FIRST THINGS FIRST I HAVE a life with Christ to live, But, ere I live it, must I wait Till learning can clear answer give Of this and that book's date ? 1 have a life in Christ to live, I have a death in Christ to die ; And must I wait till science give All doubts a full reply ? Nay, rather, while the sea of doubt Is raging wildly round about, Questioning of Hfe and death and sin, Let me but creep within • Thy fold, O Christ, and at thy feet Take but the lowest seat, And hear Thine awful voice repeat, In gentlest accents, heavenly sweet : " Come unto Me, and rest ; Believe Me, and be blest," J. C. Shairp. FIRST THINGS FIRST Ht)£)re60e6 to l^oung flDen BY THE REV. GEORGE JACKSON, B.A. New York : 46 East Fourteenth Street THOMAS Y. CROWELL & COMPANY Boston : 100 Purchase Street ^y]\ovTe 8k ra X'^pKTixara ra jxe a aettova.— l COR. xii. 31 TO MY MOTHER INTRODUCTORY NOTE The sermons contained in this volume have all been preached in the course of the writer's ordin- ary ministry, and, with one or two exceptions, during the last twelve months. They have been re-written from the original notes, but both in form and substance they remain practically the same as when first delivered. In making this selection for the press, the aim of the writer has been to illustrate and emphasize the truth suggested by the title of the book. If he has succeeded in this, he will be the more readily pardoned the occasional repetition of ideas, which is the almost inevitable consequence. How much, and to how many, he is indebted, probably no busy preacher can tell ; certainly the writer cannot. He has gleaned in many fields and always with one end in view. Some acknow- ledgment of his many obligations he has sought viii First Things First to make in the footnotes attached to these pages ; and with this he must be content. The address entitled " The Unanswerable Argu- ment for Christianity " is reprinted from the Wesley an MetJiodist Magazine (January 1894), by kind permission of Rev. C. H. Kelly. With this exception all the addresses appear now for the first time. Edinburgh, 19/// September 1894. CONTENTS ^ PAGE " Self-Revere.nxe, Self-Knowledge, Self-Control" . i I dorintljians vi. 19. " Know ye not that your body is a temple of the Holy Ghost 7''^ ILuke V. 8. ' ' Simon Peter fell doivn at Jesus' knees, saying, Depart fro?n me ; for I am a sinful man, O Lord.^* I ffIorintf)ian«i ix. 27. ' / bzcffet my body, and bring it into bondage. " i^ontans vi. 13. ** Yield yourselves unto God.^^ II How Jesus dealt WITH Inquirers 15 III What IS IT TO BE A Christian ? 31 ©alatiaitiS ii. 20. " That life which I now live in the flesh I live in faith, the faith -luhich is in the Son of God, zvho loved me, and gave Himself up for me.'''' IV Why OUGHT I to be a Christian ? 47 JLuke V. 27. ''Follow Me.'''' First Things First V PAGE Mr. Get-i'-the-Hundred-and-Lose-i'-the-vSiiire. . . 63 Genesis xiii. 11. *• So Lot chose him all the Plain of Jordan.*^ ©mrsis xxv. 33. *• And ^sau sold his birthright tinto Jacob.'** VI The Manliness of Christ 79 %z{% iv. 13. '■^ And wheti they beheld the boldness of Petet and John . . . they took knowledge of them, that they had been withjestis." VII Temptation 97 ©diesis iii. 1-5. '''■ Noxv the serpent xvas more subtil than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said. Ye shall not eat of atty tree of the garden ? Aitd the woman said mito the serpent, Of the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat : but of the fruit of the tree which is in the 7?iidst of the garde7i, God hath said. Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die. And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not stcrely die : for God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as God, hww- ing good and evil. " VIII How the Prize was won at an old Athletic Festival 113 I CTorintijtans ix. 24-27. *^ Knozu ye not that they which run in a race run all, but one receiveth the prize? Even so run, that ye uiay attain. And every man that striveth in the games is tetnperate in all thijigs. Now they do it to receive a corruptible crown ; but we an incorruptible. L therefore so rtin, as ?tot uncertaijily ; so fight I, as not beating the air : but I buffet my body, and b?'ing it into bondage : lest by any jueans, after that L have preached to others, I fnyself should be rejected.^' Contents xi TV ■^■^ PACK The Problem of Problems— Myself .... 127 X Enthusiasm 145 ^cts! i. 13. ^^ Simon the Zealot.'''' XI The Unanswerable Argument for Christianity . . 159 ^cts iii. 2. " And a certain fuan that was laf?ie from his mother^ s womb was carried, ivhom they laid daily at the door of the temple which is called Beautiful, to ask alms of them that entered into the temple" ^Cts iv. 14. ** And seeing the vian which was healed standing with ihem^ they could say nothing against it." XII The Nameless Prophet : A Study in Conscience . . 173 *' And, behold, there came a man of God out of fiidah by the word of the Lo}-d unto Beth-el." XIII Modern Idolatry igo I 3o\)Xi V. 21. " Little children, guard yourselves from idols." xii First Things First XIV A Young Man's Difficulties with his Bible . . 205 XV The Worship OF THE Highest 221 ©cutcronontp xii. 13, 14. " Take heed to thyself that thou offer not thy burnt offerings in every place that thou seest : hut in the place zvhich the Lord shall choose in one of thy tribes, there thou shall offer thy burnt offerings, and there thou shall do all that I com- mand thee. ^'' XVI A Saved Soul and a Lost Life 235 ILtilte xxiii. 42, 43. ^^ And he said, Jesus, remember me lohen Thou comest in Thy kingdom. And He said unto him. Verily I say tin to thee. To-day shall thou be with Me in Paradise. " SELF-REVERENCE, SELF-KNOWLEDGE, SELF-CONTROL" '■'' Know ye not that yoiw body is a temple of the Holy Ghost?'''' — I Cor. vi. 19. '■'■ Simon Peter fell down at Jesus'' knees, saying, Depart from me ; for I am a sinful man, O Lo7'd" — Luke v. 8. ^^ I buffet my body, and bring it into bondage.'''' — I CoR. ix. 27. ** Yield yourselves unto God.'''' — RoM. vi. 13. 1 " SELF-REVERENCE, SELF-KNOWLEDGE, SELF-CONTROL" " T^ NOW ye not that your body is a temple of a\^ the Holy Ghost ? " — that is self-reverence. " Simon Peter fell down at Jesus' knees, saying, Depart from me ; for I am a sinful man, O Lord " — that is self-knowledge. " I buffet my body, and bring it into bondage" — that is self-control. " Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control ; these three alone," says Tennyson, " lead life to sovereign power." But is it so ? " These three alone " — are these the only saviours that man needs ? Nay, verily ; even this threefold cord, strong as it is, will snap if you do not weave into its twisted strands another and a stronger. Hence my fourth text : " Yield yourselves unto God." It is not enough that life be self-controlled ; it must be Christ-controlled. " Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control " — we need them all ; not one ally can be spared in the deadly war of Sense with Soul ; First Thin OS First but our life will never reach that power" of which the poet sings, till in the midst of the throne Christ sits as king. Let us consider these three virtues, therefore, and see how they stand related to Jesus Christ. And for convenience' sake I begin with — I. S elf -knozvl edge. — " Know thyself," said the ancient Greek oracle ; and if, as Pope has told u^, " the proper study of mankind is man," then each man should begin with himself. Is it altogether superfluous to urge the import- ance of a knowledge of one's physical self? Despite all that the schoolmaster and the popular scientific and health lecturer have done, the amount of mischief which is directly traceable to ignorance — and which is therefore preventible — can hardly be over-estimated. I am not of those who claim for physical science the first place in our studies ; yet surely prudence and common sense urge the importance of at least an element- ary knowledge of the laws of our physical well- being. How is the human machine to be kept in proper working order if we who have, so to speak, the " tending " of it are wholly ignorant of its construction ? The worst ills of life spring from causes deeper than ignorance ; they lie beyond the reach of the schoolmaster ; nevertheless, let him do his perfect work, and society will soon be a different thing from what we see it to- day. There is another side to this subject, which, Self- Know ledge though it belongs to those who are fathers and mothers rather than to the young men to whom these words are specially addressed, I cannot pass over in silence. I wish I dare say all that it is in my heart to say, all that ought to be said, and to be said, too, in the plainest possible speech ; yes, and that would be said, if it were not that we are smothered by false conventionalities. But I deliberately charge it against you fathers and mothers that you are sending your sons and daughters out into the world in utter ignorance of what it is your solemn and bounden duty to speak to them of. I know what seals your lips ; it is a feeling of modesty, of delicacy ; and besides, will they not find out these things soon enough for themselves ? It is modesty false as it is cruel. " Find out for themselves " ? Yes, indeed they will ; and the devil himself mayhap will be their teacher, and the truth never learnt from the lips of love will enter by the door of sin and shame. That is the sad dumb tragedy of many a home ; that is why the lines have come so soon in the mother's face, and the father's back is bowed while he is yet young. But this is only one form of self-knowledge. Man possesses a moral as well as a physical self. If ignorance there means disaster, not less so does it here. There is a famous picture by a German artist ^ which represents Satan playing a game of chess with man for his soul. We are all playing 1 Retzsch. First Things First that game ; if we do not know the rules of the game we shall be checkmated speedily and without pity. " Know thyself" ; keep a strict watch upon yourself ; make a study of yourself Learn what are the forces at your command ; know where you are weak and where you are strong. The general who goes into battle ignorant of the army at his back does but court defeat. Remember we are engaged in a warfare from which there is no escape. The adversary before us is as pitiless as he is powerful. It will need all our wit and resource if we are not to be left beaten upon the battle- field ; and one of the first conditions of successful conflict is a true self-knowledge. Now the truest and highest self-knowledge is only to be learned from Jesus Christ. Do not say that is a merely arbitrary statement ; it can justify itself at the bar of reason. For consider, how is a man to know himself intellectually ? Can he do so if he company all his days with country yokels ? If he would learn the cubits of his mental stature must he not measure himself, not with those who are, intellectually, his inferiors, not even with his equals, but with the intellectual giants of our race ? Only so will he learn the truth about himself Not otherwise is it in the moral and spiritual world. We must come into the presence of the Ideal Man and judge ourselves by Him. In the Tower of London are kept the standard weights and measures by which the pound-weight and the yard-stick of every village Self- Reverence shopkeeper must be tested. That is what Christ is for us in the world of moral life. Look at Simon Peter in the presence of Jesus. What Peter's estimate of himself had been before that day I do not know ; complacent enough in all probability. But when in the little fishing coble there flashed into his soul one sudden self-revealing ray from the presence of Christ, all the old self- satisfaction shrivelled into nothingness, and he " fell down at Jesus' knees, saying. Depart from me ; for I am a sinful man, O Lord." That was a memorable day in the life of Peter when Jesus " looked into " ^ His disciple, and saw Cephas, the man of rock, beneath the fluid, unstable Peter. But it was a day no less memorable when Peter looked into himself, and saw himself as with Christ's own eyes ; the disciple then had become an apostle in the making. Self-knowledge is always best learned at the feet of Jesus. IL Self -reverence. — The importance of self- reverence may be seen in a moment if we consider what happens when it is lost. Why is it that the path back to a better life is for some so hard to tread ? What is it makes even their best friends shake their heads and lose heart ? It is not that they are sinners above all the rest ; but they have begun to despair of themselves ; they have lost faith in themselves ; hope is gone, self-reverence, self-respect, dead. " Contempt from those about us is hard to bear, but God help the poor wretch 1 John i. 42 i/ji.j3\^\f/as. 8 First Things Fi7^st who contemns himself." ^ You remember poor Guinevere's sad wail — *' O shut me round with narrowing nunnery-walls, Meek maidens, from the voices crying ' shame.' / must not scorn myself. " It is from that scorn of self that, in Victor Hugo's great masterpiece, the soul of Jean Valjean is saved by the love of the saintly bishop. And if our love can thus heal of self-despisings, if it can " wipe off the soiling of despair," to such a love all things are possible ; if it cannot, I know not if there is anything that it can do. For the scorn of self is the death of hope. And yet, it may be urged, what is this scorn of self but the outcome of that knowledge of self of which we have just been speaking ? What shred of self-reverence can still cling to the man whose eyes have once looked into the whited sepulchre of his own sinful life ? How should he but loathe and despise himself? And if our knowledge of self be won anywhere save at the feet of Christ, I do not wonder if it issue not in self-reverence but in self-despair. Only He can stand over us as we lie in the depths of our self-abasement and say, as He did to Peter, " Fear not." But He can, and He does. Have we ever pondered this wonderful fact ? Christ knew what was in man, and yet He never lost His reverence for man. Hold Him for what 1 Mark Rutherford. Self- Reverence 9 we will, human or Divine, none has ever read the human heart as He read it. He knew