3/^/f 
 
 ^-^ "D"DTTVT/-iT7im/^TVr "KiT T vT' 
 
 PRINCETON, N. J. 
 
 SM/.. 
 
 BX 9178 .03 1892 
 
 Odlin, James Edwin, 1857- 
 
 1920. 
 New concepts of old dogmas 
 
 Nuviber 
 
NEW CONCEPTS 
 
 OF 
 
 OLD DOGMAS 
 
NEW CONCEPTS 
 
 OF 
 
 OLD DOGMAS 
 
 A BOOK OF SERMONS 
 
 / 
 
 ■y 
 BY REV. JAS. E. ODLIN 
 
 FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY 
 CHICAGO: I NEW YORK: 
 
 148 AND 150 MADISON STREET | 30 UNION SQUARE, EAST 
 
 Publishers of Evangelical Literature. 
 
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1S93, by 
 
 FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY, 
 
 In the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington. 
 
 All Rights Reserved. 
 
To 
 
 MY WIFE, MY BEST FRIEND, 
 
 This Book 
 
 IS 
 
 Affectionately Dedicated. 
 J. E. O. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 These sermons have been so kindly received 
 by both the home congregation and strangers 
 present, that the author has been encouraged to 
 offer them to the larger public, with the hope 
 that they may be found suggestive and helpful 
 in the higher things of our common Christian 
 
 ^^^ * PASTOR'S STUDY, 
 
 First Presbyterian Church. 
 
 lVaukega?iy III., Sept. lo, i8g2. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 COSMOS AND WORLD-AGE. 
 
 PAGE. 
 
 I. The Creation Points to God. — Job j8 :ji ... 1 1 
 II. Divinity vs. Humanity, or Aurelius vs. 
 
 Christ, — Matt, y : 12 21 
 
 III. The Secular Spirit. — Matt. 6 : 10 34 
 
 IV. God the Arbiter of Destiny. — Acts 1:7 43 
 
 THE USE OF MIRACLES. 
 
 V. Christ the Miracle-worker. — Acts 2 : 22y 23. 53 
 VI. Miracles as Related to Modern Life. — Acts 
 
 ig : iiy 72 66 
 
 GRACE, LOVE, AND OBEDIENCE. 
 
 VII. The Foreordained Grace of God. — Rom. 
 
 S ■• 2g 79 
 
 VIII. God is Love. — / John 4:8 89 
 
 IX. Obedience Demanded. — Luke g .'62 99 
 
 THE SON OF MAN. 
 
 X. Carl Marr's Flagellants. — John 14. : i^ .,, 108 
 
 XL The Face of Christ. — 2 Cor. 4:6 119 
 
 XII. The Stricken Christ. — Isa. ^j : 2 128 
 
 THE SON OF GOD. 
 
 XIII. The Appealing Christ. — Rev. 3 : 20 138 
 
 XIV. The Meat which is Perishing. — John6:2'j. 150 
 
 [ix] 
 
Contents. 
 
 CHARACTERISTICS OF EXPERIENCE. 
 
 XV. The Patient doth Minister to Himself. — 
 
 John s : 17 164 
 
 XVI. LONESOMENESS FOR GOD. — Eph. 2 : 12 I74 
 
 XVII. Freedom of the Sons of God. — John 8 : 34. . 185 
 
 XVIII. The Power of Habit. — Rom. 12 : i 195 
 
 XIX. Honest Self-denial. — i Peter 4 : 13 207 
 
 XX. Ignorance in Moral Character. — Heb. 
 
 4-15 219 
 
 XXI. The Patience of Christ; May We be Par- 
 takers. — Matt. 2^ : 41 231 
 
 THE PRAYERFUL TEMPER. 
 
 XXII. The Basis of Prayer. — JoJm 4 : 22 242 
 
 XXIII. The Life Burden a Prayer. — Neh. jj : 14. 253 
 
 XXIV. A Valid Redemption. — John j : 14^ ij 263 
 
 IMMORTALITY. 
 
 XXV. Yet shall I Liye. — John 11:2^ 273 
 
 XXVI. He is not Here; He is Risen. — Matt. 28 :6. 283 
 
NEW CONCEPTS OF OLD 
 DOGMAS. 
 
 * * * 
 
 THE CREATION POINTS TO GOD 
 
 " Canst thou bind the cluster of the Pleiades ^ or 
 loose the bands of Orion /■ " — Job j8:ji, 
 
 THE nations about ancient Israel worshiped 
 the heavenly bodies. To them they were 
 the divine powers or etherial bodies of 
 the genii, and worshiped as such. On the 
 other hand, the Scriptures always maintain 
 the creature-hood of all the starry host. 
 This would exclude their deification ; hence 
 they are regarded as light-bearers, — His 
 ministers a flame of fire, — the subservers 
 of mundane purposes. That they illustrate 
 by their greatness and the splendor of their 
 natures, the divine majesty and wisdom, is 
 the teaching of the text. The Psalmist finds 
 proof of God's true love to man in the vast 
 concerns of a universe proclaimed at night by 
 the glowing splendors of their glittering orbs, 
 
 (II) 
 
12 HetD Concepts of £)I6 Dogmas. 
 
 looking out upon the seething darkness 
 brooding over the abysmal gulf of time. 
 There was an age when men did not under- 
 stand very much of anything save the little 
 strip of earth their own nation inhabited, and 
 such other country as they had covered in 
 their travels. The highest form of philoso- 
 phy and knowledge was engrossed by the 
 man himself and the organized governments 
 under which he lived. He had sculpture, 
 architecture, wealth, slaves. Gold and silver 
 were his money and his ornament. Bronze 
 was his weapon and utensil ; war and its 
 divertisement the employment and pleasure 
 of his existence. Such a man worshiped as 
 gods the protector of the streams about him> 
 of the vale in which his village-city stood, or 
 the ever-present miracle of the sun by day 
 and the moon by night. The ancient the- 
 istic belief of the Jew taught or was cogni- 
 zant of a world creation and sustentation, 
 through the Lord, the giver of life, — an 
 apprehension strictly in keeping with the 
 scientific spirit of our century. The heavens 
 by day, the moon and stars by night, were 
 before all men. Here was the real mystery 
 of existence laid bare, if rightly understood. 
 Conscious there was no adequate solution 
 
^E?e Creation Points to (5o6. 13 
 
 of the mystery of the stars by night, aside 
 from God as first cause, the writer's hand 
 is pointing to the mystery of the chaos 
 which fills all the heavenly spaces, whether 
 glowing for us in the radiance of the sun, or 
 shrouded in the veiled face of mother earth 
 withdrawn from the blaze of celestial glories. 
 Assured that men cannot explain away the 
 facts of universal nature, though they might 
 smirch their own birthright in proving them- 
 selves earth-born, he turns his eyes to the 
 ever-present object lesson writ all over the 
 material things which man handles and 
 knows, concerning the omnipotence of the 
 over-soul and the all-wise nature of the 
 superhuman Intelligence which holds flam- 
 beauant torches over the bottomless gulfs of 
 the stellar places, from which, listening, we 
 may hear *'the roaring loom of time." 
 
 The tendency of this age, we may call it 
 the world spirit, is to magnify the miracle of 
 life. We live ; the animals live ; the plants 
 and trees live. This wonderful benefac- 
 tion over which man has dominion, fills his 
 senses, absorbs his nature, and blinds his 
 intellect until, as Bunyan so well portrays, 
 he may be all absorbed in what his muck- 
 rake shall fetch him of glittering gold, the 
 
14 Hem Concepts of Vlb Dogmas. 
 
 substance of the world's wealth, from refuse 
 and ashes. But the stars are above him, and 
 he can see them, the glittering jewels of a 
 dead creation. Far out as his eye can reach 
 there is nothing but death ; illimitable waves 
 of light and sound are coursing through the 
 transparent ether, a great ocean bearing ma- 
 jestically upon its bosom at least five stellar 
 systems moving, like our earth and its 
 planets, around a common center. Man is 
 supreme in his domain of life. 
 
 Elihu had closed his harangue of distrust 
 with the words : " Touching the Almighty, we 
 cannot find Him out ; He is excellent in 
 power and in judgment, and plenteous justice. 
 He will not afflict. Men do therefore fear 
 Him : He regardeth not any that are wise of 
 heart." To which God makes answer out of 
 the whirlwind, showing that, judging by His 
 handiwork, men must admit His wisdom as 
 seen in all the creation. The argument is 
 simply a great piling of one upon another, an 
 Ossa upon Pelion, that the majestic nature of 
 the Deity may be seen in a great heap of His 
 works. In the midst of this discourse He draws 
 an argument from the heavens. " Canst thou 
 bind the cluster of the Pleiades, or loose the 
 bands of Orion .'* Canst thou lead forth the 
 
CI?e (£reatton Points to ^ob, lo 
 
 signs of the Zodiac in their season ? or canst 
 thou guide Arcturus with her train?" 
 
 Look up now to the heavens and see the six 
 bright stars of the Pleiades, or seven, if your 
 eyes are gifted ; named after the seven daugh- 
 ters of Atlas and Pleione, who, pursued by 
 the hunter Orion and beseeching divine pro- 
 tection, were translated to the stars ; one of 
 whom fable says is invisible for shame be- 
 cause, goddess-born, she loved a mortal man. 
 But there are more than seven ; some eyes can 
 see eleven. There are six to average eyes ; 
 while viewed through ** the optic glass of the 
 Tuscan artist," they are multiplied tenfold. 
 These stars have ever held human interest. 
 In the ancient astrology they brought stormy 
 weather. Job elsewhere speaks, however, of 
 their good omens ; while Milton, taking up 
 the same thought, sings of how, leading forth 
 the sun at the creation of the solar system, 
 
 "The gray 
 Dawn and the Pleiades before Him danced, 
 Shedding sweet influence." 
 
 What does the Psalmist mean by ** binding 
 the cluster of the Pleiades or loosing the bands 
 of Orion " ? Was it not an inspired testimony 
 as to the motion of these stars in their orbits, 
 which never can be fettered by man ? And 
 
16 Heu) (Eoncepts of £)lb Dogmas. 
 
 those bands of Orion ; what are they belted 
 across but the famous nebulae of that con- 
 stellation of which Herschell says, '' I know 
 n(5t how to describe it better than by com- 
 paring it to a curdling liquid, or a surface 
 strewed over with flocks of wool, or to the 
 breaking up of a mackerel sky when the 
 clouds of which it consists begin to assume 
 a cirrous appearance " ? One of those three 
 stars in Orion's belt is white, and another 
 red. Now white stars "represent the early 
 adult and most persistent stage of stellar life ; 
 . . . while ... in the red stars we see the 
 setting in and advance of old age ; midway 
 between which is our solar system in the 
 period of full maturity and commencing age ; 
 the third star is nebulous, and all the stars 
 of Orion are seen against that nebulae, the 
 fiery mist or shining fluid out of which the 
 heavens and earth [have] been slowly fash- 
 ioned." 
 
 Belted Orion, then, is constant witness of 
 God's might, every night giving fitting dem- 
 onstration of God's formative work in the 
 creation of the worlds, described rudely in 
 Genesis, but going on before our eyes in 
 spectrum analysis. You will notice there- 
 fore a wonderful correspondence between 
 
Cl?e Creation Points to (Sob. 17 
 
 the latest science and God's book in the 
 first chapter. 
 
 " When I consider the moon and the stars, 
 which Thou hast ordained." Who is it that 
 thus considers ? Why, it is a man looking 
 out into the heavens, and he can see 2000 
 stars, but the telescope brings millions within 
 range. The argument is therefore many times 
 stronger to-day than it was in the time of the 
 Psalmist. But light is now dissected by the 
 spectroscope after it has traveled nearly 200 
 years from Arcturus. Indeed, Arcturus may 
 have disappeared a hundred years ago, and 
 we not have found it out yet. But we are 
 catching proofs of what it was, and estab- 
 lishing forever its component parts. And as 
 to the signs of the Zodiac, they were simply 
 marks upon the map of the heavens, render- 
 ing the name and place of each intelligible ; 
 but since it is possible, by the dry gelatine 
 plates of photography, which are exposed 
 for hours, to gather up impressions through 
 light-energy of the faintest objects, it has be- 
 come feasible to photograph the very stars in 
 their courses, and to record light-waves too 
 small and too large to excite vision in the 
 human eye. This enlarged capacity ena- 
 bles a photography of the heavens, which 
 
18 Heir) Concepts of £)Ib Dogmas. 
 
 began with Draper's picture of Orion in 
 1880, and which, dividing the work among 
 eighteen observatories, arranges to make a 
 great photographic chart of stars in the 
 heavens to the 14th magnitude, to consist 
 of 11,000 views each 4° square. 
 
 There are stellar systems several times the 
 size of the solar system, hurtling toward us 
 at wonderful velocities. There are quiet 
 nebulae, or very nearly so, as if they were 
 sentinels on the border land at the ends of 
 the immensities. There are dark worlds 
 rolling along in the darkness like unperceived 
 meteors before they reach the confines of 
 the earth's atmosphere ; and the collisions 
 of these dark suns, not provided against by 
 Omnipotence, is perchance the source of the 
 nebulous stars through which is accomplished 
 the more or less complete rejuvenescence of 
 the old, old world. This, with the interplay 
 of electricity in far-off worlds, destructive and 
 luminous, may well make the dust-formed 
 son of man stand awestruck, as he considers 
 the stars which God has ordained. 
 
 Canst thou, O man ! lead forth this vast 
 precession ? In all that modern science has 
 done for you, has it given you power over 
 the celestial spaces .'' Has it done aught for 
 
CI?e Creation Points to ^06. 19 
 
 you, save to reveal in most appalling way 
 the feebleness of man's nature in the lap of 
 God ? Is not the sentence of the Psalmist 
 full of soul-stirring solemnity in view of the 
 growth of the heavens as they have been un- 
 folded to the mind of man ? ''When I con- 
 sider the heavens, the work of Thy fingers, 
 the moon and the stars, which Thou hast 
 ordained ; what is man, that Thou art mindful 
 of him, or the son of man, that Thou visit- 
 est him ? " 
 
 ** The brighter stars cluster into well-known 
 groups upon a background formed of an en- 
 lacement of streams and convoluted windings 
 and intertwined spirals of fainter stars, which 
 becomes richer and more intricate in the ir- 
 regularly rifted zone of the Milky Way. We 
 who form a part of the emblazonry, can only 
 see the design distorted and confused ; here 
 crowded, there scattered, at another place 
 superposed. . . . Can we suppose that each 
 luminous point has no relation to the others 
 near it than the accidental neighborship of 
 grains of sand upon the shore, or of particles 
 of the wind-blown dust of the desert } Surely 
 every star, from Sirius and Vega down to 
 each grain of the light-dust of the Milky Way, 
 has its present place in the heavenly pattern 
 
20 Xlew Concepts of £)lb Dogmas. 
 
 from the slow evolving of its past."^ In other 
 words, to this profound student, astronomical 
 knowledge all points to God, the first cause 
 and maintainer of the stellar universe. 
 
 1 From address before British Association by its presi- 
 dent, Dr. W. Huggins, Aug. 19, 1891. 
 
AURELIUS VS. CHRIST. 
 
 *' All things therefore whatsoever ye would that 
 men should do unto you, even so do ye also 
 unto them: for this is the law and the 
 prophets.'' —Matt, y : 12. 
 
 I TAKE the golden rule as my text, because 
 I desire to consider a great Roman charac- 
 ter, who was a teacher of moral power, whose 
 works have been translated into modern 
 languages, and who is venerated by many 
 thinking men in our day. I desire to set 
 over against his best teaching the word of 
 Jesus, and try to show how different it is in 
 reach and power, and how much above it 
 looms the majestic nature of the teachings 
 of the New Testament. 
 
 '•Our little systems have their day, 
 They have their day and cease to be ; 
 They are but broken lights of Thee, 
 And Thou, O Lord, art more than they." 
 
 It will naturally occur to you to ask 
 whether there is any trace of the golden rule 
 in the writings of Aurelius, I can say there 
 are passages which show in a degree the 
 same spirit. Let me quote: "Adapt thy- 
 
 (21) 
 
22 HetD Concepts of V\b Dogmas. 
 
 self to the . . . men among whom thou 
 hast received thy portion, love them, but 
 do it truly." "Just as it is with the mem- 
 bers in those bodies which are united in one, 
 so it is with rational beings which exist 
 separate, for they have been constituted for 
 one co-operation;" or as Paul says, **All 
 members have not the same office." 
 
 Again, Aurelius says, '' The best way of 
 avenging thyself is not to become like the 
 wrong-doer." Not so high a standard, all will 
 admit, as, '' If thy enemy hunger, feed him ; 
 if he thirst, give him drink ; for in so doing 
 thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head." 
 He says elsewhere : '' Shall any man hate 
 me ? Let him look to it. But I will be mild 
 and benevolent to every man, and ready to 
 show even him his mistakes." 
 
 His view is within ; he has large apprecia- 
 tion of the contents of the human heart. His 
 philosophy of life from that standpoint is 
 Epicurean, that is, strive to be happy, and he 
 magnifies the Stoic life to this end. Hence, 
 he can give such a sentence as this : " If 
 thou findest in human life anything better 
 than justice, truth, temperance, fortitude, 
 and, in a word, anything better than thy own 
 mind's self-satisfaction, . . . turn to it with all 
 
2tureltus vs. <Ll}x\st 23 
 
 thy soul, and enjoy that which thou hast found 
 to be the best." "The mind which is freed 
 from passions is a citadel ; for man has noth- 
 ing more secure to which he can fly for ref- 
 uge, and for the future be inexpugnable." In 
 this he is at one, it seems to the preacher, 
 with the Nazarene : " Keep thy heart with 
 all diligence, for out of it are the issues of 
 life." 
 
 According to the Stoic philosophy all 
 things change, there being a true conserva- 
 tion of energy. This man was the forerun- 
 ner of the modern materialistic school, and 
 had their thought of atoms and the physical 
 organization of things as far as was possible 
 in the state of scientific knowledge. But in 
 this transitoriness, "Keep thyself calm," is 
 his maxim, and do thy duty, living according 
 to the nature of things in a God-made world, 
 and according to reason. ''Whatever any 
 one does or says, I must be good ;" just as if 
 the gold, or the emerald, or the purple were 
 always saying, " Whatever any one does or 
 says, I must be emerald, and keep my color." 
 "Belike the promontory, against which the 
 waves continually break, but it stands firm 
 and tames the fury of the water around it." 
 "Be cheerful also and seek not external help 
 
24 Xlcw Concepts of £)lb Dogmas. 
 
 nor the tranquillity which others give." A 
 man, then, must stand erect, not be kept 
 erect by others. Christ has a similar thought 
 concerning constancy: " He that putteth his 
 hand to the plow, and looketh back, is not 
 fit for the kingdom of God." 
 
 This man is no Puritan ; he teaches that 
 sin in others should be unnoticed. All the 
 area of his combat is within. He elsewhere 
 teaches a philanthropy for others, but he no- 
 where teaches that we should strive to make 
 men better. He says, "Look not around, 
 at the depraved morals of others, but run 
 straight along the line without deviating from 
 it." " How many pleasures have been en- 
 joyed by robbers, patricides, tyrants." He 
 would not have us like them ; he would 
 teach us to despise those motives that rule 
 them, and hence despise pleasure. 'This man 
 could not have been the disciple of Him who 
 twice cleared the temple courts of money 
 changers and them that sold doves, using in 
 His strong right arm a whip of small cords, 
 and whose admonition has ever since made 
 the second thought of discipleship, — so to 
 live that men may see your good works, and 
 glorify your Father who is in heaven. To 
 him the soul is a citadel having the misfort- 
 
2(ureltus P5. (£(?rt5t. 25 
 
 une to be loaded down with a body whose 
 infirmities it must bear with as little notice 
 as possible. **Thou art a little soul, bearing 
 about a corpse." (Ep't'.) ** Consider thyself to 
 be dead ; . . . and live according to nature the 
 remainder which is allowed thee." He would 
 treat all pain as the American Indian bore 
 indignities, wounds, and death at the hands 
 of his enemies ; so, too, all fame and honor ; 
 so, too, all the luxuries of wealth. The body 
 he loathed ; the spirit he crowned. Christ 
 might have taught him, ** Those things which 
 proceed out of the mouth come forth from 
 the heart ; and they defile the man." The 
 Stoic needed to know that the body and the 
 things thereof were no defilement only as 
 perverted ; that the noble office of religion 
 is to rule and save the whole man, rendering 
 unto God the things that are God's. 
 
 Not only do men die, but they are also to 
 be forgotten ; hence this teacher would have 
 us magnify the present, as being all there is 
 for the individual. ** Thou art satisfied with 
 the amount of substance which has been 
 assigned thee, so be content with the time." 
 "Near is thy forgetfulness of all things ; and 
 near the forgetfulness of thee by all." " Short- 
 lived are both the praiser and the praised, 
 
26 Xtevo Concepts of £)lb Dogmas. 
 
 and the rememberer and the remembered ; 
 and all this in a nook of this part of the 
 world." " I am the resurrection and the life," 
 said our Lord; "he that believeth in me, 
 though he were dead, yet shall he live." Yet 
 Aurelius believed that the reason why Chris- 
 tians feared death no more than he, was 
 because they were obstinate and dramatic. 
 
 Marcus Aurelius had no fear of death, and 
 yet he appeals to the transitoriness of exist- 
 ence, bidding us do every act of our '' life as 
 if it were the last ; " but the sobering thought 
 is, t/iat it is the last, and death ends all. 
 Hear him speak for himself : *^ Everything 
 is only for a day, both that which remembers 
 and that which is remembered." "Death is 
 a cessation of the impressions through the 
 senses, and of the pulling of the strings which 
 move the appetites and of the discursive move- 
 ments of the thoughts, and of the service to 
 the flesh." "Do not act as if thou wert 
 going to live ten thousand years. Death 
 hangs over thee. While thou livest, while it 
 is in thy power, be good." "And to say all 
 in a word, everything which belongs to the 
 body is a stream, and what belongs to the 
 soul is a dream and vapor, and life is a war- 
 fare and a stranger's sojourn, and after fame 
 
TXntdxixs vs. (Zl}vxst 27 
 
 is oblivion." This reminds one of Wesley's 
 hymn, which at least is Christianly in- 
 spired : — 
 
 " Our life is a dream, 
 Our time as a stream 
 Glides swiftly away, 
 And the fugitive moment refuses to stay," 
 
 and which ends with the stanzas, — 
 
 " O that each in the day 
 
 Of His coming might say, 
 * I have fought my way through, 
 I have finished the work Thou didst give 
 me to do.' 
 
 " O that each from his Lord 
 May receive the glad word, 
 ' Well and faithfully done, 
 Enter into My joy, and sit down on My 
 throne.'" 
 
 Nothing can better ilUustrate the dif- 
 erence between this noble heathen's teach- 
 ing, — drawn from the certainty of this 
 life, and the sole opportunity given a hu- 
 man being for doing good, so that he should 
 long to do good for the simple sake of 
 the good he can do, apart from all rewards 
 and punishments in the world to come, — and 
 Christianity, which sets before us the same 
 argument under the idea of this life as a pro- 
 
28 Hetp (Loncepts of £)lb Dogmas, 
 
 bation, and besides fills the present moment 
 with the eternal consequences of the life to 
 come. Do good now, says the Christian 
 teacher, for the night cometh, when no man 
 can work. 
 
 But while lacking the impressive argument 
 of the fixity of character, this Stoic emperor 
 gives profound witness of the power of con- 
 science. He often speaks of it as the dcsnion 
 within, sometimes calling it the deity, some- 
 times the divine part. This holy presence 
 he venerates. '* Reverence of the dceinon con- 
 sists in keeping it pure from passion and 
 thoughtlessness," "preserving it tranquil, fol- 
 lowing it obediently as a god, neither saying 
 anything contrary to the truth, nor doing 
 anything contrary to justice." 
 
 The second distinguishing feature of practi- 
 cal Stoicism is its' doctrine of contentment. 
 The apostle says, " Godliness with content- 
 ment is great gain." The contentment of 
 Aurelius is very wide ; it is the satisfaction of 
 the soul with the law of nature. He teaches 
 that " in anger the soul does violence to itself; 
 hence anger is sin." The Lord Jesus said : 
 "Love your enemies, bless them that curse 
 you, pray for them who despitefully use you 
 and persecute you." Again, Aurelius taught 
 
2(ureltus t>5. Ct?rtst. 29 
 
 the soul does violence to itself when it is over- 
 powered by pleasure or pain. Jesus taught, 
 "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with 
 all thy heart, mind, and strength." Aurelius 
 taught that the soul does violence to itself 
 when it says anything insincerely or untruly. 
 The Lord Jesus said, " Blessed are the pure in 
 heart, for they shall see God." Aurelius 
 taught also that the soul does violence to itself 
 when it does anything carelessly or without 
 aim. Jesus said, "But let your communica- 
 tion be Yea, yea ; Nay, nay : for whatso- 
 ever is more than these cometh of evil." 
 And finally, Aurelius taught man's duty to 
 the state, while Jesus of Nazareth said, 
 "Render unto Caesar the things that are 
 Caesar's." In other words, to Aurelius vexa- 
 tion is sin, whether to a man or to his con- 
 science. Hence the person should hold 
 himself calm against every sort of pleasure, 
 pain, praise, anger, pride, and ease, and 
 against injustice and untruth. 
 
 This shows us the length of his tether ; 
 or, if you please, the lack and the resources 
 of a man without the Bible. While there is 
 a kind of working morality here, there is 
 small consciousness of sin, and yet enough so 
 that he can say : " Never value anything as 
 
30 HctD Concepts of £)16 Dogmas. 
 
 profitable to thyself which shall compel thee 
 to break thy promise, to lose thy self-respect, 
 to hate any man, to suspect, to curse, to act 
 the hypocrite, to desire anything that needs 
 walls and curtains." He also understands 
 the course and power of temptation, speak- 
 ing of which he says : " All these things, 
 even though they may seem to adapt them- 
 selves to the better things in a small degree, 
 obtain the superiority all at once and carry 
 us away." Toward the gods he was reverent, 
 but they were the sun and perchance other 
 'planets, component parts of the universe. 
 He really believed, like Emerson, Fichte, 
 and Hegel, that God is revealed in the world, 
 it being a revelation of himself, and that 
 thus conceived God is the world, and the 
 world is God. Hence he could say con- 
 stantly, '* Regard -the universe as one living 
 being, having substance and one soul ; and 
 observe how all things have reference to one 
 perception, the perception of this one living 
 being ; and how all things act with one move- 
 ment ; and how all things are the co-operating 
 causes of all things which exist; "and also, 
 "I venerate, and I am firm, and I trust in 
 Him who governs," or *' what else than to 
 venerate the gods and bless them ?" 
 
2(ureltus vs. Christ. 31 
 
 Two considerations remain to me in clos- 
 ing. This same noble Marcus Aurelius was 
 one of the persecuting heathen emperors. 
 We are told that under him the persecu- 
 tions took a fresh turn ; he gave full scope 
 to the outbursts of popular fury, and intro- 
 duced espionage and tortures, that Chris- 
 tians might be led to recant. Now this was 
 a. man who advocated toleration among the 
 heathen, but who could not tolerate Christ. 
 The most horrible persecutions occurred un- 
 der his auspices. To mention the most fa- 
 mous instance : Blandina, a delicate female 
 slave, was scourged, roasted on a red-hot chair, 
 thrown to the wild beasts, and then executed. 
 The dead bodies of the martyrs lay in heaps 
 on the streets at Vienne. John Stuart Mill 
 calls it **one of the most tragical events in 
 all history," and Mill ought to know. The 
 emperor seems to have been angered by the 
 enthusiasm with which the Christians met 
 death. The cold moralist put to death the 
 enthusiast for holiness. It is claimed that 
 Aurelius never read a line of the New Testa- 
 ment ; if true, it is so much against his repu- 
 tation, for he was deluged with Christian 
 apologies, and as emperor had no right to 
 condemn unheard any set of opinions. 
 
32 Hem Concepts of £)I6 Pogmas. 
 
 Here was a man possessed of the scientific 
 spirit and a moral character of great worth, a 
 man whom the modern agnostic quotes. I do 
 not dig him out of his grave to do despite to 
 his memory, but I do rather exult to think 
 how narrow is the sneer against the fanatical 
 spirit of the church, when he whom they 
 could crown as the consummation of their 
 ideal in most ancient times, showed the per- 
 secuting spirit with most terrible ferocity 
 against the same Christianity which the 
 modern Pantheist hates. Secondly, this man 
 was extolled by John Stuart Mill as a writer 
 in his ** Meditations" of an ethical elevation 
 almost equal to that of the Sermon on the 
 Mount. I am willing to grant the helpfulness 
 of that book to a man who does his duty ; it 
 is an ethical hand-book of value to me per- 
 sonally. I admit its help. But it is no more 
 to be compared with the ethical teachings of 
 Christ than a speck of dust in a ray of sun- 
 light athwart a darkened room is to be com- 
 pared to the blazing glory of the noon-day 
 sun. It is a little revelation made to the 
 natural heart through the Holy Ghost. This 
 man thus eulogized by Mill was made a god 
 in Rome when he died, in i8o A. D. Mill 
 nearly succeeded, in his own imagination ; 
 
2(ureltus t?s. <Ll}v\st 33 
 
 the ancients succeeded quite, and placed 
 his bust in the atrium of their houses among 
 the Penates. There is no comfort in anything 
 Marcus Aurelius can say apart from Jesus 
 Christ. There is stimulus in him, but there 
 is no inspiration of life. We take him as our 
 friend ; we take Christ as our Redeemer, and 
 rejoice that we have a greater light than 
 this great genius of the past. 
 
THE SECULAR SPIRIT. 
 
 *' Thy kingdom come.'''' — Matt. 6:io. 
 
 THERE is a pomp of earth distinctively as- 
 sociated with human life. When we rear 
 the magnificent bronze to perpetuate the 
 characteristic appearance of some celebrated 
 person, long lines of veteran organizations, 
 loud volleys of artillery, and all the impressive 
 ceremonial it is possible to devise, mark its 
 completion and devotion to its great and 
 beautiful aim, which is to perpetuate among 
 men the memory of the golden words that 
 fell from those lips, and of the unique in- 
 fluence of that marked personality upon the 
 community life of its age. 
 
 In a certain sense a life is the product of 
 the environment. It is one thing to be born 
 on Lake Michigan at latitude 43°, and quite 
 another to be born at Stanley Pool on the 
 Congo. What career is worked out on either 
 continent is in a measure distinctive thereof 
 The savage chief in the heart of Africa holds 
 his position in a kind of representative capac- 
 ity ; a reverence attaches thereto sufficient 
 (34) 
 
^l}t Secular Spirit, 35 
 
 to transmit his autocratic power to his de- 
 scendants. The world age of his time finds in 
 him its most splendid representative, and 
 would surely claim him as its own. Very- 
 much the same way in our land, the distin- 
 guished man is claimed to have the marks of 
 the commonalty about him ; he is first of all 
 the product of their schools, their religion, 
 their culture, and their civilization. 
 
 The same glorification of the world period 
 is traceable in art. Each splendid effort of 
 genius illustrates more fully human experi- 
 ence, and unfolds more widely the truth of 
 man's likeness to his Maker. True, most of 
 the classic names of painters have been those 
 distinguished in their treatment of religious 
 subjects, and many critics propose to find in 
 their works evidence of profound spiritual ex- 
 perience. Correggio, Titian, Carracci, Do- 
 menichino, Guido Reni, Michael Angelo, are 
 all church Christians of a pronounced type. 
 In music we may similarly call the list of 
 great names, and we shall find many a one 
 whose distinction rests upon work more or 
 less directly religious. Handel could not be 
 Handel without the " Messiah, " any more than 
 Raphael could be Raphael without the Ma- 
 donnas. But these representatives serve as 
 
36 HetD Concepts of Vlb Dogmas. 
 
 the basis of the canons of modern art in 
 their sphere, just as the mutilated Greek 
 sculpture in its sphere, not withstanding 
 the influence of time in mutilation, is su- 
 preme as the standard of taste. 
 
 This individual state of the human mind 
 is so advanced beyond the acquirement 
 of its fellows, that men call it inspired, the 
 powers of imagination and color are so 
 superhuman, and its achievement is so un- 
 approached in its generation. The great 
 statesman, we say, has genius ; the great 
 scholar has gifts ; the poet and the artist 
 'have inspiration. When they are living, 
 the glory of the canvas, the faultless lines 
 of the statue, the imposing and beautiful 
 effect of the public edifice, the dominant 
 effects of human intellectual greatness, show 
 forth a glory of this world, a something in 
 creation apart from God, independent of 
 nature, and characteristic of humanity ; this 
 I do not condemn. It must speak to the 
 devout soul of the wonderfulness of the 
 human heart in its capacities and endow- 
 ment, and of the heavenly begetting of the 
 human soul : — 
 
 " The soul that rises with us, our Hfe's star, 
 Hath had elsewhere its setting, 
 And Cometh from afar." 
 
CI?e Secular Spirit. 37 
 
 It is, however, possible to regard the 
 works of man independently from the motive, 
 the moment, and the environment. We 
 have the glorious resultant left clear and 
 well-discerned to mortal eyes. But here the 
 world spirit shuts itself to this contemplation 
 of the achievements of the ages^ and we see 
 men give themselves to earnest study of the 
 biography of heroes, who do not devote one 
 moment of the years to thoughts of God or 
 higher thought of duty. Then comes a 
 deification of human intellect and a constant 
 laudation of the gigantic works from men's 
 hands. The world age is now in a condition 
 to appeal to men's sympathies and to se- 
 duce their wills through the aesthetic and 
 finer senses ; they have not God in all their 
 thoughts. Some such apprehension of 
 earthly glory may have colored the pure 
 vision of the Son of God when, for purposes 
 of human redemption, Satan tempted Him 
 and unfolded to Him the kingdoms of the 
 world in all their glory. The highest re- 
 wards of intellectual greatness, namely, 
 that consciousness of superiority, which, 
 however slight, pampers the weak vanity of 
 small souls, and which in all its fullness great 
 souls are not insensible to, and that added 
 sense of world consciousness in which the 
 
38 HetD Concepts of £)Ib Dogmas. 
 
 world vaunts itself as free from God and 
 transcending Him, that fullness of life and be- 
 ing* when God is esteemed afar off and ex- 
 
 o 
 
 istence /^-r 5^is assumed, was the prize which 
 Satan offered, and which the Son of God, 
 though tempted sorely, put aside. Milton, in 
 " Paradise Lost," describes such a world 
 consciousness : — 
 
 *' High on a throne of royal state, which far 
 Outshone the wealth of Ormus and of Ind, 
 Or where the gorgeous East with richest hand 
 Show 'rs on her kings barbaric pearl and gold, 
 Satan exalted sat, by merit raised 
 To that bad eminence. ... 
 
 And by success untaught 
 His proud imaginations thus displayed. 
 Powers and Dominions, Deities of heav 'n. 
 For since no deep within her gulf can hold 
 Immortal vigor, though oppressed and fallen, 
 I give not heav'n for lost : from this descent 
 Celestial virtues rising will appear 
 More glorious and more dread." 
 
 The world consciousness of hell is after all 
 the world consciousness of earth which exalts 
 itself against God. The deification of dead 
 heroes among the savage tribes of Africa, the 
 worship of ancestors in China, the deifica- 
 tion of both ancestors and heroes in ancient 
 
C{?e Secular Spirit 39 
 
 Greece and Rome, — all testify how the world 
 spirit under different conditions lifts its head 
 against the kingdom of God. In those coun- 
 tries where the low degree of civilization has 
 precluded the elevation of the world spirit to 
 a more exalted form and culture, it remains 
 where it was centuries ago, and we may study 
 it in its native seats to-day, and learn some- 
 thing of the darkness of the human imagina- 
 tion as it exalts itself against the Supreme. 
 But in those nations that reach a higher 
 level of intellectual life we find a more per- 
 fect apprehension of the glory of this world 
 and a greater exaltation of human achieve- 
 ment. Lysander, returning to Sparta after 
 the overthrow of Athens, was sung by the 
 poets and worshiped as a heathen god. Al- 
 exander the Great became so intoxicated 
 with the full measure of the glory of the 
 world which he enjoyed, that he insisted 
 upon the reverence of a deity from his court- 
 iers and generals. So much has history left 
 us of the culmination of the esteem of Greek 
 genius for itself and its age. But in Rome, 
 where the human intellect under the blessing 
 of God attained its most magnificent propor- 
 tions, we find Caesar voted by the senate, — 
 after the campaign in Africa, which firmly 
 
40 Hen? Concepts of £)Ib Dogmas. 
 
 established him on the throne, — a statue 
 with the inscription, '' Caesar the demi-god," 
 temples erected to his ** clemency," where 
 his worship was celebrated, and his image 
 borne with those of other gods at festivals 
 and laid with theirs on the altar. When by 
 the senate Caesar was formally declared a 
 god, the emperor then ruling, Augustus, was 
 declared by courtiers to be inspired by the 
 Deity, and in remoter parts of the Roman 
 empire, temples were rising to his divinity. 
 And I have only tithed them ; sixty human 
 beings were deified by the Roman state, from 
 Caesar to Constantine. And worst of all was 
 Nero, who by his terrible cruelties, animal 
 sensuousness, demoniacal debaucheries, and 
 inhuman persecutions, earned the appella- 
 tion of antichrist, the wild beast from the 
 abyss, and was the, representative to the early 
 church of the great red dragon, — this man 
 was called on coins ** the Saviour of the 
 world!' greeted by crowds as a god, sacri- 
 ficed to on altars in the streets along which 
 he walked, and declared by the poets a deity 
 of the first rank. But modern examples are 
 not wanting. In 1792, during the Jacobin 
 revolution which declared atheism the true 
 religion and indiscriminate murder the hand- 
 
CF?e Secular Spirit. 41 
 
 maiden of liberty, the commune of Paris, at 
 a festival in the ancient church of Notre 
 Dame, enthroned a shameless prostitute as 
 the "Goddess of Reason." And last of all, 
 we cannot fail to notice that essential deifi- 
 cation of the celebrated philosopher, Auguste 
 Comte, by the philosophical sect which he 
 founded. 
 
 I have striven to give thus some impres- 
 sion of the external nature of the kingdom of 
 darkness, to show its reality, and that it has 
 a history on earth. I appeal to the memory 
 of your hearts, if in hours of temptation you 
 have not been consciousof the glamour which 
 attaches to the things of earth, as over against 
 the kingdom of God and His righteousness .'* 
 And what is this kingdom of our heavenly 
 Father, which we are to pray shall be estab- 
 lished ? I ask you to notice its lowliness and 
 difference in mission. Is there pomp and 
 ceremony in it, a prescribed ritual, a robed 
 clergy, and gothic house filled with a dim re- 
 ligious light through glass of beautiful color 
 that speaks the master-hand of the artist ? 
 and does the swelling music through the dim 
 aisles seem the seraphic voice of heavenly 
 song by angel choirs ? Then know that 
 though faith may live along with this min- 
 
42 Hetr> (Eoncepts of Olb Dogmas. 
 
 istry to the aesthetic feelings, there is not 
 of necessity one particle of faith in it such 
 as shall make the worshipers true members 
 of the kingdom of God. Does earthly king- 
 ship covet the title of defender of the faith ? 
 Though that sovereign may be a precious 
 Christian queen, who graces the nobility of 
 her blood by the purity of her Christian life, 
 know that the power that wields the scepter 
 and the sword is not able to make a single 
 soul righteous, or blot out the iniquity of a 
 single transgression. Does the human in- 
 tellect vaunt itself over its achievements ? 
 Know that, unaided of the Holy Ghost, it 
 can never fathom the depths of its own sin. 
 But the first note of its creed is death to the 
 soul filled with the worldly spirit : "Lord, I 
 repent; do thou forgive;" and every subse- 
 quent step of that life is a shaping of heart 
 in its innermost passions into the likeness of 
 Him who set all the temptations of earth at 
 naught, and took upon himself the death of 
 a vile criminal at the hands of brutal sol- 
 diery, amid the plaudits of a Jewish mob, in 
 order that the glory of another might be 
 made manifest, even the glory of the eternal 
 Father. 
 
GOD THE ARBITER OF DESTINY. 
 
 " He said unto theni^ It is not yours to know 
 the times or seasons, which the Father hath 
 kept in His own power.'''' — Acts i : '/. 
 
