathoHc lineage that
they have blinded their eyes to a degree that makes
them unable to distinguish the true thing when it is
placed before them. Estranged from Vaticanism by a
historical break in the past, they are in danger, on
the one hand, of academic intolerance of the Papacy
which assumes no adequate shape in active life, and
reabsorption into the Church of Rome, on the other
hand, because of a lack of sufficient vitality to with-
stand the pressure of the Papacy which moves with
the weight and the certainty of a glacier upon all
that lies near its base. Catholicity may require that a
Church should touch with her life the utmost bounds
1 The Swiss Church, under the wise and energetic leadership of
Bishop Herzog, does not belong under this heading.
22 ADVENTURE FOR GOD
of history, but it is equally incumbent upon her, and
equally a mark of her lineage, that she should touch
the uttermost part of the earth.
Again, when we look at a Christian philosophy,
such, for instance, as finds embodiment in Unitarian-
ism, while some of us may not care to deny its claim
to call itself Christian because its adherents cannot
bow the knee to Jesus Christ as being God Incarnate,
we find it hard to understand how it cares to lay any
claim to being Christian, because of its non-expansive
character. A religion must be either universal or local,
there being, of course, varying degrees of local limi-
tations, and Unitarianism has declared itself to be
local, whereas Christianity is universal. To the ob-
server modern Unitarianism appears to be amiably tol-
erant of anything that bears the name of religion,
excepting, perhaps, historic Christianity. Were it to
prevail, the result would be the withdrawal of all
missionary forces, and eventually the extinction of
itself and every religious faith that it dominated. It
puts forth no missionary effort, and it is gradually
fading into an idea without an embodiment. Its non-
expansive character is fatal to its permanence.
It is necessary for us to know all this, and to dwell
upon it, in order that we may realize how natural a
thing missionary work is, how unnatural its absence ;
how it is not a straining on the part of an ambitious
THE VISION 23
spiritual kingdom to number among its multitudes
untouched nations for the sake of magnitude, but the
radiant development of a life that lives only so long
as it expands.
IV
The terminus ad quern of this discussion is immediate,
personal and practical. I am not wilUng to state gen-
eral principles without applying them. If I say that
human life to be effective should have a broad vision
as well as clear, I mean that you whom I address
should consider this as a necessary part of your own
experience ; if I lay it down as an axiom that an ab-
sence of missionary venture is a cause as well as a
symptom of low vitality in a church, and conversely
that expansion is rewarded with renewed vigour, I
mean that a high degree of vitality in our o\mi com-
munion hinges upon the earnestness with which you
gird yourselves to touch the uttermost part of the
earth. It is you who must be filled with a profound
conviction that the expansive power of Christianity
is inherent and not due to a command ; in other words,
that the Christian tree does not grow because it is
bidden, but because it is a tree. I have been dealing,
not with a moment of history which is dissociated
from the present, but with typical events which illus-
trate the principles that rule the ages.
24 ADVENTURE FOR GOD
You who are anticipating a life in the ministry
must have it as your first determination, not merely
to be sympathetic with all the actual work of the
Christian Church, but to open your soul to the mis-
sionary appeal of Christ as it applies to the modern
world. Your interest in missions may not be formal,
but must be profound and permanent. If you are not
moved by the impulse now, there is something seri-
ously amiss in the fundamental principles which ac-
tuate your life. On the other hand, if the missionary
motive and missionary hope thrill you to-day, you
must be prepared to be thrilled even more to-morrow,
until your enthusiasm rises into a passion, and your
passion into a reasoned devotion that will set no
limits to what you are willing to do for the kingdom
of God. Upon this depends your power to minister
effectively in the little country church where per-
chance your lot may be cast. A view of the entire
landscape must precede the planting of a single gar-
den. If a vision of the Church Catholic precedes a
vision of the parish, the parish will become what it
should be, the Church Catholic in miniature. It is
one of the disadvantages of a national church that
her children's imagination is apt to be shut in by a
close horizon, whereas the Church of Rome treats the
world as her heritage, and it is the earliest lesson
learned by her votaries.
THE VISION 25
It has sometimes been urged that the American
Church, in that she has the ends of the earth at her
door, owing to the generous hospitahty with which
she welcomes the sons of every nation (except the
Chinese), is not called upon to make the same ad-
venture abroad as other churches. But assimilation is
not expansion, whereas both are necessary to healthy
life.i It would be silly to advocate that every national
church should aim to send missionaries to every
heathen country. Just where each can best make far-
off ventures of faith is a matter usually decided by
indications that seldom seem to leave room for doubt,
and which are horn^ not of blood, nor of the will of
the flesh, nor of the will of man, hut of God.
Not every one is called to go abroad, though the
possibility ought to lie before every candidate for
holy orders as a matter for serious consideration.
The stronger and abler a man is, the higher the pro-
bability that he may be chosen to follow in the foot-
steps of S. Paul, S. Augustine, Selwyn, Hannington
and Ingle. The best material should go to supply the
greatest need, the largest ability to the most per-
plexing difficulty. It is but a normal occurrence when
a capable man, w^ho would be powerful in any com-
1 Bacon, in his essay on Kingdoms and Estates, points out that
Rome because she was apt in assimilation acquired a genius for
colonization. "All states that are liberal of naturahzation to-
ward strangers are fit for empire."
26 ADVENTURE FOR GOD
munity and would hold his own in a metropolitan
church, goes into the missionary field, domestic or
foreign. I wish it were possible, even though all
clergy may not permanently surrender their lives to
missionary work in foreign lands, that no man were
allowed to enter his more circumscribed task in pa-
rochial duties at home without having had the disci-
pline and inspiration of a term of service abroad. It
would do for his Christian life what a sojourn in
Europe after the completion of education does for
business and professional men.
It is not, I trust, a suggestion of Quixotic character
that after ten years of successful experience there
would be no waste and no jar to spiritual interests
at home if a pastor, while on the crest of the wave,
were to resign his post and turn his attention to the
greatest need of the moment, wherever it might be.
Am I not right in thinking that some of our nomi-
nal Christians require the wholesome neglect which
S. Paul meted out to the Jews after he had laboured
with them in vain ? Far be it from my mind to speak
slightingly of that great body of devout men and
women who make some of the parishes of our larger
cities strongholds of faith and an inspiration to all
who are familiar with their life and working. But it
is to the conventional Christians that I refer, who do
not know the value of pastoral oversight and the in-
THE VISION n
spiration of a high quahty of prophetic utterance,
because they have never been deprived of it. The
gifts that we can most readily lay our hands upon
are the gifts that we are most inclined to undervalue.
It is expedient for you that I go away.
The lot of the missionary is cast in a fair ground
and he has a goodly heritage. He asks no commisera-
tion or sentimental applause when he goes on his ad-
venture. I have known those who, having felt them-
selves called to distant labours, have been compelled
by merciless obligations to abandon their chosen path,
— sometimes because of ill health, sometimes because
of less painful but quite as imperative claims. When
the blow came it was a crushing one. The satisfaction
with their lot was such that even the going to a plea-
sant spot in a pleasant land was no compensation for
their inability to continue to witness for Christ in a
far-off field. It is obvious that there is no special hero-
ism in going on the Apostolic errand, and leaving
home and kindred. It is a joy, and the compensation
far exceeds the sacrifice. It grandly illustrates the fact
that in its final form the Christian life is not a life of
renunciation, but a life of consecration, — a life that
means giving up only in so far as giving up is giving
upward, — giving upward of the whole self, its gifts,
its present and its future. It is the life of courageous
freedom, the life of security in peril, the life of abun-
28 ADVENTURE FOR GOD
dance in the midst of want, the life of peace in the
midst of care, the life of large fellowship in the heart's
loneliness. To the missionary who has gone where
Christ has bidden the earth is a very small sphere. It
is no longer a marvel to him that God can hold it in
the hollow of His hand. Let none dare pity the mis-
sionary; for that man stands exultant, with the em-
blem of his vocation bound to his brow as a monarch
wears a diadem.
Though it is possible that any one may be called to
go, it is certain that all are called to see. Many people
to-day are dying morally and spiritually because their
sole conception of Christianity is that miserable self-
saving creed which has made Christianity sometimes
an object of contempt in the minds of non-Christians
who have a broad vision of life and service. Man, by
virtue of his manhood, needs the most exalted ideals,
the most enterprising tasks, the most extended vision.
One cause of low spiritual vitality is not that there
is a failure on the part of pastors to build up the
people committed to their charge in formal theology
or in practical righteousness, but that the whole ideal
of Christian revelation and adventure is not presented
by men who themselves have been caught in the arms
of the vision. The cry for funds, the machinery to se-
cure them, are not only necessary but important; but
I wish it were possible, for a year or so, to say not so
THE VISION 29
much as a word about the need of money, and to spend
the entire time in giving men the privilege of know-
ing the breadth of Christian work, and in teaching
them how each separate life in catching the Apostolic
missionary ideal will attain that joy and power which
is our Christian heritage. Arguing from duty or mere
authority is always precarious, especially in our day
when the search for truth is probably more spiritual
and less dependent on bare organization than ever
before in Christian history. One always has to guard
his statements, and I do not wish to be understood as
in any sense depreciating the grandeur of duty. Illu-
mination and inspiration sometimes best come in the
process of fulfilling an obligation couched in terms of
categorical imperative.
Were I to follow my impulses, so far as practical
missionary work is concerned, I would turn the atten-
tion of the people at home to the least successful mis-
sions, merely to assert my faith in the certainty of
their ultimate success. "Nothing succeeds like suc-
cess," and in an age in which there is so much of a
passion for statistical results, spiritual interests are
frequently injured by a misapplication of this fine
proverb that means, to Mm that hath shall it he given.
In the illumination and the glad assurance of our
ideal, we need to turn our most potent forces on the
most manifest weakness visible. If it be argued against
30 ADVENTURE FOR GOD
the placing of this ideal insistently before men that
some natures are incapable of broad vision, I indig-
nantly repudiate it as an insult to a humanity that
has been caught in the tide of Christ's redeeming
power. A broad and exalted conception of duty never
yet injured a man, never narrowed his immediate
responsibilities. Spiritual obligations never broke a
character, and without them no character has ever
been made.
I speak about adventure for God in the terms I do
with the consciousness that the signs of the times
are full of hope. It is unique and inspiriting that
in the heat of a political campaign the President of
this Republic should call men to confer with him re-
garding a missionary opportunity in a non-Christian
land which it seemed to him should be seized. This
was irrespective of any sectional or denominational
thought, and showed in its features that divine light
which shines forth from every life that has the true
Apostolic conception of Christ's commission.
When the highest post of honour in a leading school
for girls is the presidency of the missionary society,
and when the head master of a great school for boys
publicly proclaims that he would rather see one of
his pupils a foreign missionary than in the Presi-
dential chair, surely the vision of adventure for God
is a living force in our midst!
LECTURE II
THE APPEAL
Then Sir Galahad came unto a mountain, where he found
afi old chapel, and found there nobody, for all was desolate,
and there he kneeled tofore the altar, and besought God of
wholesome counsel. So, as he prayed, he heard a voice that
said. Go thou now, thou adventurous knight, to the Castle of
the Maidens, and there do thou away the wicked customs.
IN insisting that we must bathe ourselves in the
Apostolic vision without narrowing its horizon or
abating its thoroughness, I am not plunging into
reckless and idealistic altruism, but am advocating
the preservation and promotion of home interests.
In our enthusiasm we have not wandered away from
the reasonableness of the second commandment of
love which restricts the degree of love we can give to
others. We are hindered from loving others better
than ourselves, and so losing our hold on the pro-
cesses of self-improvement, by being told that our
love for our neighbour must have for its index and
measure the love of self, — thou shalt love thy neigh-
hour as thyself.
An excess of love for others is more often exhibited
in the destructive forces of indulgence — as, for exam-
ple, of parents for children — than in reckless forms
of self-sacrifice. It is a question in my mind whether
indulgence is after all an illustration of excess of
32 ADVENTURE FOR GOD
altruism and not rather a practical exposition of the
fact that we not only may but must love our neigh-
bour as ourselves — in manner at least. Indulgent love
is most often if not always the love of the self-in-
dulgent and undisciplined, and it is as destructive of
others as of self He who is indifferent to the quality
of his own character is equally indifferent to that of
his neighbour. The well-fed self-pleaser is prone to
think of charity as consisting of gifts of food. On
the other hand, the man who has a firm hold on
Christian privilege is moved to give to the limit, in
depth and breadth, of that which he possesses. In
short, he who lives loves because he lives. That which
remains to be determined is the direction, the quality
and the measure of love. The Christian ideally loves
as high as God and as wddely as the boundaries of
humanity.
Nor is insistence on the need of inner vision an
over-valuation of subjectivity. Until recently environ-
ment w^as accused of being responsible for horrible
crimes. The charge is wholly true if under the word
environment are grouped subjective and inner forces,
but only partially true if confined to physical sur-
roundings and the evil influences of heredity. A bi-
ologist who, amid all the advantages society can
contribute toward his welfare and efficiency, can see
no farther than the tail of a bacillus is a prisoner of
THE APPEAL 33
theory. Whereas the laundry -girl who finds a joy
" in helping people to be clean," and who in imagina-
tion fills with singing birds and the fragrance of
spring the mean alleys that conduct her to her daily
toil, though she die a death induced by undue hard-
ship, will go singing her way into the hearts of men
and lending vitality to others when the violets are
growing over her ashes. ^
A broad vision, together with an armful of tasks, is
the best solvent for doubts. Honest thinking is ne-
cessary, but logic never has been, and never will be, the
sole guardian of truth. Logic gives a conviction that
we can carry, but not one that will carry us. When,
however, we are caught in the vision of the Church
in her ideal completeness, and in her daring venture-
someness for God, the corporate faith becomes indivi-
dual faith, and bears us in its arms with the gentle-
ness and firmness of a mother clasping her babe.
i"'My beautiful places' — it was Katie, speaking dreamily —
' are all in me mind. My mother, she talks to me of Ireland, of
the green hills of St. Columbkill she talks, of the rings of the
Good People. I 've never seen them, but I see them in me mind,
and many other things. When I walk down Durham Street every
morning to the laundry, I pretend the train-yards are hedge-
rows, with the May on them, like she tells, and the sounds of
the carts is brooks a-running, and the cars is wind in the trees,
and I have a real pleasant walk.' " Vida D. Scudder, A Listener
in BaheU p. 228.
There is a woman of Gospel story whose imaginative action
gave her immortahty {S. Matt, xxvi, 6 ff.).
34 ADVENTURE FOR GOD
Before going on to consider the next division of
our subject I wish to guard myself from the implica-
tion that I am instituting a comparison between the
commonplace and the romantic, — work at home and
work abroad, — to the disadvantage of the former. A
modern poem^ speaks my mind regarding true great-
ness. Heroes are
Not always, nor alone, the lives that search
Hon) they may snatch a glory out of heaven
Or add a height to Babel ; oftener they
That in the still fulfilment of each days
Pacific order hold great deeds in leash,
That in the sober sheath of tranquil tasks
Hide the attempered blade of high emprise.
Their vision transfigures their sombre career and makes
it a glory. The pathos of such a life as that of Charles
Lamb is lost in its highly tempered splendour. Deny-
ing satisfaction to the adventurous impatience of
youth to walk abroad with unfettered tread and to
give free play to such holy love as might encompass
him, he sits down in the gloom of his half, and some-
times wholly, mad sister to brighten it, and through
it the shadows of a world, with humour incomparable.
The missionary who goes to darkest Africa is supe-
rior in no wise to the missionary who abides at home,
1 A To7-chbearer, by Edith Wharton.
THE APPEAL 85
provided both have the Church's vision. " Not once . . .
have I thought the foreign claims superior to the
home, or honoured the foreign missionary above his
equally heroic and equally faithful brother who toils
in the obscurity of a broken-down village. ... It is
not for me — it is not for any foreign missionary —
to look loftily on the ministry at home, or think of
them as less loyal, unselfish, and true. We are all
missionaries, the sent ones of the King; and not our
fields, but our faithfulness, matters." ^ But the Church
must have both the one and the other before she can
go swinging through time like the triumphant force
she was ordained to be by her Leader. We need to
realize the largeness of a small work as well as the
smallness of a great work, in order that on the one
hand we may do least things grandly, and on the
other, grand things humbly.
The promise to Christ^ that the heathen were to be
for His inheritance, and the utmost parts of the earth
for His possession, through Him becomes a promise
to His followers who learn the art of seeing far — to
the most obscure pastor and to the humblest com-
municant.
I
Visions from on high require to be supplemented by
appeals from beneath. It is at the meeting point of
^From Far Formosa, pp. 16, 17. ^Psalms ii, 8.
36 ADVENTURE FOR GOD
the two that purpose runs into achievement, the ideal
into the actual and practical.
When the Apostles started out, like Abraham they
had nothing but naked faith to guide them. Un-
wonted impulses moved them, but they were as chil-
dren learning to walk. New life stirred in them, but
it was too abundant for their surroundings, and they
did not know how best to use it. They were cramped
by their Jewish training, which had taught them to
despise the nations of the world, or at best to toler-
ate them. They had yet to learn that God hath viade
of one hlood all nations of men for to dwell on all the
face of the earth. Possibly the missionary commission
was for the moment lost or obscured in the wealth of
knowledge which in a brief space had become theirs.
By degrees the enduring incidents of the evangelical
record sorted themselves out, until in the narrative-
preaching of the Apostles it assumed its true place,
so that finally in the written page it was enthroned
at the summit of each synoptic story,^ bursting into
a shower of promise on the threshold of the Church's
annals.^ They began to understand what at first per-
haps was a dark saying only when appeals came from
men for such aid as the Christian body knew it was
competent to supply. At the beginning they were
1<S. Matt, xxviii, 18 ff . ; S. Mark xvi, 1.5; .9. Luke xxiv, 48, 49.
^ActsL 8.
THE APPEAL 37
hampered by the ingrained conviction that the Gen-
tile was rehgiously a lower order of being than the
Jew. That God did not look on the Gentile with full
favour was the Jewish way of expressing the idea that
the Gentile lacked capacity for truth in its highest
form. To go and preach the Gospel among the na-
tions would seem like undertaking to teach a blind
person to paint. It was a lesson that had to be learned
by degrees, that the "soul is naturally Christian,"
that there can he neither Jew nor Greek, there can be
neither bond nor free, there can be no male andjemale:
for that all are one man in Christ Jesus}
They were quite right to proceed cautiously until
they arrived at this conviction. We are not precipi-
tately to conclude that because we possess and enjoy
a good thing it is necessarily to be forced upon others
without invitation or some sign on their part. The
reverse side of God's will as expressed within is God's
will as expressed without. Christ's command to go to
the nations required a sign from them to confirm it.
Obvious need is always both an indication of an un-
satisfied appetite and an unused or partially used ca-
pacity. To a nature that is at once sympathetic and
practical the recognition of a need is a challenge to
minister to it, a request for practical compassion. It
was one of the finest features of the life of Jesus that
1 Gal. iii, 28.
38 ADVENTURE FOR GOD
in delicate ways He was governed by this principle.
Seeing His friends "distressed in rowing" during a
bit of rough weather, He moved to their relief.^ The
tears of a grieving and bereft woman were a strong
enough appeal to bring forth His first self-manifes-
tation after His resurrection. A mother's love sees in
her crying babe all the invitation that is necessary to
draw her to its side.