the hellish possibilities that slumbered in its dark depths ; knew, too, how they could burst forth in horrid shapes of murderous hate and blood. And yet He reverenced man, and caused him to be reverenced, as none other ever did. What to others was only a ruin, was to Him at least ruined magnificence. He looked on human nature not as one that gazes on some still lake and thinks only of the foul creeping things that nestle in its slimy depths ; but rather as one who sees how in its quiet bosom it may bear, as in a mirror, the fair image of the over-arching sky. " If there be a devil in man, there is an angel too " ; Christ never missed the angel. He saw the possible saint even in the actual devil. Therefore in His eyes every human life was sacred — the life of the little child, the fallen woman, the outcast publican. This is the lesson Christ will teach me if I come to Him. I, am I made in the image and likeness of God ? Yes ; the image may be worn and defaced, but it is His image that I bear. I, the prodigal, I who have strayed so far and fallen so low, am I a child of God ? Yes ; I may be a lost son, yet am I a son still. Myself, this ruined shrine, where " the snake nests in the altar-stone," whence all things pure have fled, does the Holy One still call this His own, still seek entrance here? He does, He does. I may sell myself to the devil, body, soul, and spirit ; yet do lO First Things First I belong to God : He has rights in me that no deed of mine can set aside. This is what Christ would teach me. Shall I not come to Him ? HI. Self-control. — Of the necessity of this virtue it can hardly be necessary for me to speak. Long centuries ago Plato depicted the soul under the figure of a many-headed monster, a lion, and a man combined in one form. The man repre- sents the higher nature, the reason ; the lion, the passionate element ; the many-headed monster, the lusts and appetites. Only when the man within us rules is it well with the soul. Scripture is full of the same truth. " He that ruleth his spirit," says the wise man, " is better than he that taketh a city." " Gird up the loins of your mind and be sober." " I buffet my body," says Paul, and the word he uses is a very picturesque one ; it is borrowed from the language of a pugilist in the Grecian games : we might almost translate, " I beat it black and blue." He will spare no pains to keep under his body and to bring it into subjection. Let every young man then be sure of this, that if he does not learn to practise self-control, he is lost. But is this the conclusion of the whole matter ? Is there no more to be said ? I take down Emerson's noble essay on " Self-reliance," with its motto so characteristic of its author's teaching, ne te quaesiveris extra. All through the essay he rings the changes on this word : " trust thyself," Self- Control li " insist on yourself," " nothing can bring you peace but yourself." And the world owes a great debt to Emerson for his preaching of this hardy, vigorous gospel. But is there salvation in it ? Salvation, I mean, for the weak and them that are ready to perish ? " Let not sin reign in your mortal body." But what if the usurper be already in possession ? Where is the stronger than the strong man armed ? Plato can tell me that the man should keep his foot upon the beast ; but will Plato, will anybody, tell me what I am to do when the paw of the brute is on my back and his cruel fangs are at my throat ? Who then shall deliver my soul from the mouth of the lion ? I speak to some of you who feel yourselves helpless, almost hopeless. I might put the trumpet to my lips and cry with all the moral energy of which I am capable, " Watch ye, stand fast in the faith, quit you like men, be strong"; but you have no power to respond. I might bid you " flee youthful lusts " ; but it is too late ; they have you and hold you as in an iron vice. If " nothing can bring you peace but yourself," you are undone. I might preach self-control till the crack of doom, and it would avail you nothing. The reins are out of your hands, and the wild horses of passion are carrying you whithersoever they will, unchecked. What shall I say to you ? Not " be strong " simply — there is no Gospel in that ; but, " be 1 2 First Tilings First strengthened."^ You will never get back your self- control till you submit to Christ-control. " Yield yourselves unto God!' You remember Tennyson's picture of this isle " ere Arthur came " — " There grew great tracts of wilderness, Wherein the beast was ever more and more, But man was less and less, till Arthur came. Then he drave The heathen ; after, slew the beast, and felled The forest, letting in the sun, and made Broad pathways for the hunter and the knight And so returned." " Wherein the beast was ever more and more, but man was less and less " — is that a picture of our life .^ Yet do not despair. Crown this Divine Arthur King, and He will slay the beast, and drive out the foes that have conquered us. He will restore all the waste places of the soul, and out of its wild confusions bring forth settled peace and ordered beauty. There is a very touching story told of Robert- son of Brighton by one of his biographers,^ to illustrate the wonderful influence exercised by the great preacher among his own townsfolk. A shopkeeper had in his little parlour behind the shop a portrait of Robertson on the wall. When- ever in his business he was tempted to trickery or meanness, he would hurry into the back room and look at the picture. " And then, sir, I felt that it ^ Eph. vi. ID ^vdvvafiouade. The verb is passive, not active ; "receive strength," not "make yourselves strong." 2 Rev. F. Arnold. Self-Control 13 was impossible for me to do it." With those pure eyes upon him he could not sin. Yet that is but a feeble image of the power that Christ is for salvation in the hearts of them that receive Him. " Yield not your members as instruments of un- righteousness unto sin : but yield yourselves unto God " — so runs our English version ; but there is a truth in the word that no translation can reproduce. The tenses of the verbs are not the same.^ Perhaps we might paraphrase in some such way as this : " Do not go on yielding your- selves to sin, but now by one definite act yield yourselves to God." The one word points to the successive acts of sin by which evil at last obtains the mastery over us ; the other to the one act of supreme self-surrender which carries all else with \\.? It is to that supreme self-surrender I call you now. Lay in Christ's hand, once for all, the sceptre of your life ; say to Him — - *' In full and glad surrender, I give myself to Thee, Thine utterly and only And evermore to be. Reign over me, Lord Jesus ! O make my heart Thy throne ! It shall be Thine, my Saviour, It shall be Thine alone." ^ TrapiardueTe . . . wapacrT'/jcraTe. 2 See Bishop Westcott's papers on R.V. in Expositor (Third Series). HOW JESUS DEALT WITH INQUIRERS II HOW JESUS DEALT WITH INQUIRERS THE subject of this address is one of which the four Gospels are full. Yet I do not know of any particular verse that I can use as " text." But since the address itself will be full of " texts " from beginning to end, there is perhaps the less need. My plan is a very simple one — to let the sacred narratives tell their own story, and show us how Jesus dealt with the men and women who sought Him. Jesus had inquirers — that is the first point to notice. Probably even we who have been reading our Bibles all our life have never yet realised how the multitudes of Palestine sought after Christ. Take, e.g.^ St. Mark's Gospel, and run your eye rapidly over its earlier chapters, and note with what remarkable frequency sentences like these occur : " And they say unto Him, All are seeking Thee";^ "And they came to Him from every quarter " ; ^ " And when ... it was ^ i. 36. '' i. 45. C 1 8 First Things First noised that He was in the house, many were gathered together, so that there was no longer room for them, no, not even about the door : and He spake the word unto them " ; ^ " And He went forth again by the seaside, and all the multitude resorted unto Him " ; ^ " And Jesus with His disciples withdrew to the sea, and a great multitude from Galilee followed " ; ^ " And He cometh into a house. And the multitude Cometh together again " ; * " He cometh . . . and the multitude cometh " — so is it ever. In the house, by the sea -shore, in the desert — wherever He is, there are the multitudes gathered together. Or we may take individual instances. Wise men from the East come to His cradle saying, " Where is He that is born King of the Jews ? " As the shadow of the cross falls upon Him, Greeks from the West say, " Sir, we would see Jesus." Nicodemus comes to Him by night. John sends messengers to Him from prison. The woman of Samaria questions Him at the well by the wayside. His very enemies, writhing in their helplessness, confess, " Behold how ye prevail nothing : lo, the world is gone after Him." So was it in Christ's day. How is it to-day ? Ah me ! we are all discussing " non-churchgoing," and lamenting that the " multitudes " seem to care so little for the preaching of Christ's Gospel. And truly that is sad enough. But what seems to me far sadder still, is that good men and 1 ii. I, 2. '^ ii. 13. ^ iii. 7. ^ iii. 20. How Jesus dealt with Inquirers 19 women should come together in conferences and conventions and what not, and say, as I have heard them say, " Yes, yes ; we may not have got the crowds, and our churches may be half empty ; but then, after all, crowds are not every- thing ; it is where two or three are gathered together that Christ has promised to be." Well, we may set up what excuses of straw we like, the fact remains — when Jesus was here upon earth, the crowds were with Him, the common people heard Him gladly ; and if to-day His Church has lost or is losing its hold upon the multitudes, something is wrong, somebody is to blame. Christ's example tests individuals as well as Churches. Men in doubt, in difficulty, in trouble came to Him. We Christians are His representa- tives to-day ; does anybody come to us ? Does any one ever say to you, " I am wrong, all wrong ; can you help me ? " Does some poor mother ever ask you to sit with her sick lad ? When there is death in the house, and the blinds are drawn, and the mourners go softly, do they listen for your knock, and wish that you may come ? Are we wanted ? When we are gone, will any one miss us ? Christ had inquirers ; how did He deal with them ? Mark — and while so many to-day deny His sovereign claims, let these unworthy hands put the crown upon His brow, — He was never 20 First Things First puzzled. He is never taken aback ; He never hesitates. The troubled look of perplexity never gathers on His face : He meets every questioner with the steady gaze of one before whose clear vision the whole world of truth lies open. His enemies scheme and lay their trap and put up their spokesman with his well-conned speech, but He is never taken by surprise. He never takes a case to avizandum^ as the Scottish law-courts say. He does not say, " The problem is new, I must take time to consider it ; come back again to-morrow." Pharisees and Herodians may take counsel together how they shall catch Him in His talk ; He takes counsel with no man how He shall answer them. Yet, though His retorts can be sharp and terrible, He never quibbles or dodges or evades, and even the very form of His answers is so perfect that to mend is to mar.^ There is an open-air service going on in the streets of Jerusalem ; the preacher is Jesus. Just on the edge of the crowd stands a little group of " officers " — policemen, as we should say — listen- ing spell -bound. They have been sent by the authorities to take Jesus. But they go back without their prisoner. " Why have ye not brought Him ? " " Never man spake like this Man ! " Were they not right ? Yet Jesus did not answer all His questioners. " When thou wast young," said Christ to Peter, " thou girdedst thyself, and walkedst whither thou 1 See Dr. Robertson Nicoll's very suggestive Life of Jesus Christ. How Jesus dealt until Inquirers 21 wouldest : but when thou shalt be old, thou shalt stretch forth thy hands, and another shall gird thee, and carry thee whither thou wouldest not." Just at that moment, Peter, turning about, sees John following : " Lord, and this man, what ? " " If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee ? follow thou Me." " And one said unto Him, Lord, are they few that be saved ? And He said unto them. Strive to enter in by the narrow door : for many, I say unto you, shall seek to enter in, and shall not be able." " Lord, dost Thou at this time restore the kingdom to Israel ? " And once more He lays His finger on their lips : " It is not for you to know — it is not for you to know times or seasons which the Father hath set within His own authority." What does it mean ? That Christ can hold no interview with idle curiosity ; that He will not satisfy mere prying inquisitiveness. " The secret things belong unto the Lord our God " ; and when with our coarse fingers we twitch at the veil that hides them from us. He does but answer us with His " It is not for you to know." " Of the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat : but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said. Ye shall not eat." And who shall murmur that it is so ? If seven things are revealed, may not the eighth be kept secret ? If we may wander at will through the many- roomed mansion of God's great universe, who shall complain if here and there is a locked door 2 2 First Things First whereon His finger has written Private} But Christ forbids vain speculation only to enforce obvious duty. " And this man, what ? " " What is that to thee ? folloiv thou Me!' " Are they few that be saved ? " " Strive to enter in at that narrow door!' " Dost Thou at this time restore the king- dom to Israel ? " " It is not for you to know . . . but ye shall receive power . . . and ye s J tail be my witnesses r He hath showed thee, O man, what is good. " It is true, although strange," says a great and wise writer, ^ " that there are multitudes of burning questions which we must do our best to ignore, to forget their existence ; and it is not more strange, after all, than