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 Prinr^tflu ®lj00l0gtcal Seminary 
 
The Culture of Christian Manhood 
 
BY 
 
 William H. Sallmon 
 
 STUDIES IN 
 
 The Life of Paul. 
 
 Paper, 1 5 cents. Cloth, 25 cents. 
 STUDIES IN 
 
 The Parables of Jesus. 
 
 Paper, 15 cents. Cloth, 25 cents. 
 STUDIES IN 
 
 The Life of Jesus. 
 
 Paper, 25 cents. Cloth, 40 cents. 
 
< 
 
 X 
 
 U 
 
The Culture 
 
 of 
 
 Christian Manhood 
 
 Sunday Mornings 
 In Battell Chapel 
 Yale University «?> 
 
 Edited by 
 V 
 
 William H. Sallmon 
 
 With Portraits of Authors 
 
 " So /ull of grandeur is our dust, 
 So near is God to man, 
 IV/ten duty whispers loiv, ' Thou fnust,' 
 The youth replies, '/ can.' " 
 
 Emerson 
 
 New York Chicago Toronto 
 
 Fleming H. Revell Company 
 
 M DCCC XCVIl 
 
Copyright, 1897, by 
 Fleming H. Revell Company 
 
 THE NEW YORK TYPE-SETTING COMPANY 
 
 THE CAXTON PRESS 
 
Contents 
 
 Preface 
 
 I. Selected Lives . 
 
 By Charles Cuthbert Hall, D.D. 
 
 II. The PaiTt We Know . 
 
 By Alexander McKenzie, D.D. 
 
 III. Personality 
 
 By Amory H. Bradford, D.D. 
 
 IV. The Evolution of a Thinker 
 
 By George A. Gordon, D.D. 
 
 V. The Great Heresy . 
 
 By David James Burrell, D. D. 
 
 VI. Christ Seeking the Lost 
 
 By George Harris, D.D. 
 
 VII. An Extraordinary Saint . 
 
 By William R. Richards, D.D. 
 
 VIII. The Meaning of Manhood 
 
 By Henry van Dyke, D.D. 
 
 IX. Strength and Courage 
 
 By Lewis O. Brastow, D.D. 
 
 7 
 
 PAGE 
 9 
 
 47 
 63 
 81 
 
 lOI 
 
 118 
 
 138 
 164 
 
Contents 
 
 PAfifi 
 
 X. The Peril of Protracted Temptation . 184 
 
 By Teunis S. Hamlin, D. D. 
 
 XI. The Gospel's View of our Life . . 200 
 
 By Rev. Joseph H. Twichell 
 
 XII. Trophies of Youth the Safeguard of 
 
 Manhood 216 
 
 By Rev. James G. K. McClure 
 
 XIII. Manhood's Struggle and Victory . . 233 
 
 By S. E. Herrick, D.D. 
 
 XIV. The Sabbath 249 
 
 By Bishop John H. Vincent 
 
 XV. Immutability 272 
 
 By M. Woolsey Stryker, D.D., LL.D. 
 
 XVI. The Sinless One 286 
 
 By George T. Purves, D. D. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 WHEN that prince of American preach- 
 ers, the late Bishop Brooks, after care- 
 ful deliberation, declined to accept the call to 
 the pulpit at Harvard University, he remarked 
 to a friend that " the man vi^ho can preach 
 helpfully to university men is the man who 
 holds a city pastorate." The colleges are 
 rapidly coming to this conclusion, and the 
 college pastorate is giving way to the new 
 system of college preachers. The pastoral 
 work, where it is attended to at all, is cared 
 for by other agencies. A few colleges, indeed, 
 combine both methods, but in all the tendency 
 is to place the main emphasis on the preach- 
 ing. The preacher now comes in from the 
 busy world toward which so many of the 
 students are looking, and gives them glimpses 
 
 9 
 
Preface ^ 
 
 of it. He comes from contact with a broader 
 life than a settled college pastor could be ac- 
 quainted with, and he brings the prestige of 
 an exalted position, and a greater enthusiasm 
 for the large opportunity opened before him 
 than could be maintained by a permanent 
 resident. Naturally enough, the ablest men 
 of the country are ready to respond to the 
 call for such noble service. ** No thinking 
 minister can stand up before a company 
 largely composed of young men without a 
 strong wish to be plain-spoken and to come 
 straight to the point. They have a fine im- 
 patience for all mere formalities and round- 
 about modes of speech, which acts as a moral 
 tonic to brace the mind from vagueness and 
 cleanse the tongue from cant. They want a 
 man to say what he means and to mean what 
 he says. The influence of this unspoken de- 
 mand is wholesome and inspiring, and the 
 preacher ought to show his gratitude for it 
 by honestly endeavoring to meet it." These 
 words, from one who occupies an influential 
 city parish and commands the respect of col- 
 
 10 
 
Preface 
 
 lege men wherever he meets them, will ac- 
 count for the direct and practical character of 
 the discourses in this book. They have been 
 selected for what they are worth in them- 
 selves, and will repay reading and re-reading. 
 The editor takes pleasure in introducing some 
 of the finest minds in the American pulpit, — 
 with the messages of inspiration which they 
 have brought to the members of Yale Uni- 
 versity, — hoping that the influence of their 
 words will be multiplied many-fold by thus 
 being put into permanent form. 
 
 <:r 
 
 
 II 
 
■^^■^^^^^/////^ 
 
Selected Lives 
 
 By 
 
 Charles Cuthbert Hall, D.D. 
 
 President of the Union Theological Seminary, New York 
 
 *' That ye may be . . . children of God . . . in the midst 
 of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom ye are 
 seen as lights in the world, holding forth the word of life." 
 — Phil. a. 1^, 1 6. 
 
 MY theme is Selected Lives; or, the Dis- 
 tinctioji Conferred on Men by Academ- 
 ic Training. Selected lives are lives singled 
 out from the mass : set apart, trained, and 
 commissioned unto a special opportunity. 
 The basis of selection may be chiefly that of 
 physical competency, as when men are se- 
 lected for service in the army or in the ath- 
 letic games. Or it may be chiefly that of 
 intellectual culture, as in competitions for 
 posts of honor in Hterary life. Or it may be 
 chiefly that of spiritual efficiency, as when 
 
 13 
 
Selected Lives 
 
 Christ selected apostles, saying, " Ye did not 
 choose me, but I chose you, and appointed 
 you, that ye should go and bear fruit, and 
 that your fruit should abide." To-day my 
 purpose is to remind you, as university men, 
 that by reason of your being here, in the 
 academic atmosphere, among the academic 
 traditions, inheriting the academic privileges, 
 you are selected lives singled out from the 
 mass, set apart, trained, and commissioned 
 unto a special opportunity. Standing in this 
 great congregation of college men, I feel that 
 I may speak without reserve of the distinction 
 conferred on men by academic training. It 
 is difficult to speak of this in a promiscuous 
 assembly, where non-collegians are blended 
 with collegians, lest one be thought to dis- 
 parage the excellent and forceful men who 
 have not had the university training ; but in 
 the pulpit of this venerable seat of learning, 
 in an atmosphere charged with the purest 
 and the best essence of the academic spirit, I 
 feel no hesitation in reminding you that be- 
 cause you are collegians you constitute a class 
 
The Individuality of Men 
 
 of selected lives ; I feel no reserve in apply- 
 ing to you and in breathing upon you that 
 glorious apostolic prayer for selected lives 
 which is our text : " That ye may be children 
 of God in the midst of a crooked and per- 
 verse generation, among whom ye are seen 
 as lights in the world, holding forth the 
 word of life." 
 
 If instead of the hundreds of men present 
 this morning there were but one man, and 
 he a man of thoughtful, noble spirit, it would 
 be easy to deliver to him the message God 
 has laid upon my heart. I would bid him 
 ponder the thought of a selected life. I 
 would bid him note how he has been selected, 
 why he has been selected. I would bid him 
 accept his destiny. 
 
 But while it would be easy to talk with 
 one man alone of these things that lie so near 
 to his personality, it is not difficult, because 
 of the intense love and sympathy I feel to- 
 ward young men, to speak to each one of 
 you, in this hour, with a clear and impressive 
 sense of your individuality. The message, 
 
 '5 
 
Selected Lives 
 
 then, is this: the selected life; the mode of 
 its selection; the end of its selection; the 
 acceptance of destiny. 
 
 First and chiefly^ the Selected Life, I can 
 conceive of nothing to which a noble soul 
 responds more profoundly than to the sense 
 of being a selected life : a life chosen, set 
 apart, exalted from the mass, specialized unto 
 a purpose. We have read to-day the splen- 
 did story of the anointing of David;* of the 
 mystic purpose that singled him out from 
 among his brethren, that called him from the 
 sheepfold, that would not let his life grow 
 narrow and rustic and indolent, basking in 
 the sun on upland pastures, but drew it as 
 with the cords of love unto a loftier, broader 
 destiny, drew it to the leadership of men, 
 setting it apart with the sacred oil of a royal 
 anointing. It is a wondrous picture : that 
 beautiful boy, whose life till now has been so 
 pure, so natural, so simple, out upon the hills, 
 where he has watched the white clouds sail- 
 ing over him, where he has felt the free wind 
 
 * I Sam. xvi. 1-13. 
 I6 
 
The Royal Anointing 
 
 of God playing upon him, while his heart, 
 unburdened by any care, has lived in the 
 sunny present, giving, perchance, scarcely a 
 thought to the future. But in the hour of 
 his anointing it dawns upon him that he is a 
 selected life — that he, yes, he! is set apart 
 for an unusual destiny. What thought is 
 greater than this to a soul that is noble ? To 
 feel the anointing of God upon itself ; to know 
 that it is called out from the mass, selected 
 and set apart for something! It is an exalt- 
 ing thought — so high that often at the first 
 one cannot attain unto it. While we all know 
 that there are and ever have been selected 
 lives, and while we all recognize selection in 
 others who by their gifts and callings and 
 opportunities are manifestly set apart in the 
 world as its leaders, there is much difficulty 
 for many a noble soul in conceiving of itself 
 as one uf the called. But when that thought 
 comes home — when one is brought to feel 
 that the anointing oil is upon one's own brow, 
 and that life must henceforth have meanings 
 reaching far beyond one's self and touching 
 
 17 
 
Selected Lives 
 
 the destinies of others — the mind can hold few 
 thoughts more exalting. A deep joy rises 
 in the soul, " a tide too full for sound or 
 foam," a sense of having caught some of 
 Christ's meaning when he said, " I came 
 that ye might have life, and that ye might 
 have it more abundantly." Yet this exalting 
 thought of being a selected life brings no 
 pride, no shallow vanity to a noble soul, for 
 it is also a most humbling thought. With 
 the sense of one's own destiny comes a new 
 conception of the broadness of life, and to 
 know that God has anointed one for a pur- 
 pose is also to realize the solemn meaning of 
 living and the disproportion between one's 
 powers and one's calling. The more sure we 
 are that our lives have been selected from the 
 mass for a purpose, the more conscious do we 
 become of the deficiencies in ourselves that 
 threaten to hinder, if not to prevent, the ful- 
 filment of our calHng. And thus the exalt- 
 ing thought, which is so truly the humbling 
 thought, becomes also the sanctifying thought. 
 The man on whom is dawning the conception 
 
 i8 
 
The Academic Brotherhood 
 
 of his own life as a selected life begins to feel 
 the sacredness of living. He sees that he is 
 not his own, that he is chosen and ordained 
 for special duty in the kingdom of God, for 
 special service in the world of men. And 
 the spirit of consecration enters into his life 
 — the desire to accept his destiny and to be 
 made worthy of it. 
 
 Why do I place all this so earnestly before 
 you to-day? Because I regard you as a 
 body of selected Hves. The fact that you 
 are here, in the university circle, in the aca- 
 demic brotherhood, constitutes you members 
 of a selected class in the world. Academic 
 training confers a distinction upon men, sets 
 them apart from the mass, specializes their 
 opportunity, pours upon their foreheads the 
 drops of a holy anointing. To claim this 
 distinction for college men is to claim no 
 more than facts will justify. Because you 
 are members of a great and populous univer- 
 sity, because you are accustomed to congre- 
 gate as a small army among yourselves, 
 because those of us who deal much with col- 
 
 19 
 
Selected Lives 
 
 lege problems are impressed with the growth 
 and expansion of student life in this country, 
 we are all likely to overestimate the propor- 
 tion of college men in the population of the 
 United States. But it can be shown by most 
 carefully prepared statistics how relatively 
 small is the student class, and how, for every 
 young man entering the academic circle, hun- 
 dreds must be denied the exalted privileges 
 of that noble circle, save as we who have had 
 those privileges, and have by means of them 
 become a selected class, shall know the mean- 
 ing of God's anointing upon ourselves, and 
 shall go forth as lights in the world, holding 
 forth the word of life to those who have not 
 been called with our calling. 
 
 One difficulty stands in the way of your 
 realizing that you are all — every one of you 
 — selected lives, anointed and set apart for 
 special influence in the world. That difficulty 
 is the fact that within the university are such 
 marked differences not only in the capacity 
 of men to be leaders, but in the disposition 
 of men to live nobly. There must be striking 
 
 20 
 
Diversities of Gifts 
 
 differences of capacity among you. Doubt- 
 less you have natural leaders among you : 
 men of brilliant personality and singular 
 forcefulness, who come to the front in your 
 counsels and achievements by a kind of natu- 
 ral and involuntary selection ; men who would 
 probably have been leaders anywhere, out of 
 college or in college. And there can be no 
 doubt that many a quieter man, many a man 
 less richly endowed with the fascinating gifts 
 of personaHty, is often depressed as he mea- 
 sures his own lesser influence against these 
 born leaders, judging them to be selected to 
 a class from which he has been left out. But 
 the thought I am presenting to-day is larger 
 than that which takes note of the scaling of 
 personal gifts. It is a thought that includes 
 every man among you in the class of selected 
 lives, on whom God has poured a holy anoint- 
 ing. Your academic life is your anointing. 
 You are selected because you are here, and 
 because of what you should be made by 
 being here. In every grouping of men there 
 will be gradings of power — some men more 
 
 21 
 
Selected Lives 
 
 evidently born for leadership than others. 
 Even among the twelve apostles there were 
 gradings of power and a few natural leaders. 
 Yet all were called and selected and set apart 
 by Christ to go out into the world and to 
 spread the light of his coming up and down 
 the world. And you, whatever the gradings 
 of power among you, are all called, even from 
 the least to the greatest, to go out into the 
 mass of the world from which you have been 
 singled and set apart, that you may be chil- 
 dren of God in the midst of a crooked and 
 perverse generation, among whom you are 
 seen as lights in the world, holding forth the 
 word of life. And the same is true in regard 
 to the different dispositions which may be 
 found among you toward living nobly. Your 
 capacities may differ, while yet you are all 
 called and selected ; so also your moral dis- 
 positions may differ, while yet you are all 
 called and selected, from the noblest to the 
 most ignoble. There must be earnest men 
 here, brave with a most exalted purpose, 
 conscious that God has selected and anointed 
 
 22 
 
Why were We Selected*? 
 
 them for great ends. And there may be 
 men here far less earnest, devoid of the spirit 
 of consecration, idle, irresolute, yes, loving 
 darkness rather than light. Yet they are 
 selected lives and anointed lives as much as 
 the others, by virtue of their being in this 
 academic brotherhood ; and the carelessness 
 of their lives is a more serious and melan- 
 choly perversion of good because it is the 
 denial of God's anointing and the misuse of 
 special privilege. By the rule Christ himself 
 laid down — " To whom much is given, of him 
 shall much be required " — it is more grievous 
 for a college man to live ignobly than for 
 another, for his is the greater light, his the 
 higher calling, his the more royal anointing. 
 But how came this selection, my brothers, 
 to be set on us? How is it we are here, 
 while others whom we have known are not 
 here and can never be here ? How were we 
 singled out and selected to live within this 
 academic circle, closed against hundreds of 
 our contemporaries? Ah, that is a deep 
 question; deep and far-reaching must be its 
 
 23 
 
Selected Lives 
 
 answer. Doubtless many of us are here 
 through the consecrated self-denial of others 
 on our behalf. There are those who love us, 
 who think they see in us signs of God's se- 
 lecting grace, who have borne and are bear- 
 ing mighty burdens, that we through their 
 poverty might be made rich with the intel- 
 lectual and spiritual wealth of the academic 
 life. I know the fathers who are practising 
 heroic self-privation, some of them in remote 
 and ill-paid pastorates, that their sons may 
 enter manhood within this circle of selected 
 lives. I know the young sister who is hoard- 
 ing her scant income as a teacher, that her 
 younger brother may not lack the privilege 
 of a European university. Doubtless many 
 of us are here through the mystic influence 
 of heredity. The strain of intellectual ten- 
 dency is in our blood, an ancestral heritage. 
 We were projected into this circle by the 
 momentum of an intellectual predestination, 
 gathering force, it may be, from colonial 
 times. Our selection was prenatal. We are 
 what we are because our fathers and their 
 
 24 
 
For what are We Selected? 
 
 fathers were what they were. And doubtless 
 many of us are here through the direct and 
 obvious calling of the Spirit of God. I doubt 
 whether Christ's selection of his apostles was 
 more emphatic or more individualistic than 
 his call and selection of some of us to come 
 into this circle, and live hio life, and follow in 
 his train, and go out into our generation and 
 be seen in it as lights in the world, holding 
 forth the word of life. Can any one of us 
 entertain the belief that he Is here because of 
 Christ's choosing, and not offer up his very 
 life to Christ in full response, saying; with 
 Johann Scheffler: 
 
 " O Love, who ere life's earliest dawn 
 On me thy choice hast gently laid ; 
 
 O Love, who here as Man wast born, 
 And wholly like to us wast made ; 
 
 O Love, I give myself to thee. 
 
 Thine ever, only thine, to be." 
 
 And unto what are we selected ? What is 
 the end and object of the distinction conferred 
 on men by their academic training? It is — 
 to speak the apostolic word with direct refer- 
 ence to the national and social and spiritual 
 
 25 
 
Selected Lives 
 
 questions of our own country and of our own 
 time — it is that we may stand in the midst of 
 our crooked and perverse generation, our 
 generation which has so many distorted ideas 
 and unwholesome practices, and be as lights 
 in the world, holding forth the word of life. 
 It is that we may show in ourselves and pro- 
 mote in others nobler citizenship, poHtically, 
 socially, spiritually. It was many years ago 
 that Benson, the fine-spirited Archbishop of 
 Canterbury, who died so suddenly at Ha- 
 warden, said, in his impassioned way, to the 
 boys at Wellington College : ** As citizens 
 men despise their birthr'ghts." We have 
 been compelled to witness much of that de- 
 spising of the civic birthright on this side of 
 the sea; much of a corrupt citizenship, sell- 
 ing its birthright for money, estimating the 
 public service by its gains. God forbid that 
 I should seem to imply that the line dividing 
 the noble from the ignoble in the ethics of 
 citizenship is the collegiate education; that 
 the citizens who honor their birthright are 
 not numerously found among those who never 
 
 26 
 
Academic Citizenship 
 
 matriculated in college. Patriotism in its 
 purest form may be found in every social 
 order of our land. But I do affirm the pe- 
 culiarly great opportunities given to him who 
 combines with a pure spirit a liberal educa- 
 tion, to become a light in the world, a leader 
 of his countrymen toward higher and broader 
 conceptions of national honor and of civic 
 duty. The college man in politics is the 
 salvation of the present and the hope of the 
 future. Training tells. The untrained mind 
 may be as lofty in its intention as the mind 
 of a scholar. But the academic discipline 
 joined with the academic point of view are 
 indispensable for statesmanship; and what 
 this country chiefly needs is a race of states- 
 men, selected lives ^ trained in the university 
 to estimate upon the historic basis the trend 
 of events, nurtured in the university upon the 
 ideals of a fervent, white-souled patriotism, 
 kindled in the university with that sublime 
 ambition to serve the state for the state's 
 sake which makes citizenship a high profes- 
 sion and the birthright within the nation a 
 
 27 
 
Selected Lives * 
 
 holy and unsullied trust. It is a great thing 
 to go forth as a collegian into the vast terri- 
 tory of philanthropic, moral, and Christian 
 opportunity. It is a great thing to be a col- 
 legian in these latter days, and to have part 
 in this mighty expansion of sociology as a 
 practical science. It is a great thing to be a 
 collegian and to carry the skill and fire of an 
 academic training into the moral movement 
 of our day. It is a great thing to be a colle- 
 gian in these times, and in the holy ministry 
 of Jesus to go out and preach a simple Chris- 
 tianity, a more fraternal and catholic church- 
 manship, a gospel whose spirit is first of all 
 and above all the missionary spirit. 
 
 Selected Hves, called by the Spirit and the 
 providence of God into peculiar privilege 
 and specialized opportunity, accept your des- 
 tiny. It is within your grasp, to have and to 
 hold, or to reject and to throw away. God 
 puts your opportunity into your hand. If 
 you use it your life will be a victory ; if you 
 put it from you some other man will gladly 
 seize it and conquer where you failed. May 
 
 28 
 
Our Opportunity 
 
 I not in this place speak — not into your ears 
 only, into your very hearts — the message of 
 a Yale man of the class of '6i, Edward Row- 
 land Sill ? It is his wonderful parable of op- 
 portunity, a parable for each selected life to 
 ponder : of the coward who flung away his 
 sword upon a vain excuse, and of the king's 
 son, he on whose brow were the drops of the 
 royal anointing, who seized the sword the 
 coward flung away and with it won a splendid 
 triumph for the cause of truth : 
 
 " This I beheld— or dreamed it in a dream: 
 There spread a cloud of dust along a plain ; 
 And underneath the cloud, or in it, raged 
 A furious battle, and men yelled, and swords 
 Shocked upon swords and shields. A prince's banner 
 Wavered, then staggered backward, hemmed by foes. 
 A craven hung along the battle's edge. 
 And thought : ' Had I a sword of keener steel, — 
 That blue blade that the king's son bears, — but this 
 Blunt thing! — ' he snapt and flung it from his hand, 
 And lowering crept away and left the field. 
 Then came the king's son, wounded, sore bestead, 
 And weaponless, and saw the broken sword, 
 Hilt-buried in the dry and trodden sand. 
 And ran and snatched it, and, with battle-shout 
 Lifted afresh, he hewed his enemy down 
 And saved a great cause that heroic day." 
 
 29 
 
The Part We Know 
 
 By 
 
 Alexander McKenzIe, D.D. 
 
 Minister of the First Church in Cambridge 
 
 '''' Silver and gold have I none; hut such as I have give I 
 thee." — Acts Hi. 6. 
 
 THESE are very simple words. The 
 thought is neither original nor pro- 
 found, but it has always been a popular verse. 
 Perhaps this is because we are so often asked 
 to give what we cannot give, or we require 
 ourselves to do what we cannot do, that there 
 is special encouragement in being told on 
 high authority that we can only do what we 
 can and give what we have. 
 
 The incident itself is familiar. A man 
 lame from his birth was laid at the Beautiful 
 Gate of the T-emple at the time of the even- 
 ing worship. He saw the two Galileans, 
 
 30 
 
/^o^^ 
 
 -J^^ /^S.€^<._/:^^ 
 
 -O 
 
The Value of Money- 
 Peter and John, entering in, and he looked to 
 them for an alms. They fastened their eyes 
 upon his longing eyes, and Peter said, " Sil- 
 ver and gold have I none." It was silver 
 and gold the man wanted, and his rising hope 
 fell into disappointment. But Peter finished 
 his sentence, " Such as I have give I thee," 
 and the man was content. The first words 
 are of little account, save as a natural begin 
 ning. The latter words hold the force of the 
 sentence. It was of no consequenceto Peter 
 or to the man what the apostle had not ; the 
 strength was entirely on the positive side. 
 '* What I have " is in itself a strong sentence. 
 Happily, that which he had was in itself of 
 much greater value than that which he lacked. 
 Silver and gold are of great worth, but they 
 cannot do all things. They can build a hos- 
 pital, but they cannot create physicians. 
 They can endow a college, but they cannot 
 make scholars. When we call the physician 
 to our necessity we do not care whether he 
 has silver and gold or not, and men have 
 been eminent as college professors who were 
 
 31 
 
The Part We Know 
 
 in no wise distinguished by their wealth. 
 Indeed, the need of silver and gold may be a 
 stimulus to exertion, as when the great Eng- 
 lish lawyer sprang suddenly into his first 
 great cause and great fame, and assigned as 
 the reason for his remarkable effort that he 
 felt his children pulling at his gown and cry- 
 ing, '* Father, give us bread." On the other 
 hand, the possession of wealth may lessen the 
 exertion. When Thomas Aquinas visited 
 Innocent IV., the pope displayed the great 
 treasures of the church and boasted, " The 
 time has gone by when the church must say, 
 * Silver and gold have I none.' " ** Yes," was 
 the answer of the saintly doctor, " and the 
 time has gone by when the church can say to 
 a lame man, ' Rise up and walk.' " The wise 
 man knows the use of wealth, while he keeps 
 himself independent of it. It was a fine as- 
 sertion of independence made by the English 
 prelate at New Zealand, when the authorities 
 in England warned him that if he persisted in 
 his course they should cut down his salary. 
 ** You can get very good fish here in the 
 
 32 
 
Variety in Helpfulness 
 
 bay," he said, " and I know a place in the 
 woods where you can dig up roots that you 
 can eat." What could be more absurd than 
 the attempt to control through his salary the 
 utterances of a man who can Hve on roots! 
 
 But if we are not to have silver and gold, 
 let us by all means have something. There 
 is so great variety in the wants of men that 
 there is great variety in the help which can 
 be given to them. Think how many things 
 might have been done for this lame man. 
 He could have been furnished with money ; 
 he could have been furnished with sound feet 
 and ankle-bones; one who could have done 
 nothing more might have moved him into a 
 comfortable position against the wall, or have 
 drawn his rug over his feet, or brought him a 
 piece of bread or a cup of water. But the 
 man in his want represents the world and its 
 necessities, and suggests the varied opportu- 
 nities calling for whatever endowment of 
 skill or strength one may possess. Peter was 
 able to give to him the best gift when with 
 the divine power intrusted to him he lifted 
 
 33 
 
The Part We Know . 
 
 up a man who had never stood upon his feet 
 and gave him strength to take up the work 
 of Hfe and to walk in its pleasant places. 
 This was Peter's grace. It may not be yours 
 or mine, but it is given to every one of us to 
 have something which the world needs and 
 which we can give as the manifesting of our 
 life. Let us make sure, by all means, that 
 we have something which the world needs, 
 and that we are using what we have, not 
 hindered by what we lack. Negative lives 
 are of small value. Negative acts, if there 
 are such things, are not worthy of men in the 
 serious work of life. The phrase sometimes 
 used of an act which we like to perform, that 
 " there is no harm in it," is not worthy of a 
 man. It is not what an act does not have in 
 it, but what an act does have in it, that should 
 enlist our care. An act with no harm in it is 
 a purse with no money in it; it is not equal 
 to the needs of our daily life, while we are 
 easily able to have money in our purse. The 
 requirements of God do not stop at the nega- 
 tives. "Do not covet" means "Love." "Do 
 
 34 
 
The Positive Life 
 
 not lie " means " Tell the truth." " Do not 
 steal" means *'Give." For our own sake and 
 for the world's sake let us keep on this side of 
 possession and accomplishment. A colorless 
 life is of no honor and no use. To commend a 
 man for having no fault is often to reproach a 
 man for having no virtue. Stand for some- 
 thing ; have a place and be a force in the world. 
 They asked John the Baptist who he was. 
 He made little account of what he was not, 
 and we are not impressed by his words, " I 
 am not the Christ. I am not that prophet." 
 It is the positive side of his declaration which 
 marks the man and asserts his force : " I am 
 the voice." The two great confessions in 
 the midst of the gospel are confessions upon 
 the positive side : " Thou art the Christ, the 
 Son of the living God." "Thou art Peter, 
 and on this rock will I build my church." 
 Stand for something. There is an expression 
 of great strength used by St. Paul in writing 
 to the Corinthian church : " Ye are members 
 in particular " ; not " members," not " mem- 
 bers in general," not " members upon the 
 
 35 
 
The Part We Know 
 
 catalogue," but members with a definite place 
 and work and honor and reward — " members 
 in particular." I am walking with you, and 
 I point to a man whom we see upon the 
 street, and I say, " Who is that man? " You 
 answer, " He is nobody in particular." '* But 
 he is a man, is he not? " " Oh yes; he lives 
 here ; I meet him frequently ; you will find 
 his name in the city directory. But that is 
 all; he is nobody in particular." Another 
 day we meet another man, perhaps more 
 plainly dressed, more simple in his bearing, 
 and I repeat my question, " Who is that 
 man? " " That man? Why, that is the fin- 
 est lawyer in the town. That man was 
 governor of the commonwealth. That man 
 is the leading professor in the college." 
 " Ah, I see ; you have not told me his name, 
 but you have told me the man. He is what 
 St. Paul meant ; he is somebody * in particu- 
 lar.' " 
 
 A positive life is the Hfe of the highest 
 accomplishment and is lived in the highest 
 domain. There are many things that we do 
 
 36 
 
Knowledge More than Ignorance 
 
 not know. There is a part of everything 
 that we do not know. We are all under- 
 graduates in the university of life. But we 
 know in part ; that is, in part we know. So 
 St. Paul teaches us. Use that part. What 
 we do not know is of little practical value 
 compared with the part that we do know. 
 If I may adapt the saying, our knowledge, 
 however small, is of greater account than our 
 ignorance, however great. We should be 
 very glad that it is only a part that we know. 
 Life would be dismal indeed if we had reached 
 the limit of truth upon any of its broad lines ; 
 if there were no more great verities than we 
 have compassed or can soon compass ; if duty 
 and truth and life were all held within our 
 slender grasp ; if there were no more of glory 
 and honor and immortality than we can see 
 and understand and value and make our own. 
 It is the almost limitless extent of truth which 
 makes it divine, and the endless years that 
 are awaiting us are to be filled with the end- 
 less attainment of knowledge and grace and 
 life. St. Paul, with all his visions of eternal 
 
 37 
 
The Part We Know • 
 
 grace and life, rejoiced to confess, reveled in 
 the confession, that that in which he was liv- 
 ing passed his knowledge. So St. John, ris- 
 ing to his sublime conception of the character 
 of the saints, poured out his exultant heart in 
 the great confession, " Beloved, now are we 
 the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear 
 what we shall be." But while they knew in 
 part they used the part they knew; they 
 rested their own life upon it ; they gave it to 
 others for their learning; they breathed it 
 upon the world for its inspiration; they be- 
 lieved in the steadily rising sun and the day 
 that eternally shall grow brighter and brighter. 
 It is little to say that our knowledge, too, is 
 in part. Our knowledge of God is very far 
 from perfect. We believe in God, the Father 
 Almighty. We know the love of God. We 
 rejoice in his providence. But no man hath 
 seen God at any time, nor can see him. Yet 
 upon this knowledge of God which we do 
 possess we build a life of confidence, obedi- 
 ence, affection, the strong life of a child of 
 God to whom there comes the continual 
 
 38 
 
The Obedience of Our Verities 
 
 growth in all that is godly and divine in the 
 power of an endless life. We know Jesus 
 Christ, our Lord and Saviour. We know 
 that the eternal Word was made flesh and has 
 dwelt among us. We know that life of divine 
 beauty and help. We know the parables of 
 truth and the miracles of mercy, and that he 
 loved the world and gave himself for it, the 
 Lamb of God, the Saviour of men, forever- 
 more Redeemer and Intercessor. But the 
 method of the incarnation we do not know. 
 The full secret of redemption we cannot trace. 
 The secret working of the Holy Ghost in the 
 souls of men we cannot define. Yet we open 
 our hearts to the Comforter; we intrust our- 
 selves to the Redeemer; we follow him who 
 is the light and the life of men. We know 
 in part, but the part we know is the part we 
 use. To use the part we know is to know 
 more. Not the fondling of our doubts, but 
 the obedience of our verities leads up the 
 heights of knowledge. 
 
 Perhaps there is no better illustration of 
 the method of life which is here commended 
 
 39 
 
The Part We Know « 
 
 than that which is given in the gospel in the 
 case of the man who was born bhnd. His 
 ignorance was very great and his knowledge 
 was very small. Christ came that way, and 
 spoke to him, and bade him go wash in the 
 pool of Siloam. The man heard the voice, 
 understood the direction, went down the hill, 
 and in that very act made the beginning of a 
 Christian life, for he had done at Christ's 
 word, though he had never seen Christ, what 
 no one else had ever done, what he had never 
 dreamed of doing, what no other one would 
 ever have asked him to do. He knew that 
 he was told to go and wash in Siloam, and he 
 went. He came back seeing, and his trouble 
 began. His life had been an easy one, nar- 
 row, dull, but free from great anxiety or large 
 exertion. From that time men who should 
 have rejoiced in the gift which came to him 
 gathered around him to annoy him and accuse 
 him, to make his new sight a burden to him ; 
 and even his father and mother, to whom he 
 might have looked for sympathy, turned upon 
 him the hard faces which seemed to make it 
 
 40 
 
The Wise Blind Man 
 
 hardly worth the while to be able to look 
 upon the features of a friend. The poor 
 man's ignorance was appalling, but shrewdly 
 he took hold of what he knew and worked 
 simply with that. "This man is a sinner," 
 people said to him. They denounced, and 
 they would have him denounce, the stranger 
 who had given him his sight. To all their 
 reasoning he could make no answer. He 
 was wise in keeping himself free from what 
 he did not know. And finally, when they 
 had worried and badgered him to the last, 
 he cried out with the wit and shrewdness of 
 a man who had done much thinking, with a 
 poor appeal to pity in this confusion of his 
 new gift; still clinging to the part he knew, 
 he cried out in this wise : ''Gentlemen, have 
 compassion upon me. I am a poor man. I 
 have never had any chance. I have never 
 been to school. I cannot answer you. I do 
 not know anything about these things you 
 are throwing at me. Whether he be a sinner 
 or no I know not. One thing I know : that, 
 whereas I was blind, now I see." On that 
 
 41 
 
The Part We Know 
 
 " pin-point of his experience " he stood, and 
 from it nothing could move him. Well, they 
 turned him out of the church. So much 
 they could do. But they could not turn him 
 out of himself or away from Christ. Jesus 
 met him, for he heard that they had cast him 
 out, and he turned a compassionate look upon 
 the new eyes and said, " Dost thou believe 
 on the Son of God?" Mark the answer. 
 " If I knew who he was, I think I should 
 believe on him" — it was not that he said. 
 It was a forward, straight-out confession: 
 " Who is he, Lord, that I might believe on 
 him?" ** Thou hast both seen him, and he 
 it is that speaketh with thee." And he said, 
 " Lord, I believe," and he worshiped him. 
 Thus from the first moment when Jesus spoke 
 to him to this last moment of revelation the 
 man born blind stood in front of his ignorance, 
 took what he knew, used what he knew, 
 worked what he knew into his life, and be- 
 came the confessor, the first man to suffer for 
 his faith in Jesus Christ. What wonder that 
 one of our most brilliant, philosophic preach- 
 
 42 
 
Advance in Knowledge 
 
 ers should say, " When I would know just 
 what Christianity is in its last analysis I must 
 make a careful study of what passed between 
 Jesus and the man born blind " ? 
 
 The times that we are living in greatly 
 need this practical method. It is a day of 
 negation. Great questions of religion and of 
 life are under discussion. Nothing escapes 
 the scrutiny of the eager, restless mind of 
 man. Out of this time of removal the great 
 truths will come, and they will not suffer 
 shock. Meantime it is a period of unrest, 
 and with many a period of increased uncer- 
 tainty. With the best intentions, they feel 
 less assured concerning many matters of faith 
 which they have held of great account. But 
 study cannot be checked, searching cannot be 
 repressed, and we must wait in faith and pa- 
 tience, in the quiet confidence that the things 
 which cannot and ought not to be shaken will 
 remain. But for ourselves, for our personal 
 life, for our influence in the world, the only 
 manly rule is that which is suggested to us 
 here by the blind man and by the apostle — 
 
 43 
 
The Part We Know 
 
 to use what we have, and in the faithful 
 employment of what we know to gain the 
 steady accession of knowledge, the constant 
 increase of its truth and power. If it be 
 necessary to write over many a page '* Silver 
 and gold have I none," we certainly are able 
 to write over many another page " Such as T 
 have." This is the time for using what we 
 have, and this is the place. The life in a 
 university is too young to be mortgaged to 
 ignorance. With the face set forward, with 
 willing ears waiting for the call of duty, we 
 are to be assured that it is a positive living 
 which is called for, the use of what is in hand. 
 It is in this way that all advance in study is 
 made. We go from the alphabet that we 
 know into the literature that stretches its 
 endless reach beyond us. We go from the 
 few figures learned in childhood to the high 
 reckonings which mark the courses of the 
 planets. Let it be so in all study : from 
 what we have on to the greater having. In 
 the use of what we have let us come to be 
 Christ's disciples. In the use of what we 
 
 44 
 
The Best Gift 
 
 have let us advance to higher discipleship, 
 ever learning, ever teaching, steadily getting, 
 steadily giving. When we take account of 
 life let us give especial heed to that which 
 we have. If we find that we have not the 
 means by which we might do some work 
 which is waiting for us, the result is not to 
 be inactivity, but the doing some other work 
 with the force in our hands. If we had sil- 
 ver and gold we would give them, but often- 
 times they cannot meet the want, and often- 
 times they are poor gifts. Modern charity 
 has learned the lesson, and is striving to teach 
 it to us, that money is seldom the best gift to 
 the poor, but the help to get money, which 
 shall maintain self-respect, promote industry 
 and all the virtues. If, some day, I find I 
 have no silver and gold, then let me go down 
 to the Beautiful Gate of the Temple and work 
 some simple miracle. I can help some lame 
 man ; I can read to some blind man ; I can 
 comfort and strengthen ; I can bless ; and 
 even wanting many things which might be of 
 service, I can do those larger things which 
 
 45 
 
The Part We Know 
 
 Christ has told me of, saying, *' The works 
 that I do shall ye do ; and greater works than 
 these." Let us not forget that this incident 
 at the Temple was but the picture of his life. 
 Silver and gold Christ had none. In not one 
 instance in the gospel did he give this kind 
 of help, but he gave men strength and com- 
 fort and eternal life. One thing he always 
 had, and he gave that. That one thing every 
 man has, and, whatever be his property, every 
 man, like Christ, can give — himself. And no 
 man is poor who has himself to give. 
 