The greatest reformers have not undertaken their
task by commandment, or by a request that every one
is competent to read. In most instances they have had
to do a work of interpretation. The suffering world
speaks in a language that the sympathetic alone can
understand, and then only after hard study. Where
other people hear a cry of distress which says, "I am
in need," strong compassion hears a voice which begs
for aid: "It is you who can best minister to me. Your
wisdom and strength can succour me." Often it is the
true beginning of life when aching pity is roused to
the consciousness that it can be transformed into sav-
ing activity. John Howard was a valetudinarian and
neurotic, a burden to himself and his friends, until
his duties as sheriff put him where he could interpret
the cry of the prisoner as meaning that he was or-
dained of God to bring humaneness into the convict
and criminal life of Europe. William Wilberforce, in
1 S. Mark vi, 48.
THE APPEAL S9
the plaintive voices that called across the seas from his
family estates, distinguished that which his father had
missed, and became the emancipator of the enslaved
blacks of Great Britain. Our own brave Dorothea Dix
bade fair to slip in early life into a consumptive's
grave, until she looked beneath the surface of the
lives of the insane, and perceived her vocation written
in unmistakable terms. Their piteousness was the op-
portunity her compassionate nature was awaiting be-
fore it could ripen into that indefatigable beneficence
which rested a loving hand on the mental sufferers
of two continents. Vision and appeal met together,
compassion and distress kissed one another, and forth-
with confusion felt the compelling hand of order laid
upon its heaving bosom.
II
The Apostles gradually grew into the consciousness
of the practical value of their vision. Though occupied
in looking upward, they did not forget to keep an ear
to the ground for the voice of God speaking through
humanity. They signalized the beginning of their
career by being practical. If the diaconate originated
in an eleemosynary dispute, for that reason it was
none the less, but in my judgement all the more, di-
vine. And the same may be said of the establishment of
episcopacy rising out of a simple need in the develop-
40 ADVENTURE FOR GOD
ment of organization. The orderly processes by which
God reaches His purposes are a witness to His personal
superintendence in human affairs. Mysteriousness is an
aid to belief in the lower stages of human ev olution ;
in the higher, intelligibleness is sought for and ex-
pected because we men of reason are made in the
image of God and endowed with understanding that
is different from God's not in quality, but only in
degree. Consequently in some of the strange things
which formerly were set aside as being insoluble
puzzles we are beginning to discern a system and
order, a history of action and reaction, which go to
enhance and not detract from the beauty of each
incident. An explicable miracle is just as holy, just
as much the work of God, as an inexplicable one. In
essence both are alike.
Among the earliest indications of broad progress
occurs the incident of Philip and the eunuch.^ The
narrative is replete with grace and poetry. Were it
translated into the language of modern psychists it
would be illuminated by the lightning of telepathy
striking across space after the manner of wireless
telegraphy. Nor do I see any objection to such an
explanation provided it does not stop at that and
preclude thoughts that are deeper, though not less
intelligible.
1 Acts viii.
THE APPEAL 41
The compassionate soul of Philip, equipped for
work, sensitive in high degree to the least claim upon
him, was in a condition to feel, even at a distance,
the spiritual upheaval that w as going on in the mind
of the perplexed eunuch ; just as the seismograph of
a Philippine observatory records promptly an earth-
quake in distant India. The treasurer of Candace,
with splendid courage but with mystified mind, feel-
ing his way into the rare atmosphere of Heaven, with
naught but an uninterpreted Scripture in his hand,
touched the distant evangelist, who was led by the
power of the Spirit into his presence. Need was call-
ing to efficiency, and the unifying Spirit of God fitted
each to the other. In a book of sweet S'uig-Sofig
rhymes by Christina Rossetti is the picture of a nurse
offering over a grave an infant to a mourning mother
just bereft of her little one. Underneath is the verse:
Motherless hahy and hahyless mother —
Bring them together to love one another, —
a parable teaching how God draws deep to deep.
Just as the poetess in intention and imaginative effort
brings together the needy and the succourer, so does
God by an angel — or by telepathy, if you please : it
is of no importance — intimate to the strong man
where his strength may be most effectively used. If
proficient sympathy has a keen ear, unconquered woe
42 ADVENTURE FOR GOD
has a loud wail. The life-saving corps on the shore is
always on the alert for signals of distress from the
storm-swept sea, and understands the rockets flung
skyward by perishing mariners. The Man of Sorrows,
living in the sorrowers of to-day, calls to the Man of
Practical Compassion, living in the faithful servant of
His Church. Nor does He call in vain. Space does not
prevent spiritual communication through a language
other than that of the spoken word.
Again, the vision of S. Peter w^as the necessary
complement of the vision of Cornelius.^ Separated by
the distance between Joppa and Caesarea, they were
energized by the same Spirit, so that soul touched
soul, and each gave knowledge to the other before
they met in the flesh. Just as there was a seeking for
Christ by the Oriental sages, as well as a seeking for
the sages by Christ, so there was a seeking for the
Church by the Gentiles before there was a seeking
for the Gentiles by the Church.
Perhaps the clearest instance of this principle oc-
curs in the history of S. Paul. ^ The Apostle was mak-
ing his way toward Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus
suffered him not. A wail of distress floated across
the Hellespont. It was a very commonplace dream,
that of the man of Macedonia; it might be traced
to the influence on S. Paul's sleeping thoughts of
^Actsx. ^ Acts xvi.
THE APPEAL 43
a conversation about the needs of Philippi held
during the day. But when he had seen the vision^
straighticay we sought to go forth into Macedonia, con-
cluding that God had called us for to preach the gos-
pel unto them} Beneath the commonplace features
of the incident, the Apostle's sensitive nature dis-
cerned God's invitation issuing through the dream
lips of a Macedonian.
So much for the illustrative instances from the
Bible, which is the book of universal experience and
finds the confirmation of its veracity in ordinary his-
tory, to which we shall now give our attention. At
any moment of the Church's life when a strong mis-
sionary impulse has been manifested, it has been
due to the fact, not that some spiritual genius has
been stirred by a mere subjective vision and tried to
share his experience with others, but that the emo-
tions and cravings of people groping after God have
made themselves felt in the tender places in the
Church's heart. The story of Gregory the Great and
the fair-haired Angles, which eventuated in the mis-
sion of Augustine, is but the story of S. Paul and the
Macedonians in new setting.
In the latter part of the eighteenth century Great
Britain's interest in India was purely commercial.
Protestantism was hardly represented there, what
"^Acts xvi, 10.
44 ADVENTURE FOR GOD
there was being of Danish origin, though the Roman
CathoHcs had long been doing good work. When the
Baptist Carey declared his conviction that India was
stretching out its hands for aid, he met with nothing
but discouragement, not the least being, that from
among his own co-religionists came the remark that
if God wished to convert India He could do it with-
out their aid. Though Carey had passed middle life
he had not forfeited the privilege of the pure in heart
to see visions. His listening ear, too, had caught the
sound of low pleading from the purlieus of the
Zenana and of loud protestation against the hideous-
ness of Suttee. At first he alone of his fellows saw and
heard. It was the case of Philip and the eunuch over
again, and the Spirit of the Lord led the evangelist
toward the south unto the voay that goeth down from
England to India.
Coming up higher still into our own times, the ex-
perience of Mackay of Formosa reads like a story of
the days of S. Peter and S. Paul. Mackay had always
had the missionary vision and purpose. It was his
whole life. He awaited a definite beckoning from
God which would declare the place prepared in the
divine counsels for his labours. For a long time he
waited in uncertainty, but at length his Church bade
him gird himself for the journey to China. And
when he had come over against Quang Tung he as-
THE APPEAL 45
sayed to go into the Swatow district; and the Spirit
of Jesus suffered him not. "There were strong induce-
ments presented in favour of settling in the Swatow
district, but I resolved first to see Formosa. . . .
I had no plans, but invisible cords were drawing me
to the 'Beautiful Isle.'" A few weeks later on, "there
came to me a calm, clear, prophetic assurance that
here would be my home, and Something said to me,
'This is the land.'" 1
It would be easy to multiply illustrations, but one
more must suffice. A few years ago a young clergy-
man of the Church of England, whose life was full of
practical sympathy with those servants of commerce
who man the merchant marine, heard the moan of
the exploited and abused sailor in a distant American
city. Equipped with nothing but a vision and an ap-
peal he went, and though San Francisco is not as yet
such a port as one expects to enter through a Golden
Gate, the comparison between what it is and what it
was tells afresh the story of the certain success of ad-
venture for God.^
1 From Far Formosa.
2 A double call is required to determine the missionary vocation,
— that which comes from within, and that which comes from
the Church. This has been so from earUest times. A man does
not become a priest because he feels an inward call. The cor-
porate body has to determine whether or not the call is from
God. It is not less the case in connection with missionary enter-
prise. The final decision as to quahfications rests with the
46 ADVENTURE FOR GOD
III
The appeal to the missionary expresses itself in a two-
fold way : in intuitive religiousness, and in readiness
to hear. In the case of both the eunuch and CorneHus
there was natural devoutness and reaching after God,
as well as attentiveness to what their preceptors had
to say when they were sent. The term Natural Reli-
gion, though it has a special meaning, implies that
it is natural to all men to be religious, that capacity
for religion is inherent in human life. Not that in
some cases there is not such ignorance, obtuseness,
perversion, as to give the appearance of an absence of
the religious faculty. There are instances, as in the
case of cataract, where the power of vision is veiled
and calls for something akin to surgery before the
faculty is in a position to be used. Even among the
most refined characters and developed intellects a
common endowment of manhood can be so abused or
neglected as to cease to execute its function : as with
Dean Stanley, who buried his aesthetic sense beneath
historicity in such a way that in later life the grand-
est scenery suggested historic associations, or nothing ;
Church. It should be noted in such cases as those quoted above
that the fitness for the work had long since been decided upon by
authoritative voices ; it was merely the sphere in which the voca-
tion was to be pursued that required to be determined. The
Church has learned by experience that she cannot afford to
employ in her missionary ventures persons without training.
THE APPEAL 47
or as with Darwin, whose capacity for worship died,
by his own confession, of malnutrition. Whatever
interest there may be in the study of those abnor-
raahties in which the rehgious sense is dead or gone
to decay, the fact remains that there is no race, no
nation, no tribe, in which at least the seed of reli-
giousness does not live.
Even Herbert Spencer points out the universality
of the religious capacity, while denying that it affords
any presumptive evidence in favour of the divine con-
tent of religion. "Religious ideas of one kind or
other are almost universal. Admitting that in many
places there are tribes who have no theory of creation,
no word for deity, no propitiatory acts, no idea of
another life — admitting that only when a certain
phase of intelHgence is reached, do the most rudi-
mentary of such theories make their appearance, the
implication is practically the same. Grant that among
all races who have passed a certain stage of intel-
lectual development, there are found vague notions
concerning the origin and hidden nature of surround-
ing things, and there arises the inference that such
notions are necessary products of progressing intelli-
gence. Their endless variety serves but to strengthen
this conclusion, showing as it does a more or less in-
dependent genesis — showing how, in different places
and times, like conditions have led to similar trains
48 ADVENTURE FOR GOD
of thought, ending in analogous results. That these
countless different, and yet allied, phenomena, pre-
sented by all religions, are accidental or factitious is
an untenable supposition. . . . The universality of
religious ideas, their independent evolution among
different primitive races, and their great vitaHty
unite in showing that their source must be deep-
seated instead of superficial." ^
It is one of the glad surprises of evolution, dis-
tinguishable equally in nature and religion, that an
ugly seed sprouts into a comely plant. Prophecy,
viewed from the side of the prophet, is a looking into
a seed valuable only as having capacity for growth,
and reading its destiny ; it moves from crudeness to
perfection, from ungainliness to beauty. The priest
at the Jewish altar saw in the sacrifice before him
beauty by anticipation. We, on the other hand, look-
ing backward, roll up the developed plant into its
original covering, and that which was to them of old
time a glimpse of the one all-availing self-oblation
of the Saviour of the world is to us a revolting scene
of butchery. We forget its horrors only so far as we
stand between the reality and the shadow.
Even in a heathen land to-day where the religion
that prevails is crude and cruel, we have something
to learn beyond the fact that the natives have religious
1 First Principlesy pp. 13, 14.
THE APPEAL 49
capacity. Beneath their rites and superstitions are
possibilities waiting fulfilment. The substance of re-
ligion, whatever the religion be, always bears an af-
finity, however slender, to Christianity, which is the
fulfilment of each religion and all religion. The re-
ligious sense is fed only by realities, and every religion
lives by virtue of its underlying truth and not by
virtue of the fascination of its error. A superstition is
sometimes the distortion of a religious fact, sometimes
a normal stage in religious growth through which men
must pass before they can touch the higher points of
inner culture — in short the beliefs of to-day frequently
fade into the superstitions of to-morrow. But a dis-
tortion bears witness to the symmetry upon which it
has laid rude hands, just as imperfect development
does to degrees of progress lying in the future. After
all, I do not see much to choose in point of attraction
between the sacrifice of a chicken at the time of rice-
planting by an Igorrote, and the Jewish ceremonies
which called for the immersion of a living bird in the
blood of one newly slain in connection with the cleans-
ing of a leper.^ On the other hand, from both alike as-
cends the aroma of devotion, the yearning of the unful-
filled for fulfilment ; in both may be seen men searching
for Christ and the truth, and reaching out their hands
to Him and to His Church for knowledge and succour.
^Lev. xiv.
50 ADVENTURE FOR GOD
Only the man with a vision can discern an appeal
in the lower stages of religious development. Spiritual
things are spiritually discerned, and in conditions
which conveyed no suggestion of hope to an agnostic,
an apostle would discover his largest opportunity. The
motley crowd that were the scorn of the illuminati of
the day were counted by Jesus worthy of companion-
ship, and drew from His lips some of the most touch-
ing and exquisite sayings that ever moved the heart
of man.-^ Among my treasured possessions is a letter
from Bishop Westcott in which he says, "I have been
discussing with my archdeacons and rural deans to-
day some of the darkest problems of Durham life.
Even here there is, we can feel, material which the
Spirit can transfigure." The most truly hopeful man
is he who takes pains to see the worst features of a
situation before he throws his weight upon the side
of the best ; whereas expectation dependent solely on
promise is pretty sure to end in disappointment if
not in dismay.
The religion of Mohammed is not such as to inspire
a Christian, but it creates a loyalty in its devotees
that makes one pause before condemning it without
reservation. That group of fanatical Moros, unloved
and unloving, who asked an American general, under
whose escort they were to halt the column on a certain
1 S. Luke XV.
THE APPEAL 51
holy day, that they might offer to God that which
they deemed His due, and who paid their rehgious
debt with simplicity and earnestness, — a small band of
Mohammedans amid a large command of not too de-
vout American soldiers, — bore witness to the power of
their faith Godward and the roominess of their reli-
gious faculty. Human life was made for religion, and
religion was moulded to meet man's capacity, until the
climbing heights of Christian truth crown all lesser
peaks and gather them into its own perfection. In
the strange religious vagaries of far-off peoples the
missionary descries not merely religious capacity, but
Christian capacity, and his lips are loosed to preach
the Gospel by the sight.
IV
But in man's will as well as in his natural instincts
there is a prejudice in favour not only of religion, but
also of the Christian religion. Barring the deafness
of part of Judaism, there was extraordinary willing-
ness, not to say eagerness, to listen to the Apostolic
preaching. The New Testament documents are de-
scriptive of an increasing and attentive congregation;
the opposition and persecution recorded are inciden-
tal, marking progress rather than indicating defeat.
The same may be said of the whole course of the
Church's history to the present time. Very frequently.
52 ADVENTURE FOR GOD
even when a warped character professes antagonism
with his hps, his heart is paying silent homage to the
truth that for the moment his will refuses to em-
brace. A properly trained man with the Christian
message burning on his tongue will never want a suf-
ficient hearing. In the early part of my ministry I
expressed to Bishop Brooks discouragement in what
seemed to him, and what afterwards proved to be, a
missionary opportunity of value. He replied to the
effect that "a preacher of God's truth is never
without ample opportunity unless he is in a wilder-
ness, where there is no human life to address." It is
undoubtedly true that in countries that have been
under Christian influences for centuries great com-
partments of life and activity can remain callous to
Christian principles, or rest satisfied with a very loose
acceptance of them, owing to the apathy that is bred
of familiarity. But even here, when a tiTie prophet
arises he does not lack audience. Our age is weary to
death of homiletical apologies of critical or non-
critical theories, but gives quick and sustained atten-
tion to a constructive thesis built on the basis of as-
sured critical knowledge. Three features of Christian
preaching portrayed in the life of its Author and of
His Apostle to the Gentiles — features which will win
when all else fails — are absence of negation save by
way of contrast; abundance of positive statement car-
THE APPEAL 53
rying with it an appeal to common sense not less
than to the affections; a sparing use of denunciation.
Men are as ready to listen to truth as they ever were,
but are more quick to distinguish the falsetto from
the natural than of yore.
It is when the missionary finds himself in the midst
of peoples to whom the name of Christ is unknown
that he appreciates how strong an appeal their readi-
ness to hear constitutes. It makes the heart of the
preacher eloquent, even though his tongue cannot
keep pace. Here is a leaf from the notebook of a
missionary, modern and wise, working among sav-
ages whose idea of Christianity until his coming con-
sisted in a firm conviction that it was a force hostile
to their traditions and unproductive of good among
men of their blood. "I had in my pocket some copies
of a version of the Creed, the ' Our Father,' and the
substance and meaning of the Ten Commandments,
which, by dint of labour, we have put together in the
local dialect. So when a dozen or so of the chief men
were squatting around me smoking, I produced these,
and having handed around copies, by way of compH-
ment, I proceeded to read and give such explanation
as I was able with my limited knowledge of the lan-
guage. Attentive my hearers were and appreciative,
some of them taking up the theme of a command-
ment, approving and amplifying in a way that I could
54 ADVENTURE FOR GOD
not always follow, even remotely. At last there was a
sober pause, and then two of them, as if simultaneously
inspired, began a deep-toned chant or recitative, in
minor key:
It is very good that
The Apo-Pachi ^ of Bontoc
Came to Tukukan
To teach the people
The Commandments of God." ^
A few years before, in the same district, for the first
time I stood before a group of heathen who had come
to hear what I had to say. The scene is indelibly
burned into my memory — their statuesque figures
as they stood immovable, serious, with a hungry look
in their eyes ; the cruel barrier of language shutting
me out from communication with them; a few halt-
ing words in our own tongue which to them must
have been but a medley of incoherent sounds, then
the calm consciousness that God had not been baffled,
but had taught them something of His truth through
the imperfect media placed by us at His disposal.
The interesting experiment was recently tried of
sending one of our leaders ^ of Christian thought and
life to give a course of lectures in the Orient on Chris-
1 Sir-father.
2 The Rev. W. C. Clapp, in The Spirit of Missions.
3 The Rev. Charles Cuthbert HaU.
THE APPEAL 55
tianity. He returned all aglow with the reception with
which his message had met. The Buddhist zealot of
Ceylon and Japan, and the scholarly Mohammedan
of India, sat at his feet appreciative of the noncon-
troversial truths which he presented to them, and, as
he left, entreated him to come again. Probably no
converts were made, but a new vista of Christ's re-
ligion was opened up and the way made easy for fur-
ther ventures of like character. If all that Christianity
asks for is a fair hearing, all that the Orient asks for
is a fair statement, and the world of men are as ready
to hear as the King's messengers are to speak. There
are but two great realities in the vast universe, —
the heart of God and the heart of man, and each is
ever seeking the other. It is this that makes adven-
ture for God not an experiment, but a certainty. The
appeal issuing from man's abysmal need is met by the
amplitude of the divine suppl}^It is a horror to think
of facing human need — sooner or later every seri-
ous-minded man is forced to face it — without vision
or vitality. The sole thing left for such a one is to
break his heart across the bars of the prisoners' cage
before which he stands, impotent though compassion-
ate, and die. He might clothe himself in apathy, it
is true, but it were preferable to die. God, however,
requires neither tragic alternative, for He has clothed
His humblest servant with power, y
56 ADVENTURE FOR GOD
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
Because He anointed me to preach good tidings to the
poor :
He hath sent me to proclatjn release to the captives.
And recovering of sight to the blijid,
To set at liberty them that are bruised,
To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.