many other facts in this wonderfully mysterious and defective existence of ours. One-fourth of life is intelligible, the other three-fourths is unintelligible darkness ; and our earliest duty is to cultivate the habit of not looking round the corner." Well would it be for many of us, if, like the Psalmist, we " stilled and quieted " our souls ; if we did not exercise our- selves in great matters, in things that are too high for us. The silences of Jesus are not ended yet. He is before the high priest, on the eve of the crucifixion. He listens as the false witnesses demolish one another's testimony, but He says nothing. At last the high priest can bear it no longer : " Answerest Thou nothing ? what is it which these witness against Thee ? " " But He 1 Mark Rutherford. How Jestcs dealt with Inqtiirers 23 held His peace and answered nothing." Again, He is before Pilate in the palace : " Whence art Thou ? " " But Jesus gave him no answer." Yet again, He is before Herod : " And he questioned Him in many words ; but He answered him nothing." What does it mean ? That leering wickedness, bold, defiant badness, gross, conscience-defiling sin will get no answer from the pure lips of Jesus. With Caiaphas standing in the shoes of the holy- men of old and yet compassing the death of the Son of God : with Pilate the unjust judge who first acquitted and then commanded to be scourged his innocent Prisoner : with Herod wagging his impudent tongue, when he should rather have died of shame in the presence of the friend of the murdered Baptist — what converse can Jesus have with such as these ? He answered them nothing. I draw a bow at a venture. It may seem like needless insult to bracket any of you who read these words with Caiaphas and Pilate and Herod. Yet who knows what devilry may lurk under a fine dress or a decent coat ? But this I say unto you, by the word of the Lord, that if your life be corrupt and unclean, if you are playing fast and loose with the plainest laws of God, do not come whining about your difficulties — literary difficulties, historical difficulties, and the like — for you will get no answer. Go, read your Decalogue ; that, at least, is simple enough. Wash you, make you clean, put away the evil of your 24 First Things First doings. Then come back, and perchance this Christ may hold some speech with you. Till then, silence — silence — silence. Turn once more to another group of questioners. You may read of them in the 22nd chapter of Matthew. Here is a little knot of men who, caring nothing about Caesar or tribute-money, have become suddenly interested in both : " What thinkest Thou ? Is it lawful to give tribute unto Caesar, or not ? " And here are the Sadducees with their elaborately trifling conundrum concern- ing the seven -times -wedded widow: "In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife shall she be of the seven ? for they all had her." And last of all a lawyer, a little casuist, with his nice discrimina- tions and fine-spun distinctions, anxious about laws that are great, and laws that are small : " which is the great commandment in the law ? " We know how they fared, one and all : confusion overwhelmed them. " No one was able to answer Him a word, neither durst any man from that day forth ask Him any more questions." Let us bring our questions to Christ, but let us take heed to ourselves. We cannot deceive Him. He " perceived their craftiness." He knows what is in man, and needeth not that any should ask Him. He darts His swift interrogation into our inmost souls : " Why reason ye in your hearts ? " He plucks aside the hypocrite's robe, and shows him the naked self within. Bring your question, but remember Christ will go behind the How Jesus dealt with Inquirers 25 question to the questioner. He will not deal with you as with an anonymous correspondent, and send you the answer, not knowing who or what you are. " I also will ask of you one question," He says. And if you dare not meet His gaze ; if your question is a sham, and yourself a hypocrite. He will only answer you with the hypocrite's infinite rebuke, or with the silence that stabs worse than His keenest words — " neither tell I you by what authority I do these things." But it is time to turn to the other side of our subject. If Christ seems to us sometimes stern and harsh, yet on the other hand what large and loving and helpful answers He gives to the sincere and earnest seeker ! " And when He was alone, they that were about Him with the twelve, asked of Him the parables." And he sits down by their side, as a mother with her child, and makes all things plain to them. They bring to Him their failures, and ask Him the wherefore of them : " Why could not we cast him out ? " And He tells them : " Because of your little faith .... This kind can come forth by nothing save by prayer." And even when there seems a tone of reproach in His voice, that they should be so slow of heart to learn the meaning of His life. He repeats the old lesson again with added sweetness and beauty : " Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known Me, Philip ? " And we pass from thence as from the temple's porch 26 Fwst Things First into the very Holy of Holies of Christ's teaching. So is it always. A wayside beggar, blind and forlorn, cries to Him, " Lord, that I may receive my sight ! " And immediately the sightless eye- balls are made to see. A leper outcast from the ways and homes of men clings to Him : " Lord, if thou wilt. Thou canst make me clean." And He put forth His hand and touched him, and his flesh came again as the flesh of a little child. Ignorance, groping blindly in the dark, turns piteously to Him : " Who is He, Lord, that I may believe on Him ? " " Thou hast both seen Him, and He it is that talketh with thee." And when John sends from the prison, where doubts rained thick and fast upon him, to ask, " Art Thou He that Cometh, or look we for another?" this time Christ will not content himself with a merely verbal message, but, " in that hour He cured many of diseases and plagues and evil spirits ; and in many that were blind, He restored sight," and then the answer is given, " Go your way and tell John what things ye have seen and heard." It would be easy enough to multiply instances of Christ's ready response to the earnest inquirer. But these perhaps may suffice. One or two simple principles now emerge and may be briefly stated. Christ dealt with men individually. All our talk nowadays is about the " masses." Jesus never " lumped " men in that indiscriminate fashion. He concerned himself with individuals — Peter, James, John, Mary, Martha. The brief story of How Jesus dealt with Inquirers 27 His life is full of private interviews. And so dealing with men, He entered, by the power of His perfect sympathy, into the life of each, and met, because He knew its individual wants. " He takes your view of things," says James Smetham, in one of his delightful letters, " and mentions no other. He takes the old woman's view of things by the wash-tub, and has a great interest in wash powder ; Sir Isaac Newton's view of things, and wings among the stars with him ; the artist's view, and feeds among the lilies ; the lawyer's, and shares the justice of things. But He never plays the lawyer or the philosopher or the artist to the old woman. He is above that littleness." This is the explanation of Christ's infinitely varied methods of dealing with men. It is only the quack who has one remedy that will suit a hundred different patients ; the wise physician studies each case separately, marking individual symptoms, tracing back the course of the disease to its very beginning. It was so the Great Physi- cian dealt with the souls of men. " He took the suffering human race, He read each wound, each weakness clear, And struck His finger on the place, And said, Thou ailest here and here. ''^'^ " Master," said one, " I will follow Thee whithersoever Thou goest." It is the language not of insincerity but of thoughtlessness, of a * Matthew Arnold. 28 First Thino-s First ij nourishment). 1 86 First Things First of the whole matter : when conscience speaks, we are not called upon to justify to any one, not even to ourselves, that which it bids us do. There is one and but one safe path, and it is the path of obedience. Do you remember the answer of Peter and the apostles to the high priest ? " We straitly charged you," said the high priest, " not to teach in this name : and, behold, ye have filled Jerusalem with your teaching, and intend to bring this man's blood upon us." " We must obey God rather than inenl^ said the aoostles. This simple, unconscious hero- ism, that casts no sidelong glances of admiration at itself in the glass, that never stops to think how fine a thing it is doing, but does the right just because it is right, — is it not this that you and I need ? And where did these men learn it ? Let their enemies tell us : " And when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, they took knowledge of them, that they had been with Jesus." There is the secret : if you covet this holy boldness, be with Jesus. God forgive me if I ever preach a sermon that does not help somebody to get nearer to Him ! And there is more in this perhaps than we think. As I have reminded you before,^ the greatest forces in life are personal. Our lives are fashioned by thoughts, ideals, books, but most of all by living men who love us. These " uphold ^ See page 109. The Nameless Prophet 187 us, cherish us " when all things else are nothing. " Quit you like men, be strong " — sometimes the old words thrill us like a bugle-blast at early morn : no task is too difficult, no hill too steep. And then again the weary feet drag heavily, and the tired hands fall slack and nerveless at our side. It is not books, or examples, or precepts we want now — these do but mock us — but the helpful counsel, the strong arm of the living voice, the loving friend : it is companionship, friendship we crave for. Such companionship, such friendship, not for difficult hours only, but for all life, is offered to you, " The strong Son of God " says to us, the weakest and unworthiest of us, " I have called thee friend." Will you make that friendship yours ? Will you seek His face ? Will you live in His presence ? MODERN IDOLATRY Little childi-en, guard yourselves fi-om idois.'''' — i John v, 21 XIII MODERN IDOLATRY THESE are John's last words to those whom, in his affectionate, old man's way, he addresses as " little children " ; probably if the books of the Bible were arranged in the order in which they were written, they would be seen to be the last words of Scripture also. Whatever wider significance we may give to this parting injunction of the Apostle's, it does not seem necessary to exclude the literal meaning. John was writing to Christians who had long ago abandoned all worship of idols of gold or silver or stone, graven by art and device of man. Yet in such a city as Ephesus, where, hardly more than a generation ago, such a scene was possible as Luke has described for us in the nineteenth chapter of the Acts, it may well have been that even Christian men still needed to hear the old command : " Thou shalt have none other gods beside Me." Neverthe- less it was not only against such idols that John was warning his readers. " Idol" in his vocabulary 192 First Things First means anything that comes between us and God, anything that takes for us the place of God. John had just been speaking (in the verses preceding my text) of that knowledge of the true God unto which in Jesus Christ his readers had attained ; and now he bids them take heed that nothing and nobody come between them and Him. His words are a warning against idolatry in its widest and largest meaning. But before I pass on to speak of these words in that understanding of them, there is one other point I want you to notice. How are we to explain this solemn warning against idolatry in an epistle which pays throughout the profoundest homage to Jesus Christ ? It is worth while observing how profound that homage is. Take passages like these, culled almost at random : — " Who is the liar but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ?" — ii. 22. " Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is begotten of God " — v. i . . " Hereby know ye the Spirit of God : every spirit which confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God : and every spirit which confesseth not Jesus is not of God" — iv. 2, 3. " And this is the boldness which we have toward Him, that, if we ask anything according to His will. He heareth us" — v. 14. " Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God abideth in him, and he in God " — iv. 15. Modern Idolatry 193 What are we to make of this ? One of two things : either John, who was, remember, for three years a personal follower of Christ's, and who writes in this Epistle from first-hand knowledge of the things of which he speaks,^ — either, I say, John believed that Jesus was indeed the Son of God, and Himself equal with God, or he stands self- convicted of the stupidest inconsistency, the flattest blasphemy. A learned Berlin professor,^ who has recently been lecturing in our city,^ has spoken of Jesus as " a simple, trustful religious genius, preaching a sweet Gospel of the love of God to the multitudes of Galilee." ^ John knew no such Jesus. If we cannot be certain of that, we might despair of being certain of anything. I have read of a Roman emperor who kept a statue of Jesus and a statue of Plato side by side in his pantheon. It is so that Dr. Pfleiderer treats Jesus ; but, since He is primus mter pares, He gets a pedestal twelve inches bigger than the rest. Now that is a doctrine which the Christian Church from the first century to the nineteenth has always strenuously denied. For three centuries after Christ no Christian thinker dared to make Him one in a row, as Dr. Pfleiderer has done. The New Testament ^ " That which was from the beginning, that which we have heard, that which we have seen with our eyes, that which we beheld, and our hands handled, concerning the Word of life .... declare we unto you " (i. i, 3). 