 Now let us away ! Let us raise the sails. 
 There is not much wind. But let us set 
 the sails and get the anchors up on deck. 
 There will be a strong breeze at night, and 
 before morning we shall be well out to sea. 
 
 46 
 
Personality 
 
 By 
 
 Amory H. Bradford, D.D. 
 
 Pastor of the First Congregational Church of Montclair, N. J. 
 
 "But lighting upon a place -where two seas met, they ran 
 the vessel aground."— Acts xxvii. 41. 
 
 WHO can describe a shipwreck? — fury 
 of waves, terror of people, howling 
 of winds, and roaring of waters! For four- 
 teen days this ship on which the Roman cen- 
 turion and his prisoners had taken passage 
 was driven by the wind ; for fourteen days 
 there was sight neither of sun nor of stars. 
 Two hundred and seventy-six persons were 
 on board. Strength and courage were alike 
 exhausted. There was no cessation of the 
 storm. The sailors imagined that they were 
 drawing near to land, and, sounding, found 
 first a depth of twenty fathoms, then fifteen 
 
 47 
 
Personality ^ 
 
 fathoms; then, fearing lest they should be 
 cast on a rocky shore, they put out four 
 anchors from the stern. That method of 
 anchoring ships was not uncommon in those 
 times. They "wished for the day." How 
 much is packed into those words ! But there 
 was selfishness even there. The sailors, pro- 
 fessing to look after the anchors, lowered one 
 of the ship's boats and were about to try to 
 save themselves when they were exposed by 
 Paul. As day began to dawn he moved 
 among the people and begged them to take 
 food, assuring them that they should all be 
 saved. Not until he took the bread himself 
 and calmly gave thanks to God were they 
 willing to eat. A ship is comparatively safe 
 in the open sea, even if the waves are piled 
 into mountains ; but when land is approached 
 breakers make quick work of the strongest 
 craft. In the dawning light they saw not far 
 distant a bay, which they tried to reach. 
 Having thrown overboard the wheat with 
 which the ship was loaded, they cut loose the 
 anchors, raised the sail, and made for the 
 
 48 
 
Paul and the Shipwreck 
 
 haven. Suddenly they came to a place where 
 two seas met. Then nothing remained but 
 to run the vessel aground. The soldiers had 
 to answer for their charge with their lives. 
 Therefore they advised the centurion to kill 
 the prisoners so that none should escape. He 
 would not consent ; thereupon both prisoners 
 and passengers threw themselves into the 
 waters, and all reached land. 
 
 We have seen Paul facing angry mobs ; 
 going alone through the mountains of Asia ; 
 in the presence of mocking philosophers in 
 Corinth and Athens; before the Roman 
 governor and the Jewish king; but we have 
 never seen him in circumstances so trying as 
 these. During weeks of storm he was the 
 good angel of the ship. He cheered the 
 sailors, comforted the prisoners, encouraged 
 the centurion. When others expected to go 
 to the bottom he was confident that all would 
 be saved. Tradition represents him as of 
 inferior presence — possibly of limping gait, 
 very Hkely with some serious affection of his 
 eyes, mean, as he has himself told us, in bodily 
 
 49 
 
Personality- 
 appearance. His power was in his qualities 
 of spirit, and those he never more superbly 
 manifested than when a prisoner on his way 
 to the imperial city. The greatness of per- 
 sonality has seldom had a finer illustration 
 than in his conduct in the midst of the ship- 
 wreck. 
 
 What do we mean by personality? It is 
 all that distinguishes a man from a thing. 
 When one is richly endowed in mind, heart, 
 and will he has a strong personality. When 
 the heart predominates over the intellect he 
 has a sympathetic personality. When am- 
 bition prevails there is a malign personality. 
 The word needs little definition ; its meaning 
 is evident. It may be a blessing or a curse. 
 If it is used in the interests of love it is a 
 blessing; if in the interests of selfishness it is a 
 curse. Paul was an eager, impassioned, per- 
 sistent enthusiast, a man of great intellect, 
 inspired and fired with fervent love. His in- 
 fluence was the result of what he was. Per- 
 sonality is the sum of all the powers. Pascal, 
 in one of his immortal ** Pensees," has finely 
 
 50 
 
Types of Heroism 
 
 said : " But were the universe to crush him, 
 man would still be more noble than that 
 which kills him, because he knows that he 
 dies, and the universe knows nothing of the 
 advantage it has over him." In other words, 
 spirit is mightier than matter, and personality- 
 is always spiritual. Will can never be con- 
 quered by force. A child may defy a storm ; 
 the ocean may engulf the man whom it can- 
 not destroy. I have never tired reading of 
 the attempts of the late Professor Tyndall to 
 scale the Matterhorn. He would not be pre- 
 vented from planting his feet upon its loftiest 
 peak and gazing upon the frozen ocean that 
 broke into billows of snow and ice at its base. 
 But personality is not so impressive when 
 it is pitted against nature as when in a 
 good man, alone and undaunted, it faces 
 a throng who are strong and bad. The 
 power one man may have over a multitude 
 is vividly illustrated in the story of that 
 monk who, hearing of the gladiatorial ex- 
 hibitions in Rome, made his way to the im- 
 perial city and the Colosseum ; and who, 
 
 51 
 
Personality • 
 
 as the brutal sport was about to begin, 
 leaped from tier to tier of the crowded seats 
 into the arena. Standing before the gladi- 
 ators with drawn swords, he cried to the 
 spectators in a voice which rang through all 
 the arches : " Will you praise God by the 
 shedding of innocent blood ? " The spectacle 
 did not cease that day, and he who tried to 
 stop it was run through by the swords of the 
 gladiators, but not until he had given a death 
 blow to the barbarism that had long dis- 
 graced the so-called Christian empire. 
 
 *' His dream became a deed that woke the world, 
 For while the frantic rabble in half-amaze 
 Stared at him dead, thro' all the nobler hearts 
 In that vast Oval ran a shudder of shame. 
 The Baths, the Forum gabbled of his death, 
 And preachers linger'd o'er his dying words, 
 V^hich would not die, but echo'd on to reach 
 Honorius, till he heard them, and decreed 
 That Rome no more should wallow in this old lust 
 Of Paganism, and make her festal hour 
 Dark with the blood of man who murder'd man." 
 
 What most attracts toward higher ideals? 
 The splendid utterances of orators? The 
 finished sentences of brilliant authors? Our 
 
 Master showed finer discernment when he sent 
 
 52 
 
The Power of Character 
 
 his disciples into the world to do just as he had 
 done. He attracted others by the evident 
 goodness of his life — by the power of his per- 
 sonality. When he called, Peter and John 
 left their nets and followed him. By the 
 same methods his work is to be continued. 
 Influence is not measured by words, but by 
 character. No book was ever so well worth 
 studying as a noble life. Men, not books, 
 have lifted the world toward higher things. 
 Some persons are so genuine, so true, so 
 trustworthy, that in the hour of need they 
 are always sought. The greatest figure in 
 English history is that of OHver Cromwell. 
 But Cromwell did not leap into publicity at a 
 bound. He was a country squire, in appear- 
 ance uncouth, in manner without polish, with 
 no gift of oratory ; but he could be counted 
 on. The times demanded " a still, strong 
 man," who could " rule and dare not lie," and 
 he was that man. What made Abraham 
 Lincoln the idol of the republic and the glory 
 of his generation? Not his eloquence, al- 
 though few have spoken more eloquently ; 
 
Personality 
 
 not his achievements, although few have 
 achieved greater things. He is remembered 
 and loved for what he was. The little 
 girl who pleaded for her brother found the 
 great President's ear attentive; the widow 
 with the story of her only boy found his 
 heart sympathetic. He never ceased to be a 
 man, and in that fact was his power. Culture 
 alone is not personality ; neither are wealth, a 
 beautiful presence, an honored lineage, nor 
 physical strength. " A little child shall lead 
 them." We bow before strength, but 
 that will fail ; we admire intellect, but in- 
 tellect is not always to be trusted. Show 
 me one who will never deceive, who is hon- 
 est as the day, unselfish as love, who never 
 seeks his own but always another's welfare, 
 and I will show you a man whom all who 
 know will trust, before whom many hearts 
 will open, and into whose keeping sacred 
 secrets will be committed. The greatest 
 power in the world is personal, and per- 
 sonal power culminates when wisdom and 
 knowledge are married to goodness and 
 
 54 
 
The Secret of Personality 
 
 love. When we are what we ought to he the 
 things which we ought to do will be evident, 
 and the strength to do them at hand. 
 
 If Paul was remarkable neither for physi- 
 cal strength nor for learning, and least of all 
 for grace and charm of manner, then what 
 was the secret of his unique personality ? 
 He would not have been long in answering 
 that question. " The love of Christ con- 
 straineth me." By that he would mean, 
 " The secret of my life is in the fact that the 
 very love which was in Christ has reached 
 down and taken hold of me and made me its 
 glad and grateful slave." " Christ liveth in 
 me." "I am crucified with Christ," The 
 old Saul had gone out of sight, and a new 
 man had come in, who was impelled by the 
 very forces which took Jesus to the cross. 
 The secret of his power, service, and endur- 
 ance was in " the heavenly vision." Another 
 element in Paul's personality was his large 
 and vital faith. That is not synonymous 
 with belief. Faith in a person is never the 
 same as belief in a proposition. Faith is not 
 
 55 
 
Personality 
 
 the acceptance of a series of doctrines; it is 
 the bond which links us with the unseen ; it is 
 the bridge which we throw over the abyss 
 between ourselves and the infinite. '* I be- 
 lieve in God so that I trust him" is a true 
 description of faith. 
 
 Faith is the faculty of realizing in our 
 mortal life the unseen and eternal, and love 
 is the substitution of Christ's motives and 
 methods for those of the world. These two 
 graces combined in one character go far to- 
 ward the making of an inspiring personality. 
 Those who have " endured as seeing Him 
 who is invisible," who have dared to face a 
 majority in the consciousness of being right, 
 who have followed love even though it has 
 taken them to the cross, have been leaders to 
 whom the world has come at last. That 
 monument on Commonwealth Avenue in 
 Boston is typical. There was a time when 
 the most maligned man in America was Wil- 
 liam Lloyd Garrison. Even Boston was 
 ready to hang him, for no reason except that 
 he believed in God and loved man. He was 
 
 56 
 
Faith and Love 
 
 not great, except in his passion for humanity. 
 He would not sacrifice a brother to win a 
 world's applause. The secret of heroism is 
 always found in faith and love. No one is 
 heroic without them. Those who trust God 
 seldom fear man, and will not doubt that in 
 the end truth and righteousness will prevail. 
 If they go down beneath the waters it will be 
 with a song upon their lips. He who forgets 
 himself and lives for others, though he be 
 as humble as the Galilean, will sooner or 
 later inspire many with a passion for his 
 ideal. 
 
 Four characteristics are always found in 
 those who exert an enduring and benefi- 
 cent influence. The first is devotion to God. 
 Where there is no vision of God the tendency 
 is ever and inevitably downward. Those 
 who believe in no mountain-crests will seek 
 to climb none. Those who have stooped 
 lowest in service have previously been lifted 
 highest by their beliefs. Those who have 
 been surest of God and most consecrated to 
 him have had the most faith in man and 
 
 57 
 
Personality 
 
 done the most for his elevation. Those 
 who have visions of God sooner or later be- 
 come like him. They are not attracted by- 
 evil, because they have fallen in love with 
 the good. No one has led the race far to- 
 ward the heavenly heights who has not been 
 sure of God. All are heroic who can say, 
 " Though he slay me, yet will I trust him." 
 
 The highest manhood necessitates the finest 
 culture of mind and heart. An ignorant good 
 man is never so efficient as one who has ample 
 knowledge and has cultivated his faculties. 
 Goodness is sometimes allied to coarse- 
 ness, and culture to crime ; circumstances 
 often make culture impossible ; but in them- 
 selves knowledge and training are elements 
 of strength, and, other things being equal, 
 he who knows much and who has been care- 
 fully trained will do most for God and man. 
 All men are " loaded with bias." Some- 
 thing which will develop the good and make 
 " a balance in the faculties " is desirable. 
 God gives his Spirit to those who can use it 
 best. Some ignorant men have done great 
 
 58 
 
The Necessity of Purity 
 
 things, and some learned men have been 
 fools ; but no man ever accomplished much 
 because he knew little, and no man was ever 
 a fool because he was learned. Paul spent 
 three years in Arabia before he began to 
 preach. All teachers of abiding influence 
 have spent more time in studying than in 
 teaching. Every grace of manner, every gain 
 of education, every charm of presence, every 
 refinement of expression, will be sought by 
 those who are anxious to achieve worthy 
 things for the kingdom of God. 
 
 If personality and power are synonymous, 
 then those habits which hinder the fullest 
 and most beautiful development of the spirit 
 should be put away. Fineness of spirit can 
 manifest itself only through purity of body. 
 All ought sometime to offer Tennyson's 
 prayer : 
 
 " Oh for a man to arise in me. 
 
 That the man I am may cease to be." 
 
 Whatever dulls the intellectual faculties or 
 dims the spiritual perception limits influence. 
 Those who have found nearness to God have 
 
 59 
 
Personality 
 
 begun by abstinence from all that pampers 
 the flesh. Prophets have never spent much 
 time in parlors. Gluttony and spirituality are 
 sworn enemies. Narcotics and stimulants do 
 not clarify spiritual sight. The pure in heart 
 see God. The astronomer makes sure that 
 the glass of his telescope is not soiled by a 
 single fleck. The reflector in the lighthouse 
 must be kept untarnished. If we would 
 know God and thus be of some little service 
 in making him known to our fellow-men, we 
 must make sure that our thoughts are pure 
 and our habits clean. 
 
 But perhaps the chief factor in a beneficent 
 personaHty is loss of self in devotion to 
 humanity. Sooner or later others will seek 
 the man who never schemes for himself. 
 Those who exalt themselves no one else will 
 exalt. A physician, at the peril of his life, 
 allowed a tube to be inserted into his veins, 
 that blood might be drawn from him to save 
 the life of a servant. Those who will risk 
 their lives for the lowliest are made of heroic 
 stuff. For such this world is waiting. Self- 
 
 60 
 
The Prerogative of No Class 
 
 assertion is hateful ; self-sacrifice to save 
 one's fellow-men, sublime. The inscription 
 on the tomb of General Gordon in St. Paul's 
 Cathedral closes as follows : " Who at all 
 times and everywhere gave his strength to 
 the weak, his substance to the poor, his sym- 
 pathy to the suffering, and his heart to God." 
 No wonder that Chinamen listened to him as 
 if he were a messenger from another world ! 
 No wonder that African tribes believed that 
 he was a superior being! All who forget 
 themselves in the service of God and man 
 help to make grand, sweet music in the midst 
 of the storm and shipwreck of this mortal 
 life. 
 
 Personality is the prerogative of no class. 
 The loftiest spirit may inhabit the frailest 
 body and the whitest soul dwell in the deep- 
 est poverty. All who trust God and in the 
 spirit of Christ serve their fellow-men enter 
 into the secret places of abiding power. 
 Devotion to the divine, the culture of every 
 gift and faculty, body and mind " according 
 well " and kept pure and clean, loss of self in 
 
 6i 
 
Personality 
 
 the consciousness of the privilege of serving 
 humanity — these are the characteristics of 
 that lofty and beneficent manhood so finely 
 designated in our time by the word " per- 
 sonality," and perfectly illustrated for all time 
 in the example of Him who came not to be 
 ministered unto but to minister, and who by 
 losing His life became the Saviour of the 
 world. 
 
 62 
 
The Evolution of a Thinker 
 
 By 
 
 George A. Gordon, D.D. 
 
 Pastor of the Old South Church, Boston, Mass. 
 
 "I thought on my wajys, 
 And turned my feet unto thy testimonies.'* 
 
 Ps. cxix. 5p. 
 
 THE thinker is always an interesting 
 being; but sometimes he is a sophist, 
 and, although interesting, he is misleading. 
 And even when he is not a sophist he is fre- 
 quently abstract, remote, vague, and there- 
 fore unprofitable. Here in the text we have 
 a man who is a thinker and yet no sophist, 
 no dreamer, but one who brings the full power 
 of an inspired intelligence to bear upon the 
 most urgent and the most momentous issues 
 of life. In the evolution of this typical vital 
 thinker as he comes before us in the words, 
 
 63 
 
The Evolution of a Thinker 
 
 ' ' I thought on my ways, 
 And turned my feet unto thy testimonies." 
 
 there are four things to be noted. 
 
 I. In the first place, his words are remark- 
 able for the clear recognition which they con- 
 tain of the supreme and ultimate relation of 
 every human life. The last reference of our 
 existence is to God. The words " my ways " 
 and " thy testimonies " present the two terms 
 in the great final comparison, the two persons, 
 the finite and the infinite, who have to do 
 with each other before all and after all. As 
 a cathedral built in the heart of a great city 
 rises with the other buildings round about it, 
 keeps company with them a certain distance, 
 and then leaves them all behind, soars away 
 skyward, and at last, solitary and alone, looks 
 up into the infinite spaces, so every man lives 
 among men. He rests with them upon the 
 same political and social foundation ; he 
 stands with them in a wide and important 
 fellowship ; he rises with them a certain way, 
 and then he goes beyond them all, and the 
 
 last look and reference of his spirit is to the 
 
 64 
 
The Supreme Relation 
 
 Eternal. We drew our being from God, we 
 live and move and have our being in God, 
 and at death we breathe back our life into 
 God's hands. The first thing in our existence 
 is our Maker, and when we have done with 
 all others we have still to do with him. For 
 the clear and impressive recognition of this 
 supreme and final relation of human life the 
 words of the text are indeed remarkable. In 
 the evolution of thought this thinker began 
 at the divine beginning, and let us be thank- 
 ful to him for that. 
 
 2. The words of this man are remarkable, 
 in the second place, for the application which 
 they reveal of an awakened intelligence to the 
 business of living. Is it not strange that in 
 a world where so much thinking is done, and 
 where so many magnificent monuments have 
 been erected to the triumph of human reason, 
 so very little thought should be given to that 
 which is of supreme moment — life itself? 
 Every locomotive that leaves the station must 
 have an engineer; that is, intelligence must 
 be in command. Every ship that clears port 
 
 65 
 
The Evolution of a Thinker 
 
 must have a captain ; again, reason must rule. 
 In all the professions the cry is for more light, 
 for larger-minded men. And no one expects 
 success anywhere in the business of the world 
 but in proportion as he puts his mind upon 
 his task. Our science, our art, our philoso- 
 phy, our political institutions, our industry, 
 our history, and our entire civilization are 
 monuments of the greatness and triumph of 
 the human mind. Upon every hand we behold 
 the marvels achieved by thought. Every- 
 where it is doing wonders, except in the evo- 
 lution of character. Life is left to make way 
 for itself, to go unshielded into the field of 
 battle. Character, the supreme thing, is 
 abandoned to chance ; it is left to grow wild ; 
 it is given no succor, no inspiration from the 
 power of intelligence. And one may as rea- 
 sonably expect a child to play in safety upon 
 the confines of a jungle, with the hiss of the 
 snake and the growl of the wild beast audible 
 from the thicket, as for a young man to hope 
 to keep his honor, maintain his purity, and 
 
 hold fast his integrity in the peril of the world 
 
 66 
 
A Typical Criticism 
 
 without the application of Christian intelli- 
 gence to the business of living. 
 
 And this criticism holds against men of 
 genius as well as against ordinary men. Like 
 others, they are good and bad from impulse, 
 and moral judgment has had but little to do 
 with the guidance of their lives. Take, for 
 example, the criticism that Burns passes upon 
 himself in his poem ** A Bard's Epitaph." 
 How much deeper, how much more severe, 
 how much more to the point it is than the 
 censure of any other critic ! 
 
 " Is there a man whose judgment clear 
 Can others teach the course to steer, 
 Yet runs himself life's mad career 
 
 Wild as the wave? 
 Here pause — and, through the starting tear, 
 Survey this grave." 
 
 " The poor inhabitant below 
 Was quick to learn and wise to know, 
 And keenly felt the friendly glow 
 
 And softer flame ; 
 But thoughtless follies laid him low 
 
 And stain'd his name." 
 
 With what unerring insight the poet reaches 
 to the heart of the difficulty, and with what 
 
 67 
 
The Evolution of a Thinker 
 
 utter fidelity he lays it bare! The funda- 
 mental sin in the career of Burns was the fail- 
 ure to put his personal life under the power 
 of moral intelligence. That, I do believe, is 
 at the heart of the overwhelming majority of 
 the blasted hopes and the blighted careers 
 with which every fresh generation of young 
 men has hitherto disappointed the world and 
 plunged it in tears. 
 
 And even where thought is given to life, it 
 is usually one-sided. There are two great 
 partners in the business of living: the sum of 
 things and the individual man ; the universe 
 and the single person; God and the soul. 
 Two questions thus arise in every earnest 
 mind: How does God deal with us? How 
 do we behave toward God? Upon the first 
 question we are marvelously free, and this 
 may be one of the reasons for the amazing 
 popularity in our time of the Book of Job. 
 The absolute freedom of speech in which he 
 indulges, the bold way in which he calls the 
 Almighty to account, accords wonderfully 
 well with our prevailing mood. We complain 
 
 68 
 
God's Problem 
 
 of the weather, which is not our work, but 
 the Almighty's ; we are vexed at our physi- 
 cal constitution, which is not of our doing, 
 but of the divine; we are sore at heart — 
 whatever we may pretend to the world — 
 because we are so poorly endowed in intel- 
 lect, which cannot be laid to our account, but 
 must be laid at the door of our Maker; we 
 are ashamed over the evil dispositions with 
 which our nature is infested, and for which 
 we are in no way responsible. We call God 
 to account for our total inheritance and en- 
 vironment ; we ask for light upon the mystery 
 of iniquity and the mystery of pain. 
 
 All this freedom of thought is well. Let 
 it go on. There is a fundamental faith in the 
 reality of righteousness underneath it that 
 makes it little short of a revelation of God. 
 Theodicies have their necessity in the moral 
 reason of man and in the conditions of the 
 world. Sometimes they are a mere parade 
 of rhetoric, like Pope's " Essay on Man " ; 
 again, they reduce themselves to nothing by 
 denying the facts, like the optimism of Leib- 
 
 69 
 
The Evolution of a Thinker 
 
 nitz; still further, they are epoch-making in 
 their freedom, magnificence, and failure, like 
 Job ; and yet once more, they create new 
 hope, as when Milton, on his way toward a 
 justification of the ways of God to men, emp- 
 ties heaven and earth and hell in the presence 
 of faith. Theodlcies there have always been ; 
 attempts at them there always must be in this 
 world. But the moment we throw the bur- 
 den of human life, the world, the universe 
 upon God we conquer ground for a new ex- 
 pectation. God will at last construct his own 
 justification. And what a day that will be 
 when the Eternal appears at the bar of the 
 conscience that he has made and enlightened 
 to give an account of his purpose in the uni- 
 verse! That will be the great and terrible 
 day of the Lord. That is the final judgment 
 toward which the conscience of man looks for- 
 ward both with awe and with deathless desire. 
 With such a cause, for such an end, with such 
 a Reasoner, how ineffably solemn and grand 
 the scene will be! Then surely the morning 
 
 stars will renew and perfect their song, and 
 
 70 
 
Man's Problem 
 
 all the sons of God will shout for joy as they 
 never yet have done. 
 
 But if the universe has its problem, we 
 have ours. It is our privilege to ask God to 
 account to the conscience that he creates and 
 trains for his conduct of the world. But here 
 our solicitude should cease. We may rest 
 assured that the Infinite will give his answer, 
 that God will accomplish what it is his to ac- 
 compHsh. Meanwhile we have our funda- 
 mental question. How are we behaving 
 toward the Eternal ? Granted that the mys- 
 tery of temptation, and hard tasks, and dis- 
 agreeable circumstances, and positive disap- 
 pointments, and occasional sweeping losses is 
 for God to explain, is it not ours to play the 
 man in all, under all, and through all ? There 
 are two questions that may be asked about 
 the great Face in the Franconia Notch, the 
 •'' Old Man of the Mountain." You may ask. 
 How does the sky deal with the Face ? Does 
 it bite it with frost, does it snow it under, 
 does it sweep it with storms, does it tread 
 the great features with the feet of hurricanes, 
 
 7x 
 
The Evolution of a Thinker 
 
 does it greet it out of an endless succession 
 of sunrises, does the glow of innumerable 
 sunsets, reflected from the transfigured clouds 
 that float before it, light up the lofty profile ? 
 That is one question. But there is another. 
 How does the Face behave toward the sky? 
 Is it calm and grand and fixed and serene, 
 sublimely expectant, and in immortal recon- 
 ciliation with the infinite, and in blessed 
 peace? How is God dealing with you? 
 What kind of blood has he poured into your 
 veins? Of what tissue and substance has he 
 made you, and what are the forms of trial 
 with which he has girt you ? What is your 
 inheritance and what your environment? 
 How is God dealing with you ? That is one 
 side of the business of living. But there is 
 another. What is your bearing toward him ? 
 Are you a coward or a king, a devotee of 
 indulgence or a hero of righteousness, a mu- 
 tineer in the world or an unchangeable wit- 
 ness of love and hope ? 
 
 3. This Hebrew thinker was remarkable 
 for the way in which he discovered that he 
 
 72 
 
The Power of the Bible 
 
 was wrong. He began to think upon his 
 personal life, and he soon found that he was 
 not the first nor the greatest thinker in that 
 region. A royal succession had preceded 
 him. They had recorded their thoughts 
 upon the greatest interests of existence. 
 Their recorded thoughts had become the 
 highest wisdom, the Holy Scriptures, the 
 Bible of the nation to which this man be- 
 longed. To these testimonies of God he 
 turned, and these sustained, enlarged, and 
 enlightened his best reflections upon his own 
 life. He took his career to the highest, and 
 in its presence he discovered the error in 
 which he had been trying to live. 
 
 When a young man who is gifted as a 
 musician goes to perfect his education, the 
 nobler his nature and the more promising his 
 mood, the more eager he is to live in the 
 company of such musicians as Schubert, 
 Mendelssohn, and Beethoven. These great 
 kings in the realm of harmony are ever about 
 him, ever looking down upon him, and his life 
 is rebuked and corrected by them and inspired 
 
 73 
 
The Evolution of a Thinker 
 
 at the same time. When a student of painting 
 really wishes to excel, to discover his defect, 
 and to see the path to high achievement, he 
 goes to the great European galleries where the 
 masters will look down upon him from the 
 walls. In the presence of Rembrandt, Titian, 
 and Raphael he will find both the error of his 
 work and the way out of it. There these 
 masters stand, forever revising, forever cor- 
 recting, forever pointing out the defect and 
 forever indicating the path to true achieve- 
 ment. Our own Longfellow, the most com- 
 pletely poetical nature that we have yet pro- 
 duced, owed his humility and his perfection 
 as an artist in no small measure to the fact 
 that he lived with Dante. The great Floren- 
 tine revised and guided, rebuked and inspired 
 his devoted scholar. And it is beautiful to 
 think of Tennyson, the consummate poet and 
 artist of our century, dying with Shakespeare 
 in his hand, thus acknowledging his deep in- 
 debtedness to the high excellence of that 
 supreme poetic genius. 
 
 Now when a man of the world wants to 
 74 
 
Appeal to the Highest 
 
 test his goodness, what does he usually do? 
 He picks out some shabby church-member 
 and compares him with himself. Finding 
 himself as good as the other member of the 
 comparison, — he could not well be worse, — 
 he congratulates himself and concludes that 
 he is good enough. And so men who want 
 excuses for their low lives take good men at 
 their worst — Peter when he denied his Mas- 
 ter, the ten when they forsook the Lord, Paul 
 when he lost his temper — and again suborn 
 their moral judgment. Take good men at 
 their best; take the divine man Christ, and 
 the error will soon leap to light. There is 
 one hymn which we especially need to sing 
 these days : 
 
 " O God, how infinite art thou! 
 What worthless worms are we!" 
 
 We need the sense of contrast between our 
 wretched lives and God's perfections, between 
 our poor, miserable actual and the blazing 
 and eternal ideal. The highest wisdom of 
 the race, the Bible, the highest life in history, 
 
 75 
 
The Evolution of a Thinker 
 
 the life of Christ, — hither we must come for 
 the evolution of a true moral judgment upon 
 our personal life. 
 
 4. Last of all, this man is remarkable for 
 the ease with which, finding he was wrong, 
 he returned to righteousness. He con- 
 sulted the testimonies of God and found that 
 he was wrong. Instantly the active power of 
 his nature came into play : he turned his feet 
 unto these same testimonies ; he grasped the 
 right thought of life ; that right thought must 
 be embodied in his heart, in his speech, in his 
 whole existence. Show an honest man that 
 he is wrong; if he sees it, and if he is an 
 honest man, he will turn at once. If he is 
 full of excuses he is a hypocrite. Take the 
 difference between Paul and Felix. Paul, 
 going like a cyclone against Christianity, 
 against the great cause of humanity in his 
 age, is met by the hght from heaven. It 
 struck him to the ground. He was spoken 
 to by the Lord, and what is his cry ? " What 
 wilt thou have me to do?" The answer is, 
 " Become an apostle ; retrace your steps ; 
 
 76 
 
The Test of Sincerity 
 
 wherever you have persecuted my cause go 
 and preach it" Instantly lie rose up and 
 went, and met the sneer and the scoff and the 
 persecution of those who had hailed his fa- 
 naticism with joy, who now hated him be- 
 cause of his adoption of the new faith. By 
 his immediate renunciation of a discovered 
 error he showed his sincerity. He could not 
 stand by a lie ; he could not consecrate his 
 power to that which God had demonstrated 
 to his soul to be wrong. Take now the case 
 of Felix. Paul preached to Felix on temper- 
 ance and righteousness and judgment to 
 come, and he trembled in his inmost soul at 
 the power of that preaching. What was his 
 response ? *' Go thy way for this time ; when 
 I have a convenient season, I will call for 
 thee." He was a sneak! No other word 
 describes it. Tell a man he is wrong; if he 
 is a man, he will right it, by the help of God. 
 Show a man that he is wrong, and if he be- 
 gins to reason about it, give excuses for it, 
 procrastinate and promise amendment by and 
 by, that man is morally unsound to the cen- 
 
 77 
 
The Evolution of a Thinker • 
 
 ter of his soul. When the captain of a ship 
 has been out at sea in a fog for a week, and 
 has been going God only knows where, and 
 suddenly the cloud lifts and the sun streams 
 upon him, and he finds out that he is hun- 
 dreds and hundreds of miles away from his 
 true course, what does he do? He thanks 
 God for dehverance, for the great rebuke, for 
 the sweet discovery of the light, heads the 
 ship the other way, and begins to beat back 
 with a singing heart to his true course. And 
 so when you find an honest man, and show 
 him that he is not on the right path, that he 
 has departed from his true course, gratitude 
 leaps like a spring set free in his heart, and 
 there is a new song in his soul, and he begins 
 to beat back to righteousness. 
 
 These, then, are the four things to be laid 
 to heart. First of al^, we must recognize 
 and revere our Maker. In the evolution of 
 the thinker, we must begin at the beginning. 
 We come from God, w-e go to God, and our 
 entire existence is supported by his will. 
 We must see him face to face ; we must feel 
 
 78 
 
The Great Opportunity 
 
 him under and over and round about and 
 within our Hfe. Our being must be ever open 
 toward him, as the windows of the devout 
 Jew in exile were toward Jerusalem. Our 
 nature must become alive with his presence, 
 our character all shot through with his power. 
 Then we shall have a divinely illuminated in- 
 teUigence to bring to bear upon the great 
 business of living. Christian manhood will 
 issue from the creative presence of the Eter- 
 nal Spirit within the soul, mediated, under- 
 stood, interpreted, and served by the whole 
 power of reason. And in the companionship 
 of the Lord the secret sin, the hidden fault, 
 the entire defect and error of existence, will 
 lie in perpetual open revelation. Last of all, 
 we shall leap to the grandest privilege given 
 to man, the sublime chance for the return to 
 righteousness. I cannot tell you how very 
 great human life seems to me to be under 
 this conception. I have looked at the tide 
 going seaward, at the. ocean returning upon 
 itself, until it seemed as if it would go away 
 forever and come again no more. But the 
 
 79 
 
The Evolution of a Thinker 
 
 moment of pause, change, and return finally 
 arrived. First in ripples, then in heavier 
 swells and longer rolls, with the constant 
 retrograde constantly checked and overcome, 
 with the pull of the heavens and the cry of 
 the shore, it thundered to the flood at last. 
 So we retreat from wisdom, from goodness, 
 from God ; and so we return when we come 
 to ourselves. To beat back out of the depths 
 and from the far distances, to come home- 
 ward in spite of all reverse movements, to 
 rise to the flood at length — that is but a poor 
 symbol for the march upon righteousness, 
 the joy of the successive gains, and the hope 
 of the final and overwhelming triumph in 
 God. 
 
 80 
 
c:;/i(^.^^y^'-^^ 
 
The Great Heresy 
 
 By 
 
 David James Burrell, D.D. 
 
 Pastor of Marble Collegiate Church, New York City 
 
 '' From that time forth began Jesus to show unto his dis- 
 ciples, how that he must go unto Jerusalem, and suffer 
 many things of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and 
 be killed, and be raised again the third day. Then Peter 
 took him, and began to rebuke him, saying. Be it far from 
 thee, Lord: this shall not be unto thee. But he turned, and 
 said unto Peter, Get thee behind me, Satan: thou art an 
 offense unto me: for thou savorest not the things that be of 
 God, but those that be of men." — Matt. xvi. 2/-2J. 
 
 IN the religion of the Parsees there are two 
 supreme beings: Ormuzd, "the Good," 
 creator and sustainer of all things bright and 
 helpful ; and Ahriman, " the Black," who pre- 
 sides over the regions of darkness, evokes the 
 malignant passions, and stands sponsor for 
 warand sorrow, disease and death. These two 
 are perpetually arrayed against each other, the 
 
 81 
 
The Great Heresy * 
 
 gage of conflict being the dominion of this 
 world. It is Hke a stupendous game of chess, 
 in which wars and truces, the convulsions of 
 nature, and the ups and downs of history, are 
 as the moves of pawns and castles upon the 
 board. It is impossible to say how long the 
 game will continue, or what the issue will be, 
 inasmuch as the contestants are coeval and 
 coequal. Perhaps it will go on forever. 
 
 We also believe in two great powers who 
 contend for the sovereignty of this world, but 
 they are not coequal. One is infinite ; the 
 other — though of immense guile and resource 
 — is finite. And the end is to be seen from 
 the beginning. God is always and every- 
 where getting the upper hand of Satan. The 
 world grows constantly and cumulatively 
 better from century to century, from year to 
 year, from day to day. Every time our old 
 world rolls around, it rolls a little farther into 
 the light. 
 
 ** The eternal step of progress beats 
 To that great anthem, calm and slow, 
 Which God repeats. 
 God works in all things ; all obey 
 
 82 
 
"Here am I; Send Mel" 
 
 His first propulsion from the night. 
 
 Wake thou and watch ! The world is gray 
 
 With morning light!" 
 
 There never was a moment, from the be- 
 ginning of the eternal ages, when God did 
 not intend to save this world. All things 
 were included in his foreknowledge. Sin, 
 suffering, salvation, the casting down of ini- 
 quity, and the restitution of all things in the 
 fullness of time, were from eternity present 
 before him. In one of the boldest and most 
 picturesque portions of Scripture we are in- 
 troduced into the councils of the ineffable 
 Trinity. The three Persons are represented 
 as in earnest conference respecting the de- 
 liverance of our sin-stricken race. The cry 
 of the erring and suffering has come up into 
 their ears. The inquiry is heard, " Whom 
 shall we send, and who will go for us?" 
 Then the only-begotten Son offers himself: 
 *' Here ami; send me!" He girds himself 
 with omnipotence, binds upon his feet the 
 sandals of salvation, and goes forth as a 
 knight-errant to vindicate and rescue the 
 
 83 
 
The Great Heresy ^ 
 
 children of men. When next we behold him 
 he is a child, wrapped in swaddling-clothes 
 and lying in a manger. The incarnation is 
 the first chapter in his great undertaking, and 
 a necessary part of it. As Anselm says in 
 Cur Deus Homo — ** He must become man 
 in order to suffer, and he must continue to be 
 God in order that he may suffer enough for 
 all." In thus assuming our nature he laid 
 aside the form of his Godhood and " the glory 
 which he had with the Father before the 
 world was " ; but he never lost sight of his 
 beneficent purpose. He realized constantly 
 that he had come to redeem the world by 
 dying for it. 
 