LECTURE III
THE RESPONSE
Then Sir Galahad drew out his sword, and set upon them so
hard that it was a marvel to see it, and so, through great
force, he made them to forsake the field ; and Galahad
chased them until they entered into the castle at another gate.
And there met Sir Galahad an old man, clothed iii religious
clothing, and said. Sir, have here the keys of this castle. Then
Sir Galahad opened the gates, and saw so much people in
the streets that he might not remember them, and all said.
Sir, ye be welcome, for long have we abiden here our de-
liverance.
WITH the vision of an effective life, with abun-
dant vitahty clamouring for expression, and
under the spell of an appeal, half dumb, half spoken,
from those in need of what adventurers for God could
give, these apostolic knights are prepared for action.
The exact sphere that would claim them has yet to be
determined.
For a moment they pause on the threshold of their
old home like hounds, fresh loosed from the leash ;
and then, catching the scent, they speed toward their
quarry. Their biographies are brief, for they quickly
slip out of sight, lost in the fine oblivion of effective
service.
They were not driven away by persecution — the
Jerusalem church was scattered abroad, except the
I 57
58 ADVENTURE FOR GOD
apostles} S. Paul's biography is representative, and
reasoning from what we know of his career and that
of S. Peter, it is fair to infer that the rest of the group
were not less favoured, but like them were always
guided by the Spirit in their course and identified
each with some special work. The detail of legends
telling whither the different Apostles went may be in
error, but the residuum of truth that abides indicates
that they were occupied in various national movements.
-^ This is what Scripture would lead us to expect. Em-
phasis was laid by Christ, in a way that does not al-
low of any explanation save that of carefully con-
ceived design, on the word "nations." To quote classic
instances : The gospel must first he preached unto
all the nations} This gospel of the kingdom shall he
preached in the whole wmidjbr a testimony unto all
the nations; and then shall the end come} Thus it is
written, that the Christ should siiffer, and rise again
from the dead the third day; and that repentance and
remission of sins should he pi^eached in his name unto
all the nations, heginningfrom Jerusalem} Go ye there-
fore, and make disciples of all the nations,^ — not dis-
ciples "out of" or "from;" but the nation is spoken
i^c^^viii, 1. 2^^ Mark xiii, 10.
3 S. Matt, xxiv, 14. 4 s. Luke xxiv, 46, 47.
^ S. Matt, xxviii, 19; see also S. Matt, xxi, 43; xxiv, 9.
THE RESPONSE 59
of as a unit, iropevOevre^ ovv fJtxi6r]Tev(raT€ Travra to. Wvq.
S. Paul recalls prophecy: The scripture, Jvreseeing
that God would justify the Gentiles (another word for
"nations") by Jaith, preached the gospel beforehand
unto Abraham, saying. In thee shall all the nations be
blessed} The revelation of the mystery . . . now is mani-
fested, and by the scriptures of the prophets, according
to the commandment of the eternal God, is made know7i
unto all the nations unto obedience of faith? To give
one more quotation, this time from S. John : Tlie na-
tions shall walk amidst the light of (the city of God).
. . . They shall bring the glory and the honour of the
nations into it}
The Jews had been prepared by the teaching of ages
to look on their nation as being of divine origin and
living under divine superintendence. It was shaped at
its birth by God's formative hand, and throughout its
history His loving interferences, consoling or disci-
plinary as required, ruled its progress. Always the me-
dium of divine revelation, the nation was the Church,
and the Church was the nation. Advance in national
consciousness was marked by the adoption of a new
name for God. Javeh Tsebaoth in its earliest appHca-
tion had reference to the armies of Israel itself, "which
1 Gal. iii, 8. 2 iJo^^, xvi, 25, 26.
3 Rev. xxi, 24 ff. ; see also ii, 26 ; vii, 9 ; xxii, 2.
60 ADVENTURE FOR GOD
were habitually regarded as the hosts of Jehovah,
marching under Him as their captain, waging war in
His name." ^ Whatever else God was. He was first of
all a national God.
The exalted conception of the nation entertained
by the units of which it is composed indicates the
value if not the divinity of national life. In early
days citizenship was an unknown thing, because citi-
zenship implies respect on the part of the state for
each personality included within its bounds. Family
and tribal features were more conspicuous than those
of the individual, but towering above both stood the
nation. Personality was valuable only so far as it con-
tributed to the upbuilding of the commonwealth.
Patriotism was the earliest conspicuous virtue, the
prophets of the chosen people being their patriots.
In how high esteem, how divine a structure, they held
the nation to be is shown by the fact that before be-
lief in immortality was definitely shaped, it was con-
ceived a sufficient reward for self-sacrifice to the death
that the victim should by his act have contributed
something to the vitality of his nation.
/ The sanctity which the Jews ascribed to their race
was right in essence, though wrong in its current in-
terpretation, which conceived that theocracy stood
for the isolation of one nation from the rest of the
1 Bampton Lectures (1897), p. 186.
THE RESPONSE 61
world as being the unique instance in which there
was an abiding principle of divine government.^ Had
they but been able to see it, the divine capacity of all
the nations was implied in God's promise to Abra-
ham.^ It was a lesson hard to learn that " the princi-
ples in which Judea was formed are represented as
the universal and immutable laws which are a condi-
tion of the life of a nation. If it had not a divine
origin and unity, if there had not been in it the pre-
sence of an invisible King, it would then have been
the exception, and its course the singular circum-
stance, the abnormal condition, in history." It took
all the dialectic and ardour of S. Paul to convince
even a few that God made of' one blood all nations of
men to dwell on the face of the whole earthy having
determined their appointed seasons and the bounds of
their habitation.
It is a significant fact, indicating the stubbornness
of Jewish bias toward exclusiveness, that a large part
of his extant writings is occupied in proclaiming that
Christ is for the nations, and the nations for Christ.
This stands out more prominently than any dog-
matic utterance, being bound up with his doctrine of
justification by faith, and is the constant accompani-
ment of the song of the Incarnation which he sings.
We know that in our own pei*sonal religious experi-
1 See Josephus. 2 Q^yi^ xii, 3.
62 ADVENTURE FOR GOD
ence, if we get some revelation of God that bears
upon our happiness or development, we can easily
come to believe it to be unique. It is hard to realize,
indeed it can only be realized after a season of train-
ing, that while God has a special revelation for each
individual, His love and care of every one else is as
great as that bestowed upon us.
We can appreciate how the very fact that S. Paul
had at one time so intense and so exclusive a concep-
tion of the divine character of his own nation would,
when his vision had broadened, be the finest cham-
pion that could be found of that of other nations. It
took time for him to grasp the idea of catholicity,
but once having made it his own, the fire of his con-
viction set aflame the world.
Insistence on this tmth w^as of importance to deter-
mine the direction of apostolic effort, — whether to
masses of men bound by inherent ties, or to chance
individuals who might be ready to listen to the
Gospel appeal. The character of the Gospel was in
itself a deciding factor. Its social character required
for its nourishment social soil. The closer woven the
web of life, the completer the Christian opportunity.
Christ's teaching had emphasized the nation as the
main point of evangelical attack, so that when once
the realization of the capacity for truth, or if you
choose, of the potential sanctity, of all nations was
THE RESPONSE 63
established in the minds of the first missionary band,
their plan of action was not difficult to sketch.
II
Naturally the first piece of national work to be un-
dertaken was the evangelization of the Jews. It was
ready at hand, and in the course of the enterprise the
Apostles would have a chance to grow into that world
consciousness which was bound to come because of the
various forces from without, as well as from within,
playing upon them and urging them towards it.
Their first preaching was in the Temple, as being
the centre and symbol of the nation's unity. By the
use of its revered precincts they could best reach the
heart of the people. No building in the world's history,
neither Westminster Abbey in London nor S. Peter's
in Rome, ever controlled thought and life as power-
fully as this monument of Judaism. When Rome had
exhausted herself in her endeavour to fit the Jewish
nation into her imperial system, she thought to deal
her stubborn antagonists a death-blow by razing to
the ground the Holy City, and together with it the
Temple. In its courts the young church continued
steadfastly day by day;^ there S. Peter reminded the
excited throng of God's promise to Abraham, and that
Christ's blessing was to rest first upon them;^ there
1 Acts ii, 46. 2 j_cts iii, 25, 26.
64 ADVENTURE FOR GOD
before the Sanhedrim S. Stephen sounded the keynote
of catholicity;^ there the feet of S. Paul trod for the
last time as a free man before he was taken a prisoner
to Rome.^
In course of time S. Paul discovered his vocation as
Apostle to the Gentiles, but his patriotic zeal does
not allow him to forget men of his own blood. Bre-
thren, he says with fervour, my hearfs desire and my
supplication to God is for them, that they may be saved. ^
If there are Jews in any place whither he goes in his
travels, it is to them that he addresses his first coun-
sel and exhortation. It is true that when his fellow-
countrymen show invincible prejudice that he exclaims
in anger thsit foom henceforth he will go unto the Gen-
tiles} But he cannot be taken too seriously, in that we
presently find him as hard at work as ever in a syna-
gogue.^ However, he is altogether too sane a man to
continue indefinitely to spend himself to no purpose,
though even when his world scheme is in full swing,
there is no indication of a subsiding love for the Jew.
He had a twofold citizenship, one of blood and one
of privilege, but loyalty to the latter did not interfere
with the largest appreciation of the former.^
1 Acts vii. 2 jicts xxi, 27. ^ Eom. x, 1.
* Acts xviii, 6. ^ Acts xix.
6 If it is possible to fix a precise moment in which he irrevocably
throws the balance on the side of Roman as distinguished from
Jewish citizenship, it would seem to be on the occasion when he
THE RESPONSE 65
The first cases in which was recognition of the spirit-
ual rights of those who belonged to other races were
what might be called sporadic. S. Paul was the first
stable and permanent force that made for catholicity.
In the earlier moments of Christianity believers ex-
pected that their Lord was shortly to return to earth.
They could not look at a passing cloud without feeling
that He might emerge from its depths. They could
not retire to rest without the expectation, almost
amounting to belief, that they would be awakened by
the call to judgement before the rising of the morning
sun. They could not begin a day's task without a
sense of the imminence of His return. The result was,
in some instances at any rate, a paralysis that pre-
vented men from heeding the ordinary obligations of
life and fulfilling their allotted task.
In view of this solemn anticipation, any conception
of nationalism would be lost sight of. Even S. Paul,
with all his far-sightedness, for a while shared the cur-
rent idea. He, however, had the balance which most
of his fellows lacked. He saw that the truest way to
meet Christ was with hands laden with the duties of
the day, and he writes to the Thessalonians with in-
dignation at their inertness. When the hour struck
is compelled by hopeless Jewish injustice to appeal to Caesar
(Acts XXV, 11). At a much earlier period, however, he begins to
figure as a citizen of the Empire (ch. xiii).
66 ADVENTURE FOR GOD
in which he realized that time was of no account, and
that the second coming of Christ was as likely to be
long delayed as to be near at hand, we find him, with
sober judgement and practical skill, seizing hold of
everything human and making it a channel for the
promotion of the catholic gospel of his Master. As we
have noted, he lays his life along the unwilling body
of the Jewish race, as is natural that he should, because
he is a Hebrew of the Hebrews, and the sense of his
citizenship in the chosen people tingles to his very
finger-ends. Having done his utmost for them, only to
be repelled, he turns without despair, and with new
resoluteness, to his larger vocation.
As a citizen of the Roman Empire, freeborn, he
has a pride that belongs to every true patriot in his
relationship to the imperial city and its world-wide
schemes. Though the clamour of multiform needs
touches his emotions, the call comes to him to make
use of the Roman control of the world in order that
he may reach by means of it the uttermost parts of
the earth. He seizes on every coign of vantage, set-
ting his ambition on preaching the Lord Jesus in the
shadow of the palace of the Caesars. His restless gaze
penetrates farther still, and he plans to reach Spain.
The tradition, mythical as it is, of his having gone
to England is worthy of the man, bearing testimony
to his all-embracing love.
THE RESPONSE 67
Though there are no words of the Apostle declar-
ing that he believed the Roman Empire to be God's
handiwork, — a truth reserved for poetic expression in
later centuries, — his attitude toward it is as expressive
of his conviction as a De Monarchia or a Divine Com-
edy would have been. He feels it to be the best re-
ceptacle available into which to pour Christian truth.
The perfection of its organization, the expanse of its
domain, the diversity of its provinces, on the one
hand; and on the other the justice of its decrees, its
interest in the individual life, its ideal of brother-
hood, the tactfulness of its methods, were features of
its life for which the Apostle could not fail to have a
growing appreciation, as not only admirable in them-
selves, but also as an instrument for furthering God's
purposes among men. Seeing these things he saw far,
but not to the end. He could not understand that
Rome was ordained to be the foster-mother of na-
tions yet unborn, and that the Church of Rome was
to become the stepmother, not always unkind, of
national Christianity throughout the world. Nor could
he foresee that Roman citizenship, which more and
more as life went on fired his imagination and kindled
his pride, predicated a day when the state would be
coextensive with the nation, and citizenship would
become less a matter of blood and more one of choice,
thus establishing a new basis, making for peace and
68 ADVENTURE FOR GOD
good will on a large scale.^ But he saw enough to in-
spire him with the purpose of pressing the body of
Christ on the body of the Empire, mouth upon mouth,
eyes upon eyes, hands upon hands, until it waxed as
warm with imparted vitality as the Shuhammite"'s boy
under the touch of Elisha.^ With wide discernment
he injected the truth into the artery of travel between
Rome and the East, fixing himself on vital parts un-
til the regions round about caught the new life from
the colonies, and in turn passed it on to the farthest
bounds of the provincial system.
It was in this way that the command, the invita-
tion, the promise, that all nations were to be evangel-
ized began to express itself in activity.
Ill
Undoubtedly the earliest though not the last mis-
sionary obligation is along the line of national com-
merce and expansion, as is exemplified in the history
of the Church of England, though she did not rise to
a sense of any duty excepting to men of British blood
until 1799, when the Church Missionary Society, a
voluntary association for the exclusive work of evan-
gelizing the heathen, was founded. A year later the So-
1 Seth Low in the Annals of the American Academy of Political
and Social Science.
2 2 Kings iv, 34-.
THE RESPONSE 69
ciety for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign
Parts, ah-eady venerable in years, like Abraham when
he had his vision, extended its missionary horizon to
include other heathen than a handful of American
Indians. But the last century was no longer young
when the Church of England rose superior to the im-
perial conception of missionary responsibility, and
stooped her shoulders to receive the whole of the
Lord's burden.
Our own Church in her missionary life, by following
along the lines of national expansion, has done only
the natural thing, and had she failed to be bold in
moments of perplexity, would have forfeited all claim
to national character. The one seemingly doubtful
element is found where such territories as California,
Texas, Porto Rico and the Philippines are concerned,
territories in which Spanish Latin Christianity has
long been established. The question, however, was set-
tled more than half a century ago at the consecration
of Bishop Kip. The condition of Christendom being
what it is, the question of jurisdiction in such cases
is too nice to be rational or to carry weight. I have
no hesitation in saying that if you are in a position
entailing a conflict between the ecclesiastical and the
moral, in taking your stand with the former you
abandon the Person of Christ and His righteousness
for the sake of being respectful to a skeleton organi-
70 ADVENTURE FOR GOD
zation as little deserving consideration as a valley of
dry bones.
The Church of England has had a rare opportunity
in her colonial work alone to study the phenomenon
of nationality in relation to religion. It is only at
this late date, however, that it is beginning to dawn
upon us how important it is to study thoroughly the
racial and national characteristics for practical ends.
It may be that we are running to an extreme in
minimizing the extent to which Western administra-
tion and Western ideas have influenced the inner life
of Africans or Asiastics. But there is no room to
doubt that wherever the instincts of a people are done
violence to, wherever the colonial government is re-
pressive rather than expressive of the possibilities of
native life, wherever the missionary enterprise has
consisted merely in inflicting a Western conception
of Christianity on an Eastern people, the wheels of
permanent progress become clogged, and national
conversion fades into a distant prospect. An acute ob-
server and defender of empire remarks of British rule
in India that "it tends to destroy native originality,
vigour, and initiative. How to replace what our rule
takes away is the great Indian problem."^ The same
must be true of every mission in which there is not
such a reverence for national character that the least
^ Bernard Holland in Imperium et Libertas, p. 12.
THE RESPONSE 71
local custom is considered worthy of study and in-
terpretation. The quarrel as to what is the essence
and what the accidents of Christianity — most of us
are cocksure that we know! — must be settled before
we can accomplish our best work abroad, though on
the other hand we are in a fair way to solve the pro-
blem if we prosecute that work in the spirit of open-
minded sympathy. Illumination and knowledge are
wont to come to us through the sacrament of the sim-
ple duty of to-day simply performed.
God made no two individuals alike and no two
nations. It is not the variety of genera that is the
largest marvel of creation, but the variety of species
and individuals within each genus. Just as individual
conversion consists in changing not facts or tempera-
ment, but relationships, so with the evangelization of
the nations.
The Reformation of the sixteenth century M^as less
an outburst of revolt against theological error than
the spontaneous blazing up of outraged national life.
" It was not Luther who shattered a so-called Catho-
lic unity into fragments, but the expansion of na-
tional consciousness, whether in France, in Germany,
or in England." ^ The Empire that in God's counsels
had been ordained to be the guardian for a while of
adolescence sank into the capacity of an oppressor
1 See Allen's Continuity of Christian Thought, pp. 248, 320.
72 ADVENTURE FOR GOD
until the strength of youth rose in its might and
struck for freedom. Men may lament the doctrines
which were taught by the extremists of the Reforma-
tion, and, confusing an incident in a movement with
the movement itself, give vent to broad condemna-
tion of the whole, but they cannot enjoy any of the
larger national privileges and liberties of to-day
without paying homage to the Reformation.
The sanctity of the nation is inherent. The nation
is a holy thing, not as being guilty of a grande latro-
cinium^ not as deriving a reflected glory from the
Church, but holy in that it is a sphere of God's pre-
sence on earth, and as truly indwelt by Him, though
for a different purpose, as the Church herself. Just as
in the beginning Roman pohty and Roman organiza-
tion were factors in shaping and colouring the Church's
life, so to-day every church in Christendom that as-
pires to be national must become so by putting her-
self en rapport with the nation. We are bordering on
the worst fault of Judaism if we think of our own as
being the only holy or the most holy nation, or the
Roman Empire as being the unique instance in which
national polity and organization could be allowed to
influence the Church.
Various have been the mechanical efforts to put
Church and State in a true relation to one another —
1 De Civ'Uaie Dei.
THE RESPONSE 73
domination of State over Church, then of Church over
State ; partnership under a legal agreement, and finally
a free Church in a free State. But it is by no formal
or artificial compact that the ideal union is consum-
mated. The natural relation is the most divine, and
only those countries in which the Church and State
occupy cognate spheres, each jealous for the other''s
rights within its province, does either Church or Gov-
ernment have its largest opportunity. Whenever the
Church tries to manipulate state affairs, or to pull
the cords of political matters, confusion and conflict
ensue. It is bound to be so, for divine laws are being
slighted, the sanctity of the nation ignored.
The story of the first days of Christianity in Japan
is of missionary value. The character and zeal of
Francis Xavier are an inspiration for all time, but he
brought with him to Japan (1549) the defects of the
papal Christianity which he represented. Disregard
for the sacredness of national life and institutions,
similar to that which awoke the slumbering lion of
nationalism in Europe, stirred to the core the Japa-
nese, who then as now were ardent nationalists. Smoul-
dering fires burst into flame early in the seventeenth
century when leyasu, under the justifiable conviction
that national affairs were being tampered with by
the priests, and that the Empire was thereby endan-
gered, issued his edict of expulsion and extirpation.
