(yi a 
 
 •^■^ Trend AND DRIFT 
 
 iiiiiimiiiii' V _ , 
 
tihvaxy of Che Cheolojical ^eminarjp 
 
 PRINCETON • NEW JERSEY 
 
 PRESENTED BY 
 
 The Estate of the 
 Rev. John B. Wieding^er 
 
 BV 4501 .V24 1910 
 
 Vance, James I. 1862-1939 
 
 Tendency 
 
TENDENCY 
 
By James I. Vance, D. D. 
 
 Tendency: The Effect of Trend and 
 Drift in the Development of Life. 
 Net ^1.25. 
 
 A series of discussions of formative influ- 
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TENDENCY 
 
 The Effect of Trend and Drift 
 In the Development of Life 
 
 JAMES l/VANCE, D. D. 
 
 " Opens wider still the portal 
 To the land of the immortal, 
 
 Every year : 
 And thinner grows the curtain 
 That divides us from the certain 
 
 Every year." — Anon. 
 
 New York Chicago Toronto 
 
 Fleming H. Revell Company 
 
 London and Edinburgh 
 
Copyright, 1910, by 
 FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY 
 
 New York: 158 Fifth Avenue 
 Chicago: 80 Wabash Avenue 
 Toronto: 25 Richmond Street, W. 
 London: 21 Paternoster Square 
 Edinburgh: 100 Princes Street 
 
This book is dedicated to the people 
 who think more of Life thaii of the 
 kind of clothes it wears, who feel in 
 the pulses of the Transitory the tides 
 of the Permanent, and who find in the 
 common task and daily round their 
 points of contact with the Infinite. 
 
Foreword 
 
 Man is more like God than anything else in the 
 world. The making of the future world is man's i 
 business, but man himself is, as yet, in the mak- 
 ing ; and the kind of world he is to make will | 
 depend upon the kind of man he becomes. 
 
 The value of any particular civilization or the 
 eminence of any age of the world depends upon 
 where it finds man in the progress of his develop- 
 ment. No civilization can be great whose men 
 are inferior, and no age can be illustrious whose ; 
 manhood is tame. 
 
 In a magazine article, Mr. Thomas A. Edison 
 is reported as saying: '*We are only animals. 
 We are coming out of the dog stage and getting a 
 glimpse of our environment. We don't know, 
 we just suspect a few things. It will take an 
 enormous evolution of our brains to bring us 
 anywhere." ^ 
 
 There may be some truth in this statement. If 
 so, it is the truth that was said long ago, and in 
 a far nobler way, by him who wrote : ** It is not 
 yet made manifest what we shall be." ^ 
 
 It is the man that makes the age. It is the 
 people that create the civilization. If the man 
 be a mere animal, whose chief functions are bark 
 
 • The Independent, January 6, 1910. » 1 John iii. 2. 
 
 7 
 
8 FOEEWOED 
 
 and bite, it will be the dog age ; but if the man 
 has climbed out of the brute and lost his fear of 
 force, and discovered the majesty of ideas and 
 the glory of love and the divinity of gentleness, 
 the dog star is in eclipse ; the dawn of the human, 
 — shall we say the divine 1 — is at hand. 
 
 Therefore, where is man ? What is going on in 
 him ? Whither do the tides of his being turn I 
 What are his impulses and faiths, his struggles 
 and ideals? What is man becoming? Is the 
 music of his life still half bark, half song ? 
 
 What follows in this little volume is an effort 
 to feel along the lines of the development by which 
 man makes his way upward and onward. The 
 chapters deal with some of the forces which are 
 at work in determining the tendency and de- 
 ciding the destiny of a human life. 
 
 One may sign his theological system with what 
 name he likes best, he may prefer the old and 
 call himself Calvinist or Arminian, he may pre- 
 fer the modern and elect Determinism or Libera- 
 tionism, or he may prefer not to be classified ; 
 but if he study life at all, he must take into 
 account the fact that it is constantly undergoing 
 some kind of development. 
 
 This development may be up or down, it may 
 be trend or drift ; but there is no such thing as 
 stagnation. No man ever stays where and what 
 he was. Nothing leaves us as it found us, and 
 we leave nothing as we found it. 
 
 The problem of life is, first to get it and then 
 to live it in such a way as to be coming con- 
 
FOEEWORD 9 
 
 stantly into a fuller fellowship with Him who is M 
 its source. 
 
 If a man will do this, there is no reason why 
 he should not become as divine as God ; not that 
 he will ever be God's equal, but that the divine 
 nature of which we are partakers will come to 
 be in full and harmonious control. 
 
 While we are, even now, more like God than 
 anything else in the world, "it is not yet made 
 manifest what we shall be. We know that, if 
 He shall be manifested, we shall be like Him ; 
 for we shall see Him even as He is." ^ 
 
 ^ 1 John iii. 2. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 I. 
 
 Whither 1 
 
 13 
 
 II. 
 
 Down From thf, Heights . 
 
 30 
 
 III. 
 
 The S1REN8 .... 
 
 44 
 
 IV. 
 
 Divine Compassion . 
 
 64 
 
 V. 
 
 A Great Love .... 
 
 67 
 
 VI. 
 
 God's Once More 
 
 81 
 
 VII. 
 
 The Comforter 
 
 95 
 
 VIII. 
 
 The Making of a Soul 
 
 111 
 
 IX. 
 
 The Open Door and the Ad- 
 
 
 
 versaries .... 
 
 120 
 
 X. 
 
 Seeing the Invisible 
 
 130 
 
 XI. 
 
 The Success of Failure 
 
 138 
 
 xn. 
 
 A Face Towards the Morning . 
 
 146 
 
 XTTT. 
 
 Sanctified for the Street 
 
 160 
 
 XiV. 
 
 The Value of an Eddy in the 
 
 
 
 Stream of Life 
 
 171 
 
 XV. 
 
 The Wings of a Dove 
 
 185 
 
 XVI. 
 
 The Altar and the Choir 
 
 196 
 
 XVII. 
 
 The Heights of Life 
 
 208 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 The Crown of Life on the 
 
 
 
 Brow of Death . 
 
 223 
 
 XTX. 
 
 Destination and Departure . 
 
 234 
 
 u 
 
Tendency 
 
 WHITHER ? 
 
 "Many a saint in the making seems to be marred by 
 faults and conflicts from which the smug, careful, reputable 
 sensualist is exempt. The di£Eereuce between the two is 
 not one of position. It is one of direction. The one, how- 
 ever high he stands, is moving down. The other, however 
 low he starts, is moving up." — Henry Van Dyke. 
 
 THE difference between people and things • 
 is that things stay where they are and \ 
 people move. Anything that stays 
 where it is, whether it be an idea, a government, -, 
 or a system of divinity, stagnates and dwindles 'j 
 down into nothing but a thing. 
 
 The difference between people and things is 
 that things stay what they are and people change. \ 
 It is in the condition of change that is embedded 
 the chance to grow. People grow because they 
 move on. Anything that stays where it is must \ 
 stop at what it is. It is a finished product. 
 
 The difference between people and all other . 
 living creatures is in the direction they are going, ,'; 
 because the direction they are going determines I ' 
 the way they are growing and what they are' 
 becoming. 
 
 13 
 
14 TENDENCY 
 
 It is a matter of tendency. It is not a matter 
 of heredity or environment or any or everything 
 else so much as it is the matter of tendency that 
 determines the dignity of life. And this fact is 
 true, whether the realm be human or divine. 
 
 God is not so much a finished product as a 
 being whose personality is packed with divine 
 tendency. On one occasion, Jesus said to His 
 disciples : ''Whither I go ye know, and the way 
 ye know." He was speaking of the tendency of 
 .His life. He was going somewhere. He lived 
 'with His face towards destiny. He was not 
 f wandering aimlessly down the aisles of time. He 
 I was not strolling purposeless across the field of 
 j human history. Somewhere on the far-away, 
 eternal horizon was a goal and He was moving 
 towards that goal. Nothing could halt or retard 
 or divert or intimidate or discourage or keep 
 Him back from His destination. His life pos- 
 sessed the element of tendency and the tendency 
 of His life determined His career. 
 
 This tendency was the matter of chief concern 
 and importance. It was not what He had, nor 
 even what or where He then was, but where He 
 was going. 
 
 It was not what He had as He stood homeless 
 among the sons of men and said: "The foxes 
 have holes, and the birds of the air have nests, 
 but the Son of man hath not where to lay His 
 head." It was not what He had as He faced the 
 hungry multitude, beside Galilee, with the loaves 
 and fishes of a lad's lunch in His hand. It was 
 
WHITHER ? 15 
 
 not what He had as He stood at daybreak on the 
 seashore and called to His weary disciples with 
 their empty nets after the night of fruitless toil : 
 "Children, have ye any meat?" It was not 
 what He had that night of His betrayal and 
 arrest when all His disciples forsook Him and . 
 fled. It was never what He had. It was always 
 where He was going. 
 
 It was not where He was but where He was | 
 going. It was not where He was as He went 
 from city to city with His disciples, worn with 
 the long journeys, now sittiug down beside Jacob's 
 well to rest Himself, again withdrawing into the , 
 solitude of some desert place, that He might re- ( , 
 fresh His soul by communion with His Father. ' 
 It was not where He was that night of the agony 
 in Gethsemane. It was not where He was as He 
 stood in Pilate's judgment-hall, spit upon and 
 insulted by the lookers-on. It was not where He 
 was as He hung dying on the cross, as they 
 wrapped His body in death-bauds and laid it in 
 Joseph's tomb. It was never where He was. It ^ 
 was always where He was going. 
 
 It was not where He had been but where He 
 was going. He came out of eternity for He was 
 "The Lamb slain from the foundation of the 
 world " ; but Christ's glory was not behind Him ; 
 it was before Him. It was where He was going. 
 
 He seems to say to His disciples : " You know 
 where I am going. There may be some mystery 
 as to whence I came, but you know whither My 
 life tends. Whither I go ye know, and the way 
 
16 TENDENCY 
 
 ye know." They could pierce the mist of cir- 
 cumstance and tear through the veil of appear- 
 ance. The thoughtless and heedless crowds saw 
 only the suiface, and said : '' Jesus is a peasant, 
 the son of a carpenter, friendless, unimportant, 
 without a future." But the disciples had faith 
 and spiritual discernment to see through into the 
 soul of Christ's ministry and discover its tend- 
 ency. 
 
 There was, however, one disciple who failed to 
 see it. He was the disciple who is notorious for 
 his doubts. "Thomas saith unto Him: Lord, 
 we know not whither Thou goest, and how can 
 we know the way ? " 
 
 Thomas was a shallow materialist. He lived 
 on the surface of things and not in their funda- 
 mental and elemental realities. He estimated 
 life by appearances. 
 
 Christ rebuked him and set him right. He 
 said : " I am the way ; " that is, " Not My sta- 
 tion, not what I have, not what I do or say but 
 
 I what I am, My spirit. My character, is the way. 
 
 ' I am going whither what I am will take Me." 
 " He that hath seen Me, hath seen the Father," 
 that is, " He that hath seen what I am or he that 
 
 |.hath seen whither I am going, hath seen the 
 
 ."iFather. The Father is My destination." 
 
 No one who knows much of Christ has any 
 doubt as to where He has gone, or rather as to 
 where He is still going. There is but one destiny 
 for a life with His tendency. The whither of 
 such a life is unbroken and eternal fellowship 
 
WHITHER ? 17 
 
 with God. We are not surprised to read that 
 He burst the bands of death and came forth vic- 
 torious from the tomb. Death could not fetter a 
 life within which beat the tendency of Christ. 
 We are not surprised to read that He rose from 
 the slopes of Olivet into the heavens before the 
 bewildered and astonished eyes of His disciples. 
 Earth has no power to hold down a life with such 
 a tendency. We are not amazed to read that He 
 is seated at the right hand of the majesty on 
 high, for that is the fittest place for a life with 
 Christ's tendency. And we shall not be sur- 
 prised to see Him coming again, in the clouds of 
 glory, for He has said He would come and there 
 is no power that can block His way or prevent 
 His going whither what He is will take Him. 
 
 Such was Christ's sermon on tendency. He 
 illustrated His sermon with Himself. It was 
 His way of saying that even God cannot escape 
 the operations of the law which binds destiny 
 and tendency together. If God is bound by the 
 law, much more is man. 
 
 The Element of Tendency in Every Life 
 There is the element of tendency in every life. 
 We are going somewhere. We live with our 
 faces towards destiny. We are not wandering 
 aimlessly down the aisles of time. We are notj 
 strolling purposeless across the fields of history, t 
 We may wish we could stroll but it is not permit- 
 ted. Out there on the horizon is a goal and every 
 one is moving towards a destination. Man is not 
 
18 TENDENCY 
 
 a cloud on the sky to evaporate aud disappear. 
 He is not a mirage in the desert to go out of ex- 
 istence with a change of atmospheric conditions. 
 Man is a child of desiiny. He is going some- 
 where. Whither ? 
 
 He may change the direction of his life but he 
 cannot halt its momentum. Life is the sort of 
 thing that refuses to stand still and stagnate. It 
 may be going wrong, but it is going. It is like 
 the onward flow of a river. The lay of the land 
 may change its direction, but it cannot stop its 
 flow. You may build a dam across the river's 
 course and it will only pile up against the bar- 
 rier in its way until it breaks through or, with a 
 shout of victory, leaps over and goes on its course. 
 You may pile a mountain in the river's path and 
 it will sweep around it or grind through it, as the 
 Colorado Eiver has done in that awful gorge in 
 Arizona, where the Grand Canyon yawns seven 
 miles from lip to lip, aud where one may stand 
 on the dizzy edge and gaze on the river dashing 
 through its wild, weird channel a mile below. 
 
 The operation of this law of tendency is as 
 wide-spread as existence. It makes itself felt in 
 the tiny insect life of the world, and it likewise 
 manifests itself in the activities of God. 
 
 It shows itself in plant life and in the vegetable 
 
 world. Here are two seeds that look alike and 
 
 .weigh the same, but when they burst the en- 
 
 I velope which holds their life, they express them- 
 
 f selves in forms which are totally unlike. Here 
 
 is a rough root whose tendency will blossom into 
 
WHITHEEI 19 
 
 a rose, and there is a smooth nut whose tendency 
 will shape out into a mighty tree. Here are two 
 protoplasmic cells so nearly alike that the most 
 powerful microscope can detect no difference, 
 but one makes a baboon and the other an im- 
 mortal soul. 
 
 As we climb the scale of being, the operation 
 of this law becomes, if possible, even more pro- 
 nounced. It is preeminent in the moral and 
 spiritual realms. Back there in the citadel of 
 the soul resides a mysterious something which 
 projects life in a certain direction ; and one 
 moves, day by day, in all that he says and does 
 and is, in all the windings and turnings and 
 changes of his career, whither his tendency \ 
 takes him. 
 
 Tendency the Matter of Chief Concern 
 One's tendency is the matter of prime impor- 
 tance and chief concern. It makes one man a . 
 saint and another a demon. It takes one to 
 heaven and another to hell. 
 
 It is not what a seed looks like and weighs, 
 but what is the whither of the seed. The tend-i 
 ency will determine whether that seed is to make^ 
 a weed or a stalk of grain, whether that pro- 
 toplasmic cell is to terminate in animalism or j 
 intelligence, whether a particular soul sensation ji 
 is to express devotion to God or defiance of His ^ 
 will. 
 
 It is not what we have, but where we are go- 
 ing. We may have but little. Our possessions 
 
'i 
 
 20 TENDENCY 
 
 may be all obligations, our liabilities in such 
 excess of our assets as to leave us hopelessly in 
 debt. It is not where we were, but where we are 
 going. The past may reproach us and shame us 
 and condemn us. It is not even where we are on 
 the road of life, but are we on the right road ? 
 It is not how long we have travelled the road, 
 but are we going in the right direction ? The 
 supreme question is ' ' Whither ? ' ' 
 
 Out on the open sea two steamships draw 
 near together. One is an ocean greyhound, and 
 the other is a freighter, but their prows are 
 turned in the same direction, and they have both 
 signed for the same port. The greyhound will 
 soon sight land, but, in due course of time, the 
 slow boat will steam into the selfsame har- 
 bour, for the two ships are one in their 
 tendency. 
 
 Here are two men in the race of life. One is 
 talented, brilliant, distinguished, influential ; 
 the other is plain mediocrity ; but both men 
 are controlled by the same convictions and their 
 lives are devoted to a common service. They 
 will part company somewhat along the road of 
 life, but only as the two ships parted on the 
 open sea, for their tendency in life is the same, 
 and they will be together at the goal. 
 
 Instead of complaining of poor transportation 
 facilities, instead of finding fault with the road- 
 bed and wondering just what station he may 
 have reached on the journey of life, one would 
 
WHITHER? 21 
 
 better make sure that he is travelling in the^v 
 right direction. A blunder here is fatal. 
 
 The Effect of Tendency 
 
 The efifect of tendency on every phase of life is 
 fundamental and far-reaching. 
 
 Consider its effect on effort. The value of an 
 effort depends not on what is accomplished, not 
 on where it lands you, but on the direction it I 
 takes you. We want to be better, our progress 
 is slow. We strive to get up and on, but there 
 is frequently little to show for the effort save the 
 struggle itself. We know that God wants us to 
 rise. He tempts us to the heights. However 
 far we may have gone. He is saying that it is 
 better further on. However high we may have 
 climbed. He is saying that there are higher j 
 heights to ascend, finer sights to behold, better ,j 
 fields to enter. But we make such slow progress. 
 We climb and fall and fail. We strive and fall 
 short and are discouraged. 
 
 God looks at the tendency ; not at what we 
 achieve but at what we try to achieve ; not at the 
 result but at the struggle ; not at where we are 
 but at where we are going. 
 
 There, at an easy, pleasant stretch on the road 
 of life is a man of decent habits. He has no 
 severe temptations. He is respectable and self- 
 complacent. He is a stranger to struggle. Ex- 
 istence is without events. He is dallying with 
 opportunity and frivolling life. There is not 
 enough of the soldier in him, even to don a uni- 
 
V 
 
 22 TENDENCY 
 
 form and think of battle. In the forces which 
 i make a world, he simply does not count ; he 
 is a human cipher with no unit to give it 
 value. 
 
 Down there in the gorge is a soul in the dark, 
 battling with temptation, fighting the spectres of 
 j fear, tearing off the fetters of moral slavery, 
 wounded, sore bestead in the conflict, stumbling, 
 sometimes falling, crying out of the shadows for 
 help, bat ever keeping his face towards the stars, 
 seeking for the God of his salvation, and swear- 
 ing through every dread encounter : "Though 
 He slay me, yet will I trust Him!" That is 
 victory ! There is a soul with a future ; and 
 over such a career, all heaven bends with sym- 
 pathy and hope. 
 
 Consider the effect of tendency on character. 
 
 Man is not a finished product. He is in proc- 
 ess of becoming. His development is going on. 
 It does not yet appear what he shall be. Some 
 one has said : "Boys will be boys." He was 
 an abler diagnostician of life who said : ' ' Boys 
 \'will be men." 
 
 The way one goes determines what one be- 
 comes. This is a commonplace of science. 
 Man's physical being has been shaped by his 
 tendencies. Cell life has thrown itself out after 
 sustenance, until at last it has made an arm. 
 The arm has continued to reach for things until 
 it has achieved a hand. Whether or not one 
 may accept this as good science, it is certainly 
 true that, in the making of character, we become 
 
WHITHER ? 23 
 
 whither we are going. ' ' Sow a thought and reap 
 an act, sow an act and reap a habit, sow a habit 
 and reap a character," is one of life's tamest 
 commonplaces. The story of one's career is reg- 
 istered in himself. Everything I have ever done, 
 every word I have ever uttered, every thought I 
 have ever had, every temptation I have ever en- 
 couraged or resisted, every battle I have ever 
 fought, every defeat I have ever suffered, every 
 victory I have ever won is recorded in me. 
 What I am is the sum total of all my tendencies. 
 At the judgment day it will not be necessary for 
 the Recording Angel to open the books to find 
 one's record. It will be enough for the man to 
 stand forth in the white light of that throne and 
 show himself. What he is tells his whole life 
 story. 
 
 Consider the effect of tendency on destiny. 
 
 Destiny is character lengthened out into eter- 
 nity. "Sow a character and reap a destiny." 
 If tendency affects character, much more does it 
 affect destiny. 
 
 We can readily understand the effect of tend- 
 ency on destiny, in so far as destiny is destina- 
 tion. If one is to reach his destination, he must 
 go towards it. A man who is going to the north 
 pole is not going to the equator. One cannot 
 travel to " the far country " and " home " at the 
 same time. But destiny is far more than desti- 
 nation. 
 
 Jesus said to His disciples : "I am the way." 
 For every man, the same truth applies. What 
 
k 
 
 24 TENDENCY 
 
 you are is your way, your tendency. Destiny is 
 where what you are will take you. 
 
 I sent my soul through the invisible, 
 Some question of that after life to spell ; 
 
 And by and by, my soul returned to me, 
 And answered, ' I myself am Heaven and Hell.' " 
 
 Destiny is not a trick of chance or fate. You 
 are going whither what you are will take you. 
 What one is tending to become now, he is tend- 
 ing to become forever. 
 
 Tendency an Inteepretee 
 Since all this is true, we can more clearly un- 
 derstand why there must be a mighty difference 
 between faith and doubt. 
 
 God is ever calling for faith. He tells us that 
 it is useless to pray without faith, that He can do 
 nothing for us unless we believe. Sometimes we 
 are disposed to regard the demand as unreason- 
 able. Why is not doubt as good as faith, if it 
 be honest*? Indeed, sometimes we are rather 
 proud of our doubts. We regard them as the 
 signs of emancipation. We look upon doubt as 
 the hall-mark of independent thought. Is not 
 doubt as good as faith, if it be sincere ? 
 
 Doubt and faith are nothing in themselves. 
 They are simply soul tendencies, but tendencies 
 in diametrically opposite directions. Faith is 
 the tendency of a soul towards God, and doubt 
 
WHITHER 1 25 
 
 is the tendency of a soul away from God. Faith * 
 is simply the light shining on the face of a soul 
 turned towards the sun, and doubt is the gloom / 
 on the face of a soul tui-ned towards the night. ^ i 
 It is not a question of sincerity but of direction. 
 The fact that a man who is on the wrong road is 
 sincere in thinking he is on the right road will 
 not bring him to his destination. The sincerity 
 of one who swallows poison, mistaking it for 
 medicine, will not prevent the fatal effects of 
 the drug. Without faith it is impossible to , 
 please God. Without faith it is impossible to 
 reach Him. Faith may have its nights of trial, i 
 its hard, steep stretches of difficulty, its conflicts 
 and crosses, but it is on the right road, it is 
 moving towards light and peace. Some day it , 
 will emerge triumphant. 
 
 Tendency also makes it evident that the earlier 
 one consciously surrenders his will to God, the 
 better. If he is going the wrong way, the longer < 
 he goes that way, the further he will get from . 
 where he should go and the harder it will be to t 
 get back. 
 
 It is vastly harder for one who has lived fifty 
 years, going away from God, to yield his will to 
 Him, than for a child. The tendency of a life- 
 time must be revolutionized. The man must re- 
 trace his steps and come back to where he was 
 when he was a child. Was not this what Jesus 
 meant when He said : ''Except ye be converted, 
 and become as little children, ye shall not enter 
 into the kingdom of heaven." There is nothing 
 
» 
 
 26 TENDENCY 
 
 more dangerous than to persist in a wrong course. 
 It is a fallacy that sin leaves us where it found 
 us. It is never too soon to start right. 
 
 Tendency also would seem to say that the hope 
 of a chance after death is an utterly forlorn hope. 
 It does not say that God will ever decline to ex- 
 tend the offers of grace. It is saying that there 
 is not the ghost of a chance that one can change 
 his attitude of rejection to the offers of grace, 
 whose tendency away from God has hardened 
 through effort and character and destiny, out into 
 eternity. It is easy to bend the sapling or twist 
 the twig, but wait until the tree becomes a forest 
 giant, and you will not bend it. With your hand 
 you can shape the river's course, as it trickles 
 from the spring at its source, but you cannot stay 
 its tide there where it sweeps into the mighty 
 deep. It is not difficult for Christ to win a 
 child's heart, but what shall be said of a soul 
 that has gone out into eternity, hardened against 
 all the love and compassion of a merciful God ? 
 Dives asked that a messenger from the spirit 
 world be sent to warn his brethren, but Abraham 
 said : ''If they hear not Moses and the prophets, 
 neither will they be persuaded though one rose 
 from the dead. ' ' 
 
 "Now is the accepted time. To-day is the day 
 of salvation." "To-day, if ye will hear His 
 voice, harden not your hearts." 
 
 These are the shibboleths of age-old evangelical 
 religion, but they are likewise the household 
 words of current, scientific teaching. 
 
WHITHER ? 27 
 
 Tendency and Salvation 
 
 The purpose of salvation is to invest human 
 life with a divine tendency. 
 
 It is intended, of course, to make one better, 
 to enable him to be good, to quit sin, and live a 
 correct life, but all that is incidental. 
 
 It is intended to make him useful, to lead him 
 to invest life aright, to employ his powers in 
 God's service, but even that is incidental. 
 
 It is intended to make him happy, to empty 
 his heart of worry and his mind of anxiety, to 
 give him joy and peace and blessed contentment, 
 but all that is a mere incident of salvation. 
 
 It is intended to make him safe, to assure him 
 of divine protection against all his foes, to confer 
 on him a stable and lasting hope, but this is inci- 
 dental also. 
 
 Salvation proposes to accomplish all this by 
 giving life the right direction. "With the heart 
 man believeth unto righteousness." One is 
 saved, not when he is sinless, unselfish, seraphic, 
 safe, but when the tendency of his life is towards 
 God. 
 
 This is the work accomplished in regeneration. 
 We are born again. We become partakers of the 
 divine nature. Christ is formed within us as the 
 hope or the tendency of glory. His life tendency 
 is imparted to us, and as it develops it takes us 
 the way He went ; and " we know that when He 
 shall appear, we shall be like Him for we shall 
 see Him as He is." 
 
 Repentance is investing life with a new direc- 
 
28 TENDENCY 
 
 tion. It does not mean that one is merely sorry 
 for his sins, but that he is sorry enough to quit. 
 Eepeutauce is not tears but tendency. 
 
 Conversion is simply changing one's way. It 
 is a man seeing that he has gone wrong and com- 
 ing back to where he started wrong, and starting 
 right. 
 This matter of tendency is also the tremendous 
 J fact involved in choice. God keeps His hands off 
 when it comes to the human will. He pleads 
 I but He will not use compulsion. We stand where 
 I the roads divide, and the will chooses, and the 
 -choice determines tendency. If the choice is 
 wrong, effort and character and destiny are 
 wrong ; if the choice is right, all is right. 
 I No wonder that all the eloquence of heaven is 
 I packed into the appeal which says : " Seek ye 
 i the Lord while He may be found, call ye upon 
 Him while He is near ; let the wicked forsake 
 his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts ; 
 and let him return unto the Lord, and He will 
 i have mercy upon him, and to our God, for He 
 ^ will abundantly pardon." 
 
 Whither •? 
 Let a man examine himself as to the whither 
 of his life. With eternity in view, whither ? To 
 keep on living as we are living now, where will 
 it take us ? We must keep on living. Suicide 
 will not stop life. It will only take off the 
 brakes. We must keep on forever. What if we 
 are on the wrong road ? What if each day 
 
WHITHEE t 29 
 
 but takes us nearer the invisible edge of a 
 precipice ? 
 
 There is nothing in life more important than 
 to get right with God who alone is life's true 
 goal. And the way to get right with God is to 
 accept Christ as a Saviour and follow Him. He 
 is the way to God. If there be a heaven any- 
 where it is in Christ's direction. If eternal hap- 
 piness is to be had, it is out there towards Him. 
 Christ is the direction, the tendency, the way, 
 and no man cometh unto the Father but by Him. 
 
 ''Whither I go ye know, and the way ye 
 know." 
 
 When Christ said it, right before Him stood 
 the cross, but beyond its shame and suffering 
 glimmered the sheen of the white throne. He 
 says : "If any man will come after Me, let him 
 deny himself and take up his cross and follow 
 Me." One should not be frightened by the sight 
 of a cross. It is the sign-post on the road to the ' 
 throne. While the road may be rough and long 
 and steep and marked by a cross, if it lead at 
 last to the Father's house, it is enough. "Be- 
 loved, now are we the sons of God ; and it doth 
 not yet appear what we shall be ; but we know 
 that, when He shall appear, we shall be like 
 Him, for we shall see Him as He is. And every 
 man that hath this hope " or this tendency, " in 
 him purifieth himself, even as He is pure." ^ 
 
 > 1 John iii. 2, 3. 
 
/! 
 
 II 
 
 DOWN FROM THE HEIGHTS 
 
 " No man is hurt but by himself." — Diogenes. 
 
 It does not take a very close study of human 
 nature to discover what may be called ' ' a coun- 
 ter tendency," or at least " cross currents." 
 
 Man has not always gone and does not always 
 go in the direction of himself. 
 
 Possessed of elements that make for divinity, 
 he has not always manifested divine inclinations. 
 
 Just as in the natural world there are found 
 the unmistakable evidences of violent eruptions 
 and planet changing, continent-making, hemis- 
 phere-destroying upheavals ; so in human per- 
 sonality are found the traces of a tragic past and 
 the undeniable evidences of moral tragedy. 
 
 One may call this by either a scientific or a 
 theological term. He may explain it by the 
 doctrine of sin or by the theory of evolution ; 
 but the signs are downward and they indicate 
 not ascent but descent. 
 
 Somewhere human nature has suffered a lapse. 
 There has been a fall. Man's tendency has re- 
 versed itself, and the race, for the time at least, 
 has seemed to thwart the divine purpose. 
 
 This tumble down from the heights, as in the 
 30 
 
DOWN FROM THE HEIGHTS 31 
 
 crossing of some valley to reach a higher range, 
 may have had, in the eternal ijlan, for its ultimate 
 purpose a higher life for man. Who shall say ? 
 The problem of the existence of evil is the one 
 insoluble mystery. But however it is to be used, 
 sin is a fact, and the fall of man was the tragedy 
 of the race. 
 
 The author of the Eighth Psalm, in a striking 
 line, portrays man before this descent manifested 
 itself. He says : '' Thou hast made him but 
 little lower than God." 
 
 It is the translation of the Hebrew text as 
 found in the American Revised Version. The 
 translation is correct, but its audacity is striking. 
 At last the translators have had the courage to 
 put into English just what the Hebrew says. 
 The old translation is ' ' Thou hast made him a 
 little lower than the angels" ; but the word is 
 not the word for angels. It is '^ Elohim," the 
 word which everywhere else is translated " God," 
 and the daring thing affirmed is not that God 
 made man a little lower than the angels, but that 
 He made him but little lower than God ! 
 
 The race started high. At the beginning of 
 his career man's moral and spiritual plane was 
 but little lower than that of the Deity. Human- 
 ity is Jehovah's finest product. God's greatest 
 work is not a planet, a shining sun, an ether sea, 
 a potent law, a celestial city ; it is not singing 
 angels and shining seraphim, but man. At the 
 summit of creation God made man but little 
 lower than God, stamped him with the divine 
 
32 TENDENCY 
 
 I image, crowned him, and gave him dominion 
 over all creatures. 
 
 A modern sensational writer of freak fiction 
 undertakes to tell the story of man "before 
 Adam." The story is a nightmare. The writer 
 takes his readers among the beasts. His heroes 
 are half human, half brute. Groping amid pre- 
 historic shadows, he tries to show how man has 
 slowly fought his way uj) out of bestiality and 
 carnality, out of ferocious appetites and base lusts 
 and constant fears to a point where human na- 
 ture, at the lowest stage of moral filth and spir- 
 itual stupidity, has emerged. There is, of 
 course, no evidence that the story is true. Con- 
 sidered as the output of an excited imagination, 
 working overtime, the story is interesting ; but 
 treated as either science or religion, it is not val- 
 uable. Compared with the doctrine of the origin 
 of man, contained in the old Hebrew Psalm, it is 
 as a swamp to the Garden of Eden, as dull clay 
 to gleaming diamonds. 
 
 " Thou hast made him but little lower than God, 
 And crowned him with glory and honour. 
 Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of Thy 
 
 hands ; 
 Thou hast put all things under his feet." 
 
 , This is the Bible doctrine of the origin of man, 
 
 5 and it takes us to the heights. To be a member 
 
 of the human race, the Psalmist declares, is to 
 
 come of a great line. It is to have Jehovah for 
 
 an hereditary ancestor. It is to trace one's 
 
DOWN FROM THE HEIGHTS 33 
 
 descent from altitudes but little lower than the 
 lofty peaks whose dizzy heights lose themselves in 
 the clouds of the infinite, where Divine Being 
 has its explanation. To have the blood of man 
 in your veins is to be dowered with a heritage of 
 being past the price of all worlds and the glory ' 
 of all angels. 
 
 One may be a very lowly, a very humble and 
 obscure and unworthy member of this human 
 race ; he may be some unfortunate defective or 
 cripple ; he may be a vagabond on the streets, a 
 waif without a home, a criminal in a dungeon, 
 the victim of his own vices ; but upon him there 
 lingers the tracery of the skies and about him is 
 the livery, though in rags, of the life that is but 
 little lower than God. He belongs to the first 
 family of the realm. He possesses a dignity un- 
 equalled by all material things. He has a soul ; 
 and Jesus was speaking calmly and without ex- 
 aggeration when He said : ^' What shall it profit 
 a man if he shall gain the whole world and lose 
 his own soul ? " 
 
 So startling a statement cannot hope to go un- 
 challenged. There are two facts whose challenge 
 may be considered. 
 
 The Challenge of Size 
 The first is the challenge of size. It confronted 
 the poet of the oi'igin of man. It overwhelmed 
 him in the very moment he was declaring that 
 man was sprung from God. In an outburst of 
 poetic passion he exclaims : ' ' You have made 
 
34 TENDENCY 
 
 him but little lower than God," but even as he 
 says it, the absurd audacity of the thiug seems to 
 seize him, and before the line is dry, he asks 
 permission to revise. He says : 
 
 " When I consider Thy heavens, the work of Thy fingers, 
 The moon and the stars, which Thon hast ordained, 
 What is man, that Thou art mindful of him ? 
 And the son of man, that Thou visitest him ? " 
 
 That is, he looks around him at the big world. 
 He sees the glowing sun and shining moon and 
 radiant stars ; he beholds the majestic forces of 
 nature ; he hears the roar of the tempest and feels 
 
 Ithe breath of the storm-wind and sees the leap of 
 the thunderbolt ; he walks out under the sky at 
 night and lifts his eyes to the matchless starry 
 host ; he takes in all the grandeur and glory of 
 that fadeless pageantry ; and then he comes back 
 I to himself, to his weakness, his littleness, his 
 jj' obscurity, his infinitely less than minor part in 
 j' : the big world's affairs, and he seems to say : "It 
 i cannot be, the song is false. In a big world like 
 this, man is too infinitesimal to claim the atten- 
 tion of the mighty God. He is lost amid its 
 splendours, hopelessly dwarfed amid its stupen- 
 dous statures." 
 I If the ancient singer felt this, how much more 
 ■must we ; for ours is a bigger world than his. 
 
 The study of astronomy is a salutary discipline 
 for human conceit. To gaze upon heaven's spec- 
 tacular, to let the imagination wander through 
 endless systems of worlds spread out on the map 
 
DOWN FEOM THE HEIGHTS 35 
 
 of space ; and then to come back to one's own 
 tiny planet and dying race and puny self, is to 
 be in the mood to ask : " What is man that/; 
 Thou art mindful of him ? " 
 
 Since the Psalmist's day, the telescope has 
 been invented and stars he never dreamed of 
 brought to sight. The Milky Way has been 
 found to be not merely a band of light on the 
 brow of night, but an innumerable host of indi- 
 vidual stars, massed in solid phalanx, marching 
 in close and serried ranks across the fields of 
 space, until we catch but the gleam of their shin- 
 ing armour. Since his day the photographic 
 eye has been invented, and there have been 
 added to the roof of the heavens vast systems of 
 the starry world, invisible to the natural eye 
 even with the aid of the most powerful telescope. 
 Worlds have been added to worlds, systems to 
 systems, out through the infinite spaces, until 
 the heavens have become a stellar host in com- 
 parison with which the Psalmist's starry galaxy 
 was but a corporal's guard. If the size of the 
 world was a challenge in his day, how much 
 more in ours ? 
 
 The doubt which rises in this challenge we feel. 
 It makes us skeptics. God is too great. His U 
 affairs too vast, and man too small for God to n 
 care. Man is but a part of the dust of the uni- 
 verse ; the insect life of a little planet which 
 itself will some day run its course and drop into 
 the sun. Man is only a mote swimming in a 
 sunbeam, a worm crawling around the angle of a 
 
36 TENDENCY 
 
 clod, an insect asleep on a leaf. To say that the 
 God who presides over all worlds singled out a 
 single member of the midget tenantry of a tiny 
 planet for His special care, is incredible. Our 
 prayers can never reach Him. Amid the rush- 
 ing, endless worlds of this labyrinthine universe 
 the weak petitions of our timid hearts can never 
 find their way to the great throne. 
 
 The doctrine of a start on the heights may pass 
 as poetry, but considered as serious prose, it be- 
 comes a solemn farce. This is the doubt which 
 preys on us. 
 
 The Challenge of Sin 
 The second challenge is even more serious. It 
 is the challenge of sin. It sires the doubt which 
 comes, not as we look around, but as we look 
 within. It is the doubt which arose in the mind 
 of the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, 
 when he tried to say with one in a certain 
 place : ' ' Thou hast made him but little lower 
 than God." 
 
 He quotes the old line. He repeats the ancient 
 doctrine of the origin of man. He recites the 
 early glory of the heights. He tells us how God 
 wrought at the summit and made man in His 
 image, and crowned him with the empire of the 
 world. Then he looks, not at the face of the 
 stars, but into the faces of his fellow men. He 
 looks down into his own guilty heart and 
 darkened mind. He looks at fallen, sinful 
 human nature. He sees man imbruted, his face 
 
DOWN FKOM THE HEIGHTS 37 
 
 written over with the ruiu of God's law and his 
 powers eaten out with hist, and he says: **It 
 cannot be. The song is false. Man is too vile 
 to claim the care of the holy God," and the old 
 doubt breaks forth afresh. 
 
 " What is man that Thou art mindful of him ? 
 And the son of man that Thou visitest him? '' 
 
 That is the awful cloud ; this is the real 
 tragedy ; not what man was before Adam, but 
 what he is after Adam ; after centuries of tuition, 
 after ages of divine opportunity, after dispensa- 
 tions of the Bible and the Cross and the Holy 
 Spirit. What has man achieved ? What are 
 his accomplishments *? 
 
 We see him fallen so low that the angels weep 
 over his downfall. We see him living with a 
 thin edge between him and eternal despair. We 
 see him dwelling on the verge of that lost world, 
 the smoke of whose torment ascendeth forever 
 and ever. We see him cursed by want, dis- 
 figured by hate, defiled by vice, haunted by fear. 
 We see, under our very eyes, massacres in 
 nations claiming to be civilized, racial atrocities, 
 daily crimes whose trial in the courts of justice 
 leads us to close our windows and bar our doors 
 to save the children from defilement. We see 
 man the author and agent of infamies and 
 iniquities that cry to high heaven for redress. 
 This is what we see. " We see not yet all things 
 put under him. ' ' 
 
 This is the challenge that makes us falter as 
 
38 TENDENCY 
 
 we read the ancient song. This is the fact that 
 made the translators hesitate. It sounds almost 
 like sacrilege to recite the origin of such a crea- 
 tui'e as next to godhood. Granted that prayer 
 can find its way through the rushing worlds, how 
 can petitions from lips so stained find an audi- 
 ence at that white throne? Our sins condemn 
 . us. It is the image of the beast which we bear, 
 R the vices which rot in our flesh, the passions 
 ft which riot in our blood, that seem to make the 
 old song false. 
 