 SOME students have seen a rebuke in this 
 answer of Christ. And indeed it may be 
 a rebuke, though just its exact meaning is 
 hard to define. Granted He does mean to 
 reprove them, strangely telling commentary 
 this upon their slowness to believe and per- 
 versity to receive of Him who spake as never 
 man spake, that in this last interview before 
 the ascension, Christ was compelled to give a 
 stinging blow of censure, reminding them 
 that they were under His tutelage, and that 
 it was His duty as teacher to instruct them in 
 what it was fitting they should know, rather 
 than in what they desired to learn. " Surely 
 He scorneth the scorners ; but He giveth 
 grace unto the lowly " (Prov. 3 : 34). 
 
 You will remember that back in Christ's 
 ministry, on Wednesday before Passion 
 Week, just fifty days previous to our text, — 
 for now He is standing on the brow of the 
 Mount of Olives and is soon to be caught up 
 
 (43) 
 
44 Icett) Concepts of £)Ib Dogmas. 
 
 into heaven, — there had been similar ques- 
 tioning on the part of the disciples concern- 
 ing His second coming, then on the Mount of 
 Olives as now, only then overlooking the 
 Temple, prophecy concerning the throwing 
 down of whose stones led up to the question, 
 privately asked by a few, '* Tell us when shall 
 these things be." In the first instance His 
 second coming and the end of the world is 
 had in view ; in the second, the restoration of 
 the kingdom to Israel, both in my opinion 
 being the same event under different titles. 
 Pray notice the answer in each case. In the 
 former, *' Of that day or that hour knoweth no 
 one, not even the angels in heaven, neither 
 the Son, but the Father ; " in the latter the 
 words of our text, "It is not yours to know 
 the times or seasons which the Father hath 
 kept in His own power." It seems to the 
 preacher there is a progress of knowledge in- 
 dicated here. In the first instance, Christ 
 declares His ignorance as a bar to revelation, 
 in the second He pleads lack of jurisdiction, 
 which the Father hath and the Father alone. 
 In the first it is, *' I know not ; " in the second 
 it is, '' I can not." But He leaves us with this 
 declaration of a divine providence running 
 through the times and the seasons of this 
 
®ob tl^e 2Xxb\Ur: of Desttny. 45 
 
 little planet we call the globe as next to the 
 last words that He should ever utter to the 
 twelve men whom He had chosen to be wit- 
 nesses of His life and sufferings, and preachers 
 of His gospel. 
 
 The time and place make it an awe-inspir- 
 ing theme. The dogma of our text is 
 profound. Its time and circumstance give 
 suitable setting that the gleam of the jewel 
 may be seen in its worth, the truth of which in 
 its concept may well engross our attention. 
 Epochs and incidents of history are in God's 
 power. Mahomet and his epoch, Rome and 
 her epoch, Napoleon and his epoch, are all of 
 God, and do not go beyond His permissive 
 decrees. In Christ's thought all is under His 
 power. '* Roll up that map," said Pitt, after 
 the battle of Austerlitz, as he lay a-dying, 
 " it will not be wanted this ten years." That 
 was man's estimate of the situation in 1806. 
 Waterloo and St. Helena were God's answer 
 in 18 1 5. To every cry of human despair 
 there is God's answer in destiny, which He 
 hath kept in His own power. Knox preached 
 congregations into fury against sacerdotalism, 
 so that though he said not a word instigating 
 to violence, they left him on one or two occa- 
 sions to demolish monasteries, shatter altars, 
 
46 Xt^vo Concepts of £)Ib Doc^mas. 
 
 rend pictures and vestments ; yet God guided 
 the molten metal of that reformation period 
 into such mould that Scotland became most 
 law-abiding. 
 
 Day before yesterday anarchists were fight- 
 ing troops and police all day long in Rome 
 and Lyons. In European countries the agi- 
 tations of the past have been within a gen- 
 eration against church and monarchy ; the 
 unrest of to-day proclaims the dissatisfaction 
 of laborers with all governments. The Old 
 World has more of the dissatisfied, but she 
 has also a larger population per square acre. 
 Out of this chaos shall come a result, one of 
 the long series of time, and its consequent 
 eventualities which God has appointed by His 
 own free will. Be not therefore restive at 
 the seeming progress of this or that danger- 
 ous opinion, either in church or state. If 
 God would destroy the church by progress 
 of opinion, nothing can save her ; if He would 
 destroy the ship of state, nothing can keep 
 her from the rocks. We can do but little in 
 this world to make it better, much less turn 
 the tide of public opinion ; but God rules, 
 and is bringing His own designs to pass on 
 earth as well as in heaven ; statesmen are 
 but pawns upon the chess-board of the world ; 
 He moveth them as He will. All times are 
 
(Sob tE?e 2Crbtter of Destiny. 47 
 
 in His hand ; they shall not flinch. All his- 
 tory is therefore but God's working with hu- 
 manity, as geology is His working upon the 
 material universe, and as chemistry and 
 botany are kaleidoscopic views of God's 
 handiwork in present events. 
 
 There was an ancient theory that each 
 cycle of history is but a reproduction of the 
 one just past. The preacher would not 
 waste breath disputing it, but he would call 
 your attention to this : that according to 
 Jesus Christ, God is the one absolutely un- 
 changeable condition of human history, the 
 source of its unity, the arbiter of its destiny. 
 He, therefore, is the best historian who reads 
 best God's teaching in the book of life. He 
 who reads only man's works, touches only 
 circumstantials of the handiwork of the Un- 
 seen. This history of the world, a never-end- 
 ing panorama, is the history with which the 
 religious concerns of mankind are to be 
 identified. The gospel was not to be the 
 sum and substance of all things, in the sense 
 that having reached its development, earth 
 had come to heavenly fruitage, and the globe 
 must needs cease turning on its axis. But 
 instead the gospel of Christ is subordinate 
 to the providence of God the Father. 
 
 One might foresee from this statement of 
 
48 Hem Concepts of £)Ib Dogmas, 
 
 our Lord's the failure of the great Roman 
 Church to make the pontiff of even her vast 
 communion the head of national governments. 
 Certainly as Protestants we think that it is 
 in keeping with the modern idea that all 
 the relations between government and church 
 should be those of tolerant protection. We 
 can understand how it was that the Scotch 
 and English Puritans had a work to do in 
 this country with their lofty ideals of duty, 
 along with the Dutch who came to trade 
 in peltries, and the Maryland Catholics who 
 came for toleration. All were merged in the 
 epoch ; each one played his part well under 
 God. Fully as we may be convinced that 
 one had a nobler mission than others, yet 
 we are conscious that the best each could 
 offer was used by Him who ruleth the times 
 and seasons, and hath kept all within His 
 own control from the foundation of the world. 
 We can understand how it is that piety and 
 the world often clasp hands on many great 
 subjects, as when the immoral, vain, head- 
 long, foolish humanist, Ulrich von Hutten, 
 united with the pure, lion-like Luther and 
 the courageous, rational Zwingli, also good 
 and pure, — it was camp-follower, monk, and 
 pastor, — against Rome and her mastery over 
 
<5ob tf?e Arbiter of Destiny, 49 
 
 human life and conscience ; or as when Theo- 
 dore Parker, Ossowatomie Brown, and William 
 Lloyd Garrison, — Rationalist, Calvinist, and 
 infidel, — unitedly fought slavery intrenched 
 in high places and condoned by the sleeping 
 conscience of a free people. In the East, 
 where there are laws prohibiting the liquor 
 traffic, it is no uncommon thing for all de- 
 nominations, liberal and orthodox, to unite 
 with atheist neighbors, not even-handedly, 
 but unite nevertheless to suppress open sale, 
 all agreed that this thing is of the devil and 
 no good. 
 
 We serve Christ, and the output of our life 
 is merged in humanity ; we and they are one. 
 We are Christian in heart ; we are human in 
 species. Our obligation is to God ; our life is 
 with men. Duty must be met at the bar of 
 a human conscience in the presence of an 
 omniscient God ; service must be rendered 
 on the theater we call human life. There is 
 no obscuration of the Father's jurisdiction by 
 reason of the incarnation, for Christ took 
 upon himself the form of man. We can un- 
 derstand that readily, but further, Christ ad- 
 mits that His mission does not affect God's 
 headship over human nature and all its af- 
 fairs. There was a cross on Calvary which 
 4 
 
50 Xl^vo Concepts of Vlb Dogmas. 
 
 had a bleeding sacrifice for you and me, mak- 
 ing an atonement, alike of wondrous pathos 
 and inestimable dignity, the efficiency of 
 which is our sole hope of redemption. But 
 that sacrifice left undone many things which 
 may be called the wheel of natural life. It 
 released us from the power of death, but it 
 did not abolish the death of the body or the 
 pains of disease. Every weakness of the 
 flesh is full to overflowing. The cup of hu- 
 manity's tears is wrung full, morning, noon, 
 and night ; the freshness of the morning is 
 breathed on brows hot with fever, and 
 parched throats are thirsting interminably 
 for cool water that goes babbling by from 
 springs as old as the hills. 
 
 Our Christian life may give such admirable 
 Stoicism under pain, that we may bear up 
 better, — plain living and high thinking may 
 save us many aches and pains ; but the body 
 must suffer ; for the times and seasons are 
 within the authority of the Father. Life is 
 lengthened a third or half under the civili- 
 zation brought to pass by the teachings of 
 Jesus ; and our lives are so happy, and the 
 boon of existence is so sweet, that we bless 
 God for every additional hour. It is a thing 
 to be prayed for and, if won, joyfully ac- 
 
(5ob tf?e Titb'xkv of DesttriY* 51 
 
 cepted. But the amount of pain necessary 
 to close our lives is, so far as we know, a con- 
 stant factor. There are the losses by death. 
 You who are older know best what this 
 means. But toward men outside our families 
 we also have compassions. It is like a line 
 in battle, one falls on the right and one on 
 the left. They were Christians, but the times 
 and seasons are in God's hands. They drop 
 out so frequently, we begin to say, '* Why 
 am I left ? This man was healthy and more 
 needed than I." There is an adage, '* TAe 
 good die you7ig'' However much hearts may 
 bleed, there is the consolation of a divine 
 purpose shrouded in the mystery of being, 
 which purpose must be benevolent, for God 
 is good. 
 
 According to Christ, the great purposes of 
 revealed religion must wait upon God's provi- 
 dence. That providence ushered us into be- 
 ing, and keeps us here. It shall lead us 
 forth again, let us hope, to a nobler life prom- 
 ised through faith. We do not realize the 
 awfulness of every tick of the watch, which 
 measures God's will of time and sense for us. 
 Perhaps it is well we do not. As God is su- 
 preme, he is a good object of faith. I am 
 weak and helpless under Thy chastisements, 
 
52 Hem Concepts of £)lb Dogmas. 
 
 faulty and fickle in my best judgments, a 
 creature of day dreams shot here and there 
 with the bright colors of illusive hopes and 
 debasing prosperity. O God ! dear God ! 
 who keepest times and seasons within Thine 
 own power, my heart and my flesh crieth out 
 for the living God. O Christ ! Saviour of 
 sinners, may Thy intercession and sacrifice 
 avail that my spirit fail not of strength be- 
 fore the appointed time of deliverance comes, 
 when the Father hath determined that I 
 must die. 
 
CHRIST THE MIRACLE WORKER. 
 
 " yesus of Nazareth, a Juan approved of God 
 unto you by jfiighty works and wonders and 
 signs, . . . ye by the hand of lawless men 
 did crucify and slay.''''— Acts 2 : 22^ 2j. 
 
 THE Apostle argues that Christ was ap- 
 proved of God because He wrought won- 
 ders. Strange, is it not, that which was 
 an argument in the first century should be- 
 come a hindrance and stumbling-block in the 
 nineteenth, and that the emphasis of religion 
 should have changed poles from stress upon 
 the supernatural to insistence upon the eth- 
 ical ? They said Christ wrought wonders. 
 We say Christ wrought righteousness. But 
 yet the ethics of the first church super- 
 abounded ; the reason why Christianity con- 
 quered the world was that Christianity was 
 able to prove to the world that it had better 
 morals than that world. Miracles, then, were 
 not ever the sum of Christian faith ; they 
 were simply decoys to arouse the attention ; 
 not meant as the real proofs, only first proofs 
 to awaken the understanding, that the abso- 
 lute demonstration to mind and heart might 
 
 (53) 
 
54 Heu? Concepts of £>lb Dogmas, 
 
 follow. May they not be like irons driven 
 into the crevices of the precipice, by which 
 one may mount, of no further service, the 
 cliff once passed, but never to be displaced, 
 as there always must be some climbers-up 
 that way. So it happens we in this nine- 
 teenth century are still clinging to the 
 miraculous in religion. 
 
 Most religious philosophers are wont to 
 call attention to the fact that Christianity 
 shares this peculiarity with all other great 
 religions. We must note, however, that by 
 reason of its written memorials of her past, 
 Christianity hath from the first had an 
 accurate knowledge of her history denied 
 to other beliefs. It does not affect the 
 truth of Christian miracles which were re- 
 ceived by devout minds and handed down 
 soon in written documents that other faiths 
 have had miracle myths. The growth of 
 myth in the New Testament must have taken 
 place, the scholars tells us, before 65 A. D., 
 the date of the first Gospel (Mark), and were 
 quoted by church Fathers within the first 
 century after Christ's death. We have no 
 right to throw away the miracles of our Book 
 because of the growth of mock m iraclesin 
 theirs. We have, however, a right to throw 
 
Cl^nst tf?e 2TttracIe Xt)or!er. 55 
 
 them away when scholarship is able to prove 
 that any one of them did not occur. 
 
 I have always held that the miraculous side 
 of the Bible was in large part due to contact 
 with superstitiously wrought faith and to the 
 credulity of the populace among which it was 
 first preached. The adherents of other faiths 
 would deny its credibility were these lacking, 
 and would be enabled to shake the fidelity 
 of many of its members. I adduce this as 
 something always to be taken into account, 
 rather than as something novel. 
 
 Christ wrought a revelation in an ancient 
 faith and national life. That people were re- 
 ligious and patriotic in an eminent degree ; 
 they were learned too, and acute ; they had 
 a wonderful literature in their sacred books, 
 a wonderful conception of the Divine Being, a 
 wonderful solidarity in their social life, which 
 had come to fixity in social manners and 
 customs. Here comes a man without pres- 
 tige, from the family of a village artisan, of 
 royal blood indeed by remote descent of a 
 throne usurped, but no more so than hun- 
 dreds, yea, thousands, of others who had 
 come into the lengthened antennse of the 
 royal genealogical tree. He loosens the 
 power of caste upon multitudes, leading 
 
56 Hem Concepts of £)lb Dogmas. 
 
 them, soon after his death, to break with 
 nation, religion, and party, and become 
 known only as his. Alive, he split the peo- 
 ple in twain again and again ; dead, he per- 
 manently divides the national life. They 
 had been bound to creed and nation ; they 
 were henceforth bound to him. Moses had 
 been their pride ; Christ was become their 
 glory. They had heretofore lived for them- 
 selves ; they now lived unto Him only. 
 Moreover, the contagion spread. 
 
 Rome, who had conquered Judea and held 
 It with firmness in her iron grasp, notwith- 
 standing its remoteness on the frontiers of 
 the empire, herself in turn was conquered by 
 a Jew, and in spite of the persecution of 
 emperors, the corruptions of the time, the 
 contempt of wealth, the resistance of heathen 
 learning and philosophy, and the satire and 
 sneers of the populace, within three cent- 
 uries, representing the whole of the known 
 civilized world, was transformed and trans- 
 muted to new views, new righteousness, new 
 forms and social laws ; that is, from polythe- 
 istic heathenism, with its lords many, to the 
 refined speculations of Christianity founded 
 upon its doctrines of a triune Godhead ; from 
 the idea of a state to be plundered, to that of 
 
Cl^rtst tlfz ITttracIe XDorfcr, 57 
 
 organic society, as an integral part of the 
 kingdom of God. I said it changed its cus- 
 toms ; so it did. Its feasts became Christian ; 
 the Christian festivals replacing those as- 
 signed to each part of the year, all in a similar 
 way being transformed and diverted, divested 
 of old ideas, re-invested with new. Sunday 
 was introduced, and its observance enforced 
 by law. Time was dated from Christ's death, 
 whereas before it had been computed from 
 the foundation of the Roman city. The tides 
 of vice were rolled back ; the pontiff had the 
 power of an emperor ; the priest that of a 
 prince. Qualify it as you may, a stupendous 
 miracle has been delineated by the church in 
 history, and cannot be effaced. We will not 
 follow it down through the ages. Its life is a 
 perpetual reality, adjusted to each age, but 
 born of the heart and mind of God. 
 
 Now was there no reason behind this stu- 
 pendous fact ? As well say there is no beach 
 below the tide, no sun behind the light of 
 day. Significance of all this is not chiefly, 
 but yet it is significantly, in the beginning. 
 Could the mighty impetus which divided 
 Judaism and converted Rome have been 
 founded on a fiction ? As well say the story 
 of how Bonaparte conquered Europe and 
 
58 Xttvo Concepts of £)Ib Dogmas. 
 
 placed his creatures on many a throne, was 
 a mistake, that he had no power to lead 
 legions into battle, no wizard-like strategy, 
 no magnetism upon men. As well say there 
 has been no tariff legislation in America, and 
 no theory of national development on this 
 continent, as to say that the miracles of the 
 first ages of the history of the church are not 
 traceable to actual and powerful miracles, ac- 
 companying the life, death, and resurrection 
 of the Lord Jesus Christ. Without miracles 
 it is a mirage to be dissipated by scrutiny of 
 the time in which they appear. But the age 
 in which they appeared, believed. The Jew- 
 ish rulers did not believe ; the Christ was 
 crucified ; His disciples scattered, — why did 
 they believe, except for signs and wonders 
 such as convinced their reason, in spite of all 
 unbelief and caV'il, that the Jewish rulers 
 and mob were wrong, and this Jesus whom 
 they crucified was both Lord and Christ ? If 
 miracles were not in the Book, we could not 
 understand how faith came into being, and 
 the church began her life. The rise of the 
 church is due to a conviction of men, aroused 
 by the miracles of the Christ. Before His 
 goodness they stood rebuked ; before His 
 miracles they bowed. His righteousness ap- 
 
Cl?rtst t^e VTiivack tDorfer. 59 
 
 palled them ; His miracles convinced them ; 
 as in life, so after death. 
 
 Though this pulpit cannot see how the in- 
 tegrity of Christian things can exist without 
 miracles, it does not follow that miracles are 
 to be viewed in precisely the same light as 
 of old, when they were wrought. To them 
 every silent act out of the ordinary course 
 was instinct with God. To-day the Chris- 
 tian thinker sees God here, but studies His 
 work to see how He works. He has been 
 trained to this in his investigation of or- 
 dinary nature. As to-day nothing happens 
 above law or beside law, and contradictions 
 are formal and not real, the sudden comet 
 being as much under law as the finest grain 
 of seashore sand on the hard beach of the 
 ocean, so owing to our scientific education 
 we look upon the strange as a new aspect 
 of the formal, and another expression of the 
 output of God in law. It is not wrong, there- 
 fore, to frame theories as to scientific relation 
 of Christ to the wonders wrought, that we 
 may say how He did it. It is not necessary 
 for the validity of the miracle that we stand 
 awestruck, as did the early disciples, dumbly 
 unconscious of anything save awed amaze- 
 ment. That it fitted its time is thus made 
 
60 Hem Concepts of PIb Dogmas, 
 
 most obvious. To you and me it means 
 hardly more than many a wonder done in 
 the natural world, such, for instance, as the 
 persistence of every flower after its kind, so 
 that it is three or five parted, according to 
 its plan, is green or red, and has similarly 
 veined and shaped sepal, petal, or involucre, 
 and sends out leaf stems in precisely the 
 same way. The real wonder is the conjunc- 
 tion of all the events of His time with the 
 vicissitudes of the God-man's personality. 
 
 The great Napoleon was wont, at the crit- 
 ical moment of battle, watch in hand, to await 
 the booming of Soult's, Ney's, or Grouchy's 
 cannon, knowing that if they met the ap- 
 pointment, his strategy had met fruition. As 
 this act of Bonaparte showed a master-mind, 
 so God's timing of all things, making the 
 wonders of the life of Christ focus in the per- 
 son of Christ, shows mastery of destiny. 
 Any one of these acts might have happened 
 alone, and been dismissed as either prodigy 
 or law work ; but concentrated into the life- 
 time of the Eternal Son, following attentive 
 upon His acts and obeying the word of His 
 life, we have a most startling correlation of 
 motive in God with revelation to men upon 
 earth. This I claim to be the heart and life 
 
Cl?rt5t tl^e irtiracle IDorfer. 61 
 
 of the wonders of Christ's ministry, and is no 
 destruction of the miraculous. The scientific 
 spirit is therefore revealing the full nature of 
 miracle, and by making- it understood, is per- 
 forming the same service to the miraculous 
 in the Gospels which it is doing in unravel- 
 ing the knotted threads of natural law, and 
 showing that there is no labyrinth in nature 
 but what has its clue, which, taken, leads out 
 at the very gates of the palace of God. 
 
 For instance, the mind-reader of to-day, in 
 catching involuntary movements of the eye, 
 hand, and other parts of the body, is making 
 plain along what line Christ's superhuman 
 endowment lay when He read the thoughts o^ 
 men. If there is a natural hypnotic control 
 of one mind by another (?) by which nervous 
 disease may be relieved by gifted men, we 
 know that a slight increase of similar powers 
 would explain the processes of many New 
 Testament miracles. When men of strong 
 bodies and capable of great physical endur- 
 ance in our own time, begroomed and be 
 watered, fast forty days and more, the forty- 
 days-and-nights fast of our Lord bespeaks 
 more of the intensity of His struggle against 
 sin, who is the holy Saviour of His people, 
 than of angelic ministries ; when the con- 
 
62 Hem Concepts of £>lb Dogmas. 
 
 test ended, the eternal Son had established 
 forever the chastity of His spirit. Since sur- 
 geons in rare cases find patients in the hos- 
 pitals sweating blood drops in the extremity 
 of the anguish of a human spirit under pain, 
 we can better appreciate the depths of the 
 human nature of our Lord by means of the 
 acuteness of His shrinking from the foreseen 
 suffering, and the fullness of His heroic nature 
 that flinched not through it all. 
 
 These are illustrations of what I mean by 
 the illuminating character of modern scien- 
 tific research upon miraculous things in the 
 New Testament. It does not destroy the 
 miraculous, it rather makes it alive. For 
 the old idea of miracle is dead to you and 
 me, except as we view it through modern 
 eyes, and explain the wonderful phenomena 
 presented. I also notice that miracles are 
 still wrought, and it does not occur to the 
 preacher why the old miracle should be dis- 
 credited and the new believed. The ship 
 whose prow is stove-in by the iceberg 
 on the great banks of Newfoundland, is 
 providentially saved ; a few feet farther, and 
 the air-tight compartment had not availed. 
 A gentleman steps off a train to view a coal- 
 mine, and is withdrawn from the railroad 
 
<Zl}tist ll^e ITTtracIe IDorfer. 63 
 
 accident ensuing, — providentially diverted, 
 we say. Stambouloff and Beltcheff were 
 walking home, from a cabinet council, near a 
 public square in Sofia. In the dusk the as- 
 sassin pours the contents of his revolver 
 against Beltcheff, thinking he was the lion- 
 hearted premier of Bulgaria. God's destiny, 
 we say, preserved the protector of the liber- 
 ties of the new-born Danubian state. The 
 Duke of Westminster devoted the earnings 
 of the celebrated Ormonde to the erection of 
 a beautiful church near Eton Hall, perhaps 
 signifying by this act that God disposed the 
 chances on the turf in his favor ; just as 
 at ancient Lyons the Romans put upon 
 a tavern door recently discovered, ** Here 
 Mercury promises you gain, Apollo health, 
 and Septumanus good fare and a good bed." 
 If, then, the most trivial accidents of our 
 time are to be accounted as dropped out 
 from God's hand by His will, so that even we 
 may pray for His blessing as we gamble, — 
 the preacher very much doubts whether there 
 is not a time when every gambler prays, — 
 then who are we that we deny God's power 
 to bring to pass a series of such providential 
 dispensations, some of adversity, others of 
 prosperity, but all of which together in this 
 
64 HetD Concepts of £)16 Dogmas. 
 
 life of the Nazarene as in your life and mine 
 make up that total of what we are and what 
 we hope to be, giving Him distinguishment 
 among the sons of men as a wonder worker, 
 having power with God ? 
 
 I have called attention to the fact that 
 apostolic preaching made acceptance of the 
 miraculous the first step of conviction. I 
 want to add further the thought that they 
 who accepted miracles believed and were 
 saved. Somebody every now and then takes 
 me into a corner and says, " I do not be- 
 lieve this or that miracle. I cannot feel 
 it is true. I accept the Bible, all but this." 
 Now the preacher is one of those persons 
 who perceives clearly that belief in God and 
 love for man is the main thing, but belief in 
 God and love for man with consciousness of 
 salvation have ever gone hand in hand with 
 belief in the miraculous. Of old, men denied, 
 turned their back upon Christ, and died in 
 their sins ; to-day, as ever, men deny mira- 
 cles, turn their back upon Christ, and die in 
 their sins. Of old, men believed and were 
 saved ; to-day men believe and are saved. 
 But says some one, *' It is hard to believe." 
 You are mistaken. The hardest and most 
 injurious thing in modern intellectual life is 
 
CI?rtst il}z miracle XDorfer. 65 
 
 to deny on simple assumption anything as- 
 serted in God's book. For one miracle is 
 nothing more or less, if you prove it false. 
 But all miracles are thrown when you relin- 
 quish one simply because ** I am a mind to." 
 I am talking of God's blessing the heart and 
 mind of a man through faith, and I say, if 
 you want peace, ** Believe, and thou shalt 
 be saved." 
 
MIRACLES AS RELATED TO MOD- 
 ERN LIFE. 
 
 " And God wrought special miracles by the 
 hands of Paul: insonnich that unto the sick 
 were carried away from his body handker- 
 chiefs or aprons, and the diseases departed 
 from them, and the evil spirits went out.^^ — 
 Acts ig : ii, J2. 
 
 HANDKERCHIEFS and napkins which 
 had come in contact with Paul's body, 
 were borne away, and the sick were healed. 
 Now a fair treatment of this narrative de- 
 mands that we shall accept it as it is. We 
 would like to believe there was a volition of 
 Paul, but he may not have been conscious 
 that the cloths were taken. Christ, you will 
 remember, had the hem of His garment 
 touched by the woman in the crowd, and 
 turned, conscious that power had gone forth 
 from Him. Still, of the millions that touched 
 the Son of man, only one of them all was 
 healed ; one was in such state that virtue 
 went forth at the touch of faith. In this in- 
 stance alone in the life of Paul is there 
 similar unconsciousness of the endowed per- 
 (66) 
 
irttracles as Kelateb to ITTobern Ctfe. 67 
 
 sonality concerning the fullness of his mi- 
 raculous gifts. Once in the history of Peter 
 the sick were placed where his shadow 
 might fall. 
 
 These few instances were given, per- 
 chance, that we could not rationalize them 
 away. We are reducing miracles to the 
 minimum, explaining them by natural law, 
 finding in them a higher law, not seeing in 
 them God's will regnant, and forgetful of a 
 divine personality which can break through 
 the ordinary restraints of natural law as 
 easily as an elephant can brush aside the 
 rabbit-snares boys set in the jungles ; and as 
 commonly does it, as men by intuition and 
 experience enter into their birthright of 
 power and dominion over nature, and tear 
 natural law in pieces. For instance, there 
 are beautiful trees growing in a fertile, well- 
 watered soil ; dale and hill are an oasis of 
 beauty, so superlative are they of their kind ; 
 when the rosy dawn lights the skies, God's 
 heavens seem to kiss them, as in the morning 
 mothers kiss children half awakened from 
 their slumbers. But man finds in the bowels 
 of the earth the yellow glitter of the pre- 
 cious copper ; he digs for it ; he builds his 
 furnaces that forth from their livid lips of 
 
t)8 Hctt) Concepts of Olb Dogmas. 
 
 flame he may take their liquid treasure, ''pu- 
 rified seven times as by fire." That dross 
 which was there by law of nature he has 
 purged, and it is gone, — behold a miracle, — 
 and the gases which he has generated in sepa- 
 rating the metal from its dross, have been 
 a quiet pestilence for miles in area, to flower 
 and shrub and tree ; the principle of life in 
 seed and flower, in grass and shrub, is gone. 
 The decaying tree-trunks of the monarchs of 
 the forest are plaintive witnesses of the de- 
 struction which man has wrought when he has 
 laid his hand on natural law, and by the 
 powers bestowed upon him hath brought the 
 desolations of the desert upon a blooming 
 garden of God. 
 
 Now the question is, whether man shall 
 thus be a bull in the china shop of nature, 
 destroying objects, and rending law in tat- 
 ters, while God is tied hand and foot in the 
 world which He has made ? and shall we stand 
 aghast when we see evidence of that same 
 interference with natural law by God with 
 which on the part of man we are so familiar ? 
 — a familiarity that has bred contempt and 
 which has in its turn blinded itself in stupid 
 egotism to the matchless power of God. But 
 I will state it again. 
 
ZTtiracIes as Helateb to ITTobern €tfe. 69 
 
 Here is a midget of a man, so puny that 
 he might well fear lest the Deity, chang- 
 ing the grapple of the belted crust enswathing 
 mother earth, might topple off a crag and 
 bury him under a thousand tons of crystal- 
 lized quartz ; he disports himself picking up 
 a stone pulled to the earth by centrifugal 
 powers, and forgetful that he lifts it by an 
 interference with natural law. Moreover, this 
 man breathes, unmindful that his lung cavity 
 is saved from being crushed in and he him- 
 self made a revolting spectacle, solely by di- 
 vine interposition, through which in some 
 way men are enabled to overcome the pull 
 of these same centrifugal forces, and to live 
 in spite of dominant law. We sometimes 
 wonder how flies stick on ceilings ; I fancy 
 there is greater wonder how men live. And 
 this is the creature who cannot believe that 
 the Almighty can invade, in the personali- 
 ties of Jesus and His disciples, the domain 
 of natural law, whose whole life is a con- 
 stant series of invasions of that same sort. 
 
 It is evident God intended that there 
 should be no doubt as to miracles. For 
 wriggle around one and another as you may, 
 you will be but impaled on the third. Hyp- 
 notism may explain one thing, but it cannot 
 
70 Hem Concepts of £)Ib Dogmas. 
 
 explain all. Christ was more than a mind 
 reader ; His revelation more than that of 
 Madame Blavatsky, and His miracles more 
 than those of Col. Olcott, Blavatsky 's lieu- 
 tenant, who has been working modern signs 
 and wonders of late in Ceylon ; thus putting 
 new wine into the old wine skins of Bud- 
 dhism in the East. Of the type of admittedly 
 unimpeachable miracles contained in the 
 Gospels is this miracle of Paul's handker- 
 chiefs. Tradition says they were carried 
 into Bulgaria, and that there the miracles 
 were wrought, but that is a long way. All 
 the teaching I can see is that to some 
 sick folk unable to be on the scene of 
 the Apostle's labors, healing was carried 
 by faith through articles which had been 
 touched by Paul. Christ always did some- 
 thing ; He would say, Son or daughter, 
 I say unto thee, Arise ; He would pray be- 
 fore raising the dead to life ; He would 
 moisten the spittle and place it upon the 
 blind eyes to be made seeing, because He 
 was working miracles upon men, and work- 
 ing manifestly and clearly apart from natu- 
 ral law, which He was to defy. We should 
 be more and more in the dark if He had not 
 dramatically done these things. Dramatic, I 
 
miracles as Kelateb to tlTobern £tfe. Tl 
 
 say, in order that men might be attracted to 
 the act, and with aroused attention witness 
 His deed ; they would therefore perceive there 
 was no fraud or jugglery about it, and also 
 have most clear consciousness that it was 
 from the resources of His own personality 
 these works were wrought. 
 
 You say, ** There is no need of miracles; 
 it amounts to nothing in my faith. Why do 
 you puzzle with these arguments of analogy ? 
 Why does the church insist on the super- 
 natural works of Christ, and subject Chris- 
 tianity to the suspicion of being charlatan 
 born, like Mormonism, spiritualism, and the- 
 osophy ?" Well, here is a man with hypnotic 
 powers such that he can control the will of 
 another, remove the disorders of his halluci- 
 nations, heal his nervous sickness, and make 
 him testify that the healer is a most marvel- 
 ous personality, gifted with divine powers. 
 Said Madame Blavatsky to Moncure D. 
 Conway of the things her disciples said 
 concerning her, '* They think they see 
 them " ( ?). The power of the hypnotist, from 
 a disciple's standpoint, would seem super- 
 natural. What argument could you and I 
 advance to these admirers and devotees if 
 the miracles of Christ were wanting ? We 
 
72 HetD Concepts of £)lb Dogmas. 
 
 can now say, Produce your miracles ; we 
 will show you miracles of greater power, 
 equal to those of the hypnotist, and far tran- 
 scending them. Greater authority must go 
 with greater powers. 
 
 The handful of seeming modern miracles is 
 as nothing compared with those of Christ 
 culminating in the resurrection. The hun- 
 dreds of thousands of men and women, 
 awaked by the trifling mysteries of spiritual- 
 ism to a kind of living faith in the modern 
 necromancer, the medium, and in the mod- 
 ern exorcist, the clairvoyant, are evidence 
 that the modern world needs straight doc- 
 trine of the miraculous power Christ had 
 of old to heal. You say the spiritualist is a 
 man of moderate intelligence, and so try to 
 throw the case out of court. Let me tell you 
 that some of the brightest men I have known 
 have been spiritualists. Take Mrs. Annie 
 Besant, formerly a secularist, the friend and 
 coadjutor of Charles Bradlaugh ; this woman 
 has been noted as a hard atheist, believing 
 only in materialism and denying all spiritu- 
 ality. She has recently been expelled from 
 her old society because of her adoption of 
 the miracles of Madame Blavatsky as genuine 
 and the acceptance of Blavatsky's account of 
 
VTixxacUs as Kelateb to Ittobern £tfe. 73 
 
 the wisdom she had drawn from the Mahat- 
 mas. The truth of it is, no person's intellect- 
 ual capacity is guaranty for right opinions. 
 And the foolishest of notions that ever en- 
 tered the heart of man is the dictum, " My 
 way is the only way dictated by reason, and 
 all who disagree are fools." 
 
 Taking things as they are, we need the 
 argument that the miracles of Christ and His 
 Apostles transcend all others, and therefore 
 that the moral authority of Christ transcends 
 all others. So long as spiritualists, hypnotists, 
 theosophists, Mormons, cannot raise the dead^ 
 they cannot produce authority enough to 
 show their right to be regarded as the 
 moral teachers of mankind, God not having 
 given them supernatural powers confirma- 
 tory thereof. Science, as meeting these new 
 errors, cannot overcome them. It can and is 
 for the first time cataloguing their manifesta- 
 tions ; it cannot explain the phenomena any 
 more than it can explain thought or life or 
 death. A power revealed before the eyes of 
 science becomes a phenomenon and is granted 
 its place among the powers in exercise by 
 men. It cannot break the force of authority 
 granted thereby. The only power that can 
 break the force of modern superstition is the 
 
74 tcctt) Concepts of £)I6 Doc^mas. 
 
 power of the cross upheld in an elevated and 
 central position by sign and wonder wrought 
 by the God-man and continued among His 
 personal disciples. What maintained Bou- 
 langer with the French people, who took his 
 life the other day at Brussels ? He was not a 
 church man, for he said, in instructions given 
 to generals concerning the officers under them 
 while he was war minister of France, " It 
 is unrepublican to go to the place called 
 the church." He was indeed the idol of the 
 atheistical eight million in France and the 
 half-breeds between them and Catholicism ; 
 but he had the capacity of winning France 
 by personal qualities much like those of the 
 Great Napoleon. He was not great, but he 
 was a pleasing personality, and was adored 
 by thousands. 
 
 Human nature^ having so much mate- 
 rial to be inflamed by the possession of 
 unusual qualities, is constant food for im- 
 pression through the miraculous, the miracle 
 of genius, or the miracle of mysteriously 
 endowed personality. Give then, O man of 
 God ! to the eager heart of humanity the 
 divinely endowed Christ, that on the basis 
 of a wonder-working, extraordinary person- 
 ality men may lay the foundations of a super- 
 
^trades as Helateb to VTiobztn £tfe. 75 
 
 natural morality ; that the world may not 
 sink to the moral degradation of France, well 
 typified by the fact that Gambetta, her fore- 
 most patriot and orator, died at the hand of 
 his mistress, while Boulanger, their greatest 
 popular idol since Mirabeau, shoots himself 
 over the grave of his dead paramour, es- 
 tranged from wife and family. 
 
 It seems to the preacher that while he thus 
 defends the miracles of the New Testament, 
 he must attack the Romish superstition of 
 relics. If a handkerchief which had touched 
 the flesh of Paul were preserved until now, 
 would it have the same miraculous powers 
 it did then ? Or in other words, were the di- 
 vine miracles of Christ consequent upon the 
 suffusement of material things with power? 
 so that miraculously endowed things, coming 
 in contact with others, would bestow miracu- 
 lous endowment ? so that the holy coat of 
 Treves, being once worn by our Saviour, 
 hath miraculous powers to this day } so that, 
 as the great crowd of pilgrims, under the 
 lead of their parish priests, files behind the 
 high altar and past the smock-frocked brown- 
 ish relic with a hole for neck and half sleeves, 
 and looking as if made of old china silk, the 
 nervous and trembling anxiety of the pil- 
 
76 HcrD Concepts of £)Ib Dogmas. 
 
 grims is justified ? and likewise the hope of 
 mothers who now and then bring paralytic 
 children, and of the devout who ask that 
 rosary or other keepsake may be touched 
 upon it by the attending priests in antici- 
 pation that virtue thus communicated may 
 be transferred to the sick, that they shall 
 recover ? 
 
 The New Testament miracles require im- 
 mediateness and personality. It is always a 
 dynamic power, not a slumbering or dor- 
 mant one. 
 
 The holy coat was discovered by Helena, 
 the mother of Constantine. Newman, in his 
 ** Apologia Pro Vita Sua," says: "I think it 
 impossible to withstand the evidence which 
 is brought for the liquefaction of the blood of 
 St. Januarius at Naples, and for the motion 
 of the eyes of the pictures of Madonna in 
 the Roman states. I see no reason to doubt 
 the material of the Lombard crown at 
 Monza, and I do not see why the holy coat 
 at Treves may not have been what it pur- 
 ports to be." This gives the true case be- 
 tween Rome and Protestantism, as to modern 
 miracles. That all living men, and not the 
 least among them, Protestants, would ven- 
 erate the garment of the Lord Jesus, if 
 
ZTTtracIes as Helateb to ITtobern Ctfe. 77 
 
 handed down to us from antiquity, is un- 
 doubted. We may even grant that there are 
 true cases of faith healing among those re- 
 ported from the German city, when many 
 days over 40,000 pilgrims pass the shrine 
 and two millions are expected to pass it ere 
 the (tunica sacrosancta) Holy robe shall be 
 sealed away from human sight until again in 
 the twentieth century it shall be brought 
 forth to the gaze of the devout multitudes. 
 
 I say there may be real healings, God over- 
 looking the poverty of human asking in the 
 dire extremity of human need, turning its 
 eyes in faith to the heavens. But the differ- 
 ence between us remains ; if the garment is 
 the true robe of Christ, it is but the decayed 
 vestment without power ; it is not the 
 vehicle in and of itself of the miraculous. 
 The endowment was upon the nature of 
 Jesus, the God-man, not upon His clothing ; 
 and such remnants, if they exist, have no 
 more power than mere rags. We preserve 
 the coat of Washington ; we would preserve 
 the coat of Christ if we might ; we re- 
 spect the character of the one, we adore that 
 of the other ; but we do not regard as sacred 
 the garments of either, and the permission to 
 see the one or the other is merely a gratifica- 
 
78 Hem Concepts of Vlb Dogmas. 
 
 tion of curiosity or taste for the historic ; 
 namely, that we may gain knowledge of His 
 appearance among men, and thus get some- 
 what of the local coloring, and fuller sense of 
 His authentic teaching. But as for power in 
 the fiber of the garment which He wore, we 
 deny it ; far less power hath it resisting de- 
 cay than the blade of corn in the spring- 
 time, pushing upward in the light, speaking 
 of death indeed, but of death swallowed up 
 in life, with which it is now endowed, each 
 change in which, as it progresses from blade 
 to ear and full corn in the ear, bespeaking 
 a miraculous energy from the center of 
 things to whose immortal benignity there 
 are no miracles in things present or things 
 to come, in life or death or any other creat- 
 ure, as all things are of God and of God 
 only — their source and their sum. 
 
THE FOREORDAINED GRACE 
 OF GOD. 
 