74 ADVENTURE FOR GOD
Less than forty years after Xavier arrived at Kago-
shima the storm began to brew. The Portuguese and
Spanish traders "began to hbel each other to the
Japanese authorities." The ire of Taiko Sama was
roused by the gossip of, some say a Portuguese, others
a Spanish, sea-captain. Chamberlain narrates the
story. ^ " ' Our kings,' so this bluff sailor is reported
to have said, 'begin by sending into the countries
they wish to conquer priests who induce the people to
embrace our religion, and when they have made con-
siderable progress, troops are despatched, who com-
bine with the new Christians, and then our kings have
not much trouble in accomplishing the rest.' Though
not to be taken literally, there was doubtless a foun-
dation of fact for the statement thus imprudently
blurted out, — the i-ulers of Spain and Portugal, as
we know full well from their proceedings in other
quarters of the globe, were anything but single-minded
in their dealings with native races. History repeats
itself; for the conduct of Europe towards China in
our own day exhibits precisely the same medley of
genuine piety on the part of the missionaries and
shameless aggression on the part of the countries which
send them out." Thus the ruin of a fair hope was in-
itiated by the lust of traders and consummated by the
intrigue of missionaries.
1 Things Japanese, p. 322, note.
THE RESPONSE 75
It is a matter for congratulation that all the
missions in China, with the one unfortunate exception
of the Roman Catholics, refused to assume political
rights and duties such as the French papal mission-
aries sought for and secured at the end of the last
century. The allurement of momentary prestige was
promptly declined in order that spiritual power
might remain pure and free, and that Chinese national
rights might be duly respected.
Christianity, once having gained foothold in a
nation, should lend all her energies to adapting it —
and Christianity is far more adaptable where national
life is concerned than many of us suppose — to local
tradition, thought and temperament. The nation
should be trained, like the child, according to its
bent. Here, for instance, is a Malay tribe, brought
into touch with a rigid form of Christianity, who, so
far from being won, only stiffen into aloofness be-
cause they intuitively feel they would lose their tribal
character by submitting to baptism. Let a sympathetic
missionary go to them and show how tenderly and
sympathetically individuality and local traditions are
handled, and suspicion will gradually give place to
glad acceptance of Christ's truth and righteousness.
Throughout the East this is becoming more and
more a recognized method. The day of iconoclasm is
past, and generous sympathy now holds the sceptre.
76 ADVENTURE FOR GOD
In Japan the patient missionaries of Christ, often
blunderingly no doubt, are " working their way into
the soul of the nation. They are conscious as no one
else is, that inspiration can come to Japan only
through her own prophets, that all that is not essential
to the well-being of God's kingdom on earth — foreign
garments, Western ideas — must be stripped away
before the full power of Christianity can be experi-
enced; and they are always working with this end in
view. It is wisdom, not self-importance, that explains
the reluctance of the missionaries to give the Japa-
nese Church immediate autonomy ; the times are not
ripe. Slowly, from the bottom upward. Christian truth
is making its royal progress, and in due season
Japan's prayer for abiding inspiration will be answered
throughout her length and breadth." ^
IV
But the winning of the nations to Christ is a privi-
lege to which every missionary is not called. It canies
with it a greater measure of attraction than any
other phase of adventure for God. Nationalism is
not, as Lord Acton seemed to think, a necessary evil
to be borne, but a divine emotion that will bear its
best features as an adornment into the Celestial City
itself. Those who have a share in carrying it to the
1 A paper written by me for The Outlook, Feb. 20, 1904.
THE RESPONSE 77
height of its possibilities, by putting Christian truths
into a normal relationship with it, have on their
hands the most momentous of tasks.
There is, however, an humbler phase of evangeliza-
tion to which some may be elected, that is to say, the
evangelization of less closely organized life than that
which we have been considering. That it can burn
with a flame of radiance unsurpassed by other forms of
missionary endeavour, the story of Zinzendorf and the
Herrnhuters bears ample testimony. "In two decades,^ j
the little church of the Brethren called more mission- j
aries into life than did the whole of Protestantism in '
two centuries."^
First came the vision of the pure-souled boy who
saw the length and breadth of an effective life, — "our
unwearied labour shall go through the world in order
that we may win hearts for Him who gave His life
for our souls." His passion was caught by his friends,
until each one of his little company could say, Ich habe
nur eine Passion^ unci die ist Er, nur Er ("I have but
one enthusiasm, and it is He, only He"). The logic of
such a life could be none other than it was. He who
takes his stand by Christ and views the world of men
from this high vantage-ground shares Christ's vision ;
and he who shares Christ's vision shares His work.
1 1722-1742.
8Warneck, Missions^ p. 63.
78 ADVENTURE FOR GOD
The "Lord's Shepherds" had a jewel in their pasto-
ral staff which should never be wanting among men
w^ho claim to be the ambassadors of the Pastor pas-
toriim. Here it is: "The unity of the Brethren and
missions are indissolubly united. There will never be
a unity of the Brethren without a mission to the hea-
then, nor a mission of the Brethren which is not the
concern of the Church as such." With their motto on
their brow —
We will most gladly dare,
While here we fare —
they began a career of adventure for God that verges
on recklessness. Their effort was to seek out the for-
gotten, the abandoned, the hopeless, the uninteresting,
and bring them in to partake of the Feast of the King,^
let the obstacles in the way be what they might.
We would seek labour there
Where labour is.
They "were persuaded that their call was not to work
anywhere for national conversions, that is, for the
bringing of whole nations to Christ,^" so they went
with joy to the humbler task, caiTying comfort to the
ice-bound shores of Greenland and the barren bleak-
ness of Labrador.
To such work our Communion is called not less than
1 S. Luke xiv, 12, 13. 2 Warneck, Missions, p. QQ.
THE RESPONSE 79
to that among the nations. Those who count them-
selves to possess high privilege have the responsibiHty
laid upon them of exhibiting much love. We, like her
of the Gospel story, can find worthy occupation in
bathing the Saviour's feet.
The English Church has not failed to do her share
for obscure tribes and dying peoples. In the jungles
of Africa she bears her witness among the simple
negroes. In the islands of the summer seas Christian
hymns and prayers rise to God beneath the calm gaze
of the Southern Cross from the dark-skinned converts
of Selwyn and Patteson. Further north the shy Karens
of Burma's hills flock to the Church's sheltering arms
at the call of England's missionaries.
Our own Herrnhuters, Whipple and Hare and Rowe,
with their noble comrades, are worthy to stand by the
side of Zinzendorf and his missionary band. Though
we shall never be able to think of our national treat-
ment of the North American Indian with aught but
shame as we review the past, there will always be one
illuminated chapter in the otherwise dark history.
"After my consecration as bishop, while the words,
Hold up the weak, heal the sick, bind up the broke?!,
bring again the outcast, seek the lost, were still ringing
in my ears, the venerable Bishop Kemper said with
deep feeling, 'My young brother, do not forget these
wandering Indians, for they, too, can be brought into
80 ADVENTURE FOR GOD
the fold of Christ.'" ^ Need I say that Whipple did not
forget his promise?
Two years ago one of our own clergy went to the
succour of the long-haired, tattooed savages who dwell
in the mountains of Luzon, neglected and unloved.
The days went by with no sign of positive results re-
warding his labours until at last a young lad sought
baptism, the flrstfruits of his prayers and teaching.
It is fitting that the Kingdom into which no one can
enter unless he become as a little child should have
as its earliest citizen this boy. And so once more the
prophet's words come true, — Aiid a little child shall
lead them.
The lives of men who are drawn by the vision to
the hidden corners of the world, to minister to the
odds and ends of this strange human race of which
we are a part, are not wasted. Modern government
does not neglect the obscure; and if school-teachers
and officials of state feel it a matter of duty, if not
of positive inspiration, to defend the rights, develop
the capacity, heal the wounds of the racially diseased
and weak, living in their midst, participating in their
lives, it should be deemed no hardship, either by those
who send or those who are sent, to carry the conso-
lation, the strength, the joy, the discipline, of the
1 Bishop Whipple's Lights and Shadoios of a Long Episcopate,
p. 33.
THE RESPONSE 81
Church into primitive homes. It is not that the
Christian mind thinks of those who have never had
the opportunity to know the truth as it is in Christ
Jesus as being condemned to perdition by their own
misfortune, and that it is our duty to snatch a brand
here and there from the burning. Far from it. Chris-
tianity is a force and a gladness for the days of time,
the floor of the universe, the scions of mortahty. It is
their heritage and right. For the self-protection and
development of those who are born into Christian
conditions, as well as for the present benefit of the
unenlightened.
We would seek labour there
Where labour is.
We delight to give our loved ones things even of
ephemeral worth as tokens of love, but when we give
the gift of Truth we bestow a lasting benefit which,
while it is at home in time, is on its throne in the
realms beyond.
There is a picture rosy with romance wherever the
strong meet the weak in terms of love: the greater
the space between the extremes, the more radiant the
glow. It is the pride of our day that philanthropies
abound. The heart of every great city throbs with
compassion for the prisoner, the sick, the helpless,
the poor. It is not proximity in space that deter-
82 ADVENTURE FOR GOD
mines our responsibility to the weak. Arguments
hinging on distance are withering before the inven-
tive genius of the age. At one time brick walls a fur-
long away shut off the needy from the prosperous as
effectively as though each lived on a different globe.
That day is so far past that now the farthest need
may be laid any morning on our breakfast-table, the
most recent calamity in the most distant land served
up to us as our concern before its immediate victims
have ceased quivering under its heel. If we are to live
at all we must live as men who recognize the whole
world as neighbours; and oftentimes our best service
will be rendered to those so far off, so mean, so ob-
scure, that we preclude all possibility of any return.
Such service is no waste of wealth, but a delicate ex-
pression of that sympathy which makes life's wounds
bearable. The only way to kill self-pity is to bury it
life-deep in compassion, that it may be smothered by
others' woes. What is the use of wealth, if not to
benefit the poor? What is privilege for, if not to place
at the disposal of the unblessed?
Now we that are strong ought to hear the infirmities
of the weak, and not to please ourselves.^
"^ Rom. XV, 1.
LECTURE IV
THE QUEST
In many strange adventures have I been in this quest. And so
either told other of their adventures.
IN the preface to the Bool: of King Arthur and
of his Noble Knights of the Round Table Cax-
ton says therein shall be found "many joyous and
pleasant histories, and noble and renowned acts of
humanity, gentleness and chivalry." Nor does he ex-
aggerate the refined beauty of that masterpiece of
knightly romance. But inasmuch as the story of mis-
sions is another embodiment of the same tale, it is not
less full of romance, joyousness and pleasance. The
book of the Acts of the Apostles is as thrilling a re-
cord of daring and achievement as you can find in
human annals.
Napoleon did not plan his campaigns with greater
care than the Apostles, if S. Paul's course is at all
representative, as I beheve we are warranted in assum-
ing. The Apostle to the nations was not dazzled by
the magnitude of his world-wide venture. Like his
Master, his love of men had its roots, and grew, in love
for men. He was not among those whose grasp of the
general meant a neglect of the particular. With a
heart big enough to embrace nations, he always seems
to have had his arms about the individual. Now it is
83
84 ADVENTURE FOR GOD
a far-off convert who creeps into the foreground of
his consciousness to receive a stimulating message of
advice or encouragement, — Say to ArcMppus^ Take
heed to the ministry which thou hast received in the
Lord^ that thou fulfil it} Or, again, more than a score
rise up to receive his greeting, each one distinguished
by a word of affection all his own,^ — Mary^ who he-
stowed much labour on us, Apelles, approved in Christ,
and the rest of them. Every one who once found en-
trance into the interest of S. Paul remained there to
dwell. Time and distance did not obliterate them.
Even in his silences they could feel assured of his
loyalty to them. They were as truly the companions
of his inner life as though they were before him in
the flesh. They were the joy, the anxiety and the
crown of his existence.
In his attention to the poor he neither despised nor
neglected the rich. He was solicitous for hovel and
palace alike. ^ As we read of his singular adventure in
Lycaonia,^ among a rude and barbarous tribe whom
he tried to win for Christ, we know how his heart
would burn with sympathy at the story of Patteson,
1 CoL iv, 17. '^Rom. xvi. scf. Phil i, 13.
* "The use of the Lycaonian language shows that the worship-
pers were not the Roman coloni, the aristocracy of the colony,
but the natives, the less educated and more superstitious part
of the people." Ramsay's S. Paul the Traveller and Roman Citi-
zen, p. 119.
THE QUEST 85
and the South Sea heroes or of the Herrnhuters. The
passion of S. Paul is perhaps the most prominent
characteristic of his personaHty, though I sometimes
think that it is his balance. However, he had both pas-
sion and balance in a nicely determined partnership.
I
It is a tribute to his poise that he did not go about
battering down non-Christian religions. Had he been
a zealot and nothing more, his conversion would have
been the beginning of anti -Jewish prejudice and per-
secution. Converts, according to common experience,
are unbalanced extremists. Instead of this, he re-
mains full of veneration for the old order, magnify-
ing its value at the very moment that he condemns
its exaggerations or the misinteipretations of its un-
enlightened votaries. He is under orders from on high
to proclaim Christ for the world, and the world for
Christ; but this requires a process of reconstruction
and fulfilment rather than one of substitution.
It is written in the nature of things that commen- \
dation is antecedent to effective condemnation, appre-
ciation to just criticism. Condemnation is nothing but
an expression of bad temper, criticism, of outraged
taste, if it has not for its end improvement. Men are
soured and irritated by it when the spirit in which it
is uttered — it is always self-evident — betrays the
86 ADVENTURE FOR GOD
fact that its author is reposing in the conceited con-
viction that he is the one person who has a vision of
the ideal, or indeed any capacity for it. S. Paul takes
for granted that there is both capacity and vision in
those whom he addresses, and reveals the fact to them
by praising some features of their life which consti-
tute a starting-point for better things.^
This is true of his method both when he deals with
morals and when he lays the foundation for an un-
biassed study of comparative religions by touching
with an appreciative hand the religions of his own day
with which he is brought into close quarters. The good
qualities that are, form the promise and foundation
of virtues and graces that are to be; the religion that
is, being from God, is the preparation and basis for
that fulfilling religion of which he is an ambassador.
What finer appreciation of Judaism can be found
than that contained in his letters ? No jot or tittle of
the law, its ritual or its content is slighted or at-
tacked by his pen — only its abuse or misapplication.
The Jewish Scriptures are not dethroned from the
high place they hold in the regard of the Hebrews ;
1 1 would make my own these words : "I have always believed
that it is better to stimulate than to correct, to fortify rather
than punish, to help rather than to blame. If there is one atti-
tude that I fear and hate more than another it is the attitude of
the cynic. I believe with all my soul in romance ; that is, in a
certain high-hearted, eager dealing with life." Fi-om a College
Window, in the Cornhill Magazine.
THE QUEST 87
they become the Scriptures of the Christians — for a
considerable period their only Scriptures. The old
Covenant is caught up into the New. Judaism is the
historic basis of the Faith.
But it is not the only foundation for Chi-istian
truth, though it must always remain the chief sub-
structure. It is the representative pre-Christian reli-
gion. Neither Christ nor His Apostle made onslaught
on heathen beliefs ; the latter used them, and he was
a man who never used a bad thing hoping therewith
to achieve a good end. When S. Paul is for the first
time called upon to preach to a cultured people with
traditional gods and ancient creed, as has been
pointed out by every one who has touched the sub-
ject, he begins with an appreciation of the substance
underlying the shadow, the truth hidden in the
superstition. In other words, he tells the Athenians ^
that their religion which is symbolized by the altar
dedicated to the unknown God is a preparation for
Christianity — Whom ye ignorantly worship^ him de-
clare I unto you. There is inspiration even in the
writings of a heathen author — certain also of your
own poets have said. For we are also his offspring. In
the presence of the record of this incident, the
Saviour's words float into the memory : / came not to
destroy, hut to fulfil.
^Acts xvii.
88 ADVENTURE FOR GOD
The Jewish faith is not displaced from the noble
relationship which it rightly holds by having at-
tributed to it an illustrative character. It is the pre-
paratory religion in another sense than that usually
understood ; it is the typical preparatory religion.
One of its functions is to declare to other religions,
even the cruder religions of savages, that they, too,
point to and find fulfilment in Christ. S. Paul
touched the outskirts of the pagan world in Lyca-
onia.^ The inhabitants were children of nature with
a thin veneer of Roman tradition overlaying their in-
digenous belief. But even here he found common
ground for understanding. The living God, he said,
fixing upon the value of natural religion, which made
heaven, and earth, and the sea, and all things that are
therein, in times past siiffered all nations to walk in
their own ways, nevertheless left not himself without
witness, in that he did good, and gave us rain from
heaven, and fruitful seasons, Jilling our hearts with
food and gladness.
Wherever the Christian teacher may go, to darkest
Africa, to the provinces of China, to the primitive
folk of the Luzon hills, Christ, who is the Light that
lighteth every man that cometh into the world, has
preceded him, and is there to greet him. He has laid,
He is, the foundation on which we are to build. The
^Acts xiv.
THE QUEST 89
fine old allegory of the beggar who under a compas-
sionate touch flashes forth as the Lord, finds new ap-
plication in this connection. Missionary work is not
a doubtful experiment, but a certain success. There is
no ground that is so barren that Christianity cannot
take root in some corner of its soil, no field so aban-
doned that it is not in at least a slight degree pre-
pared to receive the first principles of the truth. As
surely as every river in the land ultimately reaches
the sea, so surely the religion of Jesus Christ will
receive into itself those lesser faiths wherein God
did not leave Himself wholly without witness. There
comes a tremendous enlargement of interest and a
full flood of hope with the thought that the first duty
of the missionary is to find Christ rather than to give
Him among those to whom he is sent.
The chief unfulfilled religions of our time are those
of the Orient, where is the home of great nations,
some of them in decline, some at the dawn of their
life's finest day. The East at this juncture is the cen-
tre of attention because in its contact with the West,
wherein have always originated the largest movements
of history, lie the gravest, the most imperative, the
most interesting human problems. Without Chris-
tianity a solution is hopeless. There are here and there
to be found wide rents in the fabric of society, but
none so stubborn of repair as that between East and
90 ADVENTURE FOR GOD
West. In Christianity, its history, its substance, its
method, rests the hope — the sure hope — of unity.
Christianity is an Eastern reHgion with a successful
Western experience. Its founder was of Eastern origin,
birth, education and history. He Hved and died in a
country that then as now was the borderland between
East and West. Yet the first thing that the new-
born rehgion did when it was a toddhng infant was
to launch out boldly to conquer the West. It was not
content until it had ensconced itself in the very heart
of the Empire. The earliest duty which it conceived
to be laid upon it was to demonstrate in practical
form that it was universal in essence and purpose. It
took on Western dress and spoke in a Western tongue
until the habit became so much a matter of course
that its adherents were inclined to look upon Chris-
tianity as a Western product, and the thoughtless, for
the lack of a better argument, urge against missions
in the Orient that it is absurd to force a Western re-
ligion on an Eastern people !
There is a beautiful, but not critically justifiable
translation of a well-known passage in Zechariah^
which places Christ before us as the Orient. The Vul-
gate reads, Ecce vir oriens nomen ejus (" Behold the
Man whose name is the Orient "). However untrue the
translation may be to the context, it is true to the
1 Ch. vi, n.
THE QUEST 91
text ^ and true to the fact, — Christ is the Orient. The
father of His immediate herald called Him the day-
spring from on Mgh^ — an intense simile transcending
the thought of God as light, and portraying Him as
the source whence light comes. The fact, then, that
Christianity has become Westernized by nineteen cen-
turies of experience is offset by the fact that the au-
thor of Christianity is the Orient, and in taking Him
to the East we take Him to His own.
n
Some broad generalizations made by a Bampton lec-
turer^ bring out forcibly the common standing-ground
which Christianity has with the two great world re-
ligions of Islamism and Buddhism. The three foun-
dation stones of religion, philosophically viewed, are
Dependence, Fellowship and Progress. Christianity
has the three in full measure. Mohammedanism has
Dependence as a natural and indigenous element, with
Fellowship present, though weakly exhibited. In Bud-
dhism Fellowship is the indigenous and most strongly
marked feature, with Dependence and Progress both
playing a part, though an undeveloped part, in its
iThe same word can be translated either " Branch " or "Ori-
ent," though the connection decides in favour of the former.