2 Professor Pfleiderer, ^ Edinburgh. ^ These are not Dr. Pfleiderer's own words, but express, I believe, his views with perfect accuracy. O 1 94 First Things First writers were no believers in " hero-worship " ; Paul and Barnabas reject in hot haste the attempted sacrifice of the multitudes of Lystra. But the homage they will not receive for themselves they freely pay to Christ. John warns his readers against idols ; the stern monotheism of his ancient faith ran in his very blood, and yet, with no sense of inconsistency, he bids them bow to Jesus. I do not want to seem intolerant. I do not want to put my Bible under a glass case and to say to the critic, " Hands off there ! " Let him sift and dissect and analyse as he please. But if, when his work is done, he offers me some poor pale ghost, and says " this is your Jesus " ; if he brings me back a faith emptied of miracle, of prayer, of immortality, and says "this is His Gospel," — no, a thousand times no ! If you want that Christ, take Him ; He is not John's Christ ; He is not mine. If that faith can help you, be it so ; lean upon it ; but, mark, it is not Christianity. Call it what you please, but do not steal for it the Christian name. That was not the creed of the first century ; it is not the creed of the nineteenth. It was not so our fathers believed; neither so will their sons believe after them. Not yet, on the world-scale at least, has this new gospel proved itself to be the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth. " Little children, keep yourselves from idols." Who among us is an idolater ? " Among us ? " Modern Idolatry 195 Yes, among us. " But we know that an idol is nothing in the world ; and though there be that are called gods, whether in heaven or in earth, yet to us there is one God, the Father. We subscribe to Foreign Missions, we — " But stay ; do not let us play with the surface -meaning of words. Worship is a thing of the spirit. What a man trusts in, that is his god. You may never have bowed the knee to an idol made with hands, and as far back as you can remember you may have daily bowed the knee to God, and yet you may be an idolater. I have seen a great congregation bow as the preacher said " Let us pray," and it seemed as if all were worshipping. But while man looketh on the outward appearance, God looketh at the heart, and He said, " This people " — this man, that woman — " honoureth Me with their lips, but their heart is far from Me." When the wise men come seeking the infant Saviour, Herod bids them " bring me word that I may come and worship Him also " ; yet all the while his hand is feeling for his sword, that he may redden it in little children's blood ! Call you that worship ? Put these two words of the Apostle Paul's side by side : " Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ " (Rom. i. I ) ; " God . . . whom I serve in my spirit " {ib. i. 9).^ Whom do I serve ? In the outer sphere of life, in the eyes of men, God. But " in my spirit," ^ Note the correct rendering of the R.V. "m my spirit," not ^^with my spirit " as in A.V. 196 First Things First whom ? what ? For remember, as some one has truly said, " A man's true worship is not the worship which he performs in the public temple, but that which he offers down in that little private chapel where nobody goes but himself." ^ The deities that are shrined there, these be thy gods, be thy offerings otherwhere what they may. So once again I put the question, Who among us is an idolater ? We smile when we are told — to take but one instance out of multitudes — of North American Indians who to this day worship their bow and arrows; yet theirs is an idol good and benign by the side of the unclean deities that some of us have fashioned for ourselves, and are bowing down to every day. Let us take the Bible in our hand and search out some of the dark corners of our hearts. " Wlwse god is their belly." ^ That is idolatry in its most repulsive, disgusting form. Gluttony, Drunkenness, Lust — to bow down before these is to worship the Beast, and to bear his mark in our foreheads. Swift and terrible is the retribution. When Moses came down from the mount with the two tables of stone in his hand, and saw the dancing and heard the shouts of the idol- worshippers, we are told that " he took the calf which they had made, and burnt it with fire, and ground it to powder, and strewed it upon the water, and made the children of Israel drink of it." The grim irony of it ! Do none of us know what 1 Dr. Maclaien. ^ p^ii. iii. 19. Modern Idolatry 197 it is to have that bitter draught pressed to our lips? "Thy calf, O Samaria, hath kicked thee off"^ — we need no preacher to tell us what that means. " All this will I give thee," said the tempter, " this — and this — and this — and this — all this will I give thee if thou wilt fall down and worship me." You struck the bargain, and there you stand to-day a befooled and cheated man. " All this " ? what was it ? A passing thrill — a momentary titillation of a nerve — Dead Sea fruit that turned to ashes in your mouth. " Covetousness, which is idolatryr ^ Paul tells the Ephesians that the covetous man is an idolater; writing to men who had turned from idols to serve a living and true God, he yet warns them that if they yield to covetousness they will become entangled again in the yoke of idolatry. Does not that word smite some of us ? We never bowed the knee to Gluttony or Lust or Drunken- ness ; we do not sin vulgarly ; we even look down with a Pharisee's proud pity upon them that do. And yet all the week through and all the year round we jostle with the crowd that pay their obsequious homage to the " gilded beast " of wealth. Of all forms of modern idolatry none is more fatal than this. From some we are saved by their very coarseness. We may yield once, or even twice, but their unredeemed vulgarity becomes an effectual check. But the appetite of avarice 1 This is one out of several possible renderings of a difficult text. 2 Col. iii. 5 ; comp. Eph. v. 5. 198 First Things First grows by what it feeds on ; the desire to get is a deadly octopus that fastens itself upon the soul and will not be shaken off. " And the Pharisees, who were lovers of money, heard all these things ; and they scoffed at Him." That is the last penalty of the mammon - worshipper : he grows dead to all things else. The publican and harlot shall enter into the kingdom of God while he is shut out, while he does not so much as know that there is a kingdom to be entered. " Ye cannot " — not simply " may not," but " cannot " — " serve God and mammon." " And Hezekiah brake in pieces the brazen serpent that Moses had made : for unto those days the children of Israel did burn incense to it : and he called it Nehushtan!' ^ Now we are in another world altogether. What does this mean ? That it is possible for us to turn even the sacred things of religion into idols that come between us and God. The brazen serpent was the Divinely- appointed symbol of a Divine act. But the children of Israel made of it a fetish, and burned incense to it, and put it in the place of God. Then arose Hezekiah, the reformer and iconoclast, and took the ancient symbol of deliverance into his strong hands : " This that you are worshipping," he cried, " what is it ? Nehushtan — a piece of brass " ; and he brake it in pieces before their eyes. It is the ever -recurring danger of the Christian Church, to allow our symbols, our ^ 2 Kings xviii. 4. (" Nehushtan," i.e. a piece of brass.) Modern Idolatry 1 99 sacraments, our services, ay, and even our Bibles, to come between us and the living God — so to think of them that we cease to think of Him. Every one who knows anything of contemporary religious life, especially south of the Border, knows that there is no graver peril menacing our faith to-day than this materialism within the Churches. The blessed results of that mighty spiritual awakening at Oxford fifty years or so ago, which we associate with the names of New- man, Pusey, and Keble, no one, Anglican or Nonconformist, can wish to deny. But equally undeniable is it that in these latter days the good seed is being choked by those enormous and portentous sacerdotal and sacramentarian growths which have sprung up side by side with it. We have just been told on excellent authority ^ that " the number of Anglican churches in England and Wales has almost doubled since 1882, and is now 5957. At 250 incense is used ; at 406 there is a daily celebration of the Holy Eucharist ; the much -discussed 'eastward position' is adopted at no fewer than 5037; ' Eucharistic vestments' are worn at 1370, and altar-lights are employed during the sacrament of the Eucharist at 2707." In the multiplication of Christian churches we may all heartily rejoice ; for the rest, I frankly confess it brings back to memory a saying of Dr. Marcus Dods', that one of the crying needs of ^ See The Tourists C/mrch Guide, by Lord Halifax. My quotation is taken from the Daily Chronicle. 200 First Things First the Church to-day is a satirist. That these mon- strous growths which are darkening the very heavens might be smitten with the withering sarcasm that fell from the lips of God's prophet of old on the idols of the heathen ! We may be wrong, but to some of us it seems as if the days were fast ripening for the coming of another Hezekiah — another Knox, another Cromwell — who shall fling our once cherished symbols to the bats and the moles, and cry, " Nehushtan ! — in the Lord God of hosts be your trust, and not in these things ! " " Little children, keep yourselves from idols." I have only touched upon one or two of the forms of our modern idolatry. It may be that in none of these forms does the temptation to forget God in His creatures present itself to us in its strongest and subtlest form. We may never have been in danger of ecclesiastical idolatry. " The narrowing lust of gold " may never have burned in our souls. From idol -worship in its grosser, coarser forms our whole nature may recoil with honest loathing. And yet we too may be offering our real worship to an idol and not to God. Never, perhaps, have we held in so high esteem as to-day the things that are most worthy of it. Writers like Wordsworth and Ruskin have opened our eyes to the beautiful in art and nature. Beauty holds us to-day with a spell our fathers Modern Idolatry 201 never knew. Literature, too, has brought its price- less treasures to our very door ; and now the very- poorest and humblest of us may tread in the foot- steps of Shakespeare and Milton, of Scott and Tennyson, and think after them the thoughts of the wisest and best. Then comes the temptation, so subtle and so strong — how subtle and how strong let them say who have felt it — to count the^e things the first things, the supreme things in life. A religious faith — so many an educated young man may be tempted to think — to those whose lives are starved and poor, to whom it comes as their one escape into the infinite from the narrow, grimy round of daily toil, may be of priceless worth ; but to me with my wider outlook and far-stretching horizons and hundred windows that look out into eternity, what can it bring to me ? But is there nothing that we need beyond what these things — art and literature and science — can give to us ? Did you ever ponder this deep saying, " They that make them shall be like unto them ; yea, every one that trusteth in them " ? Your gods cannot lift you beyond themselves. At the Art Congress in Liverpool in 1889, Sir Frederick Leighton complained that in so many of our countrymen " the perception of beauty is blunt, and the desire for it sluggish and super- ficial ;" and he contrasted us in this respect with what has been revealed in the buried ruins of Pompeii, where even " the appliances of the kitchen and pantry form a museum of art of inexhaustible 202 First Things First fascination." We may frankly admit the truth of the indictment ; yet no one knows better than Sir Frederick Leighton that even in beauty- loving Pompeii abominations flourished that it is a shame even to speak of, and that pictures have been revealed there which the excavators had to cover up because they were so foul. A great student of Italian life and literature ^ has told us that the idolatry of beauty in Italy ended at last in the degradation both of art and character. To say that art and literature must not be as gods to us, is not to deny them their place in our life : it is to deny them the first place. The great powers of the world in which we now pass our days, says Dean Church, " are not the powers for man — man the responsible, man the sinner and the penitent, who may be the saint — to fall down and worship . . . they at least feel this who are drawing near to the unseen and unknown beyond ; they to whom, it may be, these great gifts of God, the spell and wonder of art and literature, the glory and sweet tenderness of nature, have been the brightness and joy of days that are now fast ending ; they feel there is yet an utter want of what these things cannot give ; that soul and heart want something yet deeper, something more lovely, something more Divine — that which will realise man's ideals, that which will com- plete and fulfil his incompleteness and his help- lessness — yes^ the real likeness, in thought and ^ Dean Church. Modern Idolatry 203 will and character, to the goodness of Jesus Christr 1 I claim the first place for my Lord. I may not have named your idol by name ; but whatever it be, make haste to put it from you. Till then your life is as a kingdom where the wrong man is on the throne ; there can be no settled peace till He whose right it is to reign come to His own. Make Him first in everything. Nay, He can take no other place. It cuts me to the heart when I plead with you to give up all and follow Christ, and you say, " Yes, yes ; Christ was a great and good man ; the greatest and the best of men, indeed." He does not want your patronage : He calls for your submission. Do not bring to Him the little penny-pieces of your respect, saying, " Hail, Master, this will we give Thee." You yourselves are His : render, therefore, to this Caesar the things that are His. " The dearest idol I have known, Whate'er that idol be. Help me to tear it from Thy throne And worship only Thee." * Rather a long quotation, but I let it stand as one of the last utterances of one of the finest Christian scholars of his generation (see