 ^^ For whom He fo7-eknew^ He also foreordained 
 to be conformed to the image of His Son, 
 that He might be the firstborn among many 
 brethren,'''' — Rom. 8 : sg. 
 
 THIS sermon is like chapters in some books, 
 — to be read or skipped. It is not milk 
 for babes. If there is anybody here that is 
 impatient under discussions of what is cur- 
 rently termed Calvinism, they would better 
 go out. The subject of God's sovereignty 
 can only be treated fairly by those whose 
 souls, like the eyes of eagles under the fierce 
 rays of the sun, will be unblinking in the 
 presence of eternal truth. I say this sermon 
 may be heard or omitted. You can be a 
 Christian, and not believe in God's sover- 
 eignty. If you dissent from much or all of 
 this sermon, is no matter. It is presumed no 
 one will be lost because his head is dizzy, and 
 he cannot climb mountain precipices or bear 
 the looming, yawning chasms down the jaws 
 of which it is terrible to look. One may 
 hesitate to sit with the fates of awful mein to 
 
 (79) 
 
80 rcem Concepts of £)I6 Pogmas. 
 
 see them spin the thread of life, and espe- 
 cially while Atropos shall cut the thread. Let 
 those turn their face that will ; but shall we 
 deny that eternal laws take their course with- 
 out obstruction, and that men and angels 
 must submit ? What we do object to is that 
 any person shall listen prejudiced to the 
 questions treated. However, it must be 
 added, as the conviction of the preacher, 
 that it is impossible for a person with an 
 illogical mind to understand the arguments 
 on this subject. The bitterness with which 
 foreordination and kindred topics are as- 
 sailed is largely due to this incapacity. 
 Further, the mastery of this subject cannot 
 be attained at a leap ; it is a question for 
 years of deliberation, and as in all philosophic 
 questions, insight is granted only as a reward 
 to patience. 
 
 He who has the capacity to think philo- 
 sophically can have but two horns to his 
 dilemma, — either God's sovereignty, or athe- 
 ism. Hence it is true that many of the 
 highest intelligence must be Calvinists if 
 they are Christians. That multitudes have 
 failed to think it out is unfortunate ; the 
 great doctrine of God's sovereignty then be- 
 comes like the bur under Haley's saddle in 
 
Cl?e ^oreorbaineb ©race of ©ob. 81 
 
 ''Uncle Tom's Cabin " — a constant irritant; 
 as that bur made a bucking horse, so this doc- 
 trine makes bucking men. But a man irri- 
 tated, hackled, and out of temper, is not in 
 the mood to consider a question as broad 
 as the cosmos, as high as heaven, and as 
 deep as hell. 
 
 Foreordination is the vastest subject that 
 can engross the attention of mankind, and 
 at the same time is the fundamental question 
 of religion. It touches human nature, and the 
 mission of Christ alike. There are childish 
 people who bow before shrines and who be- 
 lieve as they are taught, to whom faith pre- 
 sents no problems, and who do not consider 
 the essentials of faith ; we condemn their 
 superstition, or rather I should say we con- 
 done it. But those persons who thus 
 condone it are themselves guilty of an intel- 
 lectual jugglery and blinking of the real 
 questions of religion such that we are unable 
 to say which category is the most unworthy. 
 
 The Scriptures teach a science of God. 
 From nature we learn that there is design 
 in the universe, but can only conceive of 
 events as occurring in series, that is, one after 
 another. This design in nature of course 
 bespeaks a designer, as truly, to use a famil- 
 6 
 
82 Hett) Concepts of £)I5 Dogmas. 
 
 iar illustration, as the serpent mound in Ohio, 
 with gaping mouth, bespeaks a fabricator^ 
 Now the question arises, whether the om- 
 nipotence which creates, foreknows future 
 events. A man may build a tiny craft, and 
 make a miniature sail, and carry it to the 
 edge of the lake, and let the west wind blow 
 it out of sight. The power to create does 
 not necessarily imply the power to foresee 
 whether it would keel over and sink, or find 
 the other shore, bearing a sealed message 
 which another shall read. So, say some, in 
 making man filled with the breath of life, 
 there is not of necessity foreknowledge of 
 all coasts on which he may land or of all 
 choices which he may form. But that be- 
 ing so making must have intelligence, and 
 some sort of idea as to the probabilities 
 of what may happen to this man whom he 
 has made free. Can God make a power of 
 choice which He does not foresee ? For in- 
 stance, there is the power of thought when 
 one idea arrests another, and so brings it 
 above consciousness. Is it possible for Om- 
 nipotence to make a brain capable of trans- 
 mitting and originating ideas, and not know 
 what it can produce ? To say He could, 
 would be like saying that the inventor of a 
 
tr^e ;Joreorbatneb ®race of ^ob. 83 
 
 machine making nails could invent every 
 part, set the machine up ready to bite the 
 flat bar iron, and turn out a finished product, 
 without trying whether it could do so or not, 
 or knowing certainly that it could eat the 
 iron and make the nail. If God made man, 
 He must know his out-put, what with cer- 
 tain motives will be sure choices. 
 
 You may say this is not quite conclusive ; 
 but add one thing to it, the fact that men 
 consent to government, and thus human in- 
 stitutions cohere, and that there is growth, 
 life, decay of human institutions and civiliza- 
 tions, for which there is land and country^ 
 the one suitable to sustenance, the other 
 segregating them, so that men in govern- 
 mental relations could not exist unless the 
 theater of events had been prepared, and the 
 human constitution been fitted by a super- 
 natural wisdom for organic life in nations. 
 That is, man could not live by hazard, there 
 must be a fruitful soil and climate to support 
 him, also there must be kindred blood to 
 bind the various branches together ; there 
 must be the coercive power over one mind 
 of force directed by another, so that rebell- 
 ious provinces shall be subdued. Mountain 
 chains must build barriers to hem them in 
 
84 Hett? Concepts of £)Ib Dogmas. 
 
 from outside influences, and harsh weather 
 from northern skies must put iron in their 
 blood. God must have sagacity enough to 
 know what a man will think in a certain case. 
 
 God is in the world pulling on the very 
 verges of the cosmos, making Arcturus and 
 all his train do His bidding. Is that a dead 
 vitality ? Does it not show an instinct in that 
 each star has a law which pulls one way, 
 binding the spheres in their courses.? Does 
 not each chemical combination show an in- 
 stinct at least ? that is, it always acts the same, 
 proving intelligence like that of the horse 
 that knows the way along the road over 
 which he has passed to his own barn. 
 
 There is no such thing as law without life ; 
 there is no such thing as life without intel- 
 ligence behind it, giving the law of its being. 
 As God's spirit is in all animate creation and 
 manifesting intelligence ; is that same spirit 
 not in man, the sustainer of his life, the 
 recognizer of his every act, the illuminator 
 of his conscience } " This is the light which 
 lighteth every man that cometh into the 
 world." Law is but the external descrip- 
 tion of God's intelligent working in natural 
 things ; it is not an abstract essence ; it is 
 a living presence, the heart of the material 
 
^^e ^oreorbatneb ^race of ^ob. 85 
 
 thing. Everywhere present, everywhere in- 
 telligent, He must have cognizance of man's 
 thought of whose principle of life He is the 
 core, and without whose spirit in its mem- 
 bers, the human body could not exist. This 
 is a course of reasoning extra-scriptural, but 
 leading to the scriptural point of view. This 
 philosophy explains man's true freedom. 
 
 There is a hypothesis which presents itself 
 as an alternative to foreordination ; namely, 
 that of foreknowledge pure and simple. I 
 have tried to prove that God foreknows ; I 
 want to prove something more. God fore- 
 knows, therefore foreordains, is this other 
 theory. That is. He knows the choices of 
 each free agent, and foreordains according to 
 the foreseen acts of each. In other words, it 
 has been decreed from all eternity that each 
 man shall do as he pleases. But a free act 
 foreseen, and because foreseen, fated, is an 
 act without an element of freedom in so far as 
 it is a God-compelled act. To foreknow and 
 then decree is the only kind of a decree 
 possible by any personality. Our boasted 
 freedom, therefore, becomes fatalism through 
 circuitous terms. Foreordination becomes 
 foreknowledge in an interchangeable way, a 
 kind of sophistry running in a circle. The 
 
86 HctD Concepts of £)Ib Dogmas. 
 
 foreknowledge by God of His own acts is a 
 foreknowledge of freedom ; a foreknowledge 
 of a freedom of others dependent upon en- 
 vironment is equivalent to fatality. It is 
 freedom for God and not for men. In other 
 words, the Armenian hypothesis is fatalism ; 
 namely, that each man can do what God has 
 foreseen and determined ; which is equivalent 
 to this, that every man does as he must, and 
 must do as he does. Whatever is, is right. 
 
 Now suppose we say that God foreordains 
 all things, whatsoever comes to pass, without 
 regard to man's choice, but in His forewill- 
 ing and foreordaining, preserves the integ- 
 rity of each human will. Sometimes these 
 wills decide as He would have them. He fore- 
 knew it, but He did not by decreeing compel 
 obedience. That there was something in a 
 man's make-up and in the environment of his 
 life, which has resulted in choices of good and 
 in the love of God, is due to omnipotence, 
 but it does not interfere with freedom. Then 
 how about those souls who, under the in- 
 fluence of the Holy Ghost and the opportuni- 
 ties of divine providence, reject Christ and 
 all good ? Are they lost ? Says the Armin- 
 ian. Yes ! Says the Calvinist, By no means. 
 God has only begun when He is rejected. 
 
C^e 5<^reorbatneb ^race of ^ob, 87 
 
 Heaven and earth are daily witnessing God's 
 workings in behalf of those who have defi- 
 nitely rejected Christ. A thousand sorrows 
 may be required to bring one heart into 
 obedience to the Lord, which He grants, not 
 that a will may be broken, but that a soul 
 may be saved and a new heart created. 
 Another let us hope has a vicissitude of pros* 
 perity, that through prosperity he may find 
 a new motive in life. For most of us, how- 
 ever, God mingles the cup ; pleasure and 
 sorrow, comfort and pain, ecstasy of joy, and 
 dolor of suffering are all ours, that out of a 
 composite experience a child of God may be 
 brought near to the Father's heart, and 
 despite wrong choices of will, may yet in 
 freedom know what it is to love God. 
 
 -The preacher doubts if one of us first 
 turned to God. The rather is our redemp- 
 tion to be traced to His unbending purpose 
 to bring us in freedom to choice of good. 
 That He cannot save all men is undoubtedly 
 true. To believe that He would is to fly in 
 face of the analogies of human experience, 
 which sees evil choices abounding unshaken 
 in many souls, and likewise is contrary to 
 the word of Christ, the revealer of God's will. 
 But that He does save myriads by His free 
 
88 Xlcw Concepts of £)I5 Dogmas. 
 
 grace, in spite of themselves, and doth bring 
 them free in full consciousness of their free- 
 dom into the kingdom of God, is to me the 
 only consistent doctrine which harmonizes hu- 
 man freedom and divine sovereignty. Either 
 there is no God, or this is about the state- 
 ment of His being and nature. If there is a 
 plan and purpose behind nature and life, 
 there must be this harmonization or the 
 equivalent. God knows what natural law 
 will bring to human hearts, and likewise 
 freedom ; He will save sometimes in spite of 
 law, sometimes by law. He will save some- 
 times by freedom, and sometimes in spite of 
 freedom, though consistently therewith. It 
 is all of His grace and love. For with me 
 the other alternative is that God made the 
 world and set it a-going, so that all things 
 run by chance, a kind of Pandora's box, full 
 of evils. He himself standing helplessly by, 
 sorry now that He did it, but helpless to 
 avert the catastrophes which have resulted. 
 Well may such believe the story of His gift 
 of Christ simply a fake, like a green turnip 
 at a horse's nose ; all very well for the horse 
 that likes it, but to be rejected by the horse 
 that does not. Said Christ, " Ye have not 
 chosen me, but I have chosen you, and or- 
 dained you, that ye should bear much fruit," 
 
GOD IS LOVE. 
 
 " For God is love.^^ — / John 4. : 8. 
 
 FOUR hundred millions of men the world 
 over are keeping holy time this Lent, in 
 that act showing the common bonds of Chris- 
 tian faith ; thrice as many more do not recog- - 
 nize the bond by similar symbolic acts of 
 devotion. But who of us that is one with the 
 Christian church in recognition of the supreme 
 value of the life of Christ, does not rejoice that 
 he can take upon his lips the electrifying 
 words, " I am a Christian," and that he is not 
 a pagan ? We are told that from the mouths 
 of the Nile in the delta of Egypt to its 
 sources in the great central African lakes, 
 there is every diversity of human circum- 
 stance under the sun, and all under anti- 
 Christian knowledge and forms of religious 
 belief The country about the mouth of the 
 Nile is distinctly out of joint with the civili- 
 zation of Europe, with which it has been in 
 contact since history began, and it never yet 
 invaded the seats of barbarism above, toward 
 the source of the mighty floods which were 
 generated in the heart of the continent in a 
 
 (89) 
 
90 HetD (Lonczpts of £>lb Dogmas. 
 
 manner unknown, and which at their an- 
 nual rise were gratefully accepted, as the 
 nourisher of life in the whole Nile basin. 
 At length the vail has been lifted upon four 
 thousand miles of pagan country. And 
 though it is new and strange, yet from the 
 granite palaces of Cairo, where, enshrined in 
 luxury and ease, the natural man panders to 
 his baser nature, with all the increased en- 
 dowment and environment derived from 
 commerce with Christendom, to the most in- 
 significant savage of the marshes in the 
 equatorial provinces, viewing men, do we 
 not thank God we are not as they are ? And 
 would not the poorest and most wretched 
 Christian hesitate to exchange his poverty 
 for the riches of an oriental civilization, 
 which with such blandishments of the creat- 
 ure would make man a pagan as the price of 
 such a heritage ? And what is the difference, 
 so world-wide ? Define it, that we may make 
 it ours and understand our privilege. Ah ! 
 yes, I would if I could. 
 
 Deeper than man's choices are these ine- 
 radicable diversities of human nature im- 
 planted in his constitution by the divine 
 Wisdom, and finding their ultimate expression 
 in the heart and character of Christ. But 
 
6ob is Core/ 91 
 
 one thing in considerable fullness is testified 
 to by the Christian observance of Lent ; it is 
 the testimony of love to love, and is a recog- 
 nition that love is eternal. Jesus suffered 
 because He loved ; God sent Him because He 
 loved. We love Them because They first 
 loved us. Jesus bearing the burden of the 
 approaching sacrifice with courage, weighed 
 down by foreboding, yet immutable in His 
 purpose, is the Jesus whose self-sacrificing 
 love we this day recognize. 
 
 In the heart of Africa, under the moon- 
 light, the lonely village built around huge, 
 monumental bowlders left by antediluvian 
 floods, is asleep, for men, whether savage 
 or civilized, must take their rest. They 
 hear the sharp blows of a hatchet upon the 
 stockade of wattled poles that surrounds 
 it. The men seize their poisoned arrows 
 and such other weapons as they have, 
 and run out to the defense of their home 
 huts, to be met as they go beyond their 
 thresholds by leaden rain from Arab rifles. 
 They fall prostrate ; mothers, shrinking, hide 
 their children, and peering out into the dark- 
 ness, illumined by the torch which has now 
 been laid to the straw thatches, look for 
 chance of escape, as wild beasts surprised by 
 
^2 Hctt) Concepts of £>\b Dogmas, 
 
 prairie-fires, only that they have less courage 
 than the beasts, according as they know 
 better the cruel temper of the manslayer 
 behind the rifle. Poor hunted creatures 
 they are, from the first stroke of the ax to 
 the last act of the bloody drama of the star- 
 lighted plain. This is man's humanity to 
 man. The knowledge of their possession of 
 a few hundred pounds of elephant tusks 
 easily exchangeable for gold, or the desire 
 for women and girls as slaves, or the hatred 
 engendered in petty border strifes, are all 
 the motive needed for such foul scenes of 
 blood. Let them, who would deify humanity, 
 acknowledge their God. 
 
 Let us take another picture. A Child is 
 born into a poor carpenter's family ; under 
 the meagerest conditions of earthly wealth, 
 without favor and without power, living un- 
 der the tyranny of the mightiest government 
 of antiquity at its worst ; and while never 
 favoring injustice in the least, yet never 
 showing the slightest temper of hatred for 
 the oppressor. Meeting only hypocrites with 
 scorn, and going on calmly with a proclama- 
 tion of love and mercy, and with a life of 
 self-sacrifice, under the white light of which 
 all His doctrines disappear as candles are 
 
®ob is Cope. 93 
 
 outshone under the arc streaming with elec- 
 tric splendor, so much more is doing than 
 professing, so much more is life than creed, 
 and in that frame of mind set as a ftint in 
 love and compassion for us, He dies. This 
 man Christianity reverently says was the 
 only begotten Son of God, and strives to 
 identify itself with Him, and fashion its 
 temper like His, making hard endeavor to 
 shroud its poverty of good in His benignity 
 and worth, feeling that only as through Him 
 and of Him, as the great pledge of the eter- 
 nal nature of God's love, can there be any 
 foundation for hope of man's redemption 
 from sin, and restoration to the arms of an 
 offended God. Leaving aside the deeper life 
 under Christian faith, there is yet to every 
 Christian man a unique significance in the 
 whole life of Christ. 
 
 Did you ever think of the difference be- 
 tween God as an abstract creation of the 
 human intellect, quiescent and absolute, and 
 of God actively interested in the affairs of 
 this life ? Of this latter attitude Jesus Christ 
 is the great proof. Granting that Jesus was 
 the only begotten Son of God, then the in- 
 finite Father could not view with indifference 
 the excursion of the incarnated sonship into 
 
94 HetD Concepts of PIb Dogmas. 
 
 the domains of men. And granted that the 
 Father sent forth the Son to redeem, then 
 His love going with Him would attach itself 
 to the creatures and the created universe 
 whither He went forth on His errand of re- 
 demption. 
 
 There is a story going the rounds that 
 Stanley had offered himself to the woman of 
 his choice, and not having received an answer, 
 plunged off into the Dark Continent, on the 
 rescue of Emin Pasha. If this be true, and 
 the heart of the woman turned toward him, 
 what must have been her suspense when his 
 death seemed assured; after tidings had 
 turned in his favor, do you not believe that 
 the woman's heart had interest in every one 
 of that same mission, particularly in Emin 
 and his men, for whom that rescue was un- 
 dertaken ? Even so must the interest of God 
 have covered every creature for whom Christ 
 went on a mission of redemption, desperate 
 in its character and terrible in its ordeals 
 of tear-compelling sufferings. Granted the 
 revelation of the love of God for Christ, a 
 love by its nature unending, and extending 
 to the meanest and poorest whom Christ 
 loved because God loves his only Son ; and 
 granting one thing more, which Christianity 
 
(5ob is £ot?c. 95 
 
 teaches, namely, that man was made in the 
 image and likeness of God in his first estate, 
 and that first impression has never been 
 wholly effaced, do not the bronze hinges of 
 one more temple door swing open to the hu- 
 man imagination, namely, the door of the 
 temple of love ? Do we not see that if our 
 earthly love is like the love of God for His 
 dear Son, the love of the weakest human heart 
 is eternal, like the love of God ? 
 
 This is the characteristic of the Christian 
 revelation which I bring before you, that 
 love is eternal because God is love. Heathen 
 men have known this love for others of their 
 kind. Damon placed himself in the hands 
 of Dionysius to be put to death if Pythias, 
 going to arrange his affairs, should not 
 return, but before the execution, Pythias 
 came back to save his friend from death. 
 Husbands loved their wives, fathers loved 
 their children, but they did not know that 
 love was eternal. Hoping, as some did, that 
 there might be some sort of immortality for 
 the soul after death, they did not know the 
 immortality of love. Mothers can now love 
 their own with assurance, knowing that love is 
 eternal. Husband and wife can now love 
 each other till death them do part, and hold 
 
96 Hetp Concepts of £)Ib Dogmas. 
 
 with clinging hands the hand of death in 
 love, for love is eternal. Friend can love 
 friend through long years of happy life, so 
 far as each other is concerned, and even in 
 the solitudes rendered solitary, because they 
 are their accustomed haunts made desolate 
 by death, may have a kind of quiet peace, 
 for we know that love is eternal. 
 
 But love cannot be scattered if it is to be 
 abiding. The eternal sort of love is not that 
 which finds new objects of affection supplant- 
 ing the old. Were this not true, we might 
 say the favor of the courtesan and the adul- 
 terer was love. Love that is eternal is meas- 
 ured, and loves to sit solitary with its beloved. 
 Carlyle, when poor, lived at Craigenputtoch 
 on a little farm that had fallen as a heritage 
 to his wife. He was immersed in literary 
 pursuits, laying the foundation of his ultimate 
 fame ; and while he delved in the literary 
 workshop, his wife delved in the kitchen. A 
 weak frame was taxed with the heavy work 
 of the farm, and trembling fingers were worn 
 to the quick, and the soft hand, nurtured 
 in ease, grew rough and calloused. But 
 though the seeds of invalidism were most 
 thoroughly sown, one thing was gained, 
 namely, the whole-hearted affection of her 
 
(Sob is £ope. 97 
 
 husband. I am willing to grant that such 
 sacrifices ought not to be required, but yet 
 it remains that just such sacrifices are the 
 infallible proofs of eternal love. Livingstone 
 died to have his body carried on the backs 
 of porters under the guidance of the faithful 
 Susi and Chuma eight months, because he 
 had loved them, and love is eternal. A great 
 philanthropist, suspecting the woman whom 
 he was about to marry loved another, asked 
 her if his suspicions were well founded, and 
 receiving frank answer that she really had 
 loved another for years, to whom she had 
 not been married because they both were 
 poor, released her of her pledge, gave money 
 to the impecunious man to establish him in 
 business, saw them married, and lived alone 
 all his life ; true love not hesitating to make 
 its object happy at the price of its money, 
 and forgetful of personal discomforture, be- 
 cause love is eternal. 
 
 All I can say is, Love in man is like love 
 in God, it is eternal. Love on, for love is 
 God-like, and remember that no labor of love 
 is lost, for it is eternal. Each act partakes of 
 the nature of the motive behind it. The kiss 
 of love is more than a kiss, it is a token. 
 The prayer of love is more than a prayer, it 
 
 7 
 
98 XCcw Concepts of £>lb Dogmas. 
 
 is a benediction. For is there not in the 
 mother's heart that which makes her ready 
 to face the flames if thereby the flame shall 
 be robbed of its prey ? Will it not throttle 
 and kill if bloodshed will spare the inno- 
 cence and sweetness of girlhood ? To 
 avenge its wrongs, is it not in spirit 
 like an avenging lioness, smiting with heavy 
 hand of the law ? or when the law fails, 
 does it not direct the avenging bullet .-* 
 Will not the mother rob her half-covered 
 breasts of their covering that her babe may 
 be warm ? Are not, then, that mother's kisses 
 pledges of affection too deep for the storms 
 of time to efface ? Are not her prayers 
 turned to blessings by her own hand the 
 next moment ? And all because love is eter- 
 nal, and love is of God, and like Him eternal. 
 No caress of love can be lost, nor is any 
 loved one past our recognition ; for love is 
 eternal. When you go home to-day, kiss 
 the babe more tenderly, for love is eternal. 
 Be kinder to your best friends, for love is 
 eternal, and God is love. 
 
OBEDIENCE DEMANDED. 
 
 •* But "Jesus said unto him. No 7?ian, having put 
 his hand to the plow, and looking back, is 
 fit for the kingdom of G&d.'^ — Luke g : 62. 
 
 IT is hard for us to gather a realistic idea 
 of the Galilean husbandman ; he was a 
 peasant born on the land. His fathers had 
 become prosperous when they ceased to be 
 nomads, and became tillers of the soil ; Isaac 
 and Jacob cultivated more than Abraham. 
 The problem of civilization is the problem of 
 the land ; the ancient Aryan derived his title, 
 we are told, from a term meaning "to plow." 
 They were plowers among herdsmen in the 
 far-off East, where they began the develop- 
 ment of modern Indo-European civilizations. 
 But the irksomeness of toil never ceases ; 
 while the wild aborigines cannot bear it, the 
 civilized man shirks it, and bemoans his task. 
 " I am a toiler from the cradle to the 
 grave," is the true plaint of the generations. 
 When Christian eyes behold the country 
 about Capernaum, from which city our Lord 
 was about to set out for the last time, they 
 cannot tell the exact site, or the many 
 
 (99) 
 
1<^>0 Heir) Concepts of £)lb T)og,mas, 
 
 changes of the physical features. That rude 
 plow of the modern tiller of the soil is able 
 to give a notion of that which may have 
 come under our Lord's eye as He saw the 
 field laborer afar off driving his bullocks 
 crookedly because looking earnestly at the 
 sports of his comrades, from whom he was 
 unwillingly withdrawn to his task, and thus 
 furnished the theme of this little parable, 
 only once mentioned in the Gospels. 
 
 We can study modern Palestine and the 
 parts adjacent for hints of the realism of the 
 time. There was over that tiller God's 
 blessed sunshine ; around him the plain ; be- 
 yond, against the horizon, the blue hills of 
 dear Galilee ; upon him rested the eyes of 
 the Son of man, and curious, questioning eyes 
 of many disciples ; for He soon sent forth 
 the seventy to preach and to heal. Clothe 
 him as you will, delineate to your imagina- 
 tion his form and face, such is the aim of 
 the modern Christian realist, but the man, 
 ah ! him. His soul state is preserved to us 
 like the insect in amber ; whatever his sur- 
 roundings, his knowledge, or his labor, we 
 know that man. Every one knows what it 
 is to be driven like a slave to his task, knows 
 what it is to have an unwilling mind yoked 
 
Obebtence Demanbeb. 101 
 
 to a compelled body, and to go scratching 
 over the light soil, driving a yoke of bullocks- 
 
 There is a small school of thinkers in 
 Germany who endeavor to apply the laws of 
 mathematical certitude to the phenomena of 
 the human mind. Thought, feeling, sensa- 
 tions, etc., are simply representations, which 
 in the mind are opposed to one another ; if 
 one representation does not arrest another, 
 it is simply lost ; it has not come above the 
 threshold of consciousness. 
 
 Just such a genesis of ideas our Lord por- 
 trayed nineteen centuries ago in this parable ; 
 desires are appealing to the consciousness of 
 that young husbandman ; his will decides the 
 body must answer for its task ; but the mind 
 roams, and the zigzag furrow testifies of the 
 conflicting motives ; these are representations 
 in arrest, says the scientist ; these are motives 
 at variance, saith Jesus. " Being is absolute 
 position," says Herbart, neglecting to define 
 it ; Christ simply assumes the existence of 
 our eternal natures, and photographs for all 
 time the soul in travail betwixt two opinions, 
 the "must" and the 'T will not." The plain, 
 unlettered Christian, with his finger upon this 
 text, has, ever since the English Bible was 
 translated, had more psychology at his fingers' 
 
102 Hen) Concepts of £){b Dogmas. 
 
 tips than all science, until through Aristotle 
 this modern school, groping its way in the 
 Stygian darkness of the soul left to its own 
 native light, hath at length, unbeknown to 
 itself, touched the hem of the Master's gar- 
 ment. Men wonder at the power of the 
 English Bible, and behind it all, above the 
 most obvious things, remains as one most 
 important factor the soul knowledge that it 
 gives. No man of ordinary education knows 
 himself in all the recesses of his soul nature, 
 who has not thumbed the New Testament. 
 And no gifted philosopher, however much he 
 may know tongues and systems, so long as 
 he allies himself with the world spirit which 
 is against God, can ever hope to attain unto 
 the knowledge of the human heart which the 
 devout man enjoys, who prays God to en- 
 lighten him as h^ reads, and who, by reason 
 of his sympathetic interest, is quick to apply 
 the teaching to himself and learn the height 
 and breadth of his heart. 
 
 Our text reveals just what human experi- 
 ence declares, that indecision is the bane of 
 life. There are all about us men who in 
 their good moments are saints and in their 
 bad moments devils. There have been many 
 Dick Steeles who can prepare for debauchery 
 
Obebtence Demanbeb. 103 
 
 by long dissertations on morality ; and this 
 because, putting their hands to the plow, 
 they look back ; they start the furrow well, 
 but they do not finish it ; they have all the 
 maxims of commonplace religion on their 
 tongues, but they do not give the heart and 
 purpose to the case in hand. Their thought 
 is behind them, when it should in aspiration 
 stretch out before them to the accomplish- 
 ment of their labor ; the allurements of the 
 past clog the will, deaden their interest in 
 the work God has set them to do ; they zig- 
 zag their course. The kingdom of heaven 
 is not won in such a way. An epistle well 
 puts this same truth : **For he that doubteth 
 is like the surge of the sea, driven by the 
 wind and tossed." Again, the same epistle 
 says, " The double-minded man is unstable 
 in all his ways." It is well, then, for us, 
 when our imaginations are on the past, that 
 we remember to keep our eyes upon the 
 present, because Christ requires a straight 
 furrow ; and that we do not allow past de- 
 lights to enervate and weaken the resolu- 
 tion of the heart. '' Keep thy heart with all 
 diligence, for out of it are the issues of life." 
 It is, I think, noticeable that Christ does 
 not ask us to preserve in our souls an equi- 
 
104 HerD Concepts of £)Ib Dogmas. 
 
 librium of motives; "He that is not for me 
 is against me." This presents a strong con- 
 trast to much of the current thought of our 
 time ; it is in favor to say, " My mind is in the 
 balance ; I see good in both sides. I am not 
 able to declare myself." Indeed, it is claimed 
 that it is a sign of mental power that one 
 vacillates back and forth between two opin- 
 ions, calling forth, as it did recently from a 
 distinguished preacher, the comment that 
 such an equilibrium was proof of mental 
 weakness rather than of stronger qualities 
 of the intellect. However that may be, the 
 primary question here is concerning the 
 mind of Christ. His disapproval of spir- 
 itual indeterminateness is pronounced ; that 
 man is portrayed in a sentence, " He that 
 hath his hand upon the plow, and looketh 
 back." Jesus gives no sanction to divided 
 affections or divided metal states. If you 
 are in equilibrium, put yourself out of it ; for 
 that very pose between Christ and the 
 world, that air of haughty indifference, that 
 assumed superiority over those who decide 
 for Him, is proof final and conclusive of your 
 lack. Do not believe that a vacillating pur- 
 pose can win the guerdon of His approval. 
 Do not believe that an intellectual accept- 
 
£)bebtcnce Demanbeb. 105 
 
 ance of Christ is enough, while your heart- 
 strings, entwined about other loves and 
 other passions than His, are tugging to draw 
 you back to the world. 
 
 This brings us face to face with the fun- 
 damental doctrine of our text ; that Jesus 
 Christ demands complete soul surrender of 
 heart and of life on the part of those who 
 are true believers. No qualification can hide 
 this blemish ; no excuse can be pleaded 
 against this judgment ; they are not fit. 
 And at the same time no lack can be pleaded 
 against those thus qualified by decision ; to 
 criticise the lack of a true believer, accord- 
 ing to Christ's definition, is to exalt one's 
 self to the position of critic of the Master. 
 
 As all roads led of old to Rome, so all con- 
 ceptions of Christian duty lead to Christ. The 
 photographs of the ancient Italian painters, 
 so far as they have come under my notice, 
 give to the Master a beatific and exalted ex- 
 pression of tenderness. The defects of these 
 paintings are their beauty, for which there 
 is no foundation in the Gospels, the absence 
 of any trace of soul struggle, such as Geth- 
 semane must have left on Him, and an ap- 
 pearance of self-esteem such as in our time 
 marks the countenances only of egotists and 
 
106 Xl<^vo (Zonc^pts of £)[b Dogmas. 
 
 mystics. That there is somewhat of church 
 tradition behind these representations, is un- 
 doubtedly true ; but at most it is only tra- 
 dition ; they are church likenesses. The 
 modern painters have erred in giving too 
 intellectual an appearance ; you see superb 
 intelligence, precocious and brilliant features. 
 But a Roman Catholic artist, Munkacsy, 
 has at length painted a Protestant Christ ; it 
 is a picture of superb power ; every form in 
 it is faultlessly posed. The scene is laid in 
 the judgment hall. Pilate on his throne, a 
 hard headed, sensual autocrat, conscious of 
 his strength and yet doubting whether to sac- 
 rifice the so-called King of the Jews to fanat- 
 ical enemies, is portrayed with all his doubts 
 upon him, as he listens to the old man 
 Caiphas, the high priest, the bombastic pros- 
 ecutor, who with swelling indignation and 
 self-contained manner presents the substance 
 of the charge. Behind Caiphas sits in garnet 
 robes and defiant aspect a rich Pharisee, who 
 with contemptuous and haughty pride views 
 the Christ. There are one or two sympa- 
 thetic countenances ; but the crowd in gen- 
 eral has the appearance of being interested 
 in the prosecution and anxious for the re- 
 sult. One of the rabble officiously inflicts 
 
£)bebtence Dcmanbeb. 107 
 
 an insult, another shouts aloud, " Crucify 
 Him ! " But that Christ is worth traveling 
 many miles to see. It is criticised, but 
 to me it appears well-nigh faultless. The 
 God-man is shown to be strung with im- 
 mense tension. His hands, bound before 
 Him, alone restrain Him from vigorous gest- 
 ure, and yet in all the pressure under which He 
 labors, you see Him completely under con- 
 trol. His face is that of one hunted to death, 
 but the resolution which speaketh from His 
 eyes is unconquerable. This is the Galilean 
 at bay, the compassionate Jesus himself need- 
 ing compassion ; this is the wrung soul which 
 prayed, "Father, if it be Thy will, let this cup 
 pass from Me." 
 
 A Christ of such resolution is the Christ 
 who speaks from our text. At the time of 
 its utterance He was indeed under less press- 
 ure, but He is the same uncompromising, 
 fearless, exacting personality in all things 
 which make for righteousness. He demands 
 thy unconditional obedience. 
 
CARL MARK'S FLAGELLANTS. 
 
 ' ' If ye love Me, keep My commandments. ' ' — 
 John 14 : /J. 
 
 CARL MARK, the painter of ''The Flagel- 
 lants," was born in Milwaukee. After an 
 unsuccessful attempt to support himself there 
 as a painter, in 1880 he returned to Munich 
 by way of Boston and New York. His con- 
 nection with a city so near us certainly height- 
 ens the interest we feel in his work. From 
 1885 to 1889 he labored on this canvas, 
 rather more than ten feet wide. This is ap- 
 proximately half the length of time bestowed 
 by the mighty Angelo upon "The Last Judg- 
 ment," who spent seven years upon but rela- 
 tively a few more figures. But while Angelo 
 painted no less than five distinct paintings, 
 each one of which might have been dissevered 
 and been separately framed, Marr gives us 
 but one concept. Notice, too, the difference 
 in choice of subjects ; while Angelo paints 
 the resurrection from the dead, the judgment 
 seat of Christ, the condemnation of the 
 wicked, and Charon ferrying the souls of the 
 
 (108) 
 
Carl mart's flagellants. 109 
 
 dead across to Hades, Marr paints a mediaeval 
 church scene. Angelo soars on the wing" of 
 imagination, and reveals glimpses of hidden 
 mysteries of religion which are the symbols 
 of faith ; Marr reveals a time about three 
 centuries previous to Angelo's day, the like 
 of which Angelo himself may have seen, and 
 displays the external form of that faith of 
 which Angelo gave the content. That Marr 
 selects one of the excrescences in church life, 
 is no criticism ; it illustrates that very pecul- 
 iarity, and casts side light upon that same 
 faith. Angelo's *' Last Judgment " and Marr's 
 "Flagellants" present about the same con- 
 trast that is to be found between the ordi- 
 nary Protestant faith of our time, and the 
 actions of the colored Christians of the South 
 during the moments of frenzy in their relig- 
 ious meetings ; it is the content of faith over 
 against the outward manifestation of what 
 a disordered imagination esteems to be a 
 natural inference from, or adjunct of, that 
 faith. The devotion of faith may take varied 
 forms, and it is its effort to make some act or 
 acts of devotion of especial value in the sight 
 of God so that it shall prevail for the forgive- 
 ness of sins. Hence we find sacrifice per- 
 verted in the Old Testament so that its 
 
110 Xlevo Concepts of £)Ib Dogmas. 
 
 sacrificial nature is lost sight of, and the 
 sacrificial act comes to have the virtue of a 
 fetich in itself, until the Psalmist exclaims : — 
 
 " Sacrifice and offering Thou hadst no delight in; 
 Mine ears hast thou opened : 
 Burnt-offering and sin-offering hast Thou not 
 required. 
 Then said I, Lo, I am come; 
 In the roll of the book it is written of me : 
 I delight to do Thy will, O my God." 
 
 This is quoted concerning Christ in the 
 loth chapter of Hebrews, the mighty epistle 
 of the atonement. Similarly, Christ quoted 
 and explained the Old Testament in Matt. 
 9:13: ''But go ye and learn what this 
 meaneth, I desire mercy, and not sacrifice : 
 for I came not to call the righteous, but 
 sinners." So, too, may we quote our text : 
 "If ye love me, keep my commandments," 
 as giving Christ's own emphasis upon the 
 ethics of life. 
 
 Let us see how these Christian Flagellants 
 illustrated their conception of faith. They 
 appeared in the nth century, but the first 
 widespread impression made was this which 
 arose from their self- beatings along the 
 streets of Perugia, which is only a hundred 
 and fifty miles from Rome itself. The im- 
 
Carl maw's flagellants. HI 
 
 mediate occasion was the terrible state of 
 fear into which Italy was then plunged by 
 the horrors of the Guelph and Ghibelline 
 wars, which were in brief the Papacy against 
 the princes and the neighboring free cities 
 of Italy. From Perugia they spread over 
 Southern and Western Europe ; they reap- 
 peared during the black death in 1348, and 
 during the famine, pestilence, and war threat- 
 ened in the days of the Turkish invasion of 
 Europe in 1399; the excitement of the time 
 being heightened by one of the periodic 
 scares of Christendom over the predicted 
 end of the world. 
 
 These are their prominent appearances, if 
 we add that of 1417, when they were under 
 the lead of St. Vincent. Their minor appear- 
 ances, however, were numerous, the last re- 
 corded being at Lisbon, Portugal, in 1820. 
 They seem to have formed a brotherhood, 
 which maintained its organization through 
 several centuries. At some periods they 
 were despised and persecuted by the church 
 in whose bosom they were nourished and of 
 whose doctrine they were the natural out- 
 growth. At Perugia, however, at the time 
 of Rainer, they were demonstrating in be- 
 half of the Guelph or Papal party. A writer 
 
112 Item Concepts of £)\b Dogmas. 
 
 says: ''Great numbers of the inhabitants of 
 this city, noble and ignoble, old and young, 
 traversed the streets, carrying in their hands 
 leathern thongs, with which, according to the 
 chronicle of the monk of Padua, ' they drew 
 forth blood from their tortured bodies, amid 
 sighs and tears, singing at the same time 
 penitential psalms, and entreating the com- 
 passion of the Deity.* They laid great stress 
 upon the baptism of blood obtained by means 
 of the scourge." It was a kind of national 
 fast and humiliation for the sins of the peo- 
 ple, by which they hoped to escape the ter- 
 rible bloodshed of their time. 
 
 In Marr's picture, Rainer is a remarkable 
 figure, clad in the black of his monk's or- 
 der, but he has a dark, wolfish face. That 
 man, as Marr has painted him, is cruel, fana- 
 tical, shrewd, determined. At the one side is 
 the young athlete laying on the blows vig- 
 orously, with the spirit of self glorification 
 in his very pose ; he has come out to show 
 the thronging crowd how to do it, and hopes 
 to win their applause ; his spirit is like 
 that of the young Comanche buck in the 
 war dance. You feel you would like to be 
 there and see him, he is so nervy. A little 
 behind Rainer is an old man, past his prime, 
 
Carl irtarr's flagellants. 113 
 
 but with the strength of his prime still in 
 him. His is a different spirit ; a troubled 
 mind finds relief in the self-inflicted lash ; his 
 bleeding memory finds panacea for its shame 
 in each stinging blow ; the scourge he wields 
 is but the external symbol of the inner casti- 
 gations of conscience ; the suffering without 
 is the veriest trifle compared therewith, and 
 the deeper it cuts the better, for a good 
 wincing blow doth grant relief to the pent-up 
 pressures within. At the old man's side is a 
 beautiful girl of fourteen summers, with her 
 pure hands folded meekly across her breast, 
 her features expressing the sorrow which has 
 been pressed upon her by the common rumor 
 of the town, or by the preaching of Rainer 
 here with the beetling brow. She has done 
 nothing to be repented ; she has no thong ; 
 such youth and innocence cannot be so 
 harshly treated. Rainer, who leads the pro- 
 cession, is looking back to her reservedly, as 
 if amid his general unconcern at the brutality 
 of the blood-stained backs he would refresh 
 himself by a half glance at such lovely saintli- 
 ness. Beside is borne upon men's shoulders 
 a figure of the crucified Jesus, whom all pro- 
 fess to serve, young man, old man, maiden, 
 and monk. It is heavy, graven work, of more 
 8 
 
114 Herr) Concepts of £)I6 Dogmas. 
 
 cost than the price put upon the head of 
 the matchless Christ, whose image is only 
 the dumb, dead show of Him whose death 
 was priceless as His life was unique, and 
 doubtless inferior to some other work, in some 
 other Umbrian city, by some more celebrated 
 artist ; and yet Perugia in the first glows of 
 its artistic splendor treasures it, and the cold 
 heart of Rainer is proud to have it here at 
 the head of his procession, for that is all 
 which is given us in detail by the artist. 
 
