GOD'S BOOK AND 
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BV 1533 .S32 1915 
 Schauffler, Adolphus 
 
 Frederick, 1845-1919. 
 God's book and God's boy 
 
God's Book and God's Boy 
 
The James Sprunt Lectures delivered at 
 Union Theological Seminary in Virginia 
 
 God's Book and God's 
 
 Boy 
 
 A. F. SCHAUFFLER, D.D. 
 
 President New York City Mission Society 
 
 Author of ** Pastoral Leadership of 
 
 Sunday-School Forces,^ etc. 
 
 New York Chicago Toronto 
 
 Fleming H. Revell Company 
 
 London and Edinburgh 
 
Copyright, 19 15, by 
 FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY 
 
 New York: 158 Fifth Avenue 
 Chicago: 125 North Wabash Ave. 
 Toronto: 25 Richmond Street, W. 
 London: 31 Paternoster Square 
 Edinburgh: 100 Princes Street 
 
THE JAMES SPRUNT LECTURES 
 
 IN nineteen hundred and eleven Mr. James Sprunt 
 of Wilmington, North Carolina, gave to the Trus- 
 tees of Union Theological Seminary in Virginia 
 the sum of thirty thousand dollars for the purpose of 
 establishing a perpetual lectureship which would enable 
 the institution to secure from time to time the services 
 of distinguished ministers and authoritative scholars 
 outside the regular Faculty as special lecturers on sub- 
 jects connected with various departments of Christian 
 thought and Christian work. The lecturers are chosen 
 by the Faculty of the Seminary and a committee of the 
 Board of Trustees, and the lectures are published after 
 their delivery in accordance with a contract between 
 the lecturer and these representatives of the institution. 
 The fourth series of lectures on this foundation is pre- 
 sented in this volume. 
 
 W. W. Moore. 
 
 President Union Theological 
 Seminary in Virginia. 
 
Preface 
 
 THE material contained in this book is based 
 on no inconsiderable experience in han- 
 dling work along lines of Sunday-school 
 instruction. For many years the author had the 
 privilege of superintending one of the largest mis- 
 sion Sunday-schools in New York City, and for over 
 thirty years he has had the joy of teaching a weekly 
 class for Sunday-school teachers, taking the Inter- 
 national Uniform Lessons for his theme. He hopes, 
 therefore, that whatever he has said in the lectures 
 herewith offered to the public will be found to be 
 helpful, and sensible as well. Indeed nothing can 
 be helpful to the Sunday-school work unless it is 
 based on common sense and actual experience. 
 
 The author's effort has not been to give an ex- 
 haustive presentation either of The Book or of The 
 Boy. His aim has rather been to view The Booh 
 from a somewhat unusual standpoint, and to give 
 the teacher, so far as is possible, a more vivid and 
 picturesque grasp of what are called Bible times 
 and Bible characters. In dealing with the scholar 
 the author has also endeavoured to work along a 
 similar line trying to arouse in the teacher a new 
 interest in the personality of the scholar such as 
 shall stimulate him to further study. 
 
 7 
 
8 Preface 
 
 With the exception of the lectures on " Joseph " 
 and " Moses," which were delivered in a course at 
 the Bible Teachers' Training School, New York 
 City, all the lectures in this book were delivered at 
 the Union Theological Seminary in Richmond, 
 Ya. They were taken down stenographically, and 
 though corrected by the author, still will doubtless 
 show the defects of extemporary address. It is to 
 be hoped, however, that what they lose along this 
 line may, in part at least, be atoned for by the 
 greater directness that is usually found in extem- 
 porary delivery. 
 
 It is hoped that these lectures may be helpful 
 both to lay teachers and to the ministry as well. 
 The author's conviction is very profound that, in 
 the average Sunday-school throughout the country, 
 the minister ought to be leader of his teaching 
 force, taking charge of the teachers' weekly meet- 
 ing for the study of the lesson, and building his 
 teachers up on the sure foundation of the Word. 
 With this hope in view he was glad of the oppor- 
 tunity to address the promising body of theological 
 students at Richmond, and is equally glad to address 
 a larger constituency through the medium of the 
 printed page. 
 
 That God's blessing may go with this little book 
 is his earnest desire and prayer. 
 
 A. F. S. 
 
 New Yorkj 
 
Contents 
 
 I. The Study of the Bible as Litera- 
 
 ture — Plus What ? . . .11 
 
 II. The Two Great Bible Dramas . . 30 
 
 III. The Study of the Bible in Spots . 5 3 
 
 IV. A Bird's-Eye View of the Acts of 
 
 THE Apostles .... 70 
 
 V. Joseph — Prisoner and Prime Minister 88 
 
 VI. Moses— Leader and Lawgiver . 105 
 
 VII. The Five Gates of Approach to the 
 
 Human Mind 120 
 
 VIII. The Religious Use OF THE Imagination 143 
 
 IX. The Teacher's Grand Quartet . .166 
 
 X. The Teacher's Eleven Helpers . 1 87 
 
 XL The Sunday- School Worker's Widen- 
 ing Horizon 208 
 
THE STUDY OF THE BIBLE AS LITERATURE, 
 PLUS WHAT? 
 
 MY theme in this course of lectures is two- 
 fold, dealing first with GoiTs Book and 
 second with God'^s Boy. In handling 
 this twofold theme the limitations of the lecture 
 course naturally prevent any exhaustive treatment 
 either of the Book and its contents or of the Boy, 
 his nature and his needs. My aim will be rather to 
 try and throw light on the Book from a standpoint 
 not often dealt with by commentaries or even ordi- 
 nary lesson helps. 
 
 The lectures on the Book aim to illustrate one 
 of the ways in which the Book may be studied in 
 order to impart to it life and motion. I desire to 
 make it to the teacher more of a living Book than 
 it has been in days gone by. 
 
 In dealing with the Boy my aim is to present 
 certain phases of the subject of paidology calculated 
 to stimulate the teacher to realize what a fascinat- 
 ing personality the Boy is and induce him to pursue 
 further the study of how to reach this Boy with 
 this Book. 
 
 Here is a boy and in front of him is the teacher. 
 In his hand each holds the Bible. What is this 
 teacher's business? To get that Book into that 
 
 II 
 
12 God's Book and God's Boy 
 
 boy's mind. That is all. Into that boy's heart no 
 teacher can get the Book. The Holy Spirit doeis 
 that. But the teacher can get the Book into the 
 boy's head ; provided he knows two things — first, 
 the Book ; second, the Boy. If he knows only the 
 Book, he will fail. If he knows only the boy, again 
 he will fail. He must know both Book and boy. 
 Then, with God's blessing, he will succeed. To be 
 known, the Book and boy must be studied. 
 
 We are often urged by modern scholars to study 
 the Bible as literature, and this contention is right. 
 Only we would utter a caution here. The Bible is 
 not to be studied as a literature on a par with the 
 Koran, the Yedas, the Zend-Avesta, and the Con- 
 fucian literature. They are literature and the Bible 
 is also literature, but the Bible stands on an emi- 
 nence by itself. As Mount Blanc towers above the 
 rest of the Alps, so the Bible towers above all the 
 religious literature of the whole world. Neverthe- 
 less, the Bible is literature. 
 
 Most of our scholars think of it as one book. It 
 is really sixty-six books written by many authors 
 in many times, in many climes, in many different 
 circumstances. Take, for example, the authors. 
 Some of these authors were highly educated men, 
 as, for example, Moses, who contributed so largely 
 to the Old Testament ; a man learned in all the 
 wisdom of the Egyptians. That meant all the 
 wisdom there was in those days. On the other 
 hand, there was Amos, an uneducated man who 
 said of himself that he was neither a prophet, nor 
 
The Bible as Literature— Plus What ? 13 
 
 the son of a prophet, but a common herdsman 
 (Amos vii. 14). In the New Testament we have the 
 Apostle Paul, born and bred in the University City 
 of Tarsus, but reared in Jerusalem at the feet of 
 the renowned scholar Gamaliel (Acts xxii. 3). On 
 the other hand we have the Apostle Peter, a fisher- 
 man of Galilee, knowing, doubtless, how to read 
 and write, but being otherwise unlearned and 
 ignorant. Thus we have two superbly educated 
 men and two men with very meagre education, 
 combining to contribute to this literature. 
 
 We have royal authors, for I doubt not that 
 David wrote some of his songs while on the throne 
 and Solomon wrote nearly all that he wrote of the 
 Proverbs on the throne. 
 
 Per contra, we have (if I may be allowed to use 
 the expression) some jail-birds, for Jeremiah wrote 
 a great deal of what he wrote in jail, and Paul, 
 who wrote much behind the bars in prison. 
 
 Most of these authors never saw each other ; for 
 example, Isaiah never saw Ezekiel ; Moses never 
 saw Samuel. Moreover, they wrote in different 
 lands — Moses in the Sinaitic Peninsula ; Ezekiel in 
 exile ; Paul, the peripatetic preacher, wrote almost 
 everywhere. 
 
 Note then the marvel of it all ! Men of different 
 social standing, men in widely separated parts of 
 the world, men who had never seen each other, 
 producing a literature of sixty-six books which we 
 yet recognize as one Book. Through it all runs 
 the one divine purpose, showing that through all 
 
14 God's Book and God's Boy 
 
 these writers there flowed an influence restraining, 
 impelling, guiding, illuminating. And so we do 
 well to call it one Book, though it be a library of 
 sixty-six volumes. 
 
 These men wrote according to their individual 
 bent. Those who were poetically inclined broke 
 out in poetry. The more prosaic writers confined 
 themselves to ordinary history. Those who were 
 philosophical dealt with wisdom literature. Those 
 who had a turn towards writing dealt in epistolary 
 writings, and he who closed the volume who was 
 on the Isle of Patmos seeing vision after vision, 
 breaks out into apocalyptic glory. You see then 
 the composite nature of this Book. 
 
 I have said that a large part of the Book is 
 poetical. It is hard for many humble Christians 
 to realize there is so much poetry in the Bible, and 
 one reason is that in our poetry rhyme and rhythm 
 are very dominant. 
 
 ^' The Assyrian came down like a wolf on 
 the fold, 
 And his cohorts were gleaming in purple 
 and gold." 
 
 You recognize that at once as poetry. But the 
 Hebrew cared nothing in his poetry for rhyme or 
 rhythm. In his poetry the Hebrew cared very 
 largely for what may be called the antiphonal 
 form, or statement, of the poetic idea, or, if I may 
 change the expression, he dealt largely in statement 
 and restatement, in afiirmation and response. That 
 
The Bible as Literature— Plus What? 15 
 
 is the main form in which Hebrew poetry is cast. 
 Take any of the Psalms and you will see what 
 I mean. Take Psalm twenty-three : Statement : 
 Jehovah is my Shepherd; Response: I shall not 
 want. Statement : He maketh me to lie down in 
 green pastures; Response: He leadeth me be- 
 side still waters. Psalm one hundred and three : 
 Statement : Bless Jehovah, O my soul ; Response : 
 And all that is within me, bless his holy name. 
 Statement : Bless Jehovah, O my soul ; Response : 
 And forget not all his benefits. Statement : Who 
 forgiveth all thine iniquities; Response: Who 
 healeth all thy diseases. 
 
 So it goes, back and forth, back and forth, as 
 though there were two choirs singing, the one 
 giving utterance to the statement ; the other 
 pouring forth the response. You realize this when 
 you turn, for example, to the poetic prophecies of 
 Balaam, uttered as he was standing on the moun- 
 tain and looking over the plain where Israel was 
 encamped. You see the antiphonal nature of his 
 speech when you can read in Balaam's prophecies 
 the statement without the response. Standing 
 alone it will make good sense. Let me now read 
 to you the statement as found in Numbers, twenty- 
 third chapter : " How shall I curse whom God 
 hath not cursed ? For from the top of the rocks I 
 see him. Lo, it is a people that dwelleth alone. 
 Who can count the dust of Jacob ? Let me die 
 the death of the righteous." 
 
 That makes good sense, but you have cut out the 
 
i6 God's Book and God's Boy 
 
 response. Now read it with the statement and the 
 response. Statement: How shall I curse, whom 
 God hath not cursed ? Response : And how shall 
 I defy, whom Jehovah hath not defied ? State- 
 ment : For from the top of the rocks I see him ; 
 Response : And from the hills I behold him. State- 
 ment : Lo, it is a people that dwelleth alone ; Re- 
 sponse: And shall not be reckoned among the 
 nations. Statement: Who can count the dust of 
 Jacob ? Response : Or number the fourth part of 
 Israel ? Statement : Let me die the death of the 
 righteous ; Response : And let my last end be like 
 his. 
 
 When in some such way we grasp the Hebrew 
 concept in this matter of poetic thought, then 
 Hebrew poetry becomes far more entrancing and 
 significant, and we enter into the spirit of the poet 
 of the olden days. I want to recommend very 
 strongly the study of " The Literary Study of the 
 Bible," by Professor Moulton, along this whole line 
 of the setting of Hebrew poetry, especially as he 
 illustrates it in that wonderfully dramatic scene 
 of the song of Deborah and Barak. 
 
 Take another instance of the literary form in 
 which the Bible is cast. The book of Jonah has 
 been the most ridiculed book of any in the Old 
 Testament, and yet it is the most artistically con- 
 structed of any of the books of the Bible. There 
 are only four chapters, which we might call 
 Strophes, in the book of Jonah, setting forth, how- 
 ever, as no other book in the Old Testament does, 
 
The Bible as Literature — Plus What? 17 
 
 God's universal love and pity for all mankind. 
 Take this division, Strophe One — Theme : Heathen 
 sailors, in great distress, call upon Jehovah and are 
 delivered. Heathen sailors ! Far from the Jewish 
 concept was it that heathen sailors might call on 
 the God of Abraham and find response, but in the 
 very first chapter you find that is the truth. Sec- 
 ond Strophe (or Chapter) — A Hebrew prophet, in 
 great distress, calls upon Jehovah and is delivered. 
 Third Strophe — Heathen Nineveh, in great distress, 
 calls upon Jehovah and is delivered. Fourth 
 Strophe — Dialogue between Jehovah and Jonah, 
 setting forth God's universal compassion on all of 
 His creatures. 
 
 This literature is not only poetical, but it is pro- 
 phetic. By prophecy I do not mean simply the 
 foretelling of coming events. I am one of those 
 who believe thoroughl}'- that the prophets did fore- 
 tell events that were centuries in the future, but 
 that was not the major part of the prophet's work. 
 The major part of the prophet's work was the 
 forthtelling of God's will, God's promises and judg- 
 ments. There are many who seem to think that 
 the prophets wrote their books very much the way 
 a minister writes his sermons. Now if there is one 
 way above another in which the prophet did not 
 work, that is the way. Almost everywhere, if it 
 were possible, the prophet first spoke his message 
 face to face with his hearers. Then he wrote down 
 a condensed account of it, the very heart and kernel 
 of what he had said. Isaiah prophesied for sixty 
 
l8 God's Book and God's Boy 
 
 years, but you can read the whole book of Isaiah 
 in a morning. The major part of what he said has 
 perished, but what he wanted to preserve has been 
 preserved. 
 
 Of course, there were times when the prophet 
 could not speak face to face with his audience, as 
 was the case with Jeremiah when he was in jail. 
 So he called for Baruch and dictated to him the 
 message he wanted to give and Baruch wrote it 
 down and read it in the temple (Jeremiah xxxvi.) ; 
 but that was only because Jeremiah could not do 
 so himself. Ezekiel could not give his message to 
 God's people in Judea face to face because he was 
 in captivity, so he wrote. But whenever they 
 could speak face to face, they always did so. 
 
 Bearing in mind, then, the prophetic manner as 
 above suggested, take the book of Amos and realize 
 that this man must have delivered a series of ad- 
 dresses in Bethel where one of the two golden 
 calves had been set up in the northern kingdom, 
 and that what we have here is the very condensed 
 essence of what Amos had to say. Realize the 
 situation. Amos was born in the southern king- 
 dom. He was sent by God to preach against the 
 sins of the northern kingdom. Between the north- 
 ern and the southern kingdoms there was bitter 
 jealousy. For a southern man to come to the north 
 to rebuke the north for its sins was a most delicate 
 action. In 1861 if any man from south of Mason 
 and Dixon's line had come North to preach to us 
 about our sins I fear very much that he would have 
 
The Bible as Literature — Plus What"? 19 
 
 had to return, perhaps more swiftly than he had 
 come, and if at that time a man had come from the 
 North to the South to preach against slavery, prob- 
 ably his return would have been greatly accelerated 
 by your efforts. 
 
 Now mark the skill of Amos in putting his mes- 
 sage. Use your imaginations here a little and 
 realize that the moment this man appeared in the 
 courtyard of the temple at Bethel they would 
 recognize him from his garb and speech as a man 
 from the south. Nevertheless, a Jew always listens 
 to hear what a man has to say. Now Amos comes 
 into the courtyard of the temple at Bethel and be- 
 gins : " Thus saith Jehovah ; For three transgres- 
 sions of Damascus, yea for four, I will not turn 
 away the punishment thereof." That is his theme 
 for the first day. That was good tidings for the 
 Israelites. Damascus was their greatest foe on the 
 northeast, so while this man is prophesying Je- 
 hovah's wrath against Damascus I fancy I can see 
 a smile wreathing the faces of many and I hear 
 them say, " He seems to be down on Damascus. 
 That is comforting." So Amos closes his address 
 and goes his way. 
 
 The second day. Lo, this prophet appears again. 
 This day his message is as follows : '' Thus saith 
 Jehovah ; For three transgressions of Gaza, yea for 
 four, I will not turn away the punishment thereof." 
 On that day as he dwells on the sins of the Philis- 
 tines I fancy I bear one say to another, " That is 
 fine. Yesterday he was down on Damascus. To- 
 
20 God's Book and God's Boy 
 
 day he is down on the Philistines. That man is 
 grand." At the close of this address I hear some 
 man saying to Amos, " Is that all that you have to 
 say ? " and Amos replies, " No, I will be here to- 
 morrow." 
 
 The third day. The crowd begins to increase. 
 The excitement becomes contagious and the crowd 
 eagerly awaits the third message. *' Thus saith Je- 
 hovah ; For three transgressions of Tyrus, yea for 
 four, I will not turn away the punishment thereof." 
 *' Oh," says the Jew, " Tyrus ! Mistress of the sea. 
 That concerns us because here is this man prophe- 
 sying against Tyrus. This man hews to the line 
 and the plummet and though he is from the south, 
 he has discernment. Amos, have you anything 
 more to say ? " " Yes, I will be here to-morrow," 
 and they reply, " Good ; we will have all our friends 
 here to-morrow to hear you. This is fine." 
 
 The fourth day. *' Thus saith Jehovah; For 
 three transgressions of Edom, yea for four, I will 
 not turn away the punishment thereof." Now 
 Edom was she who, in the gorge of Petra, hid al- 
 ways in the rocks and said, " No one shall bring me 
 down," and here was this prophet saying that Edom 
 shall be abased and shall hide in the rocks no longer 
 in safety. 
 
 Do you begin to see the excitement accompany- 
 ing the delivery of the message day after day ? Do 
 you see how this crowd, becoming more and more 
 filled with enthusiasm, is gathering in ever increas- 
 ing numbers to hear what this man has to say ? So 
 
The Bible as Literature — Plus What? 21 
 
 it went on. One day, Ammon ; the next day, 
 Moab ; and then there came a day — day number 
 seven — when he fairly startled them. *' Thus saith 
 Jehovah ; For three transgressions of Judah, yea 
 for four, I will not turn away the punishment 
 thereof." " What did he say ? Judah ? Why, he 
 is from Judah. Is he down on Judah ? " " Thus 
 saith Jehovah ; For three transgressions of Judah, 
 yea for four, I will not turn away the punishment 
 thereof." Why, that filled them with amazed 
 pleasure ; the idea of this man decrying his own 
 southern kingdom ! 
 
 Thus Amos is preparing for his ultimate message 
 to Israel and on the last of these consecutive days 
 when the crowd is very great this is the message — 
 " Thus saith Jehovah ; For three transgressions of 
 Israel, yea for four, I will not turn away the punish- 
 ment thereof." J^ow he is home. Now he has 
 gotten down to his final message, bringing himself 
 up to it as tactfully as possible. Now he stands 
 before them, as Nathan stood before David when 
 he said : *' Thou art the man ; " and here he is say- 
 ing, " Ye are the people for whom God hath given 
 me a message." 
 
 See; when you understand the environment, 
 when you grasp the method of this man, every- 
 thing becomes instantly intense with life. The 
 message becomes living and fascinating. 
 
 Yes, I say the Bible is literature. We can say of 
 it as David said of Goliath's sword, " Give it to 
 me ; there is none like it." 
 
22 God's Book and God's Boy 
 
 Take another of these Old Testament passages 
 which you will find in Isaiah, in the tenth chapter, 
 beginning at the twenty-eighth verse. I shall read 
 the passage before I begin to explain it. " He is 
 come to Aiath, he is passed through Migron ; at 
 Mich-mash he layeth up his baggage ; they are 
 gone over the pass ; they have taken up their lodg- 
 ing at Geba ; Kamah trembleth ; Gibeah of Saul is 
 fled. Cry aloud with thy voice, O daughter of 
 Gallim ; hearken O Laishah, O thou poor Anathoth. 
 Madmenah is a fugitive ; the inhabitants of Gebim 
 flee for safety. This very day he shall halt at 
 Nob ; he shaketh his hand at the mount of the 
 daughter of Zion, the hill of Jerusalem. Behold, 
 the Lord, Jehovah of hosts, will lop the boughs 
 with terror ; and the high of stature shall be hewn 
 down, and the lofty shall be brought low." 
 
 Now that is about as dry to the average reader 
 as sawdust because he knows very little about the 
 times and circumstances. It is for us to illumine 
 and throw light upon a passage like that so that the 
 reader may understand it and instead of its being 
 as dry as sawdust, it shall be as juicy as grape- 
 fruit. 
 
 What was the situation ? Sennacherib is march- 
 ing against Judah and Jerusalem with irresistible 
 power, with outstretched wings like an eagle flying 
 over its prey. City after city goes down. Neither 
 Judah nor Jerusalem has power to resist. Judah 
 trembles and Jerusalem is in fear and Hezekiah is 
 in despair. Just at that juncture it is that Isaiah 
 
The Bible as Literature — Plus What ? 23 
 
 gives bis divine message and pictures to Judah the 
 oncoming of this victorious host. Town after 
 town, city after city falls, as given in the lines I 
 read, until the enemy reaches Nob, close to Jeru- 
 salem. There he is pictured as waving his hand 
 contemptuously over Jerusalem, but there also 
 Jehovah is pictured as lopping his bough and hew- 
 ing down the high ones, so that his feet do not con- 
 taminate the City of David. Knowing that Isaiah 
 was a man to whom God had revealed the future, this 
 message would come to the people like a very mes- 
 sage from above, giving Judah deliverance and 
 peace and opportunity for repentance. And, in- 
 deed, so it happened. Sennacherib never got into 
 the City of Jerusalem. God lopped his bough. 
 God laid him low and he crept home to meet 
 death in his home and Judah and Jerusalem were 
 delivered. 
 
 But I want, if I can, to make this a little more 
 vivid. You must try to use your imaginations, 
 to put life into these things again. So lend me 
 your imaginations for a few moments. 
 
 Imagine that Canada were to us the formidable, 
 overshadowing power that the Assyrian was to 
 Jerusalem. Imagine that Canada had started to 
 conquer New York and that we in New York 
 knew that we had no power to resist. On — on — on 
 she comes — irresistibly. Now Canada in marching 
 down towards New York would naturally come 
 across at some central point, say Niagara. Then 
 there would be the following cities that she would 
 
24 God's Book and God's Boy- 
 
 take up on her way down against Manhattan : 
 Buffalo, Kochester, Syracuse, Utica, Schenectady, 
 Albany, Poughkeepsie, Tarrytown, Yonkers. That 
 would be the line she would come down ; the 
 Mohawk Yalley east, the Hudson Yalley south. 
 Imagine that we are in New York, excited and 
 filled with fear because Canada is coming and we 
 have no power to resist. Imagine then that some 
 man in New York, known to us as one to whom 
 God often had revealed His will, should come into 
 one of our squares, say Madison Square or Union 
 Square, and we, knowing that he had a message to 
 deliver from God, should gather there to learn what 
 he had to say regarding the oncoming of Canada. 
 Imagine these to be his words, " She has come to 
 Niagara ; she has passed on to Buffalo ; at Kochester 
 she has laid up her baggage ; she has taken up her 
 lodgings at Kome ; Syracuse is afraid ; Utica has 
 fled ; lift up thy voice, O daughter of Schenectady ; 
 cause it to be heard even to Albany, O poor Hud- 
 son ; Poughkeepsie is removed ; the inhabitants of 
 Tarrytown gather themselves together to flee, but 
 as yet she shall remain at Yonkers ; she shall wave 
 her hand over the city of New York, but there 
 shall Jehovah lop her bough with terror and Canada 
 shall never trod the streets of Manhattan." 
 
 See what that means ? That is what it meant 
 to them. In that way you begin to see how these 
 prophets in their presentation of their messages 
 always laid right hold of present life. They always 
 had their feet on the sidewalk. Thus we begin 
 
The Bible as Literature— Plus What ? 25 
 
 to understand the method of these prophets in the 
 preparation and delivery of their messages. 
 
 But my theme was not the study of the Bible as 
 literature, but the study of the Bible as literature, 
 Plies What ? You may know the Bible as litera- 
 ture from Genesis to Eevelation and yet gain no 
 power from it. You may know the Bible critically 
 and yet it may fail to have any influence over your 
 life, governing and shaping your every action. You 
 may know all about the poetry of the Bible, all 
 about the Apocalypse, a ad still fall short in that 
 which is the most important thing in the sacred 
 volume. 
 
 What then is this plus which I am trying to em- 
 phasize ? It is this, that this Book is the power of 
 God unto salvation to every one that believeth. If 
 I miss that, I miss the plus of it, though I may 
 have all the rest of it. This is where we preachers 
 and teachers of the Word want to bear in mind 
 that while it behooves us to know it all, still we 
 miss the major part of it if we miss the plus. 
 
 Week before last I faced in a church on the 
 Bowery in New York four hundred and thirty- 
 seven Bowery beats, mostly down through drink. 
 They were there to celebrate the twenty-second 
 birthday into the Kingdom of God of one of their 
 number — Dave Kanney by name. Twenty-two 
 years ago Dave Kanney was a Bowery beat. As 
 he told me — "I have broken every law of God 
 and man, excepting one ; I never murdered. Every- 
 thing else I have done." Twenty-two years ago a 
 
26 God's Book and God's Boy 
 
 preacher was preaching on the corner of Bowery 
 and Broome Streets Avhen this tramp sauntered by ; 
 heard, began to heed, by God's grace was revolu- 
 tionized, changed in the twinkling of an eye. For 
 twenty-two years I have watched him, a man re- 
 generated like a flash, and he has stayed regenerated 
 from that day to this ; and he got up on the plat- 
 form and told those four hundred and thirty-seven 
 men off the street what God had done for him. 
 
 Suppose I had said to him, " Tell us, Dave, what 
 you know of the antiphonal form of Hebrew 
 poetry." He would have replied, " What did you 
 say? Antiphonal form of Hebrew poetry? I 
 never heard of that." But he does know the 
 fifty-first Psalm and although he does not know it 
 antiphonally, he knows what it means to a sinner. 
 That is the plus of it that Dave Ranney has got. 
 He has got the major part of it. It has transformed 
 him. It has revolutionized him. It has glorified 
 him. 
 
 One of our missionaries picked up on a cold 
 winter night on Bleeker Street a poor street-walker. 
 IN'ellie Conroy was her name. She was in her 
 stocking feet, though there was snow on the ground. 
 She was dressed in calico, though it was bitter cold. 
 The man who kept her was a coloured man, showing 
 how far she had gone down. Our missionary took 
 her up and by God's grace the plus of it came to 
 Nellie and she was revolutionized and metamor- 
 phosed. The power of salvation came to Nellie. 
 She was taken to a home and the girls with whom 
 
The Bible as Literature — Plus What? 27 
 
 she used to associate called on her for a while to 
 see her. But Death had laid its hand on Nellie 
 and she talked with them about the change that 
 had come over her. One day she said, "Girls, 
 nothing but the blood of the Son of God could 
 cleanse the sins of Nellie Conroy. They were too 
 dark for anything else." And one day she said to 
 them, "Girls, when the roll is called up yonder 
 and the name of Nellie Conroy is called and I say, 
 ' Here,' won't they be surprised ? " That was the 
 plus of it for Nellie Conroy. 
 
 One day I was visiting an old and sick parish- 
 ioner of mine. In the course of conversation I 
 found that he had no clear vision as to the present 
 pardon of his sins. 
 
 Upon my asking him, " Do you think your sins 
 are forgiven ? " he replied, " I do not know, but I 
 hope that they are." Turning to Komans viii. 1, I 
 read, " There is therefore now no condemnation to 
 them that are in Christ Jesus," and called his atten- 
 tion to the fact that this utterance of the apostle 
 justifies us in believing in a present pardon. I then 
 turned to Romans v. 1 and again read, " Being, 
 therefore, justified by faith we have peace with 
 God through our Lord Jesus Christ," and once 
 more I called his attention to the statement that 
 we are justified, and not that we possibly may be 
 at some future time. 
 
 After this explanation the man seemed to gain a 
 new vision. At last he said, " Why did not some 
 one tell me all this before ; I have been hoping for 
 
28 God's Book and God's Boy 
 
 pardon some time in the future and lo ! the gift of 
 pardon is a present gift. This is good tidings for 
 me." See again the plus if it. 
 
 At an inquiry meeting during a revival season a 
 young man was assigned to me for conversation. 
 He seemed a most attractive young fellow. After 
 he had talked a little while he said to me, ** My 
 Sunday-school superintendent gave me this card on 
 condition that I write my name in the vacant space, 
 which I did. I never would have done it if I had 
 known the trouble that it would give me, for I have 
 had no peace since I put my name there." 
 
 On that he passed over the card to me, on which 
 was printed in large type John iii. 16 with the 
 blank space for the word " Whosoever " and the 
 word " Belie veth " changed into " Believing." In 
 the blank space the young man had written his 
 name. On reading that I said to him, " My 
 friend, God was hard after you when He inspired 
 your superintendent to give you this card, and the 
 Holy Spirit is even now urging you to accept 
 absolutely the truth of that card." 
 
 We then knelt down and prayed. All of a sud- 
 den during his prayer there was an abrupt change 
 from petition to praise. He then arose from his 
 knees, his face radiant with the new-found hope, 
 and saying, " I must find my mother and tell her ; 
 she is in the building here somewhere," he hurried 
 away. 
 
 Now ask yourself the question, " What did the 
 old man and the young man know about the Bible 
 
The Bible as Literature — Plus What ? 29 
 
 as literature ? " Simply nothing. But they knew 
 it as the power of God, and was not that the plus 
 of it? 
 
 Once more. When we stand by the grave of 
 one who has died in the Lord and look down on 
 that coffin so soon to be hidden from our sight, it 
 is not as any form of literature whatever that we 
 recall certain words that come to us, "I am the 
 resurrection and the life ; he that believeth in me, 
 though he were dead, yet shall he live." That is 
 God's message to us. It is not prophecy, not poetry, 
 not anything but a divine message God gives to 
 heal bruised hearts. 
 
 When the believer lies on his last couch and knows 
 his feet are slipping over the brink of the river 
 it is not as antiphonal poetry that he turns to the 
 Twenty -third Psalm, but as to divinely inspired 
 words, and with dying utterance he sings, " Yea, 
 though I walk through the valley of the shadow of 
 death, I will fear no evil ; for thou art with me ; thy 
 rod and thy staff they comfort me." 
 
 See, then, the plus of it. Praise be to His name, 
 we may enter into the understanding of this spir- 
 itual richness. All the rest of it is grand and we 
 commend it to your careful study, but over and 
 above everything else, never forget that the Word 
 of God is truly the power of God unto salvation to 
 all who believe. 
 
II 
 
 THE TWO GREAT BIBLE DRAMAS 
 
 THEKE are various ways of studying God's 
 Word. One is the microscopic way ; this 
 consists in taking a single text and ex- 
 amining it elaborately. There is, on the other hand, 
 the telescopic way ; that consists in taking large 
 sweeps of the history of Bible times, swift reviews 
 of Biblical biographies, large bird's-eye views of 
 God's dealing with the children of men. The 
 way I have adopted for this course of lectures, as 
 far as the Book is concerned, is the latter, thus 
 taking wide sweeps of the divinely inspired history. 
 
 We shall understand better God's dealing with 
 mankind if we understand the progress of the 
 history, if we realize how God perfects that which 
 was originally imperfect, and broadens out and 
 develops that which was originally narrow and 
 circumscribed. 
 
 The title of this chapter leads me to put in a 
 caveat, lest any one perchance should think that 
 I regard either the New Testament or the Old 
 Testament as in any sense fictitious, or imaginary. 
 I do not. The reason I put these two books before 
 you to-night as two dramas is merely for the sake 
 of picturesqueness. Now it is an old thought that 
 
 30 
 
The Two Great Bible Dramas 31 
 
 this world is a stage, and that all living creatures 
 are actors in this changeful drama of human 
 history. Taking this idea, therefore, I find that 
 the Old Testament is really one vast drama, as is 
 also the New Testament. 
 
 As dramas are usually divided into five acts, so, 
 simply for the sake of clearness,! shall divide these 
 two dramas into five acts, giving each drama, 
 however, a prelude. My divisions into ^ve acts in 
 each case may not meet your approval. I have no 
 " Thus saith the Lord " for the divisions ; they are 
 the clearest I can make. If, however, you can 
 improve on them, no one will be more charmed 
 than the writer. At all events, they will serve as 
 guiding posts, so that as you pursue the subject 
 further (as I hope you will), you may be either 
 guided thereby, or strike out clearer outlines more 
 fitting to the capacity of those to whom you 
 minister. 
 
 Beginning with the Old Testament drama, we 
 have the grand prelude of the Creation. " In the 
 beginning God created." That is more satisfactory 
 to us than " In the beginning matter," or, " In the 
 beginning force," or, " In the beginning the un- 
 knowable." Those are human statements. The 
 Biblical statement is, "In the beginning God 
 created." This satisfies the human heart. Then 
 follows the marvellously condensed statement of 
 God's creative activity, closing up with the intro- 
 duction of man. All that is the prelude, for as yet 
 there have been on earth no human actors. It is 
 
32 God^s Book and God's Boy 
 
 worth our while to remember that while at various 
 stages in this majestic prelude the record says, 
 " And God saw that it was good," only when man 
 arrives is the record changed, now reading, " And 
 God saw that it was very good." Sun, moon, stars, 
 plants, animals, good — the climax, man, in His own 
 image, very good. 
 
 Old Testament Drama^ Act Z From Adam to 
 Noah. 
 
 Here we have man's first probation and failure. 
 A command was issued, a command was broken. 
 Union at first existing between God and man, then 
 shattered, and a great chasm cleft by sin between 
 a Holy God on one side and sinful man on the 
 other. 
 
 This first act of the Old Testament drama, which 
 is very briefly recorded, ends in disaster. God looks 
 down from Heaven to see if there is any who does 
 good, and finds none who does good, no, not one. 
 They have all gone astray, every man after the im- 
 agining of his own heart ; and the result is that the 
 first act of the Old Testament drama is signalized 
 by the wiping out of all of the sons of men saving 
 only one godly family, preserved by divine grace. 
 
 Act Ily from Noah to Abraham. A Second 
 Probation. 
 
 The first probation was disastrous. God begins 
 again, this time with a godly family, and strives by 
 promises and by gracious long-suffering to woo 
 
The Two Great Bible Dramas 33 
 
 men to Himself personally. In this second act there 
 is a very high civilization developed; men build 
 cities, become musicians and poets, become artists ; 
 mankind becomes strong and puffed up in its own 
 conceit. The result is that men said, *' Come, let us 
 build and make for ourselves a name lest we be 
 scattered " ; and God says, "Go to, let us confound," 
 and breaks up all of those plans of men and scatters 
 them over the face of the earth. 
 
 In these two acts we have God dealing with all 
 mankind without distinction of family, or race. 
 These two acts are very briefly recorded. They 
 occupy at least two thousand years (probably more), 
 but the whole story is compacted in eleven chap- 
 ters as over against all the rest of the Bible 
 which covers only another two thousand years. 
 That is to say, two thousand years of history (at 
 the inside) in eleven chapters, and the balance of 
 history up to A. D. 90 or 100 in all the rest of the 
 Bible put together. That shows, to my mind, that 
 in the divine thought those two acts were merely 
 preliminary to other acts which we shall now con- 
 sider. This brings us to 
 
 Act III, Old Testament Drama. From Abra- 
 ham to Kings. 
 