p. 53). The italics in the last sentence are mine. A YOUNG MAN'S DIFFICULTIES WITH HIS BIBLE XIV A YOUNG MAN'S DIFFICULTIES WITH HIS BIBLE. [The following address was delivered at a usual Sunday evening service in answer to a number of questions addressed to me privately by young men. This fact is the explanation of the choice of subjects dealt with. To many of my readers the discussion may seem stale and profitless, and, I admit, had the points been of my own choosing they would have been very different. But I think it best to allow the address to remain as it was delivered, not without the hope that, however useless the first part may prove, the con- siderations urged in the second will be felt to be valid by all who have difficulties with their Bibles of whatsoever kind.] I PROPOSE in this address to deal with a little batch of questions which I have received from various correspondents — all of them, I be- lieve, young men. But first let me say with what honest delight I always receive communications of this kind. When Christ was here amongst men, the people He drew to Him were people in difficulty ; and for a Christian minister there can be no worse punish- ment than to be let alone. What vexes me is that 2o8 First Things First when inquirers bring their difficulties, they so often think it necessary to preface them with apologies. Fancy any one in trouble going to Jesus with a " sorry to disturb you, Sir," on his lips ! What would have " disturbed " Christ — and what ought to disturb us — would have been if nobody had disturbed Him. I always remember the saying of a good old Methodist preacher : " The man that wants me is the man I want." The points raised by my correspondents are none of them "new. Yet the difficulties are evi- dently felt as real ; and they are urged with genuine sincerity and earnestness. I will try to deal with them in a similar spirit. The plan I shall adopt is this : first, we will look at the diffi- culties singly, and then we will ask, how should the existence of these affect our personal relation to the Gospel of Christ ? " The Bible," says one of my correspondents, " is my stumbling-block " ; I shall try to show you that even if, as is likely enough, I say little to remove your difficulties, there is still no good reason why you should not enter at once the service of Christ. I. The first point to be dealt with is not exactly a Biblical difficulty, but I meet with it so often, and as it is raised again in this corre- spondence, I cannot pass it by without a word, '" What," says one of my querists, " about the Bible Difficulties 209 evil lives of so many professed Christians ? " and he clinches his question with a reference to a shameful moral delinquency on the part of a minister of the Gospel.-^ The facts I sorrowfully admit ; but let me ask my friend, Does he really think his implication a just and fair one ? Over against his disgraced minister I set a drunkard reformed by the preaching of the Cross ; is it any less certain that Christ has no responsibility for the downfall of the one than it is that He is wholly responsible for the uplifting of the other? My friend speaks of his " pain," in which all good men share, at such sad spectacles as this that he refers to, but does he not see that he is practically admitting that when professed Christians go astray it is because they do not obey the teaching of Christ, that their wrongdoing is not because of, but in spite of their religious profession, and that therefore no blame is to be laid at the door of religion itself? Do let us be reasonable. You do not judge of a doctor's skill by his failure to cure patients who refuse to take his prescribed remedies. A captain has a compass on board, but he never looks at it, and by and by he lands his vessel on the rocks. Is a ship's compass, there- fore, not a good thing ? The Bible must be judged not by what it fails to do for those who, what- ^ The reference was to an unhappy incident associated with the meeting of the Church Assemblies in Edinburgh in May of last year ; but as nothing is to be gained by repeating the facts here, I omit them. P 2 I o First Things First ever they may say, never consult it and refuse to obey it, but by what it can do for those who do. And I challenge any man to tell me of one who made this book his guide through life, and yet ended at last among the breakers ? You tell me you know a great many so-called Christians who are hard, and selfish, and grasping, and narrow : so do I ; but that is nothing to the point. The question is, what does Christ say about them ? 2. Another correspondent asks how it is possible to believe that wise and great men who lived and died before Christ came, men like Socrates, e.g., are to be consigned to everlasting destruction. I confess I do not quite understand a question like this. My friend and I surely must read different Bibles. I certainly do not believe any such horrible doctrine as his query suggests ; and, what is much more to the point, I can find nothing in my Bible that even hints at it. He says that this is the " teaching of preachers and others." What preachers ? Can any man under thirty call to mind a single instance in his own experience of such a doctrine being taught by the accredited teachers of any Christian Church ? Has he ever read anything of the kind in any book written by Christian thinker or preacher during the last fifty years ? I know something of the pulpit literature of recent years, but I cannot recall a solitary example ; whereas in five minutes I could put my hand on a score of volumes in which any such idea is scouted with indignation. Bible Difficidties 211 But, after all, it is not a question of what preachers preach, but of what the Bible says ? Astronomers may mislead us, but the stars are always there to correct both them and us. What then does the Bible say ? " The times of ignorance," Paul told the Athenians in hisfamous discourse on Mars Hill, " God overlooked ; but now He commandeth men that they should all everywhere repent." *' God is no respecter of persons," said Peter, " but in every nation he that feareth Him, and worketh righteous- ness, is acceptable to Him." Should not words like these banish forever any such hideous fear as darkens my friend's imagination ? The teaching of Christ Himself is equally unmistakable. What a glorious breadth of promise is there in words like these : " Other sheep I have which are not of this fold : and them also I must bring, and they shall hear My voice ; and they shall become one flock, one shepherd " ; or, in these again : " I say unto you, that many shall come from the east and the west, and shall sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven " — Marcus Aurelius will be among these, wrote John Wesley in his Journals when he had been reading the wise words of the great Roman thinker — " but the sons of the kingdom shall be cast forth into the outer darkness." This is language unequivocal enough surely. Can my interrogator quote one single New Testament sentence that contradicts it? 3. Another question which lies before me may be answered in the same way — by a simple 2 I 2 First Things First statement of the facts. It is astonishing how many of these " difficulties " are thus made to vanish into thin air. I am asked — I suppose for the thousandth time — how the Bible comes to speak of David as " a man after God's own heart," when, according to its own showing, he was guilty of the double crime of murder and adultery. From the way in which the question is generally put, one might almost suppose that the favourable judg- ment of Heaven followed immediately upon the perpetration of David's sin. What are the actual facts? In I Sam. xiii. 14 we read (Samuel is the speaker) : " The Lord had sought Him a man after His own heart, and the Lord hath appointed him to be prince over His people " ; that is to say, David is called a man after God's own heart while as yet Saul is upon the throne, and he himself is an innocent shepherd youth keeping his father's flock. When do we read of David's great trans- gression ? Not until we come to 2 Sam. xii., or nearly a lifetime later in the history. Samuel pronounced this remarkable judgment on a pure, high-minded youth, who in his old age, and long years after the prophet had been in his grave, fell into the most grievous sin. Where then is the difficulty ? Moreover, do not let us suppose that the Bible left it to us to condemn David's wrong- doing. I have heard low-thoughted men half insinuate that the Old Testament had a kind of sneaking sympathy with adultery and murder. What a monstrous iniquity ! Let a man read Bible Diffiatlties 2 1 3 over the first fourteen verses of 2 Sam. xif. (in which David's, condemnation and punishment are declared by Nathan), let him remember how low was the world's best morality then, and he will at least learn a lesson of respect for the Old Testa- ment that he is not likely soon to forget. 4. No less than three of my correspondents have come to grief over that old stone of stumbling and rock of offence, the first chapter of Genesis. " Evolution " haunts them like a spectre. One of them refers to Professor Drummond's recent lectures on " The Ascent of Man," ^ and asks how they are to be squared with the teaching of the Bible. Well, it may not be out of place to remind our- selves that there are evolutionists who yet find nothing in their scientific faith to disturb their faith in Christ. Take Professor Drummond himself His acceptance of evolution leaves little to be desired from the scientist's point of view, and yet he is even better known as a teacher of religion than as a professor of science. Dr. Dallinger, again, is at the same time a Methodist preacher and one of the most eminent of living microscopists. This is his confession of faith : " Some men," he says, "are deeply moved and endure a mental anguish by the possibility declared by modern science, that our proud human race in highest probability originated in the monera, and through the mollusca and the lower mammals pro- ^ The reference was, I may say, not to the published volume, but to the brief reports that appeared in the Brilish Weekly. 2 1 4 First Things First gressed upwards by great creative laws, operating through unmeasured forms, to a manhke form, a body created in this way, slowly, of the dust of the earth. This is not absolutely proven, but if ever the day shall dawn that it shall be so demonstrated to the ordinary mind that it shall be irresistible, it would leave unruffled my mental peace, and untarnished my view of the moral majesty of man." ^ Here then — to mention no more — are two distinguished thinkers, each of whom knows more about both science and religion than either I or my correspondents, and neither of whom finds any difficulty in holding to both. Should not a fact like this at least give us pause before we rush to the conclusion that science and the Bible are in hopeless antagonism ? The truth is, difficulties of the kind of which the letters before me speak arise from a misread- ing of Genesis i. It is judged from a wrong stand- point. If this chapter is meant as a strictly scientific reading of the facts of creation, then I admit frankly it is inaccurate : the parallel columns of the " reconcilers " I look upon with the eyes of a hardened sceptic. But ought we so to regard it ? It is a well-known canon of criticism that to judge rightly of any work you must place yourself at the point of view of its author. You do not test the value of, say, a constitutional history of England by the accuracy of its geographical allusions or scriptural quotations. I * Sermon on " Conscience," reported in British Weekly Pulpit, Bible DiffLciilties 2 1 5 suppose everybody knows George MacDonald's exquisite little poem " Baby " — " Where did you come from, baby dear ? Out of the everywhere into here. Where did you get those eyes so blue ? Out of the sky as I came through. Where did you get that little tear? I found it waiting when I got here. Where did you get this pearly ear? God spoke, and it came out to hear. How did they all just come to be you? God thought about me, and so I grew."* For its purpose could anything be more perfect? But what should we think if, on the one hand, some dunderheaded pedant, concerned for Dr. Mac- Donald's reputation for accuracy, were gravely to insist on taking it all as serious science, or if, on the other hand, a governess who had passed an examina- tion in Huxley's Elementary Lessons in Physiology, should really treat the poem so, and on that ground protest against its admission into the nursery ? ^ Criticism that ignores the writer's point of view is worse than idle. The same principle must be kept in mind in reading the first chapter of Genesis. Remember the story of the beginning of things may be told ^ Some only of the verses are here quoted. ^ This is an illustration of Professor Drummond's, which I read some years ago in tlie Nineteenth Century, about the time of Glad- stone and Huxley's famous duel ; but as I am writing out of reach of any public library, I have no means of verifying my reference. 2 1 6 First ThiiiQ-s First cb from two different standpoints. We know how modern science would tell it ; the grievous error we make is in supposing that this ancient chron- icler is vainly trying to accomplish the same task. But surely his point of view is the point of view of the whole Bible, not scientific but religious. That purpose is stamped on almost every verse of the whole chapter.