 And here they bear a dead image of Christ, 
 who have need enough to know a living and 
 resurrected Son of God. Suppose this boy, 
 so masterful, should look back and see instead 
 of a wooden thing forming a part of street- 
 show pomp, a true vision of the real Christ ; 
 would not the true manliness of that real 
 Christ appeal tp him, so bravely making 
 show of a heroism that is rudely veiled 
 brute force ? and should he see the true hu- 
 mility of the Son of man, would he not be 
 stricken dumb, because that instant the dark- 
 ness within him of his own self-glorification 
 was overwhelmed by the meekness of the 
 gentle Christ ? What pity that the old sin- 
 ner, blindly looking straight ahead and 
 piteously seeking distraction from the ever- 
 
Carl Klavts flagellants. 115 
 
 present wickedness of his heart, by the sting 
 of his self-inflicted blow, might not look there 
 to see a face of flesh in the death agony, in 
 order that sin might be forgiven and the 
 penitent sinner find relief through a pardon 
 bought by blood ! How sweet it would be 
 if that dear girl should but look that way 
 in the dew of her youth and in the fresh- 
 ness of her untainted spirit ! If the old 
 fox Rainer should turn there, what shame 
 must be his, when his malignity and false- 
 ness stands face to face with the holiness of 
 the Son of God. But this does not intervene, 
 the pageant proceeds, bearing the lifeless 
 image of a dead Christ. 
 
 We know now how this all came about ; 
 that Rainer represented a scheming Papacy 
 which, seizing upon the flagellant principle, 
 sporadically and obscurely practiced and out 
 of sight, through its devoted monk organized 
 a gigantic and scenic appeal, to heaven osten- 
 sibly, but really an appeal to men, that they 
 should rise to the help of the Lord's repre- 
 sentative on earth, and so end the sorrows of 
 the land by consigning all of the earth in 
 sight to a ruling Pope, God's vicegerent on 
 earth. No wonder the artist has painted 
 cunning in the face of Rainer the tool- 
 
116 Hen? Concepts of £)lb Dogmas. 
 
 The other figures represent well the classes 
 whom they relied upon for support, — the in- 
 nocent, the remorseful, and the vainglorious. 
 So it has ever been the need, a living Christ 
 in the hearts of the people ; the fact, the 
 living church dead to the most deeply sig- 
 nificant acts of the life of Christ ; or to state 
 it differently : the fact, a living church of the 
 dead Christ reaching out its Catholic Apos- 
 tolic hands — and what hands they are! — 
 for pelf and power. It was apprehension of 
 this that led Michael Angelo to paint his 
 **Pieta," which represented the Holy Mother 
 holding the dead Christ upon her knees, fit 
 type and symbol of the thought and attitude 
 of all in that day who honored the command- 
 ment of Christ. 
 
 The need of that age and the need of every 
 other is a living faith in the true and real Son 
 of God, who ever liveth in heaven, the guide 
 and Ihelper of his sincere disciples ; the re- 
 ality, alas, is too often a dead faith supplanted 
 by a vain hope of attaining the rewards of 
 faith through atoning blood by the arts of 
 self-immolation. What they did vaunt and 
 display was the bleeding back and the stained 
 thong, and this not alone to men, but also to 
 God, that ostensibly He might witness their 
 
Carl Iltarr's flagellants. 117 
 
 frenzy and flaming zeal, and grant them 
 deliverance as individual and nation, in 
 view thereof. We can but think of the an- 
 cient trial between Elijah and the priests of 
 Baal, who immolated themselves and called 
 loudly upon their god, amid the taunts of the 
 prophet. It is an exemplification of the 
 heathen way, which considers the gods ap- 
 peasable by the sacrifices which a man's 
 hands may make. It is the spirit of all 
 ritualism, which places appeasement in the 
 hands of a priesthood, or rests it upon some 
 act of devotion. Jesus Christ has said, " If ye 
 love me, keep my commandments ; " and the 
 Christian church sayeth, "Do penance, at- 
 tend regularly upon worship, profit by the 
 institutions of religion," while she too often 
 forgetteth to add, *' But remember that these 
 are of virtue solely as they shall be an assist- 
 ance to a life of obedience to the Holy Lord 
 Jesus, the shepherd and bishop of souls." 
 
 One has recently said most truly : ** Then, 
 the simple supper-talk with the twelve 
 friends, met in a fellowship sanctified by 
 prayer and love : now, an elaborate altar, 
 jeweled vestments, pealing organ, kneeling 
 and awe-stricken worshipers ; then, meetings 
 from house to house for prayer, Christian 
 
118 Hern Concepts of £)Ib Dogmas. 
 
 praise and instruction in the simpler facts of 
 the Master's life and the fundamental prin- 
 ciples of His kingdom : now, churches with 
 preachers, elders, bishops, sessions, pres- 
 byteries, councils, associations, missionary 
 boards ; then, a prayer breathing the com- 
 mon wants of universal humanity in a few 
 simple petitions : now, an elaborate ritual 
 appealing to ear and eye and imagination, 
 by all the accessories which art and music 
 and historic association combined can con- 
 fer ; then, a brotherhood in Jerusalem, with 
 all things in common and a board of deacons 
 to see that all were fed and none were sur- 
 feited:"^ to all of which we say, as did our 
 fathers of old. It is not of the Lord. Back to 
 Christ and His commandments, or ye cannot 
 abide in His love. Down with the Flagel- 
 lants ; down with Ritualism ; yea, down even 
 with the church, if by it the true Christ be 
 obscured, and fetiches of devotion be erected 
 instead. For the only valid thing in Chris- 
 tianity is love and obedience to God through 
 Christ, whom He hath sent. 
 
 1 Lyman Abbott. 
 
THE FACE OF CHRIST. 
 
 '■^ Seeing it is God that said. Light shall shine 
 out of darkness, who shijied in our hearts^ 
 to give the light of the knowledge of the 
 glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.'''' 
 — 2 Cor. 4 : 6. 
 
 THIS is a declaration concerning the light 
 which lighteth every man who cometh 
 into the world. We must agree with the 
 Quaker in asserting the universality of God's 
 influence upon humanity ; we must agree with 
 the revelation contained in the New Testa- 
 ment, which declares that the Holy Ghost 
 reveals the person of Christ to the conscious- 
 ness of believers, so that, illumined, they 
 show forth the true nature of the person of 
 the world's Redeemer. Our text is a taking 
 of the part for the whole, A sample of the 
 glory of God as revealed in Christ is obtained 
 when we attain true apprehension of the 
 character of God as revealed in the face of 
 Jesus. The object of the gospel here set 
 forth, which has sprung up in so great splen- 
 dor of God, is to scatter its rays into all parts 
 of the known world, so that men shall behold 
 
 ("9) 
 
120 ruvo Concepts of £)I5 Dogmas. 
 
 the illumination of the character of God, as 
 set forth best, or if you please, adumbrated 
 most clearly to the limited capacity of men, 
 in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, the King 
 of the Jews. 
 
 This is a remarkable scripture, because it 
 implies an acceptance of the face as a measure 
 of the man. The wondrous nature of the 
 great Master of the art of doing good, who in 
 poverty, chastity, and obedience went about 
 laden with compassions for the sick and tired 
 rabble of the Galilean towns, showed the 
 depth of His loving-kindness man-ward in 
 His face. He who in a world laden with shams 
 and fettered by hypocrisies lived honestly 
 and spake the truth, spoke out honestly 
 from His honest eyes. The carpenter's Son 
 of Nazareth, prepared by long years of medi- 
 tation for His mission, with the conscious- 
 ness of His capacities, and filled with longing 
 for the redemption of humanity, spake out 
 the fullness of His heart in the very tremor 
 of His silent lips. When He, who had in the 
 very constitution of His personality the pledge 
 of God's omnipotence, and whose life was a 
 constant endeavor for the accomplishment of 
 the eternal purposes of the Almighty Father, 
 at length in the place of a skull, at the hands 
 
C!}e ^acii of CF?rt$t. 121 
 
 of the greatest military and commercial power 
 of the earth, under instigation of the noblest 
 religion the world then knew, suffering the 
 pangs of death, cries out, ''Father, into Thy 
 hands I commend my spirit," and turns His 
 face, we may see the illumination of the glory 
 of God in the face of Jesus Christ. What 
 wonder that Wallace, portraying this scene 
 in "Ben Hur," makes Simonides, the aged 
 Jew, answer Hur's, " Now cover thine eyes, 
 and look not up ; but put thy trust in God, 
 and the spirit of yon just Man so foully slain," 
 with the reproof: *' Nay, let us henceforth 
 speak of him as the Christ." 
 
 The greatest proof of blood is said to be 
 the color of the skin. From the raised and 
 colored sculptures of the valley of the Nile 
 we learn that there has been no change in 
 color on the part of the Egyptian popula- 
 tion for a hundred generations ; the eyes of 
 Anthony and Cleopatra looked upon the 
 swarthy backs of servitors bearing the same 
 hues of skin, as do the eyes of the modern 
 traveler. This is a far better clue to race 
 than language or customs, which are fre- 
 quently imposed by conquest or changed by 
 contact. The next most important witness 
 to community of blood is the size and shape 
 
122 HctD Concepts of £)[b Dogmas. 
 
 of the skull. Cranial similarities are among 
 the best witnesses that God perpetuates 
 types and deals with men in bulk as nations 
 and communities, as well as with men indi- 
 vidually. In color and type Jesus was a 
 Hebrew ; how much He bore the mark of 
 His race, or how little its distinguishments 
 distinguished Him, we do not know. He was 
 doubtless Jew enough so that we should rec- 
 ognize Him as such did He to-day walk our 
 streets. But as men have portrayed, striving 
 to bring to the canvas somewhat of the con- 
 cept of the glory of God in the face of Christ, 
 it has been a national face, alien to what was 
 the face of the form of Jesus ; it has been a 
 limited human face, it has been a face lack- 
 ing the majesty and glory of God. 
 
 Turn over, then, the noblest prints repro- 
 ducing the well-nigh inspired productions of 
 artistic genius, and feast thine eyes on the 
 likenesses purporting to clothe anew to mod- 
 ern eyes Hirri who is at the right hand of the 
 throne of God, and close the book and rest 
 thy head upon thy hands, and see if thy heart 
 can accept any of these as a satisfaction of 
 its ideal. I am sure the best that man's hand 
 can fashion and his heart conceive cannot 
 equal the glory of God as it shines within 
 
CI?e S<^u of (Ll}vxst 123 
 
 thee, the Holy Ghost being thy teacher. The 
 picture is of earth : the glory of God in the 
 face of Jesus Christ is of heaven. Away with 
 these earthly substitutes for the unseen face 
 of Christ in the heavens, away with the rude 
 images of Christ on the crucifix, away with 
 the wayside shrine, the forms of agony, and 
 the rude clots of blood, away with the human 
 Christ ; give us the face of the Son of Mary 
 with the Godhead shining through it. 
 
 Notice, first, that it is the glory of God 
 in the face of humanity that is to become a 
 matter of knowledge through the Holy Ghost. 
 The glory of God is not best set forth by 
 some great earthquake scene, some black- 
 ness and darkness and tempest, but rather 
 by God's glory manifest in the face of the 
 Son of man. When Jesus died, the signifi- 
 cance of the event and the glory of God was 
 not to be found in the yawning earth, or the 
 rocks rent, or the veil of the temple torn in 
 twain, or the darkness, but in the face of 
 Him who upon the central one of three crosses 
 showed forth in His features an illumination 
 of the glory of God. Say how can that be ? 
 that the glory of God is not to be sought in 
 earth's most glorious sunsets, in shadow of 
 the mightiest mountains, or on the bosom 
 
124 Xicw Concepts of £)Ib Dogmas. 
 
 of the most picturesque hill-locked lake, un- 
 der the spray of the most gigantic waterfall, 
 or amid the thunder of its leaping floods, but 
 in the face of man ? The answer is because 
 God is something besides power spelled with 
 a large " P," because God is something more 
 and something very different from a giant 
 hurling hill-tops to scoop out lake basins ; 
 He is something else than natural law in its 
 most sublime workings. It is a God reveal- 
 ing Himself through personality ; which reve- 
 lation thus conditioned is certain evidence 
 that He is a person, for if He were a law and 
 a cosmic fact merely, men must learn of 
 it by its manifestations, and religion could 
 be comprised in nature, as in all atheistic 
 philosophy. 
 
 This prepares us for another consideration ; 
 namely, that the face is a mirror reflecting 
 the thoughts and purposes of the heart. A 
 face is not a mask ; by great force of will and 
 long training it has sometimes become such 
 so far as the momentary thought is con- 
 cerned. Such it notably was in the case of 
 Mr. Disraeli, and of Napoleon the First. But 
 even then the craftiness of the one and the 
 brutality of the other shone through it. You 
 need not be told the master motive of their 
 
^(?e ^acz of (Ef^rist. 125 
 
 lives, when once you have seen representa- 
 tion of their strongly marked faces. Clean, 
 pure thoughted high-mindedness works it- 
 self out from the heart into the face. The 
 glory of God was in one face, and worked 
 itself out there from the heart ; there was 
 perpetual benignity on one brow, perpetual 
 good-will lurked in the corners of one mouth, 
 perfect love as an aroma was the atmosphere 
 around one personality, perennial kindness 
 welling up in one heart was in the look of 
 the person, and is there now and evermore. In 
 other words, the human heart is made by our 
 text the interpreter of the loftiest passions of 
 the Godhead, and the human face is made 
 their fitting and adequate exponent. 
 
 If therefore thou wouldst know what the 
 face of Jesus was like, together with the su- 
 peradded glory of the majesty of God as an 
 aureole incorporated in it, seek thou the illu- 
 mination of the Holy Ghost. Seek thou not 
 to know the exact form of those features, for 
 thou couldst only have the merest outline 
 without the fire of life and without the in- 
 duement of glory. And as thou shalt turn 
 the leaves of the familiar narrative of the 
 life of Christ as told by Apostolic men, or 
 shalt study the applications of the principles 
 
126 Hen? Concepts of £)lb Dogmas. 
 
 of Christ to the practical duties of every-day 
 life as made in the Epistles, or shalt strive 
 to unravel the hidden thing in the uncouth 
 book of Revelation, ask the blessing of God 
 that thou mayest learn aright the lesson of 
 obedience, and mayest have superadded a 
 better understanding of the glory of God as 
 revealed in the face of Jesus Christ. And 
 thou shalt grope after that likeness, but shalt 
 not see it ; and everything that thy imagina- 
 tion conjurest up will be found to be some 
 recollection of painting or picture of Christ 
 refurbished up, and thou shalt be more con- 
 scious than ever of the blank that is pre- 
 sented to the eye of him who would gain a 
 definite idea of the appearance of the face 
 of the Master. 
 
 But pray on and enter more and more into 
 fellowship with the sufferings of Jesus by the 
 way of self-denial, and go out in service of 
 Him, bearing thy cross with the fullest inten- 
 tion, God helping, to carry that cross to the 
 place of crucifixion for that motive which 
 makes thy cross a possibility to thy heart. 
 Enter more and more into sympathy with the 
 mind of Jesus in its evident purpose to do 
 good to every living being in so far as He 
 had opportunity. And as thou prayest, thou 
 shalt be conscious of a presence with thee, 
 
CI?e ^acz of Cl^rist ' 127 
 
 thou shalt live under the inspiration of a 
 personality. As in various acts of life thou 
 shalt live in fashion presented by the attitude 
 of that personality toward the problems of 
 pure being, and shalt find in this and that 
 scripture the relation of that wondrous per- 
 son delineated with precision, there will dawn 
 upon thy understanding a revealed soul 
 power of exceeding largeness. In your ideal 
 of that person, righteousness, honor, and truth 
 shall have their place, the compassions will 
 be found in all fullness in Him ; righteousness 
 and mercy will be found to have kissed each 
 other ; benignity and justice will be seen 
 harmonious. And though the world cannot 
 produce anthentic features of the Son of man 
 who is the Son of God, helped of the Holy 
 Ghost thou shalt be conscious of the illumina- 
 tion of the glory of God, which must be in 
 that face, its compassions, its loves, its hopes, 
 its hates, its responsibilities, its wanness from 
 cares, its sorrows so deep, its anguish of death 
 so unspeakable. And thou shalt know of a 
 truth that thy illumination is of God the 
 Spirit, and that the glory of God which is as 
 an illumination of the face of Jesus, thou hast 
 knowledge of in thy heart ; thou hast His 
 attributes, thou knowest the marks which 
 will lead thee to His face. 
 
THE STRICKEN CHRIST. 
 
 ^^ He hath no forf/i nor co?neliness ; and when 
 we shall see Him, there is no beauty that 
 we should desire Him. ' ' — Isa. jj : 2. 
 
 THE Christian who has carried his faith 
 beyond commonplace morality, and has 
 bowed his spirit before the unique presence 
 of the Son of man, cannot fail to think what 
 must have been the form and mien, the face 
 and expression, of the Nazarene. Other art- 
 ists may paint the mythological heathen gods, 
 Landseer may paint lions, Barye may fashion 
 griffins or any uncouth beast unknown ex- 
 cept to his own imagination. Church may 
 paint landscapes, Holman Hunt faces, Watt 
 portraits and allegory ; but the man who 
 paints for Christendom is the man who paints 
 the face of Jesus Christ. To the Christian 
 believer all art is as nothing compared with 
 Christian art centering in Christ ; all art 
 lacking its consummate flower and being, 
 as a plant that never blossoms, if it does 
 not present in the highest type of its gen- 
 ius adequate representation of Him who was 
 (128) 
 
^l}t Stnchn €l}txst 129 
 
 more than Shakespeare, for whom Bacon wrote 
 his plays, because the stars presided over His 
 birth, and the supernatural was in one or- 
 ganism fully in touch with mundane things. 
 That the problem is difficult goes without 
 the saying. The abstractions of justice, 
 purity, virtue, and philanthropy are in their 
 nature absolute and characteristic only of 
 God the Supreme ; and these not dependently 
 suggested, but in union with Omnipotence 
 must be co-joined and co-terminate a finitude 
 which we who are men have in a narrow tene- 
 ment of perishable clay, so dependent upon 
 environment that the least dislocation of the 
 eternal law of nature whisks us out of being 
 in a second, a flight of space in which the 
 winged message of modern life will leap 
 underneath the oceans and connect the hemi- 
 spheres. That weakness which in a second 
 of time is as nothing, leaving a destroyed 
 body and having a spirit translated from 
 earth to Elysium, '* This day shalt thou be 
 with me in Paradise " illustrating the power 
 of God in translation from earth to heaven in 
 the same space of time in which man makes 
 his greatest triumph over nature in the elec- 
 tric circuit, this weakness which at best can 
 only meet the wear and tear of its environ- 
 
 9 
 
130 HetD Concepts of £)I6 Dogmas. 
 
 ment, less than a hundred years out of eter- 
 nity, must be united with the attributes of 
 the Godhead, its repose and power, in the 
 face of One on canvas to express with any 
 true realism Jesus Christ to a human heart. 
 Michael Angelo and Raphael must have 
 known God. Munkacsy, the artist of "Christ 
 before Pilate," must know God ; the artist 
 of the future must know the heavenly Spirit 
 and the King of kings, and must cease to 
 grovel with sense and time perceptions only. 
 In the ancient history of the church, three 
 types, illustrating three concepts of the char- 
 acter of Christ, have been left as imperish- 
 able memorials of the faith of long ago. 
 There is the young and fair Christ of the 
 Western Church, the Christ which modern 
 Christendom has succeeded to historically, 
 and illustrated, by the tendency of modern 
 artists to portray Christ in the temple as 
 do Hoffman and Holman Hunt. Then there 
 is the middle-aged Christ of the Greek or 
 Eastern Church, a Christ of unusual maturity 
 for his years, perhaps the truest Christ be- 
 cause the home Christ, that is, the Christ 
 ideal affected by the local traditions which 
 hung about the place of His nativity. Finally, 
 there is the monkish Christ, authority for this 
 
CI?e Strtcfen €l}v\st 131 
 
 last conception being derived from the text 
 of the morning : ** He hath no form nor come- 
 liness ; and when we see Him, there is no 
 beauty that we should desire Him." The 
 Oberammergau Christ is that of a reformer 
 and somewhat of this type. The Christ 
 of the great Russian painter Gay, recently 
 brought to notice, is plainly to be classed 
 here ; it is a well-nigh demented beggar who 
 faces the hard-headed wicked Roman gov- 
 ernor, Pontius Pilate. That the monk who 
 lived a holy life in his cell apart from men 
 should foster this ascetic, sorrowful ideal, 
 and make it famous, is not strange. For 
 gloomy views of life, destiny, and religion 
 must needs effect such an end. Men in gen- 
 eral have never been able to assent to the 
 Greek canon of taste which declares that 
 physical beauty and moral health are co- 
 terminous in personalities. 
 
 From Socrates to William Lloyd Garrison 
 the men who in civilized nations have had 
 most conscience and native moral power, have 
 almost without exception been lacking in per- 
 sonal beauty. The American people, whose 
 Greatheart was Abraham Lincoln, and whose 
 Nestor was Washington, have not come to 
 regard it as essential to great moral endow- 
 
132 Hero Concepts of £)\b Dogmas. 
 
 ments. There is nothing said in the New 
 Testament either way, but this we can say, 
 that they who have great bitterness of soul 
 struggle, and who with great purity and lofti- 
 ness of purpose meet evil, show their buffetings 
 in their faces, ourselves being judges. Yet 
 there is nothing in a face, one way or another. 
 We would commit no man to jail for his looks 
 nor would we hate him unheard. The heart 
 is the essential feature, and out of the heart 
 the mouth speaketh. No man shall be com- 
 pelled by his address to overcome our dislike, 
 like the French orator who must needs in the 
 first fifteen minutes dissipate by his eloquence 
 the bad impression made by his ugly face. 
 
 There is no virtue, then, in itself in beauty 
 or its lack, but nevertheless the great act of 
 the life of Christ is one of repulsive nature. 
 All other acts are commonplace beside ; His 
 death is stamped as a divinely wrought office, 
 an act full of His deity and son-ship, an act 
 fraught with more meaning than anything else 
 He did. Every other office of His life might 
 be attributed to human nature suitably en- 
 ^dowed. This alone is devoid of significance 
 if He is merely an endowed man. Did He die 
 as Socrates died, an unjustly accused person, 
 hounded by enemies, yet innocent, magnani- 
 
C{?e Strtcfen Cf?nst. 133 
 
 mous, and calm ? or did he die as Jesus 
 Christ ? Dodge it you cannot, that the su- 
 premest moment of the Nazarene's earthly 
 career, that calculated to give type to faith, 
 that which sets the seal upon the whole trans- 
 action of His life as altogether of God and not 
 of man, reveals the distressed, anguish-laden 
 features of one in death pangs, by cruel 
 agony smitten ; it is the awful and repulsive 
 face of Jesus on the cross, the Saviour of 
 sinners, which is transmitted to history. 
 
 But men are suffering all about us, and 
 while we do not believe that it is punish- 
 ment of necessity, we cannot tell what meas- 
 ure of it may be due to violation of God's 
 law in this generation or the last. This Man 
 was sinless and had a sinless nature, and the 
 very fact of that sinlessness makes eager the 
 onlooker to know why the just must needs 
 suffer. But we forget the face of Him writh- 
 ing in pain ; let us remember the dead, we 
 say, as we saw them in life ; let us forget all 
 that lies between the glimpse we had of 
 health and strength and happiness in an- 
 other and better day. But Jesus Christ, by 
 the miracle of His death, would keep alive 
 His passion. Men might well close their eyes 
 on this tragedy, and refuse to view it ; no 
 
134 Hem Concepts of £)Ib Dogmas, 
 
 man can peruse the account of it at the 
 close of a series of readings in the Gospels 
 without eyes blinded by tears which have 
 arisen unbidden. 
 
 But however much we would put from us 
 thought of a bleeding, dying Christ nailed to 
 a wooden cross, His dear flesh torn and bleed- 
 ing, His human nature ebbing slowly away, 
 His heart crying out to the Father in His un- 
 utterable anguish, Christ commands against 
 that oblivion ; He would be seated in our 
 hearts with a presence full of suffering, un- 
 comely in its anguish, a personality of sor- 
 rows, acquainted with grief; and the face at 
 first hidden from Him must be turned to- 
 ward Him, and the averted eyes must be 
 raised in faith. Is this not repulsive, this 
 Jew raised upon the cross of a malefactor ? 
 Yes, says the skeptic, you have a bloody, 
 uncomely, hateful religion. Indeed there is 
 no form, no comeliness, in the Crucified, that 
 men should desire Him. He was a man of 
 sorrows, acquainted with grief 
 
 There are three great lessons in that ter- 
 rible scene. First, it is a revelation of the 
 love of God. No easy-chair philosopher 
 could teach this. Christ in his miracle- 
 working tours about Galilee never could 
 
CF?e Stnchn <Zl}vxst . 135 
 
 have taught it. Socrates could say, ** No 
 evil thing can happen to a good man." But 
 it needed the death of the cross, the humilia- 
 tion and anguish of it, the poor, distressed 
 piece of flesh upon it, to point men to the 
 love of God for sinners. Love, even, is not 
 manifest by the hermit in his cell, but by the 
 sufferings of torture and spoliation of death. 
 Love only can be proven by the sacrifice of 
 earthly circumstance and by sufferings to the 
 end. Friendship never crosses the dead line 
 of danger ; its mein and presence there are 
 transformed ; it then is love, and not till then. 
 Only because God loved, Christ suffered. But 
 that love He would have us remember in all 
 the repulsive agony of its circumstance to 
 burn into the fiber of human hearts as with 
 caustic the words, *' God so loved the world 
 that He gave His only begotten Son, that 
 whosoever believeth on Him should not per- 
 ish, but have everlasting life." Is it repul- 
 sive ? It was for thee ! 
 
 He suffered also that we might see His self- 
 denial in it all. Sin and misery walked hand 
 in hand through the world countless ages be- 
 fore Christ came ; they were so walking then ; 
 they were apart from Him ; they sat at every 
 board, and were unwelcome guests, sooner or 
 
136 Xlew Concepts of 015 Dogmas. 
 
 later, of every household. As the burden- 
 bearer of others, it behooved Christ to suffer. 
 He was sinless, but behold the Man turning 
 His face toward us in the extremity of His 
 anguish. Why a sufferer, save that He bore 
 the load of others ? And this hateful matter 
 — sin — which thus constrained the Son of 
 God and shattered His peace, is thus seen to 
 be an overflowing cup of wrath. It surged 
 up against the foundations of the throne of 
 God, and brought the Son into the swellings 
 of Jordan. It broadens its curse wider than 
 its natural bed, and pours its seething waters 
 of destruction over the hearts of the pure 
 and good around. As it made Him suffer, 
 so it shall make thee suffer. As the sin of 
 the world was visited upon Him, so thy 
 sin is on His head, so thy sin is broader 
 than thyself, and reaches out, blackening and 
 injuring others. Sin has its curse for all, and 
 sets its seal of sorrow upon the upturned 
 brow of many an innocent person. Thou 
 who brandest another, turn and behold the 
 Man of Sorrows, and let the depth of His 
 bearing of your penalty of sin in His own 
 body on the tree be constant reminder of the 
 awful attitude of the transgressor toward his 
 kind. The Man without form or comeliness 
 
CI?c Sivxchn Cf^rtst. 137 
 
 is before thee, to be a constant reminder of 
 the sinfulness of sin. Love, self-denial, and 
 penalty are there, — love such as thou must 
 bear to others if thou shalt have the love of. 
 God as a free gift ; self-denial such as thou 
 must exercise in veri-similitude if His denial 
 shall avail for thee ; penalty for the trans- 
 gression of others the common burden of the 
 good. This anguish-torn One is to meet us 
 at the memorial table to-day, and by the un- 
 comeliness of His face to give the seal of 
 thankfulness and make strong our resolution 
 against evil. 
 
THE APPEALING CHRIST. 
 
 '''■Behold, I stand at the door and knock. ''^ — 
 Rev. J : 20. 
 
 THOUGH Christ is the Son of the eternal 
 Father, yet he had not the pomp of 
 an earthly king. As we take upon our lips 
 these words which form our text, " Behold, 
 I stand at the door and knock," notwith- 
 standing the centuries of human thought in 
 Christian things, in the light of which we in- 
 terpret everything Jesus did, our hearts are 
 awestruck, as when above the clouds we look 
 down into the chasm between the mountains, 
 or look up from the foothills from which they 
 rise to the mighty peaks, snow-capped and 
 ice-crowned, that hold their lofty heads eter- 
 nally in the heavens. Every man that ever 
 knew of Jesus Christ has been conscious of 
 an overtopping moral sublimity in Him, of 
 a spiritual excellence of character that was 
 unique, and of a personality that was un- 
 approachable among the sons of men. Any- 
 body may give you a hundred reasons why 
 you should not be a Christian, good, sober 
 (138) 
 
C{}e 2XppeaItng Cl^rist. 139 
 
 reasons too, as you yourself admitted, each 
 of which made appeal to the reason alone. 
 Yet there is not a person here that has tried 
 this way, so acceptable to modern intelligence 
 and so in keeping with the spirit of the times, 
 but what, after the reasoning was over, when 
 intellectual languor was gone, and every 
 argument was battled through, found himself 
 more convinced than ever, and that his hun- 
 dred reasons against had really been trans- 
 formed into a substantial reason why he 
 should open his heart to Jesus the Nazarene. 
 The ordinary man does not frame a hundred 
 answers, but he has his questionings, three 
 or four, more or less. Let us see what some 
 of these are. 
 
 Question i : " There are no modern mira- 
 cles like those which the Gospels say Christ 
 wrought." We answer, What of it ? who said 
 there were } Our care is whether these once 
 occurred ; according to our thinking, it is no 
 matter if the page of miracles has been a 
 blank from that day until this. 
 
 Question 2 : " The Old Testament, accord- 
 ing to the Higher Criticism, is not what Jesus 
 thought it was ; can you believe He was 
 divine.-*" We answer: If Christ's knowledge 
 of the Old Testament were faulty, which, 
 
140 Herp Concepts of £)Ib Dogmas. 
 
 however, we do not concede, it simply shows 
 in striking manner the human limitations of 
 the Son of God. We may be heretics all of 
 us, like ancient Eutyches of old, denounced 
 by the church because in magnifying the di- 
 vinity of the Son of God he forgot that He 
 was also the Son of man, and that He had 
 for most part the limitations of humanity. 
 
 Question 3 : " How can the innocent bear 
 the penalty of the guilty ? and how can you 
 accept the Scripture doctrine that the death 
 of a sinless Christ is essential to the salvation 
 of sinful men .?" We answer : Sin is continu- 
 ally exacting penalties of the innocent ; " the 
 iniquities of the fathers are visited upon the 
 children to the third and fourth generation ; " 
 the fact, then, of penalty being exacted of 
 innocency is nothing strange, it is the law 
 of human life. When therefore, in the full- 
 ness of time, the guiltless of his own free 
 will accepts in the fullness of his humanity 
 a measure of that penalty which is exacted 
 relentlessly from innocence, I can but rejoice 
 that it is so, when this assumption of pen- 
 alty doth produce moral and spiritual results. 
 Furthermore, I cannot see how I can save 
 myself out of my sin, unless sinlessness shall 
 be in some way yoked to my redemption. 
 
CF?e ^Tppealtng CI?nst. 141 
 
 We might continue answering these ques- 
 tions further, giving a sermon in a sentence, 
 but these suffice to illustrate how it is that 
 the Christian church, answering as reason- 
 able men the leading questions that are put, 
 gains strength in conviction that the duty lies 
 heavy upon every person to open his heart to 
 the knock of the living Christ. 
 
 It is undoubtedly true that the church's 
 testimony is discounted by the world out- 
 side ; they say, *' You believe, and we expect 
 you to override in your special pleading any 
 seeming obstacle ; we expect you to con- 
 clude your argument with a statement that 
 you are sincere and that you are right ; we 
 do not, however, so regard the questions 
 at issue." It is to be remarked that un- 
 believers have not only failed to convince 
 the church, but they have failed to convince 
 themselves. And while the facts of science 
 have always proved a perfect arsenal out of 
 which to draw weapons for faith, so that the 
 church defending its dogma in different ways 
 yet maintains the same system of revealed 
 truth, it is remarkable that science is never 
 satisfied that it has invented the perfect argu- 
 ment which is altogether irrefutable against 
 that citadel of revealed truth. 
 
142 Xlcw Concepts of £)Ib Dogmas. 
 
 Dissentient philosophy has gone back to 
 pre-Platonic forms of atheistical belief, and 
 done nothing" more serious than lie about the 
 age of its error by affirming that materialism 
 was new ; or back to neo-Platonism, making 
 all religions a development from which the 
 science of religion was to be deduced, declar- 
 ing all miracles of the orient on a par with 
 the miraculous in Christianity, and denying 
 the reliability of the authentic memoirs we 
 call the Gospels ; or in Positivism has gone 
 back to earliest phase of irreligion, declaring 
 the phenomena discovered by the senses to 
 be all there is in the universe ; or panthe- 
 istically with Fichte, Schlegel, Hegel, has 
 made God in one way or another this time 
 vesture of the eternal we call the universe ; 
 or at last, as culmination of all its thought 
 dissatisfied with its own tergiversations, con- 
 fessing by the act its own Impotence, in 
 Agnosticism has declared of all these things 
 there is nothing beyond cavil, we do not 
 know what to believe. In other words, un- 
 believing thinking in England, Europe, and 
 America is self-stultified from an intellectual 
 standpoint, and proclaims mental imbecility 
 in the very sphere of reason to which it 
 has made appeal. It turns to the church, 
 
C^e 2XppeaItn9 Christ. 143 
 
 and saith, "You, however, cannot convince 
 me." To this we reply, Very likely we 
 cannot, but we have convinced ourselves, 
 and maintain the substance of our dogma in 
 marked contrast with your transformations. 
 We can present a long list of Christian think- 
 ers of the highest intellectual endowment and 
 the fullest achievement, who have found in 
 Christian believing intellectual and moral sat- 
 isfaction. 
 
 I will cite a few typical names. There 
 is Faraday, the great master in physics, 
 and chemistry, at whose shrine last year 
 English science burned fresh incense as to 
 the memory of a wizard of repute on the 
 occasion of the centenary of his birth ; of 
 whom Lord Raleigh on that occasion said : 
 '* By a series of experiments he indicated all 
 the phenomena of electrical induction, and 
 proved the complete identity of electricity 
 in the lightning with that in the Voltaic 
 cell." There is the name, too, of Gladstone, 
 of whom, though it may be said that his repu- 
 tation has passed its zenith, it yet remains 
 that in point of pure intellect it is much to 
 be doubted if England has often furnished 
 his equal. Another name is that of Spurgeon 
 the lion-hearted, the last great organ voice 
 
144 Xttxo Concepts of £)Ib Dogmas. 
 
 of English-speaking preachers, the last great 
 Puritan, and the last great saint ; the man 
 who preached the same gospel at the close 
 of his ministry that he did at the beginning ; 
 the modern Paul, who finished his course and 
 kept the faith. These are three names out 
 of myriads, but each of different type ; they 
 are scientist, statesman, and pietist. Each 
 had diverse temperament, each was similarly 
 gifted, in degree, with extraordinary talents, 
 but each had Christian faith, and they all 
 illustrate to what a variety of reflective pow- 
 ers and personal temperament Jesus Christ 
 may be the greatest good, if they but open 
 their hearts to Him. Each of these men, if 
 a skeptic, would have chosen a diverse form 
 of skepticism ; Spurgeon had been a mate- 
 rialist, Gladstone had been a Pantheist, and 
 Faraday had been a Positivist. I do not 
 claim that as Christians they held precisely 
 the same opinions, indeed upon many points 
 they differed much ; but behind all they each 
 had a common Christian faith, all of which 
 unity, so wonderful and so magnificent, is to 
 be traced to the fact that a knocking Christ 
 did have open hearts in three consenting 
 minds. We present them as types of faith, 
 as witnesses of the reasonable nature of Chris- 
 
Cl?e Appealing Cl^rtst. 145 
 
 tian doctrine, and as proofs of the power of 
 Christ in the heart. But emasculate Him as 
 much as you will, cut off miracles, deny His 
 divinity, defame His church, do despite to 
 His grace, and put Him to an open shame, 
 yet there is more left than you dreamed 
 when you began. 
 
 That is your experience and it is mine. 
 It is likewise the experience of the greatest 
 minds who have undertaken to loosen the 
 hold of Christ upon humanity. Like Thomas 
 Paine, they tell a friend to believe if he can, 
 knowing well that believing is better than 
 unbelief, and hath intellectual satisfaction as 
 well as spiritual peace. Or like Webster they 
 confess that though philosophic doubts have 
 disturbed their peace, yet at length there is 
 a soulful calm when to the knock of the 
 Crucified there is the response of an open 
 heart. Or when, having written books to 
 disprove Christian faith, notwithstanding the 
 fruits of their labors, they have confessed to 
 the unique power of the life of Christ and 
 His matchless teaching. I take but a single 
 quotation from Renan's "Life of Jesus." He 
 says on page 215: "Repose now in Thy 
 glory, noble Founder, Thy work is finished ; 
 Thy divinity is established. Fear no more to 
 10 
 
146 HctD doncepts of £)Ib Dogmas. 
 
 see the edifice of Thy labors fall by any fault- 
 Henceforth, beyond the reach of frailty, Thou 
 shalt witness, from the heights of divine 
 peace, the infinite results of Thy acts. At 
 the price of a few hours of suffering, which 
 did not even reach Thy grand soul. Thou 
 hast bought the most complete immortality. 
 For thousands of years, the world will defend 
 Thee. Banner of our contests. Thou shalt be 
 the standard about which the hottest battle 
 will be given. A thousand times more alive, 
 a thousand times more beloved since Thy 
 death than during Thy passage here below, 
 Thou shalt become the corner-stone of hu- 
 manity so entirely that to tear Thy name 
 from this world would be to rend it to its 
 foundations." Illustrative this of a whole 
 class of thinkers and their unwilling testi- 
 mony to the matchless character of the 
 unique Christ. I repeat, that every man 
 that knows of Him is impressed by Him, 
 and that the moral grandeur of His char- 
 acter is the wonderment of the ages. 
 
 It is for such a personality that we plead to- 
 day, arguing that He to whom skeptics pay 
 tribute and whom Christians adore, being one 
 and the same person, the agreement of these 
 witnesses, the willing and the unwilling, doth 
 give sure ground to the feet. We cannot be 
 
tr^e 2(ppealtng Cf^rtst, 147 
 
 mistaken ; the Christ is divine, and He is 
 knocking at the door of the heart. He upon 
 whom kings might fawn is thy suppliant 
 friend, asking you to receive Him, — is thy 
 loving guest if thou wilt but have Him. 
 
 Truly, we do not believe that intellectual 
 difficulties separate between men and Christ. 
 There are too many great men and too many 
 bright men who are devout Christians for me 
 to admit that infidelity is to be reckoned a 
 sign of superior intelligence. The unbelief 
 which places itself hostile to all the Christian 
 religion can produce, is often an eccentricity 
 cultivated for effect ; but it is my deliberate 
 opinion that when atheism is honest, it is a 
 sign of an abnormal character or of low in- 
 telligence, which may be accurately graded 
 by the extent of the unbelief. God has set 
 too many witnesses of himself all about us 
 for any man of bright parts to be altogether 
 oblivious thereto. I believe, further, that a 
 doubt that cannot be mastered, itself is a sure 
 sign of indeterminate mental qualities which 
 will show themselves in other departments of 
 the person's experience. The man who has 
 not the decisive traits of character to be the 
 successful head of even a small enterprise in 
 business or in shop, has not the necessary 
 quality for the mastery of chance doubts, all 
 
148 Xitvo <£onc^Tpts of £)16 Dogmas. 
 
 of which are sure of solution to the patient, 
 inquiring mind. I pray you not to consider 
 this as abusive, it is not so intended, but only 
 to bring the mind ready for a further state- 
 ment in the matter before us. 
 