 Yet, despite the challenge, the song is true. 
 Though with faltering lips and a fainting heart, 
 yet with a voice which all the ages must hear, it 
 peals out its great creed of man : ' ' Thou hast 
 made him but little lower than God." 
 
 The Challenge of Size Eefuted 
 
 Nature itself answers the challenge of size. 
 
 The very heavens, which seemed to say that God 
 
 is too great to notice so small a creature as man, 
 
 say that God is too great not to notice him. The 
 
 microscope has uncovered the world below man, 
 
 just as the telescope has uncovered the world 
 
 above him. The microscopic world is as full of 
 
 divinity as the telescopic. Tiny molecules, un- 
 
 . der the microscope, break up into planetary 
 
 1 and solar and sidereal systems, all moving in 
 
 perfect harmony with the music of the spheres 
 
 and repeating on the scale of the infinitesimal 
 
 the phenomena of the macrocosm. 
 
 Sir Oliver Lodge estimates that if a dewdrop 
 
DOWN FEOM THE HEIGHTS 39 
 
 were enlarged to the size of our planet, the 
 molecules of hj'drogen it contains would be about 
 the size of au orange. Compute how many 
 oranges would be required to make a ball the 
 size of the earth ; as many molecules reside in a 
 dewdrop. And yet, each of these molecules is a 
 little world of its own, with planets revolving 
 around a central sun, and all under the same law 
 of the one master mind that made and governs 
 all. That is, size is nothing to God. He is as 
 much in the atom as in the universe. 
 
 Thus nature itself gives the lie to the doubt, 
 which would represent God as sitting far off on 
 the rim of the distant heavens, taking no interest 
 in the affairs of a tiny planet and a fallen race. 
 He is the God who steers the Pleiades, but He 
 is also the God who guides the sparrow in its 
 flight. He is the God who feeds "a billion 
 blazing suns," but He is also the God who 
 hovers over the tiny seed as it goes to sleep in 
 the sod. His care runs up to heights and out 
 to vastnesses of which man has never dreamed, 
 and likewise down to iusignificancies so minute 
 as to beggar all tables of calculation. 
 
 This is Christ's message to man when He takes 
 a withered blade of grass, a bird with a broken 
 wing, a lily in the field, and says : "If God care 
 for them, how much more for you, oh, ye of little 
 faith"?" This is the God to whom we make our 
 appeal, and as we do, the heavens and the. earth 
 begin to say, "Thou hast made him but little 
 lower than God." 
 
40 TENDENCY 
 
 The Challenge of Sin Eefuted 
 The man himself refutes the challenge of sin. 
 After the worst has been said about him, there 
 is something in man that refuses to be explained 
 by a process of nature, something that no cell of 
 protoplasm could ever evolve, and no course of 
 discipline create. The music in the great organ 
 is made by the air passing through the pipes, but 
 there is something in one of Haydn's oratorios 
 which all the atmospheres of time blowing through 
 the tubes of space could not produce. The sap 
 that rises in a rose-bush to the leaves of the flower 
 it carries, is not the same as the love which rises 
 from a mother's heart to her lips as she croons a 
 lullaby over the babe in her arms, the fruit of 
 her own life. A lump of pig-iron outweighs the 
 brain of Dante and Milton and Darwin, but 
 there is something in the gray matter of the brain 
 that no scales have ever been able to register. 
 
 The very capacity to sin is a certificate of man's 
 high origin. He is the only being with so sublime 
 a capacity. It proves that he is fallen, but it 
 also harks back to the lofty heights from which 
 he fell. 
 
 The power of thought is a relic of divinity in 
 man. The stars are wonderful, the atoms amaz- 
 ing, but more wonderful is the mind that meas- 
 ures them, and explains their process. In his 
 Fernley Lecture, "The Unrealized Logic of Ee- 
 ligion," Dr. Fitchett relates the discovery of the 
 planet Neptune, and calls it the "romance of 
 astronomy." He says: "It was noted that at 
 
DOWN FEOM THE HEIGHTS 41 
 
 one point in its track through space, the planet 
 Uranus swung outward from the perfect curve of 
 its orbit. What drew the great planet from its 
 course ? Two astronomers, independently of each 
 other, solved the problem. Some unknown mass 
 across millions of leagues deflected the rushing 
 orb in its course. They calculated the distance, 
 the diversion, the weight of the disturbing body, 
 and climbing up, so to speak, on the slenderest 
 thread of mathematical calculations, through 
 measureless altitudes of untracked space, they 
 found the new planet." 
 
 The intellect that can conquer space and calcu- 
 late the schedules of the infinite and wrest from 
 distant and undiscovered worlds their secrets, is 
 not to be put in the dull list of acids and alkalis, 
 and explained by a natural process. Its powers 
 are the outflashings of a soul sprung from the 
 loins of godhood. 
 
 Consciousness is further evidence of the sanity 
 of this position. A planet plunges through space 
 but it does not know it. It is a blind, dead, in- 
 ert mass. Man stands in the midst of colossal 
 forces that appall him, and could easily destroy 
 him, but he is conscious of himself. He knows, 
 and he knows that he knows. Nature may crush 
 him, but there is this eternal difference between 
 him and his destroyer. He knows. 
 
 Personality, that marvellous correlation of 
 thought, feeling and volition in the human, is 
 another sign amid the ruins of sinful human 
 nature attesting the high hour of its birth. 
 
42 TENDENCY 
 
 The possibility of growth is another. Man 
 
 \ possesses an apparently limitless capacity for 
 
 moral and spiritual development. He has within 
 
 him a quality which enables him to take on the 
 
 culture of God. 
 
 All of this, and much more that might be 
 
 mentioned, shows that there are at least sufficient 
 
 /', signs remaining to trace the footprints of Deity 
 
 ; as God passed through man's soul the morning of 
 
 1 creation. The strongest confirmation, however, 
 
 remains to be mentioned. 
 
 Jesus 
 
 The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews lifted 
 his eye from the face of fallen man to the face of 
 the Son of Man and exclaimed : ''Now we see 
 not yet all things put under him, but we see 
 Jesus." Jesus is the triumphant vindication of 
 the high origin of man. 
 
 He came to reveal God, to tear aside the veil 
 human fear had woven across the face of Deity. 
 He succeeded, and said: "He that hath seen 
 Me hath seen the Father." 
 
 But He came also to reveal man, to tear away 
 the disguises sin had woven around the human, 
 to show the higher, the finer, the divine possi- 
 bilities there are for every soul in Him. He has 
 succeeded here also. ''Whosoever believeth 
 that Jesus is the Christ is born of God." 
 
 We see the world's vastness and man's little- 
 ness, and say: "What is man that Thou art 
 mindful of him?" 
 
DOWN FROM THE HEIGHTS 43 
 
 We see God's holiness and man's sinfulness, 
 and say : ' ' What is man that Thou art mindful 
 of him?" 
 
 Then we see Jesus. We see how low divine 
 love can stoop and how high it can lift ; and once 
 more the ancient song arises without a broken 
 note : 
 
 "Thou hast made him but little lower than God ! " 
 
 In view of all this, no wonder there is a divine 
 concern for man's redemption. The fall of man 
 was the tragedy that shook the universe. 
 
 It is the value of human nature that makes the 
 ruin of a soul so stupendous a catastrophe. It is 
 second only to the disaster of the fall of God 
 Himself. Men speak of eternal punishment, but 
 there is no plummet to sound such depths. We 
 have no way of estimating the loss of a soul that 
 goes staggering down from heights which border 
 on godhood into the eternal darkness, to grope 
 amid fears, to be chained by vices, and to be 
 tormented by appetites unfed forever. No won- 
 der all heaven was aghast at the spectacle of 
 man's fall. 
 
Ill 
 
 THE SIRENS 
 
 " It is the little rift within the lute, 
 That by and by will make the music mute, 
 And ever widening, slowly silence all." 
 
 — Alfred Tennyson. 
 
 In the mythology of ancient Greece, there is 
 the story of the sirens, the sea-nymphs who dwelt 
 on an island in the southern sea, and whose se- 
 ductive music lulled to sleep the sailors whose 
 boats came too near the fatal shore. Then, while 
 their victims slept, the sirens exchanged murder 
 for song and slew the poor wretches who had 
 yielded to their evil spell. In vain were all 
 efforts to awaken the sleepers. Insensible alike 
 to the entreaties of love, the commands of duty, 
 and the appeals of honour ; shackled by the in- 
 visible fetters of the strange slumber into which 
 the song of the sorceresses had cast them, their 
 voyage ended in oblivion and a nameless grave 
 on the tide-washed sands. 
 
 In a passage of rare beauty, Charles Kingsley 
 has described the surrender of the sailors to the 
 song of the sirens : 
 
 " They could see the sirens on Anthemousa, 
 the flowery isle ; three fair maidens sitting on 
 the beach, beneath the red rock in the setting 
 44 
 
THE SIEENS 45 
 
 sun, amid beds of crimson poppies and golden 
 asphodel ; slowly they sang and sleepily, with 
 silver voices mild and clear, which stole over the 
 golden waters and into the hearts of all the 
 heroes, in spite of Orpheus' song ; and as they 
 listened, the oars fell from their hands and their 
 heads drooped on their breasts, and they closed 
 their heavy eyes ; and they dreamed of bright 
 still gardens, and of slumbers under murmuring 
 pines, till all their toil seemed foolishness and 
 they thought of their renown no more." 
 
 This ancient myth was the Greeks' story of the 
 fall of man. It enshrines the same great strug- 
 gles with temptation that the Hebrew mind has 
 set forth in the song of the lost Eden. 
 
 Human nature, in the splendour of its high 
 origin, was not exempt from temptation. Even n 
 the sinless Christ, who was the faultless embodi- 
 ment of what man was in his first estate and of 
 what he is to be redeemed and glorified, had in 
 Him that which made temptation an awful reality. 
 There at the threshold of His career, the sirens 
 met Him as they had met, at the threshold of its 
 career, the race He came to save. 
 
 Christ resisted and conquered where man 
 yielded and fell, and where man continues to \ 
 yield and fall. 
 
 The sirens have not ceased to sing. They are 
 still the temptations that would destroy and their 
 song is ever the music that would lull into a fatal 
 stupor. The sea- nymphs on the flowering beach 
 of Anthemousa, sitting amid the perfumed poppy 
 
46 TENDENCY 
 
 beds, are those influences which fascinate the 
 senses, inflame the passions, feed all carnal appe- 
 tites, but mislead, and, at last, destroy the soul ; 
 for while they charm the sensual, they deaden 
 the spiritual. They come with fair faces and 
 sweet voices, but under their beguiling appeals, 
 judgment is deceived, conscience stupefied, and 
 reason drugged and dethroned. 
 
 It is the surrender to temptation that takes a 
 human life out of its true course, that not only 
 arrests development, but dominates personality 
 with the madness that ends in ruin. 
 
 In the book of Proverbs there is a line which 
 portrays temptation very much in the same terms 
 as the Greek myth : ' ' Yet a little sleep, a little 
 slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep." * 
 
 Manhood is falling into the fatal stupor, the 
 boat is drifting nearer the shore of death, the 
 sails flap in the idle winds, the oars drift with 
 the tide, and the rudder is at the mercy of the 
 waves. Life has ceased to be a struggle, and a 
 being whose destiny was meant to be as high as 
 heaven finds a nameless grave beside the couch 
 of a sorceress. 
 
 For sin is ever a sorceress. Temptation is not 
 an angel ; it is merely the counterfeit of an angel. 
 It comes with seductive ways and a song. It 
 looks like an angel, sings like an angel ; other- 
 wise it would have no power to beguile. If 
 temptation were to come with the mask torn off, 
 [with its ghastly deformities and awful ugliness 
 
 ' Prov. vi. 10, 
 
THE SIEENS 47 
 
 naked and exposed, if it were to speak in the »< 
 hoarse and strident tones of hate or in the treach- ■ 
 erous accents of falsehood and deceit, it would • 
 cast no spell. We should laugh in its face and ' 
 kick it out. But it conies like a siren and cap- 
 tures with a song. 
 
 Perhaps at first there may be some vague sense 
 of danger and the soul try to arouse itself and 
 shake off the evil spell, but like a bird charmed 
 by a snake, conscious of peril but rooted by a 
 strange fascination, the will seems soon to lose 
 its power to resist. A fatal drowsiness creeps 
 on ; there is an undefined fear, a vague alarm ; 
 but the siren sings, and at last reluctance is over- 
 coDie. 
 
 The soul surrenders itself to the delicious sleep 
 of the senses. It is captured by temptation and 
 is satisfied to be a slave. No alarm excites, no 
 warning reaches the ear, and the drugged spirit 
 mistakes stupor for repose and slumber for se- 
 curity. 
 
 It is possible for a man to be so bewitched by 
 temptation as to mistake the stupor of sin for 
 immunity from peril ; to imagine that there is 
 no longer any danger because there is no longer 
 any fear. Conscience has ceased to trouble him, 
 and he concludes that all is well. He mistakes 
 chloroform for cure, insensibility for innocence, 
 stupidity for safety, a dope for salvation. 
 
 The sirens put their victims to sleep only to 
 destroy them. The loss of spiritual sensitiveness 
 is one of the most alarming symptoms of soul 
 
48 TENDENCY 
 
 peril. It is something to be able to feel pain, to 
 see a danger signal, to have a conscience that can 
 utter a protest, to be so filled with spiritual alarm 
 as to shake off the invisible foe, whose clutch is 
 at your throat, long enough to cry : ' ' "What 
 must I do to be saved I " 
 
 The sirens sing that indulgence is better than 
 obedience. This was the temptation that ruined 
 Eden. It is perhaps the primal transgression in 
 man's downward career. 
 
 The first lesson one needs to learn, who would 
 grow into the life of God, is the lesson of sub- 
 
 y^ mission to the supreme will, of surrender to the 
 
 1 1 impulses whose tides are towards divine compan- 
 
 ' ! ionship. 
 
 This involves the stern repression of every 
 
 " tendency that is in conflict with the eternal 
 purpose, and implicit obedience to the infinite 
 will. 
 
 Sin, however, says that self-will is supreme. 
 It whispers that man is the goal of his own ex- 
 istence, that he has no higher mission than to 
 please himself, and that to indulge himself is 
 better than to obey his master. 
 
 The man who surrenders life to this pleasant 
 lie, has made further development and growth 
 
 - for himself impossible. He has locked the gates 
 
 f of glory against himself and barred his own being 
 
 ^ out from fellowship with the divine. 
 
 The sirens sing of success without work. They 
 say that toil is irksome and struggle useless ; that 
 the boat will drift into the desired harbour, 
 
THE SIEENS 49 
 
 blown there by the winds of fair fortune and 
 good luck ; and, as the sailors listen, they become 
 sluggards and fall away from the mast, desert 
 the wind-swept deck, and say, " Yet a little 
 sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the 
 hands to sleep." 
 
 Is not this the dream many a man has of suc- 
 cess? He is Ihiukiug of it as something that is 
 to drop down into his hand fi'om heaven, ready 
 made. He would be rich quick. He would be 
 great without effort. He would be happy with- 
 out merit. He has a body built for toil, brains 
 that can think, and powers to achieve. He is 
 surrounded by circumstances that challenge him 
 to do his best, but he goes through life doped, 
 praying for a windfall. 
 
 Success does not happen. It is achieved. It 
 is not an accident, but an event. It is the prod- 
 uct of laborious effort, and is wrought out by ]A 
 years of steady, toilsome preparation and appli- '• 
 cation. 
 
 We see the day of a man's success, the spec- 
 tacular moment, and say, ''How fortunate!" 
 but lift the curtain and behold him during the 
 long years getting ready for his coronation ; toil- 
 ing, plodding on, doing each duty as best he 
 can. Genius is steady, homely, downright 
 work. 
 
 The law of labour is the first law of salvation 
 enacted by God for man. Having lost Eden by 
 substituting indulgence for obedience, man went 
 out of his first kingdom of innocence, condemned ; 
 
50 TENDENCY 
 
 but as he passed through the gates of the happy 
 life he had lost, God said, " Work ! In the 
 sweat of thy face thou shalt eat thy bread." 
 
 To regard work as a curse is to give one's 
 theology a fatal twist in the opening chapter. 
 
 The man to whom success comes as a windfall, 
 into whose lap a heritage of fortune drops out of 
 a clear sky, who finds himself, by the trick of 
 events, suddenly thrust into a high place of 
 power for which neither nature nor previous 
 training has fitted him, is to be pitied rather 
 than envied. He is not the favourite of fortune 
 so much as its victim. His seeming quick suc- 
 cess is but the method by which fate has decreed 
 his speedier undoing. His great place has only 
 made glaring the small measures of one whose 
 defects might have remained unnoticed out of 
 the lime-light of publicity. 
 
 The voices which sing of success without toil, 
 of honour without fitness, are the voices of a 
 sorceress who would cast a spell on life to destroy 
 it. They are a part of the temptation by which 
 the soul suffers defeat and its God-given tend- 
 encies are paralyzed. 
 
 The sirens sing of sin without suffering. They 
 say that innocence is homely and virtue plain, 
 and that a life of self-restraint is a life without 
 thrills. They fling prudence to the winds and 
 exclaim : ' ' Stolen pleasures are sweet, and bread 
 eaten in secret is pleasant. Thrust in ! He is a 
 coward who fears to take a plunge in the tide of 
 forbidden delights. There is no danger this 
 
THE SIEENS 61 
 
 once. Stifle conscience, put the soul to sleep, 
 and for one night give flesh a full rein." 
 
 Is not this the song that sings its wild notes 
 into the hot blood of many a youth ? " One can 
 do wrong without damage. He can be dishonest 
 this once and no one ever be the wiser. He can 
 be impure and no stain be left. He can be un- 
 truthful for the time, and hide his tracks forever. 
 He can have his fling and sow his wild oats, and 
 somehow escape the harvest of remorse and re- 
 gret." 
 
 This is what youth hears as it sails by the 
 poppy beds of Anthemousa. It is the song that 
 lures to death. 
 
 Sin stupefies. It is a dope. It deadens con- 
 science. 
 
 The sleep of sin is ever a fatal stupor. It is 
 impossible to sin and not suffer. '' Whatsoever 
 a man soweth, that shall he also reap." ^*The 
 soul that sinjieth, it shall die." Many a man 
 dies, like Samson with his head in Delilah's lap, 
 sleeping his chance of greatness away, while the 
 sorceress shears him of his strength. It is no, 
 sign of courage to do wrong. It is merely a 
 symptom of that madness in the soul which un- 
 fits one to diagnose peril. 
 
 The ancient myth, in which the Greeks recited 
 the story of the soul's defeat, goes on to say that 
 many were those who fell a victim to the sirens' 
 song. Ship after ship sailed away to come back 
 no more to the home port. At last Ulysses ad- 
 ventured the waters that washed the shores of 
 
Il 
 
 52 TENDENCY 
 
 the sirens' isle, but ere the soDg of the sea- nymphs 
 could lay hold of him and of his men, he plugged 
 the ears of his Siiilors with wax aud had them 
 lash him to the mast, leaving every sail unfurled 
 and the rudder set to the open sea. Thus he 
 safely passed the dreaded island, whereupon the 
 sirens in rage threw themselves into the sea and 
 changed themselves into dangerous rocks ; that 
 in the form of a new and closer peril, they might 
 destroy the li%'es of those who sailed the seas. 
 
 The myth may still teach us the story of 
 human struggle with temptation, and while it 
 suggests that temptation, defeated at one point, 
 renews the attack at another, it also indicates 
 how temptation itself is to be defeated. 
 
 One must be deaf to its message. He must be 
 blind to its chai-ms. He must not look upon sin 
 "with the least degree of allowance." This is 
 God's attitude, and it must be the attitude of 
 every soul that would grow into God's likeness. 
 
 The way to become deaf to the call of evil is to 
 fill the soul with the voices of divine truth. The 
 way to become blind to its fascinations is to 
 dwell on "One who is the chiefest among ten 
 thousand and the one altogether lovely." Temp- 
 tation cannot be entirely avoided. Our boat 
 must sail by it, but if one know the truth, the 
 truth shall make him free and keep him free. 
 
 He is safe who lashes himself to the mast of 
 duty, who occupies all his powers with the kind 
 of work God has for a man to do in this world. 
 Evil can do little with one who is positive. It 
 
THE SIRENS 53 
 
 is the idle, listless, negative souls that sin takes 
 captive. Let a man so tie himself up to duty 
 that he cauuot get away from it, and all the 
 sirens of sin will sing to him in vain. For him A 
 * ' All' 8 well. ' ' He will sail a straight course and 
 will reach the " desired haven." 
 
rv 
 
 DIVINE COMPASSION 
 
 "So runs my dream ; but what am I ? 
 An infant crying in the night, 
 An infant crying for the light, 
 And with no language but a cry. ' ' 
 
 — Alfred Tennyson. 
 
 The spectacle of a lost soul is a siglit that 
 moves the heart of God. The hope of a race 
 that had fallen from the heights resides iu the 
 fact of divine compassion. God's disappoint- 
 ment over sin is not the disappointment of either 
 condemnation or despair, but rather of a mighty 
 and measureless pity. 
 
 Christ, who is the revelation of God's heart, is 
 represented as moved with compassion on the 
 multitudes " because they fainted, and were 
 scattered abroad, as sheep having no shepherd." ' 
 
 " He saw them," as the text of one of the old 
 manuscripts of the Gospels would seem to be best 
 rendered, " as sheep with the fleece torn off, 
 bleeding, and unable to rise up." 
 
 This was the picture which filled the Saviour's 
 eyes, and this was the tragedy which stirred 
 His great heart as He ^'went about the cities 
 and villages, teaching in their synagogues, and 
 
 1 Matt. ix. 36. 
 54 
 
DIVINE COMPASSION 55 
 
 preaching the Gospel of the kingdom, and heal- 
 ing every sickness and every disease among the 
 people." 
 
 His was a glorious mission. Never came there 
 a man into the world on mission so heavenly, so 
 splendid and heroic, so sweet and tender and, 
 merciful, so unselfish and so sublime. He came' 
 to bid the people hope, to lift the veil of the 
 kingdom, and reveal to their enraptured gaze a 
 sight of the glory-throne. He came comforting 
 sorrow, touching human aches and hurts with 
 His tender love, and changing all to health and, 
 beauty and grace. 
 
 But, oh, the sight that met His eyes as He 
 went about on His mission of mercy ! He had a 
 soul great enough to pierce the mask behind 
 which sodden human misery tries to hide its 
 awful wretchedness, and see the terrible plight 
 of sin-smitten, lost, and fallen human nature 
 dragging through its slough of despond, hope- 
 less and helpless. 
 
 Jesus saw it because He had a great heart, a 
 mighty love, a tender pity, an infinite compas- 
 sion. It is this compassion which has made Him 
 the Saviour of the world. It has lifted Him into 
 magnificent solitude. It leads men to say not 
 only that He spake as man never spake, but 
 that He loved as man never loves and that He 
 pitied as man never pities ; until they fall before 
 Him exclaiming with Peter : ' ' Thou art the 
 Christ," crying with Thomas: "'My Lord and 
 my God!" 
 
56 TENDENCY 
 
 What kind of a person must this Jesus have 
 been, who, as He looked upon the crowds which 
 surged about Him, saw them " as sheep with the 
 fleece torn off, bleeding, and unable to rise up " ? 
 What must have been the plans and purposes 
 and business of one who could see all this and 
 then could feel what He saw ? Such an one is 
 the Saviour. It is thus that He comes to men. 
 
 The Fact of Cheist's Compassion 
 Christ came not to be propitiated, to be recon- 
 ciled, to make people do things to win His favour 
 and earn His grace. This is a heathen and pagan 
 conception of God. The gods which men have 
 made for themselves have all been fears, and their 
 friendship had to be won at great cost. When 
 Jesus came, there was nothing to fear. He did 
 !■ not come to be propitiated but to be a propitia- 
 i tion. He came not to make people offer sacri- 
 fices to Him, but to offer Himself as a sacrifice. 
 
 Christ did not come to gaze on human woe 
 
 with idle curiosity and make a plaything of 
 
 man's misery. This is often man's attitude to 
 
 human trouble. It is a problem to be studied. 
 
 The woe and squalor and crime of the world wear 
 
 f, the charm of tragedy and mystery. The world 
 
 \ studies poor people with a curious interest like 
 
 that of the man in the laboratory for germs. 
 
 There was no look of idle curiosity in the eyes of 
 
 the gentle Christ as He gazed into the faces of 
 
 the poor. 
 
 He did not come merely to pity, to have His 
 
DIVINE COMPASSION 57 
 
 emotions stirred and to weep over our hardships. 
 About the best that we can do is to wring our 
 hands and say that we are sorry, to grow maudlin 
 and sentimental over suflering. They t«ll us that 
 people have nothing to eat and we say : '* What 
 a pity ! ' ' and we send them something to eat. 
 They tell us that people have no coal and we say ; 
 " What a pity ! " and we send them some fuel to 
 keep the fire going. They tell us that the moun- 
 taineers live in one-room log cabins and that 
 many of them cannot write their names, and we 
 say : " What a pity ! " and we make a contribu- 
 tion that they may have at least two rooms and 
 be able to write their names. They tell us that 
 the heathen sit on the floor and eat with sticks, 
 while we sit in chairs and lift our food to our 
 mouths with a varied assortment of instruments, 
 and we say: ''What a pity!" and we send 
 them a missionary. 
 
 Pity is good as far as it goes, but there was 
 more than pity in the face of Him who came to/, 
 save the world. There was compassion. ^ 
 
 This compassion is Christ's crown, — not His 
 power to heal, not His wonderful wisdom, not 
 even His personal sanctity, but His marvellous, 
 unfailing, godlike compassion. Christ did not 
 come to save the world with civilization, by cur- 
 ing poverty, by diffusing knowledge. Man can 
 do all this for himself. He needs it, but he does 
 not need a Saviour to do it for him, for he can 
 do it for himself. Christ came to save the world l 
 with that which the world needs most and of 'l 
 
58 TENDENCY 
 
 which it has least. He came to save by the glory 
 of love. 
 
 " The oight has a thousand eyes 
 The day but one ; 
 But the light of the whole world dies, 
 When day is done. 
 
 I" The mind has a thousand eyes 
 
 The heart but one ; 
 
 But the light of all life dies, 
 
 When love is done." 
 
 " Thy gentleness hath made me great ! " * 
 
 The Extent of Christ's Compassion 
 Woe soon wears us out. We cannot sympa- 
 thize with very many people in trouble before we 
 are exhausted. Every one who has ever tried to 
 help a lame soul or comfort a hurt heart, knows, 
 from experience, what Christ meant when He 
 said : " Virtue is gone out of Me." It takes it 
 out of us to try to help people. We can feel up 
 to a certain point and then we find our sensibili- 
 ties deadening. We can sympathize with a few 
 in trouble, but the soul soon staggers wearied 
 and worn out. 
 
 Christ's compassion is unfailing and unwearied. 
 It is for all. All the woes and sorrows of the 
 world break on His great heart. All the burdens 
 of mankind pile themselves upon His shoulders. 
 All the griefs and disappointments of the world 
 cry themselves out on Jesus' breast. He does 
 not try to spare Himself. He invites trouble. 
 
 ^ Ps. xviii. 35. 
 
DIVINE COMPASSION 59 
 
 He says : ' ' Come unto Me, all ye that labour 
 aud are heavy laden and I will give you rest. ' ' 
 He bids all to come, not merely His disciples, 
 not merely the church people, not merely the 
 people of a certain town or community or nation- 
 ality, not merely the people of a certain sect or 
 age or planet, but all, in all worlds aud times ; all 
 the sorrowing and weary and disheartened of 
 God's wide universe who are as sheep with the 
 fleece torn off, bleeding, and unable to rise up, 
 Jesus invites to come unto Him and find rest. 
 
 He must have a great soul or He could not pay 
 out strength to a sympathy like that. There He 
 stands, bearing all the weight of the woe of the 
 world, carrying all the penalty of the sin of the 
 world, nursing all the sorrows of the troubled of 
 the world, wiping away all tears and making 
 every care His own. Yet there is no sign of 
 weariness about Him, no evidence of reluctance 
 to receive us. Marvellous compassion ! Only 
 the heart of a God is big enough for the pulse- 
 beat of a sympathy that throbs around the world. 
 
 The Discernment of Christ's Compassion 
 We are disposed to think that Christ surveys 
 the troubles of the world very much as we gaze 
 on a landscape or look across a stretch of open 
 sea. Here and there, where the swell is heaviest, 
 one may detect the white crest of an occasional 
 tide-rip, but, for the most part, it is the dull 
 monotony of unbroken sameness clean to the dim 
 line which banks itself against the far horizon. 
 
60 TENDENCY 
 
 Thus we think of Jesus as gazing on human woe 
 in the aggregate, of loving the world without 
 reference to individual needs. But Christ sees 
 far more than an occasional tide-rip on the vast 
 sea of human trouble. 
 
 One Monday morning wearied from the duties 
 I A of the Sabbath, I went with a friend for a walk to 
 . Eagle Rock, on the top of the Orange Mountains. 
 f The day was fair, the air was clear, and as we 
 stepped out on the plaza at the summit, a mag- 
 nificent panorama of splendid cities broke on our 
 sight, stretching over northern New Jersey and 
 across the North River into Manhattan and Greater 
 New York. Down there, in our field of vision, 
 i lay the communities containing the homes of 
 seven millions of peoj)le ; a greater number, it is 
 J said, than can be seen from any other point in 
 I the whole world. 
 
 I As I looked down on the scene at our feet, I 
 
 I began to think of the many human tragedies that 
 
 I were housed there under our eyes, of the count- 
 
 ; less sorrows that were there, of the funeral pro- 
 
 cessions which, even then, were winding through 
 \ the streets, of the disappointed men and women, 
 \ of the heartless grind of trade, of the struggle 
 
 1 with poverty, of the battle for bread, of the con- 
 \ flict with disease, of the woe and weariness, the 
 shame and sin and suffering ; and I spoke to 
 my companion about it, and said: " Think of 
 all that breaking on the heart of Christ. He 
 feels all that any man, woman or child down 
 there feels. It all breaks over Him ; and all 
 
DIVINE COMPASSION 61 
 
 that is just a tiny wavelet in the vast ocean of 
 human trouble that overflows His great heart." 
 "Yes," said my friend, "and remember that 
 He sees and feels it as they never can, for He sees 
 it in the light of eternity and He feels it as God." 
 So He does. He sees it in all its causes and re- 
 sults, in its intricate relations, in its effects on 
 character, influence, and destiny. He sees it 
 through and through and His compassion deep- 
 ens and intensifies with the vision. 
 
 He sees all this in each life, however lowly and 
 obscure. We are not lost in the crowd. Christ 
 does not deal with humanity in herds and droves, 
 but as distinct personalities and according to the 
 individual need. 
 
 It seems impossible. With all these countless 
 crowds thronging Him, how can He find me? 
 In the long sweep of the ages, how can He get 
 my name and study my case and have my needs 
 in His heart, so that He knows the cause of every 
 fear, the meaning of every sigh, the struggle 
 with every temptation, and all my aspirations 
 and conflicts ! But He does. He says He does. 
 He says that He knows us by name. 
 
 The Saviour has comj)assiou on a man as if he 
 were the only person in the world ; and if he were 
 the only person in all the world, all that Christ 
 has done for the whole world He would still do 
 for that one man. Amazing compassion ! 
 
 The Devotion of Christ's Compassion 
 Christ proves His love. His is not a cheap 
 
 11 
 
62 TEXDEXCY 
 
 sympathy. It has cost Him much. He had 
 much to give. He was the heir of eternity. 
 All that He had to give He freely gave. He 
 humbled Himself. He emptied Himself of all 
 He had, and took upon Him our flesh. And 
 when He came among men, He took not the lofty 
 stations of honour and distinction, but the lowly 
 place of a man of poverty and shame. He did it 
 that He might come near enough to the weakest 
 and worst of men to feel their need and assure 
 them of His pity. To crown it all, He laid down 
 His life. Greater love hath no man than this. 
 He entered the gloom of Calvary, where the 
 loneliness and desertion were so utter that, for 
 the moment, He seemed to have lost the friend- 
 ship of His Father, and there was forced from 
 His dying lips that cry of indescribable pathos : 
 " My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me ! " All 
 this He did without our knowing that He was 
 doing it, before we had ever done anything for 
 Him, before we even had being save in the divine 
 purpose ; and while as yet there was no guaran- 
 tee on our part that we would ever care for Him 
 in return. 
 
 Am ong the charming stories written by ]Mr. 
 S. E. Crockett is one of the days of Henry of 
 Navarre, the greatest of the French kings. One 
 of the characters in "The WTiite Plume" is a 
 Scotch-Spanish girl, Claire Agnew, who because 
 of her Calvinistic faith and for other reasons, had 
 fallen under the ban of the Inquisition, that terri- 
 ble and infernal institution of the Spanish Jesuits, 
 
DIVINE COMPASSION 63 
 
 A band of rough uien had beeu sent secretly to 
 compass the young girl's arrest and carry her 
 across the border. Claire Aguew had won the 
 love of a noble French youth, although as yet no 
 word of troth had passed between them. This 
 youth determined to deliver the maid from peril. 
 Without her knowledge he secured her mantle 
 and disguising himself in it, he had himself ar- 
 rested in her place and taken into Spain, where 
 his identity was not discovered until he stood 
 before the awful and hated tribunal. He was 
 tortured, thrown into the horror chamber of 
 "the Eyes," where he almost lost his reason, 
 and at last was condemned to service as a galley- 
 slave where, chained to the weary oar, he toiled 
 through the long hot days and sleepless nights, 
 in the worst of bondage. 
 
 In the meantime the girl had made her escape 
 to a place of safety, but she suspected that all 
 was not well with her lover, and by close ques- 
 tioning she at last forced from the old man who 
 was protecting her the true story of her lover's 
 devotion. Then flashing her "wet, splendid eyes" 
 on the old man, and abandoning herself to the 
 rapture of the thought of a love that had suffered 
 so much for her, she cried : "And all this he did 
 for me, simply because he loved me, and he did 
 it without my knowing it, and he did it knowing 
 that I did not know it ! " 
 
 Give that story infinite measures and let it 
 have an eternal accent, and we shall at least 
 begin to have some feint suggestion of the length 
 
64 TENDEIS^CY 
 
 aud breadth and height and depth of the devotion 
 of the Saviour's compassion, which passeth knowl- 
 edge. 
 
 The Strength of Christ's Compassion 
 
 There is power in Christ's compassion. The 
 troubles of the world drive us to despair. We 
 can do so little to help people. We can listen to 
 their story of distress and pity aud sympathize 
 and wish we might give relief, but our arm is so 
 short. We are ourselves the victims of the same 
 fearful conspiracy of circumstances. Nothing so 
 depresses one as the feeling of dull, sickening, 
 hopeless helplessness in the presence of human 
 need. 
 
 There is no note of despair in Christ's com- 
 passion. As the tide of human woe breaks over 
 Him, He is not hopeless. He is mighty to save. 
 He is able to save unto the uttermost. He can 
 endure gazing down into the black depths of 
 B trouble and listening to every cry which shrieks 
 I out its petition for help, for He knows He can 
 change it all. He has power to conquer all our 
 adversaries. He throws down the challenge and 
 enters the conflict and says: "All that the 
 Father hath given Me shall come to Me." 
 
 It is no empty boast. Christ's compassion 
 does not stand helplessly by, weeping idle tears 
 and wringing its hands over the woe of the 
 world. 
 
 He seizes the flaming sword and assails the foe. 
 
 " The Son of God goes forth to war." 
 
DIVINE COMPASSION 65 
 
 ^^ Who is this that cometh from Edoiii, with 
 dyed garments from Bozrali ? This that is glori- 
 ous iu His apparel, travelling in the greatness of 
 His strength?"* It is the conquering compas- 
 sionate Christ marching against our foes, iu the 
 might and majesty of the red religiou of the , 
 blood shed on Calvary. He will prosecute the i] 
 war until the kingdoms of the world have be- 
 come the kingdoms of the Lord, for the promise 
 of Jehovah is that the Saviour of the world ; 
 ''shall see of the travail of His soul and be 
 satisfied." 
 
 The Patience and Tenderness of Christ's 
 Compassion 
 
 Great is the patience and gentle the tender- 
 ness of Christ's compassion. 
 
 He comes with all His pity and power to help 
 us, and how often it is that we do not care ! He 
 pleads and we treat His petition with unconcern. 
 The compassion of Christ does not grow bitter 
 and resentful. With a patience that is infinite 
 He bears with ingratitude and indifference. 
 Nothing can chill His love nor tire His devotion. 
 
 It is said that there came a time iu the life of 
 Dr. George Matheson, the famous blind preacher 
 of Scotland, when the physician had to break to 
 him the news that he was going blind. Placing 
 his hands on the preacher's shoulders and look- 
 ing him in the eyes, he said : "If there is any 
 face you want to see again, go and look at it 
 
 ' Isa. Ixiii. 1. 
 
h 
 
 66 TENDENCY 
 
 quickly. Brace up and be a man. Hold your- 
 self together, for your sight is nearly gone and 
 'you will never get it again." Then Matheson 
 ;i went to his study and sat down and wrote to the 
 i woman whose face he wanted to see more than 
 I any face in the world and told her all, and she 
 [ threw him off and cut him adrift. It was in that 
 hour of bitter disappointment, in the agony of 
 that Gethsemane of his life that Matheson wrote : 
 
 ' ' Oh, love that wilt not let me go, 
 I rest my weary soul on thee." 
 
 There is a love that is eternal and a compassion 
 that not only misfortune but all coldness and in- 
 difference cannot kill. 
 
 Then, what tenderness ! If one would know 
 it, let him read the parable of the lost sheep or 
 the parable of the lost son. There lies the soul 
 like a sheep, with the fleece torn off, bleeding, 
 and unable to rise up. We have brought it on 
 ourselves by our wilfulness, our waywardness, 
 our stupid, stubborn disobedience. But there is 
 no harshness with the Good Shepherd as He 
 comes, no stern rebukes, no chidings, no resent- 
 ment ; but in His eyes a look of wondrous love 
 and in His voice the music of the invisible choir 
 and in His strong arms more than a mother's 
 gentleness, as He lifts a weary soul and lays it 
 on His heart and carries it to His Father's house. 
 
 This is the way the Saviour comes to fallen 
 man. And thus it is that He breaks the sirens' 
 spell. 
 
zh 
 
 V 
 A GREAT LOVE 
 
 " The supreme happiness of life is the conviction of be- 
 ing loved for yourself, or more correctly, being loved in 
 spite of yourself. ' ' — Victor Hugo. 
 
 " My God knows best ! Then tears may fall : 
 In His great heart I'll find my rest ; 
 For He my God is over all, 
 
 And He is love and He knows best." 
 
 — Caleb D. Bradlee. 
 
 The hope of man is the love of God. Man is 
 to recover all that he has lost bj' sin aud acquire 
 vastly more because the God who is interested in . . 
 him loves him with au everlasting love. 
 
 It is not on the fact that God is wise and 
 strong and resourceful so much as on the fact 
 that God is love that man can build an enduring 
 hope. 
 