-^ It matters but little to this writer whether the birds or fishes come first in the scale of creation ; it matters everything that his readers see behind and above all, God. " And God said " — let the intermediary stages be as many as they may, you come to that at last. Let science take all the a^ons of time it needs for the great creative processes it is slowly unravelling before our eyes ; let it go on adding link after link to the mighty chain of created being ; sooner or later the question must be asked, " On what shall we hang the last ? " and when that question is asked, the wise man and the little child will go back together to the Bible to read over again the old words past which no science ever takes us, so simple and yet so sublime — " hi the beginning, Gonr II Now, let me ask, suppose your difficulties re- main unsolved — what then ? One of my corre- spondents says he must sever his connection with ^ I specially commend in this connection the first chapter of the late Dr. S. Cox's Miracles : an Argument and a Challenge. Bible Difficulties 2 1 7 Christ's Church ; another says he must continue to remain without it. It is not necessary to do either. Some time ago I received a letter from an eminent Biblical scholar in reply to a query which I had addressed to him. It gave me the informa- tion I sought, but through the indistinctness of the handwriting one sentence remains to this day only partially deciphered. Do you suppose I threw the letter into the fire because of that one obscur- ity ? Some day, perhaps, I may clear it up ; but in the meantime I have all I asked for and all I need. Is it not possible to treat the Bible in the same way ? Granted that in parts it is of doubt- ful meaning, even wholly unintelligible, are we therefore to reject what in it we have found or may find to be both true and helpful ? That there are parts difficult to be understood every one will frankly admit. And it is really not of vital im- portance what opinion we form with regard to them. The fact is, we are all in danger of at- taching wholly unreal values to the opinions we hold on certain questions associated with the Bible. Do you really think, e.g., that it is a matter of supreme concern to the Almighty which particular interpretation out of the many that have been sug- gested you choose to put upon the first chapter of Genesis ? But, on the other hand, there is no mis- taking the great Gospel which the Bible exists to proclaim. If you come to it for science or history, you will soon be asking more questions than it can answer ; but if you want to know how to live 2 1 8 First Things First a clean, sweet, pure life, it will tell you in language which he that runs may read. " Then is the Bible an infallible book ? " But what sort of infallibility do you want — a little peddling infallibility that dots all its i's and crosses all its t's, and makes up its figures correctly, the infallibility of the gazetteer and the ready reckoner — is that what you want? Then you do not need to come to the Bible for it. But if what you want is moral infallibility, a guide who will stand at the cross-roads of life and say to the bewildered pil- grim, " This is the way, walk ye in it," here is one who never sent a traveller on the wrong track yet. That is the Scripture's claim for itself: it is " profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for instruction which is in righteousness." About any other kind of infallibility it is silent. " But," argues some one, " if we cannot be sure of the one how can we be of the other ? " The answer is simple — try for yourselves and see. But can there be any possible doubt as to the rightness and goodness of that life which the Bible offers us and to which it calls us? There are some remarkable admissions in these letters : one writer says he has no doubts about Christ ; another is quite satisfied that the world has not and never had any teaching worthy to be compared with His ; while a third who murmurs at the shortcomings of religious professors says that many are " far from what a Christian ought to be." How much is involved in that last phrase ! For, tell me, why Bible Dijjicttlties 2 1 9 " ought " a Christian to be so different from the rest of people ? Why do you expect from him what you never expect from others ? Do you not see that language like this pays unconscious homage to the loftiness and greatness of the moral ideal which is set up by Christ? Then why not let Genesis alone and begin there ? Whatever else is uncertain, it must be right to follow Christ. Scores of young men begin to read their Bible at the wrong place. The first thing to settle is not the interpretation of the early chapters of Genesis, but our relation to Jesus Christ. Never mind how sin came into the world ; it is here — the Bible did not make it — and it is doing the devil's work in our lives. Christ assures us He can put right what is wrong. The testimony of multitudes, living and dead, confirms what He declares. Why, in God's name, why will we deny ourselves the good that Christ offers us, because, forsooth, there are things in Genesis we do not understand ? I do not mean that these questions are of no importance, that it matters not how we think about them. But what I do want to urge upon you is — do not for their sake postpone what is of far greater moment. Let it be first things first. And these certainly are not among the first things ; they can afford to wait. But that which cannot afford to wait, that which has waited too long already, is your decision to yield yourself to Christ as His servant. Delay no longer, I beseech you, but this moment answer to His call and follow in His footsteps. THE WORSHIP OF THE HIGHEST " Take heed to thyself that thou offer not thy Imi'nt offerings in every place that thou seest : but in the place which the Lord shall choose in one of thy tribes, there thoti shall offer thy burnt offerings, and there thou shall do all that I cotmnand thee.'' — Dei/t. xii. 13, H- XV THE WORSHIP OF THE HIGHEST I SUPPOSE that is a text on which modern Old Testament criticism could readily preach to us a long and learned sermon. Yet most of you would probably not care to listen to it ; certainly I am not the man to preach it. For- tunately for both of us it is not necessary. We may learn the deeper, larger lessons that lie beneath the letter of Scripture, even though we have no power (and therefore no right) to judge of the difficult and delicate questions raised by literary and historical criticism. To whatever period of the history of the people of Israel this command may belong, its meaning is obvious enough. Local sanctuaries, so liable to abuse, were to be abolished : " Take heed to thyself that thou offer not thy burnt offerings in every place that thou seest." And in their place the one central sanctuary was to be established : " In the place which the Lord shall choose, there thou shalt offer thy burnt offerings." 2 24 First Things First But what is all this to us ? What sort of connection is there between our life to-day and this antiquated law of sacrifice? What have we to do with sanctuaries local and sanctuaries central — we who have learned that " God is a Spirit ; and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth " ? I turn for my answer to that remarkable writer whose abiding worth the reading world is slowly beginning to recognise, Mark Rutherford. It was from this text that Zachariah Coleman heard old Mr. Brad- shaw preach in the Pike Street Chapel in the story of " The Revolution in Tanner's Lane." " What a word it is ! " said the preacher. " You and I are not idolaters, and there is no danger of our being so. For you and me this is not a warning against idolatry. What is it for us then ? Reserve yourself; discriminate in your worship. . . . In the place ivhich the Lord shall choose, that is to say, keep your worship for the Highest. Do not squander yourself, but, on the other hand, before the shrine of the Lord offer all your love and adoration." Here, then, is the principle that I wish to illustrate and to enforce. Every wayside has its altar, its eager priests, its worshipping crowds : " take heed to thyself that thou offer not thy burnt offerings in every place that thou seest." Make your worship worthy of yourself Do not waste yourself on trifles. When you give of your best, let it be for the sake of the best. The Worship of the Highest 225 Seek, I say, after the best things. And I will have no niggard's interpretation of the phrase. " All things are yours " ; no man shall narrow for me the magnificent breadth of that great saying, " Whatsoever things are lovely and of good report, think on these things." The joys of physical and intellectual discipline, the delights of travel, of music, of painting, of books, — they are all part of the great Christian heritage ; take them to sweeten and gladden your lives. "All these things," — meat and drink and clothing, — said Jesus," shall be added unto you." And surely He who withholdeth not these things will freely grant unto us those greater gifts which minister to our higher and spiritual life? Yes, the commandment is exceeding broad; but, mark, it is a commandment, and it is at our peril that we disregard it. The penalty of disobedience is writ large in many a man's life. Here is a familiar picture : a man who, somehow or other, has always come short of what has been rightly looked for from him. His life all through has been one long unfulfilled prophecy. There is no kind of proportion in him between power and performance. He has been busy carving cherry- stones when he might have been moving mountains. It is as if a steam-hammer should be used to crack nuts. Not that he is a bad man. His life is not nasty or corrupt. We do not want to call down fire from heaven to consume him. Yet all his life has been a mistake, a colossal blunder, and when the end comes, man as well as God Q 2 26 First Things First will write his epitaph, " Thou fool ! " What is the explanation ? He has failed to discriminate. He has squandered himself on trifles. " The straws, the small sticks, and the dust of the floor," — he has lived among these, till the muckrake is more to him than the crown. True, he may never have bowed the knee to the god of unclean - ness, or violated one of the common decencies of life, but the accent of life all through has been on the wrong things, " the unnecessary things," as Marcus Aurelius calls them. He has wor- shipped at any chance altar, not at the place which the Lord did choose. The general principle is now, I think, quite clear. Let us lay it alongside our life and apply it at one or two points. I. Take the question of reading. And here the application of our principle means this — read the best books. There are few important matters about which we are so careless as the choice of our books. Many of us have but a very little time that can be given to reading, at most, per- haps, a few hours a week, and yet the most trivial circumstance is often enough to determine which books we shall read : we read a book because it is new, or because the title catches our fancy, or because the newspapers have been talking about it, or perhaps because somebody offered to lend it to us. We boast that we are " the heirs of all the ages," and then we turn to the waste-paper basket of literature, or to the "troughs of Zolaism." The VVors/iip of the Highest 227 A great writer used to say she did not want the broth of literature when she could have the soup. What have you to do with Rider Haggards or Miss Braddons when you don't know your Walter Scott or George Eliot ? Let the Heavenly Twms and the Yelloiv Asters wait till you know Old Mortality by heart, till you have laughed and cried over Silas Marner. Do not let the literature of the hour crowd out the literature of the ages. "Take heed to thyself . . ." But, says some one, is it not very largely a matter of taste? Undoubtedly ; but in this, as in other things, taste can be cultivated or it can be ruined ; and you have only to feed long enough on the highly- seasoned garbage that some writers of the day are serving up under the name of literature to destroy for ever your appetite for what is healthy and good. 2. Turn to another and most important subject — amusements. And the question just now is not so much what forms of amusements are admissible and what are inadmissible ; rather it is, What place ought amusement to have in our life ? It is here that the " discrimination " of which I have spoken is so sorely needed to-day That amusement has a place in every young man's life I shall not stay to prove, because I do not suppose any one seriously questions it. But when you ask " What place ? " you raise one of the knottiest practical problems that any of us has to solve. I am not so foolish as to suppose 2 28 First Things First that I can settle the question in a sentence, but this word let me say — it is not here that the emphasis of life must lie. Athletics are a good thing, but if to you they are becoming the supreme thing, then for you they are no longer good, but bad and dangerous. Love of sport in every young life is natural and healthy ; but if your love of sport means that your life is being turned into a huge playground, wherein the chief end of man is to make records and to break them, if to you all the world's a football-field, and all the men and women merely " players," then your love of sport is a passion which you cherish at the peril of your own undoing. I do not want to " scream " nor to exaggerate ; I am ready to go farther than most, perhaps, on the side of toleration ; no young man loves his favourite game more keenly than I do mine ; but I say deliberately — and remember I am not speaking on behalf of a " set of young square- toes, who wear long -fingered black gloves and talk with a snuffle," but in the name of young men who believe that life was meant for something more serious than the kicking of a football, or the riding of a cycle, and I say — that the wild, feverish, all-absorbing excitement, sometimes well- nigh bordering on madness, which during the football season in some parts of our country is paralysing all the higher activities of tens of thousands of young men, is fast making of a once innocent pastime an evil that will have The Worship of the Highest 229 to be shunned like opium -smoking or dram- drinking. Recreation has its place ; take care that it gets no more than its place. Never must it become the ruling passion. Let us keep it at our feet, our servant but never our master, and it will bless us ; on the throne, it will spread mental and moral anarchy through all our life. Recreation is like medicine. Take it in right measure and it is a good tonic ; take too much and it becomes a poison. But if you ask me how much you may safely take, I cannot tell you. Different people require different doses. It is a case of every man his own doctor. You must watch yourself and keep your finger on your own pulse, and ask your- self how much of this is good for you, and settle it on that ground in God's sight. 