 In one of the earliest pictures of the nativ- 
 ity he is represented as lying in the manger, 
 while just above him, on the wall of the sta- 
 ble, is the shadow of a cross. So Holman 
 Hunt paints him in the carpenter shop : the 
 day's work is over ; the weary toiler lifts his 
 arms in an attitude of utter weariness, and 
 the level rays of the setting sun cast upon the 
 
 wall yonder again the shadow of a cross. 
 
 84 
 
"For This Cause Came I" 
 
 The suggestion is true : he was born under 
 that shadow and lived under it. He knew 
 that he had come to die. He knew that, in- 
 asmuch as the penalty had been passed upon 
 the race, " The soul that sinneth, it shall die," 
 there could be no deliverance but by death. 
 Mors ja7iiia vitce. 
 
 A company of Greeks, on one occasion, 
 came, saying, "We would see Jesus." He 
 kept them waiting while he uttered those ap- 
 parently inconsequential words, '* Now is my 
 soul troubled." Why should his soul be 
 troubled? Because he saw in those waiting 
 Greeks the vanguard of a great multitude who 
 were to come to him as the fruit of the tra- 
 vail of his soul. At that moment he felt 
 himself passing under the shadow of the cross 
 — deeper, darker than ever — to pay ransom 
 for these seeking ones. He shrank from the 
 bitterness of his approaching death, yet knew 
 it to be necessary for the success of his errand : 
 " Now is my soul troubled ; and what shall I 
 say ? Father, save me from this hour ? Nay, 
 but for this cause came I unto this hour. 
 
 85 
 
The Great Heresy • 
 
 Father^ glorify thy name ! " He had come 
 to die for sinners. It must needs be. He 
 knew that without his vicarious death the 
 guilty race was without hope. He must give 
 *' his soul an offering for sin." 
 
 It could not be supposed, however, that 
 Satan, the prince of this world, would suffer 
 his power to slip away without a desperate 
 effort to retain it. He would put forth every 
 energy and use every means to thwart the 
 beneficent purpose of Christ. Thus we ac- 
 count for those extraordinary manifestations 
 of malignant energy, during the years of 
 Christ's ministry, known as " demoniacal pos- 
 session." Wherever a soul was open and 
 willing to be used there the adversary entered 
 in. The plans of Jesus must be overturned ; 
 he must not be permitted to ransom the 
 world ; he must not die for it. 
 
 Out in the wilderness, after the forty days 
 of fasting, the adversary met Jesus and pre- 
 sented to his weak and suffering soul the 
 great temptation. He led him to a high 
 place and, with a wave of the hand, directed 
 
 86 
 
"Get Thee Behind Me, Satan!" 
 
 his thought to all the kingdoms of this 
 world, saying, " All these are mine. I know 
 thy purpose : thou art come to win this world 
 by dying for it. Why pay so great a price ? 
 I know thy fear and trembling — for thou art 
 flesh — in view of the nails, the fever, the 
 dreadful exposure, the long agony. W/ijf 
 pay so great a price ? I am the prince of this 
 world. One act of homage and I will abdi- 
 cate ! Fall down and worship me ! " Never 
 before or since has there been such a tempta- 
 tion, so specious, so alluring. But Jesus had 
 covenanted to die for sinners. He knew 
 there was really no other way of accomplish- 
 ing salvation for them. He could not be 
 turned aside from the work which he had 
 volunteered to do. Wherefore he put away 
 the alluring suggestion with the word, ** Get 
 thee behind me, Satan ! I cannot be moved. 
 I know the necessity that is laid upon me. 
 I know that my way to the kingdom is only 
 by the cross. I am therefore resolved to 
 suffer and die for the deliverance of men." 
 The stress of this temptation was over ; but 
 87 
 
The Great Heresy 
 
 once and again it returned, as when, after a 
 memorable day of preaching and wonder- 
 working, his followers proposed to lead him. 
 to Jerusalem and place him upon the throne 
 of David (John vi. 15); and he ''departed 
 into a mountain alone." 
 
 We now come to the immediate occasion 
 of our context. Jesus, with his disciples, was 
 on his last journey to Jerusalem — that mem- 
 orable journey of which it is written, " He set 
 his face steadfastly " toward the cross. He 
 had been with his disciples now three years, 
 but had not been able to fully reveal his mis- 
 sion, because they were not strong enough to 
 bear it. A man with friends, yet friendless, 
 lonely in the possession of his great secret, 
 he had longed to give them his full confi- 
 dence, but dared not venture. Now, as they 
 journeyed southward through Caesarea Phi- 
 lippi, he asked them, " Who do men say that 
 I am?" And they answered, ''Some say 
 John the Baptist ; some, Elias : others, Jere- 
 \nias, or one of the prophets." And he saith, 
 *' But who say ye that I am? " Then Peter 
 
"Get Thee Behind Me, Satan I" 
 
 — brave, impulsive, glorious Peter — witnessed 
 his good confession : " Thou art the Christ, 
 the Son of the living God." The hour had 
 come ! His disciples were beginning to know 
 him. He would give them his full confidence. 
 So as they journeyed toward Jerusalem he told 
 them all — how he had come to redeem the 
 world by bearing its penalty of death ; " he 
 began to show them, how he must suffer 
 many things of the elders and chief priests 
 and scribes, and be killed." At that point 
 Peter could hold his peace no longer, but 
 began to rebuke him, saying, " Be it far from 
 thee, Lord! To suffer? To die? Nay, to 
 reign in Messianic splendor!" And Jesus, 
 turning, said unto Peter, " Get thee behind 
 me, Satan!" — the very words with which he 
 had repelled the same suggestion in the 
 wilderness. As he looked on his disciple 
 he saw not Peter, but Satan — perceived how 
 the adversary had for the moment taken pos- 
 session, as it were, of this man's brain and 
 conscience and Hps. " Get thee behind me, 
 Satan ! I know thee ; I recognize thy crafty 
 
 89 
 
The Great Heresy " • 
 
 suggestion ; but I am not to be turned aside 
 from my purpose. Get thee behind me! 
 Thou art an offense unto me. Thy words 
 are not of divine wisdom, but of human policy. 
 Thou savorest not the things that be of God, 
 but those that be of men!" 
 
 We are now ready for our proposition, 
 which is this : TJie vicarious death of Jesus is 
 the vital center of the zvJiole Christian system; 
 and any ivord zuJiich contravenes it is in the 
 nature of a satanic sttggestion. There is one 
 truth before which all other truths whatsoever 
 dwindle into relative insignificance, to wit, 
 that our Lord Jesus Christ was wounded for 
 our transgressions and bruised for our iniqui- 
 ties, that by his stripes we might be healed. 
 The man who apprehends this by faith is 
 saved by it. 
 
 And contrariwise, any denial of this truth 
 is mortal heresy. The first satanic suggestion 
 made to man was a denial of the law, when 
 the tempter said to Adam, ** Thou shalt not 
 surely die." The last satanic suggestion is a 
 denial of grace : " It is not necessary that 
 
 90 
 
A Satanic Suggestion 
 
 Christ should die for thee." The first ruined 
 the race, and the last will destroy any man 
 who entertains it. 
 
 The suggestion comes in various ways, as 
 when it is said that the gospel is not the only 
 religion that saves : " If a man is sincere, 
 what difference does it make? 
 
 ' For forms of faith let canting bigots fight, 
 His faith cannot be wrong whose life is right.' 
 
 Here is a Confucianist bowing before his an- 
 cestral tablets ; here is a Brahman bathing in 
 his sacred river ; and here an African bowing 
 before his fetish. All these are sincere ; shall 
 they not be saved with us? " If so, then the 
 death of the Lord Jesus Christ, the only- 
 begotten Son of the Father, was an incom- 
 prehensible waste of divine resource, and 
 there is no significance in the word that is 
 written : ** There is none other name under 
 heaven given among men, whereby we must 
 be saved." 
 
 It is said again, that we are saved by the 
 life of the Lord Jesus Christ as an example 
 of holiness, leading us on to self-culture and 
 
 91 
 
The Great Heresy 
 
 character-building, and his death has prac- 
 tically nothing to do with our entrance into 
 life. If that is true, then Christ did but mock 
 our infirmity in setting up such an ideal. He 
 did indeed come into the world to tell us how 
 men ought to live, what a true man ought to 
 be, what character means. That was inci- 
 dental to his great redemptive mission, lead- 
 ing us on from deliverance to righteousness. 
 But if that were all, then I say he mocked our 
 infirmity. For there is not an earnest man 
 who does not kneel down beside his bed 
 at night, after his most strenuous effort to 
 imitate Christ, and say, " Have mercy upon 
 me, O Lord, for I have sinned." We have 
 all sinned and come short of the glory of 
 God. 
 
 Again, it is said that Christ .did not die 
 vicariously, under the burden of sin, taking 
 our place before the offended law, but 
 died as all martyrs die. " He came into the 
 world as a reformer, to overthrow the evil 
 condition of things, and suffered the fate of 
 all earnest souls. He gathered into his de- 
 
 92 
 
The Voice of Scripture 
 
 voted heart the shafts of the adversary, and 
 fell." If that be so, what is the meaning of 
 the constant statement that the death of Jesus 
 Christ was a voluntary death ? The Father 
 gave him, he gave himself, an offering for 
 sin. '* I have power to lay down my Hfe, 
 and I have power to take it again ; no man 
 taketh my life from me." Life was his; he 
 made it; he played with it as little children 
 play with their toys. 
 
 I. To deny this doctrine of the vicarious 
 atonement, in any of these ways or other- 
 wise, is to set one's self athwart the whole 
 trend of Scripture. For from Genesis to 
 Revelation there is a thoroughfare stained 
 with the blood that cleanseth from sin. No 
 sooner had man sinned than the protevangel 
 spoke of the ** Seed of the woman " suffering 
 for it. The first altar, reared by the closed 
 gate of paradise, prophesied of the slain Lamb 
 of God. As the years passed the prophets de- 
 clared, with ever-increasing clearness and par- 
 ticularity, the coming sacrifice. David sang 
 of it in his Messianic psalms. Isaiah drew 
 
 93 
 
The Great Heresy « 
 
 the portrait of the agonizing Christ as if he 
 had gazed on the cross : " He is . . . a man 
 of sorrows, and acquainted with grief. . . . 
 Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried 
 our sorrows. . . . And the Lord hath laid 
 on him the iniquity of us all," The same 
 truth was emphasized by Moses, Daniel, 
 Zechariah, all the prophets down to Malachi, 
 who, waving his torch in the twilight of 
 the long darkness which closed the old 
 economy, said, " The Sun of righteousness 
 shall arise with healing in his wings." Open 
 the Book where you will, the face of Jesus, 
 so marred more than any man's, yet divinely 
 beautiful, looks out upon you. 
 
 The rites and symbols of the Old Testa- 
 ment all find their fulfilment in Christ cruci- 
 fied. Their center was the tabernacle. Enter 
 it and observe how it is everywhere sprinkled 
 with blood. Here is blood flowing down the 
 brazen altar, blood on the ewer, the golden 
 candlestick, the table of showbread, the altar 
 of incense ; blood on the floor, the ceiling, on 
 posts and pillars, on knops and blossoms, 
 
 94 
 
The Philosophy of History 
 
 everywhere. Lift the curtain and pass into 
 the holiest of all — but not without blood on 
 your palms. Here is blood on the ark of the 
 covenant, blood on the mercy-seat — blood, 
 blood everywhere. What does it mean? 
 Nothing, absolutely nothing, unless it declares 
 the necessity of the cross. It is an empty 
 dumb-show except as it points the worshiper 
 to Him whose vicarious death is the only 
 means of our salvation. 
 
 Wherefore I say the man who denies this 
 truth must set himself against the sum and 
 substance of the Scriptures. For if the aton- 
 ing death of Christ be taken out of that 
 blessed Book it is of no more value than a 
 last year's almanac as a solution of the great 
 problem of life. 
 
 2. Again, a denial of this doctrine involves 
 a downright rejection of the philosophy of 
 history. 
 
 The world has been growing better ever 
 since the cross first cast its luminous shadow 
 over it. Progress is a fact — a fact that must 
 be accounted for. Hume undertook to write 
 
 95 
 
The Great Heresy » 
 
 history without Christ, and found it a laby- 
 rinth without a clue. So did Gibbon. They 
 saw civilization advancing through the cen- 
 turies, but, rejecting Christ, they could per- 
 ceive no reason for it. The " logic of events " 
 was nothing to them. There can, indeed, be 
 no " philosophy of history " for a man who 
 refuses to see Constantine's cross in the hea- 
 vens, with its great prophecy, " In hoc sig?w.'' 
 It is a miraculous coincidence that the limits 
 of civilization on earth to-day are coexten- 
 sive with the charmed circle known as Chris- 
 tejtdom. ** The world before Christ," says 
 Luthardt, " was a world without love." The 
 church with the proclamation of Christ, and 
 him crucified, has come down through the 
 centuries, like Milton's angel, with the torch ; 
 and all along the way have sprung up institu- 
 tions of learning and charity and righteous- 
 ness. The cross is the vital power of civili- 
 zation. " All the light of sacred " and of 
 secular story as well " gathers round its head 
 sublime." If the world grows better, it is 
 
 because Christ died for it. 
 
 96 
 
The Consensus 
 
 3. Still further, to deny the vital impor- 
 tance of the vicarious death of Jesus is to 
 contradict the universal instinct. 
 
 The doctrine of the redemptive power of 
 substitutionary pain is not our exclusive 
 property. It has, indeed, a place in all, or 
 nearly all, the false religions. It may be 
 dimly seen in the hammer of Thor; in the 
 wounded foot of Brahma treading on the ser- 
 pent; in the fable of Prometheus, bound to 
 the Caucasus with a vulture at his vitals, 
 and lamenting, " I must endure this until one 
 of the gods shall bear it for me." It is still 
 more evident in the institution of the sacri- 
 fice. Wherever a living thing is slain upon 
 the altar, it means vicarious expiation, or else 
 it means nothing at all. 
 
 And why should it be thought strange that 
 God should send his only-begotten Son to 
 suffer in our stead? Is not sympathy the 
 noblest as well as the commonest thing in 
 human experience? Men are suffering 
 everywhere and always for other men. 
 Parents are suffering for their children. The 
 
 97 
 
The Great Heresy « 
 
 pains which we all endure are, for the most 
 part, not the consequence of our own acts. 
 At this point of sympathy our nature reaches 
 its noblest and best. We esteem above all 
 the unselfish man who voluntarily bears 
 the burdens of others. Should we not, then, 
 expect something of the same sort in our 
 Father? He made us in his likeness. It 
 would be monstrous if God did not sym- 
 pathize with his children who have fallen into 
 trouble. The cross is the very highest ex- 
 pression of sympathy in the universe. The 
 atonement is what we should expect. It is 
 just like God. 
 
 And it is God's exact response to the uni- 
 versal need. It fits our circumstances. As 
 Coleridge said, "The gospel finds me." It 
 answers the deepest longing of earnest souls. 
 Dr. Chamberlain relates that among those 
 converted by his preaching at the sacred city 
 of Benares was a devotee who had dragged 
 himself many miles upon his knees and elbows 
 to bathe in the Ganges. He had at the bot- 
 tom of his heart the common conviction of 
 
 98 
 
Spes Unica 
 
 sin and desire of cleansing. " If I can but 
 reach the Ganges," he thought, '* this shame 
 and bondage and fear will be taken away." 
 Weak and emaciated from his long pilgrim- 
 age, he dragged himself down to the river's 
 edge and, praying to Gunga, crept into it; 
 then withdrawing, he lay upon the river's 
 bank and moaned, ** The pain is still here ! " 
 At that moment he heard a voice from the 
 shadow of a banyan-tree near by. It was the 
 missionary telling the story of the cross. The 
 devotee listened, drank it in, rose to his knees, 
 then to his feet; then, unable to restrain him- 
 self, he clapped his hands and cried, " That's 
 what I want! That's what I want!" It is 
 what we all want; the whole creation has 
 from time immemorial groaned and travailed 
 for it. 
 
 And it is our only hope. There are other 
 religions and other philosophies, but none 
 that suggests a rational plan of pardon for sin. 
 Spes wiica. I remember an old crucifix, in 
 the public square of a Brittany village, which 
 no one passed without bending the knee. 
 
 99 
 
The Great Heresy * 
 
 Workmen on their way to the fields, Httle 
 children going to school, all bowed before 
 that stone figure of the Christ, which the 
 storms of centuries had worn almost out of 
 human semblance. The last night, as I was 
 leaving the village in the twilight, I saw an 
 old woman bent almost prostrate before it. 
 Her hands were clasped ; her uplifted face 
 bore the marks of suffering. I could not 
 know the bitterness of that poor heart, but 
 her eyes were turned toward the infinite 
 Source of help and consolation. The dear 
 hand upon the cross lifts every burden, heals 
 every wound, and saves us from the penalty, 
 the shame, and the bondage of sin. 
 
 And this is why we preach Christ, and him 
 crucified. " There is none other name under 
 heaven given among men, whereby we must 
 be saved." " He was wounded for our trans- 
 gressions, he was bruised for our iniquities ; 
 . . . and with his stripes we are healed." He 
 is thus made unto us wisdom and righteous- 
 ness and sanctification and redemption. He 
 is first, last, midst, and all in all. 
 
 lOO 
 

 ',-^««^ 
 
 
 
 '- '^f 
 
 
 
 jji^j 
 
 ^^^^P ' 
 
 
 
 . ..^JH 
 
Christ Seeking the Lost 
 
 By 
 
 George Harris, D.D. 
 
 Professor of Theology in Andover Theological Seminary 
 
 ^' For the Son of man came to seek and to save that 
 which was lost." — Luke xix. lo. 
 
 THIS sentence, which is so familiar, and 
 which puts into a single phrase the 
 whole gospel, occurs only once in the New 
 Testament, in the narrative which describes 
 the interview of Jesus with Zacchaeus, the 
 publican with whom Jesus dined in Jericho. 
 In the revised version of the New Testament 
 the saying is omitted from the report of 
 Christ's words about little children where it 
 occurs in the received version, and we may 
 be glad that it is omitted there. For children 
 are not lost. When they are men and women 
 they may be lost, but as children they are 
 not lost. But Zacchaeus was regarded by the 
 
 lOI 
 
Christ Seeking the Lost 
 
 people of Jericho as lost. He was a despised 
 man. There was no salvation for him. 
 Yet Jesus, seeing the penitence and generosity 
 of the man, exclaimed, " To-day is salvation 
 come to this house." He may really have 
 been lost before he knew Jesus, but Jesus 
 came and saved him. 
 
 I. Who are the lost? What is it to be 
 lost? We suppose the lost are those who 
 fail of heaven, who finally are in the outer 
 darkness. But that is merely the end. 
 They will not be lost at last unless they were 
 lost before. Jesus spoke of those who were 
 lost then — people all about him, with whom 
 he conversed on the streets and in their 
 homes. Because they already were lost he 
 came to save them ; not merely to keep them 
 from being lost by and by, but to recover 
 them from the lost state in which they then 
 were, to save that which was lost. If it was 
 so then it doubtless is so now. 
 
 He took pains to explain by parables what 
 it is to be lost, and we can understand best 
 by taking his own illustrations : 
 
 102 
 
Three Parables 
 
 A lost sheep, one from a flock of a hun- 
 dred, gone astray in the wilderness ; 
 
 A lost coin, one out of ten pieces of silver 
 a woman had, which had rolled away into 
 some crevice ; 
 
 A lost son, one of two, who had become 
 dissipated and was in a far country, poor and 
 destitute. 
 
 These three illustrations, explaining what 
 it is to be lost, constitute the whole of that 
 pathetic, tender, hopeful fifteenth chapter of 
 Luke's gospel. 
 
 A lost sheep is not destroyed, has not been 
 killed and eaten by the wolf. Its value re- 
 mains. The fleece may be torn by briers, 
 but is still fine and heavy. It has gone 
 astray, has wandered farther and farther away 
 from home, and does not know the way back. 
 In the forest, among the rocks, with no fa- 
 miliar object, no trodden path to be seen, the 
 poor animal runs hither and thither, pitifully 
 bleating, helpless, frightened, lost. Have 
 you ever been lost in a forest? You have 
 been following a path, but it becomes narrow 
 
 103 
 
Christ Seeking the Lost 
 
 and indistinct till at last it disappears alto- 
 gether. You do not know what direction 
 you should take. You wander aimlessly 
 about. At length you find footprints and 
 follow them, only to see after a while that 
 they are your own tracks. Daylight dies 
 away. In the twilight the trees seem to be 
 moving giants. Strange sounds startle you. 
 The deeper shadows fall ; the gloom is im- 
 penetrable. You are utterly bewildered, till 
 at last, exhausted and alarmed, you lean 
 against a tree or sink to the ground, knowing 
 that you are lost. 
 
 Jesus was thinking of those who had wrong 
 ideas of God, who were lost in a maze of 
 ceremonials and observances which did not 
 satisfy their need of God ; and was thinking 
 of those who had strayed from the path of 
 rectitude and purity and did not know the 
 way back to their true life as trusting, obedi- 
 ent children of God. They reminded him of 
 sheep lost in the wilderness. *' When he saw 
 the multitudes, he was moved with compas- 
 sion for them, because they were distressed 
 
 104 
 
Doubt and Despair 
 
 and scattered, as sheep not having a shep- 
 herd." 
 
 If one is perplexed with doubts concerning 
 God's love, or even his very existence, ask- 
 ing, as he sees the evils of the world and 
 suffers the disappointments and pains of his 
 own life, " Is there a God after all?" if one 
 can find no meaning in life, if he doubts or 
 dreads a life beyond, and wishes with a sigh 
 that he had a simple, unquestioning faith in 
 God, that one is lost — not lost beyond recov- 
 ery, but lost in the wilderness, not knowing 
 the way back, the way home. If one has not 
 kept his virtue, if by self-indulgence he has 
 made himself coarse, has forfeited his self- 
 respect, and feels that he has no right to as- 
 sociate with good men and pure women, is 
 full of bitter self-reproach, would give any- 
 thing if he had not so sinned, but does not 
 know how to recover himself, he is lost — not, 
 as he may suppose, beyond hope, but he is 
 wandering farther away from goodness, or in 
 his own old tracks, and cannot find the way 
 back. 
 
 105 
 
Christ Seeking the Lost 
 
 A lost coin, a lost piece of silver, is in ex- 
 istence, represents value, but is covered with 
 dust on the floor, or is in some dark corner, 
 and so is useless. The owner has lost the 
 use of it. That is precisely the way in which 
 a great many people are lost. They are lost 
 to their right uses. They either are doing 
 nothing, sauntering through life blameless 
 and good-natured enough, or are living on 
 some low plane of selfishness to get gain and 
 spend it on themselves. It is said, *' What a 
 pity that a young man of his talents, educa- 
 tion, property, is a mere pleasure-seeker!" 
 He has rolled into some narrow social crevice, 
 or has degraded himself to company only 
 with sporting men, — a piece of silver in a 
 dust-heap, — and is wasting his life on trivial 
 interests. God has lost him, the world has 
 lost him, for they have no use of him. He 
 is lost to his right uses. In the disuse or 
 misuse of his powers he is lost in some dirty 
 corner, in which there must be diligent sweep- 
 ing to find him at all, to find that he still 
 exists. 
 
 io6 
 
A Lost Son 
 
 And a lost son, one of two — a prodigal 
 son. This is not so much an illustration as 
 an instance. The prodigal was not like a 
 lost man, he was a lost man. He was lost 
 to his father. There was no companionship, 
 no affection, no obedience. He might as 
 well not have been. It was as if he had been 
 dead, just as his father said when the son re- 
 turned: "He was dead." And he was lost 
 to himself, to his true self. Instead of being 
 what he might have been in purity, honor, 
 manliness, he was intemperate and licentious. 
 The true self, the real man, had been usurped 
 by the false self, the ruined man. So one 
 may be lost to his heavenly Father, as he 
 certainly is if by a selfish and dissolute life 
 he is lost to his earthly father. God, who 
 desires the trust, obedience, and affection of 
 his child, receives no sign, no prayer, no ser- 
 vice. God has lost his own child. One may 
 be lost to himself even if he has not plunged 
 into the gross sins of sensuality and lust. 
 In the low life of pleasure and frivolity, with- 
 out high aims and noble ambitions, the mean, 
 
 107 
 
Christ Seeking the Lost 
 
 narrow, selfish man has banished the true, 
 pure, magnanimous, gentle man. Why, here 
 was a boy of sweet nature, open, bright face, 
 quick intellect, upon whom great hopes were 
 placed. It was expected that he would be- 
 come a good man, a useful man, a respected 
 and honored man, a religious man. But that 
 boy has become a hard, contemptuous, vain, 
 coarse, and vicious man, and the man that 
 might have been is lost. He is not his true 
 and proper self. No wonder, when the prodi- 
 gal thought of what he might have been and 
 of what he was, and determined to go home, 
 it is said that he came to himself. It seems 
 a contradiction when it is remarked of one 
 that he is not himself; yet how often the 
 vices, follies, infatuations of men oblige us 
 to say just that! 
 
 So one is lost when he is wandering in 
 error, doubt, perplexity, like a lost sheep ; 
 lost when he is not put to his right uses, like 
 a lost coin ; lost when friendship and affection 
 have nothing from him, when God has noth- 
 ing from him, when he is lost to himself, like 
 
 1 08 
 
Christ Saving the Lost 
 
 a spendthrift who has wasted his substance in 
 riotous Hving, a lost son. If this is what it is 
 to be lost, then, alas! some are lost now, 
 long before the day of judgment. 
 
 2. The Son of man came to save that which 
 was lost. He would recover a man to him- 
 self, to his uses, and so to God. He knew 
 that in men, even those considered very 
 wicked, there was power of recuperation, 
 power of recovery. So he came to bring to 
 them that truth, that influence, that life, that 
 love, on which they still could fasten, and 
 which could restore them to themselves, to 
 their uses, and to God. If only they would 
 believe him and would trust him and would 
 try, they could be saved. 
 
 There are many saviors in the world. A 
 
 good friend who will not give a man up when 
 
 he has gone astray, who throws the protection 
 
 of a generous friendship around him, saves 
 
 one who otherwise might be lost. A father, 
 
 a mother, has saved a child by letting the 
 
 child see what a true life is, by making a child 
 
 know that even if he should go astray he 
 
 109 
 
Christ Seeking the Lost 
 
 would be welcomed back. The prodigal knew 
 his father well enough to know that, and that 
 was what brought him home. The world is 
 full of saving forces as well as of destroying 
 forces. It has been said, " You may save 
 any one if you will love him enough." The 
 saviors are those who have the spirit of Christ, 
 who, knowing it or not knowing it, feel some- 
 what as he did toward men, never despairing 
 of them, ready to suffer for them and with 
 them. 
 
 How did Christ save men? How did he 
 save Zacchasus, for instance? He saved 
 Zacchaeus simply by telHng him that he would 
 take dinner with him and by actually going 
 to his house to dine. Not a reputable man 
 in Jericho would have done that, would have 
 put himself on a social equality with that 
 despised and hated man who had become 
 rich by extorting heavy taxes from the people. 
 When this undersized man — a dwarf, per- 
 haps — saw Jesus, whose very presence and 
 bearing showed him noble and compassionate, 
 yet unswerving in righteousness and com- 
 
 IIO 
 
Received Him Joyfully 
 
 manding in moral authority, and when he 
 heard his own name with the request for hos- 
 pitality, the man's heart leaped for joy ; there 
 was hope for him. *' And he made haste, 
 and came down, and received him joyfully." 
 How much that act of gracious courtesy 
 meant and cost to Jesus is not overlooked in 
 the story. " And when they saw it, they all 
 murmured," — all of them, — " saying. He is 
 gone in to lodge with a man that is a sinner." 
 Little cared Zacchaeus for that. For once 
 in his life he was well treated by one whose 
 regard he cared for. He was saved, — saved 
 to himself and to his uses, — ^and he at once 
 consecrated his wealth to the good of men. 
 
 Jesus saved men by making them under- 
 stand about God. " God feels toward you," 
 he said, " as I feel. He loves you, cannot 
 bear to lose you." Some way they did 
 understand when they knew Jesus, as the 
 world has been understanding ever since, and 
 the doubts, the errors, the perplexities vanish, 
 the sins are forsaken, the life of useful service 
 
 is begun ; we know ourselves children of 
 
 III 
 
Christ Seeking the Lost 
 
 God ; we are carried home on Christ's strong 
 shoulders. 
 
 3. But this is not all. The Son of man 
 came to seek that which was lost. He did 
 not wait for men to make their painful way 
 to him, and so to perish if they should not 
 find him, to say nothing of those who do not 
 know they are lost and do not even try to 
 find a Saviour. He came to seek that which 
 was lost, to make his mighty way to them 
 through all obstacles and all indifference. He 
 was engaged in a holy, loving search for lost 
 souls, with an eagerness which could not fail 
 to find them. 
 
 When he taught and preached he was seek- 
 ing men. He scanned every company of 
 hearers, searching for the responsive faces, 
 the wistful, earnest faces, and addressed him- 
 self to them, as every real teacher and 
 preacher looks among the upturned faces 
 before him for those who respond to his 
 words. Then he would seek out privately 
 one and another whom he had noticed Hsten- 
 ing eagerly. In the tlirong around him 
 
 112 
 
The Loving Search 
 
 at Jericho he saw one of the kind he sought 
 looking down on him out of the branches of 
 a shade-tree by the wayside. 
 
 But words and precepts even from the great 
 Teacher may fall unheeded — heard, indeed, 
 but not understood. He sought men by heal- 
 ings, by the cure of bodily ills, to get at their 
 souls afterward, as in the case of the blind man 
 whom he afterward found in the temple ; he 
 had been looking for him and at last found him. 
 
 He sought them in their homes, dined with 
 them, conversed with them one by one, tak- 
 ing great risks to himself, if need be, so that 
 he might get at them. 
 
 He sought them by his living, by showing 
 them the true life of purity, of courage, of sym- 
 pathy, so different from the hard, contempt- 
 uous, selfish life of their religious teachers. 
 
 He sought them by dying ; he gave up his 
 life because he would not be turned away from 
 that holy search for the lost and despised. 
 Even on the cross the search did not cease, for 
 there he found and saved the penitent thief. 
 
 Ever since, and now, Christ is seeking men, 
 "3 
 
Christ Seeking the Lost 
 
 is seeking us, making his way to us through 
 our prejudices, doubts, unbeHef, and sin till 
 he stands before us. Sometimes one has a 
 thought of his true self, of what he might 
 have been, ought to have been. " Oh, if I 
 could only Hve my Hfe over again!" he says, 
 and says it while he is still young in years. 
 Thinking thus, he is ashamed of himself as he 
 is, yet does not know how to recover, or be- 
 lieves he cannot recover, that true self. You 
 are the very man Christ is seeking. In that 
 thought, that longing, that regret he has 
 found you, and he is saying to you, *' Wouldst 
 thou be made whole ? " If you will trust 
 yourself to him, venturing out on him, you 
 will regain what you have lost and will be a 
 man in Christ Jesus. 
 
 You have been living all to yourself, plan- 
 ning your life so as to get pleasure and gain 
 for your own enjoyment. You are conscious 
 of powers by which you can succeed in your 
 selfish ambitions. You think you can hold 
 your own in the fierce competition. But 
 sometimes you see that your powers can be 
 
 114 
 
Saved to One's Uses 
 
 used in a better way. You see a world of 
 need, suffering, ignorance, which are largely 
 due to selfish strife. You hear the call to 
 service. You see that the truly great men, 
 the really good men, have devoted their gifts, 
 attainments, knowledge to the service of 
 others, and that such men as you are propos- 
 ing to yourself to be have only made the 
 world worse. Who of you has not had such 
 thoughts of a noble, useful life ? Again, you 
 are the man Christ is seeking. In those 
 thoughts he has found you. He would have 
 you act on those convictions, would save you 
 thus to your right uses, to which you now 
 are lost in wrong and selfish uses. 
 
 Or, it does not seem real to you that there 
 is a God, or, if there is, that he knows you 
 or has anything to do with you. You seem 
 insignificant in this vast universe, lost in the 
 very greatness of the world, swept along, a 
 helpless atom, by its resistless, unfeeling 
 forces. You are like one lost in a dark, vast 
 forest, with no sun, no star even, to guide 
 you. And you are far away from God by 
 
 "5 
 
Christ Seeking the Lost 
 
 your sins. You say you cannot pray now as 
 you could when you were a child. At the 
 beginning of a day you cannot ask God's 
 blessing on what you know you will do; at 
 the end of a day you would be ashamed to 
 bring it to God. You see no path of life 
 which does not end in darkness or in danger. 
 Again, you are the man Christ is seeking. 
 Thank God that you think sometimes of him, 
 that you are not stolid, that you are not sat- 
 isfied to be lost in his world and a wanderer 
 from his ways. Jesus says, " God is not far 
 away, a great power regardless of you. He 
 is very near you. God is love. If you know 
 me, you know God, the heart of God. I came 
 right out from God to find you. See my 
 life, my love, my compassion, my hope for 
 you, and you see God, who is my Father and 
 your Father. You know what God would 
 have your life be. He would have it like 
 mine. Come into that life and you are back 
 in your Father's house. Come to yourself 
 and you come to God. Come unto me and 
 you shall find rest unto your soul." 
 
 ii6 
 
Seeking All and Seeking Each 
 
 We think that by and by, when we become 
 religious, God will be with us. But he is 
 with us now, in every desire for goodness, in 
 every regret for wrong, in the wish to be of 
 service in the world, in the desire to recover 
 the true self in character. If we did not have 
 such desires and regrets we should be lost 
 indeed. If we do not act on them we shall 
 remain lost to ourselves, to our right uses, 
 and to God. 
 
 The shepherd out in the wilderness to find 
 one sheep out of a great flock of a hundred 
 shows that God seeks each one of us, no mat- 
 ter how many there are nor how vast the 
 world is ; and so of one piece of silver out of 
 ten. The love of the father for one son out 
 of only two shows how much he cares for 
 each of us. God does not forget you, but 
 seeks you in Christ to save you, if you are 
 only one out of a hundred or more. God in 
 Christ loves you and seeks you to save you 
 as earnestly as if he had only two sons and 
 you were one of those two. 
 
 117 
 
An Extraordinary Saint 
 
 By 
 
 William R. Richards, D.D. 
 
 Pastor of the Crescent Avenue Presbyterian Church, Plainfield, N. J. 
 
 "And the Spirit of the Lord came mightily upon him, 
 and he rent him as he would have rent a kid, and he 
 had nothing in his hand: hut he told not his father or his 
 mother what he had done."— Judges xiv. 6. 
 
 SAMSON — the most extraordinary char- 
 acter in the whole catalogue of saints. 
 We are puzzled to see how he deserves to 
 be called a saint ; yet there stands his name, 
 canonized in the Epistle to the Hebrews : 
 ** Gideon, Barak, Samson " — one of the heroes 
 of the faith. 
 
 It is a hundred years, perhaps, since Gideon, 
 the great judge, broke the power of the Midi- 
 anites. The tribes of Israel, united for a little 
 
 by his valor, had soon fallen asunder after 
 
 ii8 
 
Philistines 
 
 his death, once more an easy prey to any 
 new enemy. The most formidable of the 
 new enemies were the Philistines, a race of 
 strangers from nobody knows where, who 
 had estabHshed themselves in the lowlands to 
 the southwest of Canaan. A dull, heavy, 
 slow-witted people, but of great bodily 
 strength and devoted to war, they had com- 
 pletely subdued the southern part of Canaan, 
 reducing the wretched Hebrews there to such 
 a state of dependence that now they could 
 not even get a plow sharpened without 
 going down to some smith among the Phi- 
 listines. 
 
 It was a happy stroke of wit on the part 
 of the German student who fastened this 
 name " Philistine " to the townspeople round 
 about the university — the uncultured but 
 prosperous middle classes, whom the poor 
 scholar or artist cringes to and laughs at by 
 turns. Well, such was this race which had 
 now humiliated poor Israel. For several 
 generations to come the struggle for national 
 
 existence will be against them, culminating 
 
 119 
 
An Extraordinary Saint 
 
 at last in the glorious and triumphant career 
 of David. 
 
 Now it was Samson who began the resis- 
 tance which David brought to such grand 
 conclusion, and so we can understand how 
 for Hebrew patriots ever after the name of 
 Samson shared the glory of his more illustri- 
 ous successor. His story reads like a series 
 of martial songs, and perhaps that is what 
 much of it is — a series of martial songs rather 
 than prose record ; but whether you read it 
 or sing it, the story is wonderfully interesting 
 and may be profitable. 
 
 I say we can easily understand how the 
 name of this fearless champion against the 
 Philistines should become glorious in patri- 
 otic song and story. What possible religious 
 significance it has is not so clear. Yet the 
 tale is told religiously. This child had been 
 supernaturally promised to his parents, we 
 read, and no doubt in answer to prayer. 
 The parents were to bring him up as a Naz- 
 arite. In those days of disorder the He- 
 brews do not seem to have followed the strict 
 
 1 20 
 
A Nazarite 
 
 rules of their law concerning things clean 
 and unclean, — if, indeed, those laws were yet 
 enacted in their later form, — but this child 
 must follow them ; he must be as one sepa- 
 rate from others in touching no unclean thing. 
 Beyond that, he must drink no wine nor strong 
 drink, and no razor must ever come upon his 
 head. Those were the rules of the Nazarites. 
 So there was something religious in him — 
 this quality of separateness. The length of 
 his hair — a curious mark of physical prowess 
 recently revived — was important as a chief 
 token of this Nazarite separateness. More- 
 over, he must drink no wine nor strong drink. 
 I do not suppose the Hebrew writer or reader 
 connected that rule with the dangers of intox- 
 ication, but we cannot fail to do so to-day, 
 knowing what we now know of alcohol and 
 its effects on the human system. Is it not 
 startling that this old Nazarite regulation 
 has slowly got itself established as a rule of 
 training for every modern Samson who wishes 
 to excel in strength? As Milton puts it 
 grandly in his poem : 
 
 121 
 
An Extraordinary Saint 
 
 ** O madness, to think use of strongest wines 
 And strongest drinks our chief support of health. 
 When God with these forbidden made choice to rear 
 His mighty champion, strong above compare, 
 Whose drink was only from the liquid brook." 
 