 Now God changes His plan in dealing w4th the 
 sons of men. Now He calls out from all that wrack 
 and ruin of idolatrous environment one family. 
 With that one family He establishes a special cov- 
 enant ; to that one family He gives a special prom- 
 
34 God's Book and God's Boy 
 
 ise. " In thee shall all the families of the earth be 
 blessed." God accepts one family with whom and 
 with whose descendants He establishes peculiar re- 
 lations and gives them a peculiar promise. The rest 
 of mankind is not abandoned. Any man among the 
 Gentiles may find God if he seeks after Him, as did 
 Melchisedek, as did in some lesser sense Balaam. 
 But my point is that in Act III of the Old Testa- 
 ment drama, there is a change of plan, which change 
 of plan has lasted down to the present day. From 
 then on well-nigh all revelation, all prophetic utter- 
 ance, is confined to the chosen people. 
 
 This Act III occupies a large space in the divinely 
 inspired record, for here we find the kernel and 
 heart of much that is developed later on in the ful- 
 fillment of the divine purpose. Here in this period, 
 for example, we find under Moses a legislation 
 which the late Attorney-General Brewster, of Penn- 
 sylvania, declared to me is the basis of all of our 
 modern civilization and all of our modern legisla- 
 tion. Here in this act you have a typology, which, 
 in connection with the law, was the schoolmaster 
 to bring Israel down the centuries, until all types 
 were fulfilled in Jesus the great Antitype. Here 
 you have high priest, sacrifice, altar. And it is in- 
 teresting to see what evolution there is in the his- 
 tory as developed from these germs. Abraham's 
 family encampment had Abraham for High Priest, 
 a family high priest; it had an altar, a family 
 altar; it had a sacrifice, a family sacrifice. See 
 later on how that develops. When Israel marches 
 
The Two Great Bible Dramas 35 
 
 out of Egypt we have now not a family camp, but 
 a national camp ; we have not a family altar, but a 
 national altar; we now have not a family high 
 priest, but a national high priest, Aaron and his 
 descendants ; we have not a family sacrifice, but a 
 national sacrifice by Israel on the day of atonement 
 — surely an evolution, surely a development. 
 
 Later on, when Israel comes into the Promised 
 Land, while the national high priest remains the 
 same, while the national sacrifice remains the same, 
 we have in place of the national encampment a 
 national city, Jerusalem, and we have in the place 
 of the simple national tabernacle the magnificent 
 national temple,— again a further development. 
 Now, as we look down to the last act of the New 
 Testament, we find a further marvellous develop- 
 ment. Jerusalem on earth develops into the New 
 Jerusalem, coming down from God out of Heaven. 
 The national high priest develops into Jesus the in- 
 ternational high priest, a high priest for Gentile 
 and Jew ; the national sacrifice develops into an in- 
 ternational sacrifice, the Lamb of God slain from 
 the foundation of the world ; the national temple 
 passes away, for in that world there is no temple, 
 the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb being the 
 temple thereof. So from Abraham and the family 
 we pass to the national and the internatioual, from 
 the earthly into the heavenly, from the temporal 
 into the eternal. 
 
 In this third act of the Old Testament, you see a 
 people sent down from the Land of Promise into 
 
36 God*s Book and God's Boy 
 
 bondage in Egypt, there welded in the fires of 
 affliction into a national solidarity that has not been 
 broken, for lo these four thousand years ; for there 
 is no simon-pure blood to-day that can be compared 
 to the blood of Israel. Welded, I say, into a national 
 solidarity that has not been, that never will be, 
 broken. 
 
 You see in this third act a nation bodily trans- 
 planted from the land of bondage into the land of 
 liberty ; the promise to Abraham fulfilled, that to 
 his seed shall that land be given. 
 
 In this third act you see monotheism held to 
 with a tenacity not perfect, but wonderful, amidst 
 the surrounding polytheism ; for whether in the 
 land before Abraham's descendants went to Egypt, 
 or while they were in Egypt, or when they re- 
 turned to the land, always their environment was 
 idolatrous. The only light shining, setting forth 
 the true God, shone in Israel ; and the call, " Hear^ 
 O Israel, the Lord our God is one God," rang 
 through those centuries, not perfectly heeded, but 
 always heard. Here also the two commands, 
 " Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy 
 heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy 
 might," and " Thou shalt love thy neighbour as 
 thyself," rang down from age to age. 
 
 So you see that the third act in the Old Testa- 
 ment drama is one of great importance. This act 
 was one that was played in the midst of wonderful 
 civilizations. When I was a younger man, lectur- 
 ing on Abraham, I was asked the question, " Could 
 

The Two Great Bible Dramas 37 
 
 Abraham read and write ? " and my answer then 
 was that I could not say. That would not be my 
 answer to-day. My answer to-day would be, " Cer- 
 tainly ; " for Abraham came out of a very high 
 civilization. I have in my possession a tablet 
 from Abraham's land, in Abraham's language, 
 but older than Abraham. This tablet came from 
 the Temple of Bel, fifty miles south of Babylon. 
 It contains in Babylonian cuneiform charac- 
 ters an accounting of two treasurers by the name 
 of Nidup and Kipalne for receipts and expenditures 
 for the Temple of Bel for one year — of course not 
 in money, because there was no money then, but in 
 kind ; and on the side it says, " Balance on hand " 
 so much, signed Nidup and Kipalne, in the reign 
 of Gimil-Sin. Gimil-Sin reigned 2200 b. c, so this 
 tablet is over four thousand years old. If treas- 
 urers gave accountings two hundred years before 
 Abraham lived in Ur of Chaldees, it is impossible 
 that so wealthy a man as Abraham should not be 
 able to read and write. This sets forth a civiliza- 
 tion in which a form of accounting was employed 
 that can be read four thousand years after it was 
 written as readily as the day when it was rendered. 
 A tablet like this shows that much of modern hos- 
 tile Biblical criticism is based on theories and not 
 on facts. 
 
 This third act of the Old Testament drama I 
 make terminate with Kings, because between Abra- 
 ham and Kings God's method of governing His 
 people was theocratic ; He governed them by 
 
38 God's Book and God's Boy 
 
 patriarch, by prophet and by judge. Then Israel 
 swerved aside, saying, " Make ns a king to judge 
 us, like all the nations " ; and God said to Samuel, 
 " They have not rejected thee, but they have re- 
 jected me, that I should not be king over them." 
 God recognized a change in His covenant people, 
 they having set Him aside, and having introduced 
 kings after the manner of the heathen nations. If 
 you can find a better period at which to terminate 
 Act III, suit yourselves, only be able to give some 
 reason for it. 
 
 Old Testament Drama^ Act lY. Kings to Cap- 
 tivity. 
 
 In this act after three kings had ruled over the 
 united tribes, the nation splits in two, and we have 
 ten tribes in the north and two tribes in the south. 
 Taking up the history of the ten tribes, Jeroboam 
 for political reasons swerved aside from God's wor- 
 ship and established calf w^orship. In the northern 
 kingdom from start to finish there was ofiicial 
 calf worship, w^hich degenerated under Ahab to 
 the worship of Baal. Jehu worked out some re- 
 form ; but he did not bring the people back to the 
 worship of Jehovah, but only back to calf worship. 
 So in the northern kingdom there was never a 
 single sovereign who strove to lead the people back 
 to Jehovah worship in accordance with the com- 
 mand of Moses. 
 
 It is the custom of some people to say that the 
 Hebrew was naturally monotheistic. I deny it. 
 
The Two Great Bible Dramas 39 
 
 History shows that they were naturally polythe- 
 istic, frequently swerving aside from monotheism. 
 If God had not called them back by sending them 
 prophets, Israel would have plunged over the 
 precipice to polytheism. From start to finish 
 God's effort with Israel was to make them mon- 
 otheistic. 
 
 The southern kingdom held more literally to the 
 ordinances of God as given to Moses, partly because 
 they had the temple in Jerusalem, and also because 
 they had quite a number of godly kings, such as 
 Hezekiah, Josiah and Joash. Yet even there the 
 tendency to polytheism appeared and reappeared, 
 beginning with Solomon and reaching down to 
 Manasseh who took the ark from the most holy 
 place and substituted an idol in its place. 
 
 In due time came the march of the Ten Tribes 
 into captivity, and then one hundred and eighty 
 years afterwards the two tribes followed. Oh, 
 often I have wished that they had had moving 
 picture cameras in those days to set these things 
 before us ! What a contrast between the march 
 out of Egypt and through the Ked Sea and the 
 song of Miriam, when the horse and its rider were 
 lost in the sea — what a contrast I say between that 
 march and the march of Israel out of the land. 
 What a contrast between the march across the 
 Eiver Jordan and up to the walls of Jericho, and 
 the march again across the Jordan with the clank 
 of chains, with lamentation and crying ; the inward 
 triumphal march the result of faith and godliness. 
 
40 God's Book and God's Boy 
 
 the outward despairing march into captivity the 
 result of sin. 
 
 Old Testament Drama^ Act Y. The Captivity 
 and the Return. 
 
 A short act this, only about seventy years, but 
 most significant. For when God's people came 
 back to their land from captivity, they came back 
 changed. Up to that point they were always back- 
 sliding to polytheism, but in captivity, under 
 polytheistic rule, God cured His people of polythe- 
 ism once and for all. He said He would, and He 
 did. When they came back, monotheistic they 
 came, and from that day to this monotheistic has 
 Israel remained in spite of every temptation and 
 unfortunate environment in every land and every 
 clime. I know of no section of Israel from the 
 day of their return from captivity to this day that 
 has abandoned its creed, *' Hear, O Israel, the 
 Lord our God is one God." Marvellous were the 
 dealings, therefore, of our Heavenly Father with 
 His people, so to weld them together in the land 
 of their first captivity into national unity and in 
 the land of their second captivity into loyalty to 
 one God, the God of Abraham, of Isaac and of 
 Jacob. 
 
 Then the curtain falls, and for four hundred 
 years there is silence. For four centuries no 
 prophet speaks, no miracle is wrought, no super- 
 natural sign is given of God's watchfulness over 
 His chosen. What happened during those four 
 
im 
 
 I. Silver Coin of Artaxerxes III of Persia 
 
 Obverse: King in his chariot. Reverse: Persian Galley. (Persian 
 Period) 
 
 2. Silver Coin of Alexander the Great 
 Obverse: Head of Hercules. Reverse: Jupiter Enthroned. 
 Period) 
 
 (Greek 
 
The Two Great Bible Dramas 41 
 
 hundred years ? If Nehemiah had come back in 
 A. D. 1 to Jerusalem, he would not have recognized 
 it as the same Jerusalem whose walls he restored ; 
 he would have been staggered. "When he left, 
 Aramaic was spoken everywhere ; now it is Greek. 
 When he left, Jerusalem hearkened to Persia as 
 the centre of authority and power in the far East ; 
 now Jerusalem hearkens to Kome in the West. 
 When Nehemiah left there were no synagogues ; 
 now the land is full of synagogues. 
 
 How quickly you say " four hundred years," but 
 remember what four hundred years may cover. 
 Four hundred years ago, and a little more, the 
 Mohammedans had taken Constantinople and Eu- 
 rope trembled ; less than four hundred years ago 
 the Turks were at Vienna, and Europe turned pale ; 
 a little more than four hundred years ago America 
 was not discovered. See what four hundred years 
 may mean. In the beginning of this four hun- 
 dred years of interregnum, the governmental 
 power in Palestine was Persia ; Persian rule was 
 mild ; if the taxes were paid Persia was satisfied 
 and the Jew could govern himself, under his own 
 high priest. This Persian rule came to a sudden 
 termination in 330 b. c. when Alexander the Great 
 marched with thirty thousand Greek soldiers, and 
 at the battle of Arbela, at one fell blow over- 
 threw the Persian Empire. Then the Greek period 
 began. 
 
 With Alexander came Grecian civilization, lit- 
 erature, philosophy and culture. 
 
42 God's Book and God's Boy 
 
 The Greek period, however, was not a bad one 
 for the Jew, until Antiochus Epiphanes came to the 
 throne. Up to that time they had been allowed to 
 practice their own religion, but when Antiochus 
 came to the throne he made up his mind that 
 Jewish monotheism should come to a close, and he 
 thrust into the Holy of Holies a statue of Jupiter, 
 and sacrificed swine in the temple. 
 
 That brings us to the Maccabean revolt and 
 rule. That period runs until a. d. 40, when again 
 the governmental power changed, and from 
 that day on for centuries Palestine was gov- 
 erned from Eome. Thus you have the four periods 
 which fill the four centuries between Malachi and 
 Matthew. 
 
 The New Testament drama also has a prelude. 
 On Bethlehem's Plain suddenly the angelic mes- 
 senger appears, and the angelic chorus comes down. 
 Never before or since has this earth been blessed 
 by an angelic chorus. The words of that chorus we 
 have, but the music is not given. Oh, that we had 
 the music, that we might try to sing it. Why was 
 the music not given ? I do not know, but possibly 
 because angelic voices are capable of such wondrous 
 melody as is not vouchsafed to human voices, and 
 though we have the words, if we had the music 
 possibly we could do nothing with it. 
 
 This angelic chorus with its glad tidings breaks 
 out over Bethlehem's Plain, and then for thirty 
 years again silence. Then comes 
 
3- Silver Coin of Antiochus Epiphanes 
 
 Obverse: Portrait of King. Reverse: Jupiter Enthroned 
 
The Two Great Bible Dramas 43 
 
 Wew Testament Drama, Act I, From John to 
 Jesus. 
 
 This act stretches from John to Jesus, that is, 
 from the beginning of John's ministry to the bap- 
 tism of Jesus by John in the Jordan. This is the 
 shortest of all the acts, lasting only for six months. 
 During this act John is the main actor. A fiery 
 preacher is this John, coming suddenly out of the 
 wilderness, but seeking no congregation in the 
 cities. He had no problem of morning service 
 or evening service. Wherever he preached men 
 flocked to hear him. There was no forerunner for 
 him in the way of a modern press agent, but the 
 fiery ardour of this preacher rallied throngs around 
 him. 
 
 John's message in this brief act was twofold; 
 first, Eepent ; second, Prepare — repent of your past, 
 prepare for your future. 
 
 In this connection it is worth our while to notice 
 that this John, coming out of the wilderness, when 
 he sees Jesus gives utterance to two apparently 
 contradictory statements with regard to Him. One 
 of those statements is " Behold the Son of God." 
 That meant power, that meant triumph, that meant 
 victory. The other statement is, " Behold the Lamb 
 of God which taketh away the sin of the world." 
 Lamb of God meant sacrifice, humiliation, rejec- 
 tion, death. How could the same person be the 
 Son of God and the Lamb of God ? How could 
 these two be united in one person ? Isaiah taught 
 the same thing, however, when he spoke of Him 
 
44 God^s Book and God's Boy 
 
 who was to be born, " And his name shall be 
 called Wonderful, Counsellor, Mighty God, Father 
 of Eternity, Prince of Peace " ; and yet he also 
 spoke of one who was coming who was to be 
 ^' despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows, 
 and acquainted with grief . . . and he made 
 his grave with the wicked, and with the rich in 
 his death." Wonderful, Counsellor, Father of 
 Eternity ; humiliated, rejected, spit upon, killed — 
 how is that possible? Still, these two apparent 
 contradictions meet in Him who came from Naza- 
 reth, who was the Son of God and yet the Lamb 
 of God slain from the foundation of the world. 
 
 How John reached this truth save by direct, di- 
 vine revelation, I know not. The great trouble 
 with the apostles afterwards until Pentecost was 
 that while they accepted the statement concerning 
 the Son of God, the Wonderful, Counsellor, they 
 rejected that concerning the Man of Sorrow^s, the 
 one who made His grave with the wicked and the 
 rich in His death. 
 
 New Testament Drama ^ Act II. From Jordan 
 to the Mount of Olives., or from the Bajptism to the 
 Ascension. 
 
 This is the most marvellous of all these acts in 
 the Bible dramas. It covers only three years and 
 a half, being the second shortest of these acts, yet 
 in this act we see the fulfillment of much Old Tes- 
 tament prophecy. Genesis iii. 15 says that the 
 seed of the woman shall bruise the head of the 
 
4- Silver Coin of Simon Maccabaens 
 (Maccabaean Period) 
 
 5. Silver Denarius of Tiberius Caesar 
 
 (Roman Period.) This is the "Penny" spoken of by Christ 
 
The Two Great Bible Dramas 45 
 
 serpent. To Abraham the promise is given, "In 
 thee shall all the families of the earth be blessed." 
 Jacob on his death-bed, when blessing Judah, says, 
 " The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor the 
 ruler's staff from between his feet, until Shiloh 
 come ; and unto him shall the obedience of the 
 people be." Malachi says, "The Lord will sud- 
 denly come to his temple." And here is the ful- 
 fillment of all of these prophetic utterances of the 
 Old Testament. 
 
 How clearly did these prophets understand what 
 they were uttering ? I know not. But this I know, 
 that they saw much more clearly than many in 
 our age think they saw. How much did Abraham 
 understand from the prophecy, " In thee shall all 
 the families of the earth be blessed " ? I do not 
 know, but Christ said, " Your Father Abraham re- 
 joiced to see my day, and he saw it and was glad." 
 Evidently a much greater understanding was vouch- 
 safed to Abraham than the record in Genesis would 
 lead us to suspect. 
 
 In this second act of the New Testament we 
 have the fulfillment of typology. The typology 
 of the temple and the service in the temple was 
 intended to reveal, vaguely, perhaps, but adequately 
 for that time, the great redemption God was to 
 work out for His people . Now here is One who 
 comes, not with the blood of bulls or goats, but with 
 His own blood, to make atonement for the sins of 
 men. Here we have, in this second act of the 
 New Testament drama. Him who is the Great 
 
46 God's Book and God's Boy 
 
 High Priest — not the family high priest, nor the 
 national high priest, but the international High 
 Priest, an High Priest forever. From Aaron down 
 every high priest died and was buried and his suc- 
 cessor took his place. But from now on all high 
 priests are abolished, because there is one High Priest 
 who liveth forever to make intercession for His 
 people. And with this Great High Priest, let me 
 say, all priesthood is forever done away. Men may 
 call themselves priests, but there is no priesthood any 
 longer in the divine economy. There is one High 
 Priest, and all believers are priests unto God. There 
 is a universal priesthood, but for a human high 
 priest there is no longer any need among mankind, 
 for we have One who liveth forever at the right 
 hand of God. 
 
 Here, then, in the second act, we have the fulfill- 
 ment of all typology, all meeting in One Person 
 who came from Nazareth. Now God speaks unto 
 men by His Son ; there is no longer any need of 
 even a Moses, for the Son has come. The key to 
 the book of Hebrews is this one word, "better." 
 Moses good, Christ better; Aaron good, Christ 
 better ; the blood of bulls and goats good, Christ's 
 blood better; the law good, Christ's law better; 
 the old law, acting as a schoolmaster to bring men 
 to Christ good, the fulfillment in Christ, better ; the 
 tabernacle, the only building on earth that had a 
 divine architect, good, but that for which the 
 tabernacle stood, the real Holies of Holies in 
 Heaven, better, for there Christ liveth to make 
 
The Two Great Bible Dramas 47 
 
 atonement by His precious blood, which is better 
 than the blood of bulls and goats. So, in this 
 marvellous second act, we have a vast advance on 
 all that has gone before. 
 
 Here, briefly, let me say that you also have an 
 inbreaking of divine power as never before. It is 
 worth your while to realize that in the book of 
 Genesis there is not one single miracle wrought by 
 the hand of man. Get that right, because some of 
 you may write to me and say, " Do you mean to 
 say that there is no miracle in Genesis ? " No, I 
 did not say that ; I said that there are no miracles 
 wrought by the hand of man in Genesis. Moses 
 is the first man who wrought any miracle, and he 
 wrought many, and in his day were many wrought 
 directly by divine power. How many ? We will 
 consider that in the chapter upon the study 
 of the Bible in spots. But however many they 
 were, they were surpassed beyond computation in 
 those three and one-half years. There were more 
 miracles wrought in the three and a half years 
 of the second act of the New Testament drama 
 than in all the four thousand preceding years put 
 together. 
 
 New Testament Drama ^ Act III. Pentecost to the 
 Turning to the Gentiles. 
 
 Pentecost meant power. No Pentecost, no power. 
 In this third act of the New Testament drama there 
 is the establishment of the Jewish and afterwards 
 of the Christian Church. Here you see largely the 
 
48 God's Book and God's Boy 
 
 fulfillment of the promise of the power of the keys. 
 There is no doubt that Jesus gave to Peter a power 
 He did not give to any other apostle, and what is 
 the use of denying it ? The Koman Catholics are 
 right in regard to that statement. He did give 
 Peter the power of the keys, and that is illustrated 
 when Peter opened on the day of Pentecost the 
 door of the church to 3,000 Jewish people. It 
 was Peter again in Caesar ea who swung the door 
 open to the Gentile world, allowing the Gentile 
 world to march into the Kingdom of God without 
 paying any attention to rite and ritual and Mosaic 
 ordinance. Those were two stupendous acts on the 
 part of this man, and explain very largely the power 
 of the keys. Where the Roman Catholic Church 
 makes its gigantic mistake is in maintaining that 
 Peter had the right to pass the keys to his suc- 
 cessor, and he to his, and he to his, down to this 
 last man who was elected pope lately. I find no 
 warrant for that in the Bible. Peter opened the 
 door to the Jewish world, he opened the door to 
 the Gentile world, and dying he dropped the keys. 
 In this act we see the beginning of the triumph 
 of the Gospel through the power of the indwelling 
 Spirit in believers. Here is recorded the descent of 
 the Third Person in the Trinity whose presence is 
 universal. That was a greater blessing to the 
 Church than if Jesus had tarried here in the flesh. 
 You remember He said, " It is expedient for me 
 that I go away." They thought, " It is disastrous 
 if you go away." But He said, " It is expedient, 
 
The Two Great Bible Dramas 49 
 
 for when I go the Holy Spirit will come, and he 
 will guide you in all truth." So here you see a 
 new dispensation ; the Son leaves but the Holy 
 Spirit takes His place. 
 
 New Testament Drama, Act lY. The Times of 
 the Gentiles. 
 
 When the Jews refused the truth of this Mes- 
 siah, the day came when the apostles said, " See- 
 ing you judge yourselves unworthy of eternal life, 
 we turn to the Gentiles." In that act we now are. 
 Oh, what a journey from the Old Testament drama 
 Act I to New Testament drama Act lY. Now 
 suddenly we are actors on the stage, because these 
 are the times of the Gentiles. These times will 
 last until the veil drops from the eyes of Israel and 
 they accept Jesus as their Messiah. Christ rec- 
 ognized these times when He said, " Jerusalem 
 shall be trodden down of the Gentiles until the 
 times of the Gentiles be fulfilled." Go to Jeru- 
 salem and see who treads that city underfoot. The 
 Jew has been trodden upon by the Roman, by the 
 Saracen, and by the Turk, and in his own city the 
 most despised man is the descendant of Abraham. 
 "Oh, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, that killeth the 
 prophets, and stoneth them which are sent unto 
 her, how often would I have gathered thy children 
 together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens 
 under her wings, and ye would not ! Behold, your 
 house is left unto you desolate." Desolate it has 
 been, and desolate it will be until the times of the 
 
50 God's Book and God's Boy 
 
 Gentiles be fulfilled. These times, as I have said 
 in my judgment, will last until the veil is lifted 
 from the eyes of Israel ; for, as St. Paul says in 
 Romans, " A hardening in part hath befallen Israel, 
 until the fullness of the Gentiles be come in." 
 
 In that solemn act we participate, and thus are 
 co-workers with God. 
 
 New Testament Drama^ Act V. The Lifting of 
 the Veil. 
 
 When, we do not know ; how, we do not know. 
 Will it come ? Surely. God has not rejected His 
 people. He is holding them in suspense, so to 
 speak, by reason of their willful blindness. They 
 cried, " We have no king but Caesar ; " and no kings 
 but Cassars and Czars and Sultans have they had 
 until to-day. That was their national blindness. 
 But the day is coming when they will see, and 
 Israel will understand that Mary's Son is truly the 
 Son of David, and that in Him meet all the 
 prophecies. Then Israel will look upon Him as its 
 own Messiah, and crown Him Lord of all. 
 
 That will be a mighty act. Israel in that act 
 shall turn again towards Palestine, and that land 
 and that Bible, married, so to speak, by God, but 
 divorced by reason of Israel's sin, shall come to- 
 gether again, and God's ancient people shall occupy 
 their ancient land. 
 
 I do not believe that that will come at all 
 through any Zionistic movement, because that 
 movement is not saturated with the Messianic spirit. 
 
The Two Great Bible Dramas 51 
 
 I believe that when the veil is lifted and Israel 
 begins to turn towards the Land of Promise, it will 
 be through some mysterious impulse, as incompre- 
 hensible as the push of the birds in spring from the 
 tropics north, and the push of the birds again in the 
 fall from the north down to the tropics. And so 
 when Israel's eyes are opened, irresistibly from 
 Eussia and Germany and France and England and 
 the United States, Israel will be pushed to the land 
 of their fathers. Men will try to explain this push, 
 but there is only one explanation, namely, that 
 Israel has seen, that her eyes have been opened, 
 that now she understands and at last accepts Jesus 
 as her King. 
 
 This fifth act of the IS'ew Testament drama is 
 going to give boundless blessings to Israel. But not 
 to Israel only ; for, as St. Paul says, if the cast- 
 ing away of Israel brought blessings to the Gentile 
 world, what will the acceptance by Israel of David's 
 Son as the Messiah bring ? The blessings given to 
 Israel will be so great that they will pour over to 
 the Gentile world, and will be to the Gentile world 
 itself as life from the dead. Then will the windows 
 of Heaven be opened, and there will pour out on the 
 world blessings so great that there will not be room 
 to receive them. 
 
 See, friends, I have tried to set before you 
 briefly a series of acts in these great dramas of 
 God's dealings with the children of men, and have 
 shown that for the believer always the best is yet 
 to come. The golden day of humanity has not 
 
52 God*s Book and God's Boy 
 
 arrived, it is not in the past, it is in the future ; 
 and that golden day will be hastened just in pro- 
 portion as the believing Church of God lives up to 
 the measure of its privilege in communion with 
 and under the guidance of the Divine Spirit. Then 
 comes that glorious end, when He shall return 
 whose right it is to rule, and when this sin-cursed 
 world that saw Him tread its lanes in discredit, 
 in dejection, in poverty and in pain and woe, shall 
 see Him come again a second time without sin unto 
 salvation and ten thousand angels with Him. That 
 ushers in the end when righteousness reigns and 
 God is honoured and the world unites in singing 
 
 *' All hail the power of Jesus' Name, 
 Let angels prostrate fall, 
 Bring forth the royal diadem, 
 And crown Him Lord of all." 
 
Ill 
 
 THE STUDY OF THE BIBLE IN SPOTS 
 
 OFTENTIMES at conventions you will hear 
 ministers urging teachers to know the 
 whole Bible. That is a difficult proposi- 
 tion. Very few ministers know the whole Bible. 
 Most ministers preach chiefly from certain favourite 
 books in the Bible and rarely go outside of their 
 line. The only two ministers I have personally 
 known who spread themselves well-nigh over the 
 whole Bible in their sermons were Howard Crosby, 
 of New York City, and Charles Haddon Spurgeon, 
 of London. The fact is that there is crass igno- 
 rance of the Bible even among ministers. Indeed, 
 in New York at one time I was occupying the 
 pulpit of a large church to speak on City Missions. 
 The minister asked me what I would like to have 
 read, and I replied, the fourth chapter of Jonah. 
 When he got up to read, he fussed around, and 
 then read a Psalm. I thought that was prelimi- 
 nary, and that Jonah would come next, but Jonah 
 did not arrive. When he sat down he whispered 
 to me : " To tell the truth, I couldn't find it." 
 " Tell it not in Gath ; publish it not in the streets 
 of Askelon ; lest the daughters of the Philistines 
 rejoice," that a minister in New York should not 
 know where Jonah is in the Bible. 
 
 53 
 
54 God^s Book and God's Boy 
 
 Now it is true that the average teacher cannot 
 be familiar with all portions of the Bible, nor is it 
 necessary, because, although the Bible is inspired, 
 not all books in the Bible are equally important. 
 If I must lose Isaiah or Zechariah, there is no 
 question which I shall retain. If I must lose the 
 Acts of the Apostles or the third Epistle of John, 
 there is no question which I shall lose. Not all 
 portions of the Bible, therefore, are equally im- 
 portant. 
 
 We must, then, focus our attention and the atten- 
 tion of those to whom we minister in church and 
 Sunday-school upon those spots in the Book that 
 are of superlative importance. Those having been 
 in some sense mastered, we can pass on to other 
 enlightening and charming parts of the Word of God. 
 But until those spots of supreme importance have 
 been thoroughly assimilated, it is foolish to pass on 
 to the less important portions of this divine Word. 
 
 The books of the Bible cover Bible times. Ac- 
 cording to Ussher's Chronology (which is not 
 accurate, we all admit), that means forty-one 
 centuries. I want, for the sake of absolute sim- 
 plicity, to divide those forty-one centuries chrono- 
 logically, so as to picture the thing to your minds. 
 
 AJENAM S|ZC 
 
 III I I I I I I I 
 
 Names: — Adam, Jared, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, 
 Moses, Solomon, Elijah, Elisha, Zerub- 
 babel, Christ. 
 
The Study of the Bible in Spots ^S 
 
 Here at the beginning of the above diagram we 
 have Adam ; at the close we have Christ. Bisect 
 those four thousand years (and make all the 
 divisions biographical, since the Bible is largely 
 biographical), and you have here, 2,000 years 
 after Adam and 2,000 years before Christ, the 
 Father of the Faithful, Abraham. Bisect each of 
 those periods, and you have the name of a man 
 who was not, for God took him, Enoch, and the 
 name of Solomon. Adam to Enoch, 1,000 years ; 
 Enoch to Abraham, 1,000 ; Abraham to Solomon, 
 1,000. Now you are beginning to get the chrono- 
 logical points of the compass a little. Bisect once 
 more into periods of 600 years each, and you have 
 next to Adam a name that is not very w^ell known, 
 Jared, which is just given as a landmark. Next 
 after Enoch is the name of the first great navigator, 
 Noah. Next to Abraham is the name of the great 
 lawgiver, Moses ; then the name of the builder of 
 the first temple, Solomon ; then Elijah and Elisha ; 
 then that of the builder of the second temple, Zerub- 
 babel. Adam to Jared, 500 ; Jared to Enoch, 500 ; 
 Enoch to Noah, 500 ; Noah to Abraham, 500 ; 
 Abraham to Moses, 500 ; Moses to Solomon, 500 ; 
 Solomon to Zerubbabel, 500, Zerubbabel to Christ, 
 500. 
 
 The advantage of such a diagram as this to you 
 is that it clarifies Bible chronology and enables you 
 to locate the periods of Scripture you are studying. 
 For example : What are you reading ? Well, you 
 are reading Samuel. Yery well, then it must be 
 
56 God's Book and God's Boy 
 
 between Moses and Solomon. What is the study? 
 Nehemiah. Then you are evidently somewhere 
 after Zerubbabel and before Christ. 
 
 Now, when we come to the study of Scripture 
 covering these Bible times, there are some things 
 we notice at once. One is that this history is writ- 
 ten not like any other history that has ever been 
 put on paper. We notice that there are certain 
 points in the history that are emphasized, where the 
 narrative amplifies, and there are certain other parts 
 where the narrative contracts, and this in a very 
 surprising way. Eleven chapters in Genesis cover, 
 according to Ussher's Chronology, 2,000 years, or 
 one-half the period covered by all Bible times. 
 This is rather surprising. Then you have thirty- 
 nine chapters in Genesis covering 437 years. Why ? 
 There must be some reason. Take Exodus; the 
 first chapter covers a minimum of 215 years ; chap- 
 ter two covers eighty years of Moses' life : forty 
 years in court, forty years in the Wilderness. Then 
 the rest of the Pentateuch, or 136 chapters, cover 
 only forty years. Why ? There is some reason for 
 that. This is not a history written in a haphazard 
 way ; these writers were definitely guided ; besides 
 which, they had common sense. There must be, 
 therefore, some underlying cause for the leaping 
 over of 2,000 years so swiftly and for the dwelling 
 on forty years at such great length. 
 
 Take the New Testament : four chapters are given 
 to thirty years of Christ's life, two in Matthew and 
 two in Luke. Then eighty-five chapters in the Gos- 
 
The Study of the Bible in Spots 57 
 
 pels are given to three and a half years, and of those 
 eighty-five chapters twenty-seven chapters are given 
 to eight days. That is staggering. What did these 
 four Evangelists mean ? There must be some reason 
 for this singular division of the historical parts of the 
 Word. 
 
 Again, take into consideration one more fact, 
 which is very patent in the whole of the Word. 
 That fact is this : the miraculous in the Old and in 
 the New Testament is very unevenly divided, even 
 as is the narrative unevenly amplified. There are 
 those who think that Bible times are as full of mira- 
 cles as a pincushion is full of pins. That is not so. 
 There are times in the Bible when miracles are mul- 
 tiplied ; there are other times in the Bible when 
 there are no miracles. You will look in vain in 
 Ezra's and Nehemiah's times for miracles. In 
 Genesis you will look in vain for one miracle 
 wrought hy the hand of man. You will find in all 
 of Genesis not as much as one miracle a century. 
 This is rather surprising. There are other times, 
 however, when miracles are poured out in a wondrous 
 profusion. 
 
 Now, if my study has led me aright, I think it 
 will prove true that wherever in the Bible the nar- 
 rative amplifies, and at the same time miracles mul- 
 tiply, there you have an indication that the Holy 
 Spirit is emjphasizing that time and the teaching 
 contained in that jportion of the Word. Let us look 
 at it and see. 
 
 We have seen the condensation in the book of 
 
58 God's Book and God's Boy 
 
 Genesis where eleven chapters cover 2,000 years. 
 In that period there is far from one miracle a cen- 
 tury. When, however, we come to the Patriarchal 
 Period where, as we see, the whole balance of 
 Genesis, thirty -nine chapters, covers the lives of four 
 men, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph, all of a 
 sudden miracles begin to multiply. Heaven and 
 earth begin to have frequent communication. There 
 are more miracles in the Patriarchal Period than in 
 all the previous record put together, and a greater 
 amplification of the narrative. That would seem to 
 indicate that the Patriarchal Period is one that we 
 ought to know, one of the spots where we are to 
 sink our wells deep to get living water. That, I 
 believe, is so, because God now was founding the 
 covenant people. In the Patriarchal Period God 
 was beginning the consolidation of that nation 
 through whom all the nations of the earth were to 
 be blessed. 
 
 Where does the narrative amplify again ? In the 
 Mosaic Period. Where do the miracles multiply 
 again ? In the same period. (During the whole 
 captivit}^ in Egypt there is no record of any miracle 
 until Moses comes.) Thus in the Mosaic Period 
 suddenly the miracles multiply, while the narrative 
 amplifies very greatly. 
 
 How many miracles were there in the forty years 
 of the Mosaic Period ? I do not know. But during 
 all of the time they were wandering in the desert, 
 there were six miracles a week, for every day the 
 manna fell afresh except on the Sabbath. Multiply 
 
The Study of the Bible in Spots 59 
 
 forty by three hundred and fifteen and you will be- 
 gin to see how the miracles multiply. 
 
 Here, then, our two signs coincide — broader nar- 
 rative, more miracles. Was that an important 
 period ? Surely, because during that period God 
 was transplanting a nation, was issuing a legisla- 
 tion, was giving a typology. All of that was 
 packed into the Mosaic Period, and therefore we, as 
 teachers, ought to be well acquainted with the 
 Mosaic Period and ought to make our classes thor- 
 oughly versed in the annals of Mosaic times, which, 
 after all, were only forty years. 
 
 The narrative amplifies again, and at the same 
 time the miracles multiply, when we come down to 
 the period of the two great prophets of the north- 
 ern kingdom, namely: Elijah and Elisha. "What 
 was there very important in this period? This, 
 that then God was trying His utmost to win back 
 the ten tribes to loyalty to Jehovah, and was send- 
 ing them two of the greatest prophets that He might 
 win them back to allegiance to the God of their 
 fathers. This effort was a failure, because man 
 would not ; but Jehovah did His best and man's 
 free will wrecked Jehovah's plan. 
 
 After that there is very little amplification of 
 narrative and multiplication of miracles simultane- 
 ously until you come down to the Messianic Period. 
 Then, after four centuries of silence, all of a sudden 
 the narrative amplifies as never before. Four books 
 are given now practically to three and one-half years 
 of history. In the Mosaic Period four books were 
 
6o God^s Book and God^s Boy 
 
 given to forty years of history ; but here we have 
 only three and one-half years covered by four books. 
 Here, also, we find the other sign, marking the im- 
 portance of this period, namely : the unprecedented 
 multiplication of the miraculous. Now, as never 
 before, Heaven descends to earth and divine power 
 breaks in, not contravening any laws of nature, but 
 using all God's laws in nature, which are multitudi- 
 nous, to subserve a divine purpose. And this is what 
 one would naturally expect. If Moses, merely hu- 
 man as he was, was given this divine power of 
 miraculous activity, what shall we expect when He 
 comes who is superhuman ? If sitting down to a 
 piano I undertake to play a simple psalm tune, and 
 if I announce to you that I am Paderewski, and 
 yet make half a dozen mistakes in a simple melody, 
 you might be too courteous to say that I am a liar, 
 but in your heart you would say, " That man's name 
 is Ananias." When Paderewski sits down to a 
 piano, you expect to hear an artist, and any man 
 who blunders and strikes false notes proves himself 
 not to be Paderewski. Whatever Moses may do, 
 Christ is better and greater, and we expect a greater 
 outburst of the superhuman, of the Divine, and that 
 we find in the life of this One who was announced 
 by the angels and born of the Virgin Mary. 
 