3. I take one other application of the principle we are considering, viz. to the pursuit of wealth. And here, perhaps, the main element in the problem is not wholly dissimilar from that we have just been discussing. The pursuit of wealth, like the pursuit of pleasure, must have its place in every man's life. Christianity preaches no impossible doctrine of absolute indifference to the things of the life that now is. Always be suspicious of any representations of religion that make it visionary, unreal, unworkable. I certainly will not repeat the wild and foolish things that have sometimes been said against the possession of wealth. I would rather quote Mr. Barrie's beautiful words : " Let 230 First Things First us no longer cheat our consciences by talking of filthy lucre. Money may be always a beautiful thing. It is we who make it grimy." No ; we are not wrong in giving to wealth its place in our life ; we are wrong, utterly wrong, when that place is the first place. The mistake lies, not in caring for it, but in caring for it supremely. To make haste to be rich is a tempta- tion the most seductive and pitiless this genera- tion knows. All around us noble natures are being smitten down every day, blighted and withered by " the narrowing lust of gold." What is the terrible gambling mania of our time but just one of the " foolish and hurtful lusts " into which men fall who zvill be rich ? " The ground of a certain rich man brought forth plentifully " — and after that he could think about nothing but barns. Are you that man ? Hold a copper coin near enough to your eye and it will shut out the whole heavens from your vision. Is that what you are doing? Take heed, my brother, as George Herbert says, — "Lest gaining gain on thee, and make thee dim To all things else. Wealth is the devil's conjurer, Whom, when he thinks he hath, the devil hath him. Gold thou mayest safely touch : but if it stick Unto thy hands, it vvoundeth to the quick." Not here, at the altar of Mammon, is the place which the Lord hath chosen ; not here must thy worship be offered. The Worship of the Highest If we do not obey this Divine law, what ? If we neglect it, not in these things that I have named only, but habitually, systematically, what will the consequence be ? What will the conse- quence be ? — ah ! how we shirk that question ! How we refuse to answer it, refuse even to ask it ! We think much of to-day, little of to-morrow, and nothing at all of the day after. We will not look at life whole. We must have the present pleasure ; the palate must be tickled now ; and so the mess of pottage buys the birthright, because the one can be had to-day and the other must be waited for. ^' At the last . . . .' " says the warning voice ; but we will not heed, we do not care. The cup is sweet to the taste now ; sufficient unto the day is the enjoyment thereof; to-morrow may take thought for the things of itself. There is nothing that some of us need so much as to pull ourselves up sharp, and with both eyes fixed on our life, to ask. What is to be the end of all this ? Therefore I ask. What will be the consequence ot neglecting this Divine law? Let us turn to Mark Rutherford again for the answer : " You will not be struck dead, nor excommunicated, you will be simply disappointed. Your burnt offering will receive no answer ; you will not be blessed through it ; you will come to see that you have been pouring forth your treasure, and something worse, your heart's blood — not the blood of cattle — before that which is no God, a nothing, in fact * Vanity of vanities,' you will cry, ' all is vanity.' " 232 First Things First You remember that saying of the Apostle John, " Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world." Then he tells us why we should not love the world. He does not say it is bad, but simply " it passeth away " ; it is going ; it will not last.^ But surely man's true wisdom is to see that his life is rooted in the things which, like himself, will abide. You, my brother, what are you living for ? Is it for the things that will last, or for the things that are passing away ? What are the things that abide ? " Whether there be prophecies, they shall fail ; whether there be tongues, they shall cease ; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away." Then is all going ? Will nothing last ? Listen. " Love never faileth." Love, goodness, character — these are the things that abide for ever. "Believest thou this ? " In a day like ours, when men speak of the religion of art, or science, or literature, it is not easy always to remember — nay, it is very easy to forget — that after all these are not the supreme things. Some of you who listen to me now ^ are just entering with me on another — the seventh — year of my ministry in your midst. The years that lie behind us have brought to us all more than once we dare ever have hoped ; and yet for myself, at least, I would write failure, ay, and something worse than failure, across them all, did I not believe that they had taught, at least * See Professor Drummond's Greatest Thing iti the World. 2 August 1894. The Worship of the Highest 233 to some of us, that there is a something outside and beyond the dazzling glories of our modern life which is great not only as they are great, but great with a greatness all its own, — I mean, goodness. That is as far as this Old Testament law will carry us. Yet I cannot stop there. I am not a preacher of morality only, but a preacher of the Christian Gospel. If we say that the emphasis of our life must be on righteousness, goodness, to what does that lead us ? Goodness for us means Christlikeness ; the one is an abstraction, the other its concrete expression. To be like Christ is our definition of being good ; for we do not know, and the world does not know, any goodness like His. And so we are back once more at the old, all- important question, How shall I make that good- ness mine ? How can I, the sinful man, grow like the sinless Christ ? Mr. Matthew Arnold, in his delightful essay on Marcus Aurelius, writes of the great Roman moralist in terms of the loftiest admiration. He calls him " perhaps the most beautiful figure in history," " the unique, the incomparable Marcus Aurelius." And yet he is bound to confess that his moral precepts are not for the " ordinary man." It is impossible, he says, to rise from the study of them " without feeling that the burden laid upon man is well-nigh greater than he can bear." " The word ineffectual rises to one's mind ; Marcus 234 First Tilings First Aurelius saved his own soul by his righteousness, and he could do no more." And yet, surely, this is just what is demanded of ethical systems, that they be practicable, workable. Herein lies the glory of Christianity — its high ideals are possible. You can be what Christ bids you be, shows you you ought to be. There is not only high morality here, there is moral dynamic to make the morality operative. The secret of it all is our relation to Jesus Christ. That which among the early Christians made likeness to Christ first a possibility and afterwards a fact was their personal devotion to Him. It is not enough that we admire and reverence Him. That may carry us a little way : it can never carry us all the way ; it can never make us truly Christians. Oh ! let us follow Him, let us bow to Him, let us trust in Him with all our hearts, and He will make all good things to live and grow in us. A SAVED SOUL AND A LOST LIFE ''And he said, Jesus, remember j?ie when thoti earnest in thy kingdom. And He said tinto him. Verily I say unto thee. To-day shalt thou he with Me in Paradise'' — Luke xxiii. 42, 43. XVI A SAVED SOUL AND A LOST LIFE THIS beautiful incident in the story of our Lord's Death and Passion is familiar to us all. It is needless to spend one moment in painting again a picture every detail of which we already know so well. The story brings to us a twofold message. I see in it the beckoning finger of encouragement ; I see in it also the uplifted finger of warning. Christ is able and willing to save all ; and if only we are willing, we are not too bad and it is never too late. Death's icy finger was already on this man's heart — another moment and it would be still for ever ; but the nailed hands of Christ snatched his soul from the very mouth of hell.^ There is the encouragement. The penitent robber was saved, yet " so as by fire " ; behind lay his life a blackened, smoking waste. There is the warning. His soul was saved but his life was lost ; Christ seeks to save both our soul and our * See Bishop Hall's Contemplations, 238 First Things First life. Let us look at these two points in turn for a moment. I. The Encouragement. — Exactly what this penitent robber knew of Christ we* do not know ; at most it could be but little. It is true he calls Him " Lord," and speaks of His " kingdom." There is something, too, almost sublime in the faith which at that moment, when on the one side there stood a world leering, scoffing, hateful, and on the other but a lone, unfriended Man, could yet choose with Him, and cry, " This Man hath done nothing amiss." He saw the Lord in the Victim, the kingdom beyond the Cross. Still, when all is said, his thoughts of Christ must have been very inadequate, very unworthy. And yet, though he knew not even what he said, and though his prayer dropped from lips already white with death, Christ heard and saved him : " To-day shalt thou be with Me in Paradise." To all God offers to forgive the sin of the past and to give strength for the future ; and He offers to do it now. Is there any thought of Him in your hearts that will not let you believe that ? Again and again have I talked with men and women — even young men and women — who had brooded over this black thought till it had driven them well-nigh to despair: "I am too bad — I have sinned too deeply — I have gone too far — God's mercy is not for me." Is there any one listening to me now who feels like that ? Then may God help me to bring to you a word of A Saved Soul and a Lost Life 239 hope. " Late, late, so late " — yes, but if only we will it is not " too late." There is a popular hymn in many of our hymn-books called " Jesus of Nazareth passeth by." I can sing it all except the last verse ; when we get to that I am always silent — "But if you still His call refuse. And all His wondrous love abuse, Soon will He sadly from you turn, Your bitter prayer for pardon spurn : * Too late ! too late ! ' will be the cry — Jesus of Nazareth has passed by / " I cannot sing that. Christ never spurns a true cry for pardon. If He did that He would no longer be the Christ I know and preach. The only unpardoned ones at the last will be those who do not ask for pardon, who do not want it, who will not have it. " The only unpardonable sin is the sin of refusing the pardon that avails for all sin." ^ " T/iis is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil." But if we turn to the light, and welcome it, then are we condemned no longer. " Your bitter prayer for pardon spurn " ? No ; what I fear is not lest a day should come when Christ will be deaf, but a day when you will be dumb ; not that He will say " No " to your prayer, but that you will not care to pray. I tremble when I think what strange work sin may work in a man's heart ; but ^ Dr. Maclaren. 240 First Things First God's mercy I never doubt ; it " endureth for ever " ; it will hold out while yet there is a single prodigal ready to cry, " I will arise and go to my Father." This is the first truth I wish to emphasize ; and in order the better to do so, let me examine briefly two or three passages of Scripture which men and women have often wrested to their own hurt ; for still, as Margaret Elginbrod, in George MacDonald's beautiful story, says, " We turn God's words against Himself." Take, first, the oft-quoted passage from the book of Genesis : " My spirit shall not always strive with man." -^ Who has not heard this used as an authority for the statement that a time comes when God withdraws His Spirit from men's hearts and ceases to seek to win them to Himself? What are the real facts ? First, " My spirit " does not and cannot mean the Holy Spirit, the Third Person in the Trinity ; ^ secondly, " strive " is a complete mistranslation ; ^ and, thirdly, the whole passage, however we translate it, has absolutely nothing whatever to do with the subject under ^ vi. 3. 2 ** It is not the Holy Spirit and His office of chastisement which is here meant, but, the object of the resolution being the destruction or shortening of physical life, the breath of life by which men are animated (ii. 7), and which, by reason of its Divine origin and kin- ship with the Divine nature, or even as merely a Divine gift, is called * my spirit ' by God " (Delitzsch). ^ *' Act in " (Delitzsch), "rule in" (R.V. marg.) A Saved Soul and a Lost Life 241 discussion. The probable meaning is, as Dr. Dods expresses it, " Tlie vital principle communi- cated to man by God (ii. 7) shall not animate him for ever, for he also (like the other creatures) is flesh " ; " yet," so continues the narrative, " shall his days be a hundred and twenty years." Any one who will take the trouble to read the passage for himself as it stands in the context will realise in a moment the utter impossibility of the popular rendering. Another passage sometimes quoted in a similar connection is this : " Ephraim is joined to his idols ; let him alone " ^ — meaning he is past hope, it is useless to attempt anything more, there- fore "let him alone." But is it so certain that this is the true interpretation of the passage? " Ephraim " stands here for Northern Israel. Hosea is addressing himself to the people of Judah, and he warns them against the idolatry into which their countrymen in the north have fallen. " Ephraim is joined to his idols ; let him alone " ; i.e. be not a partaker with him in his evil- doings ; " come ye out from among them and be ye separate." The words, then, are a call to separation addressed to Judah, rather than a judgment of doom pronounced against Israel.'^ 1 Hos. iv. 17. 