 The reason why men will not receive the 
 pleading Christ, is to be traced to their un- 
 willingness of heart. Christ is a personality 
 of abounding moral perfections, and He makes 
 claim upon us of a moral sort. In ordinary 
 experience it is to be doubted whether any 
 person fails of thus apprehending Him. With 
 all consciousness of His uniqueness and the 
 plain duty of submitting mind and heart to 
 His law, eschewing what He forbids, hating 
 what He hates, knowing our duty in the 
 domain of morals, I fear that we deliber- 
 ately deny the knock of the appealing Christ. 
 This pulpit, then, takes up daily the mission 
 of preaching the divine call to salvation with 
 the distinct conviction that the reason why 
 men do not yield is not due to intellectual 
 doubts which they cannot remove, but be- 
 cause of an unwillingness they will not mas- 
 ter. If this is true, each one of us out of 
 Christ is under a stupendous obligation. 
 
 I will ask you to answer this for your- 
 selves. Can you give a truthful reason for 
 
not opening the heart to Jesus, Saviour of 
 men ? There is a white-throated song spar- 
 row, not the most beautiful singer of the 
 sparrow family, but still ranking high as a 
 songster, that has this peculiarity, — he sings 
 by day or by night ; this is the fellow who 
 pipes so bewitchingly from the syringa bushes 
 near your bedroom window at night. He 
 sings because song is in his heart, and so I 
 fancy it is in the output which we make. It 
 is no use to simulate it ; but when our hearts 
 are full, the utterances of our faith and trust 
 are as sweet to the ear of Christ as a bird 
 song at night. If we can but open heart to 
 Christ, we shall have full heart toward Christ. 
 With an open heart to-day we shall have full 
 heart to-morrow. There is longing, then love ; 
 want, then fullness ; reception, then commun- 
 ion ; dearth, then joy ; fellowship, then affec- 
 tion. I do not know how to appeal to you, 
 but then it is not I but Christ that pleads, and 
 I will let Him plead for that new life. I would 
 plead for Him if it would do any good. If 
 I repeat His words, may not He plead in the 
 voice that articulates His words .-* May I not 
 speak ; *' Behold I stand at the door and 
 knock '* ? Do you hear Him ? 
 
THE MEAT WHICH IS PERISHING. 
 
 " Work not for the food which is perishing^ but 
 for the meat which remaineth unto eternal 
 life.^'' — John 6 : 2y. 
 
 THE day preceding our text, Christ had 
 wrought the miracle of Feeding the Five 
 Thousand. The crowd then provided for 
 had followed Him to Capernaum, His home 
 city, in expectation of still further miraculous 
 provision for their need. Jesus rebuked them, 
 answering their question, ''When did you 
 come here.'"' with the words, " Ye seek Me 
 not because of the signs of My Messiahship, 
 but because ye ate of the loaves and were 
 filled." There is no side reference to the 
 Last Supper, for that is apart from the 
 lessons of the hour, and its bread, typical of 
 His availing death for believers, was not 
 meant for the multitude. He bluntly told 
 them He had brought no conquest of bod- 
 ily necessities, so that, sustained by heavenly 
 food, they might hope as lazy vagabonds 
 to be sustained in His train as He went 
 about Palestine on His journeys as a vil- 
 lage preacher. They desired a perishable 
 (150) 
 
Cl?e XiXcat xo^xdi is Perishing, 151 
 
 food that they might be fed, as were their 
 fathers of old, in the forty years of wander- 
 ing when the manna was shed down from 
 heaven ; He offers them a food which should 
 abide eternally. Like everything else, this 
 imperishable bread of Christ may be best 
 defined by what it is not. 
 
 I. That thing which leads us to turn aside 
 from idleness is nourishment to the inner 
 life. The prostrate aborigine sleeping in the 
 sun in the afternoon until at the golden 
 twilight of the tropics he stretches himself 
 and lounges to the tree where without effort 
 he gathers banana or other fruit to meet his 
 trifling wants, is in a Utopia of the Chauta- 
 briand or St. Pierre type ; but while he has 
 the earthly bread to satisfy the alternative of 
 hunger, he lacks altogether that heavenly 
 bread which the soul craves. The same is 
 true of the idler in civilization ; distraught 
 by a well-deserved poverty, knowing hunger, 
 now gorging himself with both food and 
 stimulants, and in a position where, notwith- 
 standing his temporal necessities, we might 
 suppose that a person so constituted could 
 find in the golden web of his fancy's dream 
 an inner life compensatory for his hampering 
 environment, we as matter of fact find him 
 
152 Hcu? Concepts of £)Ib £)ogmas. 
 
 most stolid of all men, and lacking those 
 thoughts transcendent which are the sure 
 proof of a heavenly birthright. 
 
 The man in a state of nature hath earthly 
 food, and is altogether the normal man, with 
 his earth stains upon him ; but he is the 
 poorest off possible to conceive, because he 
 hath not the abnormal gift of succor, nourish- 
 ment, and upbuilding which God alone can 
 give. Taking, then, the savage of heathen or 
 Christian lands, we have a type of life which 
 we do not value, but which has a certain full- 
 ness of the unrestrained, unhampered sort of 
 existence, and which wields an indissoluble 
 charm upon that savage, whether on the 
 plains or in the slums of our great cities, so 
 that transformation is slow and doubtful, — a 
 charm which even fascinates some white men 
 who give up civilisation and live with red men 
 in America, or with black men in Africa as 
 did Emin Pasha. 
 
 Occupation, therefore, which dissipates 
 idleness is the first form of bread from 
 heaven which God grants to men. What is 
 it that makes a man ? Not the power of 
 assimilating food, not the capacity to walk 
 erect, but instead the power of self-control, 
 the capacity to use tools, and his magnificent 
 
Cl?e VTuat wl}X(if is Pertsf^tng. 153 
 
 endowments of thought. When, therefore, 
 in matter of idleness he approximates the 
 animals, in so far he is of the earth, earthy. 
 II. Whenever we turn aside from amuse- 
 ment for the sake of achieving or for the 
 nobler things of life, we turn from earthly- 
 food to heavenly nourishment. On the 
 question of amusements, notwithstanding 
 the temper of this time in which we live, 
 weighted with schemes for amusement so 
 numerous and diversified that the votaries 
 of pleasure are the hardest-worked people 
 in the community, I dare affirm that the 
 Puritans were right contra mundtim. The 
 contention is not that there should be no 
 amusements, but rather that being amused 
 should be only incidental to the solid busi- 
 ness of living. The amused life is the lost 
 life ; it is eaten up as regularly as men eat 
 rations. I would rather live the sober, 
 somber life of the solemn-visaged Puritan, 
 barren and plain, angular and unlovely, with 
 its simple faith in God, but ennobled by 
 something earnest to do, consecrating many 
 humble homes, as it did fifty years ago, than 
 be a member of a modern fashionable, frisky 
 set, with its whirl of giddiness, its pursuit of 
 new sensations, its abject adoration of sham 
 
154 Hetx) Concepts of £)lb Dogmas. 
 
 wealth, and its corruptions, every now and 
 then exposed to the world by some fresh 
 scandal, for its meat perisheth, and it hath 
 not that which abideth. 
 
 The true life is that which is filled full 
 with the earnest pursuit of its calling, with 
 the affections of the family, a love for cult- 
 ure and aesthetics, and a steadfastness of 
 deepest loyalty for truth and honor. You 
 may put in some pleasures, but they shall 
 vanish as the deeper questions and the full- 
 est passions of the life are evolved. A noble 
 life is a tidal wave, coming in to shore 
 freighted from God's deep which is full from 
 the eternities ; the winds may wrinkle its 
 surface under its curling lip of foam, but the 
 flood tide of its passion for humanity or for 
 God shall sweep away barriers, flood the 
 creeks, watering the grass roots on the 
 marshes, fill the tide-dams, closing the gates 
 behind it, and thus, turning a hundred wheels 
 of interest and use to others, shall pass on 
 to the dark recesses of the seas beyond. 
 
 III. When we turn from mere attention to 
 the body, its food, its drink, its dress, to the 
 deeper concerns of eternity, and train the 
 imagination to religious themes, we turn 
 from the vexed day-dream of a heckled soul 
 
tri?e ViXtat wl}xd} is Pertsl^ing. 155 
 
 to the sureties of life and light which fill the 
 temples beyond the skies. These nutritions 
 that avail to-day thou mayst provide for, but 
 they shall fail some day ; those looks of 
 beauty shall fade ; the most beautiful gar- 
 ments shall become moth-eaten. Thou art 
 maintaining a temple of folly ; thy firm 
 comfort is unprovided for ; thy peace is 
 insecure. Thy alternations of hunger and 
 thirst must be met, but they are only the 
 fuel that feeds the flame of life. Is life to 
 consist merely in the essentials of its main- 
 tenance ? Is a person to say, I merely 
 existed, I fed, I drank, I clothed } Hear 
 me : there is a bread of God which Christ 
 declared hath in it eternal potencies. 
 
 IV. When we turn our lives from degrad- 
 ing ends, and give to motives of goodness 
 supremer place in the heart, then we turn 
 from the transitory to the imperishable. 
 These degrading ends, too, are to be con- 
 demned, not so much in quality as in degree ; 
 they are the absolute absorption of the indi- 
 vidual in money getting, or in chasing the 
 bubble ambition, or absolute devotion to toil. 
 Money is a most tremendous need, and can- 
 not be despised without loss of a serious sort 
 to the individual ; but money shall perish like 
 
156 Hen? Concepts of £)Ib Dogmas. 
 
 all else purely earthly ; it cannot endure the 
 final conflagration of things. Indeed, gold, 
 so valued, is more perishable than iron, 
 which is so unvalued. Gold, worth approxi- 
 mately $250 per pound Troy, the symbol 
 of the world's wealth, luxury, and pride, will 
 melt at one fourth the temperature of iron, 
 worth one cent a pound, the symbol of the 
 world's uses and necessities. And yet what 
 is the odds ? They are only parts of that 
 handiwork of God we call the universe, the 
 work of His fingers, which His hands shall 
 destroy. That money getting which ends in 
 miserliness is surely blind, for it leaves be- 
 hind the object of its love, and cannot reach 
 to the stars from whence cometh its help. 
 Ambition itself is an over-reaching of self, 
 for the object of self-love is in the interests of 
 the individual ; and as life draws to a close, 
 the soul is more and more conscious that 
 having done all it can for itself there is much 
 which it cannot do. It has labored and suf- 
 fered to achieve, but a limit is put even to 
 its own achievement. Some deep principles 
 are needed for anchorage now, when the 
 storms are bursting upon them. What I am, 
 is lost sight of in view of. Whither shall I be 
 swept ? Whatever I am, I am but one of 
 
C{?e ITtcat vol}xd^ is Pertsl^ing. 157 
 
 myriads of souls dropping out of sight as 
 multitudes passing a crowded thoroughfare 
 over a broken bridge are pushed one by one 
 into the cruel waters and are drowned in the 
 tide. 
 
 Men, too, may follow toil to their disad- 
 vantage, and in the noble self-restraints 
 which toil imposes may find a fettering" of 
 their nobler self. To do one thing for ten 
 hours, such as making screw eyes or the slat 
 of a blind, and follow it twenty years, unless 
 something shall come in to arouse the inner 
 man, will occasion an intellectual torpor 
 injurious to the soul. It is said to be im- 
 pressive for an American to go into the 
 poorer districts in London and meet the 
 people, for he sees before him for the first 
 time in his life Anglo-Saxon poverty, all the 
 markings on face and form showing the 
 familiar features of many a prosperous man 
 whom he has known as gifted and successful. 
 Twenty generations of toilers burdened by 
 their tasks of unrelieved monotony, under- 
 taken in ignorance and transmitted through 
 twenty generations of toilers, have produced 
 results appalling to the man of the same 
 blood, who has been redeemed by perilous 
 enterprise duly undertaken, making a new 
 
158 Hctt) Concepts of £)16 Dogmas. 
 
 man by creating new impulses, new activi- 
 ties, and a diversified experience, succeeded, 
 perchance, by a life which, though seemingly 
 one of monotony in the later generation, is 
 after all redeemed by the independence and 
 native restlessness of the man's spirit. Toil 
 is honorable, and the man who labors not is 
 to be despised, but itself, carried to undue 
 extreme, may be a positive curse to the 
 toiler. 
 
 This is said with the hope of breeding dis- 
 content in thoughtful minds, in order that we 
 may realize the poverty of this life in and of 
 itself. Life in this present environment in 
 its own concerns and in its own aims, is not 
 worthy man's attention. We have criticised 
 the life of the world age, not cynically, but 
 because we have something better than this 
 world knoweth. I desire to make plain this 
 higher life, whose transcendence Christ de- 
 clared when He said it was the bread which 
 remaineth unto the eternities. It is due first 
 to the teaching we draw from nature, that 
 personal impression which a being obtains 
 from flower, grass, tree, and shrub, from stick 
 and stone, water and air, which the most 
 barbarous savage as well as the most pam- 
 pered child of civilization perceives to testify 
 
Cf?e 2Tteat ml^tc^ is pcrisf^ing. 159 
 
 of an unknown God. This first impression is 
 re-inforced by the impulse which every heart 
 feels when looking abroad on nature and tak- 
 ing in vast reaches of land or water ; the land- 
 scape itself reacts upon the human heart, 
 much as that same landscape does upon the 
 collodion film of the photographer, and the 
 prepared heart, like the prepared plate, bears 
 evermore impress of what the Lord has 
 wrought. Conviction and impulse are thus 
 drawn from nature, that men may be re- 
 deemed from the accursed dominion of that 
 low type of natural life which is simply on a 
 level with that of the brutes. 
 
 But do not be deceived : these impressions 
 from nature are not communicated by nat- 
 ure. Two pebbles are lying together on the 
 shore ; has one an impression on the other ? 
 are they acquainted ? and do they talk ? Are 
 two trees gifted with self-consciousness, or 
 two pieces of joist, or two lakes, or two 
 mountains.'' This much is certain, he who 
 interprets the language of the babbling 
 brook and the response of the sobbing wave 
 on the shore, has a mightier task than that 
 professor who is in Central Africa learning 
 the language of the chimpanzees. And even 
 if the wind blowing among the tree-tops is 
 
160 Hem (LonccTpts of £)Ib Dogmas. 
 
 language as well as the voice of the waters, 
 a strange paralysis accompanies all other 
 acts of volition. If the rocks can speak to 
 each other, they cannot speak without the 
 intervention of some other forces than they 
 possess in common ; also to me as possessing 
 a material body the material thing can have 
 no witness. Now we maintain this, that the 
 deriving of intellectual impressions, without 
 which there is no possible conception of 
 the spiritual life, can be explained only on 
 the inference that the material nature of the 
 one has impact on the spiritual nature of the 
 other through act of God. 
 
 These impressions of the senses thus im- 
 pacted upon the spiritual nature of man, in 
 the heart of a child, filling the soul with the 
 tremulousness which accompanies those first 
 testimonies of nature to the senses, are the 
 ringing of the joy bells of the heart over the 
 discovery of the new continent of man-soul ; 
 all of which has been accomplished by the 
 direct intervention of God. What wonder 
 that as the man grows older, when he re- 
 ceives still stronger impressions from the 
 landscape, so conscious is he of the divine 
 beauty of the earth that he exclaims. Lord, 
 " Thou art here," and nothing can suit the full- 
 
^l^e IHeat wl}X(i} is Perisl^tng. 161 
 
 ness of the heart save the Te Deiun Laudamus , 
 The second gift of the eternal bread is in 
 the power of abstraction and thought, by 
 which we forget that we are animal, and be- 
 come the creatures under the stars and part 
 of the immensities of God. All scientific 
 knowledge, all conception of truth, all ar- 
 tistic creations of brush or pen or voice, are 
 through God The tympanum of the tele- 
 phone at the ear of the receiver is perfect, 
 but to transmit its message there must be a 
 similar tympanum to respond to the human 
 voice at the other end of the wire. Granted 
 a perfect receiver, it is still a useless instru- 
 ment without a transmitter. The air may be 
 full of sounds out there, but you are passive, 
 being unmoved by its rapture. So the ma- 
 terial world hath no corresponding instru- 
 ment to the human heart ; and that soul must 
 be unmoved by long-distance messages, until 
 at the other end of sense perception a trans- 
 mitter of similar characteristics shall speak 
 into the soul the gracious messages of the 
 divine impressions. Why is it that a song 
 gives inspiration, except it be that the wave 
 motions started by the volition of the singer 
 reproduce upon us those impressions with 
 
 which it was freighted ? How then can inani- 
 II 
 
"162 Hert) Concepts of £)Ib Dogmas. 
 
 mate nature answer back from its dead clods 
 and give me the impressions of a living be- 
 ing? We answer, It cannot, except God 
 interposes, who is the Author, though the 
 Holy Ghost, of this eternal bread of life 
 differentiating the genus homo from all the 
 creation. This is the second step in the 
 redemption of man from subservience to 
 the flesh. 
 
 Of this bread of heaven Christ was the 
 consummator. That primeval revelation to 
 man of God in nature, and God behind nat- 
 ure, He quadrupled a hundred times over. 
 Monotheism outside of Judea was a starving 
 remnant, having lost its own ideals with 
 which it started, and not able intelligently 
 to make affidavit as to its own birthright. 
 Henceforth all is secure ; Christian men can 
 to-day as well >deny their self-consciousness 
 as their God-consciousness ; we are as sure 
 that He lives as that we live. 
 
 How much the incarnation of the divine 
 wisdom in the person of the Nazarene has 
 deepened human knowledge, let the intelli- 
 gence of Christendom as opposed to the 
 ignorance and superstition of heathenism 
 give good and sufficient answer. It may 
 be truly affirmed that notwithstanding the 
 
C!?e Itteat voli'id} is Pertsf)tng. 163 
 
 genius of Greek and Roman times, all knowl- 
 edge, philosophy, and government in any 
 Christian epoch doth vastly outweigh it. 
 This much is certain, for twenty centuries 
 the dialectics of this world have not been 
 able to overcome the foolishness of preach- 
 ing, and I doubt if it ever will. The seeth- 
 ing life of the ancient Roman world could 
 not forget Him ; the Roman power could 
 put Him to death, but could not end His 
 influence. He lives through the ages in spite 
 of the generations of men. He brought food 
 that should remain. But in no sphere did 
 He complement all that men knew so much 
 as in the moral and spiritual life. Duty 
 henceforth became plain to men. Self-denial 
 was established as a component part in all 
 goodness. Love became the leverage for 
 moving men to righteousness. The incarna- 
 tion was the re-beginning of a holiness which 
 had fled a sin-cursed earth. To the perfect- 
 ness of our ideal we unceasingly turn, and in 
 His life find light, for the life was the light 
 of men. 
 
THE PATIENT DOTH MINISTER TO 
 HIMSELF. 
 
 •* For God sent not the Son into the world to 
 condemn the world; but that the world 
 should be saved through Him.'''' — John 
 
 3 ■' n- 
 
 THERE is something in us that will not 
 down, our acts being under the control 
 of the will, and each able to do the most 
 red-handed crime ; yet God has placed his 
 daggers in the soul, as though some avenger 
 were present with our secret self to bring a 
 fiery and terrible vengeance upon the trans- 
 gressor. Wordsworth, in one of his early 
 poems, cites such a character : — 
 
 ••He met a traveler, robbed him, shed his blood; 
 And when the miserable work was done, 
 He fled, a vagrant since, the murderer's fate to 
 shun. 
 
 " From that day forth no place to him could be 
 So lonely, but that thence might come a pang, 
 Brought from without to inward misery." 
 
 Scientific descriptions of conscience fill the 
 books, most of them in a high degree unsatis- 
 (164) 
 
CI?e Patient boil} ^TTtnistcr to ^tmself. 165 
 
 factory ; but we do not need definitions ; we all 
 know the power of conscience as a disturb- 
 ing element in unrighteous calculations, in 
 thwarting us of the fruits of illegitimate vic- 
 tory by having the apples of gold turn to 
 ashes within our grasp. Criminals long es- 
 caped from justice give themselves up after 
 years of successful hiding. Like Lady Mac- 
 beth, it preys upon their minds as they 
 sleep ; the stained hand is ever before their 
 eyes, and " all the perfumes of Arabia will 
 not sweeten it." "What, will these hands 
 ne'er be clean ? " 
 
 The heart of a child beats 140 times per 
 minute, at the close of a year its stroke is 
 120, past middle life it is sixty or seventy 
 beats. Napoleon and his conqueror, the 
 Duke of Wellington, had only forty heart- 
 beats a minute. May that not signify how 
 those men could take enormous risks and 
 carry them to the end ? how the one. Na- 
 poleon, could face the allied armies of Eu- 
 rope, after his exile to Elba, and make one 
 more appeal to destiny on the field of 
 Waterloo.-* and Wellington for nine mortal 
 hours hold his line of battle firm until his 
 military instinct divined^ unerringly that the 
 time for a general onset of the whole front 
 
166 Xitxo Concepts of £)lb Dogmas. 
 
 had come ? For what is it that unnerves 
 men but a heart pumping with violence, 
 whitening the cheek and deranging the 
 powers of the will ? 
 
 Men wear out nowadays from nervous pros- 
 tration, but that is generally due to heart 
 failure, because of the reflex action of mental 
 strain upon the source of life. Worry, trouble, 
 and the nervous push of things necessary for 
 successful life, the excitements of our poli- 
 tics, the curse of the daily newspaper, with 
 its appeals to our sympathies and hates, wear- 
 ing us out with other people's concerns, the 
 multitudinous amount of brain-work which a 
 man can do through the telegraph and rapid 
 means of transit, the enormous pressure of 
 modern competition, making the waves of 
 the commercial ocean with its tides of busi- 
 ness, seem like the heaving waves of the 
 ocean in storm, — all rest upon the physical 
 constitution, and strike deepest at the heart. 
 It flutters like a wounded bird's wing beating 
 the unwilling air, or like a canary when you 
 have your hand upon the cage, at some sud- 
 den fear. A thousand hearts with sympathy 
 are throbbing when some life-saving act is 
 performed under our eyes, perhaps a strong 
 man swoons when the deed is done. And 
 
tTE^e patient boil} minister to fjimself. 167 
 
 thus the mind acts on the physical constitu- 
 tion ; the capacity for thought is in involun- 
 tary connection with the engine which drives 
 the wheels of our life ; he therefore that is a 
 fugitive from the divine justice, lives faster, 
 wears out sooner, and the joylessness of the 
 life is heightened, by the drag of a decreased 
 physical energy. This gives significance to 
 the cry of the Psalmist, '* My heart and my 
 flesh rejoice in the living God," for David had 
 committed criminal sin, and knew the depres- 
 sion of sin upon the body ; not only was his 
 soul freed from burden, but the vital energy 
 which we identify with the heart, the seat of 
 the principle of life, was freed and blest in 
 the great congregation. Thus doth God 
 daily witness in the human being, giving the 
 lie to the shameless asseveration of the street, 
 namely, that the human body knows no con- 
 science. 
 
 What mean the nervous twitches of the 
 criminal under the surveillance of the eye of 
 suspicion ? What means the dethronement of 
 reason under the pressure of a great crime, 
 or when man is ready to give up his life of 
 the body, because it is as naught compared 
 with the shame of existence? I knew a boy 
 once that took his life under just such cir- 
 
168 Xlcw Concepts of £)16 Dogmas. 
 
 cumstances. A judge has been known to 
 leave the bench and place himself at the side 
 of a prisoner at the bar convicted of murder, 
 and confess to a similar crime thirty years 
 before, so much heavier seemed the burden 
 of a wicked conscience than the loss of phys- 
 ical life, the enjoyment of which is the highest 
 boon the body can confer upon the spirit. 
 
 Says Macbeth. — 
 
 *'How does your patient, doctor ? " 
 
 Doctor. — 
 
 "Not so sick, my lord, 
 As she is troubled with thick-coming fancies. 
 That keep her from her rest." 
 
 Macbeth. — 
 
 " Cure her of that. 
 Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased. 
 Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow. 
 Raze out the written troubles of the brain, 
 And with sortie sweet oblivious antidote 
 Cleanse the stuffed bosom of that perilous 
 
 stuff 
 Which weighs upon the heart?" 
 
 Doctor. — 
 
 "Therein the patient must minister to him- 
 self." 
 
 We can say aye to that ; men know the 
 power of conscience, but every man has his 
 
Cf?e patient botE? minister to £?imself. 169 
 
 own medicine. Often circumstances do alter 
 cases, and he imagines great peril or fears 
 great turgid imaginations which never could 
 amount to much. I will only enumerate a 
 few general instances. 
 
 A very common excuse which is used as a 
 sedative in our daily life for a troubled con- 
 science is the plea : Somebody will sell 
 liquor if I do not ; somebody will cheat the 
 government if I do not ; somebody will op- 
 press the poor if I do not. Another very 
 common one is this : Everybody lies, every- 
 body steals, everybody compromises with 
 duty, everybody is a hyprocrite, particularly 
 the minister and church-members ; therefore 
 I am just like the rest. It is strange each 
 person does not see that to his own Master 
 he standeth or falleth, and that no excuse for 
 wrong-doing can be found in the misdeeds of 
 other people. But this is the medicine which 
 many a patient ministers to himself. 
 
 Now we have cited two classes of experi- 
 ence, the worst of men and the best of men. 
 But we have not placed the worst of men on 
 a par with the best. While the worst suffer 
 more or less the pangs of conscience, and 
 particular men suffer extremely, we think 
 it is true that the best people suffer more 
 
170 Tuw Concepts of £)Ib Dogmas. 
 
 for small transgressions. We have striven to 
 show a well-nigh universal characteristic of 
 human experience, but the fact remains that 
 those who live most uprightly suffer rela- 
 tively most keenly for their derelictions. A 
 person believing profanity wrong is shocked 
 beyond measure if by any sudden thought- 
 lessness he utters an oath. A person who 
 scorns a liar is very much ashamed of a de- 
 ceit, or even of whatmust appear a deceit in the 
 eyes of his neighbor. This is not strange, 
 the competent workman is he who feels most 
 the ill-made joint, or the ugly gouge made by 
 his chisel. The dabster thinks it can be made 
 right by putty and paint. They who take 
 pains in morals and religion know best the 
 blemishes of an upright character, they trace 
 disproportionately their moral oversights and 
 their unintentional sins ; but I am direct- 
 ing to the thought that the best and the 
 worst have consciousness of dereliction, and 
 that God has set up a chamber in the soul 
 like that sealer's apartments at Washington, 
 full of accurate standards of moral measures, 
 so that when we reel off yard after yard ac- 
 cording to our measure, we are somehow con- 
 scious that we have not given God's measure, 
 and having the facilities at hand, may set our 
 measure right if we will. This gives the de- 
 
Cl?e patient boil} TTi'xmskv to ^imself. 171 
 
 gree of human responsibility. We can do 
 better if we will, be juster, be truer, be more 
 devout. For therein the patient doth minis- 
 ter to himself 
 
 The Indian mother of old threw her child 
 into the Ganges to expiate the sin of her 
 soul, "for therein the patient must minister 
 to himself" Read the article in the March 
 number of the Centtiry (1890) on the "Sun 
 Dance of the Sioux Indians," and note how on 
 the fourth day the young warriors presented 
 their bared breasts to the knife of the medi- 
 cine man, that on each side, near the shoul- 
 der, the skin might be stripped up, and a 
 bone skewer firmly attached to a thong sus- 
 pended from the pole in the center, be sewn 
 in on either side, that dashing themselves 
 backward two or three hours, or perchance 
 until the skewer had torn out, they might 
 win the favor of the sun god ; the writer 
 does not say expiation, but I am confident 
 that their self-torture means more than 
 adoration of the omnipotent power of the 
 sun ; it is simply their way of atonement ; 
 for therein the patient doth minister to 
 himself 
 
 But, says some one, how about your Chris- 
 tianity } does it not, heathen fashion, provide 
 some method of redemption adapted to the 
 
172 Hctp Concepts of £)Ib Dogmas. 
 
 vagaries of the dififerent sets of people whom 
 it incloses ? I answer, Yes. Boyesen says of 
 Ibsen : "Christianity has, in his opinion, been 
 vulgarized by its adaptation to average, com- 
 mon-place men, and its demand of absolute 
 purity, uprightness, and saintliness has been 
 compromised at thirty or fifty per cent, ac- 
 cording to the ability of imperfect human 
 nature ;" which is altogether true ; for therein 
 the patient hath ministered to himself. We 
 need less of feeling and more of Christ. 
 
 Having consciousness, as all do have in 
 some measure, of condemnation before the 
 bar of our own hearts, the question arises as 
 to what medicine shall be given ; "for therein 
 the patient must minister to himself." We 
 may do as many are doing about us, — satisfy 
 the conscience by specious excuses, blunt it 
 by neglect and carelessness, stupify it by 
 intoxicants or narcotics, each man going by 
 himself, even as the heathen have and the 
 heathen do. Is it not best to find another 
 will standing above nature ? To find a law 
 for the will ; which shall lead men to a medi- 
 cine which they cannot apply each for him- 
 self, nor one for the other ; which shall be 
 revealed by personality adequate and holy ; 
 and which shall gather all unto Himself, not 
 
CI?e patient boil} IHtntster to ^tmself. 173 
 
 through any base motive of purchase, but 
 through mercy and favor, so that our redemp- 
 tion is all of good will, and our moral healing 
 the adequate cause of our salvation ? " For 
 God sent not the Son into the world to con- 
 demn the world, but that the world should 
 be saved through Him." 
 
LONESOMENESS FOR GOD. 
 
 " Having no hope, and zvithout God in the 
 world.'''' — Eph. 2: 12. 
 
 MAN is a gregarious animal. The wild 
 horses of the plains are no surer to roam 
 in herds than he to seek converse with his 
 kind. When apart from men, he longs for 
 their company, their friendship, their amity. 
 When for crimes they hunt him into desert 
 places, and he fears for his life, danger can- 
 not prevent him from seeking the haunts of 
 men ; he bares his breast to the bullets 
 of the sheriff's posse, or to the knife-thrust 
 of his enemy coming unawares, rather than 
 endure the low spirits fostered by a life of 
 exile in the solitudes ; and the oppressive 
 nature of his loneliness drives him to saloon 
 counters in the nearest scantling city. That 
 depression of spirits known as homesickness 
 is really lonesome sickness. There is nobody 
 about us whom we know in such a case ; 
 humanity in each personality seems like a 
 huge dry-goods box ; we know nothing of 
 the silks and satins inside. It is a mere 
 (174) 
 
Conesomeness for ®ob. 175 
 
 casing of soft-fibered, rough material ; the 
 soul grows lonesome in its environment. 
 There are about plenty of men, but not men 
 as we have known them heretofore. The 
 doors of our hearts have been open to our 
 friends ; they have been to us a delight, but 
 behold, the delight is gone ; they may not be 
 fifty miles from us, but inexperienced and 
 accustomed to the sunshine of human favor 
 in the circle in which we move, we are 
 clouded, perplexed, saddened, disheartened. 
 Men are not merely discomforted by this 
 lonesome sickness through days of weeping 
 and mock despair, — mock despair, I say, — 
 because of the teasing of their fellows, which 
 nettles them and makes very real the fact 
 of which they have been cognizant all the 
 way through, namely, that there was noth- 
 ing to despair about, — but it happens in 
 rare instances that men die of this same 
 homesickness, the body being in such sym- 
 pathy with the heart in its unfathomable 
 longings after the touch of life in its essence, 
 impacting its own life in the very seat of 
 being, that is, the soul. My horse pounds 
 heavily all night long in his stall for months, 
 in his frantic longing for his harness-mate 
 with whom he has been in one stable or an- 
 
176 Heu) Concepts of £)Ib Dogmas. 
 
 other, in Canada or New Hampshire, from 
 colt-hood ; my dog mourns the absence of 
 his master ; my heart pounds away with 
 seemingly trip-hammer heaviness, when as a 
 boy in my teens just away from home, new 
 school faces cannot replace or solace me for 
 the every-day faces of home and village. 
 Every created thing with affections empha- 
 sizes the difference between mere automatic 
 life, as in the tree trunk, and the sentient life 
 of a creature that can love the presence and 
 being of another creature like itself I might 
 have been made unconscious of my neighbor, 
 even as one stone is indifferent to every 
 other, one grain of sea-shore sand to every 
 other, which, heaped about it, covers it from 
 the light of day, and have cared no more for 
 sunshine than for darkness, but I was not so 
 made ; down among other motives I recognize 
 this one, which never argues out the logic of 
 its position or the logic of events, but pulls 
 away at heart leading-strings, demonstrating 
 its presence by the reach of its cordlets deep 
 into the heart of a man. 
 
 A hermit sometimes builds his shanty in a 
 neglected, barren place ; his unkempt person 
 and his life apart are both good witnesses 
 that he is not quite himself Such men are 
 
Conesomencss for ®o5, 177 
 
 unbalanced by the desire of human love un- 
 attained ; one person denies them, they can- 
 not transfer their regard to another ; denied 
 the highest human relationship with natures 
 too inflexibly true to turn about, they deny 
 all human society because the highest and 
 purest and best relation to their kind is not 
 theirs. The lonesomeness of the heart over- 
 spreads the intellect ; the feelings dominate 
 the will, or rather swamp the personality, 
 warping it ; the sentiments bleed to death 
 through the one wound ; one grievous hurt 
 of lonesome's poisoned arrow has spread a 
 benumbing influence over those spiritual 
 qualities of the inner man, so that he lives 
 no more in his social instincts, but only 
 keeps open such chambers of the soul as may 
 be used with darkened windows, shutting 
 the outlook and the sunshine derived from 
 personal contact with our kind. I fancy that 
 in these cases the imagination is unduly 
 aroused, and that the attention is fixed upon 
 the ideal of that never-dying love ; that such 
 lives are transported by visions of the pres- 
 ence of their beloved, and that, wrapped in 
 the contemplation of their ideal made real, 
 they crowd out actual association with man- 
 kind. Just as Dickens, on occasion, used 
 
 12 
 
178 Tlcw Concepts of £)Ib Dogmas. 
 
 to live with the creatures of his pen, spend- 
 ing his daytime with them present in the 
 room, revealed to his consciousness, and 
 dreaming of them at night, may be. Just as 
 Dante through long years treasured the 
 thought of Beatrice, who never could be his 
 in this life, as she was pledged to another, 
 and separated from him by the great gulf of 
 high social rank ; but whom in purest way 
 he loved, fostering thought of her, of whom 
 he wrote after her decease, and meeting 
 whom in Paradise was his chiefest antici- 
 pation. 
 
 It seems plain to the preacher that these 
 hermit souls must be explained as illustrat- 
 ing the power of lonesomeness to dislocate the 
 proper excitements of the mind and to en- 
 kindle the imagination to an improper func- 
 tion among the powers of the intellect. It 
 illustrates the craving of the soul for compan- 
 ionship in the highest degree ; for while it 
 may have relations with humanity in the 
 bulk, and may delight in them, such for in- 
 stance as a man feels in a great congregation, 
 or mass-meeting, or mob, yet the sense of 
 companionship deals first hand with specific 
 instances. We want to meet A, B, and C, 
 and out of these various meetings and the 
 
Concsomeness for ®ob. 179 
 
 pleasures thereof comes the aggregate im- 
 pression which we call pleasure of society. 
 Accentuate any one acquaintance, and it be- 
 comes friendship ; accentuate this, and you 
 find only one friendship in reality or treas- 
 ured in the imagination can help from lone- 
 someness and gloom. 
 
 Until recently the opinion has prevailed 
 that under stimulants men open their hearts 
 to the endearing fondness of friendship, and 
 that to find the typical hail-fellow well met 
 you must obtain a man with drink in him. 
 This seems to be exploded ; the quickened 
 pulses and swifter heart-beat are due to 
 the circumstances, and occasion under which 
 the drink is obtained, and not to the alcohol 
 itself If you take the drinker apart, and 
 give him all he desires, no such symptoms 
 of careless hilarity appear. We must con- 
 clude, therefore, that the social instinct is 
 stronger than, the stimulant, and that the 
 devotee who follows his cups has mistakenly 
 judged of himself, and doth not know that 
 God hath put within him living fountains 
 of water that shall slake the thirst of friend- 
 ship in a score of souls, and that it welleth 
 up within him, continually satisfying him- 
 self as well as others. These are primal 
 
180 Hctp Concepts of £){b Dogmas, 
 
 elements of being in him who is made in the 
 image and likeness of God. And if the 
 created thing hath bonds demanding satisfac- 
 tion, He in whose likeness it is made hath 
 similar bonds, and the inclination, need, and 
 desire of the one will find satisfaction in the 
 personality of the other. 
 
 We are brought face to face with the fact 
 that man's longing for companionship is not 
 absolutely satisfied with the best which hu- 
 man love and comradeship can give us, 
 but that, having all that earth can give, we 
 long for all that heaven can add of friend- 
 ship's joy and comfort. It is not an idle 
 thing to say that God's friendship is worth 
 having. Knowest thou a man who has lived 
 so impiously and wickedly that he has come 
 to feel that God's favor cannot be won by 
 his penitence,- that the heavens are brass 
 above him, and God's hand clenched against 
 him ? Then of a surety he is one from whom 
 the friendliness of earth is stricken, on the 
 withdrawal of the friendship of Heaven. If 
 eternal goodness is against me, friendship 
 is eternally dead to me, on earth and forever. 
 
 Take up again, if you please, the case of 
 that outlaw whose hands are red with human 
 blood, shed with malice of forethought. Into 
 
Conesomeness for 6ob- 181 
 
 the solitudes of the prairies he urges his 
 foaming steed, conscious of God's enmity 
 and man's vengeance. He stops and looks 
 behind him as he reaches the crest bordering 
 the bottom-lands in the broad basin drained 
 by a western river, and sees, as he carelessly 
 swings half round in the saddle, the sheriff 
 and his men behind. He ambushes him- 
 self, commanding the path leading up the 
 steep, perhaps behind his kneeling horse, or 
 behind convenient bowlders swung and set- 
 tled there by mighty waters before men 
 were on the face of the earth. He shakes 
 the cartridges of his repeating rifle into 
 place. Malignity hath taken possession of 
 him, defiance rules his brooding heart ; 
 but they lose the trail at the water, and he 
 journeys toward the Bad Lands, hoping in the 
 desert to find rest for a nettled spirit. They 
 follow him to his retreat in the valley ; with 
 keen eye he learns their number, too many 
 are they for one sure rifle ; he becomes a 
 fugitive. Continuous watching without re- 
 laxation wears upon his strength. At length 
 in the moonlight, wrapped in his blanket, 
 listening to the monotonous champ, champ, 
 champ, of his tethered horse as he feeds 
 near, resting his head on his rifle, he goes to 
 
182 Hetp Concepts of £)lb Dogmas. 
 
 sleep, to awake as strong men hold him pin- 
 ioned, while the cold handcuffs are snapped 
 upon his wrists. It is a fact that man is 
 against him ; that sheriff is humanity's cham- 
 pion ; those handcuffs are humanity's fetters ; 
 these are man's agencies : but that smiting 
 sense of Infinite Justice, repellant and hos- 
 tile because outraged and despised, whence 
 comes that, more terrible than armed men 
 when once the human mind has been roused 
 to observe how threatening is God's attitude 
 to the transgressor ? And when he comes to 
 trial, this red-handed assassin will fear not 
 so much the punishments of earthly law, with 
 its death sentence and the drop, as he will 
 the withdrawal of God's face from a soul 
 which clings to Him as naturally as a child 
 to his father's hand, and the being is shut up 
 to himself and his own resources, to himself 
 and his own solitudes, while God is with- 
 drawn afar. This world is full of meaning to 
 the man of God ; this life is full of despair 
 to the man in the world without God. 
 
 Our text refers to the condition of the Gen- 
 tile races before the preaching of the cross, 
 consequent upon the rejection of the Mes- 
 siah by His own people. The Gentile na- 
 tions were plunged into sin and into the de- 
 
Conesomeness for ^ob. 183 
 
 spair consequent upon transgression of God's 
 holy law ; the never-sleeping sentinel of con- 
 science sounded his alarms ; even in their 
 dreams men saw terrors because conscious 
 that transgression leads to penalty and that 
 the divine Power without us and within us, 
 however defined, could not make His abiding- 
 place with such souls. Men hungered and 
 thirsted after God, hungered for His love, 
 hungered for His friendliness, hungered for 
 His companionship. 
 