 Now in the Messianic Period miracles multiply 
 and the narrative amplifies at the same time in un- 
 precedented measure. How many miracles were 
 there in those three and one-half years ? There is 
 no counting. There were, in my judgment, single 
 
The Study of the Bible in Spots 6l 
 
 days when more miracles were wrought by Christ 
 than in any one year, in any one ten years, of Bible 
 history preceding that time. For there were days 
 when they brought to Him all the sick in the vi- 
 cinity and the record is that He healed them all. 
 Imagine that Sabbath day in Capernaum, which has 
 been so often brilliantly set forth by commentators. 
 In the morning of that day there was a demoniac 
 in the synagogue and the demon was exorcised. In 
 the afternoon, Peter's wife's mother lay sick of a high 
 fever, and was healed perfectly. And at even when 
 the sun did set they brought to Him all in Ca- 
 pernaum that were sick, and they gathered in front 
 of Peter's house. Oh, for a moving picture camera ; 
 oh, for some vivid setting forth of that wondrous 
 scene in the courtyard outside of Peter's house. See 
 the weary, woebegone multitude waiting ; the door 
 opens and He appears and stands and looks at them. 
 Every eye is fastened on Him, and many hands are 
 lifted in mute appeal. What a sea of woe and w^ant 
 and misery and despair it is ! Passing down through 
 that crowd, He takes a child from its mother's arms, 
 she, perhaps, a widow. He lays His hand on the 
 child. Oh, look at the mother's face ! the child is 
 healed, and the mother takes the child back, as well 
 as ever. He touches the eyes of a blind man and he 
 sees. And so He goes down into that crowd, 
 speaking and touching. Before Him is a sea of 
 woe, behind Him a scene of triumph and rejoicing, 
 until He gets to the end of that crowd, and there is 
 not one person who says, *' Oh, my head ; oh, my 
 
62 God's Book and God's Boy 
 
 head," nor one woman who looks at her child and 
 says, " See my poor child." Why, there were 
 doubtless many days in the life of the Master when 
 miracles multiplied more than in years before. It 
 is perfectly amazing. 
 
 Bear in mind that the^e healings were complete 
 and instantaneous, for in only one case is there a 
 record of a person who was diseased who had to be 
 touched a second time. Once He touched a blind 
 man and he looked up and said, "I see men as 
 trees walking," and then it required a second touch 
 and he saw all things clearly. Why was the second 
 touch needed that time ? I cannot tell. Possibly 
 because of the man's lack of faith. 
 
 Remember, no healed person ever said, " Thank 
 you, I feel better; I will come to-morrow and 
 maybe you can touch me again." This moment he 
 was deathly sick; the next moment boundingly 
 well. That is the difference between modern heal- 
 ing called faith healing and the Christian Science 
 healing of our day, and Christ's healing. There 
 was no disease He could not heal instantly, and all 
 of this healing was without money and without 
 price. 
 
 He healed the incurables. Ten lepers, incurable, 
 cried, " Have mercy upon us," and He sends them 
 away saying, " Go show yourselves to the priests." 
 Not one of them was cleansed when he started, but 
 at some point on the road, I know not where, some 
 one said, "Why, the spot is gone"— "Why, your 
 face is clean." What amazement as they looked 
 
The Study of the Bible in Spots 63 
 
 at each other and saw complete renovation ! Nine 
 of them rushed off and have never been heard of 
 since. Only one of them came back to praise Him. 
 And that is one of the bitter things of the Master's 
 experience, for with infinite sadness He says, " Were 
 there not ten that were cleansed ? Where, then, 
 are the nine ? These are not found to give glory 
 to God save this stranger." 
 
 He healed the demoniac. In our day there is 
 a large school of those, many professing to be 
 orthodox, who deny demoniac possession, and there- 
 fore deny demoniac healing. I am one of those 
 who believe in both, and I shall now give you 
 briefly the reasons which make me believe in the 
 genuineness of demoniac possession in Christ's day 
 and the truthfulness of the record as it stands in 
 the four Gospels. 
 
 Those who deny demoniac possession say that the 
 difficulty with the patient was catalepsy, or epilepsy, 
 or some form of hysteria. Some few say that it was 
 a form of insanity. To those I reply that the evan- 
 gelists always make clear the distinction between 
 all manner of disease and those who were possessed 
 of devils, and, in one case, between all manner of 
 disease and the lunatic. Mark this, however, that 
 every sick person in Christ's day was supremely 
 anxious to be healed, so that they trod one upon 
 another and people were knocked down in the 
 effort to get to the healer. In one case they broke 
 open the roof, you remember, to get a man down 
 to Him. But not one single demoniac ever wanted 
 
64 God's Book and God's Boy 
 
 to he healed ; every one resisted, excepting possibly 
 the boy whose father brought him, and of him it is 
 not said that he wanted to be healed, nor is it said 
 that he resisted. But the uniform cry was, " Let 
 us alone ; what have we to do with thee ; art thou 
 come to torment us before the time ? " That is not 
 the cry you would expect from the epileptic, or the 
 cataleptic, or the hysterical person. There is some- 
 thing peculiar about these demoniac cases as the 
 record is given to us. 
 
 In the next place, not one single person healed, 
 as far as the record goes, ever recognized Jesus 
 Christ as the Son of God. But there is not any 
 demoniac whose record is given at all in full who did 
 not recognize Christ as the Son of God. The 
 Gadarene said, " I know who thou art, the Son of 
 God ; art thou come hither to torment us before 
 the time ? " That is most striking ; that does away 
 with any explanation given that these were epileptic 
 or cataleptic persons, or even insane persons. It 
 chimes directly with the Scripture record. In one 
 case it says, " He cast out many devils and he 
 suffered them not to speak for they knew him.'''* If 
 it was real demoniac possession, there was good 
 reason why they should know Him, because, " He 
 came that he might destroy the works of the 
 devil," and that is why they cried out, " Art thou 
 come hither to torment us before the time ? " It 
 all hangs together if you accept the record ; it breaks 
 in pieces if you try to explain the record away. 
 
 Furthermore, Christ Himself never handled any 
 
The Study of the Bible in Spots 65 
 
 form of disease as though it were demoniac posses- 
 sion. He never said to any fever-stricken patient, 
 " Come out of him, thou spirit " ; but to demoniacs 
 He said, " Come out." The father said of his boy, 
 "He is a lunatic." Christ never endorsed that, 
 but He spoke to the evil spirit in the boy and cast 
 him out. This is an indication that this claim of 
 demoniac possession is based on absolute facts which 
 cannot be explained away without tearing the 
 narrative to tatters. 
 
 This sublime, miraculous power of the Master 
 was so overwhelming that even His bitterest enemies 
 never denied it. They never said that He had not 
 power over all manner of malady. What they did 
 say was, " He casteth out devils by Beelzebub, the 
 prince of devils." Instead of saying that the 
 miracles were not genuine, they said, "Genuine 
 they are, but wrought by the devil's power." That 
 is when He spoke His warning about the un- 
 pardonable sin of ascribing to the Holy Spirit a 
 devilish influence. 
 
 I have sometimes wondered how we could pos- 
 sibly illustrate this superfluity of healing power in 
 the Master. Of course, we at once say, " He was 
 Divine as well as human, and therefore divine 
 works showed themselves forth in Him." I like 
 sometimes, however, if I can, to illustrate, so that 
 common people may be helped, this superfluity of 
 power possessed by Christ. It was so great that it 
 flowed sometimes when He touched a person, while 
 at other times He did not touch the patient, but 
 
66 God^s Book and God's Boy 
 
 simply spoke to him ; sometimes He did not even 
 see the patient, as in the case of the ruler's son in 
 Capernaum, or as in the case of the Syrophenician 
 woman whose daughter He never saw. His ways 
 of working were various, because His superfluity of 
 power was overwhelming. Sometimes I have 
 thought this illustration might help to make us 
 understand His wonderful miracle-working power. 
 Some years ago a physician in New York, who 
 is making use largely of electricity along therapeutic 
 lines, knowing I was interested in scientific things, 
 said, " Come up to my office and I will show you 
 some queer things." Up I went. He set me down 
 in an insulated chair, and then he turned three 
 hundred thousand volts of static electricity through 
 my body. The moment that current was turned 
 on I knew that I was surcharged with power. He 
 then closed the shutters, took an electric bulb and 
 put it in my hands. Immediately the room was 
 illuminated through the power streaming through 
 me and changing itself into light. There was a 
 machine standing in the corner of the room ; he 
 gave me a chain attached to the machine ; the 
 moment I held the chain the machine began to run 
 furiously through the power streaming through 
 me. He hung over my head a crown of metal 
 hung by a chain. Instantly I felt as if ice-water 
 were being poured over my head, which was the 
 result of the electric current streaming out. He 
 said to me, " I can stop any pain w^hatsoever in- 
 stantly, but I cannot keep it stopped." He said. 
 
The Study of the Bible in Spots 67 
 
 " When these three hundred thousand volts go 
 through a man, toothache, headache, neuralgia, 
 neuritis will stop instantly ; but when the power is 
 withdrawn, they return." 
 
 I have sometimes thought that this might illus- 
 trate the superabundant power of the Master. 
 When He touched, the power leaped. He knew it, 
 and they knew it. One time in the crowd, you re- 
 member, a woman got behind Him, bowed with the 
 spirit of her infirmity, and touched the hem of His 
 garment. Instantly she knew something had hap- 
 pened, and He knew that something had happened, 
 though He did not see her. When that physician 
 came near to me, as near as that (indicating), with 
 his finger, a spark flew from me to him, and I knew 
 that it had flown though I could not see it, and he 
 knew it had come to him though his eyes were shut. 
 So with Jesus ; when I say a spark — do not mis- 
 understand — when whatever it was leaped from 
 Him to the woman, instantly He knew it and said, 
 " Who touched me ? " A poor disciple said, in his 
 ignorance, " The multitude thronged thee, and saith 
 thou * Who touched me ? ' " But there was crowd- 
 ing and crowding. When there was no disease, 
 there was no spark ; when disease was present, a 
 spark flew. 
 
 So, then, our point is this : that in the study of 
 the Word for ourselves, and in the leading of others 
 into the study of the Word, we must go after those 
 important points where the divine emphasis has 
 been placed, where great revelations have been 
 
68 God^s Book and God's Boy 
 
 made, where startling truths have been revealed, 
 and where power unseen breaks in on the scene and 
 the Divine manifests itself incontrovertibly in the 
 presence of the human. Then, having done that, 
 we can lead our scholars further on. 
 
 Doubtless these four periods, the Patriarchal, the 
 Mosaic, that of the two prophets of the northern 
 kingdom, and the Messianic, are the most important. 
 Those are the places where we can lead our flocks, 
 where they can feed on nourishment beneficial to 
 them. Thus, as the years go by in our ministry, 
 our people shall know the Word and always shall 
 hark back to the law and the testimony. 
 
 Briefly, one thing more. You remember what I 
 said about these twenty-seven chapters in the 
 Gospels dealing with only eight days. "Why that 
 enormous amplification there ? Because those eight 
 days from Palm Sunday to Kesurrection Sunday 
 deal with the very heart of the Gospels. There is 
 where the Son of God makes atonement for the 
 sins of the world. There is where He Himself 
 bears our sins in His own body up to the tree. 
 There is where Isaiah fifty- three is fulfilled, 
 and there is where the dead, sinful world is 
 ransomed, and He who is lifted up begins to draw 
 all men unto Him. Therefore, that being the 
 supremely crucial period of all, we have twenty- 
 seven chapters to elaborate the experiences of eight 
 days. 
 
 How about miracles during that period ? Dur- 
 ing that period there was the one super-miracle. It 
 
The Study of the Bible in Spots Ck; 
 
 was a great thing when Jesus raised Lazarus from 
 the dead, he having been dead four days. Have 
 you ever thought what a disaster it would have 
 been if, standing at the open door and looking into 
 the dark sepulchre, Jesus had called, "Lazarus, 
 come forth," and there had come forth from the 
 sepulchre only an echo ? We would have said, 
 " Much power He had, but here He is overmastered." 
 But no echo came out of the sepulchre, but Lazarus 
 himself. That however was a small miracle com- 
 pared to the resurrection of Christ. All of these 
 resurrections — resuscitations we should call them — 
 were temporary. Lazarus died twice, the widow of 
 Nain's son died twice, the ruler's son died twice ; 
 but when Christ arose from the dead. He arose to 
 die no more. The first and only real resurrection 
 was of Him who lay in Joseph's tomb, and He was 
 declared to be the Son of God with power by the 
 resurrection from the dead. So that the climax of 
 the Gospel is found in these chapters, and the 
 climax of the miraculous is found on Easter morn- 
 ing when He arises from the dead, now to die no 
 more. 
 
TV 
 
 A BIRD'S-EYE VIEW OF THE ACTS OF THE 
 APOSTLES 
 
 THE literature of the Bible is wonderful. 
 When I say Homer, Plato, Aristotle, 
 Socrates, Demosthenes, Herodotus, I have 
 given you a roster of great names along the line of 
 Greek literature. When I say Virgil, Cicero, 
 Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, I have added to the 
 catalogue of great names, this time from Kome. 
 Yet all of these taken together, as helping in the 
 spiritual uplift of man's soul, are not to be reckoned 
 in the same category with Moses, Isaiah, Jeremiah, 
 Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Paul and Peter. 
 
 See the debt of gratitude we owe to the Jew for 
 this wonderful literature, to which, with the excep- 
 tion of the beloved physician, not one single Gentile 
 contributed one word. Blessed be St. Luke that he 
 did contribute in so rich a measure two books, the 
 Gospel according to St. Luke and the Acts of the 
 Apostles. Never shall we cease to praise God for 
 the privilege granted to that man to contribute so 
 richly to the New Testament. When we reach the 
 blessed land of rest we may well all greet the be- 
 loved physician and say to him, " St. Luke, we 
 thank you for what you added to the New Testa- 
 ment." 
 
 70 
 
Bird's-Eye View of the Book of Acts 71 
 
 The Acts of the Apostles is the most important 
 single book in the New Testament, because if you 
 lose one of the Gospels you have three left ; if you 
 lose one or two of the Epistles you have others 
 left. But if the Acts were lost there is nothing to 
 take its place. The Gospels would close with the 
 ascension. The next thing you would read would 
 be a letter by a man calling himself Paul to a cer- 
 tain Church in Thessalonica, and you would say, 
 " Who was Paul and how did he come to be an 
 apostle and how did the Church in Thessalonica 
 start ? " We should be utterly in the dark if it had 
 not been for the beloved physician supplementing 
 the life of Jesus by the life, activity and success 
 of the apostles. 
 
 In dealing with this book by St. Luke, I want to 
 dwell on six pivotal events which it records. If 
 we thoroughly master these we shall have the whole 
 book of Acts at our fingers' ends. In calling atten- 
 tion to these six pivotal events I shall omit entirely 
 the ascension, because that is found in the Gospels 
 also. I shall touch on those pivotal events which 
 are found only in the Acts. 
 
 First Pivotal Event: Pentecost — which spells 
 spiritual power. Consider briefly the situation of 
 the eleven. Their Master has departed from them. 
 He has given them His parting injunction to be 
 witnesses to Him in Jerusalem, and in all Judea 
 and in Samaria and unto the uttermost parts of the 
 earth. Who are these eleven who are to take up 
 the work of the divine Son of God with any pos- 
 
72 God's Book and God^s Boy 
 
 sible hope of success ? Four of them were fisher- 
 men with not even a high school education. One 
 of them was the tax-gatherer. One was a zealot, 
 and others were plain men in the ordinary walks 
 of life. While their Master was with them they 
 had made many mistakes. They with quarrelling 
 voices at the Passover contended among themselves 
 as to which should be the greatest. Yet now He 
 is leaving them clothed with the responsibility for 
 the spread of the Gospel which He has come to 
 proclaim upon earth. 
 
 Bear in mind, they were to bring the Gospel first 
 to the Jews. But the Jews had rejected their Master 
 and said, " We will not have this man to rule over 
 us." The Jew had already set his face against the 
 Nazarene, and yet here are these unlettered men 
 bidden to present to the Jews a Gospel already dis- 
 paraged. What was their chance of success ? 
 
 They were to go to the Greeks as well. The 
 Greeks were far above the rest of the world in 
 philosophy because they numbered great philoso- 
 phers among their ranks, and how were these 
 uneducated men to teach them ? To the cultured 
 Greeks it must have seemed like a huge joke. 
 
 These men were to go to the Koman world. If 
 the Greek world was noted for its culture, the 
 Roman world was noted for its power. The Koman 
 world was given over to idolatry, and these men 
 were to undertake the organization of Christianity 
 in the Roman world. What power had they ade- 
 quate to their task ? 
 
Bird*s-Eye View of the Book of Acts 73 
 
 See the trinity of difficulties — an antagonistic 
 Jew, a sophisticated Greek, an idolatrous Eoman. 
 What are their chances of success? Humanly 
 speaking, they had none. If the Master had failed, 
 how could they succeed ? Nevertheless, He says 
 to them, " Tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem, until 
 ye be endued with power from on high." That 
 word power is from the Greek word "dunamis," 
 from which we get our word dynamite. That is 
 to say, " Tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem, until 
 ye be endued with dynamite from on high." Then 
 it was that they tarried until Pentecost, and when 
 Pentecost came the promise given of power was 
 fulfilled. So overwhelming was that power in 
 breaking down the hard hearts of opposition that 
 the Apostle Peter gained and baptized in one day 
 more disciples than the Master had gained in three 
 and a half years of His ministry, for apparently 
 about five hundred followers were all Christ could 
 count on after His resurrection. Yet here the 
 Apostle Peter, having dynamite, received approxi- 
 mately three thousand into the Church in one day. 
 
 No Pentecost, no power ; no power, no spread of 
 the Gospel ; no spread of the Gospel, Christ's mis- 
 sion ruined. You see then how tremendous was 
 the importance of that first step, that central pivotal 
 event around which all that followed revolved. 
 
 Second Pivotal Event: Persecution. Strange 
 that that should be a pivotal event in the spread 
 of the Gospel, but so it was. The commission to 
 the apostles had been to begin at Jerusalem. They 
 
74 God's Book and God's Boy 
 
 had begun at Jerusalem, but seemed to refuse to 
 go beyond it. Oh, but the Church was having a 
 splendid time in Jerusalem ! First three thousand, 
 then two thousand more were converted and the 
 Church was having favour with the people, and 
 enjoying itself in its spiritual privilege to the height. 
 But they had been told to begin at Jerusalem, then 
 to go to Judea, then Samaria, and then to the 
 uttermost parts of the earth. So in order to make 
 them obey Him, God allowed the Church to be 
 stirred up by persecution and scattered abroad. 
 When the persecution that arose about Stephen 
 burst upon the young Church in Jerusalem there 
 were ^yq thousand believers in the city ; soon there 
 was not one left, excepting only the eleven. Scat- 
 tered, driven out from home, friends, business, the 
 young Church instantly had to flee. 
 
 But mark you, God caused the wrath of men to 
 praise Him and restrained the remainder, for we 
 read that these believers scattered abroad every- 
 where went not as they might have gone, holding 
 their peace, not saying, " We are driven out because 
 we have testified, and therefore now we will be 
 silent." Nay ; the record is this, that they that 
 were scattered abroad went everywhere preaching 
 the Word. So that from the blaze of one spiritual 
 conflagration in Jerusalem there were a hundred 
 fires started all over the land and the cross of 
 Christ was preached to the world at large wherever 
 these persecuted followers fled. Thus that perse- 
 cution was a benediction. 
 
Bird's-Eye View of the Book of Acts 75 
 
 I have sometimes thought that if persecution 
 should fall on the Church here in America it might 
 be a benediction. We are too safe and protected, 
 too self-satisfied, too much wrapped up in our com- 
 fortable and luxurious churches and cathedrals. If 
 we were driven out, if we had to be the objects of 
 persecution, there might be more true godliness 
 and a more rapid spread of the Gospel on the 
 earth. 
 
 Third Pivotal Event; The Change of the Per- 
 secutor into the Preacher. That is to say, the 
 conversion of Saul of Tarsus. The two most out- 
 standing miracles in the Kew Testament are, first, 
 the resurrection of Christ, and, second, the conver- 
 sion of Saul of Tarsus. 
 
 Years ago in England, two men. Lord Lyttleton 
 and Mr. Cecil West, antagonists of Christianity, 
 agreed that each should write a book against 
 Christianity. The one was to take the story of 
 the resurrection of Jesus Christ and use it to dis- 
 prove the claims of Christianity, and the other was 
 to take the conversion of Paul to disprove the 
 genuineness of that man's spiritual experience. 
 They separated ; each studied his topic ; each was 
 illuminated; each wrote a book — Lord Lyttleton 
 on the Evidences of Christianity drawn from the 
 Conversion of Saul, and Cecil West on the Evi- 
 dences of Christianity from the Kesurrection of 
 Christ. I have the former book. The other I 
 have searched the libraries for in vain. It must 
 be out of print. 
 
76 God's Book and God's Boy 
 
 Yes, this conversion of St. Paul is one of the 
 most outstanding miracles, because while he had 
 been exceedingly violent as persecutor, as a preacher 
 he became equally earnest in championing the cause 
 of Jesus of Nazareth. 
 
 Our German friends of the rationalistic school 
 have tried to explain away the story of the con- 
 version of the apostle as not in accordance with 
 fact. One of the explanations they give is almost 
 as miraculous as the miracle itself. They say that 
 the Apostle Paul was a man of sanguine tempera- 
 ment, with the tendency of a flow of blood to the 
 brain; that in great excitement at noonday as 
 under the hot sun he was hastening to Damascus, 
 there to carry out his nefarious schemes, he was 
 actually sunstruck. Then followed brain fever 
 and visions that had no external reality. He saw 
 sights and heard sounds which he thought came 
 from the other world. The result was that he was 
 a changed man and because of this delirium result- 
 ing from sunstroke, turned from persecutor to 
 preacher. 
 
 Now that would be as great a miracle as the 
 story that St. Luke tells us. I never knew that 
 sunstroke had the power to change a man's char- 
 acter in that way so swiftly. I had a friend in 
 New York who had charge of a chapel that I 
 afterwards took. He had a half a sunstroke, and 
 as a result he never preached again for a year and 
 six months, and yet we are told that this Saul of 
 Tarsus is sunstruck and begins preaching in three 
 
Bird's- Eye View of the Book of Acts 77 
 
 days. If that is the result of sunstroke, I would 
 recommend, Mr. President, that you close your 
 Seminary and stand your students out in the hot 
 July sun until they are all sunstruck. Maybe then 
 some of them could rival Saul as preachers. 
 
 This conversion of Saul changed a great antago- 
 nistic of the Master into a great protagonistic for 
 the Nazarene, and just as he was intense against, 
 so he became intense for Jesus Christ. It must 
 have been to him an immense surprise when he 
 began to preach Jesus Christ as the Son of God to 
 find that they meted out to him exactly the same 
 treatment that he had been meting out to Jesus' 
 followers. As a result, the apostle had to flee 
 from Damascus in an ignominious way. 
 
 Then had the Church rest, when this man was 
 changed from antagonist to friend and supporter. 
 Then began that marvellous career which only 
 ended when he laid down his life for his Master in 
 the Imperial City of Rome. 
 
 Fourth Pivotal Event : The Breaking Down of 
 the Middle Wall of Partition Between Jew and 
 Gentile. That middle wall of partition was of 
 divine ordination. When God called Abraham 
 and made him the father of the covenant people 
 a wall was raised between Jew and Gentile and no 
 one might be a member of that covenant people 
 unless he was a descendant of Abraham, or unless 
 he came through a gate in that wall called the 
 Gate of the Proselyte. 
 
 That waU had stood two thousand years. Peter 
 
78 God's Book and God's Boy 
 
 knew it was divinely erected. There was not a 
 single apostle living who had the faintest concep- 
 tion that that wall was to come down. All of 
 them thought that if the Gentiles were to be saved, 
 Jews they must become and only then salvation 
 was possible. 
 
 To the Apostle Peter was given the breaking 
 down of the middle wall of partition. But to con- 
 vince him that the command was divine there had 
 to be overwhelming evidence, and that overwhelm- 
 ing evidence was given in a manner entirely unique. 
 It was given by a dual miracle, the like of which I 
 do not find anywhere else in the Bible. A miracle 
 wrought in Caesarea and another miracle wrought 
 in Joppa and the two miracles fitting into each 
 other like two sections of some dovetailed piece of 
 furniture. Mark— Peter is in Joppa on a housetop, 
 engaged in prayer, with no idea in his mind that 
 the Gentile could come into the Church on an equal 
 basis with the Jew. Meal-time has arrived. Peter 
 is hungry, but while the meal tarries, he falls into 
 a trance. Then the vision. Down comes a sheet 
 and a voice says, " Rise, Peter ; kill and eat." 
 Peter looks into this sheet and sees there four- 
 footed beasts and unclean things, which according 
 to the laws of Moses he was forbidden to eat. 
 Peter therefore replies, " Not so. Lord ; for I have 
 never eaten anything that is common and unclean." 
 Thereupon the voice says, " What God hath 
 cleansed, make thou not common," and up goes the 
 sheet. Peter is bewildered. While he is thinking 
 
Bird's-Eye View of the Book of Acts 79 
 
 it over down comes the sheet again and the voice 
 says, " Kise, Peter ; kill and eat." Now I fancy 
 Peter may have thought, " There will be a change 
 in the contents of that sheet, because I made it 
 clear that I could not eat unclean things." So he 
 opens the sheet again. The same misery, the same 
 uncleanliness ! Again perplexed Peter says, " Not 
 so, Lord ; for I have never eaten anything that is 
 common and unclean," and again the voice says, 
 "What God hath cleansed, make thou not com- 
 mon," and up goes the sheet. Peter is more mys- 
 tified than before, but while he is thinking down 
 comes the sheet the third time and the voice says, 
 " Kise, Peter ; kill and eat." Now he thinks it is 
 certainly changed and again he looks in. The 
 same repulsive contents ! So for the third time he 
 says, " Not so, Lord ; for I have never eaten any- 
 thing that is common and unclean," and the third 
 time the voice says, " What God hath cleansed, 
 make thou not common," and up goes the sheet. 
 Peter is now more perplexed than ever. 
 
 A knock at the door down-stairs. " Ho, what is 
 all this ? " " Men have come from Caesarea." 
 "Whom do they want?" "Peter." So Peter 
 goes down and there stand the men sent from 
 Cornelius in Caesarea who tell Peter of a miraculous 
 visit of an angel to Cornelius announcing to him 
 God's recognition of his alms and prayers and bid- 
 ding him send to Joppa for Peter. Though Peter 
 still does not understand the meaning of all this, 
 the Spirit says to him, " Go with these men and 
 
8o God's Book and God's Boy 
 
 doubt not, because I have sent them." So Peter 
 by divine admonition starts out with these men and 
 the next day but one after that they enter into 
 Caesarea. 
 
 Then comes the story equally familiar to us of 
 Peter saying, " You know how it is unlawful for 
 me to go into the house of a Gentile, but God has 
 taught me to call no man common." Then the 
 preaching, then the Pentecostal blessing. Then 
 Peter's eyes are opened and he sees that as on the 
 Jew at first descended the Holy Spirit, so on the 
 Gentile without their entering into covenant rela- 
 tionship with the Jew there has descended the same 
 Divine Spirit. Thus the middle wall of partition, 
 two thousand years old, goes down with a crash 
 and Peter sees that in the Kingdom of God there 
 is no longer Jew or Gentile, but the Divine Spirit 
 of God makes all one in Christ Jesus. 
 
 What a blessed privilege to the apostle to help 
 in bringing down that wall, in levelling that divid- 
 ing line so that henceforth there is no longer Jew 
 or Gentile, but all are one in Christ Jesus. Alas, 
 that, as a fact, men began to build dividing walls 
 again and we have got them to this day. There 
 is the Presbyterian wall, the Methodist wall, the 
 Episcopal wall, and the Lutherans have their wall. 
 The Baptists have not got a wall — they have a 
 ditch with some water in it. The result is that all 
 these walls divide one denomination from another, 
 separate the Saviour's followers and make them 
 stand on one side or the other. Oh, the pity of it I 
 
Bird's-Eye View of the Book of Acts 8l 
 
 Praise be to God, these walls and ditches with 
 water in them are going to come down or be filled 
 up and do you know where that process is going 
 on more rapidly than elsewhere ? It is in mission 
 fields, where missionaries are beginning to see that 
 for the pressing needs of China, Japan and Korea 
 the idea of a Presbyterian wall, or Methodist, Epis- 
 copal, Baptist, Lutheran wall, is absurd. In the 
 mission field we shall have at last one Church of 
 the living God, trusting in Jesus Christ as Saviour 
 Divine and being sanctified by the Holy Spirit as 
 the Divine Third Person in the Trinity. They 
 have got to come down — these different walls — be- 
 cause they are human structures and not of divine 
 ordination. 
 
 Fifth Pivotal Event : The Organizing of Mis- 
 sionary Work by the Church. There had been 
 missionary work by the followers of Christ. But 
 now in Antioch under the great blessing that had 
 come to them through Barnabas and Saul, the 
 Church feels called by the Holy Spirit to organize 
 missionary work. The Holy Ghost saw fit to call 
 upon Barnabas and Saul to undertake this work. 
 
 Mark just here that when the Holy Spirit picked 
 out from that prosperous Church in Antioch men 
 who were to be sent abroad it picked out the two 
 best they had — Barnabas and Saul. The Church at 
 Antioch, had it been like some modern Churches, 
 might have made reply, ^* Oh, Lord, what have you 
 asked? These are our best men. The Church 
 cannot get along without them. Take some of the 
 
82 God's Book and God's Boy 
 
 others. They are second-rate men. Send them, 
 but let Barnabas and Saul stay here." Modern 
 Churches have acted this way only too often. 
 They preserve their best men at home and if they 
 have some kind of a second fiddle, why he can go to 
 Korea or China or Africa. That is not the way of 
 the Divine Spirit. I believe if the Church at 
 Antioch had held on to Barnabas and Saul it would 
 have shrunk up. It was the sending out of the 
 best that brought back to them a benediction that 
 they could hardly overestimate. 
 
 What we need, friends, is that the very best of 
 you shall go to the hardest fields. Good men are 
 needed to work in the slums. No one of you is 
 too good for missionary work in Korea, or in China, 
 or in Japan. The very fact that you are called at 
 home to a big church may be only another reason why 
 you should not accept that call because it marks you 
 as being a man of influence. That very fact might 
 send you to the slums or to dark Africa, or to China, 
 Japan or India. The Holy Spirit wants the Church 
 always to put her best on the altar. When she does 
 that then to the Church will come so great a bless- 
 ing that the cup of the Church shall run over. 
 
 Sixth Pivotal Event : The Crossing of the Gospel 
 from Asia to Europe. The story, of course, is very 
 familiar to us ; Paul at Troas, the vision of the man 
 of Macedonia saying, " Come over into Macedonia 
 and help us," the conclusion of the apostle that 
 that was a divine call, and the swift departure 
 from Asia and the crossing over to Philippi. 
 
Bird's-Eye View of the Book of Acts 83 
 
 Now there had been several crossings from one 
 continent to another just about in that same locality 
 in days gone by. Xerxes had crossed from Asia to 
 Europe with a million of men that he might con- 
 quer Greece, and only this summer I stood by the 
 identical spot where they say his throne was as he 
 watched his fleet combating with the Greeks. 
 Alexander the Great played a return match and as 
 Xerxes went from east to west, Alexander marched 
 from west to east, and at the battle of Arbela the 
 whole Persian Empire was conquered and Alex- 
 ander advanced almost unopposed to the borders of 
 the Indus River. 
 
 Neither of these crossings had wrought any great 
 benefit. Nothing of spiritual value could be found 
 in either of them. Since that there has been an- 
 other crossing in that same locality, when the Turk 
 crossed over to Europe, but that brought no real 
 benefit to Europe. It rather tended to disturb and 
 damage, and Europe will really be benefited when 
 the Turk is pushed back to that continent from 
 which he came. 
 
 Here, however, an army is crossing from Asia to 
 Europe for the conquest of Europe for its King. 
 This army consists of four — Paul, Silas, Timothy 
 and Luke. Xerxes' ambition was much more easy 
 to satisfy than Paul's because it is much easier to 
 conquer a nation physically than it is to conquer it 
 spiritually. It would take ten times more effort to 
 conquer a man's soul than to conquer his body. 
 
 Xerxes having failed, Paul is now crossing over 
 
84 God's Book and God's Boy 
 
 with his three fellow workers in order that he 
 might win Europe for the cause of his Master and 
 for Him who is the God and Father of us all. So 
 these four go over invading Europe without sword 
 or shield, without spear or bow. 
 
 It is rather significant, is it not, that the first 
 convert won by these men was a woman — Lydia of 
 Thyatira, who was in Philippi at this time. And 
 the second convert was a woman with a spirit of a 
 Python, whom the apostle freed from her bondage. 
 Frankly, that seems to me to illustrate what the 
 Gospel does for women. It does for us men bound- 
 less things ; it does for woman still more. God 
 planted man in the Garden of Eden and gave 
 woman as his helpmeet and they were to be side by 
 side. When sin came man pushed woman behind 
 him and she has been tramping along behind ever 
 since, excepting only where Christianity has come 
 in. The Mohammedan does not walk side by side 
 with his wife. Would he help his wife on the 
 trolley-car ? No, indeed. He would walk on 
 ahead and get on the trolley-car and she might get 
 on if she were quick enough ; if not, that was of no 
 concern to him. All over the world when sin is 
 present man has thrust woman behind and down 
 and has kept her there. When Christianity comes 
 it brings woman back to where God placed her 
 originally — side by side with man as his helpmeet. 
 
 In modern days it seems as if there were a move- 
 ment on foot to shove woman ahead of man. She 
 has been behind him, then brought up to his side, 
 
Bird's-Eye View of the Book of Acts 85 
 
 and now there is a movement to put her ahead of 
 him. I am sorry for the advocates of that move- 
 ment because it is contrary to the nature of things 
 and when you go against nature, nature usually 
 draws back and gives you a blow between your 
 eyes that makes you see stars. 
 
 I remember hearing a lecture by Dr. J. G. Hol- 
 land years ago in which he asked this question, " Has 
 woman any sphere ? " and his answer was, " No." 
 Second, " Has man any sphere ? " and his answer 
 was, " No." " What then," he asked, " is the situa- 
 tion ? It is this : Man has a hemisphere and woman 
 has a hemisphere and if you bring two hemispheres 
 together then you have a sphere." Well said. 
 Man has his duty, privilege, opportunity ; woman, 
 her duty, privilege, opportunity. Bring these to- 
 gether and you get something that is divine. When 
 the two are side by side, hand in hand, arm in arm, 
 then we have the ideal relationship. 
 
 This army of four had a very singular experience. 
 Within a very few days half of the army was in 
 jail. In jail because they tried to, and succeeded 
 in, delivering a poor woman from the grasp of the 
 men that were making money out of her misfortune. 
 So into prison Paul and Silas go because of their 
 act of mercy to oppressed humanity. And are they 
 defeated ? Nay verily. Here is where you see the 
 wonderful triumph of these men over all physical 
 disabilities. I fancy that if you had been a fellow 
 traveller with the Apostle Paul you would have 
 never been dull. There was always something 
 
86 God's Book and God's Boy 
 
 doing. You might not have been comfortable all 
 the time, but dull, never. You would not have 
 been dull even in the darkness of that prison cell, 
 though if your back had been in the same condition 
 as his you might have been very uncomfortable. 
 Imagine it for a minute. From his neck down to 
 his hips he is all bruised and bleeding, and Silas is 
 in the same condition. Their clothes are put on 
 their bruised backs without any first aid to the 
 injured ; not a drop of water ; not a mouthful of 
 food ; pitch dark. 
 
 I fancy I hear Silas saying, "Paul, how are 
 you ? " " Getting along very well, thank you." 
 Then do you hear Silas say, " Paul, we always 
 seem to get into trouble when we preach. Don't 
 you think we had better stop ? " and then Paul 
 reply, " Yes, I think I will stop " ? Oh, no ; they 
 begin in the dark to sing a duet of praise to God. 
 These suffering, crushed men praise God for the 
 privilege of suffering in this way. Such men you 
 cannot overthrow ; such men you cannot conquer. 
 You may kill, but conquer, never. 
 