2 S. Luke i, 78.
3 Bishop Boyd Carpenter in Permanent Elements of Religion
(1887).
92 ADVENTURE FOR GOD
life. Thus the divine elements and the common stand-
ing-ground with Christianity in Islamism are Depen-
dence and in some measure Fellowship ; in Buddhism,
Fellowship, w ith Dependence and Progress faintly out-
lined. In the fatalistic fanaticism of Islamism is evinced
a marvellous capacity for faith ; in the self-commun-
ings and reveries of Buddhism, an unusual faculty for
worship. A recent writer ^ says of the latter faith :
" In the high moral code of Buddhism we may see a
preparation for Christianity."
Intelligent and balanced appreciation of heathen
faiths has been growing steadily. The Church of Rome,
in spite of the inflexibility of her ecclesiastical system,
has been quick always to interpret the popular mind
and develop cults suited to the emotions of the masses.
It is one factor that makes for success in her career.
The angularity of our own communion affords a strik-
ing contrast to this. Our liberality consists more in
diversity of interpretation than in practical adapta-
bility.
In the mission field until quite recently but little
consideration was given to indigenous religions. The
missionary went through the East in very much the
same spirit that CromwelPs soldiers went through
some of the English cathedrals, with instruments of
destruction in hand. The study of comparative reli-
1 G. B. Ekanayaka in East and West.
THE QUEST 9S
gions was chiefly an academic amusement. For the pop-
ular mind the appearance of Sir Edwin Ai-nold's Light
of Asia (1879) marked an epoch. Few good words
were said of the book by orthodox critics. I was told
by grave-eyed men that it was an insidious book,
undermining the very foundations of Christianity, and
I took their word, not reading it for long years only
to discover in the end that it was nothing worse than
a poetic exaggeration of the beauty of Orientalism.
It was no more in error than the belief that God was
not in any religion but Christianity — perhaps less.
Its effect was to rouse many to a consciousness that
though
The heathen in his blindness
Bows down to wood and stone,
he is not wholly without a vision of God. The new
thought of course ran riot in some circles, blighting
missionary interest. '*If so moral and beautiful a re- /
ligion already obtains in the East, why disturb the
natives with our Western ideas .? Christianity does
not fit them. They have an Eastern faith suited to
their minds and habits" — the flimsy and en-oneous
logic we are all familiar with. The unbalanced thinker
with a new and fascinating theme cannot stop when
he once gets going. Something of a craze set in for
the study of Oriental cults, and various defenders of
Buddhism and Hinduism came to the fore. Two
94 ADVENTURE FOR GOD
books of comparatively recent date are worthy of
mention, The Soul of a People^ an imaginative de-
scription of Burmese life, and The Web of Indian
Lrfef championing in powerful language the faith of
India.
It is good that the revulsion of feeling came, be-
cause it brought with it illumination, and placed the
missionary cause on a surer and more intelligent foot-
ing than hitherto. Take the single fact that Sir Ed-
win Arnold and the rest were able to see and de-
scribe the inner value of the Eastern religions to
which they gave their attention. It bears testimony \
to the interpretative faculty of Christianity. So far
as I am aware no one who has not had a Christian ;
inheritance and training, or was not steeped in
Christian thought, has been able to discern their
worth. It is impossible to divest ourselves of the
Christian view-point if we have once been trained to
use it. Just as it would have been impossible for
any one but a Christian to have made the speech of
S. Paul at Athens, so no one but persons of Christian
experience could have written The Light of Asia,
The Soul of a People, or The Web of Indian Life. As
I run over the present-day champions of Oriental cults
I find among them none but those who have been
1 By H. Fielding Hall,— a piece of inaccurate idealization.
2 By Margaret E. Noble.
THE QUEST 95
permeated with Christian thought, — Colonel Olcott,
Mrs. Besant,^ the Swami, Wu Ting Fang (once a pro-
fessing Christian).
When I was in Rangoon I went to see the leader of
Burmese Buddhism, Ananda Maitriya. I found that
he was a Scotchman and his name was MacGregor. He
is a man of scientific attainment who was brought up
in Christianity. Intellectual difficulties disturbed him,
and he embraced Buddhism in Ceylon. Afterwards he
became pohn-gyee and chief propagandist in Ran-
goon. He told me that he purposed Buddhizing Amer-
1 It is the Christian, not the Theosophical part of Mrs. Besant
that says: "You must not build the Church of Christ on an-
tiquarian research, nor on the Higher Criticism, nor on any
question of the value of a manuscript ; you must build Christ's
Church on the living Christ, and not on the dead manuscripts,
otherwise your Church will crumble before the assaults of
scholars and antiquarians. You should not live in continual fear
lest one man should take away from you this doctrine, and an-
other man that ; lest this scholar should deprive you of one be-
lief, and another scholar of another. Nay ! those things may have
their place and use ; and the greatest use of criticism seems to
me to be not that it establishes the facts of history, because
these facts of history are not very important things, but that it
drives the devout heart back on its own experience, on the liv-
ing experience of a living Christ, which is the basis of all true
religion. For rehgion is not based on mouldy manuscripts, nor
on worm-eaten books; it does not find its sanction in the au-
thority of Councils, nor in the statements of tradition. It comes
from human experience, from the evolving relation of the hu-
man soul with God. And Christ is driving His Church back up-
on that, because it has been built on the shifting sand of history
instead of on the rock of human experience." Is Theosophy
Anti-Christian ?
96 ADVENTURE FOR GOD
ica and England after having purified the ancient
religion of Japan. In him we have another evidence
of the interpretative power of the Christian mind.
It has been urged as though it were an argument
against Christ's claims that His originality largely
consisted in interpretation, whereas it is the opposite.
The originality that says wholly new things is ec-
centricity ; the originality that rediscovers old things
sets the world aflame with glory and moves all men.
It is a joy to me, and a new evidence that Christ is
the Universal Man, whenever I find in the maxims of
Confucius or the Vedas an approximation to Christ's
teaching. That which inhered in Christ is character-
istic of the religion that bears His name. He could
take a well-worn bit of Jewish Scripture and make it
blaze like a diamond. Christianity in its relation to
other religions is as the sunlight to a jewel: you
place the jewel in its rays and the light catches its
every point and reveals its hidden or half-developed
qualities. The Scotch Burman and the English In-
dian cannot be as though they had never been bathed
in the truth of Jesus Christ any more than Ananda
Maitriya can cease to be Allan Bennett MacGregor,
or Sister Nivedita of Ramakrishna-Vivekananda can
cease to be Margaret E. Noble.
It is the natural thing for us to recognize that in
Jewish history and literature lies the Christian faith
THE QUEST 97
prior to being unfolded. The relationship has long
since been worked out for us, and it is an easy task
to translate this prophecy, that psalm, this incident
into Christian terms; but it should not appear to us
either forced or difficult to interpret other religions
similarly. If God made a special revelation through
Judaism He none the less makes a real revelation
through other non-Christian religions. Christianity is
the completion of all that is imperfect, the illumina-
tion of all that is obscure in religion, viewed broadly
as that which is the outcome of man's search for the
truth. It is only what we should expect, then, that
Christian minds should prove to be the ablest expo-
nents of Oriental beliefs, that they should surprise even
the life-long votaries of those beliefs and bring them
as pupils to their feet. If they are ignorant of or dis-
claim the source of their illumination, the fact abides
as a tangible process easily traced and explained. The
play of friendly though ill-disciplined Christian forces
on Burmese Buddhism has borne fruit not only in a
revival locally, but in the establishment of a mission-
ary propaganda claiming to have a message to the
world.^ Christian methods have been incorporated into
1 " It will be the faith of the future in that far distant time when
all mankind, conquered by the Love it teaches, enlightened by
the Truth it holds, shall dwell at last in harmony, in self-restraint,
in mutual forbearance, — shall attain at last to a true civiliza-
tion," &c. Buddhism, vol. i, no. 1, page 14.
98 ADVENTURE FOR GOD
Buddhism, Chi'istian generosity has awakened in Bud-
dhists a spirit of Hberality. By their own admission,
though not perhaps in the sense they mean, "the
activity of Christian missions has been a most potent
factor" in this revivifying of their traditional faith.
/ All this goes to prove what Christianity is — the
fulfilling religion. If untempered sympathy and a
little knowledge of Christ can do much, what will
full knowledge and disciplined sympathy accomplish ?
The Gospel stands as a strong mountain whose peak
is in the heavens, lifting into itself the little hills,
and gathering about it as a skirt the broad plain at
its feet. Nor is there a more beautiful spot in the
experience of the Christian Church than where some
ancient religion is caught up into its splendid height.
If the religion of Christ Jesus can never stoop the
head of its absolute claims, neither can it ever raise
itself so as not to touch and absorb the least as well
as the greatest of preparatory and unfulfilled creeds.
Ill
Supposing we were unfortunate enough not to know
that there was affinity between non -Christian beliefs
and Christianity, and yet were convinced of the ab-
solute claims of Christ, we would be in an awkward
dilemma, for experience declares that you cannot an-
nihilate an indigenous religion any more than you
THE QUEST 99
can blot out a man's temperament. The Judaism of
Christianity is one of the Church's strongest pillars
— its moral code, its ardent piety, its lucid theology.
There are grounds for maintaining that the
Chthonic ritual of the Greek religion belonged " to
the primitive Pelasgians, the Olympian to the con-
quering Achaeans." ^ But whether this conclusion is
coiTect or not the two cults both lived, the younger un-
obliterated by the older, though they were unfriendly
enough in their essence. "The formula of Olympic
cults is do ut des ; of Chthonic rites, do ut aheas.''^ So
Andrew Lang: ^ "What the religious instinct has once
grasped it does not, as a rule, abandon; but subordi-
nates or disguises when it reaches higher ideas."
There is an interesting and curious illustration of
the principle to which we are giving our attention in
S. Paul's experience among the Lycaonians. " Where,"
says Ramsay, "the Graeco-Roman civilization had
established itself, the old religion survived as strongly
as ever, but the deities were spoken of by Greek, or
sometimes by Roman, names, and were identified with
the gods of the more civilized races. This is precisely
what we find at Lystra: Zeus and Hermes are the
names of the deities as translated into Greek, but the
old Lycaonian gods are meant, and the Lycaonian
1 Greek Religion^ in the Spectator, April 9, 1904.
2 Custom and Myth.
100 ADVENTURE FOR GOD
language was used, apparently because, in a moment
of excitement, it rose more naturally to the lips of
the people than the cultured Greek language/'
The history of the indigenous religions of the East
points in the same direction. Before the age of Con-
fucius (the beginning of the sixth century before
Christ) there were gropings after God which found
expression in much the same way as among other
primitive peoples. Confucius seems to have deliber-
ately avoided conflict with the system that obtained.
With philosophic insight he saw that if there was a
chance of " substituting a morality for a theology ""
it was not by precipitating a conflict, but by proclaim-
ing the positive principles of a superior way. But it
would have resulted in the same thing had he taken
any other course. The indigenous faith would have
continued to peep through the garments of his moral
code as well as through the later innovations of Bud-
dhism, which began its Chinese career in the second
century before Christ.
In Japan history repeats itself. The crude mytho-
logical nature- worship known as Shinto, or "the
way of the gods," held undisputed sway until the
middle of the sixth century after Christ, when Corea
contributed a missionary suite of Buddhist monks to
the Japanese. Shinto was a "puny fabric"^ perhaps,
1 Things Japanese, p. 415.
THE QUEST 101
but just because it was indigenous the pulse of a na-
tion beat in it and made it strong enough to Hve to
this day. Even though Buddhism conquered it,
Shinto, paradoxical as the statement is, remained un-
conquered, — a historic relic perhaps, but a historic
relic enshrined deep in popular affection. " It is the
established custom to present infants at the Shinto
family temple one month after birth. It is equally
customary to be buried by the Buddhist parish priest.
The inhabitants of each district contribute to the
festivals of both religions alike, without being aware
of any inconsistency." ^ At first the primitive belief
had a struggle for existence, during which it was
driven to consolidate its forces and take the distin-
guishing title which it has since borne. There was a
clever attempt on the part of Buddhism to absorb
Shinto into the new faith, but it was so ineffectual
that not only has the ancient cult maintained an ex-
istence until now, but since the beginning of the
eighteenth century it has enjoyed some measure of
rejuvenescence.
The history of Burmese religion follows along a simi-
lar course. Burmese folk-lore is more than ordinarily
picturesque and poetical, and perhaps that is one ex-
planation why devotion to the Nat continues to be an
integral part of worship among men and women who
1 Things Japanese, p. 405.
102 ADVENTURE FOR GOD
are the most loyal Buddhists in the world. There are
two species of Nats, — on the one hand inhabitants of
the six inferior heavens which contain rewards for
good people after death; on the other, "spirits of na-
ture, fairies, elves, gnomes, kelpies, kobolds, pixies,
whatever names they have received in other countries."^
What can more fully illustrate the indelibility of in-
digenous religion than the following excerpt?^ "The
worship of Nats, of the spirits, has nothing to do with
Buddhism, and is denounced by all the more earnest
of pyin-sin as being heretical and antagonistic to the
teachings of the Lord Buddha. The late King Min-
dohn, who was a true defender of the faith and pos-
sessed of a deeper knowledge of the Pali texts than
many of the members of the Assembly of the Perfect,
fulminated an edict against the reverence paid to the
Nats, and ordered its discontinuance under severe pen-
alties; but the worship was never really stopped, and
under King Thebaw's erratic rule flourished more
than ever."^
1 The Burman, his Life and Notions, by Shway Yoe, a book
worth reading by those who desire to get a true view of the
Burmese and their country.
2Jbid., p. 230.
3 Cf. Bishop Coplestone in the Report on the Census of Burma
(1881). "The Burmans frequently make offerings to Nats, and
regard the spirit world with an awe not called for by the creed
of Buddha. The belief in Nats has remained, underlying their
thoughts and religion ever since they were converted to Bud-
THE QUEST 103
In the first number of Buddhism ^ an apology is made
for the continuance of the old geniolatry coterminous
with the later religion. Here is the explanation. That
which "religious instinct has once formulated or ac-
cepted as true, it does not, as a rule, abandon at the
incoming of new ideas and ideals, but rather tends to
incorporate them, to subordinate or transform them
in accordance with the old ideas. . . . Wherever Bud-
dhism has gone, we often hear it said it has never sup-
planted the religion it found, the indigenous religion.
Yet the people among whom it has gone acknowledge
freely their adherence to Buddhism, and in almost the
same breath own allegiance to some more ancient
cultus. So in Thibet under Buddhism are Shamanistic
beliefs; in China, Confucianism and Taoism go hand
in hand with Buddhism ; in Japan, Shintoism has wel-
comed Confucianism and Buddhism; in Ceylon, Hin-
duism is said to have con'upted Buddhism; and in
Burma and Siam Nat-worship is found with Bud-
dhism." The interesting thing to note is that the old
religion still retains under Buddhistic supremacy its
peculiar character, even though it may be in essence
incompatible with Buddhistic principles. Had Bud-
dhism been less politic and fought with the older cults
dhism, a relic of the ancient cult which is still preserved intact
among the wilder Karens, Chins and other hill races."
1 Pages 83, 88.
104 ADVENTURE FOR GOD
for exclusive rights, the issue, it is fair to conclude,
would have been the same. That it has aspired to ab-
solutism, its fruitless attempt to absorb Shinto in
Japan bears testimony. It seems to recognize its limi-
tations. By its own admission it is not a fulfilling reli-
gion, but a supplementary one, whose features are so
plastic as to be easily marred or mended by the reli-
gions with which it keeps company, and which continue
side by side with it as distinctive religions.
The history of the relationship to other beliefs of
Christianity runs parallel for a short distance with
the experience of Buddhism. The truth as revealed in
Jesus Christ has not succeeded, where it has tried, in
obliterating all the distinctive characteristics of the
heathen religions with which it has been thrown into
contact. Wherever there has been pitched battle, as
for instance with later Judaism^ or with Islamism,
the result has been the confirmation, the dignifying
and the further alienation of the non-Christian be-
lief. Christianity, withal that it is the universal and
absolute religion, is not strong enough to erase the
handwriting of God as seen in the primitive creeds
and natural religion of the various divisions of the
human family.
1 Shylock is typical of the Jew for whom the Christian Church
is at least in some measure responsible, — the creation of intol-
erance and persecution.
THE QUEST 105
IV
The parting of the ways comes with the absohite
claims of Christ and the Church's consciousness of
world-wide, time-long mission. Conviction comes be-
fore toleration. We can afford to be tolerant because
we know beyond perad venture just where we stand.
There are two kinds of toleration : one the toleration
that originates in weakness, the other that which ori-
ginates in strength. The attempt to make Christ a
local celebrity, and to welcome into His gallery Gau-
tama and Confucius as peers, is the toleration of weak-
ness. To put the name of Zoroaster and the Sibyl in
a window of Westminster Abbey in company with the
prophets, as being with them heralds of the dawn, is
the toleration of strength. The motto of Christianity
is not "Live, and let live," but / came that they may
have life, and may have it abundantly} Christianity
is to other religions what, for instance, the most ad-
vanced science always is to the science of the past,
adding to what was said to them of old time, words
which not merely supplement, but complete. She is
organically related to all the vast reaches of the
world's yesterdays, carrying in her hand all history,
inviting into her confidence all religions, taking un-
der her guardianship all humanity. It is insufficient
1>S. John-x., 10.
106 ADVENTURE FOR GOD
to say that nothing pertaining to life fails to be of
interest to her; rather is it that everything touching
man is her duty. Everywhere the world is waiting for
her fulfilling activity.
The absolute claims of Christ are unmistakably
written in the original Christian documents. They are
as clear as a bugle-note, incapable of double meaning.
Before them, groping gives place to certainty, and
man stands forever with his feet bathed in the dawn.
Prophets, moralists, philosophers, statesmen, in earlier
days shed their single ray of light on the tangle of
human problems, never claiming to point out the
whole way, the complete truth, nor to possess the
fulness of life ; never calling attention to themselves.
Christ alone makes this astounding claim; He only
calls attention to Himself as the key to the whole of
life's mystery: / am the way, and the truth, and
the life: no one coineth unto the Father, hut hy me}
If this were the only saying of the sort we would have
reason, perhaps, to doubt its authenticity, and would
be less intolerant of placing Christ in the Pantheon.
But such assertions are of the very texture of the re-
cord of Christ's life; not in S. John's Gospel alone, but
impartially in all alike they weave their sturdy threads.
I have quoted this text first as gathering up in one
regnant, conclusive sentence that which He scatters
1 S. John xiv, 6.
I
THE QUEST 107
profusely up and down the pathway of His instruc-
tion. If therefore the Son shall make you free, ye shall
he free indeed} I am the bread of Vfe: he that cometh
to me shall never hunger ; he that helieveth on me shall
never thirst.^ Peace I leave with you, my peace I give
unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let
not your heart he troubled, neither let it be afraid.^ Come
unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I
will give you rest} There are other sayings — mys-
terious, terrible, obscure — which if they do nothing
else mark out the exclusive character of His claims.