 It is a daring thing to attempt even the dis- 
 cussion of so great a theme as the love of God. 
 One can hope to do little more than direct medita- 
 tion upon it, and gaze through certain words of 
 Scripture, as through open windows that look out 
 on an enchanting landscape. 
 
 As one rides through the matchless scenery of 
 the Canadian Eockies on a railroad train, and 
 gazes, from the car window, out upon the 
 67 
 
68 TENDENCY 
 
 majestic, glistening, snow-capped peaks which 
 tower about and far above him, and then down 
 into the wild gorges far below, where gleaming 
 rivers, born of glaciers, rush in mad, defiant haste 
 over huge boulders and through narrow passes 
 to the open country and later to the sea, he finds 
 himself unable to put sight into speech. The 
 spectacle is too sublime for words. There is, 
 however, one thing he can do. He can turn to a 
 fellow traveller and say, ' ' Look ! Look at that ! 
 Just look !" 
 
 So as we consider God's great love ; as we gaze 
 up towards its sublime heights and out on its 
 limitless stretches and down into the abysmal 
 depths from which it lifts the soul ; as we think 
 of the wonder of its plan and the marvels of its 
 grace ; as we contemplate its tenderness and com- 
 passion, its sacrificial atonement and holy en- 
 treaties and glorious keeping power, we feel like 
 exclaiming : Oh, to ' ' apprehend with all saints 
 what is the breadth and length and height and 
 depth ; and to know the love of Christ, which 
 passeth knowledge."^ Words are too shallow 
 for such a theme. God's love is too vast to be 
 put into words. There is, however, one thiug 
 that we can do. We can turn to our fellow 
 travellers along the road of life and say : " Look ! 
 -Just look ! For His great love wherewith He 
 floved us ! " 
 
 Even the inspired writers of sacred Scripture 
 seem to have found all their vocabularies running 
 ' Eph. iii. 18. 
 
A GREAT LOVE 69 
 
 out aud falling short before the love of God. 
 Tbey do not atteuii)t to describe it so much as to 
 poiut towards it. Through the open window 
 they bid us gaze out and along shining and end- 
 less aud eternal vistas. This is what John was 
 doing when he wrote, " God so loved the world." 
 He could not measure the love of God. No 
 plummet can sound its depths, no wing can soar \ 
 to its heights, no line can measure its circumfer- 
 euce, no mathematics can compute its reaches, no 
 imagination can conceive its fullness, and so 
 John simply wrote, "God so loved the world." 
 God' s love dwarfs all standards, tosses iiside all 
 metaphors, runs away from all comparisons. It 
 was this feeling that overwhelmed Paul when 
 thinking of God's love, he seemed to throw all 
 adjectives into one inspired exclamation, "For 
 His great love wherewith He loved us ! " ^ 
 
 A Present Comfort and an Everlasting 
 Hope 
 
 There is a mighty chasm between the divine 
 and the human, between God and man. In the 
 opening verses of this second chapter of Ephe- 
 sians, the writer describes the human. It is a 
 picture of corruption and death. Fallen human 
 nature is described as rotting in vice. Man has 
 his conversation in the lusts of the flesh. He is 
 by nature a child of wrath. He is under the do- 
 minion of the prince of evil. God, on the other 
 hand, is holy. His is the white throne. In His 
 
 > Eph. ii. 4. 
 
70 TENDENCY 
 
 presence the creatures rest not, day or night, 
 crying, "Holy, holy, holy! Lord God Al- 
 mighty ! " How can there ever be anything but 
 an everlasting difference and an eternal distance 
 between God and man ? God would seem to be 
 our fear, our despair, our awful condemnation, 
 until with the voices in the Apocalypse, we cry 
 to the mountains and rocks, ' ' Fall on us and 
 hide us from the face of Him that sitteth on the 
 throne." ^ 
 
 Since this chasm exists, how can God enter into 
 sympathy with man ? How can He ever under- 
 stand how we feel and what we need ? Yet it is 
 . just this that we most crave. We long for some 
 I one who understands us, who has walked our 
 I way and lived our life and staggered under our 
 burden ; who has faced our temptations and 
 j fought our battles and drunk from our cup and 
 ' who has been burned by the flames which scorch 
 and sting us. Where shall we find him ? 
 
 We are told that Christ is such a friend. He 
 • was tempted in all points like as we are, yet 
 without sin. He lived a human life. He suf- 
 fered on the cross and died to reconcile us to 
 God. Yet somehow we feel that Christ's life is 
 not quite like ours. He had a divine as well as a 
 human nature, and while He may not have used 
 His divine nature to combat temptation and rout 
 Satan, still He had this divine nature. He was 
 God as well as man. Then while He suffered for 
 sin, He never sinned. . He was tempted, yet 
 1 Rev. vi. 16. 
 
A GREAT LOVE 71 
 
 without sin. There is the fatal difference. He 
 knows transgression, not as an experience, but 
 only as a theory. He does not know actual sin, 
 and the story of our life is the record of actual 
 transgression. 
 
 Hence the puzzle which baffles faith is : How 
 can Christ understand and sympathize with man 
 when He has never sinned? The monumental 
 pile of righteousness that j^illars the church and 
 maintains social respectability may tell me what 
 I ought to be. He may quote all the maxims 
 and mottoes of virtue, and repeat the command- 
 ments and denounce the "exceeding sinfulness 
 of sin " and thank God that he "is not as other 
 men are," but what does he know about my 
 conflict ? His ravings about virtue do not help 
 me ; they depress and discourage and enrage me. 
 
 " 'Tis the weakness in strength that I cry for ! 
 My flesh that I seek in the Godhead ! " 
 
 I seek a Saviour who knows my road, not from 
 His study of geography, but because He has 
 travelled it. How can Christ do this when He 
 has never sinned ? 
 
 He does it by the power of love. This is the 
 miracle love works. It enables us to enter fully 
 into all the struggles and aspirations of those we 
 love. It so thoroughly puts our life into accord 
 with another's that we are not only able to sym- 
 pathize with what he suffers and enjoys, but 
 makes it impossible not to do so. Love cannot 
 escape this vicarious participation. 
 
 1 
 
72 TENDENCY 
 
 We are familiar with all this in the experience 
 
 of human love. I have talked with a mother 
 
 whose son had been thrown into jail charged with 
 
 Jl a certain crime. The mother had suffered far 
 
 I more than the sou. The thing had almost killed 
 
 \ her. Yet she had committed no crime. It was 
 
 love that bridged the chasm between her and the 
 
 son in his prison cell. 
 
 This is what God's great love does. God is 
 holy. He has never sinned. He cannot look 
 upon sin with the least degree of allowance, but 
 He can sympathize with sinners. With all the 
 vicarious passion of undying love, He enters into 
 our experience, shares our woe and sorrow, our 
 despair and remorse, and tastes our sin. Just 
 ; as one suffers for and with his child in trouble, 
 M so does God with His children. Thus we find 
 ourselves in the Godhead. Thus a great love 
 bridges the chasm between God's holiness and 
 man's guilt. Love spreads its white wings and 
 flies across the abyss. That flight neither tires 
 nor frightens love. Indeed love efiaces the 
 chasm. ''For scarcely for a righteous man will 
 one die ; for peradventure for the good man some 
 would even dare to die. But God commendeth 
 His love towards us, in that while we were yet 
 sinners, Christ died for us." ^ 
 
 Thus God's love becomes our present comfort 
 and our everlasting hope. The divinity of God 
 is not His power, nor His knowledge, nor His 
 wisdom, but His love. God has power and 
 
 ' Rom. V. 7, 8. 
 
A GEEAT LOVE 73 
 
 knowledge and wisdom, but God is love. God j 
 is love and "could we love as God loves," said I 
 Sidney Lanier, "we should be as God is." (. 
 Blessed be God for His great love wherewith He ) I 
 loved us ! 
 
 Having uttered this inspired exclamation, Paul 
 follows it with three statements which we may 
 regard as three windows through which to gaze 
 out upon God's great love. 
 
 The Window of Quickening 
 The first we may call " the window of quicken- 
 ing." It is described in the verse which says : 
 " Even when we were dead in sins, hath quick- 
 ened us together with Christ." 
 
 We are looking out upon God raising a dead 
 soul to life. The sinner is gasping in the throes 
 of final dissolution. The stars of hope are all 
 dead in the sky and despair is about to spread its 
 black mantle, when suddenly a glow gleams in 
 the darkness and love is seen hovering over the 
 face of the dead. It kisses the pallid brow and 
 in the agony of tasting death, it imparts life to 
 the dead, until through all the arteries and veins 
 of being there rushes the warm, strong, tumul-v 
 tuous tide of divine, transforming life. v 
 
 Eecently in New York City a baby's life was 
 saved through the transfusion of blood from the 
 body of the father into that of his child. The 
 operation was one of the most remarkable of its \ 
 kind and has excited the keen interest of many 
 outside the medical profession. Because of the 
 
74 TEKDENCY 
 
 delicate and dangerous character of the operation, 
 it was impossible to use either anesthetics or a 
 connecting tube uniting the body of father and 
 child. When the oi^eration began the child was 
 in a dying condition, and before the operation 
 was finished, to ordinary appearances, it was 
 dead. The father's arm was opened from the 
 wrist to the elbow and a vein lifted out. An 
 opening was then made in the child's leg and the 
 blood-vessels of parent and offspring stitched to- 
 gether. An attending surgeon said to the father, 
 "Does it hurt?" With a face livid with pain 
 he said, " It hurts like hell, but if I can save the 
 baby, what of it?" At last everything was 
 ready for the red tide from the father's heart to 
 I enter the apparently lifeless little body lying 
 I ,iicross his slashed arm ; and the instant the blood 
 Ai rushed into the child's body it revived. What 
 y had been practically a dead body was quickened. 
 On a divine scale this is the story of Calvary. 
 Christ's death on the cross was the transfusion of 
 God's life into the dead soul. There on the tree 
 I God opened His veins that the blood might save 
 us. The life is in the blood. Christ came that 
 I we might have life. He has quickened us at tre- 
 ' mendous cost. There is no suffering like that 
 
 |whi(;h pressed from Him the bloody sweat in the 
 garden. He suffered death itself and the pains 
 of hell forever, and He did it to reveal God's 
 great love. 
 
 Some day, that baby will be old enough to hear 
 || and understand the story of how the father opened 
 
A GREAT LOVE 76 
 
 his veins to save his child. With that knowl- lA 
 edge, there will come a stronger, deeper, truer 
 love for the father. The child will say : " I ■ 
 must not disappoint my father. I must not \ 
 grieve him. With a great love he gave me my j 
 life, and I must try to live so that he will never | 
 regret the hour he opened his heart and shed his 
 blood to give me life." 
 
 Man must not disappoint God. He has quick- 
 ened him. We have heard the story of the suf- 
 fering that saves us. We know how one was 
 wounded for us and how His precious blood was 
 shed that we might live. 
 
 " And we rauat love Him too, 
 And trust in His redeeming blood 
 And try His works to do. ' ' 
 
 The Window of Comradeship 
 The second window we may call, ' ' the window 
 of comradeship." It is described in the verse 
 which says : " And hath raised us up together 
 in heavenly places in Christ Jesus." Haviug 
 quickened us, God makes us His companions. 
 
 It is not easy to gain admittance to a personal 
 acquaintance with the choice spirits of the world. 
 We may read the books written by people of 
 genius. We may be familiar with their portraits 
 and places of residence ; but when we seek to 
 know them, we find the door of introduction dif- 
 ficult to enter. A gentleman came one day, the 
 purpose of whose visit was to secure a personal 
 interview with a certain lady of large wealth and 
 

 76 TENDENCY 
 
 generous impulses. He had travelled hundreds 
 of miles and carried letters of recommendation 
 from many people of a certain kind of promi- 
 nence, and spent a fortnight in New York City 
 diligently seeking some kind of influence that 
 would helj) him to the interview he coveted, but 
 all in vain. I had to send him away as i^oor as 
 he came. Access into the presence of the dis- 
 tinguished of earth is granted only to the privi- 
 leged few. But here we are told that admission 
 is granted to companionship with the choicest 
 V spirit of all times and worlds. One is allowed 
 \ to live on terms of intimate and daily compan- 
 ionship with God Himself. God is not only not 
 a fear ; He would be a man's closest and best 
 friend. This He offers to the man who has fallen 
 from the heights, who, having yielded to the 
 sirens' song of temptation, has lost all ; and He 
 offers it without conditions. 
 
 Three words are used to describe this comrade- 
 ship with God. The first is ''raised." God's 
 great love exalts. One must be fitted to move in 
 that high society of divine communion. Love 
 does it. Love is the refining and civilizing in- 
 fluence of the world. Under its spell rudeness 
 and crudeness and coarseness of every kind dis- 
 appear, and the spirit, refined and cultivated, is 
 in a measure fitted to associate with God. 
 
 The second word is '' sit." It is a picture of 
 equality and repose. We are not kept standing 
 in His presence, as though we were quickly to 
 make known our request and then to be dismissed 
 
A GEEAT LOVE 77 
 
 from the divine presence. God's love raises us 
 to sit with Him. It is a happy way of describ- 
 ing privileges that are permanent and secure. 
 
 The third word is "heavenly places." Love 
 raises us to sit with Him "in heavenly places," 
 in experiences which have something of heaven 
 in them. They are places with the sky and 
 climate, the scenery and music and associations 
 of God's own country. They are seats of joy and 
 peace and satisfaction. 
 
 This is the second sight that greets the eye of 
 the soul that looks out on God's great love. 
 This is love's plan for life. When the dead soul 
 is quickened, it is raised to something more than 
 bare existence. God does not leave man to go 
 starved and beggared through life. He exalts 
 him to royal privileges and blessed fellowship. 
 How can the soul be unhappy in such a state as 
 this? How can one ever get his consent to go 
 back to lust and animalism, after having tasted 
 the felicity of communion with God ? This is the 
 Gospel for daily life. It enables the clerk at the 
 counter, the toiler in the mills, the banker at his 
 desk, the machinist, the lawyer, the housewife, 
 the teacher to feel that as they work they are 
 sitting together in heavenly places in Christ 
 Jesus. Then drudgery is transfigured and noth- 
 ing is any longer hard. 
 
 The Window of the Ages 
 The third window may be called "the window 
 of the ages." It is described in the verse which 
 
78 TENDENCY 
 
 says : ' ' That in the ages to come, He might 
 show the exceeding riches of His grace iu His 
 kindness towards us through Christ Jesus. ' ' 
 
 What can one do with a verse like this ? For 
 finite intelligence to attempt the discussion of the 
 thought it contains is like handling the ocean 
 with a spoon or weighing ai)lauet in apothecary's 
 scales. As one looks out through this verse, he 
 gazes on a vista that is endless. ' ' That iu the 
 ages to come ! " The prospect towers like some 
 dizzy peak whose summit is lost in the clouds. 
 We cannot see the top. We can only gaze on 
 the snow-clad slopes of the lower ranges which 
 bank themselves against the sky-line. God's 
 love is not an incident of His career ; it is His 
 career. Comradeship is not the whole program, 
 it is but the first number, God continues to 
 exalt those whom He loves throughout all 
 eternity. Age after age there will appear some 
 new unfolding of His wondrous plan. He will 
 be forever manifesting the exceeding riches of 
 His grace in His kindness towards us through 
 Christ Jesus. God's plan goes on widening and 
 heightening and brightening forever and forever 
 for those He loves. 
 
 It has not yet dawned upon us what it means 
 to be saved. We have glimpses of what it means, 
 but that is all. We see a drunkard reformed, a 
 libertine cleansed, a criminal changed, a sinner 
 redeemed and we say: "That is salvation." 
 It is only the beginning of salvation. The river 
 has not run its course with the first gush of 
 
A GREAT LOVE 79 
 
 crystal on the earth's surface. The spring is but 
 the river's start. It will go ou deepening, widen- 
 ing, growing in volume and power, until it loses | ', 
 itself in the mighty deep. Wo is it with salva- 
 tion. Salvation is an eternal river of joy. 
 
 God has not finished. He has not published 
 the full program. He has merely announced 
 the introduction. God's love has resources of 
 which man has never dreamed. He has lifled 
 the veil and shown the glory of Calvary. He 
 has told the story of the Incarnation, the Atone- 
 ment, the Eesurrection, and the Ascension. He 
 has made us partakers of all this ; but God's house 
 is more than a vestibule. The great temple of 
 divine mysteries is ahead. He has taken us into 
 the vestibule, that in the ages to come, He might 
 show the exceediug riches of His grace in His 
 kindness towards us through Christ Jesus. 
 
 These are the three windows of vision ; the 
 window of quickening, the window of comrade- 
 ship, and the window of the ages. These are thai 
 three inspired glimpses given of God's great love. • 
 No wonder that in the presence of such a sight ai 
 man would break forth into an ecstasy of excla-i 
 mation and cry : ' ' For His great love where- 
 with He loved us ! " 
 
 God's love is great. It is deeper than all seas, 
 higher than all heavens, brighter than all suns, 
 more enduring than all ages. All fires cannot 
 consume it, all hate cannot baftle it, all darkness 
 cannot obscure it. It is mightier than death, 
 potent as truth, and glorious as God Himself. \ 
 
 \ 
 
80 TENDENCY 
 
 There may be dark problems and great sor- 
 rows, but since God loves us, all things work to- 
 gether for good. The fact that God is with us 
 and the thought that He loves us slays fear. 
 When I was a child, like most children, I was 
 afraid to be alone in the dark. When my mother 
 put me to bed at night, as she tucked in the 
 covers and kissed me "Good-night," I remem- 
 ber how she used to say : '' God is in the room 
 and nothing can hurt you." The thought that 
 God was there disarmed my fear. If we could 
 only carry childhood's simple faith in the near- 
 ness and love of God through all the years, life 
 would be different. With God's great love shin- 
 ing around, why be afraid? With that love 
 watching over the life, why be unhappy 1 With 
 that love guaranteeing the future, why be worried 
 over to-day or anxious about to-morrow ? 
 
 " Where there is faith, there is love ; 
 Where there is love, there is peace; 
 Where there is peace, there is God ; 
 Where there is God, there is uo need." 
 
VI 
 
 GOD'S ONCE MORE 
 
 "It is not to taste sweet things, but to do true and noble 
 things, and vindicate himself under God's heaven aa a God- >/■ 
 made man, that the poorest son of Adam dimly longs. Show I 
 him the way of doing that, and the dullest day-dnidge 
 kindles into a hero." — Carlyle. 
 
 God's great love wins and the life that was 
 estranged from its maker is once more in His 
 keeping. The prodigal returns to his Father's 
 house. This is the miracle of Calvary. Man, 
 who was made for God, but had been enticed and 
 estranged by sin, and lured by the siren of temp- 
 tation, is God's once more. He begins to recog- ' 
 nize that he does not belong to himself, that he 
 does not exist for his own enjoyment, that he was; , 
 created for some mission outside of his own be- 1 1 
 ing, and that as he fulfils this mission, he finds j j 
 himself. This fact justifies man's existence, and > 
 it is the only fact that does. 
 
 The only reason anything in this or any world 
 has a right to exist is that it is not its own. The 
 first question asked about anything is, '' What is i| 
 it for?" If it is not for something it is of no , 
 use ; and if it is of no use, it has no right to be. , 
 A thing justifies its existence by its use, its mis- I 
 sion. 
 
 81 
 
82 TENDENCY 
 
 The flowers which bloom in the spring are not 
 their own ; they exist to beautify the world. The 
 rivers which run to the sea are not their own ; 
 they serve every living thing along their banks. 
 The stars which shine in the sky are not their 
 own ; they obey the purposes of Him who made 
 them. All creatures, from the microscopic life 
 of the world, through every species and genus 
 and family and class and race and time, toil for 
 the common good. They must serve some pur- 
 pose outside their own being. Everything that 
 is, must set its face towards some task or duty or 
 master and make obeisance and say, *'I am not 
 my own." If it fails, it forfeits its right to be. 
 
 There is a sense in which even God is not His 
 own. He does not exist for Himself. If He did, 
 He would never have aroused His powers and 
 unlocked His mighty energies and released His 
 f eternal purpose and built around His infinite 
 personality the limitless universe through which 
 He ranges and over which He rules. Even the 
 Deity must exist for something. God must j ustify 
 His right to be. He must have a mission. There 
 is no higher role for even godhood than that of a 
 servant. God is not His own. He is for His 
 world. The tiniest blade of grass may look up 
 into His face and say: "Thou art my God." 
 Every dewdi-op and snow- crystal and beam of 
 sunshine may say: "God is mine." Every 
 sighing wind and singing bird as well as the 
 angels which throng the throne and the saints 
 which pray from beneath the altar may speak 
 
GOD'S ONCE MOEE 83 
 
 God's name with loving reverence and say : 
 *' He is my God too." 
 
 Surely man can be no exception to this univer- 
 sal law. His right to be rests on the fact that he 
 is not his own. He can justify his existence only 
 on the ground that he serves some purpose out- 
 side his own being. Like the God in whose 
 image he was made, he is to be a servant. His 
 powers are to be aroused and his energies un- 
 locked and his faculties employed for the sake of 
 the world that has been built around him. If he 
 is of no use, he has no right to be. When a man 
 discovers this, he begins to throw off the handi- 
 cap of all cross currents and counter tendencies 
 and move towards the true goal of being. He 
 is once more a being with a divine tendency. 
 The sinister influence of sin may still disturb, 
 but it no longer dominates him. 
 
 Man's master must be greater than himself. 
 If he is not his owd, he is owned. If he is 
 owned, he has an owner. His owner is neces- 
 sarily greater than what he owns. It is not 
 seemly for a lion to be in bondage to a mouse. 
 It is not fitting that man should be the slave of 
 some creature lower down in the scale of being 
 than himself. This does not mean that he is not 
 to do humble tasks and serve little people, but 
 he is to serve the world under him only as tlie 
 servant of the Lord above him. Just as the sun 
 pours down its radiance alike on the evil and on 
 the good, and lights the track of an insect crawl- 
 ing on a leaf as brilliantly as the triumphal march 
 
84 TENDENCY 
 
 of kings and world-conquerors, and does it, not 
 because insects and kings own the sun and give 
 to it its orders, but because the sun's Creator has 
 so decreed ; so man, while occupied in lowly tasks 
 and serving humble duties, must look above and 
 beyond for his master. 
 
 Where does he find him ? As he gazes out and 
 along the horizon of existence for a being in 
 whose employ he may find an ample justification 
 of his own existence, what face appears ? There 
 is but one, for there is but one figure that towers 
 higher than man along the line of being. It is 
 the face of God. Man looms next to God in the 
 scale of being. He is the highest up towards 
 God of all His creatures. When God says to 
 such a creature as man : ' ' You are not your 
 own," there is but one thing for man to conclude. 
 It is : '' Then I am Thine, O God." 
 
 If this be true, can a man who repudiates his 
 obligations to God justify his own existence? 
 Can he give any adequate reason for his right to 
 be a man? He may justify his existence as an 
 inferior animal, but can he defend his right to 
 existence as a human being ? It is related of an 
 old Roman, who had filled a high position in his 
 nation, that growing weary of the affairs of state, 
 he retired to his farm that he might live the 
 simple life, and spent his time growing cabbages. 
 At a certain crisis in public affairs, it was felt 
 that his country needed him and a commission 
 waited on him and asked him to return to public 
 ofi&ce. He declined and said : ' ' Come out and 
 
GOD'S ONCE MORE 85 
 
 let me show you my cabbages." God may spare 
 a man who persists in shovelliug dii't and grow- y \ 
 iug cabbages when he might be ruling Eome, but I 
 can the man justify himself? A being with im- ' 
 mortal powers and eternal aspirations must not 
 be satisfied to be chained like a galley-slave. 
 God did not make a creature with such powers 
 and capacities to burrow like a worm through a , 
 clod, or flutter like a blind bat among the rafters. 
 Man must live for something that corresponds to 
 the majesty of his beiug and the boundless sweep 
 of his powers. He must seek his Master on an 
 everlasting throne. He was made for God, and 
 only as he recognizes this and admits that he is , 
 God's, can he defend his right to be. 
 
 God Asserts His Claim 
 
 God insists on His rights. He demands pos- 
 session of His property. He insists that man 
 fulfil the purpose for which he was made and 
 vindicate his right to be. 
 
 Is it not a little strange that God must do this 
 with the highest and noblest of His creatures ? 
 Everything else that God has made recognizes 
 what it was made for and goes on and does it. | 
 The sun was made to shine and it shines. The 
 natural world was made to discharge certain 
 functions and it does so with such promptness 
 and regularity that we call its habits 'Maws," and 
 we regard them as laws which cannot be broken. 
 With unfaltering fidelity the little creatures as- 
 signed to scavenger duty go about their tasks. 
 
86 TENDENCY 
 
 Each creature in its place, iu the wise and wide 
 economy of the world, does its work and serves 
 its Master without a murmur until man is 
 reached. Then and there rebellion breaks out 
 and man says: "I am my own. I belong to 
 myself. I recognize no master. I will do as I 
 please." That is sin. Sin is rebellion against 
 the law and order of the world. It is man lifting 
 from his brow the crown of his own right to be 
 and hurling it beneath his feet. Sin is the act 
 by which man uncrowns and degrades his own 
 being. 
 
 God punishes the rebellion and insists on His 
 rights. He says to man : ' ' No. You are not 
 your own. You are no more your own than the 
 summer storm which purifies the atmosphere is 
 its own. You are no more your own than are 
 the flowers which shed their fragrance and 
 beauty on the world and lay down their lives to 
 fulfil their mission. You have no more right to 
 live a selfish life than the soil which grows your 
 crops or the electricity which drives your cars. 
 You have no more right to live for yourself than 
 I have to live for Myself. I am God. I am that 
 I am. I am self-existent, but I bend My back 
 beneath the burdens of all My creatures. I have 
 a right to be God, only because I do the work of 
 a God, only because I please not Myself, but take 
 upon Me the form of a servant, and minister to 
 all over whom I rule. Do not imagine that man 
 alone, of all that is, can break this universal law 
 and still have the right to live." 
 
GOD'S ONCE MORE 87 
 
 God supports His claim with an argument that 
 is unanswerable. 
 
 He might have said to man : ' ' You are not 
 your own, because, like every other creature, you 
 are dependent. You are served by others. You 
 are part of a world in which all are partners, and 
 no one liveth to himself. All that you have, 
 others have helped you to get. You call it your 
 own, but you did not produce it. You speak of 
 your wealth, but multitudes toiled with you in 
 its production. You speak of your wages, but 
 thousands had to work before you could even be 
 employed. "What have you that you did not 
 receive? Every breath that you draw, every 
 morsel of food you eat, the raiment you wear, the 
 fuel which warms you, as well as the sunshine 
 and music and beauty of the world, declare that 
 you are not your own." God might have said 
 something like this, and His claim would have 
 been incontestable, but He goes higher. 
 
 He says to man : "You are not your own, for 
 you have been bought with a price." He tells 
 what the price was. It was the death of Christ. 
 This is what Christ was doing on the cross. He 
 was paying the price. This is the explanation 
 of the great transaction. God was making the 
 eternal purchase. He was buying back His own. 
 He was redeeming His children from serfdom to 
 self, from slavery to lust, from bondage to sin. 
 He did it with the death of Christ. He paid a 
 stupendous price. It staggered heaven. There 
 was no greater price for even God to pay. Hav- 
 
88 TENDENCY 
 
 ing paid the price, God claims His own. He 
 says to His children : ''I have bought you from 
 shame and folly, from everlasting misery, from 
 the infamy of a lost life. I have done it by giv- 
 ing My only begotten Son to the shameful death 
 on the cross ; and now I claim My own." Surely 
 the price was enough. When one reads the story 
 and thinks of what Christ suffered, of His descent 
 from the throne of deity to a low estate, of His 
 humiliation and temptation and loneliness, and 
 of the agony of His crucifixion ; and reflects that 
 He did all this to redeem man from self, and to 
 lead him to lift his eyes from lusts and passions 
 to that sublime, divine face on the high horizon, 
 the face of the eternal Father, and confess that 
 he is God's ; it would seem that enough has been 
 paid. 
 
 God Follows His Claim with a Command 
 In the nineteenth and twentieth verses of the 
 sixth chapter of First Corinthians, the writer, 
 having stated the fact that God owns man, passes 
 on to a great conclusion. 
 
 ' ' Ye are not your own ; ' ' that is the premise ; 
 "Therefore glorify God in your body, and in 
 your spirit, which are God's;" that is the con- 
 clusion. Between premise and conclusion is 
 builded Calvary. Before God's ''therefore" 
 stands a blood-stained cross and on it hangs the 
 Son of God. 
 
 God demands that His own glorify Him ; that 
 they do what He wants done ; that they live so 
 
GOD'S ONCE MOKE 89 
 
 as to please Him. It is not a question of whether 
 a thing will honour man. Will it honour God f \ 
 It may dishonour man, but if it honour God, it 
 is man's dutj^, for he is God's. It is not a ques- 
 tion of whether a thing pleases me. Does it 
 please God? It may displease me, but if it 
 pleases God, I must do it. I am His servant. / 
 The duty of a servant is not to please himself, 
 but his master. What is God's will ? 
 
 We are to glorify Him in the totality of our 
 being and assets, in all that we have and are, in 
 our bodies and spirits, in that which is temporal 
 and in that which is eternal. 
 
 We are to glorify Him in that part which is 
 temporal, in our bodies, in the flesh. This body 
 is God's temple. If so, how dare to defile it! 
 What treason to debase it with vice and desecrate 
 it with the practice of loathsome lusts 1 Some- 
 times we imagine that if we honour God in our 
 spirits, we may do as we please with our bodies. 
 Not so. The body belongs to God, and He de- 
 mands that it glorify Him. Besides, no man 
 can keep his spirit clean who allows his body to 
 be foul. 
 
 " Let us not always say, ' spite of this flesh to-day 
 I strove, made head, gained ground upon the whole ! ' 
 As the bird wings and sings, 
 Let us cry, ' All good things 
 
 Are ours, nor soul helps flesh more, now, than flesh helps 
 soul!' " ' 
 
 If we are God's, all that we own is His. If 
 
 ' Browning. 
 
90 TENDENCY 
 
 He owns us, He owns our property. He allows 
 us to own it, that He may control it. If one 
 owns a piece of ground, he owns the grass that 
 grows on it. If God owns us, we are to glorify 
 Him with all that we own. What we are to give 
 Him is to depend, not on our whims and moods, 
 not on what we think we can spare, but on what 
 it takes to glorify Him. He is to have not what 
 we like, but what He likes. 
 
 This is the kind of ownership of property so- 
 ciety needs to have recognized ; not the public, 
 collective ownership of land and capital, for 
 which socialism is shrieking ; but the divine 
 ownership of property whose right rests on the 
 claims of creation and redemption. If men would 
 only recognize God's right to His own, anarchism 
 and communism and socialism and all the other 
 selfish isms that bellow for revolution, would not 
 have an ounce of breath left for their propaganda 
 of unrest. 
 
 Man has an eternal part also. He is to glorify 
 God in his spirit as well as in his body. He is 
 to have the kind of spirit that will honour God. 
 The spirit that honours God is the spirit of love. 
 It is not the spirit of hate, of division, of un- 
 brotherliness. God's kingdom in this world is 
 not advanced by appealing to the passions and 
 suspicions and hates of men. The kingdom 
 grows in love. Man's spirit is his immortal 
 part. Some day man dies and leaves his body 
 behind. The spirit goes on, for man is essen- 
 tially a spirit. He must glorify God in his spirit, 
 
GOD'S ONCE MOEE 91 
 
 ill what he is ; in his faith, his forgiveness, his 
 courage, his fidelity, his sacrifice. 
 
 Man's spirit rules his body. If he glorify 
 God in his spirit, he is likely to do so in his 
 body. If he refuse to honour God in the tem- 
 poral, it is not likely that he will honour Him in 
 the eternal. 
 
 Man's chief end is to glorify God. As he does 
 this, he may be trusted to do everything else 
 right. Man needs faith in God to keep him 
 straight and safe. Some time ago a beautiful 
 boat was launched on Lake Champlain. Shortly 
 afterwards a storm came up and the boat began 
 to drift. The captain ordered the anchor out 
 but the boat continued to drift. Again he thun- ( 
 dered the command: "Out with the anchor." j 
 They told him the anchor was out, but the 
 boat continued to drift, and eventually wentj 
 down. The anchor chain was three feet tool 
 short. 
 
 Any anchor chain that fails to lay hold of God 
 is too short to save man in this storm -stressed life. 
 The man who is to live through the storm must 
 have hold of God. It is he who loves God that 
 can be depended on to love his fellow man. It is 
 the man who is genuinely Christian that can be 
 depended on to be thoroughly human. It is the 
 man who carries the highest motive to the lowli- 
 est deed that is likely to do best the least thing 
 that needs doing. 
 
 Therefore glorify God ! 
 
 A life with this clause makes "drudgery divine." 
 
92 TENDENCY 
 
 In God's Claim and Command Resides Man's 
 Guarantee 
 
 The command comes wearing the stern face of 
 duty, calling for self-abnegation and self-sacri- 
 ficing service. It seems to load us down with 
 the shackles of slavery and to impose upon us a 
 perpetual bondage ; but as we come to under- 
 stand it, the face of duty is transfigured and 
 shines with blessed privilege, the shackles are 
 changed into the jewelled bracelets and gold 
 chains of royalty, and bondage becomes heirship. 
 If we are God's, we must glorify Him ; but if we 
 are God's, we are safe. No evil can befall us. 
 We are not slaves for the very reason that we are 
 God's slaves. Slavery to Him has become a great 
 emancipation. "If the Son shall make you free, 
 ye shall be free indeed." If we are God's, we 
 tare no longer outcasts, wanderers, but children 
 ■ of the King, vested with all rights, dowered with 
 all privileges, clothed with all powers, and 
 crowned with fadeless destiny. 
 
 God will not neglect His own. He may sulfer 
 them to be tempted, but not beyond they are 
 able to bear. He may allow them to be afiiicted, 
 but He will make it work out for them a far more 
 exceeding and eternal weight of glory. If God 
 has power. He will use it for His own. If He 
 has wisdom. He will use His wisdom for His 
 own ; love. He will use His love for His own. 
 He will not starve His own children. ''If ye 
 then being evil, know how to give good gifts unto 
 your children ; how much more shall your Father 
 
GOD'S ONCE MOEE 93 
 
 who is in heaven give good things to them that 
 ask Himr'^ 
 
 We do not admit that we are God's once more ; 
 we boast it. 
 
 He will not suifer His own to be lost. Whatever 
 it may mean to be lost, it certainly means some- 
 thing in a real and awful sense, even in this 
 world. One may not like the old theology, but 
 there is a lost world. If we are God's, He will 
 not suffer us to be lost. With His everlasting 
 arms around us, salvation is secure. " All that 
 the Father giveth Me, shall come to Me." "I 
 give unto them eternal life, and they shall never 
 perish." 
 
 If we are God's, God is ours. If God is ours 
 all that God is and has is ours. 
 
 One may have little in his own name. If his 
 heaven is to be only what he earns it will be a 
 poor heaven. Human merit will not buy much 
 in the markets of eternity. But if one be God's 
 he is God's heir. If he is God's not only is all 
 his God's, but all God's is his. To give up all 
 for God is not to be beggared. It is not giving 
 up that beggars, it is holding on. A lad, whose 
 father was offering him a present, was unable to 
 take it. He had gotten his hand fastened in a 
 long jar with a slender neck and seemed unable 
 to extricate it. His father told him to pull his 
 hand out, but he said : "I can't let go." '' Let 
 go of what r ' " Why, the penny ! " The little 
 fellow had put his hand into the vase to take out 
 ' Matt. vii. 13. 
 
li 
 
 94 TENDENCY 
 
 a penny and his chubby fist, that refused to let 
 the penny go, was too big for the opening. He 
 let go and found that he got his present and kept 
 his penny too. 
 
 It is a common blunder in life to hold on to 
 some trifling value and lose eternal riches. 
 
 The way to be rich is to let go and be God's 
 forever. 
 
vn 
 
 THE COMFORTER 
 
 " For one soul working in the strength of love, 
 Is mightier than ten thousand to atone. ' ' 
 
 — Sophocles in CEdipus at Colonus. 
 
 The problem of man's development toward 
 God is a problem for both man and God. Man's 
 effort to solve the problem, as we shall see later, 
 involves all the complexities of human experi- 
 ence. Nothing is incidental or accidental. Every 
 note, however lightly struck or however much of 
 discord it may seem at the time to make, is a 
 part of the great symphony of being. 
 
 God's effort to solve the problem resolves itself 
 into a single task. It is the transfer of His life 
 to man. If this can be accomplished, this life of 
 God in a man's soul will ultimately fashion his 
 character into godlikeness and direct his destiny 
 god ward. Just as the life of a rose in a homely 
 root will some day bud and blossom into the 
 flower we love, so the life of God in a man will 
 permeate his being with its glory and direct and 
 determine his development towards God. 
 
 The transfer of this divine life into the human 
 is the Christian doctrine of the Holy Spirit. 
 
 All human need is met by the ministry of the 
 divine spirit. Every plan and purpose of God 
 95 
 
96 TENDENCY 
 
 for man is realized as the Spirit has the right of 
 way in human life. He is the eternal Father's 
 highest thought for the safety and welfare of His 
 own. 
 
 Christ's name for the Spirit is " Comforter." 
 
 The Comforter is the infinite soul of the world, 
 "working in the strength of love," to develop 
 the life of God in souls for whom love has already 
 made atonement. 
 
 Christ's promise to His disciples was that He 
 would not leave them comfortless. He did not 
 promise that He would not leave them poor or 
 sad or persecuted or afflicted or distressed or sor- 
 rowful, but He did say : "I will not leave you 
 comfortless." He did say: ''Whatever your 
 lot, however hard your conditions, however great 
 I your sorrows and sore your bereavements, you 
 shall have comfort and consolation and cheer and 
 moral strength and spiritual fortitude and holy 
 hope and triumphant confidence, for I will not 
 leave you comfortless. ' ' 
 
 He fulfilled His promise by sending the Com- 
 forter. His plan was not to relieve His disciples 
 of the things which tried them. It was not to 
 destroy their enemies and diminish their diffi- 
 culties and reduce their work. It was not to 
 give them a new world to live in. The world 
 was to stand but He was to send to them in the 
 world the Comforter. This Comforter is the 
 Holy Spirit, the third person of the blessed 
 Trinity. So great and glorious and complete, so 
 permanent and preeminent and divine is His 
 
THE COMFORTEE 97 
 
 ministry, that He Las preempted the uame. He j a 
 is uot a comforter, but the Comforter, the blessed i \ 
 Paraclete. 
 
 Christ gave His estimate of the ministry of the 
 Comforter. He said to His disciples, " It is ex- 
 pedient for you that I go away : for if I go uot 
 away, the Comforter will uot come unto you ; 
 but if I depart, I will send Him unto you." The 
 statement must have staggered His disciples. 
 How was it possible for any one to take Christ's 
 place ? Nevertheless, He says that there is one 
 who can do better than He has done or can do ; 
 so much better that for their sakes He is going \ 
 to leave them. 
 
 It was hard for the disciples to understand such 
 a saying. As He looked into the faces of the men 
 He loved, with a break in His voice which told 
 of His affection for them and with a light in His 
 eye which told that this affection was so great 
 He would put Himself aside, Jesus stated it as 
 His deliberate conviction that there was a greater 
 blessing than to have Him. 
 
 The Value of the Comforter 
 Could there be a stronger statement of the 
 value of the ministry of the Holy Spirit! 
 
 Jesus seems to say that the highest good He 
 can conceive of for His disciples is not for them 
 to have Him with them but for them to have the 
 Holy Spirit with them. How could anything be 
 better than Christ ? If these men may only have 
 Him with them, they can stand anything. If 
 
98 TENDENCY 
 
 they may see His face and bear His voice and be 
 blessed with His safe counsel and inspiring lead- 
 ership and hallowed fellowship, all will be well. 
 