 I have been in prisons in the small hours of the 
 morning myself, not as a prisoner, but as a visitor. 
 I have heard songs, ribald, filthy. I have heard 
 curses, blasphemous, horrible ; but a song of praise 
 to God from men whose backs were in that condi- 
 tion, never. Have you ever stopped to realize what 
 the Apostle Paul's back must have looked like? 
 Eight times that man was whipped; five times 
 with whips and three times with rods. Eight times 
 
Bird's-Eye View of the Book of Acts 87 
 
 he was tied to the post and eight times down to his 
 hips every inch of his back was bleeding. You 
 could not put your finger on Paul's back that you 
 did not touch some scar or blotch. Yet he says 
 this was a light affliction — "this light affliction." 
 " How many times did you say you were whipped, 
 Paul?" "Eight times." "And yet you talk 
 about a light affliction? " Hear his answer. " For 
 our light affliction, which is but for a moment, 
 worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal 
 weight of glory." That kind of a man you cannot 
 conquer. 
 
 This was the kind of an army which, going from 
 Asia to Europe, began that westward march of the 
 Gospel of Jesus Christ that paused not until it 
 struck these Western shores and is now rolling 
 across the Pacific into Japan and China. 
 
JOSEPH— PRISONER AND PRIME MINISTER 
 
 JOSEPH is presented to us in the Bible as a 
 most beautiful character, one whose study 
 well repays every Christian teacher. To 
 Abraham there are given thirteen chapters in the 
 book of Genesis, and to Joseph thirteen, thus giving 
 more than one-half of the first book of the Bible to 
 the narrative of these two men's lives. 
 
 We may find flaws in Abraham's character as 
 well as in Isaac's. Jacob's life is full of mistakes 
 and sins. Moses spoke once unadvisedly with his 
 lips, and Aaron sinned grievously in the matter of 
 the golden calf. Paul had a burst of anger with 
 Barnabas, James and John desired at one time to 
 call down fire from Heaven to burn a whole Sa- 
 maritan village alive. Peter, like Jacob, was full of 
 faults. But in the whole life of Joseph there is no 
 single fault recorded. This does not mean that he 
 w^as sinless, but it does mean that the Divine Spirit 
 did not see enough that was variant from the truth 
 in his life to make record of the same. There are 
 few of these Bible characters of whom this can be 
 said. Among these are Joshua and Daniel. 
 
 Joseph's life falls into two divisions. First, his 
 humiliation, dealt with in Chapters XXXYII, 
 
 88 
 
Joseph — Prisoner and Prime Minister 89 
 
 XXXIX, and XL, and second, his exaltation, 
 which occupies Chapters XLI to L inclusive. 
 
 First, his humihation. He is introduced to us 
 in the family of Jacob at the age of seventeen as 
 an upright and lovable boy. He was his father's 
 favourite, and this very fact aroused the jealousy 
 and envy of his brothers. (See Genesis xxxvii. 3-4.) 
 Incidentally, we pause to notice that family favour- 
 itism never produces good results. In the family, 
 if nowhere else, justice must be held in even balance 
 and every member of the family must be looked 
 upon and loved and cared for as tenderly as every 
 other member. Old Jacob, however, having taken 
 Joseph as his favourite, emphasized this most un- 
 wisely in giving him a garment that should dis- 
 tinguish him at once from his brothers and make 
 him the observed of all observers. 
 
 This envy by his brothers soon intensified by 
 reason of two dreams which Joseph had, which 
 were prophetic dreams, the one where the sheaves 
 bowed down to his sheaf, and the other where the 
 sun, moon and stars did him reverence, and the 
 result of his telling these dreams, in a kind of boy- 
 ish though unwise enthusiasm, was that his breth- 
 ren hated him yet the more. 
 
 It was his duty at times to bring a full report of 
 his brethren to their father. This naturally did 
 not in any way modify their feelings, so they laid 
 up their envy and hatred for a convenient season. 
 This season came when the aged Jacob sent his 
 favourite boy to inquire concerning the welfare of 
 
go God's Book and God's Boy 
 
 his shepherd brothers. They were at this time in 
 Dothan, and there Joseph finds them. As soon as 
 they see him, they recognize that now, at last, their 
 chance has come. Away from the father's tent 
 and home, alone, they have got him, and now they 
 propose to wreak their vengeance on this innocent 
 boy. Their first plan was to kill him. This was 
 changed, however, through the intervention of 
 Keuben. Then they threw him into a pit from 
 which Keuben planned to rescue him. The valley 
 of Dothan abounds to this day in these limestone 
 pits, and there the purpose of most of them seems 
 to have been to leave the boy to starve. But this 
 plan was changed when certain Midianites, also 
 called Ishmaelites, passed by on their journey to 
 Egypt. Then Jacob's blood, the scheming, money- 
 making blood, told, and Judah said, " What profit 
 is there in our brother's blood ? Come, let us sell 
 him to the Midianites." So poor Joseph is pulled 
 up out of the pit and sold to the Midianites for 
 twenty pieces of silver. The brothers pocket the 
 cash and return to their father whom they deceive 
 with acts and words, while they hypocritically rise 
 up to comfort him in his sorrow at the loss of his 
 favourite boy. 
 
 In the East things are now largely as they were 
 3,700 years ago. Well do I remember sitting in 
 that valley of Dothan, which we visited out of re- 
 spect to the memory of Joseph, and at noon-time 
 taking our lunch just as the brothers did on that 
 historic occasion. While we were talking of Joseph 
 
Joseph — Prisoner and Prime Minister 91 
 
 and his experiences, we heard bells, and across the 
 mouth of the little lateral valley of Dothan, which 
 branches off from the highway between Damascus 
 and Egypt, there passed a caravan, as of old, garbed 
 in the same robes and on the same errand as these 
 men were to whom Joseph was sold. It was fairly 
 startling, and we almost looked around to see where 
 the pit was in which we might find the living Joseph. 
 
 Down to Egypt this innocent boy is carried, and 
 there sold into the house of Potiphar, one of 
 Pharaoh's officers. There he tarried for some con- 
 siderable time, until through the iniquity of 
 Potiphar's own wife he was again ensnared, not in 
 iniquity, but in her toils. When he w^ould not 
 yield to her temptation she instantly maligned him 
 to her husband. The result was that Joseph had 
 to descend one step further in the line of humilia- 
 tion, and from slave in Potiphar's house he goes as 
 prisoner into the jail of the king. 
 
 There he tarried for about four years. There 
 too, as in Potiphar's house, his fidelity and ability 
 were equally marked. As in Potiphar's house all 
 things were put under his charge, so in the prison 
 whatever was done Joseph was the doer of it. 
 
 Here we pause for a moment to see the conflict 
 between plans human and plans divine. The hu- 
 man plan of the brothers is to get Joseph out of the 
 way for good and all. The divine plan is through 
 Joseph's instrumentality to make a place for Jacob 
 and his family, where they may abide in time of 
 stress and storm, and where, in Egypt, they may 
 
92 God's Book and God's Boy 
 
 multiply, and at last in due season be brought back 
 to the land which God promised to Abraham and 
 his seed. These two plans, human and divine, here 
 collide, and most instructive it is whenever we see 
 a collision between human and divine purposes, to 
 see how God will utilize all the human, both the 
 sin and the holiness, and work out the warp and 
 woof of the divine plan with absolute perfection. 
 The brothers thought that they had accomplished 
 their plan, and were ignorant of the fact that God 
 was using the wrath of man to praise Him, and 
 was restraining the remainder. 
 
 We see this collision between plans human and 
 plans divine not infrequently in the word of God, 
 and it is helpful to our feeble faith to see how al- 
 ways the divine is victorious, and the human and 
 sinful is pushed to the wall to make way for God's 
 plan to move on to complete success. 
 
 It is worth our while here also to mark the stead- 
 fastness of Joseph's character in the midst of ad- 
 versities. All these things came to him, not be- 
 cause of his sin, but because of his righteousness. 
 That is hard to understand and we sometimes are 
 tempted to say, " Surely in vain have I cleansed 
 my heart," for " all these things are against me," 
 and, what profit is there that I should serve Je- 
 hovah when this is the outcome of my loyalty? 
 Yet, with all these adversities coming to him be- 
 cause of his steadfastness, Joseph's faith never 
 varied or failed, nor was his disposition in any way 
 soured so that he became vengeful. We see this in 
 
Joseph — Prisoner and Prime Minister 93 
 
 the way in which he treated Potiphar, in the way 
 in which he stood for the right in that man's family. 
 We see it again in the way in which he showed his 
 fidelity in prison and was kind to Egyptian pris- 
 oners like the butler and the baker who were placed 
 under his care. 
 
 Had Joseph been like some modern men this 
 would have been his argument : " These Egyptians 
 bought me when they had no right to purchase me. 
 Potiphar put me here in prison for doing right and 
 not wrong. Now is my chance, and being in 
 charge in this prison, when Egyptian prisoners 
 come in I will have my revenge on them." 
 
 I fancy had Joseph had a disposition like this 
 when the butler and the baker came into the prison 
 he might have seen his chance to retaliate, and to 
 make their lives a burden to them while they were 
 there. This, however, was not in any sense Joseph's 
 feeling, for he was sympathetic with the prisoners, 
 as is proved by the fact that one morning on com- 
 ing in to see them, he noticed on the faces of the 
 butler and the baker an unusual expression of sad- 
 ness, and kindly he inquired, " Wherefore are your 
 countenances sad this day ? " Sympathetically he 
 entered into their dreams, and gave them a proper 
 interpretation, and so showed that the milk of hu- 
 man kindness was as sweet as ever with him, in 
 spite of all the adverse circumstances with which 
 he had to contend. Here are Christian graces after 
 the type of the beatitudes, illustrated 1,700 years 
 before the beatitudes were uttered. Here is the 
 
94 God's Book and God's Boy 
 
 spirit of Christianity exemplified before Christ ever 
 was born, showing that even under the old dispen- 
 sation grace might foster those virtues which are 
 the true adornment of every child of God. 
 
 We do well to call attention to these facts be- 
 cause they stand out most markedly in the times 
 and in the environment in which Joseph found 
 himself. Kindliness, purity, honesty and sympathy 
 were not graces that had been cultivated in those 
 days to any great extent. More was it cruelty, in- 
 trigue, revenge and resentment. All the more, 
 then, like a lily growing in a swamp, does this 
 wondrous character of Joseph stand forth as some 
 thing to be admired, testifying to the grace of God, 
 and the triumphs that He can attain in the working 
 out of perfect human character. 
 
 Again it is worth while to note now God uses 
 minute links in the chain of divine providence to 
 work out His great purposes. Was there any con- 
 nection between the sadness on the faces of the 
 butler and the baker, and the deliverance of Israel 
 from Egypt ? Was there any connection between 
 Joseph's sympathetic interest in their dolorous con- 
 dition and the triumphant exodus of the Israelites ? 
 Not to the human eye. But as the story is given 
 to us here we see easily that all these little things 
 were links, welded together by divine supervision 
 and care, making a great chain of divine provi- 
 dence. So that between the sadness of the butler 
 and the baker, and the exodus on that eventful 
 night years later there is close connection. 
 
Joseph — Prisoner and Prime Minister 95 
 
 Darwin, in one of his enchanting lectures, says 
 he noticed that in English villages heartsease would 
 not grow wild, but away from the villages they 
 grew wild in abundance. Looking for the cause 
 for this he found a chain of causes. In English 
 villages dogs abound and run at large. Where 
 dogs run at large cats must stay at home. Where 
 cats stay at home field-mice abound. Where field- 
 mice abound, bumblebees' nests are destroyed. 
 Where bumblebees' nests are destroyed pollen is 
 not carried from flower to flower for fertilization. 
 Therefore, dogs, no heartsease. 
 
 This is one of those beautiful hidden chains made 
 up of links, and until you understand the links you 
 cannot understand the result. Take the links here 
 between the sadness of the butler and the baker 
 and the triumphant exodus. jS'o sadness on their 
 countenances, no notice taken by Joseph. No 
 notice taken by Joseph, no interpretation of their 
 dreams. No interpretation of their dreams, no re- 
 membrance of Joseph by the butler when he was 
 restored to the king's favour. No remembrance 
 of Joseph by the butler when he was restored to 
 the court, no deliverance of Joseph. No deliver- 
 ance of Joseph, no preparation for Jacob to come 
 down to Egypt. No preparation for Jacob to come 
 down to Egypt, no exodus. 
 
 It is charming to watch the minute links which 
 God makes use of, for doubtless as it was in 
 Joseph's case, so it is in our cases. God is making 
 use daily of links in our experience to weld them 
 
96 God's Book and God's Boy 
 
 into the great chain of divine providence in our 
 behalf. It well repays the student of Bible history 
 and especially of Bible biography to look for these 
 chains with their multitudinous links and to see 
 how God uses things small as well as things great 
 to work out His divine purpose. 
 
 This brings us, second, to Joseph's exaltation. 
 This came with a leap. To-day in prison, to- 
 morrow, second in the kingdom. How this came 
 about we need not recount, for the story is familiar 
 to every Bible reader. There are some who think 
 that the story (because of its very extraordinary 
 nature) is apocryphal, and that no ruler would take 
 a man out of prison and promote him at one leap 
 to be second in the kingdom. We admit that the 
 story is rather extraordinary for us Occidentals, 
 but we do not admit that it is so peculiar for 
 Orientals, for Oriental methods have been and still 
 are at antipodes from those which we adopt. 
 
 In my home in Constantinople the Sultan had a 
 private dentist whose name was De la Hue, and 
 his business was to wait on the Sultan when called 
 for. One day the Sultan had a toothache and sent 
 for his dentist. The dentist was off shooting, and 
 the messenger said, " Your Majesty, the dentist 
 cannot be had." " Get me a dentist," demanded 
 the Sultan. 
 
 Now there was a dentist near the Galata Tower, 
 whose gilded tooth I have often seen swinging 
 over his office on the street. He pulled teeth for 
 twenty -five cents apiece. The stupid officials knew 
 
Joseph — Prisoner and Prime Minister 97 
 
 of no other dentist than that one, and mounting 
 their horses they rode up to his office and told him 
 their errand. Then they discovered that he had 
 no garments suitable to enter the palace in. So 
 they mounted him on a horse, took him to a ready 
 made clothing store, dressed him appropriately and 
 took him to the palace. He examined into the diffi- 
 culty, found the offending molar, extracted it, and 
 the Sultan was at rest. 
 
 Immediately the Sultan deposed his French den- 
 tist, and put this man in his place, created him a 
 Pasha or peer of the realm, gave him a palace in 
 the city and a palace in the country and an annual 
 stipend that made him one of the rich men in the 
 land. To-day in a garret, pulling teeth at twenty- 
 five cents a tooth, to-morrow peer of the reahn 
 with two palaces and an annual stipend. Had this 
 dentist had the common sense of Joseph all might 
 have gone well with him, but to carry out the 
 illustration of Oriental manners I must finish 
 the story. The dentist, through great prosperity, 
 lost his head, took a pistol and forced his way into 
 the presence of the Chief Admiral and threatened 
 to shoot him. The Chief Admiral asked, " Who is 
 this man ? " They said, " The Sultan yesterday 
 made him a peer." " Oh, did he ? " said the Chief 
 Admiral. With that he called for a carriage and 
 drove to the palace, and said, " Your Majesty, this 
 man whom you created Pasha yesterday threatens 
 to shoot me." " Send him to me," says the Sultan. 
 So the new peer is brought before the Sultan, and 
 
98 God's Book and God's Boy 
 
 like a flash the Sultan takes away his title, his 
 palace in the countrj^, his palace in the city, and 
 his annual stipend and puts him back in his garret. 
 
 That is Orientalism, pure and simple, and that 
 will illustrate (if any one thinks that Joseph's story 
 is rather extraordinary) Oriental methods. For the 
 Oriental people there is nothing extraordinary in 
 anything that an absolute sovereign does. In 
 Joseph's case, however, Pharaoh had good ground 
 for his action. 
 
 So now we have Joseph riding around Egypt 
 in a chariot, with outrunners who cry, "Bow the 
 knee ! " and every man who sees Joseph's chariot 
 coming prostrates himself. Thus God is working 
 out His plan, the malignant plan of the brothers is 
 being thwarted, and God's purposes concerning 
 Israel are moving on to completion with majestic 
 power. 
 
 Now we come to fourteen years of extraordinary 
 activity on the part of this Prime Minister. First, 
 the seven years of great plenty. Second, the seven 
 years of great famine. And here I might say that 
 within a few years there has been dug up in Egypt 
 a scroll which is the petition of certain men to the 
 king for a remission of their taxes because of seven 
 years, consecutively, of famine under which they 
 have been suffering, and that scroll dates back to 
 the days of Joseph. 
 
 During these years of activity Joseph went 
 "throughout all the land of Egypt." That ex- 
 pression gained a new significance to me when I 
 
Joseph — Prisoner and Prime Minister 99 
 
 visited Egypt, for Egypt is like my hand and arm. 
 The hand with outstretched fingers is like the delta 
 of the Nile, and the arm is the river. As you go 
 up the river from the delta south, for fifteen hun- 
 dred miles you can see from the deck of your boat 
 every particle of arable land on either side. For 
 the most part the arable land is but a mile wide on 
 either side of the river, sometimes two miles, but at 
 the very widest five miles. Outside of that sand, 
 eternal sand, where even beetles can hardly live. 
 So that Joseph's going throughout all the land of 
 Egypt to gather grain practically meant that he 
 got into his dahabeah, or native boat, and sailed up 
 and down, riding occasionally a mile, or perhaps 
 two miles, or Q.Ye miles inland, and returning again 
 to his boat, to see that the taxes were properly 
 paid during those years when the ground brought 
 forth by handfuls. 
 
 During all this time Joseph had communicated 
 in no way with his father, and that seems to us 
 rather strange. While he was a slave he could not, 
 nor while he was in prison, but when he came to 
 the position of Prime Minister our modern ideas 
 would naturally suggest that he should make some 
 great effort to find out whether his father was alive 
 or no. But there seems to have been no such effort. 
 In explaining this let us bear in mind that com- 
 munication in those days was not as rapid as in our 
 time. Joseph had no telegraph, and he had no 
 telephone to call his father up, and say, " Hello, is 
 that you, father ? Well, this is Joseph. No, you 
 
loo God^s Book and God's Boy 
 
 are mistaken, I am alive. No, I was not killed, 
 they sold me down in Egypt and put me in prison, 
 and now I am next to the throne. Won't you 
 hurry up, father, and come here, because there is 
 plenty of food here ? " 
 
 The Oriental is ordinarily somewhat phlegmatic 
 and Joseph was very busy during those years of 
 plenty, and I suspect that he felt in his deepest 
 soul, " They will come down sooner or later, and I 
 will see them, and when they come then I will 
 make them understand that God meant all this for 
 good to me and to them as well." 
 
 At last the famine pressed hard even in Pales- 
 tine, and Jacob sent his sons down to Egypt to 
 purchase food. Now comes that interesting series 
 of interviews between Joseph and his brothers, 
 prolonged and repeated as they were. If you read 
 the story in a cursory way you will gain the im- 
 pression that Joseph was hard in heart to his 
 brethren and harsh in manner. And so he was 
 outwardly, because their hearts were hard, and 
 required to be broken before they could be brought 
 to a proper sense of their cruelty and to a right 
 state of mind. But that Joseph did it with kindly 
 intent is evident by the number of times we see it 
 recorded that he refrained from ^veeping, or that 
 he went out and wept because he could not restrain 
 himself, and he was not willing to be seen weeping 
 before the time came when he could reveal himself 
 to them as their brother. All his actions were 
 with intent, and wise, because he desired God's 
 
Joseph — Prisoner and Prime Minister loi 
 
 purposes to be carried out in their hearts and lives 
 as well as in his own. 
 
 Kemembering this we will be better able to in- 
 terpret these interviews, culminating at last in that 
 magnificent burst of affection when Joseph orders 
 every Egyptian out of the court that the Egyptians 
 may not see him break down in paroxysmal w^eep- 
 ing, as one by one he embraces these brothers of 
 his. This is a beautifully tender picture, unsur- 
 passed perhaps anywhere in the Bible excepting in 
 the story of David and Jonathan and of Ruth and 
 Naomi. 
 
 The brothers go back to their father after their 
 first interview with Joseph, not knowing yet who 
 he is, and they tell the story to their father, while 
 he, suffering, broken-hearted, refuses to allow Ben- 
 jamin to go down to Egypt, and says, " Joseph is 
 not, and Simeon is not, and ye will take Benjamin 
 away." Poor blind Jacob says, " All these things 
 are against me." Had he had clearer vision he 
 would have said, "All these things are for me." 
 The selling of Joseph, the arrest of Simeon and the 
 request for Benjamin were all parts of God's plan 
 in the woof and warp of divine providence. 
 
 Paul had clearer vision when in the eighth chap- 
 ter of Romans he said, " And we know that to 
 them that love God all things work together for 
 good." Not "a few things," not "many things," 
 not "most things," but "all things," says the 
 apostle. Had Jacob had Paul's vision he would 
 have said, "This is God's way, and through this 
 
102 God's Book and God's Boy 
 
 devious and sometimes dark pathway God is lead- 
 ing out and up and on." 
 
 It is significant that poor Jacob's confidence in 
 his boys and their fidelity was so small that when 
 at last they told him, " Joseph is alive," he would 
 not believe one of them. What made him believe 
 was the wagons which Joseph sent to bring the 
 old man down, for the record is, ^' And when Jacob 
 saw the wagons that Joseph had sent to carry him 
 the spirit of Jacob their father revived." That is 
 a commentary on his sons and their influence with 
 him, and his confidence in them, and that may 
 make us understand again why Joseph put his heel 
 on them for a while until he could bring them to 
 their senses. 
 
 Then follows the descent into Egypt in accord- 
 ance with what God had told Abraham long before, 
 that his seed must go down to Egypt and there 
 they must endure affliction for generations (or 
 centuries) before they should be ripe for trans- 
 plantation to the land w^hich God gave to Abraham 
 and his seed forever. There in Egypt, first with 
 prosperity and secondly with adversity, God was 
 welding together into w^onderful unity that people 
 whose solidarity never is to be broken until the 
 day of their final redemption. Egypt did for 
 Israel what has never been done for any nation on 
 earth, for the people of purest blood this day on the 
 face of the globe are not Gentiles but the Jewish 
 people, and the nation which God scattered, over 
 two thousand years ago, is still one in its national 
 
Joseph — Prisoner and Prime Minister 103 
 
 unity, still one in its religious adhesiveness, and 
 will remain one until the day that God's purpose 
 is wrought out and they accept Christ as David's 
 greater Son, as the Messiah. God's purpose for 
 Israel is not completed yet. When it is completed, 
 there will come not to Israel only but to the Gen- 
 tile world the fullness of the divine blessing, for 
 as the apostle says, if the casting away of Israel 
 has been a blessing to the Gentile world, what 
 shall their ingathering be unto the same world but 
 life from the dead ? 
 
 At last the end of life comes to this grand man 
 Joseph, and his abiding faith in God and His 
 promises is shown when he takes an oath of the 
 children of Israel, as told in the last chapter of 
 Genesis, saying, " God shall surely visit you, and ye 
 shall carry up my bones from hence." Embalmed 
 and laid in a mummy case, and that in a sarcoph- 
 agus, the body of Joseph is the longest unburied 
 body in history, for it remained unburied probably 
 for two centuries or more, a standing witness to his 
 faith in God. For when, in passing, an Israelite 
 child said to its father, "Whose is that sarcoph- 
 agus ? " the answer might well have been, " The 
 sarcophagus of Joseph." " Why is it not laid away 
 in some final resting place ? " " Because he took 
 an oath of us, saying God would one day visit us, 
 and we should take his body when we go, and my 
 boy, go you shall, one day." 
 
 A wonderful testimony was that uninterred body, 
 therefore, for at least two hundred and fifteen 
 
104 God's Book and God's Boy 
 
 years, and it is most uplifting to realize that on that 
 night of superlative excitement when Israel gathered 
 itself together to march, they never forgot the 
 body of Joseph. Some committee was put on guard 
 to see that when they started that mummy case in 
 the sarcophagus should not be left behind, and the 
 record is that on that night when they marched 
 they took with them the body of Joseph. 
 
 No funeral procession was ever as long as that of 
 this wonderful man, for his funeral procession was 
 forty years long. Throughout all their wanderings 
 in the wilderness they never forgot that mummy 
 case. Whether by day or by night they journeyed 
 it went with them. Whatever might have been 
 left behind that never was. Though the story 
 never relates that it was so, we know it must have 
 been so, because in Joshua xxiv. 32, after they have 
 gotten to the very centre of the land, the record 
 reads that they buried the body of Joseph in 
 Shechem. 
 
 So wondrously the man's life begins, continues 
 and closes. So wondrously God's providence 
 elaborates the divine plan, making use of human sin 
 and frailty, making use of man's perverse desires as 
 well as man's fidelity and consecration, and work- 
 ing out that which He said at the beginning He 
 would accomplish that His people should be so- 
 journers in the land of Egypt, and in due time they 
 should be brought out and transplanted into the 
 land flowing with milk and honey. 
 
yi 
 
 MOSES— LEADER AND LAWGIVER 
 
 FOR a short while after Joseph died thi.Qgs 
 went well with Israel in Egypt. Then 
 there arose a ruler who knew not Joseph. 
 Israel was enslaved and for many scores of years 
 served by the brick kiln. Tyranny increases until 
 finally when bondage is at its most cruel point there 
 comes the deliverer, and this gives rise to the Jewish 
 proverb, " When the tale of bricks is doubled, then 
 comes Moses," which is their way of saying, " When 
 night is darkest morning is nearest," or " Man's ex- 
 tremity is God's opportunity." 
 
 Moses was born while the decree was still in 
 force that all male children of the Israelites should 
 be thrown into the river. Here we have, as in the 
 case of Joseph, a clean-cut collision between the 
 divine plan concerning this baby and the human 
 plan. As we said then, so we again say, it is 
 charming to watch the working out of the divine 
 plan and the pushing to the wall of the human 
 plan ; to see how God causes the wrath of men to 
 praise Him and the remainder He restrains. 
 
 God's plan concerning this baby is " He shall de- 
 liver my people." Pharaoh's plan is " He shall go 
 into the river." Mark how in God's plan He makes 
 use of human instrumentality and, in saving the life 
 
 105 
 
io6 God's Book and God's Boy 
 
 of this babe without any miracle whatsoever, over- 
 turns Pharaoh's plan, and gives His own plan the 
 right of way. There are in this chain of divine 
 providences delivering the baby many links, some 
 of them inconspicuous, yet all of them necessary 
 for the fulfilling of the divine purpose. Among 
 these links is a woman's wit. Jochebed, Moses' 
 mother, knowing that she cannot conceal her child 
 much longer, puts her wits to work, conceives the 
 plan of the ark of bulrushes, daubed inside and 
 outside with pitch and slime, and entrusts her child 
 to the river in this little ark. Another link is the 
 sister's fidelity. Miriam, thirteen years old, is put 
 to watch that baby boy to see that no harm comes 
 to the child, and to see that when Pharaoh's 
 daughter comes down, she, Miriam, shall intervene 
 at the psychological moment. Had Miriam been 
 unfaithful and run off and played with the girls, 
 Pharaoh's daughter might have come down to the 
 river and found the child and taken it away, and 
 then Moses never would have known his ancestry. 
 Well, the princess came down to the river, and see- 
 ing the little ark among the bulrushes, curiosity 
 (another link) is aroused and she sends her maid to 
 see what might be in the ark. There they find a 
 little baby weeping and this brings in the fourth 
 link in the chain of divine providences and that is a 
 baby's tears. The tears of the child touch the heart 
 of the princess and she says, " This is one of the 
 Hebrews' children." 
 
 Were I a poet I would begin my song with 
 
Moses — Leader and Lawgiver 107 
 
 Moses' tears and would make them swell into such 
 a flood as should drown Pharaoh's army before I 
 got through. 
 
 So God's plan concerning the saving of this boy 
 succeeds and Pharaoh's plan miscarries, and before 
 the day is ended Moses is back in his mother's arms 
 with the shield of the princess over him to guard 
 him from harm, and actually with wages paid the 
 mother to nurse her own boy who has now become 
 the adopted son of Pharaoh's daughter. 
 
 It is charming to see these divine plans working 
 out. From the time that Moses' mother entrusted 
 him in the ark to the river, to the time that she got 
 him back into her arms, with wages for his care and 
 with royalty for his protector, how many hours do 
 you think elapsed ? Moses' mother was shrewd 
 enough to figure to a nicety the time when the 
 princess would come down, for she would never 
 leave her baby boy to scream and cry uselessly in 
 the river. I make no question that it was within 
 an hour from the time she went out from her house 
 and deposited the ark in the Nile, to the time that 
 the child was brought back and was safe in his 
 mother's arms. 
 
 When Moses can no longer be cared for in his 
 home, he goes to Pharaoh's court, and for practi- 
 cally forty years enjoys all the advantages of court 
 life along educational lines. For we read in the JSTew 
 Testament he was learned in all the wisdom of the 
 Egyptians, and that meant all the wisdom there 
 was in those days, because Egypt was the most 
 
lo8 God's Book and God's Boy 
 
 cultured land of that time. Every advantage that 
 could be laid before him or poured into his lap was 
 his and Pharaoh himself is educating this boy to 
 bring down Pharaoh's pride. 
 
 The forty years of court life came to an abrupt 
 end. Moses, always patriotic and loyal, found one 
 day an Egyptian shamefully abusing an Israelite. 
 He defended his co-patriot, slew the oppressor and 
 buried him in the sand. But the deed could not 
 be hid, and the day following, Moses learns to his 
 amazement and alarm that the deed is out and he 
 must flee. It would never do even for Pharaoh to 
 stand in defense of Moses, a member of the op- 
 pressed race as against an Egyptian. Moses knew 
 that and the result was that he abandoned the land 
 of his birth, and fled to the back side of the desert, 
 even to Mount Horeb. 
 
 There begins the second period of this extraordi- 
 nary man's life, and now, again for forty years, we 
 find him in the wilderness living the life of a shep- 
 herd. It was in these years of comparative soli- 
 tude, I believe, that Moses learned much concerning 
 God and His ways. In silent communion with God 
 he could learn lessons that could not be learned in 
 Memphis or Thebes. And in solitude he could have 
 spiritual experiences that never would come to him 
 amidst a multitude of people. So also Elijah learned 
 much in the wilderness before ever he had his first 
 encounter with Ahab. Paul himself after his con- 
 version went down into Arabia where he tarried 
 for three years and there had such revelations as 
 
Moses — Leader and Lawgiver 109 
 
 prepared him for his future career. John the Bap- 
 tist too came out of the wilderness to deliver his 
 messages, *' Kepent, prepare ! " And our Lord Him- 
 self came out of thirty years' silence, and forty 
 days of bitter temptation in the wilderness and 
 only then began His active ministry. The fact is 
 that the believer can learn in solitude that which 
 he never can learn among the multitude. The 
 danger of modern Christian activities is that in 
 their very multiplicity we lose our personal grasp 
 on things unseen, and because we are surrounded 
 with the visible, the invisible becomes shadowy and 
 vague. Never must the worker lose secret com- 
 munion upward and neglect private meditation on 
 things divine, for in solitude with God he gets his 
 strength for service among the multitude. 
 
 At last the forty years as shepherd in the wilder- 
 ness also came to an abrupt end. One day Moses, 
 as he had been doing for forty years, was leading 
 his flock to the pasturage, and he saw a bush burn- 
 ing. Many times had he seen burning bushes, 
 doubtless, but there was something this time which 
 struck him as unique. The bush burned on but 
 would not burn up ; and he said, " I will turn aside 
 now and see why the bush is not burnt." That 
 was the miraculous sign of the divine presence, and 
 there Moses received the divine call to leave his 
 solitary life and to return to a life of the most 
 strenuous activity. 
 
 He declined at first, and naturally. " Who am 
 I," says Moses, " that I should go and deliver Israel 
 
1 lo God's Book and God's Boy 
 
 from the bondage of . Pharaoh ? " And indeed 
 Moses might have made a very good argument to 
 excuse himself from obeying the divine command. 
 He might have said, " O God, do you not know 
 that I have been forty years in this wilderness be- 
 cause, when I was in favour at court, I struck down 
 one Egyptian? And now I am in disfavour at 
 court, and you tell me to go back and deliver the 
 nation ? Impossible ! " The argument would have 
 been much stronger than the arguments which we 
 sometimes produce to excuse ourselves from difficult 
 duty. But Moses made no such argument, and 
 when God said, " Surely I will be with thee," he 
 accepted the divine commission and with his brother 
 started down to the land of the Pharaohs. 
 
 It is worth our while here to pause for a moment, 
 to realize that God's call to a special service came 
 to Moses in the midst of his daily vocation. There 
 was nothing extraordinary that morning when 
 Moses started for the pasture land. There was no 
 sign that this was to be to him a pivotal day in all 
 his earthly experience. In the midst of his daily 
 toil comes the call. With the call comes the 
 promise, and to the call is returned the loyal 
 response. 
 
 This is not the only case of this kind in the 
 world. 
 
 I see a farmer threshing in the wine press. 
 Gideon is his name. It never occurred to him as 
 he took the flail and went forth to his ordinary 
 daily task that he was to receive a call that day to 
 
Moses — Leader and Lawgiver 1 1 1 
 
 be the deliverer of Israel from the tyranny of 
 Midian. But that was Gideon's day. Covered 
 with chaff, wet with perspiration, suddenly there 
 comes a vision and a call. The result was that a 
 benediction came to Israel, such as they had not 
 known for years, through this turning of the man 
 from his daily task to larger duty. 
 
 Elisha is plowing with twelve yoke of oxen and 
 he himself with the twelfth. As he put his hand 
 that day on the handle of the plow he never 
 dreamed that that was his day. But that was his 
 day truly, for storming up from the south came 
 the great prophet Elijah, and taking his mantle off 
 he threw it over the shoulders of Elisha, and Elisha 
 at once knew that he was to be Elijah's successor. 
 
 We are at the receipt of customs. Matthew sits 
 there and has opened his little office for the receipt 
 of taxes. Never did he dream that that was to be 
 the pivotal day in his life. But that day the 
 Nazarene came past and looking Matthew quietly 
 in the eye. He said, " Matthew, follow me." That 
 was Matthew's day. 
 
 Peter has been fishing all the night and is weary, 
 and rather disappointed because he had caught 
 nothing. In accordance with the divine command 
 he changes his method and encloses a large haul of 
 fish. That was Peter's day, for the command to 
 him was " Follow me," and he left all, boats, fish, 
 net, business, partners, and obeyed the call. 
 
 If I have made my meaning clear you will real- 
 ize that in these days the divine command to you for 
 
1 12 God's Book and God's Boy 
 
 larger service may come at any time or any place. 
 You need no Campbell Morgan, no Moody, no Billy 
 Sunday, no revival service in order to receive God's 
 call. It may come as it came to Samuel in the 
 darkness of the night. It may come at any time. 
 Our attitude towards our Heavenly Father is to be 
 the attitude of all these men. Listen, and when 
 the divine call comes assume the attitude of obe- 
 dience. 
 
 Do calls come in these days as they did then ? 
 I believe they do. Not, perhaps, in the same way 
 with burning bush or audible voice, but yet with 
 the same clearness and imperative command. 
 
 About fifty years ago in London, young Dr. 
 Barnardo, then a medical student, was giving vol- 
 unteer service in establishing a little school, in one 
 small room, for street waifs in the east end of Lon- 
 don. He and a friend acted as janitor, teacher, 
 everything. One night he was closing up his room 
 and the boys had all gone except a little fellow who 
 stood by the stove warming himself. The medical 
 student said to him, " Go home, little boy," but the 
 boy never moved. Dr. Barnardo went on complet- 
 ing arrangements for closing up, and was about to 
 leave when he noticed the lad still there. He 
 walked over to the little fellow and said, " Come, 
 little boy, why don't you go home ? " The boy 
 said, " I have no home." The Doctor did not be- 
 lieve it, because at that time he did not fully know 
 the destitution of the east end. Finally he took 
 him to his own lodging and fed him and induced 
 
Moses — Leader and Lawgiver 113 
 
 him to talk. Dr. Barnardo said, '' Keally, have you 
 no home, little boy ? " and the boy replied, " No, 
 I have no father or mother or relatives ; I sleep 
 anywhere." " Well," said Dr. Barnardo, " are there 
 any other little boys like you ? " The little fellow 
 said, " Lots of them." " Will you take me to see 
 them ? " said the Doctor. The boy consented, and 
 so at midnight out they went through the narrow 
 streets, and finally brought up at a place which 
 they entered through a rear alleyway. Then the 
 boy pointing to a coal bin said, " There they are, 
 in there, lots of them." The Doctor lit a match 
 and looked into the coal bin. It was empty. 
 Nothing abashed the boy said, " The cops have been 
 after them ; they are on the roof." He then climbed 
 a low brick wall, pulled the Doctor up after him, 
 and there with the tin roof under them and the 
 winter sky over them lay thirteen boys sound asleep. 
 The Doctor's guide said, " Shall I wake them ? " 
 and, telling the story. Dr. Barnardo says, " I had 
 this one boy on my hand and did not know what 
 to do with him and now he offered to wake thir- 
 teen more on me, so I replied, ' No, let tbem sleep.' " 
 
 Then and there, however. Dr. Barnardo heard 
 God's call to devote himself to the outcast children 
 of the east end of London. That was Dr. Bar- 
 nardo's day and as a consequence, last night there 
 slept under sheltering roofs of institutions started 
 by the Doctor over seven thousand waifs and strays 
 from the streets of the great city. 
 