 The whole trend of this sermon has been 
 to show that we need companionships and 
 association, that we need it manward and 
 Godward. Man of this world, satisfied with 
 thine earthly friendships, what is that longing 
 within thee, unquenched and unquenchable, 
 except the cravings of a soul adapted to com- 
 munion with the Most High, desiring that 
 companionship fulfilled ? Believe me, that 
 longing which cannot be satisfied is simply 
 lonesomeness for God. Heap up thy wealth, 
 magnify thy learning by long years of study, 
 gratify thine ambition, lengthen out the list 
 of thy friends to regimental proportions, all 
 shall not avail to save thee from lonesome- 
 ness for God, so long as thou closest thine 
 heart to His entrance, so long as thou shut- 
 
184 Xlcvo Concepts of £)Ib Dogmas. 
 
 test His love out from thy love, His life from 
 thy life, His essential being from contact with 
 thy being in that great act which we call 
 communion with God. I read of a person 
 the other day who spent a night in tears out 
 of lonesomeness for God. It is needless to 
 say God came and granted companionship 
 and the consciousness thereof. Thou mayest 
 be alone in the bright illumination of the 
 ball room, as well as in the quiet of thy 
 library amongst the books ; thou mayest be 
 alone in this congregation, with many people 
 within reach, as well as amid the trees of the 
 virgin forest ; thou canst not place thyself in 
 a circumstance where thou art not solitary 
 within if God is apart. Turning thy face to 
 the heavens, realizing thou art without Him 
 in the world, how melancholy is thy loneli- 
 ness ! Seek His^love and His favor, and He 
 shall give His presence, "before whom Cheru- 
 bim and Seraphim continually do cry, Holy, 
 holy, holy, Lord God Almighty," and before 
 whom angels veil their faces. 
 
FREEDOM OF THE SONS OF GOD. 
 
 " Verily^ verily, I say to you,, Every one who 
 doeth sin is the slave of sin^ — yohn 
 8:34. 
 
 IT is a profound comment on this passage, 
 and equivalent to another form of state- 
 ment of the text, which says that personal 
 liberty is secured by the servitude of vices. 
 The habitues of the larger vices will allow 
 a good name to become as empty as yes- 
 terday's wind, will sacrifice fame so that it 
 shall become as naught, a reputation like 
 that of the great expounder of the Constitu- 
 tion, becoming eaten by the corroding rust 
 of human weakness, so to remain for all 
 time. Nay more, they will lay their wives 
 and their children upon the altar of their 
 vices and consume them there, and finally 
 will face death with the courage of a hero 
 but the heart of a slave. You have seen 
 them go forth into the land of shadows as 
 slave caravans, each one bearing his yoke, 
 and disappear in the darkness of African 
 forests. Well hath Christ said, " Every one 
 who doeth sin is the slave of sin." 
 
 (185) 
 
186 HetD Concepts of £)I6 Dogmas. 
 
 Political liberty is another thing, but after 
 all the same remark applies there as else- 
 where ; there can be no secure liberty save 
 by the servitude of vices. You may object 
 to sumptuary laws as much as you choose ; 
 but when vice shall rule, liberty shall die. 
 The South American States and France are 
 illustrations of this fact. They are republics 
 indeed, but a republic cannot save a cor- 
 rupted national life. Their sudden revolu- 
 tions, each closing in terrible carnages of 
 blood, are but ebullitions of a tyranny which 
 is never wanting in the State, a sure sign 
 of its moral and spiritual degeneracy. 
 
 Pythagoras, the Orphic philosopher, five 
 hundred years before Christ, declared, '' He 
 who is the bondservant of sufferings and is 
 ruled by them, is unable to be free." We 
 have here a particular application of Christ's 
 general axiom. For sin is not merely stal- 
 wart vice, but sin as defined in our text by 
 Him who spake as never man spake, is also 
 every besetment of human flesh which, crys- 
 tallized into a habit, maketh the better nature 
 its servant ; it may be gluttony at table un- 
 fitting for active duties in life ; it may be the 
 white lie of deceit, which habitually driveth 
 
^recbom of t(?e Sons of ^ob. 187 
 
 honor into hiding and maketh truth its slave, 
 or other fault. 
 
 The English public have recently been 
 following with great interest a prosecution in 
 the courts. It is known as Osborne vs. Har- 
 grave. The suit was brought by Mrs. Os- 
 borne against Mrs. Hargrave, her cousin, for 
 saying that she, Mrs. Osborne, had stolen a 
 pearl and diamond brooch which belonged 
 to her. The first damaging fact was that 
 Mrs. Osborne knew the drawer, opened by 
 a secret spring, in which the jewels of Mrs. 
 Hargrave were kept. She was identified by 
 the jeweler, and her own handwriting upon 
 the bank note received in payment proved 
 conclusively that the charge was true. 
 
 Mrs. Osborne was a long time in hiding, but 
 was finally imprisoned to await trial for per- 
 jury. Witness how one sin led her in bondage 
 to another. Mrs. Osborne stole the jewels ; 
 she then carried them to the jeweler as her 
 own, she gave a fictitious address and a fic- 
 titious name, told her fiance that she was 
 innocent, and he married her, notwithstand- 
 ing the scandal (April 4, 1891), believing her 
 word. But this was not enough ; to carry 
 out the pretense and satisfy her friends she 
 
188 Hem Concepts of £)lb Dogmas. 
 
 must needs bring suit against the Hargrave 
 cousin, deceive her lawyer who took the 
 case, and continue to dupe her husband so 
 egregiously that when he saw the signature 
 upon the note, he fainted, so clear was proof 
 of his wife's transgression. Indeed is he that 
 doeth sin the slave of that sin. 
 
 I started with the declaration of Pythag- 
 oras, " He who is the bondservant of suffer- 
 ings and is ruled by them is unable to be 
 free." Bodily pain, then, to revert to this 
 original statement, may be a cause of sin. 
 The weight of human suffering seems heavy 
 enough, and sympathetic souls will say, Let 
 that stand by itself; but while the impres- 
 sions of pain are transitory, departing with 
 its withdrawal, yet its mastery leaves us in 
 bondage, and bondage where moral results 
 are affected is sin. Sudden pain may make 
 us well-nigh insane, but it is our duty to bear 
 it. "I cannot help swearing," says one, 
 "when I am hurt." You are in bondage, 
 then, to pain, which looses the tongue to 
 profanity. '' I cannot be happy," says an- 
 other, "I suffer so much." The real ques- 
 tion in such a case is whether we will be in 
 servitude to pain, and allow it to destroy the 
 serviceableness of our lives. Shall it lead us 
 
^recbom of tf?e Sons of (5ob. 189 
 
 to a fault-finding temper ? shall it drive us 
 habitually to an anaesthetic on slight occa- 
 sion ? shall it fill our hearts with the bitterness 
 of death, and turn our faces away from God ? 
 
 Then indeed the ministry of pain has be- 
 come a slavery to sin. For the mastery of 
 one's self is freedom ; and he who is mas- 
 tered by the anguish of suffering, is not 
 master of himself Only for the sick is such 
 slavery permissible. For all who are short 
 of absolute invalidism the mastery of the 
 feelings of the body is the freedom of life. 
 Indeed, I have known some so to school 
 themselves to the endurance of their ills and 
 weaknesses of the flesh that they endured 
 hardness as good soldiers of Jesus Christ unto 
 the end, the discipline of health answering 
 most admirably every adversity until death. 
 And did not they show themselves free in- 
 deed, and servants of the King.? 
 
 In the "Memorabilia" we find this matter 
 discussed. Socrates asks : " Therefore who- 
 ever is ruled by the pleasures of the body, 
 and because of these is not able to practice 
 the best things, think you this one is free .? — 
 Least of all," he replied. Again Socrates 
 asks, ''Just as doing the best things appears 
 free to thee, so to have those who are pre- 
 
190 Iceu) Concepts of £)Ib Dogmas. 
 
 vented doing such things do you think is 
 slavish ? — Altogether so," he answered. 
 
 I have quoted this to show the argument 
 of Christ, that they who do right are free 
 and they who do wrong are in bondage, is 
 one which He shares for substance with 
 Socrates. Granted that Socrates did not 
 have the spiritual insight of Christ or His 
 moral power, yet these desires of the body, 
 so far as we can enter into understanding 
 of the language of his time, are always con- 
 trasted with the things of the spirit, that 
 is, the intellectual nature. This question of 
 human freedom and human slavery under 
 sin, this pulpit desires to argue out this 
 morning a little further. 
 
 The Christian recognizes obligation in 
 Christ's service. Paul called himself the bond- 
 servant of Jesus Christ. Wherein, then, does 
 its freedom lie ? We answer that it is a 
 service of love and a life of conviction, in 
 other words, a life of obedience. There is, 
 moreover, freedom of choice toward evil, as 
 between it and the good. But evil choices, 
 followed, result in foregone conclusions, in 
 desires unresisted after the habit has been 
 formed, in aimless blundering into trans- 
 gression after transgression. Wrong-doing 
 
^reebom of tf^e Sons of ^06. 191 
 
 usurps the whole life and the whole man. In 
 right living there is knowledge of good and 
 evil. Good men refuse to choose evil, not 
 because they do not know it, but because 
 they spurn it. Do evil men refuse to do 
 good because they know what it is, and 
 being well-informed in regard to it, reject 
 it as the lesser good ? What knowledge 
 have the great majority of evilly disposed 
 men of what is really good ? Certainly there 
 are comparatively few who really know what 
 it is to do good, who fall away from right- 
 eous living. Our older theology held it to 
 be impossible to fall from grace, and I am 
 inclined to think it was right. As a matter 
 of fact, the evilly disposed are never safe ; 
 settled down to one order of life, you can 
 never tell how soon a new influence may 
 draw them away to new paths. Why do 
 fathers and mothers watch with such eager- 
 ness the young manhood of their sons and 
 the young womanhood of their daughters, 
 except they are aware a wrongly directed 
 life will leave, with pleasure, another name 
 for likings, at the helm, the flapping sail to 
 any breeze ? 
 
 I wish this were all that needed to be said, 
 but, alas ! it is not. We have not drawn the 
 
192 Hem Concepts of £)lb Dogmas. 
 
 full picture of human bondage to sin. We 
 have drawn some sketch of the bondage of 
 sin where sin is vice. The bondage of the 
 individual conscience yet remains. It is 
 remarkable that the conscience can be en- 
 slaved by one's prejudices. For this rea- 
 son some people can never do anything 
 right because we never will grant that any- 
 thing they do is right. Conscience knows 
 such a course is wrong, but the sin of selfish- 
 ness hath enslaved it. Then, too, there is a 
 wrong moral perspective, the minor moral 
 cause being unduly magnified and left to 
 outweigh the mightier cause, and men are 
 led to support the wicked thing, sin reigning 
 in them and accomplishing its purposes of 
 enslavement by using the lesser good to 
 accomplish the greater. This is a true diag- 
 nosis of much sinning of every degree. 
 Whether we down righteousness by expe- 
 diency, or whether the Jesuit, for love of 
 Christ, sanctifies unrighteous means, or the 
 Indian thug makes the victim of his assas- 
 sination an offering to Shiva the destroyer, 
 it is all the same ; it is the satisfaction of 
 the moral nature with an object to result in 
 its eternal enslavement to transgression. 
 There results a moral complacency or satis- 
 
^reebom of tE^e Sons of ^ob. 193 
 
 faction with the condition of the slave ; then 
 men can afford to scoff at moral issues, and 
 rest satisfied with the reign of error in the 
 community, for it is like their own moral 
 state. 
 
 Most singular is the conscience, for while 
 it can be mastered for substance yet never 
 wholly. As the German tribes never were 
 conquered by the Roman legions, so we may 
 term this the Gothic part of the kingdom of 
 man-soul. The conscience money often re- 
 stored, and the wishes that you and I have 
 that we could make some wrongs right for 
 which money cannot atone, the sudden start 
 of guilty men when they see the face remind- 
 ing them of their transgression, and the con- 
 fession of undiscovered sin sometimes as 
 damning as murder, confession of which is 
 indeed dangerous, are cases in point. Some 
 men with reminder, some men without re- 
 minder, are each after all the slaves of fear 
 which is born of sin. To have one's waking 
 moments never secure from the dagger of 
 one's conscience, or to put the face in post- 
 ure as a kind of shield against the world to 
 save us from the moral death that would 
 follow on exposure, as Bismarck, or Tito 
 Melema, put on armor and so saved himself 
 
194 Iten? Concepts of £)lb Dogmas. 
 
 from the dagger of the assassin, all this 
 bespeaks slavery to a mastery ignoble and 
 debasing. And the heart, how timid it is, 
 how cringing before its master, that a stray 
 shot from the bow of memory should set it 
 straight a-quaking and ready to yield itself 
 to horrors, perchance to death. 
 
 That all men who profess faith in Christ 
 and do not yield full devotion, reap accord- 
 ing as they sow, and find partial deliver- 
 ance and somewhat of hope, is but right. 
 But those who make God their whole por- 
 tion, like Cardinal Manning or like Living- 
 stone and Gordon, like every saintly person 
 on earth, find in saintliness a true freedom, 
 with its bracing of the nerves and its buoy- 
 ant life without fear. Said the Master, ** If 
 therefore the Son shall make you free, ye 
 shall be free indeed." 
 
THE POWER OF HABIT. 
 
 " I beseech you therefore, brethren^ by the mercies 
 of God, that ye present your bodies a lining 
 sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which 
 is your reasonable service.'''' — Rom. 12:1. 
 
 AT the beginning of an essay on '' Cus- 
 tom and Education," Lord Bacon says : 
 "Men's thoughts are much according to their 
 inclination ; their discourse and speeches ac- 
 cording to their learning and infused opin- 
 ions ; but their deeds are — as they have 
 been accustomed." Education therefore is 
 midway between the lawlessness of man's 
 nature, which acts because it must, and the 
 formal acts of man in society and forming a 
 part thereof. This is a superficial definition ; 
 habit is deeper than the external man. 
 Thinking has habits as well as doing, saying 
 as well as acting. All thinking seems an as- 
 sociation of ideas, so that habit has its place 
 in all thought. We have power to form an 
 idea, but in calling it up we associate it with 
 something else. We recall words by think- 
 ing of the man that said them. We fix a date 
 by something else that happened at the same 
 
 (195) 
 
196 Xlzw Concepts of £)Ib Dogmas. 
 
 time. We recall a face through the form, 
 clothing, and speech, and the incident 
 through another associated thing. 
 
 Language shows this same. The word 
 thing, for instance, is the Anglo-Saxon 
 thingafiy ** to become heavy," hence it is any- 
 thing material, and so often means any sepa- 
 rable or distinguishable object of thought. 
 By association of ideas this word has arisen. 
 Likewise by association with it as an organic 
 part of speech, it has power in language. 
 That is, we use words according to certain 
 well-defined senses established by the usages 
 of society. The custom of society determines 
 our vocabulary, for most part. Doing, say- 
 ing, thinking, are all words expressive of 
 conceptions formed of things habitually 
 done, habit being an important factor therein. 
 Verily, man is a creature of habit. 
 
 It is not strange, therefore, that in moral 
 things man has need of this same discipline 
 of habit, which he has in every other depart- 
 ment of his life. For this end alone, has 
 society protected itself by innumerable laws, 
 unwritten indeed, but all the same laws of 
 moral power, each one a breakwater protect- 
 ing the precious silver-laden argosies of the 
 soul. It is easier to break the written law 
 
Cf?e pomer of V}ah\l 197 
 
 than that moral law sustained by the senti- 
 ment of a multitude. A written law is a very- 
 strawy affair, without the moral support of 
 public sentiment. The king's officers found 
 it so when they went to cut the masts re- 
 served in the New England forests for the 
 royal navy. Sumptuary laws prove it so 
 when the local sentiment does not conform 
 to the laws enacted by the legislatures of 
 their respective commonwealths. Indeed, 
 our whole system of government, like all 
 democracies, is simply an endeavor to put 
 the written law in touch with popular senti- 
 ment, that there may be less mobs in arms 
 against government and more real effort 
 made to benefit the masses. That public 
 sentiment, therefore, which is mightier than 
 the rule of kings, and without which the 
 strongest legal finding is but weak as the 
 paper on which it is written, however lofty 
 the court that grants it, may well challenge 
 the respect of you and me, however reluctant 
 we may be to listen to its best judgment on 
 moral and social questions, especially in so far 
 as it has sought to advance righteousness in 
 the hearts of all the people. But it is notice- 
 able that those who deny legislative law, also 
 deny the moral sentiments of mankind. They 
 
1 ^^ Xlcw Concepts of £)lb Dogmas. 
 
 who break one kind of law break both kinds ; 
 they are a law unto themselves. What they 
 hate and condemn is restraint. 
 
 Good habits have two special functions : 
 First, they conserve natural endowment, 
 making capacity tell in some given direction. 
 A dozen colts in pasture, racing about from 
 one end to the other, having sure habits 
 indeed of a wild, roving sort, so that predic- 
 tion may be made about them, such as, here 
 they will come for water, and there for grass, 
 when trained by habit to harness, will pull 
 loads, or draw batteries, or proudly lead 
 into battle cohorts of cavalry, each one as 
 perfectly trained as the rider upon his back. 
 Similarly, men are like a gregarious herd 
 beating about for food, the satisfactions of 
 thirst, and for companionship until the 
 trained man shall supercede the untamed, 
 and regularity of toil, either with head or 
 hand, shall conserve the energy of life, 
 and make productive the fallow lands of 
 creaturehood. 
 
 So in moral things there is a conservation 
 of energy. Every one that is a student be- 
 comes more and more conscious, as he pur- 
 sues a literary or professional life, that there 
 is a limit to human capacity. A man can 
 
CI?e pott?er of £)abit. 199 
 
 work so many hours, and can become so 
 exhausted with bodily toil that he can labor 
 no longer ; similarly, those who use their 
 brains in any calling find they have their 
 intellectual capacity, which they may de- 
 velop, and which, when dissipated, their all 
 is gone. That same capacity untrained can 
 amount to but little. It is a conservation of 
 that energy which, instead of being dissipated 
 aimlessly, shall be turned into some channel 
 where its output shall count. Here I am 
 with this plant in the world ; it has a capac- 
 ity for physical labor. I must exercise that 
 in some way. The body is the basis of the 
 intellectual life. I can so avoid the develop- 
 ment of my body that I cannot half think. 
 Undoubtedly all of us who do not perform 
 manual labor in our callings err in having no 
 thought of exercise and physical development 
 of our bodies. The thought-power has rela- 
 tions to the nervous system the physical 
 basis of thought, and that system, is simi- 
 larly dependent upon the rest of the body, 
 upon which depends the exercise of its 
 functions. 
 
 The pale invalid stretched on a bed of 
 languor, from which he cares not to limp 
 out-of-doors by day and on which he can- 
 
200 HctD (Eoncepts of £)Ib Dogmas. 
 
 not sleep at night, near by being the elec- 
 tric light, which he can turn on at will 
 through a button, and reaching out for the 
 books heaped about him, beguiling himself 
 from thought of his own deplorable con- 
 dition to which he has been brought by 
 forced and precocious intellectual develop- 
 ment, is a fine illustration of how needful it 
 is that habits of health be given the body, 
 conserving the powers of the whole man. 
 How much better it is, in the long run, to have 
 a strong body with a stupid intellect, than a 
 strong intellect stupefied, in the moiety at 
 least, by the sickly incompetence of the body 
 consequent upon its deterioration through 
 the neglect to conserve it by healthful bodily 
 habits. That the schools see this now and 
 make provision for the health of pupils in 
 providing proper training, is one of the best 
 signs in our times. 
 
 But granted a healthy mind and a sound 
 body, the fact must not be lost sight of that 
 the mind can do only so much and no more. 
 Under too great a load of intellectual activi- 
 ties the giant Spurgeon has recently suc- 
 cumbed at fifty-seven. The mind is stricken 
 down as under the blows of an enemy ; all 
 the material for the maintenance of life has 
 
C{?e poit)er of ^ahxt 201 
 
 been burned up by the torch of knowledge. 
 It is the opinion of experts that the human 
 body can do as much in eight hours as in 
 ten, which, if true, will inevitably shorten the 
 hours of labor. The human mind can un- 
 doubtedly force itself as much as the body, 
 possibly more so. But it, too, has its limits. 
 Burn the torch twelve hours a day, and it 
 will last thirty years ; burn it eight hours, 
 and it will last fifty years. Make your hab- 
 its, therefore, that they shall conserve the 
 maintenance of life, and give the greatest 
 possible output to labor. 
 
 Do not, however, lose sight of the fact that 
 in a given period which will fully exhaust 
 the nervous powers of the body, only so 
 much can be done, and nothing more. En- 
 ergy once expended under these circum- 
 stances is forever spent. If you give up your 
 time to novel reading until the brain reels, 
 there is nothing left for science or art or 
 knowledge of any kind. The vis viva of the 
 mind is gone ; you can put nothing in mo- 
 tion. The molecules of the brain may act, 
 but they cannot produce thought. You read 
 the page, but cannot remember a line. As 
 you can put only so much in, it behooves 
 you to be careful what you put in. 
 
202 Hem Concepts of £>{b Do^jmas. 
 
 These two truths I desire to apply to total 
 abstinence. Use alcohol habitually, and you 
 merely interfere with the normal running 
 processes of the body. You burn up a little 
 more fiber, nature's reserve for exigencies, 
 exposing yourself to premature death from 
 disease. You burn up what you need, what 
 you cannot replace by any assistance of 
 modern medicine. For a given output of 
 thought you are paying an unnecessary per 
 cent. And when we turn to the sociability 
 of the saloon and the life of the inordinate 
 drinker, the case truly becomes bad. What- 
 ever may be the delights of intoxication, or 
 the pleasures of those peculiar saloon friend- 
 ships of which we hear so much, they are 
 simply an expenditure of energy in foolish 
 and useless fashion. The radiancy of the 
 illumination of the mind is, however one 
 may strive to conceal it, a burning out of 
 the torch of nature, and a wasting of ener- 
 gies which might have been diverted to 
 noble purposes. 
 
 See that dullard who, hulking about in all 
 weathers, lives a hermit in squalor and lone- 
 some solitariness. His education is noth- 
 ing, and his natural power was wasted ; pure 
 laziness stunts and spends the whole endow- 
 
C^c pomcr of ^abtt. 203 
 
 ment, and you despise him. But how about 
 that other, resting his elbows on saloon 
 counters, who has succeeded in life, using 
 opportunities and achieving, but squandering 
 in prodigality the precious endowments of 
 God, chasing the mirages of the intoxicated 
 imagination over every moor until the way 
 is lost and every opportunity is gone, until 
 heaven is obscured under the mists, and the 
 Star of Bethlehem no more gives bearings 
 for pilotage, and God, as he speaks through 
 the moral law in the conscience, is heard no 
 more, and the better nature does not sleep, 
 but the rather dies a slow, lingering, but 
 perfect death ? And yet we hesitate to ab- 
 stain for the sake of the weak. 
 
 Secondly, good habits not only conserve 
 capacity, but they also enlarge and broaden 
 it. In a trip to Escanaba I did not see a 
 single harbor on the west side Lake Michigan 
 which was not built by double rows of piles. 
 So good habits open a path over the shallows 
 of the soul, and bring a new commerce over 
 the waters. Hence it is the man becomes 
 great and strong ; he has conserved and en- 
 larged himself. 
 
 The day of genius is past ; its heroes are 
 rapidly being forgotten. It is the Michael 
 
204 Hctt) Concepts of £)Ib Dogmas. 
 
 Angelos, who by hard work achieve their 
 place, winning immortal honors. This has 
 been accepted ever since Wellington over- 
 came the erratic Bonaparte at Waterloo 
 by vulgar hard pounding which wore out 
 sixty thousand fighters, but wound up for- 
 ever, let us hope, among modern men the 
 notion that any gift of birth can keep pace 
 with the increment which may be added to 
 a bright mind as it shall develop under the 
 power of habit. Bacon quotes Machiavelli 
 where he says, "There is no trusting to the 
 force of nature, nor to the boastfulness of 
 words, except it be corroborated by custom." 
 This is truth ; many men promise reform, 
 few men follow it out to the end. The habit 
 of the person will alone tell us what his word 
 is worth. You would not take the promise of 
 a man whom you knew to be habitually un- 
 truthful, because you count his habit stronger 
 than his promise. It is easier to make a silk 
 purse out of a sow's ear than to make any- 
 thing out of him who has no habits you 
 can trust. He who habitually does his duty 
 is the man who rises to opportunities, and 
 who is equal thereto. Coolness and audacity 
 made Grant what he was ; thoroughness was 
 the characteristic of George H. Thomas ; de- 
 
CI?e porper of ^abtt. 205 
 
 votion to the will of God furnishes the key to 
 the character of the great Spurgeon, now, 
 alas ! no more, and doing one's duty, to that 
 of Gordon, Livingstone, and Mackay. 
 
 Now, what interferes with all habit but 
 this, the irrationality of appetite and the 
 whim of desire ? Ten thousand million wills 
 have been broken down the past century 
 by drink. I do not care about the pro- 
 cess, whether they began as moderate drink- 
 ers or not. Sufficient for me is it, to know 
 that they have been mastered who had other- 
 wise mastered themselves. On the altar 
 of this Moloch have been sacrificed thou- 
 sands of millions of good intentions, dear, 
 sweet, good intentions, as nice to look upon 
 as red apples in God's country across the 
 mountains of Oregon, to which the Cali- 
 fornia miners turned with longing eyes. But 
 without good habits they can be easily 
 shaken off by the slightest wind of appetite, 
 as the Early Rose and the Summer Harvest 
 grafts, high up in the old-fashioned apple- 
 trees in the East, when fully ripened, were 
 shaken down by the earliest zephyrs of the 
 morning, and so, lying toothsome upon the 
 dewy grass, were soon in a swine's snout. 
 A great painter typified gluttony by painting 
 
206 Hert) (Concepts of £)I6 Dogmas. 
 
 under it a figure in despair trying to fight its 
 way upward over a cloud fashioned like a 
 swine's head. Fit symbol that for the stimu- 
 lated appetite that rules in the person given 
 over to the beastiality of drunkenness ! In 
 the words of the apostle, ** I beseech you, 
 therefore, brethren, that ye present your 
 bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable 
 unto God, which is your reasonable service," 
 which, as we interpret it, in these days of 
 the riot of appetite, means, '' Live total ab- 
 stinence lives." 
 
HONEST SELF-DENIAL. 
 
 '* But insomuch as ye are partakers of ChrisVs 
 sufferings, rejoice.^' — / Peter 4 : ij. 
 
 WE cannot enter into Christ's passion by- 
 thrusting ourselves into suffering as a 
 means of purchasing the divine favor. It is 
 glorious to suffer, if one must, to preserve 
 some righteousness or to save some good 
 cause. This premise should be prefixed to 
 everything we may say on self-denial, as the 
 soul loves false weights and measures, and is 
 often as eager for them as dishonest traders 
 for false balances. 
 
 The one thing on which self-denial de- 
 pends is love, like the love of Christ, that 
 flowered aright in silver blossoms, which re- 
 tain their beauty through the far-spent ages. 
 He that loveth much doeth much ; he that 
 loveth little doeth little ; he that loveth 
 naught doeth naught. So thou canst easily 
 put thyself where thou belongest. Didst 
 thou ever do it, and find the teaching of 
 God's book of life in thine own heart .-* Thus 
 self-denial may be thy condemner, and give 
 
 (207) 
 
208 Xlzvo Concepts of £)lb Dogmas. 
 
 thee a moment's dissatisfaction ; and so it 
 shall be always to us all. But we may make 
 self-denial our coadjutor, helper, friend. For 
 comradeship and fellowship with this mystic 
 one, if thou art candidate, a few simple rules 
 I give thee for thy novitiate, that thou 
 mayest come as men of old came to the 
 Pythagorean mysteries in which thou art to 
 walk in white with the chosen ones of purest 
 counsels, and together with them learn the 
 deep mysteries of the hidden life. Three sim- 
 ple rules are presented as guiding thoughts 
 concerning that way. Self-denial demands 
 sacrifice ; yes, indeed, but note well, a sacri- 
 fice on your part ; I give thee, therefore, the 
 first rule : — 
 
 All true self-sacrifice is a sacrifice of your- 
 self and not of some one else, and further- 
 more, a sacrifice, of yourself alone, and not of 
 yourself plus some one else. 
 
 This may not commend itself to your judg- 
 ment, but let us see. A layman marries a 
 wife, changes his mind as to his calling in 
 life, and drags her unwillingly into the 
 self-denial of a home missionary field. This 
 he has no moral right to do. He has a 
 right to sacrifice himself and no one else. 
 Or a person puts himself in such a place 
 
^onest Sclf=6ental. 209 
 
 that his children do not have suitable op- 
 portunities in life. The man has done well 
 by himself, but he has not remembered 
 others in his plan of life. Or he may un- 
 wisely plan his great philanthropy, and bring- 
 it to naught, causing the useless benevolence 
 of those who heard his call, but have been 
 sorry ever since that they gave heed, and 
 tried to help him out. It is this view of the 
 case which has led the preacher to feel that 
 celibacy would be a powerful adjunct in mis- 
 sionary operations ; not an enforced celibacy, 
 but one which is essential to true self-denial, 
 which would sacrifice itself and no one else. 
 The bitterness of spirit in some hearts, 
 owing to the self-denial to which they have 
 been unwillingly forced to become parties, 
 has made me feel most keenly that good 
 men and women must needs be more careful, 
 not how they sacrifice themselves, but how 
 they sacrifice something themselves, while 
 they throw the weight of their burden of love 
 for the sake of which they hope to shine 
 in heaven on other people's shoulders, as if 
 good service in the kingdom of God con- 
 sisted in large measure of a person's success 
 in dragging others in and attaching them'to 
 the car of the Lord, and compelling them 
 
210 Hert) Concepts of £)I6 Dogmas, 
 
 to drag it through weary years, whether they 
 will or no. 
 
 Self-sacrifice should not be selfish sacrifice. 
 This false self-sacrifice has been parodied in 
 the world. If it were not the preacher's set- 
 tled conviction that a laugh in church serv- 
 ice has no moral value, he would illustrate 
 it by a story. But this much needs to be 
 said, that this kind of false heroics, the jest 
 of the street, deserves to be pilloried in the 
 house of God, and given the brand of Cain as 
 sign of its eternal shame. 
 
 Self-denial which entails sacrifice upon 
 others and in no wise upon ourselves, is well 
 illustrated in some forms of pious good ad- 
 vice. College presidents advise boys to go 
 as missionaries ; why do they not go them- 
 selves ? City preachers advise men to self- 
 sacrifice in humble parishes. The rich invite 
 the poor to large self-denials, while they do 
 not invite themselves to a single cup of 
 coffee less. We advise forgiveness, but our- 
 selves nourish wrath on slight occasion. It 
 seems as if a person washed waifs on con- 
 tract, at a cheap lodging house in the city, 
 and sudsed them well, regardless of eyes 
 and mouth, but neglected his own person, 
 carefully rubbing off the soap dry which 
 
^onest 5cIf=6emaL 211 
 
 had come upon his own hands and refusing 
 the application of water. For to tell the 
 truth it is only the filthy imaginings of a 
 vain mind that despises the purifications of 
 self-sacrifice. This whole style of life is con- 
 temptible. It is pious cant, which covers not 
 a multitude of sins but a horde of lies, part of 
 which we tell ourselves, and part of which 
 we tell other people. All of this self-deceit 
 is due to wrong conceptions of self-denial, 
 as a thing the sham appearance of which 
 is very blessed ; whereas the only bless- 
 ing is in the heart, which is always alloyed 
 by even the consciousness that the deed is a 
 thing of common fame, the credit thereof 
 becoming an arousement of pride and the 
 temptation to a sham life of hypocrisy, var- 
 nished over with pretentious acts and words 
 of self-denial which cost nothing and hence 
 are a good stock in trade, if that sort of stock 
 is the kind desired. 
 
 The second rule of self-sacrifice is as fol- 
 lows : Sacrifice all you want to, except your 
 better self. 
 
 Some people think that in religion they 
 have no self; which is unfortunately not 
 true. This self undoubtedly has duties ; it 
 has also rights which cannot be denied with- 
 
212 Hen? Concepts of £>lb Dogmas. 
 
 out loss of power and function on the nobler 
 side of life. This is easily illustrated. In 
 the old church many a man went into a 
 monastery and became a Benedictine monk, 
 and spent his time tilling the land, which 
 meant something for civilization, though but 
 little to himself After years of devotion to 
 religion and the church he was a piece of a 
 man. It is all very well at first blush for 
 ministers to say nothing that remotely bears 
 on moral questions, for fear some one will 
 take offense, but when after a course of years 
 the individual has lost the use of his moral 
 powers of stamina, you find that there is only 
 the fraction of a man in the pulpit. When a 
 person cannot read the daily papers without 
 sin, as I used to hear some say out East, and 
 who therefore despised all knowledge of cur- 
 rent events as" sinful, they had a wrong kind 
 of religion, because it militated against the 
 perfect, noble, fully developed, all-round man- 
 manhood and womanhood, which it is the 
 right of every believer to possess. 
 
 Christianity was not meant to be a limita- 
 tion on individual advancement. Great bur- 
 dens of self-sacrifice which dwarf the man 
 should be undertaken solely when the person 
 is fully convinced that the sacrifices involved 
 
^omst Self^bental. 213 
 
 are justified in view of what he can accom- 
 plish ; that is, whether loss in one direction 
 may not be made up by gain in another. 
 There is, of course, the familiar considera- 
 tion of the advantage gained by the special- 
 ist in the branch to which he gives attention, 
 in consequence of which much must be lost 
 in the broader range of things. 
 
 We see the same thing in all life. Agassiz 
 could tell by a bone the character of the 
 fish to which it belonged, and this was re- 
 markably verified by subsequent discovery, 
 but he knew little besides natural science. 
 So in religion, one man cannot do every- 
 thing, he must specialize, and with the gain 
 there must be the loss. Next to murder, 
 suicide is ranked as mortal sin, that is, next 
 to murder of another is the murder of self 
 So it seems, next to the sacrifice of others 
 is the sacrifice of one's self in moral things ; 
 the first is cowardly, the second is foolish. 
 Does that seem hard } It is true, whether 
 hard or not. Who doubts that the millions 
 of monks have squandered their better selves 
 under vows, and well-kept vows often, of the 
 utmost self-abnegation. 
 
 Protestantism, too, has made similar mis- 
 take, though not with such awful conse- 
 
214 Hem Concepts of £)lb Dogmas. 
 
 quences. ' We, too, have taught that the 
 motive behind the act alone sanctifies that 
 act. Thus have we glorified stupidity on 
 the one hand, and stricken the Lord's cause 
 on the other, for a round man in a square 
 hole cannot glorify God as he ought. Wit- 
 ness in the many and many a minister who 
 is confident that the Lord called him into 
 his work, and the unanimous, or all but 
 unanimous, conviction of every one else that 
 God called some one else, and he answered. 
 Now we make bold to say that in spoiling 
 a good business man to make a preacher 
 who is utterly incapable of being useful, is 
 strange way of making self-denial tell for 
 righteousness. 
 
 There is on Somerset street, Boston, a fine 
 brick building belonging to the theological 
 department of Boston University ; it is called 
 Jacob Sleeper Hall, after the donor. Jacob 
 Sleeper, when a young man, was a student 
 for the ministry in the Methodist Church, 
 but his eyes failed him, and he gave his at- 
 tention to business. He was very successful, 
 and became a millionaire, but he did not lose 
 his early bent. He was the Nestor of all 
 Methodist enterprises in New England, par- 
 ticularly of the Boston University, and sup- 
 
^onest Self^bental. 215 
 
 ported eight or ten ministers all the time 
 himself, each one of whom doubtless did 
 more good than Jacob Sleeper himself could 
 possibly have done if he had gone into the 
 ministry, and had given his life to what 
 would, on the face of it, seem a more self- 
 denying experience. This man was provi- 
 dentially stayed in his mad career. God, 
 however, I am persuaded, would have us 
 stay ourselves by fully counting the cost. 
 For this purpose I bid you sacrifice all except 
 your better self Remember that a gift for 
 one thing is sacrificed, if, destroying it, you 
 persist in turning to something to which you 
 are not adapted. Remember the endowment 
 of your nature is a gift of God, especial and 
 holy, and at first hand from the Lord and 
 Giver of life. 
 
 The third rule of self-sacrifice is : Check- 
 mate evil thoughts with antidotes. 
 
 " I will not think this thing," amounts to 
 but little, in the ordinary experience of 
 temptation. To make that will against evil 
 thoughts powerful, you must give it the 
 panacea of something else to think about, 
 which shall be free of association with the 
 wicked thought. Prayer, a scripture pas- 
 sage, a verse from a Christian poet, has often 
 
216 Xtetp Concepts of £)Ib Dogmas. 
 
 been the salvation of a person from his bad 
 thoughts. A good book is a power in help- 
 ing men and women over the frictions of 
 every-day life. As married people settle 
 down, they find a life which for most 
 stretches away from them like the great 
 plains of the river systems in the West, 
 seemingly flat as a floor, above which there 
 is a brilliant sunshine falling upon a beauti- 
 ful verdure, but replaced now and then by 
 clouds and storm. The monotony of that 
 level life will be broken, if one can but 
 call in the wizards of the imagination, and 
 through poetry and prose read silently or 
 aloud ; 'new vistas are disclosed, as when 
 the ravine by the water-courses opens up to 
 one on the river heights, and the eye sees 
 again a diversified landscape, with the early 
 autumnal tints .painting all with the colors 
 of a divine artist. So we may find antidote 
 against the corroding cares of daily life. 
 
 We sometimes fawn upon others ; believe 
 me, we fawn too often upon our baser selves. 
 And by sentimentality, as if personal pleas- 
 ure must always have a whole hide, we foster 
 the same spirit in others. Why, poor man, 
 he is struggling with his appetite ; poor fel- 
 low, how helpless he is ; let all men pity and 
 
fjonest Self^bental. 217 
 
 wring their hands ! Now I suggest that he 
 play the man. Penitents in monasteries lash 
 themselves for their evil thoughts. If any 
 man would free himself from appetite, let 
 him similarly persuade himself that his appe- 
 tite is not too good to be trampled upon as 
 a hated thing ; then let him buy in some 
 leather store a knout such as is used in 
 Russia without stint upon the backs of free- 
 men who as much as dare to criticise the 
 Czar's officers ; and when the glamour of the 
 senses is arising which will soon shut out 
 the light of day from the moral universe of 
 that microcosm, let him bare his shoulders 
 and whip himself, and believe me, praying God 
 to nerve his arm, he will soon, holding this 
 form of self-denial firmly before him, monas- 
 tic though it is, be able through self-denial 
 to trample his destroyer under foot. This 
 may seem severe, but no man who longs for 
 the mastery of himself through the help 
 which Christ can give has a right to say that 
 he really wants to be free until he can go to 
 this degree of self-denial in hatred of his own 
 pleasure and in determination to master him- 
 self through an antidote of suffering. More- 
 over it seems to the preacher that the person 
 who thus through prayer and suffering comes 
 
218 ITeu) Concepts of £)15 Dogmas. 
 
 back to mastery of himself and to peace with 
 God, doth partake of the sufferings of Christ 
 in the redemption of humanity as no world- 
 ling can who curls his legs under his chair, 
 and eaten up by his comforts in life, sighs 
 over the redemption of humanity at such 
 tremendous cost, and perchance sheds a 
 few briny tears. Such a life of self-denial 
 doth by its suffering join on to the sufferings 
 of the ** Son of man who was the Son of God." 
 Every one of us needs to deny ourselves to 
 the quick, that we may enter into the pas- 
 sion of the Lord Jesus Christ. 
 
IGNORANCE IN MORAL 
 CHARACTER. 
 
 *' Let us hold fast our confession. For we have 
 not a High Priest that cannot be touched 
 with the feeling of our infirmities ; but one 
 that hath been in all points tempted like as 
 ive are, yet without sin^ — Heb. /f. : 75". 
 
 HERE stands a murderer at the bar ; why 
 a craning of necks to see him ? why the 
 moral sentence which condemns him ? except 
 it be that public sentiment scorns him for 
 the sensations which he has made his own, 
 and which have left indelible impress on his 
 character. Men in armies are enlisted that 
 they may kill when need comes, else their 
 service were a sham. But we are told that 
 no man likes to say he killed another, and 
 that when a person is known to have done 
 such an act, especially in a wanton manner, 
 he is a marked person among his fel- 
 lows, and is disliked and shunned by them, 
 because of knowledge which each esteems a 
 blemish upon moral character. The glory 
 of arms is not in the death one deals, so 
 
 (219) 
 
220 Xlcvo Concepts of £)lb Dogmas. 
 
 much as the death one faces ; it is the glo- 
 rious unflinching in face of mortal peril, and 
 not an envenomed temper. We love to say 
 our brave are magnanimous for this reason, 
 and to lay stress upon every noblest thing 
 about them. We would have our soldier 
 ignorant of much of what dastards boast ; 
 even courage and the glories of valor pale 
 under certain circumstances. We expect, 
 then, knowledge and ignorance to be side by 
 side, and reckon the strength of one in pro- 
 portion with the lack of the other. 
 