 There are Christians to-day who feel this way 
 about the physical presence of Christ. They are 
 looking for Christ's return to earth in bodily 
 form as the consummation of Christian hope. 
 They feel that little can be done under existing 
 conditions. The world is to grow worse and 
 worse, deceiving and being deceived. Their 
 prayer is: "Oh Lord, tarry not but come." 
 The most that the Church can do at present is to 
 protest and witness. Only when Christ returns 
 and leads His Church in person against the enemy 
 can the victory be won. 
 
 Yet Christ is saying that there is something 
 better than this, something better for the Church 
 than to have Him. It is for the Church to have 
 the Holy Spirit. It is so much better, that He is 
 going away in order that the Holy Spirit may 
 I come. 
 
 Christ measured the blessing of the Comforter 
 by the greatest blessing the world had received. 
 He said that it is greater than the greatest. It 
 was something when ' ' God so loved the world, 
 that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoso- 
 ever believeth in Him should not perish, but 
 have everlasting life." That seemed to exhaust 
 all the resources in the treasury of divine love. 
 That gave the world a Saviour. Christ is saying 
 that a greater blessing remains. God's highest 
 gift to man is to be shed forth. It is the gift of 
 
THE COMFOETER 99 
 
 the Comforter which the Father will send iu His 
 Sou's name, aud through whom He is to com- 
 muuicate His life to mau. 
 
 What would the world be if Christ had not 
 come aud lived iu it 1 We have grown so used 
 to our blessings that we take them for granted. 
 We forget that they came with Christ and are the 
 product of His ministry among men. 
 
 Among the cards which came to my table one 'K 
 Christmas was one entitled, "The Birthday of * 
 Hope." It is the story of a minister's dream on 
 Christmas Eve. He is seated in his study and 
 hears in the street below his window a band 
 playing the old Christmas hymn, " Oh, come all 
 ye faithful." His 'New Testameut is open before 
 him and he has read in the Gospel of the beloved 
 disciple to the line "If I had not come," when 
 he falls asleep and dreams of a Christless world. 
 The first thing to impress him about this world 
 into which Christ had not come was that it was 
 a world without Christmas. He steps into the 
 street, but there is no Christmas cheer in the air. 
 Instead of the salutations of good-will, there are 
 the curt nods and hurried greetings of those who 
 are absorbed with their own plans. He enters 
 the homes of the people and finds that the chil- 
 dren have not hung up their stockings in glad 
 anticipation of Christmas morning. He looks in 
 upon the poor and finds that no one has been 
 there with baskets of good things for the Christ- 
 mas dinner. The faces of the children are 
 pinched by poverty and pale with want. Turn- 
 
in 
 
 100 TENDENCY 
 
 ing to the street again he sees a great bare spot 
 ] A on the top of the hill where had stood the splendid 
 
 Cathedral overlooking the town with its protect- 
 ing benediction. It had disappeared, for it was 
 a world into which Christ had not come. As he 
 went on, he came upon other vacant spaces, 
 where had stood other churches, the hospital, 
 the orphanage, the asylum, the dispensary and 
 various buildings erected as an expression of 
 faith in the Man of Galilee. 
 
 The people whom he met seemed anxious and 
 weary, and as he looked closer he discovered that 
 each carried on his shoulder a burden. One man 
 as he passed him was saying : ' ' Oh, wretched man 
 that I am ! Who shall deliver me from the body 
 of this death ? " He was about to tell him of the 
 cross where burdens roll away, when he remem- 
 bered that there was no cross, for it was a world 
 into which Christ had not come. 
 
 Sick at heart, he entered his study again, to 
 find that during his absence, a great change had 
 taken place. Whole rows of books had disap- 
 peared from his library shelves. Every book 
 about Christ was gone. He opened his Bible 
 and found that it ended with Malachi. There 
 was no New Testament, for Christ had not 
 come. He took down Browning and Milton and 
 found many blank spaces in these poets. He 
 discovered that everything in his books i)rompted 
 or inspired by Christ and His teachings had van- 
 ished. He turned to find an empty space over 
 the mantel where had hung a picture he dearly 
 
THE COMFOETER 101 
 
 loved. It was the picture of a man, blood- 
 staiued, foot-sore, iu torn garments, bearing in 
 his arms a tired lamb. 
 
 Often, when worn and weary in his work as 
 an under-shepherd of the flock, he had gone to 
 this picture of the Good Shepherd and thought 
 of his Master and been comforted. Now it was 
 gone, and as his eye went around the room, he 
 found that almost every picture he loved had 
 disappeared. 
 
 With tears of disappointment, he sank into his 
 chair, when a tap at the door told him that a 
 child below was asking to see him. He went 
 down to find a little girl, her eyes swollen with 
 weeping, who said: "Won't you come to see 
 father? He is very ill." Hand in hand, they 
 went through the night to the home where the 
 lights in the upper windows told of sickness. 
 When he reached the bedside, the dying man 
 said: "Can't you help me?" "I think I 
 can," he replied, and put his hand in his pocket 
 for his New Testament to find that there was no 
 New Testament and that he had no Gospel with 
 which to comfort the last hours of a dying man. 
 The man died a Christless death. At the funeral, 
 there was no song of hope, no blessed promises 
 of the resurrection, no message of the mansions 
 prepared for them that love Him. 
 
 The only words of the funeral service were 
 "Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust." 
 As the hard clods fell on the coffin lid, he awoke 
 from his horrible dream to find that this cruel, 
 
102 TENDENCY 
 
 fl pitiless, Christless world was false, and to hear 
 the band a little further up the street still playing 
 the old hymn : 
 
 "Oh, come all ye faithful, joyfully triumphant ! " 
 
 It was only a dream, and yet there is a sense 
 in which the dream is true, for if Christ had not 
 come the world would be all and worse than the 
 dream. Society would go back to chaos and ex- 
 istence would become intolerable. 
 
 Yet Christ declares there is something better 
 than all the blessings which have come by reason 
 of His presence among men. He seems to say : 
 Gather together all that I have brought ; all 
 changes in government and school and home and 
 
 . society ; all philanthropies and charities and 
 
 I humanities ; all merciful deeds and tender loves 
 and immortal hopes, and compute their worth. 
 Tax the mathematics of the universe to cast up 
 the sum total. Beggar the values of time and 
 eternity to express the result. And when at last 
 you have reached it, know there is something 
 ^ better, higher, diviner than for the world to 
 *\ have Me. It is for the world to have My spirit. 
 It is for My people to have the Comforter. This 
 is so much better that it is expedient for Me to 
 go away, "for if I go not away the Comforter 
 will not come unto you ; but if I depart, I will 
 send Him unto you." Amazing statement ! The 
 value of a gift measured on such a scale bewilders 
 
 V us. What men need is not so much a divine ex- 
 
 « ample as the divine life. 
 
THE COMFORTER 103 
 
 Christ speaks as if the comiug of the Com- 
 forter depended on His departure. Why ? It is 
 a mystery whose secret we must doubtless wait 
 for eternity to disclose. Is Jesus saying that 
 heaven has claims on godhood, too ? Is He in- 
 timating that the concerns of that vast realm are 
 such that it cannot surrender two persons of the 
 Holy Trinity to earth at the same time and for 
 the same dispensation ? 
 
 Whatever the explanation may be, there can 
 be no doubt as to the value of the Comforter's 
 mission. In characters as high as the highest 
 heavens, the blessedness of the Spirit's ministry 
 is announced. 
 
 The Mission of the Comforter 
 
 How does the Comforter fulfil His mission? 
 How does He communicate and develop the life 
 of God in a human soul ? What does He do that 
 makes His mission the crowning consummation 
 of Christ's career? 
 
 He applies all that Christ did. He makes the A 
 principles for which Christ died victorious. He 
 establishes the kingdom. This is the dispensa- 
 tion of the Holy Spirit. Christ accomplished 
 salvation, the Holy Spirit applies it. Christ \i 
 made salvation possible, the Holy Spirit makes |l 
 it actual. Christ made salvation sufficient, the I 
 Holy Spirit makes it efficient. 
 
 He does this by glorifying Christ. Clirist 
 said: "He shall not speak of Himself," and 
 
104 TENDENCY 
 
 again : *'He shall testify of Me." The Com- 
 forter reveals the glory of Christ. The mission 
 of a stereopticon light is not to display itself, but, 
 as far as possible to conceal itself, and throw on 
 the canvas a picture, and make the picture large 
 and distinct and vivid. This is the mission of 
 the Holy Spirit in revealing Christ. He throws 
 on human life a great, luminous, radiant, lovely 
 revelation of the Saviour. 
 
 He also communicates Christ. In regeneration 
 Christ is born within us by the Holy Spirit, and 
 in sanctification Christ is developed within us by 
 the selfsame spirit. 
 
 The Comforter also reproves the world, pro- 
 ducing conviction. 
 
 He reproves the world of sin ; not of the sin 
 of violating the law — any one can convict of that 
 kind of sin ; but of the sin of not believing on 
 Christ. Only the Holy Spirit can convict men 
 i of this sin. 
 
 He reproves the world of righteousness j not of 
 the righteousness which is of the law, the right- 
 eousness of morality — any one can convince of 
 that kind of righteousness ; but of the righteous- 
 ness of Christ, the righteousness Christ imputes 
 and whose power is certified by Christ's ascension 
 to the Father. Only the Holy Spirit can con- 
 vict and convince of this righteousness. 
 
 He reproves the world of judgment ; not of the 
 
 judgment against the violator of law — any one 
 
 can convict of that judgment; but of the judg- 
 
 ■ ment of evil, of the condemnation of iniquity, of 
 
THE COMFORTEE 105 
 
 the defeat and final overthrow of all that is wrong. 
 Only the Holy Spirit can convict in this judg- 
 ment. He shows men that Christ has won the|! 
 victory. He reveals the prince of this world in 
 chains, beggared and dethroned ; and, exalted iii 
 his place, He reveals Christ, the blessed Prince 
 of Peace. 
 
 Such, in part, is the mission of the Comforter. 
 He constructs the kingdom. He lifts the name 
 of the despised Nazarene above every name. To 
 the natural eye, when we see Him, there is no 
 beauty that we should desire Him ; but when re- 
 vealed by the Comforter, Christ becomes the 
 chiefest among ten thousand and the one alto- 
 gether lovely. No character is so stainless as 
 His, no sacrifice so holy, no love so resistless. 
 With the Comforter, failure is impossible. There 
 is no room for pessimism. The Holy Spirit pos- 
 sesses all power for conquest. Because of a 
 peculiar interpretation of an unfulfilled prophecy, 
 to throw up our hands in despair and declare the 
 present dispensation impossible of results does 
 not honour Christ. It is treason to the value of 
 His ascension promise. 
 
 This, however, is not all the Comforter does. 
 It was a great thing for the disciples to have the 
 success of their mission underwritten by the 
 third person of the Holy Trinity and to be abso- 
 lutely assured of ultimate victory ; but this was 
 not all. There would come times of loneliness* 
 and trial and persecution and martyrdom. He 1 
 was to be the Comforter for these hours also. 
 
106 TENDENCY 
 
 The Holy Spirit comforts the Christian with 
 two great blessings. 
 
 One is strength. The promise is, "You shall 
 r J have power after that the Holy Ghost is come upon 
 ' you." It makes little difference as to the size of 
 our task or the weight of our burden or the ex- 
 tent of our field if only we have the power. We 
 do not want to reduce our work, but to increase 
 I our power. We do not want to become less 
 j efficieut but more useful. This Christ gives us 
 through His Spirit. Strength is a great comfort. 
 If only we may have strength enough, we can re- 
 sist, endure, and achieve without growiug tired 
 or despairing. Through the power of the Holy 
 Ghost one may double, treble, quadruple himself. 
 
 The other blessing is knowledge. The Com- 
 I . forter is to lead us into all truth. He shall teach 
 us all things, and bring all things to our remem- 
 brance that Christ has said. He lights up dark 
 problems and gives spiritual illumination. He 
 does not give us a scientific explanation of the 
 mysteries of time and eternity, but He gives us 
 that higher soul perception by which one can 
 say : "I know whom I have believed." 
 
 Are we cast down with a sense of guilt ? The 
 Comforter takes of the things of Christ and 
 shows them unto us. He takes the word which 
 says : ' ' The blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth from 
 all sin," and we are comforted. 
 
 Is it an hour of loneliness and depression, of 
 heart-sickness and homesickness'? The Com- 
 forter brings to our remembrance how Christ 
 
THE COMFORTER 107 
 
 said : *' I will not leave you comfortless," and 
 our hearts have rest. Is it a lime of anxiety? 
 Is the mind tossed by perplexity or worried with 
 the friction of trifles I The Comforter brings to 
 our remembrance that Christ said : " Peace I 
 leave with you, My peace I give unto you, not 
 as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not 
 your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid," 
 and we are comforted. 
 
 Is sorrow our portion? Does bereavement 
 come and break our hearts? Then once more 
 the Comforter takes of the things of Christ and 
 shows them unto us. He reminds us of the word 
 which says: "In My Father's house are many 
 mansions, I go to prepare a place for you." 
 Sorrow has become sacramental. We begin to 
 understand what our Lord meant when He said : 
 "Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be 
 comforted." Bereavement has become an open 
 door through which we pass into the secret of the 
 divine presence. Surely Christ made no mistake 
 when He gave to His disciples this highest proof 
 of His love. We are wont to think of His 
 death on the cross as the highest proof, but was 
 it not a loftier devotion even than the cross, 
 when He put His own love aside and went away 
 that His disciples might have the Comforter ? 
 
 The Conditions 
 To acquire the Spirit, it is not necessary to 
 persuade God. One does not need to pray Grod 
 to send the Comforter. Chi'ist has prayed that 
 
 1^ 
 
108 TENDENCY 
 
 prayer aud it has been answered. The Holy 
 Spirit has been shed forth. 
 
 The man who wants fresh air does not need to 
 go down on his knees and pray God to send it. 
 He needs only to throw oj)en his window and 
 breathe it in. God has provided as amply for 
 the soul as for the lungs. 
 
 " His greatness flows around our incompleteness, 
 Around our restlessness, His rest ! " 
 
 One needs but to claim the Comforter. 
 
 Nevertheless, before he can do so, he must 
 comply with the conditions for the indwelling of 
 the Spirit. 
 
 Christ may send the Holy Ghost, but He can- 
 not comfort one who is living in known sin. Sin 
 grieves the Spirit. This is the awful thing about 
 sin. Its ruin is vastly more than the legal pen- 
 alty inflicted by a violated law. Sin makes it 
 impossible for the soul to receive Christ's ascen- 
 sion gift. 
 
 The other condition is the surrender of the will 
 to God. God's people must be willing in the day 
 of His power. It is an easy thing to talk about 
 complete surrender, but when it comes to the do- 
 ing, nothing is more difficult. Yet before Christ 
 can give His best blessing, the will must lie 
 broken and surrendered at His feet. God's will 
 must rule ours not because He has crushed us, 
 but because, like Jacob at the brook, we have 
 ceased to contend and begun to cling. This is 
 
THE COMFOETER 109 
 
 the great victory. It is what God wanted of 
 Abraham ou Mouut Moiiah. He did uot waut the 
 old Patriarch to slay his son. He did waut him 
 to slay his will. Job was nowhere greater than 
 when, looking across the barren waste of his deso- 
 late life he cried, " Though He slay me, yet will 
 I trust Him." David was never more a king 
 than when he turned from the dead face of his 
 child, and " changed his apparel, and came into 
 the house of the Lord and worshipped." Chi'ist 
 had no holier hour than there in Gethsemane 
 when in His agony He was caught up into the 
 very heart of God, and said : " Nevertheless not 
 what I will, but what Thou wilt." 
 
 This is the surrender that must be made. It is 
 the price Christ paid to send and we must not 
 pay less to secure the Holy Spirit. 
 
 Is Christian experience barren 1 Is there little 
 of joy and peace and strength 1 It is because one 
 does not give God a chance to comfort him. He 
 is trying to comfort himself with some cheap, 
 shallow, human expedient for happiness ; and all 
 the time the Comforter, whom Christ went to the 
 highest heavens to send down to this troubled, 
 sorrowing, sin-sick world is saying : ' ' Let Me 
 comfort you. ' ' 
 
 He is here. We may not see Him, nor feel the 
 glory of His presence. We may be gazing into 
 the distant heavens, as if Christ had forgotten, 
 but the Comforter has come. We are in a spir- 
 itual atmosphere that is far more real than the 
 sensual. 
 
110 TENDENCY 
 
 One summer, on the Santa Fe Railroad, I went 
 through the San Bernardino country, where a 
 few months later gold was discovered, yielding 
 $120 to the ton ; and into which men poured by 
 the hundreds and the thousands with the lust for 
 gain. As I looked out of the car window on 
 those brown and barren stretches of desert, de- 
 void of any sign of life, I saw only the glare of 
 the blistering sun on the gaunt rocks and hot 
 sands. Yet there before my eyes, within three 
 miles of the railroad track, was one of the richest 
 gold fields in this country. 
 
 There is a promise of treasure richer than all 
 the gold of the Klondike and all the diamonds of 
 the Transvaal and all the money in all the mints 
 and all the treasuries of all the nations of the 
 world. But the eye is holden. We look out on 
 life as upon a bare and barren stretch of sun- 
 baked desert sand. We are discouraged and 
 pessimistic and unbelieving. Yet beside us 
 stands one who can change the desert into a 
 garden. Oh, for sight ! 
 
VIII 
 THE MAKING OF A SOUL 
 
 *"A handful of souls,' he mused— ' just a handful — 
 scarcely enough to make the merest infinitesimal speck of 
 molecular dust in the whirl of the cosmos ! And yet — we 
 must believe God cares for even this handful.' " — The Vicar 
 ofShadbrook in "Holy Orders." 
 
 "Man's unhappiuess comes, in part, from his greatness. 
 There is an infinite in him, which, with all his cunning, he 
 cannot quite bury under the finite." — Carlyle. 
 
 The transfer of the divine nature from God to 
 man and man's resultant development constitute 
 the great mystery of spiritual life which bafiles 
 while it enchants us. 
 
 The making of a soul is the business of being, 
 so far as man is concerned, and no business is so 
 complex. It draws on all worlds for its materials. 
 
 Spiritual life is not made offhand ; even when 
 God Himself handles the tools and presides over 
 the process. The statures and stations of that 
 life are not conferred, but achieved. They come 
 as the result of the unfolding and outgrowing of 
 the divine principle or tendency within. 
 
 Jesus throws some light on the question in an 
 
 interview with two of His disciples, James and 
 
 John, who had come to Him asking that they 
 
 might sit the one on His right hand and the 
 
 111 
 
112 TENDENCY 
 
 other on His left in His kingdom. Their ambi- 
 tion was great. It soared to the seat of godhood. 
 Their Master rebuked them for stupidity, not be- 
 cause they were asking for too much, but because 
 they expected to get it without struggle. They 
 were thinking only of the glory and forgetting 
 the field of battle. They were fascinated by the 
 vision at the summit, but unmindful of the long, 
 hard climb by which it must be reached. 
 
 Jesus knew the weary way along the crags and 
 through the thorns to the heights. He knew 
 that back of the crown was the cross, and He said 
 to the two men whose soaring aspirations vaulted 
 the temporal and sought the eternal : " Ye know 
 not what ye ask. Are ye able to drink the cup 
 that I am about to drink ? " ^ 
 
 With an airy, easy self-confidence, which 
 showed that they were, as yet, but shallow 
 students of life, they said: "We are able." 
 They felt that nothing could hinder them or halt 
 their faith or lame their hope. They were like 
 men on the edge of a vast wilderness across 
 whose hot sands and under whose fiery skies and 
 through whose barren, desolate wastes they must 
 pass to reach the goal ; but ignorant of it all and 
 thinking that they needed but to make a prayer 
 to arrive at their destination. Their enthusiasm 
 was splendid, but if their experience had been 
 greater, their self-confidence would have been 
 less. 
 
 In a tone half sad, half glad, their leader said : 
 
 1 Matt. XX. 22. 
 
THE MAKING OF A SOUL 113 
 
 *'Yes, you will drink the cup. Little as you 
 realize what it meaus you will adventure the 
 perils of the wilderness way. Already the shadow 
 of the cross is on your faces, though you know it 
 not. You will taste the bitterness of the cup and 
 be baptized with its suffering. You will hear the 
 cry of persecution and the shout of those who 
 would destroy you. You will feel the loneliness, 
 the heart-sickness, the desertion ; and as you do, 
 you will begin to understand how the heights are 
 scaled ; but as to these high seats in glory which 
 you covet, they are not Mine to give, but they 
 are for those for whom they have been prepared." 
 The Saviour's reply must have suri^rised His 
 disciples, not by its refusal, but by the ground 
 of this refusal. Their disappointment iu not 
 getting what they sought was swallowed up in 
 their astonishment at Christ's inability to give it. 
 
 God's Limitations 
 
 There are some things in the destiny of a human 
 life that are not God's to determine. The reason 
 is not that God is a small god. There are spirit- 
 ual blessings within reach of every human life, 
 but not within the power of any being, either 
 human or divine, to bestow. There are triumphs 
 of grace and degrees of usefulness and estates of 
 happiness for which the soul longs, but about 
 which even God must say : ''They are not Mine 
 to give." 
 
 The amazing thing is that the Saviour, who 
 claims to be able to save unto the uttermost all 
 
114 TENDENCY 
 
 who come, makes this admission. Christ is the 
 preacher of the limitations of God in the making 
 of a soul. His is the voice that tells us that there 
 are things God wants us to have but cannot give. 
 
 They are the best things. The best is none 
 too good for man. It is not wrong to aspire. It 
 is wrong not to aspire. There is no virtue in be- 
 ing satisfied with little in the kingdom of life. 
 It is a false humility that would content itself 
 with the crumbs that fall from the table of 
 privilege. Every man has the divine right to 
 regard himself as the special favourite of heaven. 
 
 It is when we come to claim our privileges that 
 we strike against a dead wall. Heaven seems 
 unable to honour our draft, and we begin to won- 
 der whether the soul is able to covet a blessing 
 that God is unable to bestow, or can it be that 
 human aspiration soars beyond divine resources *? 
 
 Nevertheless, the best is attainable. The 
 Saviour did not tell His disciples that these high 
 degrees were impossible, that they were asking for 
 that which they could never get. He merely 
 said that they were not His to bestow. 
 
 The heights are open. The radiant ascent to 
 the seat of godhood in glory is not impossible. 
 God does not bar the way. Omnipotence does 
 not tether us down to the swamps of doubt and 
 the foothills of mediocrity. The highest soul- 
 life is within reach of all. There is no partiality 
 with God. 
 
 There are no arbitrary fiats, no sovereign de- 
 crees of reprobation to fix the soul's destiny in 
 
THE MAKING OF A SOUL 115 
 
 starless and eternal night. God's heaven is for 
 all. The seats beside the throne of the infinite 
 are accessible to man ; yet God is powerless to 
 put us there. He can provide salvation. He 
 can unveil His face and reveal His heart, and 
 call. All this He does, but the heights of spirit- - 
 ual attainment are actually occupied by those 
 who have achieved them. 
 
 The Prepared 
 
 The heights are for those for whom they have 
 been prepared ; for those who are fitted to occupy 
 them ; for those who have the character, the 
 spiritual stature great enough to entitle them to 
 stand beside the Lord in glory. '^Heaven," as 
 an old minister used to say, " is a prepared place 
 for a prepared people." 
 
 Jesus said, " I go to prepare a place for you," 
 but the people who occupy it must prepare for 
 the place that has been prepared for them. Are 
 there degrees in heaven 1 There is nothing but 
 degrees. In the kingdom of Eedemption, there 
 is no mechanical standard, no doctrine of the 
 minimum wage, chaining genius to the heels of 
 mediocrity or boosting indolence to the throne 
 of merit. The people who go to heaven must be 
 ready for it. 
 
 Cardinal Newman says : " If a man without 
 religion (supposing it possible) were admitted 
 into heaven, doubtless he would sustain a gi-eat 
 disappointment. . . . He would perceive 
 himself to be an isolated being, cut away by 
 
'1 
 
 116 TENDENCY 
 
 Supreme Power from those objects which were 
 still entwiued about his heart. Nay, he would 
 be in the presence of that Supreme Power, whom 
 he never on earth could bring himself steadily to 
 think upon, and whom he now regards only as 
 the destroyer of all that was precious and dear to 
 him. . . . Heaven is not a place of happi- 
 ness except to the holy. 
 
 ''Nay, I will ventui-e to say more than this; 
 —it is fearful but it is right to say it— that if we 
 wished to imagine a punishment for an unholy, 
 reprobate soul, we perhaps could not fancy a 
 greater than to summon it to heaven. Heaven 
 would be hell to an irreligious man. 
 
 *' God cannot change His nature, holy He must 
 ever be ; but while He is holy, no unholy soul 
 can be happy in heaven. 
 
 "Fire does not inflame iron, but inflames 
 straw. It would cease to be fire if it did not. 
 And so heaven itself would be fire to those who 
 would fain escape across the great gulf from the 
 torments of hell." ^ 
 
 This is true of every spiritual experience and 
 attainment. The soul does not wear happiness 
 as the body wears clothes. Spiritual excellence 
 is not handed down ready made, but must be 
 'I wrought out. Heaven must be within us, before 
 it can ever be around us. 
 
 The soul is not hoisted into glory. It grows, 
 is developed, evolved, prepared. Salvation is 
 not a finished product, manufactured in heaven, 
 ^ " Parochial Sermons." 
 
THE MAKING OF A SOUL 117 
 
 and marketed to those who pay the price. It is 
 not a crowu to be worn or a sceptre to be wielded 
 or a harp to be played. It is a germ of divine 
 life imparted. As this germ develops, it goes 
 through all the processes and obeys all the laws 
 of growth. 
 
 We are familiar with the phenomena of growth 
 in physical, mental, social and moral values. 
 We know that nothing that is worth while jumps, 
 in a single spasm, to full fruition ; or leaps at one 
 bound from conception to maturity. There must 
 be a long process of toil and struggle, of hope and 
 travail, of effort and failure and renewed effort, 
 until through it all, at last, something emerges 
 that carries in itself the stain of every surrender 
 and the glory token of every struggle. 
 
 It is thus in the lower realms of being. When 
 we enter the spiritual, is all this to be reversed ? 
 Are we to imagine that soulhood or spiritual ex- 
 cellence is to be handed down ready made f Are 
 we to go to God, as James and John went to 
 Christ, and say : *' Give it to me ; — faith, hope, 
 love, holiness, usefulness, peace, happiness — 
 Thou hast all this. Give it to me. Bestow upon 
 me, O Lord, a great soul, complete, with charac- 
 ter and capacity and vision and sainthood quali- 
 fied to sit on the throne of the highest." 
 
 It is not God's to give. It is for those for 
 whom it has been prepared. It must be achieved. ' 
 Nowhere are the facts of growth so conspicuous, 
 the processes of development so wonderful, the 
 struggle to become so long and difficult, the op- 
 
h 
 
 118 TENDENCY 
 
 position so fierce and persistent, the prize so 
 precious, the goal so imperishable as in the mak- 
 ing of a soul. 
 
 The Peocess 
 
 All the comedies and tragedies of life are 
 packed into this process. There is no greater 
 sight than this of a human life achieving the 
 spiritual. It is a battle with grim spectres, a 
 desperate struggle with the flesh, a constant fight 
 with temptation. It calls for self-denial, forti- 
 tude, patience, hope, daring, perseverance and a 
 daily dying ; but through it all, the soul grows. 
 It acquires vigour, power, vision, responsiveness, 
 capacity. Its earthly estate may dwindle, but it 
 is clinging to the eternal and daily buildiug a 
 statelier mansion. It is slow and stern and often 
 disappointing but it is the only way to glory. 
 
 The process is largely in the hands of the indi- 
 vidual. Salvation, in a measure, is provided and 
 conferred, but the individual must work it out in 
 his experience, if he is really to possess it. 
 
 Among the means of grace or the agencies of 
 growth is prayer. Prayer is not merely what one 
 says. It is spiritual receptivity. It is the soul 
 feeding on the infinite. It is to the soul what air 
 and sunshine are to the body. It is the spiritual 
 laying hold of the materials out of which it is to 
 build itself into the divine likeness. 
 
 Work is another of the means of grace. The 
 question of work is not a question of wages. It 
 is something more than a question of service. 
 
THE MAKING OF A SOUL 110 
 
 It is the active side of spiritual development. It 
 is the act by which one translates what he gets in 
 prayer into what he does in life, and in this way 
 makes it a part of himself. Work passes divine 
 energy through personality and in the process 
 transforms personality into the divine likeness. 
 
 Suffering is still another of the means of growth. * 
 It is the welding process. It is the furnace of 
 purification. It is a way the soul has of making 
 secure its achievements, and of retaining only 
 that which is of real value. 
 
 By prayer a soul comes into contact with the 
 infinite, by work it passes the infinite through 
 the powers of its own being, and by suffering it 
 fuses with the infinite. 
 
 All this is a man's business here in time. He 
 cannot unload this business on God. He cannot 
 expect God to pray for him or work for him or 
 suffer for him, in such a way as to furnish him 
 with exemption. 
 
 He must do it for himself. This is his concern. 
 He is here to make a soul, to achieve an immortal \^ 
 part, to develop an eternal capacity. Whatever 
 his creed or church or calling, his business is the 
 growth of his spiritual being. All else, sooner or 
 later must fall away, — body, goods, reputation — • 
 only the soul survives ; the invisible, intangible, 
 indestructible personality ; and that goes to the 
 place for which it is prepared. It will never rise 
 higher than its own wings of devotion carry it. 
 Its destiny will have no limitations, save those fixed 
 by the boundaries of its own spiritual capacity. 
 
IX 
 
 THE OPEN DOOR AND THE ADVER- 
 SARIES 
 
 " Do not despise your situation, in it you must act, sufEer, 
 and conquer. From every point on earth, we are equally 
 near to heaven, and to the infinite." — AmieVs Journal. 
 
 ' ' Tie down a hero and he feels the puncture of a pin ; 
 throw him into battle, and he is almost insensible to pain." 
 — John C. Calhoun. 
 
 No oue ever tried to become, without encoun- 
 tering opposition. While they summon, the 
 heights also seem to warn. They speak of peril 
 and difficulty. 
 
 Every man who gets the vision of a better life, 
 if he will but look closely, may see between him 
 and the vision the face of foes. 
 
 It is this twofold vision that Paul had before 
 him when, writing to his friends at Corinth, he 
 said, '' For a great door and effectual is opened 
 unto me and there are many adversaries." ^ 
 
 It is a line out of the life story of a man who, 
 fought by all that was worst, did ever that which 
 was best. Any one who is familiar with this 
 life story must feel that when Paul wrote of ad- 
 versaries, he was not scared. There was a look 
 in his face that meant war, a note in his voice 
 
 ' 1 Cor. xvi. 9. 
 
 X20 
 
THE OPEN DOOE 121 
 
 that meant defiance, a gliut in his eye that boded 
 no good to his adversaries. The sight of them 
 only made him more determined to enter the open 
 door. He was never the man to have his career 
 shaped by circumstances, but ever the man to 
 shape circumstances to his career. He belonged 
 to that royal race of men to whom opposition, in 
 the face of known duty and privilege, instead of 
 hindering, only incites to invincible heroism and 
 unconquerable determination. 
 
 The men who win are not those who have no 
 foes, but rather those who, fought by all that is 
 worst, do ever that which is best. 
 
 The Open Door 
 
 The vision of the open door is the vision of op- 
 portunity. It is the answer to prayer. It is 
 one's chance for something better. Beyond its 
 radiant portal lies the land of promise. Inside 
 the door, opportunity waits to take us by the 
 hand and lead us on to the fruition of all our 
 hopes and dreams. 
 
 Man is so constituted that he must press on in 
 quest of the better. There is a voice within 
 every normal human being that is ever saying, 
 "There is something better than this for you. 
 You may not deserve it. You may be unworthy 
 of what you have, but why be balked by lack of 
 merit, when the door of fortune stands ajar? 
 Somewhere an isle is waiting, somewhere a crown 
 is making, somewhere a kingdom is preparing. 
 You have not reached the summit. Push on ! " 
 
122 TENDENCY 
 
 This is the song of hope. Were hope to cease 
 singiug, we should perish. 
 
 Oue may not always see the open door. He 
 may go through life with his eyes tied to his feet, 
 his soul chained to his senses ; like Mary in the 
 Garden, on Easter morn, with the risen Lord at 
 her side, but " she knew not that it was Jesus" ; 
 and not until Christ guided her blind heart as 
 one would guide a blind man, into the ecstasy of 
 the secret, did the great discovery break on her. 
 Thus often a great door and effectual opens, but 
 we do not see it. Heaven is down at our door- 
 step and we say it is a dull day. We plod on 
 through the mire of things. Opportunity always 
 has difficulty in getting itself recognized. 
 
 God is the author of the open door. He does 
 not build a dead wall across any man's path, but 
 a door, and He holds and keeps it open. In the 
 Eevelation, it says, "I have set before thee a 
 door opened." ^ That is true for every life. 
 God is ever calling us to something better. He 
 is not trying to keep us down, to hold us back, 
 to make us unhappy, to brand us with failure. 
 He is the God of the open door, the divinity of 
 opportunity. 
 
 He is this for every man. One may doubt or 
 deny it. He may say : " There is no chance 
 for me. Circumstances are against me. I am 
 doomed." Let him open his eyes and look 
 ahead, for there is every chance for him. At 
 the next turn of the road, he will come to the 
 ' Rev, iii. 8. 
 
THE OPEN DOOE 123 
 
 open door. Somewhere it exists for him and if 
 be will but listen, even now he may hear the 
 voices of an invisible choir, chanting the call of 
 destiny. 
 
 The Adversaries 
 
 There is also the vision of hostility. Oppor- 
 tunity is accompanied by opposition. 
 
 It is always hard to climb. We go down grade 
 without effort. We go to pieces without struggle ; 
 but to hold on, to hold out, to go on, to rise, to 
 achieve, to overcome, to reign can never be with- 
 out struggle and conflict. There never was a 
 kingdom of any kind in any realm of the phys- 
 ical, mental, moral or spiritual, but had to be 
 fought for. 
 
 Before every open door the adversaries camp. 
 The instant something better dawns on the 
 horizon, an enemy comes into sight. The adver- 
 saries are numerous. They are within and with- 
 out. We find them in the circumstances and 
 conditions of life. Sometimes our friends become 
 our foes. Sometimes a man's foes are they of his 
 own household. It may be that the man himself 
 has become his worst enemy. 
 
 Strange as it seems, we must fight to be good 
 and do right. Why could not the opposite have 
 been ordained as the law of the road ? Why not 
 locate the enemy in our rear so that a man would 
 encounter his adversaries when running away 
 from duty ? But there in front is the bristling 
 line of spears. Even divinity seems to be bound 
 
124 TENDENCY 
 
 by this law. Wheu Christ came to save the 
 world, although He came on the holiest missiou 
 ever attempted, He eucouutered opposition. 
 Temptation fought Him at the threshold of His 
 career and the nearer He came to the cross, the 
 more iiercely was He assailed. It is the law for 
 every life. The instant one sets his face towai'ds 
 something better, he confronts war. 
 
 If a man is content to be a nobody, he will not 
 be disturbed. If he is satisfied to be nothing but 
 putty in the hands of fate, the enemy will not 
 trouble to muster even a corporal's guard against 
 him. He is not worthy the trouble. A life with- 
 out ambition and aspiration is a life without op- 
 l)Osition, but if there be daring in the soul, de- 
 termination in the heart, the glint of war in the 
 eye, the very air is charged with hostility. 
 
 Opportunity and Opposition 
 Such is the situation. Opi)ortuuity and oppo- 
 sition live on the same street. They dwell under 
 one roof. Wherever there is the vision of the 
 open door, a closer scrutiny will detect the ad- 
 versaries. On the other hand, whenever one en- 
 counters persistent opposition, he may rest as- 
 sured that not far away the door of privilege and 
 blessing is ajar. 
 
 This is the tragedy of daily life. The things 
 wo most desire, are usually the ones we must 
 fight hardest to acquire. 
 
 There is the matter of greater simplicity and 
 less nervous strain and worry in the style of liv- 
 
THE OPEN DOOR 125 
 
 ing. Complexities multiply. New schemes of 
 extravagance present tbemselves. We are the 
 victims of our blessings. At the time when 
 emancipation is son;ly needed, we find the simple 
 life most dillicult of accomplishment. 
 
 There is the matter of personal culture. There 
 was never such an open door to education. 
 Every facility for self-improvement is oflered. 
 Leviathan universities and fabulously endowed 
 colleges, that offer curricula which only the wise 
 can understand, practice the open door. It 
 would seem that anybody might be learned. 
 Nevertheless, Ijarring that easy knowledge which 
 comes from the hurried perusal of the morning 
 paper or the monthly magazine, it may be seri- 
 ously doubted whether culture is either easier of 
 acquisition or more widely prevalent. 
 
 There is the matter of personal integrity. 
 There was never a time when an honest man had 
 such an open door. He is in demand every- 
 where, in business, in politics, in religion. Un- 
 purchasable, incorruptible manhood commands 
 the top of the market ; but there are many ad- 
 versaries. It is not easy to be honest, even when 
 one is dead in earnest about being honest. At a 
 time when honesty is one of life's finest assets, it 
 is hardest of achievement. So much so, that 
 many are skeptical of its existence. It is no 
 longer a question as to whether deception is 
 wrong, but does it pay? Can it win? Has it 
 power ? 
 
 The editorial declaration in a popular New 
 
126 TENDENCY 
 
 York daily paper, that a newspaper's chief con- 
 cern should be with whatever will give it a cir- 
 culation, was merely the brazen statement of 
 what has become with many the real philosophy 
 of life. It is the substitution of expediency for 
 honesty. It is surrender to the adversaries with- 
 out even a show of resistance. 
 
 When we come to consider matters perhaps 
 more vital to the spiritual development of man, 
 the same situation exists. 
 
 Faith is opportunity. All things are possible 
 to faith : Man's supreme need is an ideal. Only 
 that can save him from animalism. He must be- 
 lieve in something better than cash and carnality. 
 Yet faith is not easy. Doubt is insolent and ag- 
 gressive. Materialism is always abroad, and the 
 man who would believe in the unseen must fight 
 for it. One's faith may not be much ; just a 
 crutch to a lame man, but if it enables him to 
 walk with his soul in the air and his eyes 
 on a star, he would do well to fight for his 
 crutch. 
 
 It is a day when that friendly, brotherly, hu- 
 man kind of life Christ came to teach and help 
 men to live is longed for. The world is hungry 
 for fellowship and yearns for the pulses of the 
 race-kin. Yet there are many adversaries. The 
 extremes of life are increasing, the chasm of class 
 widens, the walls of caste rise higher, and while 
 "get together" is the word for the twentieth 
 century, it is, as yet, hardly more than a word. 
 
 A matter of deeper concern, not only to the 
 
THE OPEN DOOR 127 
 
 Church of Christ, but to all meu, is the world's 
 evangelizatiou. There was never such au opeu 
 door to Christian missions. Everything con- 
 spires to make the present preeminently a mis- 
 sionary age. The one problem that confronts 
 the Church is the problem of the harvest field. 
 The condition of the uon- Christian nations is such 
 as to create the greatest religious crisis the world 
 has ever known. 
 
 At such a time, Christianity finds itself con- 
 fronting the most serious situation it has ever 
 faced in lauds that are nominally Christian, where 
 it must begin again the fight for existence and 
 give to meu a new and better reason for its right 
 to be. 
 