 Moses heard God's call, heeded and obeyed, and 
 
114 God^s Book and God's Boy 
 
 down he went to Egypt, there to undertake the 
 task of delivering Israel from the bondage of the 
 Egyptian. 
 
 Now follows the conflict between Moses and 
 Pharaoh. Notice the attempted compromises on 
 Pharaoh's part with Jehovah : 
 
 Exodus V. 2. Pharaoh : " I know not Jehovah 
 and moreover I will not let Israel go." 
 
 Exodus viii. 8. After the plague of the frogs 
 Pharaoh says : " Entreat Jehovah and I will let the 
 people go," and when relief comes (viii. 15) Pha- 
 raoh hardens his heart. 
 
 Once more there comes a turn in the screw of di- 
 vine pressure (Exodus viii. 25), when flies have 
 cursed the land, excepting only the Israelites' por- 
 tion. Pharaoh calls for relief and says, " Go ye, 
 sacrifice to your God in the land." That was a 
 compromise, — let them go, but not too far away. 
 But when respite comes then Pharaoh's heart is 
 hardened again (v. 32). 
 
 Once more in Exodus ix. 28, after the terrible 
 scourge of the hail the king relents and says, " I 
 will let you go." Relief, however, comes and once 
 more the heart of Pharaoh is hardened (Exodus ix. 
 35), " and he did not let the children of Israel go." 
 
 In Exodus X. we have a continuation of the great 
 conflict between Moses and the sovereign, ending 
 by the sovereign saying, " Go now ye that are men," 
 meaning that the women and children must remain 
 behind. But Moses would not accept the compro- 
 mise. Again, after the plague of the locusts (Ex- 
 
Moses — Leader and Lawgiver 115 
 
 odus X. 24), Pharaoh once more relents— the pressure 
 is terrific — and he says, " Go, only let your flocks 
 and your herds be stayed." He knew that if 
 Israel's property were left behind, Israel would re- 
 turn for this property, and again be under his power. 
 To this offer Moses replies, " J^o, there shall not a 
 hoof be left behind." Then comes Pharaoh's 
 answer, " Get thee from me, take heed to thyself, 
 see my face no more ; for in that day that thou 
 seest my face, thou shalt die." 
 
 Then comes the final turn to the screw of the di- 
 vine overwhelming pressure, in the slaying of the 
 first born, and all Egypt cries in woe and despair. 
 Then it is that quickly Pharaoh sends for Moses in 
 the night and says, " Go, men, women, children, 
 flocks, herds, everything, and pray for me " (Ex- 
 odus xii. 31-33). 
 
 That is the outcome of the conflict between Je- 
 hovah and Pharaoh, — Pharaoh crushed and Jehovah 
 and His people triumphant. 
 
 So Israel, led by this wondrous leader, marches 
 out gloriously and Miriam on the farther side of 
 the Ked Sea sings with her damsels their song of 
 deliverance. 
 
 After this for forty years Moses is substantially 
 in the same general vicinity of Sinai, where he 
 had been previously for forty years, only now he is 
 a leader of people and not a leader of sheep. Here 
 he becomes legislator, being the divine medium 
 through whom God's laws (the decalogue and other 
 laws) are transmitted to men. 
 
n6 God's Book and God's Boy 
 
 This leads us to say that in these later days since 
 the discovery of the Hammurabi code of laws, it is 
 customary for some critics to say that the Mosaic 
 Code is copied from that of Hammurabi, and that 
 there is nothing original about the Mosaic legisla- 
 tion. To this our brief reply is that the Ham- 
 murabi Code is saturated with idolatry. The 
 Mosaic Code is pure from all idolatrous tendencies. 
 It is based on that declaration, " Hear, O Israel, 
 the Lord our God is one God and thou shalt love 
 the Lord thy God with all thy heart." In the 
 second place the Hammurabi Code shows signs of 
 licentious worship in making definite legal pro- 
 vision for what are called the " Sisters of the 
 Gods," under whose ceremonies there lay a sub- 
 stratum of gross licentiousness. 
 
 The Mosaic Code is free from all that. 
 
 In looking at the character of Moses we realize 
 that of all Old Testament worthies he stands easily 
 the chief. There arose not a prophet like unto him 
 to the end of the history of Israel. As Paul in the 
 New Testament is easily the first of the apostles, 
 so Moses is easily the first of the prophets. In 
 view of this fact we are much astonished when we 
 find such a contrast between two experiences in 
 this man's wonderful career. 
 
 You remember in the matter of the golden calf 
 as told in Exodus xxxii. Moses pleads for his people. 
 In bitter sorrow over their defection, and anxiety 
 over their fate, he says, " Forgive their sin and if 
 not, blot me, I pray thee, out of thy book." 
 
Moses — Leader and Lawgiver 117 
 
 That is very wonderful. It is as though he said, 
 " If they must perish or I must perish, let me per- 
 ish, — only forgive them." That was almost divine. 
 Yet later on, as told in Numbers, the eleventh chap- 
 ter, when Israel lusts after flesh and cries, *' Give 
 us flesh to eat," you find Moses occupying a posi- 
 tion that is fairly startling. 
 
 It seems that the burden of the people had so 
 worn on this man that he lost control of himself 
 and as he hears the people weep from afar, Moses 
 is displeased. Turning to God he cries with ter- 
 ribly faultfinding spirit, " Wherefore hast thou 
 dealt ill with thy servant and wherefore have I not 
 found favour in thy sight, that thou layest the bur- 
 den of all this people upon me ? Have I conceived 
 all this people ? Have I brought them forth that 
 thou shouldst say unto me, carry them in thy 
 bosom as a nursing father carryeth the sucking 
 child, unto the land which thou swearest unto their 
 fathers. Whence should I have flesh to give unto 
 all this people ? for they weep unto me saying, 
 Give us flesh that we may eat. I am not able to 
 bear all this people alone, because it is too heavy 
 for me. And if thou deal thus with me, kill me, 
 I pray thee, out of hand." 
 
 That is most startling. Is that the same man 
 who plead so to save the people ? It simply shows 
 how fallible the greatest of men are, and how he 
 who thinks that he stand eth should take heed lest 
 he fall. 
 
 It was speaking unadvisedly with his lips that 
 
1 18 God's Book and God's Boy 
 
 prevented this man from entering into the land. 
 To see the land was his privilege but to enter the 
 land was denied. And so, on Nebo, Moses looks 
 over the land from south to north, then passes 
 away, and Jehovah buries him, and to this day no 
 man knows the place of his sepulchre. 
 
 But in Jude we are given a flash of light upon 
 that burial ceremony on Mount Nebo, for Jude says 
 that Satan contended for the body of Moses and 
 the Archangel resisted. Why do you think Satan 
 desired the body of Moses, and why did God send 
 the Archangel to resist him ? My interpretation is 
 this : Down in Egypt, from which the people had 
 come out, it was customary to deify their rulers. 
 Israel tended always to idolatry, and there was 
 danger that when Moses was dead Israel would 
 deify their leader and start to worship him. Their 
 idolatrous tendency is abundantly proved (2 Kings 
 xviii. 4) in the case of the brazen serpent which 
 they brought up, and to which even in Hezekiah's 
 day they were burning incense. 
 
 Had Satan got that body and brought it down 
 into the camp there was danger that the people 
 would embalm it and worship it. That (I think) is 
 one of the causes of the conflict between Satan and 
 the Archangel, for God would not allow Moses' 
 body to be thus abused, and would never let Moses, 
 the proclaimer of one God, be the occasion of 
 idolatry. 
 
 It has always been to me a comfort that after all 
 Moses did get into the land, for on the Mount of 
 
Moses — Leader and Lawgiver 119 
 
 Transfiguration it was his privilege to enter. Be- 
 fore bis death, from the southern extremity of the 
 land he looked over to the northern boundary line 
 where Mount Hermon could be easily seen. When 
 Moses came to the Mount of Transfiguration on the 
 north of the land, he entered and looked clean over 
 to the south. Oh, if we could only know what 
 flashed through Moses' mind as from the northern 
 mountain he saw the southern mountain where he 
 had breathed his last in his earthly pilgrimage ! 
 
 Yet once more Moses appears. This time, when 
 on the Isle of Patmos John sees and hears things 
 divine, there suddenly breaks upon him a great 
 song as of a multitude singing, and he listens to 
 the word of the song. Lo and behold it is the 
 "song of Moses and the Lamb." In that better 
 land the evangelist says he heard the name of the 
 Eedeemer and of Moses coupled together. The 
 name of Moses is the only name in Heaven coupled 
 with the name of the Son of God. 
 
 There Moses is exalted above all the sons of men 
 and that makes me believe that Moses was the 
 grandest man that ever lived or ever will live, he 
 being the only man whose name is taken on the 
 lips of the redeemed in glory in conjunction with 
 the name of the Eedeemer Himself. Surely, then, 
 we can say with more of emphasis than was said in 
 the Old Testament — There has not been seen a 
 prophet like unto this one with whom God spake 
 face to face. 
 
YII 
 
 THE FIVE GATES OF APPROACH TO THE 
 HUMAN MIND 
 
 WE are facing each other at this moment, 
 but you do not see me and I do not see 
 you. No one ever saw me, not even 
 my mother. She saw my body, she saw my gar- 
 ments, but me, never. Nobody has ever seen me 
 excepting He of whom the Psalmist speaks so won- 
 drously in the one hundred and thirty-ninth Psalm. 
 I dwell hidden from all observation, and no man 
 can reach me unless he reaches me through one of 
 five gates of approach. 
 
 It is of great importance, therefore, that preach- 
 ers and teachers should understand how best to use 
 these five gates of approach to the mind of the 
 hearer in the congregation or of the scholar in the 
 class. These five gates are, eye gate, ear gate, 
 nose gate, mouth gate, touch gate. We call them 
 the five senses. It is impossible for us to imagine 
 a sixth sense. Through these five senses all knowl- 
 edge of the external world, all communication with 
 our fellow men has to enter. Of these, by far the 
 most rapid is the sense of sight. More marches 
 into the human mind through eye gate than 
 through all the other gates put together. This is 
 especially true in childhood. 
 
 1 20 
 
Five Gates to the Human Mind 1 2 1 
 
 The next most rapid method of approach to the 
 human mind is through ear gate. When you cut 
 out what we have learned through eye gate and 
 ear gate, you cut out the enormous majority of the 
 facts that find entrance to the human mind. Where 
 eye gate and ear gate collide, that is to say, where 
 different facts appeal simultaneously to those two 
 gates, eye gate has the right of way and ear gate 
 is pushed to the side. It is impossible to appeal to 
 a human being through ear gate while at the same 
 time some one else is appealing to him through eye 
 gate. Dr. Moore, your President, is a noted speaker, 
 but if he were on this platform and were talking 
 to you about the most fascinating thing in the 
 world, I would wipe him out in a moment if you 
 would allow me to appeal simply to your eyes. 
 Imagine him standing there and I here. He is 
 addressing you on a most important theme. But if 
 I begin to do this (here the speaker took off his 
 coat and put it under a chair), he is finished. 
 (Great laughter.) I have proved what I said. 
 
 It is, therefore, imperative for the preacher or 
 teacher to learn how most wisely to use eye gate 
 in connection with ear gate. When the speaker 
 has the attention of his hearers through these two 
 gates simultaneously, then nothing can intervene. 
 The mischievous boy in Sunday-school who has 
 brought the seductive pin, forgets all about his pin 
 when he is seeing something and having it ex- 
 plained ; the pin has a moment of rest. 
 
 It is not often possible to appeal to an audience 
 
122 God's Book and God's Boy 
 
 through nose gate. I have done it, but the op- 
 portunities are rare. At one time we had the 
 lesson of Mary anointing the Saviour's feet, and it 
 is said that the house was filled with the fragrance 
 of the ointment. Before the lesson was read in 
 Sundaj^-school I said, "All teachers to the plat- 
 form, please." They all rose and came. "All 
 teachers take out their handkerchiefs, please." 
 All did so. Of course, the school was on edge, 
 thinking, " What is he going to do now ? " Then 
 I produced a bottle of cologne and poured the 
 whole bottle over their handkerchiefs saying, 
 " Teachers, go to your classes, waving hand- 
 kerchiefs ; scholars, smell." Of course, the whole 
 house smelt of cologne. I asked, " Does it smell 
 sweet?" "Yes, sir." "Well, to-day we have a 
 lesson telling of a house smelling far sweeter. 
 Turn to the lesson." 
 
 When, however, eye gate and ear gate are closed, 
 as in the case of Hellen Keller, we have to fall 
 back on touch gate, and it is surprising to see how 
 sensitive touch gate is when eye gate and ear gate 
 are shut. Some things can never pass through 
 touch gate, such as colour and perfume, but armies 
 of facts have marched into Helen Keller's mind 
 through touch gate. 
 
 If in a Sunday-school class it is possible to com- 
 bine an attack on eye gate, ear gate and touch gate 
 simultaneously, then you have got firm hold of that 
 scholar. It is impossible for a scholar to move 
 while looking, listening and touching. He is a 
 
Five Gates to the Human Mind i 23 
 
 clever teacher who knows how to march facts into 
 the human mind through three gates simultane- 
 ously. 
 
 I am going to deal this morning with the attack 
 on eye gate, one often neglected by preacher and 
 by Sunday-school teacher. I say by preacher, for 
 alas ! preachers fail to use eye gate with the younger 
 members of their congregations. It can be most 
 successfully done if you will only take the pains. 
 Object sermons are welcome not to children only, 
 but to the adults in every congregation that you 
 possibly can minister to. This is my experience. 
 
 When I became Superintendent of City Missions 
 and began preaching in churches up-town I went to 
 a very conservative Presbyterian church where I 
 knew I should have to preach frequently. I said to 
 the elders, " May I preach five minute object ser- 
 mons to the children ? " Courtesy prevented them 
 from saying, " No," so the clerk of the session said, 
 " Well, you might try it." The following Sunday 
 I preached an object sermon of about five minutes. 
 The next day I got a letter from the clerk of the 
 session saying, " The session desires me to say that 
 you can preach as many object sermons as you 
 want in this pulpit." 
 
 The adults are just as well pleased as the young 
 people with object sermons but, as minister, you 
 woo and win the young people by a five to eight 
 minute object talk as you can do in no other pos- 
 sible way, so that they look forward with a great 
 deal of pleasure to going to church. At Bar Harbor, 
 
124 God's Book and God's Boy 
 
 where I preach every summer, they often 'phone 
 me, " Are you going to preach to the children this 
 morning ? " If I should say no, which I never do, 
 the children would stay away ; if I say yes, the 
 children come. 
 
 Now the underlying principle in the handling of 
 objects for spiritual purposes is this : Everything 
 material has some likeness to something spiritual. 
 That is a law without any exception. Let me re- 
 peat it. Everything material has some likeness to 
 something spiritual. That is, there is an analogy 
 alonff some line or other between everv material 
 thing and some spiritual thing. It is for the 
 preacher or the teacher to discern those likenesses, 
 those analogies, so as to be able to rightly handle 
 the material object for spiritual purposes. 
 
 Out in the East a missionary told me this spring 
 that the syllogism does not touch the Eastern mind. 
 But a parable or analogy will convince an Oriental, 
 and he says, " That settles it." Just so a parable or 
 an analogy will reach a child where a syllogism 
 will fall flat. Learn then, my friend, the analogy 
 between things material and things spiritual, be- 
 tween the visible and the invisible. 
 
 How can we do this ? By patient work. In the 
 days when I was trying to learn, I would sit down 
 in my study, pick out any object in the room and 
 force my mind to discover an analogy between that 
 object and some spiritual truth. Not all objects 
 are equally rich in analogies, I know full well ; but 
 it will do you good to sit down and force your mind 
 
Five Gates to the Human Mind 1 25 
 
 to draw even obscure analogies. Slowly you will 
 become adept in seeing just where the attractive 
 analogies lie. I was aroused when I was a student 
 in the Seminary to paying attention to this matter 
 of object teaching by an address I heard given in a 
 Sunday-school convention by the then noted Sun- 
 day-school worker, Edward Eggleston. I went to 
 that Sunday-school convention with the superb self- 
 conceit of a theological student who thought he 
 knew it all. I soon found I knew nothing, and 
 then I began to learn. 
 
 Turn now to these analogies, and permit me to 
 give you specimens of analogies between things 
 material and things spiritual. Here is a watch. 
 That watch in many points is like a boy. One time 
 in a class I said to a boy, " In what respect is this 
 watch like a boy ? " The boy promptly said, " It 
 has two hands." 
 
 " Yes. Are the hands pointing right ? " 
 ' " I suppose so." 
 
 " Do your hands always point right ? " 
 
 Shamefacedly he said, " JSTo." How swiftly that 
 arrow sped to its mark ! 
 
 Then we went on and the following analogies 
 were developed : every watch has an inside and an 
 outside and so has a boy. The inside of that watch 
 is far more important than the outside, and so it is 
 with a boy ; for as a watch with a gorgeous out- 
 side, jewelled, and a poor inside is a poor watch, and 
 one with a pewter outside but a good inside is a 
 good watch, so a boy or girl dressed up to the nines, 
 
126 God's Book and God's Boy 
 
 and foul inside is a poor boy or girl, and a poorly 
 dressed boy or girl, clean inside, is of more value 
 than gold, yea, than much fine gold. That watch 
 needs winding up every day, and so does a boy. 
 Boys' bodies all need winding up three times a day, 
 breakfast, dinner and supper, and every right kind 
 of boy gets a twist or two between meals if he can 
 get hold of something to eat ; that is right. But a 
 boy has not only a body, he has a mind, and his 
 mind needs to be wound up. What is the public 
 school for ? To wind up his mind. "What is college 
 for ? To wind up his mind. What is the theolog- 
 ical seminary for? To wind up your minds. It 
 is a good thing to keep your mind wound up. But 
 a boy has more than a body and a mind, he has a 
 soul, and the soul has to be wound up. Who can 
 wind it up ? Only God. See how quickly these 
 analogies come. This watch is now invisible to 
 anybody here (putting it in his pocket). Does the 
 watch say, "Ha, nobody can see me now, I am 
 going to stop " ? Oh, no. It is a good watch ; 
 light or dark, it keeps on doing its work. But 
 many a boy and girl says, " Teacher is not seeing 
 now, it is my chance." See what a good example 
 the watch sets ; light or dark, visible or invisible, it 
 is working all the time as well as it knows how. 
 
 This watch, if it goes right, goes according to the 
 sun. If when the sun is at the zenith this watch 
 does not say twelve o'clock, the watch is wrong. 
 The sun governs all watches, and they are right or 
 wrong according as they synchronize with it. So 
 
Five Gates to the Human Mind 127 
 
 I am right or wrong according as I synchronize 
 with whom ? With Him whom we call the Sun of 
 Kighteousness. When I keep time with Him, then 
 I am right ; if not, I am wrong. 
 
 Suppose you had a lesson on Jesus' utterances 
 with regard to the bread of life. " I am the bread 
 of life ; your fathers ate the manna in the wilder- 
 ness and they died ; if any man eat of this bread, 
 he shall live." Take, then, into the pulpit, or into 
 the class, some bread. What is this for? To 
 satisfy my hunger and give me strength. Bread 
 stands for all bodily nourishment, and God so 
 made us that we need it, and it is right that we 
 should have it. But there are more kinds of hunger 
 than one ; there is the hunger I feel in my stom- 
 ach ; there is the hunger I feel in my mind. Every 
 question a boy asks is a sign that he is hungry, 
 otherwise he would not ask it ; he is hungry for 
 knowledge. A boy says to me, " Where is Ant- 
 werp, that the Germans have just taken ? I am 
 anxious to know." If, in reply, I offer him a piece 
 of bread, will that satisfy his mental hunger ? 
 What does he want to satisfy this mental hunger ? 
 A geography. I hand him a geography and I say, 
 *'Look at the map of Belgium there." He does so 
 and is satisfied. All books, all educational institu- 
 tions, have for their object the satisfying some kind 
 of mental hunger. I supply the boy's lody with 
 bread, I supply the boy's mind with facts. 
 
 But the boy has a different hunger. He is anx- 
 ious to know what to do about his sins. He knows 
 
128 God's Book and God's Boy 
 
 he is a transgressor; he knows that he cannot 
 cleanse his own heart. The boy is hungry for 
 spiritual knowledge, and I hand him an arithmetic. 
 Will that help him? AVhat does he need? He 
 needs the Book which contains the story of Him 
 who is the bread of life, and you point him to this 
 Book. So physical hunger may be met by bread, 
 mental hunger is met by books, but spiritual hun- 
 ger may be met only by Him who is the bread of 
 Hfe. 
 
 Take another illustration. This I never used 
 before last Sunday, but last Sunday I preached 
 to a very large mission congregation spilling over 
 into side rooms, on the complaint brought against 
 Paul in Thessalonica where the people said, " These 
 that have turned the world upside down are come 
 hither also." I held up a large, very handsome 
 vase and said, " See ; I have a lot of these vases 
 on the mantelpiece at home, and if I come out to 
 breakfast and find them all upside down, I say, 
 *What is the matter with the servant girl this 
 morning? She must be crazy.'" What would I 
 do ? Go around and turn them all right side up. 
 What did they say about Paul ? " This man turns 
 the world upside down." Is that true ? Yes, be- 
 cause the world was then upside down, and if you 
 turn it upside down again, you turn it right side 
 up. We are upside down, and what does God want 
 to do with us ? Nothing but what Paul wanted to 
 do — turn us upside down again, so that we may be 
 right side up. 
 
Five Gates to the Human Mind 1 29 
 
 You see, I am using only simple things ; I am 
 not using ornate, complex objects, and I never do. 
 If you go into complex object teaching, you will 
 surprise and delight more than you will profit. 
 That is the danger of all of these electrical experi- 
 ments and clever chemical experiments, both with 
 adults and children ; they will say, " My, wasn't he 
 clever ? " and will forget the truth you wanted to 
 impart. Therefore, the utmost simplicity is what 
 I would recommend to any young man trying in 
 the Sunday-school or in the pulpit to use objects. 
 
 Here is a bunch of keys. To me that is very 
 valuable. JSTo two keys in that bunch will open 
 the same lock. This is a key to my apartment; 
 this is a key to my door in the ofiice ; this is a key 
 to the compartment inside the safe where valuables 
 are kept. Every key has its own door that it 
 opens. These keys open things material — doors, 
 desks, safes. Are they the only kind of keys that 
 there are ? No. There are compartments of knowl- 
 edge that I want to get into, and these keys will 
 not help me there. Books are keys to mental store- 
 houses of priceless treasure. Every good book is a 
 key to a priceless inheritance ; every bad book is 
 a key to the bottomless pit. See, then, how care- 
 fully I must use my keys. The public school is 
 offering you boys and girls keys; the college is 
 offering you young men and women keys. If you 
 should see me go down the James Eiver and throw 
 this bunch of keys into the water, you would say, 
 " What is the matter with him ; has he lost his 
 
130 God's Book and God's Boy 
 
 senses ? " Yet boys and girls in the public schools 
 throw their keys into the water ; they will not use 
 them ; alas I what is the matter with them ? 
 
 Then there are keys to things spiritual, and 
 many throw those keys away. This is a key to 
 everything spiritual (indicating Bible). There is 
 the key to eternal life. 
 
 ISTow do you see that in all of these analogies I 
 work always from the material towards the mental 
 and then the spiritual, because that is the way we 
 are constituted. The first that appeals to us is the 
 physical, then the intellectual, then the spiritual, 
 and the scholars will follow your thoughts steadily 
 along those lines. 
 
 Here is another very little thing. This is a com- 
 pass, that I wear on my watch-chain. What is the 
 use of that compass ? To guide me. There is the 
 needle that points to the north and the south. If 
 I am in the forest and do not know which way is 
 out, but know that I ought to go north, and the 
 sun is beclouded so that I cannot see it, I take out 
 my compass, look at it and say, " Yes, all right." 
 I can find my way out of great difficulty with that 
 compass. No ship would go to sea without a com- 
 pass, for on it often depends its safety. 
 
 Now then, what is that like ? In spiritual things 
 that is like the guidance I get from God's Book ; 
 that is my compass. That shows me which way 
 not to go ; that shows me which way to go. The 
 Bible is our compass, and the man who refuses to 
 take the Bible as his compass is as foolish as the 
 
Five Gates to the Human Mind 131 
 
 man who goes to sea and refuses to have a compass 
 on his boat. You are responsible if God gives you 
 a compass and you will not use it. 
 
 Just imagine what a fine thing this glass of water 
 would be on a hot day when you had travelled far 
 and had not had a drink. You would drink it with 
 great avidity. (Pours ink into glass.) See; too 
 bad ; it is spoiled. Would you drink it now ? 
 How easily it was spoiled ; how quickly defiled. 
 Can I cleanse it just as easily ? No. Easy to de- 
 file, hard to cleanse. So it is with my heart ; how- 
 ever clean and pure it might have been, if a little 
 sin is poured into my heart, it is suddenly defiled. 
 One lie will defile your heart ; one taking of what 
 does not belong to you will defile your heart. Easy 
 to defile. Easy to cleanse ? No. That is why the 
 Psalmist said, " Cleanse thou my heart, Jehovah," 
 because he could not cleanse it and nobody could 
 but only God. 
 
 St. James says, "Behold how much wood is 
 kindled by how small a fire. And the tongue is a 
 fire." Here is a match. (It is perfectly surpris- 
 ing, let me say in passing, how you men look at 
 this match. I would think you never saw a match 
 before. That shows how eye gate dominates.) It 
 is a very simple thing, but I can make such ar- 
 rangements that this match would bring about a 
 great disaster. I could have this chapel mined and 
 explosives put underneath and a long fuse put to a 
 place of safety. Then all I would need to do to 
 blow up the whole place would be that (lighting 
 
132 God's Book and God's Boy 
 
 match). It can do terrible damage. When I was 
 a boy in Constantinople, where the houses are of 
 wood, a Greek in his house, which was near ours, 
 had an image of the Virgin, and in front of that an 
 oil lamp burning day and night. The soot from 
 that lamp had spread over the board wall. One 
 night as he was sitting in his room a little spark 
 flew from the lamp, lit on the soot and the fire be- 
 gan to spread. He said, " I will spit you out," and 
 he went and spat on it, but it had gone too far. 
 He then went to the pump to get a pitcher of 
 water. The wind slammed the door to, and he 
 couldn't get in. His house burned and fifteen hun- 
 dred other houses with it, ours among them. " Be- 
 hold how much wood is kindled by how small a 
 fire." And the tongue is a fire — that is the point — 
 a tongue set on fire by Hell and setting on fire the 
 whole world. To show what an evil tongue can 
 work, I have known of a church split in two by a 
 woman's tongue. She kept it going until the 
 church was broken up. 
 
 Here is another example. You all have hands. 
 I used this in the Bar Harbor church this summer. 
 Even the adults Kked it, and a multi-millionaire 
 came to me afterwards and said, " That was fine." 
 I say this to make you realize that you should not 
 be afraid to use object talks anywhere. 
 
 What wonderful things hands are. Without 
 hands this chapel could not have been built. With- 
 out hands cathedrals would not go up. Without 
 hands clothes would not be made. Without hands 
 
Five Gates to the Human Mind 133 
 
 the watch in my pocket could not be put together, 
 for no man could make a watch with his feet. Are 
 these hands good things ? That depends on how 
 we use them. If 1 have a quarrel with my brother 
 and draw off and smash his teeth down his throat 
 with my fists, is that a good thing ? No. If my 
 brother is sick and I carry him a bowl of broth and 
 smooth his pillow, and sit by his side, is that a 
 good thing ? Yes. Hands, therefore, are good or 
 bad according as I use them. They ought to be 
 rightly used ; they may be wrongly used. They 
 are blessings or the reverse, according to how you 
 make use of them. What God intends is that they 
 shall be a blessing to others. 
 
 Your eyes, you have a pair of them — no, I beg 
 your pardon — everybody has three pairs. You 
 have got bodily eyes, which are wonderful things, 
 but I don't want to stop to talk about them ; I 
 want to talk about the others you possess. You 
 have another pair that I call the eyes of the mind. 
 Tom comes from school with a slate and an arith- 
 metic under his arm. He sits down after supper 
 and starts to work out his lesson. Presently he 
 says, " I can't see." What can't he see ? He sees 
 the figures, he sees the slate, yet he says, " I can't 
 see." His big brother, looking over his shoulder, 
 says, " Tom, you have added there where you ought 
 to have substracted," and Tom exclaims, " Oh, I 
 see." What does he see ? Intellectual light has 
 dawned upon him and he sees with a pair of eyes 
 more important than physical eyes, because all 
 
134 God's Book and God^s Boy 
 
 great inventions and sublime truths are the result 
 of men seeing something intellectual. Then there 
 is a third pair of eyes that all have but many do 
 not use, and they are your spiritual eyes, which see 
 things eternal, things moral, things that lay hold 
 on life everlasting. And just as I want rightly to 
 use my physical and intellectual eyes, so I want 
 these two spiritual eyes to be used in the proper 
 way. Thus I have six eyes, and if I use them all 
 right, God's blessing then rests on the threefold 
 vision He has given me, vision physical, vision in- 
 tellectual, vision spiritual. 
 
 Here is a Pennsylvania Eailroad time-table. 
 What is that for ? That is to guide me when I 
 want to go anywhere to a place marked on this 
 time-table. What is that like ? It is like God's 
 time-table given me in His Book to get to a certain 
 place. That Book tells me how to get to Heaven, 
 and how to get to Hell, both of them ; it guides 
 me straight up or straight down as I want one or 
 the other. That Book has examples of men who 
 got to Heaven and of men who did not. This 
 time-table, however, would not be of much use to 
 me if I never looked at it and, as a consequence, 
 went to the depot to go to New York and sat there 
 for hours. A railroad time-table is not made to be 
 put in your pocket and never used ; and this Bible 
 is not made to be put on the centre table in the 
 parlour and covered with a doily and never used. A 
 man is a fool who never uses a time-table if he 
 travels, and he is a greater fool if he never uses 
 
Five Gates to the Human Mind 135 
 
 God's time-table on his journey to tell him how to 
 get from this world to the world everlasting. 
 
 Here is a pair of scales which deal with the 
 whole question of weighing, and the Bible has a 
 good deal to say about weighing. If you happen 
 to have a lesson on Belshazzar, you remember it 
 says, " Weighed, wanting." These scales weigh 
 letters. But there are other kinds of scales ; there 
 are scales that weigh you, and nearly everybody 
 wants to see once in a while how much he weighs, 
 whether he has gained or lost. In Washington 
 they have scales so delicate that they would weigh 
 not only this piece of paper, but if I write my name 
 on that piece of paper with a lead pencil and 
 weighed it again, the scales would show how much 
 the lead that came off of my lead pencil weighed. 
 That is wonderful. Then we can weigh other 
 things. A barometer weighs the air. We measure 
 many things ; the thermometer measures heat ; the 
 neurometer measures your nerve power and your 
 grip. If only we could get scales that would 
 weigh a man's honesty, no bank in the world 
 would be without them. A young man comes in 
 and says, " I would like to get a place in this 
 bank." The president replies, " Step on that pair 
 of scales." Around the indicator goes perhaps to 
 " Dishonest." Many a man would decline to step 
 on those scales. Suppose there was a pair of scales 
 that showed a filthy lie ? God has got such scales. 
 He said with regard to Belshazzar, " Weighed, 
 wanting." Belshazzar had undoubtedly said with 
 
136 God's Book and God's Boy 
 
 regard to himself, " Full weight." The Bible says 
 the Lord weighs the spirits of men. He knows 
 how much I weigh. If I am short weight, what 
 can be done ? Nothing save for Jesus Christ to 
 make my short weight of unrighteousness full 
 weight with His righteousness. 
 
 Here is a photograph of a noted man in Turkey 
 to-day. Oh, no, that is not a photograph of the 
 man ; it is a photograph of his face and of his 
 clothes. You all have had photographs taken and 
 have arrayed yourselves in your best for that pur- 
 pose. Now my own photograph suggests that it 
 would be wonderful if any one could take a photo- 
 graph of my mind. I wonder, if I got a photo- 
 graph of my mind, whether it would look as orderly 
 as a photograph of my body. How would you 
 like to have a photograph made of your mind and 
 pass it around amongst your friends, saying, " That 
 is my mind " ? Probably some would say, " Is 
 that a photograph of your mind ? Well, you need 
 not come around here again." But God says, " I 
 know the things that come into your mind." He 
 has got your mental photograph. Just imagine 
 the spiritual photograph of a debauchee, or a 
 Bowery bum, or of a gilded gambler, or a drunk- 
 ard. Would he show it to any living soul ? God 
 has got our mental and spiritual photographs. 
 Every idea that comes into your mind, every desire 
 that exists in your heart, is known to Him. Be 
 careful, then, that your mental and your spiritual 
 photograph be decent. 
 
Five Gates to the Human Mind 137 
 
 Here is a little electric light, used when I want 
 to look at the clock at night. I have a larger one 
 to use when I want to walk along a dark path to 
 see a neighbour, which shows the rough places I 
 must avoid. That is a useful thing. What analogy 
 is there between this and things spiritual ? You 
 can get it from the Bible, " Thy Word is a lamp 
 unto my feet, and a light unto my path." What 
 this is to my physical feet, God's Word is to my 
 spiritual feet ; it keeps me from danger, it warns 
 me from pitfalls, it guides me in the right way. If I 
 wanted with this light to go from here to the city, and 
 there were no street lights, I would not say, " Oh, 
 there is no use in my starting, I can't see the city." 
 No, I cannot, but what can I see ? Four steps in 
 front of me. Take those four steps and I see 
 another four steps, and when I take those four steps 
 I see another four steps, and thus it will light me 
 to the city. The Book does not show me the path 
 all through my life at once, but it lights me a few 
 steps at a time, on, on, until I get to that land 
 where they need no sun, for the Lord God Almighty 
 and the Lamb are the light thereof. 
 
 Now I have said enough and more than enough. 
 If you say, '' This man has brought us all he has 
 got," I say, " Not by a long shot, because the mat- 
 ter of object teaching is endless." Nature is brim- 
 ming over with analogies. I have used only what 
 I happened to have with me, but my :able drawers 
 in New York are full of objects. What you want 
 to do is to study the analogies between things ma- 
 
138 God^s Book and God's Boy 
 
 terial and things spiritual. If your work along 
 these lines is based on common sense, the reward 
 of your work will be actual gain in power, not only 
 on the Sunday-school platform, but in the pulpit ; 
 you will win the hearts of the children, and in that 
 way extend your ministry, and you will be able to 
 bring many a child to a knowledge of the truth 
 whom otherwise you might not be able to reach. 
 
 These children size things up to a nicety. One 
 time in Bar Harbor I gave an object lesson with 
 a little bicycle oiler and a little sand and I drew 
 out the point that sand makes machinery work 
 hard and finally stops it, while oil makes it move 
 smoothly. I then said, " Sand in a household is 
 angry words that make friction and trouble be- 
 tween children ; oil is smooth words that make no 
 friction. I will give you two drops of oil to use 
 often, and one of them is ' please,' and the other of 
 them is ^ thank you.' " The next day but one a 
 lady sent me word that on Monday morning she 
 had gone into the nursery where her boy and girl 
 were who had been present on the previous day at 
 the church, and the boy was domineering over the 
 girl. Just as she entered, the girl exclaimed, *' Jim, 
 you need a little oil." 
 
 One time at Jekyl Island I was preaching to 
 children and my theme was, " Let your light so 
 shine," illustrated by a little candle. A small boy 
 was in church for the first time in his life, and he 
 never took his eyes off of me as I explained that 
 letting your light shine was setting a good example, 
 
Five Gates to the Human Mind 139 
 
 and that God would light your light though Satan 
 would try to blow it out. Like all red-headed boys, 
 this child had a fiery temper, and the next day it 
 blazed up. At once he said, " My light has gone 
 out." Presently he cooled off, and then said, "I 
 think my light is lit again." He then made his 
 nurse put a candle in his nursery. She asked him, 
 " What for ; you have an electric light." But he 
 insisted on a candle. One time in the nursery he 
 went off in a terrible rage and then said, " Satan 
 put my light out; light that candle." Presently 
 cooling down he added, "My light is burning 
 again." I mention that to show that four-year- 
 olders will catch hold almost immediately of an 
 illustration by which Christ's truth may be driven 
 into their hearts. 
 