 So Samson grew up a Nazarite from birth, 
 and these Nazarite pecuHarities made him a 
 sort of reHgious personage ; but, except for 
 these pecuHarities, he was as Httle Hke what 
 we call religious as anything you could well 
 conceive : a strong, fearless, irrepressible boy 
 and lad and youth, true to his Nazarite vow, 
 but in other things which we should deem 
 more important setting no bridle to his lusts, 
 and, above all, overflowing with a quality 
 which we seldom associate with the Hebrew 
 race ; for the amazing strength of this man is 
 not a more conspicuous trait in him than his 
 rollicking humor. His story is the one part 
 of the Bible which bubbles over with irre- 
 pressible fun. A big, overgrown boy, life was 
 one long joke to him until it was darkened 
 by his great disaster; and even then, the 
 ruling passion strong in death, he contrived 
 to make the last tragedy itself a kind of ap- 
 
 122 
 
His Good Humor 
 
 palling jest, for he first got his enemies roar- 
 ing with laughter before he pulled down the 
 roof on their heads. Whether he was pro- 
 posing riddles at his own wedding to his 
 Philistine groomsmen; or, when he lost his 
 wager, paying it to the winners with the 
 spoil of some of their own friends whom he 
 slew for the purpose ; or turning into their 
 fields of grain a lot of jackals with blazing 
 torches tied to their tails, that he might look 
 on from the hillside and see the manifold 
 devastation spreading itself among the grain 
 and laugh at the comical disaster; or choos- 
 ing a jaw-bone of an ass to slay Philistines 
 with, and celebrating the fight in a song, and 
 naming the place from that extraordinary 
 weapon — in all his encounters with these 
 heavy-witted foes Samson contrived to attain 
 two objects : he got his revenge on them and 
 he got his laugh out of them. The physical 
 strength and the cheerful good humor of the 
 youth were alike unconquerable, and it is an 
 interesting fact that the scholars are in some 
 doubt whether his name means strong or sunny. 
 
 123 
 
An Extraordinary Saint 
 
 Reading the Bible with our Puritan asso- 
 ciations and antecedents, we have not always 
 appreciated this feature of the story. Our 
 Samson is rather the Samson Agonistes of 
 Milton's poem, a splendid poetic creation, 
 but by no means the same man with this 
 Samson of the Book of Judges; for John 
 Milton, Puritan that he was, had little time 
 for laughter. His hero moves on sedately in 
 majestic blank verse, fit captain for some 
 regiment of solemn- visaged Ironsides ; but 
 the real Samson laughed himself out of his 
 cradle, and through one chapter of his life 
 into another, and into his grave at last. 
 
 We thank God for our Puritan ancestry 
 and for their solemn, steadfast righteousness ; 
 but I thank God also that the inspired list of 
 saints finds room, somewhere between Enoch 
 and Moses and Samuel and all the prophets, 
 for poor Samson, the sunny and the strong. 
 So, then, this element of humor and fun is 
 not all of the devil, though the evil one may 
 have contrived to appropriate such large 
 tracts of it for his uses. There is a great 
 
 124 
 
Because Ye are Strong 
 
 deal of jesting that the apostle calls foolish 
 and not convenient ; those who make a mock 
 at sin are fools ; it is the laughter of fools 
 that is like the crackling of thorns under a 
 pot ; the beatitude is for those who mourn. 
 Yet in spite of all this, the Bible also sets 
 forward this other side of the truth and tells 
 how God himself can fill men's souls with joy 
 and laughter, and that his appointed cham- 
 pion may be the sunny and strong. 
 
 " I write unto you, young men, because 
 ye are strong," says the apostle ; not in spite 
 of your strength and all those cheerful ele- 
 ments of soul which compose it — not in spite 
 of it, but because ye are strong and sunny- 
 hearted. Behold this champion whose name 
 would cheer the Hebrews through genera- 
 tions of hard struggle against the terrible 
 Philistines to final victory over them, because 
 God had given him such mighty strength 
 and such healthy and resolute and infectious 
 good humor. " I write unto you, young 
 men, because ye are strong " ; and remember 
 these same qualities of youthful strength and 
 
 125 
 
An Extraordinary Saint 
 
 good humor and natural, happy hopefulness 
 ought to be serving some good purpose in 
 the Lord's campaign against sin, putting 
 heart into your sadder neighbors to fight on 
 the same side. 
 
 But I would not leave the impression that 
 this story of Samson is altogether pleasant 
 reading. It ought to be, but much of it is 
 not — quite the reverse ; it is laughable, but it 
 is very sad. His life-story is so nearly a fail- 
 ure. So far our English poet was justified in 
 making it the basis of a tragedy. With all 
 his strength he was so pitiably weak. Sam- 
 son had his laugh out of the Philistine men, 
 but their sisters avenged them on him, mak- 
 ing a slave and tool and fool of him. The 
 old writer tells his tale straight on without 
 stopping to moralize much, but where can 
 you find a sermon on the need of personal 
 purity like this — so magnificently strong, so 
 fatally and contemptibly weak ? Of the two 
 forms of sin which specially assail young 
 men, Samson may guard us from the one 
 
 by way of example, and from the other by 
 
 126 
 
Purity 
 
 way of warning. Touching no wine, he ex- 
 celled in strength; but he listened to Delilah, 
 and there quickly followed weakness, dark- 
 ness, the prison-house, the grave. A giant 
 for muscle, but not a strong man all round. 
 He was a weakling beside that hero of Tenny- 
 son's who could say : 
 
 " My good blade carves the casques of men; 
 My tough lance thrusteth sure; 
 My strength is as the strength of ten, 
 Because my heart is pure." 
 
 But it would be a great mistake to suppose 
 that Samson's only fault was his susceptibility 
 to woman's beauty. That became a fatal 
 blemish in his character because of something 
 else that was amiss in him, or lacking in him. 
 His great fault was of omission more than of 
 commission. The reason why he followed 
 after that which was evil was that he lacked 
 something else to follow after— something 
 that was good. Beyond the mere obedience 
 to his Nazarite vow, can you point out a 
 single ennobling purpose in this man's Hfe, a 
 single persistent purpose of any sort, except 
 
 127 
 
An Extraordinary Saint 
 
 to get his own amusement out of life as he 
 went through it ? He shows a kind of patri- 
 otism, perhaps, but of no very exalted quality ; 
 for it appears that this valiant Hebrew slew 
 Philistines chiefly for purposes of his own, 
 to satisfy his own grudges. No doubt God 
 might use the man's exploits afterward for 
 rousing Israel and encouraging her against 
 her foes. But Samson himself betrays no 
 such large purpose or expectation; he was 
 avenging himself, that was all, or else amus- 
 ing himself. 
 
 Ah, young men, rejoice in your strength, 
 and laugh, if you will, when your hearts are 
 glad ; but it is a sad thing to pass through 
 this world with nothing better to do than 
 laughing ; and the more strength, the worse 
 for you, perhaps, if you can find no good 
 purpose to serve with it. You see a young 
 man developing physical prowess in his games, 
 and so long as the game lasts you are satis- 
 fied if he fairly wins ; but what a melancholy 
 failure the life seems if that young Hercules 
 carries out into the world that splendid phy- 
 
 128 
 
Want of Purpose 
 
 sique, but finds nothing there to do with it, 
 no sort of man's work to make this world 
 happier and better, nothing but to go on 
 amusing himself all his days, until he falls 
 victim to some fatal dissipation ! Or even if 
 it be strength of mind that his studies have 
 developed in him, how far is that better than 
 strength of body if the man finds no manly 
 work to do with it, no deliberate campaign 
 for Israel against the Philistines, nothing but 
 to go on amusing himself with his strength 
 all his days? What Samson teaches us by 
 way of warning is that we must get something 
 which he had not — some steadfast, ennobling 
 purpose worthy of whatever strength God has 
 given us. That is the safeguard against 
 temptation. Delilah would have had little 
 chance at the hero if he had had something 
 to do. Laughter is to cheer a man in his 
 work, not to take the place of his work. 
 Games and sports are for the spare holiday, 
 or for evening's refreshment when day's task 
 is done ; the long day itself is not a game or 
 a joke. " They that sow in tears shall reap 
 
 129 
 
An Extraordinary Saint 
 
 in joy." " So was our mouth filled with 
 laughter." But to let other men do all the 
 painful sowing while he spent his whole time 
 getting his idle sport out of their faults and foi- 
 bles, like this big, playful champion of Israel, 
 was not the way a strong man ought to live 
 his life through, not good business for a saint. 
 
 Indeed, as we keep our eyes on this strange 
 character, the wonder continually grows how 
 any one ever ventured to call him a saint. 
 What did Samson to deserve the title? 
 ** Through faith," says the Epistle to the 
 Hebrews ; but where did faith come in with 
 a character like this ? 
 
 That question was partly answered for us 
 at the outset. This man was a Nazarite. 
 " To touch no unclean thing, to drink no 
 wine or strong drink, to leave his head un- 
 shaven" — so far as it went this was matter 
 of religious principle with him, for he be- 
 lieved these peculiar customs to be God's will 
 for him. His obedience in that one particular 
 was matter of faith; that was not a jest. 
 Samson laughed at almost everything else, 
 
 130 
 
One Thread of Faith 
 
 but not at his own extraordinary head of 
 hair; and I fancy if any unwary Philistine 
 ever laughed at it in his presence, it was his 
 last laugh in this world. 
 
 There does not seem much piety in that 
 — that little patch of solemn reality in a 
 man's life, when all the rest was treated so 
 slightingly. No, it was very little; yet see 
 how even that little may be enough to save 
 the man. If a man's heart is bound to the 
 holy will of God by any frailest bond of will- 
 ing obedience, just that may be enough yet 
 to save the man, that is, to let God save him. 
 All the rest of Samson's life was somewhat 
 ignoble; not deliberately wicked, perhaps, 
 rude and undeveloped rather; a big, playful 
 animal, too idle to lift himself to the dignity 
 of moral choice. But here in the matter of 
 his Nazarite vow was one moral principle, one 
 thread of religious faith binding his big brute 
 nature to the holy God above him ; and while 
 that thread holds, though the whole man 
 may seem more animal than angel, yet there 
 is hope of his final salvation. 
 
 131 
 
An Extraordinary Saint 
 
 But let Samson beware how he ever lets 
 that one frail thread be broken. A holier 
 man, like Moses, touching God on every 
 side, if he had chanced to be a long-haired 
 Nazarite and some day had lost his hair, it 
 might not have mattered much. But poor 
 Samson, losing that hair of his, will have lost 
 all the religion he ever had ; the Lord was 
 departed from him, his strength was turned 
 to weakness. 
 
 You will see people who do not impress 
 you as very godly, and yet you do believe 
 them loyal to some principle; careless about 
 other things, they have been faithful to that. 
 Now I am glad to believe that any such faith- 
 fully cherished principle, which a man would 
 not betray at any cost, may be a sort of ger- 
 minal but genuine faith binding his soul to 
 God. 
 
 But what if now the man should lose even 
 that frail tie between his soul and heaven? 
 Thank God if there is any one conviction or 
 principle which in all the trials of life you 
 have always held fast, never letting it go. 
 
 132 
 
His Sin 
 
 Ah, but what if you should let it go now ? If 
 this Samson should wilfully break away from 
 God by cutting off his own hair, that might 
 really be for him what the New Testament 
 calls the sin against the Holy Ghost. 
 
 You notice Samson was not guilty of that 
 sin, not quite. He did not wilfully break his 
 own vow; he did not cut off his own hair. 
 His fault was in trusting a fair and false 
 Philistine, letting her beguile his judgment 
 till he told her all that was in his heart. 
 That was fall enough for an Israelite. You 
 have no right to give your whole heart so 
 unreservedly to any Philistine, or any one 
 else except the holy Lord above you. And 
 the fault brought its swift and terrible pen- 
 alty. The treacherous temptress betrayed 
 him, of course, robbed him of his locks in his 
 sleep and gave him to his enemies. They 
 put out his eyes, and bound him with fetters 
 of brass, and made him grind in their prison- 
 house. At first view one would think the 
 end of this man as disastrous as if with his 
 own hand, with daring impiety, the Nazarite 
 
 ^33 
 
An Extraordinary Saint 
 
 had shorn himself. So it often seems to us ; 
 the heedless faults of men seem to entail as 
 fearful retribution as their deliberate crimes. 
 The boy or man or woman overmastered by 
 sudden temptation has let slip purity, honor, 
 truth, integrity, and the life seems as utterly 
 shipwrecked and darkened as if the sin had 
 been committed with deliberate malice. 
 
 But it was not so; that is not the end of 
 the story of this man. For it reads : " How- 
 beit the hair of his head began to grow again 
 after he was shaven." I am not curious to 
 mark out the precise line between history 
 and poetic allegory in sentences so sublime as 
 these. The divine favor and strength were 
 not yet utterly forfeited for Samson ; that is 
 what we can understand. Even In his blind- 
 ness the Spirit of God could begin to make 
 him strong again. Why, that old scene in 
 the dark Philistine prison-house glows with 
 light as a prophecy of Christ's salvation. 
 Have hope In God, you who have been be- 
 trayed and ruined by sin. There is hope In 
 God for all, however lost, who truly repent 
 
 134 
 
His Restoration 
 
 of their sin. For we know that God has sent 
 One into the world, " and anointed him to 
 preach deHverance to the captives, and re- 
 covering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty 
 them that are bruised." That is the gospel 
 of Christ: hope for the penitent, a glorious 
 light that was not yet shining in those savage 
 days of the judges ; but can you not see a 
 dim prophecy of it when you read, " Howbeit 
 the hair of his head began to grow again after 
 he was shaven "? 
 
 And so the lords of the Philistines are 
 gathered to offer sacrifice in the temple of 
 their god ; and they send for their dishonored 
 enemy to make sport for them ; and his hands 
 touched the pillars of the house, and one 
 earnest prayer of faith rises to the God of his 
 strength, and he bowed himself with all his 
 might ; and the epitaph stands : ** The dead 
 which he slew at his death were more than 
 they which he slew in his life." So he died 
 triumphantly at last, this Hebrew champion. 
 He could be counted among the victorious 
 believers, and his name will yet cheer his 
 
 135 
 
An Extraordinary Saint 
 
 people to stubborn resistance and final vic- 
 tory over their Philistine oppressors ; for God 
 had regarded his penitence, the hair of his 
 head grew and his strength came back to him 
 in the prison. 
 
 Oh yes, we may have hope in God, how- 
 ever we may have been betrayed by the de- 
 ceitfulness of sin. 
 
 Yet it was a sad and tragical triumph, 
 after all — better than nothing; and if you 
 were speaking to a company of miserable old 
 men, who had already thrown away the 
 chances and hopes of a lifetime, you would 
 be glad to hold out to them even that sort of 
 meager encouragement. Better to be saved 
 so as by fire than to be lost altogether. 
 
 But I could not possibly satisfy myself with 
 
 the thought of any such destiny for you — 
 
 you men with the choice opportunities of life 
 
 still looking you in the face. I chose this as 
 
 a topic mainly with the purpose of urging 
 
 you not to throw away your lives as that 
 
 strong man threw away so much of his 
 
 through his idle, aimless uselessness. Oh, 
 
 136 
 
Walk in the Spirit 
 
 be sure to find some man's work to do ; pray 
 God to give you some man's work to do with 
 your strength of body, and your strength of 
 mind, and the natural, good-humored hope- 
 fulness of your young manhood. That is a 
 prayer you need not fear to offer in Christ's 
 name ; it is a Christian prayer. If God will 
 put enough strong, positive Christian purpose 
 into your heart and life you will be safe from 
 the Philistines, I think ; but in no other way. 
 If you are walking in the Spirit you will not 
 fulfil the lusts of the flesh. 
 
 137 
 
The Meaning of Manhood 
 
 By 
 
 Henry van Dyke, D.D. 
 
 Pastor of the Brick Church, New York 
 
 "How much, then, is a man better than a sheep!" — 
 Matt. xii. 12. 
 
 ON the lips of Christ these noble words 
 were an exclamation. He knew, as no 
 one else has ever known, " what was in man." 
 But to us who repeat them they often seem 
 like a question. We are so ignorant of the 
 deepest meaning of manhood, that we find 
 ourselves at the point to ask in perplexity, 
 How much, after all, is a man better than a 
 sheep? 
 
 It is evident that the answer to this ques- 
 tion must depend upon our general view of 
 life. There are two very common ways of 
 looking at existence that settle our judgment 
 
 138 
 
4^7%^^^-^ Cf-i4.^^ lU y /Zjt^ 
 
The View of Materialism 
 
 of the comparative value of a man and a 
 sheep, at once and inevitably. 
 
 Suppose, in the first place, that we take a 
 materialistic view of life. Looking at the 
 world from this standpoint, we shall see in it a 
 great mass of matter, curiously regulated by 
 laws which have results, but no purposes, and 
 agitated into various modes of motion by a 
 secret force whose origin is, and forever must 
 be, unknown. Life, in man as in other ani- 
 mals, is but one form of this force. Rising 
 through many subtle gradations, from the 
 first tremor that passes through the gastric 
 nerve of a jellyfish to the most delicate vibra- 
 tion of gray matter in the brain of a Plato or 
 a Shakespeare, it is really the same from the 
 beginning to the end — physical in its birth 
 among the kindred forces of heat and electri- 
 city, physical in its death in cold ashes and 
 dust. The only difference between man and 
 the other animals is a difTerence of degree. 
 The ape takes his place in our ancestral tree, 
 and the sheep becomes our distant cousin. 
 
 It is true that we have somewhat the ad- 
 139 
 
The Meaning of Manhood 
 
 vantage of these poor relations. We belong 
 to the more fortunate branch of the family, 
 and have entered upon an inheritance con- 
 siderably enlarged by the extinction of collat- 
 eral branches. But, after all, it is the same 
 inheritance, and there is nothing in humanity 
 which is not derived from and destined to 
 our mother earth. 
 
 If, then, we accept this view of life, what 
 answer can we give to the question. How 
 much Is a man better than a sheep? We 
 must say : He is a little better, but not much. 
 In some things he has the advantage. He 
 lives longer, and has more powers of action 
 and capacities of pleasure. He is more 
 clever, and has succeeded in making the 
 sheep subject to his domination. But the 
 balance Is not all on one side. The sheep has 
 fewer pains as well as fewer pleasures, less 
 care as well as less power. If It does not 
 know how to make a coat, at least it suc- 
 ceeds in growing its own natural wool cloth- 
 ing, and that without taxation. Above all, 
 the sheep is not troubled with any of those 
 
 140 
 
The View of Commercialism 
 
 vain dreams of moral responsibility and future 
 life which are the cause of such great and 
 needless trouble to humanity. The flocks 
 that fed in the pastures of Bethlehem got just 
 as much physical happiness out of existence 
 as the shepherd David who watched them, 
 and, being natural agnostics, they were free 
 from David's delusions in regard to religion. 
 They could give all their attention to eating, 
 drinking, and sleeping, which is the chief end 
 of life. From the materialistic standpoint, a 
 man may be a little better than a sheep, but 
 not much. 
 
 Or suppose, in the second place, that we 
 take the commercial view of life. We shall 
 then say that all things must be measured by 
 their money value, and that it is neither profi- 
 table nor necessary to inquire into their real 
 nature or their essential worth. Men and 
 sheep are worth what they will bring in the 
 open market, and this depends upon the sup- 
 ply and demand. Sheep of a very rare breed 
 have been sold for as much as five or six 
 thousand dollars. But men of common 
 
 141 
 
The Meaning of Manhood 
 
 stock, in places where men are plenty and 
 cheap (as, for example, in Central Africa), 
 may be purchased for the price of a rusty 
 musket or a piece of cotton cloth. Accord- 
 ing to this principle, we must admit that the 
 comparative value of a man and a sheep fluc- 
 tuates with the market, and that there are 
 times when the dumb animal is much the 
 more valuable of the two. 
 
 This view, carried out to its logical con- 
 clusion, led to slavery, and put up men and 
 sheep at auction on the same block, to be dis- 
 posed of to the highest bidder. We have 
 gotten rid of the logical conclusion. But 
 have we gotten rid entirely of the premise 
 on which it rested ? Does not the commercial 
 view of life still prevail in civilized society ? 
 
 There is a certain friend of mine who often 
 entertains me with an account of the banquets 
 which he has attended. On one occasion he 
 told me that two great railroads and the major 
 part of all the sugar and oil in the United 
 States sat down at the same table with three 
 gold-mines and a line of steamships. 
 
 142 
 
The Money Standard 
 
 " How much is that man worth? " asks the 
 curious inquirer. ''That man," answers some 
 walking business directory, " is worth a miUion 
 dollars ; and the man sitting next to him is not 
 worth a penny." What other answer can be 
 given by one who judges everything by a 
 money standard ? If wealth is really the meas- 
 ure of value, if the end of life is the production 
 ortheacquisition of riches, thenhumanity must 
 take its place in the sliding scale of commo- 
 dities. Its value is not fixed and certain. It 
 depends upon accidents of trade. We must 
 learn to look upon ourselves and our fellow- 
 men purely from a business point of view and 
 to ask only : What can this man make ? how 
 much has that man made ? how much can I 
 get out of this man's labor? how much will 
 that man pay for my services ? Those little 
 children that play in the squalid city streets 
 — they are nothing to me or to the world; 
 there are too many of them ; they are worth- 
 less. Those long-fleeced, high-bred sheep 
 that feed upon my pastures — they are among 
 my most costly possessions; they will bring 
 
 143 
 
The Meaning of Manhood 
 
 an enormous price ; they are immensely valu- 
 able. How much is a man better than a 
 sheep? What a foolish question! Some- 
 times the man is better ; sometimes the sheep 
 is better. It all depends upon the supply 
 and demand. 
 
 Now these two views of life, the materi- 
 alistic and the commercial, always have 
 prevailed in the world. Men have held 
 them consciously and unconsciously. At 
 this very day there are some who profess 
 them, and there are many who act upon 
 them, although they may not be willing to 
 acknowledge them. They have been the 
 parents of countless errors in philosophy and 
 sociology; they have bred innumerable and 
 loathsome vices and shames and cruelties and 
 oppressions in the human race. It was to 
 shatter and destroy these falsehoods, to 
 sweep them away from the mind and heart 
 of humanity, that Jesus Christ came into the 
 world. We cannot receive his gospel in any 
 sense, we cannot begin to understand its 
 scope and purpose, unless we fully, freely, 
 
 144 
 
Christ Reveals Man to Himself 
 
 and sincerely accept his great revelation of 
 the true meaning and value of man as man. 
 We say this was his revelation. Undoubt- 
 edly it is true that Christ came to reveal God 
 to man. But undoubtedly it is just as true 
 that he came to reveal man to himself. He 
 called himself the Son of God, but he called 
 himself also the Son of man. His nature 
 was truly divine, but his nature was no less 
 truly human. He became man. And what 
 is the meaning of that lowly birth, in the 
 most helpless form of infancy, if it be not to 
 teach us that humanity is so related to deity 
 that it is capable of receiving and embodying 
 God himself? He died for man. And what 
 is the meaning of that sacrifice, if it be not to 
 teach us that God counts no price too great 
 to pay for the redemption of the human soul? 
 This gospel of our Lord and Saviour Jesus 
 Christ contains the highest, grandest, most 
 ennobhng doctrine of humanity that ever has 
 been proclaimed on earth. It is the only 
 certain cure for low and debasing views of 
 life. It is the only doctrine from which we 
 
 145 
 
The Meaning of Manhood 
 
 can learn to think of ourselves and our fellow- 
 men as we ought to think. I ask you to 
 consider for a little while the teachings of 
 Jesus Christ in regard to what it means to be 
 a man. 
 
 Suppose, then, that we come to him with 
 this question : How much is a man better 
 than a sheep? He will tell us that a man is 
 infinitely better, because he is the child of 
 God, because he is capable of fellowship with 
 God, and because he is made for an immortal 
 life. And this threefold answer will shine out 
 for us not only in the words, but also in the 
 deeds, and above all in the death, of the Son 
 of God and the Son of man. 
 
 I. Think, first of all, of the meaning of 
 manhood in the light of the truth that man 
 is the offspring and likeness of God. This 
 was not a new doctrine first proclaimed by 
 Christ. It was clearly taught in the mag- 
 nificent imagery of the Book of Genesis. 
 The chief design of that great picture of 
 the beginnings is to show that a personal 
 
 Creator is the source and author of all things 
 
 146 
 
In the Image of God 
 
 that are made. But next to that, and of 
 equal importance, is the design to show 
 that man is incalculably superior to all 
 the other works of God — that the distance 
 between him and the lower animals is not a 
 difference in degree, but a diflference in kind. 
 Yes, the diflference is so great that we must 
 use a new word to describe the origin of 
 humanity, and if we speak of the stars and 
 the earth, the trees and the flowers, the fishes, 
 the birds, and the beasts, as "the works" 
 of God, when man appears we must find a 
 nobler name and say, '* This is more than 
 God's work; he is God's child." 
 
 Our human consciousness confirms this 
 testimony and answers to it. We know that 
 there is something in us which raises us in- 
 finitely above the things that we see and hear 
 and touch, and the creatures that appear 
 to spend their brief Hfe in the automatic 
 workings of sense and instinct. These powers 
 of reason and aflfection and conscience, and 
 above all this wonderful power of free will, 
 the faculty of swift, sovereign, voluntary 
 
 147 
 
The Meaning of Manhood 
 
 choice, belong to a higher being. We say 
 not to corruption," Thou art my father, "nor to 
 the worm, " Thou art my mother " ; but to God, 
 *' Thou art my Father," and to the great Spirit, 
 " In thee was my Hfe born." 
 
 " Not only cunning casts in clay: 
 
 Let Science prove we are, and then 
 What matters Science unto men, 
 At least to me? I would not stay. 
 
 ** Let him, the wiser man who springs 
 Hereafter, up from childhood shape 
 His action like the greater ape ; 
 But I was born to other things." 
 
 Frail as our physical existence may be, in some 
 respects the most frail, the most defenseless 
 among animals, we are yet conscious of some- 
 thing that lifts us up and makes us supreme. 
 " Man," says Pascal, ** is but a reed, the 
 feeblest thing in nature ; but he is a reed 
 that thinks. It needs not that the universe 
 arm itself to crush him. An exhalation, a 
 drop of water, suffice to destroy him. But 
 were the universe to crush him, man is yet 
 nobler than the universe ; for he know^s that 
 he dies, and the universe, even in prevailing 
 against him, knows not its power." 
 
 148 
 
The Direct Appeal 
 
 Now the beauty and strength of Christ's 
 doctrine of man lie, not in the fact that he 
 was at pains to explain and defend and justify 
 this view of human nature, but in the fact that 
 he assumed it with an unshaken conviction of 
 its truth, and acted upon it always and every- 
 where. He spoke to man, not as the product 
 of nature, but as the child of God. He took 
 it for granted that we are different from 
 plants and animals, and that we are conscious 
 of the difference. " Consider the lilies," he 
 says to us ; " the lilies cannot consider them- 
 selves : they know not what they are, nor 
 what their life means ; but you know, and 
 you can draw the lesson of their lower beauty 
 into your higher life. Regard the birds of the 
 air; they are dumb and unconscious depen- 
 dents upon the divine bounty, but you are 
 conscious objects of the divine care. Are 
 you not of more value than many sparrows ? " 
 Through all his words we feel the thrilling 
 power of this high doctrine of humanity. 
 He is always appealing to reason, to con- 
 science, to the power of choice between good 
 
 149 
 
The Meaning of Manhood 
 
 and evil, to the noble and godlike faculties in 
 man. 
 
 And now think for a moment of the fact 
 that his life was voluntarily, and of set pur- 
 pose, spent among the poorest and humblest 
 of mankind. Remember that he spoke, not to 
 philosophers and scholars, but to peasants and 
 fishermen and the little children of the world. 
 What did he mean by that? Surely it was 
 to teach us that this doctrine of the meaning 
 of manhood applies to man as man. It 
 is not based upon considerations of wealth or 
 learning or culture or eloquence. Those are 
 the things of which the world takes account, 
 and without which it refuses to pay any at- 
 tention to us. A mere man, in the eyes of 
 the world, is a nobody. But Christ comes to 
 humanity in its poverty, in its ignorance, 
 stripped of all outward signs of power, desti- 
 tute of all save that which belongs in common 
 to mankind; to this lowly child, this very 
 beggar-maid of human nature, comes the 
 King, and speaks to her as a princess in dis- 
 guise, and lifts her up and sets a crown upon 
 
 150 
 
The Capacity of Fellowship 
 
 her head. I ask you if this simple fact ought 
 not to teach us how much a man is better 
 than a sheep. 
 
 2. But Christ reveals to us another and a 
 still higher element of the meaningof manhood 
 by speaking to us as beings who are capable of 
 holding communion with God and reflecting 
 the divine holiness in our hearts and lives. 
 And here also his doctrine gains clearness 
 and force when we bring it into close connec- 
 tion with his conduct. I suppose that there 
 are few of us who would not be ready to ad- 
 mit at once that there are some men and 
 women who have high spiritual capacities. 
 For them, we say, religion is a possible thing. 
 They can attain to the knowledge of God and 
 fellowship with him. They can pray, and 
 sing praises, and do holy work. It is easy 
 for them to be good. They are born good. 
 They are saints by nature. But for the great 
 mass of the human race this is out of the 
 question, absurd, impossible. They must 
 dwell in ignorance, in wickedness, in impiety. 
 
 But to all this Christ says, '*No!" No, 
 151 
 
The Meaning of Manhood 
 
 to our theory of perfection for the few. No, 
 to our theory of hopeless degradation for the 
 many. He takes his way straight to the out- 
 casts of the world, the publicans and the 
 harlots and sinners, and to them he speaks of 
 the mercy and the love of God and the beauty 
 of the heavenly life; not to cast them into 
 black despair, not because it was impossible 
 for them to be good and to find God, but 
 because it was divinely possible. God was 
 waiting for them, and something in them 
 was waiting for God. They were lost. But 
 surely they never could have been lost 
 unless they had first of all belonged to 
 God, and this made it possible for them to 
 be found again. They were prodigals. But 
 surely the prodigal is also a child, and there 
 is a place for him in the father's house. He 
 may dwell among the swine, but he is not one 
 of them. He is capable of remembering his 
 father's love. He is capable of answering his 
 father's embrace. He is capable of dwelling in 
 his father's house in filial love and obedience. 
 That is the doctrine of Christ in regard to 
 152 
 
The Lost Likeness 
 
 fallen and disordered and guilty human 
 nature. It is fallen, it is disordered, it is 
 guilty ; but the capacity of reconciliation, of 
 holiness, of love to God, still dwells in it, and 
 may be quickened into a new life. That is 
 God's work, but God himself could not do it 
 if man were not capable of it. 
 
 Do you remember the story of the portrait 
 of Dante which is painted upon the walls of 
 the Bargello, at Florence? For many years 
 it was supposed that the picture had utterly 
 perished. Men had heard of it, but no one 
 living had ever seen it. But presently came 
 an artist who was determined to find it again. 
 He went into the place where tradition said 
 that it had been painted. The room was used 
 as a storehouse for lumber and straw. The 
 walls were covered with dirty whitewash. 
 He had the heaps of rubbish carried away. 
 Patiently and carefully he removed the white- 
 wash from the wall. Lines and colors long 
 hidden began to appear ; and at last the grave, 
 lofty, noble face of the great poet looked out 
 again upon the world of light. 
 
 153 
 
The Meaning of Manhood 
 
 " That was wonderful," you say, '' that was 
 beautiful ! " Not half so wonderful as the work 
 which Christ came to do in the heart of man 
 — to restore the forgotten likeness of God and 
 bring the divine image to the light. He comes 
 to us with the knowledge that God's image is 
 there, though concealed ; he touches us with 
 the faith that the likeness can be restored. 
 To have upon our hearts the impress of the 
 divine nature, to know that there is no human 
 being in whom that treasure is not hidden 
 and from whose stained and dusty soul Christ 
 cannot bring out that reflection of God's face 
 — that, indeed, is to know the meaning of 
 manhood, and to be sure that a man is better 
 than a sheep! 
 
 3. There is yet one more element in 
 Christ's teaching in regard to the meaning 
 of manhood, and that is his doctrine of im- 
 mortality. This truth springs inevitably out 
 of his teaching in regard to the origin and 
 capacity of human nature. A being formed 
 in the divine image, a being capable of reflect- 
 ing the divine holiness, is a being so lofty 
 
 154 
 
Immortality Brought to Light 
 
 that he must have also the capacity of enter- 
 ing into a life which is spiritual and eternal, 
 and which leads onward to perfection. All 
 that Christ teaches about man, all that Christ 
 offers to do for man, opens before him a vast 
 and boundless future. 
 
 This idea of immortality runs through 
 everything that Jesus says and does. Never 
 for a moment does he speak to man as a 
 creature who is bound to this present world. 
 Never for a moment does he forget, or suffer 
 us to forget, that our largest and most pre- 
 cious treasures may be laid up in the world to 
 come. He would arouse our souls to perceive 
 and contemplate the immense issues of life. 
 
 The perils that beset us here through sin 
 are not brief and momentary dangers, possi- 
 bilities of disgrace in the eyes of men, of 
 suffering such Hmited pain as our bodies can 
 endure in the disintegrating process of dis- 
 ease, of dying a temporal death, which at the 
 worst can only cause us a few hours of an- 
 guish. A man might bear these things, and 
 take the risk of this world's shame and sickness 
 
 155 
 
The Meaning of Manhood 
 
 and death, for the sake of some dariing sin. 
 But the truth that flashes on us Hke Hghtning 
 from the word of Christ is that the consequence 
 of sin is the peril of losing our immortality. 
 '' Fear not them which kill the body," said 
 he, "but are not able to kill the soul; but 
 rather fear him which is able to destroy both 
 soul and body in hell." 
 
 On the other hand, the opportunities that 
 come to us here through the grace of God are 
 not merely opportunities of temporal peace 
 and happiness. They are chances of securing 
 endless and immeasurable felicity, wealth that 
 can never be counted or lost, peace that the 
 world can neither give nor take away. We 
 must understand that now the kingdom of 
 God has come near unto us. It is a time 
 when the doors of heaven are open. We 
 may gain an inheritance incorruptible, and 
 undefiled, and that fadeth not away. We 
 may lay hold not only on a present joy of 
 holiness, but on an everlasting life with God. 
 
 It is thus that Christ looks upon the children 
 of men : not as herds of dumb, driven cattle, 
 
 156 
 
Our Need of Christ's Teaching 
 
 but as living souls moving onward to eternity. 
 It is thus that he dies for men : not to deliver 
 them from brief sorrows, but to save them 
 from final loss and to bring them into bliss 
 that knows no end. It is thus that he speaks 
 to us, in solemn words before which our 
 dreams of earthly pleasure and power and 
 fame and wealth are dissipated like unsub- 
 stantial vapors : " What shall it profit a man, 
 if he gain the whole world, and lose his own 
 soul ? Or what shall a man give in exchange 
 for his soul? " 
 
 There never was a time in which Christ's 
 doctrine of the meaning of manhood was 
 more needed than it is to-day. There is 
 no truth more important and necessary for 
 us to take into our hearts, and hold fast, 
 and carry out in our lives. For here we 
 stand in an age w^hen the very throng and 
 pressure and superfluity of human life lead us 
 to set a low estimate upon its value. The air 
 we breathe is heavy with materialism and 
 commercialism. The lowest and most debas- 
 
 157 
 
The Meaning of Manhood 
 
 ing views of human nature are freely pro- 
 claimed and unconsciously accepted. There 
 is no escape, no safety for us, save in coming 
 back to Christ and learning from him that 
 man is the child of God, made in the divine 
 image, capable of the divine fellowship, and 
 destined to an immortal life. I want to tell 
 you just three of the practical reasons why 
 we must learn this. 
 
 I. We need to learn it in order to under- 
 stand the real meaning, and guilt, and danger, 
 and hatefulness of sin. 
 
 Men are telling us nowadays that there is 
 no such thing as sin. It is a dream, a delu- 
 sion. It must be left out of account. All 
 the evils in the world are natural and inevi- 
 table. They are simply the secretions of hu- 
 man nature. There is no more shame or guilt 
 connected with them than with the malaria 
 of the swamp or the poison of the nightshade. 
 