 So that, look which way we may, we find 
 privilege and peril living as close neighbours. 
 
 Opposition is Opportunity 
 What is a sane procedure when, in sight of 
 privilege, peril threatens ? There are those who 
 counsel surrender, who j)refer peace to heroism, 
 who look upon opposition as a providential bar- 
 rier, and change their course. They are like a 
 worm that crawls until a clod or stone blocks its 
 way, and then changes its course. They move 
 along the line of least resistance. They live on 
 the surface of their personality, rather than in its 
 elemental depths. They are merely what the 
 circumstances of the moment chance to make 
 them. 
 If we will but agree to surrender privilege, we 
 
128 TENDENCY 
 
 may escape conflict. All that tlie adversaries ask 
 is that we stay outside the open door. As long 
 as we make no special effort to enter, they will let 
 us alone. We may discuss opportunity, admire it, 
 prize it, feel that it should be entered, determine 
 some day to enter, and the adversaries will con- 
 gratulate us on our prudence ; but the moment 
 we start to enter, there is war. 
 
 Nevertheless the open door is there to be en- 
 tered. It is not there for spectacular effect. The 
 right attitude is that of conflict. One must not 
 surrender. He must face the foe. He will never 
 get anywhere nor amount to anything any other 
 way. The people who have shaped the history 
 of the world have all had stormy careers — Calvin, 
 Savonarola, Luther, Knox. They all faced a 
 gray sky and spoke of hindi'ances, not with a 
 wail or a moan, but with a war-cry. 
 
 He who does this discovers that the battle is 
 itself a blessing. He is fit to enter the open door 
 only after he has fought his way to it. No man 
 can wear privilege gracefully and well, who has 
 not learned its worth in the red carnage of con- 
 flict. Struggle is ever the royal road to author- 
 ity and power. It is not an accident that if one 
 would rise, he must climb ; it is merely the law 
 of a divine necessity. 
 
 He who faces his adversaries with a manly 
 courage, who fights his battles with a steady re- 
 liance on Him who calls him through the red 
 line to that radiant portal beyond which his 
 kingdom is waiting, lives to find that opposition 
 
THE OPEN DOOR 129 
 
 is but another way of writing opportunity. It is 
 not "the open door, but adversaries" ; it is 
 "the open door and adversaries." They are 
 comrades. 
 
SEEING THE INVISIBLE 
 
 " The teeming air and prodigal, 
 Which droops its azure over all, 
 Is full of immortalities 
 That look on us with unseen eyes." 
 
 — Philip P. Cooke. 
 
 ■ The secret of emancipation is a sight of the 
 unseen. The slave is he who never looks beyond 
 his fetters. That is the real freeman of the world 
 who, whatever his estate, like the ancient He- 
 brew who set his people free, ' ' endured as seeing 
 Him who is invisible." ' 
 
 This is the sign of greatness and the way to 
 power. 
 
 Man cannot see much with his eyes, not be- 
 cause they are bad, but because they are not 
 built to see the big things, the real things, the 
 eternal and the infinite. "With his eyes, one can 
 see only the surface, the shadow, the temporary, 
 the changing, the unstable, the things which ap- 
 pear. If he is to rise into companionship with 
 God and be divine, he must see the permanent, 
 the essential, the abiding, the everlasting, the 
 invisible. He must look, not with his eyes, but 
 with his soul. Like the man whose vision made 
 » Heb. xi. 27. 
 130 
 
SEEING TUE INVISIBLE 131 
 
 him the leader of a nation and the creator of a 
 civilization, he must endure as seeing Him who is 
 unseen. 
 
 Moses looked with his eyes and saw Egypt, its 
 power, its wealth, its splendour, its dynasties. 
 He saw its throne waiting for him. He saw him- 
 self heir apparent to the foremost place among 
 the rulers of the world. An ordinary man would 
 have looked no further. The "seen" would 
 have been good enough, but Moses looked be- 
 yond Egypt to the kingdom that was coming ; 
 the kingdom of righteousness and truth, of peace 
 and good-will, whose throne was not tinsel like 
 Egypt's, and whose authority was supreme. As 
 he saw the unseen, his heart beat faster. He re- 
 fused "to be called the son of Pharaoh's daugh- 
 ter," or to be captured by Egypt's cheap show. 
 
 He looked with his eyes and saw Israel en- 
 slaved. He saw his people downtrodden and 
 oppressed, poor and despised, smitten and ap- 
 parently hopeless. An ordinary man would 
 have despaired. He would have said, "Nothing 
 can be done with these dumb slaves," but Moses 
 looked beyond the visible and saw Israel emanci- 
 pated. He saw the light of Canaan on the far 
 horizon. The vision stiffened his courage. He 
 broke through conventionalism, threw down 
 worldly ambition, walked out of the palace ; 
 and, setting his face towards the desert, began 
 forty years of stern preparation for real leader- 
 ship. 
 
 The Jew saw what, as yet, had no existence, 
 
132 TENDENCY 
 
 save in the divine plan and purpose. He saw 
 into the soul of events and endured. He never 
 flinched nor faltered nor halted nor allowed him- 
 self to be dismayed. 
 
 This is the sign of victory. 
 
 No one 'ever does a great thing who sees only 
 the seen, the present, the tangible, the evident, 
 the insistent, the finite. He must see the unseen, 
 the future, the intangible, the elusive, the ideal, 
 the infinite. He must discover, not that which 
 is, but that which is to be ; that which may be, 
 should be, and which, with a stout soul following 
 hard after God, must be. 
 
 The builders of the old cathedrals, which fill 
 us with awesome reverence as we walk their 
 stately aisles and gaze towards their lofty arches, 
 were men who saw the unseen. Those marvellous 
 piles of templed reverence and devotion were 
 caught out of the invisible and dragged down out 
 of the eternal and chained to stone by men who 
 first saw what was not and then translated their 
 vision into shape and form. 
 
 The old masters were not sordid materialists, 
 dull realists, stupid copyists, but men whose 
 souls were aglow with the ecstasy of a sight no 
 eye ever saw. Their canvas flames with the por- 
 trayal of the invisible. It is not what one sees 
 in a picture that makes it great; it is what he 
 does not see. The true poet, who brings a song 
 out of the kingdom that is coming, is no dull 
 rhymester of homely realities, but a man who sees 
 the unseen. The rapturous quality of a song is 
 
SEEING THE mVISIBLE 133 
 
 not what one hears ; it is what he does not hear. 
 The divine realm is ever beyond the reach of 
 the senses. Only he can invade it who has a 
 soul. 
 
 In so commonplace and unpoetic a thing as daily 
 toil, success rests with him who looks beyond the 
 actual and sees what he does not see. He is not 
 content to plod in the beaten track, but discover- 
 ing future possibilities, he ventures out. He has 
 visions and holds out and plods on and persists, 
 despite short profits, bad markets, strikes, lock- 
 outs and what nots, until at last he enters his 
 promised land. 
 
 The inventors, the promoters, the pioneers, the 
 discoverers, are all built on the lines of faith. 
 They are not slow conservatives, holding to the 
 old ways aud saying: ''Things can only be as 
 they have been," but prophets, announcing that 
 things will be as they have never been. They 
 have the vision of what may be aud venture life 
 and limb, and risk fortune and reputation to 
 make it good. 
 
 Nation builders and age makers have all had 
 upon their souls the glow of the invisible. Egypt 
 languished for centuries, cursed by poverty, 
 smitten by famine, afflicted by pestilence, sub- 
 mitting to the handicap of uncertain seasons, 
 empty and full by turns, because no one saw the 
 unseen. At last England sent such a man in the 
 person of Lord Cromer. He has regulated the 
 overflow of the Nile, built walls, dug canals, con- 
 structed roads, and given to that ancient land of 
 
134 TENDENCY 
 
 hoary traditions, groaning for centuries under 
 unnecessary burdens, its great emancipation. 
 
 If one is to have a future, he must quit looking 
 at what he sees. He must let his vision range 
 higher and farther and dwell on what he does not 
 see. 
 
 In the realm of influence, the people who help 
 us are those who see not what we are but what 
 we may become. No man ever helped the world 
 who stopped at an accurate diagnosis of its 
 troubles. 
 
 The parent who would train a child to great- 
 ness must see more than appears in the child. 
 He must look beyond surly moods and fits of 
 temper, beyond wilful disobedience and way- 
 wardness to the kingdom of character that may 
 be built up in the empire of that little person- 
 ality. 
 
 This is God's vision of man. It is this vision 
 which makes Him our Father, and enables Him 
 to train us into His likeness. It is this vision 
 which He imparts to man, in the gift of faith, 
 and by means of which man is enabled to come 
 off conqueror in all the conflicts of life. 
 
 In any moral revolution or battle for reform, 
 the people who bring things to pass are those 
 who see the unseen. 
 
 The galleries are always full of a kind of sight- 
 seers, who go into hysterics over the spectacle of 
 evil. They see the seen in depraved human so- 
 ciety. They behold the rampant insolence of 
 men whose god is gain, the crawling cowardice 
 
SEEING THE INVISIBLE 135 
 
 of men to whom a moral issue is a danger-sigual, 
 the lawlessness aud class hatred and greed of men 
 who rave about humanity but whose panegyrics 
 are blankets to cloak their own meanness and 
 hypocrisy of soul. 
 
 This they see and it is all that they see ; and 
 seeing it, they are in despair. They pronounce 
 the situation hopeless and say: "Nothing can 
 be done. Appetite, lust and greed will have 
 their way. Morals cannot be legislated into a 
 community." 
 
 There are, however, some who look beyond 
 the seen. They are fascinated by a social and 
 civic ideal. They have faith in the eternal 
 principles of truth aud honour. They listen far 
 enough back to hear the voice which thundered 
 on Sinai, and pleaded on Calvary. They catch 
 the enthusiasm of God and believe in a better 
 world. Already they see iniquity in defeat and 
 immorality routed, and they endure. It is such 
 as these who sooner or later will win the battle 
 and save the day. 
 
 It is preeminently such as these who translate 
 God into the life of the world. No man would 
 last in a mission field twenty-four hours who sees 
 only with his eyes. The horizon is banked with 
 diificulties. Everywhere obstacles are sky high. 
 All around are hate, ignorance, sin, the rule and 
 riot of sensualism. The world, the flesh and the 
 devil are in the majority. Any one who stops 
 with the sight of this is bound to be discouraged. 
 He must look beyond aud see with his soul and 
 
136 TENDENCY 
 
 catch the vision of the chariots of the Lord. 
 Then victory is sure. 
 
 Indeed, the acquisition of God is not possible 
 without this vision, for all who come to Him 
 must believe that He is and that He is the re- 
 warder of them that diligently seek Him. 
 
 Doubt is easy. It is simply looking at what is 
 seen and saying : " There is no God in sight, no 
 immortality, nothing but an ancient dogma and 
 some pious dupes whose weak ways may please 
 heaven, but cannot mislead earth. Faith is 
 foolish." 
 
 It is simply a case of bad eyes. The doubter is 
 of a kind with the blind man who does not be- 
 lieve in sunsets he has never seen ; with the deaf 
 man who does not believe in music he has never 
 heard. 
 
 There is the unseen. Why not look at that f 
 There are truth, honour, love, divine compassion. 
 Why not look at these ? Because one does not 
 see them is no reason he should doubt their exist- 
 ence. They are the great realities. The trouble 
 is not with religion but with eyes. 
 
 Any one who seeks the upper path will find 
 much to hinder, — temptation, hardship, priva- 
 tion, disappointment. There they are in the way 
 and anybody can see them. When one stops to 
 consider them, they look twice the size they are ; 
 and if he look no further, courage will die. 
 
 Let him look through them and beyond them, 
 to the everlasting hills, to the fadeless beauty on 
 the infinite sky, to God and the victors whose 
 
SEEING THE INVISIBLE 137 
 
 shouts ali-eady resound from the sublime battle- 
 ments, and endui'e. Some fair morning the night 
 will end, the dark change to day, the invisible 
 emerge from its web of mist and shadow, and the 
 soul have its great emancipation. Having en- 
 dured as seeing Him who is invisible, he shall at 
 last see Him face to face and know as he is 
 known. 
 
XI 
 THE SUCCESS OF FAILURE 
 
 " Massena was not himself until the battle began to go 
 against him. ' ' — Napoleon Bonaparte. 
 
 "We can fix our eyes on perfection, and make almost 
 everything speed towards it," — Channing. 
 
 Failure is not always defeat in the struggle of 
 
 J life. It is not the worst thing that can befall us. 
 
 P It is far worse to succeed through dishonour than 
 
 to fail because of steadfast allegiance to principle. 
 
 One is not necessarily beaten when the crowd 
 hisses. He is not conquered because he is 
 crushed. There is such a thing as the success of 
 failure. We should not lose heart and fling 
 courage away because life seems one unbroken 
 succession of failures. Our defeats may turn out 
 ^ Ho be our real victories. 
 
 History abounds with illustrations of the suc- 
 cess of failure. The heroes, at whose shrine a 
 nation worships, are usually those it has crucified. 
 The people we would immortalize, we first put to 
 death. The men we honour longest, are not al- 
 ways those we honoured most when living. They 
 are frequently those we treated worst and whose 
 careers seemed to go out in the blackness of the 
 night of defeat. England beheaded Charles the 
 First, and France burjied Joan of Arc. Wash- 
 138 
 
THE SUCCESS OF FAILUEE 139 
 
 ington aud Lincoln are far more popular to-day 
 than they ever were while living. 
 
 The quickest road to immortality is not im- 
 mediate success. If one would live forever in the 
 memory of his fellow men, let him get himself - 
 put to death for something. The world makes | 
 its heroes out of those who love a cause well 1 
 enough to fail for it ; if need be, to die for it. It 
 is in the moment of apparent failure and defeat 
 that the man who dies for a cause is really 
 strongest. It is not an idle warning that says, 
 ' ' Beware when all men speak well of you. ' ' The 
 man who never provokes opposition or arouses ; 
 antagonism, who leaves events as placid a pond [ i 
 as he found them, has his title clear to a swift 
 and merited oblivion. 
 
 The successful cause is not always that which 
 has the largest following. A cause may be dead 
 and still muster a majority. Some people never . 
 read the death notices. A dogma may be as life- * ; 
 less as the dust of a mummy, and still get itself 
 recited in the creeds of the monkey multitude. 
 
 The cause which succeeds is that which can 
 capture the imagination and enlist followers who 
 are willing to die for it. The cause itself may 
 not be the best, but if people love it enough to 
 fail for it, it is not only alive but heir to the 
 throne. The real enthusiasts of the world are 
 these, aud these alone have power to wake the 
 dead. 
 
 Perhaps the most illustrious illustration history 
 affords of the success of failure is Jesus of Naz- 
 
140 TENDENCY 
 
 ereth. His disciples talked mournfully about His 
 death and said : ' ' We hoped that it was He who 
 should redeem Israel. ' ' ' 
 
 They felt that their leader had failed and that 
 His failure was complete, and they were dis- 
 couraged. Not a shred of hope was left to hold 
 them in from despair, not a star was shining in 
 the sable sky that shrouded their night of disap- 
 pointment. They had hoped, but they have 
 ceased to hope. Hope is dead. Their prospects 
 have suddenly shunted into a blind alley ; and 
 ' the career which a while ago looked out upon a 
 radiant future, along vistas arched with promise 
 and lit with glory, ends as abruptly as it began. 
 
 Their creed has become a dirge. Not a note 
 of triumph, not a shout of courage is anywhere 
 to be heard. Their cause has found its tomb, 
 for their hero has failed and their god is dead. 
 
 Jesus' disciples were not alone in their inter- 
 pretation of Calvary. His enemies felt that the 
 I cross had finished a troublesome fanatic. The 
 general public regarded the incident as closed. 
 ', After a brilliant, meteoric flash across the sky, 
 the revolutionary Eabbi disappears and there are 
 no trailing clouds of glory left behind. 
 
 All the circumstances of the occasion seemed to 
 confirm the general verdict. We now halo 
 Calvary in the love light of religious reverence. 
 As we look back, we seem to see it aflame with 
 the glory of the Infinite. We interpret that 
 transaction by subsequent events, and give to 
 * Luke xxiv. 21. 
 
THE SUCCESS OF FAILUEE 141 
 
 that brief stage eternal counsels and purposes for 
 a background. 
 
 In reality, there was no halo there, no light of 
 the infinite giving to Calvary a supernatural 
 transfiguration. Everything was mean and 
 shabby. A troublesome peasant who had defied 
 the authorities and been run down by the officers 
 was being legally executed. Whether justly or 
 unjustly was a matter of little concern. The man 
 was dead. He had been put out of the way. 
 The circumstances of the crucifixion branded Je- 
 sus with failure. 
 
 Jesus seemed Himself to assent to this conclu. 
 sion. He ceased to struggle. As He hung there 
 on the cross. He was the picture of weakness. 
 No light of courage shone in His eye, no flush of 
 hope mantled His face. His voice is broken with 
 defeat. The old ring of triumph and leadership 
 is gone. He admits that God has deserted Him. 
 In despair, He sobs: " It is finished." He can 
 do no more. He has acknowledged defeat and 
 fallen back into the void to be swallowed up of 
 that gloom which gives a grave to aU the wrecks 
 and failures of time. It is the death of hope, the 
 failure of divinity, the burial of God. From the 
 view-point of the senses, there is no appeal from 
 this verdict. Jesns failed. He talked of a king- 
 dom, but it was the farce of power. He spent 
 His life getting followers, but at His death, there 
 were scarcely enough for pallbearers, and at the 
 first danger-signal they forsook Him and fled. 
 He spoke of saving the people, but could not 
 
142 TENDENCY 
 
 save Himself. Merely to say that Jesus failed 
 
 is, from the human standpoint, to be generous to 
 
 the memory of Jesus. It is to render a merciful 
 
 verdict. 
 
 Nevertheless, if there be one thing absolutely 
 
 n certain to- day, it is that Christ's failure was His 
 
 I real success. The victory was going on under 
 
 [ the very eyes of His disciples, but they lacked 
 
 { the vision to see it. They saw only the dust of 
 
 the fearful conflict and concluded that their leader 
 
 was defeated. 
 
 The fact is there was never so complete a vic- 
 tory. None ever succeeded so well as Jesus of 
 Nazareth. When one thinks of the way He 
 started and then of the dimensions to which His 
 following has grown, when he tries to tabulate in 
 statistics the results of Calvary and estimate the 
 (power of the cross among mankind, he is dis- 
 I posed to rank Jesus as the most successful leader 
 in all human history. 
 
 Not only so, but if we are to name the crisis 
 
 hour of His career, it was there on the cross, as 
 
 He hung dying. When failure seemed absolute, 
 
 then triumph was most secure. When defeat 
 
 ''seemed irretrievable, His cause was unconquer- 
 
 , able. 
 
 It was there, in His death hour, that He met 
 and vanquished the last and worst of foes. When 
 He. said '' It is finished," He said it not as a wail 
 of defeat, but as the shout of victory. This was 
 the Saviour's real view of the situation. He 
 never, for a moment, wavered. He knew the 
 
THE SUCCESS OF FAILURE 143 
 
 world thought He was failing and perhaps that)^ 
 was the hardest thing He had to stand. The 
 sting of failure is this. It is hard to hold out 
 when you feel that others have lost confidence iu 
 you. But Christ did not falter. He knew that 
 He was right. He had not the slightest doubt 
 about the worth of dying. He loved His cause 
 well enough to die for it. He was willing for 
 time to write " failure " over His career, and for 
 His best friends to say : " We hoped that it was 
 He who should redeem Israel " ; for even as they 
 said it He was by their side again, risen from 
 the grave, the triumphant refutation of all their 
 fears. 
 
 The leaders of the world are those who are 
 strong enough to seem to fail. Instead of wor- 
 shipping appearances and judging eternity by 
 snap-shots, they catch the vision of that divinity 
 which may consecrate and halo a failure. 
 
 We are not to conclude that failure is essential 
 to success. This doctrine of the success of failure 
 is not a gospel to comfort shabby mediocrity and 
 indolent self-indulgence. It is not an easy road 
 to self-esteem for the riffraff of society. Because 
 one tries and fails, he is not to put himself on the 
 honour roll, with the reflection that he has gotten 
 into the hero and martyr class. One should never 
 be satisfied with failure. Indeed he must be un- 
 willing to fail. A true soul finds failure a fear- 
 ful ordeal. God would have us believe that fail- 
 ure is impossible for one who is faithful to duty \ 
 for it is impossible. Truth is never conquered. 
 
144 TENDENCY 
 
 It always falls to rise again. Duty is forever in- 
 vincible. 
 
 Certainly one is not to make an excuse of fail- 
 ure. It is no cloak for cowardice. He is very 
 far from being either a hero or a martyr who 
 says : " I have failed. Therefore nothing more 
 can be expected of me." There are people who 
 have failed and thank God they have. They are 
 through with a disagreeable task. To such, fail- 
 ure is not a halo of glory but a brand of infamy. 
 The failure which is sacramental is his who fails 
 in the line of duty. The world calls it defeat, 
 but the Eecording Angel enters it as victory. 
 As the years roll on and the mists clear and 
 events shape themselves aright, it is seen that 
 every stand for truth, every testimony for honour, 
 every death for duty was triumphant. 
 
 Let the man who has failed in the path of duty 
 study his failures at the foot of the cross. Let 
 him sun his dying, withered hope in the light 
 of Calvary, and he will find the sere leaves grow 
 green again and winter turn to spring. He will 
 learn that failure is not necessarily defeat and he 
 will come to love duty enough to fail for sake 
 of it. 
 
 The failures of such an one are eternal assets. 
 They are divine values. 
 
 It was about the time Moses said : ''I am a 
 failure," that he became of some account to God. 
 It was when Jacob gave up as a wrestler, that he 
 prevailed. It is the stoop of the soul that re- 
 news it. It is through the defeats and failures 
 
THE SUCCESS OP FAILURE 145 
 
 encountered iu the line of duty, that the divine 
 character is imparted and developed. Struggle 
 brings us nearer to the heart of God. 
 
 He who has learned this begins to live in a 
 divine way, for he worships a God who is not 
 thinking of the gross earnings of his life, the bulk 
 of his happiness, the utensils of his comfort, the 
 statistics of his position ; but who is thinking of 
 him and would give him a soul of courage and a 
 heart of faith ; and that in the old way. He 
 takes him through Gethsemane and out to Cal- 
 vary. He lets him fail, but his grave is not his 
 tomb. It is his throne. 
 
XII 
 
 A FACE TOWARDS THE MORNING 
 
 "He ouly is advancing in life, whose heart is getting 
 softer, whose blood warmer, whose brain quicker, whose 
 spirit is entering into living peace. And the men who have 
 this life in them are the true lords or kings of the earth — 
 they, and they only." — John Buskin. 
 
 No religion is of much account that fails to 
 strike a note of optimism. The creed that does 
 not declare for a sj)irit of cheerfulness is defect- 
 ive. The doctrine that puts a premium on 
 gloom is a dangerous heresy. 
 
 People whose lives are developing in a divine 
 direction are people with their faces towards the 
 morning. They have caught on their souls the 
 light that transfigures. 
 
 It is a significant statement Paul makes in his 
 second letter to the church in Corinth when he 
 says: "I determined this with myself, that I 
 would not come again to you in heaviness." ' 
 
 After a season of serious reflection, he has 
 reached the conclusion that it is his duty to be 
 cheerful. He has tried the other plan and found 
 it unsatisfactory. He says he is coming to 
 Corinth ''again." He had gone once before in 
 heaviness. He had visited the city, with a dole- 
 ful countenance. He had gone cast down and 
 
 ' 2 Cor. ii. 1. 
 
 146 
 
A FACE TOWARDS THE MORNING 147 
 
 oppressed. His reception was not eucouraging. 
 The people seemed sorry to see liiiu. The au- 
 diences were small. The congregations were not 
 responsive. There seemed to be no great demand 
 in Corinth for a preacher whose sermon was a wail. 
 
 He has learned his lesson. He has discovered 
 the calamity of gloom, the worthlessness of pes- 
 simism, the disaster of heaviness. He says : "I 
 will never do it again. I have made up my mind 
 to this. I have finished with the religion of de- 
 pression. It is without value. It lacks power. 
 It has no message. It defeats itself." 
 
 He does not mean that there was nothing to 
 make him heavy-hearted. He is not saying that 
 everything was as it should be, that the church 
 was perfect and every believer faithful, and that 
 there were no divisions nor scandals among the 
 Corinthian Christians. He was not a fool. He 
 knew there was plenty of material for gloom. 
 He knew well enough there were things to dis- 
 courage and change cheer to pessimism, but he 
 says : ''I will not allow these things to depress f\ 
 me. There is another side and I am looking at » 
 that. MTien I come again you may expect me to 
 wear a smile. You will find me in good spirits, 
 for I have determined this with myself that I 
 will not come again to you in heaviness." 
 
 It is not necessary to be heavy-hearted in 
 order to maintain a reputation for piety. One 
 need not wear a sad countenance to prove oneself 
 of the number of the elect. 
 
 This thing of loading down religion with heavi- 
 
148 TEimENCT 
 
 ness is a mistake. This way of striking from the 
 saint's calendar all gay moods and festal occa- 
 sions is wicked. Gloom commands no premium. 
 Its stock is always at a discount. Over against 
 the religion of depression let us place the religion 
 of cheerfulness. It is a good religion, whether 
 we be preachers with churches, or teachers with 
 schools, or parents with children, or doctors with 
 patients, or lawyers with clients, or merchants 
 with customers. Whatever one's work, let him 
 live with his face towards the morning. 
 
 Cheerfulness is a Duty 
 Beginning at the bottom and considering the 
 subject on the lowest plane, cheerfulness is a 
 duty. It is an obligation. It is something we 
 owe. There are certain things we ought to be, 
 such as honest, just, pure, kind. Among these 
 things we ought to be is a strain called '' cheer- 
 fulness." It may not have occurred to a man 
 that he is as morally bound to be cheerful as he 
 is to be honest. If not, it is because he has not 
 gone very far in the study of morals. 
 
 Cheerfulness is a duty we owe to others. I 
 have no more right to unload my nasty moods 
 and ugly humours on an unoffending public than 
 I have to throw my garbage into my neighbour's 
 back yard. It is the quintessence of selfishness 
 for a man to come from business sour and cross 
 and ill-tempered, and to inject all his infelicity 
 into the stream of domestic life. It is a gross in- 
 justice for a teacher to unload her nerves on the 
 
A FACE TOWARDS THE MORNING 149 
 
 iuuocent beads of her pupils. It is a strategic 
 blunder for a preacher who falls down to try to t 
 comfort himself by seorchiug his cougregatiou. ' 
 Each of us has enough of his own that is dis- 
 agreeable, without being loaded down with his 
 neighbour's. It is oui- duty to add something to 
 the light of the world, rather than to increase its 
 darkness. 
 
 Cheerfulness is a duty we owe to ourselves. 
 Self-interest calls for cheerful moods. No one 
 can do his best who surrenders to gloom. This 
 way of seeing all the difficulties and sleeping 
 with all the troubles and carrying all the burdens, 
 unfits for life. It has been the ruin of many a 
 career. Many a man has gone to pieces for no. 
 other reason than that he insisted on heaviness. \ 
 Gloom makes everything harder. The story is 
 told of a little girl who was at dinner, and just as 
 she raised the spoon to her lips it was flooded 
 with golden sunlight, pouring through a western 
 window. As she took the spoon from her mouth 
 she said, ''Mamma, I have swallowed a whole 
 spoonful of sunshine. ' ' Many would be improved 
 by a little sunshine on the daily bill of fare. 
 Sweetness and light will improve any disposition. 
 
 Cheerfulness is also a duty we owe our work, 
 our profession, our business, the vocation in 
 which we are investing our life. Whatever it 
 may be, it deserves enthusiastic espousal. If we 
 are not enthusiastic over it, who will be ? If we 
 go around sighing about the heavy and depress- 
 ing character of our life-work, people will have 
 
150 TENDENCY 
 
 uo respect for either it or us. We should give to 
 it our best and let it fill us with light aud hope. 
 
 By all means cheerfulness is a duty we owe our 
 Maker. This is God's world and it is as beauti- 
 ful a world as the Deity could make. The provi- 
 sion for our comfort is God's product and it is 
 ample. Why should the children of a king go 
 mourning all their days ? If we are Christians, 
 we owe it to Christ that we be cheerful Christians. 
 If He can do uo more for us than make us wail 
 aud look dejected, there will be little encourage- 
 ment for those who are already dejected to turn to 
 j Christ for relief. Christ did not say to His dis- 
 fciples, " Ye are the clouds of the world, the gloom 
 of the world, the dejection of the world," but "Ye 
 are the light of the world." "Let your light so 
 shine before men that they may see your good 
 works and glorify your Faiher which is in 
 heaven." 
 
 But this i)lane of duty is the lowest from which 
 to discuss the subject. The poorest thing to be 
 said about cheerfulness is that it is a duty. 
 
 Cheerfulness is a Privilege 
 Privilege is better than duty. Duties are what 
 we are obligated to do, privileges are what we are 
 permitted to do. Our privileges are our treasures. 
 They are the things we seek. They enrich and 
 beautify and bless and transform. Among our 
 privileges is cheerfulness and without it one can- 
 not be truly happy. 
 
 It is not the absence of seriousness. It is not to 
 
A FACE TOWAEDS THE MOENING 151 
 
 be coufounded with flippancy. It does uot mean 
 that one must give up his convictions and take a 
 shallow view of life. His optimism is uot to be 
 like that of the ostrich which tucks its head 
 under its wings when pursued and imagines that 
 its enemy has ceased to exist because no longer 
 seen. Indeed one must see all that is hostile. 
 The true optimist takes the most serious view of 
 life and for this very reason is convinced that he 
 must be cheerful. He is saying "I must be 
 cheerful. I cannot stand these things in any 
 other way. If I am to live and win, I must move 
 from the swamps to the heights. I must ascend 
 to privileges." 
 
 This is the way the Bible looks at the subject. 
 It does not regard cheerfulness as a duty but 
 rather as a privilege. The three great occasions; 
 in the Jewish year were the feasts. They were I 
 the times of choicest and greatest religious privi- 
 lege, but they were festival events. The people 
 did not go around with doleful countenances, 
 chanting a dirge, but with hosannas of praise and 
 hallelujahs of thanksgiving. 
 
 Cheerfulness enables us to enjoy life. It 
 doubles every blessing. One may have all the 
 material for happiness, but if he lack cheerful- 
 ness, it profits him nothing. He may have 
 friends and home and wealth and the oppor- 
 tunities for travel and the gratification of his 
 tastes, but if he be without clieerfuluess, they 
 will profit him nothing. Of all the moods of the 
 contented life, cheerfulness is greatest, 
 
152 TENDENCY 
 
 It puts tlie soul in tune. It gives the spirit 
 harmony and grace. It is the music of existence. 
 The poet Carpaui asked Haydn why his church 
 music was so cheerful. Haydn replied : "I can- 
 not make it otherwise. I write according to the 
 thoughts I feel ; when I think upon God, my 
 heart is so full of joy that the notes dance and 
 leap, as it were, from my pen ; and since God has 
 given me a cheerful heart, it wiU be pardoned me 
 that I serve Him with a cheerful spirit." 
 
 A cheerful heart not only sees and hears the 
 beauty of the world, but sings it. Cheerfulness 
 affects everything ; and all it touches, it makes 
 beautiful. Sometimes you have seen a face whose 
 features were homely. There was not a line of 
 grace in the countenance, but there was a look in 
 the face that delighted you. There was an ex- 
 pression that transformed the homely features 
 and filled the countenance with beauty. It was 
 the shining out of a cheerful soul. 
 
 Why be moody and morose when we may be 
 cheerful ? Why stay in the swamps and be 
 choked by the fogs and poisoned by the rank 
 vapours of the marshes, when the sun-kissed 
 heights are open ? 
 
 Cheerfulness is something more than duty ; it 
 is something higher even than privilege. 
 
 Cheerfulness is Power 
 If we are out for power, if we are unwilling to 
 reduce our capital, we must be cheerful. Cheer- 
 fulness doubles the effectiveness of personality. 
 
A FACE TOWARDS THE MORNING 153 
 
 It enables one to use the power he already pos- 
 sesses. Gloom clogs the wheels. Cheerfulness 
 is like oil on the axles and cylinders. One can 
 do better work in a cheerful mood, for he can 
 handle himself to better advantage. We all feel 
 this. When we are cheerful, we can do any- 
 thing. The work is no trouble. Indeed it is not 
 our work that is ever the difficulty, so much as 
 our mood. It is not what we do that wears us 
 out. It is rather worrying about what we do not 
 do, but think we should. It is not overwork that 
 breaks people down, so much as worry over 
 underwork, imperfect work. If only we could 
 be cheerful, our vocation would be transformed 
 and work made a delight. 
 
 Optimism is essential to success. Gloom gets 
 no audience anywhere. The thing for which we 
 are willing to pay the price of admission must 
 please us. If a book promises to make one mel- 
 ancholy if he read it, he will decline with thauks. 
 The books we love are those that give us pleas- 
 ant moods. Should a certain course of action of- 
 fer whose issue is likely to depress you, you shun 
 it as you would smallpox. We may be willing 
 to endure a cross for the sake of loyalty to a 
 great cause or a holy ideal, but not for the sake 
 of being entertained. 
 
 Let two men of equal capital and ability start 
 in the same business at the same time, side by 
 side. Let their positions and establishments and 
 opportunities be the same in all respects ; but let 
 one man be cross and sour and mean while his 
 
154 TENDENCY 
 
 neighbour is genial and obliging and cheerful. 
 We know perfectly well which door will be 
 thronged and which man is doomed to make a 
 speedy assignment of his assets to satisfy his 
 creditors. 
 
 Hume said: "The habit of looking on the 
 bright side of things is worth more than an in- 
 come of a thousand dollars a year." "While one 
 cannot always be cheerful on even a thousand a 
 year, especially when his salary is paid him in 
 the currency of his own moods ; Hume is prob- 
 ably correct in his estimate of the financial value 
 of cheerfulness. 
 
 Emerson says : " Do not hang a dismal picture 
 on your walls and do not deal with sable and 
 gloom in your conversation." 
 
 Dr. Talmage used to declare " Some people 
 have an idea that they comfort the afflicted when 
 they groan over them. Don't drive a hearse 
 through a man's soul. When you bind up a 
 broken bone of a soul, and you want splints, do 
 not make them out of cast iron." 
 
 '' Give us, oh, give us," cries Carlyle, *' the man 
 who sings at his work ! Be his occupation what 
 it may, he is equal to any of those who follow the 
 same pursuit in silent sullenuess. He will do 
 more in the same time — he will do it better — he 
 will persevere longer. One is scarcely sensible 
 of fatigue when he marches to music. The very 
 stars are said to make harmony as they revolve in 
 their spheres. Wondrous is the strength of 
 cheerfulness, altogether past calculation its power 
 
A PACE TOWAEDS THE MORNING 155 
 
 of endurance. Efforts to be permanently useful, 
 must be uniformly joyous — a spirit all sunshine 
 — graceful from very gladness, beautiful because 
 bright." 
 
 Cheerfulness is duty, it is privilege, it is 
 power. There is, however, a still higher thing 
 to say about it. 
 
 Cheerfulness is Possible 
 
 It is possible for every cue, whatever his tem- 
 per or disposition or climate or circumstances or 
 call, to be cheerful. This is a bold thing to say, 
 but I believe it to be true. 
 
 I do not mean to say that one can always be on 
 the mountain top. There will come periods of 
 depression, occasional descents into the vale of 
 gloom. Neither do I mean that cheerfulness will 
 come easily or at once ; but by hard, persistent 
 effort the prevailing mood of life may be made a 
 cheerful one. 
 
 How is it to be done ? 
 
 Something will be gained by fortitude. There 
 is virtue in the stoic's method, in the refusal to 
 be cast down ; in the stubborn and dogged nega- 
 tion of heaviness. I am not advocating the 
 chloroform method of deadening the soul to pain- 
 ful sensations ; nor am I commending the fool's 
 philosophy which identifies virtue with calamity ; 
 or that peculiarly baffling interpretation of Prov- 
 idence which makes one's spirits fall as he pros- 
 pers and rise as his afflictions multiply. When he 
 published "Taxation No Tyranny," Dr. Johnson 
 
 \ 
 
156 TENDENCY 
 
 is reported as saying to Boswell : " I do not think 
 I have been sufficiently attacked for that work. 
 Attack is the reaction. I never feel that I have 
 struck a good blow unless there is a glorious re- 
 bound." To which Boswell replied : " What are 
 you coming at now, sir ? I should think that five 
 or six small arms in every newspaper, and repeated 
 cannonading in pamphlets would satisfy you." 
 
 There are a few people who seem never so happy 
 as when they are most miserable, but the major- 
 ity of the human race is built on a different plan. 
 
 There is, however, such a thing as rising by 
 sheer force of the will above the depressing ef- 
 fects of adverse conditions and remaining cheerful 
 by the power of determination. At the battle of 
 Germantown, General Nash, of North Carolina, 
 had his horse shot from under him. The charge 
 which killed the horse tore a hole in the Gen- 
 eral's thigh. As horse and rider fell. General 
 Nash clapped his hands over the hole in his leg 
 and laughingly said to his men : ''Boys, I've had 
 a devil of a tumble. Don't wait for me, but 
 hurry on after the enemy." That is the spirit 
 of the conqueror. A man with a will like that 
 cannot be depressed. 
 
 Nothing can 
 
 \ . " Circumvent or hinder, or control, 
 
 I The firm resolve of a determined soul." 
 
 A still better thing to do is to cultivate the 
 habit of looking on the bright side of things. 
 Like any other habit, it is a habit that can be 
 
A FACE TOWARDS THE MOENING 157 
 
 cultivated. One cau get in the way of looking 
 for that which is disagreeable, or, if he choose, 
 for that which is pleasant. He can cultivate the 
 disposition of seeing, as soon as any subject is 
 mentioned, the shadows, or, if he j)refer, the lights. 
 
 Both are there. It is simply a question of 
 which he will elect. . 
 
 Life is like the ancient shield with two sides, ' 
 one of gold and one of silver. The two knights 
 fell out and fought as to which was right, one 
 contending that the shield was gold and the other 
 as stoutly asserting that it was silver. After 
 both were worn out in the contest, they decided 
 to look at the shield itself, and lo, both were 
 right. 
 
 So it is in life. There is a bright side and a 
 dark side. It is merely a question of which onejl 
 prefers. 
 
 One may cultivate the habit of looking at the 
 bright side. Perhaps this is the one thing of 
 real value in Christian Science. Christian 
 Science is not a religion. Its errors from that 
 standpoint are palpable. But Christian Science 
 is valuable as mental therapeutics. Some one 
 
 expressed an aversion to calling on Mrs. , 
 
 and said : " She wails so much ; but I understand 
 she wails less now. Probably her health is bet- 
 ter." *'Her health is better," was the reply, I 
 " because she wails less." 
 
 The practice of wailing is hard on the consti- 
 tution. It is bad for the nerves. It is better to 
 be cheerful. 
 
158 TENDENCY 
 
 It is not a question of what to think about. 
 There are plenty of things over which to worry. 
 There are problems of sorrow and suffering and 
 pain and sin sufficient to drive us crazy if we al- 
 low them. It is rather a question of what we 
 will think about. He is wise who counts his 
 blessings. 
 
 The best of all the ways to be cheerful is the 
 method Dr. Chalmers used to commend when he 
 spoke of 'Hhe expulsive power of a new affec- 
 tion." It is the method of crowding out the 
 gloom with the light. The way the seven devils 
 were to be kept out of the cleansed house of the 
 man in the parable, was by the angel who took 
 up his abode in the house. 
 