They seem to me that kind of hyperbole which hu-
man minds need to startle them into the truth. All that
ever came before me are thieves and robbers} If any
man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and
wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and
his own life also, he cannot be my disciple} All things
are delivered unto me qfniy Father: no man hnoweth
the Son, bid the Father: neither knoweth any man the
Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son
will reveal him} Add to these representative pas-
1 S. John viii, 36. 2 s. John vi, 33. 3 ^. John xiv, 27.
4 S. Matt, xi, 28. 5 s^ John x, 8. 6 ^. 2yt<A;e xiv, 26.
7^. Matt, xi, 27; S. Luke x, 22. Cf. note H, p. 552 of Liddon's
Bampton Lectures (ninth edition). Dr. Vance Smith is "natu-
rally embarrassed by our Lord's solemn words. 'The verse,' he
says, ' in both evangelists interrupts the train of the Gospel, and
looks strangely out of place, though it would have been per-
fectly suitable to John. ... A singular verse, ' he exclaims, in a
108 ADVENTURE FOR GOD
sages the fact that Christ's self-chosen name was "The
Son of man," ^ — which, whatever further significance
it may bear, is a claim to universahty and a quiet de-
chnation of local or merely national Hmitations, — and
an impregnable position for His unique relation to
life is established so far as documents are concerned.
Draw the absolute threads and you have not even a
man left — only a mutilated and useless fragment.
A king once ordered a royal robe to surpass all in
the world. (I am answering in allegory those who out
of consideration for Oriental religions and under the
spell of their beauty would minimize Christ's claims.)
It came, a thing of glory, — gold and scarlet and pur-
ple on a constant background of black. "Splendid,"
he exclaimed, "but make it more splendid by denud-
ing it of all gloom. Draw the black threads." Obedient
to his behest, his servants wrought the work of de-
struction, and it came back to him a tangled mass
without form, incapable of covering the nakedness of
a beggar, much less of adorning the shoulders of a
king- And so the only man^ brave enough to offer a
later passage, 'which looks as if by some chance it had been
transferred from the Fourth Gospel.' Yet there it is, in the Syn-
optists."
1 Who but One who held in His hand the sceptre of final au-
thority would command His disciples to go to "all nations," and
affirm that He would be with His followers even unto the end of
the world? (S. Matt, xxviii, 19, 20.)
2 Renan, Vie de Jesus,
THE QUEST 109
reconstructed Christ after destroying His absolute
claims offers us what? — a book that is dying, and in
a few years will be dead. And of all worthless things
nothing is more worthless than a dead book.
Fortunately Christianity is not dependent solely
upon documents for the establishment of its right to
throw its arms about all peoples and nations. It has
that indisputable testimony known as experience
which at once declares the character of its destiny and
the method of working it out. From the first it ap-
plies itself to its task of conquering by absorption
and fulfilment. Other religions influence, and are in-
fluenced by, their predecessors or antagonists; Chris-
tianity alone merges their best elements into herself
until they disappear not in death, but into life. She
moves the beggar from his hovel into her palace,
where Buddhism would let the beggar live on in
deepening degradation by the side of Gautama's man-
sion.
It is in my judgement the strongest claim for the
imperial aspect of the Church's polity that it came
from the Roman religion of the day, which was na-
tionalism. Gibbon says that " the ruin of Paganism,
in the age of Theodosius (a.d. 378-395), is perhaps
the only example of the total extirpation of any
ancient and popular superstition."^ His term is
1 Decline and Fall of the Roman Emjnre, ch. xxviii.
110 ADVENTURE FOR GOD
wrong. For "extirpation" read "absorption." The ac-
cidents were destroyed, the substance was used. Not
abvays did the Church interpret aright her relation
to pagan behef, not always did she fight with spirit-
ual weapons ; but the higher principle prevailed in
the end, and the process of fulfilment did not flag.
The basilica became a Christian temple, the weekly
memorial of the Resurrection to this day bears in
its name the mark of nature- worship. "The senti-
ment that in the heathen world had rallied about the
changes of the seasons, or had found in the Eleusi-
nian or other Mysteries a religious expression, gained
in the observance of Easter a point of contact, by
which the transition could be made to the Christian
ritual. . . . The life of nature constitutes a tangible
basis for Christian hope, while the spiritual resurrec-
tion glorifies and consecrates the external order, as
though it were designed and adapted for the further-
ance of man as a spiritual being." ^ The same author
sums up the whole thought thus : " The Church
was now beginning to assert, in emphatic ways of
her own, the neglected truth that in the substance
of the visible creation there was some kinship with
Deity, as well as in the spirit and reason of man. In
this way Neoplatonism passed over into the Catholic
1 Allen's Christian Institutions, pp. 467 ff. The whole chapter
bears on this thought.
THE QUEST 111
Church and became the inspiring principle of its
ritual. Rome had bestowed upon the Church her gift
of organization and administration ; Greece had lent
her philosophy and intellectual culture ; Egypt, with
Syria, came last, and furnished the motive of the
cultus or worship, by whose agency the last vestiges
of heathenism were overcome."^ The glory and honour
of the nations are thus brought into the City of God.
We find that early in the annals of Christendom
other religions than Judaism were recognized as con-
tributing their best elements to the Church of Christ,
and so are exhibited as having a preparatory function
leading directly into Christianity. Paganism attacked
Christianity and strove for its annihilation. However
erratic Christianity was, on the other hand, in her
method of dealing with paganism, however short of
her ideal as the fulfilling religion, "apostasy, weakness
and sin have had no power to destroy the imperish-
able strength of Christianity. It became secularized,
yet it still remained a leaven, to leaven the whole
world." 2
The voice of history adds its witness to that of the
original documents of Christianity, testifying to its
1 Allen's Christian Institutions, p. 458.
2Sohm's Outlines of Church History, p. 21. Cf. pp. 27 ff. for a
survey of the relation of Gnosticism to Christianity, and the
contribution from paganism to the Church of mysticism.
112 ADVENTURE FOR GOD
absolute claims, — claims worked out by a process of
fulfilment. It has been reserved for us of later genera-
tions to see the futility of the use of force against
conviction whether or not it be exerted in the name
of Christ. As we look back we discern how Truth
won in the might of its sympathy and not in the
power of the sword, by absorption of that which was
worthy, rather than by iconoclastic violence against
deficiencies and distortions.
An absolute claim demands an absolute response. He
who has manifested Himself as the controller of men
throughout the mazes of history can be trusted by
the individual to take care of His own particular de-
stiny. The whole man is asked for, and the whole man
must respond. With the growth of implicit trust in
the children of the Church, there will revive the zeal
of Apostolic days to make bold adventure for God to
earth's remotest bounds. Until this is done with a
more generous offering of the best men to the farthest
and hardest work, and a more equable distribution of
the Church's benefactions, there will be halting theo-
logy and clouded glory in Christendom. Wonderful as
Christ's claims are, without testing them in the cru-
cible of human experience, where all nations and peo-
ples and tongues, where East and West, mingle their
THE QUEST 113
elements for the universal good, we can have no
grand conviction that they are true. It is easy to see
how strong missionary effort, which realized its pur-
pose among the peoples of Asia and the tribes of
Africa, would come back to Christianized lands in the
form of new grounds for belief. There are hosts of
honest men who are waiting to be convinced of that
which they would fain accept, namely, that Christ is
indeed the Monarch of men and that we are safe in
surrendering our best to His keeping. The unwon
world is ripe and ready to be garnered. Two years ago
at this time I was in the capital of Formosa. The
Japanese pastor asked me to baptize three persons
who were asking admission to fellowship with Christ :
an aged samurai^ who had once been a bitter antago-
nist of the Church, a young surgeon in the army, and
a lad of ten. Their names were selected with an im-
aginative insight that was rarely delicate and beau-
tiful. The aged knight, whose weapons had for a sea-
son been against, not for, the faith, became Simeon —
Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according
to thy word;
For mine eyes have seen thy salvation;
the soldier doctor became Cornelius; and the boy,
presented by his father, who stood behind him, was
Isaac. Old age, virile manhood and sunny youth
114 ADVENTURE FOR GOD
stretched out their hands to God and were found by
Him. As in a parable they pointed to the dawning
day. Beheve me, it is no ordinary privilege to be al-
lowed to stand on the mountain top and watch the
earliest rays catch the highest peaks, the sure pro-
mise that the valleys erelong will be golden with the
sun's glory. As yet we of the West have but little un-
derstanding of them of the East. But Christ, who is
the Orient, is the unifying force who is drawing to-
gether inch by inch the severed edges.
Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall
meet,
Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God's great Judgement
Seat;
But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor
Birth,
When two strong men stand face to face, thd they come from
the ends of the earth!
LECTURE V
THE EQUIPMENT
Sir, said the king unto Sir Galahad, here is a great marvel
as ever I saw, and right good knights have assayed and failed.
Sir, said Sir Galahad, that is no marvel, for this adventure
is not theirs, but mine, and for the surety of this sword I
brought none with me; for here by my side hangeth the scab-
bard. And anon he laid his hand on the sword, and lightly
drew it out of the stone, and put it ifi the sheath and said
unto the king, Now it goeth better than it did aforehand. Sir,
said the king, a shield God shall seiid you.
IT is an apparent inversion to speak of work first
and equipment afterwards. A moment's reflection,
however, will convince you that true preparation is
that which is the outcome of knowledge of the thing
to be done. Conventional preparation is not free from
the likelihood of missing the mark. The sword and
armour of Saul with which David was girt were laid
aside for an equipment adapted to the task as he had
worked the problem out by a study of conditions.
Formal preparation yielded place to intelligent pre-
paration.
In speaking of the missionary's equipment, I am go-
ing to set a high ideal that we may aspire each to
have an "Excalibur" and a white shield as fine as
Galahad's. Ideals sanctify the actual. The Church is
holy because her ideal is holy: likewise the nation.
115
116 ADVENTURE FOR GOD
We cannot afford to be negligent of methods or wea-
pons. Christ looked to His armour in the forecast of
His vocation in the wilderness, and like David dis-
carded that which was unworthy. We, then, must look
to ours.
Obvious features of equipment I shall pass by, not
that they are unimportant, but because they are al-
ways being pressed on your attention, — faith, convic-
tion, knowledge, tolerance, courage, sympathy. Let us
confine ourselves to four matters that are not always
given the prominence they deserve, — the cultivation
(1) of the imagination, (2) of the social instinct,
(3) of the spirit of patriotism, (4) of the spirit of
moral adventure.
I
A TRAINED imagination added to a disciplined char-
acter forms a powerful and winsome combination.
There is a healthy glow shed upon life by a cultivated
imagination which lends charm and potency to all the
activities of the personality possessing it. The imagi-
nation is one of the most important faculties we enjoy.
It is the natural basis of the spiritual quality of faith.
Undisciplined imagination expresses itself in credulity
and superstition; starved imagination, in heaviness
and scepticism; balanced imagination, in buoyant
trust and simple faith. One of the most conspicuous
THE EQUIPMENT 117
characteristics of the Jewish prophets is their imagi-
native power that enabled them to forecast in radiant
language things that might be. Thej saw the state of
the case always from a high elevation. How beautiful
upon the mountains are the feet of him that hringeth
good tidings, that puhlisheth peace !^ Why upon the
mountains.? — why not from the ways of men.^^ Because
they must "catch the sunlight on the hilltops ere they
speak to the dwellers in the plain." ^ You must live
a life above men before you will be capable of living
an influential life with men. A view of the ideal is
antecedent to a view of the actual. O Zion, that hring-
est good tidings, get thee up into the high mountain}
Before the dwellers upon the plain can be moved, the
messenger must bathe his message in an altitude as
near heaven as he can rise to.
The fragmentary glimpse in Scripture of our Lord's
mode of life and instruction reveals a nicety of
imaginative cultivation that is without parallel. He,
like the prophets, sought the mountain tops before
He walked the plains. "As one reads the biography
of Jesus, one cannot fail to be struck with the effect
that seems to have been exercised on His mind and
nature by the wide prospect from a lofty elevation.
Try to cut out the mountain scenes from His life.
1 Is. lii, 7.
^MaXhQSon's Leaves for Quiet Hours, pp. 60-62. ^Is. xl, 9.
118 ADVENTURE FOR GOD
How much poorer would the Gospels be."^ In the
story of the typical temptation ^ we clearly have a
piece of autobiographical naiTative. It is as powerful
a piece of imaginative literature as exists, lifting up
ordinary temptations into the inner recesses of ro-
mance. Such a passage as that describing the temp-
tation of the mountain top presses "on us the idea
that a notable side of the character of Jesus lay in
His poetic and imaginative susceptibility to the
influences of natural scenery. The susceptibility did
not take the form merely of a liking for the pictur-
esque, which seems to be rather a fashionable idol of
the modern mind than a deep-seated craving of
the human spirit. It was the suggestiveness of a wide
prospect, the stimulation of the mind accompanying
the outlook from a point of vantage, which moved
the nature of Jesus, and was probably a strong in-
fluence in determining his education." ^
Perhaps nowhere does the imaginative power of
Christ manifest itself more than in His mode of
teaching. He is the author of the parable, which is
something quite distinct from the allegory or the
fable. It is the height of the art of illustrative story-
telling in which deep principles are inculcated by and
embodied in simple, unadorned narratives taken from
1 Ramsay's Education of Christy pp. 37, 38.
2 S. Matt. iv. 3 Education of Christ, p. 40.
THE EQUIPMENT 119
the common affairs of life. Each parable suggests
manifold truths, but it attempts to drive home only
one. So supreme an imaginative art is that of the
parable that very few men dare to attempt it. "Christ
talked in parables," said Moody, whose power to reach
the masses has been unsurpassed in our generation.
"Oh, how I wish I could talk in parables! I would if
I knew enough." No preacher would be wasting time
if he were to study the structure and substance of the
parable and make efforts in private to speak its
mystic tongue, even though he never composed one
worthy of seeing the daylight.
Another indication of Christ's imaginative power is
found in the idea that some people have that He did
not teach theology. The theology is there in his con-
versation and in His public utterances, but it is
theology that has caught the glow on the hilltops
and melted into poetry.
In the case of S. Paul ^ we find a philosophic nature
breaking into song because due attention was given
to imagination for the sake of faith. His colouring is
rich always, but sometimes it excels itself In his
marvellous burial sermon over the dead in Christ of
all times and nations ^ you are carried into the farm-
land, and see at one moment the scattering of the
1 He seems to have been a reader of poetry. Cf. Acts xvii, 28.
2 1 Cor. XV.
120 ADVENTURE FOR GOD
seed, at the next the tossing tassels of the golden
grain. What bald logic of resurrection ever had lan-
guage half as convincing as this! At another time
night and day speak powerfully to the human will
and entice it to play its part where mere command-
ment would repel.^ Man needs radiant armour, and
he gets it from S. Paul's hand.^ Truth, righteousness,
faith and the rest of the grand series look as full of
promise as the new-born lily-bud with the kiss of the
morning dew still on its lips.
S. Peter's imaginative gift was distinctive. His pe-
culiarly sensitive and impulsive nature reveals a half-
discipHned imagination that on the one hand brought
him trouble, and on the other hand took flight with
him into regions of faith whither his companions
could scarcely follow. The angels hovered about the
threshold of his consciousness and gave him security
in peril.
Our modern world will readily respond to a sane
imaginative appeal. Napoleon Bonaparte was not far
wrong when he said that he who would rule men must
rule them through the imagination. His deepest power
lay in the idealistic conception he had of reestablish-
ing a world-empire, with France as its centre, rather
than in his ability as a general or power in adminis-
tration. It will always be so, for man is a creature of
1 Eom. xiii, 1 1 if. 2 j^p^^ yi, 10 ff.
THE EQUIPMENT 121
emotions, and a function of Christianity is to develop
that side of life so that it will not be erratic. Theology
is the queen of sciences only so far as it is humanized
and made to blend with the divine in man and on earth.
Melt your theology ^ into poetry. The story of the
Father's love toward his erring son 2 is the Epistle to
the Romans declared in terms of the human emotions.
Theology alone creates an angular soul, unlovely and
of small power among serious men ; theological igno-
rance, on the other hand, suggests a jellyfish. I have
seen characters that look like a neat volume on rudi-
ments of theology, and others resembling a handful
of loose leaves of unconnected but pious sayings.
Our modern world is a world of facts and things,
and for this very reason the pulpit should be all aglow
with imaginative skill. The business man, who has
nothing but a steady diet of logic all the week, stands
in a position to be easily won by a poetic appeal from
one who has had experience with God and with hu-
manity, — the earliest qualification of a preacher. Little
children, too, whose minds are being moulded with sci-
entific precision, more than at any moment in the his-
tory of child-life, need folk-lore and fairy stories in
the nursery and the romance of religion in the Church
and Sunday-school. Neglect the imagination and you
1 Note that you must have your theology before you can melt it.
2 S. Luke XV.
122 ADVENTURE FOR GOD
offer an affront to faith — I do not hesitate to say so,
for I beheve the imagination to be as truly divine as
the reason in conjunction with which it is to be used.^
There are two ways of cultivating the imagination
which I would emphasize : 1. Grasp the subjective
teaching of the Old Testament. Christ^s use of the
Scriptures was either ethical or spiritual. It ought
not to be difficult to see that no theory of criticism
can rob the Old Testament of these elements. The
significance, for instance, of Elijah's retreat into the
wilderness and his communings with God^ can never
fail to teach a whole garland of lessons, no matter
what theories may be advanced regarding the place
in the realm of history Old Testament miracles hold,
or the method by which God held converse with men
in the old days. If we have once realized that the
history of the Jews is a history illustrative of the di-
vine element in all history, and have read the story
of our own or other nations looking for God in its
pages, then we can go back to the Old Testament
with a quiet mind and a certainty that its chapters
are designed not merely to challenge our critical fac-
ulty, but also to give scope for the healthy exercise
of the imagination. 2. Read poetry, especially Dante,
1 During the original preparation of these lectures I chanced to
pick up a book by an eminent financier and statistician urging
the necessity of the cultivation of the imagination.
2 1 Kings xix.
THE EQUIPMENT 123
Shakespeare and Browning. Dante is the poet of saint-
liness ; Shakespeare, the poet of common life ; Brown-
ing, the poet of moral adventure. Dante reveals life's
worst possibilities and passes on to its best. The In-
ferno portrays the certainty of sin's lash, the punish-
ment of sin being sin ; the Purgatorio reveals penalty
in the guise of blessing — it is the book of pain, but
also the book of song ; the Paradiso is the book of
present joy in life with God. Shakespeare is the re-
vealer of human character. No book except the Bible
more fully unlocks the inner recesses of common life
and ordinary people — the sort that we rub shoulders
with daily. There are no saints, his men and women
are pictured without idealistic colouring. Browning
seems to take a delight in dragging all the gloomiest
problems of men into the public gaze with scorn that
inheres in a courage that knows that they can be
overcome. He teaches us to fear nothing, no not even
" the Arch Fear in visible form," for there is nothing
to fear. His high hope cannot be dethroned, for it is
bom after he has plumbed the world's woes and found
them not to his disadvantage. Having seen, challenged,
fought, won the victory over the worst, he takes his
seat forever in the citadel of hope. He is the poet of
the beauty of ugliness, the perfection of the imper-
fect, the splendour of the ordinary.
The missionary more than other men, perhaps,
IM ADVENTURE FOR GOD
stands in need of imaginative development. Novelty's
charm withers in a day. Lonehness among a people
who baffle our efforts to understand them is loneli-
ness indeed. Inner resources are a boon to be coveted
under such conditions. If one has imagination he will
have at any rate a sense of humour, without which
I soberly believe none should be accepted as a mis-
sionary. The imaginative man is the one who will
most quickly come into touch with the people, for
the control and use of the imagination is essential to
sympathy. Does not the following excerpt from
Moody's life reveal one of the secrets of his power ?
"He saw a student carrying a heavy valise. ... 'I
had started to read my Bible, but somehow I could n't
fasten my attention to the book. I could see before
me as I read that young man trudging along with
that heavy valise. Perhaps he had given the quarter
that it would cost him to ride to the station in the
collection taken up at my request the day previous.