 There is a gamut of experience here, but 
 no half-tones ; each note must be clear, with 
 no quaver ; it is not a study of harmonies, 
 but the note of nature. Art has nothing to 
 do with character ; it is be, and be not ; act, 
 and refuse to act ; it is quality, and absence 
 of quality. 
 
 Christ, we say, was without sin. This is 
 more than a Christian dogma ; we esteem it 
 a Christian fact. It is one of the things 
 which we would stand for against all comers, 
 and without recourse. But if Christ was 
 without sin, it was a personality which 
 lacked the experience of that sinning which 
 is a factor in human life. Yet we say that 
 Christ knew the depth of human weakness. 
 
^g,nova\\c^ in literal C^racter. 221 
 
 and lived among men that He might be the 
 perfect Saviour of sinners. These two facts 
 thus held indicate that the ignorance of the 
 God-man's spirit and His appreciation of 
 human need are not contradictory terms, and 
 that there was nothing essential in sin as sin 
 to His earthly ministry. Moreover, it does 
 not seem too much to say that the strength 
 of His character, the uniqueness and beauty 
 of His life, depend upon that ignorance of 
 the Christ in large degree. Jupiter, the head 
 of the Graeco-Roman deities, had his mar- 
 riages, amours, hates, quarrels, petulancies, 
 and personal spites ; Jesus, our Christ, had 
 nothing of the sort in His life on earth or in 
 His heavenly nature. The uniqueness, there- 
 fore, of the Christian Deity in good measure 
 resides in His ignorance. But the ignorance 
 of Christ was more than absence of knowl- 
 edge ; it is really equivalent to knowledge 
 ignored, innocency prized. Christ's life was 
 not one which led Him apart from transgres- 
 sion ; for He lived on an earth defiled, con- 
 taminated, and corrupted by sin ; in a moral 
 atmosphere reeking with it, in a human so- 
 ciety perverted by it, with a human heart 
 open as no other animal organism was to it. 
 But with these surroundings, the blessed Son 
 
222 ttert) Concepts of £)I5 Dogmas. 
 
 of Mary despised it. His ignorance, there- 
 fore, was an ignoring of it all. In other 
 words, it was an ignorance born of resolu- 
 tion. On this hung the sinlessness of the 
 Christ during His earthly ministry, and the 
 loss of it would have been the loss of His 
 function as Saviour, and His capacity to 
 execute the will of God foreordained in the 
 councils of heaven, when the Lamb without 
 spot was slain before the foundation of the 
 world. 
 
 To the question, "What is the difference 
 between Christ and Mohammed, or between 
 Christ and Confucius, or between Christ and 
 Buddha?" we give answer of course. That 
 which must exist between man and the God- 
 man ; but to sum it up in an analogy, we say 
 it is the difference between knowledge of 
 transgression and transgression ignored. 
 
 It is not what we are thrown into that 
 determines our life. Of course there is the 
 circumstance of birth and environment which 
 determines in the rough careers ; but that 
 once settled and a life in a civilized land 
 granted, and the position of the individual 
 being determined so far as the theater of 
 events is concerned, the place of the person 
 amid his surroundings will be fixed by what 
 
3$norance in ^Horal Cl?aracter. 223 
 
 he ignores in the life which he leads. That 
 editor who was congratulated upon the high 
 character which his paper maintained, said 
 in reply that it was not so much what he 
 printed as what he refused to print, that had 
 made his paper what it was. This shows 
 the course of our argument. So in our lives ; 
 what we avoid will accurately determine our 
 life, and the force of virtuous living consid- 
 ered as output from the motive of the human 
 heart resides in what we will not do. For 
 doing, freely assented to, is a pleasure, and 
 what we do for our own sake is not that thing 
 which gives determinative force to careers. 
 The real virtue of living must arise from what 
 we do that is hard and disagreeable, because 
 it is our duty, which we are not often called 
 upon to perform, and in abstaining from doing 
 what we know to be wrong, which is a con- 
 stant quantity in our living. 
 
 The book-makers on our racing tracks are 
 but the machinery of a large element in the 
 life of our time, which finds the sensations of 
 gambling, accentuated by the uncertainties 
 and struggles of the racing turf, of greatest 
 possible pleasure. Aside from those who fol- 
 low the turf, for the money there is in it, is a 
 large class of persons who follow it for pleas- 
 
224 Hem Concepts of £)Ib Dogmas. 
 
 ure. Much depends upon horse and man, the 
 position assigned, the accidents, the skill of 
 the driver, the condition of the beast. And 
 when the interest, which each person must 
 feel when he is only an observer, is heightened 
 by the stake in money which he puts up, 
 there results a full tide of excited enthusi- 
 asm, with its alternation of hopes and fears, 
 which is a pleasurable sensation, attempts 
 to realize which are known as the gambling 
 mania. But I noticed in Prof Waldstein's 
 article, " The Finding of the Tomb of Aris- 
 totle," the following statement apropos his 
 work last year in Eretria : *' However full 
 of moments of thrilling excitement — mo- 
 ments that in their intensity have no equal 
 in any other department of scientific work 
 or sport — the practice of excavation may 
 be, there are days and even weeks of dis- 
 couraging ill success, which sorely try the 
 patience of even the most sanguine and 
 persevering." That is to say, there is an 
 excited enthusiasm in archaeology which is 
 comparable with similar sensations on the 
 turf, so that a man may stand as breathless 
 watching the digging out of a grave 2000 
 years old, as following the plunges of the fa- 
 vorite horse on which he has staked a purse. 
 
39norance in 21Toral (£f?aractcr. 225 
 
 It is obvious that the excitements of the 
 turf are poor preparations for the business 
 of living. He who craves sensations of this 
 sort, and satisfying himself therewith is con- 
 tent, will not usually be turned to the enthu- 
 siasms of His calling and to the sensations 
 of its triumphs. But says some one, "You 
 are confusing business and pleasure." That 
 may be, but the success of each life will after 
 all depend upon its pleasures. There is hardly 
 a business man but would prefer a young 
 person in his employ should be ignorant 
 of the ways of the course, of the slang of the 
 jockey, and the morals of the plunger. Moral 
 health seems to depend upon decisions in 
 such questions. The good man is not he 
 that knoweth everything that the world 
 knoweth, but rather he who ignores much 
 which that worldling prizeth. 
 
 This is the reason why our homes are so 
 blest in all their relations of life ; namely, 
 because there is one place in the world 
 where what is worst is shut out and where 
 souls may live in ignorance of the vice, sin, 
 misery, and wickedness of earth. This ex- 
 plains why it is that the loss of a good home 
 to which the memory may turn, is like the 
 misery of the damned. Parents watch their 
 15 
 
226 txetr> Concepts of £)lb Dogmas. 
 
 children with anxiety and care as they pass 
 from youth to manhood, solicitous that they 
 may on the one hand be ignorant of the 
 worst that is in the world, and on the other, 
 that, thrown in contact with the evil of the 
 world, they may ignore it, and keep their 
 hearts and minds in the love of God. For 
 to know not evil is not enough, but ignorant ; 
 to ignore it, and to refuse its impression on 
 the soul, this is the way to walk with those 
 who make this life a pilgrimage, and not a 
 fatality, and whose lips are laden with the 
 songs of heavenly love. 
 
 Here comes in a criticism of the modern 
 college. Three or four hundred men are 
 severed from the restraints of home, and, in- 
 cited by the sociability of friendship to mild 
 dissipations, are left to find out what the 
 world is. There results a kind of student 
 ruffianism, with its drinking bouts, its fires at 
 night on the campus, its gambling in a small 
 way, and the formation of a convivial set 
 often prominent at the first few reunions after 
 graduation. Then, too, there is that queer 
 thing known as college sentiment, which 
 often interferes with the moral law, such as 
 cheating through examinations or stealing 
 small things as mementoes, whether it be 
 
33norance in IHoral (£I?aracter. 227 
 
 sign boards, or conductor's lanterns, or hotel 
 ink-stands, or curtain-fixtures, or what not. 
 Now the preacher is free to say that he ap- 
 preciates the advantages and uses of an educa- 
 tion, but why is it necessary to get it in any 
 such way ? College men are peculiarly in- 
 fluenced by this idea of seeing what is in 
 the world. It is a mistake. Knowledge is 
 power, that is, of books and facts and men, 
 not knowledge of vice and of the basest dissi- 
 pations. I would pray God to bring into my 
 life no new factors of sin and temptation, 
 that my knowledge may not be so freighted 
 with evil that knowledge itself will become a 
 doubtful boon. 
 
 Say : shall a man choose his house or his 
 horse or his friend, and by that act of choice in 
 each instance refuse at a glance one or more 
 which he does not want, but in moral things 
 wallow through the mire of the world's 
 wickedness in order to know what he does 
 not desire ? It would be as reasonable to go 
 through filthy tenements when looking for a 
 home, or to ride after spavined horses and 
 have one or two die of heaves on the street, 
 when one wanted a family horse, as to wade 
 through the abysmal swinishness of some 
 vicious men to find out whether you desire 
 
228 Heu? Concepts of £)lb Dogmas. 
 
 them for boon companions, or to harbor every 
 wicked thought to see whether that is the 
 kind you will foster. I fear that if we 
 should spend our time in the squalor of the 
 wretched homes of the poor, we should not 
 love the green grass. This is the reason that 
 you drive your carriage through the best 
 streets of the city. That is the reason why 
 philanthropy is such a terrible thing to un- 
 dertake, — because the odor of filth does not 
 leave you when you come to your own table ; 
 and the grime of the place some way, linger- 
 ing on your eyeballs, blurs the beauty of the 
 sunshine, so that only as men love good will 
 they leave heights and go down among the 
 poor. I fear, too, that if you study defective 
 horses, every horse will be alike to you, and 
 you will lose your concept of a perfect horse. 
 So in the domain of holiness and morals ; 
 contaminate yourself by knowing what sin 
 is before you know holiness in its best estate, 
 and you cannot know that holiness when 
 you meet it face to face. For sin is like the 
 basilisk of mythology, which poisons a man 
 by its breath, if perchance he shall come so 
 near. The spotlessness of Mary's Son is the 
 spotlessness for humanity. Therefore know 
 as little of the bad as you can ; poison not in- 
 
'^qnovancz in Ittoral (£f?aracter. 229 
 
 telligence by transgression. Surround thy- 
 self with the good ; ennoble and elevate thy 
 thoughts. Seek not multiplicity of sensations ; 
 choose thy lot. It were better that the eye 
 should be burned out by the strategy of an 
 enemy, than with two eyes to be compelled to 
 see all the world's misery, the full depths of its 
 shame, the awfulness of its crime. For ears 
 that are closed hear not the whisperings of 
 the tempter ; and though we pity the deaf be- 
 cause they do not hear at all, yet all is not 
 lost, and there is contentment in looking at 
 the stars all the deeper and sweeter if one 
 does not hear the dog baying at the moon. 
 It will be the noblest of lives when one can 
 say, " Innocence passed me, and I prepared 
 its way. Goodness was my guest, and I sent 
 him forth unsullied. Love I knew, and re- 
 turned unselfishly. Loathsome Envy, hate- 
 ful Untruth, gluttonous Appetite, snarling 
 Malice I saw, but passed by." 
 
 There is a bale of vices some men carry on 
 their backs to the very edge of the grave. 
 They represent their cast-off vices, which 
 have served them in their day, and which 
 they love. They hope the same grave will 
 cover them both. But Innocency has no lug- 
 gage to weight her down. There are no 
 
230 Hem Concepts of £^I6 Pocstnas. 
 
 scales on her eyes ; she can view the heavenly 
 gates, and bear the rays of celestial light. 
 No grave is welcome to her spirit ; the light 
 of life is in her azure eyes, and the aureole of 
 life is about her head. 
 
THE PATIENCE OF CHRIST. 
 
 ^^ Likewise also the chief priests mocking Him 
 with the scribes and elders said. He saved 
 others, Himself He cannot save.'' — Matt. 
 27 : 41, 42. 
 
 THE last part of the collect for the Sunday 
 next before Easter reads, '' Mercifully 
 grant that we may both follow the example 
 of His patience, and also be made partakers 
 of His resurrection, through the same Jesus 
 Christ our Lord." Apprehension and recog- 
 nition of the patience of our Lord breathes 
 through, and finds admirable statement in, our 
 text. Patience is not resignation ; we are re- 
 signed in submission to another because it is 
 his will ; we are patient with our fate because it 
 is our will. Christ was resigned, and showed 
 it in Gethsemane ; Christ was patient, and 
 showed it all through passion week in His mar- 
 velous self-control. We magnify and try to ap- 
 preciate this day the patience of Jesus Christ. 
 Patience could overleap its bounds, but will 
 not. Resignation sits with folded hands and 
 awaits death. It is a blessed sight, that of 
 resignation when the life nears its close, and 
 
 (231) 
 
232 View doncepts of £)16 Dogmas. 
 
 the task is ended. How sweet to see age 
 thus sit with folded hands, submissive, and 
 giving to every beholder the sense of its own 
 quietude ! But patience suffers that it may- 
 achieve ; the patient persevere. This is the 
 most glorious trait of men of Anglo-Saxon 
 blood. 
 
 In the great storm at Samoa, the English 
 steamer " Calliope," to escape from the harbor 
 must needs pass between the American ship 
 "Trenton" and the reef upon which she was 
 drifting. Four hundred stalwart American 
 seamen face to face with death, witnessing 
 the skillful seamanship of Captain Kane and 
 the courage of the effort, gave three mighty 
 cheers for the English vessel. A London 
 paper said it was '* the expression of an 
 immortal courage. It was distressed man- 
 hood greeting ^ triumphant manhood, the 
 doomed saluting the saved." Yes, and it 
 was one thing more, the tribute of patience 
 to patience, of patience in defeat saluting 
 patience in victory. It is not strange, there- 
 fore, that the Anglo-Saxon race should be 
 most impressed with the patience of Christ. 
 We call it His .manliness. It was patience 
 under persecution which led our fathers into 
 the wilderness, forsaking the comforts of 
 
CI}c patience of Cl?nst. 233 
 
 civilization ; it explains why the plantation 
 at Jamestown failed, while the plantation at 
 Plymouth lived. 
 
 I notice that the patience of Christ was of 
 the most elevated type. In human life there 
 are two consummate acts of destiny, the en- 
 vironment into which we are born, and the 
 hour and circumstances of our death. At 
 the birth of Christ we do not think of the 
 Godhead as hushed at the instant of the in- 
 carnation, but rather of an awestruck earth 
 receiving the Prince of Peace. On the other 
 hand, we can but believe that at the cruci- 
 fixion, heaven and its hosts hung upon the 
 minute when the Son of God entered upon 
 His death agony. Could the Father witness 
 unmoved the Son's acceptance of the full 
 measure of His humanity, even the death of 
 the body ? And if the Father lost the equi- 
 poise of the eternities in those moments 
 when the sufferer said, " I thirst," or when 
 He forgave the impenitent thief, or when He 
 cried with a loud voice, '' My God, my God, 
 why hast Thou forsaken me ? " or when with 
 the words, '* Father, into Thy hands I com- 
 mend my spirit," He gave up the Ghost, and 
 the veil of the temple was rent in twain ; 
 must we not believe that the shadow cast 
 
234 Hert? Concepts of £)lb Dogmas. 
 
 by His destiny of death, .ever drawing a little 
 nearer, even as the shadow of the dial passes 
 lower and lower while the sun dips in the west 
 and the night is at hand, was ever upon His 
 spirit, and deepened as the hour was come ? 
 He foreknew His coming, if scripture is to 
 be believed, and he came prepared for the 
 body ; but so do we all. 
 
 '•Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting ; 
 
 The soul that rises with us, our life's star, 
 Hath had elsewhere its setting, 
 And Cometh from afar : 
 
 Not in entire forgetfulness, 
 
 And not in utter nakedness ; 
 But trailing clouds of glory do we come 
 
 From God, who is our home." 
 
 On the other hand, Christ knew that He 
 must die, so do you ; and Christ went forward 
 with somewhat of shrinking, so do we ; and 
 the life was stricken out of Him, even as it 
 must be out of us. As He left behind the 
 glory of His patience as a legacy to human 
 kind for all ages, so let us be possessed of the 
 same self-constancy, that we may illustrate 
 glorious examples of patience after the same 
 blessed type ; for the fruit of Jesus' life was 
 
Cf?e patience of C!}rtst. 235 
 
 not three tours amid two hundred village 
 towns of Galilee, or His three passovers at 
 Jerusalem, or everything He did from the 
 manger to the grave ; but the true fruitage of 
 His life was His passion of patience, the 
 master-motive of His career, which might 
 have been seen had we been there in every 
 nervous step from the judgment hall of 
 Pontius Pilate to Mount Calvary, and which 
 culminated in the death-agony. The pa- 
 tience of Jesus must have been solely in view 
 of His death. He knew His future, for He 
 prophesied concerning it, both the resurrec- 
 tion and the ascension, including His office of 
 intercession. His ultimate triumph was a 
 solace for His present humiliation. Heaven 
 to Him was like heaven for us, a present solace 
 because it held hopes of future comfort. As 
 the soldiers of the late war bore the fatiguing 
 march under the hot Southern sun, or mined 
 and counter-mined at seiges, delved in breast- 
 works, charged into craters, fought with the 
 ferocity of beasts, and at some news of great 
 victory won, transported, broke into cheers 
 and disorderly enthusiasm, not because they 
 were resigned, but because they were patient 
 in view of the promised peace toward which 
 
236 Hen? Concepts of £)lb Dogmas. 
 
 they were struggling and for which they were 
 pining, so we look forward, buoyed by the 
 patience of hope. 
 
 We love to think of ourselves as sol- 
 diers of the cross, for whom the never-dying 
 laurels of victory are already won, and great 
 and glorious blessings of peace are assured. 
 For this reason we seize most eagerly the 
 promises of the Master concerning the bless- 
 edness of the future life. The promises, 
 however, cannot do away with the sharp- 
 ness of death. That the promises are an 
 assistance to the sick, is undoubted, for they 
 fill the mind where otherwise there would 
 be a dull monotony of pain. That the Holy 
 Ghost sustains the dying, and often in in- 
 stances of great and true faith fills them in 
 the death struggle with the ravishment 
 of hope prematurely fulfilled, is undoubted 
 in the mind of the preacher, but death is 
 death ; the grave must have mastery over 
 the flesh. 
 
 A maxim of the old Stoics runs : "Out of 
 the universe from the beginning everything 
 which happens has been apportioned and 
 spun out to thee ; " and again, ** Whatever 
 may happen to thee, it was prepared for thee 
 from all eternity ; and the entwining of 
 
^t?e patience of (£l?rt5t. 237 
 
 causes was from all eternity spinning the 
 thread of thy being, and of that which is 
 incident to it." But this is not the Christian 
 conception of life ; we believe indeed that 
 God's plans for us begin from the past ages 
 of eternity, but destiny in the sense of un- 
 controllable and uncontrolled fate is evi- 
 denced in only two things, our birth and our 
 death. We are compelled to assume the 
 inevitable ; for one to say that he hates his 
 life is nothing strange, but he must bear it. 
 Now while death is under control in the 
 sense that we may take our own lives, this 
 is so abnormal an experience that for all 
 practical purposes we may assume all desire 
 to live. The man desires to live, but he is 
 fated to perish, and even the suicide can- 
 not escape from life save by the doorways 
 of death. This inevitable dissolution of the 
 body, the ultimate enemy alike of wealth, 
 ambition, power, poverty, need, and sin, was 
 the heritage of Jesus from His humanity. 
 
 When we are sick, we send for the physi- 
 cian, and tax all his resources on our behalf; 
 we summon up the scattered forces of the 
 will, and make ourselves ready for a great 
 stand ; we turn to God, the acknowledged 
 arbiter of our destiny, and strive to carry the 
 
238 Xlcw doncepts of £)16 Dogmas. 
 
 citadel of heaven by the storm of our peti- 
 tions beating against its walls. And this or 
 that may avail for the nonce ; but it is only 
 a respite, we must again hear the beatings 
 of the wings of the angel of death. Grant 
 could win at Appomattox, but he could not 
 win against his last great enemy in the cot- 
 tage at Mount M'Gregor. But there are 
 many instances which seem to indicate that 
 a fixed fate is certain to us. The precau- 
 tions of cowardice often bring the victim but 
 nearer to death. The hero of thirty battles, 
 just passed through, dies in his bed. Emin 
 Pasha, rescued by Stanley after years of 
 isolation in the Equatorial Provinces of Af- 
 rica, at an expense to the British govern- 
 ment of $150,000, falls from a balcony at 
 Bagamoyo at the banquet of his friends, and 
 nearly perishes. • Gen. Dan. E. Sickles, to- 
 day prominent in New York politics, I re- 
 member well as he came home from the war, 
 having lost a leg in the cause, and my youth- 
 ful blood thrilled to hear of his hairbreadth 
 escapes, of the horses shot from under him, 
 and his wounds at Gettysburg. *' A thou- 
 sand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand 
 at thy right hand, but it shall not come nigh 
 thee." 
 
C^e Patience of (£t?rtst. 239 
 
 As therefore this thing is so often beyond 
 us and a matter of God's decree, it surely 
 behooveth us to meet it without fear ; but 
 then who can ? No human being that loves 
 life and many days can honestly say he does 
 not fear to die. Each would ask, if it were 
 imminent, a few moments for preparation, 
 and those few minutes would be the best of 
 our lives ; each least bit of devotion and 
 goodness in us would rise to the surface and 
 be skimmed. 
 
 A just appreciation of Christ's patience can 
 only be had when we consider that He knew 
 the end from the beginning, and did not 
 have the resource of uncertainty which is 
 the privilege of us all. He knew His time, 
 and during passion week stood within its 
 shadow. He knew that nothing could save 
 Him. ** The Son of man must suffer many 
 things at the hands of the elders, and on the 
 third day be raised from the dead." Like a 
 criminal under sentence of death He could 
 say, '* I have five days to live, or four days 
 to live, or three," and witness the ever-nar- 
 rowing marge of time this side eternity, with 
 no buffer of uncertainty to break its force. 
 Our stand against death is bad enough, but 
 His was worse ; alone He stood with the cer- 
 
240 Hetr> Concepts of £>lb Dogmas. 
 
 tainty of His destiny. Paul and his chain are 
 but insignificant compared with Christ and 
 His cross. No man on a forlorn hope ever 
 bore his perilous mission half so jauntily as 
 He with His eye illumined by the hope set 
 before Him, in order that He might save. 
 
 A newspaper criticism of a painting by 
 Mr. Alexander Pope says: ** The subject is 
 chosen from Bulwer's scene in the ' Last 
 Days of Pompeii/ when Glaucus is about to 
 confront the lion in the arena, and when 
 premonitions of the grand disturbance of nat- 
 ure make the beast indifferent to the lesser 
 conflict prepared for the sport of the popu- 
 lace. The chief interest of the painting very 
 properly centers upon the lion, since it was the 
 instinct of the noble beast which changed the 
 plot of the story, and which acted as a warn- 
 ing to the great, throng, intimating how small 
 were men's jealousies and passions before 
 the tremendous force which hurled the city 
 unto destruction. Mr. Pope has endowed^ 
 the lion with a grand indifference to the little 
 part which he was set to play with Glaucus. 
 Instead of facing his opponent, he has turned 
 to look up toward the flame and smoke just 
 issuing from the mountain ; and his action is 
 so vivid that, although the mountain is not 
 
Cl?e patience of (£I?nst 241 
 
 seen in the painting, the spectator is aware of 
 a serious disturbance upon the nature of the 
 apprehensive beast. His head is raised, his 
 front paw is not placed as firmly as usual, and 
 his whole attitude expresses timidity without 
 a loss of nobility and grandeur." 
 
 So all through passion week the Christ 
 amidst the turmoil faced the great event to 
 come, not with timid foot, but with a mien so 
 fraught with the consciousness of destiny 
 soon to be fulfilled, that His attitude of mind 
 and heart obscured all else. What is Annas, 
 or Caiaphas, or Pontius Pilate, or Mary and 
 Peter and James, the Roman centurion, or the 
 howling mob ? 
 
 "Almighty and everlasting God, who, of 
 Thy tender love toward mankind, hast sent 
 Thy Son, our Saviour Jesus Christ, to take upon 
 Him our flesh, and to suffer death upon the 
 cross that all mankind should follow the ex- 
 ample of His great humility ; mercifully grant, 
 that we may both follow the example of His 
 patience, and also be made partakers of His 
 resurrection ; through the same Jesus Christ 
 our Lord. Amen." 
 
 i6 
 
THE BASIS OF PRAYER. 
 
 *' Ye worship that which ye know not : we wor- 
 ship that which we know.'''' — yohn 4 : 22. 
 
 TO worship in the Christian sense is to per- 
 form acts of adoration ; while to adore is, 
 first, to pay special and marked honors to 
 God, and second, to regard Him with the ut- 
 most esteem, affection, and respect. Heathen 
 men lay less stress upon love than do Chris- 
 tians, and found their worship upon power 
 and the fear of power. We must recognize 
 that comprehension of power is essential to 
 adoration, but that it is not the only attribute 
 necessary thereto. Who could worship an 
 impotent God } It would be possible to love 
 God as the lover adores his fiancee — sim- 
 ply as another person of agreeable quali- 
 ties, and perchance with a hearty sense of 
 comradeship. 
 
 That, however, is not worship ; God in such 
 circumstances is not above patronage. That 
 Christian familiarity in prayer, momentarily 
 forgetful of its disparity with the Infinite, often 
 drops into descriptions of the Deity, is due to 
 (242) 
 
^{?e Basis of prayer. 243 
 
 this fact, as if God did not know Himself. 
 Again it often describes its own case with 
 minuteness, as if the Godhead could not see 
 all the thoughts and purposes of the heart 
 without a microscope. And too often the in- 
 tellect exhausts itself in a magnificent argu- 
 ment, as if to an unwilling mind, and ends 
 with an eloquent peroration both ecstatic and 
 bewildering. From birth to death. Am I not 
 a dependent being.'' Can I breathe without 
 His sustenance .? Can I live without His 
 care ? Can I die except as He hath ordained ? 
 With such constant dependence upon Him, 
 man is ill-prepared, unless his eyes are 
 closed to his real situation in God's world, to 
 assume that he is sufficient unto himself in all 
 things. " The avalanche is starting ; put 
 down your staves through the snow-bank, 
 hold for your lives ! " the guide may shout 
 back to Alpine climbers below him ; and 
 with an involuntary terror each one clenches 
 his teeth and strikes the iron deeper. The 
 next day, safe in his hospice, each recounts 
 the dangers passed through and pathetically 
 describes the instant when the soul was be- 
 leagured by terrors. And shall the moral 
 nature thus wince under the external fact of 
 a higher law, and be unmoved if man shall 
 
244 Xlcw Concepts of £)Ib Dogmas. 
 
 know that God to whom the avalanche is no 
 more than a snowball which boys have rolled 
 in the damp snows to the foot of the hill, is 
 moving against him, holding him reprobate 
 and offensive ? 
 
 Suppose a man from another planet, or a 
 holy angel of God from heaven, should come 
 to earth and learn of men ? In Africa, on the 
 grass lands about the great lakes, he might 
 find the Wahuma an Ethiopian or Abyssinian 
 stock, and among their varied pursuits of 
 peace and war he would notice an egg or 
 banana or kid skin placed at the door of a 
 miniature temple always found at the en- 
 trance of the group of family huts which are 
 surrounded by a wattled fence. "Then, too, 
 every person," says Henry M. Stanley, ''wears 
 a ch:arm around the neck, or arm, or waist ;" 
 the one being a temple for the abode of a 
 dread deity, the other a protection from su- 
 perhuman personalities who otherwise might 
 maim, disease, or destroy. Or suppose the 
 foot should first tread on Indian soil, there 
 would be found altars before shrines in which 
 the gods do dwell, altars of sacrifice unto su- 
 pernatural spirits who are sometimes given 
 image within in such grotesque form as shall 
 shadow forth his unusual and hence god-like 
 
Cf^e Basts of Prayer. 245 
 
 qualities. "Every town in the most relig- 
 ious province of India" is filled with temples, 
 and every hamlet has its shrine. The na- 
 tional reverence of the Hindus for holy places 
 has been for ages concentrated on "the city 
 of Puri, sacred to Vishnu, the lord of the 
 world." The same is true of all antiquity. 
 Hardly a race of men is to be found that 
 does not show a worshipful spirit based upon 
 consciousness of dependence. 
 
 From man's situation he argues with only 
 such revelation as is given him in a state of 
 nature, that there is a source of life and 
 power in all the earth about him. To assist 
 in making the existence of his deity real 
 he fashions the idol, and at length cannot 
 see why the wood or stone which he has 
 placed in the shrine is not the vehicle of the 
 God who was worshiped in the shrine before 
 the idol was fashioned, and who, becoming 
 identified with the place, he thinks must be 
 identified with the visible token of him fash- 
 ioned as best the skillful hands of men about 
 can create. 
 
 You see the degrees of approach to a con- 
 summate idolatry. God the all-powerful is 
 in the world, its first cause and sustainer, 
 a certain portion of which, His handiwork, 
 
246 HetP Concepts of £)Ib Dogmas, 
 
 may be set aside to His worship. On this we 
 will build a temple. As this is the place of 
 prayer and sacrifice, it becomes holy ; next 
 the deity identified with the spot comes to 
 be regarded as the deity on the spot ; then 
 the idol in the temple becomes the object 
 of the sacrifice without the temple, and god 
 and idol are one to remotest generations. 
 But behind it all and fundamental thereto 
 is the consciousness of dependence on the 
 part of the creature. 
 
 There are many reasons why you and I are 
 conscious of mystery behind life and nature 
 due to the teachings of science, which has be- 
 come a part of common knowledge ; but we 
 are presenting those feelings common to 
 human nature, which the savage recognizes 
 in the bloody rites of his heathen ritual, and 
 which a heritage of our humanity are accentu- 
 ated by the reflective powers of the intellect 
 using the facts of our nineteenth century en- 
 dowment of knowledge. I think it is for this 
 reason that men pray : they can get along 
 without prayer, but man was made to pray, 
 and prays as naturally as he breathes. Sticks 
 and stones cannot pray, the brute beasts do 
 not pray ; therefore how excellent is our her- 
 itage. It is as a testimony to this native en- 
 
CE?e Basts of prayer. 247 
 
 dowment we quote the Rig Veda, the psalms 
 of the Indian branch of our Aryan stock. 
 " Whosoever scoffs at the prayer which we 
 have made, may hot plagues come upon him, 
 may the sky burn up that hater of Brahmans." 
 Three births the Indian Aryans taught, — 
 the birth into the world, the regeneration 
 consequent upon religious duties, and the 
 translation to the kingdom above when fire 
 setting free the spirit, the body returned to 
 the earth whence it had been derived. Then 
 the friends standing around recited the words 
 of the ritual, '' As for his unborn part, do 
 Thou, Lord, quicken it with Thy heat ; let 
 Thy flame and Thy brightness quicken it ; 
 convey it to the world of the righteous." 
 
 There is something infinitely touching 
 about a person in prayer. The worship of 
 orientals was ordinarily expressed by kneel- 
 ing and prostrating one's self before God. 
 It must be an affecting sight when the Mus- 
 sulman unrolls his carpet, faces toward the 
 East, and prostrates himself before the Su- 
 preme. I noticed in the Century for No- 
 vember, 1890, a picture of a Buddhist priest 
 already sixteen hundred miles on his journey, 
 with eleven hundred more to cover before he 
 should reach Lh'asa ; every two steps of the 
 
248 Xlcw Concepts of £)Ib Dogmas. 
 
 way he set down the miniature altar, with its 
 nosegays at either end, and its three burning 
 joss sticks, and prostrating in the supposed 
 direction of Lh'asa, did reverence to God, 
 not knowing, perchance, like the Samaritan, 
 whom he worshiped, yet his act of devotion 
 is a silent testimony of the creature's sensi- 
 bility of his dependence upon a higher power. 
 This is man bowing down before God. If I 
 should see him thus cheerfully devout, I 
 should feel like kneeling with him ; trusting 
 that I prayed more intelligently than he, yet 
 conscious of the same fundamental impres- 
 sions of my relations to the unseen Deity. 
 
 Once I did enter into devotions in just 
 this way, in the Notre Dame at Montreal. 
 It was a stormy day ; men were praying all 
 over the house, silent and motionless, rever- 
 ent in mien, and devoutly giving the sign of 
 the cross, and bowing before altar, image, 
 and picture. I said, '' I am a praying man 
 too. I care not much for those great puffed- 
 out, blood-burdened hearts under glass cases, 
 with little red globes strung along the gas 
 pipes in semi-circle above them, or those 
 vases filled with dowdy artificial flowers ; 
 but there is an incense of devotion going 
 up, there is a recognition of the oversoul 
 
CI?e Basts of prayer. 249 
 
 and human dependence. However great the 
 superstition, there is worship. I will worship 
 too, believing that God who seeth the heart 
 of Papist and Protestant alike, will be well 
 pleased." 
 
 You all will remember the wonderful pict- 
 ure called the Angelus. The attitude of that 
 peasant man and woman is an attitude of 
 prayer. In the distance a steeple rises above 
 the horizon, but they are not listening to the 
 silver tone of bells. You need not be told 
 they are engaged in worship. The legend 
 that ascribes the bell note as the signal for 
 their devotion, is not needed in interpreta- 
 tion. Whether bells are sounding in their 
 ears, it is no matter ; they heed them not ; 
 their souls are enwrapt. Consciousness of 
 dependence has obtained recognition for a 
 divine Guest, who will not turn His back in 
 the half-opened door. All other sounds are 
 banished, all other sights are dim ; one pres- 
 ence illumines two hearth-rooms, and two 
 spirits are prostrate in adoration. One 
 almost hears the words, ''Put off thy shoes 
 from thy feet, for the place where thou 
 standest is holy ground." The hundreds of 
 thousands who have stood before that bit of 
 canvass twenty-two inches in its widest part, 
 
250 Hett) (£oncepts of £)Ib Dogmas. 
 
 and have lingered that its impression might 
 grow beyond first sight effects, have sat con- 
 scious that an impression unusual in this sen- 
 sual, material age, has been infused into the 
 dull pigments by the consecrated genius of 
 the painter, so that they have become vocal 
 with the thoughts and sentiments of a human 
 heart prostrate before the throne of the King 
 of kings. 
 
 The atheist, with the spiritual and moral 
 dullard, can only say, " What can this mean .?" 
 but goes away touched on a side of nature 
 never before awakened. To them, however, 
 who have known the way of peace but have 
 neglected the means of grace, and so have 
 not walked in its ways, it is a sermon which 
 preaches louder than a preacher's voice and 
 more powerful than his pen. ''Peace," he 
 saith, " which others have and I have not, is 
 found by the prayerful peasant who acknowl- 
 edges God, being conscious of the strength 
 of the right arm of the Omnipotent, and of 
 his own dependence thereon." 
 
 To the weary and tired there is a ministry 
 in worship. For the tempted and the sick 
 there is a trance which redeems the spirit 
 from the dominion of the body, and makes 
 a dying bed as soft as downy pillows are. 
 
tri?e Basts of prayer, 251 
 
 Martyr after martyr gave up his life in the 
 flame and smoke of death at the stake, and 
 thought not of his pains, but only of the 
 revelation of the Lord Jesus to his eyes, 
 before whom his spirit prostrated itself on 
 its knees, a service which the cords binding 
 to the stake could not restrain. Huss died 
 with the words of the supplication of the 
 mass upon his lips, *' O Lord, have mercy 
 upon us." Green's shorter history of the 
 English people says of the Marian persecu- 
 tion, '* Rogers, . . . one of the foremost 
 among the Protestant preachers, died bath- 
 ing his hands in the flame, as if it had been 
 in cold water. Even the commonest lives 
 gleamed for a moment into poetry at the 
 stake. ' Pray for me,' a boy, William Brown, 
 who had been brought home to Brentwood 
 to suffer, asked of the bystanders round. *I 
 will pray no more for thee,' one of them re- 
 plied, 'than I will pray for a dog.' 'Then,' 
 said William, * Son of God, shine upon me,' 
 and immediately the sun in the elements 
 shone out of a dark cloud so full in his face 
 that he was constrained to look another way." 
 To us who are Christians has been vouch- 
 safed fullness of knowledge. Through the 
 Jews has come one Christ, the revealer in His 
 
252 Xlzw Concepts of £)Ib Dogmas. 
 
 person of the mind, heart, and temper of 
 God. One with all men in conscious need 
 of worship, we of all men have fullness of 
 knowledge alone shared by the Christian 
 centuries. Let us worship God less and less 
 as we may good naturedly treat a neighbor 
 or friend of whom we ask a kindness with 
 good will and something of fawning ; but 
 rather with consciousness of dependence in 
 manly recognition of the oversoul, let us 
 worship as the prelude to petition, as con- 
 comitant to service, and as the end of all 
 striving, God's recognition of us being our 
 hope and our glory. 
 
THE LIFE BURDEN A PRAYER. 
 
 ^'' Rememberme^ O my Lord, and wipe not out 
 my good deeds that I have done for the house 
 of my God and for the offices thereof. ^^ — 
 Neh. J J : 14. 
 
 NEHEMIAH, you will remember, was the 
 great leader who brought back the fifty 
 thousand exiles from Persia, and re-estab- 
 lished the Israelitish name in its ancient 
 seats. When the walls had been rebuilt 
 about Jerusalem, the prime necessity for trade 
 and personal security being accomplished, he 
 gave himself to the extirpation of heathen 
 practices among the people, and to the re- 
 establishment of the pure worship of Jehovah. 
 Three times in this chapter, and once else- 
 where, he asks God's remembrance of him 
 for what he had done. These were the 
 climactic acts of his career ; he had gained 
 the permission of the mighty Cyrus, and per- 
 formed the long march at the head of the 
 emigrants, refortified the city, and done all 
 that he might bring a transplanted nation 
 and priesthood back into impact with the 
 heavenly King. In view of these last acts 
 
 (253) 
 
254 Hen? Concepts of £)Ib Dogmas. 
 
 crowning his whole labor, his cry is, " Re- 
 member me, O my God, for good." This is a 
 breathing out of the heart of the man. The 
 labors of a lifetime he offers up ; conscious of 
 his singleness of purpose and of the service 
 he has been able to render, he asks that his 
 works may plead for him, and that the great 
 acts of his life may stand as memorials of 
 what he did, each one a reminder to the eter- 
 nal Spirit and appealing to the love of the 
 divine Heart. 
 
 " Ah ! " says some one, " Nehemiah is lay- 
 ing down on the counter the price he would 
 pay for himself, as a slave under the old 
 regimen might redeem his freedom with the 
 wages of his slavery. And as the first words 
 of bill of sale of the freedman granted 
 mastery over his body unto himself, so with 
 similar conception the man of God is pur- 
 chasing himself of his God for his own selfish 
 ends, is gaining mastery for himself through 
 purchase, ' Remember, O Lord, my works, 
 and grant me good.'" Now the preacher is 
 aware that no man is equal to the task of 
 his own redemption, and that it is through 
 God's love that we are saved, and that our 
 justification must be through the merits of 
 a matchless personality. But justification 
 
Cl^e Ctfe Burben a prayer. 255 
 
 by faith is one thing, and the return of love 
 by the creature justified is another. It is 
 one thing to rest assured of the pardon of 
 God, and another thing to accept that par- 
 don in penitence and taking heart to mould 
 one's character over after the model of Him 
 who needed no repentance. This second 
 act of putting one's self right with God is 
 by no means conflicting with that conscious- 
 ness of personal ill-desert and acceptance of 
 God's scheme of redemption. This attitude 
 of Nehemiah may be called Old Testament 
 legalism, or salvation by works, or any other 
 name ; to me it appears to be a noble peti- 
 tion, worthy of any devout nature, ancient 
 or modern. 
 