 This is the method of the Gospel : Christianity 
 proposes to make people happy by filling their 
 hearts with Christ's joy and peace. It is the only 
 effective method. We must go beyond our de- 
 termination to be cheerful, strong as that may be. 
 We must have more than the habit of looking on 
 the bright side of things, valuable as is such a 
 habit. If we are to be permanently and trium- 
 phantly cheerful we must have Christ. The song 
 of divine grace must sing in our hearts. 
 
 As He was bidding them farewell on the eve of 
 His arrest, Christ said to His disciples : ''Peace 
 I leave with you." As He arose from the dead 
 on the morning of His Eesurrection His salu- 
 tation was "Peace be uuto you." One must 
 claim Christ's bequest of peace, and he will find 
 cheerfulness not only holy duty and precious 
 
A FACE TOWAEDS THE MORNING 159 
 
 privilege and mighty power, but he will fiud it a 
 blessed possibility. 
 
 " ^\^iy is your face always in smiles ? " asked 
 Deicolus of Columbanus. "Because uo oue cau 
 take my God from me," was the jubilaut reply. 
 
XIII 
 
 SANCTIFIED FOR THE STREET 
 
 " I have led 
 A life too stirring for those vague beliefs 
 That superstition builds in solitude. ' ' 
 
 — Letitia E. Landon. 
 
 Life develops best in its own medium, and 
 the divinely appointed medium of life is the liv- 
 ing. 
 
 The place for a religious man is not out of the 
 world but in the world, among people, where 
 the powers with which he is endowed may find 
 employment, and the longings which cry in his 
 nature may have expression. 
 
 The cloister was a mistake, a colossal blunder. 
 It has taken man a few thousand years to dis- 
 cover that he was not meant to be a hermit : that 
 he has nothing to fear but everything to hope 
 from his kind. 
 
 Society is his salvation, and at least one-half of 
 life is to live on right terms with his fellows. 
 
 The Hebrew prophet was ahead of his times 
 but a true seer, who wrote : ' ' In the day that I 
 shall have cleansed you from all your iniquities, 
 I will also cause you to dwell in the cities." ^ 
 
 He seems to have a notion that one could find 
 • Ezek. xxxvi. 33. 
 160 
 
SANCTIFIED FOR THE STREET 161 
 
 a sanctuary ou every highway, and that people 
 are made holy not to dwell in a cave, but to live 
 in a city, where life is intense. 
 
 Sanctification is the cleansing of the soul. It 
 is having the heart purified. It is getting rid of 
 the pollution of sin and of the stains of lust. It 
 is having the mange of pride scoured out of one's 
 moral nature. It is getting one's sourness 
 sweetened, his acidity and acerbity mollified, his 
 ugliness transformed. It is being made gentle 
 and genuine and gracious and good and pure and 
 holy. 
 
 It is a big undertaking. To cleanse even the 
 best is no easy task. To make a saint one must 
 do more than provide holy apparel. The proc- 
 ess of sanctification is not a mere matter of vest- 
 ments. It is not enough to make clean one's 
 conduct. His character must be cleansed, his 
 mind, his heart, his will, his imagination, his mo- 
 tives. It is no easy thing to manufacture a real 
 saint. The counterfeit can be quickly and inex- 
 pensively produced, but a real saint is costly. l> 
 
 It requires God. If our moral and spiritual | 
 nature is to be purified, we must turn ourselves 
 over to God for treatment. God is never in de- 
 spair. No matter how stained and defiled the 
 life may be, God can cleanse it. He can sanctify 
 the worst. He sees the making of a saint in 
 the worst of sinners. He says : " Though your 
 sins be as scarlet they shall be as white as snow ; 
 though they be red like crimson, they shall be as 
 wool." 
 
162 
 
 TENDENCY 
 
 y 
 
 What is sanctification for ? Is it the goal of 
 religion, the end of being ? 
 
 Is there nothing better than being good ? Is 
 there nothing beyond holiness ? Has G od tin ished 
 when He has cleansed us from all our iniquities ? 
 Is sanctification the final act in the drama of 
 spirituality ? When one achieves sainthood, has 
 he completed the curriculum of religion ? 
 
 Many say " Yes " — if not audibly none the less 
 actually. There is a notion that the chief end 
 of religion is to make people good, to keep them 
 from being bad, to keep them from doing bad 
 things, to keep them from saying bad words, to 
 keep them from going to bad places, to keep 
 them from enjoying bad pleasures, to keep 
 them from associating with bad people, to keep 
 them from eating and drinking bad things, to 
 keep them from having bad thoughts. If it can 
 only make people good, religion is a success. If 
 it can cleanse us from all our iniquities, there is 
 nothing further to consider. 
 
 If this be the purpose of sanctification, God 
 must set a very high valuation on human piety. 
 Upon reflection, must we not reach the conclusion 
 that God has a poor sense of values ? This no- 
 tion that religion is concerned only or chiefly 
 with getting people into a state of sanctified 
 spirituality, is a very low and selfish estimate of 
 the uses of religion. Indeed there is no worse 
 form of selfishness than spiritual egotism. It is 
 the travesty and desecration of the best. 
 
 It would monopolize the Almighty. It would 
 
SANCTIFIED FOR THE STREET 163 
 
 reduce the activities of the Deity to a schedule 
 aud scheme lor getting a few choice souls into au 
 estate of immaculate puiity, where they may be 
 the euvy of the universe, if not its despair. This 
 is uot Christianity. Christianity looks beyond 
 the cleansing process. Goodness is merely an 
 incident. There is something better than being 
 good. There is something finer than getting into 
 the gallery of the saints. On one occasion Paul 
 said : "I could wish myself accursed for my 
 brethren." He said: "There is something so 
 high and fine and great that for the sake of it, I 
 am willing to forego personal redemption." 
 Evidently he believed in a goal beyond sainthood. 
 There is something better than the promise of 
 sanctification. It is the purpose of sanctification. 
 
 Sanctification is preparation— for what "? 
 
 The common answer is the sanctuary. "I 
 have been cleansed from all my iniquities, there- 
 fore I can now appear before the Lord in an ac- 
 ceptable manner. I have been sanctified, now I 
 can worship to advantage, I can say my prayers 
 with some hope of returns, I can read my Bible 
 with profit, I can partake of the Holy (Com- 
 munion without sacrilege. I have been made 
 holy, now I can climb to the heights of the Mount 
 of Transfiguration, and dwell on the plains of 
 peace, and breathe the rarified atmosphere of the 
 triumphant life of privilege and assurance. I am 
 a holy man, therefore I may now enjoy quiet rest, 
 and holy meditation aud blissful contemplation 
 aud perfect peace. 
 
 '1 
 
/ 
 
 164 TENDENCY 
 
 " At any rate, since I have been sanctified, I 
 must be careful not to be secularized. I must 
 keep away from the wicked world. I must shun 
 dirt of all kinds. I must not allow my white 
 soul to be stained nor my sanctified garments to 
 be defiled. I must lead the separated life. Does 
 it not say, ' Come ye out from among them and 
 be ye separate from sinners ' ? I must come out. 
 The Lord's seal is on me. I am one of His 
 chosen people and I must not mingle with the 
 multitude of them who have not the fear of the 
 Lord before them." 
 
 And so some would quarantine themselves 
 against mankind. They are so solicitous not to be 
 secularized that they imprison themselves from 
 the wicked world. They seek holy retreats and 
 pious solitudes. They take refuge in monasteries 
 and convents and sanctified seclusions, where 
 they may stay good and practice the holy life. 
 
 This is not the program of a real saint. 
 
 Instead of shunning it, the real saint seeks the 
 
 secular. He is thrust into it. Sanctification is 
 
 not so much preparation for the sanctuary as for 
 
 f the street. The city is a saner residence for a 
 
 \ good man than a religious retreat. 
 
 "I will also cause you to dwell in the cities." 
 God seems to nullify Himself. He seems to 
 make void His own work. "In the day that I 
 shall have cleansed you from all your iniquities." 
 That is a great day. ''I will also cause you to 
 dwell in the cities." What a disappointment! 
 What a wretched finale ! The city is the very 
 
SANCTIFIED FOR THE STREET 165 
 
 incarnation of the world-spirit. It is the em- 
 bodiment of ail that is bad. The city imperils 
 the good. Recently I read a book on National 
 Perils, and the caption of one of the chapters 
 was "The City." The popular estimate of the 
 city is to regard it as a peril. It is the strong- 
 hold of sin. It is the place where all the harm 
 is done. There iniquity is concocted and vice is 
 at home. There temptation is impudent and in- 
 cessant. The city is the place where the saint 
 is destroyed and goodness laid low. It is the 
 home of struggle and suffering, of poverty and 
 want, of woe and sorrow. 
 
 Surely the soul of a saint will soon be choked 
 to death in that atmosphere ; the sanctified will 
 soon become secularized. We are saying that 
 the city is the last place for us if we want to be 
 good. The very last place for the sanctified man 
 is the street of sin. Let him flee temptation. 
 Let him hark from the haunts of vice. Let him 
 get to the country, into contact with nature, 
 where the open fields and blue skies and singing 
 birds and blooming flowers and all the other 
 things shall whisper to him of God and help him 
 to stay good. In the day that he is sanctified let 
 him flee the town. 
 
 God says, "Seek the town." Instead of the 
 sanctuary and the communion table, God says 
 the market-place and the busy street. Instead of 
 the open fields, He says the crowded city. In- 
 stead of a garden He says a slum. Man is sancti- 
 fied, not that he may climb some Mount of Trans- 
 
V 
 
 166 TENDENCY 
 
 figuration or take an outing to the land of rest or 
 cusliion himself in the blissful repose of some 
 sequestered sanctuary, but he is sanctified for the 
 most secular place and the most secular occupa- 
 tion. 
 
 A genuine saint is a citizen. By a citizen, I 
 mean not merely a man who wakes up on election 
 days and hangs around a voting booth and talks 
 politics. A citizen is a member of the com- 
 munity. He is not a hermit but a fellow man. 
 He carries the problems of the city in his heart. 
 He plunges into the thick of its activities. He 
 loves its people. He does his best to fight the 
 city's battles, and to protect its interests. He 
 gives his all to feed its hungers and nurse its 
 sickness and solace its woes and comfort its sor- 
 rows. He wears himself out in its service. This 
 is the real citizen, and this kind of citizen is the 
 real saint. 
 
 The man of the street needs to be a God- 
 cleansed man. He needs the sanctuary to be 
 sure. He must not dare adventure the city or 
 appear upon the street until he has had his con- 
 tact with God. Before ever he takes up the 
 duties of the office, the shop, the factory, the 
 school, the store, he must linger at the altar. 
 The reason the street slays us is that we have 
 neglected the altar. The reason the city destroys 
 us is that we have gone there uncleansed, with 
 all the stain and weakness of the secular upon us. 
 The man whose work is the most secular is the 
 man of all others who most needs an hour of wor- 
 
SANCTIFIED FOR THE STEEET 1G7 
 
 ship and an altar of prayer. He whose life is 
 most worldly is he whose need is most desperate 
 for the sanctifying, cleansiug and illuminating 
 ministry of faith. But after God has cleansed 
 him, let him not fear the secular. Let him seek 
 the city. 
 
 The street needs the saint. It needs the man 
 who looks beyond the sky-scrapers and who heai-s 
 above the din and tumult of trade, the call of the A 
 Eternal. Commerce needs the entry of men whose 
 standard of righteousness is from God. Politics 
 needs the activities of men whose convictions are 
 a pai't of their worship. Society needs the help 
 of people whose pleasures are a blessed ministry 
 and whose prayer life is not negatived by their 
 play life. Let us be done with the cant which 
 shouts "wolf" every time the Chm-ch gets into 
 the street, every time the saint becomes a man of 
 the town and Christianity lays hold of real prob- 
 lems. 
 
 We have had enough of these tin soldier saints, 
 these dim sanctum saints, these glass case saints, ' 
 these self-centred saints, these mutual admiration 
 saints, these private monopoly saints, who think ' 
 God has nothing to do but to preserve them unto 
 His heavenly kingdom. Let us have a few plain, \ 
 ordinary town saints ; a few secularized saints ; \ 
 an order of priests who are priests indeed ; a gen- i 
 eration of Christians who are not too holy to be ' 
 useful. 
 
 Religion, instead of taking us out of the world, 
 is meant to take us into it. If Christ has cleansed 
 
\ 
 
 168 TENDENCY 
 
 ine, instead of running from temptation I must 
 fight it ; instead of avoiding trouble, I must cure 
 it ; instead of shunning suffering, I must share it. 
 I must plunge into the game of real life. This 
 was Jesus' way, and we must follow Him. He 
 did not spend His time seeking religious retreats. 
 He sanctified Himself ; but He did not say " Now 
 that I am sanctified, I must get out of the world." 
 His sanctification was His preparation for serv- 
 ing humanity. It took Him into the street 
 at whose end stood a cross. This is what 
 Paul meant when he said he was willing to 
 sacrifice personal redemption to save his people. 
 He was following in the footsteps of Him who 
 teaches that if any man will save his life, he must 
 lose it. 
 
 Let us not be in too great a hurry to die and 
 go to heaven. When we speak of being un- 
 worldly, let us be sure we get our words straight. 
 What is worldliness ? Is it not selfishness 1 Who 
 are the selfish? Are they not the people who 
 will have nothing to do with others ? The selfish 
 I man is the man who will have no neighbours, no 
 ' boon companions, and who repudiates all social 
 ties and social duties. He is the real worldling. 
 i He incarnates the real world spirit. He is sanc- 
 I tified for his private profit and he thinks of 
 * heaven as a close corporation of which he is one 
 of the controlling stockholders. 
 
 Christ is leading us not back to the garden but 
 on to the town, not back to Eden but on to the 
 New Jerusalem. He is beckoning us to a city. 
 
SANCTIFIED FOR THE STREET 169 
 
 *^ I, John, saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, 
 coming down from God out of heaven!" This 
 is the dream of Christianity for the future of 
 mankind. God sanctifies us, not that we may 
 wander through the daisied fields, but enter the 
 crowded streets, not that we may withdraw into 
 selfish solitudes, but with the Son of Man, toil 
 among the iDeople. He is calling us to service, 
 to fellowship, to brotherhood ! 
 
 " I said, ' Let me walk in the field.' 
 He said, ' Nay, walk in the town. ' 
 I said, ' There are no flowera there. ' 
 He said, ' No flowers but a crown. ' 
 
 " I said, ' But the skies are black, 
 
 There is nothing but noise and din.' 
 And He wept as He sent me back, 
 
 ' There is more,' He said, ' There is sin.' 
 
 " I said, ' But the air is thick. 
 And fogs are veiling the sun.' 
 He answered, ' Yet souls are sick, 
 And souls in the dark undone.' 
 
 " I said, ' I shall miss the light 
 
 And friends will miss me they say.' 
 He answered, ' Choose to-night. 
 If I am to miss you or they.' 
 
 " I pleaded for time to be given. 
 He said, ' Is it hard to decide? 
 It will not seem hard in heaven 
 To have followed the steps of your guide.* 
 
170 TENDENCY 
 
 " I cast one look at the field, 
 
 Then set my face to the town. 
 He said, ' My child, do you yield ? 
 
 Will you leave the flowers for the crown ? ' 
 
 " Then into His hand went mine 
 And into my heart came He, 
 And I walked in a light divine. 
 The path I had feared to see." * 
 
 * George Macdonald. 
 
XIV 
 
 THE VALUE OF AN EDDY IN THE 
 STREAM OF LIFE 
 
 " For solitnde sometimes is beat society, 
 And short retirement nrges sweet return." 
 
 — John Milton. 
 
 In life, as in music, there is value in a rest. 
 The idea of the sanctity of the Sabbath, of the 
 high obligation of a day of rest in the midst of 
 the strenuous week, is not accidental. 
 
 A pause, now and then, is necessary to life's 
 symmetric development. Even Christ, who lived 
 life, after a heavenly fashion on earth, and who 
 is our fairest illustration of the perfect life, was 
 not above the need of rest. 
 
 On one occasion. He said to His disciples : 
 "Come ye yourselves apart into a desert place, 
 and rest a while." ^ 
 
 To those strenuous disciples, who from quiet 
 fishermen had become busy apostles, thronged 
 by insistent crowds and absorbed by incessant 
 and exacting duties, Jesus said : ' ' Get away 
 from it all for a while to some desert place, where 
 you can get your breath and eat your food un- 
 molested." 
 
 > Mark vi. 31. 
 171 
 
172 TENDENCY 
 
 It looked as if Christ were side-tracking them ; 
 as if He were sending them to obscurity just as 
 they were reaching the height of popularity ; as if 
 He were throwing them out of the race the mo- 
 ment they were about to pluck the goal of suc- 
 cess. What career was there for such men as 
 these in the desert ? 
 
 A short while before Jesus had called these 
 men to Him and sent them forth on a great 
 campaign. He had equipped and commissioned 
 them and sent them out. True, their equipment 
 seemed rather meagre. Their baggage was light ; 
 they were not allowed two coats. Their supplies 
 were small ; there was not enough in the purse to 
 pay for a night's lodging. They were told to go 
 forth and preach repentance. It was an unpop- 
 ular doctrine. They faced the campaign with 
 vague forebodings. They were without capital 
 and without reputation. What could they hope 
 to accomplish ? But they went, and now they are 
 back. 
 
 They have won. Everything has come their 
 way. The results have been marvellous. They 
 are intoxicated with success. They have worked 
 wonders. Their message has proven to be most 
 popular. The people have crowded to hear them. 
 Even the devils have been subject to them. At 
 their touch diseases have been healed. Their 
 missionary journey has been a triumphal proces- 
 sion. It is wonderful what a man with nothing 
 but the message and tlie power of God can accom- 
 plish. Nothing is too hard for him. He needs 
 
THE VALUE OF AN EDDY 173 
 
 only to proclaim the message and to exercise the 
 power to carry the day. 
 
 They are telling Christ the story of their suc- 
 cess. Their aspect has changed somewhat. 
 Their tone is not quite the same. They are be- 
 ginning to feel their importance. There is a bit 
 of ecclesiastical arrogance in their accent. That 
 trick is acquired so soon. They are saying to 
 Christ: "The thing is easy. We can change 
 this land. We have had crowds everywhere. 
 Everybody is talking about us. Wherever you 
 go, you will hear our names. Look at the crowds 
 yonder. They are expecting preaching again." 
 Then Jesus said that which sounded strange to 
 those popular and successful disciples. He bade 
 them pause. It was not what they were expect- 
 ing to hear. It seemed to them the very last 
 and worst thing to do. The crisis was at hand. 
 The psychological moment had arrived. They 
 had the ear of the public. Now was the time to 
 strike. What was needed was not to relax, but 
 to redouble their efforts. Christ says : "Quiet! 
 Give over the whole campaign. Get away from 
 the people entirely." 
 
 He saw what the disciples did not see. He 
 saw the difference between publicity and power, 
 between curiosity and conviction, between a 
 crowd and a convert, between notoriety and suc- 
 cess. He knew what the work needed, and He 
 also knew what the workers needed ; and so He 
 told His disciples to leave the crowds and seek 
 the solitude ; to get to some spot where they 
 
174 TENDENCY 
 
 could be alone ; to get out of the roar and rush 
 and struggle of the main current to some quiet 
 eddy under a green bank where the waters were 
 still and the stream placid and where they could 
 rest a while. 
 
 He proclaims the value of an eddy in the stream 
 of life. 
 
 Often His word to men is like that to His dis- 
 ciples on the morning of their missionary adven- 
 tui-e. He sends them out into mid-stream. He 
 says : ''Go forth and work ; testify, heal, help, 
 champion the cause of the weak, comfort the dis- 
 tressed, be diligent, be tireless, be industrious, 
 transact the business of the world for the glory of 
 God." Sometimes the vastness of the enterprise 
 is overwhelming. Our gifts are poor and our 
 equipment meagre. What can we accomplish? 
 But it is wonderful what any man or woman can 
 do in this world with nothing but the message 
 and the power of God. We go forth and try, and 
 somehow the impossible again comes to pass. 
 We find that the stone has been rolled away 
 from the door of the sepulchre. We discover 
 that God's word does not return unto Him void. 
 Success surprises us. 
 
 Then just at the critical moment, when there is 
 so much to do, when the fruit of the vineyard is 
 fully ripe, and the fields white unto the harvest, 
 and everything is calling for redoubled effort, 
 Christ says : < ' Eest a while. ' ' He thrusts in be- 
 tween us and our work, and by His providence, 
 shunts us to some solitude. He bids us turn our 
 
THE VALUE OF AN EDDY 175 
 
 boat out of the maiu curreut. He commands us 
 to get out of the rush aud roai' and race and seek 
 some quiet spot, where the willows hang low and 
 the waters ripple in gentle murmurs on the quiet 
 sands, aud there forget for a while that there is 
 anything to do in the world. 
 
 It is not always easy to be reconciled to the 
 eddy. We feel that to be taken out of the thick of 
 things is to fail. To one of active mind and 
 vigorous stroke, the eddy seems an asylum of de- 
 feat. It is no easy thing to endure enforced in- 
 activity. We feel that we should be up and on. 
 Unless we are busy, life seems wasted and oppor- 
 tunity lost. It is hard to feel that we are living 
 to much purpose unless we are in the midst of the 
 whirling rapids, contending with might and main 
 against the tumult of waters that drench us with 
 their spray and thunder about us the menace and 
 challenge of their compelling forces. 
 
 Christ, however, knows the value of an eddy. 
 He knows the business of the main current, too. 
 There are times when no one is more for the mid- 
 stream than He. He was no idle dreamer. He 
 lived a stirring life. He did things. He thrilled 
 his age. He traversed his land over and over 
 again, from border to border. Few but knew 
 there was such a person as the Eabbi Jesus ; and 
 all who wished, had the chance to see Him. But 
 Jesus also knew there were times when the 
 worker should forsake the crowds and take to 
 the desert ; when he should let the work go ; 
 when he should forget that there are people tired 
 
176 TENDENCY 
 
 and hungry and sick ; when he should turn his 
 back on the throngs of eager, interested, insist- 
 ent, needy humanity, and sink himself for 
 a while, beyond the reach of publicity, in some 
 serene solitude. 
 
 Are there not occasions when what we need is 
 not to be prodded, to be told to be more ener- 
 getic, more diligent and assiduous, to rise earlier 
 and work longer and be instant in season and out 
 of season 1 Are there not times when we do not 
 greatly need a fresh dissertation on the charms 
 and virtues of the strenuous life ? Perhaps we 
 have heard enough about "the strenuous life." 
 The trouble with the average life to-day is that 
 it is a little too strenuous. There are many com- 
 ing and going and there is no leisure so much as 
 to eat. Humanity swarms in ceaseless activities. 
 
 The need is for a pause, a respite in the desert. 
 The need is to get to some place where the tele- 
 phone bell does not ring ; out of the roar and rush 
 and struggle ; to some serene retreat where we can 
 rest on our oars and listen to the lap of the waters 
 as they rock the boat, and look up through the 
 leaves of the arching branches into heaven's 
 eternal blue, and hear the bird-songs in the 
 boughs and the frogs croaking in the flags, 
 while the blessed quiet and peace of brooding 
 nature falls around the soul. 
 
 We need the solitude and quiet of the eddy for 
 rest. Jesus saw that His disciples were jaded and 
 tired. Perhaps they did not feel it themselves. 
 One may be so absorbed in his work as to be ob- 
 
THE VALUE OF AN EDDY 177 
 
 livions of phj^sical exhaustiou. Christ's keen eye 
 detected that His disciples were weary and He said 
 to them : " You must rest. Your work is im- 
 portant ; but just now something else is more im- 
 portant. Come apart and rest a while." 
 
 It was to be just for ''a while." It was not to 
 be permanent. Rest is not the regular program 
 for this life. Work is the regular ijrogrum. iiiit 
 Christ knew the value of a pause in the mu.sic. 
 He would have these men rest long enough to 
 give their worn bodies and weary brains a chance 
 to recover ; until they could get themselves in 
 hand and make ready for a fresh campaign. 
 
 People sometimes need rest. We are made of 
 the sort of stuff that gets tired. We are not 
 made of iron and stone and steel, but of flesh and 
 blood ; and these are no match for machinery in 
 a long race. The failure to observe the need for 
 rest is often accompanied by disastrous conse- 
 quences. The columns of the daily papers stare 
 us in great head-lines with the announcements of 
 frightful railway disasters. While all of these 
 dreadful fatalities are not occasioned by requir- 
 ing men to work beyond the point of physical 
 efficiency, doubtless many of them are the direct 
 result of driving flesh and blood and brain and 
 muscle beyond human endurance. Men are told 
 to work on when their eyelids hang heavy for 
 lack of sleep and their brains are dull and slug- 
 gish from the prolonged strain. 
 
 Nervous disorders are largely on the increase, 
 and no doubt a chief explanation is the failure of 
 
178 TENDENCY 
 
 people to rest when they need it. The body and 
 biaiu are toned up with drugs and stimulants 
 and kept going, until there is a breakdown. 
 Then we are taken to a sanatorium where we are 
 rubbed and dieted and dosed and massaged and 
 electrified and pulled into shape to get back 
 again into the maio current, where we rush on 
 until the next breakdown. 
 
 There are times when rest is as much a divine 
 command as work ; when it is as much one's duty 
 to quit as to go on ; when the place where God 
 wants us is there where there are no tools and no 
 audience ; nothing but desert and solitude. 
 
 "Eest a while!" Oh, thou blessed human 
 Christ, who didst take our tired and weary hu- 
 man nature up into Thine own ; who at Jacob's 
 well didst rest Thyself and by that act didst con- 
 secrate all human rest ; who dost look with ten- 
 der interest on those who are jaded and worn 
 with toil and dost thrust in between them and 
 exacting duties, and say to the thronging crowds, 
 "Stand back!" to insolent industry and noisy 
 machinery and roaring, tumultuous trade, 
 "Stand back ! give blood and brain and muscle 
 a chance;" and whose call to the overworked, 
 where many are coming and going and there is 
 no leisure so much as to eat, is, ' ' Come ye your- 
 selves apart and rest a while ! " Thou blessed 
 Christ of the road and the field and the shop, we 
 thank Thee for rest — just for rest ! 
 
 We need the solitude and quiet of the eddy for 
 meditation. 
 
THE VALUE OF AN EDDY 179 
 
 Some things are missed in mid-stream. Some 
 things that are most important, we overlook in 
 the rush and noise and compelling competition 
 of our busy life. There may be duties near at 
 hand, but we lack the time to look around, and 
 God must take us to an eddy to show us duties 
 near home. Mr. Jacob Eiis tells of a prominent 
 philanthropist and Christian worker who came 
 to him one day and begged that he would find 
 for him some family of foreigners that his family 
 might visit and make good citizens and bring to 
 Christ. Mr. Eiis found him a family. It was 
 that of a Norwegian woman who every day 
 scrubbed the office of this Christian philanthro- 
 pist. There was his work, right under his eyes, 
 but he was too busy to see it. 
 
 There are duties in the desert. It is a mistake 
 to confound the quiet of the eddy with stagnation. 
 There is abundant opportunity for heroism away 
 from the rush and competition. A lad who was 
 already a wage-earner and partly the support of 
 his widowed mother met with a street accident 
 and was taken to the hospital, where both legs 
 were amputated. His mother stood by the little 
 sufferer with streaming eyes. He mistook the 
 cause of her grief. It did not occur to him that 
 she could be crying out of sympathy for him. 
 He supposed she was troubled because the income 
 of the family was threatened, and with the un- 
 selfishness of a hero, in his crude, boyish way, 
 he tiied to comfort her by saying : '' Don't cry, 
 mudder ! Lots of kids gits settin' down jobs." 
 
180 TENDENCY 
 
 The little fellow had been cast out into an eddy, 
 but it was his chance for heroism. And what he 
 said is true in a sense he did not mean. There 
 are "sitting down jobs" ; there is work to be 
 done in the solitude ; there are duties apart from 
 the busy throngs and the rush of things ; and 
 sometimes Christ takes us out of the main cur- 
 rent that we may meditate on all this, and see 
 the great chance in life which we were about to 
 overlook. 
 
 He takes us there that we may be alone with 
 Him. It is hard to get our attention. So many 
 other things are clamouring for an audience at 
 the same time. Christ's call is but one of a thou- 
 sand appeals knocking at the door and seeking 
 admission to heart and mind. There is not much 
 chance for Christ with us, until we pull out of 
 mid-stream into the eddy. He wants our undi- 
 vided attention, and He would take us where we 
 can hear and see. Have you ever stood in the 
 midst of a roaring, rushing stream and noticed 
 how difficult it is to hear anything but the noise 
 of the waters ? One summer day I was trout fish- 
 ing in a wild mountain stream. My companion 
 was our youngest child, a lad of seven. I 
 placed the little fellow on a big boulder in mid- 
 stream, with his rod, and told him to fish there, 
 while I went a little further on. After a while I 
 looked up and he was gesticulating wildly and 
 shouting for me at the top of his voice, but I did 
 not hear a word. The noise of the stream drowned 
 all else. 
 
THE VALUE OF AN EDDY 181 
 
 Is it uot thus with us sometimes in the stream 
 of life ? God is calling us. He is thundering 
 His appeal to our soul ; but we hear nothing but 
 the noise of the waters about us. God must get 
 us out of the roar and tumult, if He would make 
 Himself heard. 
 
 He calls us to the quiet of the eddy that we 
 may listen and learn. He would not have us 
 misled as to what constitutes life. He looked 
 and listened to those disciples making their re- 
 port. Perhaps He saw they were about to lose 
 their ideals. They were getting gross and ma- 
 terialistic. They were measuring success by the 
 size of the crowd that followed them. They were 
 concluding that because they were becoming 
 popular, the battle was won, whereas it was just 
 begun. And so, that they might recover them- 
 selves, that they might get back their own souls, 
 He took them to a sanctuary of meditation. 
 
 Among the great paintings in Florence are the 
 angels of Fra Angelico, which he is said to have 
 painted when he was kneeling prayerfully at his 
 work. A man who spends his time copying these 
 angels says that he has little difficulty in the 
 work when he is in a devotional frame of mind ; 
 but that, after a night at cards or a wine supper, 
 he finds the work most difficult. He can get the 
 outlines and colours, but after a night's carousal, 
 it is days before he can get the expression in the 
 faces of Angelico's angels. 
 
 The peril which threatens many a man, in the 
 awful rush and contact of modern life, is that he 
 
182 TENDENCY 
 
 will lose his own soul, his ideals, his responsive- 
 ness, his aspirations ; and become hard and cold 
 and stale. Christ calls us aside to the meditative 
 houi', that we may learu anew what makes true 
 success; ''for what shall it profit a man if he 
 gain the whole world and lose his own soul ? " 
 
 He calls us to the solitude and quiet of the eddy 
 for strength. 
 
 Publicity is a peril. The average life is shal- 
 lowed by the crowd. The man who is constantly 
 giving out, but who has no fountain at which to 
 renew himself, is weakened. This is the menace 
 which imperils a busy life. How little time there 
 is given for fellowship. Under the constant 
 strain and drain, personality is sapped and life 
 loses its power and beauty. 
 
 Christ calls to the desert that He may renew us, 
 that He may build up the weakened will and give 
 tone and colour and resourcefulness to the spirit. 
 The only way to acquire this is through contact 
 with the Divine. The shallowed soul must go to 
 the deeps. The tired spirit must seek the source 
 of infinite strength. Man must touch God, if he 
 is to be charged with new power. 
 
 It is true that " solitude is the mother country 
 of the strong," provided solitude be a sanctuary 
 where the exhausted soul comes into contact with 
 the eternal source of power. The life that is to 
 be strong before the world must have seasons 
 when it is alone with God. It has been truly 
 said that " if chosen men had never been alone in 
 deep mid-stream, open-doored to God, no great- 
 
THE VALUE OF AN EDDY 183 
 
 ness ever had been dreamed or done." It was 
 from forty years of solitude in the desert that 
 Moses went to his public ministry. John the 
 Baptist emerged from the wilderness, when he 
 appeared on the banks of the Jordan to the crowds 
 that thronged him there. After his conversion 
 Paul went for three years to the desert of Arabia 
 Petrea, before beginning his world mission. 
 Even Christ felt the need of a wilderness expe- 
 rience before entering upon His brief public min- 
 istry. 
 
 One must hearken to the desert call, if he 
 would do his work well. 
 
 Oh, for a pause in the onward rush ! For an 
 hour in quiet waters ! For a sanctuary where 
 the soul can be alone with God ! 
 
 It is not easy to attain. Christ said to His 
 disciples, " Come to the desert," and they de- 
 parted in a ship privately ; but the crowd was 
 not to be put aside. The people rushed around 
 the upper end of the little lake, and when Christ 
 and His disciples reached the "desert place," 
 they found 5,000 people there, and another long 
 day of exacting duties. 
 
 It is not an easy thing to get away from work. 
 It is not even easy, in this crowded, modern life 
 to find the quiet place. The stream has few ed- 
 dies. 
 
 Perhaps the Church itself might be made to 
 minister more than it does to this need of our 
 nature. A friend who is an extremely busy man 
 and who carries large business responsibilities, 
 
184 TENDENCY 
 
 told me this experience. It was after an un- 
 usually crowded and laborious week and he was 
 feeling the strain of his work. His brain was in 
 a whirl and his nerves on edge. He said to him- 
 self : "I will go down to the church and have a 
 bit of quiet there. ' ' And so on a week-day morn- 
 ing he came and sat down in a pew and spent a 
 quiet, restful hour in the sanctuary, with his soul 
 turned towards the Great Giver of strength and 
 peace, and went away refreshed. 
 
 Perhaps there are many to whom, in the rush 
 of this strenuous life, the open door of the sanc- 
 tuary might offer the holy solitude the Saviour 
 had it in His heart to give His jaded disciples. 
 
 If there are those who are burdened and sore 
 pressed, and who could turn aside for a few mo- 
 ments in the midst of the day, and find in the 
 holy spell of God's house the calmness they need, 
 and go forth with fresh strength and a new in- 
 spiration, surely it would not desecrate the 
 church to open the door. 
 
 Life must beware of the publicity that makes 
 it shallow. Amid the crowding duties of the 
 strenuous life, it is wise to listen for the call of 
 Him who ever and anon says to the workers, * ' Rest 
 a while," and to remember that He who calls to 
 the solitude is the same who says to all who 
 labour and are heavy laden : *' Come unto Me 
 and I will give you rest." 
 
XV 
 THE WINGS OF A DOVE 
 
 " Wouldst thou from sorrow find a sweet relief ? 
 Rouse to some work of high and holy love, 
 And then an angel's happiness shalt prove." 
 
 — Carlos Wilcox. 
 
 The pause is of value only as it is a pause. It 
 must not become permanent. Sometimes we 
 wish it could. We long for a solitude that shall 
 be a final and lasting escape from all our troubles. 
 We sympathize with that cry of the pestered and 
 worn-out Jewish king, when he exclaimed : ' ' Oh, 
 that I had wings like a dove ! for then would I 
 fly away and be at rest." ^ 
 
 In the midst of passionate protest and bitter 
 denunciation, the awful tragedy of his situation 
 breaks in upon him, the apparent hopelessness of 
 it, the dull and sickening injustice of it ; until, 
 in a perfect panic of emotion, there escapes from 
 his lips this sigh of a soul for repose. 
 
 He has fought desperately for the seat of power 
 which he occupies. The story of his success 
 reads like a romance. From the quiet and ob- 
 scure life of an humble and unpretentious shep- 
 herd boy caring for his father's flocks, he has 
 made his way by daring deeds, through war and 
 
 > Ps. Iv. 6. 
 185 
 
186 TEN^DENCY 
 
 heroism, to the throne of a great nation ; and 
 now, having reached the summit of his ambition, 
 he finds it a storm centre of trouble. 
 
 He discovers that, to achieve peace and power, 
 is but to multiply care and increase responsibility. 
 He is finding what every man finds who has 
 fought his way to the goal of his ambition. He 
 finds that he has left repose and serenity and 
 peace of mind and freedom from worry behind. 
 For ever is it true that "uneasy lies the head 
 that wears the crown." And yet, by some 
 strange fatuity of destiny, by some unexplained 
 but resistless impulse, people will persist in 
 fighting for the chance to lose their quiet. They 
 say : ' ' Let us satisfy our ambition, and we will 
 pay the price with the sacrifice of peace." 
 
 Yet it is something more than the cares which 
 come with peace and power that trouble the king 
 whose fevered lips and yearning heart sigh for 
 repose. He is distracted with trouble. He is 
 agitated beyond measure by the cares and worries 
 of life. He watches treason daily growing bolder 
 in his 'palace. He sees iniquity hurling itself 
 down upon him like rocks from the mountain 
 heights. Terrors rush upon him like an ava- 
 lanche. His kingdom is rife with plots. His 
 own son and his trusted counsellor are conspiring 
 against him. The horror of darkness surrounds 
 him. Fearfulness and trembling lay hold upon 
 him. In the midst of his distraction he ex- 
 claims : " Oh, that I could get away from it all ! 
 that I could get back to the quiet fields with 
 
THE WINGS OF A DOVE 187 
 
 the flocks, with the music of the waterfalls, and 
 the shilling stars in my face and the open sky for 
 my canopy and the wild winds singing their 
 lullabies to my tired spirit." 
 
 As his soul muses, distracted over the situa- 
 tion, his attention is arrested by a commotion in 
 the street. The people come running together, 
 there are blows and shouts and the yelping of 
 street dogs mingled with the screams of the 
 frightened and excited populace. It was a com- 
 mon sight in the streets of a tm-bulent Oriental 
 city. As David looks down from the parapet of 
 the palace wall on this street brawl, suddenly he 
 sees a dove emerge from the centre of the scene 
 of confusion, from beneath the very feet of the 
 contestants, and spreading its wings, fly away to- 
 wards the serene altitudes and solitudes of the 
 sky. As he watches the bird, he says : ' ' Oh, 
 that I could do a thing like that ! that I could 
 escape out of all this treason and strife ! Oh, 
 that I had wings like a dove ! for then would I 
 fly away and be at rest, Lo, then would I 
 wander far off, and remain in the wilderness, I 
 would be a nobody the rest of my days ; for the 
 wilderness with peace is better than a throne of 
 care 
 
 n 
 
 Is it the prayer of a coward ? Has the king 
 lost his courage? Is this sigh for repose the 
 sigh of a beaten and defeated man ? The king is 
 not afraid of his enemies ; but his soul is sick of 
 shams, of base ingratitude, of duplicity and vain- 
 glory. The longing he expresses is deepest in 
 
188 TENDENCY 
 
 those whose devotion to duty is most steadfast. 
 It is not because he is scared, but because his 
 soul is tired of strife and his heart hurt with the 
 ungratefulness and betrayal of false friends and 
 his spirit weary of the empty show, that he lifts 
 his tired face and troubled heart to God for rest. 
 
 Where is the man or woman in any walk of 
 life, who does not sympathize with the troubled 
 king, and who has not, at some time, uttered his 
 sigh for repose? We try to be brave and stead- 
 fast to duty, but the clamour and tumult, the 
 strife and injustice of the world gain upon us ; 
 and in some unguarded moment, the prayer for 
 escape slips out of our tired hearts. Oh, to get 
 away from it all ! from ingratitude and disap- 
 pointment, from the futile effort, and the vain and 
 empty show. It distracts, it sickens and dis- 
 quiets, it gets on our nerves and wears us out. 
 Oh, for the wings of a dove, and rest ! 
 