 But Christ tells us that sin is real, and that 
 it is the enemy, the curse, the destroyer of 
 mankind. It is not a part of man as God 
 made him ; it is a part of man as he has un- 
 
 158 
 
How to Hate Sin 
 
 made and degraded himself. It is the marring 
 of the divine image, the ruin of the glorious 
 temple, the self-mutilation and suicide of the 
 immortal soul. It is sin that casts man down 
 into the mire. It is sin that drags him from 
 the fellowship of God into the company of 
 beasts. It is sin that leads him into the far 
 country of famine, and leaves him among the 
 swine, and makes him fain to fill his belly 
 with the husks that the swine do eat. There- 
 fore we must hate sin, and fear it, and abhor 
 it, always and everywhere. When we look 
 into our own heart and find sin there, we 
 must humble ourselves before God and repent 
 in sackcloth and ashes. Every sin that whis- 
 pers in our heart is an echo of the world's de- 
 spair and misery. Every selfish desire that 
 lies in our soul is a seed of that which has 
 brought forth strife, and cruelty, and murder, 
 andhorrible torture, and bloody war among the 
 children of men. Every lustful thought that 
 defiles our imagination is an image of that which 
 has begotten loathsome vices and crawling 
 shames throughout the world. My brother- 
 
 159 
 
The Meaning of Manhood 
 
 men, God hates sin because it ruins man. 
 And when we know what that means, when 
 we feel that same poison of evil within us, we 
 must hate sin as he does, and bow in penitence 
 before him, crying, " God, be merciful to me 
 a sinner." 
 
 2. We need to learn Christ's doctrine of 
 the meaning of manhood in order to help us 
 to love our fellow-men. 
 
 This is a thing that is easy to profess, but 
 hard, bitterly hard, to do. The faults and 
 follies of human nature are apparent. The 
 unlovely and contemptible and offensive quali- 
 ties of many people thrust themselves sharply 
 upon our notice and repel us. We are tempted 
 to shrink back, wounded and disappointed, 
 and to relapse into a life that is governed by 
 disgusts. If we dwell in the atmosphere of 
 a Christless world, if we read only those 
 newspapers which chronicle the crimes and 
 meannesses of men, or those realistic novels 
 which deal with the secret vices and corrup- 
 tions of humanity, and fill our souls with the 
 
 unspoken conviction that virtue is an old- 
 
 i6o 
 
How to Love Men 
 
 fashioned dream, and that there is no man 
 good, no woman pure, I do not see how we 
 can help despising and hating mankind. 
 Who shall deliver us from this spirit of 
 bitterness? Who shall take us by the hand 
 and lead us out of this heavy, fetid air of the 
 lazar-house and the morgue ? 
 
 None but Christ. If we will go with him, he 
 will teach us not to hate ourfellow-men for what 
 they are, but to love them for what they may 
 become. He will teach us to look, not for the 
 evil which is manifest, but for the good which 
 is hidden. He will teach us not to despair, 
 but to hope, even for the most degraded of 
 mankind. And so, perchance, as we keep 
 company with him, we shall learn the secret 
 of that divine charity which fills the heart 
 with peace and joy and quiet strength. We 
 shall learn to do good unto all men as we 
 have opportunity, not for the sake of grati- 
 tude or reward, but because they are the 
 children of our Father and the brethren of 
 our Saviour. We shall learn the meaning of 
 
 that blessed death on Calvary, and be willing 
 
 i6i 
 
The Meaning of Manhood 
 
 to give ourselves as a sacrifice for others, 
 knowing that he that turneth a sinner from 
 the error of his ways shall save a soul from 
 death and cover a multitude of sins. 
 
 3. Finally, we need to accept and believe 
 Christ's doctrine of the meaning of manhood 
 in order that it may lead us personally to God 
 and a higher life. 
 
 You are infinitely better and more precious 
 than the dumb beasts. You know it, you 
 feel it; you are conscious that you belong to 
 another world. And yet it may be that there 
 are times when you forget it and live as if 
 there were no God, no soul, no future life. 
 Your ambitions are fixed upon the wealth that 
 corrodes, the fame that fades. Your desires 
 are toward the pleasures that pall upon the 
 senses. You are bartering immortal treasure 
 for the things which perish in the using. 
 You are ignoring and despising the high 
 meaning of your manhood. Who shall re- 
 mind you of it, who shall bring you back to 
 yourself, who shall Hft you up to the level of 
 your true being, unless it be the Teacher who 
 
 162 
 
How to Live Upward 
 
 spake as never man spake, the Master who 
 brought Hfe and immortality to Hght? 
 
 Come, then, to Christ, who alone can save 
 you from the sin that defiles and destroys 
 your manhood. Come, then, to Christ, who 
 alone can make you good men and true, liv- 
 ing in the power of an endless life. Come, 
 then, to Christ, that you may have fellowship 
 with him and realize all that it means to be 
 a man. 
 
 163 
 
Strength and Courage 
 
 By 
 
 Lewis O. Brastow, D.D. 
 
 Professor of Homiletics and the Pastoral Charge, Yale Divinity School 
 
 " Be strong and of a good courage." — Deut. xxxi. 6. 
 
 STRENGTH and courage are inseparable, 
 and the injunction to be strong is nearly 
 equivalent to the injunction to be courageous. 
 " Be strong " can only mean " Rally the 
 strength you have." ''Be courageous" 
 means " Concentrate your strength against 
 danger or difficulty." Courage, then, is the 
 application of manly force in confronting 
 obstacles. Courage is strong-heartedness. 
 Etymologically it suggests that the heart is 
 the innermost center, " the rallying-ground," 
 of the forces of moral manhood. Of one who 
 does not or cannot rally his resources of 
 strength we say that he is discouraged, dis- 
 
 164 
 
o6<LO>c (0 f difh-cK^LAjfio 
 
Rational Faith 
 
 heartened, has lost heart. We are dealing, 
 therefore, with a rational rather than with an 
 animal quality. It is a virtue in so far as it 
 involves a rational, self-determined effort in 
 confronting the contradictions of life. It is a 
 quality of character rather than a condition of 
 nerve or muscle. It is of this courage that I 
 wish to speak. It is the courage of intelli- 
 gence and freedom, the courage of self-deter- 
 mined moral purpose, the courage of moral 
 strength, and it has many forms. Their 
 ethical quality is conditioned by the influences 
 that produce them, or by the principles that 
 enter into them and the motive forces' that 
 dominate them. The courage inculcated by 
 my text would of course take the form of a 
 Hebrew virtue. But I wish to transfer this 
 injunction to the realm of Christian moraHty 
 and to speak of the more specifically Chris- 
 tian forms of that moral strength which in- 
 volves moral courage. 
 
 I. Such courage is preeminently the cou- 
 rage of a rational faith. In every struggle, 
 
 physical, political, moral, whatever it may be, 
 
 165 
 
Strength and Courage ' 
 
 a man needs good footing. It is an athlete's 
 first necessity to look out for his feet. The 
 moral athlete who makes a successful stand 
 against the difficulties of life must have good 
 standing-ground. Faith gives us footing. 
 Skepticism is a sapper and miner. It takes 
 the ground from under our feet. A man 
 must feel that he has something under him, 
 something he can trust. Difficulty brings one 
 to a stand, throws him back upon some re- 
 source. Courage is the girding of strength 
 for resistance. It is will rallying the dormant 
 or scattered forces of manhood to conflict. 
 The rally must be made from the basis of 
 something to which one is self-committed in 
 mental and moral confidence. One must 
 know that he stands on something that he 
 can trust. In any difficulty or danger the 
 mind must be in a positive attitude of confi- 
 dence. No man can fight difficulties in the 
 air. There is nothing but moral imbecility 
 in perpetual distrust or doubt. It is not re- 
 ligion alone, but morality, nor yet morality 
 also, but the want of life and the make of the 
 
 166 
 
The Vantage-ground of Faith 
 
 soul, that demands faith. An over-skeptical 
 habit of mind involves moral paralysis. In 
 any difficulty one sees as never otherwise how 
 necessary it is to believe in something, to 
 believe in it positively and energetically and 
 even in spite of one's self and despite all com- 
 promising appearances. Faith is vantage- 
 ground for the battle. It is the Round Top, 
 the key-point of the situation for the battle 
 of life. A man may find a certain standing- 
 ground in himself. Well, God has put 
 strength into manhood, and he gives men 
 ample opportunity to test it, and a man 
 ought to be able to believe in himself. To 
 distrust one's self in a pinch is to invite defeat. 
 It is not safe to suspend one's self in the uncer- 
 tainty of self-distrust. One must trust other 
 men also. No one can stand alone. We are 
 obliged to believe in our fellow-men. A 
 man must also trust the world in which he 
 lives, and above all the God who is over it 
 and in it. In other words, the courage of 
 all soundest moral strength centers in faith, 
 in a higher power above us, and in the moral 
 
 167 
 
Strength and Courage 
 
 order of the world. A surrender of faith in 
 God and Providence would leave the world 
 in the imbecility of despair. And I question 
 if there be not in all rational faith in personal 
 manhood, in fellow-men, and in the world in 
 which we live a certain latent or implicit con- 
 fidence in a higher power and in a moral 
 order that has a rational and moral beginning 
 and goal. Certain it is that when men begin 
 to think ethically and rationally they are 
 obHged to postulate the reality of God as a 
 basis of confidence in the ultimate victory of 
 life. This courage of faith in God is the old 
 Hebrew courage. The courage of self-confi- 
 dence is no Hebrew virtue. That would 
 be disloyalty to God. To be strong is to 
 be strong in God. It is the God of the 
 fathers, the covenant God, that is committed 
 to them and will see them through. And 
 the one great central virtue of Hebrew ethics 
 was faith in a covenant God. 
 
 The same stress is put upon faith in the 
 ethics of the Christian life. And this is no 
 insignificant thing as related to the moral con- 
 
 i68 
 
Faith in Redemption 
 
 flict of life. Faith is a fundamental virtue in 
 the battle of life, because it is only unto faith 
 that we shall add a manly courage. This 
 conception of a Father God who would make 
 us his own possession, would hold us in fel- 
 lowship with himself, would throw about us 
 the shield of his loving protection and carry 
 us victoriously through into the crown-heights 
 of our redemption, is ever struggling into 
 view in all prophetic Scriptures, and it breaks 
 forth in all its completeness and magnificence 
 in the revelation of God as the Father of our 
 Lord Jesus Christ. It is the God of redemp- 
 tion that is committed to us and will see us 
 through the struggle of life. The greater 
 includes the lesser good. " He that spared 
 not his own Son, but delivered him up for us 
 all, how shall he not also with him freely 
 give us all things?" is the word of lofty 
 cheer. Christian courage, then, is the cour- 
 age of faith in the calling of redemption as 
 the divine calling of life. 
 
 2. It is the courage of rational moral con- 
 viction. Conviction involves the action of 
 
 169 
 
Strength and Courage 
 
 truth in the conscience. It gets lodged there 
 in the way of moral conquest. Moral truth 
 is well intrenched only when it is intrenched 
 in an intelligent conscience, and the only 
 valiant soldier in its army is the man who 
 carries it about with him in his moral con- 
 viction as a man carries his life and force in 
 the blood of his heart. The man who is 
 morally mastered by the truth is himself 
 masterful. To be thus morally vanquished 
 in the domain of truth and held in allegiance 
 to it is to be a conqueror in its service. It is 
 a dangerous thing for the evil of this world 
 when the truth gets intrenched in the moral 
 sense. It is not enough that it carry a man's 
 intelligence. Moral realities do not get very 
 deep root in the soil of the mind alone. 
 Convince and persuade a man, and he may 
 not remain convinced or persuaded. The 
 truth must get below the mind and below 
 emotion, that only transiently dominates the 
 will. But it has won a great victory when it 
 gets hold of the conscience and wins men to 
 
 its intelligent service. It makes valiant men 
 
 170 
 
The Vitality of Moral Conviction 
 
 of them. When a man invests with moral 
 sacredness what he holds for truth he will 
 maintain it against all comers and will advance 
 with it in the face of all opposition. Men do 
 not sacrifice much for nor stand by what they 
 hold indifferently. They stand for the truth 
 only when it takes vital hold of them. It is 
 a respectable thing to think correctly, and 
 indeed it is a safe thing to hold correct the- 
 ories, for they are likely to work themselves 
 out in practical life. But the quality of cor- 
 rectness is not enough. Living things hold 
 by the root, and they need good soil. Ra- 
 tional moral soil is the only soil that is fit for 
 the truth one holds with tenacity and defends 
 witli courage. He who turns his back upon 
 what he professes to believe and honor, and 
 plays the coward, demonstrates that it has 
 taken but Httle hold of the vital part of him. 
 We in this easy-going age demonstrate that 
 we have lost all genuine sympathy with the 
 men of better days, — days of martyr spirits, 
 days of supremest moral grandeur, — have 
 
 lost capacity for courageous and heroic moral 
 
 171 
 
Strength and Courage 
 
 witnessing, in so far as we permit the most 
 vital and commanding truths and realities of 
 human life to become open questions and 
 play fast and loose in our allegiance to them. 
 The passive virtue of humility is indeed a 
 Christian virtue, but it is a humihty that 
 should be matched by the most heroic and 
 aggressive boldness. We hear much in the 
 New Testament about boldness. That was a 
 brave church, that apostolic church. This 
 boldness took the form of free and open 
 utterance and of action corresponding. It 
 was the boldness that says it all out freely, 
 fully, uncompromisingly, without fear or 
 favor, whether men will hear or forbear, and 
 whatever the issue, as from God's inspiration. 
 To say what was in them and to act from the 
 inner stress of conviction was simply to obey 
 God. They did not stop to balance dangers 
 against duties. They spoke and acted and 
 took the consequences, and they won a vic- 
 tory unmatched in human history. It was 
 not temporizing, it was not political trimming, 
 
 it was not partizan cowardice, that founded 
 
 172 
 
Moral Force Rules the World 
 
 Christianity. Nor is it that sort of moral 
 imbecihty that shall perpetuate it. Christian 
 men will never be influential, they will never 
 be respectable, without moral strength. 
 Strength is what this world is looking for 
 and what it is sure to respect. It is moral 
 strength that is bound to rule this world, and 
 it is what the world needs to-day. There 
 is a loud call to-day for the pluck of old- 
 fashioned manly men. Before the political 
 Pontius Pilates of our age we need living 
 witnesses of Him who, in the presence of their 
 great prototype, witnessed his good confes- 
 sion : ** To this end was I born, and for this 
 cause came I into the world, that I might 
 bear witness to the truth." The world will 
 never be won to righteousness by surrender- 
 ing at discretion to its dominant spirit. The 
 moral conqueror of this world should not be 
 sacrificed to it by those who undertake to rep- 
 resent him. Christ does not know the man, 
 and will repudiate him, who sacrifices him 
 and his cause to his old enemy. Above the 
 iron doors of an ** ample house " spoken of in 
 
 173 
 
Strength and Courage 
 
 Spenser's " Faerie Queene " stand three in- 
 scriptions. Over the first the words " Be 
 bold." Over the second, ** much fayrer than 
 the former, and richHer," was " likewise writ, 
 * Be bold, be bold, and everywhere be bold.' *' 
 And on the third, '' Be not too bold." The 
 iron doorways these of a mysterious and 
 treacherous life. Longfellow in his " Mori- 
 turi Salutamus " has wrought these inscrip- 
 tions and left them as a fit battle- call to the 
 young men of this congregation and of the 
 nation : 
 
 " Write on your doors the saying wise and old, 
 ' Be bold, be bold, and everywhere be bold ; 
 But not too bold.' Yet better the excess 
 Than the defect ; better the more than less ; 
 Better like Hector on the field to die, 
 Than like a perfumed Paris turn and fly." 
 
 Not too bold; not shallow audacity; the 
 sober courage of strong moral conviction — 
 this is Christian courage, and this is what the 
 world needs to-day. What a man holds to 
 be true and right let him hold firmly and 
 courageously ; let him be willing to fight for 
 it. We want no half-hearted, half-souled, or 
 
 174 
 
Devotion is Moral Concentration 
 
 double-minded religion. Away with a lack- 
 adaisical piety! Religion must be manly. 
 If it tolerate moral imbecility it will not win 
 respect. The man whose religion is strapped 
 up by moral conviction will add to it the vir- 
 tue of a manly courage. 
 
 3. A rational devotion also lies at the 
 foundation of strong and courageous charac- 
 ter. Devotion implies an object to be at- 
 tained, upon which one concentrates his 
 energies. There is a goal to be reached. It 
 lies beyond all intervening obstacle, difficulty, 
 or danger, and to reach it one concentrates 
 effort upon it. Any sort of devotion, even 
 the commonest, involves a rallying of one's 
 personal forces about a central and command- 
 ing purpose to reach the desired object at all 
 hazard and despite all difficulty. And here 
 is the rallying- ground of courage. In fact, 
 what is courage but devotion to a desired 
 object in the face of all obstacles ? The man 
 in ordinary secular life who makes all strug- 
 gle for the attainment of his object conditional 
 upon the personal ease or comfort with which 
 
 175 
 
Strength and Courage 
 
 he can do it, or who has no object at all that 
 he is willing to put the other side of whatever 
 difficulties may arise, and has no dominant 
 purpose with respect to any supreme object 
 whatever, is a moral imbecile ; he is a man 
 without moral life and character. A man 
 may be thrown back and baffled and confused 
 by some sudden stroke of calamity, but if he 
 be a man his manhood will assert itself and 
 he will clear away the barriers and start 
 again. ImbeciHty in the presence of difficulty 
 is moral cowardice. Think of a business or 
 professional man or a student making the 
 purpose of his life conditional upon getting 
 on without loss, or upon having an easy time 
 of it! He who puts his aim this side of 
 all difficulty and surrenders when difficulty 
 comes will not reach very far or very high in 
 this world's affairs. 
 
 Now all concentrated and persistent ef- 
 fort in the work of life must rally about 
 this central purpose, and this purpose will 
 successfully meet all difficulty that lies scat- 
 tered along the entire life-path. Such a lif^ 
 
 176 
 
The Personal Factor 
 
 must be a strong and courageous life. It 
 is the life of one who puts the object of 
 his striving far over and beyond the far- 
 thest mountain-peak of earthly difficulty and 
 who has an inclusive and commanding pur- 
 pose to go over, mastering every barrier till 
 he compass the object of his life. This 
 mighty purpose to reach the goal of life is a 
 species of devotion. When the purpose is of 
 supreme ethical importance it is religious de- 
 votion. But Christian devotion involves 
 another factor, which in reality is its chief 
 characteristic. It is the personal factor. It 
 is the devotion of personal love and loyalty 
 to Jesus Christ. The strength and courage 
 of Christian devotion are more than a conse- 
 crated purpose to realize the ethical ends of 
 the Christian Hfe. It is a purpose that cen- 
 ters in personal love and allegiance to Him 
 who is himself the source and the inspiration 
 and the pattern and the end of all Christian 
 life. He only can determine the objects for 
 which his disciple may live. In him alone 
 is the spring and the motive and the guidance 
 
 177 
 
Strength and Courage 
 
 we need in reaching the object he sets before 
 us, and the strength of devotion will depend 
 on the personal relation. The aim of life can 
 never be reached without love for personal 
 beings. We know this in the experiences of 
 common life. The moral life of the world is 
 dependent on personal relations. Some 
 form of piety is necessary to morality. It is 
 preeminently true in the higher domain of 
 reHgion. The constraint of Christ's love is 
 the heart of Christian devotion. And what 
 is Christian courage but the soul's trusting 
 and loving self-preservation for the tasks of 
 life, in face of all difficulty and obstacle and 
 danger, out of a sentiment and principle of 
 gratitude to Him who is of right the Lord and 
 Master of life ? 
 
 4. To a rational faith, conviction, and de- 
 votion there should be added a rational hope 
 as the crown and completion of a strong and 
 courageous Christian life. What we strive 
 for must be attainable in some measure and 
 form at least, or strength and courage fail. 
 If hope should fail the battle of life would 
 
 178 
 
The Genesis of Hope 
 
 end. All over the field men would drop and 
 rise no more. The powers of manhood would 
 fail, and the end would be a universal wail 
 of despair. Nothing would remain but the 
 abyss of ruin to demonstrate that life is poi- 
 soned fatally at the root, that the heart of 
 the universe is evil, and that existence is a 
 gigantic failure and mockery. Some frag- 
 ment at least of the good of life we must 
 reasonably hope to win. God put desire and 
 strength and confidence into the soul of man 
 for the battle of life. Desire of the good, or 
 what seems the good, consciousness of per- 
 sonal strength and confidence in the universe 
 without or in what lies under it, one or both 
 — -these are the elements of his equipment for 
 the conflict, and out of these hope is born. 
 You want the good as your portion ; you 
 believe in the force God has lodged in you 
 with reference to its attainment ; you believe 
 in the world in which you live ; or, better still, 
 as crowning and completing all and as hold- 
 ing the key of all mystery, you believe in the 
 God that made the world and set your life in 
 
 179 
 
Strength and Courage 
 
 its environment. Therefore you hope, and 
 therefore you have courage for the battle of 
 hfe. And there is always an abundant stock 
 of hope on hand for the world at large. All 
 over the world we see its conquests. The 
 heart of man in a struggling life is demon- 
 stration that good lies behind and before. It 
 is God's witness. That it is possible amid 
 life's mountain barriers is intimation that good 
 is the law of life and good its final goal. It 
 is the outreach of man's prophetic soul after 
 the good that is obscured by the shadows of 
 life and barred by its contradictions. It is 
 mightier than all obstacles, brightening above 
 the glare of consuming flames, buoying amid 
 devouring floods, singing amid the groanings 
 of the flesh, exalting itself in the faintings of 
 sorrow, strong in infirmity, triumphing in 
 defeat, and living in the agonies of death. 
 What a world it is, and what a life is this 
 human life ! If this small fragment of it were 
 the end, it sometimes seems as if no power 
 of last defeat could crush the energies of 
 this strange struggling creature, man. It is 
 
 1 80 
 
The Song of Hope 
 
 clear enough that the world was built for 
 conquest by him, even material conquest. 
 But it was built, too, for moral conquest, and 
 what we need is hope for moral conquest. 
 To conquer the world is not to conquer the 
 untrained forces of the soul, nor to conquer 
 sin, nor to conquer death. We are conquer- 
 ing the material world in this nation of ours, 
 but materialism and animalism and sordid 
 selfishness are conquering us. But not all 
 men are conquering in the battle of material 
 life. The notes of discontent all about us are 
 bodeful. They may portend the desolation 
 of a coming tempest. Many give up the 
 struggle. What shall we do with the baffled ? 
 After all, is it not the larger number with 
 whom the world goes ill? And there is a 
 little joyous section of this struggling world, 
 weighted with the common sorrows, but joy- 
 ful still, that for almost nineteen centuries has 
 been singing the song of hope to keep the 
 weary brotherhood and sisterhood in heart. 
 The literature of hope is very rich. And it 
 
 suggests how much the song of hope is 
 
 i8i 
 
Strength and Courage 
 
 needed in the bafflings of life. How many a 
 burdened heart and baffled life has sung out 
 the hope that has been kindled at the altar- 
 flame of a divine redemption unto the rally- 
 ing of the weary and burdened and despairing 
 brotherhood of the unblessed! The hope 
 that is earth-born is not enough. The true 
 goal of life is " where beyond these voices 
 there is peace." We need a divine hand to 
 tear away the darkness of life and disclose 
 the crown that glitters for the conqueror 
 amid the glories of the perfected kingdom of 
 redemption. The song of the redemption 
 hope is a new song for earth. It is this hope 
 of eternal redemption that holds the soul to 
 its heavenly inheritance. Courage for the 
 moral conflict of life, courage to meet the 
 power of sin and of the last great enemy, is 
 the courage of Christian hope. The voice of 
 the resurrection hope has been lifted in the 
 darkness and suffering of earth. What Jesus 
 Christ has done for the strength and courage 
 of the world by his revelation of the hope of 
 eternal life and its rewards for the weary 
 
 182 
 
The Song of the Resurrection Hope 
 
 of earth no human intelligence can well es- 
 timate. 
 
 Share, young men, with this conqueror of 
 sin and death his spoils of conquest, and share 
 his assurances of the ultimate completion of 
 that universal kingdom which is '* righteous- 
 ness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost." 
 
 183 
 
The Peril of Protracted Temptation 
 
 By 
 
 Teunis S. Hamlin, D.D. 
 
 Pastor of the Church of the Covenant, Washington, D. C. 
 
 '^Joah had turned after Adonijah, though he turned not 
 after Ahsalom.^^ — / Kings it. 28. 
 
 JOAB was David's nephew, the second of 
 the three sons of his sister Zeruiah. His 
 youngest brother, Asahel, famous for his 
 swiftness in running, was killed by Abner at 
 the battle of Gibeon. The oldest, Abishai, 
 a brave, fierce, revengeful man, was always 
 at his uncle's side and rendered him invalu- 
 able service. But Joab, greatest in military 
 prowess, as well as most statesmanlike, reached 
 the place of power next the king himself. 
 He treacherously killed Abner, partly in re- 
 venge for his brother's death and partly lest 
 
 he should hold under David the same post of 
 
 184 
 
Joab's Greatness 
 
 commander-in-chief that he had held under 
 Saul. The king was grieved and outraged at 
 this act, and compelled Joab to attend Abner's 
 funeral in sackcloth and with rent robe. Still, 
 induced, no doubt, by his preeminent fitness, 
 he gave him Abner's place. Joab had fairly 
 won this by accepting the challenge of David 
 to scale the rock of Jebus and thus capture 
 the fortress that was to become the national 
 capital. So far as defense and conquest are 
 concerned he may be called the founder of 
 the kingdom. He made his headquarters in 
 Jerusalem and had a magnificent country 
 residence near by. He enjoyed almost royal 
 titles and honors. He was devotedly loyal 
 to his uncle and master. At the siege of 
 Rabbah he took the lower town on the river, 
 and then sent for the king to come and cap- 
 ture the fortress, lest the glory of the victory 
 should attach to the name of Joab. He 
 boldly disobeyed orders in killing the king's 
 rebel son, Absalom, and with equal boldness 
 reproved the king for his frantic grief, re- 
 called him to his duty to his subjects, and 
 
 185 
 
The Peril of Protracted Temptation 
 
 constrained him to show himself in public. 
 This was the more unmistakably an act of 
 loyalty since he had brought about a recon- 
 ciliation between father and son after the 
 latter had murdered Amnon in revenge for 
 the outrage upon his sister Tamar. He 
 wickedly acquiesced in David's murderous 
 scheme against Uriah, but openly opposed 
 him in numbering the people. Superseded 
 by Amasa, he treacherously killed his rival 
 and recovered his old place. He died at last 
 by violence, David on his death-bed having 
 charged Solomon to avenge Abner and Amasa. 
 
 Such are the chief incidents of an active, 
 stormy life, quite consonant with the general 
 tenor of the times. We are not now con- 
 cerned with it as biography, though it is very 
 fascinating biography ; nor as a miniature of 
 the life of the day, though in that aspect it 
 is most instructive. But it has a moral and 
 spiritual lesson of great value. 
 
 Joab was loyal to his sovereign through a 
 long life. He was loyal against many temp- 
 tations to be otherwise. From the time of 
 
 1 86 
 
Joab's Relations to David 
 
 Abner's death David feared his impetuous, 
 passionate nephews ; indeed, he said at the fu- 
 neral, " I am this day weak, though anointed 
 king; and these men the sons of Zeruiah 
 are too hard for me."* Joab could not have 
 been uninfluenced by this fact; it is diffi- 
 cult for an inferior to retain respect for a su- 
 perior who he knows fears him, or whom he 
 regards as in any essential particular a weaker 
 man than himself. Moreover, he was in the 
 secret of his master's great crime — guilty, in- 
 deed, as an accessory, but not so guilty as the 
 principal, and so with another consciousness 
 of superiority which worked against his devo- 
 tion. And monarchy was new in Israel. The 
 king reigned more by virtue of his personal 
 power than of an established habit of obedi- 
 ence on the part of his people. There were 
 the incessant intrigues against the throne 
 that to this day mark all Oriental govern- 
 ments. A score of times Joab must have 
 been solicited to join the fortunes of this or 
 that pretender, to accept anything that he 
 
 * 2 Sam. iii. 39. 
 187 
 
The Peril of Protracted Temptation 
 
 chose to ask, to escape the growing ill will of 
 his sovereign and avenge the repeated slights 
 that he had suffered. Against all solicita- 
 tions he had stood firm year after year. But 
 now David is near his end — in fact, is almost 
 comatose. It is known that he has promised 
 the succession to a younger son, Solomon. 
 The legitimist party, who favor the oldest son, 
 Adonijah, determine not to wait for the king's 
 death, but to at once seize the throne. It is 
 particularly odious treason against a dying 
 and presumably helpless man. And it is es- 
 pecially pitiful to find the aged Joab engaged 
 in it. A few years before he had resisted the 
 pretensions of the fascinating and popular 
 Absalom, and at the risk of his own life had 
 put him to death, as he deserved. But 
 meanwhile his moral fiber has deteriorated. 
 He lacks the robust virtue of other years. 
 Even the thought of his dying sovereign and 
 of the great things that they had passed 
 through together cannot hold him to loyalty. 
 So he " turns after Adonijah, though he had 
 
 not turned after Absalom." 
 
 i88 
 
Age Does Not Insure Safety 
 
 The theory is commonly held that old 
 men and women are safe from temptation. 
 We talk about character being formed, set- 
 tled, fixed. We speak of unassailable virtue. 
 We devote all our skill and energy to safe- 
 guarding the young, which is right; but we 
 neglect to throw any protection about the 
 middle-aged, which is wrong. We treat our- 
 selves in the same fashion, assuming that, 
 say, after middle life we are in small peril of 
 going astray. We accordingly subject our 
 virtues to strains to which we would not 
 have thought of exposing them twenty or 
 thirty years earlier. Hence every community 
 is frequently shocked by acts of amazing folly, 
 vice, and even crime on the part of those 
 who were supposed to have outlived all 
 temptation in such directions. Hence we 
 have the proverb, ** Count no man happy 
 until he is dead " — until he has passed be- 
 yond the possibility of throwing away by 
 one stupendous blunder or sin the accumu- 
 lated good reputation of three- or fourscore 
 
 years. We say of such a man, " He was old 
 
 189 
 
The Peril of Protracted Temptation 
 
 enough to know better," which Is in effect a 
 confession that knowing better by no means 
 carries with it the strength to do better. 
 Hamlet regards it as the gravamen of his 
 mother's offense in her criminal marriage 
 with the king that she had passed the age 
 when she could plead the excuse of impetu- 
 ous passions. History, literature, our own 
 observation unite to demonstrate that, while 
 youth is imperiled by temptation, age is not 
 safe, and to give some countenance to the 
 rather harsh maxim that " there is no fool 
 like an old fool.'* 
 
 The fact is that the danger that lurks in 
 temptation is not a matter of age at all. Per- 
 sonality is of course the main thing. We are 
 tempted according to our heredity, our ap- 
 petites, our constitutional or acquired weak- 
 nesses, our Individual proclivities toward this 
 or that sin. These vary at different periods 
 of life. Hence some temptations are strong- 
 est in youth, others in maturity, others in old 
 age. There Is a sense, too, in which youth is 
 
 weaker to resist than maturity or age. The 
 
 190 
 
Physical Perils 
 
 moral fiber, like the physical, is not yet 
 toughened. Physicians tell us that the period 
 of greatest peril to life, after infancy, is from 
 eighteen to twenty-five or thirty years. All 
 vital organs have developed rapidly ; one 
 looks most robust ; he will quickly take high 
 physical training in any direction, and, if he 
 endures it, gain marvelous power. But at 
 the same time he lacks high efficiency to re- 
 sist or throw off disease. Add to this such 
 imprudence as must accompany the unthink- 
 ing conviction that nothing can harm him, — 
 that he may eat and sleep and exercise as 
 irregularly as he pleases, — and it is not 
 marvelous that so many young men die in 
 their years of greatest promise and apparently 
 highest vitality. They are carried off by 
 disease before they have learned their own 
 powersof endurance, or, knowingthem, gained 
 the moral courage to hve well within them. 
 It is not an irrational solicitude, therefore, 
 that parents feel for the health of their sons 
 and daughters even after they are old enough 
 to be supposed to wisely care for themselves. 
 
 191 
 
The Peril of Protracted Temptation 
 
 Here the moral and spiritual nature afifords 
 a close analogy to the physical. Time 
 brings to the soul certain qualifications to 
 resist temptation that nothing else can bring, 
 such as an intelligent fear of doing wrong 
 and an accurate conception of its pernicious 
 consequences. Especially it brings the habit 
 of resisting the wrong and doing the right. 
 And it is to that settled habit more than to 
 anything else, except the immediate grace of 
 God, that we all owe our moral safety. 
 
 But if the young are thus specially exposed 
 at some points, they are also specially safe- 
 guarded at others. Their generous open- 
 heartedness saves them from meanness, which 
 is the essence of so many of the sins of later 
 life. They largely lack that calculating self- 
 ishness which, in the fierce struggle for suc- 
 cess in the world, lures to dishonesty and to 
 all the schemes of cold-blooded, relentless 
 ambition. In fact, they stand against temp- 
 tation far more nobly than could be fairly 
 expected. Some — indeed, too many — go 
 down and make early shipwreck, or lay the 
 
 192 
 
Joab Finally Yields 
 
 foundations of certain disaster in later years; 
 but the vast majority stand and put to shame 
 the fears of those who believe too little both 
 in the essential integrity of human nature and 
 in the environing grace of God. 
 
 But, whatever the age, the real peril of 
 temptation lies in its being long continued. 
 It was not because Joab was old that he 
 turned after Adonijah, while a few years 
 before he had not turned after Absalom, but 
 because at that time the temptation of dis- 
 loyalty to his king had not been long enough 
 at work to undermine his powers of resistance. 
 When, however, Adonijah raised the standard 
 of revolt and invited Joab to join him, the 
 soliciting voice had spoken so many times, 
 and each time more alluringly, that his abil- 
 ity to say no had been exhausted. He threw 
 away reputation, honor, life itself, not because 
 he was a weak old man, — for he was not that, — 
 but because he had exposed himself through 
 a series of years to the temptation that he 
 had always hitherto been able to master, but 
 that now at last mastered him. 
 
 193 
 
The Peril of Protracted Temptation 
 
 Judas seems to have been a younger man 
 than Joab — probably had not reached middle 
 life ; but he was a weaker man morally. 
 What David's general had endured for forty 
 years, that Christ's disciple was not able to 
 endure for three. From the time that he 
 became treasurer of the little band we can see 
 avarice soliciting him. The Lord seems to 
 have carefully guarded him ; for instance, in 
 letting Peter, not Judas, pay the Temple tax. 
 But his power of resistance was steadily de- 
 creasing as the coin clinked in the bag at his 
 girdle. He had handled only small sums, 
 and when thirty pieces of silver dazzled his 
 fancy he must have them, though it meant the 
 betrayal of his best friend. It was just an- 
 other case of Joab " turning after Adonijah, 
 though he had not turned after Absalom." 
 
 The fact is, dear friends, — and herein lies 
 the reason for the young standing so grandly 
 as they do, — that few are swept away by the 
 first attack of temptation. The fortress of 
 our instinctive love of the right and our care- 
 ful early training is not usually carried by 
 
 194 
 
Steel Gives Way at Last 
 
 assault, but by sapping and mining. Grant 
 conquered Lee by steady and persistent 
 pounding, in the spirit of the famous des- 
 patch, " I propose to fight it out on this line 
 if it takes all summer." The bravest army 
 ever marshaled — and none braver than Lee's 
 ever took the field — cannot forever stand 
 such dogged attacks from an enemy with 
 resources sufficient to keep them up indefi- 
 nitely. Nor can the strongest human nature 
 stand such attacks of temptation. No mat- 
 ter how confident you and I are of the qual- 
 ity of our moral fiber, we will act unwisely 
 in subjecting it to too prolonged a strain. 
 
 Indeed, this law holds throughout all 
 nature. We speak, for instance, of the life 
 of a steel rail, meaning the period during 
 which it can do its work. The incessant 
 hammering on it of locomotive and car wheels 
 finally changes the relation of its molecules 
 until their coherence is so weakened that 
 the strength of the metal is gone. Suddenly 
 there is an unaccountable railway accident. 
 It means only that rail or bridge or locomo- 
 
 195 
 
The Peril of Protracted Temptation 
 
 tive had been strained, not too hard, but too 
 long. They stood through Absalom's day, 
 but could not stand through Adonijah's. 
 
 There is in the Moyamensing prison an old 
 man who had worked for forty-three years in 
 the mint at Philadelphia. He had risen from 
 the humblest place to be chief weigher — from 
 being watched to watching others. He was 
 esteemed incorruptible and impHcitly trusted. 
 He was not extravagant and had no vices. 
 But suddenly it was found that he was steal- 
 ing gold bullion. He was not selling it — was 
 practically deriving no benefit from it; he 
 was not taking gold coins, which were equally 
 at his disposal, nor did he seem to want them ; 
 but the gold bars he could not resist. He 
 had handled them year after year and under 
 steadily decreasing danger of detection should 
 he steal them ; his moral fiber was insensibly 
 weakened, as dry-rot weakens an oak beam; 
 at last it broke, and he was a thief. It was 
 not that he was handling more gold, or that 
 any stress of circumstances impelled him. It 
 
 was not that temptation was stronger, but 
 
 196 
 
The Strongest Body Poisoned 
 
 that he was weaker. He '* turned after 
 Adonijah, though he had not turned after 
 Absalom." 
 