 To some of you there will come the responsibility 
 of handling eye-teaching in the Sunday-school or 
 the pulpit by the stereoptioon. I have made very 
 great use of the stereopticon on Sunday. The first 
 time I ever saw it used was in a High Church serv- 
 ice in the city of London. I heard that a rector 
 was giving stereopticon sermons on Sunday and I 
 went down to see. The place was so packed that 
 I could hardly get in. From the beginning to the 
 end it was interesting. First there went on the 
 screen " The Lord is in his holy temple ; let all 
 the earth keep silence before him." Then the regu- 
 lar Church of England service was thrown on the 
 screen as also the hymns. After that came pictures 
 of Bible scenes, only a very few, on which the lee- 
 
140 God's Book and God's Boy 
 
 turer spoke, making application of each picture to 
 the congregation, solemnly, powerfully. When the 
 service was over I said : " I have learned a lesson." 
 I began to introduce that into our City Mission 
 work in New York. Now you can get most 
 beautiful picture-hymns. Kau of Philadelphia has 
 a lot of beautiful ones, and also McAllister in New 
 York. 
 
 For example, there is a hymn picture of " In the 
 Cross of Christ I Glory " which exhibits only the 
 hymn and a cross. That is all. You simply ex- 
 plain what the cross means to the world. Then 
 the hymn is sung. If you have a hymn like " I 
 gave my life for thee," etc., there appears on one 
 side of the screen Yan Dyke's Christ. You explain 
 it briefly and then they sing. For spiritual effect, 
 for solemnity, for drawing a Sunday night crowd, 
 I know of nothing that in power approaches the 
 use of the stereopticon. It is not at all sensational. 
 It is not clap-trap. It is serious, Christlike work. 
 My only warning is that you do not try to show 
 too many pictures at one service. A half-dozen 
 pictures are enough, besides the hymns. Other- 
 wise you begin to confuse your audience by the 
 multiplicity of the pictures. 
 
 The moving picture has come to stay and we 
 have got, as soon as we can get proper films, to use 
 it in the church. I am convinced of this, though I 
 am very conservative in my theology, as you know. 
 As soon as we get the right moving pictures, 
 we shall use them. But when you come to the 
 
Five Gates to the Human Mind 141 
 
 psychology of your audience you have a serious 
 problem. There is such rapid motion in the pic- 
 tures that the spiritual effect is apt to be lost. 
 The audience is all excitement to know what is 
 coming next. So that the psychology of the audi- 
 ence has got to be carefully watched ; otherwise, 
 you have amusement, and not spiritual instruction. 
 I have in mind at present only one or two sets of 
 films that I would be willing to use on Sunday, 
 and one which I have used, namely Bunyan's Pil- 
 grim's Progress. To show what care I would take 
 I will tell you what I did on a Sunday night. I 
 gave notice that no one would be admitted without 
 a ticket, and that no ticket would be given to any 
 one under sixteen years of age. With every ticket 
 a cheap edition of Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress 
 was given, they promising that if possible they 
 would read it before the moving picture was to be 
 put on the screen. In addition a printed schedule 
 was given of all the scenes, the ticket holders 
 promising that if they could not read the whole 
 book that they would at least read those portions 
 that would be illustrated by the film. When the 
 night finally arrived, before each film was shown 
 an interlocutor spoke up and said, for instance, 
 "The next film will show Christian and Pliable 
 falling into the Slough of Despond. Christian 
 alone gets out on the right side and passes on. 
 Pliable goes back." Then came the picture. As 
 soon as that film was through the interlocutor 
 spoke up again, so as to eliminate all excited antici- 
 
142 God's Book and God's Boy 
 
 pation of what was coming next. I never had a 
 more solemn service in my life. When, at last, 
 the day comes when pictures of the Life of Christ 
 are made, I would never consent to having them 
 used without the audience being properly prepared 
 to know what the pictures mean and the applica- 
 tion of each picture to the human heart and life. 
 
yiii 
 
 THE RELIGIOUS USE OF THE IMAGINATION 
 
 THE task set before the Sunday-school 
 teacher is one of extraordinary difficulty. 
 The teacher is to make vivid to the 
 scholar events the nearest to us of which is re- 
 moved by eighteen hundred years, while some of 
 them are removed from us by four thousand years. 
 These events which are to be made clear to our 
 classes took place in lands that they have never 
 visited, and conversations took place in tongues of 
 which they have never heard. The habits and 
 customs of the people of Bible times differ vastly 
 from those with which our scholars are acquainted. 
 And yet we are to make vivid to them the events 
 with which the Scriptures deal, and from those 
 events we are to draw certain practical applica- 
 tions for life in the twentieth century. If it were 
 not for the fact that the Divine Spirit inspired 
 this Book and fitted it for the human mind and 
 heart, and if it were not for the further fact that 
 the Divine Spirit is willing to aid us in applying 
 the Book to the consciences of our scholars, we 
 might as well cease before we begin, for the task 
 would be beyond us. You will realize how diffi- 
 cult the task is if you pause for a moment and try 
 to understand how hard it would be to make our 
 H3 
 
144 God's Book and God's Boy 
 
 scholars enter into the life of Alfred the Great, 
 into the times of the Crusades, or even into the 
 times of the Pilgrim Fathers, which are very near 
 to us compared with Bible times. 
 
 To do this, that is to say, to make vivid the 
 story, to make living the actors, would not be so 
 very difficult if we could transplant ourselves and 
 our classes to Bible lands. One of the grand ways 
 in which the preacher and the teacher can be 
 better fitted for the responsibility incurred is by 
 visiting these Bible lands. As the French critic, 
 Eenan, has said, Palestine is the Fifth Gospel. 
 No one who has been through Palestine, for ex- 
 ample, or into Egypt, but reads every part of this 
 Word that deals with those lands with an entirely 
 new view. It has been my privilege to be in both 
 of those lands, and when 1 read the story of Jacob 
 at Bethel, his dream, and the ladder of the angels, 
 instantly I am back where I spent the night and 
 sitting in the tent door after dark began to let my 
 imagination run. The rocks, the starlit sky, the 
 whole environment, comes back to me at once, 
 and I am with Jacob as he lay down on the 
 ground with a stone for his pillow. The moment 
 I read of any experience of our Master on the Sea 
 of Galilee, I am there, because it was my privilege 
 to sail that sea in the quiet evening when every- 
 thing was gentle and calm. It was also my privi- 
 lege the very next day to pass by the shore of that 
 sea and witness the downrush of a tornado of 
 wind, so that in ten minutes the sea was whipped 
 
Religious Use of Imagination 145 
 
 into wild confusion, in which the boat on which 
 we sailed so quietly the night before would have 
 had a very difl3.cult time. One of the grand ways, 
 therefore, in which to be able to make the Bible 
 vivid is to go to the land. 
 
 The next best way is by pictures, and with the 
 Perry Penny Pictures, which we can get now for 
 one cent a piece, we can make vivid, or at least 
 more vivid than is otherwise possible, some of these 
 Bible scenes and events. These are the days of 
 splendid photographs, and you can get photographs 
 of the Sinaitic peninsula, Egypt^ Palestine, Nineveh, 
 Babylon, Rome, and in this way can furnish your- 
 selves with a setting for the events which took 
 place in Bible times. These are the days also of 
 stereopticons, when on a screen to a whole school 
 at a time you can set forth some charming scenes 
 of Bible localities. The days are rapidly coming 
 when we shall be able to see moving pictures along 
 these lines ; they have not yet arrived because 
 religious moving pictures are still like angel's visits, 
 few and far between. But you young men will see 
 the day when cheap moving picture machines and 
 good moving picture films on religious themes shall 
 be available to any pastor of a fair sized church. 
 Of course, the moving picture gives life to the 
 scene. The best moving picture I have seen laying 
 hold on New Testament times was one of a set of 
 rolls, all of them made in Palestine or in Egypt. 
 Never will I forget some of the beautiful scenes of 
 our Saviour's life that were set before a large 
 
146 God's Book and God's Boy 
 
 gathering of men and women. For example, one 
 of them was on Bethlehem's Plain at night. You 
 could see the sheep lying down in masses, their 
 backs lit up by oxyhydrogen light, very much like 
 sheep in one of Millet's pictures. You could see 
 the shepherds sitting by, quietly watching. By 
 and by the light strengthened and strengthened 
 and strengthened until it became tremendous. The 
 shepherds arose, bowed, then started off for 
 Bethlehem. There is no scholar but who, seeing a 
 picture like this, would be charmed, illumined, and 
 the whole story of the shepherds on Bethlehem's 
 Plain would become enormously more vivid. 
 
 Never will I forget the arrival of Joseph and 
 Mary in Bethlehem at the taxing, Mary riding on 
 the donkey, Joseph leading the animal, crowds 
 coming and going, they knocking here and there : 
 " IS'o, go on, no room here for you " ; until at last 
 they lodged in the stable. 
 
 Now there is an enormous opportunity for mov- 
 ing pictures along these lines. You are no doubt 
 very conservative. So am I. But if I had the op- 
 portunity in this way to make the Bible story vivid 
 to the eye and supplement it by the appeal to the 
 ear, I would seize it at once and thus would bring 
 the story home to my hearers with tremendous 
 power. 
 
 This, however, is not yet possible. What then ? 
 The only recourse we have is to make proper use of 
 our imaginations. What we have seen we can 
 describe. He must be a dullard who, having seen 
 
Religious Use of Imagination 147 
 
 a railroad accident and having helped to pull the 
 wounded out of the cars, cut to pieces with window 
 glass, cannot tell that story vividly. He has seen 
 it, and felt it, and he can tell it. The trouble with 
 Bible incidents is that we have not seen nor 
 properly felt them, therefore we cannot properly 
 picture the story to scholars. The thing for us to 
 do is to cultivate the imagination. Years ago I 
 read Tyndall's article on the scientific use of the 
 imagination, in which he goes on to show the way 
 we can picture to ourselves the carving out of 
 canons and the laying down of deltas by our 
 mighty rivers in ages gone by. He bids us, for 
 example, watch in a rain-storm any little rill that 
 starts down the side of the road to a lower level ; 
 you will see that little rill, hardly thicker than your 
 finger or possibly your wrist, tearing away earth 
 from the side of its channel, carrying along debris, 
 straw, leaves, little twigs, and rushing them down 
 the declivity into some little lake formed at the bot- 
 tom of the hill. When the rain-storm has passed 
 and the water has dried out, you see in that little 
 bit of a diminutive lake a delta ; you see earth that 
 that rivulet brought down and deposited there. 
 That furnishes your imagination with a basis on 
 which to go back towards prehistoric times, and to 
 realize how a river like the Mississippi or the 
 Amazon has torn down the sides of its banks, has 
 unearthed rocks and stones, carried them in its 
 great current and deposited them at its mouth, 
 forming its vast delta, covering sometimes hun- 
 
148 God's Book and God's Boy 
 
 dreds of acres, sometimes scores of square miles. So 
 that you see how, by using your imagination and 
 projecting yourself into the past, you realize what 
 has taken place on a grand scale. 
 
 I thought to myself then, " That's right ; why 
 should we not use our imaginations along religious 
 lines, so that, judging by what takes place to-day, 
 we can project ourselves into the past and make 
 vivid things which took place two, three, four 
 thousand years ago ? " That, I believe, is perfectly 
 possible. 
 
 We want, however, to get hold of some funda- 
 mental principle which will govern us in this work 
 of constructive imagination. This is the principle : 
 under similar circumstances men everywhere and 
 always act in the same way. Men are ever the 
 same ; they love, they hate, they fear, they hope, 
 to-day, as they did forty centuries ago. A crowd 
 to-day that is panic-stricken will act exactly as a 
 panic-stricken crowd would have acted a thousand 
 years ago. A crowd that is very anxious to get into 
 a building, and is desirous to see or receive some- 
 thing there, will act in exactly the same way as a 
 crowd did under the same circumstances in the time 
 of our Blessed Lord. Thus we can think ourselves 
 back, can project ourselves into the past, and re- 
 produce in our own imagination the way in which 
 men talked, wrought, acted in the times of patriarch, 
 prophet or apostle. 
 
 In this use of our imaginations, however, we 
 must be on our guard. Kever make an illegitimate 
 
Religious Use of Imagination 149 
 
 use of the imagination, bringing in things that are 
 not germane and not based on probable fact. Some 
 years ago I had a series of articles to furnish for a 
 book, and among others I wanted an article that 
 called for the religious use of the imagination. I 
 wrote to a noted evangelist asking him to furnish 
 such an article, which he did. That article I never 
 used, because his use of the imagination was beyond 
 the bounds of sanity. He imagined Barabbas in 
 prison ; he imagined the day when some one came, 
 and, knocking at the door, said, "Is Barabbas 
 here?" The answer was yes. "I want to see 
 him, I have come from Pilate." He confers with 
 Barabbas and tells the robber, " You are at liberty, 
 another man has been delivered to death in your 
 place, you are discharged." Barabbas is then filled 
 with joy and starts out from prison. So far it is 
 legitimate ; now comes what I considered illegiti- 
 mate. He pictures Barabbas seeing a great crowd 
 passing in one direction, excited, hurried. Barabbas 
 says, *' Where is this crowd going ? " The reply 
 is, " Don't you know ? Three men are going to be 
 crucified out here ; we are going to see it." Bar- 
 abbas joins the crowd, passes out of the city gate 
 and comes to Calvary. There Barabbas sees the 
 one on the centre cross ; he asks who he is, and is 
 told that he was condemned to crucifixion while 
 Barabbas, who was to be crucified, was given his 
 liberty. Then the writer makes Barabbas under- 
 stand that Jesus was given for him, and makes 
 the robber prostrate himself on the ground and 
 
150 God's Book and God's Boy 
 
 accept Jesus as his Saviour. Splendid imagination, 
 but with no basis of fact. I threw the whole thing 
 into the waste basket because imagination used in 
 that style is not proper. Chasten your imagina- 
 tion, therefore ; give it proper rein, but never let it 
 run away wild, as in this case I think it did. 
 
 One of the troubles with the Biblical narratives, 
 I think, is that they are so extraordinarily terse. 
 Yery few details are given. Take the miracles of 
 our Lord ; why, in a chapter you will find four or 
 five noted miracles portrayed, but all in compact 
 form, the barest outline being given to you. It is 
 for us to fill in the outline, to paint the picture 
 whose merest sketch we have. That can only be 
 done by patient work. Of course, I know that 
 every one is not endowed by nature with equal im- 
 aginative power. There are some imaginations 
 that are swift, others are slow. But my point is 
 this, that every one can quicken and cultivate his 
 imagination so that however dull you may be to- 
 day, a year from to-day proper work will see you 
 very much further along the line towards success. 
 
 Take now, if I may be allowed to set it before 
 you, the way in which your humble servant gets to 
 work. We have the story of Amram and Jochebed, 
 Miriam and little Moses and the princess. I read 
 the story and then sit down in my study, close my 
 eyes and begin to think. First, I paint the envi- 
 ronment ; it is Egypt, of course ; and I see a great 
 river. On either side I see palm trees ; along the 
 banks are bulrushes, a pyramid over there, and an 
 
Religious Use of Imagination i 51 
 
 obelisk yonder. I see two women coming down, 
 and one of them has a baby in her arms ; the other 
 is younger. Down they come and I see them look 
 up and down the bank. They go to a place which 
 they think is good. They put into the rushes a 
 little basket in which the baby is. The older 
 woman says something to the younger one, and 
 then goes away, the younger one staying there, 
 watching. Oh, there they come ; a lot of women 
 in rich dresses, one of them evidently very well-to- 
 do ; the others, attendants. Thus I sit still with 
 my eyes shut, and paint and paint and paint. 
 
 Sometimes when I am doing that kind of thing 
 something very funny happens. 1 remember one 
 time I was repainting this scene, and I saw a 
 crocodile come along and poke his nose under the 
 basket. I saw him tip it over, snatch the baby, 
 and disappear, and I said, " Oh, Moses is gone ! " 
 Had that really happened, what a disaster it would 
 have been! For that little ark carried more of 
 value than any steamship that ever sailed the 
 ocean, because it carried as freight Moses, the 
 grandest man who has ever lived so far. Then I 
 corrected that part of my imagination, because I 
 saw that the princess would never have come down 
 to bathe in the river where crocodiles were. You 
 have got to guard your imagination. 
 
 Go to work and paint ; by and by the facility 
 will come to you slowly. Take, for example, the 
 story of the Good Samaritan, so short, but so full 
 of useful lessons for the twentieth century. Sit 
 
152 God's Book and God's Boy 
 
 down again, my fellow worker, and paint. Get 
 the environment. The road from Jerusalem to 
 Jericho is down, down, down, four thousand feet 
 or so. Here comes a man on foot. Poor fellow, he 
 does not know that behind that rock three or four 
 men are waiting ; they have bad faces. One peeps 
 out, sees that man coming, and whispers something 
 to the other men. Down he comes, and just as 
 he gets where they can see him they are out at 
 him ; they beat him down, tear oif his clothes, they 
 get his money and away they go. Poor man, he 
 is in a hard place. Oh, here comes somebody up 
 from Jericho. He is a priest, as I know by his 
 garments ; he will help him. Oh, he does not ; he 
 looks at him and passes by. Here comes another 
 man, a Levite, as I know by his garb. He is go- 
 ing up to Jerusalem, he will help him anyway. I 
 see the Levite go up to him and look at him and 
 pass by. Poor man, nobody will help him. Along 
 comes another man, a Samaritan, but surely he 
 won't do anything because this man is a Jew. He 
 goes up to the helpless man and looks. Oh, the 
 conditions of his wounds ! I see the Samaritan go 
 to his saddle-bags and take out some oil and wine 
 and some bandages ; he pours the oil and wine in 
 and binds up his wounds. The man says, " Oh, 
 thank you." I look at him and see him picking up 
 the man and putting him on his own beast and 
 leading the beast he walks by his side to an inn, 
 where he takes him off, puts him to bed, and nurses 
 him himself. The next day I see him talking to 
 
Religious Use of Imagination 153 
 
 the innkeeper ; the man is in bed still. He says to 
 the innkeeper, " Keep him in bed ; I will be back 
 soon ; here is some money," and off he goes. When 
 you make your scholars in some such way see the 
 scene, then you have got bed rock on which to 
 build the application of the underlying principle. 
 
 Did you ever realize what a tremendous lot of 
 modern benefactions find their prototype in the 
 story of the Good Samaritan ? In the first place, 
 this is an early instance of first aid to the injured. 
 He got to work and helped this injured man before 
 he took him anywhere. TKen there is the first 
 ambulance I know of ; it was not a modern ambu- 
 lance, but it was the saddle on the donkey, the best 
 ambulance that was to be had. Then, in the next 
 place, I see a hospital; he goes to the inn, puts 
 him in bed, and treats him like a sick man; the 
 best hospital he could get. Then I see a nurse; 
 the man turns nurse himself. Then I see a collec- 
 tion, a Saturday and Sunday hospital collection ; 
 only one man gives anything to that collection, and 
 that is the Samaritan, who took up a collection 
 from himself. That is fine. Almost anybody is 
 glad to take up a collection from somebody else, 
 but to take up a collection from one person and 
 that yourself, that means great grace. To sum up, 
 we have first aid to the injured, ambulance, hos- 
 pital, private nurse and collection. That is beau- 
 tiful. And the application of that to the twentieth 
 century is not very hard to make. 
 
 Take, for example, another of these dramatic in- 
 
154 God's Book and God's Boy 
 
 cidents with which the Old and the New Testament 
 are brimming over, the resuscitation of the Widow 
 of Nain's son. Eead the story always first, then sit 
 down and shut your eyes and think, and picture, 
 and paint, and, remember, when you have made a 
 mistake, correct it and always try to make it a 
 little more vivid. 
 
 There is the city of Nain, a walled town, as all 
 the larger towns were then. The gate is open, and 
 as I stand a little way off from the city I see a 
 procession coming out slowly. Yes, it is a funeral. 
 Many times a funeral has come out there. Four 
 men are bearing a bier, after the manner of those 
 times, not closed, but open, with the face of the 
 dead man looking up to the sky. 
 
 But look there, if you please ; there is another 
 procession coming towards the city. I see one 
 man leading that procession towards whom every 
 one is looking. Here the two processions come, 
 nearer, nearer to each other ; they meet ; they 
 stop. Now those processions mass together in a 
 compact body. How do I know that they mass 
 together ? Because that is exactly what would 
 take place to-day. If a funeral procession were 
 coming out of a city and another procession were 
 to meet it and if some one should stop the bearers 
 of the bier would they not set it down instantly ? 
 Then both ends of the procession would crowd up 
 and press around the dead body. I see Christ 
 there. Right next the bier is the mother crying ; 
 her friends are sympathetic. Then I see Christ 
 
Religious Use of Imagination I ^^ 
 
 take the young man by the hand and say, " Arise." 
 Oh, look ! He is sitting up. He is living, speaking. 
 Then Christ says to the mother, *' Take your boy," 
 and to the boy He says, " There is your mother." 
 Then what ? Then both processions join together ; 
 the bier that they brought the boy out on dead 
 goes into Nain empty ; the mother, the boy, Jesus' 
 followers all rejoicing; and both processions pour 
 back into Nain. Will you look at them now ? It 
 was not twenty minutes ago that the people of 
 Nain saw them pass out to the graveyard, and 
 now the boy is alive and walking arm in arm with 
 his mother. How did it happen ? Everybody tells 
 everybody else as they pass down the street, and 
 the town of Nain rings with the story of the bring- 
 ing back to life of the widow's only son. 
 
 When you have got those things vividly before 
 your scholars, then you can begin on the applica- 
 tion of all of this. What were those two proces- 
 sions ? Out of Nain goes the procession of death, 
 towards Nain comes the procession headed by Him 
 who is life. Death and life meet ; life wins ; the 
 death procession marches back to ISTain a proces- 
 sion of renewed life. That is what Christ says, " I 
 came that they may have life and may have it 
 abundantly." 
 
 I don't suppose that young man staggered back 
 to town, do you ? I don't suppose that he leaned 
 on his mother and got some friend on the other 
 side to hold him and tottered back to the city. 
 Nay, verily. He went back to town vigorous, vital. 
 
156 God's Book and God's Boy 
 
 potent. There is a difference between a feeble 
 life, the life of an invalid, and strong life, the life 
 of an athlete, and Christ says that He came that 
 men might have life and abundant life. That 
 young man marches back into Nain with abundant 
 life. 
 
 Oh, we all ought to be spiritual athletes, and 
 not spiritual cripples. In every church half of the 
 people are cripples; many others are staggering, 
 feeble, and only a few are walking strongly. But 
 Christ said, " I came that they may have life and 
 may have it abundantly." 
 
 Does this method strike you at all as feasible ? 
 Surely it must. But when you try it for the first 
 time, you will find yourselves hampered ; things 
 will not go the way you would like to see them go. 
 Never mind; stand by the work patiently; whip 
 your mind into line; don't let it scatter fire all 
 along the road ; hold it down to its work steadily, 
 and presently you will see that you are gaining 
 more and more of facility in the line of revivifying 
 events two thousand years old. 
 
 Take now one more illustration. You remember 
 that in Capernaum at one time the crowd was so 
 great that it says there was no room in the house 
 where the Saviour was, no, not so much as about 
 the door. The story then goes on to say briefly 
 that four men came carrying a paralytic friend of 
 theirs ; they tried to get in by the door and could 
 not. They then went up the stairway on the out- 
 side, such as oriental houses have, and broke up the 
 
Religious Use of Imagination 157 
 
 roof of the house and let their friend down on a 
 mattress in front of the Master. The Master said, 
 " Son, be of good cheer ; thy sins are forgiven." A 
 murmur arose of faultfinding. The Master then 
 said to the crowd, " That you may know that the 
 Son of Man hath authority on earth to forgive 
 sins, arise, take up thy bed and go unto thy house." 
 The man rises, takes up his bed, and goes his way, 
 and all men glorify God and say, '' We have seen 
 strange things to-day." 
 
 But, oh, how short that story is ! Now it is fair 
 with our religious imagination to make this thing 
 live, to be actors, so to speak, as well as spectators 
 in that marvellous scene. Let me picture it for you 
 now. 
 
 Since there was no room, not even so much as 
 around the door, it follows that the house was 
 packed ; otherwise more people would have come 
 in. But every seat (on the floor, of course) was 
 taken, and the Master sat on some little raised 
 divan or platform. Men were standing by the door. 
 How do I know that ? Because to-day, if there 
 were an immense number trying to get in here, the 
 doors would be open and you would see people 
 standing as far as they could see or hear. That is 
 what we would do to-day, isn't it ? Then that is 
 what they did then. Outside of the door the 
 crowd was still rather packed, and outside of the 
 packed crowd there was a looser crowd, just as it 
 is in great gatherings to-day. Inside they are not 
 aware of what is going on outside, and when these 
 
158 God's Book and God's Boy 
 
 four friends come with their paralytic friend on a 
 mattress, those inside are not conscious of what is 
 taking place. 
 
 Now if you had a friend whom you wanted to get 
 in before an undoubted healer, and you met a crowd 
 like that outside, what would you do ? I know 
 what you would do. There are four of you. The 
 spokesman would say to the crowd out there, 
 *' Friends, we want to get this man in, for he is a 
 paralytic; we want to get him in to the Great 
 Healer ; won't you make a little room so that we 
 can get through ? " Then the looser crowd would 
 step aside a little and the four men would move 
 forward a few steps and strike the solid crowd, 
 shoulder to shoulder. Do you think they could get 
 through the crowd without effort ? If you and I 
 w^ere there and wanted to get him in, what would 
 we do next ? I know what I would do. I would 
 say, *' See here, friends ; we have got to get this 
 man in there ; make room there, make room ; we 
 are bound to get in, make room." Then I would 
 begin to push. Of course, the paralytic would be 
 shaken from side to side on his mattress while they 
 were trying to push through. Then they got to 
 the solid pack, and some one of the four said, 
 " No use trying to get in here ; it is impossible ; 
 let's pull out." So they retired, and set their 
 friend down and wiped their perspiring brows. I 
 don't know, but probably three of the four said, 
 " No use trying it to-day, better put it off." But 
 some one of those four said, " I am not going to 
 
Religious Use of Imagination 159 
 
 put it off ; I am going to get him in, see ? " " How 
 will you get him in?" " Break up the roof." 
 " Who will pay the bill ? " ''I will pay the bill." 
 When a man is in dead earnest he is willing to pay 
 the bill, and I have generally noticed that where 
 there is one man willing to pay the bill, there are 
 three that are willing he should. The resolute man 
 is like the boy to whom somebody said, " How 
 much do you weigh ? " He answered, " I weigh 
 eighty pounds, but when I am dead in earnest I 
 weigh a ton." So up to the roof they go. Now it 
 was customary for people to walk on the roof in 
 those lands, and when those inside who did not 
 know anything about what was going on outside as 
 yet, heard the walking on the roof it did not bother 
 them because that was customary. But by and by 
 however they hear, crack, crack, crack, as the roof 
 was being broken up. Now they look up. Cer- 
 tainly if the master of the house was inside he must 
 have looked up and said, " Well, somebody has got 
 some nerve." Do you suppose that the Master 
 kept on talking ? Certainly not, because every- 
 body was looking up to see what was happening 
 there. If you thought this roof was being torn up 
 would you look at me ? Surely not. So there 
 is silence. Everybody looking up. What do they 
 see ? A wide hole, four-square, and ropes put 
 across, and they exclaim, " Why, they are letting 
 down a sick man ; " and down he comes. They 
 couldn't make room before that for any more, but 
 when he was coming down on their heads they 
 
l6o God's Book and God's Boy 
 
 pushed back and back, and down he came at the 
 feet of the Master. 
 
 What are these people on the outskirts of the 
 room doing ? If I were on this platform, and a man 
 were on the floor here whom you couldn't see, but 
 who you thought was going to be healed, what 
 would the people on the outskirts of the room do ? 
 Why, you would instantly stand on your feet to see. 
 
 (Here I pause to say that some one of those four 
 friends had far better brains than most teachers 
 have in modern times, because he found out in 
 what room the Master was and where He sat, 
 and he opened the hole in the roof so that when 
 the sick man came down, he came down right in 
 front of the Master. If those people had been as 
 intelligent as some Sunday-school people I know in 
 New York, they would have opened the hole away 
 over in the corner of the roof somewhere and let 
 the man down in a dark closet. What we want is 
 not only consecration, but brains. Consecration is 
 good, but without common sense we sometimes go 
 astray.) 
 
 Well, everybody looks at the Master ; He is the 
 centre of attention. What is He going to do ? 
 Oh, for a photograph of those faces as they look 
 intently at Him to hear what He will say. He 
 says something, and instantly most of the faces 
 change. They have been filled with curiosity ; 
 now they change and are filled with criticism and 
 bitter feeling, " Who is this who speaketh blas- 
 phemy ? Who can forgive sins but God only ? " 
 
Religious Use of Imagination 161 
 
 And a large part of the crowd turns against the 
 Master. 'Now He is going to speak again, and so 
 there is silence. He looks down at the poor man ; 
 He looks up at them, and says, "That you may 
 know that the Son of Man hath authority on earth 
 to forgive sins, arise, take up thy couch, and go." 
 
 Oh, but all of this time you have forgotten all 
 about his four friends. Where were those friends ; 
 what were those four doing who had brought him 
 there with so much toil and labour ? What would 
 you have done if you had gotten a man up on the 
 roof, then broken the roof open, and then let him 
 down in the presence of some great healer in the 
 expectation that he would be healed ? Would you 
 have gone off and sat down on the edge of the roof 
 and whistled a tune? Surely not. What you 
 would have done would have been simply this 
 (here the speaker lay down dn platform and looked 
 over the edge). If you had looked up there you 
 would have seen four faces on the edges of the 
 opening, peering down with intensest interest. 
 
 Now, then, the Master has said, " Take up thy 
 couch and go thy way." At once the man takes up 
 his mattress, tiptoes his way down the room and 
 goes out. Look up ; are those faces there now ? 
 Oh, no. How do I know they are not there ? Be- 
 cause if I had been there and seen my friend going 
 away, do you think I would have stayed there 
 looking at nothing ? They have disappeared, 
 leaped down the stairs and are waiting at the door. 
 Now he comes out. What under the circumstances 
 
l62 God's Book and God's Boy 
 
 would you have done ? (You see, I am applying 
 the principle that men under similar circumstances 
 always act in the same way.) Why, of course, you 
 would have embraced him after the Eastern man- 
 ner. What would he have done ? Thrown down 
 his mattress at once so as to embrace them, kiss 
 them on one cheek and then on the other. What is 
 the crowd doing ? They are gathering around to 
 look at that man whom they have seen a few mo- 
 ments ago carried up the stairs with difficulty, now 
 walking away like an athlete. 
 
 Oh, these things are wonderful when once you 
 see them, and the only way to see them is to stop 
 and paint and paint and paint, until suddenly they 
 become living pictures, endowed with vitality. 
 
 All of a sudden the man says, " I thank you, 
 boys ; but I must be off to my family ; " and he 
 picks up his mattress and off he goes. His family 
 see him and they say, " Well, how did it happen ? " 
 And whenever that man afterwards speaks of the 
 Master he says, " Yes, they carried me to Him 
 helpless, and I walked away as well as ever." 
 
 Now you see what I mean by the religious use of 
 the imagination. You can apply this, friend 
 teacher, to any moving scene in the Old or New 
 Testament, if you will only be patient, and slowly 
 reproduce a picture. Be careful not to make the 
 details too minute, or you w^U weary your scholars ; 
 but make it living, and then, having impressed the 
 basic facts, deduce from them the application. 
 
 See what the application here, for example, with 
 
Religious Use of Imagination 163 
 
 those five men is. In the first place, in all your 
 woe, go to the Master ; His power is endless. 
 Secondly, if you cannot get to the Master by your- 
 self alone, get some spiritual friend to help you 
 along. Sometimes a combination in prayer, like 
 the combination of effort on the part of these four, 
 will accomplish that which one alone cannot ac- 
 complish. One man could not have brought that 
 man to the Master, but four did. United prayer 
 like that of Nehemiah and his friends, united effort 
 like that of these four men, will accomplish wonders 
 and produce spiritual miracles. Oh, for a little of 
 this wonderful magic touch of the imagination ! 
 
 I will close now by giving you a wonderful bit 
 of imaginative description that I heard Dr. Jowett 
 use in England a year ago. The story he illus- 
 trated was the coming of the leper to the Master. 
 He, standing in front of the Master, said, '^ Lord, 
 if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean." Here, 
 said the Doctor^ is the Master ; in front of Him is 
 the leper, absolutely " impossible." The leper was 
 impossible from the standpoint of the family. The 
 moment his wife saw that white spot with the hair 
 in it white, she said, ^' Good-bye, out." He was im- 
 possible, as he stood before the Master, from the 
 standpoint of social life. Some men, unhappy in 
 their homes, go to a sister or a relative ; this man 
 could not. If he went to a brother, or even to his 
 mother, and said, " I cannot live at home, take me 
 in," the moment they saw his disease, they said, 
 " Go, impossible." This man standing in front of 
 
164 God's Book and God's Boy 
 
 the Saviour was impossible from a business stand- 
 point. He could not go to any man and say, 
 " Won't you hire me, please ? " The moment that 
 man saw the spot he would exclaim, " Get you 
 gone." He could not open a little store and so 
 gain a living, for the moment the first customer 
 saw that spot, that would be the end of it. This 
 man standing face to face with the Master was im- 
 possible from the medical standpoint. If he went 
 to the best doctor in the community and said, 
 " Doctor, will you look and see if you can do any 
 thing for me ? " the doctor would say, " Get out of 
 this office ; don't come near it ; you are unclean." 
 This man standing face to face with the Master 
 was impossible from a religious standpoint. Any 
 beggar might go to the temple in Jerusalem if he 
 was a Jew, but this man, if he came to the door of 
 the temple and a priest saw the spot, would hear 
 the command, "Unclean, get out of the temple; 
 don't come into the temple lest you defile it." 
 Here, then, are the Master and this bundle of im- 
 possibilities face to face. And this man did not 
 deny it ; he simply brought his bundle of impossi- 
 bilities to Jesus and said, " Lord, if thou wilt, 
 thou canst," and Jesus said, " I will." 
 
 Is it not grand, to make a picture like that ? Is 
 not that worth a great deal of toil and labour and 
 study ? I will never forget the picture as he painted 
 it so vividly. But then the Doctor turned on the 
 congregation and said, "You sinner, you are impossi- 
 ble ; don't say it was your environment ; don't say 
 
Religious Use of Imagination 165 
 
 it was your bringing up ; you are impossible ; you 
 covetous man, you are impossible; you lecherous 
 man, you are impossible ; you vain woman, you are 
 impossible ; you are all impossible ; the only thing 
 for you to do is what that man did ; bring your im- 
 possibilities to Him and say, ^Lord, if thou wilt, 
 thou canst,' and He will say, ' I will.' " 
 
 Now if I have aroused you students and teachers 
 at all to make use of this God-given faculty, to 
 cultivate it, to chasten it, to stimulate it so that 
 you can make more vivid the stories which you 
 bring Sunday after Sunday to your class, then I 
 have accomplished that for which I thank God, 
 and for which your scholars will be boundlessly 
 grateful 
 
IX 
 
 THE TEACHER'S GRAND QUARTET 
 
 WE all like the best things, and any one 
 who is satisfied with less than the best, 
 provided the best be obtainable, is de- 
 linquent. 
 
 When I was a boy, I was taking at one time 
 music and painting lessons simultaneously. If at 
 any time my music master pushed me hard, so that 
 I neglected for a week my painting, when I came 
 to the painting master he would say, " What kind 
 of a daub is this ? What have you been doing this 
 week ? This is poor work." If I then replied, 
 " The music master pushed me hard this week and 
 I put rather too much time on that and had to neg- 
 lect my painting," the painting master said, "What 
 is music ? Take your violin and play a tune and it 
 is finished ; whereas, if you paint a picture, frame 
 it and hang it up, it is a joy forever. Young man, 
 pay especial attention to painting." If, then, I 
 paid particular attention to my painting and neg- 
 lected my music, when my music master arrived he 
 said, " What kind of a performance is this ? W^hat 
 are you doing ? " If I said, " My painting master 
 pushed me this week rather hard," he would reply, 
 
 i66 
 
The Teacher's Grand Quartet 167 
 
 " Painting ? What is painting ? It is a dead thing. 
 But take your violin and play and you make people 
 weep for joy. Pay attention to your music." I 
 suppose if I had taken lessons in sculpture at the 
 same time, and neglected sculpture for music or 
 painting, the teacher would have said, " What are 
 you doing ? Music is insignificant, painting is flat. 
 But when you chisel a statue in marble, you have 
 got a thing that only lacks the breath of life to 
 make it live. Young man, pay attention to sculp- 
 ture." 
 
 Each one from his standpoint is right, because to 
 the musician melody, harmony and tone are the 
 only things ; to the painter colour ; whereas the 
 sculptor looks only on form and figure. 
 
 There are many teachers who get discouraged in 
 their work because they do not realize that in our 
 work of Sunday-school teaching we have a quartet 
 of unsurpassed excellence. To this quartet I want 
 to call your careful and joyous attention. 
 