 As we pray, maybe for us as for the king, 
 there drifts across the field of memory or on the 
 horizon of imagination the vision of a green field 
 on sunny hills, with the sheep grazing undis- 
 turbed ; or a lodge in the wild woods amid the 
 leafy forests ; or a shelter by the seashore, with 
 the roll of the sea, and the white foam on the 
 quiet beach ; or a cottage perched on a moun- 
 tain top, high above the strife and tumult and 
 folly of the restless world ; and our souls catch at 
 the picture, and we cry out: "O God, for its 
 rest ! " 
 
 It is something to pray the prayer. Whether 
 
THE WINGS OF A DOVE 189 
 
 or not the dream ever translates itself into actual 
 experience, it is something to be able to lift a 
 tortured and tormented soul up towards the 
 quiet face of the Infinite and say, ''O God, 
 my Father, help Thy tired and troubled child." 
 The prayer is always ours. Nothing can take 
 prayer from us. We may not be able to go 
 away, but we can pray. The oratory is near at 
 hand. It is in our hearts. In the thick of the 
 conflict, in the midst of the tumult we may enter 
 the closet of the soul's inner life and shut the 
 door and pray to our Father in secret, *' O God, 
 for the wings of a dove, for rest, for the embrace 
 of Thy strong arms, for Thyself! " " Thou hast 
 made us for Thyself, and our hearts are restless 
 until they find rest in Thee." ^ 
 
 Are we traitors to duty because we offer such 
 a prayer? Are we cowards because care drives 
 us to His breast ? Are we weak and unworthy 
 because, when the hot fire scorches us, and the 
 sharp thorn drives its poison into our blood, we 
 feel the pain and cry: "Help, Lord"? The 
 flame and the thorn are sometimes sent to drive 
 us to Him. And so as I face my fears and con- 
 front the cares of life, I will pray without shame 
 for the wings of a dove. 
 
 It is a prayer God declines to answer. He did 
 not allow David to go to private life. He did 
 not permit him to lay aside the crown and 
 vacate the throne. Never again would there 
 come back, for him, those sunlit, care-free days 
 ' Angustine. 
 
190 TENDENCY 
 
 of shepherd-boyhood, with the murmur of the 
 brooks and the bleatiug of the sheep and the 
 scented fields and the white clouds drifting lazily 
 on a blue sky. He must stay at his post. He 
 must face the storm and fight his way through. 
 
 God does not give us the wings of a dove that 
 we may fly away from trouble. He does not 
 give us exemption. He does not take us out of 
 the world. He wants us here in the world, 
 where the tumult is greatest, where the battle is 
 hottest and the opposition fiercest. We cannot 
 go, we must stay. The gray days stretch on in 
 the calendar. The hard tasks marshal out into 
 the monotonous future until the hated line is lost 
 in the far distance. There is no let up, no relief. 
 "We must plod on. 
 
 We may as well make up our minds to the 
 situation. We are not here for repose ; we are 
 here for work. '^ To-day the song of battle." 
 We are here not to rust out, but to wear out, to 
 be patient, to resist, to persist, to do with our 
 might whatsoever our hands find to do. If we 
 fall, we are to rise again ; and if we fall to rise 
 no more, we are to fall with our faces towards 
 the foe, with our souls refusing to surrender. 
 
 This is heroism. There is nothing more 
 heroic than plain devotedness to duty. It may 
 get no cheers, it may never appear in the head- 
 lines, but it is kingly, it is divine. 
 
 While the prayer for the wings of a dove is 
 unanswered, it is more than answered. Let me 
 explain what I mean by another dove scene in 
 
THE WINGS OF A DOVE 191 
 
 th<j Bible. It occurred ou the bauks of the 
 Jor'lau, where a preacher named Johu was bap- 
 tizing a rabbi named Jesus. Jesus is ou the 
 threshold of His public miuistry. It was to be 
 the most tempestuous that ever surged around a 
 human life. It was to be thick-set with tumult 
 and conflict, with treason and betrayal, with 
 opposition and injustice, until at last it was to 
 reach its climax in the cruel death on the cross. 
 As Jesus confronts the storm, He seeks that 
 which will enable Him to have peace and rest 
 and confidence amid its tumults. This is given 
 Him. 
 
 " The Holy Spirit descended in a bodily form 
 as a dove upon Him, and a voice came out of 
 heaven ; Thou art My beloved Son ; in Thee I 
 am well pleased." ^ Christ has received what 
 King David prayed for. He has the wings of a 
 dove. Better, He has repose without goiug 
 away from His work. God has bestowed on 
 Him the strength which will enable Him to 
 achieve rest in the storm. 
 
 With the wings of a dove, with the power 
 which has come to Him in the form of a dove 
 from heaven, Jesus moved out into the thick 
 of the tumult, into the restlessness and strife of 
 a sin-smitten world. Amid it all, He had perfect 
 peace, for He had power. Indeed, so secure was 
 He in His possession of it, that He conferred peace. 
 It was the one thing the world could not take 
 from Him. He left it to His disciples as His last 
 
 ' Luke iii. 22. 
 
192 TENDENCY 
 
 bequest ; and to all the tired and troubled of 
 earth who pray for the wings of a dove, He says : 
 Come unto Me and I will give you rest. All ye 
 that labour and are heavy laden, come unto Me, 
 and I will give you rest. 
 
 This is the way God gives the wings of a dove. 
 He more than answers the prayer. He does not 
 take us out of the world, but He equips us for 
 victory in the world. He does not give us less 
 work, but more strength with which to do it ; 
 so that we can toil on and not get tired ; so that 
 we can face our program with quiet nerves ; 
 so that we can do not less but more ; so that we 
 can find our leafy bower, our rest cottage in the 
 busy street, in the din and clamour of work. 
 
 He does this by changing us, by transforming 
 our characters. This is the first work of the 
 Holy Spirit in a man's life. In another Psalm 
 is this promise: ''When ye lie among the 
 sheepfolds, it is as the wings of a dove covered 
 with silver, and her pinions with yellow gold." ' 
 It is a picture of transformed and transfigured 
 character. 
 
 God rests us by making work rest us, by mak- 
 ing our duties our privileges, our troubles our 
 consolations, our sacrifices our achievements, 
 our losses our gains, our burdens our blessings. 
 
 He rests us by sharing our work with us. 
 
 The Saviour is our yoke-fellow. Near the end 
 
 of the tempestuous song, David says, "Cast 
 
 thy burden upon the Lord, and He shall sustain 
 
 >Ps, Ixviii. 13. 
 
THE WINGS OF A DO\'K 193 
 
 thee," He htis discovered the true seeret of rest, 
 aud as the soug comes to its hual note, he says, 
 "O God, I will trust iu Thee." 
 
 Is uot this better thau exemptiou ? Is it not 
 far better thau throwing down your tools aud 
 quitting work aud going off into Elysiau soli- 
 tudes? God gives us the wings of a dove, not 
 that we may go iu quest of rest, but that rest 
 may come to us. He causes repose to descend 
 and dwell about us as we work ; He makes peac^ 
 the garrison of our souls. Keep on praying for 
 the wings of a dove, but be coutent for God to 
 answer the prayer His own way. He will more 
 than answer it. 
 
 " He waa better to me than all my hopes, 
 Better thau all my fears ; 
 For He made a bridge of my broken sighs, 
 Aud a raiubow of my tears." 
 
 While it is an unanswered prayer, there will 
 come a day when this prayer for rest shall be 
 answered in a higher, grander, diviner way than 
 we have ever imagined. 
 
 There came a day when the king had his 
 wish ; when his soul had its wings ; when for 
 the last time he said : *' The prayers of David, 
 the son of Jesse, are ended" ; when a window 
 opened towards the sunrise and the soul of a 
 man who had been faithful unto death slipped 
 out to meet the dawn, on the wings of a dove. 
 The king had finished his work, and the soul, 
 yearning for repose, was given its rest ; not in 
 
194 TENDENCY 
 
 some lodge in the wilderness, not on the sunny 
 slope of a green hill, but "in God's house for- 
 evermore." 
 
 This is the Christian's hope. There remaineth 
 a rest for the people of God. Omnipotent love 
 has built a world of quiet above the storm line, 
 and some day we shall fly away and be at rest. 
 He will take us in out of the tempest, up above 
 the strife and clamour, above all the weariness 
 of the fevered world, and our tired spirits shall 
 rest. 
 
 Thank God for the dream, and, better still, 
 for the reality. It will all come true. We are 
 not to plod on, tired, forever. Up there, a rest 
 remains. This hope sustains and comforts us 
 in the midst of the conflict. I can go back to 
 my work now. I can stand the strain a while 
 longer. I can meet the bufieting tide with fresh 
 courage, for yonder, on the horizon of hope, is 
 the kingdom of quiet, the country of rest, the 
 homeland of peace. 
 
 " There lies a little city in the hills ; 
 White are its roofs, dim is each dwelling's door, 
 And peace with perfect rest its bosom fills. 
 
 ** There the pure mist, the pity of the sea, 
 Comes as a white, soft hand, and reaches o'er 
 And touches its still face most tenderly. 
 
 "Unstirred and calm, amid our shifting years, 
 Lo ! where it lies, far from the clash and roar, 
 "With quiet distm ce blurred, as if thro' tears. 
 
THE WINGS OF A DOVE 195 
 
 *' O heart, that prayest so for God to send 
 Some loviug messenger to go before 
 And lead the way to where thy longings end. 
 
 " Be sure, be very sure, that soon will come 
 His kindest angel, and through that still door 
 Into the Infinite Love will lead thee home." * 
 
 IE. K. Sill. 
 
XVI 
 
 THE ALTAR AND THE CHOIR 
 
 " Unhappy being that I am ! Who will free me from the 
 hands of the ungodly ? Who will shield me ? Who will 
 come to my succour? Whither shall I flee? How can I 
 escape ? I know what I will do : I will turn to heavenly 
 things, and they shall do battle with the things of earth. 
 Hope shall lead the forces of Heaven. Hope shall march 
 against Sorrow and overcome her." — Savonarola, the night 
 before his execution. 
 
 Life is part a song and part a sob. It is half 
 jubilate and half miserere. It is never far from 
 a smile to a tear. Christianity's finest symbol 
 of the victorious life is a cross encircled by a 
 crown. 
 
 The story of the ancient liturgy of religion is 
 that "when the burnt offering began, the song 
 of the Lord began also." ^ 
 
 The ceremonial of worship consisted of two 
 parts, — the offering of sacrifices and the service 
 of song. The two went together. 
 
 It was the gospel of the altar and the choir. 
 In the ancient temple there was an altar, a place 
 where sacrifice was offered. Beside the altar 
 stood the officiating priest, with reverent atti- 
 tude and awesome ritual, laying upon the flam- 
 ing hearth the sacrificial gift of the sinful soul 
 seeking peace with God. The altar was the 
 
 ' 2 Chron. xxix. 27. 
 196 
 
THE ALTAR AND THE CHOIR 197 
 
 slirine of the tragedy of religion. The story be- 
 hind it was the tale of the ruin of the race, and 
 around the altar surged the sorrows and woes 
 and weaknesses of mankind. 
 
 In the ancient temple there was also the choir, 
 the service of song, the great chorus of praise to 
 Almighty God, whose mercy blessed the sacrifice 
 and whose pity spared the penitent. The choir 
 was the shrine of the ecstasy and triumph of re- 
 ligion. There the holy Psalms were chanted, 
 which voiced the people's adoration of Jehovah. 
 With sins forgiven, with hearts overflowing with 
 gratitude, with sorrows comforted, and with 
 woes and weaknesses cured, the hosts which 
 thronged the temple courts worshipped God in 
 holy song. 
 
 Life must have these two great shrines of the 
 soul for its highest development. 
 
 It must have the altar, the sacrifice, the propi- 
 tiation. True religion must have an adequate 
 remedy for sin. It must cleanse the guilty heart 
 and regenerate the dead soul. When the sinner 
 comes with his burden of guilt, his load of woe, 
 tormented by remorse of conscience and af- 
 frighted with the terror of an angry God, what 
 he needs is not a creed that will set him to mor- 
 tifying the flesh and mumbling phrases ; but one 
 that tells him that without the shedding of blood 
 there is no remission of sins ; that takes him to 
 an altar where the sacrifice is the "Lamb slain 
 from the foundation of the world." The sinner 
 needs far more than a ritual ; he needs a Saviour. 
 
198 TENDENCY 
 
 It must also have the choir. Christianity is 
 the one musical religion of the world. The great 
 musical composers have come either directly or 
 indirectly under the spell of Christianity. They 
 have gotten their inspiration from the religion 
 whose altar reconciles man to God, and makes of 
 sinners the children of the Most High. Hea- 
 thenism has no song. Paganism and infidelity 
 are not musical. It is the gospel of the love 
 of God that sets the heart singing. It is 
 Christianity's heaven that is filled with an in- 
 numerable throng, singing ' ' the song of Moses 
 and the Lamb." 
 
 The altar and the choir are related as cause 
 and effect. It is the sacrifice that starts the song. 
 If there were no propitiation for sin, there could 
 be no forgiveness. If religion were only a ritual 
 or a form of penance, it would depress us ; but 
 because it is salvation, it thrills us, it exalts and 
 exhilarates us, it fills the soul with melody and 
 wakes the world with song. 
 
 Life is to be built around these two great 
 shrines of sacrifice and song. God's temple is 
 not so much these houses built of steel and stone 
 which we erect as places of worship, as it is the 
 building whose invisible walls are the life ex- 
 periences of the immortal spirit. In each such 
 life-temple there must be an altar, a shrine of 
 sacrifice. If there is, there will also be a choir, 
 a shrine where invisible voices chant symphonies 
 of joy and peace and hope. These two shrines 
 of tragedy and ecstasy express life. 
 
THE ALTAR AND THE CHOIR 199 
 
 They speak of worship aud happiuess. The 
 altar stands for worship aud the song for the 
 happiness that worship brings. 
 
 The altar says that man must worship God. 
 There can be no happiness without it. The 
 Creator has built into our natures an undying 
 need of Him. The soul cries out for God as the 
 flowers cry out for sunshine or a child's heart for 
 a mother's love. There are aspirations which 
 soar away into the infinite and covet fellowship 
 with the Eternal. "Oh, that I knew where I 
 might find Him ! that I might come even to His 
 seat!" He is poor indeed whose life has no 
 altar ; whose soul has no God, no reverence, no 
 spot of which he may say, "This is holy 
 ground" ; no hour when with uncovered head 
 and bowed heart the secret needs of his life are 
 laid bare to the loving gaze of divine compas- 
 sion. 
 
 We need God far more than we need bread or 
 raiment. No man can be happy without God. 
 He may choke his soul into insensibility, until 
 he hears no cry, but he will not be happy. God 
 is the centre of life. He has made us for Him- 
 self. Life is more than feeding the senses. 
 "Wherefore do ye spend money for that which 
 is not bread ? and your labour for that which 
 satisfieth not? hearken diligently unto Me, and 
 eat that which is good, and let your soul delight 
 itself in fatness. Incline your ear and come unto 
 Me : hear and your soul shall live ; . . ." ' 
 • Isa, Iv. 2, 3. 
 
200 TENDENCY 
 
 *' I shall be satisfied wheu I awake in Thy like- 
 ness" — never until then. 
 
 If one is unhappy, it is not because of food or 
 raiment or work or wages. There is no song 
 because there is no altar. He is trying to grow 
 a flower garden on a barren, sterile rock. Let 
 him get his soul under an eternal horizon, his 
 pulses filled with faith in Jehovah ; and, peering 
 beyond the low banked hills and passing clouds, 
 let him catch a glimpse of the everlasting peaks 
 and the face of God. It is the soul with an altar 
 that has a song. It is the man that worships 
 God that is happy. "Man's chief end is to 
 glorify God and to enjoy Him forever." The 
 man who has not learned to enjoy God has not 
 yet discovered the secret of how to enjoy any- 
 thing. 
 
 It is also the story of atonement and peace. 
 The altar stands for atonement, and the song 
 stands for the peace purchased by atonement. 
 
 The altar says that man is a sinner. He has 
 violated a holy law. He is estranged from God, 
 and hostile to His kingdom. Before he can even 
 worship God aright, his sins must be atoned for. 
 Conscience says that this story of the altar is 
 true. We know that our hearts are not right 
 with God. Our guilty fears and evil lusts alike 
 proclaim the need of reconciliation. 
 
 It is this atonement or reconciliation which 
 Christ has wrought out on the cross. He has 
 suffered in the sinner's stead. He is the sacrifice 
 demanded. He has offered up Himself as a 
 
THE ALTAR AND THE CHOIR 201 
 
 sacrifice to satisfy di vine justice and to recoucile 
 us to God. He is the propitiatiou for our sins. 
 * ' He was wounded for our transgressions, He was 
 bruised for our iniquities ; the chastisement of 
 our peace was upon Him ; and with His stripes 
 we are healed." Christ was " brought as a lamb 
 to the slaughter." He died for the sinner. If 
 so, the sinner must have been in danger. His 
 peril must have been real, eternal, for deliver- 
 ance to have been purchased at so stupendous a 
 cost. Man is more than the victim of circum- 
 stances. He is a sinner in need of the atoning 
 merit of the Lamb of God. 
 
 When the merit of Christ's atoning sacrifice 
 becomes ours, peace, sweet, satisfying, eternal 
 peace, floods the soul. This is Christ's promise. 
 ' ' Peace I leave with you, My peace I give unto 
 you ; not as the world giveth, give I unto you." * 
 The world's peace is the peace of compromise ; 
 Christ's is the peace of reconciliation. It is the 
 peace of reconciliation that is musical. It is a 
 song that can be sung only in sight of Calvary's 
 blood-stained cross, for without the shedding of 
 blood there is no remission of sins. Without an 
 altar of atonement there can be no song of recon- 
 ciliation. 
 
 The altar and the choir take us to a door 
 draped in shadows, and reveal to the soul that 
 has been reconciled to God the mystery of suffer- 
 ing and sainthood. The altar stands for suffer- 
 ing and the song stands for the sainthood found 
 • JohD xiv. 27. 
 
202 TENDENCY 
 
 through suffering. The altar is a place of pain. 
 That ancient altar, dripping with the blood of 
 its slain victims, was a gruesome sight. This 
 modern altar, loaded with the groans and 
 anguish and agony of human life, is a spectacle 
 from which we would oft-times turn away. It is 
 hard to suffer. It is hard to suffer pain. It is 
 hard to suffer sickness. It is hard to suffer 
 estrangement and adversity. It is hard to suffer 
 the loss of home and loved ones. Suffering is a 
 hard thing, but it is a holy thing. Suffering is 
 the tragedy of the altar. 
 
 It is necessary. Somewhere in the temple 
 court of a redeemed life this altar must stand. 
 It is God's own altar. He stands beside it and 
 administers the sacrifice. It pleased Him to 
 make the Captain of our salvation perfect 
 through suffering. In the same way, God per- 
 fects all His children. He calls us to suffer. If 
 He calls us to suffer, suffering can never take us 
 away from Him. It can never be a bar to 
 fellowship with Him. Indeed, it is through suf- 
 feriug that He imparts Himself and His charac- 
 ter to His people. 
 
 Hard by the altar of suffering rises the chant 
 of sainthood. Suffering is the way to glory, the 
 door to communion, the bond of fellowship. 
 "If we suffer, we shall also reign with Him." 
 It is declared that these light afflictions, which 
 are but for a moment, shall work out for us a far 
 more exceeding and eternal weight of glory. 
 ** Whom the Lord loveth, He chasteneth." Suf- 
 
THE ALTAR AND THE CHOIR 203 
 
 fering is lite iu the shadows. The uight seems 
 to close down upon us, but we have "songs iu 
 the night." " Weeping may endure for a night, 
 but joy Cometh iu the morning." Every soul 
 that is to wear the crowu of sainthood must 
 somewhere along the journey wear the crown of 
 thorns ; but every thorn of that crown of sufl'er- 
 ing is barbed with the character of Him who 
 wore it first, and as the thorns pierce, they im- 
 part Christ. 
 
 But even sainthood is not the end of salvation. 
 Sometimes we think it is, and imagine that hav- 
 ing entered into communion with God and 
 acquired something of Christlikeness in charac- 
 ter, we have attained the end of our salvation. 
 Communion, however, anticipates conflict, and 
 we soon find ourselves on a battle-field. 
 
 It is the story of struggle and achievement. 
 The altar stands for struggle and the song for the 
 achievement won by struggle. 
 
 The altar speaks of conflict and trial and 
 temptation. It is not easy to be good and do 
 right. One must contend earnestly. No victory 
 was ever won without a battle. We are not to 
 be dismayed when the war hymn begins and our 
 marching orders send us straight into the thick 
 of conflict, for struggle is still the story of the 
 altar. We would like to win without struggle, 
 but life does not come that way. 
 
 Life is ever the output of pain. Greatness is 
 the product of discipline. ''The trial of your 
 faith is precious." Dickens, in one of his 
 
204 TENDENCY 
 
 uovels, has an amusing character who was never 
 so happy as when having a hard time. When 
 things were easy and conditions comfortable, he 
 grew despondent and was greatly depressed ; but 
 when circumstances were desperate and difficul- 
 ties piled up before him thick and apparently 
 insurmountable, he became incarnate optimism 
 and was as happy as an angel. The novelist has 
 caricatured one of the profouudest truths of life. 
 Difficulty is a real altar stair. The frosts of 
 winter are necessary to spring. It is in the fire 
 that metal gets its character. 
 
 It is better to battle than to dwindle. God 
 wants us to be, rather than to have. He wants 
 us to acquire fortitude and heroism and conse- 
 cration and we do so through struggle. This is 
 the song of battle. This was what Paul meant 
 when he said: ''I have fought a good fight." 
 He was singing his battle hymn. Perhaps one 
 may say : ' ' He has little to show for it. Look 
 at his poverty ; think of his treatment ; listen 
 to that clanking chain of bondage." Yes, but 
 look at him. Look at his faith, his courage, his 
 sublime peace ! Look at the soul of him, and 
 listen to him as he sings : ''I am now ready to 
 be offered and the time of my departure is at 
 hand." His face is shining with the light of 
 heaven and his mighty soul is aflame with the 
 glory of the world to come. He had his altar 
 and he has his song. 
 
 There is one more chapter of life transfigured 
 by the subject. It is the story of service and 
 
THE ALTAR AND THE CHOIR 205 
 
 reward. The altar stands for service and the 
 song for the reward of service. 
 
 The altar life is the service life. It is the 
 service of the life laid down. It is the service of 
 the life that ministers and judges that because 
 one died for all, then were all dead, and that He 
 died for all that they which live should not 
 henceforth live unto themselves, but unto Him 
 that died for them and rose again. The altar 
 speaks not of what we get, but of what we give ; 
 not of our gains, but our losses. The hero of 
 the altar is one who made Himself of no reputa- 
 tion and became a servant. 
 
 This is the purpose of it all. All preparation 
 faces the altar of service. Inasmuch as He laid 
 down His life for us, " we ought to lay down our 
 lives for the brethren." We are not to spare 
 ourselves, we are to spend ourselves. We are 
 here to be worn out, burned up, consumed. The 
 lesson is hard to learn, but the teacher is divine. 
 We would draw back from the fires of this altar. 
 The heat scorches and the fierce flames terrify, 
 but in their ashes is the only immortality that 
 can satisfy the soul. It is he that loseth his life 
 that shall find it. Like the swan, in the hour of 
 death we find our song. In the life laid down 
 we come upon our great reward. There is no 
 reward sweeter than that which comes from un- 
 selfish service. It is not what we do for our- 
 selves, but what we do for others that makes us 
 happy. 
 
 It is just the old story of the way the birds 
 
206 TENDENCY 
 
 got their wings. At first God gave the birds 
 their wings as burdens, and bade them carry the 
 burdens. They obeyed, and laid their burdens 
 on their shoulders and wrapped them about 
 their hearts, when lo ! their burdens became 
 their wings, and carried them. So it is with 
 every life that in unselfish service takes up the 
 tasks and duties God appoints. As we carry 
 them on our shoulders and wrap them about our 
 hearts, instead of weighing us down they carry 
 us. Our burdens become our pinions, our duties 
 become our privileges, our service our reward, 
 our sacrifice our song. Glory is a flame lit in 
 the altar fires of service. Heaven is the home- 
 land of all who travel a thorn-path of duty to 
 the cross-crowned hill where life is laid down for 
 sake of others. 
 
 Thus life is ever just the story of the altar and 
 the choir, of the sacrifice and song. 
 
 It is the story which Jesus, in far more beauti- 
 ful fashion, has told in the Beatitudes. What is 
 Christ doing there but surrounding sacrifice with 
 song ; covering the slopes which rise, out of 
 valleys of trial and sorrow and humiliation up to 
 the sky-lined summits of the delectable moun- 
 tains, with the invisible choir ? He takes the 
 hard things of life and glorifies them. He hangs 
 the horns of the altar with garlands of beautiful 
 flowers. He makes the things which hurt us 
 bless us, until in every throb of human pain we 
 hear an angel singing, 
 
 ''Blessed are they that mourn ; for they shall 
 
THE ALTAR AND THE CHOIR 207 
 
 be comforted." It is the old union of altar and 
 choir. " Blessed are they that mourn" — that is 
 the altar, — " for they shall be comforted " — that 
 is the choir. "Blessed are the meek " — that is 
 the sacrifice — " for they shall inherit the earth " — 
 that is the song. '' Blessed are ye when jncn shall 
 revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all 
 manner of evil against you falsely for My sako " 
 — that is the altar. "Rejoice and be exceeding 
 glad ; for great is your reward in heaven ; for so 
 persecuted they the prophets which were before 
 you" — that is the celestial choir. 
 
 The symbol of the Gospel is a cross ; but not a 
 cross by itself; not a lone, bare, gaunt, naked 
 cross. The symbol of the Gospel is a crown ; 
 but not a crown by itself ; not a proud, cold, 
 despotic, selfish, pitiless crown. The symbol of 
 the Gospel is a cross and a crown ; a cross lying 
 in a crown ; a crown growing around a cross ; 
 a cross haloed by a crown ; a crown won by a 
 cross. 
 
 It is the old story of sacrifice soaking in an 
 atmosphere of praise. 
 
 It is the ancient legend of the altar and the 
 choir. The two must be left together in the 
 temple of life, for we cannot have one without 
 the other. We cannot have happiness without 
 worship ; nor peace without atonement ; nor 
 sainthood without suffering ; nor achievement 
 without struggle ; nor reward without service. 
 We cannot have the song without the sacrifice ; 
 the crown without the cross. 
 
XVII 
 THE HEIGHTS OF LIFE 
 
 "So high as a tree aspires to grow, so high will it find an 
 atmosphere suited to it," — Thoreau. 
 
 " We do not count a man's years until he has nothing 
 else to count," — Emerson. 
 
 " As you grow ready for it, somewhere or other you will 
 find what is needful for you, in a book, or a friend, or, best 
 of all, in your own thoughts, the eternal thought speaking 
 in your thought." — George Macdonald. 
 
 "Great men seem to be a part of the infinite, brothers of 
 the mountains and the seas." — Ingersoll. 
 
 Man is going somewhere. Whither ? The 
 ancient creeds recited as the goal a mechanical 
 paradise or gehenna, according as man was good 
 or bad ; but these terminals hardly satisfy one 
 who has an insight into the meaning of life. 
 
 Man is in a process of development. Where 
 is this development to take him 1 He is becom- 
 ing ; what is he to become ? He is ever strug- 
 gling to translate his aspirations into attain- 
 ments. When he has reached the summit of his 
 attainments, where will he be ? 
 
 Off there, somewhere on the sky-line lie the 
 heights of life. How shall we name them and 
 with what terms shall we describe their glories % 
 
 In a passage of unusual sublimity, the Apostle 
 of the spiritual, the Evangelist whose symbol is 
 208 
 
THE HEIGHTS OF LIFE 209 
 
 the soaring eagle, exclaims: "Behold, what 
 mauuer of love the Father hath bestowed upou 
 us that we should be called the children of 
 God. . . . 
 
 "Beloved, uow are we the children of God, 
 and it is not yet made manifest what we shall 
 be. We know that, if He shall be manifested, 
 we shall be like Him ; for we shall see Him even 
 as He is." ' 
 
 It is an inspired picture of the heights. 
 
 In the mail one day came a letter from my old 
 home in Tennessee telling me of the adoption of 
 a foundling baby by some young friends of mine. 
 One morning a baby was found on a strange 
 door-step, a little bundle of humanity repudiated 
 by its own parents and thrown out on the cold 
 charity of the world. The infant was taken to 
 the Police Station and the morning papers told 
 the story of the babe's desertion and discovery. 
 
 Two days before, a young husband and wife 
 had stood beside a little grave in the cemetery on 
 the hill and, with the anguish of their first great 
 sorrow, had buried from their sight the dimpled 
 face of their first babe ; and then, broken- 
 hearted, had gone back to an empty home 
 shrouded in the shadow cast by a child's grave. 
 
 They were Christians. Their circumstances in 
 life were all that could be desired, and they 
 seemed well fitted in every way to be trusted 
 with a child ; but that strange Providence, which 
 baffles while it smites, had taken from them 
 ' 1 John iii. 1, 2. 
 
210 TEKDENCY 
 
 their only child and left them desolate. When 
 they read the story of the foundling babe they 
 seemed to hear the voice of their own child cry- 
 ing from the little grave on the hillside and 
 hastening to the station, they adopted the name- 
 less waif and took the tiny stranger, forsaken of 
 its natural protectors, to their hearts and home. 
 It will grow up as their child, it will bear their 
 name, and inherit whatever they may have to 
 bestow. 
 
 They would seem to be running a great risk. 
 They know nothing of the child's origin. They 
 are in total ignorance of what it may inherit 
 from parents who were either ashamed or unable 
 to care for it. The child may grow up to be un- 
 grateful. It may shame its benefactors, break 
 their hearts with its waywardness and dishonour 
 the name that has given it a home. But the 
 love which adopted the child did not pause to 
 consider all this. That young couple thought 
 only of the homeless and unmothered babe, and 
 with the vision of the angel face of their own 
 precious baby before them, they opened their 
 arms and said : '' Let us have the child ; we 
 would adopt it, we will be good to it and treat it 
 as if it were our own." 
 
 This is the picture John would paint on a 
 heavenly canvas. This is the story he is trying 
 to tell of the love of God. He is saying that 
 God is adopting foundlings. He is taking the 
 waifs of the world to his heart and home. He is 
 not stopping to ask of the past. He is requiring 
 
THE HEIGHTS OF LIFE 211 
 
 no guarantee as to the future. He opens his arms 
 to receive them. He thinks of the thorn- 
 crowned, death-marked face of His first begotten 
 and best beloved Son and says : "Let Me have 
 these orphaned and forsaken souls of the world, 
 homeless and hopeless ; I will be good to them, I 
 will give them My name and treat them as My 
 own. " " Behold what manner of love the Father 
 has bestowed upon us, that we should be called 
 the children of God ! ' ' 
 
 He then goes on to say what this love does for 
 foundlings. He describes the career of those 
 whom the love of God has rescued. We may 
 call it "the story of the heights." They are the 
 heights to which God lifts those whom He calls 
 His children. There are three successive alti- 
 tudes mentioned. 
 
 SoNSHip AND Adoption 
 We may call the first altitude " the heights of 
 sonship and adoption." " Beloved, now are we 
 the children of God." 
 
 God's love has just called us children ; it now 
 makes us children. It makes us what it calls us. 
 This is the mystery of redemption. We are be- 
 gotten as well as adopted. We are given the 
 divine nature as well as the divine name, and 
 experience what Christ meant when He said to 
 Nicodemus : "Ye must be born again." 
 
 The young couple who adopted the foundling 
 babe will learn to love it. They will not trans- 
 fer the love they had for their own from the 
 
212 TENDENCY 
 
 child they have lost to the one they have 
 adopted, but a new love will come; and the 
 child will learn to love them, but it can never 
 really be their child. Not a drop of their blood 
 runs in its veins. Years hence, some one who 
 knows the story of that fateful night may rudely 
 break the dream, and the child discover that, 
 after all, it has neither father nor mother, but is 
 just a foundling nursed and cared for by human 
 compassion. 
 
 Nothing like this can ever happen to God's 
 child. Our divine Father adopts us, but that is 
 not all. He first calls us His children, then He 
 makes us what He calls us. He imparts to us 
 His nature. His blood runs in our veins, His 
 life throbs in our souls, until in the face of all 
 the past and before all who would challenge our 
 rights He permits us to exclaim : ' ' Now are we 
 the children of God." 
 
 If this were all, it would be enough to crown 
 us with joy. It would suflBce to ravish the soul 
 with rapture. The gospel of sonship and adop- 
 tion is a great gospel. 
 
 It comes to the waifs and wanderers of the 
 earth, to the homeless and friendless and for- 
 saken and says : ' * Let not your hearts be 
 troubled. You are God's children. In your 
 Father's house are many mansions and your 
 Saviour has gone to prepare a place for you." 
 
 It comes to the poor of the world, to those 
 whose homes are bare, where the children cry 
 for bread, and want casts its awful terror, and 
 
THE HEIGHTS OF LIFE 213 
 
 says: ''Do not despair. You are God's cliil- 
 dren. Hope oii. You are heirs to an inherit- 
 ance incorruptible and uudefiled, and that fadeth 
 not away." 
 
 It comes to those who are smitten with sorrow, 
 afflicted, tear-dimmed and desolate and says : 
 "Be of good courage. God is your Father. 
 He will not leave you comfortless. Let your 
 Father wipe the tears from your eyes and tell 
 you of a tearless, uightless land." 
 
 It comes to those who are weary in body and 
 more weary in spirit, care-cursed and sore per- 
 plexed, and says: "Hope on. God is your 
 Father. Listen ! He is sayiug, ' Come unto Me 
 all ye that labour and are heavy laden and I will 
 give you rest.' Your heavenly Father will 
 strengthen you with the right hand of His 
 righteousness." 
 
 It is a great, a blessed thing just to be 
 God's child. Let a man claim his birthright. 
 Some time ago a woman died in an institution on 
 Blackwell's Island, who was found, afterwards, to 
 have been a descendant of an English earl. Her 
 birthright entitled her to a high position, but 
 she had led a dissipated life and died a pauper's 
 death. With a name and a nature which unite 
 us to God, shall we live like homeless waifs and 
 die like paupers ? 
 
 When low thoughts and base desires come, let 
 me think of my Father and say : " No, I cannot 
 do this, I am God's child." 
 
 When doubts and suspicions arise, let me stifle 
 
214 TENDENCY 
 
 them with the thought of my Father. I must 
 uot be disloyal to Him. 
 
 When temptations sneak in and Satan would 
 drag me down, let me resist and say : "I am 
 God's child, I cannot live a common life nor do 
 a mean thing." 
 
 "Beloved, now are we the children of God." 
 This is the song it sings. It is the song of son- 
 ship and adoption. Here am I in a world of 
 struggle and conflict, of sorrow and disappoint- 
 ment, of want and woe and discouragement, — 
 just a waif on a strange door-step in a winter 
 world, but God has adopted me. He is my 
 Father and I am His child. 
 
 Development and Growth 
 Sonship and adoption are only the first stage in 
 the heights of life. The ascent continues. We 
 may call the second "the heights of develop- 
 ment and growth." "It doth not yet appear 
 what we shall be." 
 
 I have stood on a projecting spur of a moun- 
 tain range and looked backward on the road I 
 have climbed and then far down into the valley 
 below where I could see the farm-fields and the 
 river. As I have rested there for a moment, I 
 have felt something of the joy which comes with 
 the heights; but as I have turned to continue the 
 climb, I have found the way blocked with blind- 
 ing mists and the higher ranges wrapped about 
 with the dense folds of cloud and completely 
 shut from view. I knew the heights were there 
 
THE HEIGHTS OF LIFE 215 
 
 before me, but I could not see them. They did 
 not appear. And so I had to plunge into the 
 thickening mist and continue the ascent without 
 scenery. 
 
 It is thus that John paints the second stage. 
 The road winds through the mist. " It doth not 
 yet appear what we shall be," but the way is still 
 upward and onward. We have not reached the 
 summit, with adoption. Sonship is followed by 
 development and growth. Here is the marvel- 
 lous thing about the soul. It seems possessed of 
 an infinite capacity. Man is ever becoming. 
 
 Where is the man who does not feel the 
 struggle to become going on in his nature, the 
 fearful conflict between the baser and the better 
 self? He feels, within him, forces that would 
 drag him down and he hears voices that would 
 summon him to the heights. Like Paul, he sees 
 the law in his members warring against the law 
 in his mind, until, with Paul, sometimes the cry 
 starts from his lips : ' ' Who shall deliver me 
 from the body of this death ? " 
 
 Where is the man who does not feel that there 
 is more in him than he has expressed, more for 
 him than he has ever claimed, a better message 
 than he has ever uttered, powers of being and 
 service whose leash he has not yet broken 1 
 
 These unuttered longings, these unrealized 
 ideals, these undeveloped capacities and unsatis- 
 fied ambitions and tethered powers are crying 
 for a chance. They are the voice of the man's 
 own soul clamouring for the heights. 
 
216 TENDENCY 
 
 All the discipline and struggle and suffering of 
 Christian life reside in this second stretch of the 
 road which we call development and growth. The 
 way is often rough and steep, sometimes a thorn 
 path, now a Gethsemane, somewhere a Calvary. 
 There are hard passes and dizzy cliffs to 
 scale. It is all for the sake of growth. It 
 is to make us great, to enlarge our spiritual 
 capacities. 
 
 This is the meaning of our unanswered prayers, 
 our unsatisfied aspirations and unmet longings. 
 We cry out for higher and better things and are 
 crushed because they are denied us. We believe 
 that somewhere up there above us are the 
 realities which answer to our dreams, and we 
 would that God would hand them down into our 
 open, waiting, trembling hands. But He with- 
 holds that we may still ascend. 
 
 All this bewilders us. We cannot understand 
 our sufferings and disappointments. We have 
 no solution for the puzzle of existence. We 
 are mystified. Of course we are. We are 
 climbing in the clouds. We are in the zone of 
 mist. We must walk by faith. We must push 
 on without scenery. Sometimes we wonder if we 
 have not lost the way. Again we are half 
 tempted to give up and turn back. But as we 
 listen, ever and again we can hear sounding 
 through the mist the call of divine love, saying : 
 ''Press on! It doth not yet appear what you 
 shall be." 
 
 Some things have appeared. Sonship and 
 
THE HEIGHTS OF LIFE 217 
 
 adoption have appeared. We have seen God re- 
 deem a prodigal. We have seen Him lift a 
 wretched reprobate from the ditch and transform 
 him into respectability. We have seen Him 
 touch a criminal with the glory of redeeming 
 love and make him honest. We have seen His 
 winsome grace tame the savage brute and give 
 new hope to the despairing. We have seen God 
 save a poor lost sinner from his sins. Not once 
 or twice, but repeatedly have we seen all this. 
 It appears all around us and we are disposed to 
 call it a miracle. So it is, but it is only the 
 start. It is nothing to what God is doing yonder 
 in the mist, where He is growing a soul into the 
 greatness and glory and godlikeness that will fit 
 it for heaven. But ^Hhe kingdom cometh not 
 with observation." 
 
 We can trust ourselves with God in that zone 
 of mist. He will not lose His child, nor suflFer 
 him to be hurt. He is working His own most 
 gracious will in us through these experiences 
 which we cannot understand. ''What I do, 
 thou knowest not now ; but thou shalt under- 
 stand hereafter." ^ When suffering smites us, 
 and disappointment shrouds us and our feet slip 
 and our souls falter, and we cry out with pas- 
 sionate longing for the unattainable, we must not 
 give up. God is producing the statures of a soul. 
 "It doth not yet appear what we shall be." 
 "For our light aflliction, which is for the mo- 
 ment, worketh for us more and more exceedingly 
 • John xiii. 7. 
 