 Bacteriologists say that the germs of many 
 or most diseases exist in our bodies while we 
 are in good health ; but we are able to resist 
 them. There comes a time, however, when 
 such resistance is weakened by that clogging 
 of the system that we call a cold, and we 
 have pneumonia ; or when our foes are rein- 
 forced by impure water, and we have typhoid 
 fever. We can withstand for a long time — a 
 marvelously long time — the poison of a foul 
 atmosphere, but the most robust constitution 
 will finally succumb to it. We are horrified 
 by stories of plagues and pestilences, as the 
 yellow fever, cholera, the black death. They 
 sweep over a country with awful devastation. 
 But they pass by, and, after all, do not kill 
 one where bad ventilation and unsanitary 
 drainage, with their endless persistence, kill 
 ten. The mighty storms that sweep the 
 Matterhorn throw down with awful crash only 
 
 the rocks that the constantly trickling and 
 
 197 
 
The Peril of Protracted Temptation 
 
 freezing rills of water have through years or 
 centuries insensibly crowded to the edge of 
 the cliff. 
 
 I feel sure, dear friends, that in determining 
 our moral safety or peril we give far too little 
 heed to this matter of protracted temptation. 
 I say nothing now of the duty of employers 
 to safeguard their employees by careful and 
 constant oversight, or of the many other im- 
 portant social bearings of the matter, but I 
 wish that we all might profoundly realize its 
 relation to ourselves. If we do realize it we 
 will avoid giving any temptation a long-con- 
 tinued chance to undermine our resistance. 
 The vital question is not whether we are 
 younger or older, but whether the solicitation 
 of evil can reach us for a shorter or longer 
 period. No doubt we can resist once, twice, 
 a dozen times ; but it is not so clear that we 
 can resist twenty times or a hundred. One 
 might think that, as Joab did not turn after 
 the handsome, gallant, fascinating Absalom, 
 he was safe from ever becoming a renegade. 
 
 But no ; he turned after Adonijah. We may 
 
 198 
 
Perfect Safety in God 
 
 be too proud to believe that we who have 
 withstood so long can ever yield, but this is 
 the very ** pride that goeth before destruc- 
 tion." " I do not allow myself to look at a 
 bad picture," said Sir Peter Lely, the artist, 
 " for if I do my brush is certain to take a 
 hint from it." The only safe way to treat a 
 temptation that has begun to meet us fre- 
 quently is the way of this wise book : " Avoid 
 it, pass not by it, turn from it, and pass on." 
 And even this counsel, good as we at once 
 recognize it to be, we will not heed unless we 
 seek divine grace. And that is ready : '' God 
 is faithful, who will not suffer you to be 
 tempted above that ye are able ; but will with 
 the temptation make also the way of escape, 
 that ye may be able to endure it." Trust 
 him and you shall not turn after either Ab- 
 salom or Adonijah. 
 
 199 
 
The Gospel's View of Our Life 
 
 By 
 
 Rev. Joseph H. Twichell 
 
 Pastor of the Asylum Hill Congregational Church, Hartford, Conn. 
 
 "Paul, an apostle {not from men, neither through man, 
 hut through Jesus Christ, and God the Father, who raised 
 him from the dead), and all the brethren which are with 
 me, unto the churches ofGalatia: Grace to you and peace 
 from God the Father, and our Lord Jesus Christ, who gave 
 himself for our sins, that he might deliver us out of this 
 present evil world, according to the will of our God and 
 Father: to whom he the glory for ever and ever. Amen." 
 — Gal. i. 7-5. 
 
 THIS salutatory benediction, with the like 
 of which St. Paul opens all his letters, 
 pulsates with feeling — feeling transparently- 
 generated by thoughts and affections that 
 move in the highest plane. By reference or 
 by implication the characteristic truths, views, 
 sentiments of the Christian religion are em- 
 braced in it. It would make a text for ser- 
 mons on several subjects. But what just now 
 
 200 
 
a ' //Uxax^LjULS? 
 
Penetrated with the Sense of Its Greatness 
 
 I would note in it is the sejise of life and of 
 life's meaning to himself and to those to 
 whom he is speaking which the apostle reveals 
 in it — that general import as conveyed in the 
 nature of the things it touches upon and in 
 its tone. So taken it is as an opening by 
 which we may look into his mind and mark 
 in what lights the world and men habitually 
 appear to him — the common world and com- 
 mon men. For we are to consider that he is 
 addressing people who are nothing out of the 
 ordinary. This letter of his, when it reaches 
 its destination, will be read to congregations 
 or companies, of tradesmen, artisans, laborers, 
 and their families, come together on the Sab- 
 bath or in the evening after the day's work is 
 over, probably in some private house. They 
 are before him as he writes. It is to such 
 that he deems a greeting of so exalted a 
 strain, breathing the atmosphere of spiritual 
 realities, reaching in scope to eternal horizons, 
 not inappropriate but appropriate. Approach- 
 ing them in that manner, he is not above the 
 level, but at the level of their life as he con- 
 
 20 1 
 
The Gospel's View of Our Life 
 
 ceives it ; which is to say, he is affected with 
 an idea of their Hfe that makes it a wonder- 
 fully great thing to his thought, not as their 
 life alone, but as human life. What we are 
 observing is but the expression, in one form, 
 of what has been fitly termed the Enthusiasm 
 of Humanity that distinguished him. To him 
 all men alike, as he contemplates them in 
 the situation and experience of this mortal- 
 ity, are the subjects of an overpowering inter- 
 est, sympathy, concern. 
 
 And in this he most truly represents the 
 Christian gospel ; for it is certainly a funda- 
 mental trait of It, stamped upon it by its 
 Author, that to an incomparable degree it 
 discerns and feels the element of magnitude 
 in human life as such. It is pervaded by an 
 intense emotion, the subject of which is man 
 as it sees him and knows him in those earthly 
 conditions that are universal. Because of 
 that insight and knowledge it is kindled with 
 the desire of entering Into communication 
 with his mind and spirit. It has somewhat 
 to say to him that it is immensely eager to 
 
 202 
 
Is Apt to Seem Overdrawn 
 
 say. And so it is part of our preparation to 
 understand the suitableness of the gospel to 
 man's needs, part of our preparation to hear 
 it for ourselves, somehow to view life in a 
 way to make us share its feeling about it — 
 the feeling, i.e., of those features, accompani- 
 ments, contents of it that fill it in all circum- 
 stances with a profound import. 
 
 It may seem strange to say that in order to 
 do this, in order justly to compute the facts 
 of the life we are living and that is being lived 
 all around us, it is necessary for us to pause 
 and consider. But nothing is truer than that 
 it is necessary ; for of the really large ingre- 
 dients of life — our own and that of others — 
 we are in a manner unconscious, or much of 
 the time unconscious. I mean we do not 
 think of it in their light. We incline to esti- 
 mate life by its inferior aspects. This is 
 commonplace, but so it is. And when the 
 gospel speaks its great words to us they strike 
 us at first as unfitting to such an affair as life 
 is with us and with our fellows. They seem 
 
 pitched to too high a key. 
 
 203 
 
The Gospel's View of Our Life 
 
 It is not, however, the gospel alone that 
 beholds the scene with another eye. Take, 
 for example, out of many I might name, such 
 a book as Mr. Barrie's " Window in Thrums." 
 Thrums is a village of Scotch weavers whose 
 years are spent in task-work of the most 
 drudging sort ; whose dwellings, abutting on 
 narrow, gloomy streets, are cheerless ; whose 
 backs are bent with toil ; whose life-story, to 
 the casual observer, and to themselves prob- 
 ably, were they to tell it, is from youth to 
 age that of an unremitting struggle with 
 poverty. But no, that is not their story at 
 all ; rather, it transpires, only the merest out- 
 side and framework of it. For as you sit at 
 his window beside the writer, who has lived 
 there, and listen to him while he relates what, 
 in the exercise of his gift of penetrating sight, 
 he has watched going on among those people 
 in their homes, in their relations with one 
 another, in their private annals, in their 
 hearts, — the joys, the sorrows ; the hopes, 
 the fears ; the loves, the enmities ; the noble- 
 ness, the baseness ; the moral victories, the 
 
 204 
 
The Main Contents of Experience Veiled 
 
 moral defeats, — your sense of the dullness 
 and paltriness of their lot gives place to the 
 sense of its dramatic and tragic nature. There 
 is material there for a Shakespeare to use, 
 plenty of it. Nor is there anything in the 
 Bible that overshoots the mark presented by 
 that community. And it is so everywhere, 
 in all communities. It is so here among you. 
 We are wont to speak of one's life as 
 though it were principally summed up in his 
 business, his occupation, his pursuit. But 
 that is only an incident of his life. Much of 
 his experience as may be connected with it, 
 more — far more — is aside from it and is an- 
 other story. You pass one another on the 
 campus, each going about his occasions ; you 
 exchange greetings ; your acquaintance is 
 perhaps familiar, even intimate ; you are con- 
 siderably informed of one another's circum- 
 stances and happenings ; yet how little you 
 know of one another after all ! Some things, 
 indeed, that are among the causes of your 
 classmate's cheer or trouble, that touch him 
 
 deeply, you are aware of, and he has your 
 
 205 
 
The Gospel's View of Our Life 
 
 sympathy accordingly. But in his soul are 
 private chambers into which you do not see 
 — neither you nor any one else, probably. 
 And so there are in yours. We all wear 
 masks behind which the multitude of the 
 motions of our thoughts is veiled and hidden. 
 And it is a happy thing that we do ; for were 
 it otherwise — were all, that from the natural 
 instinct of reserve or for other reasons, we 
 keep to ourselves, revealed — we could hardly 
 go on transacting with one another as we do 
 and as it is necessary we should. Every once 
 in a while as pastor I come to the knowledge 
 of, for instance, some cross, heavy, bitter, 
 long borne in silence, unsuspected, betrayed 
 by no sign ; and when that occurs my view 
 of the life concerned is changed, sometimes 
 very greatly, and I seem then to be warned 
 to go softly among my people, for I do not 
 know how many things of that kind there are 
 about me. 
 
 You to whom I am now speaking are a 
 community of students, living essentially such 
 
 a life as many thousands have lived here be- 
 
 206 
 
The Multitude of Our Thoughts Hidden 
 
 fore you, and as many thousands are con- 
 temporaneously living — a life cast in the mold 
 of the ordinary academic routine. There is 
 nothing specially remarkable in it, you would 
 say ; nothing much for the imagination to 
 expatiate upon ; nothing to make a novel out 
 of, still less a poem ; yet, beyond question, if 
 you knew the realities that in the fellowship 
 of every day come close to you, nay, if you 
 knew what is around you at this moment, — 
 what thoughts, what experiences, representa- 
 tive of the deepest passion and pathos of 
 human life, — you would be struck with a 
 great amazement; you would stare at one 
 another. 
 
 In attributing the hue and quality of im- 
 pressive significance to our life I have thus 
 far, with myself, been referring to those cir- 
 cumstances and events that lie out of view in 
 the background of personal history. But 
 there are other phases of life under the sur- 
 face — universal, omnipresent, at any rate 
 with such as we — that when pondered must 
 magnify our conception of its contents. The 
 
 207 
 
The Gospel's View of Our Life 
 
 thoughts, for instance, upon life that all of us 
 day by day are thinking — what thoughts 
 they are and how do they follow us! Take 
 the thought of our mortality^ and what a place 
 it holds in every mind that has the faculty of 
 reflection! I suppose there is not one of us 
 who does not ordinarily many times between 
 each waking and sleeping distinctly recognize 
 and in some fashion survey his situation as 
 the heir of an earthly existence that is tran- 
 sient and passing. Morning, noon, and night 
 we look that fact in the face. It is an ele- 
 ment of our self-consciousness, the thought 
 of it. It walks the street with us ; it goes 
 into company with us ; it comes between us 
 and the page we are reading ; it mingles with 
 our work and with our play. The man you 
 meet and talk or joke with has in all proba- 
 bility within the hour been visited by it, as 
 you have been, and as you both will be again 
 within the hour ensuing. It may stay with 
 you an instant only, but, wherever you are 
 and however you are engaged from one 
 year's end to the other, there occurs no long 
 
 2Q3 
 
The Thought of Mortality 
 
 interval in which it does not step from behind 
 its curtain and exchange glances with you. 
 And life so punctuated with the sense of 
 mortality is something more than humdrum. 
 Again, those whom we pass and repass in 
 the to and fro of our and their common days 
 have their thoughts, and many thoughts, as 
 do we, on the things of this strange world 
 and of human experience that it is not possi- 
 ble to see through, that are enigmatic, un- 
 fathomable. Certainly they do; why not? 
 And people in all walks, of all conditions. 
 In one of the actor Edwin Booth's letters, 
 published not long since, he says : " Life is a 
 great big spelling-book, and on every page 
 we turn the words grow harder to understand 
 the meaning of." He adds, speaking from a 
 religious faith which I believe he had : " But 
 there is a meaning, and when the last leaf 
 flops over we'll know the whole lesson." 
 That feeling of his, so vividly expressed, with 
 which, notwithstanding the distractions of his 
 calling, he communed, which no doubt went 
 
 on and came off the stage with him some- 
 
 209 
 
The Gospel's View of Our Life 
 
 times, and which grew deeper as he grew 
 older — you all understand it perfectly. And 
 it is everywhere ; it is an ingredient of human 
 life as we know it. 
 
 But ah, if the moral facts, the moral ex- 
 periences, that exist and are reaHties present 
 in the persons of those whose lives are min- 
 gled in any community, in this community of 
 yours, were uncovered, what aspects of life, 
 to clothe it with another character than it 
 wears to superficial view, would, we must 
 suppose, then appear! We cannot, indeed, 
 tell what, save in one instance, i.e., ourselves. 
 But we can conjecture; we have the means 
 of conjecturing. It is in the moral province 
 that men, that associates, have least know- 
 ledge of one another individually. These all 
 alike live hiddenly to a very great extent, 
 and necessarily so. I do not now mean a 
 purposed concealment, but that which is 
 natural. But behind the mask, the veil of 
 that privacy is what, were it seen, would 
 make it impossible for us ever to look on life 
 as a commonplace affair. In those to whom 
 
 2IO 
 
The Invisible Facts around Us 
 
 we speak our " Good morning" and " How 
 are you " as they go by us, or with whom 
 we transact, we are all the while meeting 
 things that are of evil and darkness — things 
 also that are of goodness and light. 
 
 We meet sin, desires of sin, choices of sin, 
 consciences in the torment of self-accusation, 
 consciences growing seared by wicked works. 
 We meet falsehood, ugly resentment, black 
 envy, cruel malice, degrading sensuality. 
 We meet haunting, wretched secrets and the 
 miserable fears that wait upon them. 
 
 We meet other secrets too, and immeasur- 
 ably different ones : happy secrets ; secrets of 
 the desire and choice of truth, integrity, and 
 all righteousness; rejections of sin, repen- 
 tances, sweet approvals of conscience, pur- 
 poses of duty, girdings of the spirit for the 
 battle with temptation ; unfathomable pure 
 and tender affections ; charities, generosities, 
 forgivenesses — the higher nature prevailing 
 over the lower. 
 
 What is met in us, I repeat, we know, and 
 God knows ; but all these so opposite things 
 
 211 
 
The Gospel's View of Our Life 
 
 we do daily and hourly meet in the familiar 
 paths of the fellowship of life. We do not 
 see them any more than we see those other 
 contents of life that lie under the surface, of 
 which I have spoken, but they are there. 
 And they are what makes our common hu- 
 manity a great matter — truly a matter no less 
 than tragic. I do not say that we ought to 
 see them, or that we can. As I have re- 
 marked, we could hardly live, or live together, 
 if we did. But what I would say is that it is 
 in their light that God sees our life and that 
 the gospel of Christ sees it. It was one of 
 Christ's divine marks that *' he needed not 
 that any one should bear witness concerning 
 man, for he knew what was in man," and the 
 word of his gospel is addressed to our secret 
 thoughts, our secret hearts. That is the rea- 
 son of the emotion that fills it. That is why 
 it is so infinitely serious in its strain. It 
 speaks ever from the standpoint of its view 
 of our inward man. It brings us its sympa- 
 thies, it brings us its offers of help, accord- 
 ingly. 
 
 212 
 
Speaks to the Inward Man 
 
 If any have troubles, deep, distressful, that 
 they do not tell, that they may not tell, but 
 must bear alone. He whose voice this gospel 
 is, is not ignorant of them. " O trembling, 
 weary, burdened mortal," it whispers, "your 
 pain and sorrow are not hid ; there is a rich 
 and tender divine compassion brooding over 
 you, following you every step of your way. 
 Ever at your side, though unseen, is your 
 heavenly Father and Redeemer. Cast your 
 care on him, for he careth for you." 
 
 If we have our dark questions, and are 
 pressed by the weight of life's mystery, and 
 oftentimes know not what to think of it all, 
 the gospel understands that burden too, and 
 appreciates it wholly, and feels deeply for us 
 under its oppression, and has a great deal to 
 say — more than any other teacher — to lighten 
 the load of it. 
 
 If we have sins, sins of heart and of life, 
 that are unguessed by our fellow-men, that 
 are our guilty secret, to the eye the gospel 
 turns upon us they are naked and open every 
 one. It knows all about them, and all our 
 
 2i;5 
 
The Gospel's View of Our Life 
 
 unhappy and fearful thoughts arising from 
 them. And in them Hkewise it feels for us 
 intensely, and regarding them it has much to 
 say, most plainly, most earnestly, and in per- 
 fect kindness, if we will listen to it, that is 
 just what we need to hear. 
 
 And if, in the midst of our earthly pursuits, 
 participations, and hopes we are in our deep 
 heart honestly wishing and striving after 
 goodness, and, though by reason of our frailty 
 failing oft, are holding on that way, cherish- 
 ing the aim and resolve of a better obedience 
 to all duty, the gospel penetrates that secret ; 
 and there is not a thought we have, not a 
 difficulty we contend with, not a doubt or 
 fainting we fall into, that it does not compre- 
 hend completely, for which it has not instant 
 encouragement and aid, as some of you, I am 
 persuaded, have found out. 
 
 In short, in its reckoning our life is, far 
 above all else, the life so manifold, so check- 
 ered, so full of lights and shadows, that is 
 lived within. There is the main flow and 
 volume of it. To us as in that life, so much 
 
 214 
 
A Gospel for Every Soul 
 
 of which is unknown, and must be, except to 
 ourselves and to God, yet that comprehends 
 the bulk of our total experience and all its 
 heights and depths, — that life which, as our 
 souls are acquainted with it, has such room 
 for the message of eternal grace, mercy, and 
 peace, — it draws near and speaks. It appeals 
 to us in the name of our supreme and most 
 intimate personal reahties, if we do but con- 
 sider. And so is it not a gift most practical 
 and most precious — a gospel for us and for 
 humanity ? 
 
 215 
 
Trophies of Youth the Safeguard of 
 Manhood 
 
 By 
 
 Rev. James G. K. McClure, 
 
 Pastor of the Lake Forest (111.) Presbyterian Church 
 
 "And the priest said, The sword of Goliath the Philis- 
 tine, whom thou slewest in the valley of El ah, behold, it is 
 here wrapped in a cloth behind the ephod: if thou wilt take 
 that, take it: for there is no other save that here. And 
 David said, There is none like that; give it me." — / Sam. 
 xxi. 9. 
 
 IN her gymnasium Yale has a trophy-room. 
 Many a graduate feels his blood stirred 
 as he enters it. The emblems of contest, 
 flag and cup, oar and ball, arouse the mem- 
 ory. Scenes of the past become vivid — the 
 surging crowd, the excited faces, the shouts 
 of victory. Other days are lived over again, 
 and there is joy and inspiration in recalling 
 them. 
 
 The setting up of trophies is a custom as 
 216 
 
jj^a^ 9. X)H^^L..^ 
 
The Hour of Contest 
 
 old as history; all ancient peoples did it. 
 The Greeks put shields and helmets on a tree 
 of the battle-ground if it was a land victory, 
 and beaks of conquered vessels on the near- 
 est coast if it was a sea victory. The Romans 
 did differently. They carried their trophies 
 to some prominent spot in Rome itself. Still 
 differently did the Egyptians and the Israel- 
 ites, who deposited their trophies in their 
 temples. 
 
 So it was that the sword taken by youth- 
 ful David from conquered Goliath was in the 
 tabernacle. What stirring scenes that sword 
 suggested! A young man going out alone 
 to meet a vaunting foe. Two armies, Philis- 
 tines and Israelites, numbering thousands, on 
 opposite hills, watching the unevenly matched 
 contestants. The slinging of a smooth stone, 
 its sinking into Goliath's forehead, the giant's 
 fall, David's springing forward to draw Go- 
 liath's sword. Surely that was a moment 
 never to be forgotten when, with the giant's 
 head in his left hand, David held aloft the 
 giant's sword in his right hand, and there 
 
 217 
 
Trophies of Youth 
 
 ># 
 
 burst from the throats of Israel the shout of 
 victory that sent dismay to the hearts of the 
 Phihstines and made them as leaves before 
 the hurricane to the onrushing Israelites. 
 
 Henceforth that sword of Goliath was a 
 trophy. It stood for victory. The people 
 placed it in their most sacred building, that 
 the sight of it might call to mind a past tri- 
 umph and arouse to new courage. There it 
 was, behind the sacred robe of divination, 
 well wrapped in protecting cloths. 
 
 Years passed, and David, no more a ruddy 
 youth, but now a care-marked man, seeks 
 refuge in this very tabernacle where is Go- 
 liath's sword. Reverses have come to him. 
 Instead of being a favorite he is an exile flee- 
 ing before envy and hate for his life. He has 
 not one weapon of defense. He begs the 
 priest in charge to give him some piece of 
 armor. The priest answers that but one wea- 
 pon is in his keeping — the sword of Goliath. 
 David's heart bounds at the mention of that 
 trophy. ** There is none like that ; give it 
 
 me," he says. As his hand touches it he 
 
 218 
 
The Joy of Victory 
 
 becomes a new man. His courage reasserts 
 itself. Cheered by the memory of what he 
 once had done with it, he now bravely faces 
 his difficulties. The trophy of his youth has 
 become the inspiration of his manhood. 
 
 Youth-time trophies! It is Southey who 
 says : " Live as long as you may, the first 
 twenty years form the greater part of your 
 life. They appear so when they are passing ; 
 they seem to have been so when we look 
 back to them ; and they take up more room 
 in our memory than all the years which suc- 
 ceed them." Victories won then mean more 
 than victories won later. Never is a man so 
 conscious of the sweets of triumph and so 
 elated by the joys of success as in his earlier 
 years. The shout that greeted David when 
 he conquered Goliath sank deeper into his 
 heart and memory than any shout he ever 
 heard afterward. To succeed in the contests 
 of youth, whatever their sphere, social, lite- 
 rary, political, athletic, is to have an experi- 
 ence of pleasure that is scarcely surpassed in 
 
 all one's life. 
 
 219 
 
Trophies of Youth ^ 
 
 Besides, youth is like the Nile's springtime, 
 when the fullness of the river gives oppor- 
 tunity to store away for the coming drought. 
 In youth virtues and experiences can be laid 
 up for the crises of life. Only as hope and 
 courage are accumulated then are they in 
 reserved force for sudden difficulty and trial. 
 The soldier who in camp does not learn to 
 handle his rifle will be helpless in the confu- 
 sion of battle. Insurance cannot be obtained 
 when flames are bursting out of the house. 
 He who does not strive for victories in youth 
 stands small show of victories in manhood. 
 For time is a current bearing the yesterdays 
 into to-days and the to-days into to-mor- 
 rows. The present is the future, carrying it 
 in itself as the seed carries the flower. A to- 
 morrow unconnected with to-day is unthink- 
 able. The flower that is to be must have 
 somewhere a seed that now is. Youth is the 
 seed of manhood, and what we lay up, or fail 
 to lay up, in youth determines what we shall 
 have, or shall fail to have, in manhood. 
 
 What, then, are these trophies to be won 
 
 220 
 
A Sound Body 
 
 in youth for manhood's safeguard? Physical 
 strength is one. Without it no mature man 
 can do his best work. Youth, with its warm 
 blood, vigorous vitaHty, strong appetite, rest- 
 ful sleep, may be a very magazine of power. 
 The wear and tear of physical strain have not 
 come yet. While they tarry a young man 
 may fortify himself for them by accumula- 
 tions of health which later will be a storehouse 
 of resource. 
 
 Such being the case, it is no slight matter 
 to hurt one's physical vigor either by neglect 
 or abuse. Many men have broken down 
 within five years of leaving college, and be- 
 come impaired, if not useless, because they 
 did not treasure their health while here. 
 Scores have fallen by the wayside later be- 
 cause of the recklessness with which they 
 spent their buoyant energy. Sickness and 
 death are indeed inevitable to every one, but 
 there is no necessity for soliciting their ap- 
 proach. Death walks as near the young 
 man's back as the old man's face, but why 
 urge him to overtake us? That law of God 
 
 221 
 
Trophies of Youth ^ 
 
 that makes physical decay the penalty of 
 physical wrong is unbreakable. Dissipation 
 of vital energy inevitably ends in physical 
 deterioration. A young man cannot let any 
 bodily passion run away with him and ex- 
 pect to be safe, any more than a child letting 
 a spirited horse take the bit in his teeth to 
 run as he will can expect to escape peril. 
 A man's body is God's temple, and God 
 never allows sacrilege to his temple to go 
 unchallenged and uncondemned. But if 
 with earnest desire to conserve its sacredness 
 a man stores away all possible physical vigor, 
 he will find in after-years, as David found 
 with Goliath's sword, that the purity and self- 
 control of his youth stand him in good stead 
 in the hours of exposure. 
 
 Intellectual discipline is another trophy to 
 be won in youth. Let the distinction be- 
 tween discipline and knowledge be kept clear. 
 What an educated youth needs is capability 
 to apply his mind — investigating, comparing, 
 combining, drawing deductions — and then to 
 put the full force of that mind into the work 
 
 222 
 
Ability to Think 
 
 undertaken. Better than universal knowledge 
 is power to use limited knowledge. Too 
 much knowledge there cannot be, but know- 
 ledge without the ability to use it is an im- 
 pediment, not a help. He who fails in youth 
 to learn how to ponder facts and arrange 
 them is at a great disadvantage when caught 
 in the hurry and competition of after-years. 
 Neither merchants nor engineers, generals 
 nor scholars, can do their work successfully 
 with minds undisciplined. As much solid, 
 penetrating thought may be required in rail- 
 roading as in teaching, in banking as in edit- 
 ing. The success of a college youth in the 
 industry to which he gives himself will de- 
 pend largely on his power to think. If he 
 acquires that, then he may go whithersoever 
 Providence calls him and he need not be 
 afraid to attempt his work. The man who 
 can use aright two facts will always be 
 stronger than the man who has a hundred 
 facts, but who cannot use them. 
 
 And now for moral trophies. One such is 
 habits. In youth we form them, and then in 
 
 223 
 
Trophies of Youth ^ 
 
 age they form us. At first they are our 
 method of life, and at last they are our life 
 itself. Once they involved conscious effort, 
 later they seem automatic. Care entered 
 into the first writing of our signature, but now 
 we write that signature almost as uncon- 
 cernedly as a machine prints. 
 
 Habits of good can thus become the pro- 
 tection of our maturity. They are the chief 
 dependence on which a man must rely for his 
 own right conduct when circumstances call 
 for such speedy action that he cannot stop to 
 analyze the motives that guide him. If 
 temptation to do evil suddenly assails one 
 habituated to the good, the chances are that 
 he will continue on in the habit of the good. 
 For there are hundreds of good things which 
 the human heart may do so regularly and 
 persistently that they become a very part of 
 the heart, shaping its opinions, controlling its 
 desires, and deciding its affections. 
 
 One such special habit is that of reverence. 
 Reverence is treating worthy things worthily, 
 and the most worthy things the most worthily. 
 
 224 
 
The Mission of Reverence 
 
 The command " not to take the name of the 
 Lord in vain " teaches that God, the best, 
 should be treated as the best. It is an in- 
 junction to have good judgment, to estimate 
 persons and things aright, and to act toward 
 the noblest and greatest as though they were 
 the noblest and greatest. Such a habit of 
 discriminating thought and conduct, once ac- 
 quired, is a ceaseless blessing. It secures a 
 just valuation of all objects to be considered, 
 and it prevents men from looking upon ten as 
 though it were fifty, on the mole-hill as 
 though it were a mountain, on the transient 
 as though it were permanent, on evil as 
 though it were good. 
 
 Happy the man who early acquires reve- 
 rence for purity. To consider spotlessness as 
 insignificant is to have the whole judgment 
 demoralized. Impure thought, once become 
 a fixed element of life, will color all vision 
 and lower all ideals, will make untrustworthy 
 all our opinions of society and of individuals. 
 But reverence for purity, once become a 
 habit, will so permeate our nature that the 
 
 225 
 
Trophies of Youth 
 
 low and lewd will have no hold upon our 
 thought, and we shall wonder that any per- 
 son can spoil his jokes with them or, still 
 worse, soil his own mind with them. 
 
 Happy, too, the man who early acquires 
 reverence for himself. When a young man 
 adopts the habit of regarding every one of 
 his appetites as a divine gift, bestowed for 
 holy purposes, and will not allow them to be 
 diverted to wrong uses, it is an absolute im- 
 possibility that he ever become a drunkard or 
 any kind of a profligate. Whatever is hurt- 
 ful to himself will be esteemed base by him 
 simply because it is hurtful. He will acquire 
 a self-mastery that will give him a victor's 
 sense of power. He will be too high-souled 
 to mind low and dishonorable things. They 
 may throng about him, but they cannot ap- 
 peal to him. 
 
 This matter of reverence, what a safeguard 
 it is when it is reverence for God and for 
 what manifests God ! Certainly no one may 
 expect youth to estimate all objects as man- 
 hood does. Youth is not asked to be as 
 
 226 
 
Loyalty to Truth 
 
 sedate as age. Its very nature is sprightly. 
 But if youth, whatever its sprightHness, will 
 continually hold itself to a reverential use of 
 God's name, of God's house, of God's wor- 
 ship, of God's Bible, yes, and of every fact 
 that in nature, in the soul, and in history re- 
 veals God, youth will have laid up a condition 
 of mind that will be its salvation when doubt 
 contemptuously asks, ** What is truth?" 
 For if there is reverence for the real and an 
 earnest purpose to exalt highest the best 
 things of life, youth has a panoply that all 
 the hosts of mental and moral confusion can- 
 not pierce. But if there is no such reverence 
 failure is sure. Once I saw my own class- 
 mate, urged to a stronger, better life, throw 
 himself on a sofa and with tears in his eyes 
 hopelessly answer : " It is no use. I cannot 
 do it. I have yielded to wrong so often that 
 I have no will power left. I cannot resolve 
 to do right." It was a pitiful scene : a charm- 
 ing, popular young man looking for an instant 
 beneath the surface of things, and helplessly 
 declaring himself the slave of a powerless 
 
 227 
 
Trophies of Youth » 
 
 will ! And all because throughout his youth 
 he had habitually yielded to the poorer ele- 
 ments of his nature and had allowed an im- 
 potent will to become his /^^//«^ characteristic. 
 But there is one more sphere for youth- 
 time trophies, and that a great one — memo- 
 ries. All youth is filling itself up with 
 memories, but no youth seems to have such 
 happy opportunities for memories as college 
 youth. Memories! They are almost the 
 largest, if not, in fact, the very largest, part 
 of what a man keeps with him when long 
 years have passed since he was a college 
 youth. Why should those memories ever 
 shame our hearts or injure our power in man- 
 hood? What a mistake that youth made 
 who for fifteen minutes, out of mere curiosity, 
 read a debasing book, and then afterward was 
 obliged to say, ** That book has haunted me 
 like an evil specter ever since. I have asked 
 God on my knees to obliterate that book 
 from my mind, but I believe that I shall carry 
 down the damage of those fifteen minutes to 
 
 my grave "! 
 
 228 
 
Good Memories a Defense 
 
 Good memories are strength and comfort. 
 Moses, still untried, heard God speak a mes- 
 sage of recognition and duty to him from a 
 burning bush. Later, grown to be an old 
 man and burdened with anxieties, Moses re- 
 called that experience at the bush and it 
 revived his faith and cheered his heart. It is 
 in early years that God loves to put his voices 
 into the soul, assuring us of his nearness, call- 
 ing to us to be earnest, and arousing us to 
 endeavors for our fellows. In more mature 
 years we may be almost dazed by our disap- 
 pointments, by the complexity and strife of 
 business, by the unkindness and even false- 
 ness of our supposed friends. Then the 
 temptation comes to us to question the good- 
 ness of God, to question the reaHty of the 
 soul and the worth of self-denying effort. 
 In such an hour what a help it is to look back 
 and say, "Once I was in college, and there 
 God came very close to me with his blessings. 
 I felt him in my heart. And though I knew 
 less of the world than now, still I had a ten- 
 der conscience then ; I was not embittered by 
 
 229 
 
Trophies of Youth 
 
 life's rough usage ; my motives were simple 
 and pure " ! That very memory steadies the 
 soul like an anchorage. There are many men 
 gone out from this college who to-day are 
 helped to be noble by the recollection of what 
 God enabled them to think and feel and do 
 when they were students here, walking be- 
 neath these elms and entering these halls. 
 God gave them glimpses of himself and of 
 duty that make it impossible for them to 
 doubt the reality of God and the joy of his 
 service. 
 
 A white-haired Yale man loved to tell this 
 story. In his undergraduate days he led a 
 classmate to the new life of a Christian. That 
 classmate became a wise and influential leader. 
 He blessed society and the church by his 
 Christian earnestness. He, in turn, led many 
 others to the Christian life. What a trophy 
 was this of ever-accumulating power laid up 
 in youth for the world's good! ''Bury my 
 influence with me," said a man once vicious, 
 but now repentant. He was dying, but his 
 influence could not be buried with him. It 
 
 230 
 
Christian Character a Trophy- 
 was a living thing that would not die. John 
 Newton corrupted a companion when on 
 board the ship Harriet. Later, when John 
 Newton had reformed, he met the one he 
 had corrupted and tried to undo the evil he 
 had done, but he failed. 
 
 Noble Christian character! Who will lay- 
 up this trophy now? It is a trophy, never 
 coming of itself, but won, and won through 
 contest. There are five inclinations, Horace 
 says, that must be fought in this contest. 
 His words are : ** Youth yields to every evil 
 impression, is rough to reproof, is slow in 
 attending to his best interests, is presumptu- 
 ous, and is swift to leave what before has 
 pleased his fancy." These are the inclinations 
 to be conquered. They are conquered when 
 youth (i) resists evil, (2) values reproof, (3) 
 hastens to do right, (4 ) seeks divine guidance, 
 and (5) cleaves to the good. The very im- 
 petuosity and passion of youth, turned from 
 wrong uses into right uses, help us to win 
 our trophies. 
 
 Win them, then, as David won Goliath's 
 231 
 
Trophies of Youth 
 
 sword. Go forth to life in the name and 
 under the inspiration of God. Have open 
 eyes to see the evils that threaten God's 
 kingdom in the world. Face those evils. 
 You know full well that God wishes their 
 overthrow. Do not hesitate to enter the 
 field against them. Advance upon them be- 
 fore the fascination of fear paralyzes you. 
 Thousands may stand irresolute, but do you 
 dare and do. If none else act, go forward 
 alone. Use the skill you have, simple though 
 it seem, and do your best. What if no voice 
 does speak to you from the skies, indicating 
 duty? It is enough that there is an evil 
 needing overthrow. Meet it with the soul 
 of a knight. God's eye is on you ; God's 
 heart is with you. To conquer is to give 
 cheer to all God's Israel. To-day and now 
 do the deeds and win the experiences that 
 to-morrow will be your joy and salvation. 
 
 232 
 
i OuSf ^s^l ^f^f-' ^>^ - 
 
Manhood's Struggle and Victory 
 
 By 
 
 S. E. Herrick, D.D. 
 
 Pastor of the Mount Vernon Church, Boston, Mass. 
 
 The Lamb made war with the beast. — Revelation, passim. 
 
 M 
 
 Y text, you observe, is not quoted, but 
 extracted. It is a condensation in few 
 words of extended passages of this remark- 
 able book. I have long felt that but little 
 confidence is to be placed in any minute and 
 particularizing interpretation of its pictu- 
 resque and amazing scenery. The book has 
 been the favorite exercise-ground for the 
 ingenuity and wilfulness of exegetical cranks 
 and prediction-mongers through all the cen- 
 turies. It has been the arsenal, moreover, 
 whence sectarian virulence and theological 
 hatred have drawn their weapons of nickname 
 and threat and invective. The beast, the 
 
 233 
 
Manhood's Struggle and Victory- 
 dragon, the scarlet woman, Babylon the 
 Great — these names have been affixed in the 
 history of theological or ecclesiastical war- 
 fare to this party and to that, sometimes, 
 no doubt, in the spirit of sincere and 
 thoughtful interpretation, but quite as often 
 under the inspiration of that animosity which 
 so often attends religious differences among 
 people nominally Christian. Romanists and 
 Protestants alike have picked up stones out 
 of this field to throw at each other. Lope 
 de Vega, a most devoted Catholic, cele- 
 brated the privateering exploits of the Prot- 
 estant Sir Francis Drake in an epic poem 
 which he called ** The Dragontea," punning 
 upon Sir Francis's name, in which he is made 
 to fill the part of the great red dragon of 
 the Apocalypse, and is threatened with that 
 monster's fate as the enemy of God and 
 man. In the same poem Queen Elizabeth 
 figures as the " scarlet lady of Babylon." 
 