 A Christian woman, speaking of missions 
 in my hearing, said, " The burden of the 
 Christian as one advances is changed into 
 prayer," and then corrected herself adding, 
 *' Rather, the burden of the Christian is 
 changed into wings." The first statement 
 had made its impression upon me, and I 
 could not forget it. Ah! yes, I said, I've 
 seen it so many a time. A mother, to re- 
 claim an erring child, will pamper his ap- 
 petite with food to his taste ; will gratify 
 his whim in little things about the house ; 
 
256 Xltvo Concepts of £)Ib Dogmas. 
 
 will plead with father that he may not be so 
 stern with the boy ; with dear, affectionate 
 lips will coax the wanderer, will think of him 
 much, however recreant may be his life, and 
 will pray for him with travail of heart. Does 
 not the burden of that life become trans- 
 formed by the load of its passion, the passion 
 of a weak human heart ? Does not its bur- 
 den, so willingly borne, become a mightier 
 prayer than any faltering petition that the 
 mother heart can frame from tremulous lips ? 
 Does not the life with its burden avail more 
 mightily with God than the mere prayers of 
 a million men ? Christ is set forth in the 
 Scriptures as at the right hand of the 
 Majesty on high, our intercessor. Do you 
 think that the nature of His intercession 
 is continual request for our help.'* or do 
 our prayers receive the indorsement of His 
 wounded hands and side, seals of His passion 
 and sign manuals of His burden of redemp- 
 tion, eternally made a prayer, and never lack- 
 ing in potency to the heart of the Father ? 
 
 There was a general in the East who 
 enlisted in the war of the Rebellion, was 
 frightfully maimed, and received his dis- 
 charge from the hospital a mere trunk, as I 
 remember the story. He soon sent word to 
 
tr^e £ife Burben a Prayer, 
 
 257 
 
 his fiance, releasing her from her pledge, 
 which release she promptly refused. You see 
 it was not the wording of his petition, but 
 the burden of his life, that made the prayer 
 which touched. She said there was more in 
 him as he was than in any man she knew. If 
 human kind are thus moved, is it too much to 
 believe that God is won more by the master- 
 motive of a life which culminates in a shat- 
 tered body, and of which this is a witness of 
 unspeakable power, mightier far than any 
 voiced aspiration of the heart in the lip-serv- 
 ice prayer ? We had a boy in college who 
 lived across the river and walked in to his 
 recitations. Nobody that knew him could 
 help respecting him, but so much was ex- 
 pected of him in manual labor on the farm, 
 and he scrimped so much on clothing, that 
 we thought him rather a light weight. He 
 did not have the chance to study as the 
 rest of us did. As he progressed in his 
 professional studies, we were conscious of 
 a vast development, and in the flower of 
 his youth and culture he gave himself (the 
 deacon's best gift to the Lord) to Foreign 
 Missions, and was assigned to Mexico. Be- 
 fore fully acclimated, while worn down with 
 his studies, he took the small-pox and died, 
 17 
 
258 HctD Concepts of £)I6 Dogmas. 
 
 As the spirit of the boy left his swollen, pu- 
 trid flesh, would you call it legalism or work 
 righteousness had he exclaimed, " Remember 
 me, O my God, concerning this, and wipe not 
 out my good deeds that I have done for the 
 house of my God and the offices thereof" ? 
 Could not his poor body, as representing the 
 burden of his life, speak louder than all his 
 prayers, had he lived a thousand years in a 
 monastery apart and given his whole strength 
 to prayer and devotion ? 
 
 We pray by choice, that is for chance ob- 
 jects. We happen to think of somebody, and 
 word of petition follows. We surprise our- 
 selves often in the new objects that of a sud- 
 den appear to us for prayer and the persons 
 for whom we pray. Now no prayer is lost, 
 and I would encourage you to pray irration- 
 ally, for we must pray all ways, with all 
 manner of weakness and spiritual poverty, 
 that we may enter into the true blessedness 
 of prayer ; but do not lay too much stress upon 
 it. When sportsmen shoot aimlessly, they 
 shoot into the air. When you pray aimlessly, 
 you often pray from feeling, and never coun- 
 ter to the spirit of your life, pray as you would 
 not have prayed had you thought upon it. 
 Which prayer shall God answer, the prayer of 
 
CI?e £tfe Burben a prayer. 259 
 
 the lip, or the prayer of the life's burden ? 
 Which do you want answered ? Is it not the 
 prayer of the life-burden, after all ? And as 
 you stand to-day looking back upon your 
 life, do not the failures to answer chance pe- 
 titions seem trifling one way or the other ? 
 Do you not know that the final petition, the 
 asking of your deepest desire, bearing the 
 sum of all your petitions, their very sub- 
 stance, is found in the burden of the life? 
 
 We may pray for our wants, which seem 
 as multitudinous and varied as those con- 
 tained in the advertising columns of the 
 daily press, and pray for our needs, all of 
 which are solid, real things to us, and there 
 may be no more doubt about our truly de- 
 siring the things asked than of our neces- 
 sity ; but such petitions, emphatically ours, 
 inconsiderately ours, in which we ask wealth 
 for ourselves and no one else, health for us 
 and our children, for the gratification of our 
 ambitions, that our pleasures may be unob- 
 structed and receive the blessing of Heaven, 
 couched in worshipful and respectful terms 
 toward God, they are importunate and 
 Scriptural, for they follow the rule, but 
 do we expect them answered ? There is 
 every human need in them but soul hun- 
 
260 Heip Concepts of £)Ib Dogmas. 
 
 ger, every objective but the good of others, 
 every passion but the passion for holiness, 
 every moral thing but equity, every love 
 but love for Christ, simple and sincere ; 
 and such a clamor for blessing we call 
 prayer ! And it is a kind of prayer. But 
 if my soul is in peril, and eternal destiny 
 hangs upon mortal issues for me, God grant 
 that my life may be involved within the 
 sphere of action of another life in which such 
 lip-service has only a minor place, and the 
 life is a constant burden of doing good ; 
 when the ruling passion is the travail of 
 Christ for the rescue of a human soul to 
 ways of life, and when the soul is given to 
 paths of duty, and God is great beyond com- 
 pare to one consciousness, and His purpose 
 supreme law to one will. For I know that 
 such a person, whether humble or great, 
 hath power with God for greater than lip- 
 service, the burden is transformed into 
 prayer, a constant reminder of a motive such 
 as dwells in angels' bosoms. I believe such 
 a person can alter the course of Orion and 
 the Pleiades, change the movement of human 
 destinies by his own petition, and by his own 
 prayers alone transform those human socie- 
 
CF}e £tfe Burben a prayer. 261 
 
 ties we call nations, and lift up all civilization 
 nearer God. 
 
 Of the salvation of the individual by a life 
 burden made a prayer, I cite the rescue of 
 John B. Gough from a drunkard's cups 
 through the prayful endeavors of his wife. 
 Of the salvation of a nation by the life burden 
 made a prayer, I cite the revolution of Scot- 
 land by John Knox. Of the uplifting of 
 human civilization by a life-burden made a 
 prayer, I cite the wonderful influence of 
 Christopher Columbus, through the discovery 
 of America, upon European Christendom. As 
 Columbus lay in the hold of the ship, return- 
 ing a captive to the Spain he had endowed, 
 the victim of ingratitude, oppressed and over- 
 thrown by a stupendous wickedness and 
 malice, I believe that by reason of the burden 
 he so pathetically and proudly bore it be- 
 came transformed into a petition of the 
 mighty soul that moved the heart of God ; 
 and that when, in addition to the mute peti- 
 tion of the life, Columbus prayed,^ all Heaven 
 heard the whisperings of human lips, and 
 
 iQf Columbus we are told: "So strict in religious 
 matters, that for fasting and saying all the divine office, 
 he might be thought professed in some religious order." 
 
262 ttem Concepts of £)Ib Dogmas. 
 
 Christ saw the travail of His soul and was 
 satisfied, and the Father and the Son were at 
 one with each other. Which was the greater 
 honor, to discover a new world, or to have 
 the burden of the life changed into prayer? 
 Which ? 
 
A VALID REDEMPTION. 
 
 *♦ As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilder- 
 ness, even so must the Son of man be lifted 
 up : that whosoever believe th may ifi Him 
 have eternal life:' — John 3 : 14, IS- 
 
 A FEW years ago, in one of the large fac- 
 tory towns in New Hampshire, a little 
 French boy met with an accident which 
 necessitated medical assistance. His skull 
 was stoven in at a given point ; during the 
 painful operations of the surgeon he sat 
 unmovable and calm, without an anaesthetic 
 and with nothing to help him bear the 
 anguish save only a diminutive cross and the 
 image on it, rude but suggestive of Him 
 who bore our sorrows in His own body 
 on the tree. That medical operator was 
 a sincere and devoted Protestant, and his 
 assistant, a man of similar views, shared his 
 principal's conviction that the boy's faith 
 helped him in his extremity. 
 
 Protestant theology also uses this symbol 
 as a stimulus and help to man in his ex- 
 tremity. We point the eyes of the dying to 
 the cross which was raised upon Calvary, 
 
 (263) 
 
264 HetD Concepts of £)Ib Dogmas. 
 
 that it may be to them like the brazen ser- 
 pent in the wilderness to the stricken Israel- 
 ite, — a source of healing and recovery. We 
 do not offer the crucifix, because we fear 
 that it may become an object of idolatry ; 
 that instead of finding in the smaller cross 
 a remembrance of the true cross, it may 
 come to be the all, an object of reverence 
 and a fixture accessory to the incantations 
 of devotion, in the prayers of the rosary. 
 We say with Knox, in his Scottish fervor. 
 It is a bit of painted wood ; but we wel- 
 come the faith that survives the appeal to 
 the external senses, and which, beyond the 
 sympathy which the image of suffering may 
 produce, has in its consciousness that cross 
 of Calvary, as an object of faith. 
 
 This may be readily explained. You pass 
 a person suffering bodily anguish, and your 
 heart goes out to him, but that is not an act 
 of the religious sensibilities ; true, the man 
 or woman without pity is less religious than 
 the person with it, but there is no distinct 
 moral impression which makes a man hate 
 sin or brings him into peace with God. Thus 
 in so far as the crucifix brings up to the mind 
 merely the bodily suffering of the Lord Jesus, 
 it is no help to faith ; but in so far as that 
 
U Valxb Hebemptton. 265 
 
 crucifix or your thought and my thought of 
 Calvary pervades the consciousness with the 
 idea of Christ on the cross as a sacrifice of the 
 sins of humanity, or as an atonement by 
 means of which reconciliation is possible be- 
 tween God and man, or as the most potent 
 example of the moral power of self-abnega- 
 tion, constrained by the power of which 
 exemplar men in all ages are led to resist 
 "even unto blood, striving against sin," in 
 so far the cross becomes what Jesus said it 
 should in our text, namely, a means of the 
 purification of man's heart, of the transforma- 
 tion of man's motive, of the salvation of man's 
 soul. This is the bed rock of Christendom ; 
 here is to be found all that is worth having in 
 the old church or the new. 
 
 We do not deny that immortality is a great 
 doctrine, but immortality hinges on the 
 death of Christ ; we do not deny that ethics 
 is a great topic, but we say the highest ethics 
 and the best morality must recognize in the 
 suffering Redeemer the profoundest moral 
 experience ever witnessed upon earth. Hu- 
 man philosophy attains its highest levels 
 only when it explains the relation of the 
 Crucified to the redemption of humanity, 
 justifying the claim of theology to be es- 
 
266 ttetD Concepts of £)Ib Doijmas. 
 
 teemed queen of the sciences. Human life 
 is never apprehended in its true dignity until 
 it is seen to be worthy the sacrifice of the 
 highest of uncreated beings, the sufferings 
 and sin of human beings causing Deity to 
 suffer as the only possible means of re- 
 demption. 
 
 Suppose we listen to the wild cry of the 
 mob, and strike Christ's true cross out of 
 Christian belief; once more the heathen age 
 returns when man, and man only, is a cosmic 
 fact, and God or gods are mere possibilities 
 to the imagination of dreamers. How de- 
 graded would seem the poverty of man's 
 endowment ! how base the flights of his pur- 
 est imagination ! how ignoble his physical 
 constitution ! how worthless the boon of 
 existence ! Christ without the cross is a 
 Socrates ; Christ with the cross is God in- 
 carnated in human flesh. Christ without 
 the cross is a moral personality of superior 
 intentions as to duty and righteousness ; 
 Christ with the cross is the exemplification 
 to remotest ages and all mankind of the 
 verity of eternal justice, that there is no 
 forgiveness of sin unless the punishment of 
 transgression meets its due reward. Christ 
 without the cross resigns mankind to be 
 
U Valib Kebcmptton. 267 
 
 smitten by its appetencies, leaves it cradled 
 in crime to grow up into criminality ; Christ 
 with the cross raises human character from 
 ruin and degradation, and establishes holi- 
 ness in human hearts. We mean to claim, in 
 other words, that human society is revolu- 
 tionized by the doctrines of the cross ; that 
 it brings into touch, if you please, with 
 human experience, ideas and ideals other- 
 wise unknown and strange. This we think is 
 admitted on all hands, the difference of view, 
 of feeling, of passion, and of love, which is 
 illustrated in a man who has never heard the 
 gospel, and the same man when he has heard 
 it proclaimed, or, better, when he has ac- 
 cepted it, and made it his own. 
 
 Here we are met by the objections, "But 
 the cross which the church holds up is a 
 fiction." " Christ did die, but dead, his death 
 avails not ; the atonement, the sacrifice, the 
 reconciliation, mean nothing. We believe 
 in facts, the church believes in fancy's dream, 
 cleanse thy body of superstitions, and we will 
 receive the church evangel." We beg to 
 differ with such voices. True, the cross is 
 a symbol, but it must be more significant 
 than the many myriads of crosses which 
 bore more or less guilty men under judg- 
 
268 Heto Concepts of £)Ib Dogmas. 
 
 ments of the Roman law, the world over, 
 during the reign of the imperial city of the 
 Caesars. But we affirm that the symbol- 
 ism of the cross is no greater than the 
 symbolism of ordinary life. Take an ob- 
 jector who deals exclusively with facts, and 
 who objects to the ideality of the Christian 
 religion. I warrant he may be living upon a 
 property which for fifty years has been dwelt 
 upon by his race, and that he can show no 
 deed because his inheritance is one of un- 
 broken possession. But why does that posses- 
 sion come down to his remote generation ? 
 Simply because that ancestor fifty or a hyn- 
 dred years before did symbolic things ; that 
 is, lived there, took possession, staked out his 
 claim, cultivated. 
 
 He may not have done so much upon the 
 property as others upon their homesteads, he 
 may not have been so needy or so deserving, 
 yet the symbolism of his act holds the estate, 
 and it descends securely to each remotest 
 generation of his descendants. Perhaps our 
 friend holds a mortgage upon the land of his 
 neighbor ; he doubtless is not sorry to be the 
 possessor of such an instrument, but it is 
 merely the symbol of money paid and the 
 consequent rights to principal and interest 
 
ZC Vaiib Hebemption. 269 
 
 investing in him, for which the whole prop- 
 erty may be held until at length, the equity 
 becoming worthless, he takes possession. 
 His symbol by that act is proven worth more 
 than his neighbor's fact. The symbol has 
 swallowed it up, and, if the first possessor is 
 recalcitrant, in the hands of the sheriff vindi- 
 cates very soon its right to be considered a 
 potentiality in human affairs. A store ac- 
 count, the deposition of a witness living or 
 dead, a last will and testament, the decree of 
 a court, the proclamation of our president, all 
 are instances of the effectual use of symbolism 
 in human affairs. The late dying emperor of 
 Germany, unable to qualify as ruler by taking 
 the oath of office, was compelled to affirm in 
 writing that he would as soon as he were 
 able, and though his ability could never 
 come, the symbol stood for the act, and he 
 was both a crowned and uncrowned king. 
 
 But the best illustration of all is in the cur- 
 rency of the United States. Our bank bills 
 and treasury notes are good, lawful money ; 
 in and of themselves they are worth just what 
 they will bring as old paper or as curiosities ; 
 but representing dollars in gold, they will 
 everywhere procure the necessities and luxu- 
 ries of life. Nothing is too cheap to be be- 
 
270 Hem Concepts of £)[b Dogmas. 
 
 yond their reach, and no work of art hallowed 
 by the signature of a genius, and no gem 
 bright with the radiance of God's handiwork 
 discovered and developed by miner and lapi- 
 dary, is so choice that they may not buy it. 
 And yet they are only symbols of the real 
 value contained in a gold coin of standard 
 weight and fineness. Methinks the most 
 matter-of-fact man is willing to fill his wallet 
 with them ; he does not insist on bullion 
 rather than bills, that he m.ay have more to 
 do with realities. The world's business could 
 not be done without notes of this sort, and 
 checks and similar business paper. The man, 
 therefore, who refuses to accept the cross as 
 a symbol of Christ's death upon it and of his 
 mediatorial and reconciliatory work, in con- 
 sistency should refuse bank notes, and go 
 about weighted down with gold coin. 
 
 Indeed, we may push the same illustra- 
 tion further. What is gold ? Well, it is the 
 only yellow metal ; it is the most malleable 
 and ductile metal. Very thin leaves appear 
 yellow by reflected light, and green by trans- 
 mitted light ; and when heated, the trans- 
 mitted light is ruby red. One grain may be 
 drawn into a wire 500 feet long. It is of use 
 in jewelry, particularly as furnishing, when 
 
21 Valxb Hebemptton. 271 
 
 alloyed, a strong and beautiful setting for 
 precious stones. From most ancient times 
 it has been made a standard of value, like 
 the shells known as wampum among the 
 North American Indians. In the remains 
 of most ancient peoples, along the shores 
 of the Mediterranean Sea, together with 
 beautiful ornaments, the style of which the 
 modern goldsmiths are to-day reproducing, 
 are discovered the nuggets rudely stamped 
 with the seal of dynasty or of metropolis, 
 the coin of that remote day. But gold will 
 not shield the back from winter's blasts ; 
 it will not pacify the stomach gnawed by 
 hunger or parched with thirst. It could be 
 dispensed with so far as the actual supply of 
 man's needs is concerned. It is, in other 
 words, merely the symbol of the world's 
 wealth, the something into which all values 
 can be converted, and of peculiar fitness for 
 its sphere because it is hard to obtain, the 
 supply keeping down better than that of any 
 other metal, so that it is not cheapened by 
 surplusage. Every pound of tobacco, every 
 gallon of molasses, every commodity of com- 
 merce, every inch of real property, submits 
 to this standard for the determination of 
 its value. Is it any wonder, then, that the 
 
272 ruw Concepts of £)16 Dogmas. 
 
 church cannot understand why its reality 
 should be tainted by the charge of fiction ? 
 For one, conscious of my weakness, with 
 evil ever present with me when trying to do 
 well, with the best of my purposes not wholly 
 clear from evil influence, I find in the cross 
 the symbol of my redemption, and I draw 
 healing and blessing from the acceptance of 
 its sacrifice, as completely sufficient to atone 
 for my lack and my transgression, believing 
 that, '* as Moses lifted up the serpent in the 
 wilderness, even so must the Son of man be 
 lifted up, that whosoever believeth, may in 
 Him have everlasting life." This is the stand- 
 ard of holiness ; this is the atonement for 
 transgression ; this is the pledge of life eter- 
 nal ; this is the means of salvation in a lost 
 and ruined world ; this is the symbol of God's 
 sacrifice for sin. 
 
YET SHALL I LIVE. 
 
 " Though he were dead, yet shall he liveJ*^ — 
 John II : -25. 
 
 HOWEVER poorly the Christian world 
 has assimilated the moral teachings of 
 Christ, hardly less striking is the failure of 
 mankind to enter into the great birthright 
 of immortality, revelation concerning which is 
 contained in the Christian Scriptures. It is 
 a pleasure that all communions are recogniz- 
 ing this great festival of the Christian year, 
 which pertains to no church in particular, but 
 to the church universal, its observance dating 
 from the very resurrection itself, and being 
 a blessed reminder of the hopes bound up in 
 Him who hath ascended to the right hand of 
 God the Father. To the soul that believes that 
 He lives, how can this life ever sink down out 
 of the sense of privilege and responsibility 
 resultant from apprehension of immortality ? 
 Better that the right hand lose its cunning 
 than that the creature live for his day-dream 
 and passion, his eyes able to see naught 
 above him, his thought able to engross noth- 
 i3 (273) 
 
274 Hett) Concepts of £)lb Dogmas, 
 
 ing beyond this present time. While the 
 word of Christ is a pledge of certainty, the 
 loss of which would be the loss of all absolute 
 assurance, the human heart rejoices when the 
 human reason is able to develop arguments 
 pointing to aptitude and capacities harmoni- 
 ous with the conception of a life to come, a 
 continuation and culmination of the life that 
 now is. 
 
 Every person is impressed with the inherent 
 life of the planet. Men live and die, it 
 matters not who has been, only who is. The 
 most magnificently endowed body in an in- 
 stant becomes a perishable remnant, brother 
 of the insensible clod. This present life is a 
 continuous wave of existence ; what now is 
 of humanity is the present possession of a 
 phenomenon we call life. If all ages were 
 allotted to a zone on a great sphere, each 
 of which, when it came under the sun- 
 light in its slow revolution, sprang into life, 
 all things behind being dead, all things in 
 the future being a creative possibility await- 
 ing conditions of life, we should have a good 
 illustration of the impression which life in 
 the abstract makes upon the human mind. 
 Striking God out, we say animate nature 
 lives ; but we do not know how it lives. 
 
2?et Sl?aII 3 Cbe, 275 
 
 Studying conditions and environment, we 
 cannot learn the secret of life, we only know 
 that it is. 
 
 It is not strange, therefore, that in all ages 
 there have been some who have said, ** All I 
 am conscious of is this life phase in which I 
 exist. Moreover, men about me seem moved 
 by the same impulses that I am ; the highest 
 offices of religion do not reach the masses. I 
 go with the bulk of the life in my time. 
 Everything about my personality I conclude 
 is consequent upon life." We would remind 
 you, first, that this is an observation of per- 
 sonal identity. We do as others do, we are 
 the victims of circumstance ; we will live and 
 die ; life is all and death ends all. When this 
 doctrine comes to scientific statement, there 
 is nothing but matter in heaven or earth ; 
 thought, memory, aspiration, are all products 
 of molecular action, like the heat generated 
 under chemical combinations. And the bur- 
 den of the siren-song is, " Man, thou art not 
 immortal ; thy hopes are perishable ; turn 
 thy face away from the heavens ; thy birth- 
 right to immortality is a dream." 
 
 Recall that man you knew well of old. 
 There is not a particle of the same creature 
 in him there was then ; yet you take him by 
 
276 Hem Concepts of £)I6 Pogmas. 
 
 the hand, the same finger is gone that was 
 then lacking ; you look into his eyes, they 
 are not the same, but they look the same ; 
 his face is wrinkled, but you tell him it has 
 the old look ; the voice is not the same, but 
 you would have known it anywhere ; and 
 mentally you find the same characteristics, 
 though somewhat changed. Now in all the 
 changes of the years has there not been a 
 law of personal identity running through all? 
 That body and spirit are some way or other 
 wrapped up in one personality. You read 
 his books, and you hold him responsible ; 
 you take his note, and you hold him to ac- 
 count ; you see him in a court of law, and 
 you charge the debt upon him, and you re- 
 fuse to allow him to prove that he is not 
 responsible. Let him commit crime, and 
 you trace throu^gh years his vicious courses, 
 and hold him up to the execration of man- 
 kind. That is, behind all change there is a 
 reign of law, which reaches out into a certain 
 domain and assimilates earth, air, food, and 
 water into a certain reign of consciousness 
 which we call personal existence. I will be 
 more explicit ; there is a life principle in 
 each human being which takes light, air, 
 food, and drink, and devotes it to the con- 
 
^et Sf?aII 3 Ctpe. 277 
 
 struction, maintenance, and repair of a par- 
 ticular body ; it ministers to nothing else in 
 the world ; everything that comes from the 
 outside must minister to it or be untouched. 
 You may pile a thousand barrels of flour 
 at your front door, but this life principle can 
 only assimilate a certain quantity such as 
 it may take through the body it inhabits. 
 Every ray of light, every blow, every thought, 
 every convulsion of nature, has certain ave- 
 nues of impression, but this ministry from 
 without is limited by the capacity of the life 
 principle to receive. It matters not if there 
 are oceans of water, but it has not a drop to 
 drink ; or if the world is bathed in sunlight, 
 so long as clouds are overhead. This per- 
 sonal miracle of life thus breaks in upon the 
 phenomenon of life at large. 
 
 II. Turning scrutiny within, we there find 
 evidence of the same identity. We have 
 changed, like our friends, but we know that 
 the hand which to-day clasps the hand of 
 friend, is the same that long ago plighted 
 troth and friendship ; however much may 
 have been the changes in its physical make 
 up, it is our hand now and it was our hand 
 then, and no constraint of certainty compels 
 us to move it one way or that, only the self- 
 
278 ruxo Concepts of £)lb Dogmas. 
 
 determinations of personal identity having 
 had ought to do therewith. 
 
 III. Further : that power to think known 
 to each of us is proof that we are ; and this 
 proof is not merely a present consciousness ; 
 it registers its present acts, and makes them 
 a matter of reference for the future. No man 
 writing down in ink some transaction of to- 
 day, has a safer record than you and I have 
 of certain acts which had great dramatic 
 power on us, — dramatic, I say, because or- 
 dinary events we do not care to treasure ; a 
 terrible scene of bloodshed haunts the living 
 to the death ; an unwonted sorrow never dies. 
 An old love may be imperishable ; there may 
 be mothers in this congregation who treasure 
 the little things of a child long dead. Men 
 have been" through the hell of war, or the 
 great excitements of politics, which have left 
 within them photographic scenes which can 
 be called up by memory and presented. 
 
 IV. If in power of thought we find argu- 
 ment for identity, much more in memory. 
 Amid all the changes of our life, what thing 
 has remained constant to serve as the nega- 
 tive of past scenes by means of which the 
 past is thus preserved, representation of 
 which, vivid and truthful, we may reproduce 
 
5et 5l}an 3 £ipe, 279 
 
 at will ? That this is contained in molecules 
 of the brain, an inconstant substance con- 
 stantly undergoing change, is impossible ; 
 and when you give capacity to transfer an 
 idea from one molecule to another, you have 
 given the power of personal identity. Let 
 me clinch the argument a little ; the molecule 
 of the brain is the factor in reproducing im- 
 pressions of things concerning which it can 
 have no knowledge of itself, because they 
 took place before it was in existence. Plainly, 
 therefore, there is something in living rela- 
 tions with the molecule, capable of transfer- 
 ring from one molecule to another, impres- 
 sions which it has derived from one alone. A 
 man faints away ; molecule and atom remain 
 in his brain cells, but where is thought ? 
 Dead or dormant, surely, for when he comes 
 out of it, reason awakes. The power to think 
 has remained somewhere while the life of the 
 body has gone on ; now where, I ask, was it ? 
 How can a molecule have one moment the 
 power of thought and one moment not.-* 
 Plainly the power of thought has relations 
 with the molecule, but is not that molecule. 
 Again : to take a well-authenticated instance : 
 A laborer was struck by a falling brick, and 
 was rendered insensible. When he recovered 
 
280 Hett) Concepts of £)lb Dogmas. 
 
 consciousness, he finished the sentence which 
 was interrupted when the accident occurred. 
 The functions of the body were broken off, 
 and the real thinking power was held in leash 
 until the relations could be re-established be- 
 tween body and spirit. Plainly, there is 
 something behind the body which flesh and 
 blood is not heir to, which hath a kingdom of 
 its own, and which has relations to the flesh 
 for reasons of convenience only. Again : a 
 person dies from a stroke of lightning, or fs 
 drowned ; there seems no mutilation of the 
 body, but in spite of molecular immobility 
 the capacity for thought has gone. Some- 
 thing greater than the body was here, some- 
 thing that used the body, something over 
 which the body had no control, without which 
 the body cannot protect itself from dissolu- 
 tion. 
 
 Being therefore so all important, holding 
 as it does the key of the centrifugal forces 
 which pull together the microcosm we call 
 the body, is it strange that Christian men 
 hold that the truly essential life is that which 
 has gone, or that, impressed with the argu- 
 ment drawn from personal identity, they 
 have believed that through the transplanta- 
 tion of that mysterious hidden fire of being is 
 
^et SI?aII 3 Ctpe. 281 
 
 found the true explanation of the doctrine of 
 the immortality of the human soul ? Is it 
 any harder for the human spirit to energize 
 a new body in the glorified state of heaven, 
 transferring itself from its present energizing 
 vocation in the human organism, than for it 
 to transfer its spiritual and sensual impres- 
 sions, that is, its thoughts and recollections of 
 places and occasions, from the molecules of 
 the brain, its officer and servant, of fifty 
 years ago, to the molecules of the brain of 
 to-day ? Fifty years ago I saw something ; 
 the eyes that saw it are gone, the brain that 
 registered the sensory impressions of the 
 nerves of the eye is gone ; that was fifty years 
 ago. On the new brain of to-day my inner 
 self brings up that old impression, and I see 
 it in my mind's eye again. I say that gap of 
 fifty years thus o'erleaped is as great as the 
 gap between the life that now is, and that 
 which is to come, and that the energization 
 of the new molecule of the brain fiber and 
 reproduction of sensory impressions is as 
 great as the energization of a glorified body 
 and the reproduction of sensory impressions 
 in the land beyond the swelling floods. With 
 throbbing heart, therefore, in the presence of 
 the awfulness of death, dilating with the 
 
282 rtctt) Concepts of £)lb Dogmas. 
 
 hopes of a man for immortality, gathering in 
 the testimony which my personal identity 
 gives to the feasibility of that hope, I accept 
 the word of my Master, and believe with the 
 assurance of faith that though I shall die, yet 
 shall I live. 
 
HE IS RISEN. 
 
 ''He is not here; for he is risen.''— Matt. 
 .28 : 6. 
 
 THE opening sentence of the collect for 
 Easter Sunday — '' Almighty God, who 
 through Thine only begotten Son, Jesus 
 Christ, hast overcome death, and opened 
 unto us the gate of everlasting life"— is a 
 wonderful sentence, wonderful as pure lim- 
 pid English, the glorious, chaste, and beauti- 
 ful tongue to which we were born ; wonderful 
 as pregnant with thought so copious that 
 volumes could be written upon it ; and as an 
 exact statement of Bible teaching in unin- 
 spired words, presenting in freshest way 
 Scripture thought. This collect ends as our 
 text, and leaves us gazing into eternity. 
 
 I was born, says one, amid the hills ; love 
 nourished me, and I grew. I do not know 
 anything about it, only that in the blackness 
 of the night that shrouded my being, lumin- 
 ous points appeared, here a love, there an 
 experience, again a knowledge which might 
 better be termed a consciousness. The one 
 
 (283) 
 
284 Hem Concepts of £)Ib Dogmas. 
 
 was the love which is nurtured in the home. 
 It can have no introduction to you ; your 
 hearts have been swayed by it, and must 
 be so long as God gives you reason and 
 existence. 
 
 Another luminous point against the back- 
 ground of that forgetfulness out of which we 
 sprang into our mother's arms, is what I 
 might call world-consciousness ; for it grows 
 to that. It begins in the sense of touch ; 
 however, we cannot trace it thus far ; we 
 learn to trust our instincts at first just as 
 honey bees somehow learn to soar aloft and 
 line straight for the hive. But there comes, 
 by and by, the luminous point when we be- 
 gin to mentally register conceptions of what 
 we see, what we hear, what we feel and smell ; 
 this grows, but we remember its beginning. 
 The third luminous point grows out of con- 
 trast between life and the unknown, some 
 experience which, across the brightness and 
 sunshine of our living, casts the shadow of 
 a power, which, when it strikes, strikes to 
 maim and destroy. It is shrouded at first, 
 so that we do not understand that it is 
 natural law and that it worketh death ; but 
 it plunges the iron of a nameless dread into 
 the soul. When we are blown off our feet 
 
^e 3^ Hisen, 285 
 
 by cyclones, and hug the ground in terror, 
 or when we nearly drown, the memory of our 
 minutes of clutching at grass roots, vainly 
 trying to pull ourselves out, and the seconds 
 when we are under water before the air 
 bladder of the lungs brings us to the sur- 
 face, these photographed on the memory, 
 ever bring up the same first luminous notions 
 of things. From the first we have appetites 
 and we learn to know passions. 
 
 Look at those pictures in the illustrated 
 magazines, of abject slaves and their savage 
 black masters. Tears must fill the eyes of 
 the philanthropist as he thinks of the poor 
 children of Africa being hurried away by the 
 inhuman mastiffs that guard them, to the sea- 
 coast under incredible hardships and direful 
 miseries. They, too, have had the dawning 
 of reason ; they, too, are men ; they, too, 
 have had the luminous points arise to this 
 mental vision ; and have had their horizon 
 enlarge. But their horizon is not yours, 
 their loves are not yours, their knowledge 
 is not yours. How mighty the force of cir- 
 cumstances to crush the weak ! On the other 
 hand, witness the arrogance of the captors. 
 See the predominance of bestial character- 
 istics, the weakness of the moral and spiritual 
 
286 Xtew Concepts of £)Ib Dogmas. 
 
 nature, the high ardor of their cruelty. They 
 have the air of men who die in their calling 
 if to achieve their ends death is necessary ; 
 but their calling is man stealing ; the sorrows 
 of others are their meat and drink. Does 
 the invincible human courage raise the abo- 
 riginal races of the dark continent ? Is it not 
 rather used to render more complete the ab- 
 jectness of man's ignorance, the misery of his 
 estate by nature ? 
 
 What makes the difference between them 
 and us ? The stereotyped answer is, Civiliza- 
 tion ! Yes, a very noble answer. For in- 
 stance, notice the civilization of the Indian at 
 the West. He is a drunken, lazy brute, 
 always drinking the white man's whisky, 
 always lending himself to the white man's 
 immorality, paving the way for his own de- 
 struction, so mean that the proverb, '* No 
 good Indian but a dead one," is current. But 
 then, of course, it is right ( ?) ; for it is civili- 
 zation ennobling the untutored mind of the 
 savage. 
 
 Take the black man at the South before the 
 war. The Southern whites founded the most 
 interesting aristocracy the world then knew ; 
 they hunted and fought, lived in elegant 
 homes with all the appointments of civiliza- 
 
Eje 3s Htsen. 287 
 
 tion ; they were educated and had coura- 
 geous, enterprising, and in many respects 
 noble natures. Now the black man came in 
 contact with this superior civilization two 
 centuries and a half before. As the result, 
 what was he ? Well, to the extent of one 
 million souls he was white. The disowned 
 offspring of his masters, born in sin, with the 
 seal of his shame set on his forehead as a 
 mark of Cain, forever to appeal for justice and 
 consideration to the people of this land. He 
 had almost no knowledge of right and wrong ; 
 small morals, boundless emotionalism. He 
 was a thief when thieving could be done by a 
 sneak ; he was a savage in his ignorance, a 
 child in his dependence. Behold the effect 
 of two hundred and fifty years' contact with 
 civilization. 
 
 But how about the hundreds of thousands 
 in the slums of a great city, whose homes are 
 the houses of one or two rooms, who daily 
 jostle on the streets the better classes of the 
 metropolis, who certainly are at hand to the 
 elevating influences of civilization ! To say 
 they have no religion is no competent answer, 
 for how can they hear except they have a 
 preacher, and religion is not responsible for 
 the man who does not accept it. Christ is 
 
288 Hen) Concepts of £){b Dogmas, 
 
 the power of God unto salvation to those who 
 believe. Why is it the city goes from cor- 
 ruption to corruption in private life, and in 
 public and political morality, if the elevating 
 power of civilization is the only potent and 
 all-powerful factor in reformation of life and 
 manners ? Why did the ancient civilizations, 
 the Assyrio-Persian, the Greek, the Roman, 
 fairly rot to pieces in their ages of highest 
 splendor, joint by joint, as if they were being 
 eaten off by the gangrene of personal corrup- 
 tion ? The Ingersol party then had its inn- 
 ings ; shall it have them again ? 
 
 But to go back again to our early experi- 
 ence. The budding soul awakened to a 
 knowledge of itself finds an environment 
 which leads to a special intellectual, moral, 
 and spiritual endowment. We call it Chris- 
 tianity, or the Christian religion. I dub it 
 the influence of Christ on hearts that love 
 him ; L believe it to be the one all-powerful 
 leverage for making men better, whether 
 savage or civilized ; I believe that civilization 
 without it is only manners and of doubtful 
 utility. If man is to live like a beast, let him 
 live in a wigwam ; it is his proper habitation ; 
 it is where he first laired, and is his native 
 heath. To put a low, immoral drunkard into 
 
^e 3s Ktscn. 289 
 
 a fine house is indeed putting a beast in the 
 parlor. 
 
 Christian manhood and womanhood, then, 
 deserve the best things, for they make civ- 
 ilization wherever it differs from a society- 
 formed on natural principles. It ennobles, 
 beautifies, saves this life. Hence it is that 
 unfolding to the eye of faith the life immortal, 
 and preparing a soul for death, notwithstand- 
 ing all makes the soul cling to this life, be- 
 cause Christianity alone makes this life worth 
 living. To work out such an anomaly is 
 necessary in order to have the terms of true 
 religion fulfilled. It must point to heaven, it 
 must ennoble earth ; it must lead the soul to 
 Elysium, it must make Elysium in the heart ; 
 it must make it gain to die ; it must make it 
 glorious to live ; it must make us dream of 
 the life to come with the glorified saints, and 
 make us pant for battle as good soldiers of 
 Jesus Christ. It is as though Christ took us 
 by the hand and walked the way. All uplift- 
 ing of human life in its motives comes from 
 Christ. We learn to sympathize with His 
 Spirit ; we learn to make His love our love ; 
 we live His spirit and motive into our life so 
 far as we can. He touches us through others 
 who love and imitate Him ; He touches us 
 19 
 
290 HetD Concepts of 016 Dogmas. 
 
 through the habits and usages of the com- 
 munity in so far as it is moulded by the mind 
 of Christ ; He touches us through history ; 
 He touches us through tales of heroism ; He 
 touches us through art. Put above your 
 mantel some glorious photograph of the Ma- 
 donna, or some great picture of the Man of 
 Sorrows himself, as the unique story of His life 
 impressed the imagination of a genius ; for to 
 think of Him seriously once a year is worth 
 the whole cost. 
 
 So we are led to passion-week. We stand 
 ^with the spectators in the gloom of the 
 cloud overshadowing the cross, in the gloom 
 of that cloud witnessed afar off in Egypt. 
 We see Him laid in Joseph of Arima- 
 thea's new tomb. Thus far what is the key 
 to the whole career .'' There is no clue; the 
 wonder of the life is supernatural, as by mira- 
 cle, but its true nature does not come with 
 convicting force. With the resurrection from 
 the dead added, all things are complete. We 
 see that God was behind Him, that the God- 
 head was in Him. We understand the uni- 
 <iueness of His morality because it was God's ; 
 "we understand the absoluteness of His teach- 
 ing of truth because it was God's truth. You 
 know where we started with a few luminous 
 
^e 3s Hisen. 291 
 
 points on the photosphere of the unknown ; 
 the light has grown, until at length, fully orbed, 
 manhood stands on the confines of eternity 
 with the Crucified ; he has drunk in his meas- 
 ure of the fullness of love ; his common life 
 has been ennobled ; from beast-hood he has 
 come to manhood ; he has apprehended some- 
 what of the divine nature of justice ; he has 
 come to see that it is past relations, that jus- 
 tice is immutable ; being just, he knows what 
 it is to be generous ; through good will to 
 others, born of love for them, he comes to be 
 merciful ; and when Jesus passed through the 
 gates of death, and opened up assurance to 
 humanity of the immorality He had pledged 
 to man, this reflex influence upon a man's 
 heart, if he has grown in any measure into 
 His likeness, is like a flood tide under a con- 
 vulsion of nature. Before him stretches the 
 horizon of eternities, even the horizon of 
 Jesus ; his approaching death loses half its 
 terrors through the approaching immortali- 
 ties. Within, he is conscious of a soul growth 
 gained through Jesus of Nazareth. He finds 
 that Christ has led him to God, that Christ 
 has been the revelator of God, and so full and 
 complete a revelator that he can say Christ is 
 God. He is conscious that ennoblement and 
 
292 Xlevo Concepts of £)Ib Dogmas. 
 
 enlargement of his powers is of, through, and 
 by God. And he rejoices this Easter day in 
 the resurrection from the dead as the key- 
 stone of the arch, without which the charac- 
 ter of Christ must fall a ruin, and without 
 which he would be unable to turn his face to 
 the stars in hope. 
 
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 100,000 
 SYNONYMS 
 
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 ANTONYMS. 
 
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 A COMPLETE DICTIONARY 
 
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 With an Appendix 
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 quial Phrases, etc., in current use; the Grammatical uses 
 of Prepositions and Prepositions Discriminated, a 
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 a collection of Foreign Phrases, and 
 a complete list of Abbreviations 
 and Contractions used in 
 writing: and printini:. 
 
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