Yes, and he had nearly two miles to walk. Surely
that box must be heavy ! I could n't stand it any
longer. I went to the barn and hurriedly had my
horse hitched up, overtook the young man, and
carried him and his baggage to the station. When I
returned to the house I had no further difficulty in
fixing my attention on the subject I was studying.'"
The incident is so trifling that I would not venture
THE EQUIPMENT 125
to recount it if it were not that I remember that the
shortest biography of Christ finds space to tell us
how Jesus went to the relief of His friends who were
distressed in rowing}
II
Hand in hand with the cultivation of the imagina-
tion walks that of the social instinct. We must learn
to know human nature by contact with human na-
ture, a thing that is necessary to prevent the effort
to serve from failure. The light taking of Christ's
motto, The Son of man came not to be ministered
unto, hut to minister,'^ is to be objected to. It
points to a climax reached after extended training.
Ministration covei*s such a diversified field that it
entails that deep knowledge which is the fruit of the
habit of observation. It is tme that the Christ of the
public ministry w^as the tireless minister, but He be-
came so because through the long silent years He
was studying human life. Pastoral efficiency takes its
origin in a humble sitting at the feet of the flock
while they reveal not merely their defects, but also
their capacity. A fool or a wayfaring man can de-
tect flaws without effort ; the cheapest vocation of
life is that of a critic. But it takes a trained and alert
eye to perceive good qualities in a half-developed or
1 S. Mark vi, 48. 2 s. Mark x, 45.
126 ADVENTURE FOR GOD
undeveloped character. We are inclined sometimes to
chafe because pastoral calls, especially among the
rich, hold such scant opportunities in their hand.
That, however, depends on your view-point. Re-
member that you can make a call what you choose, —
the shuffling through an unpleasant conventional
necessity, or the quiet observation in the home set-
ting of human character to which we are expected
to minister. A lack of knowledge of human life
among clergy is responsible for the frequency of
pastoral failure. Among the maxims of Confucius I
found these searching words : " One should not be
concerned not to be understood of men ; one should
be concerned not to understand men."
One duty of a missionary is to dignify social life. If
he chances to be among primitive folk a task of com-
plete reconstruction lies before him. Theories care-
fully gathered beforehand and cherished as prime ele-
ments in equipment are as likely as not destined to
prove valueless or unsuited to the special conditions.
He is thrown back upon his social ability and know-
ledge to work out the problem of sanctified fellow-
ship. It might be interjected in this connection that
inability to work with others — I am not speaking of
natural reserve or shyness, but the exaggeration of
self-assertion — is an absolute disqualification for mis-
sionary vocation. It reveals so serious a temperamental
THE EQUIPMENT 127
obstacle, or else such a neglect of social training, as
to preclude any prospect of success.
Power of leadership consists largely in ability to dis-
cern the spirits of men. Jesus hnew all men^ and needed
not that any one shoidd hear witness concerning man;
for he himself knew what was in man} At first any
attempt to appropriate such a gift as this must be
more or less conscious and uncomfortable. It calls for
social alertness. After a while it becomes instinctive,
as it did with Lincoln, who knew men better than
they knew themselves, — a fair definition of a leader.
He did not need to rely on book knowledge to the
extent that the rest of us do. He did but little read-
ing because men had always been his book, and his
swiftest glance was more accurate than the careful
perusal of most men. That preacher who by a clever
use of the Socratic method among his congregation
during the week extracted from his social intercourse
material for his Sunday sermons won the success he
deserved.
m
Patriotism used once to engender hatred and jeal-
ousy of all nations but one's own. It sprang from the
instinct of national self-preservation, which jumped to
the conclusion that unless the nation strove for su-
1 S. John ii, 24, 25.
128 ADVENTURE FOR GOD
premacy, and won by the force of its might, its own
existence was doomed. In the old days it was a mili-
tary virtue, with the motto Dulce et decorum est pro
patiia mori. But the times are changed. International
experience is by degrees teaching mutual respect and
consideration among the nations of the world, and
patriotism feels it as large a privilege to live for one's
country as to die for it. It is becoming more and
more a link in the chain of unity instead of an ele-
ment making for estrangement. The efficient priest
cannot afford to forget that he is a citizen, and that
as such he must plunge into present-day questions,
carrying with him the spiritual leaven that is to leaven
the whole lump of life. The missionary who would
work in sympathy with other nations must first know
and love his own.
The prophets of old were patriots, and from this
fact came half their power. Jesus, the pride of na-
tions, was a lover of His own country and of men who
like Himself came of Jewish lineage. S. Paul was
stimulated by thoughts of citizenship in a rising de-
gree to the close of his career. It became to him a
stimulus and inspiration for purposeful adventure,
and endowed him with subtle tact. Tact, let us recol-
lect, is sympathy in operation.
The exploration of travellers and the quest of mis-
sionaries in centuries gone were partially incited by
THE EQUIPMENT 129
zeal for national honour. In our day conquest of na-
tions for selfish ends has become well-nigh impossible,
and has given place to a desire for that conquest that
will manifest itself in peace and good- will. Diplomacy
lives for the promotion of the intelligent apprecia-
tion and enlarged understanding of foreign nations
not less than for the protection of home interests.
The foreigner not infrequently becomes the foremost
interpreter of a neighbouring nation's character, so
that it is easily conceivable how the Christian mis-
sionary, provided he be a patriot, may instruct in the
true principles of self-fulfilment a people far removed
in language and customs from his own.
Patriotism is a help to the study of language. The
thought is not strained, having a bearing on the sig-
nificance and spiritual value of language. Is it not so,
that the acquisition of an unknown tongue is not so
much the instrument through which we are to con-
vey our ideas to others — that can always be done by
an interpreter — as the key by means of which the
door admitting us into native life may be unlocked?
He who masters another tongue endows himself with
a second soul. Language is the conserver of nation-
ality as well as the highest symbol of the nation'*s
personality. Nicholas I of Russia, in his endeavour
to suppress the dialects of conquered states, and
Alexander III, his successor in his onslaught on the
130 ADVENTURE FOR GOD
Polish tongue, were bent on crushing out the lesser for
the sake of the greater nationality. The Pan-Slavonic
ideal aims at one language for the entire race. The
vernacular, like indigenous religion, is hard to annihi-
late. It may be done by the annihilation of the peo-
ple ; I know no other way. A new language, however,
may be brought into being by the blending of the
vernacular with alien tongues, furnishing an enlarged
medium of thought for a race whose horizon has been
extended. In little England Welsh on the one hand
and Gaelic on the other have stoutly withstood the
onslaught of Dane and Saxon and Norman. Some
foolish folk suppose that English will some day be a
substitute for the Babel of dialects in the Philippines.
Though it may become a lingua franca^ Malay, en-
larged and modified perhaps, will always continue.
If for a while the intellect of Europe lived in the
language of Rome, the common people were during
the same period constructing a mode of expression all
their own. Early in the fourteenth century there is-
sues in the purest Italian tongue that gem of poems
which is divine not only in title, but also in character,
the burden of the song being devotion to the nation
as a sacred thing — the writer himself was an exile
because a patriot. The Divine Comedy signalized
the adolescence of a language and promised the birth
of a nation. In the sixteenth century French was held
THE EQUIPMENT 131
in low estimation under the pressure of the classical
renaissance. The poets of the Pleiad^ came to the
rescue and prepared the way for the proud Academic
fraiK^aise. Du Bellay, one of the number, "recognized
of ^vhat force the music and dignity of language are,
how they enter into the inmost part of things; and
in pleading for the cultivation of the French lan-
guage he is pleading for no merely scholastic inter-
est, but for freedom, impulse, reality, not in literature
merely, but in daily communion of speech."^
In view of these facts it always seems to me a grave
affront to national life that the highest expression of
worship should find its only utterance in the Roman
Church through the medium of a dead language. It
is one of the standing tokens of the unextinguishable
1 The school composed of Pierre de Ronsard and six like-
minded geniuses.
2 Pater's Renaissance, p. 171. It was maintained by classical
enthusiasts that "science could be adequately discussed and
poetry nobly written only in the dead languages. ' Those who
speak thus,' says Du Bellay, 'make me think of those relics
which one may only see through a little pane of glass, and must
not touch with one's hands. That is what these people do with
all branches of culture, which they keep shut up in Greek and
Latin books, not permitting one to see them otherwise, or
transport them out of dead words into those which are alive
and wing their way daily through the mouths of men. ' 'Lan-
guages,' he says again, 'are not born like plants and trees,
some naturally feeble and sickly, others healthy and strong and
apter to bear the weight of men's conceptions, but all their vir-
tue is generated in the world of choice and men's freewill con-
cerning them. Therefore, I cannot blame too strongly the rash-
132 ADVENTURE FOR GOD
animosity toward nationalism of that communion.
The vernacular reaches its zenith in worship, but
Rome denies it the privilege in the Mass.
As a further illustration of the intimacy between
the vernacular and national character it is worth
noting that at moments of national debility there is
apt to be an importation of foreign letters, as, for in-
stance, immediately prior to the rise of the modern
German Empire there was an affectation in Germany
of French thought and expression; and among the
decadent set in America and England, the most ob-
jectionable French literature is gloated over by its
votaries, to their further degradation.
Language study is frequently the bugbear of the
newly arrived missionary, who discovers that he must
settle down to a couple of years' hard grinding be-
fore he can turn his zeal loose upon native life. If he
remembers that his task is not a dry duty to be got-
ten through with, but that in it he will find the soul
of the people, there will be at least a dash of romance
in his study to give zest in its pursuit.
ness of some of our countrymen who, being anything rather than
Greeks or Latins, deprecate and reject with more than stoical
disdain everything written in French ; nor can I express my sur-
prise at the odd opinion of some learned men who think that
our tongue is wholly incapable of erudition and good literature ' "
(p. 169).
THE EQUIPMENT 133
IV
The spirit of moral adventure stands high in the
missionary's equipment. He must be a man whose
experience justifies his boldly saying with S. Paul,
Be ye followers of me. He is to be a leader in
righteousness, and it is a leader's place to go before.
The world of men need a sure sign that there is a
power given by means of which they can achieve
moral stature. It is insufficient that we should be
equipped merely to go down into the shadows and
sympathize with weakness; we must be able to bid
them come up with us along a path with which we
have already become somewhat familiar.
There are two influences which in our day make
strongly against the processes of self-improvement, —
a certain depreciation of the power of the human
will, and the supposed cheapness of pardon. Modern
life has abated or obscured the sense of moral re-
sponsibility. The common conception is that in the
main we are born what we are to be. Our fate is de-
termined largely by our progenitors, and what is
left of it when heredity has finished playing with us
is disposed of by environment. The best we can do
is to create modifications of a minor sort. Popular
science is responsible for this distortion of the truth, —
popular science usually being composed of hasty con-
134 ADVENTURE FOR GOD
elusions drawn from a little learning. The laws of
heredity are but dimly understood, and the good
heredity at our disposal has never been encouraged
to spend the full extent of its beneficent force on us,
whereas bad heredity is invited to lay upon our lives
its maximum weight. As for environment, the whole
history of civilization consists in the narration of
man's progressive conquest of it. It is for us to test
experimentally to what extent we may appropriate
the good characteristics of our forbears far and near.
The Anglo-Saxon aristocracy of yesterday was proud
chiefly of the family name and the family gout. True
noblesse oblige drives us to make the family virtues,
brilliant yesterday but dim to-day, shine forth again
in our lives. It is a worthy venture.
Any system of semi-fatalism like that of the pseudo-
scientist is strangely at variance with the Bible. It is
the book of personal responsibility, even though it be
the book of redemption. It portrays human life not
as a toy at the disposal of chance, but as a solemn
trust, self-determining at will. It may rise or fall ac-
cording as it chooses. Men are represented as free
agents. They are called to become that which they
are not, and which they can become only through
deliberate choice and effort; to do things that seem
so far in advance of human possibility as almost to
mock our defectible and defective nature, but which,
THE EQUIPMENT 135
if we fail to achieve, expose us to the charge of cul-
pable weakness and negligence. When any one attains,
he receives commendation as having won. If he fails,
condemnation is speedy and stern. Human life,
human character, is represented as being just what
each person determines to make it. All this the Bible
proclaims in the terms of human experience.
God's grace is not honoured by any depreciation of
the power of the human will. We never know what
measure of moral capacity is at our disposal until we
try to express it in action. It is not visible except so
far as it declares itself in terms of duty performed.
An adventure of some proportions is not uncommonly
all that a young man needs to determine and fix his
manhood's powers. In the realm of moral character
this is profoundly true.^
Another bar to moral progress is the subconscious
assurance that pardon is cheap. Popular theology, like
popular science, is dangerous. The cun-ent Protestant
idea of justification by faith is not that of S. Paul.
Pardon is free, but not cheap. Without some recogni-
tion and acceptance of penance, whatever form it may
take, there can be at best but a low regard of God's
1 " What we are to be must in great measure depend upon the
eiforts we are prepared to make. If we are to become more spirit-
ual men, it can only be because we are firmly determined that it
shall be so." A. W. Robinson, The Personal Life of the Clergy^
p. 20.
136 ADVENTURE FOR GOD
mercy. It is not that we think to win pardon by self-
inflicted pain, or that we consider the sufferings of
Christ incomplete; rather is it the intuitive effort of
one who loves his Saviour to claim a share in His suf-
ferings,^ and so in some dim way come to understand
the meaning of atonement. Penance is merely an in-
dex finger helping men to estimate the full value of
forgiveness, and all who have surrendered themselves
to it know what illumination and sweetness lie hid-
den in its shadows:
The thing that seems
Mere misery under human schemes,
Becomes, regarded hy the light
Of love, as very near, or quite
As good a gift as joy before.
Modem teachers of ethics tell us that the growth of
character, like every other form of evolution, is slow.
Doubtless it is so at best, but never as slow as a slug-
gish spirit convinces itself that it is. Pace is commen-
surate with effort, and no man can measure the po-
tential rate of his own growth until he has tested his
will capacity to the utmost and to the end.
Few can speak of growth in righteousness without
a sense of shame and confusion. Surrender to weak-
nesses, presumptuous sins, minimized faults, rise up
1 Cf. S. Paul's phrase {Phil, iii, 10), that I may know . . . the fel-
lowship of his sufferings. See also Col. i, 24.
THE EQUIPMENT 137
to condemn the majority. But underlying all else are
two clear indications of capacity, — we know that we
did not fail of necessity, but of choice; otherwise our
wrong -doing would be no cause for shame any more
than the nightmare which disturbs our rest. The
power of choice still remains to us, though of course
it must now be backed up by more vigour than if we
had not weakened character by indulgence. The other
encouragement is that we still expect emancipation
from our faults. The road to be travelled cannot be
quite the same as it would have been some years ago,
but the goal is unaltered. It does not reject us as un-
worthy or hopeless, but if anything, it is more in-
viting than ever. A little more healthy self-reliance,
a little more belief in the Everlasting Arms, and we
would undertake a conquest here and there of things
that menace our well-being and curtail our useful-
ness. General Braddock was dying. He "roused himself
twice only, for a moment, from his death stupor:
once, the first night, to ejaculate mournfully, 'Who
would have thought it!' And again once, he was heard
to say, days after, in a tone of hope, ' Another time
we will do better!' which were his last words, 'death
following in a few minutes.' Weary, heavy-laden soul;
deep sleep now descending on it, — soft, sweet cata-
racts of Sleep and Rest; suggesting hope, and triumph
over sorrow, after all. 'Another time we will do bet-
138 ADVENTURE FOR GOD
ter;' and in a few minutes was dead!"^ He planned
his next adventure, but it never came off. Ours will.
You will notice that the features of equipment which
I have emphasized have as their basis elements that
are common to all, though this faculty or that may
be more susceptible to cultivation in one than in an-
other. The ties that most quickly and most firmly
bind us to others are not the endowments of genius
and brilliancy such as excite admiration. These rather
lift men up on a pedestal and act as a force making
for separation. It is the full development of the ordi-
nary gifts of human nature that furnish the soundest
armour for ministerial efficiency, — a thing to encour-
age the many of us who are conscious that, though
having no conspicuous talents, we are called to the
priesthood and its successes.
1 Carlyle's Frederick the Greats bk. xvi, ch. xiv.
LECTURE VI
THE GOAL
About midnight came a voice among them which said, My
sons and not my chief tans, my friends and not my warriors,
go ye hence, where ye hope best to do, and as I bad you. —
Ah, thanked be thou. Lord, that thou wilt vouchsafe to call us
thy sinners. Now may we rvell prove that we have not lost
our pains.
WE began the discussion of adventure for God
with the banner of romance flying to the
breeze. Visions of His deep purposes caught our imagi-
nation, and the prospect of sharing in the process of
working them out was a tonic to our souls. We heard
the moan of a suffering world telling us there was
place for practical compassion. The glint of hope and
high expectation was in our eye as we stood by and
watched the procession of God's missionary knights
march past with success in their hands, and in desire
and purpose we flung in our lot with them, donning
an equipment that might stand the strain of the cam-
paign. It is exciting to feel that life may be made
so effective as to reach the end of space, the outmost
bounds of human life. It is a help to be assured that
the deep bass note of a suffering race is there, not to
be shut out lest we hear it, not to force itself upon us
to torture us, but as an appeal for aid ; and that those
who are called to help can help. It makes missionary
140 ADVENTURE FOR GOD
work a triumphant march if the nations of the world
are ready and waiting to be converted. Our loneliness
in a foreign land is easily bearable with the comfort-
ing thought that wherever we go Christ has preceded
us and is waiting to receive us. And if an important
part of our equipment is but the wise development
of ordinary gifts, and does not consist in unique birth
endowments, then the missionary vocation is of all
vocations the one to be most coveted. While not dis-
puting the conclusion, before we accept it as being
something we are ready for, let us lay aside the veil
of romance, and measure with an accurate rule various
grave matters that are essential to a balanced view of
the situation.
The contrast between the beginning and the end of
life is great. In it lies all the difference between pro-
mise and fulfilment. Beginnings are radiant with hope ;
the end at best leaves but a broken cord hanging from
our hand. If romance enshrines the infant head in a
circle of light, tragedy draws one or more of its red
lines across the face of old age. Lying at the feet of
childhood are blossoms of virtue and achievement;
at those of old age, the fragments of disappointed
hopes, shattered vows, blighted expectations. The man
who most nearly approaches success is he whose spirit is
THE GOAL 141
not broken under pressure, whose faith is not quenched
by clouds, whose purpose from first to last is not de-
flected by threat or allurement. High aspiration al-
ways leads into the thick of trouble ; there is no round-
about way to the goal.
But it is hard, at the inception of a career, to believe
that these things must be. Why cannot the path be
kept sunny all the way through ? Are there no means
of escape from the pain and inconvenience of wounded
feet ? Can we not somehow elude the suffering of per-
sonal failure which, we recognize, often if not always
means the promotion of the cause ? The strength of
youth is so commanding, its buoyancy so elastic, as
to deceive us sometimes into thinking that the inevi-
table is capable of being avoided. But it is unkind to
allow those who are drawn toward missionary life to
imagine anything but the truth. Part of the test of
vocation is that having seen and pondered over the
cost we are prepared to pay it. The missionary who
sets out with nothing but the glamour of the mo-
ment to move him is on the highroad to failure. The
forces of progress are relentless ; they not only demand,
but they take to a nicety their pound of flesh. It is
noticeable with what emphasis our Lord lays down
the minimum price of discipleship, and how the Apos-
tles reiterate its terms. If any man would come after
me, let him deny himsef, and take up his cross, and
142 ADVENTURE FOR GOD
follow me. For whosoever would save his life shall
lose it: and whosoever shall lose his life for my sake
shall find it} If so be that we suffer with him^ that we
may be also glorified with him} The kind of suffering
is not that which we go out of our way to inflict upon
ourselves, but which comes, if not to-day, then to-
morrow, to every one who is morally and spiritually
ambitious.