 But various and contradictory as have been 
 the interpretations of most of the great 
 figures which throng the gorgeous canvas of 
 
 234 
 
The Lamb and the Beast 
 
 the revelator, there is one, the chief figure, 
 which appears more than a score of times, 
 concerning which, through all the ages, there 
 has been no difference of opinion. That is 
 the Lamb. Assuming that the great vision, 
 or series of visions, was seen and described 
 by "John, the author of the fourth gospel, 
 there can be no doubt as to the meaning 
 with which this great central figure was 
 charged in his mind. The Lamb is mani- 
 festly the eternal Christ — the infinite gentle- 
 ness and patience and long-suffering, and 
 spirit of sacrifice, which is central and inti- 
 mate in Godhood, which was once, visibly to 
 mortals, condensed and expressed in the 
 historic life of Jesus of Nazareth — '* the 
 Lamb of God," i.e., the Lamb which is in 
 God's nature eternally, without beginning 
 and without end. This gentle and yet 
 august figure appears and reappears through- 
 out the book, and often in positions of start- 
 ling incongruity. He stands " a Lamb as it 
 had been slain" — what so helpless? — and 
 yet in the midst of the throne, in the place of 
 
 235 
 
Manhood's Struggle and Victory 
 
 supreme eminence, from the foundation of 
 the world. It is the Lamb, again, that 
 opens the seven-sealed book of heaven's 
 mysteries. It is the Lamb who stands as 
 Bridegroom — his wife the new Jerusalem, 
 ever descending out of heaven from God. 
 It is the Lamb that is the lamp and glory of 
 the celestial city, in the midst of whose light 
 the nations are to walk. It is the Lamb — 
 type of all gentleness — from whose wrath 
 kings and princes and tribunes hide them- 
 selves and entreat rocks and mountains to 
 shelter them. And finally, it is the Lamb 
 which again and again makes war with the 
 beast, coming up now out of the earth and 
 now out of the sea, and which finally over- 
 comes and makes him powerless for ever and 
 ever. 
 
 The panorama is mystic, marvelous, amaz- 
 ing. I deem it a mistaken endeavor to 
 attempt any refinement of interpretation. 
 There is danger in dealing with such a pic- 
 ture too microscopically. Symbolism too 
 
 often runs into wilfulness. The tremors of 
 
 236 
 
The Lamb and the Beast 
 
 the pencil are sometimes magnified into es- 
 sentials, while really grand essentials are lost 
 sight of. In the portrayal of a regenerating 
 world what matters it whether or no we can 
 discover all at once the special significance of 
 the jacinth, the amethyst, and the beryl, the 
 seven heads and ten horns of the beast, the 
 seven vials and the falling stars, and the 
 twelve manner of fruits that are growing 
 upon the tree of life? What we want is to 
 let the grand sweep and spiritual movement 
 of the picture into our thought and life. 
 While the glories of a magnificent park like 
 the Yosemite or the Yellowstone are around 
 one, it is not best to devote much time to the 
 microscopic investigation of a single flower 
 or the striae of a beetle's wing-case. It seems 
 to me that we have here the cartoon of a 
 master who does not care at present to re- 
 veal the significance of detail, but who 
 wishes to convey his ideal of a great time- 
 movement. He entitles his canvas at the 
 outset **The Revelation of Jesus Christ." 
 And the core of that revelation is " the 
 
 237 
 
Manhood's Struggle and Victory 
 
 Lamb making war with the beast" This 
 warfare and its issues constitute the underly- 
 ing unity of the whole book. 
 
 And the beast? Well, the beast is the 
 beast; the beast which is the basal element in 
 human life, which made human life possible, 
 and the struggle with which and the con- 
 quest of which make an angelic life possible. 
 The conquest of the beast by the Lamb is 
 the meaning of all history in its larger as- 
 pect and of all individual biography. The 
 interest which attaches to every piece of 
 biographical literature arises from the fact 
 that it shows how the battle went in some 
 particular case. This Book of Revelation is 
 for this reason in some grand sense a sum- 
 mary of all human history, as it is also a 
 typical picture of all personal struggle. In 
 fact, no novel, no romance, was ever written 
 that proved of any interest, save as it made 
 this conflict the burning problem of the 
 story. It is the solution of this problem 
 which chains your interest and makes you 
 
 eager for the development of the plot and its 
 
 238 
 
The Lamb and the Beast 
 
 culmination. When that is reached, and you 
 have learned how the battle went, the author 
 has nothing more that you care to read. A 
 story that were purely human, or even 
 purely angelic, v.^ould be too tame for earthly 
 readers. We want to see the beast van- 
 quished or transformed. We want to see 
 the earthly, the sensual, the devilish, tram- 
 pled down or regenerated. No stage-play 
 was ever successful for long, no drama could 
 ever get a place in literature, that did not 
 awaken an interest in this age-long, world- 
 wide, universal, and yet intensely personal 
 contest between the Lamb and the beast. 
 It is the truth which science emphasizes in 
 its latest word about the struggle for exis- 
 tence and the survival of the fittest. History 
 and science both have to do simply with this 
 — the elimination of the beast and the en- 
 franchisement of the Lamb. It is a terrific 
 warfare, but only pessimism says that its 
 issue is doubtful. " The meek shall inherit 
 the earth." "The persecuted for righteous- 
 ness' sake shall possess the kingdom of God." 
 
 239 
 
Manhood's Struggle and Victory 
 
 If we take a large general retrospect of 
 human history, its dominant and most im- 
 pressive suggestion is the power of the beast, 
 the beast i7i man, and the beast over man. 
 And the beast is so exultant, so vigorous, and 
 the man is so feeble and so vincible. The 
 beast seems to be the steering power. Go 
 through the roods of Oriental sculpture, say 
 in the British Museum, in which ancient civ- 
 ilizations have left the enduring records of 
 their life and their religion. Everywhere 
 man and beast are joined indissolubly, and 
 the beast is evidently the groom and gover- 
 nor of the union — bulls with human heads, 
 the faces of men joined with the swift wing 
 and ferocious talons of ravenous and unclean 
 birds, sphinxes in which humanity seems to 
 be trying to paw itself free from its bestiality, 
 and yet to be helplessly held back by the 
 superior force of the brutishness. And the 
 fauns and satyrs and tritons and centaurs of 
 classic fable are reminiscences of the same 
 great fact in man's spiritual history. The 
 great empire upon whose ruins, and largely 
 
 240 
 
The Lamb and the Beast 
 
 out of whose materials, our modern civiliza- 
 tion has been constructed, with great pride 
 and in good faith traced its origin to the in- 
 fants that were suckled by the wolf. And 
 nine tenths of the scutcheons of the Old 
 World to-day still perpetuate the story of 
 this old consciousness of the power of the 
 beast, and instead of their shame, as it is, 
 treat it as their glory, with their dragons and 
 their griffins and their Hons and their vultures 
 and their bulls and wild boars. We pass 
 these things by as the unmeaning relics of a 
 dead mythology. But they are not myth- 
 ical or dead or unmeaning. They are in 
 every case the assertion of the power of the 
 beast in the history of man's nature, reHgion, 
 and life. They constitute the pictorial his- 
 tory of human animalism. They are a part 
 of the same heraldic blazonry which fills this 
 Book of the Revelation. 
 
 And the facts are not dead which they 
 represent. Beasthood may vary its prevalent 
 form from time to time, but it exists in some 
 form. Look around us. It is beasthood — 
 
 241 
 
Manhood's Struggle and Victory 
 
 how it shall be controlled and kept under, how 
 it shall be transformed or cast out — that con- 
 stitutes the problem of government and of 
 society in all our large communities. The 
 trail of the dragon winds through all our 
 streets, and his poisonous breath meets one 
 at every turn. We can hardly keep it from 
 our purest and most secluded homes, and 
 over what numberless habitations it broods as 
 a constant atmosphere, poisoning all domes- 
 ticity, making households bitter and hearts 
 hopeless. 
 
 And it is not simply a social and govern- 
 mental problem, which you and I can hold 
 off and look upon from afar with more or less 
 complacency. It is the one problem of all 
 personal life. Some of us can look into faces 
 made dear by years of pleasant companionship 
 or by ties of birth and blood, and watch with 
 solicitude the fortunes of this strange warfare 
 with the beast. No joy of life so high and 
 solemn as that with which we discern the 
 tokens of his weakening. No woe so grave, 
 so intolerable, as that which crushes our 
 
 242 
 
The Lamb and the Beast 
 
 hearts within us as we see manhood or 
 womanhood going down under the impulses 
 of animalism — becoming " earthly, sensual, 
 and devilish." Nay, we all know this power 
 in ourselves. We are conscious of the beast 
 in us. We have experienced the tigerish 
 rage, the swinish selfishness, the unfeeling 
 hardness, the retaliating impulses, the low 
 passions, mounting up and over our better 
 and purer thoughts and threatening the ex- 
 tinction of the divine. We all know it. The 
 best men in the world have felt the conflict 
 most deeply. St. Paul did fight with beasts 
 at Ephesus, and everywhere else. St. George 
 did slay the dragon, and more than one or 
 two. St. Anthony did feel the thrust of the 
 swinish snouts and the tearing of tigers' and 
 vultures' claws, which Albert Durer painted 
 in his terrible but true picture of the saint's 
 temptation. It is the story of Hercules and 
 his labors, and of the Son of man in his forty 
 days' temptation in the wilderness. 
 
 Now it is against the beast that the eternal 
 Lamb makes his war, and will until he is con- 
 
 243 
 
Manhood's Struggle and Victory 
 
 quered and cast out forever. A strange con- 
 ception that, and one that almost shocks us 
 by its incongruity — a lamb warring against a 
 beast, with the purpose and expectation of 
 overcoming him. It requires a good deal of 
 effort to adjust our thoughts to it. And yet 
 it is but saying in another and bolder way 
 that God loves a bad world into goodness; 
 that he does not, after all, depend upon the 
 machinery of legislation and penalty and 
 police to drive men out of their sins and 
 sensualisms. Force is not remedy. Shutting 
 a soul up under such mere mechanical condi- 
 tions that it would be impossible for it to do 
 sinful things would be but a sort of half-way 
 victory. Shutting up the Jack-in-the-box 
 does not in any real sense change Jack ; the 
 hideous and repulsive thing is still there just 
 under the Hd. The warfare of the Lamb 
 with the beast must be such war as a lamb 
 can make. The force by which the contest 
 is to be carried on and the victory gained is 
 not dynamic, but moral, affectional. The 
 life is not to be crushed in compulsions, as one 
 
 244 
 
The Lamb and the Beast 
 
 might break up the ice of a river, but it is to 
 be melted in the sunshine of love and grace 
 and patience. Hence such expressions as 
 ** having a heart washed in the blood of the 
 Lamb " have their real significance — a signifi- 
 cance which has been often obliterated by 
 mechanical interpretations. The only way in 
 which a lamb can fight a beast is to patiently 
 shed his blood in meek endurance. Christ 
 fights sin and conquers sin by his cross and 
 passion. The figure finds its true interpreta- 
 tion in the story of the prodigal son. The 
 beast in him was only conquered when 
 his father — patient, long-suffering, anguish- 
 stricken at his heart — fell upon the boy's neck 
 and kissed him and wept over him. It was 
 the heart's blood of the father that washed 
 away the sin of the son. 
 
 " The patience of immortal love 
 Outwearies mortal sin." 
 
 And men are slowly learning this great 
 fact, that the war with the beast is to be the 
 Lamb's war. This is the temper of all the 
 earnest efforts which are now making in civil- 
 
 245 
 
Manhood's Struggle and Victory 
 
 ized communities toward social reform and 
 betterment. Men are learning that heart's 
 blood must be shed in the battle. Compas- 
 sionate love goes further than great strenuous- 
 ness. They are learning that no throne or 
 seat of authority and compulsion and force 
 can accomplish much that has not a bleeding 
 lamb in the center of it. War as war fails. 
 War as co-passion disarms and subdues even 
 the beast. You recall Whittier's version of 
 the Indian story : 
 
 " Once, on the errands of his mercy bent, 
 Buddha, the holy and benevolent, 
 Met a fell monster, huge and fierce of look, 
 Whose awful voice the hills and forests shook. 
 
 * O son of peace! ' the giant cried, ' thy fate 
 Is sealed at last, and love shall yield to hate.' 
 The unarmed Buddha, looking, with no trace 
 Of fear or anger, in the monster's face, 
 
 In pity said, ' Poor fiend, even thee I love.'' 
 
 Lo! as he spake the sky-tall terror sank 
 
 To handbreadth size ; the huge abhorrence shrank 
 
 Into the form and fashion of a dove ; 
 
 And where the thunder of its rage was heard. 
 
 Circling above him sweetly sang the bird. 
 
 * Hate hath no harm for love,' so ran the song; 
 
 * And peace unweaponed conquers every wrong!' " 
 
 And yet this pitying love is no weak thing. 
 
 Brightest light is backed by darkest shadow. 
 
 246 
 
The Lamb and the Beast 
 
 Tenderest pity goes hand In hand with most 
 strenuous and uncompromising hate. The 
 more intense the love for any object, the 
 more consuming the wrath against whatever 
 assails the well-being of that object. There 
 is no wrath like the " wrath of the Lamb." 
 It must needs be mighty. It is the shield 
 which infinite love interposes for the protec- 
 tion of the human spirit from its worst enemy. 
 It is the blast which saves the wheat and 
 drives away the chaff. It is the fire which 
 spares every atom of the gold and burns out 
 its dross and defilement. There is no friend- 
 lier word of Holy Writ than that " our God 
 is a consuming fire." 
 
 Now this, whether you find it in India or 
 in Judea, is the gospel of Jesus Christ. It is 
 the Lamb of God who taketh away tJie sins of 
 the world. It is of no lasting use to fight the 
 beast with the beast, in the world, in those 
 who are specially near and dear to us, or in 
 ourselves. As for the beast that is abroad in 
 the world, he is still rampant, terrible ; but 
 
 there are signs everywhere that the Lamb is 
 
 247 
 
Manhood's Struggle and Victory 
 
 on the field, and his patient work grows, like 
 a dawn upon the darkness. As for the beast 
 in those around us, there must be no heat of 
 anger, no resentment of the beastliness. 
 Cudgeling will only make a cur more cur- 
 rish. We must carry toward them a bleed- 
 ing lamb in our hearts. As for the beast in 
 ourselves, ** If we walk in the Spirit," says the 
 apostle, ** we shall not fulfil the lusts of the 
 flesh." And " walking in the Spirit " is noth- 
 ing more or less than letting the gentleness, 
 the purity, the tenderness, and grace of God's 
 slain Lamb enter in and possess and dominion 
 our souls. He asks each one of us, as he asked 
 one of old, ** Wilt thou ? " And to the assent 
 heartily given he responds, '* I will ; be thou 
 clean." 
 
 248 
 
^J-^)^ou.J^ 0-Uc.c.t^Jt:^ . 
 
The Sabbath 
 
 By 
 
 Bishop John H. Vincent 
 
 Topeka, Kan. 
 
 "And he said unto them, The Sabbath was made for 
 man, and not man for the Sabbath: so that the Son of 
 man is lord even of the Sabbath."— Mark ii. 2y , 28. 
 
 JESUS himself kept, in his own way, the 
 Sabbath of the Jews. It was his custom 
 on that day to attend the services of the 
 synagogue. In the lesson of the day we 
 have a hint as to his habit from boyhood in 
 the town " where he had been brought up." 
 In the record from which the text is taken 
 we find him and his disciples walking through 
 the fields on the Sabbath day, plucking the 
 bending wheat-heads as they passed. Jesus 
 more than once gave offense to his fellow- 
 countrymen by his independence of ceremo- 
 
 249 
 
The Sabbath 
 
 nial requirements. He wrought works of 
 mercy and of necessity on Sabbath days which 
 if not specifically forbidden were to a faithful 
 Pharisee of doubtful propriety. His enemies 
 tried to entrap him, that they might condemn 
 him ; but he claimed that good deeds were 
 proper on a good day ; that the Sabbath was 
 made for man, and not man for the Sabbath ; 
 and that he, the Son of man, was lord of the 
 Sabbath. The followers of Christ, released 
 from the bondage of Jewish enactments and 
 customs, used the Sabbath for special Chris- 
 tian services, and later on observed the first 
 day of the week, which gradually became the 
 Christian way of fulfilling the Sabbatical ob- 
 ligation. We find the recognition of the 
 Sabbath in the earliest records of the Jewish 
 (which is also in its essential elements the 
 Christian) faith. In the very beginning, 
 when the first notation of time was made, 
 and man began to live and to order affairs on 
 the planet, the Sabbath was instituted. It 
 began with the race. In the immortal song 
 of creation found on the first page of the 
 
 250 
 
The Day of Genesis 
 
 Book of Genesis two facts are made clear: 
 first, that God was the Creator, and second, 
 that the creation was a gradual, a progressive 
 movement. To aid human thought and to 
 make impressive the idea of gradualness, the 
 sacred writer introduces a time-scale. This 
 ** day " of the first chapter of Genesis has 
 nothing to do with an actual "period," 
 whether of twenty-four hours or twenty-four 
 millions of years. It is a beautiful device — 
 this use of a week of days and nights — to 
 show that the creation was not instantaneous. 
 The writer might have introduced any other 
 time-measurement. He might have sug- 
 gested years, or centuries, or cycles. But 
 the most convenient, the simplest scale was 
 the week of days — a figure to help us to the 
 thought of continuous creative energy. 
 
 On the " sixth day " man appears. He is 
 a higher creation. He is made in the image 
 of God. He is to be on earth the represen- 
 tative of God in dominion — one with God ; 
 having knowledge, in his measure, like God's 
 knowledge, life like God's life, authority like 
 
 251 
 
The Sabbath ^ 
 
 God's authority, and the possibility of right- 
 eousness like God's righteousness. And how 
 shall man be helped to a true conception of 
 a godlike life — a life, not of indolence, but of 
 strength, repose, and peace? How shall 
 man, with this wealth of material resources, 
 be reminded of his spiritual endowment, mis- 
 sion, and dependence? How shall he be 
 brought into a life of communion with God, 
 his Maker, his Father — a life above the phy- 
 sical life ; a life for the development of his 
 spiritual nature, derived from God; a life 
 nobler than a life of physical, commercial, 
 social, political interest and activity ; a life of 
 preparation for all other and lower relations 
 and responsibilities? And if man made 
 innocent shall, when tested, fail of virtue 
 and drop to lower levels, how shall he be 
 brought up to righteousness and true holi- 
 ness? Therefore the inspired poet of the 
 creation added to his time-scale another day 
 — a seventh day, a Lord's day, a day of 
 divine rest and of human opportunity. It 
 was not a day of God's withdrawal from his 
 
 252 
 
Paul and the Sabbath 
 
 universe, a day of the suspension of divine 
 interest and activity. It was an impressive 
 symbol of human need and of the true rest 
 of the soul of man — godlike only when in 
 perfect harmony and communion with him. 
 Thus the primeval Sabbath was instituted as 
 a reminder of man's high relationships, and 
 as a help to his highest training for dominion 
 on the earth and for the unutterable glories 
 of his destiny beyond. How insignificant do 
 Sunday laws about " things " appear when 
 we grasp the larger thought of Genesis and 
 of Jesus, that the Sabbath was made for man, 
 and not man for the Sabbath! This same 
 view Paul and the early Christians held. 
 The study of that apostle's theory, as set 
 forth in the fourteenth chapter of his letter to 
 the Romans, will show his attitude toward 
 the ritualistic Sabbath of the Pharisees, while 
 we see clearly in his teachings and habits 
 that he exalted the spiritual life of divine 
 communion which the true Sabbath of the 
 Scriptures is appointed to promote. 
 
 The same misapprehensions and contro- 
 253 
 
The Sabbath 
 
 versies which caused discussions between 
 Jesus and the Pharisees, and between Paul 
 and the Judaizing Christians of his day, have 
 continued in the church until the present day. 
 And while such theories remain disputations, 
 extremes and excesses are inevitable. Those 
 who beheve in the divine provision of the 
 sacred seventh of our time for the higher 
 uses of man cannot approve the indifference 
 and opposition of men who would abolish 
 all recognition of the Sabbath day. Men 
 who carry their ethical and religious convic- 
 tions into political and civic life, who make it 
 a matter of conscience to seek the enactment 
 of good laws, and the execution of them when 
 enacted, are sure to array against themselves 
 and their measures men who carry the idea 
 of Hberty beyond the limits of social security. 
 And these same good and true representa- 
 tives of the higher social and personal life 
 are in danger of insisting too strenuously 
 upon religious regulations which contravene 
 both religious and political liberty. So it 
 happens that severity remonstrates against 
 
 254 
 
Laxity in Sabbath Observance 
 
 laxity and sometimes enacts and enforces 
 restrictive laws, and men who are not re- 
 ligious, or at least not religious after the re- 
 ligious ways of their neighbors, feel that their 
 personal freedom is interfered with. Citizens 
 of foreign birth, accustomed to the more easy- 
 going social ways and the less rigid religious 
 notions of their native lands beyond the sea, 
 protest freely against what they call an in- 
 fringement of their rights in a free republic — 
 less free, they aver, in these respects than the 
 monarchical governments they left in order 
 to become citizens of this great nation of 
 freemen. 
 
 This foreign element, but not this alone, 
 will account for the increasing laxity of our 
 age touching Sabbath observance. We are 
 all aware of a reaction from the old-time 
 strictness in the ordering of domestic life, 
 and especially on the holy day. And this 
 reaction is not wholly evil. We have pic- 
 tures, not always exaggerated, of the early 
 times : of the silent house on the Sabbath ; 
 the cold and frugal meal ; the long hours 
 
 255 
 
The Sabbath 
 
 spent in straight-backed pews in square- 
 walled, square-windowed churches ; long 
 prayers, long sermons, long faces ; sharp 
 rebukes for smiles that could not be re- 
 pressed, and solemn tones on Sundays from 
 voices that on week-days were natural and 
 agreeable. And all this — with sundry other 
 public offices and private admonitions — con- 
 spired to make children loathe Sabbath days, 
 sanctuary services, and home solemnities. 
 People who had no such experiences them- 
 selves have heard and read about them and 
 ridiculed them, and have reached the conclu- 
 sion that Sabbath-keeping is a bondage and 
 a folly — a bondage they purpose never to 
 endure, a folly of which they will never be 
 guilty. Thus what we call " society " laughs 
 at the church ; and as society is in the church, 
 the church of to-day laughs at the church of 
 yesterday, and we are in some danger of los- 
 ing through a laugh what is really a serious 
 and important factor in our civilization, phy- 
 sical, social, political, educational, religious — 
 
 the true Sabbath day, the American Sabbath 
 
 256 
 
Patriotism and the Sabbath 
 
 as distinguished from the Jewish, the Euro- 
 pean, and the Puritan Sabbath, the Sabbath 
 of which John Ellerton sings : 
 
 " This is tlie clay of light : let there be light to-day; 
 O Dayspring, rise upon our night, and chase its gloom 
 away! 
 
 " This is the day of rest : our failing strength renew, 
 On weary brain and troubled breast shed thou thy freshen- 
 ing dew. 
 " This is the day of peace : thy peace our spirits fill. 
 Bid thou the blasts of discord cease, the waves of strife be 
 
 still. 
 " This is the first of days : send forth thy quickening breath. 
 And wake dead souls to love and praise, O Vanquisher of 
 death! " 
 
 Let us still honor and cherish the day of God, 
 the sacred seventh of our treasure — time! 
 All good things may be abused — learning and 
 liberty and love. A nation's flag may be 
 trailed in the dust. A nation's honor and 
 courage may be tossed into the arena and 
 played with by ambitious politicians to the 
 humiliation of patriots. But learning, liberty, 
 love, the nation's flag, and the nation's honor 
 and courage, are good things. As we would 
 save our land, let us save our Sabbath. 
 It does not matter what we call this day 
 257 
 
The Sabbath 
 
 —''Sabbath," "Sunday," or "Lord's day." 
 It matters not which day of the seven we 
 hallow—" First-day " or " Seventh-day." It 
 matters not at all which hours we keep — 
 from sunset to sunset, or from midnight to 
 midnight. But let us save the " sacred sev- 
 enth " ! Are there not wise reasons for try- 
 ing to do this ? And is there not a wise way 
 of doing it? It is greatly in our favor that 
 we still have the Sabbath with us. It is an 
 institution long cherished ; maintained by 
 wise and good men ; recently revived in Paris 
 by a society of advanced French reformers 
 who, although not churchmen, nor committed 
 to any form of religious worship, are con- 
 vinced that the French working-man must 
 have one day a week for physical rest and 
 social life. The Sabbath is in the legislation 
 of all Christian lands, and the more the Bible 
 is studied, the more plainly appears the 
 reasonableness, the righteousness, the neces- 
 sity of a day made for man — for man made 
 in the image of God. 
 
 Our own busy and exciting American life 
 
 2^3 
 
Its Symbolic Significance 
 
 especially needs the calming power of such a 
 day. The tension of the times demands re- 
 lief. Worn-out bodies, overtaxed brains, 
 constantly stimulated energies, require some 
 social regulation to compel recuperative rest. 
 How fully are these requirements met in 
 Sabbath stillness, religious reflection, the 
 subduing power of sacred music, the impres- 
 sive solemnities of public worship, the joy of 
 home life, the memories of a past now hal- 
 lowed by a love that was faithful in its day to 
 its opportunity and that now draws the soul 
 toward heaven ! 
 
 The Sabbath day is a symbol of the high- 
 est and holiest verities in which man can be 
 concerned. It is a monument in time, rising 
 like the white obelisk in Washington from 
 the dust and clamor of the earth toward the 
 serene and stainless realm above. It is a 
 day that points upward to God and destiny. 
 It reminds us of duty. It offers to us par- 
 don for the past, peace in the present, and 
 hope for an immortal future. It represents 
 the righteousness that is indispensable to the 
 
 259 
 
The Sabbath 
 
 perpetuity of the republic. It represents 
 " heaven and earth in union : earth for heaven, 
 heaven for earth." Let the flag of the 
 nation float! Its intrinsic value is slight; 
 its significance beyond expression. Let the 
 day of days, God's Sabbath, stand! It is 
 but a shred of time; it is weighted with 
 treasures of eternity. 
 
 The Sabbath is the day of opportunity. 
 Its recognition by the community confers 
 immense privilege on the individual. It 
 withdraws the pressure of worldly occupation 
 and drudgery, and leaves the man free to go, 
 if he will, into the house of God " with the 
 multitude that keeps holy day." It brings 
 people together in that holiest fellowship, the 
 fraternity of worship : parents and children, 
 friends and neighbors, classes of society 
 which the cares of the world elsewhere sepa- 
 rate into castes — merchant and clerk, em- 
 ployer and employee. Alas, alas! that I 
 dream of the possible rather than of the 
 actual. But this is the Sabbath ministry of 
 good neighborship, of good Samaritanship, 
 
 260 
 
Its Sacred Opportunities 
 
 which makes it the day of the Son of man. 
 The Sabbath is opportunity for the reverent, 
 the associated, the private study of the most 
 important fields of thought to which man's 
 attention is called. For this we have books, 
 sermons, classes, and may enjoy friendly 
 reHgious conversation and discussion. What 
 possibilities crowd the hours of the Sabbath ! 
 The day makes possible personal growth 
 in faith and sympathy and unselfishness. Is 
 there a thoughtful man who does not peri- 
 odically retire from the confusion of Hfe into 
 secret chambers of reflection, of prayer, and 
 of resolve? Sabbath hours give him time 
 for this high service and furnish incentives to 
 its performance. What a corrective such 
 sacred endeavors are of all tendencies to ir- 
 reverence, to frivolity, to flippancy, to heed- 
 lessness, in matters of religious faith ! What 
 personal dignity is promoted by this personal 
 fellowship with the God who made him, the 
 Christ who redeemed him, and the Holy 
 Spirit who dwells within him! Thus the 
 Sabbath opens to the devout soul treasures 
 
 261 
 
The Sabbath , 
 
 of grace — the spirit of earnestness, of faith, 
 of resoluteness. The American Sabbath is 
 preeminently the opportunity of the Ameri- 
 can home. May we too easily abandon the 
 old-time systematic ordering of the Sunday 
 life at home ? May we become careless in 
 this respect? Better the old-time rigidity! 
 Better for the children, better for the parents, 
 better for the nation. 
 
 It is a good habit, this Sunday habit. It 
 is hard to acquire in the beginning, as is all 
 discipline in self-control and self-direction. 
 Children are quite likely to rebel against the 
 regime that is best for them. They may 
 succeed in evading or in slipping the yoke of 
 authority and then rejoice in their freedom. 
 But such liberty is likely to become bondage 
 in the end. It is good for a man to bear the 
 yoke in his youth, in the home, in the school- 
 room, in the field, in the shop. The parent 
 is likely to know better than the child what 
 ministers to personal strength and well-being. 
 Infinite wisdom and love express in law what 
 is best for man. That the best is for the 
 
 262 
 
The Safeguard of Youth 
 
 present distasteful and often grievous is not 
 strange, but it is folly to argue that because 
 distasteful or even grievous it should be re- 
 mitted. It is not a bad thing to train a boy 
 in the decencies and proprieties of table 
 manners, however strong the protests of the 
 animal within him. It is not a bad thing to 
 repress the fury of his temper and his unrea- 
 soning insubordination. A firm grip, a tone 
 of authority, a withdrawal of coveted and 
 otherwise legitimate pleasure, a physical 
 demonstration of the reign of law and right- 
 eousness — these are wholesome lessons for 
 the young brute who has wrapped up within 
 him a man's reason, a potential conscience, 
 and the germs of sainthood. Let us have 
 fear in these days, not of too much home 
 government, but of a carelessness which may, 
 before we are aware of it, develop lawless- 
 ness. Let us have a Sabbath law and a 
 Sabbath life at home. One cannot excuse 
 the traditional puritanic rigidity concerning 
 Sabbath observance ; but for the sake of the 
 
 children, by all that is beautiful and sacred in 
 
 263 
 
The Sabbath 
 
 home love, by all that is divine in parental 
 authority, by all that is imperative in moral 
 obligation, let us make the day of God a 
 sacred, a delightful, a memorable day in the 
 family circle. 
 
 I have little patience with the questions in 
 casuistry usually started when one speaks of 
 the holy day and its sacred uses : " What 
 about writing letters and studying lessons on 
 Sunday?" "What about a Sunday after- 
 noon walk with the children or friends, din- 
 ing out, starting on a journey, reading the 
 Sunday papers, street-car travel, conversing 
 on secular topics?" and other questions of 
 this class. Let all such questions be settled 
 by the individual. As Paul says, '* Let every 
 man be fully persuaded in his own mind." 
 There are many large and radical questions, 
 far-reaching questions, which the man must 
 answer before he comes to these minor mat- 
 ters, these merely symptomatic conditions — 
 questions too numerous and too radical to 
 allow us to waste time on these. Let a man 
 
 ask himself, "Am I living an earnest Hfe? 
 
 264 
 
Sabbath Questionings 
 
 Have I faith in eternal things ? Am I really 
 theist or agnostic ? Do I know the thoughts 
 and reasonings of foremost philosophers, 
 scientists, and saints who have believed in 
 God, in revelation, in destiny ? Again, what 
 are the ruling motives in my Hfe? Am I 
 aiming at service or at self-advancement? 
 Am I laying foundations of character that 
 will stand the pressure of temptation in the 
 years of public, social, or commercial life that 
 lie before me ? Am I excusing myself from 
 personal investigation of the claims of religion 
 because I happen to know of some scholarly 
 and scientific man who openly repudiates 
 those claims ? What do I really know about 
 Jesus of Nazareth? Is all the acquaintance 
 with him I can lay claim to based upon some 
 slight teaching in Sunday-school or upon some 
 references I have heard in the pulpit? Do I 
 know his place in history? Do I know only 
 what Strauss or Renan has written concern- 
 ing him, or is there a world of rich and reve- 
 rent and scholarly literature the reading of 
 
 which might modify my views of that great 
 
 265 
 
The Sabbath • 
 
 figure in human history who is to-day more 
 talked about and thought about and written 
 about than ever before or than any character 
 in all history ? Is it not worth my while to 
 read what ten of the strongest and most gifted 
 scholars of this generation have written in 
 honor of this marvel of all history? " But I 
 have suggested only a tithe of the questions 
 an earnest soul ought to ask, and which a 
 truly earnest soul will ask, in reference to 
 the most momentous topics relating to human 
 life. Here is the Sabbath day, with its 
 splendid opportunities for reflection, reading, 
 listening, conversing, on all these themes. 
 Answer these questions and you will not be 
 puzzled about street-cars, Sunday papers, 
 Sunday dinners, or any of the usual small 
 talk about Sabbath observance. Be tremen- 
 dously in earnest, and topics will take their 
 proper places, and some themes will drop 
 out of sight, and others which you have 
 never considered at all will loom up like 
 mighty mountains on your horizon. 
 
 Young men, honor the Sabbath and let it 
 266 
 
A Day of Rest 
 
 serve your higher nature. It was made for 
 man. Receive it as God's provision for men 
 who would be like God — knowing, loving, 
 creating, exercising "dominion." Use it as 
 a day of rest from the activities and perplexi- 
 ties of the lower realm of life, that you may 
 rejoice in the higher and thus exalt the lower. 
 Plato says, " Out of pity for the wretched life 
 of mortals the Deity arranged days of festal 
 refreshment." George Washington, at the 
 beginning of the War of the Revolution, is- 
 sued an order from which I quote : " That the 
 troops may have an opportunity of attending 
 public worship, as well as to take some rest 
 after the great fatigue they have gone through, 
 the general in future excuses them from fa- 
 tigue duty on Sundays, except at the ship- 
 yards or on special occasions, until further 
 orders. We can have but little hope of the 
 blessing of Heaven on our arms if we insult 
 it by our impiety and folly." Well says 
 Ralph Waldo Emerson, " Christianity has 
 given us the Sabbath, the jubilee of the whole 
 world, whose light dawns welcome alike into 
 
 267 
 
The Sabbath 
 
 the closet of the philosopher, Into the garret 
 of toil, and into prison-cells, and everywhere 
 suggests even to the vile the dignity of spir- 
 itual being." Robertson of Brighton, v^hose 
 insight into spiritual philosophy was as direct 
 and penetrating as his practical surrender to 
 its teachings was complete, says of Sabbath 
 observance : *' I am more and more sure by 
 practical experience that the reason for the 
 observance of the Sabbath lies deep in the 
 everlasting necessities of human nature, and 
 that as long as man is man the blessedness of 
 keeping it, not as a day of rest only, but as a 
 day of spiritual rest, will never be annulled." 
 Therefore let us, sons of men, sons of God, 
 keep with reverent care and with the joy of 
 love this holy day — ^this Sabbath that was 
 made for man. It is the student's day, where- 
 on he may turn from the ordinary to the sub- 
 limer world of thought and find new inspira- 
 tion for his daily endeavor. It is the doubter s 
 day, on which he may investigate the most 
 momentous questions of God and duty and 
 
 destiny. It is the children's day, when the 
 
 268 
 
The Universal Day 
 
 home circle may be perfect, and sweet mem- 
 ories be planted which shall fill the later years 
 with their fragrance. The children need the 
 gentle influence of the Sabbath. And if we 
 who are no longer children were to give up 
 ourselves to the consecration and the conser- 
 vation of the day in the interest of the young 
 life of the land, we should not only insure a 
 better and a larger life to the next generation, 
 but we should ourselves enter more fully and 
 with greater plenitude of power into that 
 kingdom of which its Founder said to his dis- 
 ciples, " Except ye be converted, and become 
 as little children, ye shall not enter into the 
 kingdom of God." The Sabbath is the J^oor 
 man's day, when he can have leisure to re- 
 ward the love of wife and children, go with 
 them to the house of God, and enjoy to the 
 full what Longfellow calls " the dear, deli- 
 cious, silent Sunday, to the weary workman 
 both of brain and hand the beloved day of 
 rest." It is the j^ic/i Diaii s day, when, if he 
 will, he may throw off the burdens of anxiety 
 
 and prove to his family that there are some 
 
 269 
 
The Sabbath ♦ 
 
 things he prizes as much as stocks and es- 
 tates and silver and gold — a day when he 
 may transfer some of his treasures to the 
 heavens and fix his heart on things above, 
 where moth and rust cannot corrupt, nor 
 thieves break through and steal. It is the 
 mourner's day, on which eyes that weep in 
 sore bereavement may look upward and hear 
 a voice out of the heavens say, " In my 
 Father's house are many mansions." It is 
 the true all saints' day, when, rising above 
 the littleness, the rivalries, the limitations of 
 this life, we may look through Sabbath skies 
 to the innumerable company in the city on 
 Mount Zion, the heavenly Jerusalem, and 
 sing: 
 
 " City of God, how broad and far outspread thy walls sub- 
 lime! 
 The true thy chartered freemen are, of every age and 
 clime. 
 
 " One holy church, one army strong, one steadfast high in- 
 tent, 
 One working band, one harvest song, one King omnipo- 
 tent! 
 
 " In vain the surges' angry shock, in vain the drifting sands ; 
 Unharmed upon the eternal rock the eternal city stands." 
 
 270 
 
The Day of Days 
 
 Therefore, as long as knowledge is better than 
 ignorance, wisdom weightier than folly, right- 
 eousness worthier than sin, freedom better 
 than bondage, earnestness nobler than frivol- 
 ity, the whole people of greater value than a 
 favored few, the soul more to be prized than 
 the body, and eternity than time, let us prize 
 highly, guard carefully, and keep holy the 
 Sabbath day, the day of the Son of man, the 
 day of the sons of God. 
 
 ayi 
 
Immutability 
 
 By 
 
 M. Woolsey Stryker, D.D., LL.D. 
 
 President of Hamilton College, Clinton, N. Y. 
 
 " That those things which are not shaken may remain.'' 
 — Heh. xii. 2^. 
 