2 This interpretation is defended, among modern expositors, by a scholar at once so orthodox and so able as Dr. Maclarcn. " There are no people," he adds, "about whom God says that they are so wedded to their sins that it is useless to try to do anything with them." K 242 First Things First But much more perplexing than either of these is the hard saying of the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews concerning Esau : " For ye know " (I quote from the A.V.) "how that afterward, when he would have inherited the blessing, he was rejected : for he found no place of repentance, though he sought it carefully with tears." ^ Readers of John Bunyan's Grace Abounding will remember how his soul was tortured by doubts born of these dark, mysterious words ; and not a few perhaps since then have passed through a like experience. And no wonder ; for here in God's own Book are words that seem to say to us that a man may seek to repent, seek earnestly and with tears, and yet be rejected. Is it really so ? Let us see. The grammatical construction of this verse is a little difficult. In all probability, when the writer says " he sought it diligently with tears," the " it " does not refer (as in the A.V. it seems to do) to the " place of repentance," but to the " blessing." That is the view adopted by the Revisers, who have placed the sentence " for he found no place of repentance " within parentheses, the result being to draw into closer connection the first and last clauses of the verse. So that what this passage tells us is really this : Esau despised and sold his birthright, afterwards desiring to inherit the blessing he sought it diligently and with tears, but was rejected. What, then, is the meaning of the parenthetical clause " he found no A Saved So id and a Lost Life 243 place of repentance " ? It is in that word repent- ance that the whole difficulty lies. Repent, in the high, religious sense of turning away from sin to God, Esau certainly did not ; at least there is no mention of any such repentance in the Old Testament narrative, which must be our chiei guide in the interpretation of these words. But repentance of another and lower kind was mani- fested by him. There was deep and bitter regret at his past folly ; there was a real change of view with regard to the value of what he had lost, and there was an earnest desire to get it back again. And it is that change of mind, that repentance, of which the writer of this Epistle was thinking when he said that Esau " found no place of repentance"; that is to say, as one expositor has put it, " He found no field in which such repentance as he had could operate so as to undo what was past." Once the blessing might have been his, but he despised it ; now it has passed to another. Esau may weep and wring his hands in the bitterness of his despair, — it is too late, the opportunity has gone for ever, and there is no place for repentance now. I do not know whether I have made my explanation clear ; but at the risk of repeating my- self, let me say again these words do not teach that a man may earnestly desire to turn away from his sin and seek after God, and yet be unable to do so. No such thought was in the writer's mind ; it is not to be found in the Old Testament narrative on which he was commenting ; and there is not a 244 First Things First vestige of any such doctrine in the whole Bible. What they do teach is this — and it is a truth sufficiently solemn and awful without magnifying into wholly unscriptural proportions — that if, like Esau, a man lets slip in early life the blessings God puts within his reach, he must not expect they will all come flocking back again the moment he finds out how he has played the fool and erred exceedingly.^ One other passage and I pass on. In the Book of Proverbs we read : " Because I have called, and ye refused ; I have stretched out my hand, and no man regarded ; but ye have set at nought all my counsel, and would none of my reproof: I also will laugh in the day of your calamity ; I will mock when your fear cometh ; when your fear cometh as a storm, and your calamity cometh on as a whirlwind ; when distress and anguish come upon you. Then shall they call upon me, but I will not answer ; they shall seek me diligently, but they shall not find me." ^ These terrible words have been put, not infre- quently, into the lips of Jesus ; and because men have thought that He says, " They shall call upon me, but I will not answer ; they shall seek me diligently, but they shall not find me," their ^ Once more I have to acknowledge my indebtedness to Dr. Maclaren. The brief exposition attempted above is in the main borrowed from a sermon of his which I read years ago. How closely I have followed him I cannot now say ; the sermon has never, so far as I know, been reprinted. 2 i. 24-28. A Saved Soul and a Lost Life 245 hearts have been filled with anguish and despair. A well-known minister (Dr. Monro Gibson), in an article on this passage in one of our theological monthlies,! mentions a very distressing case which had come under his own observation. An earnest Christian lady was visiting in one of our infirmaries. She found there an old man, broken-hearted because of sin, and anxiously seeking salvation. She told him of Jesus, the crucified One, who died that we might live. But he met her at every point with the one reply — the Gospel was not for him, his day of grace was past. When she quoted New Testament words of promise, he answered her with these words from the Book of Proverbs. Because Christ had once called and he had refused, now, said he, He will laugh at my calamity. He will be deaf to my prayer. I have not time to deal with this passage as fully as I could wish. But this let me say : these words are not the words of Christ ; the Book of Proverbs does not so much as hint that they are His in any sense ; there is not even the shadow of a reason for putting them into His lips. They are the words of Wisdom, and so understood need no apology, for they present no difficulty. But who has a right to assume that Wisdom and Christ are one ? Because to the late seeker Wisdom wears upon her brow a stern, forbidding look, does Christ therefore greet him with no gracious word of welcome ? That some of the sayings of Wisdom 1 Expositor ^ 3rd Series, vol. viii. p. 193. 246 First Things First may be fittingly put into His lips is nothing to the point. So may many of the Psalms : do we therefore make Him the spokesman of those terrible imprecations in which some of the Psalm- ists breathe out vengeance against their enemies ? No, no ; I tell you plainly, if I believed that God could ever laugh at my calamity, and mock the prayer that the consciousness of sin had wrung from a broken heart ; if I thought that my cry for forgiveness could ever be met by Him with hard and stony indifference, I would shut to my Bible and never preach again. If that be God, there i? no glad tidings of great joy for the world. But, blessed be His name, He has given to us a better Gospel than that. Drunkard and harlot, chiefest of sinners, vilest of the sinful race — let them all hear the great message of universal love. All His life Christ preached it ; at the eleventh hour He saved the penitent robber ; He put the trumpet to His lips, and shouted as with His dying breath His great evangel, " Whosoever will, let him come." Yes ; though " this cursed hand were thicker than itself with brother's blood," there is " rain enough in the sweet heavens to wash it white as snow." " I would," says Christ, and if He does not, there is only one reason, and it is not in Him, " ye would not." Now, now, though it be the eleventh hour, though the candle of life have burnt to the' socket, though you have nothing to offer God but the fragments that remain from a misspent life, yet even now if you will He will receive you, A Saved Soul and a Lost Life 247 and whatsoever of good His love can bring to sinful men He will give to you. 2. We turn from the encouragement to the zvarning. " One was saved upon the cross," says an old divine, " that none might despair ; and only one that none might presume." But it is not of the folly of what we call " death-bed repentances " that I want to speak ; we did not need this narra- tive to teach us that, surely. Its warning rather lies in this : the robber's soul was saved, but his life zvas lost. But God seeks to save not only our soul, but our life — our days, our years, our strength for service. No one will think I am speaking lightly of the infinite blessing bestowed on that dying robber, but — I say it with all reverence — Christ can do better for a man than that. It is that better thing I desire for you young men. There is a touching little poem by Dora Greenwell,^ suggested by the inscription on a tombstone in a country churchyard in Wales, which tells how he who lies below passed away at the age of eighty, and yet — referring to the date of his conversion to Christ — was only " four years old when he died " — " If you ask me how long I have lived in the world, I'm old, I'm very old ; If you ask me how many years I've lived, it'll very soon be told, Past eighty years of age, yet only four years old." ^ '* A Good Confession." 248 First Things First How long are you going to be in the world before you begin to live ? I want to tell you why you should come to Christ now. It will save you from vain and bitter regrets in after life. You know what a " palimpsest " is. In early days, before the invention of printing, when books were both scarce and dear, a scribe who wished to make a copy of some writing would, not unfrequently, for the sake of economy, take a piece of parchment that had been already used ; then when, as far as possible, the old writing had been erased, on the surface thus newly prepared he would begin his transcribing. But sometimes in the course of years, the work of erasure not having been done completely, the first writing would gradually reappear, with the curious result of a double inscription on the one sheet of parchment. Such a MS. is called a palimpsest.^ Is not that a picture of some men's lives ? To my mind there is nothing in Paul's letters so sad as the oft- repeated references to the terrible mistakes of his early life. Conversion cleansed the sheet, and we might have thought the past was blotted out for ever ; and yet even when the end is almost in view, and Paul the Apostle has become " Paul the aged," he can still see the big, ugly words beneath the newer, fairer writing of his life — " blasphemer^ perseattor, injurious!' Is ther^ anything so sad as the bittei" memories of a good man ? There are white-headed Christian men and women who ^ Some of tlie Bible MSS. are of this character. A Saved Soul and a Lost Life 249 would give their right hand — all they have indeed — to stand again where some of you do. Oh ! let us be wise in time. God can and will take back His penitent prodigal child, and give to him all that a Father's loving heart can bestow, but God cannot and God does not chase away the memories of the sinful past that tramp through the chambers of the mind. If you want no bitter thoughts of the far-off country with its riotous living and husks of the swine-trough, take care you do not wander from the Father's home. And, further, I want you to come to Christ now, because, coming to Him, you will be saved for earnest service. " Repent ye, for — " any reason you like ; any motive that really brings you to Christ is a good one ; but the Baptist's plea is perhaps still the best ; certainly it has lost none of its urgency to-day — " repent jQ^for the kingdom of heaven is at hand!' New fields await the worker, new doors stand open on every side, a thousand voices summon us to that service of God which is the service of man. And I have no greater quarrel with sin than this, that it unfits men for this high service. We pity the unhappy cripple left behind in the race of life. But our churches are full of such — men and women repentant and forgiven indeed ; but not for them the difficult task, not for them the high endeavour ; they must go softly all their days. Just as a man dragged from the revolving wheels of some machinery may lose one of his limbs and yet may escape with his 250 First Things First life, so some are snatched from utter spiritual destruction ; but maimed and crippled for time, perhaps for eternity, they can never again be all that once they might have been. In some church- yard in Germany two tombstones stand side by side ; on the one it is written Vergehen "Forgiven," on the other Vergebens "In vain." If I had to write an epitaph for some, I think I would write both Vergeben and Vergebens. My brother, will you win nothing better for yourself than that? I appeal to your sense of honour. Play the man. If you honestly believe that religion is good for nothing, that it can do nothing for you and help you to do nothing for others, say so, and at least we shall know what we are about. If you never intend to be a Christian, admit it, and mad as I shall think your decision there will at least be some show of consistency in your conduct. But you intend nothing of the sort ; you believe there is very much in religion ; you fully purpose to be some day among the ' followers of Christ. Then is it just, is it honour- able, is it manly, to treat this question as some of you are treating it ? Is there any other concern in life to which you present the same dallying, hesitating front you do to this ? Has it come to this, that every other creditor is to get twenty shillings in the pound, and God is to be put off with the sorriest pittance ? Is there to be enough and to spare for every other guest, and for Him only the crumbs that fall from the table, the mere A Saved Soul and a Los I Life 25] scrapings of the barrel ? God asks your life while the bloom is on it ; will you wait to give it Him till it is a poor, withered, shrivelled thing ? He seeks you in your youth, in the very heyday of your life and vigour : will you seek Him only when, bankrupt of days and strength, you are scarce able to crawl back to His feet ? " Are you afraid to die ? " said a sick-visitor to a man as he lay on his death-bed. " No," said the dying man, "I am not afraid; I am ashamed to die: God has done so much for me, and I have done nothing for Him." Christ seeks your soul ; He seeks your life : will you give Him both ? THE END DATE DUE mmmm^^i^ ^' ""■■"-*«^ )MV mimm^ 1 GAYLORD PRINTED IN U.S.A.