 The first of these things is the material in which 
 we work. We work in human nature. Five times 
 in the first chapter of Genesis we are told that 
 God saw the work of His hands and it was good. 
 The sixth time, after man arrived, we are told 
 that " God saw that it was very good." Now of 
 all humanity the most promising, the most delight- 
 ful thing, is the child. Most of us will teach chil- 
 dren up to their middle adolescent years. There- 
 fore, all I shall say to-night deals with this matter 
 of the budding child, before it reaches maturity, 
 
l68 God's Book and God's Boy 
 
 after which character becomes consolidated and 
 crystallized. 
 
 When you come to the study of child nature, 
 you come to one of the most fascinating things 
 that possibly can engage your attention ; for these 
 children are very bewitching. There is no better 
 material to work on than the material of child 
 nature. Consider now some of these extraordinary 
 excellencies that the child possesses by the very 
 virtue of its childhood. 
 
 To begin with, all children are plastic. By 
 plastic, I mean that they are like soft clay. We 
 adults are not like soft clay, we are like clay that 
 has been baked and is hard. If you are going to 
 change baked clay, you have got to break it. It is 
 hard to teach an old dog new tricks. When a man 
 is thirty or forty, he has crystallized, and it is hard 
 to change him. But a child is like soft clay in our 
 hands and can be moulded for his weal or for his 
 woe, according to the influences under which the 
 child falls. If you do not believe that childhood 
 is plastic, take a good Sunday-school class of boys, 
 and put into that class one evil-minded boy and 
 watch him begin to mould the other boys. If you 
 do not believe that the child is plastic, go to the 
 academy of the streets of our cities and see how 
 fast the child learns all things, not for up-building, 
 but for down-tearing. With childhood you can do 
 almost anything, by the grace of God, for its 
 uplift, for its moulding into beautiful. Christlike 
 characteristics. That is one of our great en- 
 
The Teacher's Grand Quartet 169 
 
 couragements, that we have got them just at the 
 period when every effort for good is better repaid 
 than it is in later years. 
 
 Another characteristic of childhood is that it is 
 mercurial. Like the mercury in the thermometer, 
 it is down, down, up, up. This is a trying char- 
 acteristic of childhood, undoubtedly, but it must be 
 reckoned with. We make a great mistake in for- 
 getting this. We have an idea that children are 
 so built that they can sit still and have us talk to 
 them for half an hour without wriggling. Now a 
 child is not made that way. It is torment for a 
 child to sit stilh You can sit still for half an hour, 
 but a child cannot. We have got, therefore, to 
 adapt our teaching to this mercurial nature of 
 children. 
 
 These children, by reason of their mercurial 
 nature, can do two or three things at the same 
 time, and do them all pretty well, which is more 
 than some of us can do. It used to be my habit 
 while I was superintendent of the Sunday-school of 
 the church to which I ministered, when I saw a 
 peculiarly difficult lesson approaching to preach 
 five or six weeks ahead on that lesson. I was do- 
 ing that one Sunday when I noticed a restless boy 
 sitting by his teacher's side. When I had finished 
 the service she came up and said, '' What do you 
 think Charlie did while you were preaching ? " I 
 said, "I don't know." She replied, "He had a 
 gutta-percha watch-chain and he took every link 
 apart and put it together again while you were 
 
170 God's Book and God's Boy 
 
 preaching ; I am discouraged." I said, " I am 
 sorry, but I can't help it." Six weeks afterwards 
 we came to the same lesson, and to her surprise 
 Charlie knew it well. She said, " Charlie, I am 
 glad you studied your lesson." He answered, " I 
 didn't study it." Then she said, " How did you 
 know it so well ? " " Oh," he said, " old Schauffler 
 preached on it six weeks ago." He was mercurial 
 enough to listen to me, attend to the watch-chain 
 and leap back to me again. We must adapt our 
 teaching, therefore, to that peculiar phase of child 
 nature. Change it, we cannot ; adapt ourselves to 
 it, we can. 
 
 Another characteristic of child nature is that it 
 is swift. That is one trouble, that children are so 
 swift and we are so slow. One time I saw a notice 
 on a roundhouse of a railroad company which said, 
 "]N"o engineer is allowed to take his locomotive out 
 of this roundhouse with less than one hundred and 
 twenty pounds of steam on." I thought, " That is 
 fine, and I will put up a notice in our Sunday-school 
 that no teacher will be allowed to go to her class 
 with less than one hundred and twenty pounds of 
 steam on." The trouble is that the boys go there 
 with their boilers bursting, and you get there with 
 your boiler lukewarm, and then you expect to pull 
 that train. Nay, verily. The boy whose boiler is 
 full will pull the train. Imagine this situation in 
 the class. A Wild West show has been around and 
 some of the boys have been to it. The Sunday- 
 school lesson is "Jehoshaphat helped by God." 
 
The Teacher's Grand Quartet 1 71 
 
 They don't care about Jehoshaphat ; they don't 
 know who he was ; they don't care whether he was 
 helped by God or not, but they are full of the 
 Wild West show and they all arrive early. The 
 teacher arrives full of Jehoshaphat and she arrives 
 late, and one of the boys is already teaching the 
 class a lesson on Buffalo Bill and he is doing it well. 
 That is because he has got one hundred and twenty 
 pounds of steam on, and the boy who comes early 
 with that kind of a boiler will carry the whole 
 train with him. That makes some teachers so re- 
 luctant to go to their classes. It is to them a kind 
 of a bore, and they say, " Oh, I have got to go to 
 that class again." Now wherever a teacher says, 
 "Oh, I have got to go to that class," you may be 
 sure that the class says, " Oh, here comes that 
 teacher." It is a poor rule that does not work 
 both ways. 
 
 This swiftness of our scholars is a thing peculiar 
 to America. I have seen Sunday-school scholars 
 in four continents, and nowhere can they match 
 that swiftness of mental processes which we find 
 here. A Boston lady told me one day of a Boston 
 boy in the public school who was asked to give the 
 parts of the verb " go " ; he promptly said, " Go, 
 went, got there." I took that down to ISTew York 
 and told it to my brother, who is one of the super- 
 intendents of public schools in New York, and he 
 said, " Oh, that's nothing ; a New York grammar- 
 school boy was asked to compare the adjective 
 * sick,' and he said, ' Sick, worse, dead.' " 
 
172 God's Book and God's Boy 
 
 Prof. George Adam Smith told me the following 
 story of a ISlew Haven professor of psychology, 
 whose wont it was to pounce on some child and 
 ask it a ridiculous question to see how long it took 
 the child to pull itself together and give some kind 
 of an answer. One day on the streets of New 
 Haven, he pounced on a newsboy and said, " Sonny, 
 what time is it by your nose ? " The newsboy 
 promptly said, " Mine ain't running ; is yours ? " 
 You see how swift these children are, and the 
 teacher must accelerate her speed in order to keep 
 up with the amazing rapidity of her scholars. But 
 if we do, then we lead them, for they love swift 
 people, and if we lead them in that way they will 
 follow willingly. 
 
 Another characteristic of childhood is that it is 
 superbly imaginative. Oh, how these children love 
 to make believe. They live in an imaginary world, 
 and we live in the prosaic world. If we only use 
 our imagination right, we can picture to them 
 Biblical scenes and make vivid to them Biblical 
 parables, so that they are fairly fascinated with the 
 story. Their imaginations are fairly hungering 
 for food and if we have nothing to present to them, 
 no imaginative work, we lose them. 
 
 The imagination of some of these children is 
 really bewitching. I heard, for example, of a child 
 who was eating pancakes at breakfast. She cut a 
 little piece and a big piece. Then she called the 
 little piece baby and the big piece mama, and eat- 
 ing the little piece she said, " Don't cry, baby ; 
 
The Teacher's Grand Quartet 1 73 
 
 mama is coming directly." Is not that charming ? 
 A child that can imagine such a fascinating thing 
 as that can be led by the teacher by the very 
 power of its imagination, so that teacher and 
 scholar shall be enormously stimulated and grati- 
 fied. Of course, we know by experience that these 
 children are not, all of them, angels. Some of 
 them are rather trying. I heard a man in the 
 '' Men and Eeligion Movement " make a statement 
 in public with which I failed to agree. He said, 
 pointblank, " There are no bad boys." This is not 
 true. There are some boys who naturally are de- 
 praved and degenerate. Of course, we have our 
 troubles with these children, but so do public 
 school teachers. The papers often make fun of us 
 Sunday-school teachers because of the ridiculous 
 answers we get to some of our questions, and with 
 all of that I agree. But if any public school 
 teacher will show me any stupid or absurd answer 
 of a Sunday-school scholar, I will match it at once 
 with a ridiculous answer in the public schools. 
 Lately, after having studied English history a little, 
 some scholars were asked to write an essay on 
 Henry the Eighth, and one of the children wrote, 
 " Henry the Eighth married a wife and didn't like 
 her, and put her away, and he married a second 
 and a third and a fourth and a fifth and a sixth, 
 and out of that sprang the Church of England." 
 Another boy, writing on Lincoln, said, " Abraham 
 Lincoln was born on a very cold February day in a 
 small log cabin which he helped his father build." 
 
174 God^s Book and God's Boy 
 
 Now these are not imaginary things I am telling 
 you ; these are actual facts. My brother, who used 
 to bring me sundry tidbits out of the public schools, 
 told me that in a grammar-school after a lecture 
 on the human body, the class was asked to write a 
 composition and one boy wrote as follows : " The 
 human body is composed of three parts, the head, 
 thorax and bowels ; the head is that with which we 
 think ; the thorax has the heart, lungs and liver ; 
 the bowels are five, a e i o u and sometimes w 
 and y." 
 
 Absurd things ? Yes ; but that is the way the 
 child mind works ; it misapprehends, both in public 
 school and Sunday-school. So we ought not to be 
 any more discouraged in our work than the public 
 school teachers are in theirs. Indeed, we ought to 
 be less discouraged, because the public school 
 teachers have their scholars five days a week and 
 five hours in the day, and we have our scholars one 
 day in the week and thirty minutes for the lesson. 
 Under these conditions I say it is wonderful to see 
 what results we do get. 
 
 These scholars of ours are affectionate. Every 
 child, unless it is blase, is affectionate. Childhood 
 is like a creeper that wants something to twine 
 around, and if the teacher is in the right attitude 
 towards the child, the child will twine around the 
 teacher and cling closely to the one it loves. This 
 affection of the child for the teacher may be ad- 
 mirably used by the teacher to win the child away 
 from the base, to lead the child up to that which is 
 
The Teacher^s Grand Quartet 175 
 
 noble, to win the child away from the visible to the 
 invisible, to lead the child from love for the teacher 
 to love for the teacher's Saviour. 
 
 I am sorry for any teacher whose scholars do not 
 love her. It simply shows that you are not lov- 
 able, that is all. Kesign, if you cannot love your 
 scholars ; but if you can love your scholars, hold on, 
 for, after all, the power of the Sunday-school teacher 
 is more a power of the heart than of the head. I am 
 not one of those who depreciate the head. I would 
 have the teachers prepare themselves with the ut- 
 most conscientiousness so they will know what to 
 teach. Nevertheless, the dominant power in Sun- 
 day-school work is affection and not intellect. 
 When, however, you combine affection and intellect, 
 then you have a prodigious force, and you can bring 
 your scholars step by step from that which is merely 
 human up to that which is superbly divine. 
 
 These scholars of ours have another characteristic. 
 They are heroic. We oftentimes make a mistake 
 through thinking that one must grow to adult years 
 before one can be a hero or a heroine. That is a 
 great blunder. I have known children as heroic in 
 their stand for the right as any adults whom I have 
 ever met. When a child sees its duty and is rightly 
 taught, it will often go ahead and do its duty, ir- 
 respective of its environment, even more steadily 
 than a man will. After we grow^ to be adults, all 
 kind of ulterior considerations come in. We say, 
 " This is the line of duty, but how will it affect my 
 interests ? What will people say of me if I launch 
 
176 God's Book and God's Boy 
 
 out on this career ? How will it affect my friends ? " 
 All manner of selfish considerations come in to in- 
 fluence us, not always victoriously, but often power- 
 fully. The tendency of the child, if it sees its line 
 of duty, is to follow it like the flight of an arrow, 
 regardless of consequences. Many a Sunday-school 
 teacher will bear witness to this superb characteris- 
 tic of childhood, that sees, and dares and does. 
 
 Oh, we so often underestimate the potentiality of 
 these children. We are thinking of them in a 
 derogatory kind of way only too frequently. An 
 elder in a Scotch church, being absent from com- 
 munion service, and on Monday meeting another 
 elder who had been to communion service said to 
 him, " Did any one unite with the church yesterday 
 on confession ? " The answer was, " No, nobody 
 but wee Bobby Moffatt." Oh, nobody but wee 
 Bobby Moffatt ! But what has Africa got to say 
 about " wee Bobby Moffatt " and his successor, 
 Livingstone ? What has Africa got to say about 
 his breaking open that continent and endeavouring 
 to bring in Christ's light ? To the elder he was 
 only " wee Bobby Moffatt " ; to God he was the 
 pioneer in the opening of that dark continent. 
 
 You see, then, what superb material we have 
 right under our hands, at the formative period, just 
 when imagination, when swiftness of thought, when 
 that profound affection of the child prompts it to 
 be influenced by us and to follow our lead, with 
 absolute trust, and with a loyalty unsurpassed. 
 
 That, then, is the first of these four grand things. 
 
The Teacher^s Grand Quartet 177 
 
 The second is the best tool. We all like good 
 tools. A good workman can work well with a poor 
 tool, and a poor workman cannot work well with 
 anything, but, nevertheless, a good workman can 
 work better if he can get a good tool. The tool 
 that we have with which to shape this child nature 
 is the Word of God, adapted admirably to all the 
 child's needs. Not that all the Word of God is 
 equally adapted to childhood. No one would claim 
 that. But there are multitudes of passages in the 
 Word of God which fit a child's nature as a key fits 
 a lock. Have you ever realized how the historical 
 parts of the Bible are written from the biographical 
 standpoint ? If you take the lives of Abraham, 
 Isaac, Jacob and Joseph, you have covered thirty- 
 nine chapters of Genesis, all biographical, and if 
 you take the life of Moses, you have covered the 
 rest of the Pentateuch. If you take the life of 
 David, you have covered a large part of Kings. 
 If you take the lives of Christ, Paul, Peter, you 
 have covered practically the whole of the New 
 Testament. Children like to know what people 
 did, they like to be introduced to the great men 
 and the great women of the centuries that lie be- 
 hind us. What grander story is there, for example, 
 than the story of David and Jonathan, so superbly 
 told ? What more beautiful story than the friend- 
 ship between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law as 
 given in the book of Kuth ? The model mother-in- 
 law of all millenniums is Naomi, and the model 
 daughter-in-law of the same millenniums is Kuth. 
 
178 God's Book and God's Boy 
 
 Not in Kichmond, not in any town of New Eng- 
 land, can you find any more superb examples of 
 what mother-in-law and daughter-in-law should be 
 to each other. There is no more superb poetry 
 than the words of Kuth : 
 
 ''Intreat me not to leave thee, and to re- 
 turn from following after thee : for whither 
 thou goest, I will go ; and where thou lodg- 
 est, I will lodge ; thy people shall be my 
 people, and thy God my God : 
 
 ^' Where thou diest, will I die, and there 
 will I be buried : Jehovah do so to me, and 
 more also, if ought but death part thee and 
 me." 
 
 That is superb. 
 
 Passing along, what grander story is there than 
 that of Joseph, who in adversity was loyal to the 
 truth and in prosperity never forsook the God of 
 his fathers ? The days of bitter adversity and the 
 days of wonderful prosperity were met by that man 
 in each case victoriously. 
 
 There is no book in all the world which a teacher 
 can teach year after year and not be weary of, ex- 
 cepting only this Book. I have been a teacher of 
 a Bible class of teachers in New York for thirty- 
 four years. Am I weary of it ? Never. Have we 
 exhausted it ? We have not begun to get at it 
 even yet. And as the years pass by, the Book 
 opens up more and more, and you see how it is 
 fitted to the human heart, how it fills the deepest 
 human wants, how it arouses the human conscience, 
 
The Teacher's Grand Quartet 179 
 
 how it stimulates human effort, how it sets before 
 you truth abstractly and concretely in the examples 
 of the noble men and women of days gone by. So 
 here, for the child that we wish to influence and 
 shape, we have a tool admirably adapted for ex- 
 actly the work we want to carry out. 
 
 The third of those grand things is our Helper. 
 We may well say, as we face a class of boys or 
 girls, "Who is sufficient for these things?" We 
 sit before that class, and each one of them is a 
 sovereign, sitting in his castle, with his own free 
 will. Challenge all of the professors of all the 
 theological seminaries to come and bend the will 
 of a perverse boy. Without divine aid they shall 
 fail utterly, because that boy sits inside a sovereign, 
 hearing all of their pleas, all of their arguments, 
 and replying, "I won't." There is no power on 
 earth that is merely human that can bend that 
 boy's will. Sovereign he remains, because of this 
 endowment of free agency. We need, therefore, in 
 this grand but most difficult task of shaping char- 
 acter, to have a helper who is superhuman, and 
 that is exactly what we have. The Divine Spirit 
 is willing to be a co-worker with every single 
 Sunday-school teacher in the world. It is His work 
 to lift up before the scholar, through us, the things 
 of Christ ; it is His work to tame the human will 
 and make it willing in the day of His power. I 
 believe myself that the Holy Spirit is always ach- 
 ing to act with the teacher in her class. 
 
 Many teachers go to their classes almost without 
 
l8o God's Book and God's Boy 
 
 the consciousness that there is a Holy Spirit, or 
 that He is willing to guide them in their study, and 
 in their speech. They run in their own strength. 
 Whoever runs in his own strength runs without 
 tidings, and without power. When the Holy Spirit 
 is entreated, then that teacher goes into the class, 
 and by virtue of the Holy Spirit's aid an influence 
 is exerted so that hearts are opened and wills sub- 
 dued. There are many ministers, I fear, who go 
 into the pulpit without the Holy Spirit, and they 
 come out without the Holy Spirit, too. It is not 
 your great sermon, it is not your great oratory that 
 is to accomplish anything. No ; our sufficiency is 
 through Him. How could Mr. Moody, illiterate 
 as he was, swing thousands and thousands and 
 bring them by God's grace into the kingdom? 
 Only by the power of the Spirit of the Living God. 
 How does Billy Sunday, with whose methods some 
 of us disagree, nevertheless, by God's grace, win so 
 many from low lives to high lives, from lawlessness 
 to lawfulness ? The secret of it all is dependence on 
 the Spirit of the Living God, without whom noth- 
 ing can be accomplished, and with whom nothing 
 need fail. 
 
 I would, therefore, earnestly urge that all who 
 go into the pulpit, all who go into the class-room, 
 realize that they are absolutely powerless unless 
 Divine Power flows through them, and that then 
 there is no opposition that can successfully resist 
 this divine influence. 
 
 See, then, where we stand— the best material, 
 
The Teacher's Grand Quartet i8i 
 
 childhood ; the best tool, the Word of the Living 
 God ; the best helper, the Divine Spirit. This 
 explains how very ignorant teachers, leaning on 
 the Holy Spirit's aid, succeed where highly intel- 
 lectual teachers, leaning on their own strength, 
 ofttimes fail. In my school one of my two most 
 successful teachers in winning souls for Christ was 
 a man who had lived his lifetime before the mast, 
 quite ignorant, but filled with Power Divine. Every 
 one of his scholars came to the Saviour and every 
 one joined the church. Then he came to me and 
 he said, "I am an ignorant man; these children 
 have found the Saviour; take them away from 
 me ; give them to some one better instructed than 
 I, and give me out of the primary class another set ; 
 maybe I can lead them to Christ." He was a man 
 saturated with prayer and convinced of his depend- 
 ence on the Divine Spirit. I gave him another 
 class, and every one of those found the Saviour 
 and every one joined the church. 
 
 This brings us to the fourth of these best things, 
 and that is the best aim in the world. There are 
 various aims that we can have in the education of 
 those under our care. The college coach aims at 
 superb development for the baseball or the foot- 
 ball team. What he wants is, primarily, physical 
 capability and a superb body under the government 
 of a well-trained mind. At the same time, in these 
 days of excessive athletics, I oftentimes think of 
 that passage of Scripture which says that the Lord 
 delighteth not in the legs of a man. The football 
 
l82 God's Book and God's Boy 
 
 crowd deals in the legs of a man, but I never forget 
 that the rear battery of a donkey can kick harder 
 than any football player I ever heard of. (Never- 
 theless, I do not depreciate football, though I some- 
 times think that it is one of those things which has 
 been driven to excess.) 
 
 There are others who aim at the higher develop- 
 ment of youth through the intellect. The public 
 school teacher, or college professor aims at the 
 development of the mind, which is surely higher 
 than anything physical, because it is through the 
 intellect that we stand high above the most superb 
 animal in the world. The Sunday-school has no 
 physical aim except secondarily ; nor has it an in- 
 tellectual aim except secondarily. We are not 
 satisfied if we instruct our scholars only in Old and 
 New Testament geography ; we cannot consider 
 our work well done if we impart only a knowledge 
 of Old Testament times and environment, or of 
 New Testament times under the Koman Empire. 
 All of this is a legitimate subject to work on, but 
 is only subsidiary ; our work is higher than this, 
 and reaches deeper than this. That Sunday-school 
 teacher who is satisfied because he has made his 
 scholars understand the lesson as a lesson, historic- 
 ally or geographically, comes far short of his duty 
 and privilege. 
 
 What, then, is the supreme aim of all right- 
 minded Sunday-school teachers ? It is twofold. 
 First, the conversion of the scholar to Christ. Call 
 it by any name you like, I care not ; the reality is 
 
The Teacher's Grand Quartet 183 
 
 the thing ; " Ye must be born again." I am not 
 of those who claim that a child must have a dra- 
 matic experience in conversion, such as Jerry Mc- 
 Auley had, or Dave Kanney, or S. S. Hadley. A 
 child has not run any such course as those men and 
 it is foolish to talk of a child having such an ex- 
 perience. Nevertheless, the fact is that in its own 
 way the child has got to trust the Saviour, accept 
 Him as Master and follow Him as leader. 
 
 It would be most interesting if, right here and 
 now, we could find what our experiences were in 
 coming to Christ. The experience of no two of us 
 would be exactly alike. I came to Christ at about 
 fourteen years of age, with no extra preaching, no 
 revival services, nothing at all but God and I. I 
 came to Christ quietly in my own room, on my 
 knees. I know the place, I know the time, I know 
 the experience full well when my boy heart sur- 
 rendered. 
 
 Now our chance of reaching that aim (always by 
 divine grace, remember) is enormously better in 
 childhood than in adult years. All statistics show 
 that if a boy, or a girl, passes adolescence, uncon- 
 verted, the chances are very small that they ever 
 will surrender themselves to Christ and follow 
 Him. As the years pass the chances grow less and 
 less. Enormously the majority of those who are 
 church members will testify that they found Christ 
 before they were fifteen years old. I have tested 
 this again and again, but, for your sakes, I am go- 
 ing to test it now, and I am going to ask all of you 
 
184 God's Book and God's Boy 
 
 who recognize that you found Christ at or before 
 fifteen years of age please to stand now. (Nearly 
 all rise.) You see where we stand. What an 
 enormous majority of those here were child-Chris- 
 tians. And there is our joy, and our hope, that we 
 have got these children just at this plastic period, 
 when divine influences are more easily followed 
 and divine impressions are more easily made. 
 
 That, then, is our first aim, the bringing of the 
 scholar to Christ, his conversion, regeneration — I 
 care not what your nomenclature is, so long as the 
 actuality is there. 
 
 Now many teachers make this mistake, that when 
 the scholar has united with the church they feel 
 like washing their hands and saying, " My duty is 
 done." Oh, no ; your duty has only begun along 
 another line ; it has been bringing the child to the 
 Saviour, henceforth it is to train the child up in the 
 Saviour's love and service. So, then, there comes 
 the second aim of the teacher, which is growth in 
 grace, or Christian culture. The aim of our teach- 
 ing changes at once when the scholar makes the 
 great surrender. There had been no spiritual life ; 
 it was imparted ; now it must be fostered, stimu- 
 lated, brought to proper and symmetrical pro- 
 portions ; and there the teacher's work, though 
 changing, remains, nevertheless, along the same 
 line of Christian fullness of character. 
 
 See, friends, what a wonderful thing this is. Our 
 aim with these scholars is to make them reproduc- 
 tions of Christ in character. " Be ye therefore per- 
 
\^ The Teacher's Grand Quartet 185 
 
 feet, even as your Father which is in Heaven is 
 perfect." That is oar aim. So when they are 
 born into the kingdom, it is ours by divine grace 
 to be God's tools to develop in them this Christian 
 life, so that the old things shall pass away, so that 
 the old man shall be put off like an old, moth-eaten 
 garment, so that the new man shall be put on. A 
 grander aim than that no man on earth, no angel 
 in Heaven, could desire, because grander than per- 
 fectness as our Father in Heaven is perfect, there 
 is nothing in the wide world. 
 
 Teacher, is not your privilege beyond speech? 
 Four divine things making this quartet, which, if 
 rightly handled, shall make divine music. There 
 is God's child, perverted and wayward more or 
 less, I know, but none the less God's child ; there 
 is God's Book ; there is God's Divine Spirit to help 
 me use that Book as a tool for that divine child ;' 
 there is the divine aim and object, the imparting 
 and the development of the divine character. Four 
 divine things, and all at my disposal, all by divine 
 help brought under my control more or less. Could 
 any calling be grander, more precious, or more 
 worthy of being sought after by any one on earth 
 than the calling of Sunday-school teacher? As 
 teachers, we strike into the very heart of our chil- 
 dren's lives, reach the rising generation so that the 
 families that are to be, are going to be more di- 
 vinely instructed than the families that now are. 
 We are co-working with Christ to win man back to 
 loyalty to God, to win man away from that which 
 
i86 God's Book and God's Boy 
 
 is base and low to that which is high, to win men 
 away from eternal death to eternal life through 
 Jesus Christ, our Lord. These things form the 
 grand quartet for the teacher. For the right use 
 of all of these, let us individually look to Him who 
 is willing to guide all His people with the Divine 
 Spirit of Truth, without whom, I must repeat, all 
 is vain, but with whom there shall be signal success 
 in winning our scholars for Christ and building 
 them up into Christlike living and service. 
 
X 
 
 THE TEACHER'S ELEVEN HELPERS 
 
 EYERY Sunday-school superintendent who is 
 capable will sooner or later have a good 
 school. However disorganized the school 
 may be when he takes it, he will work cosmos out 
 of chaos in due time. Every capable teacher, 
 whatever may be the class passed over to him or 
 her, will sooner or later have a well-managed class 
 because the teacher can by patience, perseverance 
 and prayer largely overcome the difficulties that 
 any class presents. If the teacher is fortunate 
 enough to have a good superintendent, then teacher 
 and superintendent work in close cooperation, and 
 school-work and class-work rapidly attain a fine 
 development. 
 
 I am talking this morning, however, about that 
 particular teacher who, even independently of the 
 superintendent, can make admirable use of the 
 eleven helpers that God has given. 
 
 Every teacher has two eyes. I have seen teachers 
 who you would think were blind, because they did 
 not seem to see. Every superintendent who notices 
 finds teachers who are oblivious to disorder in the 
 class. The boys may be cutting up didos but the 
 teacher keeps on the even tenor of her way and 
 notices nothing. There are teachers in primary 
 
 187 
 
i88 God's Book and God's Boy 
 
 departments who never notice whether the room is 
 well arranged, whether the scholars are well seated, 
 whether they are comfortable or uncomfortable. 
 It is amazing to see how they do not see. Unless 
 your scholars are comfortable it is impossible for 
 you to teach them. 1 don't care how clever the 
 teacher is, if you are sitting on the sharp end of a 
 tack he may work in vain until that tack is ex- 
 tracted. So while the scholar is uncomfortable or 
 the air in the room is exhausted, the teacher's labour 
 is futile. 
 
 Two eyes — given to see. I once had in my 
 school two blind teachers, but what they lacked in 
 physical vision they made up by the use of ear- 
 gate. One of them was very shrewd. He taught 
 a girls' class. I had said in the teachers' meeting 
 one day that I needed a teacher very much for a 
 trying boys' class. At the close of the meeting he 
 came up and said : " I will take it." I replied : 
 " Why, you are blind." " Never mind," he an- 
 swered, " I will take it." I gave him the class and 
 moved it up to the front in the school, so as to be 
 directly under my supervision. This is what hap- 
 pened the ver}^ first Sunday. The seats were all 
 cushioned and the class was crowded. As we arose 
 to sing one boy threw his h3aTin-book on the cush- 
 ioned seat. The blind teacher heard it. He stooped 
 down, picked up the book and gave it to the scholar 
 with a smile. Just at that moment the boy's eye 
 caught mine and he smiled in a kind of shamefaced 
 way. The blind teacher had been too much for 
 
The Teacher's Eleven Helpers 189 
 
 the boy with two eyes. He took his book, opened 
 it and sang like an angel. What the teacher could 
 not see the teacher could hear and thus he remedied 
 the diflBculty with that one boy and thereby quelled 
 a sort of quiet insubordination in the class. 
 
 Every teacher has two ears. There are many 
 teachers who seem to act as if they were stone-deaf, 
 for they never give their scholars a chance to say 
 anything, they never hear what is announced from 
 the platform and if a platform review of the lesson 
 goes on, they pay little attention. Ears are given 
 to hear. We must be good listeners as well as 
 good talkers. A mere lecturer is out of place in a 
 class of boys or girls. In the adult class it may be 
 that pure lecturing may pass, but with the younger 
 ones — never. There has got to be such teaching as 
 will lead the scholars to ask questions and the teacher 
 must answer them. There must be such teaching 
 as will lead the teacher to ask questions and listen 
 to the replies. That particular line of work in the 
 class I shall discuss later on more fully. 
 
 Ears are given to hear with, and if we listen to 
 our scholars' troubles sympathetically, if we hear 
 their temptations pityingly, it goes to show that 
 we enter into their lives. Just as we listen, just 
 in that proportion is the scholar won. We ought, 
 therefore, to use our ears. I noticed when I was a 
 superintendent that some teachers paid no attention 
 when I was giving an announcement from the plat- 
 form. I suppose that is always so with all congre- 
 gations. There are always some in all congrega- 
 
igo God^s Book and God's Boy 
 
 tions who do not hear aright. Even here in this 
 rather extraordinarily intellectual congregation a 
 man came up to me and said : " Did I understand 
 you to say that that tablet that you showed us was 
 an imitation ? " Now, I had said distinctly that it 
 was genuine. Where were that man's ears ? If 
 there is a notice, harken. If there is a platform re- 
 view, harken. Whatever the superintendent has to 
 say, instantly harken, because it is supposed that 
 what he says is worth hearing. 
 
 Every teacher has two feet Feet are made to go 
 with. The first thing a teacher ought to do is to 
 go to the teachers' meeting, if there be one ; to Sun- 
 day-school, always ; and in any case, promptly. 
 These late-comers make one sometimes a little vexed. 
 The only grace they develop is the grace of patience, 
 and sometimes they almost exhaust that. 
 
 But the teacher's feet are given to travel with. 
 Visitation is one of the tremendous elements of 
 power in the teacher's work. Every teacher ought 
 to visit the scholar in the home, not once or twice, 
 but fairly steadily. You can learn in the home 
 surroundings your scholar's daily environment. 
 That will help you when you meet the scholar face 
 to face. You see the influence there. You breathe 
 the mysterious atmosphere of the home. This helps 
 you to be patient, to better adapt the truth to the 
 need of each particular scholar. 
 
 One day, the morning after Christmas, I visited 
 the home of two of my scholars. The father was a 
 tailor. As soon as I entered he turned his back on 
 
The Teacher's Eleven Helpers 191 
 
 me and never turned around again. I knew at once 
 there was trouble. I did my best but failed to find 
 out what the trouble was. When I said good-bye 
 the mother followed me out into the hall and said : 
 " Last night when the children got home from the 
 Christmas tree with their presents, he was surly 
 with drink, and he snatched their presents from 
 them and shoved them into the stove, so the chil- 
 dren are broken-hearted." 
 
 See — that opened the door to me to know the 
 environment of these poor children, to sympathize 
 with them, to greet them with a little more of 
 tenderness and kindliness when next they came to 
 Sunday-school. 
 
 I had a young woman in a Bible class who was 
 sometimes troubled very much with nervousness. 
 I called at the house and the father was there, who 
 also happened to be a tailor. When he was sober 
 he was sensible ; when he was in his cups he was in- 
 sufferable. That day he was in his cups and noth- 
 ing suited him. He was as cross as two sticks. 
 He made me as nervous as a witch. Then I knew 
 why that young woman was nervous — driven to 
 pieces by the incessant faultfinding spirit of her 
 own father. 
 
 Visiting a home once where a primary scholar in 
 my school Kved, I was talking with the mother 
 about the bringing up of her little child. One of 
 the questions I asked her was, " Have you taught 
 the child to pray ? " 
 
 " Oh ! certainly," she said. " Mary, kneel down 
 
192 God's Book and God's Boy 
 
 and say your prayers." On that the little five-year- 
 old child knelt down in the middle of the room, and 
 folding her hands, said : 
 
 " O Thou with the strength of an earthly father, 
 and with more than the tenderness of an earthly 
 mother, look down upon us Thy sinful creatures, we 
 beseech Thee, and vouchsafe unto us Thy benedic- 
 tion and grace. Amen." 
 
 What a revelation that was to me, as Sunday- 
 school superintendent, of the need of that child for 
 better instruction along the line of prayer. What 
 could a five-year-older understand of the words 
 " vouchsafe " or " benediction " ? 
 
 Not only should our feet take us to the homes of 
 the scholars, but if they be in business, to their 
 place of business. If your scholars are in the factory 
 or in the shop, you will find it hard to find them in 
 the daytime at home, but in the factory or shop 
 you can catch them. Their employers are glad to 
 have the teachers visit their employees. I have 
 never found it otherwise. In that way you find 
 their environment in business hours. It does not 
 take long, and if you are wise, you will not make 
 long visits to the girl in the department or candy 
 store. But even a short visit touches the heart. 
 
 My wife had a large class of young women who 
 worked. One of them, for example, worked for 
 Huyler's, on Broadway, where ladies bought 
 dyspepsia at ten cents a glass. She was cashier, 
 and sometimes there would be a line of three or 
 more waiting their chance to pay. Of course, there 
 
The Teacher's Eleven Helpers 193 
 
 was no opportunity for much talking, but my wife 
 would simply go in and take a rose or pink, and 
 leaning over the shoulders of the ladies say : 
 " Mary, how are you ? " and give her the flower. 
 Wouldn't Mary be more sure to be at Sunday- 
 school on the next Sunday than if her teacher had 
 not done this ? My wife knew all of her scholars 
 in their homes and working places. 
 
 I was at the funeral one day, in ISTew York, of a 
 men's Bible class teacher. Around that coffin were 
 ninety men. His class numbered one hundred, and 
 they said the way he got his tremendous grip on 
 that class was that he knew every one of them in 
 their homes and in their places of business. That 
 is the blessed advantage of having two good feet 
 wherewith to visit in home and in business place. 
 
 Every teacher has two hands. See ; you are not 
 so poverty-stricken as you thought. And these 
 hands are most valuable helpers. With your 
 hands, for example, you can do blackboard work if 
 you have a class-room by yourself. You can do pad- 
 work if you have to meet where other classes sur- 
 round you. You can use your hands for corre- 
 spondence. Many of these scholars of ours get few 
 letters, especially those in the tenement sections of 
 the town, and a letter coming to the tenement- 
 house boy or girl is quite an event. But never 
 write to them on a postal card in the tenement- 
 house district, for if they live on the top floor, your 
 card is read all the way up and when it reaches the 
 top it is public property. Send a stamped letter, 
 
194 God's Book and God's Boy 
 
 sealed. Then what the scholar gets is private 
 property. 
 
 There are often things we would like to say that 
 we cannot say in the class, but a letter gives us the 
 opportunity. A letter is always read by a Sunday- 
 school scholar and frequently more than once. A 
 letter makes the scholar realize that the teacher 
 thinks of her or him away from the class, that the 
 scholar is on the teacher's heart. I have known 
 teachers who wrote letters to their scholars regu- 
 larly. In their vacation when scholar and teacher 
 are away, they secured the address of the scholar, 
 and always regularly there came the letter from 
 the teacher with a remark or two about the lesson 
 for the following Sunday. Do you wonder that 
 they clung to her as with hooks of steel ? 
 
 Remember birthday letters. It is a charming 
 thing to send a scholar : " Many happy returns of 
 your birthdaj^" Enclose a picture card. If in the 
 fall, put in some autumn leaves. If abroad, put in 
 some touching memento. It is not the price of the 
 gift that counts. It is the heart in it. The schol- 
 ars will rally around the teacher who remembers 
 them like this most loyally. 
 
 See — these other things your hands can do. If 
 you go to visit a sick scholar (which is an especially 
 good time to visit), your hands can take some little 
 delicacy, or carry a small bouquet of flowers. Your 
 hands can smooth the pillow. Your hands can 
 hold the hand of the sick boy or girl lying on the 
 bed, fever-stricken. Oh, these hands { what miracles 
 
The Teacher^s Eleven Helpers 195 
 
 they are, and how they can woo and win the schol- 
 ar's heart. 
 