 WERE the Bible less complimented and 
 more appreciated it would be read 
 far more naturally. It has no magical effect. 
 Though it is the Book, it is a book^ and a 
 book whose natural history is part of its su- 
 perlative value. Its origin was not artificial, 
 and the special occasion and accent — the 
 adaptation of each several part to a certain 
 set of circumstances — give to each part its 
 own peculiar value and explanation. We 
 want the point of view, and what is called 
 " introduction " is therefore indispensable. 
 Who, e.g., were Timothy and Paul? what was 
 
 272 
 
The Record of Process 
 
 Crete, Corinth ? how did the Galatians differ 
 from the Philippians ? It is true of the Bible 
 also, and because it is so august, nascitur non 
 fit. The divine wisdom embodied in the very 
 process and progress of revelation is one note 
 of its authority — each strand is dyed in the 
 colors of its own time. It is this normal 
 variety that leads us to be sure of that su- 
 preme unity in which all the books are 
 providential chapters of one persistent and 
 ever-augmenting interpretation of the spirit 
 of man learning to understand the inspiration 
 of the Almighty. Just because this whole 
 Book goes deepest into origins and ends, 
 man's nature and God's nature, it is the most 
 natural book in the world. We must never 
 think that the supernatural is extra-natural. 
 The Bible is not outside of human nature, 
 but at its core. Nature is not shallow ; it too 
 is a book; and the Bible is a book super- 
 naturally natural. It would be a great gain 
 if all this collection of writings could be set in 
 chronological sequence ; the nearer we can 
 come to such a mental arrangement of them 
 
 273 
 
Immutability ^ 
 
 the better for our comprehension. How shall 
 you get the force of Ezra or Jeremiah or 
 Amos if you do not know their dates? The 
 historical anatomy of the Book underlies its 
 physiology. 
 
 Of the twenty-seven New Testament books, 
 one is a great prophetic prose poem, five are 
 simple narratives, and twenty-one are letters. 
 This last is the most flexible and the most 
 personal form of writing. As it was the most 
 natural method for the apostles to use, so its 
 famihar faciHty best met the needs of those 
 diverse persons and groups. Even Its abstract 
 paragraphs are always quick and warm. The 
 whole New Testament Is full of local color and 
 is incident to actual hfe. This " touch of na- 
 ture," this circumstantiality, this Intense time- 
 liness, sign it with the signature of an all-com- 
 passing Providence. Because so vital it is 
 perennial. God's Spirit breathes through it. 
 
 Who reads a letter piecemeal? A letter 
 is meant for one sitting and a whole impres- 
 sion. These twenty-one letters are to be felt 
 in their individual completeness. " Who, 
 
 274 
 
Retrospect and Prospect 
 
 when, where, why, what?" Notably does 
 the letter to the Hebrews require and reward 
 a careful search for its dominant thought and 
 intent. It surely is among the six or seven 
 books of the New Testament foremost in 
 importance. 
 
 It has singular value as a book of relations 
 — showing the fulfilment of the Old Testa- 
 ment spirit in the spirit of the New. A per- 
 fect commentary upon Leviticus, it declares 
 the moral inviolability of God's one only 
 covenant ; it explains the merging of the dis- 
 pensation of Israel in that of the Christian 
 church, and the completion of all ritual and 
 symbol in Him whom that system had pre- 
 figured and for whom it had prepared. It 
 interprets every tradition and precedent as 
 transfigured in Jesus the Christ, and while 
 using the largest retrospect rebukes the idola- 
 try which can only look back. 
 
 But though the letter is such an ample 
 demonstration, it is more — an appeal. The 
 general scope of the argument is made glow- 
 ing hot by its special address to the trouble 
 
 275 
 
Immutability 
 
 and anxiety of those to whom just then the 
 problem of transition was of painful and all 
 but overwhelming perplexity. Here lies the 
 ardor, the pathos, the penetration of whoever 
 he was that penned it. This cardinal adapta- 
 tion to that time is what adapts it to all times 
 of strangeness and misgiving. Bishop West- 
 cott says (" C. C," p. 4) : " No men were ever 
 called to endure greater sacrifices, to sur- 
 render more precious hopes, to bear deeper 
 disappointments, than those to whom this 
 epistle was first addressed " ; and he opens its 
 inmost secret in declaring that it was written 
 " to those who were undergoing the trials of a 
 new age'' This is indeed its message — a 
 perpetual lesson for all souls baffled and hesi- 
 tating under the exactions and special appre- 
 hensions of a changing time. 
 
 From that Jewish Christian whom this let- 
 ter takes by the hand how much that he held 
 sacred seemed to be slipping away! How 
 could he turn from that solemn and splendid 
 past and all at once be adjusted to what 
 
 seemed to disregard customs and associations 
 
 276 
 
Fulfilment 
 
 intertwined with his deepest life? The He- 
 brew had and held in veneration a nation, a 
 liturgy, a temple, and a law ; how could he, 
 without sharp travail, comprehend that there 
 had been ushered in that which was larger 
 than the nation, grander than the temple, 
 more hallowed than the old ceremonial, 
 deeper than the law; and that patriotism, 
 worship, reverence, obedience, under new 
 forms, were to be kept not only, but en- 
 larged ? 
 
 No wonder that some, startled and dis- 
 tressed, drew back from what seemed to them 
 a collapse. No wonder that, unable so 
 swiftly to distinguish between the transient 
 and the permanent, some devout souls, caught 
 in the throes of such a period, found faith 
 itself in jeopardy. To show such how the 
 chosen people was the vessel of a world re- 
 demption; how the chrysalis ages were sur- 
 passed ; that Christ was not a destroyer, but 
 a fulfiller, in whom all the ancient things had 
 come to their consummation — this was the 
 task of love the epistle so wondrously per- 
 
 277 
 
Immutability * 
 
 formed. Its whole motif and criterion is the 
 evolution of an all-consistent, all-embracing 
 purpose, which glorified the past, not as a 
 sunsetting, but as a dawn. Your more de- 
 liberate reading may well analyze and array 
 this great translation of Hebrew thought into 
 Christian thought, but even the swift allusion 
 (which is all our present Hmit allows) can 
 give us the organ note that sounds the con- 
 stant key. More than any other New Testa- 
 ment writing this compact letter is ruled by 
 the method of comparison and antithesis. 
 All its detail is organized under contrast. 
 Every stroke declares that reestablishment is 
 the purpose of all disestablishment ; that, 
 whatever good God takes, he gives a better, 
 leading on to the best ; that where he sup- 
 plants he replants. And the final appeal is 
 to that affinity with him which disappoints 
 all fears and teaches the heart to *' hold fast 
 the confession of hope, that it waver not." 
 ** The law but a shadow of good things to 
 come" ; '* the disannulling of the command- 
 ment, and the bringing in of a better hope " ; 
 
 278 
 
The Building More than its Scaffold 
 
 " a better covenant, enacted upon better 
 promises " ; "a greater and more perfect 
 tabernacle"; "One worthy of more glory 
 than Moses"; " a perpetual High Priest " ; 
 " a continuing city " ; "a kingdom that can- 
 not be shaken " ; " He taketh away the first, 
 that he may establish the second." These 
 contrasts, and many more their like, declare 
 the immanent, the perdurable, the immutable 
 care of a God under whom they are not to 
 " shrink back," but to believe; and at that 
 word out blazes the sublime definition of 
 xi. I, and, the skies shriveling as in an amphi- 
 theater, whereof all ages are the spectators 
 and each present age the spectacle, there is 
 disclosed the " great cloud of witnesses," 
 and there is declared that moral continuity 
 of all believing generations in which the 
 past is forever perfecting in the " better 
 things" provided through each new present. 
 
 The culmination of the epistle lies in our 
 text, but the full chord was struck in its 
 opening phrase (i. i): " God, who," etc. 
 
 Here lies the appeal to our hearts. By all 
 279 
 
Immutability 
 
 this raptured argument the Faithful One chal- 
 lenges our confidence. Amid shaken cir- 
 cumstance unshaken Providence! Out of 
 darkness the Shechinah! Through the 
 shattering of forms, the displacement of cus- 
 tom, the overruling of precedents, over all 
 and in all, God ! 
 
 Here are the elements of all human dis- 
 cipline. Here is a solvent for the uncertain- 
 ties and reluctancy of every age, unexpectant 
 because too self-centered. God is the same, 
 and " Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, 
 and to-day, and forever." He "cannot deny 
 himself," and still declares, " It is I ; be not 
 afraid." He leads all generations and leads 
 each soul. To his fidelity we are to cleave 
 rather than to our associations with his past 
 method. In all swirl and gloom it is our 
 experience of him, rather than any forecast 
 of his way, that must steady us. 
 
 The secret of life is growth, prolonging its 
 identity while ever weaving new garments. 
 Our very bodies are a parable of the uses of 
 change. Literally they " die daily." As in 
 
 280 
 
Whatever Lives Moves 
 
 walking one perpetually loses and regains his 
 balance, taking ground with the heel and 
 leaving it with the toes, and thus moving, so 
 advances the soul — every new foothold a new 
 point of departure. Retrograde is not man's 
 natural gait; it is the crab that creeps ahead 
 and runs backward! As the oncoming buds 
 of spring push off the leaves of autumn, so 
 we doff the old summer and don the new. 
 Life is more than its leaves, and so (" as the 
 days of a tree "), " though the outward per- 
 ishes, the inner is renewed day by day." 
 This is the penalty and reward of our birth- 
 right. Immortal life must be perpetual 
 motion. Biology transcends morphology 
 and is a spiritual science. Whatever has 
 come to a standstill is dead. Then it may 
 be dissected, but not revived. The open 
 secret of life is lost. That is kept elsewhere 
 than in disjecta viembra; it is at the other end 
 of the knife. 
 
 Following neither the extremists, who 
 retain all form, nor those who abandon all 
 
 substance, and discerning between the abso- 
 
 281 
 
Immutability 
 
 lute and the relative, we can avow, as did 
 Jeremiah (xvii. 12) in other tumultuous and 
 seismic days, " A glorious throne, set on high 
 from the beginning, is the place of our sanc- 
 tuary." 
 
 With such comfort to courage as the be- 
 lieving Hebrews of the first Christian century 
 received this letter, so may we take it in this 
 latest century, which cannot be the last. 
 Each annus Domini must trace the past, not 
 to repeat, but to surpass, still going on into 
 the future's explorations with Him who never 
 stops. The developing parts which fear calls 
 fragments faith holds as portions, and finds 
 their implication by not detaching and isola- 
 ting them. 
 
 In '' the first and the last and the living 
 One " we live and move. This is the legi- 
 bility of duty and the philosophy of history. 
 What seems to indolence and timidity an 
 emergency, or even a catastrophe, is but one 
 clause of that revelation which is punctuated 
 with commas and whose continuous sense 
 uses no disjunctives and attains no period. 
 
 282 
 
The Point of View 
 
 It is they who " have no changes " who 
 fear not God. Eccentricity is dislocation. 
 To him who stations himself upon what is 
 central every enlarging circumference is 
 normal. All new experience is serious, but 
 to the reverent mind it is always precious in 
 its recall to ** the things that cannot be 
 shaken." Our vicissitudes are kindly in set- 
 ting aside secondary things and in putting 
 forward what is primary, in turning us from 
 the symbol to the^ sense, in bringing us back 
 to our necessary selves. Dislodgments 
 from ease and complacency (and from their 
 neglects and torpors) invite us to where we 
 can neither be disappointed nor surprised. 
 *' Emptied from vessel to vessel " and edu- 
 cated in expectant attention, we get by heart 
 that old solace, " My soul, wait thou only 
 upon God." If nothing is so disagreeable, 
 so dreary, so futile, as religion without him, 
 nothing is so deep and sure as he. Faithful- 
 ness to the "two immutable things" (his 
 " word " and his " oath ") can never know 
 monotony or imagine danger. In the rapids 
 
 283 
 
Immutability « 
 
 it IS certain of the helmsman. " At the core 
 of the cyclone it finds a place of total calm." 
 
 " Let us be like the bird, one instant lighted 
 Upon a twig that swings ; 
 He feels it yield, but sings on unaffrighted, 
 Knowing he has his wings." 
 
 As in a distant land the appearance of a dear 
 friend can make strange scenes homelike, so 
 the recognition of the constancy of God can 
 surmount all the tremors of a lonely heart. 
 
 Or do we ponder the riddle of this our 
 time — its incisive, insistent questions, its 
 mental pace and strain? God has not for- 
 gotten. ** Progress is made by shaking to 
 its center all that is uncritical." So has 
 every science been purged of guesses, and so 
 shall still be. Our definitions and explana- 
 tions are provisional. They are like the 
 manna, *' good for this day only." God is 
 not peradventured upon our theodicies. 
 
 The great world's convulsions usher the 
 kingdom that cannot be shaken. Not even 
 the hideous disconcert of the so-called Chris- 
 tian powers can long bar back the Son of 
 
 284 
 
The Scepter of Light 
 
 man. He will break their insolent bluster 
 with a rod of iron. 
 
 Well may we go on with God and " nightly- 
 pitch a moving tent," though all we are sure 
 of is " God " ; that syllable is central. What 
 if we stand in the fog, so we stand on that 
 Rock? 
 
 " Bright shoots of everlastingnesse " already 
 begin " the morning without clouds " which 
 puzzled and troubled souls shall know whose 
 very difficulties forced them to venture all 
 upon Him ** with whom there is no parallax 
 or eclipse." 
 
 285 
 
The Sinless One 
 
 By 
 
 George T. Purves, D.D. 
 
 Professor of New Testament Literature in Princeton Theological 
 Seminary 
 
 ''For such an high priest became us, who is holy, harm- 
 less, imdefiled, separate from sinners."— H eh. vii. 26. 
 
 WHATEVER makes the person of 
 Jesus Christ vividly real to our 
 thoughts helps us in our daily lives. Practical 
 Christianity finds a mighty stimulus in trust- 
 ing contemplating, understanding, and follow- 
 ing, him ; for in so doing we learn to live with 
 God and for man. He is the personal cen- 
 ter of our religion, the living revelation of 
 truth and life, the magnet by which we are 
 drawn heavenward, the one in and by whom 
 salvation becomes an actual possession. And 
 yet thus vividly and truthfully to apprehend 
 
 him is not easy. Being invisible he does not 
 
 286 
 
4 
 
 ^^^ 
 
 
 i '^ 
 
 i9 
 
 
 Jt "u 
 
 
 
 m '^ 
 
 ^>^B 
 
 
 ^w| 
 
 ^^m 
 
 
 ^^^^^^^H^^S^^^^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 
 ^^ 
 
 M 
 
 ^ 
 
 ■1^^ 
 
 Wm^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 - 
 
 i-"^ 
 
 
 "^ 
 
 
 
 v^ ycZ^^^ 
 
Studying Jesus 
 
 stand so clearly before us as other objects 
 which address themselves to our senses. The 
 historical distance from us of his earthly- 
 career is apt to make his figure indistinct. 
 Even our dogmatic conceptions of his person 
 and work sometimes become formal and life- 
 less, though intended to interpret him and 
 though correctly expressing what we should 
 beheve about him. It ought, therefore, to 
 be our effort constantly to repaint his figure 
 upon the canvas of our thought, to turn upon 
 him the light of experience and research, of 
 comparison and analysis, that fresh ideas of 
 his unspeakable glory may daily dawn upon 
 our minds, may delight our hearts, and cause 
 us to give him all the admiration and devo- 
 tion of which we may be capable. 
 
 Now in the words of our text we have 
 briefly described the moral purity of Jesus, 
 the sinless, unspotted excellence of his per- 
 sonal character. The language is very vivid. 
 It shows the profound impression which 
 Jesus made on the first generation of disci- 
 ples — the immediate reflection of the impres- 
 
 287 
 
The Sinless One 
 
 sion made on those who came into direct 
 contact with him. The words breathe the 
 realism of personal acquaintance. They do 
 not enlarge upon what all knew, but they 
 express very beautifully the sense of ineffable 
 purity and holiness, of infinite moral superi- 
 ority, which the disciples received from him 
 whose very presence had revealed a new and 
 heavenly life. He was " holy " ; and the 
 Greek word is not the common one for a thing 
 set apart for sacred usage, but a word less 
 often employed and indicative of an exqui- 
 sitely pure and lofty character, one that real- 
 ized and discharged all its obligations. He 
 was " harmless," i.e., thoroughly good, gen- 
 tle, benevolent, tender-hearted, and true. 
 Out of him as they remembered him no harm 
 ever proceeded. No evil ever issued from 
 act or word of his. Nothing but good came 
 from him. When we remember how much 
 we influence one another, and how much evil 
 goes forth even from the best of us to coun- 
 terbalance not a little of the good we do, we 
 shall appreciate the character of the One of 
 
 288 
 
Spiritual Separation 
 
 whom it could be said by those who knew 
 him best that he was, as he bade them to 
 be, "harmless as a dove." Further, he was 
 " undefiled " — untainted by the corruption of 
 the world in which he dwelt, unspotted by 
 the passions which left a stain even on apos- 
 tles. In short, he was " separate from sin- 
 ners." Some would take these words with 
 those that follow, " made higher than the 
 heavens," and understand them to describe 
 our Lord as now separated at the right hand 
 of God from the world of sinners, even as 
 the high priest in the most holy place was 
 separated from the multitude for whom he 
 made atonement. But I judge it more nat- 
 ural to see in the words another phrase to 
 describe Christ's personal character. He was 
 separated from sinners. The disciples who 
 stood nearest to him felt that there was a 
 great chasm between his spotless soul and 
 theirs. He was on a plane above them. 
 His motives and purposes were unlike theirs. 
 And this although in other respects he was 
 so near to them and so truly man. He had 
 
 289 
 
The Sinless One 
 
 laid hold, as this epistle says, on the seed of 
 Abraham. He was touched with the feeling 
 of their infirmities. He was full of sympathy 
 and friendship. He understood them. He 
 took them by the hand. He wept over their 
 griefs and rejoiced in their joys. Yet he was 
 evidently as far above them as the gleaming 
 stars were higher than the water in which 
 their brilliance was reflected. He was the 
 friend of publicans and harlots, and yet he 
 was " separate from sinners." 
 
 Could any language more forcibly express 
 the sense which the disciples had of their 
 Master's sinlessness? As I have said, the 
 words indicate the realism of personal ac- 
 quaintance. They do not speak in the lan- 
 guage of the schools. They do not measure 
 Christ's worth by formal standards. They 
 are the outcome of personal adoration and 
 unspeakable reverence for One whose charac- 
 ter and life had been to those who knew him 
 the disclosure of the absolutely good. 
 
 Now I desire to enable you, if possible, to 
 
 realize afresh the sinlessness of Jesus Christ 
 
 290 
 
No Sense of Sin 
 
 by suggesting certain considerations which 
 ought to make it very clear and very aston- 
 ishing to our minds. I would exalt your 
 sense of his personal perfection, — unlike that 
 of any other character who has ever appeared 
 in the history of our race, — and I would do 
 it, not by a formal proof of the doctrine, but 
 by setting his life in its surroundings, with 
 the hope that the same impression may be 
 made on our minds as on those who knew 
 him first. 
 
 I. Consider, then, that in all the records 
 which we have of the Lord Jesus there is not 
 the slightest betrayal by him of the least 
 degree of the consciousness of sin. We have 
 a sufficiently complete record to justify us in 
 saying that this is a fact. We see him in 
 most trying hours. We hear him pray. 
 We listen to his teaching on religious themes. 
 We hear him reprove others. We catch 
 glimpses of him in private as well as in pub- 
 lic. We know that he spake often about 
 himself. But in all the life of Christ we 
 never hear any confession of unworthiness or 
 
 291 
 
The Sinless One 
 
 any longing after holiness, or discover any 
 indication whatever that he felt himself in 
 the least degree touched by sin. 
 
 The significance of this will appear if we 
 recall two other facts, one of experience, the 
 other of history. 
 
 The first is that, as a matter of universal 
 experience, the more spiritual a man becomes 
 the more does he feel himself a sinner and 
 unworthy of fellowship with God. The 
 progress of man's moral life commonly con- 
 sists in the awakening and sharpening of his 
 conscience. He becomes more keenly aware 
 of moral obligations. He sees them where 
 before he saw them not. He analyzes more 
 thoroughly his motives and classifies more 
 correctly his duties. He becomes more sen- 
 sitive to the demands made upon his con- 
 science, just as progress in other departments 
 of activity consists in the refinement of our 
 powers and the larger perception of the ob- 
 jects on which they were meant to terminate. 
 This is the law of the moral and spiritual life 
 of man. He is at first a child, and, like a 
 
 292 
 
The Growth of Conscience 
 
 child, only takes in a few facts, feels his ob- 
 ligations in but a few directions. Some men 
 never grow beyond this stage. Though their 
 intellects may be cultured and their bodies 
 strengthened, their moral faculties remain 
 undeveloped. Then conscience is apt to 
 become a mere scourge, driving to unloved 
 duty; a nightmare, affrighting with threats 
 of torment. But just so far as the spiritual 
 life of man has blossomed and flowered, so 
 far has his sensitiveness to evil increased, his 
 recognition of it brightened and clarified, his 
 consciousness of its presence in him become 
 more intense, and his longings after freedom 
 from it become stronger. Witness in proof 
 of this the hymns of all religions, and espe- 
 cially the hymns of Christendom. Witness 
 the advance of social morality, taking in, as 
 it has gradually done, matters that were once 
 thought quite indifferent. Read the confes- 
 sions of the purest men and women who have 
 ever lived. Those that have risen highest 
 have felt themselves the lowest. And this 
 has not been a delusion with them ; they 
 
 293 
 
The Sinless One 
 
 have only seen more clearly. A villainous 
 murderer went to the scaffold saying that he 
 looked on his life as a whole with much sat- 
 isfaction, and felt that, with the trifling ex- 
 ception of a murder, he had tried to do right 
 by all men. Augustine wrote, " The dwell- 
 ing of my soul is in ruins ; do Thou restore it. 
 There is that in it which must offend thine 
 eyes; I confess and know it: but who will 
 cleanse it?" Such are fair examples. Who 
 of us that try to love God does not know 
 the same thing from his own experience? 
 As Christian life proceeds, as its insight be- 
 comes clearer, as its consciousness deepens 
 and is purified, it becomes more and more 
 ready to say with the Scripture, *' In my 
 flesh there dwelleth no good thing," and to 
 repeat confessions at which the world some- 
 times stands amazed. Just in proportion as 
 man's moral life advances does he feel that 
 he is not worthy even to gather up the 
 crumbs that fall from the festal table which 
 the grace of God has spread. 
 
 But lo! the one person who by act and 
 294 
 
The Call to Repentance 
 
 word gave evidence of the most spiritual life 
 was absolutely without this element of mind. 
 He had the clearest insight into moral 
 duties. His words are still recognized as 
 embodying the loftiest ethics. His charac- 
 ter is held worthy of universal imitation. 
 He loved to pray. He talked with God as 
 though he saw him. And yet, unlike every 
 other man of spiritual insight who ever lived, 
 he never betrayed any sense of unworthiness 
 or of his need of greater holiness. 
 
 And this stands out still more remarkably 
 when we associate it with the historical fact 
 that in the Jewish world in which Jesus lived 
 the sense of sin and of general apostasy from 
 God was specially strong among awakened 
 minds. Jesus lived in the age when John 
 cried to all Israel "Repent!" and with pro- 
 phetic zeal unveiled the monstrous corrup- 
 tion of the church and nation. But John 
 himself very plainly confessed his own un- 
 worthiness. Speaking of Messiah, he said, 
 *' His shoe's latchet I am not worthy to un- 
 loose." So, likewise, those men who followed 
 
 295 
 
The Sinless One ^ 
 
 Jesus were very emphatic in their confessions 
 of sin. Peter cried, " I am a sinful man, O 
 Lord." The centurion said, "I am not 
 worthy that thou shouldest come under my 
 roof." Paul called himself " the chief of sin- 
 ners." Wherever Christ or his gospel went 
 men were awakened in an eminent degree to 
 the fact of sin, and were led to confess that, 
 even if believers, they were only beginning 
 to aspire to that holiness without which they 
 felt that no man can see the Lord. 
 
 But again, amid this whole movement and 
 as the vital center of it, the Lord Jesus never 
 betrayed the slightest consciousness of wrong. 
 If he had been the product of the same in- 
 fluences which molded the rest, he would 
 have been the loudest in his confessions. 
 But not an accent of such fell from his lips. 
 How does the consciousness of sin show it- 
 self? With some in fear, causing them to 
 turn away from God and dread to think of 
 him, much more to pray. With others it as- 
 sumes the form of bravado, leading them to 
 boldly dare the consequences of their mis- 
 
 296 
 
No Need of Forgiveness 
 
 deeds. These effects, however, are seen in 
 characters which cannot possibly be com- 
 pared with Christ's. With good men, on the 
 other hand, who have been awakened to a 
 sense of sin, it shows itself in expressions of 
 repentance, in prayers for forgiveness, in 
 longings after holiness, in acknowledgment 
 of the unmerited grace of God ; sometimes in 
 painful acts of self-denial and asceticism, 
 which are supposed to compensate for trans- 
 gression or to extinguish the power of evil. 
 But none of these things are discoverable in 
 Jesus. Though he called others to repent, 
 he himself never expressed repentance. He 
 never asked to be forgiven, though he taught 
 us to ask it. On the contrary, we find him 
 rejoicing in the assurance of his Father's 
 eternal love, delighting in communion with 
 God, and finally openly challenging his ene- 
 mies on this very point : " Which of you con- 
 vinceth me of sin? " Nor is there any trace 
 of development in his spiritual life, but, from 
 the first and to the last, the utter absence of 
 the consciousness of sin appears in him. The 
 
 297 
 
The Sinless One , 
 
 Buddha claimed to reach perfection, but only 
 as the result of a long and painful process of 
 self-purification. Christ appears as free from 
 the sense of sin in the beginning of his career 
 as amid its close. 
 
 Is not this a life which stands alone in all 
 history ? Try to imagine if it be possible on 
 the ordinary suppositions of human experi- 
 ence. How could one be gifted with such 
 spiritual discernment and yet see no flaw in 
 himself, if there was a flaw? How could one 
 teach such high and pure morals without 
 confessing his own shortcomings, if he did 
 come short? How could one dwell so near 
 to the divine Father and never ask to be for- 
 given sin, which that Father hates, if there 
 was any sin to be forgiven? I ask you to 
 think of this, not from the standpoint of the 
 deity of Christ in which we believe, but from 
 the standpoint of his humanity. Conceive 
 the impression which he must have made 
 upon those about him. Realize that he was 
 an actual living person. Then you will ap- 
 preciate the fact that in all the record of his 
 
 298 
 
Credibility of the Gospels 
 
 life there is not a trace of the slightest sense 
 of sin. " If I should say, I know not the 
 Father," said Jesus to the Pharisees, " I 
 should be a liar Hke unto you : but I know 
 him, and keep his sayings." " I do always 
 those things which please him." Such ex- 
 pressions, embedded in such a life, form a 
 unique fact in the history of moral teaching. 
 2. There are only two ways by which those 
 who doubt these facts can evade the force of 
 the evidence. The first is by saying that 
 the record in the gospels is not true, but that 
 the disciples exaggerated the character of 
 their Master, embellished his virtues and for- 
 got his faults. To reply to this objection 
 would lead us too far afield. It involves the 
 whole question of the credibility of the gos- 
 pels. But I may point out in passing that 
 the gospels do describe Christ's weakness and 
 weariness, his struggles with temptation and 
 his agony in the garden. They evince no 
 disposition, therefore, to idealize the charac- 
 ter of Jesus, nor to hide his genuine human- 
 ity. On the other hand, they do not, except 
 
 299 
 
The Sinless One « 
 
 in the prologue to the fourth gospel, bring 
 out the formal doctrine about him which the 
 apostles themselves beHeved, nor do they 
 impute to the Master the theological lan- 
 guage which later revelations would have 
 justified. They have therefore all the ap- 
 pearance of honest histories. They confirm 
 one another. They are themselves confirmed 
 by the epistles. The very simplicity of their 
 story attests their historical veracity. 
 
 The other way to escape the natural infer- 
 ence from the facts of which we have been 
 speaking is to say that Jesus was under an 
 hallucination, that his enthusiasm made him 
 blind to his own defects. So Renan writes : 
 " Jesus cannot be judged by the rule of our 
 petty propriety. The admiration of his dis- 
 ciples overwhelmed him and carried him 
 away." 
 
 I wish, therefore, to suggest certain other 
 facts which render these objections highly 
 improbable, and which also serve to give a 
 still livelier sense of the real sinlessness of 
 
 our Lord. 
 
 300 
 
The Disciples' Testimony 
 
 The first is that it was those who were 
 nearest to him who have testified to his spot- 
 less purity. It is quite easy to make a good 
 impression on the public. It is not so easy 
 to extort from those who hve with us a simi- 
 lar tribute, unless it be deserved. Many men 
 seem great and good at a distance, but nearer 
 at hand their faults are manifest. Now the 
 fact was that in public Jesus was often 
 charged with doing wrong. The Pharisees 
 openly called him a sinner because they 
 thought he broke the Sabbath, and a devil 
 because he opposed them, and a blasphemer 
 because he said God was his Father. He 
 did not live such a hfe as to be called a saint 
 by the established standard of the day. His 
 reputation was not based on conformity to 
 the common ideal. On the contrary, he was 
 crucified as a malefactor. It was only those 
 who lived with him who testify to the spot- 
 less beauty of his character. They saw him 
 in private. They watched him in his most 
 critical hours. They heard his ejaculations. 
 They were his confidential friends. But it 
 
 301 
 
The Sinless One 
 
 was they who from the very first acknow- 
 ledged, and with greater emphasis as their 
 acquaintance with him ripened, that he was 
 the Holy One of God. Their testimony 
 seems of great worth. Popular applause is 
 easy to win if we conform to the popular 
 ideal, but this testimony was rendered, in the 
 face of derision and apparent failure, by those 
 who knew him best. 
 
 Furthermore, nothing that Jesus ever said 
 or did appears even now to indicate sin in 
 him. We have grown very wise. Some 
 think that, speaking comparatively, we have 
 grown good. Certainly the world has greatly 
 advanced in the knowledge of duty. But it 
 is a fact that we cannot find anything to 
 criticize in Jesus from a moral point of 
 view. All that we can do, whether Chris- 
 tians or not, from theologians to novelists, is 
 to show that our teachings were his. He can 
 still say, "Which of you convinceth me of sin ? " 
 In this age, for example, we lay great stress 
 on the love of man as the highest form of 
 
 morality; on benevolence, unselfishness, on 
 
 302 
 
sinless though Tempted 
 
 altruism. But all this was taught and prac- 
 tised ages ago by Jesus. Or, if we say that 
 morality depends on the motives from which 
 men act, what motives can be higher than 
 those which appear in the life of Jesus ? The 
 Sermon on the Mount is the moral code of 
 the ages, and point, if you can, to any princi- 
 ple or precept of that sermon which Jesus did 
 not obey in his life. I need not expand 
 on this; but I beg you to remember that 
 the growing moral sense of nineteen centu- 
 ries has not convicted him of any fault of 
 character. 
 
 And still again, remember that he made 
 this impression on his friends and gave this 
 evidence in his life although he was perfectly 
 open to temptation and, in fact, fought it 
 hand to hand. He was not a cold ideal. 
 He was not a statue in marble. Life's battle 
 was tremendously real to him. He was 
 tempted as we are. He grew also in know- 
 ledge and wisdom. And therefore the spot- 
 less holiness of his character becomes of 
 treble worth. It appears a living attainment. 
 
 303 
 
The Sinless One 
 
 • 
 
 It was a conquest. It was a thoroughly- 
 human quality, and must on that account 
 have impressed the more those who were 
 about him. We need not stumble over the 
 notion that a sinless person cannot be 
 tempted. If our first parents were tempted 
 and fell, Christ could be tempted without 
 falling. Moreover, the power of temptation 
 consists simply in its ofTering us something 
 that we desire ; and Jesus desired much that 
 he could not have, if he were to become man's 
 Redeemer. It was his lot to lay aside the 
 enjoyment of Heaven's favor; to apparently 
 fail of winning men to God ; at last to have 
 the Father hide his face from him. His 
 temptations lay in the desire for these good 
 things which were forbidden him, and the 
 very intensity of his love of God and man 
 made the temptations stronger. At any rate 
 the testimony is unanimous that he knew 
 temptation's power. The battle in the wil- 
 derness of Judea, the agony in the garden of 
 Gethsemane, the remark that fell from his lips, 
 " I have overcome the world," sufficiently 
 
 304 
 
What is Sin? 
 
 attest it. This very writer of the Epistle to the 
 Hebrews knew it. He says, " He was in all 
 points tempted like as we are, yet without 
 sin." *' In that he himself hath suffered being 
 tempted, he is able to succor them that are 
 tempted." The disciples knew him too well 
 to claim for him exemption from the common 
 lot. They saw him harassed and oppressed, 
 and therefore bowed the more reverently 
 before the meekness and gentleness, the 
 purity and love, the unselfishness and the 
 righteousness which in spite of temptation 
 never failed to manifest themselves in Jesus. 
 This adds immensely to our admiration of 
 his character. He is one of ourselves. The 
 holiness of God may be too far above us for 
 us to comprehend it, but the spotless purity 
 of the tempted Saviour, who will not adore? 
 And now, once more, I add that the Lord 
 Jesus had for his confessed rule of life a prin- 
 ciple which naturally made him realize keenly 
 the presence of sin, even in its least apparent 
 forms. He said, " My meat is to do the will 
 of him that sent me " ; and through all his 
 
 305 
 
The Sinless One ♦ 
 
 life the will of God was his law, to do that 
 will was his firm resolve. I ask you to note 
 this particularly ; for a man's sense of sin 
 depends directly upon his idea of what sin is. 
 Many people think that only crime is sin, and 
 because they have done no crime they feel 
 no sense of sin. Others think sin to be 
 merely selfishness, and because they are kind 
 and philanthropic do not regard themselves 
 as seriously at fault. But the Bible teaches 
 that sin is far more than this. It is any want 
 of conformity to the will of God. Man owes 
 to God absolute loyalty of thought and act. 
 The least rupture of that loyalty is sin. The 
 broader and deeper our knowledge of the will 
 of God, the more must we feel that we are 
 sinful. Now my point is that Jesus was fully 
 aware of this. This was his rule ; by this he 
 judged. And he gives evidence of so broad 
 and deep a knowledge of what God's will is 
 that the rule of his life made him sensible of 
 sin to a degree in comparison with which our 
 best perceptions of it are as twilight to high 
 noon. And yet he had no sense of sin. 
 
 306 
 
Christ's Credentials 
 
 Though he had the highest possible standard 
 by which to judge, he never felt that the 
 standard condemned him. Though he was 
 keenly alive to moral differences, though he 
 stands before us the supreme Teacher of what 
 is right, though he had for his rule of Hfe the 
 highest of all laws, he deliberately said, *' I 
 have overcome the world " ; "I have finished 
 the work which thou gavest me to do." 
 
 Fellow- sinners, what a character is this! 
 It defies all explanations save that of the 
 text. A man, yet a sinless man ! Tempted, 
 but never stained! Fighting hand to hand 
 with evil, but never wounded by it! In the 
 world, and yet above it ! Once and only once 
 in human history has this spectacle appeared. 
 
 Permit me, then, in a word, to press upon 
 your minds the practical importance of this 
 truth. 
 
 The moral character of Jesus is a sufficient 
 credential of the truth of his gospel. He has 
 other credentials, but I bring forward this to- 
 day. He is unique. He is truth and right- 
 eousness incarnate. Therefore his word must 
 
 307 
 
The Sinless One » 
 
 be authoritative; his teaching concerning 
 God and duty, truth and salvation, must be 
 our absolute standard. He guarantees by 
 his personal sinlessness the authority of the 
 message. What he declares to be God's 
 truth vire must accept as such. What he 
 declares to be God's will and purpose we 
 must obey and believe. We scarcely need 
 other evidence. At his feet mind and heart 
 should bow. 
 
 Further, he is worthy to be man's repre- 
 sentative before God. Sinless himself, he is 
 a rightful priest of humanity. So our text 
 says, " Such an high priest became us." This 
 is what we need. Who but he can venture 
 for us into the most holy place? Who but 
 he can sprinkle the atoning blood ? He is a 
 priest whose right to mediate history and 
 conscience, as well as God, declare. 
 
 For can we suppose that this sinless life 
 was lived for himself alone ? He himself as- 
 sures us of the contrary. He came into the 
 world. He did not belong to it. He had no 
 
 need to live on earth at all. His express 
 
 308 
 
Our Great High Priest 
 
 declaration is that he came for our redemp- 
 tion. If so, we must certainly behold in his 
 sinless life more even than the perfect ex- 
 ample of what our lives should be. It was 
 the necessary preparation for the sacrifice of 
 the cross, and it becomes more than ever 
 precious when we consider that it was part of 
 the redemption price paid for our dehverance. 
 For we are *' not redeemed with corruptible 
 things, as silver and gold, but with the pre- 
 cious blood of Christ, as of a Lamb without 
 blemish and without spot." The character 
 which the world itself cannot but admire, and 
 the life which stands forth as the great ex- 
 ception to all other lives, obtain the highest 
 significance when we also remember that 
 God " hath made him to be sin for us, who 
 knew no sin ; that we might be made the 
 righteousness of God in him." Well may 
 we adore him. Well may we imitate and 
 obey him. But above all else, well may we 
 trust him ; for he has won the right to redeem 
 us, and is able to save unto the uttermost all 
 those that come unto God by him. 
 
 309 
 
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