Christ's life is the normal life in its suffering not less
than its perfection. That is to say, a life lived consis-
tently on the same plane as His would entail as much
pain — the character of the suffering might be dif-
ferent, but that does not signify — now as then. Suf-
fering is proportionate to the completeness and the
aspiration of our lives.
Brow made more comely by the thorns harsh kiss,
Hands taught new mercy by nails rnerciless,
Heaii's portals open-lanced to human need,
Feet shod with fiery wounds that lend them sjjeed.
The friends of Jesus are like their leader in that they
never lose their pains during the period of conflict,
nor the compensating efficiency that is ensuant upon
Christian endurance.
The Lord began His course among mortals with the
diadem of success upon His brow. Heaven spoke to
1 S. Matt, xvi, 24, 25. ^ Rom. viii, 17.
THE GOAL 143
earth about the hour-old Child v/hose name was
to be Wondeifid, Counsellor^ The mighty God, The
everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace} The wise
sat at His youthful feet.^ God favoured Him and man
loved Him.^ When he began His larger work He had
the inspiration of divine Sonship in His soul.* There
were moments when popularity laid its coils to fold
Him in Laocoon-like embrace;^ the world ivent after
Him, to use the frightened hyperbole of the Phari-
sees as they beheld the hold He had on the common
folk.«
But troubles came, first in ones and twos, and then in
groups, finally in phalanxes. The envy of His enemies
takes shape in plots, and ends in tragedy. Within is the
pain of disappointment; the dulness of His disciples
impedes His work ; the faith of the people affords Him
but the fragment of an opportunity ; His teaching is
misunderstood by those nearest Him — then arrives
that hour in Gethsemane in which His soul so quivers
with pain that we can see it suffer as He is drawn away
to bleed on the cross and die. The climax of His
faithful failure is reached in a cry that is the most
perfect portraiture of loneliness that the world holds.*^
At the beginning of His life there was the song of peace
1 Isa. ix, 6. 2 s^ Luke ii, 46. 3 s. Luke ii, 52.
4 S. Matt, iii, 17. 5 s. John vi, 15.
6 S. John xii, 19. 7 S. Mark xv, 34.
144 ADVENTURE FOR GOD
and good-will,^ and the poetry of hope and joy.^ At
the end the bystander can discern nothing but the
half-silence of a broken heart and the wild music of
the untamed storm. We who are trained to see be-
neath the surface, with the wisdom and piety of
centuries to help us out, read the triumph so clearly
as almost to be blind to all else. The enthusiast,
half drunk with the vision of youth, ready to bear
self-inflicted pain, forgets that the suffering of an
adventurer for God is that which is least expected
and least wanted. When Jesus began to shew unto his
disciples, how that he must go unto Jer^usalem, and suffer
many things of the elders and chief priests and scribes,
and be killed, and the third day be raised up; Peter
took him, and began to rebuke him, saying. Be it far
from thee. Lord : this shall never be unto thee? Self-
chosen suffering seems so suitable; the kind that
comes, however, is so necessary. It takes a long while
for us to realize that suffering is the real work of an
aspiring soul.^ The protean character and the surprises
of suffering form the hardest phase of the suffering life
to be borne. The capacity of the trained mind and
refined soul to suffer is limitless, and it deepens
until life ends, or the faculties wear out. Exemption
can be bought only at a price that a true-souled man
1 5. Inike ii, 13, 14. 2 ^. i^]^^ i, 45 ff., gg ff. ; ii, 29 ff.
3 S. Matt, xvi, 21, 22. * J. Mozley, quoted by Illingworth.
THE GOAL 145
would not care to pay. It is no argument against the
love of God that the world is a world of pain, pro-
vided, as we know to be the case, that God Himself has
elected to suffer more than the greatest sufferer, and
that there is a worthy end to it all; provided that
some day we cease to be chieftains and become God's
sons, that we cease to be His warriors and become His
friends, or in a word, that we lose not our pains.
This law of suffering is not a Christian invention.
S. John Baptist, with less to sustain him than the least
Christian, went through the same stern school, illus-
trating that it was the rule of the old order not less
than of the new. His young days, I do not hesitate to
aver, were joyous, hopeful moments in spite of his in-
dulgence in rigorous self-discipline. He, too, tasted the
sweets of popularity, so that when the time came for
him to be smitten with the sword of chastisement by
another hand, the wound cut into the quick of his
soul. His feet were almost gone, his treadings had
well-nigh slipt. The dumb prison walls would have
buried his pain in their silence had he not uttered one
cry that pierced even their callousness: Art thou he
that Cometh, or look ice for another?^ Had his powers
been devoted to the furtherance of a false cause, or
not? \Vho can fully weigh the pain of such a doubt?
His mind was set at rest by Christ before his head
1 S. Matt, xi, 3.
146 ADVENTURE FOR GOD
became the toy of merry-makers. But the doubt lives
on to torture other adventurers at the sunset of their
career.
S. Peter, the Apostle who " loved to choose and see
his path," was not allowed to play truant from the
school of heroes. When thou ivast youngs thou gh-dedst
thyself, and walkedst whither thou woiddest : but ichen
thou shalt be old, thou shalt stretch forth thy hands,
and another shall gird thee, and carry thee whither
thou wouldest not} If the story is true, at the very
end the grizzled Apostle chose life as his discipline
rather than death, even when death was that which
God willed for him ; and had not Christ laid upon his
arm a warning hand, he would have failed.
S. Paul, the prototype and pattern of the modern
missionary, began his course as a Christian with a
vision whose brilliancy lingered upon his life beyond
the usual term of such visitations. His history has
more suffering in it than often falls to the lot of
men. Out of his experience he exhorts his friend to
be partaker of the afflictions of the gospel accoi'ding
to the power of God.^ There were occasions when de-
pression engulfed him. We would not, brethren, have
you ignorant of our ti'ouble which came to us in Asia,
that we were pressed out of measure, above strength,
insomuch that we despaired even of life} When sun-
1 S. John xxi, 18. 2^ Tim. i, 8. ^2 Cor. i, 8.
THE GOAL 147
set was in sight, and the Roman sword that was to
smite off his head was already uphfted, he uttered
his cry of abandonment: Demas forsook me, having
loved this present wordd} At my first defence no one
took my part, hut all forsook Tne? But he expresses
no surprise. It is only in accord with the law of God's
kingdom. Having fought his fight and tried to live
for the brethren, God has issued His decree that it is
better for them that he should die, — die in full view
of impostors leading astray the flock. And he dies
like his Master, with alternate notes of triumph and
cries of pain on his lips.
II
Let us make no mistake. The cleverest weavers of
romance must always be the foremost pupils in the
school of suffering. And without pain there is no
glory. It is wise, nay necessary, to sit down and
quietly reckon with this certainty, so that when we
meet our fate we shall not be surprised or overborne.
Which of you, intending to build a tower, sitteth not
down first, and counteth the cost, whether he have suf-
ficient to finish it?^ It is often the case that a young
priest goes out to his task without adequate appre-
ciation of even its initial discouragements. A little
pained surprise, much hopeless floundering, a gradual
1^ Tim. iv, 10. ^2 Tim. iv, 16. ^ S. Luke xiv, 28.
148 ADVENTURE FOR GOD
lowering of ideals, come to an inglorious close in the
cessation of effort, and a new blot upon the Church's
escutcheon. To some the buffeting comes early, to
some late; but to all it comes. For some it takes the
form of apathy in parochial life or partisan bicker-
ings, for others the blight of worldliness or the lust
of visible success in conflict with the pure ideals of
the youthful pastor; but for all it is a certainty.
Beloved, think it not strange concerriing the fiery
trial which is to try you, as though some strange
thing happened unto you: hut rejoice, inasmuch as ye
are partakers of Chrisfs sufferings ; that, when his
glory shall he revealed, ye may he glad also with ex-
ceeding joy. If ye he reproached for the name of Christ,
happy are ye ; for the spirit of glory and of God
resteth on you. . . . But let none of you suffer as a
murderer, or as a thief, or as an evildoer, or as a busy-
hody in other men^s matters. Yet if any man suffer as
a Christian, let him not he ashamed; hid let him
glorify God on this hehalf . . . Let them that siffer
according to the will of God commit the keeping of
their soids to him in well doing as unto a faithfid
Creator.^ S. Peter, you see, did in his day what I am
striving to do, — to convince men of the inevitable suf-
fering that is the lot of the Christian, and especially
of him who in any sense is to be a leader in Christ's
1 1 Pet. iv, 12 fF.
THE GOAL 149
Church. We must not be surprised when it comes as
though it were strange, for it is an integral part of
experience. That it is fiery does not signify — this
too is part of a divinely ordered programme. A
Christian's sufferings are the prelude to a Christian's
triumph, as in the case of the first Christian, Christ.
There is, however, one kind of suffering from which
the Christian is exempt, that of the evil-doer — the
murderer, the thief, the busybody. He is to be
ashamed if this should come to him, but if he suffer
as an adventurer for God, not only must he be not
ashamed, but he may rejoice in the great deeps of
the soul.
We must not confuse the two possible kinds of
failure in ministerial life. To the one, it is true, we are
liable, to the other we are bound. Though we may
have a wholesome fear of the first, we are concerned
with faithful failure, that is to say, the failure born of
faithfulness — not the failure of faithfulness.
The phase of failure that we of to-day are chiefly
liable to is the result of worldliness, pride and sloth.
Our position is not unlike that of the Christians who
lived when the faith began to be popular in the Empire.
What has been called the secularization of Chris-
tianity shortly took place. Compromise with the world
was mistaken for the working of the leaven of the
Gospel. The temptation is for a zealous man to try to
150 ADVENTURE FOR GOD
be not in the world as well as not of the world. He
would safeguard the purity of the truth to such a
degree that it is quite apart from life. No one can
fail to see the peril of claiming every department of
life for Christ and trying to redeem it, but a less am-
bitious course seems to force us to the admission that
the world is too much for Christ, or else that it is in
the divine scheme that certain phases of life are with-
out hope of regeneration. It would appear to me, how-
ever, that just as the nation brings its glory into the
Celestial City, so should society, or the world of com-
merce, or the sphere of intellect. The dangers of striv-
ing for this are summed up powerfully by Auberlen.^
"The fundamental error of our Christian theory and
practice is that we blend the Kingdom and the World
— the very thing the Bible calls 'whoredom.' . . . The
deeper the Church penetrated into heathenism — the
very heart of it — the more she herself became hea-
thenish; she then no longer overcame the world, but
suffered the world to overcome her. Instead of elevat-
ing the world to her divine height, she sank down to
the level of the worldly, fleshly, earthly life; as the
heathen masses came into the Church unconverted,
so the heathenish worldly spirit passed over to the
Church without passing through the death of the
1 Quoted by Archbishop Benson in his posthumous book The
Apocalypse: A Study, pp. 45 ff.
THE GOAL 151
Cross." Purely individualistic Christianity concerns
itself solely with the units of society. Social Chris-
tianity, while not neglecting this fundamental duty,
lays hands of sanctification on departments of organic
and organized life, beginning with the family, and not
stopping at the nation, but boldly claiming a voice in
international affairs. The larger enterprise is fraught
with peril, but the peril loses itself in opportunity.
The fullest opportunity has its home between a risk
and a possibility. The process is neither one of blend-
ing nor of compromise, but of leavening. It is indeed
a melancholy failure, as for the individual so also for
any part of the Church, to lose vision and take on the
tone and temper of time and space. There is nothing
worse or more difficult to remedy, for compromise with
the world carries with it the comfort of lotus-eating
— the softer features of the Gospel are appropriated
and its disciplines lost sight of. Side by side in the
mind of a Christian leader must lie a just view of the
actual and a clear view of the ideal. It is this that will
lift him up into the realm of lofty independence that
accepts established custom only after it has been tried
and not found wanting.
Pride is always a prominent temptation in the lives
of those who are of necessity forced into introspec-
tion and subjectivity. It puts the messenger before
the message, the priest before the sacrament, the man
152 ADVENTURE FOR GOD
before his God. But are we not inclined to foster the
root of pride by a misunderstanding of its real char-
acter? Pride is not the recognition in ourselves of gifts
and graces; it is rather the dwelling upon them as an
end in themselves, or as a means of self-pleasing. Com-
mon honesty compels a man who has the gift of ora-
tory, or the grace of self-control, to recognize it just as
fully as the brown-eyed man knows the colour of his
eyes, or the muscular man the power of his physique.
It is a good thing to measure our gifts as well as we
know how. Once having got their approximate size,
there is no surer antidote to pride than the employ-
ment to the full in the noblest way of what we possess.
As for sloth, in these strenuous days it usually takes
on the form of a lack of balance in which worship is
outstripped by action. It is the great unseen stretches
of life that are most endangered by the spirit of the
age. The part of life lived in the public eye is kept
up to pitch, but we are too weary, or worried, or pre-
occupied, to take time to become personally acquainted
with the eternal verities. We do not plan for deep ex-
cursions into the sphere that lies less than a hand's
breadth from our prie-dieii. Or in moral matters we
are not curious enough to try just how high we can
climb in the scale of goodness.
The commonest failure of the worldly leader is that
he has nothing to show but a flourishing business
THE GOAL 153
establishment bearing the name of a Church, and a
low ideal. That of the proud man is that he has at-
tached people to himself and not to his Gospel. He
rejoices over personal achievements with a self-con-
sciousness that results in loss of power, because it with-
draws the attention from the result to be obtained
and centres it on self. That of the slothful man, that
he is seldom behind the veil, and his sermons are
nothing but quotations or platitudes devoid of the
fire of experience. Grosser failures I have passed by,
as they are too manifest to need treatment.
Now as to the failures to which we are bound. Their
cause must be the same as brought Christ to the cross,
— other-worldliness, humility and spiritual dihgence.
It is extraordinary how one who has been true to these
standards looms up above the able and the learned.
Perhaps in his lifetime he was not very strong in the
pulpit, he was awkward in address, he had some un-
mistakable flaw in character; but the hand of death
has made his whole life speak with the eloquence of
godliness, and smoothed away the wrinkle in his char-
acter which — how strange it is we did not recognize
this before! — was incidental. His citizenship was al-
ways in heaven. His indifference to positive results
was due to his insistence upon deep results. He was
a guardian of motives and a guide and sustainer of
high purpose.
154 ADVENTURE FOR GOD
Humility is the one grace that cannot be counter-
feited. It is the hallmark of a noble character. Its
wearer knows his gifts, but he also knows for what pur-
pose he carries them. Being preoccupied in his en-
deavour to employ them worthily he has no time to
give to admiring them. He values their weight above
their beauty.
Spiritual diligence is never off duty. It begins out
of sight, but it is as much at home in public as in
private. Our Lord's spiritual activities had their source
in the unseen portions of His life, but they never ceased
to flow, simply and naturally. There were but few
formal occasions in His career ; neither was there any-
thing unprepared. The evangelical record is largely
made up of common occurrences transfigured. If we
were to pass by the deeds which called forth powers
in Him that we do not individually possess, and to
make the spiritual attitude of the Master toward the
commonplaces of life our study and pattern, we would
be in a fair way to the achievement of spiritual dili-
gence. His simplicity was not the simplicity of nar-
rowness. It was the simplicity of a single motive which
made it as easy to spiritualize one situation as another.
The simple life is not the hfe that does one thing, but
the life that does all things from one motive, and that
a simple motive.
THE GOAL 155
III
But where is the failure and the pain in a life grounded
on such principles as we have been considering? In
this: world-forces antagonistic to Christianity will
be aroused and we shall be made to feel the venom of
their arrows. You have but to read the honest biogra-
phy — it is a hard kind of biography to find — of a
leader of righteousness, to learn the thousand ways in
which his effort is impeded and wounds are inflicted.
Reduce the scale and you have a portrait of my lot
and yours, unless some early and sudden blow close
the volume summarily. Perhaps it will be in a country
to^vn where your Gethsemane and Calvary will greet
you, perhaps in the shadow of a stately city church,
perhaps on the frontier of Christianity. But greet you
it will, if you rise to your proper stature. We must
view the case without self-pity, which next to self-
admiration is most despicable. Our early schemes will
blossom and flower, perhaps. The road for many miles
will be smooth, it may be. The freshness of our vision
will not easily suffer extinction. But the inevitable is
inevitable. The vision of youth will fade ; its glow will
die as the colour in the western sky when night engulfs
the last throb of the sun. Friends will leave us. Some
of our spiritual children will lapse into unbelief, or
worse. Before a growing ideal and in the wisdom of
156 ADVENTURE FOR GOD
retrospect our earlier plans will look sophomoric and
inadequate. A long pastorate will have taken the keen-
ness off our preaching. Our parishioners will ill con-
ceal their weariness of us — one of the modern and
most painful forms of crucifixion. The younger men will
discuss questions our old-fashioned minds are unable
to follow. The query of the Baptist will rise to vex
us: "Is it not possible that I have made a mistake?
Have I not wasted my life in a fruitless struggle.?"
All this is but the common experience of faithful men.
I am but transcribing a page from everyday history.
But the vision is not dead. It has not ceased to be.
Once we carried it as the flower carries the morning-
dew. Now it carries us as the mother her babe. It still
lives, — lives with a more abundant life than yesterday.
But it has passed from a fragrance, a fascination, a
joy, into a world-force, a life undying, a beacon for
other men. It has mingled with our blood. Half the
texture of our lives is woven from its threads. "The
homely actual receives and hides the shining ideal, as
the splendours and warmth of summer are reborn in
humble plants and springing grass. Yet doubtless the
ideal will in time transform the actual to its own
image." The process is not yet complete. We can fol-
low only to the edge, and the highest prophecy of
what lies beyond is little better than a guess. For eye
hath not seen^ nor ear heard, neither have entered into
THE GOAL 157
the heart of man, the thing's which God hath prepared
for them that love him}
As with the vision, so with the appeal. The plain-
tive cry of a suffering world no longer kindles our
emotions into the half pain, half joy of yore. We hear
it with emphasized distinctness. But long since the
lines between our intellectual and emotional Hfe lost
their sharpness, and well ordered aid is our instinctive,
almost automatic response to need within the reach
of our failing strength. Feverish pity has given place
to dignified and disciplined compassion. There has
been a growth, a transformation, not loss or decay.
The world looks very evil — we can see its whole
breadth now. It requires no straining to touch the
outer bounds of human life. The nations appear far-
ther from being won than at the moment of our first
glimpse of far lands and great spaces. But it is only
because we are ripe in knowledge, rich in experience,
keen in discernment, that these things take on this
guise. Had we seen when young with the same eyes
wherewith we see now, we would have a standard of
comparison. As it is, there is none. We are thrown
back on the faith that believes that God's promises
do not fail, that no good work falls short of reaching
fruition, somewhere, some time, and the knowledge
that God's mills grind slowly.
1 1 Cor. ii, 9.
158 ADVENTURE FOR GOD
Our equipment has ceased to be a warrior's defence
and has become a veteran's consolation. Armour is
still needed, the armour of God at that, but the bat-
tle is over, and there is nothing left for us to do but
stand and wait. The fullest courage is for the helpless
hour when our world-wandering is over, our hope
Dwindled into a ghost not Jit to cope
With that obstreperous joy success ivould bring.
Yet our spirit is unbroken, our courage not cowed,
our faith not extinguished. It is only that we rely
more on God, less on man, beginning with self.
Comely fear, such as graced the Saviour's soul in the
presence of death, will be coloured with reverent
speculation on what lies beyond. Nothing remains but
to compose ourselves for the finish because we have
reached the Goal.
For sudden the worst turns the best to the brave,
The black minute 's at end,
And the elements rage, the fiend voices that rave,
Shall dwindle, shall blend,
Shall change, shall become first a peace oid of pairt^
Then a light, then thy breast,
thou soul of my soul! I shall clasp thee again.
And with God be the rest !
LAUS DEO!
By the Rt. Rev. CHARLES H. BRENT, D.D.
Bishop of the Philippine Islands
WITH GOD IN THE WORLD
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