218 TENDENCY 
 
 an eternal weight of glory." ^ Let us plod on, 
 singing ever under our breath : 
 
 "Then welcome each rebufi, 
 That turns earth's smoothness rough, 
 Each sting that bids nor sit nor stand bnt go ! " 
 
 Eevelation and Eesemblance 
 The third and last stage of the ascent we may 
 call '^ the heights of revelation and resemblance." 
 As I have stood on the spur of the mountain 
 slope, with the open valley in sight below and 
 the zone of mist rising above and concealing from 
 sight the higher ranges, I have seen the summit 
 of the cloud suddenly torn open by the wind, and 
 the mountain peak emerge, bold and distinct, 
 standing in a sea of mist and lifting its serene 
 face against heaven's sky of blue. This is the 
 way John would paint the last stage in redemp- 
 tion's heights. "We know that, when He shall 
 appear, we shall be like Him, for we shall see 
 Him as He is." The top of the cloud has been 
 blown off and we behold the serene summit peak 
 of life standing out against the dome of heaven's 
 eternal blue. 
 
 We do not know all that is ahead of us here in 
 the second stage of the journey, for God leaves 
 the clouds on the lower heights. We do not 
 know how much more of suffering and discipline, 
 of hardship and struggle, of sorrow and unsatis- 
 fied longing are ahead. Well for us that we do 
 not. We might falter and turn back. But we 
 ' 2 Cor. iv. 17. 
 
THE HEIGHTS OF LIFE 219 
 
 do know what is at the top. He is there, — o in- 
 glorious Redeemer. It is uo empty dream, uo 
 wild vagary of fancy. He has shown Himself. 
 Far down in the valley of life's sin and humilia- 
 tion, before we had even started to climb re- 
 demption's heights. He came and showed Him- 
 self. His face was veiled in Hesh to be sure, but 
 the veil could not conceal Him. He said : 
 ' ' Look at Me and see what I would have you be- 
 come. Behold what is waiting for you at the top. 
 I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, 
 the first and the last, the start and the summit." 
 
 He has appeared above all the blinding mist 
 and mystery of life. He will appear and ' ' we 
 know that when He shall appear we shall be like 
 Him for we shall see Him as He is." What an 
 hour that will be, when at last the mists have 
 rolled away, and we lift our souls up out of the 
 clouds of perplexity, and gaze towards heaven's 
 unsullied blue ; and there, serene and radiant, 
 shining with the light of God, and haloed by the 
 love which has guarded our way, we shall see 
 the face, these long years we have loved and 
 worshipped ! Never sunrise so beautiful, never 
 morning so ineffable and complete ! 
 
 And that sight is for thee, soul of mine ; for 
 these dull eyes which have ached for the vision ; 
 for this troubled spirit, sick of the sights of sin 
 and weary with hope long deferred. At last the 
 King's face shines through the gloom, and I see 
 Him and am satisfied. 
 
 Best of all I shall be like Him, for ''we know 
 
220 TENDENCY 
 
 that when He shall appear we shall be like 
 Him." This is the result of all that God has 
 been doing for us and to us and with us and 
 through us down there in the zone of mist. We 
 were perplexed. We could not understand, but 
 at last all is plain. 
 
 We shall be like Him in looks, in thought, in 
 spirit, in character, in privilege, in power, in 
 destiny. This will be heaven. Let us burn up 
 our awkward programs of the heavenly life, and 
 break our little slates and paint over our pictures. 
 They are all inadequate. Here is what is coming. 
 We shall be like Him, who is the chiefest among 
 ten thousand and the one altogether lovely. We 
 are to take on the features and lineaments supernal 
 of the King of love j and all this is for this poor, 
 homely soul of mine ! 
 
 The proof of it is that, " I shall see Him as He 
 is." At last my soul shall get its sight, its eter- 
 nal perceptions, its infinite capacity for seeing 
 God. I shall see Him, not as they saw Him in 
 Pilate's judgment-hall, spit upon and mocked by 
 His enemies ; not as they saw Him staggering 
 through the streets of Jerusalem under the burden 
 of a cross with the coarse crowd shouting ' ' Crucify 
 Him" ; not as they saw Him hanging, broken 
 and bleeding, on lonely Calvary ; not as they saw 
 Him in the tomb with the awful pallor of death 
 in His face ; but at last I shall see Him as He is, 
 robed in glory, with all disguises torn off, with 
 the mask thrown away, in all the splendour and 
 majesty of godhood. 
 
THE HEIGHTS OF LIFE 221 
 
 Such are the lieights ; heights of sonship and 
 adoptiou, heights of development and growth, 
 heights of revelation and resemblance ! Is it any 
 wonder that John adds : " He that hath this hope 
 in him purifieth himself" ? 
 
 It is a great thing to be a Christian ; to have 
 Jesus give a poor, lame, lost, orphaned soul a 
 start ; to hear His call and to follow up the 
 heights of sonship and adoption ; higher still 
 through the blinding, baffling mists of develop- 
 ment and growth ; at last to the everlasting sum- 
 mit peak of revelation and resemblance. The 
 call is always like this. It is a summons to leave 
 the swamps for the heights. 
 
 Yet I wonder if even this is all. When at last 
 we stand on that loftiest peak of revelation and 
 resemblance, where we shall see Him as He is 
 and be like Him, I wonder if we shall not find 
 heights towering higher still, and see, sweeping 
 far out into eternity, loftier and even more ma- 
 jestic ranges of divine purpose to which God's 
 love would summon us, and towards which the 
 life within would compel us. 
 
 " I have climbed to the snows of Age, and I gaze on a field 
 in the past, 
 Where I sank with the body at times, in the sloughs of 
 a low desire ; 
 But I hear no yelp of the beast, and the man is quiet at 
 last 
 As he stands on the heights of his life, with a glimpse 
 of a height that is higher." • 
 
 ' Tennyson. 
 
222 TENDENCY 
 
 But the climb to the "height that is higher" 
 on those far, dim slopes of the infinite, will be 
 different, for the days of struggle and suffering 
 and perplexity will all be over and the country 
 will be home* 
 
xvin 
 
 THE CROWN OF LIFE ON THE BROW 
 OF DEATH 
 
 "God's finger touched him and heslept." — Tennyson. 
 
 ^' Ready to die, this 5th June, 1568. Your Majesty's very 
 humble and loyal vassal and servant." — Lamoral d'Eymont. 
 
 "O Emperor, they that are about to die, salute thee." — 
 The Roman Gladiators in the arena. 
 
 Death does not stop development. It does 
 not even arrest it. Death is but an incident of 
 life, a stage in the process of growth. It is as 
 necessary as birth to the soul's full attainment 
 of its possibilities. Yet the fear of death is not a 
 groundless fear. It is the verdict of the race 
 that death may be a disaster, that it maj'^ bring 
 condemnation. 
 
 If death is to be itself a climb higher along the 
 altar stairs which ' ' slope through darkness up to 
 God " it must come as a normal experience in 
 the life-program of one who has tried to be faith- 
 ful to each duty at its time and to each privilege 
 as it offered. 
 
 To seek death as an escape from duty, as an 
 avoidance of trouble ; to shun it in order to keep 
 out of battle, is to find death worse than a fear. 
 
 Let a man live his life honestly, bear his load 
 patiently, face his foes courageously, take his 
 223 
 
f\' 
 
 224 TENDENCY 
 
 losses without grudging, endure his sorrows with- 
 out bitterness ; and when at last he nears the 
 portal of death, he shall find it a gateway flooded 
 with light, the entrance to a realm where hope 
 has its fruitions and all good dreams come true. 
 
 The heroic figure in life's great play is he who 
 I is faithful. 
 
 It fell to my lot one fall to spend two days in 
 Mercersburg, Pa. I had gone there to preach to 
 the four or five hundred young men in the Mer- 
 cersburg Academy. At the invitation of the 
 headmaster, Dr. Irvine, I arrived Saturday 
 morning in time to witness the Field Day exer- 
 cises of a school whose exploits in athletics had 
 made it famous all over the country. I was well 
 repaid. The thing which provoked my profound- 
 est admiration was an incident in the two-mile 
 race. The track is a quarter of a mile around, 
 j so that the runners had to cover it eight times to 
 make the two miles. Some twenty young fellows 
 entered the contest, and the race was run in good 
 form ; but the lad who got my heartiest applause 
 was not the one who won the prize. Indeed, he 
 was the one who came out last. When the 
 winner scored the goal, this lad of whom I speak 
 was some three-eighths of a mile behind. As he 
 came around the seventh time, the trainer in- 
 sisted that he come off, but he declined. With 
 no chance to win, he persisted in running the 
 race to the end. He had entered for two miles 
 and he was determined to run two miles. As he 
 started on the last lap, the bleachers broke into 
 
THE CEOWN OF LIFE 225 
 
 applause. I thought of the line from the Apoca- » 
 lypse which says : "Be thou faithful uuto death, ^j 
 and I will give thee the crown of life;" ' and I 
 said to myself : "The lad has lost the prize, but \ 
 he has won the race. If he will put that spirit 
 into life, nothing can keep him down. If in the 
 great race of life he will stick to duty and drive 
 on with the same unswerving fidelity, to the last I 
 lap of the road and to the final tick of the clock, 
 the great Judge of awards will give him the ' 
 crown." 
 
 Paint this schoolboy incident on the larger M 
 canvas of life and you have the real hero of the ' 
 world. 
 
 A man has run the long race. He has lagged 
 behind his fellows, but he has done his best and 
 kept on. He has persisted through countless 
 difficulties. The road has been rough and the 
 race hard ; sometimes up dizzy steeps and again I 
 through weary bogs and over hot, blistering H 
 sands and sharp rocks ; but he has kept on, a j 
 stride at a time, with his face towards the goal. 
 
 He has little applause, for he is a mere plod- 
 der. Few cheers lift at his tired feet and no 
 crowds shout his name with wild huzzas. He is 
 running a tame race, and again and again some 
 fleeter-footed runner leaves him behind, but he 
 plods on, his breath coming faster and harder as 
 he nears the end. 
 
 At last he staggers across the goal line. He 
 has put himself into the race such as it was. He 
 » Rev. ii. 10. 
 
n 
 
 226 TENDENCY 
 
 has been faithful unto death, and, gasping in the 
 
 throes of dissolution, he turns his face towards 
 
 the Judge. Then a strange thing happens, for 
 
 as he dies he lives, as he fails he succeeds, as he 
 
 falls he finds the Eock of Ages beneath his feet j 
 
 ^ and out of the infinite, a hand is stretched forth 
 
 I to garland his dying brow with victory. Death 
 
 {has not defeated him, it has merely given the 
 
 signal for his coronation. 
 
 God places the crown of life on the brow of 
 death ; and He does it, not because He pities 
 death, though He does ; and not because He has 
 power to bestow life, though He has; but be- 
 cause the death is the death of one who was 
 faithful unto death and who can therefore be 
 trusted with a crown in the realm of life. 
 
 The divine command is: "Be thou faithful 
 unto death." 
 
 This sums up in a word what God requires. 
 He does not ask us to be energetic beyond our 
 strength, or generous beyond our means, or wise 
 beyond the brains with which this poor head is 
 L furnished ; but, whatever our strength or means 
 I| or brains, He does ask us to be faithful. He 
 • does not ask me to be another, but just my own 
 plain, humdrum, homely, uninteresting, unim- 
 portant, unattractive self, but myself faithful. I 
 may have seen some one I should love to be like, 
 some one more clever than I, serener, more 
 happily circumstanced in life. Oh, to change 
 places, incomes, friends, duties ! It is not re- 
 quired. It is not permitted. Let me run my 
 
THE CEOWN OF LIFE 227 
 
 race and run it to the end. Then there will be *f 
 but one question — Have I been faithful ? 
 
 When at last the Master announces the w inner 
 in the race of life, it will be found that not many 
 wise, not many noble, not many mighty have 
 been called, but the Judge will say : "Come ye 
 blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom pre- 
 pared for you from the foundation of the world." i 
 " Thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will 
 set thee over many things ; enter thou into the 
 joy of thy Lord."^ Heaven's welcome plaudit 
 is : "Well done, good and faithful servant." 
 
 What is it to be faithful ? 
 
 It is to be full of faith. The man who has no 
 faith is not faith full but faith empty. He is faith- 
 less. It is trusting God down to the end of the 
 journey, through storm and sunshine, through 
 adversity and prosperity, through good report 
 and evil report, saying, even with the last breath, 
 " Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him." 
 
 It is fidelity. It is being trustworthy as well 
 as trustful. It is trusting God until men can 
 trust me. It is being so loyal to duty, so devoted 
 to truth, so steadfast to principle, that no lure of 
 quick success can tempt me to be faithless. It 
 means that I should rather be defeated than lie, 
 that I should rather fail in business than succeed 
 through dishonesty, that I should rather be 
 broken in fortune and ruined in reputation than 
 compromise my honour. 
 
 And it is all this, not for a day or a year, or a 
 
 1 Matt. XXV. 34. *Matt. xxv. 21. 
 
228 TENDENCY 
 
 I decade, but for life, not merely when it pays but 
 I / when it costs, not only when it is applauded but 
 /,' when it is hissed; it is ''unto death." The 
 trouble with so many is that we are spasmodically 
 faithful. ' ' Ye did run well ; who did hinder 
 you?" We are good for the first lap but we 
 soon fall out of the race. We lack constancy, 
 longevity, persistency. We have periodic sprees 
 /; of fidelity. There is none so bad, but he has oc- 
 casional intervals of revival, when his soul is 
 stirred with the desire to do better. Under the 
 influence of some rousing appeal or sublime occa- 
 sion he becomes warmed and diligent for a season, 
 \ but he soon grows cold and stiff again. 
 
 It is so easy to compound with infidelity for 
 the moment, cherishing, meanwhile, the determi- 
 nation to return to the paths of virtue once infi- 
 delity has declared a dividend. It is such an 
 easy thing to let down the bars into forbidden 
 territory this once. A crisis is impending. Suc- 
 cess is almost within our grasp. One false word 
 will win, one brief resort to deception, one be- 
 trayal of a friend. Why not? After we have 
 won we can repent and be good again. But that 
 one act of infidelity is fatal. A railroad train 
 : does not need to jump the rails a mile to be 
 •* wrecked ; a single hair's breadth will do the busi- 
 ness. A man does not need to be guilty of a 
 / whole dictionary of blasphemy in order to take 
 God's name in vain ; one profane oath suffices. 
 One does not need to become a notorious liber- 
 tine to violate the sanctity of the marriage vow ; 
 
THE CROWN OF LIFE 229 
 
 one act of impurity is enough to desecrate that 
 holy of holies. 
 
 Faithfulness uuto death is God's standard for 
 human life. On this He bases His judgments. 
 As we apply this standard, our views on many 
 things undergo a radical change. We come to 
 see that the thing of value is not speed but en- 
 durance. The real hero is not he who makes theM 
 fastest schedule but he who lasts the longest. ( 1 
 There are those who go up like a rocket and 
 come down like a stick. It is the power to hold 
 on that wins. Great Britain's most famous gen- 
 eral once said that the difl'erence between the 
 soldiers of his country and those of another was 
 not that the English soldier was braver than 
 other soldiers, but that he was brave five minutes 
 longer. It is endurance that wins the crown. 
 
 The thing of value is not achievement but 
 fidelity. It is not what we accomplish but the 
 way we accomplish it. It is our ideals, our 
 principles. 
 
 It is not success that God looks at, but the 
 struggle. Success is a cheap thing, it is merely 
 relative, an affair of the calendar and census ; 
 but struggle is an affair of eternity, it is a spiritual 
 asset. It is not appearance but character. God 
 does not judge by the uniform, the clothes, the 
 station, the accidentals of life, by what a man 
 has, by his baggage ; but by his character, by 
 what he is. 
 
 The decisive element is not the present but the 
 future. God has not finished at sundown. We 
 
 r\ 
 
i] 
 
 230 TENDENCY 
 
 cannot pass a sane judgmeut without sufficient 
 perspective. John Milton was the man who gave 
 to the English language its one great epic and to 
 the literature of the world one of its chief treas- 
 ures. While John Milton lived, he was poor, 
 and unsung. We must take all the ages into our 
 calculation to get the right answer. The trouble 
 is we are short-sighted. We must be patient. 
 
 The divine promise is : "I will give thee the 
 
 crown of life." It is what eternity offers the 
 
 faithful — a crown of life ! It is a reward that 
 
 aijpeals to the highest and best in our natui'es. 
 
 It is not a cheap prize. God does not come with 
 
 a toy, and try to bribe us with an appeal to the 
 
 appetites. He does not say : ' ' Be faithful and I 
 
 I will give you a crown of ease or a crown of pros- 
 
 [ perity or a crown of distinction or a crown of 
 
 *^ power or a crown of exemption, but I will give 
 
 you the crown of life ! ' ' 
 
 What is the promise worth ? What does it 
 mean to be crowned with life by the hand of God 
 yonder in the vast realm of the infinite *? 
 
 It is a big world that we dwell in and we are 
 all but smothered by a sense of our insignifi- 
 cance. The mighty stretches of even the natural 
 world appall us. Some one has illustrated the 
 distances of this vast natural world which lies 
 about us in this way. He says : ' ' Let us sup- 
 pose a mustard seed lying on the ground, and, at 
 the distance of forty yards, an apple. The two 
 objects represent the relative sizes of the earth 
 and the sun. But suppose this little solar sys- 
 
THE CROWN OF LIFE 231 
 
 tern of the apple and the revolving seeds to lie 
 on the field in an English county, the nearest 
 fixed star, calculated on the same scale, would be 
 another apple lying in the centre of Pennsylva- 
 nia." It takes three and a half years for the 
 light from Alpha Ceutauri to reach our planet. 
 Through holes in the Milky Way the telescope 
 looks out into limitless stretches of darkness 
 where no doubt there are solar systems so far re- 
 moved that their light, travelling for countless 
 centuries, has not yet reached us. In the midst 
 of all this bewildering vastness, we are overcome 
 with the sense of our littleness and feel like cry- 
 ing out to God : ''What is man that Thou art 
 mindful of him?" 
 
 But, if it be possible, the spiritual world is 
 vaster, and its mazes more bewildering. How 
 are our tiny souls to adventure eternity! How 
 shall we ever be able to find our way through 
 the endless stretches and the rush of worlds ? 
 
 God says: "I will crown you with life." 
 You shall not wander the infinite orphaned, de- 
 serted, forsaken, frightened, bewildered, home- 
 sick ; but crowned by the King of kings and 
 wearing the diadem of life. 
 
 Life is the one sufficient equipment for all 
 worlds. If there be life, it will make a way for 
 itself. Chiist had life and even the Cross and 
 the Tomb could not block His way. Life will 
 make a way for itself through the mazes of eter- 
 nity. 
 
 The faithful will enter the infinite wearing the 
 
232 TENDENCY 
 
 crown of life ; not hunted, defeated, driven of 
 circumstance, badgered by want ; but crowned 
 and kingly, clothed with authority and wielding 
 dominion. 
 
 This crown is the sign of the soul's kinship 
 with the royalty of heaven. It is God's way of 
 saying to the faithful : " I am your Father ; " 
 and to all the inhabitants of eternity : " This is 
 My son." 
 
 And it is on all this yon plain toiler, plodding 
 at his humble task, emerges, when at last the 
 curtain falls upon his lowly part in life's drama. 
 He has been faithful — that is all — faithful unto 
 death, and now God places on his brow the 
 crown of life. 
 
 "Why should he fear death 1 It is his hour of 
 coronation. Why should he draw back at the 
 grave ? Just beyond its shadow a throne seat is 
 waiting for him, and across its mystic portal the 
 real rulers of the world are about to acclaim him 
 a comrade. 
 
 This transfigures the drudgery of life and 
 makes each step in the long, hard race a stride 
 towards a throne. We need not worry over re- 
 sults. Our one concern is to be faithful to the 
 duty in hand. As we are, the path of duty is 
 illuminated, the goal emerges out of uncertainty, 
 and our future becomes ' ' a city which hath 
 foundations." 
 
 With the promise of a crown of life, one can 
 afford to be reckless in the discharge of duty. 
 What if his duty cost him his life? It is only 
 
THE CROWN OF LIFE 233 
 
 he who loses his life that finds it. As he steps 
 into the shadow, death changes into life. It was 
 this promise which carried Christ to Calvary and 
 His Apostles to martyrdom and countless heroes, 
 through all ages, to the block and stake. 
 
 Yonder, where the shutters are drawn and the 
 people talk in whispers and walk softly, an im- 
 mortal soul is passing out of time into eternity. 
 His has been a commonplace life, but he has 
 been faithful and now he has reached the end of 
 the journey. The sunset has come and the 
 shadows of evening are thickening. Between 
 two worlds hangs the veil which separates time 
 and eternity. On this side the veil, it is a house 
 of sorrow. Loved ones are in tears and speak to 
 each other in broken sobs and cry out to God for 
 comfort. 
 
 But on the other side of that thin veil, the 
 scene is far different. It is the hour of a great 
 soul's coronation. There are no tears, no sob- 
 bing grief and heart-broken prayers, but the 
 chant of victory, for a faithful soul is coming to 
 its own. All the pomp and circumstance of 
 heaven centre there. The face of the pilgrim 
 has lost its death pallor and the eyes shine with 
 the light of expectant immortality. God is once 
 more placing the crown of life on the brow of 
 death, and all heaven resounds with cheers for a 
 real hero. 
 
XIX 
 DESTINATION AND DEPARTURE 
 
 "Into the Silent Land ! 
 Ah ! who shall lead us thither? 
 Clouds in the evening sky more darkly gather. 
 And shattered wrecks lie thickly on the strand. 
 Who leads us with a gentle hand 
 Thither, oh, thither, 
 Into the Silent Land? " 
 
 — Johann G. von Salis. 
 
 Heaven is the name the Bible gives to the 
 destinatiou of a human being who has become a 
 partaker of the divine nature. 
 
 To such a being death is but the swinging 
 open of the gate to heaven. 
 
 While the Bible speaks of heaven, it speaks of 
 it by way of suggestion rather than description, 
 in a way to capture the imagination rather than 
 to satisfy the reason. 
 
 In one of the most confidential moods of His 
 ministry, Jesus said to His friends: "I go to 
 prepare a place for you. And if I go and pre- 
 pare a place for you, I will come again and re- 
 ceive you unto Myself ; that where I am, there 
 ye may be also." * 
 
 He was speaking of heaven. He was looking 
 through the open door of death and speaking of 
 
 ' John xiv. 2, 3. 
 234 
 
DESTINATION AND DEPARTURE 235 
 
 heaven. Staudiug in the shadow of that pres- 
 ence which, despite our faith, still makes us fear, 
 Christ dropped these blessed words of comfort 
 into the troubled hearts of His disciples from 
 whom death was soon to divide Him. 
 
 Standing on the threshold of death He pro- 
 claimed and promised heaven. 
 
 It is going out of fashion to make much of 
 heaven. People do not think of it as they once 
 did. They do not believe about it as they used 
 to. It is a common thing to make light of it. 
 It is too dreamy and far away, too misty and 
 mythical and mystical to be much of an asset in 
 real life. The hymns of heaven are retired, and 
 the religion of heaven is discredited. Our age 
 is too practical and our creeds too scientific and 
 exact. In so far as heaven finds a place in our 
 vocabulary, we are disposed to make it a present- 
 day condition. We locate it on this side the 
 grave. Instead of our going to heaven, it must 
 come to us. It must get into present conditions 
 and habits. It is regarded as a social millennium. 
 It is repairing the damage done by sin on earth. 
 It is bringing about ideal relations in real life. 
 It is getting the New Jerusalem located on this \ 
 planet. 
 
 All this is eminently Christian. Religion is a jA 
 sham, unless it affect present-day and present- ^ \ 
 world conditions. It is very well to sing of "the 
 sweet by and by," but faith in a heaven to come 
 is a lie, unless it lead one to strive for heavenly 
 foretastes and foretokens here. If the hope 
 
236 TENDENCY 
 
 of heaven affect nothing but hymnology and 
 prayer, if it lead us to do nothing but ' ' sit and 
 sing ourselves away to everlasting bliss," if it 
 fail to stir us to help the weak and nurse the 
 sick and champion the cause of the oppressed, 
 heaven is a pious fraud. If it be genuine, it 
 must get down to earth. And yet we make a 
 worse blunder if we conclude that heaven is 
 nothing but a foretaste ; and that this holy city, 
 i which comes down from God out of heaven, 
 I leaves no eternal triumphant city of God in 
 heaven. 
 
 Man cannot give up his faith in the heaven 
 Christ talked about as He looked through the 
 open door of death. He cannot surrender his 
 hope of the homeland. His heart pines for it 
 and the thought of it makes every step in the 
 long journey easier. 
 
 When we grow weary of our work, and worn 
 \ out by conflict, and discouraged by failures, it is 
 the thought of heaven that makes us live again. 
 If we had to cancel from our creed the glorious 
 hope of ' ' the rest that remaineth for the people 
 of God," the load would crush us. 
 
 When we stand at the bedside of the dying 
 and watch the strange pallor as it spreads over 
 the face we love, and feel the final pulse as it 
 goes to sleep in the tired arteries, that which 
 comforts us is the feeling that good-bye is but 
 A for a little while. We shall meet beyond the 
 river. Heaven is just across on the other side of 
 the silent ford. The parting will not be long. 
 
 ^^ 
 
DESTINATION AND DEPAETURE 237 
 
 When our departui'e draws uear, and but a 
 filmy shadow seems to intervene between time and 
 eternity, the thing which slays the fear in our 
 hearts and gives us perfect peace is the faith 
 that we are going home ; we are nearing our 
 Father's house. 
 
 It may be old-fashioned to think this way 
 about heaven, but living is an old-fashioued 
 business, and the Bible is an old-fashioned book, 
 and Christianity is an old-fashioned religion, 
 and the heart has old-fashioned needs, and 
 heaven is an old-fashioned place, and the sob of 
 the stricken soul is still what it was when Christ 
 hushed human sorrow with the hope of heaven. 
 
 The land of immortality comes down to greet 
 us and across the dim border which separates 
 two worlds, we catch glimpses of our destina- 
 tion. 
 
 Heaven is a place. It is somewhere. It is as 
 much a real world as earth. It is along some 
 line of latitude and longitude. It has a tangible 
 and definite existence. It is a place. It is not a 
 vapour, a dim idea, a holy dream, a pious aspira- 
 tion, a devout fancy. It is not merely a state of 
 mind, a condition of character, an attitude of 
 conduct. Heaven is a place. We may not be 
 able to define it, but what of that ? There is 
 much we cannot define. If our world were re- 
 duced to the geographical boundaries of what we 
 are able accurately to defiue, we should be 
 cramped for standing room. We may not be 
 able to understand heaven, but what of that f 
 
238 TEI^DENCY 
 
 What do we understand? We do not under- 
 stand ourselves. But while we may not be able 
 either to define or understand it, this we can do ; 
 we can hope it. We can believe in heaven, and 
 trust the statement of Christ, who rose from the 
 dead. 
 
 Christ is somewhere. In His spirit, He is 
 everywhere ; but in His person He is somewhere. 
 The Bible says He is at the right hand of God. 
 Wherever Christ is, there is heaven. The 
 angels are somewhere. They are not ubiquitous. 
 They cannot be in two places at one and the 
 same time. The home of the angels is the heav- 
 enly country. The redeemed of the Lord are 
 somewhere. They are not wandering like lost 
 spirits through the void. They are with Christ, 
 and there is heaven. 
 
 Christ's resurrection proves the reality of 
 heaven. It settles all that is unsettled about it. 
 If it be true that Christ said what He is reported 
 to have said, if it be true that He died, and if it 
 be true that He arose from the dead as the 
 Scriptures say, there can be no doubt of the 
 reality of heaven. 
 
 If Mary saw Him after He arose from the 
 dead, if the two women saw Him, if the two dis- 
 ciples saw Him at Emmaus, if any of the eleven 
 saw Him at either of His appearances in the up- 
 per room, if Thomas saw the print of the nails in 
 His hands and the spear- wound in His blessed 
 side, if Peter and the other disciples saw Him in 
 the early morning by the seaside, if the eleven 
 
DESTINATION AND DEPAKTURE 239 
 
 saw Him on the inountain top, if the five hun- 
 dred saw Him at one time, if Paul saw Him and 
 heard His voice that fateful day on the way to 
 Damascus, if all of these or any one of these at 
 any single time saw Jesus after He rose from the 
 dead, if Jesus is alive to-day in any of His dis- 
 ciples, in this or any other world ; then Jesus 
 lives, His word is true, and heaven is not a 
 fiction. It is not a dreamland, but as real a 
 country as America or England. Heaven exists 
 somewhere. 
 
 This little planet is not all. This dim twi- 
 light is not all. Some day the twilight will " 
 fade before the fadeless glory of eternity, ' 1 
 and this narrow planet shall be exchanged 
 for the place Christ is preparing. There is a 
 laud which satisfies our longings, where "the 
 wicked cease from troubling and the weary are 
 at rest," where all our hopes are realized and all 
 we seek is found. 
 
 Heaven is a place prepared by Christ. It is 
 something beyond our own creation. We have a rt( 
 way of saying that every man makes his own r 
 heaven. This is true in part, but it is a very ^ 
 small part. If the part man makes is all, heaven 
 is not much. If my heaven is to be nothing but 
 the happiness I construct, the reward I earn, the 
 peace I achieve, I shall be a pauper forever. We 
 are not great at heaven building. We have 
 made slow progress at it here in time. For some 
 thousands of years we have been trying to bring 
 some of our heavenly dreams to pass in human 
 
240 TENDENCY 
 
 ^ 
 
 society, but how slow our progress ! We are 
 poor architects of happiness. Only Christ can 
 build the place we call heaven. He has promised 
 to do it. He says, " I go to do it." It was what 
 He said as He looked at the cross and peered into 
 the shadows of the tomb and stepped down into 
 the valley of the shadow of death. It was just 
 Christ's way of saying "I go to prepare a place 
 for you." It was what He meant as He snapped 
 the bands of death asunder and rolled the stone 
 away and came forth in the radiant beauty and 
 glory of His resurrection. It was still Christ 
 saying with the voice of a conqueror : " I go to 
 prepare a place for you." It was what He meant 
 as He rose from the slopes of Olivet on clouds of 
 light to the right hand of the Most High. It was 
 the ascending Saviour saying in notes of victory 
 to His waiting, wondering disciples : " I go to 
 prepare a place for you." 
 
 He has gone up, leading ''captivity captive," 
 with a full knowledge of our nature and needs 
 and of all that is necessary to make us happy, to 
 build there on the eternal firmament a place of 
 habitation for His people. 
 
 Christ is preparing. He is getting things 
 ready. When all is ready, He will take us 
 home. What a home-coming it will be ! Some- 
 times a man dies in his prime and we wonder at 
 the strange Providence which cuts off a splendid 
 career in the midst of usefulness. Perhaps if we 
 could see the other side, a part of the mystery 
 might clear in a vision of the place that was 
 
DESTINATION AND DEPAKTURE 241 
 
 ready for the home-coming of the King's son. 
 Sometimes a little child is taken all too soon from 
 the arms of parental love, and we are mystified 
 by a plan which plucks the bud before the flower is 
 blown ; but we may rest assured the place Christ 
 prepares for His own is ready. No one arrives in 
 heaven to find there is no room. 
 
 Heaven will not be a disappointment. It will 
 satisfy. Christ knows best just what we need, 
 and we can safely leave all the plans audfuruisli- 
 ings of our eternal home to Him, assured that the 
 heaven He builds will fill every measure of desire. 
 It will be complete. 
 
 Of one thing we may be certain. Heaven will 
 not be a purgatory. It will not be a place where 
 people are to be disciplined by further suffering, 
 in order that they may be purged of remaining 
 dross and made fit to enter God's presence. 
 Christ says nothing about a purgatory. The 
 comfort He gives to a dying pillow is not the 
 prospect of purgatorial torment. It is heaven. 
 " That where I am ye may be also," is His word. 
 Christ is not in purgatory. Having offered a 
 perfect sacrifice for sin. He has entered into the 
 holy of holies. The Christian when he dies goes 
 where Christ is. Absent from the body is pres- 
 ent with the Lord. 
 
 The Bible gives some glimpses of heaven. 
 There will be no sin there. Sins are catalogued, 
 but they are all kept outside the gates of the 
 White City. Nothing that defileth or maketh a 
 lie is allowed to enter. A man gets rid of his 
 
242 TEIs^DENCY 
 
 chain, of his infirmity, of the sin which doth so 
 easily beset him, of the body of death to which 
 he lias been bound, and which has been making 
 existence a hell on earth. He stands up free and 
 emancipated beyond the reach of temptation, and 
 out of the peril of fall forever. That will be 
 heaven. 
 
 There will be no night there, no more darkness, 
 no blinding mystery, no baffling obscurity, no 
 weary anxiety and perplexity. "Heaven will 
 be the sweet surprise of a perfect explanation." 
 All will be made plain. 'Now we know in part, 
 but then we shall know as we are known. There 
 will be no more sea, no more exile, no more lone- 
 liness, no more enforced idleness, no more limita- 
 tions, no more separations and hardships and 
 penalty. There will be no more sorrow, no more 
 hurts, no more bereavements, no more disap- 
 pointments. God will wipe away all tears from 
 our eyes. Sorrow and suffering will so dog our 
 steps to the very gates of glory that we shall enter 
 heaven with the traces of grief upon our faces, 
 but God will stretch forth His hand and wipe 
 away our tears ; and there will be no more tears 
 forever. 
 
 We shall be with Christ, and if with Christ, 
 with all who love Him, with the loved ones who 
 have reached Him before us. My little seven- 
 year-old boy was talking to me one day about 
 heaven, and said: **But, father, you will be 
 able to think about your family there, won't 
 you?" Already in the child's heart that ques- 
 
DEST [NATION AND DEPARTURE 243 
 
 tion was asking itself which is ever on our lips 
 when we think of the country beyond death. 
 
 " When for me the silent oax 
 Parts the silent river 
 And I stand upon the shore 
 Of the vast forever, 
 Shall I miss the loved and known? 
 Shall I vainly seek mine own? " 
 
 Blessed be God, the reply is an answer to the 
 heart's prayer. The face of the risen Christ is 
 our assurance that death can never so disfigure 
 the face we love as to make us strangers. 
 The flowers of this spring time lift up the same 
 fair faces we knew in the spring days that are 
 gone. 
 
 "So after the death winter it will be, 
 God will not put strange sights in heavenly places. 
 The old love will look out of the old faces." ^ 
 
 Heaven is the place to which Christ will con- 
 duct us. He does not leave us to make the jour- 
 ney through the valley of the shadow alone. He 
 comes for us. He is our holy escort. There is 
 no danger of our losing the way. The perils 
 which lurk in the shadows cannot frighten us. 
 Christ has made the vale of death safe for all who 
 enter it, trusting in Him. He walks beside us. 
 " I come again and will receive you." It is the 
 
 * Chadwick. 
 
244 TENDENCY 
 
 beautiful way Christ has of transforming the dark 
 hour. He has described how He comes. It is on 
 the clouds of glory, and the holy angels are with 
 Him. What a celestial procession ! That is 
 what takes place at death. We see only the 
 dark side of the cloud ; we are beneath it. But 
 on the other, the heaven side, all is light and 
 glory. Christ and the holy angels have come to 
 conduct a soul to the place Christ has prepared. 
 Death is transfigured. 
 
 He will receive us unto Himself. Sometimes 
 we think of what a blessed thing it would be 
 to have been with Jesus when He was upon 
 earth ; to have gone with Him from village to 
 village, along the dusty roads, through the 
 crowded city streets ; to have spent the mornings 
 and evenings in Christ's company as did His dis- 
 ciples. True those were the days of His humilia- 
 tion. He was despised and persecuted, and had 
 not where to lay His head ; but to have been 
 allowed to share even that with Christ would 
 be a blessed privilege. Something far better 
 awaits us. We shall be with Him in glory. 
 Tired soul, this is what He says : ' ' That where 
 I am, there ye may be also ; " on the clouds of 
 glory, in the streets of gold, on the jasper throne. 
 Sometimes we think what a boon it would be if 
 Christ would do for us what He did for some of 
 the people when He was on earth ; if He would 
 heal our sick, if He would fight off death when 
 our beloved seem about to cross the river, if He 
 would let us keep the child death so cruelly takes 
 
DESTINATION AND DEPARTURE 245 
 
 away j if He would lengthen out the years of our 
 earthly companionship. We beg for that, but 
 He has somethiug far better to give us. He has 
 the homeland, not for a few years of loving asso- 
 ciation but forever. 
 
 In 1865 Lord Francis Douglas, while climbing 
 Mont Blanc slipped and fell to his death. His 
 body could not be found, and it was supposed 
 that it had fallen into the bed of the glacier. 
 According to computations based on careful esti- 
 mates from experience, the glacier should have 
 discharged the body at the foot of the mountain 
 in the summer of 1905. All that summer, the 
 aged mother of Lord Francis was there watching 
 and waiting for the body of her boy, but the 
 body, to her bitter disappointment, did not ap- 
 pear. Broken-hearted, she had been waiting for 
 years just to get a glimpse of the scarred face and 
 mangled body she loved, and lay its dust to rest. 
 She would have been comforted, if only that had 
 been allowed her. But there is an infinitely bet- 
 ter thing Christ has prepared ; not the dull dust 
 and broken body released from the icy embrace 
 of the cruel glacier, but the living, glorified i>er- 
 sonality in the bosom of the Father's love ; not 
 for one hurried, agonizing glimpse as the heart 
 sobs over the memory of what it has lost ; but 
 forever and ever in the fellowship of heaven. 
 
 There is a legend of a lad whose little sister 
 was desperately ill and who was told that if he 1 
 could get one leaf from the tree of life in the 
 garden of God, it would heal her. He travelled I 
 
246 TENDENCY 
 
 far in search of the garden, and when at last he 
 had found it, he told the angel at the gate his 
 story and begged for one leaf from the tree of life. 
 The angel said : ^'If your sister is healed, can 
 you promise me that she will never be sick again, 
 never again hungry or tired, that people will 
 never again ill- treat her?" The lad said: 
 "No, I cannot promise." ''Then," said the 
 angel, '*I will open the gate a little and let you 
 look in. If after you have seen, you still want 
 the leaf, I will go myself to the God of the garden 
 and beg it." The lad looked in and caught a 
 glimpse of the glory of heaven. He saw the 
 beauty and blessedness of the place, and as he 
 turned away, he said softly to the angel: "I 
 will not ask for the leaf now. There is no coun- 
 try so beautiful and happy as this. There is no 
 one so kind as the angel of death. I wish he 
 would take me too." 
 
 This is the Christian's hope. Amid the fra- 
 grance of Easter lilies and the music of resurrec- 
 tion hymns, the message slips in like sunshine 
 through an open window ; and to those whose 
 forms are scarred with the wounds of battle, who 
 have travelled far and are weary, whose spirits 
 sigh for rest and whose hearts cry for home, it 
 says: "This is your destination, the spot on 
 which all the stars shine, the hour when every 
 ?longing breaks into song." And yet we wonder 
 /if even heaven is a finished country. 
 
 Are there no vistas there? If life is tendency, 
 heaven will not make its pulses dumb, nor lay its 
 
DESTINATION AND DEPAKTUEB 247 
 
 glorious tides. We shall find that destination is 
 but a new point of departure and that even in 
 the full blaze of what we now call heaven, the 
 soul will still " a far-off glory see, strange music 
 hear." 
 
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