 A friend of mine out West, who was a sympa- 
 thetic, kind father, died. When the funeral was 
 about to take place, before the coffin was closed 
 and the friends had come, the oldest boy, about 
 nine years old, said: "Mother, let me see father 
 again." The mother asked him : " Why do you 
 want to see your father again ? " and the boy re- 
 plied : " I want to look at his kind handsy 
 
 These hands are good to shake hands with when 
 the scholars come to the class. When you shake 
 hands with your scholars may I suggest if you have 
 kid gloves on that you take them off, because kid 
 gloves are non-conductors ; skin to skin — that is the 
 proper way to shake hands. 
 
 I was to address a certain Sunday-school in New 
 York one day. Going in, I sat down near the door. 
 The superintendent came in and looked at me as 
 though he were a marble statue and I another, and 
 passed on. I said to myself : "If ever I want to 
 join a Sunday-school, this is the Sunday-school I 
 would not join." 
 
 Again, I went to the Bushwick Avenue Sunday, 
 school in Brooklyn, where Frank L. Brown was 
 superintendent. Before I got past the vestibule, a 
 young man stepped up and said : " I believe you 
 are a stranger, sir. I am glad to see you. I will 
 give you a seat after you register, and the moment 
 the superintendent comes I will introduce you to 
 him." The moment the superintendent came in 
 
196 God's Book and God's Boy 
 
 I was put in charge of the proper person and was 
 shown around the school. The next Saturday, un- 
 der a two-cent stamp, I got the following : " Dear 
 Mr. Schauffler — We were glad to welcome you to 
 our school last Sunday. If you do not belong to 
 any school and would like to unite with us, we as- 
 sure you of a hearty welcome, and can either put 
 you in the proper class or give you a class, if you 
 so desire. Yours truly, Frank L. Brown." 
 
 Wouldn't that draw me to that school? The 
 secretary used his hands ; the superintendent used 
 his hands ; the welcomer used his hands, and that 
 is what won my heart. If I was going to join any 
 school that is the school that I would quickly go to. 
 
 See what wonderful helpers you have — two eyes, 
 two ears, two feet, two hands. 
 
 You have got one mouthy which is suggestive. 
 Most people act as though they had only one eye, 
 one ear, one foot, one hand, and two mouths. Nev- 
 ertheless, this mouth is very helpful and he who 
 can make good use of his tongue is just by so much 
 a first-class teacher. In this respect we may ever 
 offer the prayer : ^' Open Thou my lips and my 
 mouth shall show forth Thy praise." 
 
 Now the use of this tongue of ours is most help- 
 ful. I believe that on the whole it is the strongest 
 helper that the Sunday-school teacher has, and 
 therefore to its right use very great attention must 
 be paid. With our tongues we welcome. With our 
 tongues we ask questions. With our tongues we 
 impart truth. We ought, therefore, to know the 
 
The Teacher's Eleven Helpers 197 
 
 fundamental principles of teaching through speech 
 in the appeal to ear-gate — mouth-gate of mine ap- 
 pealing to ear-gate of the scholar. This leads us to 
 a very important matter, namely : the art of ques- 
 tioning. We are appealing to our scholars' ears. 
 We want, however, also to give the scholar a 
 chance to use his tongue so as to arouse in the 
 scholar mental activity and to secure from the 
 scholar intelligent cooperation in our teaching. The 
 whole matter of the art of questioning is one that 
 deserves a whole hour at least for itself. I can 
 only give you hints. You can carry them further 
 by more detailed study. 
 
 A question is a wonderful thing. Even in a 
 class where they are paying reasonable attention, 
 the moment you say : " John, what do you think 
 about this ? " John's mind becomes active above 
 the other minds because he is called by name. A 
 question will arouse the mind of the inert listener 
 as nothing else will do. 
 
 I want to call your attention here to several of 
 the aims you should have in view in preparing your 
 questions. In the first place, a question may be 
 used to test knowledge. Oh, the ignorance on our 
 part of the ignorance of our scholars, and there- 
 fore the misapplication of truth because we do not 
 know the scholar's standpoint. We ought, there- 
 fore, to test knowledge by questions. 
 
 A teacher one day heard one of her scholars in 
 reading the lesson responsively say: "Woe unto 
 you, scribes and Parisees." At once she suspected 
 
198 God's Book and God's Boy 
 
 something, and when the class went to work she 
 said to tiie girl: "Who were these Parisees?" 
 The child replied : " The Parisees were people that 
 dwelt in Paris." 
 
 See what a deficiency of knowledge that showed 
 on the part of the scholar. Having opened that 
 Sahara of ignorance, the teacher turned that girl's 
 ignorance into an oasis of knowledge. 
 
 One of my teachers, herself a Christian girl, who 
 had taken every prize offered in the school, came 
 to me one day and said : " Dr. Schauffler, I never 
 knew before that Jesus Christ was crucified four 
 times." What a light that threw upon her mental 
 equipment. Instantly I guessed that for the first 
 time she had read the four gospels through seri- 
 atim and had found Him crucified in Matthew, in 
 Mark, in Luke, in John — four times ! 
 
 You say that happened in the tenement-house 
 district. Yery well, then, we will take Fifth Ave- 
 nue. A lady on Fifth Avenue wanted me to pre- 
 pare a series of topics on Bible characters suitable 
 for lectures by various gentlemen in her own par- 
 lours, where she got together seventy or eighty 
 wealthy ladies. I prepared the outline and took it 
 to her and she said : " I see you have David, but 
 not Solomon." "No," I replied, "I have only 
 twelve persons to select, and Solomon was hardly 
 worth while." " But," she said, " you have got to 
 have Solomon as preparatory to David." My an- 
 swer was, " I never knew a son was preparatory to 
 his father before." 
 
The Teacher^s Eleven Helpers 199 
 
 In the above-named case a well-known professor 
 in a theological seminary was to deliver the first 
 lecture, and his theme was : " The Canon of Scrip- 
 ture." He rolled on before these seventy or eighty 
 high-bred ladies about the Targums, the Uncials, 
 the Palimpsists, the Samaritan and the Peshito, 
 and I don't know what all. In amazement I said 
 to myself : " I wonder whether these people under- 
 stand what he is saying." When he closed, wath a 
 self -contented smile on his face, he said : *' If there 
 is any lady who would like to ask any questions I 
 would be glad to answer them." At that the 
 daughter of the president of that seminary leaned 
 over to me and whispered : " Please ask him what 
 he means by canon," and I said: "Professor, a 
 lady wants to know what you mean by canon." 
 I thought that question would knock him down, 
 so amazed was he, for really that was one of the 
 simplest terms he had used. 
 
 The trouble with our teaching is that we fly too 
 high. Questions will bring us dowm so that we 
 descend to the point where the scholars live. 
 
 You can ask a question to develop thought. 
 Thought is very vague in the minds of many. 
 Suppose that you have a lesson on Moses, and that 
 you affirm, "Moses was probably the greatest 
 man that ever lived." Now pause and ask a 
 scholar : " Why was Moses the greatest man ? " 
 That at once makes him stir around to find 
 an answer. It makes him pull himself together 
 to find out why. His answer may be faulty, but 
 
200 God's Book and God's Boy 
 
 at least he makes an effort, and an effort is a benefit 
 to him. 
 
 A question may be used to lead to action. That 
 is a most important aim in view. I saw that beau- 
 tifully done one day when I had made an evangel- 
 istic address to an up-tow^n Sunday-school. The 
 superintendent then invited all who wanted further 
 advice to remain. One of those who stayed was a 
 young woman, and the superintendent and she and 
 I came face to face. The superintendent said to 
 her: "Mary, if the Lord Jesus Christ were here 
 and were to say to you, ' My child, give Me your 
 heart,' would you do it ? " She answered, " I 
 would." The superintendent added, " If the Lord 
 Jesus Christ said, * Give Me your hand in token 
 that your heart goes with it,' would you do so ? " 
 "I would." Then the superintendent said: "Dr. 
 Schauffler is Christ's representative here this day. 
 He is going to ask you that question now as Christ's 
 ambassador." Then I said : " Mary, will you give 
 me your hand in token that you give Christ your 
 hand and heart ? " and she replied : " I will : here 
 it is." 
 
 Wasn't he wise ? Wasn't the leading up of that 
 woman to action by questions beautiful, the ques- 
 tion leading the scholar over the dividing line 
 between contemplation and action. 
 
 A question may be used to rebuke folly / not very 
 often, but sometimes wisely. A Bible class teacher 
 in New York had a young man in his class who 
 was very trying because when anything supernatu- 
 
The Teacher^s Eleven Helpers 201 
 
 ral came up in the lesson, such as a miracle, he 
 would break in and say : " I don't believe it because 
 I cannot understand it." One day riding into town 
 in the train, teacher and scholar were together. The 
 teacher noticed in a field horses and sheep and 
 geese, and all happened to be eating grass at the 
 same time. The teacher saw his chance and said 
 to the scholar : '' There are sheep and horses and 
 geese eating grass at the same time. In the case 
 of the horse part of it turns to horsehair. In the 
 case of the sheep part of it turns into wool. In the 
 case of the geese part of it turns to feathers. Can 
 you explain that to me ? " " No," said the young 
 man, " I do not understand it." " Yery well," said 
 the teacher, " then I won't believe it." In this way 
 he showed the young man that because we cannot 
 understand is no reason why we should not believe. 
 That broke the scholar down, and he made no such 
 foolish suggestion in the class after that. 
 
 One day one of my teachers came to me and 
 said : " I wish you would teach my class to-day. 
 There is a boy who watches his chance to say some- 
 thing ridiculous and so break up the class." I went 
 down. The lesson happened to be a temperance 
 lesson. This boy was quietly watching his chance. 
 Among other things I chanced to say something to 
 this effect, that if you think that you can fool with 
 the Devil by taking a little strong drink now and 
 then, you will be mistaken, for he will beat you 
 at that game. Immediately the boy said : " Will 
 he beat you with a stick ? " All the other boys 
 
202 God's Book and God's Boy 
 
 laughed. They thought it clever. I said nothing. 
 Presently I was talking about games and asked if 
 any of them played games, and this boy said : 
 " Yes, I play checkers. I played with my father 
 last night, and beat him." At once I replied: 
 " Did you beat him with a stick ? " He saw my 
 point and troubled me no more with his folly. 
 
 It was my privilege years ago to attend teaching 
 by questions and answers as exemplified in the 
 Teachers' College of New York City. At that 
 time I was trying hard to learn what I might that 
 would fit me for better work. I would have run 
 from Dan to Beersheba to get a little help in this 
 line. 
 
 The principle used there was this: First, the 
 teacher must never have seen the scholars ; second, 
 the scholars must not know what the lesson is go- 
 ing to be ; third, the teacher must tell the scholars 
 nothing ; fourth, the teacher must evolve out of the 
 scholars everything. There is a proposition for 
 you. 
 
 One day the topic was: "The Uses of Oils." 
 Twenty boys and twenty girls, about twelve years 
 old; many visitors. Teacher and scholars had 
 never faced each other before. This was the way 
 that clever woman began. 
 
 " ' The Uses of Oils ' is our topic. Have any of 
 you got sewing-machines in your homes ? Hands 
 please. Will you tell me please if sometimes those 
 sewing-machines don't run hard ? Yes ? Well, 
 what is done when your machine does not run 
 
The Teacher's Eleven Helpers 203 
 
 smoothly ? " " Oh, mother oils it." " Have any 
 of you boys got bicycles ? Hands. What do you 
 carry with your bicycle to make it run smooth ? " 
 "Oil." "Do they use oil in machines of every 
 kind at times?" "Yes." "Very well." Then 
 she wrote this on the board : " Oil is used for lubri- 
 cating purposes," and she added, " When we use 
 oil to make machinery run smooth we call it lubri- 
 cating it." She first gave the thought, then she 
 gave the nomenclature. 
 
 " How many of you have ever been sick ? Hands. 
 What was the matter with you?" "I had the 
 toothache." " Better ? " " Yes." " What was the 
 matter with you ? " " Awful stomach-ache." " Did 
 your mother do anything for you?" "Yes, 
 sent for the doctor." " Did you get well ? " 
 "Yes." "Did the doctor give you anything?" 
 " Yes." " What did he give you ? " " Magnesia." 
 " What was the matter with you ? " " Stomach- 
 ache." " Did your mother give you anything ? " 
 " Yes." " What did your mother give you ? " 
 "Castor oil." "What did you say?" "Castor 
 oil." " Oh." " When you give a person some- 
 thing to make them well, what do you call it ? " 
 " Medicine." " Could Castor oil be called medi- 
 cine ? " " Yes." She wrote on the board : " Oil 
 can be used for medicinal purposes." 
 
 So one by one she drew out the uses of oil, 
 telling them nothing, drawing it all out of them ; 
 giving them first the idea and then its nomencla- 
 ture. When she came to the matter of manufac- 
 
204 God's Book and God's Boy 
 
 turing purposes there was difficulty. She could 
 not tell them, so she fished and fished for it, and 
 they were all trying to get at what she was after. 
 At last one boy said his father had a paint-shop. 
 " Do you often go there ? " " Yes, but mamma 
 don't like me to." " Why ? " " Because I spoiled 
 a pair of trousers there once." "How did you 
 spoil them ? " "I sat down on a barrel of linseed 
 oil." " A barrel of what ? " "A barrel of linseed 
 oil." " Well," she said, " what does your father 
 use linseed oil for ? " " Oh," he says, " he uses it to 
 mix paint with." Then she had it. " Oil is used 
 for manufacturing purposes." 
 
 She told them nothing. She drew everything 
 out of them. They practically did it all and she 
 put it on the board. What a wonderful use of 
 questions ! 
 
 Every teacher has one head; that is to say, 
 one mind. This mind is that which gives direc- 
 tion to eye, ear, foot, hand and mouth. This 
 head is that with w^hich we gain our knowledge, 
 with which we direct every effort. This head is 
 that which every teacher ought to use (as also every 
 superintendent) for the gathering together of all 
 those factors which make us successful in our work. 
 We ought to know, all of us, the fundamental 
 principles of pedagogy and paidology. AVe ought 
 to know, all of us, the developing nature of the 
 child so that we can fit our teaching through 
 mouth, ear and eye to the varying needs of the 
 scholar. That means some study on our part. 
 
The Teacher's Eleven Helpers 205 
 
 That means getting, not many, but the best books 
 along the line of the developing of child nature. 
 One of the marked directions in which child nature 
 develops is from the egoistic to the altruistic. The 
 little child is egoistic. It is /, my opinion, my this, 
 my that. But when the child reaches the age of 
 adolescence the altruistic comes in. We have to 
 know that, because it is useless to teach a beginner 
 along altruistic lines and it is folly to deal with 
 adults along any other line than that of altruism. 
 The boys and girls, before reaching adolescence, 
 diverge after they reach the ages of seven and 
 eight. Before that age they still play together 
 and there is no sex difference. But as they grow 
 a little older the boys begin to call the girls ^^ sis- 
 sies," and go off by themselves, and the girls call 
 the boys " nasty," and go off by themselves. It is 
 hard to bring them together during that period. 
 When it comes to the period of adolescence it is 
 hard to keep them apart because every girl wants 
 a fellow, and when a girl is so fortunate as to have 
 two fellows, she is in the seventh heaven. We 
 must know these facts so as to handle our scholars 
 in the proper way. 
 
 These heads of ours are to teach us not only the 
 boy, but the Book, and that is why I have striven 
 to throw a little light on the two. Mere listeners 
 never accomplish anything, but work will accom- 
 plish almost everything and the poor teacher who 
 is willing to work will grade up and up, whereas 
 the teacher who will not work will grade down 
 
2o6 God's Book and God's Boy 
 
 and down. You see then how important it is to 
 use properly the capacities that God has given us. 
 
 Finally, the eleventh helper that we have is the 
 heart, I showed, I think, yesterday how this heart 
 is dominant over all. It underlies all. God has 
 given us our affections and through these affections 
 we win the affections of our scholars. That teacher 
 who loves the scholar will work for that scholar. 
 That teacher whose heart goes out constantly look- 
 ing after the welfare of those under his care is the 
 teacher that will gain favour in his work and be 
 able by his influence to win the scholar for Christ 
 and for Godliness. The heart is our Gibraltar and 
 if that Gibraltar is well kept then sooner or later 
 everything else falls into line. It is that heart that 
 will lead the teacher constantly to ask for guidance 
 divine and power superhuman in the work. It is 
 that heart that will lead the teacher to present the 
 scholar daily at the throne of grace. My better half 
 had a larger class of young women than she could 
 always remember the names of, but on her knees 
 every day the class book was open in front of her 
 and in private prayer it was gone through every 
 day. That was because the heart was there and 
 the heart dominated all else. 
 
 The heart will constantly go out to the scholar 
 in his misfortune, in his sickness, in times of finan- 
 cial stringency. The heart will do these manifold 
 things and so by God's good grace, supplementing 
 and directing all that these ten other helpers 
 furnish us, will so coordinate them that we will be 
 
The Teacher's Eleven Helpers 207 
 
 a benediction to our scholars without measure. The 
 heart will reach up God-ward first with supreme 
 love, will reach out next scholar- ward with equal 
 love and will strive to bring the two together. 
 Then, by divine grace, there will come to the class 
 so great a blessing that there will not be room 
 enough to receive it. 
 
XI 
 
 THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL WORKER'S WIDENING 
 HORIZON 
 
 IN" developing my theme I must deal somewhat 
 with detail. Detail is not as interesting to 
 the average hearer as are bird's-eye views ; 
 none the less, no Sunday-school worker is thor- 
 oughly equipped, and no Sunday-school is on the 
 up-grade unless much attention is paid to detail. 
 
 Years ago Mr. Wanamaker made a visit to the 
 Sunday-school of which I was superintendent and 
 when he saw the condition of the school he said 
 to me : " What is the secret of your success ? " 
 I answered : " Attention to detail." " That is 
 enough," he replied. 
 
 At one time Michael Angelo was chiselling out 
 the heroic statue of David that is in Florence when 
 a friend visited him and remarked that the work 
 was nearly finished. Months after the friend re- 
 turned and still Michael Angelo was at work on 
 that statue. The friend said to him : " I thought 
 you were nearly finished six months ago." " Oh, 
 no," he said. " Well, what have you been doing 
 these six months ? " *' Oh," he said, " I have 
 softened a little this muscle and brought out a 
 little more markedly that glance of the eye." " But 
 
 208 
 
The Worker's Widening Horizon ' 209 
 
 those are all details. They are mere trifles," the 
 friend said, to which the great sculptor replied : 
 " These trifles make perfection, but perfection is no 
 trifle." 
 
 So in Sunday-school work trifles make perfection, 
 but perfection is no trifle. 
 
 What I have to say in this chapter will be some- 
 what autobiographical. I started in Sunday-school 
 work as a kid, a mere freshman in Williams Col- 
 lege, Massachusetts. My only proof of fidelity was, 
 first, that I did try to prepare my lessons, and, 
 second, that I trudged two and a half miles on foot 
 to the school and two and a half back, and that I 
 do not remember any New England snow-storm 
 with snow-drifts up to our breasts that kept a few 
 of us from tramping through the snow to get to 
 our classes. But, oh, the ignorance with which I 
 went to my work ! Oh, the narrow horizon that I 
 had, which yet never occurred to me to lack any- 
 thing. I failed to realize that my class was a part 
 of the larger unit of the school. I failed to realize 
 that I ought to visit my scholars. Woe is me, I 
 failed to realize that I ought to know whether my 
 scholars were Christians or not. It is pitiful. Yet 
 you will meet Sunday-school teachers in your work 
 just as ignorant as I was, who need enlightenment, 
 and a proper appreciation of their work, so that 
 they shall see how wide is the scope and how vast 
 the influence of a rightly conducted Sunday-school. 
 When I grew somewhat older and became a little 
 more experienced in Sunday-school work I saw, for 
 
210 God's Book and God's Boy 
 
 example, that in the work of the teacher for the 
 class there were other things that he must attend 
 to besides the mere interpretation of the facts of 
 the lesson. He must know, for example, what his 
 scholars are reading along secular lines, whether 
 they are reading light, trashy literature, poring 
 over the Sunday paper with its grotesque carica- 
 tures and contemptible comic page. He must know 
 the companions of these scholars — what company 
 they keep. We have them only one hour in a week. 
 All the rest of the time some one else has them, 
 and other influences are surrounding them that 
 may not be uplifting. If I have a boy, for ex- 
 ample, who is in the telegraph messenger service 
 where the boys sit in the office and exchange filthy 
 stories, I must know that, so that I can meet the 
 situation, and can in some way correct the evil in- 
 fluences which for six days, and sometimes seven, 
 are dragging them down. 
 
 If my girl is in the department store I must 
 know her environment. I had at one time in my 
 school a very beautiful young woman who worked 
 in such a store. While talking to her one day she 
 said to me, " We have great temptations. Men 
 come in the store and to the lace counter (where 
 she was) and buy lace. Then by and by a man 
 will say, " I would like to buy a piece of lace and 
 wouldn't you accept it as a gift from me ? " There 
 is only one meaning to that. Or another man 
 buys something from the lace counter and then 
 says, " Sundays you must be troubled to know how 
 
The Worker's Widening Horizon 211 
 
 to spend the day. I have a splendid span of horses 
 and if you would like we can go for a drive on the 
 Speedway." There is only one meaning to that. 
 
 See, the horizon widens from that little circle 
 where I merely teach this lesson for this Sunday. 
 You go a little further and perhaps you become 
 superintendent of a school. Most ministers, in my 
 judgment, in small churches ought to superintend 
 their own schools. I have never had charge of a 
 church that I did not superintend my school. It 
 means hard work, but what are we here for ? 
 
 You will very soon find that the horizon widens 
 rapidly when you assume charge of a school. You 
 find now that the individual class is only a unit in 
 the collection of units that form the school. You 
 will find the interest of the individual class must 
 sometimes be subordinated to the larger interest of 
 the school as a whole, for the school as a whole is 
 of more importance than any individual class that 
 wants to branch off by itself and do what seems 
 good in its own eyes. 
 
 Very soon your horizon broadens again and you 
 begin to see that music is more than music. Music, 
 rightly conducted, is worship. In many schools 
 hymns are given out without the slightest reference 
 to the lesson, or to the conditions of the school. 
 Different conditions in the school require different 
 hymns. As soon as you begin to understand the 
 mission of church music, if you are thoughtful, you 
 realize that a large part of our hymnology requires 
 explanation. We understand it, but our scholars 
 
212 God^s Book and God's Boy 
 
 do not understand it and, consequently, they sing 
 with spirit, but not with understanding. 
 
 Take some specific instances. One of our hymns 
 reads : 
 
 *' Here I raise mine Ebenezer, 
 Hither, by Thy help, I^m come.^' 
 
 I wonder how many of you know what an Ebenezer 
 is. Ninety-nine out of a hundred of our scholars 
 do not, and, as a result, they sing without under- 
 standing. 
 
 *' From every stormy wind that blows, 
 From every swelling tide of woes, 
 There is a calm, a sure retreat ; 
 'Tis found beneath the mercy-seat.'^ 
 
 "When I was a boy I wondered what the mercy- 
 seat was and how I could get under it to get peace. 
 No one explained it to me. When you give out 
 hymns like these they need explaining before you 
 sing, otherwise the words are often really mean- 
 ingless. 
 
 How many of our Sunday-school scholars do you 
 suppose understand the allusions in the following 
 very familiar verse ? 
 
 " Though like a wanderer. 
 The sun gone down. 
 Darkness be over me. 
 
 My rest a stone ; 
 Yet in my dreams I'd be 
 Nearer, my God, to Thee." 
 
The Worker^s Widening Horizon 213 
 
 That means nothiDg to them. They do not know 
 of Jacob at Bethel, lying down and making a stone 
 his pillow. They do not know of the ladder that 
 he saw in his dream with angels descending and as- 
 cending. The verse is so much gibberish so far as 
 their understanding is concerned. 
 
 *' Sinners, whose love can ne'er forget 
 The wormwood and the gall. 
 Go spread your trophies at His feet. 
 And crown Him Lord of all." 
 
 I fancy there are many adult scholars who do 
 not know the meaning of the wormwood and the 
 gall, and so they, too, sing without understanding. 
 I could go on in this manner almost endlessly. 
 
 Of course, the widening horizon of the Sunday- 
 school superintendent shows him that he has got to 
 have in his school order. Order is Heaven's first 
 law, and it is the last law in a great many Sunday- 
 schools. We have what we call " Opening Exer- 
 cises," which are correctly named, because the door 
 keeps on opening to let the late-comers in, especially 
 during the singing. But hymns are a form of de- 
 votion. They are worship, and we learn that we 
 have to defend the punctual ones from the disorder 
 of the late ones in their worship, and therefore we 
 make proper arrangements to keep the late ones 
 out until such time as we are not singing praise to 
 God. 
 
 Our widening horizon makes us realize that 
 teachers' meetings for the study of the lesson are 
 
214 God's Book and God's Boy 
 
 necessary. Never will you get all the teachers to 
 attend the weekl}^ meeting, but if out of twelve you 
 get five or six, you should be satisfied. Their in- 
 fluence will affect the others. They will urge them 
 on. With a teachers' meeting (without which I 
 would conduct no Sunday-school on earth) you find 
 better work is done and the school goes right up 
 grade. 
 
 You see in these ways how the horizon is stead- 
 ily widening ? Yery soon you begin to understand 
 that you must grade the school. A gentleman was 
 in to see me this morning about his particular class 
 where he said that young men and women nine- 
 teen and twenty years of age were put into joint 
 lessons with children seven, eight and nine years 
 of age. If the angel Gabriel came down to teach 
 that class he could not do it. You cannot teach 
 nineteen-year and nine-year old scholars the same 
 thing at the same time. Gradation has to be entered 
 upon, so that those who are of a certain degree of 
 intelligence are put together. Those at a higher 
 level are put by themselves. So gradation is forced 
 upon us when we understand the significance and 
 importance of our work as teachers. 
 
 When I began to grade my school I found diffi- 
 culties because the hearts of the teachers did not 
 respond. However, finding a teacher, for example, 
 with scholars from eight to sixteen years of age, I 
 knew perfectly well that that teacher could not do 
 first class work, so I prepared a blank which said, 
 " Dear friend : I find scholars in your class from 
 
The Worker's Widening Horizon 215 
 
 ages so-and-so to so-and-so. You must have diffi- 
 culty in teaching scholars of such divergent ages. 
 I would suggest that you let me regrade the schol- 
 ars in your class from age this to age that." Some 
 of the teachers said, " Yes, try it." Some of the 
 teachers said, " Let me alone." I let them alone 
 and tried with those who were willing. In about six 
 months in a teachers' meeting I said, '' Quite a 
 number of us have been trying very careful grada- 
 tion. I would like to hear what their experience 
 is." With one accord they said, " We never knew 
 the real joy of teaching before as we know it now." 
 Then I said, " Some teachers have not had their 
 classes graded yet. I will grade them if they 
 wish." Then all the classes came in and were prop- 
 erly graded. 
 
 You will not be long at your work before you 
 understand that there is something in graded les- 
 sons. This idea of grading lessons, with which I 
 had a great deal to do as chairman of the Inter- 
 national Lesson Committee, is good. The only 
 trouble is that we have tried to grade too minutely. 
 We shall soon begin to grade less minutely and by 
 departments, instead of by years. Even then a 
 majority of the Sunday-schools in the United 
 States will not be able to accept graded lessons be- 
 cause they are not well enough organized. About 
 twenty per cent, of the larger schools already have 
 graded lessons. Seventy-five per cent, will not for 
 forty years be able to adopt a complete system of 
 graded lessons. 
 
2i6 God's Book and God's Boy 
 
 You realize that in your widening horizon the 
 main aim of the Sunday-school is conversion and 
 Christian culture. That was one of the first things 
 that impressed itself on me. I found that the 
 school I took charge of in New York had been run- 
 ning fourteen years, about one thousand strong. I 
 found that, excluding the primary department, 
 only two per cent, of the scholars were members of 
 that church. I saw that was all wrong. The re- 
 sult was that applying good common sense methods, 
 ten years after that thirty-six per cent, of the 
 scholars were members of that church. 
 
 The horizon, however, widens again. You started 
 with your class ; you widened to your school. 
 Presently the worker will realize that in the city 
 where he lives or the county where he is teaching 
 there are more schools than his. His school isn't 
 IT. He will begin to realize that he must have 
 some relationship with the county organization and 
 that he must gear himself into that larger machin- 
 ery so that his school may be a part of the larger 
 body. 
 
 Every school, therefore, ought to be a member 
 of the county association, if there be one, in order 
 that the school may give and get : may give of its 
 experience and get of the experience of others. In 
 that way all the schools will be enriched, each one 
 profiting by the mistakes or by the success of the 
 others and in a little while the whole school organ- 
 ization in the county will become more and more a 
 power for the spread of the kingdom of God on earth. 
 
The Worker^s Widening Horizon 217 
 
 It will not be long, however, before you realize 
 again that the state is larger than the county. I 
 will never forget when I woke up to the fact that 
 New York State was larger than New York 
 County. You realize that you ought to grade into 
 another organization larger than the last to get 
 good work. Every county and city association 
 ought to have organic and vital union with the as- 
 sociation of the state. Nearly all of our states are 
 organized. You have your state organization. Are 
 your schools geared into the state organization ? 
 These state associations have, as a rule, annual con- 
 ventions where they call the best men of the state 
 and such other talent as they can secure to set up 
 before the Sunday-school the highest standards of 
 excellence. In that way the whole Sunday-school 
 work is revived, is improved and becomes a great 
 power in the community. Of course, this gearing 
 into the larger organization means you give an an- 
 nual contribution to that organization, because or- 
 ganizations have some legitimate expenses and 
 every school in the state ought to give to the state 
 Sunday-school treasury. 
 
 Well, we haven't gotten thus far before another 
 horizon begins to dawn on you and you begin to 
 realize that the state is not everything. The 
 United States is larger than any state, even Texas ; 
 and you begin to realize that the United States is 
 organized, together with Canada, into what is 
 called the International Sunday-School Associa- 
 tion. You begin to see that there is something 
 
2l8 God's Book and God's Boy 
 
 nation-wide, and, indeed, larger than that, for we 
 are allied with the Dominion north of us. Every 
 Sunday-school, therefore, ought to be an organic 
 part of that larger unity. Yet I fear that there are 
 thousands of schools that do not know there is an 
 International Sunday-School Association. 
 
 This International Sunday-School Association has 
 triennial conventions and the first one that I at- 
 tended was held in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1877. We 
 came down from the North to that convention in 
 considerable numbers. Behind the platform in the 
 convention church there was a map of the United 
 States. Every state that was organized had on it a 
 large gold star. In every state every county that 
 was organized had on it a small gold star. My 
 state, New York, of course, had a large star and 
 having sixty-one counties, all organized, had sixty- 
 one small stars, so that the state was considerably 
 gilded. Illinois, Indiana, New Jersey, Massachu- 
 setts, all had their large and their small stars. 
 Georgia had no star of any kind. Well, our Georgia 
 friends stood that for two days. Oh, that awfully 
 blank spot on the map called Georgia ! On the 
 morning of the third day some dear brother from 
 Georgia had cut out a piece of gold paper the size 
 of the whole state and had pasted it over the state. 
 When some one said, " I see a great change has 
 taken place on the map," this man replied, " Yes, 
 we of Georgia are sick of seeing Georgia with no 
 gold. I have prophetically covered it with gold." 
 Three years later the convention met in Toronto and 
 
The Worker's Widening Horizon 219 
 
 seventy-two delegates came up from Georgia, 
 headed by their governor. They had been aroused. 
 Our going down there had brought life, enthusiasm 
 and energy into the state of Georgia, so that the 
 whole state pledged itself to the Sunday-schoolidea 
 as it had never done before and when these seventy- 
 two Georgians came marching in and sat down 
 side by side in the Toronto convention there was 
 tremendous enthusiasm, not on their part only, but 
 on the part of every one who had been at the 
 previous triennial convention. 
 
 You see when this international convention 
 passes from state to state it arouses the attention 
 of the state. It stimulates the workers of the state. 
 Those who are present catch the enthusiasm and go 
 back to their schools refreshed and fitted to do 
 better work in the future than they have ever done 
 in the past. 
 
 In this way this tremendous horizon broadens and 
 broadens until we realize that we are an army about 
 twenty million strong, fourteen million of us in the 
 United States and the balance in Great Britain, 
 India, China, Japan, the islands of the ocean, 
 Ireland, France, Germany, Africa. This makes us 
 realize that we are not a few fighting alone, but 
 that we are a part of a great and valiant army. 
 
 You begin to see, fellow workers, how thus far 
 all this makes our horizon almost world-wide. As 
 a matter of fact, we have got to broaden it once 
 more so that it may be truly world-wide and so 
 there is a World's Sunday-School Association. 
 
220 God's Book and God's Boy 
 
 Thus we have the individual Sunday-school ; we 
 have the city or county organization ; we have the 
 state association ; we have the International Sun- 
 day-School Association ; now we have the World 
 Convention, and that takes in all Sunday-school 
 workers from all over the world. They also have 
 their conventions ; though rarely in this country. 
 
 The first of these conventions was held in Jeru- 
 salem, in 1904 ; " Jerusalem the Golden," as it 
 never had been for centuries before that convention 
 met there. We chartered from the United States 
 a passenger steamer, filled only with Sunday-school 
 delegates. All along the line it made its impres- 
 sion. When it stopped at any port the question 
 was, " Who are all these ? " " That is a Sunday- 
 KJhool convention. These are delegates from 
 America to Jerusalem." 
 
 There was no building in Jerusalem that could 
 hold them. They had their tents and many meet- 
 ings were held in the open, on the Mount of Olives 
 and on Calvary. 
 
 In 1907, they met in Kome, the Imperial City, 
 and there again these thousands poured in and the 
 idea was, " Sunday-school." The next convention 
 was in 1910, in Washington, D. C. Then 1913, last 
 year, these delegates gathered together in Zurich. 
 
 I might say here that in order to do all that is 
 possible in behalf of those who buy tickets, excur- 
 sions were afterwards arranged, from Zurich down 
 through the Rhine, along the Riviera, and through 
 certain portions of Italy. Everything is done to 
 
The Worker's Widening Horizon 221 
 
 make each of these excursions as profitable to these 
 workers as possible. 
 
 The next convention comes in 1916 and is to be 
 held in Tokyo. See ; you have had Palestine, Italy, 
 Switzerland, the United States, and next the great 
 empire in the Far East. We propose there to 
 arouse the workers, in Japan and in near-by Korea, 
 so that we can bring to them our Anglo-Saxon views 
 of the Sunday-school idea, so as to bring up the na- 
 tive children from earliest childhood in the nurture 
 and admonition of the Lord to the end that they may 
 be workers in the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ. 
 
 Do you see where w^e are ? My theme was : 
 The Sunday-School Workers' Widening Horizon, 
 and it has become world-wide so that we may 
 realize in every school that comes into this world- 
 wide cooperation the magnitude of the opportunity 
 and the fullness of the privilege and power that 
 the Sunday-school organization throughout the 
 world is able to exert for the uplift of mankind 
 and for the bringing on of the kingdom of God. 
 
 There have been many things that have been ac- 
 complished by the International Sunday-School 
 Lesson Committee. For many years I have been 
 studying the International Uniform Lesson System. 
 That system having been adopted by the major 
 part of the Sunday-schools of the world, has 
 brought forward a set of writers for Sunday-school 
 lessons such as the world has never seen. It is pos- 
 sible now to secure the best talent to write Sunday- 
 school lessons, for the demand for the lesson leaves 
 
222 God's Book and God's Boy 
 
 of the different denominations is so great that we 
 can pay the workers the best prices and yet make 
 money for the various Sunday-school organizations 
 of the denominations. 
 
 I have seen Sunday-schools shrink up in their 
 own little circumference, and stagger on and fall 
 paralyzed. I have seen Sunday-schools branch out 
 in this broader sympathy, this international idea, 
 and receive the fullest blessing from it. 
 
 There is one more widening of this horizon. So 
 far it has been an earthly widening, including all 
 classes of men here in this life. Now my vision, 
 like that of St. John on Patmos, stretches beyond 
 and I begin to see that the influence of the Sun- 
 day-school is not only terrestrial, but is celestial. 
 I begin to see the ransomed of the world, the thou- 
 sands and millions of those brought to Christ by 
 the Sunday-school, who have heard the Master's 
 call and have gathered beyond the river, and now 
 they are beginning to sing that celestial song: 
 Unto Him that loved us and gave Himself for us, 
 and that washed us in His own precious blood, 
 unto Him be glory forever and forever. 
 
 Fellow workers, that work is not terrestrial only, 
 is not international only ; it has a wide horizon that 
 takes in the other world. So we work with our 
 fellow beings for glory eternal when the ransomed 
 of the redeemed in the Lord come home with 
 shouts of thanksgiving and triumph unspeakable. 
 
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Date Due 
 
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